Revolution, p.2
(R)Evolution, page 2
Richard smiled and shook his head.
“No. But maybe she’ll do it for you,” he said. “She finds you silly.”
“I find myself silly,” Thomas said, shaking his head in disappointment.
At Flavour, the two men sat in their usual booth at the back window. A narrow strip of a joint where the main aisle divided the space evenly. One side was the counter and the other the row of booths. Few people were inside that morning. The two co-workers were the only ones in the booth. The few other people there sat at the counter. The hostess avoided giving them a menu. They always refused it and ordered the same thing every time. Eggs, hash browns, toast, and, if it was cheap that day, bacon.
As they waited for the waitress, Richard sipped his coffee and relaxed in the seat, making the red vinyl squeak. Even though he spent the night driving the sweeper his body felt like it worked heavily the whole time. It wasn’t like that before the pregnancy. Maybe the stress and grief was wearing him down.
“You boys ordering the usual?” the waitress asked at their side.
She was a bit younger than them, in her late twenties. Curly black hair framed a light brown face, a pug nose, and wide brown eyes. She wore a light blue uniform that covered her legs to her knees and a white apron on top of it. Her hands rested in the pockets, making no move to take out the pad and pen.
Thomas smiled up at her, exposed puppy dog eyes, and said, “Morning, Ronnie.”
“Hi, Thomas,” she said. “Hi, Richard. You seem beaten down today.”
Richard stretched out his best smile and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Rough day at work?”
Thomas sputtered his lips.
“The job pays so much I feel like we’re ripping them off,” he said.
“Boy, I wish I had a job like that,” she said. “They work me so hard for little pay I have no time to think or sit for a minute.”
“Are they hiring here?” Richard asked. The possibility of working so hard he couldn’t think sounded appealing. If only he could function without a brain.
Ronnie took her hand out of her pocket and placed it on Richard’s for a moment. “Oh, honey. You don’t want to work here. Not unless your life depended on it like mine.”
Over the year since Ronnie started waitressing, they heard her life story in bits and pieces. Ronnie, like them, couldn’t afford college or trade school so she could only find menial jobs with low pay after high school. Like everyone else, those jobs suffered the economic ups and downs. The ups created more money and work. The downs fired her so the management didn’t suffer like she would. Homelessness was something she struggled with constantly during those down times.
“I suppose you’re right,” Richard said and broke eye contact with her.
“I’ll put your orders in,” Ronnie said, smiling and throwing a wink at Thomas who she knew worshiped her.
As she walked to the break in the counter, Thomas leaned to the side and watched her move.
“My, God,” he said softly. “That ass.”
Richard smiled and shook his head. His co-worker was clockwork. Every morning he made the same comment.
“You know she was flirting with you,” Thomas said.
Richard flinched.
“She was not.”
“She touched your hand,” Thomas said. “Affectionately.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. We’re friends. All three of us.”
“I don’t touch your hand,” Thomas said.
“And I appreciate that,” Richard said. “Besides. She flirts with everyone. She winked at you. It’s how she encourages big tips.”
Thomas waved him off.
“Sir,” he said. “She was giving you special treatment.”
“Even if she was it doesn’t matter. I’m married.”
“So?”
“So, that means something to me. I took vows. Before I even took them I never wanted any other woman but Amelia. I love her.”
“Even though she’s turned into a vegetable.”
Richard’s lips pressed together, fighting off foul words. Thomas’s face broke into regret.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”
Richard nodded and sipped his coffee. The anger dissolved but he knew Thomas was right. Amelia had turned into a depressed vegetable and he felt it was all his fault.
Chapter 3
The cross-town walk to his Eastside apartment on 34th Street was Richard Smith’s exercise for the day. He always walked at a brisk pace, in a hurry to return to Amelia. This morning he would be a few minutes late. He wanted to stop at the flower store and pick up a dozen plastic red roses coated with a strawberry scent. It was the kind she wore when he first met her, the kind that attracted him. Maybe their romantic past would spark something in her.
He passed City Hall at Fourth Avenue and 55th Street. It was a monster of a white marble and glass building that took up most of the block and stretched forty-two floors. It not only housed the government departments but also the courts and temporary cells filled with prisoners awaiting trial.
Today a protest brewed in the courtyard of concrete that surrounded the entrance. A few hundred Right-To-Lifers were held back by sawhorses and stabbed signs in the air. The words written on them demanded the right to life for deformed babies.
This happened a few times a week until the employees inside couldn’t concentrate on their job and sent the cops to break it up. Sometimes a riot broke out. Sometimes people were beaten and arrested. Sometimes they were killed and left in the street for their family and friends to gather. Protests like this have been going on for hundreds of years in every generation since children have been born defective.
Richard sympathized with the Right-To-Lifers. He suffered a loss. He would do anything to bring his child back even if it was deformed with scales and couldn’t speak. Amelia might be happy now. Or maybe not. He was sure that he would love the child no matter how it appeared.
Viewing the protests often depressed Richard. They were useless. The last election for anywhere in the country was twenty years. No one was interested in running the country, state, or city but people desired someone else to handle the nightmare.
Richard recalled the last time they ran an election. He was a kid in 2nd grade. It was big news and all the adults were talking about it. Mayor Kaufman who had been running the city since the previous election was challenged by Michelle Herz. The progressive candidate demanded a better life for the people in the city. A stronger economy. More civil rights. Most importantly, she wanted deformed children to live past birth and to restart research into how the deformities were happening. Polls revealed she was gaining popularity. Even Richard’s parents were interested in her.
A month before the election she was murdered. A sniper from across the street shot her in the head as she was entering her apartment building during the day. The investigation lasted a week and no one else ran against Kaufman.
Richard crossed the street to avoid the crowd and picked up his pace. Once he cleared the block, he returned to the other side. The voices softened as he moved on. He wished them luck.
At Avenue A, Richard entered Lanies’ Flower Shop and picked up the plastic roses. The strawberry scent and the perfect petals perked him up. He smiled at the cashier, thanked them profusely, and left the shop. The people that he passed on the sidewalk seemed to like the roses, too. They smiled at Richard. Some women frowned, envious. Some broke out with Awes. If the small token of a dozen roses worked on any woman in the street, then it should work on Amelia.
Inside the apartment building, he rode the elevator up to the seventh floor to his unit. He knocked on the door before he opened it. He expected Amelia to be on the couch sleeping with the television on. The last time he talked to her was during his 3 AM break. She was up, unfortunately. She probably dozed off when the sun came up, never making it to the bed like she promised.
She definitely wasn’t on the couch but the television was still on.
“Amelia?” Richard called out.
Could she be in the kitchen? Could she have gone out to run errands?
Richard crossed the living room and checked the kitchen. Empty. No sign that someone cooked or ate. He went down the hall to find their bedroom empty. The queen-sized bed was made and neat.
A sour feeling filled his gut. He tossed the flowers on the bed and checked the second bedroom that was supposed to be their child’s room. Before they found out that the child would be deformed, a friend bought them a crib. It stood by the window. Richard resisted throwing it out. Amelia was nonplussed about it.
She must be in the bathroom.
The door was ajar. Richard wrapped his knuckles on it and called her name. Was that a slow drip of water? Was she taking a bath?
Richard pushed the door open wider. He couldn’t comprehend what he saw inside. The tub was filled with red-tinted water up to her neck. Amelia wore her light blue two-piece pajamas. Her mouth and eyes were open and facing the ceiling.
“Amelia?” he rasped out.
She remained silent. He finally understood what he saw and fell to his knees, sobbing.
Chapter 4
“RIGHT TO LIFE, YOUR NAME’S A LIE, YOU DON’T CARE IF CHILDREN DIE!”
Mayor Kaufman sat behind his large oak desk with his feet on top of it and tried to concentrate on his crossword puzzle book but the protest outside his window ruined his concentration. Six across asked for a nine-letter word that started with the letter E and was a synonym for annihilate. He knew it. Damn it! The answer was on the tip of his brain.
The man in his early seventies stood from the metal and wood chair, straightened his black suit, and double-checked the desk mirror. Good. His perfectly combed white hair he had installed a few weeks ago remained in the same position.
He should have taken off the jacket to avoid wrinkles first but the office felt cold today. He told Denise his assistant about it when she went over his schedule earlier but the engineer must have been taking his time. He placed the digest-size puzzle book on the desk and took a break from it. Breaks always worked at times like these.
“RIGHT TO LIFE, YOUR NAME’S A LIE, YOU DON’T CARE IF CHILDREN DIE!”
Kaufman crossed to the window and glared down the forty-one floors to the protest below. A black blob covered the otherwise concrete gray of the courtyard. The Right-To-Lifers seemed behaved today. They remained behind the saw-horse barrier. Not like last week when a small group of them stormed the entrance. What the hell did they think they would accomplish? Whatever they believed, the security team stopped them. Officers gunned them down and killed most of the onslaught. The protest was disbursed and the remaining day was peaceful. He expected cries of pain and anguish for the ridiculous dead but they never reached up to his penthouse office.
“RIGHT TO LIFE, YOUR NAME’S A LIE, YOU DON’T CARE IF CHILDREN DIE!”
Curious, Kaufman grabbed the binoculars that he kept on the minibar. He brought them up to his eyes and adjusted the telescopic focus. Yes. She was there at the front. Jane Herz. The bitch of a daughter of bitch Michelle Herz who tried to run against him thirty years ago. He recognized her pink hair and strong face chanting along with the others. Kaufman shook his head. The woman made herself a target with that hair. If she appeared like the others down there then a sniper might have a hard time aiming at her. He didn’t think it would come to that again. No one wanted another election. The city was happy with Kaufman’s job.
Well, most of the city.
Every generation, the Right-To-Lifers grew larger and stronger. When Michelle Herz was alive they gathered in a small hall in the Lower East Side. Now they owned their own building and formed a nonprofit organization that used its funds to help the families who lost their children to extermination. Kaufman liked that aspect of the organization. He didn’t have to allocate city money to those people that needed help. And if he did try to financially help those families through their grief, they still wouldn’t be happy. It would never be enough money. People were so greedy no matter what they were going through in life.
Though, the Right-To-Lifer’s strength worried him a little. Denise had dropped off a report from the Department of Fertility on the thirty-second floor. They gathered the information of parents with defective fetuses from the OB GYN’s in New York City. The reports were fine, the statistics were progressing, but they speculated a hacker was in their system. None of the information seemed to be altered but that didn’t mean it wasn’t downloaded. What tipped them off was the use of a supervisor’s computer logging into the server at 3 AM when the offices were closed. They questioned the supervisor but he had a tight alibi. He was in the hospital where doctors removed his appendix.
If it was hackers, the Right-To-Lifers, they must have monitored all of the Department of Fertility's staff and waited for the right time to break into the server. They were a very smart and patient group whoever they were. If they were successful, they also had classified information about the babies’ disposal. That bothered Kaufman.
Just like these protesters outside, the hackers must be extirpated.
Surprise popped onto Kaufman’s face.
Extirpate!
He rushed back to his desk and double-checked the crossword. Yes. It was nine letters and started with an E. Extirpate was a synonym for annihilate.
Kaufman, smiling with satisfaction, sat at his desk. He had never felt so proud of himself. If only he could put it in a press release but he knew the public didn’t care about his intellectual pursuits.
“RIGHT TO LIFE, YOUR NAME’S A LIE, YOU DON’T CARE IF CHILDREN DIE!”
Sighing in frustration, Kaufman pressed the intercom for Denise’s desk.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor,” she asked in a sing-song voice.
“Denise, call down to security and tell them to take care of those protesters. I can’t think up here.”
“Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
Kaufman leaned back in his chair, straining the hinges as far as they would go, and closed his eyes. Taking deep breaths he tried to find the joy created by his intellectual accomplishment.
“RIGHT TO LIFE, YOUR NAME’S A LIE, YOU DON’T CARE IF...”
Rapid clacks of metal and screams reached his ears. Then silence.
Kaufman smiled and found his joy again.
Chapter 5
Amelia Smith killed herself, releasing her depression. Now it hung on Richard Smith. He couldn’t stop crying. Everything set him off. He was such a wreck that he skipped his wife’s wake and cremation. The funeral home delivered Amelia’s ashes to him the next day. A little, wooden box with a tiny lock on it. The metal plate screwed onto the lid had her name and mortality dates etched on it like a tombstone. Inside, the funeral director assured a little packet of ash with his wife was inside. The box sat on the coffee table in front of the couch. In plain view of Richard who wasted away on it.
The Smiths never had a big family. Amelia and Richard were only children. Both families suffered the loss of having deformed children executed at birth. His parents were dead five years now and Amelia’s parents lived inland in Oklahoma City. They couldn’t afford to attend the funeral but were able to log in to view it virtually. Thomas, who was at the wake, told Richard that they seemed upset he wasn’t there.
“They never liked me anyway,” Richard said. “Especially now. They blame me for Amelia’s death. If she never got pregnant, the baby wouldn’t have been executed, and she wouldn’t have been depressed and suicidal.”
Thomas, who sat on a chair across from Richard in dirty pajamas laying on the couch, said, “You can’t do that to yourself. Okay. So maybe they do blame you. It doesn’t mean they’re right.”
Richard had no response. He remained still and spaced out. Thomas sat with him a while longer, listened to the silence, and made sure his friend’s needs were taken care of before he left.
“I’ll drop by after work tomorrow,” Thomas said, gathering his bulk off the chair. “Can I bring you anything?”
“Boss still complaining I haven’t returned yet?”
“Yeah, but so what? You took bereavement leave. It’s your legal right. The union supports it. You still have some time left.”
“I should probably kill myself,” Richard said. “It would make a lot of people happy.”
Thomas gasped in shock.
“Don’t even mess around like that,” he said. “I would miss you. You’re the only person at work that I like. I don’t mean to sound selfish but the guy who temps for you is a bastard. A real ball breaker. You know how many times he rammed into the back of my cart? Those little boxes are not made for demolition derby. The bastard smiles at me through his window like we’re playing bumper cars out there.”
Richard grinned. Thomas smiled and pointed at him.
“Ahh, there it is,” he said. “Not too late for you. Not if you can smile.”
Richard nodded and watched his friend wobble out the door.
Maybe Thomas was right. Maybe there was some little light left in him. Richard’s life was dull, even when he was married to Amelia, but he always found small things to be happy about. Plastic roses, year-end work bonuses, discovering new series on television, joking around with Thomas, and Amelia’s smile.
Shit.
He pictured her smiling in his head and sobbed.
Back to zero.
With only a week left of his bereavement time, Richard decided to straighten out his brain. He planned to eat right and switch back to his normal sleep schedule. He forced himself to stay up all night. To help him along, he exercised lightly, drank coffee, and watched a lot of television. A few times he took long walks through the neighborhood. The quiet and dim streets reminded him of what he loved about his job. He was anxious to return.
Another thing he tried to accomplish was communication with the rest of the world. He joined chat groups catered to grieving spouses and he answered emails from concerned friends. Most of them were from Amelia’s relationships. Richard was surprised they were so concerned and wanted to help him if he needed it. He emptied his feelings about Amelia to them (his guilt, sorrow, attachment) and they responded with sympathy and understanding. They never judged or blamed him. Maybe Thomas was right again.
