SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A week or two later, Suzie went down to Riverdale to see Nelson. She wanted to ask him if he wouldn’t mind taking care of the air conditioning on her Doohickey as long as her car was sitting in his lot. The weather was sultry, heavy and sweaty. There were big puffy thunderheads building up everywhere. Suzie looked forward to the rain as a respite from the heat. For a few moments.

She pulled into the back parking lot and Nelson ran out to her loaner to meet her. He seemed worried about something, and acted like he was there to shoo her off and put her on the road again. ‘Honey I only have a moment,’ he said. ‘I’m real busy. What’s up?’

Suzie immediately regretted coming. She felt like he had to pay attention to her that he really needed to devote to his job, and felt guilty for bring him such a petty little problem.

Nathan pulled a Windstar van next to her and waved awkwardly. She looked away and noticed a well-dressed black woman standing around in the garage, looking bored. Suzie made a joke to lighten the tension she felt. She nodded toward the woman. ‘Is she here to make sure Nathan doesn’t destroy her car?’

Nelson looked confused, maybe because she was running Nathan down in front of him. She changed the subject. ‘I just wondered if maybe you had time to check out the air conditioning in my car while it’s sitting here. It’s just I like the air conditioning in this one so much that I don’t want to go back.’ She sounded like she was pleading.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Honey, I plain don’t have time to fix your air conditioning right now,’ he said, a desperate look in his eyes. ‘How is this Taurus doing for you? Good enough? Well, you keep it for awhile.’ He leaned forward slightly. ‘Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Right now I don’t know where I am, I’m so busy. I promise I’ll take care of you tomorrow, first thing. Don’t I always take care of you?’

Suzie felt sorry for Nelson. He worked so hard, he never had competent help, he did so much for her and she always came at him for more favors, more help, more comfort. She put the loaner into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, feeling sorry for him and sorry for herself, and then decided on the spur of the moment to go find a bad driver to shoot.

Suzie arrived at work almost an hour late, in a sweat. It had started to rain soon after she left the shop, and it was a gully washer. She was just coming thru town when the heavens opened, and immediately got off on the side streets, because when it rains in Atlanta, drivers fall apart. But the surface streets were all flooded out, and she spent forever getting thru one lake at the bottom of a hill and crossing up and over to wait in line to cross another lake at the bottom of the next hill. She abandoned her quest for justice at the first puddle, but it still took a million years to get to work. For most of those millions of years she sat in her car, stopped, the windows down to dispel the fog, her loaner steaming in the heat. The rain hadn’t cooled anything off, only basted it. The sun was back out, and the juices were beginning to bubble and seethe.

After a hurried prep upstairs, she was still hurrying when she went downstairs to hear the menu. She noticed that everyone in the kitchen seem agitated, except for Chef. The Latinos were in a frenzy, speaking softly to themselves and clumping together in groups. The black cooks were acting innocent, and Miss Charlene’s work table was a mess, with flour everywhere.

Chef announced the specials. He stood at ease, with his hands clasped behind his back, only his head moving as the words tripped from his tongue and went sprawling all over the floor. ‘Tranche de Boeuf Haché Frit au Campagne,’ he said. ‘Poulet Grillé a Diâble. Travers de Porc au Sauce Piquant. Barbote Frit au Semoule de Maise.’ The waiters all nodded their heads as if they understood completely, and thought the menu most fitting.

Suzie lapped it all up, trying to figure it out by gestalt and intuition, rather than her memory of high school French, though they never covered food in French class. She thought she could figure out the sides: Purée des Pommes de Terre, Dolique à Eil Noir. Feuilles de Rave avec Oignon et Bacon was a little challenging. Of course, the only reason she could figure all this gobbledygook out was because she knew her diners and knew the kitchen.

Suzie went upstairs and thought no more about the kitchen, because there were a million people wanting to eat dinner in Casual Dining. There was something on at the Fox Theater that night. The show started at eight. She had people at all three tables, there early so they could take the shuttle bus. But they’d started downstairs in the bar, and then brought their drinks to their tables, and then ordered food at 7:20, still expecting to make the 7:45 shuttle. They were all late, and each table acted like it was her fault that they couldn’t get their food in five minutes.

There was no lull that night. Suzie collapsed in the servants’ quarters for two and a half minutes right as the clock chimed eight, pried her shoes off, and sat rubbing her feet, stretching out her calves, bending the kinks out of her back. She was getting a headache.

Ed was full of team spirit in the Honeysuckle Room. He was wearing red bulldog suspenders, and a Dawg cap and a sports jacket were slung behind his chair. So much for the dress codes for gentlemen. He and Jerry were dining with Doctor Jeremiah Buford, MD, the doctor of bling, who’d gotten her into so much trouble over the whipped cream cake. Suzie sat them down, brought them bread and found out what they were drinking, put in their order, and dashed downstairs to check the pastry freezer, because she knew the doctor would ask.

She saw Chef standing in front of his office with his arms crossed. The kitchen was quiet. Chef was talking to a uniformed policeman who was standing next to him, also with his arms crossed. They were speaking out of the sides of their mouths. Joseph, Javel, and Maurice were standing in front of them in handcuffs, their heads down. Joseph looked up at her woefully. Miss Charlene and Miss Mabel were sitting in Chef’s office, looking miffed.

Chef noticed Suzie right away, and came over to the bottom of the stairs to chase her away. ‘No, we don’t have whipped cream cake tonight,’ he said suspiciously. ‘You heard the menu.’

She ran back upstairs, worried about the cooks, full of questions. There were three new covers in the Jasmine Room to help take her mind off it, anxious members and their parties, shuffling their menus impatiently, already late for the gig at the Fox. She took quick orders and stuffed them full of bread. Somewhere in there she managed to tell the other waiters that something strange was going on in the kitchen.

Ed and the doctor were comfortable, acting like very old friends. Jerry was chain smoking and toying with the ice in the bottom of his glass, musing about something. She envisioned him in a black hood. Death drinks himself to death.

Ed looked up as she came in with the drinks. ‘Hey, Sweet Thing, when you gonna come live in one of my condos? I’m going to set you up just right.’ The doctor noticed her for the first time, didn’t remember her, scrutinized her as he might a strange growth, decided he wasn’t interested in her, and turned his attention back to his drink, leaving her to Ed.

‘Suzie Q here is our favorite waitress,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Right, Jerry?’ Ed was aware of Jerry’s mood, and tried to keep him involved in the conversation. He started singing. Jerry joined in half heartedly for a few bars, then trailed off and raised his glass and slurped the liquor off the ice cubes.

Suzie tapped her foot impatiently, already stressed out from the other diners. ‘How about some appetizers?’ She translated the menu for them. Fromage de Tête, Oefs Mariné, Ailes Épicés. Then they ordered the same old main dishes, as expected. Steak and chicken. The doctor spent a lot of time trying to convince the other two to switch their eating habits and telling her how he wanted his fish done.

As she collected the menus, the doctor brought Ed and Jerry up to date on his plans for putting day spas in his cancer centers. State of the art treatment options, no expense spared. She’d heard most of it before. ‘Our advertising campaign begins next week,’ he beamed. ‘Watch for our commercials.’

‘When you gonna put a bar in those places?’ Jerry wanted to know. ‘I was getting chemo, I’d want a drink.’ He lifted his glass and drained it. Suzie ordered him a new one as she went out to check on the Jasmine Room.

What was Jerry so down about? He was changing the world. He and his former law firm were making vast legislative changes, developing broad-based support for a bold new redefinition of the indenture laws, based on a twist in the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime.

He was rolling in money. His new temp agency was doing very well. They had more orders than they could fill at the moment, and were anxiously waiting for the new measures to increase the supply of workers. Jerry was the most popular guy on the block. People all over the country were calling him, and he was making franchise deals left and right. The New York Times was doing a cover story on him, and next week, shares in his temp agency were going public. There were whispers about running him for Governor.

Of the two, Suzie considered Jerry the more dangerous, even though she detested Ed. It was the Ed and Jerry show, and Jerry was the straight man. But Ed always looked at Jerry when he decided to say something or to hold it in, and Jerry seemed to know a lot more about his development plans than he did.

Ed just made deals. Jerry made the deals happen. And it wasn’t just that Ed was just a good ol’ boy and Jerry had all the smarts. It was a question of motivation. The developer was motivated by greed. Jerry was moved by ideology. Jerry had beliefs and expectations that made him very rigid and heavy handed. Where Ed would wiggle around a problem, Jerry would line up his forces and blast away at it until it was in splinters.

Before he met Jerry, Ed was building cheap houses on recently deceased farms out in Douglas County. Jerry introduced him to some people downtown, and now he got preferential bidding and waived fees. He started as a house builder, now he was building a whole downtown corridor, and had visions of being the next John Portman, Architect of AtlantaTM.

Only instead of putting his mark on the city with striking and whimsical skyscrapers, Ed was going to slap whole sections of it with gated communities and condos and strip malls dressed up to look like turn of the Twentieth houses and shops. McStripmalls and McCondos.

Jerry couldn’t stand the man’s taste, but he grudgingly admired his ability to win people over; his used car salesman attitude toward problems, an easiness Jerry did not have.

Having the developer on his team, Jerry was finding whole areas of his plan much easier to implement. As if Ed rubbed off lucky on him. Professionally he was at the very top of his game. It couldn’t get much better than it was that summer. He was feared, adored, and obeyed by family, flunkies, and employees. But he was feeling the strain.

His personal life was falling to pieces. His wife had cancer. Even though they didn’t love each other anymore, and hadn’t had sex for years, they’d been together since college, and that counted for a lot. His long-term mistress was getting bitchy and he was beginning to wish her gone; his son was in and out of trouble all the time, and only stayed out of jail because of a bunch of personal favors various judges owed him.

For all his accomplishments in public, his private life brought him no happiness at all, and now it threatened to take even more of his peace of mind. He hated change, hated being bothered, and dreaded his wife dying because it would disrupt his routines. Who would take care of everything at home, automatically be the other when two were required somewhere, or listen to him bitch with good natured indifference?

He was in bits, but practically nobody noticed. His cadaverous nature didn’t stretch to the active appearance of worry. He mulled. He stewed. He brooded. The most agitation he showed was to rub one hand over the other repeatedly, slowly. He grimaced more, and this set everybody on edge. And he continued to smoke and drink.

Suzie was back. She passed out the head cheese, pickled eggs and hot wings, and brought Jerry his refill. They all needed more drinks by this time, so she left to check on the Jasmine Room and wait for the next round to come up.

The doctor tapped Jerry’s wrist. ‘Your suggestion about a liquor license. It’s a real possibility. We’ve done focus groups. All sorts of consumer comforts rate very highly among those facing death. Our consultants think people’ll really go for the luxury.’

Ed sat back and scratched himself, thinking. ‘You know,’ he said, lifting his drink and looking at the doctor over the rim, ‘I’ve got a few acres I’m developing over in Reynoldstown. We’re calling it the Emerald City. You’d fit right in there. There’s a nice middle class population round there, families and middle aged. Inman Park, Candler Park, Grant Park.’

The doctor hmmmed. ‘Disease clusters,’ he nodded wisely, stroking the wattles under his chin with a ring encrusted hand. He’d had his people study the demographics all over town looking for income and lifestyle markers. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he looked the developer in the eye, ‘I was thinking about seeing if we couldn’t get together and find a place to put one of my clinics inside the Perimeter,’ he proposed. ‘Why does it have to be Buckhead? After all, you’re changing the face of Atlanta, and I’m changing the face of medicine.’

‘I think there’s synergy in that,’ Ed agreed.

‘What’s good for Atlanta is good for America,’ they toasted themselves. Jerry just drank.

Suzie came back in to see them raising their glasses, and made note of another drink order while clearing the plates.

‘Yep, Little Girl,’ Ed observed, ‘you’re going to be living around the corner from one of the doctor’s new clinics.’

‘I’m staying exactly where I am, thanks,’ she replied, and ducked back out, ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes with your dinner.’

The doctor leaned in, looking closely at Jerry and Ed. ‘I’m about to tell you a big secret that could make you very rich if you act quickly. It’s brand new. A real medical breakthrough. We’re calling it HeatHealing Technology.’

Jerry looked at his glass. ‘It’s a cancer treatment, eh?’

He nodded proudly. ‘And there’s more. In fact, it’s the secret weapon in our clinical arsenal. But not only that. It works on everything. The applications just go on and on, all the way down to acne and ear infections.’

Ed piped up, ‘Cures colds, moles, sore assholes, farts, freckles, and leaves a glowing luster in your hair.’

‘It’s FDA approved, and patented?’ Jerry asked.

‘We’re just getting approval now, and we already hold six patents. I say we because I’m one of the founders of the company,’ he said humbly. ‘We hold exclusive rights. We’ve just opened a factory over in China where they’re putting out devices as fast as they can.’

Jerry was curious. ‘How does it work?’

‘It’s like surgery without a knife, but we can’t say that because the gamma ray people trademarked it. Gamma rays are a dead end,’ He frowned. ‘Ionizing radiation. It takes a whole bunch more permits and licenses and certifications, and it’s much more expensive to operate.’

He sat back in his seat and waved his hand grandly, his rings sparkling hypnotically. ‘Our new technology is light years ahead. It’s non-ionizing radiation. It’s as safe as your microwave oven or your cellphone. And it’s cheap to build.’ He smiled broadly, patting his stomach. ‘The profit margins are close to ninety percent. And it does everything.’

Dinner was up. Country-fried chopped steak. Fried chicken with mustard sauce. Fried catfish in cornmeal. With mashed potatoes, black eyed peas, and turnip greens. Suzie had her pick in the pantry, than delivered their dinners. There was a flurry of activity, fetching various sauces and more drinks, and then she left them to it and went to finish up with the diners in the Jasmine Room.

The men were excited. ‘It’s going to revolutionize medicine,’ the doctor said through a mouthful of fish. ‘This dish is absolutely magnificent, by the way, gentlemen,’ he tried again. ‘Do let me encourage you to order it the next time you dine here. They do fish better than anything else.’

Ed and Jerry grunted in reply and continued shoveling it in. Satisfied with their response, he continued. ‘We’re making different devices for different applications. We’ll be marketing at three levels – institutional, clinic point of sale, and consumer.’ Jerry looked impressed, and put his fork down for a moment to take a drink and listen.

The doctor nodded significantly. ‘Big hospitals will use them for tumors and vascular malformations and cardiac irregularities and such. The smaller machines are for clinic use – neuralgia and migraines, pain treatments, dentistry, local skin cancers, and the like. But by far, the most encouraging area is home consumer use. We’re working on the prototype for a handheld device that treats acne, muscle swelling, cramps. Even weight loss.’

‘Wow,’ Ed said. ‘My teenage daughter wants one right now.’

Jerry stared at his fork.

Ed leaned back and rubbed his belly. ‘Weight loss?’

The doctor stretched out his own capacious concavity to illustrate. ‘Like liposuction you do at home,’ he said, using an imaginary chrome and aqua electric shaver-looking thing over his belly, sucking it in to demonstrate the results. His face turned red.

‘Does it work like liposuction?’ Jerry asked.

‘No,’ the doctor answered, trying to avoid technical terms. ‘It zaps the fat, and then it just melts away in about a week. Results may vary, of course.’

Ed nodded understandingly. Jerry looked a little disturbed at the description, but Ed said, ‘Jerry, look into this, willya? It sounds like it can’t lose.’ He took a mouthful of steak and turned to the doctor. ‘It cures headaches, too, huh?’

‘I don’t know about hangovers,’ he said modestly, ‘but it works great for migraines. And we’re investigating it for Parkinsons and Alzheimers.’ He used his napkin to dust his mouth free of cornmeal and oil. ‘We’re getting very good clinical results using it for obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD.’ He forked up a huge pile of mashed potatoes. ‘It’s the behavioral uses I find so interesting. Attention Deficit is only the beginning. Depression, Bi-polar, antisocial tendencies, discipline problems.’

He stuffed the pile into his mouth, then picked up his glass and washed it down with his martini. ‘We’ve got a pilot program going in the prisons,’ he said. ‘The infirmary has our devices, as well as the corrections unit. We’re field testing all the applications, from wound healing to behavior modification to execution. Believe me, we’ve been quite diligent in exploring the applications.’

‘Why haven’t we heard of this before, if it does so many things?’ Jerry asked a little skeptically.

The doctor took out a card from his jacket and scrawled a name and number. ‘You just get hold of this bright boy and he’ll explain it all to you.’ Jerry pocketed the card.

‘See, the technology has been in development since the ’30s, but we just didn’t have fine enough controls.’ He looked around, apologizing for having to get technical on them. ‘It works by raising the local temperature and disrupting the pathology.’ The others nodded as if this was clear. ‘It’s been real hard to get control of the burn, the application area. But new micro devices just came on the market and now we can pinpoint a three millimeter tumor three inches inside your body and just press a button.’ He closed his jeweled hand into a fist and then flung his sparkling fingers apart. ‘Poof, it’s gone.’

Susie only heard about a quarter of the doctor’s pitch for the ground floor opportunity of the century. Her attention was elsewhere. She was reminded of the situation downstairs, and the moment she had them settled with everything they needed, crept back downstairs to see what was going on in the kitchen.

It was very quiet. Chef was gone, the cooks were gone, only the Latinos were around cleaning and washing dishes. The spilled flour had been swept up. She walked through the kitchen, aware of the cameras watching her progress. She found Manuel in the trash room, a chilled walk-in where dozens of black plastic garbage bags sat piled up in the corner every night until it was time to haul them to the dumpster around the side of the parking deck.

Manny was pulling trash. Doing Javel’s job. ‘Manny, what happened?’

Manny slung a bag onto the top of the pile and straightened up. ‘Hey, girl, how you doing?’ She nodded. ‘Chef called the cops. He accused Javel and Joseph and Maurice of stealing food. He got them on tape. The cops arrested them and took them away.’ Manny shrugged and looked worried.

‘What kind of food?’

‘Lobsters. Salmon. Ribs.’

‘What did they say?’

He shrugged again, annoyed with the whole business. ‘They say the food is going off, and they’re taking it home to feed their families.’

‘Better to feed people than to let meat spoil,’ Suzie agreed.

There was more. ‘Then Miss Charlene and Miss Mabel complained to Chef, and he fired them. Made them sign some statement, admit to something. Failure to follow instructions, something,’ he shrugged, ‘The cops took them away, too.’

Suzie went past Chef’s office on her way out and looked through grimy venetian blinds into the dark room, the computer glowing malevolently on his desk. It illuminated the cover of an industry magazine – a picture of a dollar bill being run through a shredder. The caption said, Where’s The Shrink? Employee Theft Increases. She also noticed, next to it, a catalog of home spying devices. But she didn’t see the memo to the Board outlining Chef’s plan of action.

Suzie went back upstairs in a snit. What was happening around there? What was Chef up to, and why arrest the cooks when he could have just fired them or warned them? Who was going to feed their families if they went to jail? And what was he thinking firing Miss Charlene and Miss Mabel? The kitchen would fall apart without them. Chef couldn’t possibly keep things in order by himself. He was breaking up a good team. Suzie hoped he knew what he was doing.

In fact, Chef Henri knew exactly what he was doing. He came into the kitchen of the White Magnolia Club and immediately saw how it was: a traditional Southern kitchen. More like a family. Or a coven. Like the three hags of Hamlet back there boiling up trouble. But he didn’t want a matriarchy. He wanted a military model, the way they did it at his $100K cooking school.

This Chef wanted to control everyone. He wanted efficiency. He wanted precision. And he wanted loyalty. He wanted to be the Napoleon of cooks. He wanted to maintain the glint of pure control over every tile, every recipe, every presentation, every olive in the bottle and every spice jar on the rack, every cook in his place, gloriously in lockstep and proud to wear the uniform.

He knew he would have to get rid of the two old black ladies who ran the place before he could control the kitchen, and he knew that he needed to do something to provoke them. They were both way too smart to cross him openly, and he needed a confrontation so he could show the entire kitchen who was boss.

So he kept his eyes open, noticed where people were cutting corners or taking advantage of the kitchen’s bounty, or outright stealing from the Club. He installed cameras, he got inventory and ordering software, he kept an eye on his troops, all the things the General Of The Cooks was supposed to do. Just that the previous chefs were kept so busy trying to make the cooks do it their way that they didn’t have time to check up on everything.

It’s not that the cooks were deliberately hoodwinking Management. It’s just that they had their own ways of doing things, and all they had to do to continue doing things their way was to keep the chefs from insisting otherwise. You find a weak point, and you push.

It’s only fair that the kitchen be run for the benefit of the workers. The customers are really only there to entertain the restaurant staff. The way to Socialism is through a man’s stomach. In a worker’s paradise, where everyone gets fed, clothed and housed, those that make and serve the food eat first and best.

Chef knew about these kitchens. He’d attended a workshop: Effectively Managing Employee Honesty. They read The Art Of War at this workshop. They learned about cutting off the head, ruling by fear, the use of spoils. The best way to win is the way without a battle.

Chef Henri was planning to replace every person working there with somebody else who would do it his way from their first day on the job. So he spied and documented, and wrote up the old black ladies every time they went back to doing it their way when his back was turned. He wrote them up three times a day. By the time he orchestrated firing them, he had a sheaf of broken rules and instances of insubordination – plenty of ammunition if they decided to sue for wrongful dismissal.

The latest memo, the one Suzie couldn’t see in the glare, was his recommendation that the Club adopt a formal loss control program, with a written shrink prosecution policy and more closed circuit cameras; conduct pre-employment honesty, drug tests, and immigration checks; and switch to automated ordering and delivery. Let the staff know they were being watched, scare them into being honest, or outsource them.

Suzie spent a few moments in the bathroom when she got back upstairs, fuming and puzzling. Then she went and found Yolanda and a few others and spread the news. The waiters were dizzy with curiosity, but they all had work to do, and soon forgot about it.

Suzie’s tables in the Jasmine room needed a few final touches, and then she was in to collect the dishes from the Ed and Jerry show and order more drinks.

Jerry was telling the doctor about his new temp agency. He was slurring his words just a little, and when he caught Suzie’s eye he lifted his glass for more.

‘There are work programs for everything from shoe manufacturing to call center applications,’ he continued. Doctor Jeremiah looked fascinated. ‘Virtually every industry has workforce needs we can satisfy, no matter how tough. Everything from road building to mining and oil fields. In fact, the worse the job, the more in demand we become.’

‘Give me your poor, your hungry, your downtrodden,’ she said under her breath, quoting Jesus, or was it the Statue of Liberty?

Jerry heard her. ‘And I’ll trod on them some more, and make a profit,’ he sneered.

‘It’s not like they’re worth a fuck,’ Ed added, then turned to her. ‘What do you think, Honey? Wouldn’t it be easier to let temps do all the shit work and you just sit back and keep us company?

She scowled at him. Like she’d want to sit around shooting the shit with these rednecks.

He pressed her. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have some help?’

She stood and thought, her arms full of dirty dishes. ‘Are you saying that we servants should have slaves?’

He laughed. ‘Hell, my wife has told me for years that every woman needs a wife.’

Jerry continued as she left for the pantry. ‘We rent them out cheap. Pennies on the dollar compared to ordinary contractors. No benefits or Workman’s Comp, either. It’s a great deal. We’ve got a development program, a mission statement thing. Five year plan.’

He paused and drained his glass. ‘I foresee a gardener, cook, maid, and nanny, though there are security issues with that, in every household.’ He painted a glorious picture. ‘Everyone living a life freed from labor, able to devote themselves to the greater glory of God.’

Suzie was back with the dessert menus. ‘No, they can’t complain,’ Jerry was assuring the doctor. ‘These are cushy jobs, and they know it. It’s just honest work. Nothing heals your soul better than work for work’s sake.’ He sat back slightly, ran his finger around his collar, and thought about how his spiel sounded. He was rehearsing it for a conference he was having the next morning.

‘They’re all losers anyway,’ Ed observed. ‘They’ll never make anything of themselves. Proven losers. They’re stupid, lazy, uneducated, they’ve got no moral values, and they’re dangerous as hell when you let them run wild. Like my kids,’ he joked.

Jerry continued. ‘These types are really useful when harnessed, like any great energy. We’ve got a workforce here at home capable of building the dams and the pyramids and our interstate highway system twice over.’

The doctor, who was old, mused, ‘Like the WPA back in the 30s’.

‘Kinda.’ He moved on, not wanting to get into definitions. ‘It’s a great deal for the employer, too. We take care of everything, uniforms, maintenance, food and housing. Payroll. Insurance. Medical. All of it.’

He paused to assess the doctor’s reaction. Dr. Bling liked what he was hearing. Jerry could tell he was searching for a way to use his services.

‘Certified skilled workers, guaranteed,’ Jerry continued. ‘Site manager included.’ Mention full supervision and they’ll eat out of your hand.

He wound up for the knockout blow. ‘It’s an absolutely self contained, turnkey system. We go from concept to operations, and coordinate a complex mix of technical, financial, political and social solutions. All you do is sit back and count your savings.’

Suzie was in and out during this speech, clearing away the dinner things. She was uncomfortable hearing Jerry talk about his employees as if they were subhuman. She remembered the contents of the folder, the way the newspapers had talked about blacks as if they were only barely able to breathe on their own. She said nothing, and waited for their dessert orders. She was glad to tell the doctor that there was no whipped cream cake.

‘Ah, well then, I suppose I’ll have to have bread pudding. You’ve got that, haven’t you?’ he asked accusingly. It was right there on the menu. She pointed to it with a finger and smiled a big fake smile.

He nodded irritably and turned his attention back to Jerry. ‘What about this bunch of laws you’re fixing to get passed?’

‘It’s not just a major redefinition of a basic constitutional right, but an expansion of the power to rid society of miscreants.’ Suzie bristled to hear that word. It was one of the ones she mumbled whenever she was chasing a bad driver.

‘We’re planning to expand the new laws to include the more marginal members of society the poor, those too ill to work, retired people who refuse to contribute, troublesome kids, the psychiatric cases your methods can’t help.’ He nodded at the doctor, who nodded back condescendingly.

Suzie listened with horror. The people Jerry’s law would affect sounded suspiciously like people she knew. ‘Blacks? Latinos? Women, too?” Suzie broke in. ‘Why?’

The doctor looked angry. ‘Why? Our way of life is under siege, and we’ve got to protect it. Disorder and anarchy is attacking our whole civilization, trying to extinguish our light and replace it with cultural darkness. The targets of our laws aren’t civilized. They’re not even human. And it’s only a beginning.’

Suzie stood in front of him, her hands clenched at her side. ‘What makes you and your kind right? Why do we have to follow your ways? Why can’t we all get along? Isn’t this country supposed to be a melting pot?’

The doctor looked at her like she was an ant, and growled, ‘We’d rather be separated. Our history, our culture, our laws, all of western civilization comes from us, we’re the natural leaders.’

‘White people, you’re talking about, right?’ she sneered.

‘Of course white people. This was an English country. We were here first. White people colonized the land and made the laws and invented American society. We set everything up just the way we wanted. And now everything we believe in is under attack. The Indians want to drive us out, the blacks want to murder us in our beds, the Asians want to sell our daughters into white slavery. Hell, the Mexicans want to change our national language, for Christ’s sake.’

The doctor was red in the face, his jowels squeezed into a grimace. It was obvious to Suzie that he held on to these ideas fiercely. ‘I’m an old fashioned man,’ he said, and the others nodded. ‘I believe in the common values, where every race knows its place, and nobody gives any trouble about crossing the lines separating us.’

Suzie protested feebly. ‘But all people were created equal.’

‘Aw, what’s the problem, Girl?’ Ed broke in. ‘Everybody knows they’re not people like us. Blacks were sired by Satan mating with dogs. Asians came from Satan mating with cats.’

Suzie stared at him. The doctor added, ‘God gave us – white people – dominion over the earth, not them. He didn’t make them equal. This is a white Christian country, and we have a right to run it the way we want to. We’re starting a crusade against nonbelievers and non-whites, including Blacks, Hispanics, troublesome Jews, and uppity girls like you.’

Suzie stood there with her mouth open.

Jerry saw her expression. ‘You think we’re racists. Well, here’s what a racist is. A racist honors his race and reveres his ancestry. A racist prefers the company of his own kind, like everybody else does, and thinks that his genetic inheritance is worth preserving. By that definition, we’re all proud to be racists.’ The others agreed heartily.

Suzie backed out of the room, shaking her head, and ran to the servants’ quarters for a minute of peace. Their attitude disturbed her more than anything she’d read in the folder. She had thought the articles she’d read were from some dim past, thankfully forgotten by all but a few people with hate in their hearts. But these men were important members of society, and they should know better. She couldn’t figure them out.

A few minutes later, much calmer, Suzie came out of the pantry, shaking water off her hands, and ran right into Ed as she turned the corner. Before she knew it, he had waltzed her across the floor and backed her through the door of an empty dining room.

‘Oh, Baby, Baby’ he muttered into her neck, searching for a vein so he could suck the life out of her.

She pushed him away, growling. ‘Back off,’ she said, backing off and standing in the middle of the room. He came toward her again. They did a circle around an empty table. She felt panicky and hot; he felt explosive and full of determination. It was like Snidely Whiplash chasing Nell, only there was no Dudley Doright. Just Nell, reaching under her skirts for her knife.

Finally he grabbed her, and bent her backwards onto the table. ‘It’s meant to be, Darling,’ he insisted with alcoholic breath that would gall a dog. ‘I want you so bad,’ he murmured, pressing up against her, rubbing up and down on top of her. ‘We’ll be so happy together.’

Suzie stopped struggling for a moment, in shock. Those were the very words she’d practiced hearing from Nelson. Ed started nibbling at her neck. The sensation was intensely annoying, like a bug crawling on her. She rolled him off.

She got up, and moved in between him and the door. She put her hands on her hips and stomped her feet. ‘When are you going to get it that I’m not going to be your girlfriend?’

He thought she looked adorably sexy, and started advancing on her again, a big grin on his face. She fled. He followed, arranging himself, whistling a happy tune.

Dessert was a rather stiff half hour, with Suzie acting like she didn’t know them, Ed trying to wink at her, and Jerry ordering more drinks and playing with his ice cream. It was nothing unusual, actually, because by this time of night they were all potted and probably wouldn’t have much recall once they woke up the next morning.

The doctor thought he still had a point to make. He was haranguing Ed and Jerry now, who nodded in drunken agreement with everything he said. Several times they tried to get a word in edgewise, but he waved a ringed finger and continued. He was on a roll.

‘We’d much rather turn back the clock rather than adapt to the way things are. Things are going to hell and we want to return to normal.’

Suzie couldn’t keep her mouth shut. He made her so angry that she had to speak up in the defense of the rest of the world. ‘What’s wrong with change? Why are your ways automatically right? Who made you the arbiter of the truth?’

Jerry snarled at her. ‘You’re talking like a child.’

Ed said, more kindly, ‘Wait till you’re older and you’ll see we’re right.’

Suzie snapped back, ‘I really hate being told I’m a child with immature perceptions and trivial objections. I think you’ve lost touch with how things really are. You’re the ones living in a dreamworld, trying to get privileges for some at the price of slavery for others. Especially now, with all these new prison laborers. We need more diversity. More sharing. More getting along. Your racist attitudes belong down the disposall of history.’

The men looked at her with open mouths. She was shocking them now. Ed had thought, simply because Suzie was white, she shared his prejudices and beliefs. It was becoming clear that she did not. If they only knew how she really felt, they would have had her arrested on the spot for treachery to the white race.

‘You white supremacists are ridiculous.’ She stomped out of the room and went to hide in the pantry until they were gone, and only returned to the room to clear the table when she heard them leave.

Ed walked out of the bathroom with his cock out, and waddled back into the Honeysuckle Room to give Suzie her tip. She turned with a load of dishes in her hands, and he was there, fumbling at her waistband, breathing on her. She ducked away from him and turned back to see his little dick scrunched up on top of tiny little balls, peeking out of his pants. He grinned hopefully. She turned away in disgust and left the room.

She saw them standing at the top of the stairs waiting for Ed who trailed out after her zipping his pants. ‘If you’re the glory of the white race,’ she said, ‘then nobody has to kill you in your beds. You’ll choke on your fat, slobbery tongues in your sleep, and the world will be rid of you.’ Jerry looked daggers at her; Ed whimpered with desire, seeing her so mad. The doctor fumbled with his jewelry, shocked. They stumbled downstairs, and Suzie broke into tears.

When she got downstairs to clock out and leave, she noticed them across the parking deck getting into their cars after a nightcap. She took note. The doctor drove a white Cadillac, Ed drove a Mercedes SUV, and Jerry drove a BMW. They all Republican bumper stickers. She made a note to replace them with War Is Peace stickers the next time they had dinner.

It was still the full moon. It was high in the sky as she drove down Boulevard going home. Suzie was exhausted, moreso than usual. The guys getting arrested downstairs; and fighting with those assholes; she was very tired, and she was sorry that she’d gotten involved at all. It wouldn’t do any good, and it might get her fired. Maybe she didn’t mind getting fired. Anything beat serving people like that and having to listen to them hate everybody who wasn’t like themselves. Horrible, nasty, fat, rich, ugly white men.

An SUV pulled in front of her halfway down Boulevard. She had to slam on the loaner’s brakes and swerve to the right. She ran up on the curb and hit a trashcan, narrowly avoiding a light pole. The trashcan left a dent in the right front fender. Oops. Maybe Nelson wouldn’t notice.

* * *

next, news at eleven

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Suzie noticed a new billboard as she passed the back of the airport. It was for the doctor’s cancer clinic. It showed a woman reclining in a lounge chair, her hair wrapped in a turban, the strong, comforting hands of a massage therapist on her shoulders. It’s The Way To Go. 800-FOR-CURE.

There was an accident on I-75 somewhere north of her. She was in a construction zone, stopped and creeping for over an hour, watching the water temperature rise, sweltering, afraid to run the air conditioning because the loaner’s engine was running hot.

She passed the old closing-down Ford assembly plant around the back of the airport at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. She felt pity for the old assembly workers who were being dumped. She could see the new air traffic control tower looming up behind it and a crane looming over that, still far away, part of the airport expansion. The new one was twice as high as the old one. It was like a baton, 400 feet in the air, with a tower shaft and a head, crowned by a parapet and a conical roof. Like a space age plastic dildo.

She painfully coursed onto the Connector and began merging, riding the bumper of the car in front of her at twenty five miles and hour and watching the city come in to view. From this exact distance, the pencil Bank of America building on North Avenue looked exactly the same height as the penis Westin and the castle 191 Building and the rubix cube Georgia Power a dozen blocks south, and the praying hands missile silo just going up in Midtown, a dozen blocks further north. Suzie thought about the cosmic coincidence here. Like how your pinky finger held out as far as you can is exactly the same width as the sun and the moon both. Oooh. Suzie was still stoned.

As she drew closer to the wonderful City of Oz, the skyline receded, and then the capital buildings loomed up in white marble, and then she started passing under Memorial real slow, and there was Grady Hospital on the curve. Slowly, slowly, watching heat rising in the lanes around her. After that, traffic slowed down dramatically, and Suzie abandoned the highway and got off at Freedom Parkway to take the surface streets.

It was 6:37 when she pulled into the parking deck. She was way late. She was sweaty, her nerves were rattled from trying to cut corners and get to work a split second less late. But she wasn’t even dressed yet, and it was going to be a busy night. She clocked in, and scurried up the stairs to the servants’ quarters to pull on her uniform. The Service Manager was going to write her up for being late. She hated getting into trouble.

There was a flyer taped to the mirror in the servants’ quarters. It was slapped up there crookedly. She hopped over to read it while struggling into her pantyhose.

Notice. Effective Immediately, The Dress Code For Wait Staff Has Changed.

Suzie groaned and rolled her eyes. Another indignity. And we’re supposed to pay for it. Blah blah, now they wanted oxford shirts and club ties for the men instead of ruffled, stiff-collared tuxedo shirts and bowties. The women had to wear club ties, too, with the stupid club emblem printed all over it. And it wasn’t good enough to dress in regular knee-length tuxedo skirts, now they had to be short tuxedo skirts. No longer than fingertips.

Suzie dropped her hand to her side to see, and glanced down. Mid thigh. Halfway up to her butt. A good foot shorter than just below the knee, which was hard enough to deal with when she knelt down and bent over to get things out of the sideboard. Black stockings? Heels? No way.

She charged downstairs to ask Chef for her old job back. Enough is enough. But when she got to the kitchen, she saw several cops standing in a loose cordon around the Latino porters, who were bunched up along the central work table. The porters had their heads down; it was eerily silent in the room. She could hear the taps dripping in the sink. Chef was in his office with a guy in a dark suit, they were looking at papers on his desk and talking. Chef looked up and saw her at the bottom of the stairs. Suzie panicked and ran back upstairs, suddenly, irrationally afraid they would come after her.

She found Yolanda pulling salad plates from the dumbwaiter. ‘These salads really took their time getting up here,’ she complained. ‘My tables are hungry.’

‘Something bad’s happening downstairs,’ Suzie said. ‘There are cops down there. The porters are in some kind of trouble.’ Yolanda delivered her salads, then whirled downstairs to see what was going on. She was back in moments with a frown on her face.

‘Immigration,’ she said heavily. ‘I mean, Homeland Security. They’re checking papers.’

Suzie felt her stomach twist. How many of the porters were legitimately legal? How many had papers? What would the cops do with them? They were nice people. They had families. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked significantly, thinking it would be rude to ask if she was legal herself. Yolanda nodded. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’ Yolanda shook her head and shrugged. They went back to work.

That evening the place was messier than usual. The trash got full and overfull, and nobody came to pull the bags and give them empty ones. Dirty dishes piled up in the bus trays and nobody came to haul them to the kitchen. The waiters finally loaded them onto the dumbwaiter themselves and sent them down, but they came back up the next time they hit the button.

When they ran out of glasses, Suzie looked around in the pantry at half a dozen racks of dirties stacked up in the corner, and decided to go have a look downstairs.

The kitchen was limping along without the porters. The cooks were cooking, but nobody was straightening or cleaning or carrying or toting or fetching or prepping. The place was a mess. She stumbled along to the storeroom and found two racks of tumblers on a dolly. As she was pulling it along the treacherous floor to the dumbwaiter, she ran into Manny, apparently the only legal immigrant in the Club. He looked haggard, worried. He kept his eyes down and was silent as they passed.

Later, when she was clocking out, she found him doing dishes. ‘Oh, Manny, I’m so sorry,’ she cried. ‘What’s going to happen?’ He looked very sad, and shook his head and mumbled something. ‘Can I help you clean up?’ Manny said no. He looked miserable. The porters were like family and he was just as sorry as the ones sitting in jail now. The camera glared balefully at them.

When she arrived at work the next day, she found a bunch of temps shadowing Manny around the kitchen staying out of the way of the cooks. He was showing them how to operate the dishwasher. They stood around casually, bored. Interested in everything but the idiosyncrasies of the Hobart.

Chef was standing at the fringe of the group, watching Manny train his new porters, making notes to post the operating directions for the Hobart in Spanish as well as English. He wasn’t impressed with any of the new porters so far, but it was by far the lowest level job in the kitchen, and he needn’t expect too much of them right away.

Suzie went up to him after clocking in, He saw her and nodded. ‘Um, Chef,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I was wondering if you’ve thought about my job in the kitchen.’ He looked at her, staring. She twisted her knuckles together. Maybe he didn’t remember.

He looked back at his notes, looked up at the new porters for a moment, looked back at his clipboard. ‘You know,’ he said, finally looking her in the eye. He sighed. ‘We just don’t have room right now.’ He paused. Suzie tried not to fidget. ‘And you’re not really the type of person we want to have cooking in our kitchen.’

Suzie stood there looking at him. ‘We?’

He shook his head dismissively. ‘I just don’t think you’d make a good cook, that’s all. I don’t want to waste your time, or mine.’

She summoned her courage. ‘You think that? You’ve never seen me working in the kitchen. I’m very competent doing prep work.’

He looked sly. ‘You make a pretty good waitress. Why don’t you stick to that? It’s less stressful.’

‘Because I want to cook.’

‘Do you really?’ He looked her up and down slowly. ‘Well,’ he said, looking back at his clipboard. ‘Not here, anyway.’

Suzie marched upstairs to the dining rooms, hurt, banished, thinking about whipping up a page from the Anarchist’s Cookbook to throw at Chef. She spent time folding napkins and polishing silver, dreaming about random terrorist acts committed on Chef’s person, sharpening diatribes to pierce him with as he lay dying.

Twenty minutes later they all trooped down to hear the menu, and Chef stood there haughty and superior, tripping a string of rapid French off his tongue, then turned crisply and marched back to his office. Suzie didn’t hear a word of it. She was watching him with deep resentment and ill will, and thinking thoughts that started with How Dare He.

She noticed a knot of the new porters washing dishes, talking and handing plates lazily back and forth, tossing silverware into a bus tray full of water. They looked all around them as they worked. A Sous-chef in kitchen whites stood nearby, keeping an eye on them. She’d never seen him in the kitchen before. This new Sous-chef was a tall white guy getting a little beefy in the middle. He stood straighter than a lot of the Sous-chefs, and didn’t have any burn scars on him. He also had no sense of humor. He just stood and watched, as if he had dark glasses on, fingering a wire whisk-looking thing he held in one hand, and mumbling.

She waved over at the black cooks, but couldn’t catch anyone’s attention. They were all nervous and quiet, keeping their heads down, doing their jobs. Suzie felt watched as she turned around and headed up the stairs. Now that she knew she couldn’t come back, she was really missing the friendly ambience of the kitchen.

The assholes were there, as usual, coming up the stairs like three warriors with drinks in their hands at the stroke of eight. She lobbed imaginary grenades at them as they ascended. The weapons failed to dislodge the enemy. Suzie’s attitude got worse.

She left them to settle themselves in the Honeysuckle Room, and armed herself with a basket of bread and a butter dish before going in to say hey.

Ed was his usual bombastic self. ‘Honey! This here’s our favorite waitress, come here and give us a little kiss.’ There was bold laughter from the guest. Suzie looked daggers at him. She passed out menus, made up something for the specials, and waltzed out to order more drinks.

She came back in with the drinks. The guest was that consultant guy, Bob, who attended the good doctor Bling when she first started upstairs. He was just concluding his introduction of whatever business he was there to discuss. Suzie dallied around the room while he passed out shiny brochures showing smiling, happy people in business suits and uniforms, posing in front of office buildings and industrial sites. Big Behemoth Consulting.

She stood in front of them for a few minutes, waiting for Bob to wind down. She cleared her throat. It was hard to tell exactly what he was trying to sell them. She tapped her foot. They ignored her. Something to do with taking Jerry’s business to a new level. She felt her ankles starting to swell. She shifted her weight. Some software package.

Finally, she turned and headed out to the pantry to find something to poke at for a few moments. But just as she got to the door, the consultant paused, surprised, and Ed said in a whiny voice, ‘What’s the matter, Sugar? Ain’tcha going to take our orders?’

So she came back to stand in front of them again. Shrimp cocktail, spinach and artichoke dip, chicken salad in little bite-sized pieshells. Main courses all on the regular menu. More drinks. The consultant wanted wine, so she flounced out impatiently for the wine list, only to have him choose the cheapest red with hardly a glance.

Ed eyed her greedily when she returned with more drinks. ‘When you going to get your new uniform, honey?’

Shit. She forgot about that little annoyance. ‘I just found out about it tonight,’ she complained. ‘It’s going to take me a couple of days to get alterations.’

He leered, his pudgy lips rolling back away from his teeth. ‘You know, I’d love to go along shopping with you. Help you pick things out.’ He wiggled in his seat. ‘Black stockings, huh?’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What, did you write the new dress code yourself?’ He grinned. She wasn’t sure.

‘I just want to see more of those legs,’ he explained happily, grinning like a coon dog – Ah jus cain’ hep masef.

‘Leave me alone,’ she snarled.

Suzie returned to the pantry to wait for their appetizers and see about the drink order. The dumbwaiter came up, groaning and squeaking, from the kitchen. She lifted the door. The food was a mess. They’d left the lids off the appetizers, and just piled the plates on top of each other on a tray. She sorted it out, gathering the shrimp up and dusting them before re-arranging them around a wiped-off bowl of cocktail sauce on a plate. Then she peeled the pastry plate from the dip plate. It came up with a sucking sound. She scraped the gray-green slop off the bottom with her finger, and then retrieved the pastries, which were all over the floor of the dumbwaiter. Suzie looked into the corner as she picked up one of the chicken salads. Hmm, not very sanitary. She checked the pastry for gunge before putting it back on the plate.

Ed was fiddling around in his lap, looking absent-minded and content. He started up with a whine. ‘Where you been, Girl?’ Suzie ignored him. Jerry and Bob never looked up.

Jerry was explaining the idea behind his new temp agency. ‘The bottom line is,’ he said as she plopped the plate of dip in front of him, ‘is all about getting the work done for the least amount of money, right? Usually that means moving the operation to India and getting rid of all those high-wage workers here at home.’

‘That’s sound business practice,’ nodded the consultant, picking up his fork to stab at a pastry. ‘There are tremendous cost savings and tax breaks in outsourcing. And often better-quality work. No unions.’ He put a pastry in his mouth and began to chew. ‘Less regulations, so you can work them harder. No benefits costs.’

Ed summed it up. ‘What’s good for the bottom line is good for the world.’

Suzie finished serving their appetizers. ‘Either way,’ she commented dryly. ‘It puts those loyal employees at home out of a job.’

Bob finished chewing and swallowed, putting the fork down and going for another one with his fingers. ‘Let them find another job,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s not like what they do is important. A trained monkey could do most of the work.’

Suzie thought of how hard she worked and how much intelligence it took to satisfy these jerks, and took aim at the consultant. ‘You know, a trained monkey could do your job,’ she said, looking down at him. ‘All you do is sit there and chatter and be sociable.’ She smiled thinly.

Bob smiled back, but he was affronted. Ed was amused. ‘Hell,’ he agreed, ‘you’d groom the nits out of Jerry’s hair if he’d let you.’

After a moment of silence, Bob picked up the conversation. ‘I assume you give your employees the usual psychological and motivational tests?’ he asked, choosing another delicious morsel. ‘Our software comes with a complete profiling system.’

‘We don’t need it. Our people come pre-sorted. We just look at their sheet. The violent ones get shipped off to the military. Then we organize the others according to offense and skill level.’

Bob the consultant nodded absently and thought about what he wanted to say when Jerry stopped talking.

Jerry explained how they had it all figured out. Service workers needed to be neat, organized, and manually dexterous, so they were going to place pickpockets and petty thieves in restaurants and retail stores. Under armed guard, of course.

Office clerks had to be anal-retentive, able to concentrate; and that was a great fit for forgers and embezzlers. Factory workers had to withstand repetitive work over long periods, often in confined areas, so they needed the kind of employees that could be bolted into place. A lot of crazies would end up there, along with computer hackers and the like, who enjoyed solitary, sedentary, infinite tasks. As for versatile criminals, that is, people with four or more convictions in different criminal realms, they were earmarked for Management.

The consultant sat there and let Jerry talk, because a talked-out client signs the contract. He also let Jerry talk because he was beginning to fantacize, staring at Jerry’s nose and thinking about the pitch he’d make to the senior partners the next morning. They were really listening to him these days, after he’d given them the scoop on Doctor Bling .

‘Of course a business like this is so much more than an employment agency,’ Bob said wonderingly. ‘It’s a barrel of money for you, and our system will track it.’

Jerry went on, ignoring the pitch. ‘I can guarantee the same low low wage they’d get in India or Malaysia, with the same output per worker. And the company’s product will be made right here at home, by Americans. Think of the savings in shipping costs. And we’ve got a friendly government, not at all like those unstable sons of bitches.’

Bob was no longer listening. He couldn’t care less about selling Jerry software now. He was witnessing the birth of a brand new way to affect labor costs, the largest contributor to the bottom line. Private label workforces. Bonded employee leasing. Everyone’s labor problems solved. Cheap, controllable, replaceable units; like machines. He couldn’t think of a business that wouldn’t be excited to switch to My Labor ForceTM. ‘We’re going to have to complete rewrite the payroll software,’ he mused, slipping his BlackBerry out of his pocket.

Suzie came in to clear the dishes. Back in the pantry waiting for their main course, she scraped the plates into a dangerously full trashcan. There were two bus trays full of dirty dishes sitting on the floor under the dry sink. Trying not to disturb anything, she balanced her plates on top of the stack on the counter.

The main course came up in the dumbwaiter. She raised the door gingerly, expecting to see a new mess. And she was not disappointed. Evidently the new porters didn’t know where the plate lids were kept, because all the plates had been tossed onto a tray in the dumbwaiter without lids, and the plates were stacked haphazardly, and she had one hell of a time chasing carrots and picking up peas. She had to remold the mashed potatoes, and scrape up the sauce and dollop it back onto the meat. She had to pull some broccoli spears out of the gungy corners and wipe them off. Suzie got a better taste of their food by licking her fingers than she ever did picking at it.

She went back to the room with their main courses looking presentable.

Jerry was still rattling on. This time, it was all about his ex law firm that was working with state representatives to rewrite certain statutes in a special session of the legislature ‘We’re fixing to pass new legislation, next week, as a matter of fact. A blow for God against liberal humanism.’ He nodded at the consultant. ‘We’re going to make it illegal to teach anything but scientific fact in our schools.’

Suzie paused, filling the wine glasses. ‘Scientific fact?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Yeah,’ Bob retorted. He was smarter than her. ‘Scientific fact. Like electricity. Chemistry. Not unproven theories about how mankind descended from the beasts.’

She looked at Jerry in dismay. ‘Are you banning the teaching of evolution?’

Bob drew himself up stiffly and explained it to Suzie. ‘Evolution in all aspects is contrary to true science. There is no empirical evidence for the hypothesis of evolution.’

She was taken aback. ‘But DNA, archeology, cosmology, they all point to evolution.’

He shook his head. ‘All of the empirical evidence supports the Creation Model.’

‘There’s evidence for creation in six days and nights? It’s scientifically possible?’

‘The proof is the Word of God.’ Jerry looked away from her as he spoke, sounding weary, like she was some disembodied voice asking stupid questions, and he wished she’d go away. ‘At best, evolution’s explanation for the origin of mankind is silly. A child’s fairy tale.’

Suzie stood there with a hand on her hip, holding some bit of trash she’d picked up off the table, taking it all in. Then she turned and walked out of the room.

Bob turned to Jerry. ‘I understand that the Board of Ed is meeting next month to replace the word Evolution with Biological Changes Over Time in the textbooks.’

Jerry nodded; he knew all about it. ‘My firm is acting as advisor on the new textbook design. It brings God closer to the everyday world.’ The consultant approved heartily. ‘The next step is to make religious education compulsory. I’d like to see it get equal time in the public school curriculum.’ Jerry savored his words for their sound-bite potential.

Suzie was in the pantry with rolled-up sleeves, racking dozens of dripping glasses. The new porters had finally come and cleared away the racks and trays full of dirty dinnerware. There were still piles of dishes and clusters of glasses waiting to be racked and tubbed, and she worked as fast as she could to clear away the backlog without getting her sleeves filthy.

When she went back in with the dessert menu, Jerry was starting to talk about his investigation of Doctor Bling’s new therapy. Jerry realized that Bob had gotten in on the same ground floor, and the conversation quickly became arcane. Ed was quiet. He looked bored, impatient. He winked at Suzie.

‘Jerry signed his wife up for treatments,’ Ed said proudly. ‘That’s how good it is.’ The consultant looked at Jerry with hopeful concern. The developer also looked at Jerry with hopeful concern. The two looks were different. ‘How’s it working for her?’ Ed asked him.

Jerry slugged back the rest of his wine. ‘Well, she hasn’t been the same since the chemo, anyway. So it’s hard to tell.’ He knocked back the rest of his liquor. ‘She’s just not herself any more,’ he said in a low voice. ‘More like a ghost. I’m worried about her.’

Ed made sorry noises, but secretly thought Jerry’s wife was whiney and bitter. He’d never liked her. What he was waiting for was for Jerry to get some young piece of ass that he could fuck on the side. His thoughts turned to nearer objects as Suzie came back into the room. Too bad she showed not the least bit of interest. But she was so cute and spunky. Like a pixie. A fuck fairy.

She breezed through the room collecting empty plates, then back through for the wine glasses, and then back in with fresh drinks and the dessert menu. Ed didn’t get a word in edgewise, Bob went to the bathroom, and Jerry lit a cigarette and sat in a gray cloak of smoke.

‘You know?’ Ed asked out of the blue, after deciding on peach ice cream. ‘My car just isn’t running right, and my mechanic got himself thrown in jail.’ He swaggered toward Bob to explain. ‘A little thing on the side he was involved in.’

Suzie said, ‘And you’re too cheap to take it to the dealer.’

He sat up straight and made a point. ‘You know, I can’t stand dealerships. I used to work in one. They’re crooked to the bone.’

They were still talking about mechanics and cars and car races and the speedway down in Griffin when she came back with their desserts, which she’d had to transfer to clean plates upon retrieving them from the dumbwaiter.

‘No,’ Ed said, drooling at the sight of his ice cream. With sparkles. ‘Just give me a good old Georgia boy knows how to fix cars, that’s what I like.’

‘I know somebody like that,’ Suzie said.

He licked his lips, covered with cream. How sexy he looked, like a pig at a trough. ‘Really. Maybe I should call him up and have a little talk about my problem.’

Suzie thought about it. Maybe they’d get along. Maybe Nelson would appreciate the referral. Maybe he’d soak Ed for all kinds of work his car didn’t need. ‘He’s down in Riverdale,’ she offered condescendingly. ‘Stoner’s Auto Repair.’ She reeled off the number. ‘Ask for Nelson.’

‘Stoner’s. Nelson. Thanks, Baby Doll.’ He wrote it down on his cloth napkin and stuffed it into his pocket.

Ed ambushed her just after dinner, when the others were all making going back to the bar noises and he sneaked off to the bathroom. He surprised her as she was coming through the door with the carpet sweeper.

‘Hey, Honey, I nearly forgot to tell you. Wait till I show you this.’ He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘You are just going to love this.’ He made a flourish unfolding it. ‘Lookie here and let me show you where we’re going to set you up in a brand new apartment all your own. Just a few short months and you could be living right here.’ He slipped an arm around her waist.

Suzie rolled her eyes and backed off. ‘I’m not moving from where I am, thanks,’ she insisted, feeling frantic. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t live anywhere where you knew where it was.’

He finished unfolding the paper and dropped his finger onto the map. Suzie was looking at it from a different angle than she was used to, but she saw the railroad and Moreland Avenue right away. His pudgy finger pointed to exactly where she was living on Seaboard Avenue, and an artist’s rendition showed shops below and condos above. It looked like a row of pre-1920s shops downtown.

‘Here,’ he said, moving his finger slightly, ‘The doctor has the corner, next to the Marta Station.’ Suzie bent over and saw a Starbucks and a Wolf Camera drawn in nearby. The developer pointed to a shopfront he’d had put in just for her. ‘Look, Honey, just for you,’ he said, slapping her butt. ‘The Suzie Q Cafe.’

Suzie felt sick. Then she saw the name of the new development down in the corner of the paper. The Emerald City. From that point on, she was apoplectic. He came at her for a thank you hug, and she slapped him hard in the face. He looked startled.

‘You did this on purpose,’ she accused, feeling murderous. ‘You know where I live?’

He started to smile, rubbing his face with one hand. He was getting excited to see her so emotional. ‘That’s my neighborhood, you dumb fuck,’ she said, punching him in the arm. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You can’t rip it down and put up that shit. How dare you?’

He reached for her breast. She chopped at him with the broom handle, and felt it connect. ‘How are you going to pick up your teeth with a broken arm?’ she barked at him, backing out of the room.

* * *

next, suzie blows a fuse

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Suzie drove around, doing some thinking. She didn’t pay attention to where she was going. She just drove. She didn’t notice the landscape features, she didn’t see the endless strip malls and fast food joints and gas stations. The only thing she noticed was how close the car was to conking out.

What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am? A tune she and her dad used to listen to went through her head. Everything Nelson had ever told her had been a lie. He loved her, that was a lie. It was special between them. He never got hard for anybody else like he did for her.

He’d been sleeping around the whole time. She should have known he wouldn’t go as long as they had without sex. She expected every minute that he would tell her he had to see her, he had to have it, he couldn’t bear to be without her, he needed to show her how much he loved her. They hadn’t had sex in months, and it was because he was too tired from fucking other girls and couldn’t get it up for her.

She felt her love for him like a boulder on a bungee cord. It plunged out of sight, then came snapping back up, just out of reach. But it was just a rock, what should she care?

Then why did she love him? She knew he was a shit, but he did something to her heart. Whenever they touched, a feeling like she was home came over her, and she felt an outpouring of love for him, a real soul connection. It frightened her. It scared him too; he said so when they kind of talked about it once. When she brought it up.

She thought on a practical level for awhile. She knew they were never going to live together, in the back of her head. But he was the best prospect she had, so she continued her feeble attempts to manipulate him into marriage. He would never be the best provider, but he was the one who made her feel the best, feel the most intense. The one she needed to have in her arms.

Hell, he was probably a terrible provider. Always buying and selling dope, always high. Thank God he didn’t drink. There was that problem with crank he used to have. But he said he’d been clean for months, and she believe him.

She found herself driving east. Farms and pine trees and rolling hills. When she got to Madison, she turned north.

Suzie drove some more, suffering from her hangover. Everything irritated her; everything was too much. The heat was scalding. Dehydration parched her skin; she sweated dried salt. Her mouth sucked humidity out of the air. Her hands were shaky. She felt nauseous. She needed to sleep. She wasn’t thinking clearly.

She fantasized about how she could help him if they were living together. Help him start his own business, give him a nice hot dinner and rub his shoulders when he came home, make love twice a day. He’d be less tense, less harried. If he worked for himself he could just work when he felt like it, and relax the rest of the time. They’d be happy all the time.

Suzie didn’t have a whole lot of practical experience of life. She had a bunch of romantic ideas about how relationships were supposed to work. She’d picked up a mess of fancy notions from TV, like for example that the lot of the working class was amusing, and everyone partied a lot and shared lots of love. It was all good. After all, nobody in the sitcoms cursed the government, or got put in jail on a bad rap, or complained of being exploited by Wal-Mart. She took it for granted that life was supposed to be like that. But recent events had proved that life was entirely different from anything she’d seen on TV.

Okay, so she was finding that her hopes for a life with Nelson were a little immature. So fine, Nelson’s out. He wasn’t worth much anyway. So what that she loved him with all her heart? If she simply stayed away from him, then she wouldn’t feel that soul thing that happened between them, and she wouldn’t miss him. It sounded like a good plan to her. And, truthfully, for Suzie, Out Of Sight Out Of Mind has always won out over Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder.

She saw a dead deer on the road in front of her. Aw. Her heart bled for Bambi. As she got closer, she saw that it was a dog. Probly ran away from home and was out sniffing around for females. Dumb dog. As she passed it, she saw it was a truck tire peeled from a passing eighteen-wheeler. She called Uncle Daddy again, but there was no response.

But now what? No home. No boyfriend. No job. Which would she miss the most? Hmmm. None of the choices were stellar. If you asked her, she wouldn’t have a good thing to say about any of them. Living in the apartments with the lost boys was ratty and dungeonlike, and they always made her feel small. The job was hell, with heaven just out of reach in the kitchen. The boyfriend. Cocksucker.

That reminded her of her feelings toward Ed. And Jerry. Her head started to pound. All men can’t be like that. Why couldn’t she find one she could stand?

Like her dad. Brave, strong and true. Her heart filled with love, a layer of harsh longing in the middle. He left her. She was all alone. She couldn’t get his approval any more. And she so needed his approval.

He loved her no matter what she did, made light of even her worst faults. Honored her as a human being and a good girl, even when she wasn’t. Made excuses for her stupid mistakes. He would have let her get away with murder if she’d wanted to go that far. But she always did what was right because she knew he’d be proud of her, and she always asked herself what he would think of whatever she’d done.

Would he be proud of her now? Having killed one. Wanting to kill another. Wanting to blow up Nelson’s shop with him in it. Wanting to take a machine gun into the Club. These thoughts made her pause. Those were terroristic acts she was fantasizing. And that’s not how a reasonable adult is supposed to behave. Even though most humans entertain murderous thoughts on a daily basis. It’s just that you’re not supposed to act on them. But she had. She’d killed Jerry. And she wanted very badly to kill Ed.

She’d have killed Hitler if given the chance. Wouldn’t anybody? How about if you were around in those days? If you were, say an Allied spy, holed up across the street from where Hitler had a cozy thing going with a party wife? Wouldn’t you fire if you had a clear shot? Knowing what that maniac was doing to the world? Wouldn’t you be morally obligated to assassinate him? Wouldn’t history justify you? I’m certain Pat Robertson would think so.

She came to a light just turning red, pulled the gearshift to neutral, then fluttered the gas and braked to a halt. It went to stall, but she gave it more gas, then it roared, so she let off the gas, then it started to stall again. She had to concentrating on zenning exactly the right pressure at exactly the right time until the light changed.

Suzie wondered, Am I bad? I probly should get some type of therapy. But no anti-depressants, she decided. Remember, speed kills.

She found she’d driven clear over to Athens, so she turned west, and because she wasn’t thinking, she decided she would cut cross-country toward Atlanta instead of taking US 78, the main back road. She was tired of traffic.

Hours later she found herself in Morrow, well south of town. At least she knew how to get home from there. She came up Georgia 54 – Jonesboro Road – and bypassed the highway until she got to Lakewood, where she figured she might as well get on the Connector and finish her trip sooner. She was heading home. Such as it was.

Traffic was moving well. She passed one overpass after another, all of which could turn out to be the bridge she put her tag on. But each one had something wrong with it. One bridge was too visible to escape notice. One was too dimly lit. One vista showed Atlanta far away and small. One bridge showed Atlanta close up, but off to the side of the road. None of them were just right. The railroad bridge just before Pryor Street was still her best candidate.

She slowed down as she reached it and took in all the details. It had a big huge traffic sign in front of it, which marred the view of her proposed tag, but would protect her from notice from oncoming traffic. The bridge had an iron fence on the inside, a chain-link fence next to it on the outside, then a cement lip feet high, a maybe four foot recess and then eight feet of iron wall, rusty black, empty. And a twenty foot drop. She imagined it all in a flash of creative projection . I can do this, she thought, crossing her fingers for luck.

The on-ramp to I-20 East was fucked up from all the traffic still being rerouted from the south end of the Perimeter. So she got off at Turner Field and went home through Grant Park again. One of the original neighborhoods of post-Reconstruction Atlanta. Hundred-year-old Craftsman and Queen Anne houses. Wide porches, high ceilings, large rooms, stained glass, ancient trees, large yards. Renovated. Graceful, gentrified, intown living at its finest.

She took Boulevard north to Edgewood and tried to cut east through Inman Park, but the road was barricaded at Euclid. So she cut a little south to DeKalb Avenue to parallel the tracks, but they wouldn’t even let her on the street. So she went over to cut south under the train tracks by the Krog Street tunnel, but it was closed and barricaded as well. So she went back to Boulevard and took it south to Memorial, and went east that way. Traffic was backed up when she got to Monroe, but at least it was moving, so she turned left and got in line, and eventually came upon a barricade.

It was at Wylie Street, right at the edge of her neighborhood. Cops were standing around directing traffic away from the area. Suzie parked the Trooper and got out to ask when they were going to start letting people back in.

They told her that the whole area was under an evacuation order. Reynoldstown, Cabbagetown, Little Five Points, Inman Park. Even the new shopping center. The CSX terminal was shut down. That meant no eastbound or westbound trains through Atlanta until further notice.

‘Are you a resident?’ the cop asked her, looming over her.

‘Yes, I live in the apartments on Seaboard.’

The cop looked twice at her and backed off slightly. ‘Wow. Were you there?’ She nodded. ‘You should go to the hospital, let them check you out. The whole area’s a disaster zone, and especially that part. There’s nothing to go back to.’

‘I just wanted to see it,’ she explained.

He took pity on her. ‘We might let people in tomorrow or the next day,’ he told her, though in fact it would be a week. ‘They’re still decontaminating.’

She considered walking in. They can’t patrol all the backyards between here and my house, she thought. Then she thought about the toxic waste. And what did she want to see a burned out shell for? It would just make her headache worse.

Suzie went and got in the Trooper and tried to start it. The starter went rinna rinna for awhile, then caught. And the engine died immediately. Suzie concentrated on getting it to start again, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas.

She looked around when the car started up, triumphant. She wish people could appreciate what kind of skill it took to drive Nelson’s car. Then she saw Ed the developer standing at the blockade, talking to the cops. He’d pulled his Mercedes up right next to hers, and she hadn’t noticed. She could see the fake can of lubricant in the back.

Ed wanted to go into the area, and they were giving him the same story they gave her. She could hear him arguing with them, wanting them to make an exception for him. ‘I’ve got a right to be in there,’ he insisted. ‘I have to see what kind of damage was done to my property. And my insurance people are on their way.’

The cops weren’t impressed. Suzie wanted to yell out that he was the ultimate reason the place was being quarantined. But she held her tongue. Her head hurt too much to yell. And they weren’t impressed with her, either.

Ed was still trying to get them to let him in. They asked if he was a resident, and he answered, ‘Well, in a manner of speaking.’ He spread his hands out to indicate the neighborhood. ‘This is all mine now,’ he said proudly. ‘I bought it all up right before this happened, and I’m concerned for my investment.’

The cops seemed slightly more impressed. It was obvious to them that someone had been buying up the neighborhood. Ed pointed, indicating the new Edgewood shopping center down the hill. ‘Yessir,’ he insisted, ‘part two of the long-awaited Southeast Atlanta renaissance. We’re fixing to turn this area into a city within a city just as soon as we can get it cleared out.’ He leaned over confidentially and said, loud enough for Suzie to hear, ‘My job’s a lot simpler with this little fire here. It’s better to just let it burn and then call in the bulldozers.’ The developer looked around and saw Suzie, but didn’t recognize her.

She scoffed, What, if I’m not wearing a tux I’m invisible? She revved up the engine so it wouldn’t stall, and pulled out fast, full of hate. Bastard, she thought. You’re next.

But she didn’t turn back and try to tail him. She drove on, instead, not ready to take action. As the minutes passed, she began to regret leaving the scene. She wished she’d caught the bastard out right there, followed him down Wylie as he tried to get in the back way. She could have gotten him back in those side streets, maybe stopping to tell him she knew a secret entrance, leading him in, and pushing his face into spilled nuclear waste.

She pictured him face down in a glowing green ditch. Pig. It really bugged her that he hadn’t recognized her. He looked right at her, and never even noticed her. Of course, she was pretty filthy. Maybe he could smell her from there. Who would look at her, as bedraggled as she was?

She drove back down Moreland the other way, and stopped at Uncle Daddy’s house. The car was there, the truck was gone. Nobody answered the door. Nobody answered the phone.

So Suzie put ten bucks in the tank and went for another lost drive. It was afternoon was all she knew. Or late morning. She drove south on Moreland past Intrenchment Creek. Across the still-closed 285 in the southeast part of town. Past Fort Gillem. South to Morrow, to Stockbridge. Far. Where the roads lead away from the city instead of toward it. Way down in the country. Suzie drove until she got lost, and then kept driving. Then she turned around and made her way back to town, still in the grip of her hangover, and feeling really sorry for messing her life up so badly.

She was just passing Confederate Avenue when Alex’s phone rang. It was Uncle Daddy. She felt so relieved she started to cry. Her head pounded. ‘Oh, Uncle Daddy,’ she sobbed.

‘It’s all right, Baby Girl. It’s all going to be okay.’

‘But where have you been?’ she whined. ‘I’ve been trying to call you for days .’

‘I left it my cellphone in the truck. I’ve been using your Auntie Mae’s car recently. I haven’t been home much, I guess.’ He sounded depressed.

‘I didn’t have your cellphone number,’ she sniffled. ‘How’s Auntie Mae?’

‘The news isn’t good, Honey. They’re going to have to operate.’

‘What is it?’

‘Breast cancer.’

Suzie felt her heart break. ‘Oh no. How is she taking it?’

‘How does she ever take anything? She’s cool as a cucumber, reading her Bible and saying nothing. She’s a rock. I’m so worried about her.’

‘How are you doing, Uncle Daddy?’

‘Oh, I’m alright, Baby Girl, bless your heart. It’s just a little sudden, that’s all. Listen, I’m heading down to Macon right now with a load, but I’ll be back around here late tonight. Call me anytime, you have my number now. Say, why don’t you come around tomorrow morning late, and we’ll go get some breakfast at the Waffle House?’

‘Awful House,’ she responded automatically. It used to be a game between them.

He chuckled. ‘That sound okay? Fine.’

‘I’m going to go see Auntie Mae.’

‘Give her my love.’

She choked up. ‘I love you, Uncle Daddy.’

‘I love you too, Suzie Q.’

She went off to see Auntie Mae, parking on another street among several abandoned heaps. Nelson’s car fit right in.

Auntie Mae was no longer in her hospital room craning her neck to watch TV or lying back reading her Bible. The nurse couldn’t tell her where she was. Suzie still couldn’t prove she was next of kin, and the nurse wasn’t saying nothing. Heartless bitch.

Suzie wouldn’t accept that Auntie Mae was just gone, and went barging into the room to make sure. There was another old black lady there, craning her neck to watch TV. Suzie looked at her, and then noticed Auntie Mae’s Bible sitting on top of the air conditioning unit. ‘Is that yours?’ she asked the old lady. The woman shook her head. Suzie dashed over to the window to retrieve it. ‘It’s my Auntie’s,’ she explained, tucking it into her bag and walking out.

Her heart was sore thinking about Auntie Mae. Cancer. An operation. They were going to knock her out, and anything could happen to her when she was under the anesthesia. She could have a heart attack on the operating table, or in recovery. She could have a stroke, an allergy to the anesthetic, she could be given too strong a dose. The surgeon could leave medical instruments inside of her. She could be riddled with disease they wouldn’t know about until they went in. Shit like that happens all the time in hospitals.

She called Uncle Daddy immediately, full of fear, and told him of Auntie Mae’s disappearance. It was news to him. He said he’d call the hospital and then call her right back to tell her what was going on. He was already on the road, but he had all the numbers.

Suzie drove away from the hospital, afraid she’d never see Auntie Mae again. She flashed back on her dream vision of herself, attached to tubes and pumps, hallucinating a life while being pegged to a bed. The thought of Auntie Mae as helpless as that brought tears up and closed her throat, and then Suzie was driving down Boulevard sobbing, She had to pull into a parking lot, and then crossed her arms over the steering wheel and put her head down, bawling. She had such a headache.

When her tears ran out, she drove over to the Home Depot parking lot on Ponce and took a nap, curled up in the dusty Trooper under a scrubby parking lot tree, her hips on the driver’s seat, her shoulders in the passenger seat, her middle suspended over the gearshift and console. She sobbed little baby sobs in her sleep.

When she woke up, the sun was below the houses bordering the shopping center, and her hangover had gone. She found the thought of food intriguing once again. So she counted her money, and then walked through the parking lot over to Eats a few feet up Ponce, deliberately violating the signs that said, Parking For Customers Of This Center Only Or We’ll Boot Your Ass. She got the vegetable plate; a buck an item. Nothing better for replenishing those electrolytes than collard greens, cornbread, beans and rice, and sweet tea.

She sat in the crowded restaurant ignoring the people and trying to concentrate on flipping through a copy of Creative Loafing while she ate. There was a story about the new development planned for Reynoldstown. Her neighborhood. She found herself staring at the same artist’s rendering Ed had shown her. There was her name above some shop. Like she would fall for that. What an asshole.

She sat there mopping up the juice from the greens with her cornbread. She thought about the Ed and Jerry show. Sexist, racist, selfish, conniving, murderous, mean ugly stupid bastards. Jerry was dead, and that must be a blow to the forces behind the new slavery laws. She felt righteous for a moment. But Atlanta was going to become a McDonald’s kind of place if Ed continued unchecked. She realized that she had unfinished business. As Jerry went, so should go his best friend and co-conspirator.

She thought of how she felt when she shot Jerry. She’d had no question. It had been an instinct. Even questioning herself now, she immediately stopped and thought, No. It had to be done. She got the same response when she questioned her wish to kill the developer. He’s a monster.

A news truck drove by. She thought how she could go home and catch the early news because she wasn’t working at the Club any more. This made her think about how she couldn’t watch the news because her house was burned down. And now she was jobless, homeless, illegal, a wanted fugitive, an outlaw. And it was all Ed’s fault.

She drove over to Ansley Park and parked across the street from the Club’s main entrance, waiting for him to finish his dinner. She wondered who he was mistreating tonight. She was very happy not to be going inside the iron gates to serve Atlanta’s elite any more.

She called Uncle Daddy to find out what they’d said at the hospital. He’d had long phone conversations with various officials, and had been cut off several times going out of cellphone range, but he understood that they moved her to a new rehabilitation center to perform her operation this afternoon, and he would know more tomorrow.

‘Rehab center?’

‘Some cancer place. It’s just opened up. Some new technology they’re going to use on her.’

Suzie shouted, ‘No! Uncle Daddy, you can’t let them do it. It’s untested. It’s dangerous.’

‘Baby Girl, the doctors wouldn’t do anything that’s not safe for Auntie Mae.’

‘Yes they would! They’re just waiting for the chance.’

‘Honey, you need to calm down.’

‘But I’m serious.’

‘I know you are. I know you’re scared. And I am, too. But we’re in the doctors’ hands now, and with the grace of God your Auntie Mae will be fine. She’s already had her operation by now. Try not to worry.’

Suzie sat there and worried for several hours. Auntie Mae with a microwave pointed at her chest. Auntie Mae cooked from the inside out. Auntie Mae’s swollen, staring eyes with her hair frizzed out like a maxi-afro.

She saw Ed’s car come weaving down the drive at some point past eleven. The loss of his favorite waitress and his best friend hadn’t made for drastic changes in his social habits. He cruised toward Piedmont and headed up toward Buckhead.

Suzie started the engine after a few seconds, and followed him out of the Club. She kept behind him, playing three-pedal twister trying to keep the car from stalling whenever they came to a light.

Stopped at Piedmont Circle, she had her right foot turned sideways, working the gas and the brake in turn while easing the clutch in and out of gear, cursing the broken emergency brake. He took a left and got onto Buford Highway heading north.

She followed him to Sidney Marcus, going fast. She applied the brakes as she came up to the light. The pedal squished down toward the floor without slowing her Trooper. Suzie shoved down on the brake. Nothing. She mashed the brake harder, but still nothing happened. The back of Ed’s car was alarmingly close. In desperation, Suzie stood on the brake, her head pressing against the roof, pulling back on the wheel with both hands as hard as she could.

The car came to an agonizing halt a single coat of paint from his bumper. Suzie was sweating out of every pore, and she could feel her entire head and shoulders red and swollen with effort. She started breathing again and sat back down, unclenching her hands. After stopping the car with pure willpower, keeping the engine from dying was simple.

The light changed, and her feet danced a little letting the clutch out. She went slowly over the hill, pumping the brakes. The pedal firmed up and the brakes stopped the car just fine, now. An intermittent problem. Nelson didn’t tell her the brakes had air in the line. Was he trying to kill her or did he think she liked these little challenges? She felt the sweat turning cold on her skin. Her breathing slowly returned to normal.

She actually liked driving the Trooper. It was high, and the engine was a real workhorse. Nothing automatic, nothing complicated. No frills at all. That’s the way she liked her cars. Maybe she would keep it. It would need cleaning up, though. Maybe she could fit the back out as a sleeper and go to Florida for the winter. Say, Boca Raton, where you can live well under a bridge, and still send postcards home. Having A Wonderful Time.

The Trooper’s interior was really filthy. The more she thought about having a mechanic’s car, the more her enthusiasm dampened. Nobody drives as broken-down a car as a mechanic. It wouldn’t get her halfway to Valdosta.

Ed turned right onto Georgia 400, and they were off. She was right behind him the whole way, and he never noticed. He took it up to 80 and hardly slowed at all going through the cruise lane, leaving Suzie screaming in fury as she stopped her car at the tollbooth.

Suzie got the Trooper into fifth gear and floored the gas. Soon she was going 90, and he was nowhere to be seen. The Trooper didn’t really like going that fast. It hiccoughed and spat, and the wheel shimmied horribly when she tried to push it any faster. She sat on the edge of her seat, her hair whipping around her head, her short legs stretched to mash the pedal down, all her energy focused on catching up to the evil developer.

She noticed all the traffic cameras, one every few hundred feet, some of them peering down through the windshield at her lap, her face. Were they all recording, all the time? Maybe she should put the wig and glasses on. She drove as fast as she could, peering ahead for tail lights. She wondered how far he was going, which exit he’d most likely get off on. Roswell, Alpharetta, Cumming?

The road was empty. Every mile or so she passed a car plodding home at 65. Every five minutes, a car passed her like she was standing still. Georgia 400 is a drag strip. Cars routinely run it up to 175 and over when nobody’s looking. And the cops never look.

She passed the exit for Roswell, and Holcomb Bridge Road. She still couldn’t see him, but had to choose. She kept going. It was agonizing to know that he might be turning into his driveway in Country Club of the South while she was still speeding down the highway.

She checked the gas. A little under a quarter tank. Good. She kept her speed up as high as she could, but she still didn’t see him. She got to the Alpharetta exits. How far ahead could he be? Did he already get off? It was driving her nuts. She felt as if a part of herself were getting off at each exit, scattering her attention along the road behind her.

Either he was already at home in darkest Alpharetta having a good long piss in the bathroom, or he was heading for Cumming, the back side of Lake Lanier. A house on the lake and boating around drunk on the weekends would suit him fine. Forsyth County’s reputation for racism, too. Cumming, then. She kept going. She was getting low on gas.

The road got very lonely. The spy cameras ended at Windward Parkway, above Alpharetta, and after that there was nothing, just Suzie in Nelson’s rickety dusty deathtrap, passing black pine trees and glowing black hills. The wind blew her hair all over. It got into her eyes. She could hear a succession of crickets. After awhile it sounded like one giant cricket keeping pace with her car. She began to get sleepy. She kept driving.

She passed the exits for Cumming and was heading north toward Dahlonega. There was still nobody on the road. She felt sure she had missed him. He must be home in bed by now. She prepared to take the next exit and turn around, her mouth full of bitter disappointment. Then she saw lights way ahead. It was a car getting over from the passing lane to take the next exit. Her heart rose into her mouth with excitement. There is a God.

He got off on exit seventeen, forty miles from Atlanta. She was right behind him, trying to decide what to do. He turned right, and sped on down the road into the darkness. Suzie pulled out and steadily gained speed. Two miles down the road, he turned right again. Suzie caught a glimpse of the sign as she skittered around the corner. Brown’s Bridge Road. Then she had a discussion with herself about top-heavy vehicles and sharp turns, after which she pulled out her gun and loaded it with paintballs. She put it on her lap and covered it with her wig-and-cellphone assembly.

They were on a two-lane, unlit country road, going up steep hills and down steep hills, around bends and across intersections as fast as possible. Ed was a practiced drunk; he hardly weaved at all. They crossed a branch of Lake Lanier over a low bridge. Pretty. Sparkly black water, black pines. Suzie was following him, right on his bumper, trying to make up her mind whether to get behind him and ram him, or get beside him and push him off the road.

Wondering why she bothered when he hadn’t recognized her before, she put on her wig and pushed her hair up into it. Then she spent a minute fumbling unsuccessfully for the scarf to tie down the whipping strands. They were leaving whip marks on her cheeks.

Blonde nylon hair went up her nose. She started sneezing. She looked at the dashboard and noticed again that she was low on gas.

He was weaving a little more now. Probly getting sleepy, she thought. Maybe she wouldn’t have to shoot him at all. He drifted into the left lane and slowed down as they were going up a hill. Suzie felt like she’d won a battle without fighting. She came up alongside his car, suddenly infected with pity in case he was falling asleep and fixing to drive off the road.

Ed rolled his passenger side window down and shot at Suzie’s car with a nine millimeter Baretta. Suzie screamed with fright. The bullet went wild. He shot again, and it grazed the roof. He shot again, and it hit the door post. She slammed on the brakes and dropped behind him. He slowed.

Ed was trying to kill her. This realization hit Suzie like a face full of cold water. He didn’t know who she was; she was just some woman driving down the road, and he took offense and started shooting at her. Suzie’s fury was matched only by her incredulity. How dare he? She grabbed her paintgun and sped to catch up with him.

She got the corner of his windshield with a psychotic yellow paintball. He squeezed off another shot at her hood. She was scared to death he was going to hit her, or she was going to lose control of the car. He kept shooting at her, and it was all she could do to keep driving and try to shoot back.

Now it felt like there was something wrong with the steering. A bushing, maybe. The car felt like it was stuck in mud – veering and threatening to turn over going uphill, the engine threatening to stall going downhill.

They were staggering down the road together, trying to kill each other. Suzie kept even with him and pumped off ten shots, covering the inside of his windshield, the dashboard, his seat. She reloaded in her lap and resumed shooting. She was aiming straight at his heart. A few balls fell into his lap and exploded. She could tell it hurt, even at her gun’s puny speed. He yelled ‘Ow’ every time she hit his inner thigh. So she shifted her aim gladly. And miraculously, her aim improved. He stopped firing and covered his nuts with his gun hand.

Then she ran out of paintballs. He was quick to notice, uncovered his balls, and started shooting again. The next bullet went through her wig. She felt it hiss and smelled burning nylon. She snatched it off. That was too close. She started to panic, afraid for her life.

In an act of desperate frustration, she tossed the gun through his window, hoping to hit him, or deflect his aim, and maybe give her a chance to get away. She didn’t throw it very hard, and the wind cut down on its speed, but as a flying object, it did pretty well, because it slewed around and whacked him upside the head with the barrel, which had the most heft of any part of the paintgun.

The blow didn’t hurt him, but it made him mad, and he turned his full attention to her. His left arm was holding the wheel. It jerked as he swing toward her, his face purple and puffed out with anger, his eyes barely visible as cold, void-like black holes. Even with eight to ten feet between them, he was still trying to suck her in and drain the life out of her.

He was aiming at her now, not her car. It had become purposeful aiming, calm zenlike aiming. She could tell he was going to hit her the next time he fired a shot. She felt like prey.

Ed could no longer see through his windshield for all the paint, so he kept sticking his head out the driver’s side window to see the road, and sticking his head back in and cranking it around to aim at her. His next shot went through Suzie’s door.

She looked down to see something whiz by her knees as the door panel buckled and the rolled-down window shattered inside the door. She took her foot off the gas and slowed out of range while she thought about it.

She was stuck on the road with a drunken fool who had a gun and was out to kill her. And she was completely unarmed. If she turned the car around he’d be right behind her.

He stopped a few hundred yards up the road. Suzie had slowed and was preparing to turn and run away, amazed at her luck. But then she saw him turn around. Suddenly he darted forward, shooting out his driver’s side window as he came. Suzie realized that she was going to die. He either didn’t care if he was injured, or was convinced his Mercedes would survive a head-on that would flatten her Trooper.

She had never liked to play chicken. But when there was no choice, you pick what they give you. She was fixing to go up in flames or down in history. ‘Want to play chicken?’ She screamed, letting out the clutch and gunning it. ‘I’ll show you chicken.’

The two cars closed fast, aimed directly at each other. Ed was in the middle of the road and stayed there as they got closer and closer. He had the momentum, the purpose, the drive, the horsepower, the balls, the ammo. Suzie was only going along with it, hoping at every moment for a reprieve.

She was scared to death. She could see the whites of his eyes, green in the dashboard glare. He was right in front of her. Suzie veered at the last minute toward the ditch on her side of the road.

And then a miracle happened.

She felt the wind whump her as the developer’s car flew by. She felt her right wheels flop down into the grassy margin toward the ditch. The car rattled violently. The wheel jerked out of her hand.

She lost control for a long moment as the Trooper decided whether to go straight or fall over on its side into the ditch. Finally she wrenched it back onto the pavement and slowed, gasping for breath, still praying.

She looked for Ed in her mirrors. She couldn’t see him. Maybe he’d just kept going and was out of sight over the hill. Maybe he’d be waiting for her on the other side. Maybe she should just keep going in the other direction, or turn into the next driveway and shut off her lights and hide until dawn.

The road behind her stayed dark. She went halfway up the hill, stopped, and did a three-point turn in the road. Five hundred yards down the hill, Suzie noticed a trail of black screech marks in the road, leading into a ditch on the other side of the road. The tire marks were steaming. She slowed her car and peered out the passenger side window. There, ten feet down an embankment, upside down, was Ed’s Mercedes, its wheels spinning.

She might have stopped. She probably should have stopped. But she was afraid. He might be conscious. He might still shoot at her. She didn’t want to die. She looked at her dashboard, distracted by the gas pump light. The gauge was below empty. How far was she from civilization, anyway?

She looked back at Ed’s car. There was no movement. It was quiet except for broken car sounds and crickets. His lights were still on, shining through the steam into the woods. She hoped he was wearing his seatbelt.

She put the car in gear and drove on. She didn’t care about killing Ed anymore. She was satisfied to have immobilized him. Now he couldn’t follow her. She was safe.

The nearest gas station was near Georgia 400, miles back the way she’d come. She got to the pump just as the Trooper was starting to sputter, and put her last five dollars into the tank. The gauge barely moved. She looked up to see cops going by in the direction she’d just come, driving purposefully.

She felt bathed in relief. Her spine tingled and her stomach fluttered. Her heart felt light, her shoulders straightened. She took a deep breath. Ah, ozone. Suzie thought about moving to the country, where it smelled like pine and you could see the stars.

She got back in the Trooper and headed back to Atlanta. All the way back, she thanked her guardian angels for the many miracles she’d been blessed with.

What miracle had occurred to save Suzie’s ass? She’d thrown her wig at Ed as they’d passed each other. It hit him in the face, and the glued-on cellphone whacked him in the nose. He thought it was an animal and went apeshit.

* * *

next, suzie does something brave