CHAPTER ONE

In his last tooth-grit, fevered moments, Dad grabbed my arm and asked if he would be remembered for making good money or for making good choices—and died before I got the chance to tell him that he’d made so much money, most people assumed he’d done the latter.

He spent three years living, and another three dying, in a small apartment at the end of the same street that I lived on. The building, blue and short, with cast-iron railing, capped a cul-de-sac and stared bleakly down the stretch of road to my bedroom window where I always kept the curtains drawn. By the time he passed I was too far away to reach him, but no one believed me when I said that, because according to the phonebook we were close. That street is cobbled now, but it wasn’t always, and every time I leave my top floor flat it reminds me that ‘renovation’ isn’t synonymous with ‘improvement.’ The stones are haphazard, the mortar bunched in uneven clumps—normal people built this street, people of the earth and of ignorance. People like you and me.

My building rears up alongside it, tan brick and cool, sepia windows. The glass doesn’t reflect much and only permits a ghost of true sunlight through its grime.  The cobbled street winds right past the stoop.

A decent sidewalk lines both sides of the street. Next door, windswept leaves rattle past charcoal streaks that lead to Mr. Frenkel’s mass grave of expired cigarettes. None of them are new—he stopped smoking when he stopped doing everything else. I might have been the first to notice his absence, since at the time I had a job at the Municipal Building a few blocks down and walked to work every day.

The School is diagonal to the Municipal Building. It’s bulky and sad and shingled, and the roof is a little worn around the base of the temporary steeple. Every two years, when the Red Coats take office, the steeple swings upright and permits hundreds of children carrying anything from sippy-cups to condoms. They punch their time cards and proceed to learn a lot about nothing. After two years, the Blue Coats take office, tear the steeple down, and spend the next two years un-teaching everything the children just learned. I always get the impression that no one ever learns anything this way, and the only thing that really ever changes is the steeple. And for that reason, if I had to prefer one it would probably be the steeple, since it casts a nice cool stripe of shade in the afternoon, right across the cobbled street, and provides the perfect place for one to enjoy his lunch break.

For all my talk of cobblestones, I usually kept to the paved sidewalk (back when I was employed). I did this mainly because it felt better to my feet, but there was one other reason and I didn’t even know her name. Every weekday morning, I passed a woman I’d only ever seen on the street; a woman with a hard, bright smile and a frame dressed in cardboard. She was poor and beautiful and dirty and pure. She was rare, and exquisite, and bruised. But none of these elements appeared to be contradictions, at least not on her, because she patched them together with confidence and acceptance and something so much more heartbreaking than poverty.

She’d be about thirty if she wasn’t timeless, if she didn’t have the history of mankind written on her face—but because of these traits she wasn’t thirty, or one hundred and thirty. She was timeless, and any man without a watch could love her forever. I thought I might if I ever spoke to her, but I always avoided eye contact out of fear that she’d ask me for change.

I saw her for the last time seven Mondays ago, on the same sidewalk, and as her eyes swung toward mine I checked my watch and realized I would be late to work. I had barely slept the night before. Every few hours I would burst into wakefulness, sweating and high on adrenaline from a dream of which I could only remember shadows. Each time I immediately closed my eyes, scrambling to rebuild the broken images and muffled sounds. But they slithered away within seconds, leaving nothing but a morbid anxiety in the pit of my stomach and a vague memory of Prehistoric Cave-people having sex. I overslept as a result, and when the Church Bells tolled the fifteen-minute warning, I was ironing a silk tie and choking on the air while my toast turned black on the stove.

I let my sleeve fall over the watch and walked faster, listening for a dull, brass clang to commence the workday. This late in the morning, Entrepreneurship Avenue belonged solely to me and a flustered old man across the street. He fumbled through every step, halfway blind under his bucket cap and as desperately pressed for time as myself. I recognized him from the Municipal Building—he worked on the bottom floor with the United Morality Commission. I think he did clerical work. 

The Church Bells made my tardiness official as I rounded a drab, industrial parking garage—nearly as tall as the Municipal Building and three times as plain. I sighed, slowed my pace (no amount of running could make me less truant, they would say), and watched through the corner of my eye as the old man whisked the cap from his head and threw it in the grass. 

Less than a block past the Parking Garage, the Municipal Building sprouted from a pedestal of once-white steps, now green and marbled from the weather. The Building looked like an enormous red brick made of many smaller red bricks, balanced vertically so that it’s height exceeded its depth, with staggered rows of cream-curtained window squares facing the scummy fountain at the street’s terminal.

I took plenty of time climbing the steps, counting off the seconds since the Bells went quiet. I refused to acknowledge the Doorman until we met. A chill flew around the Building. The sunlight that had blessed the morning dwindled to a cold, steely glow. The sky, all slugged over with strings of gray pulp, boiled and sank, swallowing Ozark peaks a hundred miles away.

‘Go ahead and rain,’ I thought. ‘It’s a good day for rain.’

         I crested the marbled flight and finally forced my attention to the pug-faced Doorman by the front entrance.

“You’re late for Monday Work,” he said, moving to block the entrance.

At his straightest posture, his nose would brush my nipple, and his hands dragged so low that I’d often wondered if he could tie his shoes without stooping. His Lilliputian-stature matched his wit; in a few moments, he’d demand to see my time card, that being his only job, and I would give it to him since he practiced this diminutive responsibility with such incredible passion. Perhaps it seemed so important to him because, for the few brief moments that he held a person’s timecard, he could look down on whomever he wanted.

“Timecard,” he said, thrusting a pudgy palm into my sternum.

I pulled the lanyard (which hung around my neck) over my head and let it dangle out of the Doorman’s reach just long enough that it might not have been malicious before dropping it in his hand. 

“Monday lateness is a three point fine,” he said, and marked the back of the timecard with a Sharpie. When I only shrugged, he grimaced as if personally offended, and tucked the lanyard into a rectangle pouch at his waist. “You’ll get it back at close, after the points are nixed from your ledger.”

“Perfect,” I said. 

“It’s your responsibility to keep your ledger in good standin’. The points you lose affect the grade our State gets from the UMC.”

         “I know.” I glanced at the sky, suddenly hoping for a downpour.

         “It only takes a handful of lazy people comin’ in late to hurt our national rank.”

         “I know.”

         “If you know it so good, why are you late?”

         I coughed to hold down a much more vulgar sound. Footsteps approached from behind—the old man with the bucket cap.

         “I don’t know.”

         Seeing someone else to harass, the Doorman placed a silver keycard against the door panel. It hummed and hissed and popped ajar, and not a second too soon.

         “Have a nice rest’o your day,” he said as I brushed past him.

A few seconds after the door snapped shut, thunder growled somewhere, and the air filled up with rain.

*





MUNICIPAL BUILDING

4: Government Oversight (GO)

3: Federal Lobbying Association (FLA)

2: Cafeteria, Restrooms

1: United Morality Commission (UMC)

B: Sunshine Rooms



         I sidled into the elevator and pressed the number four, hands folded in front and elbows tucked in. Sweat and perfume spiced the air, and before the elevator door slid shut, any comfort to be found in the space had been strangled by writhing tweed and hot breath. I didn’t move until the third floor, which is where everyone apart from me exited, and then rode the elevator the rest of the way up, feeling deflated, warm, and unsanitary.

         I exited into a hall of brightly lit marble and oak doors and gold plaques and a large polished sign, hanging in the center of it all, declaring the splendid place’s name:  Government Oversight. 

         Here, the air tasted fresh and light, and everything shimmered, save the rain-lashed windows at the end of each hall. Even losing the timecard didn’t affect me, really. I could approach the far window and look down on the Doorman, and the cobbled street, where the rain surged in curtain-droves on my pitiful apartment, and on my Dad’s old place at the very end. Here I walked above it all, above everyone save my colleagues, and that knowledge alone did more for my disposition than liquor.

         “Stout!” A man called my name from the end of the hall, bald head extending from behind the turn. “Been trying to find you! Come on ‘round to my office.”

         I glanced to the window once again before tearing myself away toward the far end of the hall.

As I drew closer to the turn, the rolling murmur of soft voices swelled. The noise sounded airy and timid and flirtatious in a way that pulled me along.

         “Ah-ha! Thomas Stout, late for work as usual. How about an Irish breakfast? You look terrible.” The bald man, David Yorick, held out a decanter of some amber liquid that frothed when it swilled against the glass. The chatter came from behind him (but had now ceased), where a dozen or so young people huddled in a mass with notebooks on their arms and presentiment-painted faces. Yorick’s face burned and he smiled too easily.

         “Off to an early start,” I said, swiftly closing the distance between us to relieve him from the burden of walking upright.

         “Take a pull or two, and then we gotta see to these folks,” Yorick said.

I unstoppered the vessel and drank deeply enough that I could see through the bottom. I watched the decorative ceiling warp through the glass, the crystal chandelier melt and stretch long where the wood paneling twisted and met in a point, and didn’t stop until my eyes overflowed with molten tears. When I lowered the rim from my lips, the whole world righted itself.

“So,” Yorick said, clapping his hands together. “This is Mr. Stout, and yes, he’s an executive here at G.O. just like me. One of the youngest we’ve ever had, just like his old man. Now, what were we talking about?” Yorick kicked back one wobbly leg to stabilize the other, and held out his palms expectantly.

A slender girl at the front, sixteen or seventeen years old with a bright pink notebook, fluttered her fingers in the air.

“Yes! Go on.”

“Well, um, we were talking about the G.O., and how it got started.”

“Right, great.” Yorick grinned and nodded my direction, as though I were meant to understand something he couldn’t say right then, but I couldn’t think of what that would be. He swiveled back to face the group.

“Some years ago, way before you were around to see it, our great, great government had become hopelessly corrupted. Money passed under tables by pure force of habit. Every politician was paid off, paid for, or out-paid. Obviously, this wasn’t best for a well-greased democracy, ‘cause everyone didn’t get a fair go. So, some of the nation’s top Job Creators and lawmakers got together and came up with the solution. What we needed, more than anything, was Government Oversight!” Yorick beamed, face flushing deeper. His attention flickered for a second to the decanter in my right hand. “So, that’s what we do, fellas like me and Stout. We go to meetings, hearings, what have you, and make sure the government officials are toeing the line. If they don’t...well, that’s when it gets fun.”

Yorick burped under his breath then fell silent as the students buried their faces, scratching quick lines across their notebooks.  I moved in and tugged on his sleeve.

“Do you need me here?” I said quietly, and then checked my watch for emphasis. “I’ve got a caucus in ten minutes.”

Yorick’s brow flew toward his hairline, clearly startled, and sucked in a breath as he read his own watch.

“Damnit, so do I,” he said. “Completely forgot. And their instructor won’t be back for an hour.”

“Excuse me sir,” said a boy from the group, waving a spindly hand over his head. His voice, when it didn’t rasp, still clung to the piped, tender tones of youth. “I have a google about your job.”

Both Yorick and I turned to address him, but Yorick spoke first, slurring, “What is it?”

“Politicians still get money, right?” he said. “So who gives them money? And how do you decide if it’s corruption or not?” The boy’s writing hand trembled, causing the pencil-tip to repeatedly dot the page. Based on the pallor of his face and the tightness in his throat, I thought he might have swallowed his tongue. 

“Well, that’s simple,” said Yorick, adopting a quizzical expression that, while appropriate for the situation, seemed completely foreign on his face. “Corporate donations, as offered by G.O.-certified lobbyists, are lawful.” Yorick paused long enough to tease out a sharp hiccup. “Unauthorized donations, such as those from groups sponsored by private citizens, are not.”

Again came the scratching of pencils, a sound like the scurry rat claws behind drywall. I set the decanter down as a tide of dizziness washed over. 

“And why not private citizens’ groups, again?” said the boy.

I felt his eyes on me when he spoke, as though he wanted my answer instead. I met his gaze, casually, expecting to gorge myself on his quiet admiration, his reverence for my subtle attractiveness—the jaw-line and the solid chest, the black wool and shiny leather, and all of those things which perpetually drew the attention of his female classmates. But I saw none of those things. Instead, I discovered a peculiar depth to his eyes, which were as murky-blue as the ocean, and from those depths radiated what I assumed to be a fiercely intense intellect, intense and confused and suffering from some terrible disconnect with the world. Like the grinding dissonance between the visions behind his eyes and the illusions before them might have been enough to churn those ocean-irises into a storm.

I’d seen those eyes before—hidden in the darkness of a closed-casket; and before that, locked away at the end of the street; and, in a sober moment, accusing me from a bathroom mirror. I knew those eyes in a way I’ll never have words for, except to say that I hated them.

I grabbed the decanter again, ignored the rushing in my skull, and threw back enough to make my mouth tingle. Yorick was already replying to the question, but I hadn’t been listening.

“...so, that’s why private citizens can’t give cash to politicians. It’s bad for democracy, because if one guy has more money than his neighbor, then the richer one has more leverage! We wind up with a system where the richest citizens have the loudest voice, and that’s not equality.” Yorick slapped his thigh, caught in the momentum of his speech, and struggled to allow a brief pause for the frantically scrawling students.

“On the other hand, businesses are vital to the health of the United States. They grow our food, build our houses, give us jobs, and generate revenue. They do so many important things! So you see, what’s good for them is good for all of us, as long as the lawmakers make good laws. Only when the lawmakers make bad laws does the system fail. And that’s what the G.O. is for. To make sure the system doesn’t fail.”

Yorick lifted his wrist again, watch glinting in the chandelier’s yellow incandescence, and pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Just one more thing,” the boy said, a little bolder now.

Yorick grunted impatiently. “What’s your name?”

“Joey.”

“Joey,” he said, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “This stuff is real complicated, and it takes years to learn all the ins-and-outs. It’s been a nice time, but I have an important meeting to get to.”

“It will only take a second,” Joey said. A few of his classmates groaned. The rest were either inattentive or seemed nervous by his persistence.

Yorick lifted his watch yet again, then bolted his hands to his hips. “Well, go on then.”

“We learned in class that your organization is paid for with public taxes. So, I was wondering, since your job is to make sure our lawmakers don’t misuse our taxes, whose job is it to make sure that you don’t?” 

And then a shocked quiet, hanging over everyone like a heavy blanket. It took me a moment to understand what the boy was getting at. Joey teetered on the heels of his sneakers with the notebook clutched to his chest. A pained look, most likely regret, began to creep across his face.

“Really, I’m late,” Yorick said at last as he fastened the top button of his blazer. His tone darkened. “You’ll have to take this one, Stout. Their instructor comes back in an hour.”

“Hey, no, I can’t—”

“Just give them a tour, show them what you do.” Yorick slapped my back, wrested the liquor from my hand, and then darted off. I watched him disappear around the turn, and simply stood for a moment before confronting the group again.

“So?” said Joey. 

“You mean the taxes? We don’t get paid taxes.”

“But our teacher said—”

“Look,” I said, hitching up my coattail to get to my pocket. When I found my wallet, I flipped it open and withdrew a business card and offered it to him. When he took it, I said, “It’s right there, beneath my name.”





Thomas S. Stout

Executive Overseer, G.O.

“A Non-Profit Organization” 



“So...you don’t get tax money at all?” he asked.

I started to speak, but then stopped, and tried again, and stopped again. Joey cocked his head, curious and innocent enough, but there was more to him than that. I clenched my fist in an attempt to quell the frustration.

“We’re not tax-funded...we’re tax-deductible,” I said, and shoved the wallet back into my pocket. Joey slipped the business card into a pouch on his book-bag. “It’s different. Completely legal, completely ethical, the whole nine-yards. Do you get it now?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“Does everybody get it now?” I repeated, louder. A scattered chorus of consent echoed in the corridor. “Great. I have a caucus in five minutes, so I guess you all can follow me to that. Just take notes or whatever until it’s time for you to leave. It’s a Democrat hearing, so there should be plenty to write about.”

“Democrat?” said the girl from before, with the pink notebook. “But the Democrats aren’t in session this year.”

“They always start meeting and thinking up ideas before the Switch,” I explained as I walked, the clatter of twenty-something footsteps in my wake. “During the two years that the entire legislature is Republican, what you call the Red Years, most of the Democrats go on vacation, or game shows, or promote crap books. But you can always count on them returning before the official Switch-over to the Blue Years, spending hours pre-drafting enough bills to undo whatever the Republicans did while they were away. They like the start of their terms to be memorable.”

“And where do the Republicans go during the Blue Years?” a male student asked. We’d reached the flight of stairs that would take us to the basement, where the caucus was scheduled to start in less than three minutes. I started down the stairs as quickly as I could manage, motioned with my hand for them to hurry, and shouted my reply up the echoing stairwell: 

“South. Like the birds.”