The Ignored (40 page)

“Has anyone made any attempt to find out what we are? Why we’re like
this?”

“Sort of. I mean, we’re always being asked to fill out questionnaires
and take telephone polls. And once a year we’re all required to take a physical
exam that’s totally unlike any physical I’ve ever had. But, no, probably not to
the extent you mean. The corporations don’t care about us as people; they only
care that we do what they want us to do. We do—and I think that’s good enough
for them. They don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“How long has this place been here?” Mary asked.

“The town was founded in 1963, although it was called Gates then and was
owned by Gates Manufacturing. Thompson Industries took it over in 1979, changed
the name.”

“But has the city always corresponded with the mood of the country?”

“Of course. Why else would it exist? In the late sixties we even had
riots here. You should’ve seen it. Young people said they were tired of being
Ignored and wanted recognition. I don’t think, at that time, they fully realized
what we were. They thought it was imposed on us or something, like we were a
legitimate minority and were being oppressed by the system. There were protests
at the Gates headquarters, and when that went nowhere there were riots here.” He
stopped walking, looked around to make sure we were alone, lowered his voice.
“Gates sent in troops to quell the unrest. Private troops. A hundred and ten
people were shot and killed. No one ever saw it on the news—no one would’ve
remembered it if they
had
seen it—but the troops came in and stood in
formation and started taking out citizens. Didn’t matter who they were or what
they were doing. The troops didn’t care. They just opened fire.” Again, he
looked around to make sure we were alone. “Keep that under your hat, though.
That’s not something that’s talked about around here.”

I nodded.

“We gained more autonomy after that, but that was because we’d been
cowed into submission. We knew we were expendable. The company could exterminate
us all and no one would notice. No one would care.” He shook his head. “Then
times changed and we changed with them. We said no to Salty Surfers and yes to
nacho-flavored Doritos.” He shrugged. “And here we are.”

We continued walking, no one saying anything for a while. We came to a
Mrs. Fields cookie counter, sandwiched in a hole in the wall between Standard
Brands Paints and Standard Shoes. Ralph stopped walking. “Oh, you have to try
one of these cookies. They’re the best in the world.”

We stood in front of the window, looking in at tray after tray of fresh
cookies. I could smell the scent of baking, a full, sugary, chocolaty delicious
odor.

The counter was not yet open, but Ralph rapped loudly on the glass, and
an elderly woman in a red-and-white uniform slid the window aside, peeking out.
“Yes?”

“We have some new recruits here, Glenda. Think you could spare a few?”

The woman looked at us, smiled hello, then turned back to the mayor.
“Sure,” she said. “For them.
You
have to wait until regular business
hours.”

“Oh, Glenda—”

“Don’t ‘Oh, Glenda’ me. You know very well that the only reason you
wanted them to try my cookies is because you wanted one, too.”

“I can’t help it. I love your—”

“Oh, here. Take one and shut up.”

She handed Ralph an oversized cookie, passed others out to us as we
stepped up to the window.

I bit into the cookie. I wanted to hate it, to prove to myself, if no
one else, that I was not typical, not ordinary, not average, not exactly the
same as Ralph in my likes and dislikes. But I loved the cookie. The taste was
wonderful, a blend of chocolate and peanut butter that was like a concoction out
of my dreams. The taste was so perfect that it seemed as though it had been
created especially for me.

That was frightening.

Especially since I knew everyone else in town felt exactly the same way.

We stood there eating, making stupid small talk about how good the
cookies were, and I looked around me. I’d thought Thompson would be a real town,
a real community, not a corporate testing ground, and part of me wished I were
back in Desert Palms. Part of me wished I were back in my apartment in Brea.

Part of me loved it here.

We continued walking, ending up back at city hall around lunchtime.
Other people were in the building now—secretaries, clerks—and Ralph
grabbed the file folder from his desk and took it and us upstairs, handing the
folder to a woman standing behind a counter marked HOUSING AND COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT.

“Denise, here, will assist you in finding housing,” Ralph said. “She’ll
assign someone to take you around until you find a place that’s suitable. I
assume you’ll all need furnished places?”

We nodded.

“No problem.” He turned toward me. “I’d like you to come with me, if you
don’t mind. I’ll help you find a place to live.”

I nodded. “All right.” I turned toward the others. “See you guys later.”

“Later,” James said.

“Bye.” Mary smiled at me. “I think we’re all going to be very happy
here.” Her hand found Jim’s and held it.

“I hope so,” I said.

I nodded good-bye to Don and followed Ralph back downstairs.

In the lobby, the mayor turned to face me. “I like you,” he said. “I
trust you. I have a good feeling about you. That’s why I want you to tell me
about this Philipe.”

“What about him?” I wasn’t sure what he was after.

“Something’s been bothering me all morning. I couldn’t figure out what
it was. I mean, he’s supposed to be your leader, he’s this brilliant guy, and
he’s coming in sometime in the next few days, and you guys act like he doesn’t
exist. Did you have some type of falling out?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Is there… something wrong with Philipe? Something I should know
before he gets here?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“How can I put this? Certain people who are Ignored are… shall we
say, disturbed. Something happened to them. Some short circuit in their brain.
I’ve seen it before. We had one guy here who was a pyromaniac. Seemed like a
perfectly normal guy, but he felt compelled to burn houses because he said giant
spiders lived in them. There was another guy who thought he was communicating
with an alien race that expected him to repopulate the world by impregnating
dogs. We caught him mounting an Irish Setter. These people are few and far
between, but they cause us a lot of problems.”

I tried to keep my voice light, noncommittal. “What makes you think
Philipe’s like that?”

“I don’t know. Something about the way you guys seem all hush-hush about
him. I might add that those other men were also very charismatic men. Leaders.
One was a popular high school teacher. The other was my predecessor, the former
mayor.”

“Which one was he?”

“The alien dog-fucker.”

“Philipe’s not like that,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, studying my face, then nodded, satisfied.
He clapped a hand on my back. “Okay, then. Let’s get you settled.”

I followed Ralph outside. Why hadn’t I told him about Philipe? About
seeing him kill those two girls? About his “hunches” and his mood swings and his
spells? Was it because I was more loyal to Philipe than to my conscience? Or was
it because…

Was it because somewhere down in my superstitious heart of hearts I
believed that Philipe was right, that if he had not killed those girls something
would have happened to one of us?

No. That was stupid.

But Philipe’s “hunches” had always been right, hadn’t they?

Ralph was walking across the parking lot, toward a white city vehicle.
“We have plenty of jobs for you if you want them,” he was saying. “Recessions
never affect us here.”

I nodded, pretended as though I’d been listening.

“Take a few days off if you need to. Get adjusted. Then come and see me
if you want to work.”

We got into the car, and he started talking about the furnished condo
that was going to be mine. He broke off in mid-sentence as we turned onto a
street festooned with banners.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“The Andy Warhol Day parade. It’s coming up this weekend.”

I noticed that the banners hanging from the streetlights and telephone
poles were celebrity portraits, the Warhol photo-paintings of Marilyn Monroe and
Jane Fonda and James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor.

“Andy Warhol?” I said.

“It’s one of our most important holidays.”

“Important?”

“To be famous for fifteen minutes,” Ralph said. “To be
noticed
for fifteen minutes. That’s what we pray for. That’s all we ask.”

I was about to say something else, something sarcastic, but I stopped
myself. What was I doing? Why was I putting down these people for desiring
recognition, these people who had never in their lives been noticed by anyone?
We had had our day in the sun. We had had our fifteen minutes of fame. Even if
the Terrorists for the Common Man had never been recognized, our deeds were
taken note of. We had the newspaper clippings and the videotaped newscasts to
prove it. I recalled my own rage, my own desperation before I teamed up with
Philipe, and I could not find it in my heart to condemn these pathetic souls for
wanting the same thing I had wanted, the same thing all of us had wanted.

I found myself looking up at a giant poster of Warhol hanging from a
temporary grandstand set up on the side of the street. “Hasn’t anyone Ignored
ever been famous?” I asked.

“In 1970, we had a rock group from here that had a top ten hit. The
Peppertree Conspiracy. ‘Sunshine World’.”

“I have that record!” I said. “I loved it! It was the first record my
parents ever bought for me!”

He smiled sadly. “We all have it. We all loved it. Everybody loved it
for a week. Now I don’t think you could find anyone who isn’t Ignored who has a
copy. There may be a few forty-fives buried in boxes in garages here and there,
but most of the records that were bought were probably tossed or given to the
Goodwill or Salvation Army. I bet you couldn’t find anyone who even remembers
the song now.”

“What happened to the group?”

“Teddy Howard’s our minister.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“Roger died of a drug overdose in 1973; Paul’s our local morning shock
jock on the radio.” He paused. “And I was the drummer.”

“Wow.” I was impressed, really impressed, and I looked at him with
renewed respect. I remembered sitting on my bed when I was little, two pencils
in my hands, pretending to drum with the record, imagining myself on stage in
front of thousands of screaming girls. I wanted to tell him this, but the
funny/sad/nostalgic look on the mayor’s face told me that that might best be
left for another time.

He turned down another street. “Come on,” he said. “It’s getting late.
Let’s go see your condo.”

I found a job in the planning department of city hall, processing
building permit applications. It was a boring job, but I was boring and I was
surrounded by other boring people, so I guess, theoretically, I should have
enjoyed it.

I did not.

That surprised me. My likes and dislikes, moods and rhythms had always
been so perfectly in sync with those of Philipe and the other terrorists that
I’d automatically assumed that life in Thompson would be relaxed and fun, that
I’d be happy.

That was not the case.

It was not the fault of my coworkers, who welcomed me with open arms and
even invited me out for happy hour at a Mexican restaurant at the end of my
first day of work. It was my fault. Maybe I’d been expecting too much, had had
my hopes up too high, but I was disappointed. The magic simply wasn’t there. I
guess I’d thought that once I came to Thompson everything would be perfect,
everything would fall into place—but it hadn’t happened. I was surrounded by
a city of people exactly like myself, and I felt as alone and out of it as I
always had.

My condo was nice, I had to admit. Ralph had set me up in a furnished
two-bedroom split-level in a community called The Lakes, and I was next to a
winding man-made waterway bordered by a fifteen-foot greenbelt. I had no
complaints there. But somehow having so much room completely to myself seemed
awkward, strange, and a little unsettling after spending so much time living in
such close proximity to the other terrorists.

The other terrorists.

As I’d feared, as I’d known, we saw very little of each other after that
first week. I invited James and Don and Jim and Mary to see my condo, and I went
over to visit their new homes, but, intentionally or unintentionally, we were
placed far away from each other, at opposite ends of the city, and none of us
found jobs in the same area.

I had the feeling that this was planned, that it was done on purpose,
but I could think of no reason why that would be the case. We were here among
our own people. Why would we be purposely separated? It didn’t make any sense.

After all that time with the terrorists, I was probably just paranoid.

Whatever the reason, though, it was inconvenient for us to see each
other.

And we started spending more time with our new coworkers and less time
with each other.

I heard, third-hand, that Philipe and the others had arrived a few days
after we ourselves had and, like us, had settled into the Thompson lifestyle,
but I saw none of them and did not make any effort to look them up.

The Thompson lifestyle
was
different. As Ralph had said,
everything was free. As far as I could tell, no money ever exchanged hands
within the city. I saw no coins or dollar bills. If I wanted something, I simply
walked into a store and took it. A shelf inventory was later taken, I suppose,
and the results forwarded to the corporation.