splat chapter nineteen

Suzie took a glass of water to her room. She was bored and restless, and worried about her efforts as a crime fighter. Sleep felt unlikely, so while she was up, she might as well print a few bumper stickers she'd been working on.

She started by running a sheet of F The President stickers. She'd seen them on someone's car, and ran home to mock them up, and was anxious to see how they printed. The original, square black W The President bumper stickers were offensively smug and self-righteous. She'd cast about in vain for a parody that would actually say something. W The Resident wasn't very good. W The Poophead just sucked. But because it's been an act of treason to criticize the government since the Patriot Act, she'd been surprised to see F The President an outright condemnation, only just slightly veiled. Surely that kind of statement qualified as a terroristic threat.

She had an idea, opened a new document, and set up quickly for a page of The Emperor Has No Clothes On. And then did it again for a page of Rome Fell. But she wanted to keep creative outbursts to a minimum, because she'd already decided to concentrate on parodies, subversive jokes she could stick right over someone's existing bumper sticker. They'd never see it, and she could laugh about it for years, because once people become used to something, they become blind to it, and never see it again. Like when she used to write herself notes to remind herself to remember to do something or think Care Bear thoughts or get milk, and she would then walk right by wherever she'd stuck them, completely oblivious to the stickies on the door and the fridge.

She thought about her campaign to end bad driving. If she wanted to leave a message, a bumper sticker would work perfectly, except for the delivery part. Through careful experimentation at the hideout, she'd come to accept the fact that she wouldn't be able to fit a message into a paintball shell, or glue it onto the outside as a tail, or anything like that. She couldn't rapid-fire the gun and trace out a message, either. And she couldn't begin to figure out a way to lay down a stencil so the paint would splat words. Sighing, she opened another document and absently set up The Left Lane Is For Passing And Cretins.

Suzie sat at the computer taking sips of water and doing ten different things, as usual. She sure had gotten used to having a computer. Setting it up had taken a good few hours of dicking around by a geek friend of the guys, in between TV shows and partying, but no sooner was it connected than she was hooked.

They'd tapped into the data line, worth thirty bucks a month, retail. They had a brief discussion about maybe investing in a wireless modem to take advantage of someone else's connection, but they didn't think anybody in the complex would be likely to have anything that tech. They reasoned that any computers in their neighborhood would have been pulled out of the trash or donated by some friend making an upgrade.

They would have been mistaken. Their apartment complex alone had ten units connected to the Internet by wireless modem. One was across the alley in the next building, where a girl not much older than Suzie had gotten her life together after a stint bartending in Little Five, went back to school, and now had a good job working for the Centers for Disease Control over at Emory. The CDC was running projections on the anticipated bird flu pandemic, and she brought a lot of work home. Thankfully, they'd supplied her with all the latest technologies to help keep her working through the nights.

Another wireless customer was Mike, a drug dealer two buildings down who was into technical stuff. Security. He had wireless mics in the trees and cameras trained on everyone, and ran it all through his computer, along with his wife's Internet business and his kid's DVD collection. In addition, being an amateur genius, he liked to experiment with smart house technology, so there were programmed lights and locks and music and microwaves inside his forty-year-old apartment, things that would come on unpredictably and give his customers anxiety attacks.

A third Wi-Fi spot was just upstairs from Suzie's apartment, the home of a corporate droid at Big Behemoth, Inc., a (disguised) consulting firm located at the top of a skyscraper downtown. Thirty-four year old Stan Bradley, a single, monkish kind of guy, worked in the graphics department making idiot sales pitches look good, mostly by correcting spelling and grammar. To a large extent, his main function was to dress them up in fancy stock photo images and trendy formatting flourishes of lines and colors. These days they were involved with a huge big drawn-out proposal to get Coke's business for some order-tracking software they wanted to sell, and it took months of overtime to get the presentation out, so he was racking it up.

Stan was into obscure music and audio production as a hobby, and that's a small but expensive field, so he was on a never-ending hunt for special, rare CDs, and he had bought a mess of equipment, and still had lots of dough. He had an I-mac and an I-pod, a wireless computer keyboard, a wireless piano keyboard, state-of-the-art sound mixing equipment, and rock-concert quality speakers.

But Suzie didn't know any of these wired-up neighbors. She had no clue about the CDC researcher, and only ever nodded at the drug dealer when she passed. She did feel that she knew Stan through his music, which came dripping through the floor late at night in piercing highs and thumping bass notes, sometimes almost subliminal.

So, as it happened, they could have slapped a wireless network card in Suzie's computer, and patched on into Stan's connection. And they had discussed it as an option, because wireless cards are cheap when you work in the stock room, like Alex did. But the guys decided the fast fix was the better solution, and went ahead and connected her to the Internet by hand. The next time a cable guy came around he'd find it. But they'd just go out and patch it in somewhere else.

The sheet of F The Presidents was done printing, and looked pretty good. She set it aside to dry, and sent another couple of pages. She could hear the guys in the living room shouting lines at the TV. They were watching Napoleon Dynamite again, and she was tired of hearing them all intone, 'Gimme your tots,' with the hero. They sounded retarded, the whole bunch of them.

She took a pair of scissors and separated individual stickers for awhile.

Disgruntled Employee Of The Month

My Child Sold Your Honor Student The Answers To The Test

Eternal Damnation Awaits Those Who Question God's Unconditional Love

She took a sip of water and thought about what Joseph and Chef Henri had said about her chances at the Club and her future without culinary school. Maybe she should get a job in some other kitchen and prove them both wrong. Or get a job doing something else.

Here she was working in a restaurant, but only because Auntie Mae happened to whisper to Miss Charlene in church that Suzie was getting restless and needed a dose of How Things Are and a spell of hard work before she got herself into trouble.

Suzie liked working in a restaurant. Food service was good. They fed you. It's what kept people alive. It was something nice to do for people. Et cetera. And it was supposed to be easy to get a job in the back of a kitchen.

She brought up a browser and did a search for culinary schools. She clicked on the first one, and was taken to an online brochure. Pictures of gleaming kitchens, the chefs looking more like surgeons than cooks, standing posed in white suits with enormous knifes and huge steel bowls, beaming happy smiles.

'Why is the Culinary Institute of the South the truly greatest cooking school?' she read. 'The faculty members presenting these courses are world-renowned chefs and restaurant management professionals, but that is the smallest reason for entrusting your education to them. More valuable is their ability to coax the utmost in excellence from each student. Of the five million chefs in the United States, fewer than one percent have been considered even to be approached by the Culinary Institute of the South. The faculty for the cooking course includes many of the great names in restaurant management. Never has such an illustrious group of chefs been available for your professional education. One could literally search forever, trying to match the excellence of our training and culture. Click here to contact us for more information.'

There was no mention of costs anywhere on the site. She went back and looked at the next hit.

Smiling white kitchens and gleaming cooks. 'The Associate of Occupational Science Degree, developed in response to student interest and industry demands, at Le Coq Français Institute of Culinary Arts will provide you with the training and expertise you need to begin your career in the culinary industry. Graduates prepare for entry-level positions such as line cook, pantry cook, assistant dining room manager, or sommelier.' Suzie shook her head. An assistant dining room manager was the guy who made sure there were plenty of supplies in the pantry. She probed further. Finally a price. 'From $42,000 to the low $70s.'

Another catalog. This one had course listings. She looked it to see what a degree would look like. She found lots of survey courses of cooking styles. And lots of technical subjects. For a few minutes, she got lost looking at the classes and fantasizing what they might teach.

'Menu Development.' 101 ways with chicken and greens.

'Meat Identification and Fabrication.' Well, okay, you've got to know your cut of beef, but how do you make it?

'Restaurant Law.' See, that's just nasty. Law. Feh. Might as well be math.

'Organizational Behavior.' Whose ass to kiss and how to cheat your boss.

'Computers in the Food Business.' They're everywhere. Cameras, too, evidently.

'Marketing and Promoting Food.' Come and get it before we feed it to the homeless.

'Psychology of Human Behavior.' How not to throw food in the laps of asshole members.

'Field Experience and Action Plan.' How to get an entry level job in the back of a restaurant.

She spotted a course that was close to actual kitchen experience. 'Advanced restaurant cooking. Learn to prepare modern and seasonal dishes in the school's restaurant. This course emphasizes cooking techniques and ingredients used in contemporary and classical cuisines, and covers planning and ordering for production, station organization, preparation and plating, timing, palate development, and other production realities of a restaurant.' She already know all that stuff, except for the cooking and ordering parts. What's palate development?

There in print was her current job. 'Introductory table service. An exploration of table service principles and skills with an emphasis on customer service in a restaurant. Topics to be examined include guest relations, professional communications, order taking in an à la carte environment, service sequence, point-of-sale systems, cash handling, beginning merchandising, table skills, and dining room preparation.'

She learned all that with hardly any training at all. It was just working in a restaurant. If she were to go to school, it would be for a piece of paper. What a scam. And how much was all this? A 4-year bachelor's degree, $10,000 tuition a semester, room and board, equipment. $100,000 to go to school to learn how to be a Sou-chef.

She got distracted after this. How much does it cost to go to college for something else? She went back to the search results and hit the website of a generic sounding art institute, which had a culinary certificate, but mostly taught computer and high-tech skills. A BA in Visual and Game Programming, Video Production, Media Arts & Animation, Illustration & Design, Interactive Media Design, Audio Production, Advertising. Hmmm.

Suzie's big problem was that she was rootless. She was raised that way, and didn't really know what it was like to be settled. What she needed was a good all purpose career she could take with her anywhere. Like cooking, construction, mechanics. Something everyone needs but can't do for themselves. Not a doctor; people only need a doctor when they're sick, lawyers when they're in trouble, religion when they're uncomfortable. The real essentials were food, clothes, shelter. Transportation. Sex. Sleep. Music, entertainment, drugs.

Suzie's big problem was that she was interested in everything. She always bombarded her dad with questions, and never slacked off as she got older. If she'd gotten near a school when she was a kid, they would have labeled her ADHD, and put her on daily doses of speed to zone her out. It was just natural motormouth curiosity to her dad, and he spent hours answering.

But what did she ever know about working in a specific career? She just assumed she'd grow up and drive with her dad. Or do a bunch of different things and see the world. As long as she didn't have to settle down and pick just one thing, one place, one task. She could never decide. When she got to high school, there was a placement test where she had to rank a bunch of career choices. She gave most of the list 1s and 2s. Everything reached out and grabbed her.

She opened an new page and started laying out business cards.

Suzie Q Public

Professional Dilettante

She knew she wanted to do something important. But she could never get any farther than that. Just like her gold standard for tagging a bridge. She wanted to do something big, something mighty, something world-shaking. But when the world shakes, people curse and grab the breakables. Maybe she'd be better off staying simple and humble. Waitress at the White Male Club. A mechanic's girlfriend. A vengeful vigilante. A loser.

As she got into bed, Suzie noticed the interoffice envelope she'd brought home from work, and crawled back out to fetch it. The string was tied in an intricate cat's cradle pattern. Inside was a stack of slim manila folders. She pulled one out and opened it. They were xeroxes of old newspaper clippings, looking more like they were from supermarket tabloids than serious papers. The Atlanta Constitution, the Atlanta Evening News, the Atlanta Sunday News, a bunch of others. All from 1906. None of them mentioned the fire in San Francisco.

The headlines were all big and overwrought. 72-point type. Atlanta Race Riot. It gave the impression that they were a little naive back then, getting all excited about stuff that no longer pressed any buttons. Suzie mused about simpler ages, with simpler enemies and simpler solutions.

But this was a little much.

Rude Negro Badly Beaten.

What is this stuff? she thought as she leafed through the folder. She lifted out a xeroxed full page. The headlines made her head spin.

County Police Force Is Trebled To Protect Women From Negros

Would Kill Every Negro to Protect Our Women

Vigilance Committee Is Being Organized

$1,600 Reward To Capture Negro

The next page was an editorial called The Ungrateful Negro, and was full of the most obvious crap that nobody would ever listen to. Black people were distinctly inferior, it declared. Savage, non-progressive. They were lazy and never did anything to improve themselves. Suzie's stomach clenched up. She skipped to the bottom to read the closing paragraph:

His religion was the grossest superstition. He offered up to his heathen gods the sacrifice of the Negro child; and when his appetite for four-legged animals was sated, he changed his diet by cooking and eating another Negro.

What? Who wrote this stuff? She peered at the name, disgusted. Tom Watson, influential white Atlanta politician, 1906. She balled it up and threw it aside.

There was a list of books and articles published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 'Race Traits And Tendencies Of The American Negro.' 'The Color Line: A Brief In Behalf Of The Unborn.' 'Lynching, A Southern View.' 'The Need Of A Southern Program On The Negro Problem.' 'What Is The Destiny Of The Negro Race? Extinction.'

There was a picture cut out from a magazine, April 1906. It was a picture of black man, a lump of cotton in his fist, his head bowed and turned from the camera. Suzie thought he looked strong and noble, resigned but not hopeless. The rather too-long caption disagreed.

Negro of the criminal type. Densly ignorant and lazy and often with no white man who is his friend. He works only when he is hungry; and he is as much a criminal as he dares to be. The type carouses in the saloons, overflows the jail, fills the chain-gangs; the accounts of its horrible crimes against women flood the newspapers, giving a bad name to the entire negro race.

Suzie made a face. How dare they say that? These were newspaper articles. They had an obligation to be impartial. It was so unfair, really inflammatory. She glanced at other headlines, feeling her anger build.

Atlanta Evening News, August 1906. 'Women Of Fulton County Must Be Protected From Black Fiends.'

Atlanta Constitution, August 1906. 'Mob Of 2,000 Gathered At The Lawrence Home Anxious To Burn Negro.'

She threw the folder against the wall, the poisonous copies flying out in a sheaf and curling against the floor and ceiling. She felt red in the face; her stomach was clenched and her head was pounding. Every headline was worse than the last. They were bloodthirsty and hysterical. It frightened her.

And it stirred her up. She began to feel murderous. She found herself wanting to kill the reporters who wrote the headlines and the learned scholars who penned the articles. Anyone with such racist attitudes needed to die, far more urgently than any bad driver. Anyone convicted of racism of any kind should be shot. There should be a law that you have to love everyone.

As she fell asleep, she wondered if she had to love bad drivers too, but then thought Nah, and drifted off.

Suzie had a bad dream. She's being chased by a crowd of people because she's guilty of being herself. They have a trial and she's set out in front of God and everybody and accused of fucking up her own life. She breaks down and cries on the stand. God passes her a piece of toilet paper to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

Then they're going to take her out in the back and lynch her, but she runs away, and ducks down alleys trying to escape the angry mob. She can hear the bloodhounds baying in the distance. She runs faster, slipping around corners and trusting that she'll find a way through. Even though it really doesn't look like it.

She woke up. Her heart was pounding, she was out of breath, her calves were tight and cramped. She saw the strewn paper glowing in the dim light next to the door, and picked up a few sheets on her way to the bathroom. She sat looking at them in the dark, blinking at their ghostly blue-grayness, then crumpled them up and pushed them down into the overfull trash can next to the sink and went back to bed.

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 next, nelson takes care of everything