Heathern Read Free Page B

indirectly; reason enough for circumspection. We waited in
enveloping night for our cars to arrive. From the west a blur
breezed past Thatcher and Gus; a bicycle messenger racing
a delivery to one who couldn't wait, each knowing nothing
more valuable than a little more time.
    "Watch it!" the messenger shouted, flashing by. As he shot beneath an unbroken streetlight Jake fired. The bicycle
passed some distance beyond the light's cone before falling
over. Gus put his hand on Jake's shoulder.

    "You rushed, Jake," he said. "That's why I didn't act. I
could see he was unarmed."
    "I'm sorry," said Jake, his knowledge seeming too much
for him as he covered his mouth with his hand.
    "Remember breath, though. Breathe in as you fire and
hold it. Then let it go a few times after." Gus demonstrated.
"Like a train. Gets air back into the head."
    "Just wing 'em next time, Jake," said Thatcher, dry of
emotion. I knew that within he rocked as if in an earthquake. "Low-key. That's the way."
    I rode home in a Dryco car to my apartment on King
Street, which Dryco also provided; Thatcher gave me many
nails that I might use. I lived in the bottom two floors of an
1825 townhouse refitted to postmod standards by the
previous occupants. They'd lost it during the Readjustment;
maybe they never deserved it, I'd tell myself. Maybe I
passed them each morning as they raked at my clothes,
calling for pennies, crying for change. On the street and on
my stoop were syringes and shards of bottle-glass left by
passersby to remind the street's residents how long we'd
lingered at our own edges, relying on balance so we
wouldn't fall in.
    My neighbor on the third floor wasn't screaming. Wrapping my comforter around me when I got into bed as if
expecting recovery a thousand years hence, I let my memory squeeze me unconscious. A friend who lived in the
neighborhood I'd be visiting told me a story that never
made the news. Sixty problem people were shot in Corlears
Hook Park by the Army. Sanitation men came in white
trucks and buried them in red bags. A woman went to the
landfill, after. With bare hands she tore away the earth until
she found her husband. Retucking the others beneath their blanket, she carried him off that he might sleep alone. One
who watched as she patted the earth down upon his new
bed asked where she'd go now. To the grocery, she said, I
got mouths to feed.

     

TWO

    While waiting at the stoplight we watched tanks roll
down First Avenue. In the Readjustment's early months so
many control vehicles collapsed through the pavement into
the subway that those remaining assigned to Manhattan
now only traveled those streets with thicker crusts. A
semblance of calm prevailed for the moment in the city's
more disgruntled neighborhoods; many within the government, especially Army personnel-some even within
Dryco-wished to remove the soldiers from New York as
they'd been removed from other cities and send them into
Long Island where they were needed. The Drydens said no;
the Army couldn't control trouble if it wasn't around to start
it.
    "It's sad that so many hope for better," said Avi, staring
into the one-way glass as if watching his favorite show.
"Hope's the truest opium. Better that people work with what they have. But no, they dream that the man on the
white donkey will ride up and put everything in its place.
As a dream, it's cancer."

    "Hasn't cancer a purpose?" I asked, still dreaming that
one day I might win an argument with Avi that he admitted
to my having won.
    "It makes people appreciate the world for what it is," he
said.
    One tank lagged after the rest, the litter's runt. Had the
driver not recognized our car as one of Dryco's own and, for
laughs, turned its turret toward us, I don't know what Avi
would or could have done. All in Security were able in all
fields; Avi, after Gus, was ablest, but I never hoped that he
might always save us.
    "I've always told you you'd be happier if you