A New Day in America (26 page)

“Jaz,” he says, and they shake.

“Ed,” Nos responds.

“Heard you need a tattoo, homie,” says Jaz, eyes flat and presumptuous, as though he were giving an order instead of offering a service.

“I got business.”

Jaz turns. “I don’t do business with nobody I don’t tattoo.”

So that’s how he’s going to play it. “Yeah,” says Nos, resigned. “I need a tattoo.”

As Jaz turns, he shows a tattoo of the Decepticon face on the back of his bald head. They walk inside through a heavily-barred door with bulletproof glass and pass a white girl with piercings and sleeves inked with ghoulish demonic masks. Jaz leads them through a bright room with massive color paintings and posters everywhere, images ranging from comic-book nude women with angel wings touching themselves, A
La Doce Vida
poster with a gorgeous blonde and a romantic Italian smoking over a blue backdrop, black and white murals with an explosion of incompatible alien shapes, a naked black goddess with a popping red rose and red boxing gloves, huge and ancient Samurai silk-screen prints, and masks with tusks, fangs, and whiskers hung from all over the world. Soul music blasts with a sensual croon.
Half gangsters, half artists. Which is Jaz?

A small, thin, black-Asian paints the thick outline of a dragon. The back has a long, plush couch and resembles a living room. A skinny black kid with big, thick glasses tattoos the back of a gorgeous woman. Scores of action figures are posed on the shelves: from X-men to Doomsday and Darkside, Spider-man and Darth Sidious, Robotech planes and rows of ancient Decepticons: Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Laser-Beak, Rumble, Preadaking.

Jaz sits on a stool, and the pierced white girl follows with a stack of paper towels.

“So, what do you want?”

Nos wracks his brain. He had never once in his life considered getting a tattoo, but the evening seems right. Sitting with Jaz for an hour would be the best way to navigate his needs in Frisco. He wants something to memorialize Yvette, but cannot think of a symbol for her that would mean anything.

“Nay,” he says. “Can you draw the river?”

Jaz looks to the girl and chuckles. He gets her a paper and a marker, and Nay concentrates hard and draws the four wavy lines she had been drawing in the mud along the river. Her tongue sticks from the side of her mouth, and she tries to align the waves as perfect as possible.

“Look at you, shorty can draw,” says Jaz. “You want to be a tattooer one day?”

She hands Jaz the paper, and he examines it and nods.

Jaz dons an ink-stained apron and dips his needle in a tiny cup of ink. He works the peddles at his feet, and his needle buzzes a dim pain into Nos’ shoulder. The in-and-out breathing from Jaz’s nose sounds above the needle buzz and rhythm and blues. Nos smiles in the crooning.
Music. Been a while
.

“Any chance you seen a woman walking around here with three red-nosed pits?

Jaz pauses and wipes the excess ink and blood from Nos’ arm.

“Hard to miss,” says Nos.

“I seen her,” Jaz mutters. “Comes and goes. You got some kinda rifle, I heard?”

“ASM-DT Amphibious Assault Rifle, Omnicorp Special Ops.”

“Gangster. Only so many ways to come up on that.”

“Gotta be worth what I’m looking for.”

“And what’s that?” asks Jaz.

“The Chef.”

Jaz looks puzzled. “The Chef? Never heard of him. You hungry or something?”

“He cooks drugs. I heard he came out to San Francisco to make some money. He’s concocted a drug called they called
the cure
back in New York.”

“The cure. That, I heard of.”

“He’s worth a fortune.”

Jaz meets Nos with his eyes, making a second measure of the man.

The parlor doors slam open. Six Decepticons roar inside. They’re talking at one another like barking dogs. No one hears each other and no one cares.

“Went Revelation hunting, boy!” one announces to Jaz. His skin is a metallic black, his head stark bald. He has bold white teeth and huge eyes with whites that surround his pupils all the way around. He looks like a reverse smiling skeleton.

Jaz keeps his focus on filling in the black of the waves of Nos’ arm.

“Got like ten of ‘em, straight up!”

Another comes forward with a knapsack and pulls out a man’s head by the hair.

Jaz looks up and chuckles, “Gangster.” Then he realizes. “Put that away, Doom, we got a little girl here.”

Nay is looking wide-eyed at the Revelation Guard’s head.

“My bad,” says the one called Doom as he puts the bloody head back in the bag.

“Where’d you catch them?” asks Jaz.

“Right on China Beach.”

Jaz puts his attention back to the tattoo.

“They know who hit ‘em?”

“Nah, no chance.”

“The beach is no good, man. They got crazy backup in the water,” says Jaz, his voice raspy.

“Caught like ten dudes sipping soup and reading Bibles. Straight murked every last one,” says Doom.

“They could have followed.”

“Nah. First they gotta get through the Hasids, and you know they ain’t letting that go down. They’d start a war.”

They’re an army. Their purpose is war
.

Jaz is halfway through filling in the second wave on Nos’ arm when they hear the beating of helicopters. Loud. Two, maybe three of them.

“Motherfucker!” says Jaz, dropping the needle.

He cracks Doom across the face, quicker than Nos would expect he could move. Doom drops. He sits on the floor and holds his forearms around his shins, head hanging between his knees.
Like Jaz just told his son to sit and think about what he’s done. Always good to know the local food chain
.

Jaz snaps the latex gloves off his bear hands.

“Get the fuck up,” he says.

Everyone, even the tattooers, artists, and half-naked girl whose tattoo is half-filled in, pulls guns off of walls and behind couches and from trunks.

Nos draws his Sig and creeps to the front window.
Should have known. Should be better armed
.

Lights shine down from three helicopters above the city buildings on the young hustlers outside of the tattoo shop. They stand still and in awe as if gazing up at heaven. Bursts from a minigun mow them down where they stand.
So much for civilization
.

Ropes drop from the choppers, and soldiers slide down to the adjacent street corner one by one. Apaches—eight in each one.
Jaz and his men probably aren’t worth a shit, either
.

The Revelation Guards spread behind cover, stack up, and fire from the street.

Nos runs Nay into the bathroom and returns to the window with his Sig. White minigun fire tosses a row of cars, and explosions blare in the street. Shrapnel sprays against the shop’s façade. Decepticon bodies fly.

Amidst the cluster-fuck of gunfire and explosions, Nos hears their rear breeched. He races back to Naomi, just ducking the
crack
of rounds blasting through the main room. Two guards in full body armor step through the back. Nos is just out of sight. Nos cranks a choke on one and grabs the gun of the other. The gun fires and rattles through Nos’ arm. The soldier spins away from Nos’ grip and punches him, as Nos aims his partner’s machine gun at his chest and bullets crush holes through him. Nos then yanks the stunned soldier’s gun from his hand, kicks out his knee, flips the gun, and shoots his face the moment his head hits the floor.

Gunfire from above dies down. There’s a moment to breathe. Jaz and Doom take stock of the wounded and killed. The street seethes with wreckage and fire. Apaches thump in the streets. More Decepticons show up with AK’s, as they seem to file in endlessly from the streets.

“Those Revelation fucks folded like a bad hand,” calls Doom.

Just the first wave. Now for the second
.

A black-outfitted unit emerges on the roof of the adjacent building.
They’re setting up .50-caliber turrets, I’d wager
. Sentry laser scopes patrol up and down the streets. Turret fire pounds through Jaz’s store. Nos sees another gun beside it—a rail gun.

Jaz sees it, too.

“This place is going to blow!” yells Nos.

“Out! Everybody out!” orders Jaz.

Nos is already on his way out the back door with Naomi clung to his chest, arms wrapped around his neck. Everybody runs.

A deafening blast from the rail gun tunnels through Jaz’ shop and blows through the back wall
. Keep running
. An impact missile crashes through the front window and detonates inside, shattering every window and making dust of brick.

More Decepticons pour through the streets and return fire to the rooftop. Nos runs and keeps running.
Naomi, hold on
.

He falls and drops Nay. He doesn’t understand why. He tries to get up and falls again. He reaches to his leg. There’s blood on his hand. And then he feels the sting.

Nos gets up, bracing himself. Bullets
hiss
at him.

Don’t die
.

He limps off, but can’t control his leg. His blood trails on the sidewalk. He staggers into an alley. Sees a dumpster. Hears the footsteps from behind. They rumble louder.
A train a-coming
.

He holds his gun to the alley entrance. He opens the dumpster, sweating, bleeding. He lays Nay on the garbage bed.

“Pa, no!”

“I’m sorry, Nay!”

“No!”

“Stay quiet, please, no matter what. I’ll come for you.”

He lowers the lid on her cries.

The footsteps are on him. Revelation Corps. He stumbles, turns, and raises his gun. Semiautomatic barrels flip and aim at him.

He sees flashes, hears shots, and feels the burning.

Nay isn’t sure she is awake. The darkness is all she sees, and the smell is revolting. She is buried in slime and limbs. She lays still for a while. Time to give up. The weight around her has also given in, and Naomi is now one of them. She thinks of the pile of burning children in the bottom of the blue pool. She is one of those children now, and they are all around her. She does as they do. This must have been her mother’s way. She feels closer to her now than ever before. There is pain all around, in her head, her arms. Mom must have felt this pain, too. It doesn’t ever stop, but Nay is ready. She isn’t scared anymore. The hard part is over. Now she only has to wait
.

And wait. As the time passes, her heart beats faster against her chest. The gunfire has stopped. Breathing becomes more and more difficult. She wonders why these problems still bother her. Her legs begin to twitch, and soon her whole body rebels, spazzing against the weight, refusing it. She jumps up, and a blaze of light flashes and is gone with a slam. This is it. She presses her back up again, pushing her arms down through the piles and sliding through like quicksand. Her hands search against the skin for something to hold her up. She claws and thrusts her knees and sits up, raising the heavy metal. She can’t hold it any longer, and a force lifts the lid all the way up for her
.

Pa
.

The white light is so intense. She holds her eyes shut and stands upright, the weight falling off. She’s arrived. Pa
.

Once her eyes adjust, she sees she is sitting in garbage. A dirty old woman holds the lid up. She has one eye and stringy hag’s hair and missing teeth. Half of her face is burned and black like the kids in the pool. Not Pa
.

“Who’s this little monkey?” she asks, looking around the back alley. “Blood, blood, blood.”

Naomi climbs from the dumpster. She drops a few feet to the pavement and looks around the alley for Pa. All she sees is blood. His blood, and so much more. It trails around the corner and is in a pool at the foot of the dumpster
.

“What bad mama gorilla throws her monkey out like trash?”

The lady digs through the dumpster
.

“All for a red mark. A red letter. Beasts and monkeys. Throwing little girls out like trash. All for God. They don’t know God. I know God. I met God. Ben Stiller. Jesus is Ben Stiller. And I met the parents. I did.”

Naomi paces. The woman is too creepy. Nay walks toward the mouth of the alley
.

“Where are you going, little monkey? Not out there. They take children with the red letter out there. The Stiller followers. More and more, they come and snatch people with the red letter. Stay with Galadriel.”

Naomi looks onto the outside of the alley. It’s so huge. Everywhere the streets turn in different directions
.

“Pa,” she says, tearing up. “I need to find my pa.” Her face is full of tears. She has never cried so hard in her life
.

“The gorilla left you, monkey,” says the woman. “Stop that crying.”

“Not a gorilla.”

Galadriel puts her hand on Naomi’s shoulder. She’s dirty and smelly, but Nay is used to dirt and smells. She knows Pa wouldn’t let this woman touch her. But now her touch feels good. Nay cries and cries. Normally she doesn’t want to cry in front of Pa because he is working so hard and has so much to worry about. Now it all just falls like forever
.

“Why does it cry? Why does it cry?” The lady sits in her overcoat against the brick alley walls and looks like she wants to cry herself. “Come, gemstone monkey. Pretty gemstone monkey tossed like trash.”

Nay doesn’t want to go closer. But she does
.

The bag lady’s coat is warm, and her fingernails are long and yellow
.

“I lost my baby gemstone. So Stiller wants me to find you. Come, we’ll find food and dry those pretty tears.”

Galadriel stands and pushes a shopping cart full of bags, adorned with multicolored beaded necklaces all around the front and sides. The lady takes one
.

“Here, this is my favorite,” she says and puts the necklace around Naomi’s neck. “Made by my little baby gemstone with her tiny hands.”

The woman pushes her shopping cart out into the street, and the wheels creak and bounce against the pavement. She is just out of sight when Naomi follows after her
.