splat, a novel by jeanne

i'm at wordpress now

2009-03-09T16:45:00.002-05:00

if you are interested in seeing more of my work, including a fabric blog, a food industry rant blog, several fiction blogs, a cancer blog, then please go to my family of blogs at wordpress.

www.fabricart.wordpress.com
www.geneticake.wordpress.com
www.breastcancerblog.wordpress.com

thanks for enjoying my work.

love
jeanne

I hope you enjoyed my novel

2007-01-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

I had a lot of fun, and was made quite enraged, writing this novel. It deals with sexism, racism, road rage, revenge, corporate conspiracies to dominate the world, and asks the question: what can one person do about it? The answer isn't politically correct, but I felt much better getting it all down, so it was worth it to me.
If you'd like to read another novel, in progress, about a construction site from hell and the neighborhood residents affected by it, you can find it here. It's got addiction, murder and mayhem, little old ladies and dogs as its theme, and when I have a chance to work on it, I'm happy with the progress. It's a novel approach to novel writing, as it's being written entirely online, with all the notes and research available to you, the reader. It's even got pictures chronicling the construction process.
Enjoy.

splat chapter thirty-five

2006-10-04T12:36:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The graphic is Sniper Captured in big bold paint-splattered letters. The announcer is a way chipper blonde in a bright red suit. 'Our top story this morning,' she chirped, 'police have arrested the Sniper of Atlanta after a bizarre shootout in North Georgia early this morning.'

The screen shows his photo. 'Elwood Dwayne Collier, fifty-six, head of a multimillion dollar development company, was captured after a struggle with police this morning. His car was discovered by police in a ditch on Brown's Bridge Road in Forsyth County at about one a.m. this morning. Apparently he went off the road after a gunfight with what police are calling an underworld colleague. Police attempting to rescue Collier were fired upon, and returned the fire.'

The screen shows stock footage of a rescue helicopter landing on a hospital helipad. 'The suspect was life flighted to Grady Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and other serious injuries sustained in the accident. Police found an illegal handgun in the vehicle, alcohol, as well as cocaine and marijuana, bomb making materials, and paint similar to that used by the Sniper in the recent death of his business partner, Jerald Sweat.'

The anchor looks personally relieved that the Sniper has been caught. 'Police are charging Collier with multiple acts of terrorism, as well as the shooting death of his former partner, firearm violations, drug trafficking, DUI, interfering with an officer, assault with a deadly weapon, and resisting arrest. According to police, Collier is said to be well-connected socially and politically, with ties to white supremacist gangs, organized crime, Latin American drug cartels, and,' she looks at the camera significantly, 'he has a history of domestic violence interventions. Police say that when he is out of intensive care, he will undergo drug treatment and psychiatric evaluation before receiving a formal hearing.'

Uncle Daddy grunted in satisfaction and settled further into his chair. Maybe there was hope for Suzie after all.

The same house-in-flames graphic comes up. The graphic hasn't changed in a while because the artist responsible for the Suspicious House Fire series of illustrations has recently been arrested for unpaid taxes.

'In a new development,' the woman says happily, 'police have apprehended the arsonists responsible for the recent fires, including yesterday's apartment fire, which resulted in six deaths, widespread evacuations, and millions of dollars in damage to the CSX railroad terminal.'

She looks gleeful. 'The arsonists told police that they were acting under orders from,' she paused for emphasis, 'developer Elwood Collier and his former business partner Jerald Sweat. The accused arsonists confessed to thirty-two arson attacks in the past six months. Police plan to charge Collier with these crimes as well.'

Uncle Daddy grunted again, and got up to get himself a glass of sweet tea. But there wasn't any, so he got a beer instead.

The graphic changes to black letters that read Fraud. 'Police are also investigating whether other crimes were committed in the redevelopment of that section of Reynoldstown. They are looking into allegations that Collier committed insurance, mortgage, and tax fraud. He is also suspected of attempting to bribe local police and government officials. The GBI has moved to seize his assets pending the outcome of this investigation.' She looks smug. Maybe she'd been hit on by him at some party.

The anchor turns serious now. 'In a sudden reversal of policy, lawmakers say they will be tightening restrictions on the shipping of hazardous waste through populated areas, effective immediately. Restrictions were loosened on the eve of the recent rail yard fire, which is still being investigated by the EPA. This is a bipartisan action sponsored by six members of the legislature, who spent an uncomfortable night with their families in city shelters when their nearby Inman Park neighborhood was evacuated.'

Uncle Daddy sipped his beer as a legislator in a crumpled suit and a loud voice vows to reevaluate conditions in Atlanta's shelters. 'Damn straight,' he muttered, and has another sip.

The graphic shows a traffic jam, the letters read The Big Mess. 'More traffic-related problems in the aftermath of the Big Mess today. The south end of I-285 is still closed while workers remove debris from the roadway.' The screen shows a shot of cranes in the road, hauling off plane bits.

The graphic still reads The Big Mess, but shows a t-shirt inside a red circle with a line through it. 'Police have confiscated 10,000 t-shirts bearing the slogan, I Survived The Big Mess. They say Atlanta's traffic problems are being made worse by the thousands of rubberneckers and tourists who have jammed the roads around the airport trying to get a glimpse of the clean-up efforts. There are reports of whole families traveling from South Carolina and Alabama to view the site of the incident. Police have threatened to arrest sightseers and loiterers.'

The anchor grows somber. 'Airport officials announced probable delays in finishing the long-awaited Fifth Runway. While it may be possible to step up production, they say, the extent of repairs to the future runway surface may endanger their record for being on time and under budget.' She looks at the camera encouragingly. Go team.

The graphic changes to that annoying panda. 'Plans to turn Grant Park into a multi-use development met with opposition from the top today, as the Governor came out in support of keeping it as a public park.'

The Governor appears on screen, looking severe. 'Plans are being redrawn at this time to keep Grant Park out of the hands of unscrupulous developers who are trying to ruin one of Atlanta's beloved features.'

The announcer comes back and smiles. 'New plans include a three-story parking deck, and officials say a small admission fee is being considered to help defray the projected $13 million cost.' She pauses. 'And now, a word from our sponsor.'

An ad comes on. The sound gets louder. Uncle Daddy shifted slightly in his chair. He was feeling a little tired.

The scene opens on the exterior of an upscale suburban McMansion. A team of Mexican gardeners works on the beautifully kept front lawn. We cut to the interior and see a blonde wife in the dining room, dressed in designer casual clothes, arranging schedules and to-do lists. Around her, black maids are hard at work cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, washing the windows. A Chinese cook stirs several pots on the stove and bends over to check something in the oven. Through the bay window overlooking the back yard, we can see a black nanny pushing the children in their swings. Everybody's smiling.

The scene cuts back to the housewife in charge of it all. She says, in honeyed, southern belle tones, 'I used to do all this myself.' She nodded toward the workers.

'I worked my fingers to the bone to keep my family comfortable.' She shows her manicured hands, looking like she's never done a hard day's work in her life.

She sighs and smiles and gestures at the servants. 'I never imagined how easy life could be. Now I have time for all the little things that are so important.'

She rises from her seat and grabs a tennis racquet and a sports bag. 'Like a game with the girls. And lunch at the Club. And after that, my daughter and I are going to the mall.'

She heads for the door. A smiling tuxedoed footman opens it for her. She turns back to the camera and smiles broadly. 'Make all your dreams of luxury come true with certified service personnel.'

The woman steps lightly out to her Escalade on the curb. A servant holds it open for her and bows. She bounces in and pulls away. Her license reads RentaslaveTM and a phone number comes up on the screen beneath it: 1-800-SERVANTS.

The news is back. The graphic reads Wanted in bold black letters over a fuzzy driver's license photograph of a man. 'Police are looking for Nelson Tatum, a forty-two year old white male residing in Douglasville. Police say the suspect is 6'9½'' tall, and weighs 195 pounds. He was last seen in the Riverdale area yesterday. Police consider him armed and dangerous and caution citizens not to attempt to apprehend him themselves, but to call the police immediately.' She looks at the camera with disapproval on her chipper face. 'Nelson Tatum has been linked to Elwood Collier, the alleged Atlanta Sniper, and is said to be the head of the biggest stolen car ring and illegal drug operation in the South.'

Uncle Daddy stirred long enough to see Nelson's picture. A redneck. He closed his eyes.

The graphic changes to flames. It reads Up In Smoke. 'In a related story, the Riverdale auto repair shop where the fugitive worked burned to the ground yesterday evening.' The screen shows footage of a huge fire, completely engulfing the building. Only the sign is undamaged - Stoners Ato Repar, appearing intermittently in the thick black smoke.

'Flames reached one hundred and fifty feet at times. Five fire engines responded to the call, and it took them hours to get the fire out. Police speculate that the fire involved petrochemicals of various kinds, as well as tires and automobile interiors .'

The screen cuts to a picture from a helicopter. It hovers over the highway and pans over to show how close the fire is to evening commuters on Tara Boulevard. The camera zooms closer to show onlookers, the street closed for a block surrounding the building, fire trucks and cops sprawled across the lanes, traffic backed up all the way to I-75. 'Police consider this fire the work of arsonists, and are examining the wreckage for clues.'

Uncle Daddy started to snore softly.

The graphic changes to a set of scales. 'In the state legislature today, the Republican majority overwhelmingly made the Democratic party illegal, due to alleged ties with terrorist organizations. Police have started rounding up registered Democrats.'

The screen shows people scraping bumper stickers from their parked cars. 'Police are manning roadblocks to catch suspected Democrats. In a similar move, being a Liberal has now also been declared illegal, but police are unsure how to identify these criminals and are waiting for guidelines.'

Uncle Daddy shifted in his chair to get more comfortable. The snoring stopped, but he slept on, exhausted.

The graphic is a medical caduceus behind bars. 'Doctor Jeremiah Buford, head of HeatHealingTM Technologies and the Jeremiah Buford Clinic for Cancer Solutions, is being charged today with several felony counts of receiving stolen goods, animal abuse, and operating a laboratory without a license.'

The screen shows animals in pitiful condition sitting woefully in their cages. 'Five chimpanzees from our very own Zoo Atlanta were discovered in cages in his basement, most suffering from apparent brain damage, as well as radiation burns to various parts of their bodies. Doctor Buford said in a statement that he was performing tests to assure the safety of his company's product.'

The screen shows a still picture of the doctor, dripping with jewelry. 'Dr. Buford is one of the founders of the Jeremiah Buford Clinic for Cancer Solutions, which has been ordered closed by the FDA pending investigation. According to officials, as head of HeatHealing Technologies, he is faced with serious legal liability due to fatal product defects that they allege he has hidden from federal officials.'

Uncle Daddy slept on.

A new graphic reads Bad Boy. The anchor looks at the camera. A small smile creeps over her features as she tries to remain professional. 'In national news, internationally known televangelist Pat Robertson was arrested for making terroristic threats against whole communities and heads of foreign governments.' The picture is a stock photograph showing his smiling face. He looks deranged. 'Reverend Robertson, who once ran for President of the United States, is being kept in an unknown location, and is being charged with violations of the Patriot Act. No arraignment date has been set. Calls to the Christian Broadcasting Network asking for their response have not been returned.'

Another graphic reads Emerald City scrawled on a bridge with cops scratching their heads above it. 'Another movie fan comes to Atlanta,' the anchor says, smiling happily. 'A graffiti artist tagged,' she emphasizes tagged with her eyebrows, 'a bridge on the Connector late last night, and then escaped capture by police.'

A fuzzy traffic camera photo comes onscreen: Suzie being cool in her black clothes and her backpack, attaching spraycans to her harness. 'Police are searching for this person, who was nearly apprehended in the act of what they're calling terroristic vandalism late last night. Police were alerted by vigilant DOT traffic operators to the attempted vandalism, and rushed to the scene, but the culprit escaped capture, assisted by an accomplice in a getaway tractor trailer that stopped on the highway to pick him up. The two escaped pursuit by both police car and helicopter, and their whereabouts are currently unknown.'

The screen shows a traffic camera picture of Uncle Daddy's truck, its fangs gleaming. 'Police are also looking for the driver of the Kenworth truck that stopped to illegally give aid to the suspected terrorist. Police think the vandal may be a teenager wanted for multiple graffiti crimes in Atlanta. Plans to remove the graffiti are being made, which police say will cause the closure of the northbound Connector for several hours. Graffiti removal will be scheduled for nighttime hours when impact on traffic will be minimized.'

She looks at the camera with a big smile on her face. 'Next up, it's going to be hot enough to fry an egg out there today.'

Uncle Daddy turned in his sleep and started to snore again.

It was getting to be dawn. The birds were louder than the crickets. Suzie was lying in a handy ditch between tracks, in an unknown yard, waiting for another chance to catch a freight train out of town. She was cold in the morning air, wet from the dew, stiff, sore, bruised, tired, and yes, hungry and thirsty. She had no idea where she was. She dozed, her head resting on her bag, hoping for some luck.

And luck was to be had. Suzie happened to be in Tilford Yard, one of the busiest yards in Atlanta. Forty trains a day. Since she didn't know enough to approach a friendly trainman and ask him where there was a train making up, she was going to need crazy luck.

She awoke to the sound of a train pulling out. She looked up and saw a bunch of shadowy figures emerging from the same gully as she was lying in. They gravitated toward the train, spotting a couple of likely cars, and exploded into action.

She watched as they chased a string of cars; a boxcar with its door open, a grain carrier with ladders on the end, a flatbed with a steel structure held upright by clamps. It seemed like a dozen people running for the train. Suzie hurriedly got up and ran to join them. All around her they were jumping on, catching hold of rungs, diving through the boxcar door.

She paced the boxcar and threw her bag inside. It was chest high off the ground and the train was picking up speed. How was she going to get inside? She'd seen several people vaulting into the open car. It looked like it took some serious vertical lift, and she was a shrimp. She felt scared. But she was running alongside the boxcar and it was starting to outrun her. It was now or never.

Several faces watched from the inside. Someone shouted encouragement. She leaped into the car, diving headfirst onto the slippery metal floor. Her hands were grabbing like a gecko's. Her legs were hanging out of the door. She heard someone telling her to keep them straight. She was too afraid of getting caught in the wheels to let them drop, but she could feel herself starting to slip out, her legs sagging. She tried arching her back to bring her legs up, and felt a searing pain as she aggravated the injuries she'd gotten in her fall onto the top of Uncle Daddy's truck.

And then she felt strong hands grabbing her shoulders and pulling her in.

She looked at her benefactor. It was a tall, skinny guy a couple of years older than her, with a warm smile on his face. She arranged herself along the wall in the middle of a crowd of rail kids, marveling at her luck and trying to catch her breath.

'Does anybody know where we're going?' she asked.

The guy who hauled her aboard said, 'We're on the A&WP line to Montgomery and points south.'

She looked at him. He was kind of cute. She noticed his backpack. There were two bullet holes in it. He saw her looking. 'Yard bulls,' he said, and she nodded. 'I'm Maximillian. I'm a poet.'

'Suzie. Uh, I do graffiti.'

He pointed around at the others and introduced them. 'Gracie,' who looked about fifteen, 'she's emancipated from her parents. Gracie nodded. 'Johnny Thunder,' he nodded at an older guy, about forty-five. 'He's up for King of the Hobos this year.' Johnny said Hey and grinned. 'That's Kathleen,' he said, pointing to an old lady. 'She's from Ireland.'

Suzie said, 'My mom lived in Ireland.' Kathleen smiled. 'You got shoes, girl?' Suzie's feet were cut and blackened. The woman fished around in her bag and tossed her a pair of tennis shoes. Suzie choked up.

Maximillian pulled a forty-ounce bottle of beer out of his pack. Suzie wondered how it had managed to remain unbroken. He must have a method. He passed it around and everybody had a swig.

The train passed yards full of rusted out industrial items, ex cars, ex buildings; picked up speed. It swayed pleasantly. The wheels made screeching noises at odd moments. The passengers talked quietly. Suzie looked at Maximillian and wondered if he was as nice as he looked. He looked back, and winked.

The train rode off into the sunrise. The moon set.

* * *

The end

splat chapter thirty-four

2006-09-23T13:43:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Suzie landed with a clatter of objects and a ferocious slam onto her back, knocking the wind out of her. The sound of her fall boomed, and the surface beneath her crumpled. She bounced. Her bag cushioned her fall slightly, but there would be telltale bruises later. She lay there, stunned, not breathing, staring into the depths of the night sky. She could see little particles of matter floating in front of her eyes - dust motes in the street lights; stars. She heard crickets.

Someone fired at the truck from above. Oh yeah, cops. They were angry. She heard sirens. With a great staggering breath, with a sharp stab of pain, she rolled over. She groaned; the surface she was on creaked. She rolled again. It hurt all over. She rolled across the knife and grabbed it. Nice knife. Suzie kept rolling until she fell off the side of the trailer.

Uncle Daddy caught her in his arms. Drivers who'd stopped to watch the drama cheered. She hugged him. She cried. He cried. The cops fired another shot. He bundled her in through his door, got in after her, and took off.

He pushed and shoved a path through the cars, and for once they got out of his way. The exit was a thousand feet in front of them. They heard sirens. They left the highway as flashing lights appeared over the hill. The cops were all standing on the other side of the bridge, watching and pointing, calling on their cellphones.

'You hurt, Baby Girl?' he asked as they descended the ramp at Ormond Street and took a curve. Turner Field loomed over them to the north. Uncle Daddy made a quick decision as he rounded the bend, and took a right on Crew Street, denting a light post. He drove down the narrow street behind Hank Aaron Boulevard, which was too well lit for comfort. He turned his truck lights off.

Suzie didn't think she'd broken any bones. She moaned, 'Yeah, I'm okay.'

'My God, Baby Girl, what have you got yourself into?' he asked. She couldn't say right at that moment. 'What the hell were you thinking?'

He passed up the first left, onto east/west running Atlanta Avenue, a nice wide thoroughfare, and he didn't take the next one either: a rickety, hilly little bitty street called Vanira. He went one more street and turned up Haygood, only slightly wider. The back end of his trailer rode up over the curb and gouged out a scrape of dirt as he turned. They crossed Hank Aaron Drive and disappeared into the shadows. They heard sirens.

'Can't you stay out of trouble for one minute?' he demanded. She started sniffling. 'It wouldn't take them long at all to figure out you're the sniper, and then you'd really be in trouble.'

Suzie had to agree. She was stupid. She was achy. It hurt whenever the truck lurched. The houses looked so close. The streets looked so small. Uncle Daddy drove his big rumbling truck through sleeping neighborhoods. He hardly slowed down, he was that confident. Or maybe scared.

At Martin Street he took a left. And ran over the curb. This time he pulled a street sign over. He took a very hard right onto Farrington, and pulled out a stop sign. The trees were overgrown, and jutted out into the street. Cars lined one side. Sometimes he had to choose, sometimes he left a line of trees with the bark scraped off and the lower branches in the road, and still scraped up the cars.

'You really know your side streets,' Suzie said with admiration.

He mumbled. 'Summerhill. I grew up here. This was the first black neighborhood after the slaves were freed. It was all tarpaper shanties and log cabins, but it was property. Folks probly thought as much of their homes as white people over in Inman Park did - the first white neighborhood.'

They scraped by cars and trees and rode up over the curbs. They heard sirens. They heard a helicopter. They saw a flashing beam looking down on Georgia Avenue to their north, the obvious route for a large vehicle escaping pursuit. They must have thought he'd turned left on Hank Aaron. Suzie whispered, 'These are not the droids you're looking for.'

The roads in Summerhill were tiny, and most of them didn't go through. Uncle Daddy had to zigzag, taking a left on Hill Street, then a right on Kendrick, and then a left on Rawlins. Suzie watched as they passed old houses crammed together, all dark; all the paint worn off, the boards dingy, the screens blackened, the porches coming away from the front of the house.

They gingerly crossed Atlanta Avenue going north. It was one of the wide streets the cops would assume they'd taken. She couldn't see the helicopter. As they turned a sharp right onto Ormond, scraping loudly past a phone pole, she saw it loom into sight above Atlanta Avenue, now a block behind. She could feel the whumping of the blades thru the cab of the truck.

Uncle Daddy made a left onto Cherokee and headed to the bridge over I-20. This was the dangerous part. It was wide, it was lit, it was a through street, and it was a block north of the precinct station. From there on, it was all running.

They scurried north along Cherokee, under the trees that still remained on the outer border of the park. Beautiful Grant Park. Suzie gazed at it in admiration. In the moonlight it still looked like 300 acres of 150 year old trees.

Then Uncle Daddy had to get his truck around a narrow bit lined with shops on Cherokee, then across the I-20 bridge, then a right turn onto Woodward, just one block shy of Memorial, and a left on Park, one shy of Boul. And then the really dangerous part. The intersection of Memorial and Boulevard, a major junction of surface streets, where cars and trucks and police cars drove by all night long.

They could no longer hear the helicopter. Uncle Daddy turned right onto Memorial, running up over the side of the curb, and went down the hill to the light at Boulevard. He had to wait for the light. Suzie kept looking at the sky. The light changed, Uncle Daddy turned left, and they cruised down Boulevard approaching the entrance to the CSX Intermodal terminal. They went around a bend. There were the Fulton Cotton Mill lofts on the right. There was the terminal entrance down a ways to the left.

But the terminal had been closed for 36 hours. There were trucks lined up on the entrance ramp, lined up in the turn lane into the terminal, and lined up with their right wheels up on the sidewalk behind that, all waiting to be processed. Uncle Daddy couldn't get past the line of trucks. He had no choice but to pull in. Two more trucks coming from I-20 pulled in behind him. He was blocked.

After being closed all day and the night before, the terminal was now reopen. Uncle Daddy had been waiting around at home, and came to get in line when he got the call. That's why Suzie got voicemail: he was on the phone.

A cop with flashing lights sped past them. She ducked down. Uncle Daddy started to complain that she was giving him a heart attack.

Suzie started scratching a batch of poison ivy that was coming up on her legs. 'I'm sorry for getting the cops in your business, Uncle Daddy. It's not a terrorist den, I swear.'

'Hush. I knew that all along, Honey. I've been down back to see your place. Remember I helped you put up the swing?' She didn't remember. She'd always wondered how she got the rope up into the branches.

'How's Auntie Mae? Did you find out anything from the doctors yet?'

'No, Baby. They said they'd moved her to a recovery center, but wouldn't tell me where, and I've got to go talk to the doctor about it in person. So I don't really know how she is.'

'I'm so worried about her. What if something went wrong with her operation? Why haven't we heard anything at all?'

'Patience, Baby Girl. She's got to be all right. They would have called me if she weren't.'

'But complications. Maybe they're afraid to tell you.'

Uncle Daddy remarked quietly, 'Your mom died of complications, you know.'

Suzie stopped breathing. She didn't know. She'd never heard the details.

'Your Mom had a heart attack while she was under the anesthetic.' Oh. She felt blank. He continued, 'They were doing an emergency cesarean. You had your cord around your neck and your daddy said you were awfully blue.'

Anesthetic. Suzie shivered. She started to cry softly. Uncle Daddy reached over and hugged her to his chest. She felt like a rag doll. She hadn't showered for days, but Uncle Daddy wouldn't care.

'Your Auntie Mae wanted me to give you something from your mamma,' he said gently.

Suzie sighed. 'Keep it for me, Uncle Daddy, I can't take anything with me. I'll just lose it.' Then she remembered, and dug around in her bag for Auntie Mae's Bible.

The sat there in silence for a moment, looking at the cover. 'She's not getting any better, you know,' he remarked.

Another cop went by.

Uncle Daddy made up his mind. Suzie felt him change, and sat up to look at him. 'I'm going to dump this load, Baby Girl, and then you and me are going to head on down to Florida for awhile. I've got some good buddies down in Holiday, near Clearwater. We can hole up there and stay out of sight until this all dies down.'

She thought about it. She could go to community college, or get her CDL, or get another job as a waitress. 'But you can't leave Auntie Mae,' she objected.

He nodded. 'I know I can't. I'm just going to drop you down there and come back here until she's fit to travel.' He sighed. 'Then I thought we might as well retire and enjoy life while we can.'

She thought of fleeing to Florida. The cops'd have them before they got to Macon. 'I can't let you do that, Uncle Daddy,' she said. 'It's too dangerous, and you haven't done anything.' she thought a moment. 'You'd spend your life in jail if they caught you. Aiding and abetting a terrorist.' She started sniffling again. 'I'm a big girl now. I'll manage.'

'No,' he said strongly. 'I won't let you do it alone.'

She tried to reason with him. 'Auntie Mae needs you.' She put her hand on the door handle.

It was too much for him. He needed Auntie Mae, and the thought of her in the hospital made him realize he couldn't leave Atlanta for any length of time, not even to try and rescue Suzie. He was defeated. They sat there in silence while another cop whizzed by. They heard the helicopter again, getting closer.

'Uncle Daddy, I've got to go,' she said.

'But where are you going?'

'I've got a plan. I'll be okay. I'll give you a call in a couple of days to find out how y'all are doing.'

He pulled out his wallet and gave her all the money he had. Suzie saw a twenty and a few ones and started to object, but he thrust it into her hands. 'Better hurry, now,' he said gruffly. Suzie gave him a big, deep hug, and was out of the truck before either of them could start crying.

She looked up and down the street. Big rigs lined Boulevard. The terminal was just up the hill, but she couldn't just walk in. Oakland Cemetery was to the right, and ran up against the railyard. She eyed the stone wall. It was too high to climb, but Uncle Daddy could boost her over. Then she spotted some bushes, and ran for them.

It's possible to climb the bushes commonly known as redtips, but only if you weigh less than 60 pounds. However, they grow twenty to thirty feet high, and they're really good cover. Nobody could see Suzie once she squeaked between them and the wall. Climbing was another matter. Every branch she put her foot on broke. Suzie ended up, scraped and scratched, pulling herself up along the trunks and rolling over the top of the wall. She landed in soft, wet grass. Her poison ivy itched like crazy.

It was still dark, but it must have been around 4:30, and dawn was coming. She hurried along the wall to the back of the railyard, ducking down whenever she saw the helicopter scanning the ground. Her path ran up a hill and through the potter's field, with nothing to hide. A wall separated her from the trains and the tracks, a million railroad cars, just waiting to shelter her.

She got to the corner of the cemetery and found an iron fence, chained shut. So she climbed it, and found herself right next to an empty railroad track with dry grass in the middle. The next track had a train parked on it. And the next one. And the next.

Suzie had no idea how to catch a train.

She climbed between two cars, scrabbling over with her heart in her mouth, afraid that the train would suddenly move and crush her. She walked along between two trains, ready to duck underneath one if she should see somebody. But she was alone. All the action was going on in the main part of the yard, where trucks were being checked in, offloaded using a big huge crane, and lifted onto piggyback train gondolas.

She kept between trains and slowly made her way down the tracks in the direction of her old apartment. She thought maybe the edge of the yard would be a good place to catch a train pulling out. Activity was going on all around her. She kept hearing beep beep beep, getting closer and closer. Metal would scrape metal, then very loud bumps. She didn't know what was making the noise. The trains around her were still, unmoving, dark. She slowly passed the unseen beeping object. The tracks began to come together. And then it was down to just a couple of tracks rolling out toward Decatur.

She passed under the Marta station walkway and came across her old apartment. It made her very sad to see it, all collapsed in on itself, blackened by the fire, acres of rubble and burned out cars. It was eerily silent. She wondered why she'd come here to see it. It wasn't because she could actually catch a train there. No trains had rolled through since she'd been on the tracks. She came this way so she could see the wreck of her life. So she could really understand that there was no way to go back. No place for her here.

She returned the way she had come. For a few hundred yards there was no cover, and she had to walk as if she were invisible, dressed in black, with a black bag on her shoulders, her white skin glowing in the pre-dawn light. All she had was her bag. Her Dad's picture was still in one piece, with blue purple streaks on it where it got wet during the hurricane. She had her Superman t-shirt. She had her chef's knife and a pocket full of money. And she was alone in the world. She started to sniffle again.

She snuck back through the parked trains. This time she spotted the source of the beeping. It was a guy in a big old rolling crane, busy moving from one flatbed to another, lifting hundred-ton containers and loading them onto the car. She made her way past it in a hurry, having to duck underneath and scramble over cars like playing russian roulette. She was really nervous. If she were caught it would mean another charge added to the list. They'd never let her out of jail.

She continued walking along the tracks toward Downtown, sneaking between trains. She was leaving the yard. It was beginning to get light in the east, for real this time. She could hear the birds waking up. Maybe she was in the wrong place. Maybe there were no trains she could actually catch in this yard. She wasn't going to be able to find shelter on a piggyback car with 53-foot trailers stacked on top of each other, and that's all this terminal seemed to have. She walked faster.

She heard the rails singing, and looked behind her. A train had finished being loaded and was pulling out, going slow. She ducked under a car until the engine had passed, and then looked for some way to get on. Some of the cars had short sections of railing on them, so she ran over to one and paced it, trying to work her courage up.

She stretched her hand out to the highest rung she could reach and grabbed hold. Her feet were yanked out from under her, and she scrambled aboard and ducked down to make herself small in case she passed an alert train man. The train continued moving slowly into town. Suzie wondered where it would take her.

Not far, apparently. The train took her to the west side of Atlanta, and stopped. She got off and looked around. It was a huge rail yard. Thousands of cars, dozens of tracks. It was getting light. Suzie found a ditch and made herself comfortable.

It took several hours for Uncle Daddy to discharge his load at the terminal and get home. The cops never found him, but he was going to have to get those fangs off his grill right away. He worried about Suzie and his wife most of the time he's sat there waiting. Now, getting home, he would normally go to sleep, but it was getting light, and he decided to stay up and go to the hospital first thing and find Mae. So he sat down in front of the TV set and turned on the morning news.

* * *

next, suzie finds peace in the sunrise

splat chapter thirty-three

2006-09-13T09:18:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Suzie rolled into the sparkly city with a profound sense that she had worn out her welcome. She was jobless, homeless, friendless. She had no business in Atlanta anymore. With Auntie Mae probably dying there was nothing holding her there. In fact, it was dangerous to stick around, having soiled the nest so many times.

She had a deep, uneasy sense of unfulfillment. She felt like she'd been wasting her time. In a shallow examination of her life, she decided she hadn't learned any lessons at all. She was the ultimate loser. Hell, she even ran from a fight with Ed. She berated herself for it. She couldn't even act on her convictions when her life was at stake. She told herself she had to be a soldier, that it was honorable to not flinch. Then she thought of all the teenage boys who played chicken, and how stupid she'd thought they were. Then she thought about her own painful death as a result of some contest of honor. Fuck that, she concluded. She was right to run.

But she was still a loser. She ran from danger on a daily basis. She couldn't stand up to Nelson, she didn't stand up to bullying at work, she never stood up to her roommates. Such a little mousey thing, always trying to please, to be acceptable, to earn just a few brownie points. Always looking for approval. Suzie was tired of this bullshit. Approval was her reason for living? She hocked a loogie out the window. Yuk fu. Not anymore.

The new Suzie was going to be a smarter, harder, more worldly Suzie. Nobody was going fool her anymore. She wouldn't trust nobody. She would keep to herself. She would above all avoid emotional entanglements.

If she believed this for a moment, it was out of willfulness. Suzie fell in love with every man she met; she was curious about every little thing she saw, and every situation she came across. She always spoke to strangers; she always said the wrong thing. She never really knew what she thought about a given subject until the words were out of her mouth and it was too late to take them back.

But she did believe it was time to manifest some change, to bring forth some new version of herself; to grow up a little. She needed to do something she could point to, an icon of her spirit, of her intention. A legacy. A statement.

This naturally brought her to thoughts of tagging that bridge. And then it was hardly the work of a moment to persuade herself that she needed to vandalize property, just as it was to persuade herself she had to rid the world of the Ed and Jerry show.

She needed to tag the bridge. It was her moral obligation. Her duty to society. Her duty to her friends. After all, the guys had probly been arrested for tagging. That made them political prisoners of an unjust government. So, in a show of solidarity, she had to vindicate them by carrying on their work the obligation to comment on society, in front of God and everybody.

Not just vandalism. Art.

Not just terrorism. A statement.

Okay, she cautioned herself. This is more bullshit. So how does Surrender Dorothy make a statement about the plight of political prisoners?

Hmmm, she thought. It shows the false values of consumerism, imprisoning us in sparkly dreams of perfection? Prisoners of the glitz?

That's stupid.

It shows how we're all innocents in the hands of forces beyond our control, just trying to get home?

No.

It illustrates the moral, All That Glitters Is Not Gold? Except just two hours up Georgia 400 is Dahlonega? Where all that glitters sure enough is gold?

Now you're back to being stupid.

I give up. The only thing Surrender Dorothy is to illustrate how pretty Atlanta is, how fairy tale it seems from far away. So cute, sitting there in the middle of infinite forest like that. I know; I've got it. it celebrates the fact that Atlanta's the Capital of the South, the place of hopes and dreams, where there's work and a good life, not like the million little munchkin towns everybody came from. It really is the Emerald City.

Why don't you just say why you want to do it?

I just thought it was funny when I saw it next to the Mormon Temple up in DC, and I wanted others to appreciate the joke.

Why didn't you say so?

It was a full moon. Shit always happens on a full moon. This full moon had Suzie talking to herself. She hadn't had much sleep the past couple of nights, and the sleep she'd had was loaded with toxic hazards. She'd been under a lot of strain lately. She wasn't thinking very clearly; she didn't grasp all that was happening in her life, and she was wishing like crazy that she could get out of dealing with it.

The pressure of the full moon was bringing everything to a head. All the problem areas of her life were under attack, and she didn't have fingers enough to plug the leaks. Suzie was on her last nerve.

But she was by God going to do that tag. She drove down to just south of town, and got off at University Avenue. She turned east and explored the industrial neighborhood around the railroad tracks. She could park her car somewhere around there and hike in from the grade crossing at University and Ridge streets. But it would be a long hike.

She turned around and went back under the highway to see what it looked like on the west side. She took her first right, onto Moton, and snaked her way northeast along Roy, West, Fletcher, and finally onto Fortress Avenue, which paralleled the Connector. She was getting good with the dance on the pedals.

It was a very poor section of town: teeny houses with garbage-filled yards, kudzu-eaten houses with boarded windows, burned-out hulks sprayed with gang graffiti. It was in much worse condition than her Reynoldstown ex neighborhood. Used to be.

A little way up Fortress, the houses gave way to vacant lots and a railroad crossing, and then proceeded north across the tracks into an even worse-off neighborhood.

South Yard was massive. It stretched away to the left; trains and tracks as far as the eye could see, a sort of plain of metal and rock in a hilly landscape of trees, poor people's houses, and rusting industrial lots.

However. To the right was the railroad overpass at the Connector, not twenty yards off. The promised land awaited.

Suzie parked her Trooper near a house that looked like it might have occupants, so that nobody would mistake it for an abandoned vehicle, a burned-out version of which was splayed all over the street a little ways up. She changed into black clothes in the back of the truck, gathered up her bag and Jason's gear, and locked the door behind her.

It was after 2:30 in the morning. Did she really want to be wandering around South Atlanta on foot at that time of night? But there wasn't a soul out in that neighborhood; nobody was on the street corner selling crack; there were no cars worth robbing or passers-by to scam. There was no reason why she should be afraid. But she shivered anyway. She realized how much she disliked being by herself.

She walked out onto the bridge. It was an awesome sight. Suzie stared open mouthed at her surroundings. The power of the trains, their giant proportions. Five tracks were a hundred feet across. The view was vast. It was very quiet, and very clear. It dwarfed her.

Atlanta shone from there. You could see everything, Turner Field, all the downtown buildings, straight up Peachtree. All lit up, with fairy lights all around. It was a magic city. It was the Emerald City. New York and DC rolled into one with a touch of Detroit and LA; the spiritual capital of America. The heart. Or maybe just the gut - who's to say?

Suzie stood looking at it and sighed. I love this city. She walked out across to the east edge of the bridge, overhanging the right lanes of the Connector, and thirty to a hundred feet from the gigantic road signs. Nobody from the road could see her there. She had a good look at the elements she had to work with. Iron railing, chain link fence, concrete edge, then nothing until the road, a long way down .

She considered how she was going to proceed, having only theoretical ideas about how to hitch herself to the fence. Another thing she'd never done because the guys wouldn't let her. She could tie the rope at one end, and then get it somehow to the other end of where she wanted to the tag to go, and tie it off there. There would be slack.

Was there anything she could to do take up the slack? She could put a third anchor in the middle, but then she'd have to transfer her lead from one to the other. 'It's easy,' she said, mocking Jason in that nasty way he had of making her feel stupid for asking. 'Just hook this thingie to the other thingie and go.'

She was remembering things she'd managed to worm out of Jason, rudimentary instructions for dealing with fall hazards. Obvious things that might assume subtlety when she was in the middle of a situation.

Like, don't fall. If you fall, don't swing. Keep your balance. And practical advice, like don't tangle your rope. Don't get it knotted up, don't hook your lanyard back onto itself thinking it'll hold. Don't connect your hooks to each other. Don't hook onto anything that could give way.

She continued figuring out the mechanics. All her anchor points were on the inside of the fence, and she needed to run a rope on the outside of the fence to hang down below the bridge surface. That was simple. She could tie one end and stuff the other through a link in the fence.

She had a sudden thought. She'd better have string tied to the end of the rope and attached somewhere so she could retrieve it once she'd climbed the fence. She looked down at the road. A truck and two pickups whizzed by doing 70.

Then there was the fact that the rope would sag in the middle, so she was only going to be able to paint the iron bridge support in the middle part of the rope. So maybe thirty feet. One two three four...sixteen letters and a space. How legible would eighteen inch letters be from 300 yards? Better make it forty feet. That would give her thirty feet of usable rope. So she thought.

She wasn't sure about any of this, especially whether she could safely launch herself off the side of a bridge. If she tied a hundred -foot rope to a fence post or a railing, she could use it to climb over and back. Once she was over she could just climb down and hook her lanyard to the guide rope. Simple.

She tried to remember how Jason said to get into the harness. She looked at it in her hands. It was a jumbled up mess of webbing and buckles. She tried putting the wide loops around her legs and her arms through the narrow loops, but it didn't feel right. She looked at the size of the narrow loops. Grown men put their legs through those things? She stuck her foot through, and scooted the strap up her thigh. It pinched. She pulled the large loops apart and stuck her shoulders through them. But the harness was right up against the bottom of her throat. Maybe she had it on backwards.

She peeled back out of it and turned it around. Better. But it was flopping loosely down off her shoulders, so she had to go around to all the buckles and take close to a foot out of each length. She hadn't realized Jason was that tall. Or she was that short.

Finally she had it on and snug. She stuffed a couple of paintcans into the equipment loops on the harness, and put her cellphone into the pocket of her black jeans.

She put her bag on like a backpack. She attached a lanyard to a loop at the side of her harness.

She picked up the rope and inspected it. Not for frays and stiffness cuz what did she know, but to admire its beautiful purple color.

Suzie stood there coiling the rope and thinking about how to attach to the anchor point. Jason had showed her how to make a figure eight knot once. He was a Boy Scout. She tried to remember.

Suzie ran the end of the rope around the railing, and then whipped it back off. It was rusty, with sharp edges. No. She ran it around the thick fence post instead, made a loop, then wrapped the end around the rope around the post, and tucked it through the loop.

She stood there for several minutes trying to figure out how he'd shown her to make the knot. She'd done it a bunch of times when he first taught her, and she should remember it, but the pattern was gone. She knew she had to loop a loop, though.

She paid out twenty feet, and stuck the rest of the coiled rope into the top of her bag. Oops. She looked at the descent device at her feet. She'd forgotten to thread the rope through her descender before tying it to the fence post. But Jason had shown her a special feature.

She took the descender and swung the side plate open. Inside were little cam rollers zigzagging along its length. She curled the rope up between them like river bends, and pressed it in with her fingers. Then she swung the cover back over it and latched it down. She attached the descender to her harness. She was ready.

Shit. No she wasn't. She'd forgotten the hook. She stamped her feet. This was taking too long. She unhooked from the descender and sped back to the truck, unlocked the back, and retrieved a six foot long metal hook with a short lanyard attached. She ran back with it over her shoulder like a javelin thrower, connected the rope again, attached the lanyard to her harness, and slipped the hook between the straps of her bag. Now she was ready.

She never noticed the baleful eye of the traffic camera not thirty feet from where she stood. It saw all her preening and prancing and staring open-mouthed at the city lights. It watched her struggle into the harness. It watched her go over the fence.

She scaled the chain link, crawling upwards with hands and feet. She was in black. She had silver spraypaint. She was standing on the outside of a fence off a railroad bridge, holding on to a rope, traffic rumbling below. If that wasn't cool, what was?

Except she was scared shitless and thinking this was the dumbest thing she'd ever done. It was no joke trying to climb a chain link fence in flipflops. All she could think about as she'd crawled over the top was that she could fall at any moment. She spent several humiliating minutes hooking her harness lanyard to the fence at eighteen-inch intervals all the way down. She called herself a few choice names during these moments.

When she got down to the edge of the fence, she squeezed her descender and dropped jerky, short distances to the edge of the concrete lip, her feet swinging as she bounced, the taste of bile in her mouth. Then she grabbed the string tied to the fence and retrieved the guide rope and tied it to the bottom of the fence post. It sagged a lot more than she expected. She hooked her lanyard to the guide rope.

Suzie stabilized herself with a white-knuckled fist around the guide rope, grabbed the hook, and swung closer to reach it under the edge of the metal bridge support. It caught. She swayed. It was kind of scary to be suspended over the highway. It was so far down, and she was so high up, and the traffic was going by so fast. She felt very small. Very vulnerable. Very panicky and short of breath. She started feeling sorry for herself. She felt tears. Enough, she scolded herself angrily. None of that crap, you wimp. You pussy.

It was hard to hold her position without having three hands. Just holding on with the hook in her left hand and painting with her right wasn't going to work. She had to sling her left arm over the guide rope and hold it with her body weight while using the hook. She found this out the hard way; the first time she loosened her grip with the hook, she immediately slid to the middle of the sagging guide rope, and had to haul herself hand over hand back to her position.

Time was passing. She had no idea how much time was passing, but it already felt like she'd been there for hours. There was a little false-dawn lightness on the horizon. Well, she thought, uncomfortably surveying the traffic below, might as well get into it.

She unhooked her spraycan, selected a fat tip for that 6'' sweep, and got started. She was mostly hidden by the exit signs a few yards away. They were massively huge. The signs she always squinted at when she was driving were twenty feet tall. She was glad they were there. They gave her a lot of invisibility until the cars got right underneath them. Then everything came clear - there was the bridge, there was the Emerald City beyond, there was Suzie dangling from ropes. It made her nervous. She was certain each motorist was looking up as they went by directly underneath.

She started to draw. Then she hesitated. She was suddenly struck with the lameness of the words she'd chosen. First, she was stealing from a successful and famous tag that belonged somewhere else. DC taggers resprayed the words Surrender Dorothy every time the DOT took it off, and it had been going on for the past twenty years. It would be disrespect if she just stole it.

So leave them their glory, and make an assertion to top it. Suzie leaned over and carved out a big silver E, as far over to the left as possible. She drew herself close with the hook, bent over, and twisted around to reach out with her spraycan. The letter turned out a little wobbly. But it was big. And clearly it was an E. She went over it again to make it thicker.

Then she moved over slightly, using her right hand to pull herself along, and sliding the hook with her left, sprayed a big M, only deciding at that moment to do all upper case letters. She bobbled over a few inches, and made another big E. It was a nice E, Suzie thought. There was a certain grace in the way she'd drawn the bottom leg. Like it was edging along.

She edged along. She was moving lower with each foot as her weight added to the sag of the amateurishly tied rope. Suzie was spraying level with her knees now. The R wasn't as nice. She wasn't paying enough attention to the zen of writing. She was paying more attention to the ground beneath her, and how often something big and lethal went by at 65 miles an hour.

She moved over and contemplated her work so far. She noticed there were no cars going by at the moment. Silence on the highway, the sounds of crickets and a distant siren. She loved the sound of the crickets. They were all around her, even suspended in the middle of a highway.

She continued, making a big A with a curly bar through it. Cars came by and she lost the sound of the crickets, but the siren kept getting louder.

Over in the state-of-the-art DOT Transportation Management Center, with eight operator consoles and nine 120-inch screens showing a three-by-three grid of traffic cameras, a small group of technicians had stopped monitoring the traffic to stand and watch Suzie clowning around on the bridge. Finally, after all bets were taken, and with a tinge of regret, the operations manager alerted the dispatcher, and the squad car took only a few moments to reach the scene.

Suzie got frightened when she realized the siren was for her. It got louder and louder, and then stopped. Oh shit, she thought, they've got me.

She moved along the rope and kept working, having to reach up slightly to make the next letter. For a moment she forgot which letter it was. It wouldn't be cool to misspell her tag. She hurriedly painted an L.

She moved into position for the next letter, and then stopped to wedge the paintcan between her thighs and grab her cellphone out of her pocket. The leg straps of the harness made this awkward and painful.

She reached up and started painting the D as she hit the button to redial, muddling the upright a little in her haste. She heard voices above her. The cops had spotted her rope.

The phone rang and rang, and finally she got Uncle Daddy's voicemail. Oh no! She waited frantically through the announcement, and blurted out, 'Help, help! Uncle Daddy help me. I'm out tagging a bridge and the cops are after me. I'm stuck on the Pryor Street bridge, and I'm fixing to fall onto the northbound Connector. Oh, please help!'

Then she screamed as her descent rope was tugged violently from above, jerking her upward and whanging her shoulder into the bottom of the concrete edge. The hook was pulled out of her grasp and swung away beneath her, attached to her harness.

She heard the cops calling for backup. They were holding on to her rope. Quickly she paid out some line, grabbed the hook and latched on, and then bent over and scrawled out a C, much looser than the rest of the letters. It was harder to make a round C when she was being snatched at. Suzie heard another siren getting louder and then stopping. Wonderful, she thought, join the party, endanger my life. She resumed practicing her handwriting. The C turned out rather chunky.

She looked up and saw shiny helmets and brims of cop hats above her like petals of a flower, backlit by the orange sodium vapor streetlights. They were hauling her up, hand over hand. She lost the hook again. Swearing viciously, she paid out more rope to keep out of their clutches. It was only a hundred foot rope. She looked up and saw frays appear in the rope as they continued jerking her upwards over the concrete lip. She remembered what Jason had said about avoiding sharp edges.

As they brought her above the fence bottom, she saw their shoes, their pants, and the baleful stare of the traffic camera on the other side of the bridge, pointing out over northbound traffic, and at the moment, capturing her struggling image a jerky who knows how many times a second. Suzie felt sick.

She struggled with the cops. They were trying to haul her up over the side of the bridge, trying to grab her through the fence. She was using her hands and legs like a cat resisting being stuffed into a box. Her guide rope was resisting them, but they didn't realize it. She was being pulled from both sides.

She was a million percent certain she did not want to go up there with them. She said No, with every breath of her being. Rebellion filled her soul. No, you can't. No, I won't let you. No, you are not going to win. She was just one little girl standing up to the way things are. I won't participate in this kind of society, she thought melodramatically, this cruel world. I'd rather drop to my death on the highway.

She hoped it would be a truck that hit her, because then she'd be good and dead and wouldn't feel anything. She pictured an unpleasant alternative: herself hitting the ground, which would almost kill her, but not quite, and then being hit by a speeding car, which would leave her only mostly dead. It would be horrible. The pain, the fear, the broken bones, the splitting headache, the agony of waiting for the ambulance so they could make her well enough to serve time. Oh, God. Anything but that. A good whack from a thirty-ton truck would be a blessing if she managed to live past the drop onto the concrete.

While she was up at the fence, she took the opportunity to hook her descent rope to it with a D-ring, above herself. Maybe it would slow them down. She paid out a bunch more rope and got back to work. She hooked onto the bottom of the bridge, and drew an I. It was a big, flourishy I, the cap rising at the end as she was once again yanked upward.

She didn't mind dying as much as the thought of going through the system. She saw herself in handcuffs in front of a judge. She saw a cell door opening and clanging shut, she saw herself getting lost among thousands of prisoners in colorless suits, shuffling down gray corridors. She saw herself being strapped to a table and sedated for her execution. No, a thousand times No, she'd want to cry out, but she'd only be able to think it loudly as the drugs kicked in.

The cops pulled on her rope again and the movement slammed her head into the cement lip of the bridge. She could a feel a bump starting. It felt like it was bleeding. She started to swing. Her head bounced off the concrete a couple more times.

Hands were reaching down at her through the fence. She bounced and swayed and pried herself away from their grasp. Then her phone popped loose from her pocket. She spared a moment to watch it take forever to reach the pavement and shatter into a thousand pieces. And she still had minutes left on that phone.

She paid out more rope and came down a little to the right of the last letter. Quickly she stabbed out an upright, and then swung her arm up to describe the cap of a T. It was badly ragged. It looked more like an A on its side.

Suzie began to consider her options. She could stay and finish her tag, which who knows they'd probly paint over anyway, or she could try to avoid being sent to jail.

She'd planned for this very contingency. Actually, the way the fantasy went, the cops would arrive to block her exit after she'd finished her tag. The plan was simple. Repel down to the road smiling and waving at the cops, scale a wall, and walk off into the surface streets. She'd thought about it in detail, and it had seemed pretty practical. But Suzie was finding out that shit happens. There are always more variables than you can plan for.

The cops were keeping her too busy to paint at the moment, and they'd taken up most of her rope. Now one of them was reaching down a noose thing on a long pole, trying to nab a flailing limb. She threw her spraycan at the other end of the pole, and the rope went away with a yelp. She heard guns cock above her on the bridge; that's how much the cops respected her pitching arm.

She unhooked another paint can and returned grimly to work. They had now drawn her so high above her writing that she was bending over, almost upside down, her hook arm burning with the stretch, reaching out with her can to start the Y. The road surface was over her head. She began to get dizzy. It was hard to breathe. But she soldiered on. The Y turned out squished pretty flat, like a T. She drew a straighter Y on top of it. Now it looked like an F.

She heard a truck horn, faintly, just at the crest of the next hill. The cops were hauling her higher. She turned upside down in the harness and went to correct the Y. It was an efficient, if jagged, Y. Except it was almost a P because they'd pulled her away from the tag and hauled her up to where they could reach her again.

The cops lunged for her, and caught at her heel but lost their grip. They touched her, she thought in panic and revulsion. And fear. She was so vulnerable. She kicked out and spun away from then. She paid out more rope, hooked onto the bridge, and went to finish her letter.

The truck horn was louder. She heard sirens in the distance. She heard the crickets again, and it gave her the confidence to reach right out and redraw the leg of the Y, beautifully straight, thick and expressive. She looked south, and saw a big rig lumbering down the road toward her. It was a beat-up old red Kenworth with fangs painted on the grille. It was hauling a container. Suzie almost let go her spraycan. Uncle Daddy.

He was honking his horn at her, and flashing his lights. He put on his signal, moved over a lane to the right, and began to slow, positioning himself below the bridge. She looked up at the angry red faces of the cops and smiled. But they jerked her upwards again and she banged her shoulder against the concrete.

Uncle Daddy came up underneath her and stopped in the middle of the highway. Not an easy feat with that kind of momentum. His brakes squealed and hissed, his trailer slewed around. You stop 50,000 pounds of trailer on a dime. Four-wheelers honked wildly behind him and made emergency maneuvers.

The cops saw traffic stopping in the road and redoubled their efforts. Suzie was slammed into the concrete, and slammed again, and then hauled up alongside the foot of the bridge. She guessed maybe they wanted to kill her before she could drop to her death. She thought about spraying paint at them as she came up to face level. It would be a bad thing, she reflected. Permanent blindness. She thought for the first time about the consequences of pissing off your captors. She wondered if the traffic camera would catch them beating her up.

Suddenly, she was caught. A hand grabbed her by the hair. She screamed. She kicked, and another hand caught her foot. Her flipflop fell off. Her spraycan went flying. She was caught. She swayed in her harness between the two cops, looking into their triumphant faces.

She jumped and flipped and spasmed trying to get loose, but they had her. If only her hair was shorter, they'd never have gotten a hold on her. Suzie spent time wishing she'd shaved it back when the weather turned hot. Of course, they would have fired her if she'd turned up like that at the Club. Except it would have been fine for working in the kitchen.

She thought of her chef's knife. Cops were climbing on the fence to get to her. She was pinned like a butterfly. She struggled to get to her bag, slung over her shoulders. She shrugged it over to where she could reach the zipper. Which stuck. She screamed in frustration.

The cops were getting closer. That noose-thing was back waving in her face. She batted it away and it did a little parry and then caught her by the wrist. Now she only had her left hand free. And it was under the bag. She reached all the way around the bag and stuffed her hand into the opening she'd made for the tail of the descent rope. The zipper scraped her wrist.

She thought 'Knife' with every shred of her being and reached past the rope to the bottom of the bag. She brushed past a bunch of stuff, and when her hand came to a rest it touched the handle. There is a God.

She pulled out the knife.

Someone cried, 'She's got a weapon!' The cops drew their guns. One of them called for backup. The cop holding her by the hair loosened his grip in surprise.

Suzie pulled her head away and screamed, whirling in the air by her ankle and her wrist. The cops took aim. Swinging dizzily, waving the knife in her free hand, she slashed wildly in the air above her head in the direction of the rope.

The knife found something. She hacked at it in desperation. She felt it catch and pull. She sawed. She was crying now, whimpering and blubbering. The cops were fixing to shoot her and she was going to die and it was all so frustrating because she was stuck, trapped, doomed. And it was all her fault.

One of the strands popped. She kept sawing. The wrist noose pulled her upwards. The rope pulled her upwards. They were drawing her upright against the fence. Her ankle hurt. She looked down at the cop. 'Would you mind loosening up just a little?' she asked through her tears. He looked sorry to be hurting her, and tightened his grip some more.

Another strand popped. The rope started unwinding. She started to sag against them. She felt a surge of hope. Then the rope broke. Suzie let out a roar and shoved against the fence with all her might. She broke free of their grasps and dove, seeing their faces as she arched away. They looked disappointed. She heard somebody calling for more backup.

Suzie dropped like a stone. She was staring at the dark sky, falling backwards with a knife in her left hand, the noose thing on her right, and the hook beneath her. She let go the knife, and it fell alongside her. They all rotated together.

* * *

next, suzie bounces

splat chapter thirty-two

2006-09-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

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 cellphone whacked him in the nose. He thought it was an animal and went apeshit.

* * *

next, suzie does something brave

splat chapter thirty-one

2006-08-29T11:04:00.000-05:00

Suzie did a lot of thinking in the early morning hours, getting up to pee a lot behind the car and developing a splitting headache. She thought about being homeless. She wondered if she'd get arrested. She thought about running away on a freight train. She thought about finding a job, a new place to live. She worried about the guys, about Auntie Mae.

She spent several long moments thinking about driving to Nelson's house and unloading all her stuff there. Hi, Hon, I'm moving in. What do you want for dinner?

She looked forward to seeing Nelson when he drove into work that morning. He'd get there, and find her, and they'd crawl into the back of the spacious Cadillac, and they'd make spectacular love and then drift off to sleep on the cool leather seats.

She woke up in a sweat. The leather seats weren't cool, they were clammy, covered with beer-drenched sweat, smoke permeated sweat. Suzie's mouth stank, her armpits stank, the sweat from her pores stank. She reeked of beer, stomach acid, and smoke. Her teeth were scummy. She needed a shower. She needed a long time in the bathroom.

She lay there thinking kind thoughts about the customer restroom inside the shop, and counting the minutes until it would open. It wasn't very private, and she was allergic to the air freshener. They kept the temperature uncomfortably cold, and the most memorable decoration was a badly patched fist hole in the wall. Probably a customer. But it was heaven to her.

Suzie planned to wash her hair under the tap, then get naked and sponge herself off, and then rinse out her clothes and put them on all wrung out. She might even give her old skanky driving gloves a scrub. She wouldn't even think of doing these things in the bathroom out on the shop floor. It grossed her out just to think of it.

It was hot in the car. All the windows were down, even the sticking one, and there was no breeze. Suzie's skin stuck to the seat and made a peeling sound as she turned over. The sun was up past the trees, and the moment it touched the car it began to sizzle.

Suzie's breath grew flammable. She felt the scorch on her arm and started dreaming she was a dragon just learning to use her powers. She awoke to find the sun coming in the window on her arm, burning scales. The car smelled very bad. Suzie felt like she'd been beaten with sticks. She decided to get out and stretch and find a new spot to pee in.

While she was squatting beside the dumpster wondering why her head was pounding, a car came driving in. She hastily pulled up her shorts and rose. They'd seen her, oops.

It was the well-dressed black woman from the day before. The woman recognized her, too. They stared at each other for a long moment while she parked the car. Then they both looked over at Nelson in the passenger seat. Suzie turned away after a moment and walked around to the front of the building to give them some privacy.

She heard the woman drive off with squealing tires thirty seconds later. Nelson came vaulting around the corner. 'Gee, Baby, it's good to see you. What brings you here so early? Stick around for a minute and I'll roll us up a joint. We can smoke it right here. Nobody's going to be in for awhile.'

That gave him a thought. He sidled up to her. 'Would you like to go somewhere quiet for a few minutes?'

Suzie pushed him away, sharply angry. Her head pounded with the effort.

She was feeling conflicted. Evidence of another girlfriend upset and hurt her. She strongly wanted to punish him. But she still wanted the whole thing to go her way. She wanted him to tell her she was the only one. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and sob, whining, Oh, Nelson, I'm homeless. My house burned down last night, and I didn't get a wink of sleep. I feel sick. I think maybe I was exposed to toxic chemicals. I'm worried about getting arrested. I just want someone to hold me and make it better. Oh, Nelson, I need a place to live.

She desperately wanted him to say, Baby, just move in with me and we'll be happy. But she knew he wasn't going to say that. And so she couldn't say all those things she wanted to say. She couldn't throw herself into his arms. She couldn't afford to let him comfort her.

All she could say was, 'The car you loaned me doesn't work. I need my car back.'

'I don't know if you've noticed, but it's not here at the moment,' he said, unconcerned. She looked at him questioningly.

'It's gone,' he repeated.

'What do you mean?'

'It's just gone.' He shuffled his feet, then grew animated and tried to make light of it. 'Oops, I must have misplaced it,' he mocked himself. 'Where did I put that darned car?' He put his hands on his hips and nodded sorrowfully down at her. 'I said it was being worked on,' he whined. 'Don't you trust me, Baby?'

She whipped her head up and stared at him. 'No. Who is that woman who dropped you off?'

'Oh, she's just a friend. A customer really, like you.'

'What do you mean, a customer? I'm not a customer. I'm your goddamned girlfriend.'

'Of course you are, Baby. She means nothing to me. You're the only one I love.' He puts his hand to his heart. 'Except for Mom.' He went to hug her.

She butted out of his embrace. 'My car. I want my car.'

'It's not all the way fixed,' he warned. 'Of course, you can always take it back the way it is, but it won't run, and what good will that do you? Better let me finish fixing it before you take it. Plus, you know how much I love you, it won't cost you nothing. Save you 300 bucks.'

'I'm worth a lot more than 300 dollars.'

'Certainly, of course. You're priceless. That's why I'll give you the shirt off my back. All you gotta do is ask.'

'Well, I'm asking. Can I have my car back?'

He grabbed his head with both hands and tugged. 'You don't understand,' he said theatrically. 'How can I make it clear to you, Baby? Your car is gone. Off the lot. I'm pretty sure it's over at a buddy of mine's specialty repair place being looked at, but I just can't give it back to you right now.'

She ignored the pretty sure part. And the right now part. 'I need to have a car, Nelson.'

'I know you do, Baby. Listen. I'm gonna give you my car. My own personal car that I can take up the steepest mountain and drive through creeks with. You'll love driving it.'

And he dragged her to the front of the building, where his old, dusty brown beat up Isuzu Trooper sat well off the ground on extra large, muddy tires, the windshield cracked in a dozen places, including what looked like a bullet hole. A big rock, probly, Suzie thought.

Nelson's hand was on his heart in a show of sincerity. 'It's my pride and joy, I want you to know that. It's my own personal car, not a borrowed car, understand. I want you to take good care of it.' He opened the door and handed her inside, dropping the keys into her hand. 'A 1984 Isuzu Trooper. The first SUV.'

'Now, it's a manual transmission,' he explained while she put on her driving gloves. She rattled the gearshift and took it out of gear, tested the brake, pumped the clutch. Suzie looked around the filthy interior. It reeked of old dope smoke. There was the stub of a cigar in the cup holder, and roaches littered the floor along with clods of dirt and cellophane wrappers and crumpled up McDonald's bags.

She tried to start the car, but the starter cranked feebly and refused to turn the engine over. Nelson dismissed the problem. 'It's just running low on juice, it's nothing. Come back tomorrow and we'll see about getting another battery in there for you. It never gives me any trouble, but you're not used to it.' He winked. 'I understand.'

He continued detailing what made this car so special. 'Now wait till I show you how to start it. The trick is, is that you've got to keep feeding it gas or it might tend to stall, at least until it warms up.' (This was a lie. The engine never warmed up enough to keep the idle above stall. But by the time she figured this out, she was miles away.) She got it started after several tries, the starter going rinna rinna for awhile. It stalled immediately. She started it again and pumped the gas pedal like she had a spastic foot. The empty gas tank light came on. She was thinking, This is bullshit.

She had a hangover so bad she could hardly see, and there was Nelson, palming off another broken down vehicle and giving her complex instructions that her life depended on, and all she could think of was going somewhere quiet and lying down.

She turned the engine off and went to get her stuff out of the Cadillac. Then she gave it the once over to see if she'd left anything. She wasn't going to miss that particular loaner.

Nelson had busied himself with opening the bay doors, and was hovering just inside waiting for her to finish going back and forth with her shit. 'I've rolled us a big one,' he announced enthusiastically.

Suzie grimaced. 'You know,' she said, 'I don't have time to hang out.'

'It'll make your hangover feel better,' he said persuasively. It must have shown on her face.

He was right. She stood at the wooden worktable beside him, carefully keeping her distance. She didn't want to talk. But he was nervous. So she decided to push him.

'About that girl who dropped you off.'

'Who? Oh, she's just a friend. Baby, you know you're the only one for me.' He went to put his arm around her, and handed her the joint. Great clouds of smoke escaped into the air of the shop as he began to hack and cough.

Suzie moved away while he stood convulsed. He looked pitiful. But she didn't find a lot of pity in her heart for him. He was more pathetic looking. And she was not in a mood for empathy. He was such a liar.

He straightened up and started pleading again. She stamped up to him and thrust the joint into his hand. 'You know, you can just cut that out right now. I know damn well she's your girlfriend. You've just been taking advantage of me, when I was thinking all along we would get together as soon as you...changed your life, got free, whatever.'

He stood there with a sorrowful expression. 'You've just been putting me off, haven't you?' she continued. 'This excuse here and that one there. Your son being too young, your roommates and how you support them and they depend on you. Telling me I can't come to your house.' She screamed at him, jumping up and down. 'You've been lying to me all along!'

He squealed. 'No! You don't understand. The thing with my roommates, they're a fragile bunch of people. And that girl who drove me in today, she lives real close by and offered to give me a ride.'

But Suzie saw a pattern, going right back to the first time she walked into the garage and saw him standing tall against the sunlight. Lies, manipulations, callously using everyone. Including her. She got in the truck. 'I'm sick of this, Nelson. You can have your car back when you return mine.'

'Oh, Baby, don't be like that.'

She started the engine and pumped furiously on the gas. 'When it craps out on me I'll just leave it. You'll find it at the impound lot.'

Nathan and Nubby were pulling up in Nubby's beat-up old Honda. Suzie took the opportunity to slip away. She got as far as the stoplight in front of the garage before the Trooper stalled again. She had to restart it in the street, using all three pedals to keep the car from stalling again immediately and rolling backwards, feebly cursing the broken emergency brake.

She drove Nelson's wreck straight to the gas station and put five bucks in it. As she was unscrewing the gas cap, she noticed a bunch of police cars zooming down the street the way she'd come. She thought maybe they might be going to Nelson's, and a feeling of hopeful joy uplifted her.

* * *

next, somebody gets theirs

splat chapter thirty

2006-08-26T15:17:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER THIRTY

Suzie drove her loaner Cadillac along the secondary roads toward town. The first thing she discovered about her new ride was that it had a cool little computer display she could punch up to tell her how many miles she could drive on how much gas in how big a tank. She played with that for awhile. The second thing she found out was that the air conditioning was broken. Oh well. She opened the windows all the way down, and drove on, sweating into the leather seat. She third thing she discovered, when she got home, was that the right window was now stuck down.

She had car trouble all the way into town. The car started overheating after fifteen minutes of driving, the idiot temperature light came on, and by the time she got to Turner Field, smoke was coming out of the engine compartment. It smelled electrical. Suzie began to resent Nelson for giving her such a shitty car. Where was her car, anyway? She wanted it back. Fucking loaners, every one of them was trouble.

She drove past Grant Park on the way home, and looked at the new construction at the zoo. Old trees, old houses, a very genteel area, the best of old Atlanta. On the corner, inside the park's new chain link fence, there was a sign for condos. Pre-Selling In The High $500s. Suzie was puzzled. Condos in venerable Grant Park?

Suzie drove the rest of the way home with the car making alarming noises. She parked in front of her building on Seaboard Avenue, and got out to grab the right window with both hands and slide it up, mashing the window control with her foot.

The Cadillac's engine knocked for a couple of minutes after she shut it off. She noticed with annoyance that the owner of the car had a Bush sticker on the rear window. Covering the brake light, how appropriate. She thought about what she could replace it with. Bush Is A War Criminal. No, that's like to get you shot. You have to be more subtle. The Emperor Has No Clothes. Maybe too subtle.

Suzie's neighborhood looked like a movie back lot. The sets were there, props, incidentals, but the people were absent, the houses artificial. Trash blew around like tumbleweeds. She felt everyone was hiding behind false walls where she couldn't see them, all watching her. All letting her walk into whatever trap had been set for her. Suzie, just pawn in game of life. She went and peered around the curtains to make sure nobody was observing the apartment from outside. It was very creepy.

It was still daylight out, and it was sweltering inside. It was also musty and pungent. She went around turning the fans on high to clear out the used bar odor. She put on clean clothes, damp and smelly. Real soon now on the laundry, she thought resolutely.

Suzie whipped food out of the fridge and made herself a sandwich with a sense of real satisfaction. She grabbed a beer from a twelve-pack the guys had left mostly untouched, and wandered into the living room.

She was home in time for the six o-clock news. It felt strange to see Whatshername so early in the evening. Her lime green suit hurt Suzie's eyes. Too perky for dinnertime.

The graphics and music come up. The white middle aged co-anchor is missing. Whatshername looks apologetic and mumbles that he's on vacation. Five to ten? Suzie wonders. There's Darius Gray the science reporter filling in for him. He makes such a shiny new shotgun. He's unbearably handsome and youthful. He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head impetuously, smiling broadly. Suzie finds him annoying.

Whatshername scowls. 'Our top story tonight is Atlanta's traffic.' A graphic comes up of cars piled up on top of each other, with steam and smoke and angry looking drivers. 'It will go down in history as The Big Mess,' she says. The boy wonder chuckles.

A new graphic dissolves in, a cop car bar of flashing blue lights. 'Traffic ground to a halt last night as a series of rush-hour pileups occurred on the downtown Connector, the west side Perimeter at I-20, the top end Perimeter, Georgia 400, I-85 at Spaghetti Junction, and I-75 both at Windy Hill and down near the airport.' Helicopter pictures show massive lines of stopped cars. It's impossible to tell which of the many traffic jams they are showing.

'The Governor declared a local state of emergency, and all interstates in the Atlanta metro area were closed.' The helicopter films empty highways. This picture looks weirder than the shot of stopped traffic. 'The interstates reopened a few hours ago, just in time for tonight's rush hour, except that rush hour was expected to be unusually light because most workplaces were closed today due to the inaccessibility of downtown Atlanta.'

The graphic turns to flames and smoke. 'A deadly pileup occurred on the Downtown Connecter at the height of the Big Mess last evening, killing three people the driver of a minivan that rolled and caught fire, and two people in a car the driver collided with, that also rolled. Seven others were wounded in secondary collisions. While this was happening, drivers in the northbound lanes of the Connector experienced numerous collisions and fender benders because of rubbernecking. Two people were hurt. The victims were taken to Grady Hospital.' The picture is stock footage of Grady, the Southeast's top first-level trauma center, and where you want them to take you when it's a car accident or a gunshot wound.

The graphic becomes a mushroom cloud. Whatshername continues. 'Over on the westside Perimeter today, workers continued to clear the damage caused by an exploding gasoline tanker that crashed into the I-20 overpass last night.' The screen shows footage of men in hardhats and safety vests down in a hole removing dirt. Suzie recognized Javel, from the Club. They had him digging in the dirt. Wow.

'All but one lane of both highways remain blocked off tonight as workers repair structural damage to the bridge on I-20, and a thirty foot crater in a section of I-285 below.' The screen shows the line of drivers slipping one car at a time around the scene, then pans over a never-ending line of vehicles simmering in the heat.

The next graphic is a crowbar raised in anger. 'In a bizarre twist, angry motorists stopped in yesterday's traffic apparently attacked another driver who they claim was driving inconsiderately. Forty-nine year old Wayne Smith of Kennesaw is in the ER at Northside Hospital this evening, with multiple internal injuries and broken bones. His condition is listed as guarded, and he is expected to make a partial recovery. Police made no arrests, and there is no word as to whether the driver who was attacked, might not himself face charges.'

A map of the Southeast comes up, showing the cities and the road network. 'Traffic was affected all over the South today, from Florida to New York, and west to the Mississippi River. Travelers were backed up and forced to detour through Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama to get around...' she pauses and they both say it, 'The Big Mess.'

They smile at each other, then the anchor looks back into the camera and resumes with a serious face. 'The total cost to fix The Big Mess is estimated to top fifty million dollars. Atlanta's businesses fear the loss of millions of hours of productivity. A meeting is scheduled with management of area attractions and retail stores next week, to examine the situation and make recommendations.'

The next graphic shows huddled gray refugees in the rain. It says HEROES in bold yellow letters at the top. 'The Atlanta-based crew of Flight 666 is being honored today for their swift and calm action during an incident on the airport's unfinished Fifth Runway. Brave crewmembers rescued 138 passengers and led them to safety through yesterday's hurricane force winds.'

There's stock footage of an ambulance in front of an ER. 'Some of the passengers suffered minor scrapes and bruises during the incident, but no one was seriously injured. NTSB officials are investigating. Airport officials would not provide further details.'

He looks at the camera for the bad news. 'All lanes of the south end Perimeter will remain closed until the investigation is finished.'

On another channel, it would be a massive story. They were going to have to dismantle the crashed plane and haul it away in order to clear the unfinished runway and the road surface beneath. It was going to take buckets of money, and weeks of 24/7 work to get everything back on schedule.

However, Atlanta airport officials felt it was a terrible scandal. They feared for Atlanta's reputation as the world's largest transportation hub, and put pressure on the news station's management to tone down coverage of the incident. And so the co-anchor putting a feel-good fluff spin on it instead of doing a hard-hitting investigation into construction flaws, or explosive revelations about airport management corruption.

The graphic changes to a runny paintgun splat on a car door. It's red, like dripping blood. Huge black letters say Sniper. Suzie grew suddenly cold. Whatshername says accusatorily, 'We turn to the dark side of human nature, on the other end of the scale from gallant passenger rescues.' She looks at the camera to deliver bad news. 'There was another sniper attack yesterday.' Suzie's ears began to burn. 'This time it resulted in the death of one of Atlanta's rising stars.'

Suzie felt flushed and feverish. She killed him? 'The attack occurred on Georgia 400 yesterday evening, under cover of the citywide traffic jam. An execution style murder, carried out in cold blood during rush hour traffic.'

Suzie felt horribly guilty. 'Police are sure that this is the work of the Atlanta Sniper, but acknowledge that this attack differs from what they've seen so far, and speculate that this time the Sniper may have known his victim.'

Suzie felt terrible. She deserved to be punished. She reached for Alex's cellphone to call 911 and turn herself in.

The screen flashed his picture. 'The victim is fifty-seven year old Jerry Sweat, a prominent and influential lawyer, and founder of Atlanta's own Reinsourcing America program.'

Suzie stared at his face, his rat eyes, his lanky, cowl of death hair. Her heart filled with hate, and suddenly she felt justifying in killing him. She put the phone down.

'The whereabouts of the Atlanta Sniper remain a mystery tonight.'

The screen shows a blurry cellphone picture taken from somebody's car. 'Police are looking for this person.' Suzie felt afraid. It's a skimpy dressed hooker type wearing a Superman t-shirt, cutoffs, flipflops, and a big bag. Her blonde wig is askew. She appears to be on her cellphone. Suzie relaxed a bit.

'Police are also looking for a black Mercedes SUV.' Nobody would find her that way.

'If you have any information, please call the Atlanta Police Hotline at 1-800-GOT-INFO. A reward of $95,000 is being offered for the apprehension of this suspected terrorist, who police warn is armed and dangerous.'

Oh, damn. Suzie sat there stunned. Inside her head bounced several different reactions. Oh no, Jerry was dead. She'd killed him. It was horrible. She was a bad person. Well, he deserved to die. But his wife, his kids, whatever mistress he had on the side, wouldn't they miss him? They'd be better off without him. He was a slave owner, a pig, a white supremacist. He deserved to die.

The argument continued in her head. The side favoring capital punishment was winning. But she still felt bad. She still felt hollow inside. She still felt wrong. She could feel tears starting to come.

'Coming up,' the co-anchor says. 'What the hurricane left behind.' The scene shows cars stuck up to their windows in flooded streets, and rescue teams in rowboats ferrying drivers to the shore.

An ad comes on. Suzie sat and watched it, her mind in a vacant trance. She stared at the next ad without paying any attention at all. She was successfully blanking her mind out to avoid the guilt lurking around her brainstem.

The news is back on. Whatshername looks fierce. The graphic is a pup tent with Terrorist emblazoned on the side. 'Police announced that they've found a terrorist camp in Southeast Atlanta.' Suzie came alert. 'Atlanta Police, acting on a tip, discovered what they believe is the terrorist den of the Atlanta Sniper.'

The scene shows a clearing in the woods. 'Police swooped down on the camp and discovered tire tracks and this hastily emptied encampment.' Suzie's stomach twisted and began to cramp. My hideout.

'Earlier photographs taken by the survey crew who discovered the site showed a firing range and a suspected drug and explosives lab.' Suzie scoffed. They were so wrong.

'Little remains of the den of terrorism tonight, after Homeland Security agents, the GBI, and local police finished their investigations.'

The scene showed a display of junk Suzie forgot to pick up. 'Among the items retrieved were targets, ammunition, a sawed off gun barrel, and a plastic jug containing a suspicious liquid, which is being tested.'

It was only ex sweet tea. But the idea horrified Suzie.

The anchor continues. 'Authorities questioned residents in this moderate-income section of southeast Atlanta, who were shocked to learn they had a terrorist camp in their midst.' She looks at the camera reassuringly. 'We'll have more coverage of this story as it develops.'

Uncle Daddy. Suzie frantically called his number, but he still didn't answer. She tried his cellphone. She got voicemail.

The broadcast continues. The graphic is a stop sign behind bars. 'In other news,' the anchor says brightly, 'local law enforcement have been having a field day with the new, stricter traffic laws. Recent roadblocks have resulted in over 500 apprehensions, including DUI, license and registration violations, possession of drugs and unlicensed weapons, unpaid child support, outstanding warrants, assault and attempted flight.' She looks completely innocent.

The next graphic is an apple resting on a Bible. 'Next year, Georgia public school students will be allowed to study the Bible in school. Under a bipartisan plan proposed in the State Senate today, the Board of Education will have the green light to approve course materials for a Bible-based curriculum to be taught from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. These classes will teach Bible history, and explore the Bible's influence on literature, art, culture and politics.'

She glances up at the camera. 'Five protestors were arrested and charged with illegal assembly outside the Board of Education chambers following this announcement.

They cut to an ad and Suzie tried calling again. There was still no answer. She got herself another beer and watched the ad.

The scene opens on an expensive lobby. We're looking at a pair of closed elevator doors. The bell rings and the doors open. Fetid smoke pours out. The well-dressed occupants explode through the doors holding their noses. A shabbily dressed old lady stands in the middle of the now empty elevator, smiling apologetically.

Voiceover. A man's voice booms, 'Ah. You've made a social gaffe.'

'Sorry,' she says sheepishly, looking for the voice.

'There's no need to endure the heartbreak of flatulence,' he says reasonably. 'Now there's a cure for nature's little surprises.' She looks quizzical.

'Prevent unwanted gas attacks with new NoventaTM'. She smiles hopefully. People to get into the elevator, jostling around her and turning to face front as the doors close.

'Most people who take NoventaTM tolerate it well,' he continues. The old lady is the only one who thinks the voice is unusual. 'The most commonly reported side effects were headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and drowsiness.'

The doors open, two people get off, one gets on. 'Other side effects include constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, headache, dry mouth, bleeding ulcers, inability to urinate, halitosis, erectile dysfunction, heart attack, and stroke. See your doctor if you experience these symptoms.'

The doors open again and a bunch of people get off. Three people wait to get on. 'The active ingredient in NoventaTM may affect your ability to remain alert while doing normal daily activities. You should talk to your doctor if you develop significant daytime sleepiness or experience episodes of narcolepsy, or involuntarily falling asleep.'

The doors open again. A crowd of people wait to get on. We glimpse the little old lady, still looking around for the voice. 'A small number of patients taking this medicine have developed symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome. If you or your family notice that you have unusual urges to utter obscenities, talk to your doctor.'

The doors open. Again, everybody rushes out of the elevator in a panic, holding their noses, leaving the little old lady alone, smiling apologetically. The voice booms, 'Isn't it about time you asked your doctor about NoventaTM?'

The news is back on. The graphic is a freight train transporting a huge biohazard symbol in a flatbed car. Darius takes the story. He gathers himself up to be authoritative.

'The Transportation Safety Board,' he says significantly, 'today announced a relaxation of safety restrictions that will make it easier to ship toxic waste through Georgia. According to the Board, this is needed to facilitate the removal and safe disposal of the waste, and will also result in taxpayer savings. Environmental groups,' his mouth twists into a sneer, 'short of an actual protest, issued a cautiously worded criticism of this plan, suggesting potentially adverse effects on populated areas. We asked local law enforcement officials, who said that while these criticisms weren't violations of the protest ban, they were seditious, and the groups are currently being investigated for terrorist ties.'

He looks at the camera with sincerity. 'Do the new transport guidelines make us less safe? Tune in tomorrow for our special report. A primer,' he pauses and smiles winsomely. 'All About Trash.'

He stays with the next story, licking his lips and tossing his hair as the panda graphic comes up. It's his debut as co-anchor and he wants to make an impression. Suzie gets the impression he's pretty smarmy. 'New developments in the redevelopment of Grant Park,' he says. And nervous.

There is film of surveyors and construction workers milling about in the red dirt of an ex hill inside the park. 'Slopes are being graded, trees are being cleared, and new roadways are being staked out,' he says, barking out the story, his eyes ticking from side to side as he reads the teleprompter. 'It's all part of the plan for renovating the Zoo and building the new Grant Park Center.' He forgets to smile as he struggles to present a handsome face to the camera as well as read the news.

The screen shows a graphic, the red line of projected visitor volume running off the top of the chart. The co-anchor continues. 'Officials estimate up to three million people a year will visit the Zoo once it reopens. This has led to an expansion of the project's scope. Permits have been granted for a community center, including a multiplex theater complex to replace the ageing Cyclorama. It will also include conference rooms and banqueting facilities, and a parking deck to handle the massive influx of cars into the neighborhood.'

The camera comes back to the co-anchor. On the whole, he's pleased with his presentation. 'In addition, plans have been approved to build a 535-unit live-work complex and shops in the area.'

He frowns like a theatrical mask. 'On a sour note, more protestors were arrested today outside the park's gates, and charged with making terroristic threats.' He turns to Whatshername, smiling. 'I'd like to live in the new Grant Park,' he says enthusiastically. She nods and smiles stiffly. Her family always has a yearly reunion in that park.

Suzie switched channels. How was she supposed to pass the evening without the guys? She turned to another news channel and found out all about the plane crash, but still there was no discussion of mistakes and corruption. Suzie suspected a plot.

She watched part of a game show. She watched cartoons. She watched the Weather Channel. She watched MTV. She drank another beer. It was really weird not to have a job to go to.

About eight she wondered what was happening at the club. Was Ed barging into the Jasmine Room for dinner, without Jerry? Without Suzie? Would he be lonesome, or would he hit on whatever poor waitress had to serve him?

She tried calling Uncle Daddy again. She really wanted to know how Auntie Mae was, and did they know anything yet about her diagnosis.

She continued flipping through the channels. Around and around the dial. Not thinking about having killed somebody.

She stopped at an ad with a laugh track. It's a Christian ad for a comedy set in the Middle Ages. Skits include 'Excesses of the Catholic Popes' and 'Love Songs of the Inquisition'.

She stopped at a talk show on the Liberal Channel. A woman in a plain skirt and sweater is whining, 'The Conservatives have had political ascendancy since Reagan was in office, and they still see themselves as underdogs.'

Her male guest in a sweater and khakis agrees strongly, 'That's right. They're still complaining about being the victims of Liberal media distortions. But for the last twenty years, the media has been owned and controlled by Conservatives.'

The woman shakes a finger disapprovingly. 'How can they sit there and act victimized when they're the source of so much distortion and ...'

Suzie resumed her cruise through the channels in haste. Those people were too angry to watch.

An ad. A black screen. Red letters appear: Caution. A male voiceover begins, full of authority. 'Don't watch this announcement if you don't need to lose mega pounds.'

The scene opens on a field of sunflowers all cranked up toward the sun. A woman dances by, so light on her feet she floats. Strings swell in the background. A woman's voice comes up, full of compassion. 'New ConstrictaTM with patented Megaoxygel ATa has been shown in clinical trials to significantly enhance weight loss without dieting.'

The scene switches to a podium where an authoritative man points to a chart. He's an attractive silver haired fox. 'Clinical tests prove new ConstrictaTM is the best fast weight loss product available. Period.'

His voice becomes serious, confidential. 'This product should definitely not be used by people who only need to lose a few pounds.'

The screen fills with the silhouette of an enormously fat naked person. He continues. 'If, due to genetic factors beyond your control, excess body fat is adversely affecting your health and self-esteem, then this may be the cure you've been waiting for.'

The scene switches to a kitchen table where a rotund middle aged woman takes two gel caps at the start of her meal. Using X-ray vision, we see them quickly expand into a mass of goo in her stomach. She smiles.

'Discover how full you feel after just a few bites.' She continues smiling, and pushes back from the table, leaving most of her dinner. Her face looks smoother, ten years younger. She feels great.

She cleans the dishes in fast motion, getting thinner all the time. 'ConstrictaTM's active formula, XanthidreneTM, keeps you at peak energy all day.'

She is now working in the garden, raking the neighbor's yards, cleaning gutters, trimming trees; polishing cars, moving so fast she's becoming a blur. 'You'll be so busy, you won't have time to be hungry.'

Finally she slows down. She's now dressed in red party clothes, she's been to the hairdresser, and she's ready to go paint the town with Handsome. 'New ConstrictaTM with patented Megaoxygel ATa.' The voice pauses. 'From Klein-Smith, a name you trust.'

Suzie kept being distracted by the guy in the apartment upstairs. He was making big noises up and down the stairs. She felt very edgy, and wondered in her paranoia if he could be a cop. When the next ad came on, she put her head out the door and caught him coming downstairs with a box. 'Are you moving out?' she asked. He looked at her, like, duh. She felt silly. 'Well, I just wondered.' She went to close the door.

He said, 'I've got some stuff I'm throwing out, if you'd like to take a look.'

She stopped. 'Hey, that's nice. Sure. Yeah, we've got next to nothing down here.' She was suddenly enjoying herself. It felt so good to be doing something other than watching that stupid box.

'Well, come on up when you've got a moment.' So she followed him out to the moving truck, talking. It was just getting dark out. She followed him upstairs. He was nice, friendly, interesting. Suzie wondered why she hadn't noticed him before. His name was Sebastion.

She stood around awkwardly in his living room. Sebastion pointed out a big trash container full of kitchen equipment and cleaning supplies, and headed back out with another box. Suzie poked around and took a few things to be polite. Then she noticed a cutting board and a chef's knife.

'I'd love to have these,' she said as he came back through the door.

'Yeah, sure. That's a good knife. But I'm moving in with my girlfriend and she's got plenty of kitchen stuff.'

Suzie turned back to the container to hide her disappointment. Oh well. 'Want a beer?'

'Thanks.'

Suzie helped him move a couple of boxes down to the truck, and stopped on the way back up for a couple of beers. They sat and talked for a few minutes.

Sebastion asked about their moving plans. 'Oh, we're not leaving,' she said, nonchalantly. 'Not until they throw us out. Then, who knows?' She drank deeply. She didn't want to think about it.

Sebastion shrugged. 'I lived in a squat in my youth,' he said. 'Seattle. It was fun except in the winter. Then I was a rail kid for awhile.'

She liked the sound of that. 'What's a rail kid?'

'People who hop trains. Like back during the Depression. They go all over, and stay in hobo jungles near the rail yard, or squats in town. There's a lot of fat to live on in this country. You almost never have to buy food.' He lifted his can for another sip. 'It's a great life. You're free. Nobody messes with you.'

Suzie was dubious. 'Is it safe?'

'Well, in the traveler world, it's more dangerous for guys, because they fight. And there's a lot of women riding the rails these days. I'd say it's about forty percent women.'

Hmmm. She took a drink. 'If I ever become homeless, maybe I'll do that. You're sure it's not all homeless guys and tramps?'

'Not homeless. Houseless. Houseless people travel, homeless people don't. And it's mostly young people now. Just a few old-timers, and they're like elders. Everybody respects them. And everybody looks out for each other. The only dangers are falling into the wheels, and the railroad bulls.' He nodded wisely at her. 'They shoot you.' He took another sip of beer. 'I'm curious as to why you're staying. Everybody else is moving out. Surely you must have noticed.'

She looked almost blank. 'Not really.' She still didn't fully believe it. The drug dealer two buildings down was there as usual. There were still cars in the complex, maybe even a few homeless guys still hanging out in the parking lot. She wouldn't know.

'No, really, haven't you seen the moving trucks the last few months?'

No, she hadn't. People were always moving. She didn't want to think about it. Being a late riser, like her roommates, she didn't spend any time going or coming. They either were inside watching TV and hanging out, or they were out slaving at their day jobs, or they were asleep. They were the lost boys, and they weren't ever going to grow up if they could help it. If we keep our knowledge of reality firmly surreal, they figured in the backs of their heads, and pretend we don't notice, it'll all just go away.

Suzie noticed a bunch of brochures heaped up over a trashcan next to the couch. She asked Sebastion about it. 'Oh, that's just stuff I brought home to work on. Proposals, mostly.'

'Where do you work?'

'I'm in the graphics department of Big Behemoth Consulting,' he said, as if the name usually provoked some reaction. 'Big Behemoth Inc.' Suzie was blank.

She recognized a shiny brochure, showing smiling, happy people in business suits and uniforms, posing in front of office buildings and industrial sites. 'I think I served dinner to one of your guys at the White Magnolia Club,' she said.

'That'd be Bob Clark, partner. He's an asshole. His group sells this clunky human resources software, and then the client pays $50,000 a week for months getting it debugged and training the employees.'

She looked at another discarded piece of work. It was a yellow banner on a blue background. He saw her looking at it. 'I'm working on this now. My Labor Force.'

She looked crossways at the graphic. 'You know, it reminds me of those Support Our Troops ribbons people put on their cars.'

'Yeah. That's no accident. The client is real patriotic and the partner wanted to hit all the buttons.'

'It should be Support Our Tyrant, you know. Support Our Military-Industrial Complex. Support Record Oil Industry Profits. Support Our Halliburton.' She was starting to sound like a preacher, her voice droning rhythmically like that guy on TV with the Bible.

He must have thought Suzie was being kind of intense. 'You know,' he said jokingly, 'you could be arrested for treason, talking like that.'

Suzie shut up and looked around the room suspiciously. Maybe there were microphones. She changed the subject. 'I've been thinking. Maybe I want to work in the corporate world.'

He smiled. 'Never. We're hapless slaves.'

Suzie shrugged dismissively. 'We're all wage slaves.'

'No, no,' he protested. 'Real slaves. Chained by debt. Chained by the lifestyle. Consumer slaves.'

Suzie disagreed. 'No, real slaves are the convicts who get put in jail and forced to work.'

Sebastion paused. 'Well, there are many kinds of slavery,' he began.

'We all have to work,' she insisted, cutting him off.

'No, we all have to do something.' Sebastion had thought about this. 'Not necessarily work. Not necessarily other people's work. There are lots of options.' Suzie thought about getting paid to sleep late and ride around taking out bad drivers. Too stressful.

Sebastion looked around at all the things his corporate slavery had bought. He would never really consider quitting his day job and struggling on his own. Getting regular paychecks was too easy. 'It doesn't have to be a bad thing, being a slave.'

Suzie thought about it. 'I guess. You don't have to think.'

'Your daily routine is preplanned. You don't have to do any paperwork, like filing taxes or paying bills.'

'You're part of a group.' Suzie loved the idea of belonging. 'You're anonymous.' She liked the idea of blending in even better.

'You get all kinds of benefits, provided at no out-of-pocket cost.'

'Like three meals a day and a dry place to sleep?' She thought of the homeless guys. Lucky them. 'Medical. And HBO - we don't have HBO.'

'They reward you for doing well. Time off, perks. Advancement.' He drank the last of his beer and stood up. 'And it's guaranteed employment.

'I guess you can't get fired.' Suzie got up. That's where she wanted to work.

Sebastion went back to loading boxes onto the truck. Suzie helped with one box, but then noticed the bumper sticker on the Cadillac. It irritated her abruptly. She felt motivated, so she ran inside her apartment and found an old razor in the bathroom.

It was mostly dark now. The sky was smoky cobalt, but no stars. You don't usually see stars in Atlanta. She stood on her tiptoes and leaned over the trunk with the razor, painstakingly scraping the bumper sticker off. She lay there for a moment staring at the scrape marks, wondering exactly what she was going to put there to replace it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed shadowy figures moving through the alley between apartment buildings. She shivered slightly and looked around. There was nobody on the street, no cars out. Just the moving van in front of her, and a train across the street, going slowly by on its way into Hulsey Yard. Suzie went inside and had another beer. What the hell. Then she resumed cruising through the channels.

She stopped at a Christian talk show. A curtain, a desk, a couch, a white televangelist running to fat, and his trim black sidekick with just a touch of gray. They're smiling and looking pleasant.

'In fact, Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic,' the televangelist remarks.

The sidekick nods, 'Amen.'

'We Christians are committed to a spiritual aristocracy,' he explains. 'The ascendancy of the Holy.'

The sidekick leans forward, interested. 'What's our first task?'

The televangelist is glad to tell him. 'The first task in the Kingdom of God will be to vigorously suppress all idolatrous religions.'

The sidekick scoffs. 'That's a tall order, since non-Christians still outnumber us three to one.'

'Not for long.' They both giggle.

The televangelist continues. 'Civil law will be rewritten to conform to the Bible's moral laws. God made them thousands of years ago and never changed his mind.'

'Hallelujah.' The sidekick goes on to observe, 'His laws were intended for all nations, cultures, and societies, all religions and all times.'

The televangelist gets heated. 'We're talking about criminalizing immorality of all kinds - blasphemy, adultery, homosexuality. The penalty is execution.' He looks fierce.

The sidekick looks puzzled. 'Infidelity will be a capital crime, won't it?'

The televangelist looks righteous. 'A woman found in adultery will be stoned to death. The same goes for those found guilty of engaging in same-sex or pre-marital sex.'

The sidekick rubs his hands. 'That's thousands of executions a year.'

The televangelist smiles reassuringly. 'We advocate stoning over burning. We'd like to encourage more audience participation.'

'It gets the lesson learned quicker,' the sidekick agrees. 'What else is in store for us in God's Earthly Kingdom?'

'We're reserving all the important government jobs and judgeships for the righteous among men. Men committed to upholding God's laws and serving His people.'

The sidekick piped up, 'And we mean men. Women won't be able to meddle in important affairs of state anymore.'

The televangelist agreed wholeheartedly. 'We're going to stop the feminist destruction of our nation first thing. Women will go back to being the property of their fathers and husbands, or if sold, their owners.'

'The husband is the head of the family,' the sidekick reminded him.

'I know that's right.' They both laugh.

The sidekick cocks his head to ask something important. 'What about slavery?'

'Well, that's a ticklish question. But the Bible clearly states that slavery is a fact of life.' He shrugged apologetically. 'We're only following Biblical laws here.'

'The Bible specifies that only unbelievers and women should be slaves, doesn't it?' The televangelist nods. The sidekick looks relieved.

'Don't forget,' the televangelist reminds him. 'Jesus said he wouldn't be coming back until Christian soldiers had conquered and converted the whole world in His name.'

The sidekick looks dubious. 'How can we use persuasion alone to create a God-fearing society and a Bible-based government?'

'We can't, of course,' he smiles. 'But we've got some influence. We can start by denying citizenship to anyone who refuses to submit. It's about time this country came into line with other countries around the world that have a compulsory state religion.'

The sidekick nods his agreement. 'And what about our foreign policy?' he wants to know.

'We're going to turn our armies into crusaders, and send them out to conquer in the name of Jesus. A righteous holy war. The Muslims had one good idea, after all.'

The sidekick snickers. 'Yeah, and their idea of Paradise sounds good too.' They both snicker.

Suzie kept cruising. She seemed to be running out of things to watch. She paused at an ad. The voice announces, 'Tonight on Tough Love: New Issues In Prison Reform - Faith-Based Prisons. And, The Rising Tide Of Televised Executions.'

We see the condemned, strapped down. He's peaceful, drugged. The shot tracks backwards to the outside of the chamber, a large white metallic box with black glass and a red digital display.

The camera focuses on the warden, his face severe. He steps back, shuts the door firmly, and then with swift, practiced motions sets the timer - beep beep beep - and presses Start with authority. Stirring music rises to cover the sound of the motor. The light goes on inside the box, and the prisoner begins to rotate, strapped to a plastic table.

'Join us live from Atlanta as we showcase a new tool in the arsenal against crime. Tonight on Tough Love, Ten O'clock Eastern, Nine Central.'

A few channels up, a game show is on. Suspect Politics. It has an English host. 'Welcome back,' he says briskly. 'We're ready to begin the $500 level. The category is Orwellisms - New Takes On Newspeak.' He pauses to look them over. 'This should be a quick round. Good luck, everyone.' The camera pans over to three panelists in front of stands. A middle-aged white teacher, a Black lawyer, and a Chinese businesswoman.

'Here's the first answer.' He reads from a card. 'Democracy and freedom are two euphemisms for this basic economic structure.'

A buzzer rings. 'What is Capitalism,' rushes the Chinese woman.

'Right, Wanda.' The woman smiles.

He reads another card. 'The answer. Using political means to keep a client nation in a position of overwhelming superiority, relative to hostile neighbors.'

A buzzer rings. It's the white lady. 'Yes, you have the question?'

'What is the Peace Process,' she says with excitement.

'Good.' He nods. 'Yes. That's $500 to Margaret.' He continues, shifting cards. 'Here's the next answer. It's the exploitation of resources by outsiders, resulting in great personal wealth, but leaving the inhabitants impoverished.'

'Carpetbaggers,' says the businesswoman promptly.

He hesitates. 'No. I'm sorry, that's incorrect. Anyone else?'

'What is Development,' the lawyer says.

'That's right,' he nods to the black guy. 'You're all even. This is getting exciting.' He takes another card from the stack.

'The answer. Huge profits in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries generated by grossly inflated health care costs.'

They all three go for the buzzer. 'That's a close one. Wanda.'

'Managed Healthcare.'

'Yes, you're absolutely right. And that puts you ahead of the rest.' She smiles proudly. The others look resolute.

'The next answer goes like this. Ending health and environmental safeguards that impact corporate profits, while granting blanket immunity to corporations and executives.'

There's furious stabbing at the buttons. 'Yes, Margaret.'

'What is Deregulation.'

He nods and turns to the others. 'You both knew that one, too, I'm sure.' He tugs at his collar. 'It's really heating up in here. Here's the next answer. A state of powerlessness in the workplace, producing desperate and compliant workers.'

'Ah,' he observes. The camera shows their puzzled faces. 'A hard one. Nobody has a question for our answer?' He pauses, then reads, 'What is a flexible workforce.' They sigh. 'Yes, sorry,' he says sympathetically.

He looks through the cards. 'All right. We're down to the final few answers in this round, and you're ahead at the moment. Here's the next answer. Firing numbers of middle management and support staff, to achieve greater upper management profits.'

'Yes, Tod.'

'What is Restructuring.'

'Very good. And our final answer. Replacing the local workforce with cheap external labor as a cost cutting measure.'

'Outsourcing.'

The Chinese businesswoman wins the round. The camera focuses on her. She claps at herself and the other contestants, beaming. The host remarks, 'Tremendous. A wonderful round. We'll continue the match after this. They all wave at the camera.

Suzie was getting tired. Endless nonsense, and still a dull ache inside, and the feeling that nothing was worth anything. She was definitely depressed, but lacked the energy to get up and go to bed. She lingered at a Spanish station for awhile, listening to some vivacious woman in a sheath dress having an animated discussion about something with a homely looking Latino with a mustache and his belly bulging over his shirt. She couldn't figure out what the topic was. Then she nodded off. Then she had to pee. Then she went to bed, crashing into the walls back to the bedroom, unusually unsteady on her feet. Her head spun when she lay down. Suzie never drank six beers in a night..

As she fell asleep, for one timeless moment, Suzie has a vision. She's lying in a hospital bed in intensive care. Her life is attached to the monitors. A pump does her breathing for her. She keeps having crazy dreams, all on the same theme, all just like her daily life. All complicated, never-ending slow nightmares; accompanied by the pssh of the pump and the beep of the monitors. She keeps having to remind herself that her real life is in intensive care, not in these strange, drug-induced dreams.

She slept heavily, weighed down by the beer. Sometime later in the night she had a dream of doors. A room with three doors. One has a witch, one's a clown, one's a monster. Only one of the doors leads out, and she has to choose. If she's wrong, she's just going to have to do the same dream over and over again until she gets it right. So she choses one, goes inside, and kills the clown. Clowns scare her the most.

It was a full moon. Shit happens on a full moon. She only slept heavily because she was drunk, but her dreams were weird and full of emotion, and she kept rocketing up from a nightmare to catch her breath before it started again.

She and her friends are hiding in some urban section of town, with trash all around, blown out street lights, cars on blocks. It's dark. Bad people are after them, and they're scared. Now they're cornered, and the bad guys are throwing Molotov cocktails at Suzie and her friends. She feels the whoomp, rather than hears it. She feels the heat, the burning liquid splattering all over her body, the sizzle of burning skin and hair and bubbling fat.

Suzie woke suddenly, sweating coldly, in the afterglow of her dreams. It's a wonder she woke up because of all the beer, and it's a no-brainer to say that she woke up feeling nauseous with a headache and a dry mouth. Orange shadows flickered lightly on the wall. The fan sucked smoke through her open window. She realized that she was dreaming real smoke, and stumbled up to investigate. She started to cough. There was smoke everywhere.

She identified not one fire, but four. Three in the next building, and one right above her in Sebastion's apartment. Hmmm. She got dressed and took several trips to the Cadillac with her milk crates, the computer, an armful of clothes, her quilt and pillow. She noticed Philip's climbing gear hanging by the door, and suddenly decided she was going to do that tag, with or without the guys. She went back to get it, and threw his bag of gear and his hook into the trunk. Then she remembered her new knife and cutting board, and went back a last time, turning off the lights and closing the door as she left. She drove off with a feeling of loss, and put her hands over her ears as she passed the fire department coming in from Moreland.

She parked the car at the new Edgewood center, then walked slowly back up the street and over to the train tracks to watch the growing destruction. She felt bad, her gait was unsteady, she was weaving. She had to pee again.

The fire had grown fast in the time it took her to get back. They had begun furiously pumping water at multiple fires. The roar of the flames drowned out any hissing, but it looked like the water was evaporating before it got there. The flames were now at the tops of the trees, and shooting higher. The fire spread. More sirens, more trucks, more helicopters and news vans.

Suzie thought about how much trauma she was being made to endure. What else, God? she wondered. It's a well-known fact that you shouldn't ask God what else, but Suzie was still drunk, and not thinking about how God might answer that kind of challenge.

Time passed. Explosions, trembling ground, winds of flame and smoke. Roofs and walls collapsed. Cars exploded in the parking lot. The fire grew higher. Burning debris fell onto oily dirt from generations of parked and leaking cars, and there were tongues of creeping flame along every burnable trail, smoldering and bubbling along the driveway and across the road to the train tracks of the CSX Intermodal rail terminal at Hulsey Yard.

The dried brush at the edge of the railyard caught fire. Then a scrubby pine tree went up. Then trash on the rails caught fire, underneath a train creeping toward Decatur and points east. Then the drippy stuff coming off the cars caught fire.

This was one of the first legal lethal trains allowed to come right through the middle of a densely populated area and strategic transportation hub like Atlanta. The tower knew about the chemicals and toxins on the manifest, and wanted the train to get the hell away from downtown Atlanta. But the operator knew the rules. The train came to a halt, car by car, with a thousand heavy clanks. The fire grew higher; the stationary cars started to creak and pop. Smoke began boiling out and into the night sky, all lit up by the city lights, glowing. The flames made pretty colors. Greens. Purples. Blues. It was awesome.

It was also deadly. Suzie fled with a panicky feeling in her stomach. And explosive. She got to Moreland before the beer rebelled in her stomach. She puked into a brand new trashcan in the new shopping center and staggered off, feeling like a wino. She was shaking when she got to where the car was parked. She wanted to hold her breath in case something really toxic was being released.

The Cadillac's engine refused to catch at first. She felt panic rising from her stomach to her lungs. The starter whined and strained for a long minute, slowing. She felt her heart being dragged like the motor. She felt her throat tightening, her lungs growing wheezy.

It started, and Suzie limped off to Ghetto Kroger on Ponce, and huddled in her quilt under the glaring lights of the parking lot, trying to fall asleep while being gently hassled by stealthy people at her window. A new siren went by every few minutes.

After several hours of this, she started up the engine and wound her way down the secondary roads to spend the rest of the night in the parking lot in back of Nelson's shop, the car threatening to catch fire the whole time. She smelled smoke. Who says you can't take it with you?

* * *

next, what kind of fool

splat chapter twenty-nine

2006-08-19T13:07:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Suzie slept like a child. What's the difference between the sleep of the just and the sleep of the damned? Do you think the wicked suffer for their evil done during the day? Do the good commit heinous crimes in their dreams? Maybe there's a balance.

Suzie had boiled all her anger away before she got home. Her lust for revenge evaporated while she made her way through the still wet streets. It took Care Bear fortitude to stay awake all the way to Reynoldstown. She got home to a damp, empty apartment and fell into her bed, spent, asleep inside of a minute. She didn't toss and turn, she didn't wonder if Jerry was all right, if he'd recognized her, if he'd go to the cops and tell them she was the sniper. She didn't think about anything but how tired she was.

All her dreams were under the surface, and to tell the truth, they were all about silly things with very little symbolic content. The only snippet she could recall had her in a movie theater in her socks, sliding all the way down the smooth aisle, watching the screen. Then, rather than walking back up to find a seat, cuz she thinks she's already seen it, she pushes through the exit doors next to the screen and walks out into the sunset. What kind of meaning can be found there?

When she woke up, she was sore all over, so she must have been fighting some kind of battle in her sleep. She felt like she'd been hit with a stun gun. She sat in the living room for awhile, groggy, and watched the Weather Channel while the sun shone outside, wishing the hurricane would turn around and come back. She'd been in no mood to appreciate such impressive weather yesterday, and was sorry now. She waited with the TV on mute until the tropical report came on, hoping it would show another storm boiling up out of the Gulf, heading miraculously their way. But the newest one was still bopping around the Caribbean. She shut off the TV, disappointed. Maybe the next one.

There was nothing to eat. She didn't feel like macaroni and cheese out of a box, or ramen noodles, or a beer. She wasn't really hungry. She looked around at the living room. She'd cleaned it up yesterday, but it was still gross and disgusting. It would take more than just picking up trash to make it a pleasant place to live. She went back into her room, and it was in the same kind of shape, so she gathered and sorted and cleaned and trashed until her room was neat for the first time in months. Maybe she'd take all that laundry down to the laundromat and wash it. Maybe later.

She remembered Alex's phone. It was charged now, so she walked over to the new Edgewood Shopping Center across Moreland to see about buying some minutes for it. The burned out house looked clean now that the rain had washed away a lot of the rubble. A black, picked-over skeleton of some defeated dragon. Suzie felt nothing as she passed it. It bothered her that she was so anesthetized. Yesterday the sight of it had brought tears, but today it was as if it were some sort of art installation. Ruined house #78.

She bought a hundred minutes from the phone store in the new center. It was amazing how fast they'd turned an abandoned industrial complex into dozens of stores that looked like they'd been there for years. She stopped into the new Kroger and bought herself a loaf of bread, some ham, and a carton of milk, just so she could say there was food in the house.

Then she walked back to the apartment and made herself a nice home-cooked meal, and used Alex's phone to call Uncle Daddy, who'd just gotten back from his trip to Macon and was heading for bed.

He sounded glad to hear from her. 'Where are you, Honey?'

'Oh, I'm at home. I thought I'd come over and see you later.'

'Well, maybe you better not. Things are kind of difficult at the moment.' He paused. Suzie chewed her sandwich. 'I heard noises down the back last night,' he began.

Suzie's stomach knotted. She put the sandwich down. 'Oh.'

'There were lights in the woods, and helicopters. Give me your phone number.'

Auntie Mae would be upset. She never did approve of Suzie's hideout. The woods were no place for a little girl to hang out in by herself. 'How's Auntie Mae feel about this?'

He answered a different question. 'She's not doing real well, Honey,' he said, sounding sad. 'The doctors had her in for some tests the other day, and she was supposed to be back yesterday, but they wanted to run some more tests. They're not saying what they think.'

'My God. What's wrong with her?'

He sighed. 'Like I said, they won't tell me nothing. She's just been a little tired lately, is all. It's probly nothing to worry about.' He sounded worried.

'Where is she?'

'I took her up to Atlanta Medical Center there on Boulevard, used to be Georgia Baptist. You might could go and see her. She's feeling pretty low.'

Suzie thought she would just run up there and ask the doctors herself.

'Hold on a minute, Honey,' Uncle Daddy said in a different tone. 'I'm hearing noises down the back.' He put the phone down and went to the kitchen window. The back yard was crawling with police, heading toward the house. He picked up the phone and said hurriedly, 'Honey, the cops are here, coming up from your place in the woods, it looks like. You better stay away from here for awhile. But I want you to go see your Auntie Mae.'

Suzie felt sick. 'Okay, I will, Uncle Daddy. I'm sorry to bring the police down on you.'

'Don't worry, Baby Girl, I'll be fine. You take care of yourself.'

Suzie had a strong urge to sneak over to Uncle Daddy's and cruise by to see what the cops were up to. But she knew for a fact that it would be a stupid thing to do. So she got in Ed's Mercedes and went over to see her Auntie. She parked a couple of blocks away and walked in, to avoid the parking fee.

She had a few qualms about parking such an expensive car near Boulevard, but looking around she realized that just because people were poor and had no jobs didn't mean they didn't drive nice cars. There were a lot of expensive cars parked in the neighborhood. Either a lot of poor people living well, or a bunch of cheap doctors that didn't want to pay the $3 parking fee either.

She left Ed's car where she'd parked it, satisfied that it was as safe as anywhere. She was feeling that Atlanta was a gentle place. Even if it was urban, people still had manners and respect for each other. For a moment, the world felt like a warm, safe place to be.

She found Auntie Mae sitting up in bed dressed in a hospital gown. She was watching a talk show, looking bored. Her room was mostly empty linoleum and empty wall, the bed and a rolling tray were crammed into a corner almost directly below the TV set, so Auntie Mae's neck was cricked. Suzie sat next to her and rubbed her shoulders, arranged the covers, fussed over a passive, quiet Auntie Mae.

'Did they give you any drugs, Auntie Mae?'

'No. Why do you ask, child?'

'I thought you were looking a little out of it when I came in.'

'No. I'm just a little tired. It's too noisy here to get any real sleep. And they keep coming in and fiddling with me.'

They sat there for a few minutes in silence, absorbing the ads and the details of other peoples' lives.

'Uncle Daddy says they don't know what's the matter with you.'

'No. It's probly nothing. Don't you worry.' She patted Suzie's hand.

They sat there for a few more minutes. Another talk show came on.

'This is where my mom died, isn't it?' Suzie asked in a small voice.

Auntie Mae looked at her sympathetically. 'Yes, it is.' She turned to look out the window at the view part of a brick wall someone had painted to look like a field in spring. 'Lord, it's been over twenty years since your mamma passed,' she said, looking down at Suzie. 'You've grown to look so much like her.' She reached out and stroked Suzie's hair.

Suzie took her hand. Auntie Mae was the only mother she really knew. She used to be so lively and strong. Now she was like a ghost, the skin on her hands paper thin and dry, a grayness tingeing the beautiful deep brown, making her hand look like it had been pulled from a fire.

'You're like her in other ways, too,' Auntie Mae continued after a silence. Suzie wanted to hear more. Nobody ever wanted to talk about her mom in front of her.

'Not that you'd ever get involved with the types she ran around with when she was your age.' She laughed softly at the memory and stroked Suzie's hair some more.

'A bunch of environmental activists is who she hung out with. Oh, she was wild, that one. She ran off with her boyfriend who blew up some company's warehouses and then fled. She ended up in Ireland for years, living as somebody else.'

'That would be fun,' she said.

'You only think so. She had to work a deal with the feds before she could come back home, else they would have arrested her for aiding and abetting a fugitive. They wanted to know where the old boyfriend was, but by then she had no idea, and couldn't tell them anything they hadn't known for years.' Auntie Mae sighed. She'd loved Suzie's mom like a sister, back when she was a bit of a rebel herself.

'Yeah, your mom, a real firebrand.' Auntie Mae picked up a strand of Suzie's hair. 'Your hair used to be more gold, more like your mom's, but it got deeper as you got older.' She ruffled Suzie's mop top. 'And dark blue eyes. She always looked real straight at you. Direct. And she'd poke, if she found a place where you had issues. She'd wind you right up to see how you'd react. Hurt like hell sometimes, but people learned not to try any nonsense around her. She was psychic, too. All that stuff, horoscopes and handwriting and tea leaves. She could read beer suds and sweater lint, that girl. She could really pin someone down, lay it all out. People used to come to her.'

Suzie laughed angrily. 'I'm like that? I don't have a psychic bone in my body. And I know absolutely nothing about people.'

Auntie Mae patted her hand. 'I'm tired, dear. Let me lie down. Hand me my Bible over there, if you don't mind.' She pointed to the air conditioning unit by the window.

Suzie got it, took the extra pillows from behind Auntie Mae's back and arranged the blankets around her. 'I should go,' she said, kissing her forehead and blinking back a tear. 'Try to get some rest. I'll come see you tomorrow.' Auntie Mae opened her Bible and started reading where she'd left off.

Suzie went out to the nurse's station. A big black woman in scrubs sat behind the desk filling out charts.

'I'd like to talk to someone about my Auntie's condition.'

The nurse regarded her calmly. 'And who's your Auntie?'

'Mae Wilson.'

The nurse continued to look at her with the same expression on her face. 'And she's your auntie,' she said, unconvinced.

Suzie fidgeted. A white girl claiming relationship to a woman with mahogany skin. Uh huh. 'Yes. She raised me.'

The nurse cocked an eyebrow. 'Like, she was your maid or something?'

Suzie nearly shouted, 'No! I lived with her after my mom died, and...and then my dad.' She burst into tears.

The nurse busied herself with her charts while Suzie fought to control herself. 'Well,' she said, trying to be kind. 'I'm not allowed to give out details of a patient's diagnosis if you're not the next of kin.' She looked up at Suzie. 'And I couldn't tell you anything, anyway. You'd have to speak to the doctor.' She went back to work. Suzie turned away, dismissed and feeling small, and left the building.

When she got back to Ed's Mercedes, she noticed something through the back window. It was a can of brake fluid, tossed in the back. Nelson must have thrown it back there. It bothered her. Here she was, driving a real expensive car. It should be neat and clean, polished and fly.

She reached back and picked up the empty can. It wasn't greasy. She took the cap off and poked at a plastic seal, unbroken. Hmmm. The can twisted apart in the middle. A ziplock bag holding an ounce of pot fell out on the street. She stared down at it. She looked around. Then she stuck it back in the can and threw it in the back. She tried calling Uncle Daddy, but he didn't pick up the phone.

Suzie didn't even try to get on the Interstate. It wasn't completely closed down at this stage, but there were so many bottlenecks, and such a long line waiting to go through or even around that police were warning motorists not to go anywhere near Atlanta if they could help it. Most of the city didn't bother coming in to work that morning.

She drove down to Riverdale on US 41, a secondary highway that runs from Michigan to Miami.

It used to be how you got there, but after the interstates, it was just streetlights and strip malls between vast sections of scrub trees and farmland. Today it was backed up like a parade going through. Everybody was taking alternate routes. It took her an hour and a half to get to Riverdale, a fifteen minute drive on the Interstate.

She had a lot of time to think about Auntie Mae, about her mom, about various acts of vengeance, about her ex job. The more she thought, the more edgy she grew. She was such an angry person, her feelings so raw they amazed her. She never suspected she was that mad at the world.

But she also had this dead area inside of her, where nothing could get in. She was like a light switch, on and off. Her emotional range swung from fury to sobbing, and that was about it. The care and love she had felt sitting with Auntie Mae was the only halfway peaceful emotion she could point to. It bothered her. She must be some kind of freak.

She finally pulled the Mercedes into Stoner's garage, and drove around the back past a newly whitewashed wall. She noticed it with intense annoyance. Then she saw through the open bay doors that Ed was there, yelling at Nelson. Nelson made frantic gestures to Nathan, who came running out of the shop to change places with her.

Ed had seen his car come into the lot, and was stalking through the garage toward it. Suzie fled in a panic. She jammed between cars, crouching so he wouldn't see her. Her bag got stuck going through a small squeeze, and she squealed in frustration trying to pull it through.

Ed looked around, suspicious. He didn't believe that Nathan had been out driving the car, as Nelson was insisting. He continued to yell. She listened to them argue from around the corner. Nelson was lying through his teeth. Ed started cussing. Nelson acted offended, like he never used foul language. Ed started threatening.

Suzie longed to put her head around the corner to see him fume - standing there belly out, red faced, too short to look Nelson in the eyes - promising to have him killed. Nelson's response would be to loom over him and growl. Suzie'd seen him do that with dozens of nasty customers.

Finally Ed climbed up into his car and left, but not before having some pretty insulting things to say about the mess inside the car.

Nelson was steamed. Suzie came out of hiding, feeling like it was all her fault. 'No, Sweetie. I'm not mad at you,' he assured her. 'But, Honey, you sure make things difficult for me when you do things like this. That fucking asshole was this far from calling the cops on me.'

She stood in the hot sun, talking to him. He seemed reluctant to go inside. 'Did you fix whatever he wanted done?'

'No, you didn't give me a chance.'

She winced. 'What did you tell him?'

'I told him there was a problem and he has to bring it back so I can do something else. I told him I've got a part on order and he's just going to have to be patient. But he took his car and cussed me out into the bargain.' He shrugged. 'Now it's his problem.'

He edged away from her and went running back into the shop, grabbing a socket wrench and burying himself in a pickup's engine compartment.

Suzie came in out of the heat, and noticed a woman standing around at the wooden worktable, thumbing through the paper. She was black, and beautiful, with a short afro. Well dressed. Bored. Maybe it was the same woman she'd seen before. Maybe not. Suzie floated around the same side of the shop, but apart from saying hey they didn't speak to each other. The woman read the paper, Suzie watched Nathan testing cars.

Nelson was off under some other car, and then dodged into the office. Suzie looked around for her car and didn't see it. She wished Nelson would roll a joint so they could go around the block and talk. She had so many things to get off her chest. She still hadn't told him she got fired, she wanted to know what he thought of Ed, and she was getting more and more freaked out about having shot Jerry.

But he was ignoring her, and staying away from the other woman, too. She felt uncomfortable. The woman was hanging out in Suzie's exact same spot, and she felt rootless not being there. 'Which one's your car?' she asked brightly, trying to make conversation about how long it was taking and how you had to watch them every minute.

The woman nodded that her car was parked out back, and turned to walk out in the sun and pace back and forth where everyone could watch her. She looked bored.

Suzie moved into her spot and smoothed the paper. She didn't like the way the woman looked down her nose at Suzie's ragged t-shirt and worn jeans. Just because she was dressed nicely, wearing makeup, looking good; not wilting in the heat like Suzie was. The woman exuded exasperated patience. Like she was queen of the universe.

'Who's she think she is, the owner?' Suzie whispered to Nubby while he washed up at the hand sink. Nubby mumbled something unclear and scampered back to the car he was working on.

Suzie studied her. As a customer, she'd be impossible to satisfy. No way would she put up with Nelson's usual half-assed job. She would criticize and whine and bitch and moan until he caved and gave her the best he had, and didn't make her pay for it. And she'd still be haughty about it.

Suzie always took the least crumb, the most broken down car, the worst repair job, and was grateful. She looked at the woman's car; a late model Toyota, gleaming silver, spotless. She would have contrasted it with her car, but her car wasn't there.

Suzie noticed that the woman had no bumper stickers, and thought of one she could print up when she got home. Something like, I'm A Horrible Bitch And It's Contagious. The woman patted her perfect hair and smiled meanly at Suzie, coming back inside and stand impatiently by the Goat's front fender.

Nelson was still giving both of them a wide berth. Suzie went after him, and cornered him rising from the oil pit. She loomed above him as he climbed out of the hole. He started, looking around to see who was noticing. What was wrong with him? Suzie figured it was because Ed had yelled at him. She felt awful about making him look bad professionally. 'Um, Nelson,' she began, turning her attention to her car needs. 'I hate to mention it...'

He whirled on her defensively. 'Now, whatever you think,' he started. Then he noticed her slouching over, looking at her feet, embarrassed, ashamed. He straightened up and preened slightly, glancing over at the black woman, who was watching the scene intently.

Suzie didn't touch him. She tried to never show physical affection in front of the boys, and certainly not in front of customers, and he was standing too far away to touch, anyway. But she wanted a hug badly. Something was very wrong between them, and she felt at fault, and she knew there was nothing she could do except go away and let him work.

But she didn't know where her car was. 'Um, Nelson, I don't have anything to drive.'

'You can have yours back, Baby,' he said nonchalantly. 'It's all fixed.'

'That's the problem. I don't see it anywhere.'

He didn't blink. 'One of the boys took it off to a specialist to get the clutch plate turned.'

Suzie didn't think a clutch could be turned like a brake drum. 'But all the boys are here.'

A bolt of mental lightning hit him. 'I know. You can drive this other car.' He was animated now, and vaulted off toward the front of the shop. 'Let's you and me go and get you up and running. It's a real comfortable car. You'll love it.'

He led her to a 1990 baby blue Cadillac DeVille and waved her inside like she was royalty. 'Yessir,' he said, fishing the keys out of his pocket. 'This is just the thing for you. Air conditioning, leather seats, automatic everything.' He spoke quickly, his gestures urging her to start the engine.

He rummaged in his shirt pocket and reached out with a fistful of pot. She stared at it in her palm. 'I'd rather have a hug and a few minutes to talk with you,' she said. 'I've got a lot of things on my mind. I need a hug.'

His eyes moved around rapidly. 'I know, Baby. But I'm so busy.' He spread his hands. 'I've got to get back to work, can't leave the boys alone for a minute.'

She nodded. He couldn't.

'I've been driving this car myself for the last few days.' He looked at her. 'That's how I feel about you. Giving you the car I'm personally driving. Nothing's too good for you.' He was so anxious for her to be gone that he was almost spinning on the pavement. He was jumping up and down like an impatient child.

'How are you going to get home?'

'Oh, I'll get a ride,' he mumbled vaguely. They were out of sight of the garage. Nelson bent down in the door and went to give her a quick peck on the cheek.

'Where's my hug?' She cried.

He grimaced, and looked around, and reached in and grabbed her shoulders, bringing his face to hers with his tongue already out and probing the air for her lips. His mouth was dry, and there was a string of spit between his tongue and upper lip. It was like french kissing a large, drooling parrot.

She turned away and reached for the ignition. The Cadillac started with a rattle and a belch of smoke. Nelson bounded back from the car. 'Okay, Honey. Come see me tomorrow.' He backed away. 'We'll spend some time together tomorrow.'

Suzie saw through the garage as she was pulling out that Nelson was in there talking to the black woman, his arms by his side, pleading. The woman looked mad.

On her slow way back into town, Suzie tried to call Uncle Daddy again. There was still no answer.

* * *

next, how much worse can it get? Ha.

splat chapter twenty-eight, part two

2006-08-18T11:16:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, PART TWO

Suzie got on the Connector behind Jerry and followed him up 85, weaving in and out using her best driving skills to sneak up on him in the rain. But he was a road hog, and loved the left lane. She found it hard to keep pace with him, but a series of fortunate slowdowns prevented him from getting too far ahead. It was the start of rush hour. In all this rain, it was going to be one hell of a rush hour.

5:14 pm. Six miles southwest of Suzie, Michelle Robineaux was cruising down I-85 in her minivan, a Christian audiobook playing at top volume. She was driving fast, as she usually did, hanging out in the left lane, running people off the road like she was in a hurry to be somewhere. Michelle was driving from Raleigh, North Carolina to New Orleans, going down to visit her latest grandchild. She was well rested, despite having spent the night in some fleabag hotel halfway between Charlotte and Greenville. She was taking her time, and had all evening to get west of Montgomery before stopping again.

Right now she was occupied taking pictures of all the interesting sights as she traveled through the city. She had her camera on her lap, and every now and then she would grab it in her right hand, swing it up, and press the shutter release, hoping to capture something that caught her interest. Being a digital camera, it would miss most of her shots while the computer thought about the settings. Most of the pictures would turn out blurry, and those that didn't would show perfectly focused shots of the raindrops on her window.

She was listening to something she'd ordered from the 700 Club: Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. She found it very convincing, and she was gripping the wheel with a fist while taking notes on a pad of paper resting on the airbag.

Michelle had been driving like this for years now. She was over seventy, and considered herself one of the best drivers in America. In her youth, people told her she should have been a race car driver, but of course, that's a man's job, so she never took them seriously. But she did enjoy displaying her skills. The fact that her vision and hearing were going did not diminish her ability to drive at all.

Right now she was behind some slowpoke in the left lane, impatient for him to move out of her way. She crept up onto his bumper and flashed her lights, but he ignored her, so she got closer still, and honked. Still no response. So she kept it up, getting annoyed at the guy for being so inattentive, asking God to move him out of her righteous path. She would have cursed him, but she wasn't mad enough yet.

Michelle was very religious. The only thing she ever read was the Bible. She kept sneaking peeks at the juicy parts, though it filled her with guilt. If you'd dropped her Good Book on the floor, it would have fallen open at Judges 19:24-29, or the story of Amnon and Tamar, or of Lot and his daughters, or her favorite, the Song of Solomon.

She was still in the left lane as 85 and 75 joined at Brookwood. Traffic slowed dramatically. She was listening with great interest as her tape exposed the horrible excesses of women who didn't keep their place, and her ire was rising.

She crept up on the bumper of the inconsiderate jerk who was blocking her way. 'In the name of Jesus, move the hell out of my way,' she shouted, full of righteous indignation. Slowly the car moved over to let her pass. But the tape said something inflammatory just then, and she got busy writing it down on her pad of paper, unconsciously matching speed with the driver she was trying to pass. The car behind her began flashing its lights, and she got annoyed. What's wrong with him?

Michelle felt thirsty and reached for her coffee mug. The coffee was cold, so she lowered the window and threw it out. It splashed milky white onto the window of the car behind her, which swerved and slowed, honking. She cursed the driver to a fiery death, in the name of God's merciful justice.

Holding the steering wheel with her knees, she reached onto the floor of the passenger seat and grabbed the thermos bottle. She looked up and jerked her minivan back on course. She put the thermos between her thighs while unscrewing the cap. Then, holding her mug in her left hand, and hooking onto the steering wheel with a finger, she poured herself another cup of coffee. She drifted into the next lane. The car next to her honked and slowed. Michelle understood why people said Atlanta drivers were so rude. She took a sip of steaming hot coffee. Happy now, she returned her attention to her audiobook. Wives should submit to their husbands in all things.

There was downtown Atlanta spread out before her, the tops of all the new skyscrapers lost in the mist. Holding the coffee in her left hand, she reached for her camera with her right. Holding the steering wheel with both pinky fingers, she aimed her shot, but unfortunately some Antichrist in the next lane chose that moment to honk at her and swerve away, and she became distracted. The shot blurred.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Her windshield wipers squealed for rain. She drove with unfocused eyes, drinking coffee, listening to the words of Truth, every moment tempted to snatch up her pen and make a note. Her mind was full of thoughts. Michelle had long ago taught herself to multitask. She found it no trouble at all to do five things at once. In fact, the more she had on her plate, the sharper her mind got, the swifter her reactions.

Just then, her cellphone rang. It was somewhere on the passenger seat, buried under the pad of paper, sandwiched between her Bible, a bag of half-eaten chips, and the can of mace she kept to ward off attackers. She fumbled for it as her minivan rounded the Marta curve. Her car yawed way out into the next lane, to a chorus of angry honks and obscene gestures. Michelle cast her condemning eyes on the offenders, corrected her position with a jerk, and raised the phone to her ear with her left hand, struggling to hold her coffee mug with her pointer finger while balancing the phone in her palm.

It was Michelle's daughter-in-law, calling to find out where she was. At first her eyes darted actively about the road, consciously paying attention, showing that she was better than most people at not being distracted by phone conversations. But then she started thinking about how annoying she found her daughter-in-law, how unchristian her son's family was, how she was planning to baptize her grandson secretly when his parents weren't looking. Her eyes glazed over. She didn't notice the cop behind her trying to get past. She was thinking how that hussy gave every sign of being possessed by a demon.

A truck passed her on the right, hissing at her as it threw up a fine mist onto her windshield. 'Demon from Hell,' she shouted. She had to let go the wheel with her right hand, still holding the camera, and reach through it to activate the wipers. They were on the Grady Curve. Her bitch daughter-in-law was warning her they had rules for her to follow, insinuating that they didn't trust her to behave herself. This made her furious. She didn't notice the cop's lights go on, only partly because she was using her jaw to hold the phone to her shoulder and couldn't turn her head.

Her daughter in law was Satan's spawn, and it was time to perform a deliverance ministry on her. 'You are possessed by the devil,' she foamed, beginning an impromptu exorcism. 'In the name of Jesus Christ crucified, I adjure you to leave this unclean body. Direct your power to this sinner. Drive Satan, this unclean demon within her, away. I command you, demon, whoever you may be, by the power of God.' She went to make a mystical sign she thought she'd seen Pat Robertson make on TV. 'I cast you out in the name of Jesus the Destroyer of Lies,' she said into the phone. 'I praise you Jesus...'

She suddenly felt suffused with the Power of the Holy Spirit. Her hands shook. Her vision clouded. She dropped everything to praise the Lord. She spilled coffee all over herself. She dropped the phone. Her hands left the wheel and raised to the sky in supplication and praise. She started speaking in tongues. She took her foot off the accelerator.

The cop behind her got on the loudspeaker and told her to pull over. She felt the voice as a vibration going through her chest. Believing she was being thanked by Jesus Christ, her personal lord and savior, Michelle Robineaux prayed in glorious glossolalia as her car drifted across two lanes, sideswiped a Krispy Kreme van, flipped, rolled, and burst into flames.

Traffic on the southbound Connector stopped dead in the road, as parts of her car covered six lanes, and avoidance-accidents filled the rest. Traffic on the northbound side stopped dead in the road in a big pileup, as rubberneckers paid attention to the fire and brimstone and ignored the brakelights in front of them. It was an unholy mess.

Suzie was stuck in traffic going the opposite direction and miles north, still fairly confident that she was following Jerry. The traffic was diabolical all the way to 400. One car moved at a time, and then stopped. Like dominoes on acid. It was taking forever. The rain was to blame. The standing water stalled some cars, other cars overheated, and there were fender benders as people tried to jockey for better lanes. She passed them all at a snail's pace. A drowned snail.

Suzie peered through the rain at the cars ahead. All she could see were tail lights and shadowy boxes in the thick, heavy, visible air. The wind swept the rain into curlycues and tendrils of moving atmosphere. The cars were cutting through standing water on the road. Nobody was going more than 12 miles an hour. She kept looking for Jerry's BMW, and kept not seeing it.

5:27 pm. Fifteen miles to the west, Jimmy James ('JJ') Jackson was driving around Atlanta on 285, coming from Roswell. He was going around the west side of town to take I-20 to his next stop, a Shell station on MLK Drive. He was driving a Mack MR cab-over truck, hauling gasoline. It was starting to rain again, the road was slick, and the four-wheelers were all driving like assholes.

Cars and trucks were backed up on the right to take the I-20 exit westbound, so JJ moved over, and over again to position himself for the left exit onto 20 eastbound, maintaining a safe distance between him and the car in front of him. As they approached the I-20 overpass, a four-wheeler traveling beside him suddenly sped up and pulled right in front of him, as if the driver didn't see him. JJ peered through the back window and saw the driver flailing her hands. Then he saw her turn around and gesture into the back seat. Then she slammed on the brakes, in the grip of some emergency.

JJ carried out evasive maneuvers, consisting of swearing impotently and braking as gently as he could to avoid jacknifing on the wet road. He was tempted to just drive right over the idiot, but then he spotted a baby carrier in the back seat, and had no choice but to veer off onto the shoulder. He was doing fifty-eight when he hit the bridge abutment.

JJ Jackson was killed instantly. The tanker, weighing 56,000 pounds, smashed him to jelly as it followed him into the concrete bridge, and then blew up. All lanes of I-285 in both directions stopped dead in the road as truck pieces scattered like burning shrapnel. Above, all lanes of I-20 stopped dead in the road as huge cracks opened up in the bridge surface and flames shot through them. Smoke rose like an atomic cloud into the air. The rain increased, but did nothing to lessen the intensity of the flames.

5:31 pm. Sixteen miles away, Suzie decided that Jerry was going to take Georgia 400, and followed, still crawling thru a downpour. Suddenly she made out the bumper sticker on a BMW that moved in front of her, and realized with a thrill that she'd caught up to the bastard. He got into the left lane, driving aggressively, if slowly. He pulled away, but she was confident now.

5:34 pm. The airborne rush hour was every bit as bad as rush hour on the ground. Twenty miles east of ATL airport, Flight 666 from DCA, a 727 three-quarters full, was on final approach. Conditions were marginal. Light rain, patchy ground fog, scattered clouds at 1,000 feet; an overcast cloud layer at 2,000 feet and thunderstorm anvils to 40,000 feet. Gusting crosswinds to sixty-five knots. The tower informed the pilot that the whole area was under a wind advisory, and tornadoes had been reported up and down the path of one of the larger feeder bands.

A hurricane churning northwards past Atlanta goes like this: gusty winds, low clouds, and torrential rain for awhile, followed by gusty winds, hot sun, and instant fog as the air steams right up like someone's focusing the sun with a magnifying glass, followed by another line of thunderstorms. There was a recent storm cell cruising north away from the airport at speed, and another cell in Fayetteville heading toward the airport. Flight 666 was positioned to come in during the lull between one cell and another.

Even in a hurricane, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was open for business, planes dodging the thunderheads on their way in and out. The busiest airport in the world, the airport too busy to close. It might be gusty and rainy with nine inches of rain forecasted, but that was a lot better than anything west or south of there. All over the Southeast, flights were being diverted and schedules were being tossed into the trash. Incoming air traffic was stacked up thirty thick, flying procedure turns all the way up to Charlotte, with barely the required three miles between them, all traveling at 150 knots, all getting lower and closer, all coming in to land. And more behind them, all flying into a headwind that gobbled up their fuel like nobody's business.

The aircraft passed into range of the ILS beacon at the end of the runway. That's an electronic marker that sends out a very narrow beam three degrees up and to either side of the runway. The closer planes get to the beacon, the more accurate the reading on the beam. However, there was a little problem with Flight 666. The aircraft was not getting the ILS signal, but the plane's internal navigation computer said they were right on target, lined up on the final approach, getting lower and closer.

The pilot and copilot spent time looking for a visual, but it was soup out there. It was like flying through bunches of cotton candy, playing peekaboo with the ground. Ground so dark under the clouds that you couldn't see any features. Ground so obscured by rain that even the lights grayed out. They kept flying lower and closer.

The clouds broke up as they approached, and for a moment they saw the runway. The pilot adjusted his heading slightly until it was right in front of the nose. However, the computer still indicated that the runway should be slightly to the north, so he and the copilot feverishly tried to identify the error and make a correction so the instruments would agree with their eyes.

He called in. 'Tower, I see the runway.'

'Do you have the runway in sight?'

'Uh, yepper.'

'It has stopped raining temporarily. You're cleared for visual approach.'

'Uh, be advised we are low on fuel.'

'Copy, so is everyond else..'

The pilot kept checking out of his window. Clouds clouds clouds Runway clouds clouds Runway clouds clouds. Lower and closer, lower and closer. 'Where's that cone?' he demanded. 'We're not getting the signal. We're supposed to be right there.'

Four miles. Constant pressure on the stick was beginning to cramp up the pilot's hand. For a moment, they thought they saw runway 8/26 through the clouds at ten o'clock. This satisfied and comforted them, because they knew that if there was another runway to their right, then they must be heading for the south runway. And there it was again, so all was well. But it was strange, because they couldn't see the terminal lined up between runways. They couldn't see runway lights. Maybe there was a power outage.

Three miles. Though they had intermittent visual identification of the airport, they were still not picking up the runway beacon, so something was wrong. Their eyes reassured them every few seconds that they were heading right toward the runway, but they weren't getting confirmation. Their error checks were getting more frantic and desperate. Lower and closer. Lower and closer. The copilot reached to contact the tower.

Two miles. The computer kept insisting that the plane was outside of the glide path. Either the aircraft was left, right, or somehow too high. But it was time to land, and a last view out the windscreen confirmed that the runway was right there. So the pilot pulled the flaps back and dropped the landing gear.

The pilot was certain of his visual on runway 9R/27L. They were now below a thousand feet . The aircraft dropped down through the clouds, which tore away in patches. He started to see lights, the ground, and suddenly it all unfolded beneath him, with absolute clarity. The runway, eight hundred feet down, a mere mile and a half in front of him, the airport lights, the neighborhoods and roads they were flying over. The runway disappeared back into the clouds. The pilot adjusted power, aiming straight ahead, lower and closer.

One mile. The crew was real busy doing stuff in the cockpit. There was a lot of noise and concentration and frantic figuring going on, and they didn't really hear the tower screaming at them over the radio. They were doing fifteen things at once. They weren't even looking out at the ground anymore. When things go crazy, sometimes you miss a few steps.

Then the clouds were gone and the runway was below, and so they went roaring on in there, and it was too late to do anything about it when they saw that everything was wrong. All sorts of things were different from your typical 9,000 foot runway - there were no lights, no markings, no skid marks, no concrete, Instead, they found themselves landing on top of a pretend runway, a faux runway, a phantom runway, a soon-to-be completed runway. A runway made out of a pile of dirt, shaved flat, and left to erode in the rain.

The pilot was still flying right at it, however, lower and closer. And because his brain knew it was the runway, he was still flying right at it. He didn't have a lot of choice. The aircraft was two hundred feet off the ground, they were close to stall speed, they were too low on gas to call a missed approach and go around again. So while his copilot screamed incoherently at the tower, the pilot put his aircraft on the ground. As gently as possible.

The first few moments went really well. The construction had gotten to a point where the dirt subsurface of the runway-to-be was packed and polished smooth, a giant dirt road. It was pretty muddy at the moment, however, because of the six and a half inches of rain the hurricane was in the middle of dumping on top of Atlanta.

The wheels fouled with mud, and started skidding, and then collapsed, and the plane flopped into the mud, still sliding faster than most cars could drive. Belly down in the mud, like some giant dog, the plane slid down the runway while the pilot tried to steer with the engines. The plane crept ever so slightly to the right as it slowed. Against all odds, it looked like it might work out. The men in the cockpit were extremely tense, every muscle straining, every hand clenched, every thought ending with, 'Oh, fuck.' Fractions of a second crept by as the pilots watched the muddy red simulacra of a runway whirr past.

Even if they couldn't hear over the noise of the plane scraping through the mud, the pilots were marginally aware that there was horrible pandemonium going on back in the cabin as passengers panicked, all the sinners said, 'Oh, fuck,' and absolutely everyone hurled prayers back into the sky as if the plane could follow them.

Slowly, the plane slowed. Both pilots had their feet jammed to the floor, as if trying to brake a semi on a sheet of ice, down to body english and elbow grease and willpower and prayer. It was plowing more toward the right, and the pilots got a better view of the construction site as the plane turned sideways, and continued to skid down the pretend runway.

The copilot reached for the microphone to say something reassuring to the passengers as the plane slowed to a gentle slide, but just then the left wing tip, at that point the leading edge of the plane, began to dig into the dirt of the artificial hill that the runway was being built on top of. With the sound of a shovel prying up roots, the wingtip sliced into the dirt. Then the whole plane flexed and pulled its wing back out of the ground. The fuselage rolled as the plane bounced to its other side, rocking until the opposite wing touched the ground, and rocking back again.

The second time the leading edge of the wingtip sliced into the surface of the runway, it hit a hole. A rather large hole. The left wing of the aircraft went through a missing section of runway. Instead of a hundred feet of bridge to slide safely over, there was a sudden 60 foot drop from the edge of this missing chunk to the surface of I-285 below.

The tip hit the road surface and stopped abruptly. The plane's wing flexed sharply, and then rebounded slowly, taking passengers and crew through a half gainer. The aircraft bounded into the air, its right wing pointing straight up at ninety degrees. It balanced for a very long split second on its wingtip, and then tilted over, and came gently - for a million-ton aircraft - to rest, leaning up against the side of the hole, the left wing stuck in the eastbound lanes of the tunnel, the fuselage twenty feet off the surface of the soon-to-be-completed runway, mostly upside down, and the right wing waving back and forth hundreds of feet above the westbound lanes of 285.

The tail was out over the other side of the runway, hanging by its cables. The plane was suspended there, cracked open at the seams. The passengers could see daylight above their feet. They were on their backs, strapped in upside down. The tail snapped off and fell onto the Perimeter. The rest of the plane shifted ominously. The rain picked up.

5:43 pm. Traffic on the westbound side of I-285 stopped dead in the road at the sight of a huge jet plane facing them like some bomber from hell. Drivers panicked, causing a forty-eight vehicle pileup. Unhurt motorists stopped and got out of their vehicles to stand in the pouring rain, staring up in amazement, taking pictures with their cellphones and calling 911.

The captain reached for the intercom. He put a jauntiness into his voice that made the copilot blush. 'Well, folks, looks like we had a bit of a bumpy landing. I'd like to apologize for putting us down a little farther from the terminal than expected. Right now our capable flight crew will see you safely off the plane, and we'll have you reunited with your luggage in no time. On behalf of the crew and myself, we hope you enjoyed your flight.'

138 passengers were upside down in their seats. Flight attendants started trying to open the cabin doors and get the emergency chutes switched around opposite their suggested positions . In the cockpit, the pilots were busy shutting down the equipment.

138 passengers dropped and rolled and were picked up off the ceiling of the aircraft, or turned summersaults over their seat belts, or dangled upside down until they were released into waiting arms. Lines formed for the chutes. There was very little talking. Overhead bins had all come loose underfoot, and some alert passengers managed to find their carry-ons.

The flight attendants would get special awards later. They were tight, trained, and keeping it all together. Passengers were deplaning as fast as they could be unfastened, turned upright and shoved out the door.

The crash victims stood huddling in the rain and wind at the foot of the chute. News helicopters began bobbing above their heads. They could see the lights of emergency vehicles bogged down in the mud of the almost completed runway. The passengers were silent, stunned, waiting meekly, lucky to be alive and really glad to be off the giant plastic slide that was held in place with velcro. It took under two minutes to empty the equipment.

The flight crew abandoned the plane only after the last passenger went down the chute into the wind and rain. A feeble cheer went up from the passengers when they appeared at the plane's mostly upside down door.

The crew began herding passengers away from the aircraft, faces bowed to avoid the rain, slogging carefully through the mud to be rescued. Rescue vehicles were bogged down completely in the muck, a quarter of a mile away.

Brave drivers in the far right lanes of 285 westbound began to creep along the shoulder, trying to get into the tunnel and resume their journeys. But most people turned their engines off and gawked up at the nose and the slowly oscillating wing of the crashed airplane.

The rocking of the fuselage had never ceased, and now a combination of wind and weight began to pull the plane over, making a great gnashing sound. Passengers and crew fled the scene leaving shoes and carry-on bags stuck in the mud. Drivers standing around the mouth of the tunnel scurried back into the shadows. The fuselage came farther over the edge. It began to tilt; it began to teeter right at the edge of the bridge, the top wing yawing out over the stopped vehicles below. Stuck travelers heading westbound sat there in their cars, mesmerized.

And then, with one long metal screech, like ten thousand fingers on a blackboard the size of Turner Field, the aircraft slowly pirouetted and bowed its head, both wings coming to rest across the rim of the bridge, bAllencing on their leading edges as the airplane's black nosecone came to rest straight down, and the back end of the fuselage stuck straight up into the air. Like a cartoon plane crash, stopped in the air mere feet off the ground.

5:47 pm. The rain let up to a drizzle. Low clouds raced across the sky heading due north. Wind pushed and prodded the wet, weary passengers as they stumbled toward the flashing lights.

Thirteen miles north, Suzie was just creeping past the exit to Lenox Mall, afraid maybe Jerry would have gotten off there. But she spotted him heading up the road at the last minute, and continued her slow-motion pursuit.

Uncle Daddy was driving around the bottom end of the Perimeter heading for 75 South, taking a load of auto parts to Macon. He was having some trouble driving in the rain; the rig was handling sluggishly in all the water, he could feel the load shifting every time he took a curve, and his stopping distance was enormous. He cursed all the silly little ants in four-wheelers that kept squeezing in front of him. Traffic kept coming to a stop, every mile or so. It had been stop and go all the way around the Perimeter because of the rain, because of construction, because of rush hour.

As he entered the new 285 runway tunnel, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that something was very wrong. First he noticed what looked like an enormous knife blocking the tunnel's exit. Then he noticed a great deal of mud on the road surface. And cars stuck in it, pointing every which way. Uncle Daddy braked to a smooth stop with only a slight skidding of his trailer. He was rear-ended by a four-wheeler trying to stop, but there was no damage to his Kenworth. Cars pulled to a stop behind them, causing more crashes as traffic stopped dead on the road in the almost-completed bridge tunnel.

5:54 pm. Traffic had been stopped below the crash scene for eleven minutes. A new feeder band had moved over the area, and the wind and rain picked up until you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The traffic jam gurgled and regurgitated around the Perimeter like a snake with constipation.

The flow around the bottom end of the Perimeter stopped, choked to death at the south end of the airport. Vehicles came to a stop further and further along 285 every moment. Traffic coming both ways along 75 was affected next, and the right lanes backed up as drivers were prevented from exiting onto the Perimeter. Then traffic coming up from 85 South jammed at the entrance to 285.

Northbound travelers started to encounter massive brake light zones as they made their way past exits onto the Perimeter. A fender-bender occurred in the middle lanes of I-85 South at the 285 East exit, and while the drivers were inspecting the damage, another fender bender occurred a hundred yards to the rear. This narrowed the road down to one left lane. On I-75 South, a tanker carrying septic sludge grazed a Dodge Ram maneuvering past the exit to 285 West, and jackknifed, car after car impacting its side as it slowly came to a halt, sewage spreading out and beginning to dilute in the rain. All lanes were now blocked on 75 South. Several injuries were reported.

6:00 pm. Seventeen minutes after Flight 666 came down on the wrong runway, the northbound lanes of both 75 and 85 were barely creeping past the exits to the Perimeter. Traffic was slow in all lanes all the way from Union City on 85, and Tara Boulevard on 75. The Connector into town had palsy, as cars shuddered to a stop further and further away from the rapture of Michelle Robineaux.

As the rainy rush hour continued, more and more motorists tried to get from Downtown where they worked, to some point outside the Perimeter where they lived. More and more motorists came around a bend in the rain and saw completely stopped traffic in front of them, put their brakes on, and came to a halt while the cars behind them came to a halt, and the cars behind them, and the cars behind them.

6:05 pm. Traffic came to a stop at Spaghetti Junction on 85 North, and just before Cobb Parkway on 75 North. The top end Perimeter came to a creaking, splintering halt as car after car slammed into car after car. This kind of jam happened every day, but as luck would have it, it was complicated by a fresh twelve-car pileup at Spaghetti Junction, and an accident involving a drunk driver in a pickup just before Windy Hill on 75.

6:11 pm. Atlanta rush hour traffic was a necklace of pain around the city. Suzie was in an enormous line at the tollbooth on 400, beating the steering wheel in frustration. Jerry was in a much shorter, actually moving line of cars with prepaid cruise cards who were jaunting through the tollbooth at a speedy five miles an hour. He was getting away. Suzie yelled and screamed, jumping up and down in the seat, honking madly. He was out of sight, and she was still five cars back from the tollbooth. Would she have been mad to learn that Ed's car also had a cruise card.

Slowly, slowly, she crept forward. Then she was through the toll, creeping forward. Then she was approaching the exit to the Perimeter, crawling. Her throat was ragged from screaming. She passed the exit, and traffic stopped dead on the road in front of her.

A mile in front of her a car had tried to change lanes to take the Sandy Springs exit, and got hit by a bunch of other cars that didn't want him getting in front of them. It wasn't a high speed crash, but it was just as dangerous, because he'd pissed off a lot of people who were now dragging him out of his car and beating him with tire irons and flashlights.

It stopped raining. Dark purple clouds barrelled along right over their heads. People all around Suzie turned off their engines and rolled down their windows and left their cars to peer up the road and wonder. Suzie sat in the developer's car listening to traffic reports on the radio, fiddling the dial from station to station, bored. Seething with anger and frustration.

6:25 pm. The only moving vehicles within sight of Atlanta's highways were helicopters, traipsing from one interchange to another, battling the winds, floating just under the clouds, gleefully reporting massive traffic jams everywhere.

Suzie sat and fumed for twenty-eight minutes. Jerry was somewhere ahead, a sitting duck. And she was helplessly stuck somewhere behind him. Her one meaningful act of vengeance, and she was stuck in traffic. It had started to rain again, hard and pelting. It made insistant tapping sounds on the hood and roof.

Suzie found that she couldn't just sit there and let her opportunity for vengeance pass. She grabbed her bag and checked her things, and then got out of the car and started walking forward through the line of cars. She hardly saw anything around her. Her ears were filled with the sound of roaring blood. Her head pounded with rage, her heart beat wildly with the desire to inflict pain. She was barely thinking.

It was almost by reflex that she reached into her bag and put on her disguise. The weight of the glued-on cellphone dragged the wig over slightly, but she didn't care. She reached back into her bag and patted her paintgun. She was full of purpose now. Full of hate. The rain stopped again. Her wig stuck in limp strands to her face and neck, and began to itch.

She saw Jerry's BMW in the distance. Still in the left lane. She walked along the shoulder steadily, slowly, ignoring the other cars. Every step felt like it took a month, every breath felt like thirty gallons in and out of her lungs. Every car she passed seemed like it was half a mile long.

Jerry was smoking in his car. His windows were down slightly and Suzie heard classic rock coming from inside the car as he leaked cigarette smoke into the air. She walked calmly up to the car. Her mind was blank. She had rehearsed his crimes for hours, all day long, proving over and over to herself how inhumanly wicked he was. But now she felt mostly fatigue. Numbness. A weariness unto death.

She stopped by his open window and looked down at him. He sat staring forward out the windshield, his fingers busy tapping in time to the music. She stood there quietly. It was as if she were back at the Club, waiting for him to order. Finally, he looked up. An annoyed look crossed his face and he reached for the window switch. He took her for a beggar. 'I don't have any money for you,' he snarled and turned away. The window began to close.

Something snapped in Suzie's brain, setting off a reflex she'd been practicing for months. 'Well, I've got something for you,' she said viciously. Her finger curled around the gun and brought it out of her bag, and with one swift tremor, she jerked it toward him and pulled the trigger. Bloop. Suzie shot Jerry in the temple with a menstrual-red paintball. His head continued to turn, sped up considerably by the force of the projectile.

Bloop. Another red paintball hit the back of his neck. It wasn't going very fast, but it had enough impact to explode all over him. Jerry looked startled, and went limp in his seat. His cigarette fell into his lap. The side of his face and the back of his neck looked like Suzie'd been at him with a kitchen knife.

She bent over to have a good look at him. He wasn't moving. Only the dripping red paint was moving. Only the smoke from his cigarette was moving. 'Enjoy,' she said. 'No tipping allowed.' She looked back at him as she moved away. 'And no smoking in the dining room.' Maybe he'll be out long enough to catch on fire, she thought.

Suzie walked slowly back to Ed's Mercedes. It had begun to rain again, harder every moment as another feeder band moved over. Suzie had begun to cry. She wasn't sorry for Jerry. She would have liked to torture him to death, to hear him beg, to see him in real pain. Hell, with her lousy paintgun, she didn't actually think she'd done more than stun him. Suzie was crying for herself.

It rained harder than ever. Suzie had left the bag opened and rain poured into it like she was standing under a rain spout, soaking everything, ruining her picture of her dad. She cried harder than ever.

She got back to the car. Up ahead, where drivers had beaten the lane-crosser within an inch of his life, the ambulance was heading off to the hospital and the tow trucks had begun to arrive. Traffic was beginning to move minutely in the lanes farthest from the scene of the incident.

Suzie sat in Ed's car, sopping wet, waiting for traffic to stir in front of her. She pulled her wig off once she sat down, and was slowly pulling herself together. Her gloves were stuck on. She'd cried pitifully all the way back to the car, sobbing, horribly sorry for herself. She felt as if the world was coming to an end and she was more of a loser than ever.

The cars close to her began to creep forward. Suzie turned on the engine and followed an inch at a time, barely paying attention. The cars in the left lane weren't moving at all, blocked by Jerry's BMW. She stared straight ahead as she drove past in the next lane, not daring to look over. She was certain that everyone would automatically know she had shot him. But they all assumed the car had stalled and he must have walked off and left it, because he was invisible, slumped out of sight in his seat. Suzie glanced in her mirror and noticed a police car approaching his stalled car along the shoulder. She had a few moments of absolute panic, but as the traffic continued to move, she felt like maybe she might make it away. It was close.

Twelve responsible citizens had called 911 on her. One saw her putting on her disguise. Two more saw her stalking toward Jerry's car along the shoulder. One saw her whip out her gun and fire into the car. Two saw her putting the gun back into her bag, and half a dozen called simply because they thought she looked suspicious walking through stalled traffic. The reports dwindled to almost nothing by the time she got back to the developer's car, so the cops got a very good description of the assailant, but they only knew the make, model and color of the car she got back into. Traffic was too thick and the rain was too heavy to get the license plate from the traffic cameras.

6:49 pm. The Perimeter, I-85, I-75, I-20 and GA 400 resembled movie sets from The Day After, with isolated zones resembling the aftermath of the chase scene from The Blues Brothers.

Suzie got off at the Northridge exit and made her way back home along the surface streets, making the usual detours to avoid flooded out sections. She felt numb, and very tired. She hardly thought of Jerry at all, and when she did it was with a certain satisfaction.

By 5:28 the next morning, most of the rain had blown past the metro Atlanta area. But the interstates were closed. I-75 North was thick with trucks coming up from Florida, all lined up with nowhere to go, and traffic was solidly packed north of Macon. By early afternoon, it was a parking lot all the way down to Valdosta near the Florida border. Traffic on 85 North from Montgomery was likewise stopped. 75 South from Chattanooga was being rerouted through Birmingham, and 85 South was rerouting traffic from Greenville to Augusta. I-20 travelers were being stopped at the border and told to visit Birmingham or Augusta for a couple of days. Across the nation, it was the top story on the morning news.

* * *

next, mort trouble

splat chapter twenty-eight, part one

2006-08-06T11:21:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, PART ONE

The guys still weren't there when she got home. The TV was on the Cartoon Network, where she'd left it, but she was too depressed to watch the news, or to check out the chance of rain on the Weather Channel. She turned the TV off. The living room was eerie without constant sound and lights. It smelled of mold, stale cigarettes, and dried beer. The odor of freshly burnt house came in through the open windows. Suzie felt lonely, and this made her more depressed. She was all alone in the world. She felt fatigued beyond anything she'd known. Her back hurt. Her feet hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her head hurt.

She put herself to bed, but couldn't go to sleep. Her mind kept replaying all the conversations she'd overheard, all the snippets of vitriol and self-righteousness and prejudice, all the snide, catty observations, all the cruel abuse hurled at her. She kept thinking about Jerry's plan to enslave the working class. She kept seeing Jerry's wife, dying in her party dress. She kept wishing she'd been more forceful with the poor little barefoot woman. Leave the bastard, she kept thinking. Leave him. Divorce his ass and take him to the cleaners. It serves him right for treating his wife like that. Make him poor. Revenge is a dessert best served on a canapé tray.

Suzie's mind kept spinning. She wondered what she was going to do for a job now that she'd been fired. Fired. Let go. Terminated. She thought about almost being turned over to the cops, and felt cold. The chance of being arrested. Put in jail. Made to serve time with thieves and murderers. She started to shiver. It was eighty-two degrees in the house, and she was freezing.

It started to rain. This should have brightened Suzie's mood considerably, but she felt even more depressed. She lay in bed, snuggled in the covers, listening to the rain dripping on somebody else's window air conditioner, listening to the rain hitting the leaves of the dogwood tree outside her window. It sounded sad. She started to cry, and every time she thought of the things that had happened to her, she cried a little more. Her tears increased with the rain. Finally, it reached the intensity of a howling, drenching downpour.

She stayed up all night crying, sniffling, listening to the rain, feeling like she was drowning. When she finally slept, it was fitful, full of angry dreams.

She dreams...she forgot. But the pace was frenetic and confusing and she didn't know what to do.

She dreams it's raining. She's wet but not miserable, and is kind of enjoying herself. Everyone else is scurrying around trying to keep dry. The details are gone now, but she was on some kind of mission.

She dreams she's riding in the truck with her dad. They're stopped at a light, and talking easily. She doesn't remember what they were talking about. To their right is the on ramp to I-85. It looks like they're at the North Druid Hills entrance. The light changes. Suddenly Suzie is no longer in the truck, but standing at the side of the road, watching her dad drive away. She shouts his name. She thought he would pull over to the right shoulder and wait for her. But he keeps going, and gets into the left lane to take the cloverleaf back toward town, an option that doesn't exist except in the dream place. She shouts again. His window is down, and as he goes around the curve she sees him dart over in his seat, maybe to unlock her door. She shouts a third time, as he disappears. A stream of traffic is going past, blocking her from crossing the road to catch up. She doesn't know if he'll be there when she rounded the curve. She begins to think she'll have to make her way home on foot.

She swam into consciousness some time late in the morning. The apartment was silent, the rain was continuous, the humidity was 150Àher sheets were soaked. It was getting to be a full moon. Shit happens on a full moon.

The guys were still not home. She knew something was wrong, and was now certain they'd been arrested. She wondered what she could do about it, how she could find out what happened to them, how she could ever raise bail to get them out. Maybe her next paycheck would cover it. This reminded her of having been fired. Her heart sank.

She turned on the Weather Channel. It was good news: there was a hurricane, onshore and barreling straight up the border between Alabama and Georgia, and they were forecasting high winds and torrential rains all day, with the danger of flash floods and possibly tornadoes. But the news didn't brighten her mood at all.

Wandering through the apartment, picking up trash and pitching old clothes into the corners, she stumbled across a cellphone sticking out from under a couch. It looked like Alex's. Hmmm. She rummaged around in his room and found the charger, and plugged it in. She turned it on, but it came up with a message to upgrade the minutes. A prepaid phone. Maybe she could use it. It might come in handy to have a phone, especially if she was going to be looking for a job. And when Alex came home, he'd be glad to see that she'd bought him some minutes. He never had the money for cellphone service.

She got into the loaner, drenched to the skin, and started the engine. It was working fine the night before, except for overheating and the Check Engine light, but this morning there was a funny noise when she started it, and it roared to life with a new, loud clanking sound, metal slamming against metal.

Oh shit, she thought, it's going to die on me. She put it into gear and put her foot on the gas. The noise increased, the clanking went faster. How was she going to drive all the way to Riverdale with it acting like this? How could she get it there before it died? Nelson would be so mad at her for killing the car.

Passing the burned-out house on Seaboard brought tears to her eyes. The devastation reminded her of Jerry. Something she heard him say to Ed made her wonder if they weren't in back of the house fires. And the more she thought about it, the likelier it seemed. Neither of them had any respect for anyone without a lot of money and power, and both of them were ruthless.

She drove as fast as she could in the downpour, always in the right lane in case she had to pull off the highway with a dead car. She was anxious. She could feel the tension building in her shoulders, her legs. She was willing the car to keep going, sitting forward in her seat, using body english to propel the car down the road, watching the idiot lights and desperately hoping they wouldn't change. The engine noise gave her a headache. She was nearly in tears from worrying whether she was going to make it.

She pulled into the garage and took her foot off the gas. The sound lessened until it sounded almost normal. She put it into park and left it running so Nelson could hear it, but Nubby told her he was out on a test drive, so she shut it off and went into the shop to wait, slipping and nearly falling on a fresh grease spot. She wondered did they ever mop the floor, or did they just wait for a good rain and hope it would flood the place clean.

Nubby was working on a pickup in the southwest bay. He left the driver's side door open while he was fooling around under the hood, and Suzie could hear it. Bing bing bing. The sound irritated her.

Nathan pulled a rusty old car into the emissions bay. He grinned at her. 'We're going to have to clean-pipe this one,' he said. 'I got to wait until Nelson gets back, though. He won't let me do it myself.

Suzie hung out at the wooden worktable, rummaging through the newspaper, a copy of Hustler, a grease-thumbed parts catalog for the GTO. She found a huge butt-end of a joint, too big to call a roach. She found a picture. It was Nelson, looking smashed. He was sitting sprawled against a booth seat next to a dark haired woman with too much makeup on. The shot was taken from between some stripper's bare legs and high heels. She turned it over. It was developed a little over two weeks before.

Nelson pulled into the back parking lot and came loping into the shop. Nubby came up to him with a clipboard and they discussed what to bill some customer for taking a part off, cleaning it, putting it back on again, and calling it new. Nathan came up and snagged him to go watch the beginning of his illegal emissions test. Glenda yelled through the hatch that he had a call on line two. He hadn't even seen Suzie.

Suzie was distracted. The car Nelson had pulled up in looked a lot like the developer's car. She wondered if he'd taken her advice and brought it down to let Nelson fix it. She wandered over to the edge of the shop, standing out of the way of the rain sheeting off the roof and blowing in at a 45-degree angle, and had a look at his bumper. Sure enough, there was her replacement sticker. The bastard never noticed it. Cool.

She had a sudden thought. Maybe she could get a job working at the garage. Then she could make a side career out of political commentary with her stickers. She decided to ask Nelson if he had anything she could do there. Maybe she could change oil. Nathan certainly wanted to move up the ladder; she could do his job. Or Allen's, who hadn't been around the shop lately, probably a parole violation.

But first, she had to tell him about the loaner blowing up. She went up to him and waited for him to finish his phone call. He gave her a distracted half-hug and continued talking. She studied the clouds and rethought her confession. By the time he hung up, she was thinking of other things entirely. 'Look, Nelson,' she said, pointing to the sky. 'A feeder band. That's the hurricane, right there.'

He gave her a bothered look. He hated rain.

She sidled up to him. 'Do you want to go for a ride?' she asked. There was something so exciting about pounding rain. She suddenly felt like she'd really like to go off somewhere and make love. Even in the middle of the mall parking lot. Nobody would see them on a day like this.

Nelson noticed her condition, and dragged her off into the parts room for a quickie. This time she didn't pull away or feel embarrassed that everyone in the shop knew what was going on. She felt giddy, hearing the rain beating down on the roof, feeling Nelson thundering into her, knowing how close they were to being discovered. She forgot all about the car. Nelson came before she'd even hardly got going. She was sore afterward; it had been so long since they'd had sex, it felt like her hymen had grown back.

When they came out of the parts room, Nelson looked into the parking lot and saw the loaner. 'Oh, good,' he said, 'you've brought it back. We've got to get that car fixed and out of here today. Let me give you another car to drive until we can fix yours.' He called to Nathan to pull the car into the south bay.

The car started up and began clanking loudly. Nelson looked at Suzie narrowly. 'What's that sound?' he asked. Suzie was surprised that he had to ask. He should know the characteristics of every sound in every car.

'I was just going to ask you,' she said. 'It started making that noise this morning. That's why I brought it back.'

He blew up. 'Why didn't you call me instead of bringing it all this way?' he yelled, backing off and staring down at her. 'You could have damaged it beyond repair, and we'd be liable for it. What's the customer going to say when he finds out it's broken?'

'But the phone's out,' she said weakly. 'I couldn't call you, and I thought the best thing would be to get it here as fast as possible.' She held back tears. 'I didn't think.'

'Baby, cars aren't supposed to make that kind of noise,' he said, more gently. He was thinking over his options. He turned to Nathan. 'Leave it where it is,' he decided. 'We'll do something else.' Nathan shut it off and came back inside, sopping wet.

Suzie was puzzled. 'Doesn't the customer need it back today?'

'By the time I get through with it,' he said, 'the owner won't know it.'

Suzie pointed to Ed's car. 'Can I borrow that one?' she asked sweetly. She had a sudden thought about booby trapping it somehow, putting a paint grenade in the car somewhere, somehow. Something that would pop up and bite him.

'But we're working on it today,' he said. 'We got to do a brake job.'

'I told a friend I'd help her move today, and that's got plenty of room.' He looked around the parking lot for something big, but except for a pickup with a blown engine, there was nothing. 'I'll have it back in a couple of hours,' she insisted, trying the same type of baldfaced lie she suspected of him, rubbing up against him and stroking his arm. 'I'll have it right back. I promise.'

He hesitated only a split second. 'Sure, Sweetie,' he said with a show of generosity, handing her the keys with only a shadow of anxiety. 'Bring it right back.' She pulled on her driving gloves and blew him a kiss, and left before he could come up with another alternative.

She made her way back into town in Ed's Mercedes SUV. The rain was still steady, but the sky was lightening above her, and she could see yellow sky between feeder bands. She drove to her hideout, but went in through the cemetery next door so she could work on the car undisturbed. She hadn't gone in this way for months. The path was completely overgrown, and she had to push aside the undergrowth and step through brambles, watching for poison ivy. It was raining only lightly now, but she was wet through, with scratches on her arms and legs.

The ground was squishy. The trees sounded like it was still raining hard. It was hot, and humid, and everything smelled like a mixture of tropical plants, salt air, and mold.

As she brushed by all sorts of plants descending to the creek, she noticed some tree limbs that had been cut, and saw little dayglo orange flags on stakes. Surveyors had been through recently. Suzie wondered if someone was planning to develop the woods behind Auntie Mae's house, and thought evil thoughts about Ed and Jerry.

She looked around the clearing. It didn't look as if the surveyors had gotten that far. Everything was filthy. There was mud everywhere; runnels covered the clearing as the rain converged on the creek. Suzie looked around, disgusted with her silly fantasies of being a superhero. She went around gathering up the junk and stuffing it into a garbage bag, angry with herself.

It took a couple of trips to pack all the stuff into the trunk of Ed's Mercedes. Her lean-to and stool. Equipment for do-it-yourself paintballs, from an abortive attempt to include a printed message inside the sphere. A bunch of plastic jugs and a length of rope. Cans of house paint, a bicycle pump syringe, a couple of yards of rubber surgical tubing, some ball bearings, a pair of roach clips, cotter pins, some tools, a bunch of old paintgun magazines.

She'd had such grandiose dreams of complex James Bond stealth weapons. She'd spent hours dreaming up fantasy redesigns of her weaponry. She'd cut the paintgun barrel down. She'd disguised her gun as a drink cup. She thought about putting it into a long tube to hide it, but it would have meant shooting out of the passenger side window. She thought about making a gun hole through the back of the trunk, and wiring the trigger to the brake handle. She thought about filling the trunk with paint buckets and dumping them onto the road in front of her target.

Today, she had this stupid idea about cutting a hole in the driver's side door so she could fire unobserved. But cutting holes in the door wouldn't give her a good shot; it would confine the gun to a very narrow angle, so she'd be maneuvering the car to take aim.

She realized she was being hasty. She was about to do deliberate damage to a very expensive car that just happened to belong to someone she despised. She realized she was being hateful, and therefore she shouldn't do it. It would be better to put sugar in the gas tank, and fuck things up for him over the long term; cause him real money to get it fixed.

Then she thought about how much Ed made last year, some bunches of millions of dollars. Why the fuck not destroy his car? And plus, she was really paranoid about someone seeing her gun, because she was afraid of being spotted by Joe Commuter and turned in, or shot at by some vigilante punk wannabe cop. So she got out her screwdriver and started to take the interior panel off the door anyway. She felt silly, though.

She started on the panel screws, and noticed that they were half-stripped. Some were missing. The rain was starting to pick up. She was sitting there on the edge of the door, taking the door panel off, getting wetter by the moment. But she couldn't get a purchase on the screws. Everything was getting wet, and she was crying with frustration.

Finally she got the panel off. But how strange. Someone had built shelves into the door. She thought for a moment and peeled up the carpet in the back. The metal of the floor had been cut away, and there were more compartments. Suzie sat and thought. Then she examined the shelf in the door. Beeswax was scraped along the edge in curling slivers. There was a scummy gray mass on the ledge of the door below. Something had spilled and gotten wet. She tasted it. Sweet tea and something bitter. Then her teeth went numb. Cocaine. Ed was running drugs? Nelson was running drugs? Some expatriated mexican was running drugs?

She looked closer at the interior of the car. Everything had been fucked with. Not that anything was out of place, because how would she know? But there was ash everywhere, and a roach in the console ashtray. There was grease on the rug, and bolts and screws on the floor. The glove compartment was a mess. Someone had spilled sweet tea on the passenger's seat, and it was still damp. She wondered what was going on, and put the door back on, bemused. She forgot all about cutting her own holes in the car.

The rain picked up again. She got back on the road. The clouds were low and scuddy, the sky above them lead-gray. She was driving around aimlessly. With no job to go to, she was at a loss for something to do with herself. She was still steaming about getting fired, and her mind was still rolling around the things she'd heard last night. She was beginning to piece everything together. Things that had been too far over her head to muss her hair, now hit her upside the head as they came around again. Her neighborhood was going down the tubes, her roommates were going to jail, and her chances for another restaurant job were finished.

And it was all because of Ed and Jerry, who had been thorns in her side for a very long time. Jerry was behind the new, draconian homeless laws, and the new twist on slave labor. He and Ed were the cause of the house fires, and behind the plan to destroy her fine old Atlanta neighborhood for profit. She grew more and more angry, less and less rational. She felt crazy. She wanted revenge like she'd never wanted it before. Ed and Jerry must be made to suffer, to pay for her pain. She hated being in such a helpless position - no job, no home, no future - and she blamed them.

So she went looking for Jerry. One more quest for vengeance, but this time she wasn't just out to get a random bad driver. She was out to wreak justice on an evil man. To stop a clear and present danger. To stomp a noxious, disease-ridden bug.

She knew where he used to work, and figured she might could find him t here, so she drove over to the Midtown law offices of Reedham and Wheat, Mohn, Nash, Wayle, Sweat, and Trimble, and parked illegally at the end of a side street, watching the parking deck entrance.

She sat there for several hours peering through the streams of rain on the windshield. She smoked the roach, she read the owner's manual, she doodled on the leather seats with a ballpoint pen.

But Jerry wasn't coming out. Maybe he wasn't there at all. Maybe he was over at the legislature, helping to put new harshness into the legal system. She drove downtown to the Capitol buildings. But there were armed guards, and no way to cover all the exits and parking lots. So she moved on. Perhaps he was over at the old prison farm, the Straight Path Center, advising prison officials on how to get the most use out of their new slaves. So she cruised down Moreland past Auntie Mae's, out Key Road, and drove slowly by the barbed-wired facility. No luck.

She felt foolish. She'd spent three or four damp hours, sitting and waiting, and cruising and searching, and it was looking pretty hopeless. How stupid she felt. Back on Moreland, the first thing she saw was the Reinsourcing America billboard. Suzie pulled into a gas station and used the public phone, standing in the rain. The operator gave her the street address of the agency. Midtown, not two blocks from his old law office. So she headed back north.

And there he was. Suzie was illegally parked on Peachtree for no more than five minutes when she saw his BMW pull out of the parking lot and head for the highway at . She followed him. Her stomach hardened into a tight knot when she caught sight of him. She tasted bile. She wanted to kill him, to see his lifeless body slumped in his seat. It was a good fantasy. He so needed to die.

* * *

next, a little heavy weather

splat chapter twenty-seven, part two

2006-08-04T21:21:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN, PART TWO

There were the members in black tuxedos, looking like clones. And then there were their wives. Skinny women with their evening gowns falling off them, wearing $200,000 jewelry around their necks. Women with square, stout bodies squeezed into something that they'd said, 'Oh sure, I'll just hold in my stomach all night.' Women in sleeveless dresses that were showing off real muscles earned at the gym. Ravenous women that wouldn't eat except after a round of, 'Oh, I shouldn't.' Women who were perpetually dieting and looked daggers at the waiters going among them with trays of canapés.

Passing hors was an assembly line process. Into the pantry, where a cook with a coldbox full of little edibles was busy arranging them on trays. The waiters lined up, discussing the crowd. Then when it came their turn, they hoisted their tray and went out to circulate among guests. Sometimes they didn't get ten feet into the room before their trays were empty and they were coming back to line up in the pantry again.

Suzie was on her third tray, and the room was getting crowded. Her wrists were sore, her arms ached. She had a smile plastered on her face, and was looking people in the eyes, smiling, enticing, tempting, offering. 'Oh, have some of these. Everyone says they're heavenly.'

The details of the hors d'oevres were somewhat complicated. There were baked brie tartlets with toasted pecans. There was mini beef Wellington with a béarnaise dip. There was sliced smoked salmon with capers and dill cream on rounds of melba toast. There was Thai pistachio chicken salad on shrimp toast.

Suzie listened to the descriptions back in the pantry, and rolled her eyes. This audience wouldn't care about the details. She went around the room saying, 'These are salmon, beef, cheese, this is chicken salad.' She said it 793 times. As the guests hovered over the tray, she'd add, 'Take two. It's going to be a few minutes till I can get back your way.'

She noticed another waiter moving in front of her. It was the woman who worked smart. She wasn't making eye contact with the guests; she wandered blindly through the crowd, slowly, lingering near knots of people, waiting for them to reach out and grab food off her tray. Suzie watched her. Poor thing. She waddled. Her legs were short, her ankles were stumpy. Her feet hurt and her hips were creaky. They passed in the crowd. 'I'm getting too old for this,' the woman said in a low voice.

Suzie cruised to another knot of partiers. She walked up to two members in black suits, with short, balding hair, and round faces with glasses. They were way taller and bulkier than she was. Their lissome and shimmery wives towered above her on their high heels. She held the tray above her head. They picked at the food and kept talking.

'We decided to freeze the pensions in our firm,' the one member was saying. 'The employees haven't stopped giving us hell about it.' He gulped a canapé, and continued, chewing. 'They point to the raises we just gave top management, and our record profits, and just won't stop complaining. If I could count the number of bitchy emails I've received.' He selected and inhaled another tidbit. 'They know we have to stay competitive. They need to get off their asses and take greater responsibility in managing their own finances. Get in line with current trends.'

The other member said in a confidential tone, 'I've heard rumors of a walk out.'

'We'll fire every one of them, and won't give them any pensions at all. Goddamn ingrates.'

Suzie lowered the tray and moved away. It was much lighter. The men had only had a few hors d'oevres while they were talking, but the women had eaten morsel after morsel, staring down at the tray like it was a game board and deciding which piece to take next.

Ed the developer saw her before she saw him. 'Darling,' he roared from his circle of members and their wives. She came over and offered them her tray. He leaned down toward her to say softly, 'Where you been all night?' Then straightened up, took a chicken salad, and said proudly to the group, 'This here's my little waitress who takes care of me whenever I eat at the Club. Right, Suzie Q?' His all-seeing wife, embarrassed at his attention to a waitress, kicked him gently in the shin to keep him from breaking into song. Suzie managed an embarrassed half-grimace.

There were tight knots of people in formal wear standing right in front of the pantry door holding drinks and talking very loudly. The knots formed clumps. Having secured their spot nearest the source of the food, they weren't about to move. The waiters had to wend their way through a thicket of black coats and half-naked backs.

The traffic irritated Suzie, and she saw the pained faces of other waiters waiting to work their way through. But they couldn't be rude, they couldn't say, 'Listen, stupid, stand somewhere else.' They couldn't bump the guests, because it would be the waiter's fault. They couldn't catch their attention and say, 'Excuse me,' because the noise level was too loud. They just had to stand there until someone, a wife usually, noticed and moved them out of the way.

One guest was Suzie's instant favorite. A woman in a simple black dress, wearing almost no makeup; not all done up like a Buckhead babe the way the others were. She was being kind to the waiters, asking if they'd been able to sample the wonderful appetizers. She was being so nice that Suzie kept coming back with full trays to offer the woman the first choice of the chicken salad ones, her favorite.

Several times Suzie saw someone whose clothes she admired, and spontaneously complemented her on her dress. As if they cared. If they heard her, they nodded and smiled a genteel smile. It was interesting that so many of the ladies were uncomfortable in their expensive clothes. They were stiff, they kept tugging at straps or waists or hems. And they wobbled when they walked in their high heels, every one of them.

After an hour of wandering through the increasingly tipsy crowd, the noise level was deafening. There were so many guests in evening wear that movement was almost impossible, and Suzie was getting tired. Her feet hurt. She began to stand in one place holding her tray and smiling stupidly. She began to walk slowly. She began to hide in the pantry while her tray was being refilled. She started leaning against the walls, holding the tray with her elbow wedged into her hip, resting her arm muscles. Every time she thought about the hours and hours until she could go home, she moved a bit more languorously.

She paused in a strategic spot with her upheld tray, joining another waiter who was smiling steadily. They stood there and rested for a moment as people came by and absently grabbed a snack. 'I know they're supposed to be rich and all,' Suzie observed after awhile. 'But they've got thicker accents than anyone I've ever heard.'

The woman looked puzzled. 'What's that got to do with it?'

'Well, they sound like rednecks.'

The woman looked at her. 'Girl, they are rednecks. Most of this country is rednecks. What's being rich got to do with it?'

'Well,' she said, embarrassed. 'I thought wealth meant culture, education, refinement. Things like that.'

She sneered. 'What century did you grow up in?'

Suzie came out with another tray of canapés and wandered over to a further corner of the room where she hadn't been before, and headed to a large knot, hoping they would clean the tray for her.

It was the doctor of bling in a small crowd. Suzie thrust her tray into the middle of them. The doctor gave no sign that he saw her. Canapés started disappearing; Suzie could feel nudges and pressure as busy fingers pounced all over her tray.

The men were talking global politics, the problem of America's image overseas. 'We're a force for good,' someone declared. 'Encouraging countries to become more democratic is the right thing to do.'

Doctor Bling pronounced, 'I personally support the idea of being the world's moral policemen.'

Her tray empty, she went past Ed and his wife. She sure didn't look pleased with him. He kept looking around the room, his big face beaming tightly, like nothing was the matter, while his wife fussed at him. 'All's I'm saying is, is you better behave yourself. If I catch you messing with that horrible Mary Ellen McCall again, you'll be sorry.' Maybe she beats him, Suzie thought. 'I'm ashamed of you,' she continued. 'It's not the way a gentleman acts. Your constant dirty mouth, those awful innuendoes. You make me sick. I don't know why I ever married you.'

The developer rolled his eyes at Suzie. She turned away. His wife continued to berate him. Suzie hear her shrill voice from across the room. 'Tramps. Whores. Other men's wives. Waitresses. How could you?'

Back in the pantry, a cheer went up when they ran out of appetizers and the call went down to the kitchen to send up the main dishes. The waiters began carrying their trays around the ballroom looking for empty glasses and crumpled napkins. Then the trick became to avoid knocking into some guest and spilling over a tray full of glasses. It was a test of skill and navigation for the waiters.

The guests never noticed, but the waiters showed off for each other, turning lithely or bending into impossible shapes to skirt obstacles without slowing down. Eye contact and a grin were all the acknowledgement they'd get, but it was all about being part of the team.

A few minutes later, a string of porters entered the room holding serving trays full of food, which they carried to the buffet tables. Waiters hurried to remove the lids of the bains-marie and light the cans of sterno underneath, the trays were lowered into the frames, and serving spoons were laid on top. Then they got out of the way as the guests converged on the buffet.

Suzie and the rest of the service staff stood against the wall while the guests filled their plates and took their seats. Plenty of partiers ate standing up, so now there was less room to move because of all the people taking up space at the tables as well.

The porters inspected the guests and their things closely, and completely forget to watch the buffet table for empty serving dishes. They were kind of creepy, for porters. Way too edgy, kind of unfocused on being servants, more interesting in figuring things out and watching for opportunities.

She found herself standing next to a porter who wanted to carry on a conversation. He was a tall, skinny white guy in his early fortiess with a grizzled face and crooked teeth. He started by observing how nice everybody looked, and when Suzie responded with a curt nod of her head, he went on to observe that they all looked very rich too. Suzie said nothing, not wishing to encourage him.

He changed the subject. 'This is hard work. My feet are sore.'

Suzie felt sympathetic. So were hers. 'They working you hard?' She asked.

'Ah, it's not so bad. It's kind of cushy. We could be doing hard labor.'

Suzie stiffened. 'I'm sure you deserve it,' she sneered.

He looked her over, offended. 'I don't deserve to be treated like a criminal,' he said. 'I'm dressed up just like you, doing the same job, where's the difference?'

Suzie reacted with physical distaste. 'You're a public enemy. Society has tossed your ass out, away from good honest citizens.' Except there he was.

'I'm not an enemy,' he smiled reassuringly. 'I'm a nice guy.' His hands went out by his sides, pleading. 'I'm a good man.'

She turned away from the table she was watching and glanced at him. He once had a handsome, intelligent face. Suzie found herself less willing to insult him. He might could be a nice guy, who was she to judge?

He looked over at her. 'I'll have you know, Darling, some of these dangerous criminals are in for nothing more than unpaid parking tickets.'

'Well,' she hesitated. 'There might be some people who don't deserve it, but you've got to be consistent to be fair.'

'What about honest mistakes, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, mistaken identity?'

'Excuses.'

'What about bad laws?'

She paused. A pause that drained the energy out of her thoughts. 'Bad laws.' Suzie thought about it. Like the homeless law. Like the vandalism equals terrorism law. Like the dissent is treason law.

Good rules, bad rules. She didn't consider going over the speed limit to be criminal. Or cheating on her taxes. Or stealing pens and lighters. Or writing on walls.

'Well,' she said. 'The real crime is being a danger to others. The violent acts.'

He agreed with quick nods of his head. 'Yes,' he said rapidly. 'Human life is a sacred thing. Violating a human life should be punished with the harshest tortures ever devised.'

He shifted on his feet rapidly, his weight on his toes like a guy on meth. His eyes darted around the room while he was talking, a nervous smile distorting his lips. 'I contend that property is theft,' he said, looking around to see if anyone was listening. 'It's not really a crime to steal or damage or vandalize somebody's property because it doesn't really belong to them. It's just depreciation. Like, it's just stuff, it gets old and breaks down.

Vandalism, a thing that just happened. She thought about it as she went out to collect more dirty dishes. Well, vandalism did just happen if you parked in certain urban parking lots at night. Suzie fantasized going out and keying a bunch of Hummers in the parking deck as a lesson to those who would flaunt their wealth while others did without.

She came back to Doctor Bling and his group. She could tell by the colors of the dresses that this was a different batch of couples schmoozing with the rising star. She handed the tray into the middle of the circle. Conversation never slowed as they picked it clean. 'We need a unified strategy, a solid brand positioning,' some guy said. 'We need to stick with the taglines that have always worked for us.' He paused briefly to squeeze in a canapé. 'The land of opportunity. That's a brilliant tagline. But we've got to downplay opportunities for women and things like that, because different markets won't go for it.' He looked around at the other men. 'Women should keep their place, anyway.' The wives ignored him.

The good doctor spoke up in a righteous tone. 'The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.'

Continuing to explore the room with a tray half-full of empties, she spotted Jerry talking to another member over by the buffet. The other member was famished, and ate from the serving trays with his fingers. Jerry wasn't interested in diluting his alcohol. He was half-drunk and fuming. 'You know what it costs to keep a prisoner in this state?' he asked as Suzie collected glasses from off the buffet table behind him. 'Fifty bucks a day, $20k a year. And the state's only allowed to recoup thirty dollars from each convict.' The other guy nodded, his mouth full. 'That's why I started this business. We make them work it off. I rent them out and do the paperwork and keep the commission. Everybody's happy.' Suzie finished filling her tray and moved away.

The guests ate and ate. The waiters circled and hovered. The ladies slung their tiny purses over the backs of their chairs when they sat down, and left them there as they got up for more, or wandered over to other tables, and only came back for them when it was time to go to the bathroom with a gaggle of friends. Suzie thought they were being careless with their bags, especially with convicts on the loose, but they looked at her strangely when she cautioned them.

She made a slow circle of the tables, looking at the plates and glasses. It was hard to tell when someone had eaten all they were going to eat. Most people were consuming only some of what they had, and either played with the rest of their food, or left it in front of them. Only a few knew to put both knife and fork together on the plate as a sign to the waiters that they were finished. Suzie heard grumbling among the waiters lining the walls, about etiquette, about badly raised rich people, about pigs in troughs.

She made her way to where Ed and Jerry were standing close together, waving drinks in each others' faces. Ed's belly took up the middle of the space.

'This shit is getting out of hand,' Ed was saying, worried. 'We got to keep them under control.'

'Well, what do you want,' Jerry sneered. 'It's not like they're special effects movie guys, or pyrotechnic experts doing a Fourth of July.'

'I know, but.'

'These are guys with records a mile long. They like playing with matches. That's why I picked them.'

'All's I'm saying is, is that we got to make them be more careful. I didn't know they'd be so hard to settle.'

Jerry waved it away and finished his drink. 'Of course they're going to be a little hard to control. It's creative genius at work.'

He reached over as Suzie passed and dropped his glass onto her tray, nearly making her lose her balance and spill a dozen glasses. She looked back at him. He was staring at her with malevolence in his eyes, as if he'd just spied a rat.

The crowd in the Ladies Slipper Ballroom began slowly to disperse as the guests had enough to eat and wandered off to the dance floor. Suzie and the other waiters picked up their pace, scurrying to the pantry with half eaten food, plate stacked on plate, glasses clinking together, napkins crumpled and stained.

She pushed through the pantry door with her tray, squidged over to the folding table that was now set up as a slops, scraped the food into a trashcan, dumped the drinks into a bucket, stacked the plates into a bus tray, tossed the silver into a water-filled tub, inverted the glasses into the proper rack, tossed the napkins into a laundry basket, picked up her tray, spun on her heels with a squeak, and went out for another load. She was going full steam now. All the waiters were hustling, trying to keep up with the mountains of dirty dishes still being generated in the ballroom. Nobody was chatting, nobody was passing comments, nobody was taking their time.

Except the porters. They were still holding up the walls, watching the diners, still never minding the levels of Bourguignon and Coq au Vin and Veal Marsala and Shrimp Curry in the bains-marie, making excursions instead to hover in the vicinity of the members' back pockets.

Jerry was over by the bar when she came out, waiting impatiently for a drink. The bartender had seen him coming, and handed him his fresh whatever as he got to the head of the line. He took it without a word, and moved off, turning back to his conversation with a fat member with glasses and short, balding hair.

'Let me get this straight,' the guy said. 'You convict them, and then sell them back into the same workforce.' Suzie was standing with the bartender, clearing dirties from the side of the bar.

Jerry nodded, taking a sip. 'The only net effect on the economy is a reduction in available money,' he waved his glass, 'because they won't be spending anything where they're going'

The guy shook his head. Available money, isn't that a key factor in causing a depression?'

'Not a depression,' he said pedantically. 'A period of revaluing and reprioritizing our resources.'

They each had a slug of their drink and looked around. Suzie glanced at the bartender and could tell he was listening. Jerry explained, trying to interest the guy in the worldwide implications. 'The class you want to protect is the class with the major spending habits.'

The member nodded; sure.

'Well, the best way to conserve resources is to confine all consumer spending to the rich.' Jerry took another drink and looked him in the eye. 'And all it takes is doing away with the free working class.'

Suzie saw the bartender's eyebrows raise, as he graciously continued to serve all the roaring drunks who came up to the bar.

The guy blinked, then took another drink. 'Yes, how elegant. Bye-bye Wal-Mart. Their entire customer base will be in jail.'

Jerry nodded seriously, sloshing his drink. 'We foresaw that problem and reached out to help. Wal-Mart is one of our biggest collaborators, actually. We've done visioning sessions with them that were just astounding. They've got this slave-labor issue figured out. They pioneered a lot of modern personnel methods that we really admire.'

Suzie finished loading her tray and moved toward the pantry.

'They'll be better citizens than before,' Jerry watched her go. 'Their contribution will be channeled where society needs it most,' he said to her back. 'Not wasted on things like entertainment, putting gas in their pickups, or sitting around watching TV. Subhumans.' She could hear him from the door. Suzie didn't go back near Jerry for awhile.

At 9:45, the Service Manager came around to tell them they were going to close the doors and break down the buffet at Ten, and after everything was cleared away, they were to join the waiters in the Southern Sportsman Ballroom to tend to the dancing drunks.

The breakdown began. The ultra-polite Service Manager followed the last of the guests to the doors and shut them, and the moment there was nobody around to see them, the waiters went to work like cockroaches in the dark.

Tray after tray of uneaten food went back to the pantry and was dumped into the trash. The sauces came back brown and gloppy looking, with bits of whatever the guests had been dipping into them. Gross. The leftover hunk of prime rib went straight to a Sous-chef who took it downstairs to dry it out for the employee meal tomorrow. Oh well.

They rushed to help themselves to whatever morsels they desired, cramming lumps of cheese and chicken wings into their mouths as they came through the doors, eating chocolate covered strawberries, stuffing themselves with ham biscuits, gobbling mouthfuls of grapes, wrapping things in paper towels to sneak home. But, eat as much as they could, the food in the garbage can could still have fed a multitude.

It took much less time to break everything down than it had to set up. Half a dozen waiters stripped the tables of their linens and folding everything, and dumped the fancy gold top cloths into a basket to be returned to wherever they'd been rented from. Then the porters took the tables and chairs away, along with a few handbags.

The waiters had a few moments of standing around in the pantry, catching their breaths and basking in the glow of their unnoticed hard work, and then it was into the other ballroom, to watch the members and their wives party down, to clear away glasses, to walk around with trays of pastry, to ache longingly for the end of the evening.

Ed stood by himself in the middle of the room. He watched Suzie as she picked up empties, and waved her over to deposit his glass on her tray. 'How you doing, Sweetie?' he asked, all smiles.

She almost felt sorry for him for having such a bitch of a wife. On the other hand, she didn't know anyone who deserved it more. She made some inaudible remark and tried to move on, but he reached out and grabbed her free arm. 'How's about you and me slipping off to my car?' he asked. 'I've got heated leather seats and a bottle of Jack Daniels in the back.'

Suzie looked at him like he was crazy. 'I like your new uniform,' he leered. He wanted to tell her just what her uniform did for him. There was his wife just finished yelling at him, and there he was hitting on her the moment her back was turned. Where was the hag, anyway? Suzie spotted her, sitting down next to another wife, their heads together.

Suzie wandered over to where the wives sat, and found a few glasses to collect. Ed's wife was holding the other woman's hand and looking concerned. She looked like she'd just finished fainting. Suzie walked up to them. 'Is everything okay, ladies?' she asked. 'Is there anything I can get for you?'

The developer's wife looked up and recognized Suzie. Her look of concern was replaced by revulsion. 'No, thank you,' she said archly. 'We're perfectly fine.' But the other woman asked for a glass of water in a voice Suzie had to bend down to hear.

'I'll be glad to get you some water,' she said. 'Just sit right there and I'll be back in a moment.' It was only when she came back and handed the water to the woman that she realized it must be Jerry's wife.

She looked like a specter. Her skin was ashy white. She looked over a hundred years old. Her wig had slipped down over one ear. The skin on her neck was papery, and her arms were sticklike. Suzie wondered why she was here. The woman was obviously ill, and needed to be in bed. Did Jerry force her to get dressed up and come out? Suzie felt immensely sorry for her. She looked like she was going to die right there in her chair.

'You look unwell,' she said. 'Are you sure I can't call a taxi for you?' Jerry's wife looked like it was a wonderful idea, but the developer's wife hushed her up. 'I said,' she sneered gracefully, 'we're perfectly fine. Thank you all the same.' She turned back to Jerry's wife. Suzie left them and headed back to the pantry.

She was clearing a table in the far reaches of the ballroom when she was jolted by a hand grabbing her elbow. It was a mousy little woman with short hair and a black sequined gown shapelessly draped over her worry-thin body. Tugging at Suzie and leaning into her at the same time. 'You've got to help me find my shoes,' she said very softly, very close to Suzie's ear. She clutched Suzie's arm with a desperate grip. 'You've got to help me find my shoes, or my husband's going to be angry.'

She was very drunk. Luckily Suzie had a table to support her, or they'd have been weaving around the ballroom like waltzing clowns. Suzie tried to prop her up by her elbow, and assured the woman that she would look until she found them, and that she'd be right back. The woman stared into her eyes with childlike trust.

Suzie stabilized her against the table, and stared down at her clothing for some distinguishing mark so she'd remember who this person was once she'd rounded up her shoes. She wore a dark brown cut-velour scarf in oak leaves. It would do for a landmark.

She looked into the woman's face. 'Tell me about your shoes.' The wife had short dirty blonde hair, and a sad face, a pitiful face, like she wanted to please but her master beat her. A blonde Springer Spaniel.

She thought for a moment. 'They're dark brown, sling back.' She waved a hand vaguely at the room. 'I left them under the table somewhere.'

Suzie went around grabbing the bottoms of tablecloths and billowing them up so she could get a good look underneath. She looked in the corners, looked in the decorations, looked in the hall, looked in the lounge. Finally she found them kicked deep into a bushy display of kudzu vines, honeysuckle and gardenias. Then she realized she was never going to find the woman in this crowd if she had moved from the table. Which she had.

Suzie spent a bunch of time wandering around looking at women's faces. She thought it was strange to go through a crowded room and only see one thing. That wasn't usual for a waiter. Well sometimes it was. Most times waiters saw everything, aware of every nuance of movement, behavior, conversation, game, scheme, dynamic.

She got stuck behind a couple of members for a moment. While she waited for traffic to thin out, she listened to them discussing the Battle of Atlanta at the end of the Civil War. About Hardee's men sneaking around the back of the Union soldiers in the night for a surprise attack. Hardee was a street in her neighborhood. They also mentioned Brantley, Manigault, Holtzclaw, Cumming, Walthall and Stovall. All streets in her neighborhood. All Confederate Generals in Cheatham's Corps. 'A bunch of history, right there,' the guy was saying. 'I can't wait to get in there with my metal detector when construction starts.'

She passed them a few minutes later, and this time they were talking about the Peculiar Southern Institution. 'The idea that slavery was an inferior economic system is a damned Northern lie.' The guy sounded heated, but all Suzie saw of him was his back. 'They insisted it was unprofitable, but don't you believe it.' The other guy made I Hear You noises. 'Slavery was incredibly profitable, the best possible return on your investment,' he continued. 'Much more efficient than family run farms, and no harder on the slaves than what any white farmer or factory worker had to put up with in those days.'

'Slavery was incredibly profitable, the best possible return on your investment,' he continued. 'It was much more efficient than family run farms, and no harder on the slaves than what any white farmer or factory worker had to put up with in those day.'

Suzie decided she'd had enough of that part of the crowd for awhile, and went to another part of the room, slowly, looking at every woman's neck, only looking at women's necks, automatically blurring out whoever didn't have anything around her neck, fiercely examining everyone who had anything around her neck at all. She zeroed in on a green scarf. Her eyes snapped to a silver choker. Maybe she should have been looking to see who was barefoot, but she continued her roving search for the oak leaves and the blonde hair.

She felt like a dog looking for her owner. She's not in this room. I'll go into the next room. Are you here? Are you here? You are my person, I know your smell, I will find you. I must find you. It's my mission. I'm a good waitress. Pant pant pant.

She didn't find her. But eventually she found someone who was also looking for the shoes.

'Those are Margaret's shoes,' she said, as Suzie walked down the hall toward the bathroom with the shoes in her hand. Like she might suspect Suzie of stealing them.

Suzie handed them over. 'She asked me to help her find them.'

The woman smiled with brittle care. 'Thanks. I'll take them to her, I know right where she is.'

Relieved of her burden, Suzie went back into the ballroom, and cleared tables for a few minutes.

She stopped to take empty glasses from a couple of members. 'I'm tired of all the criticism,' one of them said. 'All these angry unbelievers and liberals accusing us of the worst crimes and excesses. They're attacking Jesus, and I for one won't stand for it.' He pounded his empty glass into his fist. His friend muttered.

'I mean, we were here first. We invented the American culture. We instilled this country with a noble, Christ-centered tradition. And now we have all these other cultures cutting us down and demanding changes. You don't take our shared common values and call them biased and prejudiced.' He thumped his glass onto Suzie's tray. 'We are the keepers of what is right and what is wrong, and people are just going to have to get used to it.'

She passed Jerry with a full tray. He was reciting a list to a couple of other members.

'The banks, the Church, everybody. Audi, BMW, Daimler-Benz, Ford Werk, Volkswagen. IG Farben, Bayer, Siemens, Leica, BASF, Degussa, Krupp, Bosch, Electrolux, Blaupunkt, Deutsche Telephonewerk - they own T-Mobile. I've got a bunch of stock in that company.'

She passed Jerry again with an empty tray. He was speaking with the fervor of a preacher in front of a camera. 'They operated at peak capacity all the time. Yes. And they made enormous profits. I'm telling you. Yes. Not just from the low low cost of labor. Not at all. Also because there was no benefits cost.'

One of his friends said, ' Now that's what I'm talking about.'

She passed Jerry again just to make sure what she was hearing. 'Never even had to feed them, really,' he was saying urbanely. 'Just order up another one from the camps and send the wasted unit to the ovens. That's how cost-effective it was.'

She moved away, and noticed the woman with the oak print scarf again. She had her shoes on, and was flitting like a ghost around a hi-boy, her hands fluttering, going into a crouch beside it, making her self small so nobody could see her. She was plastered. Then she flitted over to her husband who was standing at the next table scowling, and made as if to hang off his neck, but then flitted away again to flutter in front of him, like a six year old courting her father, whispering Don't Be Mad At Me things.

Suzie didn't like the looks of the husband. He was a fleshy man, his chins came over his collar and bowtie. He had no lips, his mouth was pressed in wrinkled disapproval. He meant to be severe with her, and wasn't falling for the seductive act.

Suzie went to bus the table around Jerry and his group. He was draining his drink and she stopped to let him deposit it on her tray. 'Disposable people,' he was saying, looking down at her with no expression on his face.

She wandered off to gather more glasses and noticed a guy with a drink in one hand, leaning against a wall, squeezing his wife's ass through the flimsy material of her backless dress. She loved it, and was draped across him smooching his neck.

After a few more rounds of the glasses, she decided to check the lounge for new deposits. She found the blonde oak woman with her shoes on, huddled against a table in the front hall, looking sulky.

'Did you found your shoes?' Suzie asked, for something to say.

The woman's face brightened as she recognized her. 'Bless you. You're so kind to find my shoes.' She grabbed Suzie's hand.

Suzie wondered why she looked so upset. 'How are you doing, then?' she asked.

'I'm very angry.'

'At whom?'

She glanced fiercely down the hall toward the bathrooms. 'At my husband.' She swayed and bobbed when she talked, leaning and straightening. She gave Suzie a hug. 'Thanks for finding my shoes,' she said, sighing. 'I love you.' She started to cry.

Suzie gently disentangled herself from the arms of the weepy woman.

'He's on the board of directors. I'm so embarrassed.'

'Are you embarrassed for yourself?' The woman nodded tearfully. 'Don't be,' Suzie said, squeezing her hand. 'You can't let anyone make you feel small.'

She looked at her shoes. 'I embarrass him.' A tear started to fall. She was gripping Suzie's hand tightly, so she reached up with the other hand up to wipe it off her cheek.

'You'll be aight.' She wiped another tear.

She sniffed. 'He's embarrassed that I had a little too much to drink.'

Suzie snorted. 'That happens to everyone. It's not a bad thing. You're a good person.'

She brightened. 'I am a good person. I try very hard.'

Suzie agreed. 'You're a good person and you'll be fine.'

She started to cry again. 'He never notices I'm a good person.'

'He's a mean man.' Suzie remembered his scowl. 'It's a power thing,' she tried to explain. 'Don't let anyone make you feel bad about yourself..' She felt like she was scolding her.

The woman teared up some more. Suzie wanted to tell her to just go ahead and divorce the bastard. She'd seen how they were together. He was the disapproving, stern guy who thought he knew best and that she needed to do things his way. He was punishing whenever anything was less than he expected it. An alcoholic himself, by the looks of it. The kind that sits and broods in front of the TV set, and then gets abusive and ugly. And if she was drinking too then they'd get into a shouting match, and he'd hit her and slam off into another room. 'Divorce the bastard and start again.'

She looked around wildly. Suzie knew she could never bring herself to file for divorce. Look what she'd be losing. All her friends. All the clothes and jewelry and the nice house and the vacations. All the people who air kissed behind each others' ears and said HaYow AWher Yew.

She left the woman holding up the table in the front hall, and went reluctantly back to picking up empty glasses. Suzie noticed the guy, still squeezing his wife's ass, now standing over by a hi-boy. His hand had moved lower. People were looking. She was squirming. He had a big grin on his face.

Suzie cleaned up a few hi-boys, delighting in swiping fresh drinks from partiers who'd just then parked them on the table and gone onto the dance floor. She didn't drink them, though some waiters were sneaking the dregs of likely glasses as they walked into the pantry. She carried them back to the slops table, poured them out, and inverted the glasses into the rack.

Suzie took her tray and went to check for glasses in the ladies' lounge. The ladies had been extraordinary diligent about taking their drinks to the bathroom with them, and just as careful to leave them lying all over the sinks and dressing tables. As she was coming out of the lounge, she was waylaid by Ed the developer, who whipped the tray out of her hand and put it down on an end table. Opening a closet door, he whipped her inside and shut it again.

Ed was all over her, his hot alcoholic breath on her neck, in her hair, searching for her lips, his weight crushing her back into the shelves of toilet paper and cleaning supplies, his hands relishing the feel of tuxedo skirt, the polyester pleats covering Suzie's breasts. She shoved him away. 'You know,' she said coolly, 'your wife is tired of your flirting with anybody you identify as female.'

He paid no attention. 'Oh, Baby, Baby, I want you so bad,' he crooned, drooling, as he fumbled for a feel. She shoved him away. The back of his head hit the door with a thunk.

'I'm going to have to make a scene if you don't stop this,' she said coolly. He paid no attention. He was grabbing at his crotch with one hand, grabbing at her skirt with the other, and leaning on her to keep her still. She shoved him away.

The door popped open and he went sprawling onto the floor. Suzie emerged from the closet, straightening her hair and smoothing her skirt, and saw him propped up on his elbows, grinning at the progress he'd made. A couple of guests on their way to the lounges stopped and exclaimed over him, looking at Suzie. Another member helped him up and they staggered into the men's lounge. Suzie collected her tray and fled for the pantry.

She went back out for another batch of glasses and bottles. Her feet really hurt her now, and her lower back was sore. She was almost on automatic, her eyes admitting only the light from empty glasses, her ears unfocussed. Little phrases came at her out of the din. The vacation house. The renovation. The sitter. The President. The war. The hurricane.

She walked by a group of wives being lectured by someone's husband. 'Liberals are notorious opponents of good old American values,' he said, explaining. 'Where the husband goes out to work, and the wife stays home and takes care of the family.' The women nodded politely and glanced at each other with blank expressions.

She cleaned up a hi-boy where two men were watching the dancers and talking.

'Deliberate mass firing for profit enhancement,' one said. 'It's the latest trend.'

The other guy said, 'It's a natural and objective market phenomenon, like a hurricane or a tornado.'

She noticed the guy squeezing his wife's ass. It was almost porn. She had one leg half-up on his thigh and was wriggling into his crotch. His hand was inside the back of her dress, fingering her thong. His grin was larger than ever.

Ed found her clearing glasses off a table in the back of the ballroom where it was poorly lit and practically deserted. 'I'm serious about taking you out, Little Lady,' he said as he circled the table toward her.

'You know,' she said, straightening, lifting the tray. 'I'm working here. I'm trying to get my job done, and you're hassling me.'

He kept coming. 'I own you anyway, practically,' he said in a spiteful voice. 'I pay your wages.' He swaggered up in her face. His voice softened. 'You need to be nicer to me.'

She backed off. 'You do not pay my wages. And I don't work for tips.'

He kept coming. 'No, really. You better get friendly.' There was a warning in his voice.

She look at him with disgust. 'Fuck you. You can't influence my behavior. You're not even getting real service. All you're getting is what minimum wage buys, the appearance of service. And you'd better appreciate my performance, or I'll spill something on you, ooh.' She shook her half-full tray at him, clanking the glasses.

'Shit.' He was getting angry. 'You women have never had it easier. You get to steal jobs from men or stay home and play house. Marriage and divorce are a business to your kind. You trade for sex just like any whore.' He kept coming. 'You can even join the Army and see the world if you want, and there's no danger of being killed in combat.' She could see the fury in his eyes. Fortunately, he was drunk, and she could run faster than he could.

'I can see you've put a lot of thought into it,' she observed, backing around the table.

He kept coming. She eventually did something she might have regretted in another life. Ed got within spitting distance, his little eyes squinched up, his face as red as if she'd already slapped him. He reached discretely for her breast, and she threw a drink into his face. He backed off for a moment, startled by the ice cubes pelting his glasses, and kept coming. 'Aw, come on,' he pleaded. 'Be nice to me.' He reached for her ass. She took aim and kicked him in the knee. He went down, howling, holding his leg. Suzie put the glass back on her tray and prepared to return to the pantry.

Jerry was there in a moment, the lawyer in him rushing to take advantage of an opportunity for litigation. 'What do you think you're doing?' he demanded in a very loud voice. Members and their wives turned to stare.

Ed was still rolling on the floor. He was trying to look up Suzie's skirt. 'I told you you better be nice to me,' he warned. Suzie turned to go, resisting the impulse to step on him.

Jerry hurled a final insult as she walked away, incensed at her audacity. 'You're just a stupid little white trash whore,' he said in a voice she could hear from the door. 'You'll never do anything with your life. You'll never make any difference. You might as well be dead. And you're a horrible waitress.' He laughed cruelly. 'You can't even do a simple job like waitressing right.'

The Service Manager found her in the pantry. 'Suzie, I need to see you in the office.' he said, and led her down the stairs into the kitchen and straight to Chef's office. He unlocked it, and shut the door behind them. He stood towering over her. 'I've noticed some very disturbing things about you tonight, Suzie,' he said heavily.

Suzie was tired. Her arms felt like she'd been tied up all night. Her feet ached like there were chains attached to her ankles. She sighed.

The Service Manager looked her up and down. At her stapled skirt. Her runned tights. Her flat shoes. 'It's come to my attention that your attitude has gone downhill in a hurry.' He moved closer. It felt menacing. Suzie had only the bookshelves to back up into.

'I've had complaints from several of the members,' he continued. It was a different kind of threat from when Ed had her boxed into a closet. This was the kind of threat where she felt in danger of her life. Sweat bloomed on her forehead, and a chill went down her spine. 'And their wives have been complaining about you, too.' She began to feel light-headed.

The Service Manager put his hands on his hips and took a lecturing stance. 'I would never have believed it possible of you. Assaulting a member. Twice. What were you thinking? We could have you arrested for this. You'd deserve it, too.' He shook his head, satisfied with his assessment, and not giving her any chance to explain.

'You're trouble,' he continued. 'I knew it from the beginning. You don't go along, you don't get how the game is played. You ask too many questions, and you've got a superior attitude. You'll never make a good waitress,' he finished.

Suzie started to explain that Ed had been harassing her for months, and tonight he had grabbed her ass in public and tried to rape her. But the Service Manager cut her off.

'We're going to have to let you go,' he said as if it pained him. 'We're willing to pay you two weeks severance, but you're finished working here as of right now. We'll send you your paycheck.'

Suzie was mad. 'You don't want the publicity,' she stated, then thought about it. 'I could tell such tales that the Club would be in the news for weeks. I could bring a lawsuit that would keep the Club in the papers for months. Years.'

The Manager looked severe. 'You know,' he drawled, 'we've had reports of missing items, and we're going to search you before we let you leave.' He got a mean look. 'And never mind the severance.'

Suzie snorted, exasperated. 'You know damn well it's the new porters who are stealing things.' She was sick of the whole thing. 'Can I go now?'

He shook his head and gazed at the ceiling. 'Maybe I will turn you over for questioning,' he said, then grinned maliciously and slouched against the door. Suzie felt him looking at her. It made her itch.

He stood there blocking her way. 'Why couldn't you just be nice to the members?' he asked reasonably. 'They're ordinary people. They're good people. They deserve a little respect. Especially from the likes of you.'

Suzie counted to ten. 'No, they don't. They go out of their way to make me feel small and worthless. And the Club treats us like slaves. I don't have to be nice to asshole antichrist members.'

He scowled. 'You've gone out of your way to insult them, especially Mr. Collier and Mr. Sweat.' Suzie had to think of Ed and Jerry's last names. 'They're very, very unhappy with you. Mr. Collier is considering bringing assault charges against you.'

Suzie fumed. 'You know,' she said, resolving to barge through him, feeling just the least bit claustrophobic and panicky in the confined space. 'I'm sick of catering to a bunch of ruthless, paranoid assholes who validate their low self-esteem by the relentless pursuit of power. How can you say they're good people? They're not good people at all.'

In the end, they let her out of Chef's office and marched her through the parking garage to her car. The Manager and one of the guards stood and peered into it suspiciously as she got in, started the car, and drove off the premises. A uniformed gate attendant radioed when she left the gates.

She made her way home in shock. The events of the evening swirled in her head. The conversations she'd overheard, the drunken behavior, the feel of the developer's hands on her crotch. How could they fire her? She needed that job. No, fuck it. Fuck them. She hated the job, she was glad they'd fired her. But how dare they fire her? She hadn't done anything wrong. It was so unfair. She was so pissed off.

To calm herself down, Suzie went by Krispy Kreme. The hot doughnut light was on. She got in the drive-through lane, and hardly noticed ordering. She found her hands shaking, and realized she needed to get herself together, so when she got her three hot ones, she pulled in to a space beneath the sign and put the car in park.

She worked the bag open with right hand while her left still clutched t

splat chapter twenty-seven, part one

2006-07-24T10:26:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN, PART ONE

Suzie sat on the couch and thumbed through the channels, looking for something to pass the time before she had to get ready for work. She passed the Weather Channel, where some guy in a yellow slicker and a falling-apart umbrella was standing at some railing overlooking the water, screaming into the microphone about winds and rains. It was another hurricane; they were one every two weeks now. She turned back and watched until the satellite picture came on. Atlanta was too far inland to be threatened by hurricanes, but once in a while one came up this far on its way to Europe, and favored the area with a foot of rain. Those were great days for Suzie. Richly textured feeder-bands racing by, the curve of the storm visible across the whole sky; balmy air you could feel; all that rain. What bliss.

But the show bored her after a few minutes, because the presenters were all pretending this hurricane was as dangerous as Katrina, and the satellite photos showed it to be a wimpy thing aimed at a relatively vacant part of the coast. So she raced through the channels until she got to the Cartoon Network, and spent a mindless half hour or so watching the Powerpuff Girls fight cartoon evil. She liked their eyes.

She was feeling lonely by the time she had to get ready for work. She checked Alex's room as she passed, and found he'd recently tagged his walls with black paint in thick letters. Gave it even more of a cave feel. She couldn't tell if his bed had been slept in or not, because of course he never made the bed. Hell, he never washed the sheets. And half the time he went to sleep fully clothed, so what was the difference? She looked closer at the new tag. It said Gloria.

She remembered the new uniform requirements as she retrieved her skirt from where she'd kicked it the night before, and the thought of having to raise her skirt for a bunch of lecherous rich white men filled her with hate. Then she had an idea.

She went back into the living room and rummaged around in the stash of tools until she found the staple gun. Folding her skirt to the required length, she stapled the new hem, happy to see when she turned it right side out that the staples made a nice, neat, shiny metal row three inches in. That'll show them. She dug out a pair of black tights, jettisoned into a corner of the closet many long months ago when she was going through a punk phase. They had big runs in them, but she'd runned them on purpose, as part of her punk look, and decided that they suited her current attitude nicely. Never mind high heels, tho. She briefly considered wearing her Doc Martens, but in the end wore her regular black runners.

She drove past the burned house in daylight. It was still dripping and smoldering. It sagged and moped in the sun. The smell was overpowering. People had died. People she passed all the time.

She noticed, when she went to clock in, that there was nobody at all she recognized in the kitchen. Only Manny, who slithered in and crept out, trying desperately to escape notice.

She followed him out to the trash room. Standing shivering in the refrigeration, she asked him where the cooks were, and what was going on.

He looked around furtively. Suzie quickly examined the walls and ceilings for cameras, and wondered if they were bugging the trash room. 'They're all gone,' he said, sorrowfully. 'Chef made them all take a piss test when they came in this morning. He warned them last night before they left, and half of them didn't show up this morning. The ones who came in, they all failed the test, and the cops took them away.'

'Then who are those guys out there now?'

He looked darkly at her, then shrugged, and went back to his work.

Chef was being very hands-on out in the kitchen. He was prepping and cooking, supervising and teaching a batch of new cooks. Suzie could see that he was happy being involved with his new staff. These workers listened to instructions, not like the Black Mafia that just did it their way no matter how many times he showed them how to do it.

Suzie paid close attention to the Sous-chefs in toque hats that stood around watching. Guards, eh? She noticed one whispering to himself, and wondered if they had headsets built into their toques. She decided the strange-looking wire whisks they carried were stun guns. But she couldn't see enough to figure it out, as she slid past them and scampered up the stairs.

Tonight was a whole different setup. Casual Dining was closed, and all hands were diverted to the ballrooms on the main floor, where they were setting up for the annual Founders' Ball.

Suzie went into the pantry and checked out the function sheet. The Ladies Slipper Ballroom was being set up for a buffet, and the Southern Sportsman Ballroom for dancing and drinking. The function sheet laid out the room setup and the linen order, detailed the menu, and listed the hors d'oevres that were going to be passed around on trays.

Suzie checked out the rooms. Porters were setting out the dining tables and the buffet tables in the Ladies Slipper Ballroom. She could see indentations on the rug where the hand truck had been wheeled in with table tops stacked up on it. The tops had been centered on steel pedestals, and looked ugly and utilitarian without their linens. She counted twenty ten-tops. Tuxedoed porters were bringing in chairs that Suzie guessed were rented for the occasion, at least 200. The bare bones of three serving stations were being set up in the corners of the room for the prime rib and other things that needed to be portioned on the spot by a Sous-chef. Two bars were being laid out against the long walls.

Suzie watched new porters setting up a long, snaky mess of tables down the center of the room, with a tuxedoed guy in sunglasses and a walking stick watching them from a corner. The Service Manager was directing the process. 'Over a little, no, less, that's right, now look, it wobbles, we've got to level this table here, no, don't put that there yet.'

Suzie went over to the Southern Sportsman room and saw four bars being set up in the corners of the room, and watched a team of new porters setting out big parquet squares on top of the rug to make a stage and a dance floor. They were setting up a dozen hi-boy tables around the dance floor, where partiers would leave their drinks to go dance. There were also six ten-tops randomly placed in the middle of the room with linens draped to the floor and chairs being brought in. There were a lot of ironwork pyramids and pedestals along the walls, with workers twining kudzu vines and flowers around the grillwork. How festive.

She wandered back into the other ballroom and helped cover the tables. White undercloths went on, stained and holed from years of use, and then heavy fancy gold rented table linens that went to the floor all around the tables. Totally elegant, if you didn't look underneath.

When the tables were covered, the waiters sat down and started folding piles of napkins, talking about the horror stories.

A black waiter took her turn. 'It was a gig over at the Marriott Marquis on Peachtree,' she said. She was middle aged, and had the air of never being surprised by nothing. 'It was 240 medical students from over at Emory. Some conference. Breakfast, lunch and dinner for three days. We spent a couple of hours setting it up, and the moment we opened the doors, they charged in. They about ran us over stampeding to the buffet tables. The rudest bunch of kids I've ever met. The same behavior every meal.'

The other waiters made sympathetic sounds.

'I'm never doing one of those again,' she said, shaking her head. 'I couldn't bring myself to go in on the Friday morning. And the agency woman called me up at home and said, ''I thought you were going to work with me.'' And I said, ''Working with you is fine, but what about working with me? You sent me on a suicide mission. And you didn't even give me extra to make it easier to bear.''' The waiter looked around. 'And do you know, she got this regret thing in her voice, and told me she didn't think she was going to be able to use me again.'

The other waiters tisked and clucked, nodded and frowned. Waiting tables was a thankless job. She looked around, appreciating the support. 'I hope she doesn't call me. I don't need it.' They all grunted.

Everyone folded another dozen napkins each. The pile in the center of the table was getting small. The Service Manager came along with a plastic bin, and everyone stopped to pile their folded napkins into it.

The woman resumed. 'I'm getting old, not stupid,' she said. 'I'm working smarter. My old club where I worked, they made us take full trays into the dining room. Ten full plates on them, heavy stoneware plates, with lids, and we were supposed to go in there with them balanced on our raised hands.'

Her listeners uttered shocked and dismayed sounds. She was a tiny woman. It was so unfair to overburden people like that. 'They insisted, absolutely insisted we do it that way. Well, I couldn't do it. I had to go in holding my tray with both arms, and that really screwed my back up.' She reached for more napkins. 'When I was twenty I could lift ten plates. But now? Four is the most.' She considered it. 'Yeah, four.'

'I'm telling you,' someone agreed.

She shook her head at the memory. 'You know what I mean?'

Someone else added, 'I hear that.'

'That's what I'm saying,' she finished.

The napkins were all folded, so the waiters all got up and finished setting the tables, laying out gold placemats at each setting, lining up empty wine glasses, arranging napkins in the center. Somebody went around to each table with a gold centerpiece of flowers. Somebody else went around with little votive candles and lined them up around the centerpiece. They spent time covering the buffet tables with cloth and gold linen, and the same for the serving stations, but finally everything was done, and it was still a good hour before the function started.

The Service Manager called them all together in the Southern Sportsman Ballroom, where they stood around looking stately in their formal clothes. The new porters joined them, strangers in tuxedos, silent and watchful. Their shadowy supervisors stood where they could keep an eye on them.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said. 'Welcome. And welcome to all you temps. Thanks for being here tonight to help with our most important do of the year.' He looked at the function sheet. 'Tonight we're going to be having 470 guests, and they'll be mostly interested in drinking and dancing. The band goes to eleven-thirty, so expect to be here until twelve-thirty or so.' Everyone shifted on their feet.

Then he read off a list of names, assigning people to pass hors d'oevres in the Ladies Slipper, others to pass hors in the Sportsman, the older black guys to work the bar, the temps to pour wine and help out, everybody to clear empties off the tables. He mentioned that the porters would be acting as beverage and food runners, keeping the bars and buffet tables stocked. Suzie found herself on the canapé detail in the Ladies Slipper Ballroom.

The Service Manager clapped his hands and checked his watch. 'Okay, people, we've got fifteen minutes to eat dinner. Go on down to the kitchen, and I'll see you back up here at 7:15.'

They all filed down the stairs into the kitchen, where the cooks had put trays of food on a prep table. Everyone lined up and took a paper plate, grabbed a bun out of the plastic bag, and then picked over a tray of burgers. Suzie judged that they'd been run through the oven to cook, and wondered about their quality. They sat, already cool, in a slime of congealed blood and fat, sagging and pitted, dry and tough looking. Utility grade meat, yum.

Suzie looked at what else there was to eat, and decided she just needed to go ahead and down the crap they were serving. She found a burger in the middle of the stack that looked less overcooked than the others. Then she scooped up a spoonful of baked beans out of a tray and drained the watery sauce out of it. Stretching them with water, or just making sure they didn't congeal while they heated up?

She wondered, too, about the tray of tater tots, which nobody had bothered to stir while they were in the oven. They were crisp and crunchy on the surface, but all stuck together in a white pasty mass inside. There was a tray of something green and white and lumpy at the end, and it might have been artichoke dip and it might have been a gelatin dessert, and though some nudged it with its serving spoon, nobody dared to try any.

They all trooped over to the Kudzu Room and crammed into folding chairs around the folding tables. The temps took their chances with the drink dispenser, and complained about the drinks coming out all carbonation and no taste. Everybody else got water from the tap and complained that it tasted of chlorine. No pleasing people, eh?

Forty waiters and porters sat at three long folding tables, eating delicately in their formal clothes, their bow ties unhooked and slung around the back of their tuxedo shirts, dangling through the loop at the back of the neck.

The porters ate in a group, not looking up. They ate fast, and after nodding to the guard, got up for seconds, like they really enjoyed the food. Nobody noticed the kitchen knives they stashed in their shirts while they were out in the kitchen.

They all looked with considerable envy at the few waiters who brought food from home. One had a salad. One had a sandwich. Somebody brought a container of Brunswick stew and cornbread. They were enjoying their food. The others all anticipated stress-induced heartburn, and no time at all to think about it, no time to go sit in the servants' quarters and let their stomachs settle.

A sad looking little black waiter was talking about some place she'd worked where some employee had mixed up the cleaning chemicals and accidentally spilled them on her hand. She showed the scars to the others, who looked horrified. She told how she had to go to the hospital. It swelled up, and she couldn't work, and had all sorts of doctor bills - $225 for the emergency room, $83 for one drug, other expenses. When she came back to work and told the manager about it, he didn't believe she'd been burned on the job. 'I got to tell you I don't believe you, he said.'

The waiters exploded. Yolanda looked stern. 'But it's Workmans Comp,' she explained. 'You get injured on the job, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. You have a right to file a claim.'

The woman looked at her plate. 'He said he'd take care of it. He made me give him the paperwork.'

'Did you give him originals?' somebody asked quickly.

'Do I look stupid?'

There were sighs of relief. 'How long ago did it happen?'

She looked doubtful. 'It's been two months.'

Yolanda said, 'You have two years to file, but you'd best do it sooner than later.' She shook her fork in the air. 'You have to file. He won't do it for you.'

'But he'd said he'd take care of it,' she protested. 'I don't want to go back to him about it. I don't like making trouble.'

She frowned. 'But he's not going to file. If there's a claim filed against the Club, then they have to pay out, and he's Management, so he'll do anything to avoid paying. You have to file yourself,' she insisted.

'I'll do it Monday.' She wasn't looking at anybody when she said this. She wasn't convincing even to herself. She didn't like confrontation.

They were all done with dinner. Burping, they tossed their plates and cups into a huge garbage can next to the break room door, and trooped back upstairs to the ballrooms. And then it was time to open the doors and let the guests stream in, heading for the bars.

* * *

next, the fan hitting i promised

splat chapter twenty-six

2006-07-19T14:23:00.000-05:00

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Suzie went home still pissed off about work. Fucking Ed with his hands all over her. Stupid Jerry and his right wing plans to rule the world. The stupid new temps at work fucking up at every opportunity. They all pissed her off.

She got home in a foul mood. A stop at Krispy Kreme didn't help. Now she was bouncing with a sugar high as well as pent-up irritation. She sailed the box over at the guys when she came through the door, the doughnuts still stuck to the cardboard, two missing out of half a dozen. The box spun through the air and the guys fought over who got a whole one and who had to split one. She sat down to watch an ad.

The scene opens on a jacuzzi framed by a woman's bent leg. She's lounging at the side of the pool on a towel, a fresh fruit drink by her side. A group of women are sitting in the jacuzzi beyond, some wearing gaily colored turbans. They're sipping drinks and laughing.

The voiceover comes up, a reassuring male voice says in a soft, lilting voice, 'You should be having the time of your life. You've got everything to live for. But once you've got cancer, things get complicated. One thing's simple. You need to concentrate on you. We want to make your cancer treatment a holiday from the daily stresses that can slow your healing.'

The scene dissolves to a closeup of a woman in a towel getting a massage, a blissful smile on her face. 'Enjoy the serenity of total care, the peace of mind that comes from knowing you're doing everything you can.'

The scene changes to a shot of the center's busy front desk. 'Rest in the comfort of total support, and relax in the utmost luxury during your time of special needs.'

The scene dissolves to fuzzy sunset colors and pastoral music. The voiceover returns: 'For all your cancer-fighting needs, it's the way to go.' A picture of the founder flashes up on the screen, and the name Whoosie Clinic for Cancer Solutions appears beside it. Then a final dissolve to the phone number filling the screen: 1-800-pampered (total care) (solution) (way to go. for cure)

Suzie caught the face of Doctor Bling when it was flashed onscreen. Wearing a white suit, dripping with jewelry, looking pleased with himself. She felt a wave of revulsion. He was so creepy and so ugly. 'I know that guy,' she gestured at the screen. 'He's a member where I work.'

'Look at the bling-bling on the dude,' Jason said.

Alex made a face. 'Wow, he's old.'

'The way to go. Is he for real? That's a great slogan,' Demetrius said. The news came back on.

Whatshername looks up gaily, like she has a joke to tell. 'Our top story tonight, the Atlanta sniper has been at it again, this time apparently shooting at two targets at once.'

She turned solemn as the sniper graphic appeared in back of her. 'Police received two emergency calls at the same time this afternoon. One call reported paintgun fire from a red Ford pickup, on Georgia 400 northbound near Clayton County, reporting a man in a Buick that shot over a thousand paintballs at an SUV he was riding next to.'

She hands the story over to their roving reporter, Maurice Black, who is standing in front of the downtown police station. 'According to a new theory suggested by the GBI, police are investigating the possibility that the Atlanta sniper could actually be a team of terrorists, using disguises and coordinating their activities by cellphone. Police are considering whether Atlanta's gangs might be involved.'

The reporter looked at the camera. 'The police spokesman says they're also considering the idea that people are committing copycat shootings. The law clearly says that it is a terrorist act to shoot or throw an object at a conveyance which is being operated or occupied by passengers. Atlanta Police officials want to send a message to people who might be thinking of making attacks of this kind - they plan to be very hard on copycat criminals.'

Whatshername responds with mild horror. 'As if a real sniper weren't enough, the last thing we need are wannabes.' She looks down at her pages and composes herself. 'Police are still searching for a black male in his 20s, and are asking the owner of a blue '94 Dodge Doohickey to come forward for questioning.'

The guys laughed and elbowed Suzie, who shook her head bitterly, unamused.

A bright graffiti-like graphic comes up, GANGS, being squeezed tight by chains. The white middle aged anchor in the gray suit takes the story. 'Three separate gang hideouts were raided in three different parts of Atlanta today, as police went out of their way to show that crime has no color.'

A map of Atlanta comes up behind him, red stars to the northeast, the southeast, and the north of town marking the raids. 'This afternoon, a dozen members of a notorious Hispanic gang were arrested in a restaurant on Buford Highway. At the same time,' he nodded, 'twenty-five members of a black gang were rounded up as they returned to class after lunch at Jonesboro High School, and eight members of a white supremacist group were captured in Cobb County in the basement of one of the member's grandparents.' The camera shows each group being hustled into the station for booking, bent over, handcuffed, avoiding the cameras as they're being paraded by.

The co-anchor stares at the camera balefully. 'Gang membership is an offense under Georgia's anti-terror legislation,' he reads off the monitor, 'and gang members face up to ? years in jail.'

The camera cuts to another spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department, standing in front of a podium at a press conference. Arrayed behind him are the weapons and drugs confiscated from the various detainees. 'These forty-five dangerous criminals are being charged under the Patriot Act . Members of Atlanta's street gangs are desperate people terrorizing our streets, committing crimes to intimidate and coerce the civilian population. The terror perpetrated by gangs fits squarely within the scope of our anti-terror laws. Georgia wants criminals to know that domestic terrorism will not be allowed to threaten our American way of life.'

The reporter appears in front of the camera again. 'Other charges include murder, attempted murder, various weapons and drug charges, and assault. At this time, police are not alleging that the gangs are connected to any terrorist networks.'

The reporter turns to interview a man standing next to him. 'Civil libertarians and some terrorism experts say this case is a misuse of the law. They call it Definition Creep.'

The camera turns to the man, one of the lawyers for the accused. 'This kind of police action should raise alarms. We're witnessing the use by law enforcement of an ever-expanding definition of the term Terrorism.'

The camera turns back to the reporter. 'The accused terrorists are being held without bond, and could remain in jail indefinitely without going to trial.'

An ad comes on. The music comes up, strings playing soupy Mantovani favorites. The camera pans over a breathtaking scene of distant blue mountains framing gently rolling fields and cool shady trees. The camera focuses on a group of people enjoying the hell out of their country resort. Horseback riding, golf, tennis, boating, laying around soaking up the sun, sitting rocking and gazing at the view. Mint juleps. Gin and tonic. Sweet tea.

A shot of the main building reveals a Southern mansion, framed by an avenue of liveoak trees dripping Spanish moss. There are darkies in the fields, singing as they work. Black house servants in formal wear take the guests' luggage upstairs, female servants in aprons and caps show guests to their rooms.

The scene switches to a ball. The guests are dressed up and dancing, the band playing, the wine flowing. Everybody is deliriously happy and entirely occupied with having fun.

The voiceover comes up: 'Make your next vacation a luxury lifestyle dream come true. Experience the way it used to be. Bathe in gracious Southern ambiance, get a tantalizing taste of a time when everything was right with the world and everyone knew their place. Let your next vacation be a time when all your troubles remain at the door, and you can relax and indulge yourself in all the good things you deserve. Come spend a week being pampered, relaxing with people of your own kind.'

A black servant struggles down the hall with massive amounts of luggage. 'Enjoy your own personal servants, specially trained to cater to your every whim.' The white master watches him go, smiling down at the tip in his palm, refused by the servant with a pleasingly subservient attitude. He tosses the coin in the air and catches it with a snap, and puts it back in his pocket.

'Avoid unpleasant interactions with people of other races and cultures.' The camera shows a white man lecturing a row of black servants who hang their heads and mutter Yessah, Yessah.

The scene cuts to a barbeque dinner on the lawn. White people in designer casual clothes are enjoying pit roasted pork and brunswick stew and cornbread, drinking wine and beer, laughing it up while a band plays a mix of country classics and country rock. Black servants in formal wear and white gloves circulate with trays of hamburgers and hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, pizza slices, pie and ice cream. 'Enjoy the food you trust. Traditional American food. Just like Grandma used to make.'

The scene dissolves to a final shot, an aerial view of the resort, all pastoral simplicity and home-grown plenty. The sun is setting as the strings grow more unctuous. The voiceover comes up. 'Come to Club Heritage, where we've got everything fixed up right, just the way it's supposed to be.'

Demetrius spoke up. 'Hey, I saw an ad just like it the other day on BET, but they had Koreans being the servants for the black people. Club Afrique, it was.'

'Yeah,' Alex nodded to Jason, 'we were cruising the Spanish channels and saw one just like it with blonde babes serving chips and salsa to Mexican guys with moustaches. It was called Club Latino.'

They might have seen one on the Christian channels, Club Saved, featuring group activities like speaking in tongues, and where everybody's forgiven, so they can do whatever they want, and still go to heaven. The guys would have noticed that the servants were all colors, but the masters were overwhelmingly white. But the guys would never see the ad, because they always sped up going past the Christian channels, and gagged and hissed and made hex signs whenever they happened to catch Pat Robertson on the air.

Everybody got up and did something while the rest of the ads were on. Suzie changed clothes, cursing, reminded as she kicked out of her skirt and tuxedo shirt that she was going to have to go through considerable trouble fixing up her uniform.

The news is back. 'Good news on the medical front.' Whatshername looks confidentially into the camera. 'We've brought in our science correspondent, Darius Gray, to explain the details.' She turns to him and bats her eyelashes. 'I've had a look, and I've got to admit, I'm bewildered by this whole technology.'

A babyfaced presenter in a dark suit and a red tie nods reassuringly and turns to the camera slowly. 'Yes, it's complicated, but the face of medicine is changing rapidly. We're lucky to be in Atlanta, with the CDC and so many world-class hospitals.' Whatshername nods appreciatively. 'We get the benefits of new developments long before other parts of the country.'

He's talking to the camera now. He's very debonaire. 'Clients of Atlanta's Straight Path Center For Rehabilitation have signed up to participate in a major study of the new devices made by HeatHealing Technologies. This testing represents the final hurdle before FDA approval.'

We camera shows an interior shot of the infirmary at the Straight Path, being fitted for the new devices. Technicians are installing something that looks like a giant coffee machine in one corner, all black and chrome, arms and pipes going everywhere, with LCD screens displaying molten red numbers. Other workmen are installing the largest of the devices, which is going to fill half the room. They're putting up struts at the moment, with white molded plastic panels stacked up ready to be fastened on.

The camera cuts back to the studio. The science presenter lowers his voice and explains. 'These devices operate on the body thermally, by spot-focusing on the diseased area without affecting other parts of the body. It works on a different principle than radiation, more like supercharged sonography.' He smiles, pleased with his smooth delivery. 'It's good for a variety of conditions, and they'll be running live human trials at the Straight Path Center to test various applications, such as wound healing, and behavior modification.' He nods significantly. 'The technology is also being examined for its potential use in capital punishment.'

The camera cuts to an interview with a Straight Path official. 'Yes,' he affirms, 'Our boys are part of an all-volunteer effort to advance medical science, and we're testing the newest weapons in our arsenal against disease.'

The broadcast continues. The graphic is a set of traffic lights behind bars. 'In other news,' the co-anchor says brightly, 'better watch those red lights. Police and lawmakers are getting serious about making Atlanta's streets safer, by sharply increasing the penalties for many road violations.'

Suzie perked up. Maybe someone understood that bad drivers were the problem, not her.

He sounds serious, even threatening. 'Running a red light in the greater Atlanta metro area will soon cost you thirty days in jail. Failing to wear a seat belt will put you behind bars for ten days.' He smiles grimly. He's a very careful driver. 'A conviction of reckless driving, improper passing, or failure to signal a turn,' he paused, suddenly somber, 'offences which used to cost you a fine and points on your license, will now get you six months in the slammer.'

The graphic changes; now it's an orange road sign saying Construction. He continues. 'What's more, Georgia's laws against speeding in a work zone, already the toughest in the nation, now have much more tooth.' He doesn't stop to discuss whether it's 'teeth' or 'tooth' with the anchor. He looks bothered. 'Starting tomorrow, Georgia's Highway Patrol warns that they're going to aggressively enforce both themove-over law and the speed limit in workzones, even at times when there are no workers present.' He thinks about his route home. 'Even in the middle of the night. If you're caught speeding in a work zone, you'll pay a minimum of twice the standard $2,000 fine, and your potential time in jail will go from twelve months to five years.'

He gives a resolute grimace at the camera. 'So slow down in work zones, and move over for those flashing lights. Give our law enforcement officers room to do their duty. Or you'll be sorry.'

The co-anchor is in a cold sweat. He's taking this story personally. He's been taking stories personally ever since people started disappearing. One of the first homeless guys they picked up was his cousin Wheezer. They used to be real close. And he's lost relative and friend after acquaintance and barfly, and now he's starting to feel that he could be next. He looks like a harmless television announcer, but he's got a secret life; everybody does. Everybody looks guilty in the rearview mirror when the lights start flashing behind them.

They cut to an ad. The music is tacky and sickly, bespattering the air with the sound of patriotic strings. A flag rolls in the breeze. Black letters fade in, reading: Businesses Are Outsourcing Their Human Resources Departments To Reinsourcing AmericaTM.

The scene opens with a woman being interviewed. 'I decided to open a factory because my rug-weaving business outgrew my basement.' The wall behind her proudly displays the AtlantaTM symbol woven into a rug, her big break. 'My business is growing by leaps and bounds,' she says, 'with orders for almost a million rugs. So I turned to Reinsourcing America for everything I needed to start up an extra-large capacity operation right here in my home state.' The camera shows smiling, happy workers at huge looms inside a warehouse. The clacking noise of the machines is drowned by the swelling strings of the music.

The flag comes up again. Businesses Are Seeing A Better Way To Care. The scene cuts to a man being interviewed. 'We're keeping our state highways peachy clean with Reinsourcing America,' says a DOT guy by the side of a busy interstate. A row of smiling, happy men in neon-green vests wave international safety orange garbage bags at the camera while guards look on. More strings.

The flag again. Businesses Are Finding The Solution To Employee Relations Problems. The scene dissolves to a shot of smiling, happy workers dressed in kitchen whites. The layout looks a lot like the Club's kitchen. 'We switched to Reinsourcing America and things have never run more smoothly,' says Chef Henri. The scene fades to black. White letters come up: Reinsourcing AmericaTM, 1-800-GetAJob.

'Well, fuck me,' Suzie said slowly, turning red. She stared at the TV set. 'Oh my God. I don't believe it. We've got a bunch of criminals working in the kitchen? They've hauled off all those great Spanish guys and put in ruthless jailbirds in their places? How awful. How creepy. I'm not safe in my own workplace.'

She got up and paced up and down behind the couches between the kitchen and the front door. 'How can they do that?' She was so worked up that she was beating the back of the couches with her fist as she passed. Thump thump thump thump. 'It endangers all of us. Those people are drug addicts and lawbreakers. They're violent psychopaths. They need to be locked up, not running loose in the kitchen of a prestigious private club. They could cause all sorts of trouble. Filthy disgusting animals.'

'Whoa,' Alex said. 'Calm down. It's not like you're in any danger yourself.'

She spun around, furious. 'It's not about me. It's about letting unrepentant criminals out in public. That's like setting them free.' She made a face, her mouth drawn down like a Kabuki actor. 'I have no compassion for people who've murdered or robbed or beaten other people,' she stated. 'A hundred years ago, most of them would have been hanged. Now we feed them, clothe them, give them medical care and HBO. We don't have HBO.'

The guys looked at each other. Demetrius asked, 'Why aren't we stealing HBO?'

'They don't have to choose a life of crime.' Suzie was speaking in a reasonable tone, a tone that insisted they guys see how reasonable she was being despite outrageous provocation, despite her barely held-together rage. 'Any one of them can decide to do something else at any moment. But a life spent in criminal pursuits is going to lead to jail. It's that simple.' She stopped at the kitchen door, spun around on her heels, and marched back up the line of couches. Thump thump.

'But most of them haven't done anything all that bad,' Philip protested. 'Possession. Traffic offenses. Little stuff. How morally outraged should society be?'

She stamped her feet. 'If they're in jail, they deserve to be punished.' Demetrius made a hocking noise in his throat, and Alex raised an eyebrow. 'They deserve harsh treatment. People who rob or steal or mug or rape. People who do bad things. People who hurt other people, or who kill people, or get drunk and run into people, or who drive bad and cause other people's death.' She waved her arms manically. 'They should be put away and punished.' God, she felt righteous. 'It's not punishing them to put them to work in the kitchen. Oh yeah, I guess it might could be. But they can't do it right next to me. I'm not going to work alongside criminals.'

The guys sat and let her rant, gazing vacantly at the TV. 'Punished,' she continued, pacing up and down. 'Not taught better, not made an example of to deter others, but punished so it hurts. When people do something evil, it's only right that the guilty get their noses rubbed in it.' She paused to spin around and head down the line of couches.

Now she was thumping the wall as she walked. 'They deserve it. Not just to taste the evil they've done, but to half-drownd in it. Do evil unto evil, that's what I think.' Alex looked up at her, wondering when she would finish. 'No, really. Make them feel the pain they caused others, make them understand how bad it is, and make them really, really sorry before you stop punishing them.' She stopped and thought about it. 'I think wanting revenge for criminal acts is a sign of a healthy and sound mind.'

'Evil unto evil,' Alex laughed. 'Suzie, you're sounding just like all that racist crap you've been telling us about.'

She didn't hear him. She was busy examining her own her harsh judgment and deciding it was generous. 'Death by firing squad would be appropriate, but really bad shots that mangle the target. That would be better. Or poison. Something really painful and slow, so it really hurts for a long time. Intense, searing pain, like having your skin peeled off, or being cooked from the inside.'

She was getting off on the lust for inflicting pain on someone she hated, someone who deserved it. It felt good to make someone suffer for what they'd done. No pain, no gain. The torturers of the Inquisition really believed in their work.

The guys had had enough. Philip went home, muttering. Jason threw an empty beer can at her. Alex tried again, 'Suzie. You're sounding just like all those racists you hate. Do you hear yourself? I've never heard more intolerance than what's coming out of your mouth right at this moment.'

She almost screamed, 'Why are they putting prisoners in regular jobs? Why are they contaminating society? The whole idea of prison is to isolate the convicts from the regular people. Putting them in people's kitchens is too much. They're criminals for God's sake.'

'The guards will keep them in line,' Alex argued.

'Yeah, but that means we've got a guy with testosterone and a gun walking around the kitchen keeping people down on purpose. Anybody could get shot. And they're competition; they're stealing jobs from people whose families depend on them. Violent criminals and murderers don't deserve jobs, they deserve to die, or be locked up forever. There's just no debating it.' She stood there, her arms folded on her chest, angry as hell, amazed that they didn't agree with her.

'But it's not necessary for society's well being to execute people,' Alex observed rationally. 'You want to punish them more than what's necessary to preserve society. You're just talking revenge.'

'What's wrong with revenge?'

'It's cruel and barbarous. Even fucking God says vengeance is His prerogative.'

The guys were sick of her tirade, and didn't understand her attitude at all. So they ignored her and turned their attention back to the TV set. The news came back on, and everyone, even Suzie, who was still as mad as she could be, sat back down and watched.

The guys made fun of the panda graphic over the co-anchor's shoulder. Suzie continued to stew. She missed his latest cartoon collectible. 'Grant Park celebrated the first spade of dirt to be turned in the revitalization of Zoo Atlanta,' the co-anchor says, and the screen shows a gathering of city officials. Somebody cuts the ribbon, and the mayor wags a brand new spade and says a few words about great opportunities and fiscal responsibility, then brings up the $3 billion Atlanta sewer project, but the camera cuts away in mid-sentence.

'Work has already begun,' the co-anchor continues, back in the studio. 'Grant Park will remain closed until the heavy construction is completed and the park is safe for visitors again.' The camera pans across a brand new razor-wired chain link fence surrounding the park, and focuses on the ballfields, where heavy yellow earth movers are parked, the turf crisscrossed with deep red gouges of Georgia clay. A logging truck sits half-filled with huge old oak trees taken from the park's interior.

The scene cuts to a crowd of angry neighbors and their dogs, out for an early morning walk only to discover that crews working through the night have fenced off access to the hills and dales of their park.

The reporter says in voice-over, 'Several protesters were arrested this morning while the security barrier was being erected.' The scene shows the cops just arriving. Everyone loitering around the workmen is being rounded up and hustled into white Atlanta police vans.

'The protestors have been charged with violation of the new anti-demonstration law, and are being processed at the Straight Path.' The camera lingers on a large sign in front of the Zoo entrance. Bringing Atlanta A Grant Park For The 21st CenturyTM.

The co-anchor takes the next story, turning to the camera with vibrant authority. The graphic behind him is a landing airplane and a construction sign. 'Officials at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport announced that the projected cost of Atlanta's new terminal is currently $150 million over budget,' he says, looking serious.'A discrepancy between the contractor's estimate and the new design team's estimate of construction costs recently pushed the total $200 million higher. It's beginning to look like the new terminal is going to cost Atlanta over a billion dollars by the time it's open.'

He turns to Whatshername, who asks in a concerned voice, 'But how can the cost change like that?'

The co-anchor looks wise. 'A spokesman for the project explained that factors such as the rising cost of steel are at fault. Also, the planned terminal has undergone several expansions of its square footage, going from under a million to a million and a half square feet.' Whatshername nods absently. 'Managementhas issued new orders to the design team to shave 300,000 square feet off the five-story building, in order to get the project within budget.'

He looks over at the anchor with a smile. 'On the other hand,' he says, 'airport officials plan to hold a ceremony as the last piece of the Fifth Runway is dropped into place over the new 285 bridge tunnel. Should be exciting.'

Whatshername nods happily, and turns to face the camera. A graphic resembling a fight scene from the old Batman TV show comes up, dayglo stars and balloons reading Pow and Kablam. 'More traffic woes this evening as the Connector came to a halt and remained stopped long after rush hour was over.'

Helicopter footage shows pandemonium on the Connector just south of the I-20 interchange. Turner Field is visible in the shot, and what looks like scattered kid's toys littering the road. The anchor continues. 'A tanker carrying used cooking oil overturned on the Connector northbound, and spread its contents all over the road, closing all lanes. Workers are still on the scene cleaning up the mess. This was followed by an accident in the opposite lanes at the same location, as drivers slowed down to rubberneck. There was a thirty-two-car pileup on the southbound side as inattentive motorists ran into stopped vehicles. Six serious injuries were reported, twenty-three drivers and passengers went to Grady Hospital. Doctors are keeping the more seriously hurt overnight for observation.'

A bunch of ads came on and the guys all got up for more beers and to fight over who got to use the bathroom first. Suzie sat there, staring at the TV set, oblivious, fuming. The guys plunked back onto their couches when the ads were over. The springs squeaked and groaned. Suzie was bumped into the air as Alex threw himself down beside her. She shot him an evil look.

Whatshername begins the story as the house-in-flames graphic comes up behind her. Suzie looks for changes in the graphic but can't find any. 'More suspicious house fires. This time a tragic loss of life in East Atlanta, which has been hit by more suspected arsons than anywhere else in Atlanta. We go now to Gloria Morales, who is reporting live.'

The guys are chanting Gloria Gloria. They're chanting so loud that they don't hear Whatshername mention the location of the latest fire: Seaboard Avenue. Their very own street.

Beautiful Gloria Morales comes on the screen, and the guys are so happy they pelt each other with the empties. 'Shadowy figures were observed pouring gasoline on the front porch of this house,' she says, pointing to a smoldering ruin still being hosed by firefighters. 'The house did not have working fire alarms, and three people died of smoke inhalation: an eighteen-month old boy and his two sisters aged eight and twelve. It happened about forty-five minutes ago. The whereabouts of the parents or guardians is unknown.' The camera pans over the house, taking in the fire trucks and hoses.

'Hey,' Alex said. 'That looks real familiar.'

'All burnt up houses look the same to me,' said Jason.

'Yeah,' Demetrius observed, 'this story is getting so familiar that you can almost smell the smoke.'

Gloria is back on camera. The guys hush. She's plainly angry. 'Police again have no idea who could be causing the fires, and refuse to speculate. Neighborhood residents, on the other hand, have been insisting for weeks that the arsons are the work of unscrupulous investors who first try to get the properties by intimidation. As you can see, this is the result of their alleged threats. Three children dead and another East Atlanta house destroyed.' She paused for a moment, begins to say something, and then stops. She gives a great sigh, and then signs off. 'This is Gloria Morales, live from Seaboard Avenue in the Reynoldstown area of Atlanta.'

The guys looked at each other in surprise. 'I didn't hear any sirens,' Jason said.

Alex replies, 'Yeah, I heard them.' They looked at each other, grabbed their gear and their skateboards, jumped up out of their couches, and tore down the street looking for the newsvan.

Back in the studio, Whatshername comes on, putting a smile on her face, and whips out a closed umbrella. She grins. 'Up next, could it be a change in the weather? And in sports, how the Braves did tonight.' Go Braves, her smile says as the picture cuts to an ad.

Suzie got up off the couch as the ad came on, and walked slowly down the street toward Monroe. Evidence of the fire was all over the street, emergency vehicles parked haphazardly, hoses ran everywhere. She smelled the awful burning smell, cinders and water in the hot night air complicating the pollution mix.

She saw the guys clustering around Gloria, towering over her. Suzie was surprised to see how small Gloria seemed against the guys, who were all over six feet. She was looking at their filthy t-shirts and their scraggly hair, and probably wanted to overlook their unwashed humanity entirely, except that they were such ardent fans, and they showered every day, and wore deodorant, and she appreciated the worship.

Gloria stood there, half their height, twirling to face them all in stilleto heels and a short skirt. They surrounded her, bending over protectively, drooping treelike around her like something out of Peter Pan and the lost boys. Suzie could only see her tiny legs and her black heels. They stood there gawking at her, embarrassed but ardent. They asked her to sign their skateboards, showed her their tagging gear.

She was impressed, and suggested that maybe she'd like to do a story on them. Suzie heard this and scoffed. She could see the graphic. Graffiti: Art Or Terrorism?

Alex scrawled his cellphone number on an empty cigarette pack and crumpled it into her hand. They start talking animatedly about their planned tag downtown, offering to take her along, and her cameraman, too.

Finally Gloria said she had to go and broke off the conversation, shaking hands and promising to call. They stood there waving their skateboards as she hopped into the newsvan and left. They were still dazed, high, in love.

Water dripped from every surface. Filthy gray smoke seeped from every crack. Things snapped and crackled all around them. It stank, and the air burned in their lungs. There was a glow inside the embers that promised to smolder all night.

The guys shouldered their backpacks and began to argue half heartedly about which site they were going to tag tonight, and which one they were going to take Gloria to, and started walking down Seaboard toward Monroe. Suzie watched them go.

She heard Demetrius suggesting they go do some one dollar sushi at the new Ru-San's, right there on the corner in the new shopping center, and they stopped to count their change, suddenly hungry. Suzie thought about chasing after them, and hanging out, maybe paying more than her share for dinner just because she had the money and they didn't.

But she was nauseous from the smell of the toxic smoke, and decided to just go home and go to sleep. She could just see them ignoring her and letting her pay for the food and then go off tagging without her anyway. She felt abandoned. Nobody wanted to hang out with her. Nobody wanted her around.

She walked slowly back to her apartment, dragging her feet, feeling sorry for herself. She felt exactly the same way she'd felt in high school: ignored, unwanted, despised.

High school felt like jail to Suzie. Sentenced to being the only white kid in one of the truly awful urban public schools serving southeast Atlanta, neglected and forgotten because anybody who could afford it sent their kids off to private school and got them the hell away from what everybody knew was just a factory for criminals. The teachers spent all their efforts on crowd control and attempting to impose discipline on kids that were bigger and stronger than them, and who faced all challenges with an attitude of threat and violence.

Policemen patrolled the corridors with guns, and the kids went through metal detectors to get into school. Fire doors were chained and locked, and the administrators acted like prison guards. The rare teacher who tried to instill a sense of opportunity through education was first reprimanded for giving the kids unrealistic ideas, then fired.

And Suzie, bright, inquisitive, independent, was ignored, insulted, made an example of at every turn, made to answer for all the crimes of the white man against all the other races of the world: for slavery, oppression, genocide, for their unquestioned assumptions of superiority and the right to rule. Not only the Blacks but the Hispanics and the Asians all spat on her and called her names and went out of their way to collide with her in the halls. They tortured Suzie, and there was nothing she could do about it. The front office just told her to go back to class, and the nurse always turned her away. If she didn't want to leave school grounds and get suspended, she had to stay and take it.

For some reason, she took the abuse personally. And her only means of defense was to conclude that she didn't belong. These people were not like her. Not in any way. She vigorously asserted her innocence at every opportunity. Everyone else there was heading for jail and a life of crime, but she didn't deserve to be there, she didn't deserve to be scorned by everyone, she didn't deserve to be treated like a criminal just because of her skin color.

She turned a constantly bland, innocuous face to her classmates, her teachers, the wardens, hoping someone would realize the mistake and do something to rescue her. But they looked back with steely stares that said Eat Shit And Die, White Girl. And so she did her stretch in high school locked in solitary confinement.

She'd been allergic to criminals ever since; anyone with anything to do with the police or courts, helicopters, shadowy figures, youths in gang colors, crime statistics on the news, CSI shows, homeless people, suspicious types she passed on the street or glimpsed in passing cars, traffic offenders. She even got a little uneasy when the guys got drunk. She had real problems dealing with alcoholics and criminals. Anyone out of control, anyone who overdid it, who exceeded, who supersized their weakness and spilled it on others.

She got back into the apartment, having missed the rest of the news, and went straight to her room without turning off the lights, leaving the TV on for when the guys came back later. She tossed and turned for hours, smelling the thick smoke, identifying the smells of burnt wood, burnt plastic, burnt fabrics. She thought she could smell burning flesh, burning hair. When she finally got to sleep, it was after 3:47, the last time she looked at the clock. Her sleep was disturbed by dreams.

She's trying to get to work on time. She leaves home and dream-runs, slow and hardly touching the ground. She gets to where she parked her car, but it's not there. She must have parked it somewhere else. Now she's going to be late to work, and doesn't have her phone, or the number of the Club. She gets fed up and decides to call in sick and not go to work at all.

Then she decides to fly back to the house, and she takes off and begins moving, but a little girl runs up and grabs her legs and pulls her back to the ground. Suzie turns on the kid and tries to beat her up, slapping, pinching and punching, but the blows land soft and slow and don't disturb the kid at all.

The kid wants Suzie to show her how to fly, but what she really wants is for Suzie to tow her along by the hand and fly for her. Suzie tries, and gets dragged down, and finally tells the kid she's going to have to do the work herself. She offers to teach her how to fly, but the little girl has a fit, and Suzie takes off.

She's so pissed off that her flying is full of power and speed. It never occurs to her to fly to work. She goes back to the house, instead, where she looks around for her car keys, wasting her time ditzing out on various objects she finds.

During the next dream cycle, Suzie has another one. She's in a car, going around the corner, sitting in the passenger seat. She's practicing her escape from the moving car. Open, out, roll. Open the door, cast yourself out of the car, roll away. Over and over.

Two dream cycles before waking, Suzie rehashes the car dream. This time, it's her head tumbling out of the car. She can see the back of her head falling out as the car turns, the pixie-short cap of red hair blowing in the wind. Then her head hits the ground, bounces, and spins around. Suzie sees her own face. She's older, and she's really black. Oh. How interesting. As she wakes, she decides she looks good as a black woman.

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next, la merde frappe le ventilateur