I nod. "Hello."
He doesn't acknowledge me until he's crossed to the square and is seated on a rotting bench that faces the street. "You looking for something?" he asks.
His young cheeks are stubbled with pimples, his chin with sparse bits of facial hair. He's structured himself to look angry, this boy barely sixteen years old and not as big around as my thigh. It's an attempt that leaves me feeling sad.
"You know where I can get some water?" My lips are cracked and my pants are torn. I've shown my hand, so I add, "Fruit? . . . Bread? Groceries?"
The boy squints into the setting sun. "Store's right behind you."
I turn. The sign on the window says
Produce/Bond,
the way all places of business announce their product or service. First by what they sell, then by their location.
"Thanks."
As the front door opens, I catch my appearance in the reflective surface. I look like I'm about to fall down, so I stand taller. Square my shoulders. Pretend I have the energy for good posture. The door closes and I see the boy on the bench get up. He bolts back across the square, skinny legs kicking up grass.
Shit
. I put my hand on the door again, ready to run back to the farm, to the creek, to the bottom of the old concrete grain bin I saw on the perimeter where I could hide. But a voice stops me.
"You okay there, miss?"
I turn. An old man is standing just behind me, holding out a pint of strawberries. They're pink, more round than heart-shaped. Too young. "Picked these this morning off some pots I keep in the greenhouse. They're a little early off the vine but still good. Just set 'em out on your counter for a day or two."
He smiles a little too big. As if we were discussing something tawdry, something other than strawberries.
I have to walk around him to get farther into the store. "No, thank you." Long windowed coolers are humming in the back. It's an effort to conceal my thirst.
The man follows me to the blue bottles of cold filtered water that line the whole of the first door. I turn left, walk past them, stop at the third one down. At the amber bottles of beer.
The man stops next to me. I can see his slate beneath the stays of his collar, flesh bagging around it like cooling lava. "Not used to us old folks, huh?"
I don't answer. Edge past him back to the appropriate cooler, where I retrieve two sodas and, casually, not even looking, one bottle of water.
I live in Wernthal, the seat of our government. I see old folks every day. In rich black suits striding between rows of Blue Coats. In red robes making speeches from their front lawn.
"Well, I probably wouldn't know what to say, either." It's false, his deprecation of self. It comes out with a low barking laugh, the result of too many cigarettes.
The shop keep has been sent out here as some form of punishment. He was once a Manager in some bigger city. I can tell by his haughty air and jaunty shoes. They were expensive once. Made of the best leather and cut just so. There's a buildup of polish around the heel. Too many sweeps of the brush have dulled the leather's roundest parts. I bet he wears them every day, these vestiges of his life elsewhere.
I walk to the checkout, ignoring the droplets of condensation the bottles leave in my hands. But he's in no hurry to help me.
"What happened to you?" The old man is looking at my torn trousers.
"Gardening."
"Gardening?"
"Pulling weeds." I wave my pay card.
"Must have been some weeds!" the old man says loudly, drawing the attention of the other shoppers. They wander over slowly to look at my pants.
I put the bottles on the counter. "Can I check out now? Please?"
It was a mistake, coming here.
The thought makes me dizzy. I have to steady myself on the counter.
"No need to get all riled up, sweetheart--" he begins.
Ezra's voice stops him. "Ed!" she shouts, storming through the front door on platform shoes. "Back off!"
The shop keep looks from Ezra to me, his countenance now a little less desultory, a lot more unsavory. "You two friends? You in the business, honey?" He leans down. Wiggles his eyebrows. Turns back to Ezra. "You teaching her some special tricks?"
Ezra's green eyes swing over to me as she proceeds down the main aisle. "Next time, tell me when you need something, yes?" She retrieves a bottle of water from the cooler, unscrews the plastic top, and takes a long, thirsty drink, some of the liquid running down her chin. It's everything I can do not to rip the bottle from her hand.
Ezra turns back to the shop keep. "What she does for a living isn't any of your business."
"It's business, right? Could be mine."
"Forget it."
The remnants of any kind-old-man features dissolve. Ed throws back his shoulders and heads for the register. "You don't make the rules, Ezra."
She waits for him to walk by before giving me a scowl."You couldn't wait?"
"You paying, then?" Ed calls out to her. He has one hand flopped indiscreetly over the register, beckoning.
Ezra retrieves her pay card from a small purse carried around her waist like a belt and throws it on the counter.
"You think too much of yourself!" the shop keep snarls. He runs the card through the reader, a trenched piece of oblong
plastic sitting atop the register like a malformed head. "Too good for the local clientele, huh? Unless they happen to wear a badge, maybe?" He looks up, soliciting approval from the other shoppers, but they turn away or hunker into the shelves.
"I'd like a bag for my beverages, please." Ezra studies her nails, ignoring Ed, who's come back around the counter.
"The church allows it!"
"Plastic, not paper."
The old man reaches over the desktop and yanks a plain white bag from the underside. "You just like a little pork with your pork, is that it? Those of us without the blue suits, we don't meet your standards." He laughs, throaty and wet.
"My card?" Ezra puts out her hand, palm up. Fingers waving.
Ed throws it at her. "It's my right as a Confederation citizen to partake of that particular social service and there's no shame in it! Nobody's going to make Ed Saunders feel anything but satisfaction for having chosen
to release my loins to better service my soul
! Eh? That's how the Pastor puts it! And I know my rights, Ezra James! You can't turn me away unless I have a record and I don't have a record! The rule of All Equals applies! Even to you!"
Ezra is cool. She follows me to the front of the store. Shoves a bottle of water into my hands.
The woman next in line walks over to the shop keep. Whispers something in his ear while nodding at us.
"Come on." I hold open the door for Ezra.
But Ed's been pressed into action. He runs a hand through his thinning hair. Starts toward us in long, dragging steps. "Hold up, Ezra," he says. "I know you're providing society a service, honey. You think I don't know that? I'm a widower! I'm the best kind of customer you gals got! A man with straightforward, no-nonsense needs! We're all placed according to our individual strengths. This just happens to be yours."
Next to me Ezra is tensing. I can see each vertebra of her neck extend as the muscles of her shoulders compress. "Excuse me?"
Good Christ
. I twist the top off my water. Drink half the bottle in one gulp.
Having caught Ezra's attention, the old man goes back to the woman waiting at the register. Scans her items as he explains, "When somebody turns eighteen they're given tests to determine their best placement, right? We all take these tests and then the government officials tell us what our strengths are, what are weaknesses are, and so on." He looks up at us. "They're very accurate tests, Ezra. If you'd been better suited for other work, you would have been assigned other work. Think of it this way. If you weren't so pretty, they'd have made you a day laborer." This makes Ed happy with himself. He smiles at Ezra. Gives me a wink.
You, too, honey
.
Ezra retrieves a pair of sunglasses from a trouser pocket and slips them over the bridge of her nose. "Thanks for the water, Ed," she says, smooth. Then looks at the others, who turn immediately away. "Have a nice day, ya'll." And is gone.
By the time I get through the front door, Ezra's already halfway across the street. I have to jog to catch up with her. We walk together for two blocks, not talking. I'm torn between anger that Ezra's put me in this position and guilt that I've acted on it. Ezra's thoughts are impenetrable.
"Well?" I'm the first to break the silence.
"Well, what?"
"You have something you want to say?"
"What do you want, Adams? You want me to grill you?" Ezra looks back at me with hooded eyes. "Okay. What were you fucking thinking? Walking into town. Are you fucking stupid? Is this your version of hiding? How's that?"
"You didn't leave me anything to drink! Or any matches so I could at least boil creek water!"
Ezra turns the corner and we're suddenly in a residential area. On a road lined with old-fashioned, pre-Pandemic
houses. She jogs ahead, onto the sidewalk. "You're not my only problem, Adams."
She moves along quickly past the old homes. Most are two stories with front yards and porches, some of them screened in. They'd look nice if it weren't for the boards used to patch up the missing strips of yellowed plastic--some material from the past that's no longer used. No replacement parts available.
Ezra turns up the drive to a large, pretty house, all its cream-colored siding intact. The grass is neatly trimmed. Boxes of purple and orange flowers line the windows. It's domestic. The kind of home my grandparents had, without the crops.
"You coming in or what?" she asks.
"This is your place?"
Ezra frowns at my disbelief and disappears into the screened porch. Her voice trails back through the open door. "Don't let the cat out."
I'm halfway in when she releases the screen. It bangs me in the nose.
"You own a cat?" I ask. It's a stretch to imagine Ezra caring about anything long enough to keep it alive.
She ignores my questions. "Wipe your feet."
I do as I'm told. Shoo away the ugly gray cat that appears and rubs itself against my shins. Drag the soles of my shoes across her Welcome mat. Once inside the kitchen, I stop and look around. It's not a home with sterile white walls and gray floors. It's the house I wanted to grow up in. There's a loaf of bread resting on the counter, fresh-baked, breathing out the heady scent of yeast. There are spices in a rack and dishes upside down on a towel, perspiring. The kitchen is well used. Loved. I'd have done anything to live in a place like this.
I imagine Veracity here. Imagine her bursting through the porch door after hours spent playing in the autumn leaves. She kicks off her boots, struggles out of her coat. Steals a soda from the refrigerator. Not the government-issued kind.
A
Coca-Cola,
the kind my father used to drink out of a bright red can. I imagine us--a family--and maybe a few friends playing cards at the large round table.
We see you over there, Veracity. Come here, darlin'. We'll deal you in.
A roast cooking in the oven, a pie cooling on the windowsill, all foods we could separate into parts and eat together as a whole. This should have been Veracity's life. This should have been my kitchen.
"Harper!" Ezra is in front of me, snapping her fingers in my face. "Hey!"
It takes a moment to shake off such powerful longing. "What?"
"Shut the door," she says, disappearing through a side hall.
I follow Ezra around the corner to a plain bedroom. A wide, nine-drawer bureau and an equally long mirror line one wall. Her bed is made, covered with a white comforter sporting pink flowers, the corners tucked in. There's not much else to see. She walks through an arched doorway and enters a room with a sofa and a chair and a mirror the length of its closet door.
Ezra is waiting for me with her evening wear in one hand and her prostitute's sash in the other. She needs to change. The bare skin of her face and forearms is paler than I'd thought. White as snow, and thin enough that the veins show through.
"You're going to have to stop taking things so goddamned personally," she says. Then, somehow, shoves a glass into my hand, though I don't remember seeing her move.
I look down into the clear water. "You left me alone. With nothing to drink."
"I was being watched, Adams! What did you want me to do? Compromise the whole fucking bunker for you!"
No
. I blink. Time elapses. When I look up, Ezra's already changed into her evening wear. A short black skirt and a shirt made of see-through plastic with bits of black material sewn on.
"What's this really about?" she asks. "It's not about you getting
dehydrated
."
The room is wobbling. Jostling the thoughts in my head until one spills out. "I left my daughter for this! I let her be
taken away
for this!"
Oh.
I've said it.
Ezra turns and looks into the mirror. "You have to let go of that shit, Adams. It's not helping you or your daughter."
I feel the last vestiges of my strength drain away. Sit down, quickly, on her recliner. "What do I do?"
"You don't die." Across the room, my blinking eyes get snapshots of Ezra dabbing at her mouth with a tube of bright red lipstick. "Don't die and someday you'll be able to tell her you didn't leave her."
My mind is drifting away and my eyes start to go with it. Ezra's arms become wispy bits of poplar. White and black branches caught in a breeze. They change, become long ropes of flesh tubing that have no children at their ends. Umbilici.
It would be so easy to shut my eyes and drift off. I'm so thirsty. My lips taste like salt. My body is a pool with the plug pulled out.