Deadrock (7 page)

Planetary Earth Date: 15.7.2015

The next
morning on their way to work, Max realized that these walks were going to seem
unbearably long if he didn't start winning more coups. A jet roared overhead
and he used it as an excuse to pretend that he didn't hear Bird gloating over
his latest win.

"I said,
so what's the score now, Max?" asked Bird.

"You know
the score is 3 Bird, 1 Max," said Max stepping along a little faster.

"I got
you good by the deli, didn't I, Max?" crowed Bird. "I snuck up behind
you and GOTTCHA!" He poked Max in the ribs and drew stares from fellow pedestrians.

"Yeah,
well, I got you pretty good this morning," said Max.

"As I
said at the time, I don't think that was a fair coup."

"You didn't
say, 'Game Over' the night before, so you were fair game," said Max, crowing
a bit himself.

"But
getting a coup on a man sound asleep isn't exactly kosher," said Bird.

"Didn't
you tell me that braves in your tribe thought it was the highest coup to touch
a corpse? Well, believe me, you looked dead."

"I warn
you, Max, you're upping the stakes. I may have to start playing hard-ball,"
said Bird.

"Just don't
scalp me," said Max entering the office building.

"Now
there you go. You
new-comers
always get that wrong.
Native Americans rarely scalped anybody! And we were taught the practice by you
people who invaded our lan-"

"Yeah,
yeah," said Max.

They entered
the offices of Rhoades Through Time. Nickie poked her head out of her cubicle
door.

"Ready to
go, Max?" she asked.

"Ready,"
he beamed.

Bird
whispered, "All I have to do is get you a picture of Nickie to moon over
and I'll be able to coup you a million times. Gottcha, gottcha, gottcha!"

"Just get
to work – and stick to Ted," Max hissed.

As he walked
toward her, Max thought Nickie looked even better than yesterday. Who says blue
sundresses aren't appropriate in an office?

They neared
their first stop, Rasputin Used Records store.

"What's a
record?" Max asked Nickie.

"Yeah, I
know," she laughed. "I'll put in some CDs, too, but I think the
capsule should have some vinyl."

Max entered
and followed Nickie through the arches of the stolen goods detector. He closed
his eyes tight to protect his corneas. They'll all be blind by age 102, he
thought sadly.

As Nickie
wended her way down the aisle marked Heavy Metal, Max stopped to consider the
grubby poster of a blonde, scantily clad woman wearing a crucifix.

"Who's
that?" he asked a clerk who stuffed square, flat boxes into a wooden bin.

The clerk gave
him a snarky smile and adjusted one of two tiny gold rings that pierced his
right nostril. "I'm with ya, dude, but some people still dig Madonna."

Madonna? The
people of the twenty-first century picture the Madonna looking like that? I
wonder how they picture Joseph and the Wise Men, Max wondered.

"And she
sings?" muttered Max.

"Some
people think so. Mostly old," said the clerk. "Personally, I like
more combative stuff, you know, full-body-contact, retro-fusion, nihilist rock
and roll!"

"Yeah,"
said Max, "I like a good Scream-In or a Howling, myself," said Max.

"Scream-In?
Where do you go for that, man?"

Max was just
trying to figure out how to give the clerk directions to a Howl Dome that
wouldn't be built for another 98 years when Nickie placed a tall, teetering
stack of vinyl records on the counter.

"Would
you send these to this address?" she asked the clerk, handing him her business
card and a credit card.

She turned to
Max. "I really need your help, Max! What should we include?
Rock, pop, jazz, hip-hop, country, rap?
And which artists?"

Max stared at the
rows of records and antiquated CDs, the crude predecessors of the liquid sound
tube. He tried to remember the name of that ancient band Grandma collected.
What was it…Red something? No, I got it! "Pink Lloyd!" he said.

"Hmm,
yeah, Pink Floyd. We could put some classics in there. Maybe we'll just load up
a computer with a little of everything and include a loaded flashdrive.
And classical, too?
Who should we get? Beethoven, Mozart,
Bach…"

"Elvis."

"C'mon, I'm
serious!" she said.

So was I. He's
practically a deity, after all, thought Max.
 
"Does it really matter what you put
in the capsule?"

"Yes it
matters!" she said, fumbling with the returned credit card. "I think
of it as planting an archeological garden. Something to say here's what we
thought about, here's what we worried about, here's what we wanted to be-"
She broke it off and hurried from the store. Max ran after her.

She was halfway
down the block when he caught up to her. But keeping up was another matter.

"Nickie,
could you, do you think you could slow down a bit?
I'm a
little dweeb
,
remember
? I've got short dweeb
legs!" he panted.

"Oh, Max,
I'm sorry. Every time I think about my future I-" She stopped short in
front of Hicklebee's Children's Book Store.

Books! They
still have paper books, thought Max.

Nickie spied a
book in the window and without another word, pushed past Max and entered the
store. Inside, he found her perched on a pint-sized yellow wooden chair,
reading the book from the window,
The
Runaway Bunny
.

"The
bunny baby runs away and hides but the mother bunny always finds her,"
said Nickie, showing him the first page. "I used to beg my mother to read
this to me every night. And she would. No matter how bored she must have gotten
with it," Nickie said softly. "I miss her so much."

"Oh, don't
– don't cry, Nickie," said Max. Don't cry! I don't know what to do
if you cry. Should I hold her? No, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nickie put
down the book, and threw her arms around Max's neck, sobbing. Hold her. Right,
hold her.

"Oh, man,
I feel so stupid," she said, wiping the last of her tears. Max sat on the
bus stop bench beside her and offered her his open arms. "You can cry some
more if you want, I don't mind," he teased.

She gave him a
little shove. "The people in the bookstore must have thought I was crazy."

"Probably
just thought it was a really sad book," said Max.

"I don't
know what it is, but sometimes, just out of the blue I start crying over her. I
mean it's been a year and a half, you'd think I'd have better control,"
she said.

"No, my
dad died over two years ago and I still feel sad sometimes."

Nickie nodded.
The bus came and they got on, the bus trailing a plume of smelly exhaust.

Max sat by the
window. "I used to get real mad at my dad for dying."

"I'm not
mad at my mom. She didn't want to die. It was a car accident. They called me
into the principal's office. I knew it had to be something really bad because
we were right in the middle of a test. My dad was there. He just looked so, so
sad. Like he didn't want to have to tell me and make me sad, too."

The bus
stopped, they got off, and waited at another bus stop. Max went to an ice cream
cart parked on the sidewalk and bought two fudgesicles. He handed one to Nickie
and they ate in silence while another bus came and went.

"I wish I'd
known my mom," said Max, licking the last of the fudgesicle off the stick.

"Did she
die when you were a baby?" asked Nickie.

"No, she
was a Breeder," said Max.

"A
breeder? You mean like a surrogate?"

"A
surrogate? Yeah, that's it, a surrogate mother," said Max.

Nickie's ice
cream dripped unnoticed into her lap. "You're kind of alone, aren't you,
Max? Except for Mr. Bird, that is."

"Bird?
Oh, yeah. We're, uh, inseparable, you might say."

Nickie sighed.
"Well, I'm glad I've still got my dad. He's kind of A.D.D. but he's there
for me when I really need him. And he needs me a lot, too."

But
Ted's going to be murdered, thought Max, with a stab of guilt
.
Or murder someone else, which is just as bad. What's she going to do without
him?
  

Max turned to
Nickie. "C'mon, let's go back to the bookstore. I think that book deserves
to go into the vault."

Back in the
office, Nickie and Max had listed and tagged most of the items from Bird's desk
by three o'clock. She packed
The Runaway
Bunny
, a stack of records and CDs, a turntable, a PlayStation console, a
box of Huggies, Play Dough, the fishing pole, a New York City roadmap, a pair
of Hulk inflatable Slam Hands, a gel pillow, a Swiss Army knife, a Nerf
football, a roll of Mentos, a liter of Coke, a cuckoo clock, a can of Raid, and
a snow cone maker.

"I'm
sorry you missed lunch, Max," she said, glancing at the clock on the wall.
"I thought maybe you could join my dad and me, but it looks like he forgot
our lunch date. Again."

"No
problem. That fudgesicle was very filling." His stomach growled loudly and
he shifted in his seat. "Actually, I'm more concerned about Mr. Bird. Did
he send you a text saying where he was going?"

"No, but
don't worry, he's probably just taking a break," she said.

"We've
been here two hours. That's a pretty long break."

Nickie stopped
packing and gave him a concerned look. "Don't worry, Max. He doesn't seem
like the type who'd abandon you. You've been together a long time."

"Yeah,
but it's still sort of a trial relationship."

At that
moment, Ted wandered in through the glass door, took a clipboard off a hook
next to it and studied the attached list as he wove his way to his office.

"What's
that?" asked Max.

"Shipping
list," said Nickie. "The hard copy tells how many capsules we ship
each day. Dad's in charge of keeping the shipping records straight." She
called to her father, "Dad, where have you been? I thought we were going
to have lunch together."

"Oh,
sorry, honey, it just slipped my mind," Ted said. His eyes never left the
clipboard as he wandered on past the doorway.

"It just
slipped his mind," she said to Max. "How can your own daughter just
slip your mind?" Without waiting for an answer she hurried after her
father.

Max sighed and
loaded the rest of the items into the cardboard boxes and onto a cart. He took
the elevator downstairs to the basement and lifted them into the shiny steel
vault the size of their motel room. He circled the vault half-full of boxes,
furniture, toys and electronics. He stepped around a life-size cardboard cutout
of Michelle and Barack Obama, then sat in the plaid La-Z-Boy recliner and
leaned back. A shiver went through him. Bad place to die, thought Max. It would
take some time for the oxygen to go, but all along you know it's gonna run out
sometime.

The heavy
metal door crrrrreeeeaaked and started to close. "Hey, wait! I'm in here!"
Max jumped from the chair and rushed to the door.

"Hey,
Max!" said Bird at the entrance.

Max panted, "Bird!
Gnartz!"

"I've
been looking for you. How long you been back?" asked Bird as he took the
empty cart and rolled it back into the elevator.

"About a
half-hour," Max lied. "How long have you been gone?"

"About
forty-five minutes, I guess," Bird said.

"You've
been working hard here, then," said Max.

"Oh yeah,
nose to the grindstone." They reached their floor and walked to their
cubicle. "Just routine stuff. I called some places for donations, did input
and cataloged items. Oh, Max, you should really get on the computer more
– it's so much fun, so 0s and 1s! "

"Did Ted
go anywhere?" asked Max.

Bird casually
stretched and looked over the top of the cubicle wall and towards Ted's office
where Ted was talking to Nickie. "Right! I forgot to tell you. He went out.
Did errands."

"That's
it?"

"Sure,
that's it. Oh, and then when he came back here, I took a little break. Thought
this might make a good addition to the capsule!" he said, pulling the
folded
National Enquirer
from his
pocket. "Read this part about the nine month-old baby who weighs a hundred
and ten pounds!"

"You're a
liar, Bird!"

"Well, I'll
admit it sounds like a lot of weight, but the mother swears-"

"Not
that, you dizbecile! You lied when you said you've been gone forty-five
minutes! I've been here waiting for you for over two hours!"