The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker (13 page)

“I am sorry,” the old man says.

Joshua rolls down his pant leg. “I don’t want your apology!
You’re just like them!” He starts pacing in front of the TV, breathing quickly.
“God, this could all be some kind of set-up. We don’t know. We can’t possibly
know.”

“Just take it easy,” I say.

“No,” Joshua says, looking at me. He stops in front of the
old man, looking down at him. “We should kill him.”

“Please,” the old man says. His head darts from Joshua to me.

Joshua reaches down and the old man’s bound hands fly up in
front of his face. Joshua pushes them away and grabs the old man’s shirt and
lifts him off the couch. “We should do to you exactly what they did to us. Then
you can tell us if an apology makes everything better!”

“Please,” he says. His eyes are bulging. His lower lip
quivers. I can’t help but feel good about this, seeing the old man so afraid.

“We’ll drown you,” Joshua says, shaking the old man
violently. “And then we’ll go out and we’ll find one of your friends with the
black masks and we’ll do the same thing to him and we’ll laugh just like they
did.”

The sun’s begun to dip behind the low-rise condos, casting
shadows across the living room.

“And then we can scream in your ears,” Joshua says through
gritted teeth, pulling the old man close. He screams as loud as he can, right
in the old man’s left ear. The old man cries out, wincing. A tear slips down
his cheek. “And then we’ll put you in the closet with a bright light, so you
can’t sleep. So you can’t lay down.”

“Please,” says the old man. “I am bad. You are right. I am a
bad person.”

The corners of my mouth ache. My dry lips crack. I’m smiling.
I’m enjoying this. The smile fades. I look around. The room reminds me of a
cell. My living room. My cell. Joshua reminds me of one of the soldiers who
held me down. So who am I in this grisly re-enactment? I’m the supervisor,
standing in the shadows with a smile on his face.

“Stop,” I say. Joshua reaches back and swings his fist at the
old man, connecting with his jaw. The old man cries out and his knees buckle
but Joshua holds him up. I reach out with both hands and tear Joshua’s fingers
away. “Stop!”

The old man collapses onto the couch, drawing in raspy
breaths. Joshua steps back, looking at me with surprise. He holds up his raw
knuckles so the last ray of red sunlight shines on them. Then the sunlight
disappears.

I fall into the recliner next to the couch. “God damn it.”

“I’m sorry,” Joshua says. “I’m sorry.” He sits on the other
end of the couch, rubbing his face. He begins crying. “I’m not like this. This
isn’t me.”

“We’ll take you to a shelter,” I tell the old man.

Joshua turns to me, eyes wide. “What if he rats us out?
They’ll come back for us!”

“Please don’t take me anywhere,” the old man says. He turns
to me. “Please. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking there’s some
kind of place set up for people who’ve lost their homes. There isn’t. People
are sleeping in rubble. They’re walking around begging and dying in the street.
If you make me leave, I will die.”

“You’re already dead,” Joshua says quietly. Violently.
Through his barred teeth, as if he’s fighting back the urge to explode again.
Then he seems to realize it and breaks down again, crying into his hands. I
don’t need to wonder if he was like this before he was detained. I know he
wasn’t.

I look at the old man. “You stayed here because they told you
I’d never be back. You condemned me to death to save yourself.”

“Would you have done any different?” he asks. He must see
something in my eyes, something I’m not aware of, because he suddenly starts
crying. “Please,” he whispers.

I lean back in the chair, turning away from the old man. It
doesn’t affect me at all, seeing him crying like this. All it does is reminds
me of the sounds in the hallway of that cold building. The sounds of men and
women piled together for warmth while they waited in uncertain fear. Now, this
old man is my detainee and I don’t feel anything for him. I’ve got to feel
something for him. I can’t be like those men inside the prison. I can’t be
them.

I can’t.

“We can turn him in,” Joshua says. It’s dark now but I can
see he still looks angry. He’s frowning; his lips refuse to seal shut. “The two
of us can vouch that he’s an insurgent. They’ll take him away.”

I feel a tear tickle my jaw and wipe both cheeks clean,
shaking my head. “No one deserves what we went through.”

Joshua sits back and shakes his head. “I could kill him right
now. I wouldn’t even think twice about it. What’s wrong with me?”

We’re changed.

The power turns back on and so does the electric heater. A
cold shiver runs down my spine. Pins and needles prick the skin of my arms and
dizziness sets in. I have a vivid flashback of the cramped cell in the prison,
with cool air circulating and then hot air circulating. My Fortress of Solitude
has become nothing more than a constant reminder of the torture I went through.

They took
everything
.

Joshua turns on the TV. It’s set to the old government-owned
broadcast station. A woman is talking about the reactions across the country,
the questions people have about the occupation, and how the Provisional
Authority is addressing those issues. Warm, comforting music chimes in between
segments, and the smooth male voice-over talks with a very refined upper-class
accent about what freedoms the Provisional Authority has brought us.

Joshua turns the channel. Human beings are flinging
themselves into the paths of oncoming Coalition traffic, detonating explosive
devices—the camera intentionally unfocused—and sending a shockwave
around the nearby two-story urban homes that shatters the glass and causes the
parked cars to shudder.

The electricity in the room shuts off again. Who’s
controlling it? I draw the window shades behind the television to let in more
moonlight. The streetlights are out. Above, I can see the stars hanging in the
clear sky the way they must have looked a hundred years ago, when the city’s
narrow cobblestone streets were lit sparsely with stout gas lamps. Thousands of
stars cast the entire city in a shiny luminescence and it’s absolutely
beautiful.

I walk into the kitchen and grab a flashlight from the drawer
next to the fridge. I turn it on, shining a light across the dark gray walls of
the kitchen. My home doesn’t feel safe. This is just like the
cell—someone else is controlling the lights and the heat. The food in the
refrigerator is spoiled and rotten.

Joshua feels it too. He’s moved to the windows, pressing his
hands against the frames. He slides them over the heating vent near the floor,
up along the wall and across the bookcase, tripping over the stack of PC parts
in the corner.

“They’re just computer parts,” I tell him, trying to convince
myself as well. “I used to put together computers in my spare time.”

Joshua walks around them, moving closer to the front door,
keeping his hands pressed against the wall. He’s looking for the Catch, a trap
that would define this cell I once called home.

The old man sits on the couch, quiet. He’s stopped crying and
now his eyes are closed and he’s breathing very slowly. He’s asleep and I’m
jealous. I can’t fall asleep so I sit in the chair and stare at the street
through the windows. Joshua walks from wall to wall, running his fingers over
the surfaces, checking the windows, checking the floors. Outside, I hear a
muffled low rumble far away. It reminds me of the sound I heard inside the
isolation room.

A heavy vehicle passes on the street. I watch the bright
white headlights illuminate the street and then the massive black vehicle
passes. Its wheels kick up the small pieces of paper littering the street,
swirling them into the air, illuminated by the red taillights. I hear a sharp
metallic scraping noise come from down the street. I wish I could see what
caused the sound. Not knowing … it makes the dark room feel even darker. More
suffocating.

“This place is a cell,” I whisper. I stand up to find Joshua.
He’s in the kitchen, running his hands around the little windowsill above the
sink. I was afraid. I was afraid he’d disappeared.
Behind him, the first fiery colors of dawn have begun to
illuminate the concrete edges of the long condo next door. My first reaction is
disbelief. It’s impossible. Night has just fallen.

No. It’s real.
Time is passing differently now.

“We need to get out,” I say. “We can’t stay here anymore.” I stand
up and lean over the couch, making sure the old man is still asleep.

“Where are we going?” Joshua asks.

“Out,” I say, handing my nylon jacket to Joshua. I open the
packaging for the black raincoat and put it on. It’ll protect me from the wind.
I’m OK with the cold. I’ve always preferred cold over warmth.

“Should we take anything?” Joshua asks. His upbeat tone sounds
forced, unnatural, but I’m thankful to hear it anyway because I’m not sure
what’s going to happen when we leave this place. But just the fact that we
can
leave is enough.

“No,” I say. I feel anxious, as if someone somewhere might
automatically lock the front door before we can escape. “Let’s just go. We need
to get out of here.”

I walk with them out to the patio, surprised to find that it’s
warmer than yesterday and there are gray clouds overhead. I can see the clear
devastation of the tall buildings to the north. Damaged glass. Gaping holes
revealing twisted skeletal support beams. Cracked concrete as if the buildings
are made of sand that’s begun to dry and flake apart.

“We’ll go downtown,” I say. “We’ll find a shelter. Some place that
needs help. We’ll offer to help.”

“But what about your home?”

“It’s not my home anymore.”

“What will we do?”

“One step at a time,” I tell him with a smile.

We walk west, toward the commercial district. We pass rows of
one-story houses with shades drawn over the windows. We pass a Laundromat and
it’s open and there’s a young woman and a young man sitting near the windows,
next to a dryer and I can see clearly through the dryer window that the clothes
are sitting on the bottom. The power’s out and they’re waiting for it to turn
back on so they can finish drying their clothes.

“They’re moving on,” I tell Joshua, stopping to stare at them.
They stare back. They probably don’t know what’s happening or why it’s
happening, only that they’ve decided to continue.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Joshua confesses.

On the next block, a pack of dogs runs out from between two tall
parking structures. They follow us at a respectful distance. There’s a
Pomeranian and a golden retriever and two terriers.

“They probably all had owners,” Joshua says, glancing over his
shoulder. “At some point.”

We cross the street, passing a cafe and I can see two people
inside behind the counters, waiting for the power to return. We pass a small
restaurant with red trim around its doors and two large windows that are
cracked and have been covered with plastic. The chairs and tables on the small
outdoor patio are chained together but they’re still arranged for customers,
not stacked and sitting near the door. The street in front of the restaurant is
damaged, sinking into the earth with a wide black ring whose edge reaches the
sidewalk.

The dogs stop following us, slipping between two old apartment
buildings with boarded-up windows. We cross the street, walking in silence
beside clothing shops and restaurants and a small office building. There are
people inside. They stare out at us wearily. Unsure. How do you sell clothes
during an occupation? They’re still searching for a way. They’re still trying
to figure that out.

But at least they’re
trying
.

I can hear someone talking. I think it’s coming from the tall
glass building on the corner but when we get there, the intersection is empty
in every direction and the sidewalk on the corner looks like it’s been chiseled
away with a massive sledgehammer.

I hear the voice again. It’s coming from farther north, echoing
down the empty street. It sounds like someone in trouble. I look both ways and
cross, walking fast. I can hear the Joshua’s sharp, quick breaths, wet and
raspy and determined to keep up.

“It’s up here,” I say, looking over my shoulder. Joshua looks
pale, as if he’s unsure of whether he should follow me at all. I hear cheering.
“It’s a crowd,” I say. “There’s a crowd up ahead.”

“We should stay out of it,” Joshua says.

“We
can’t
stay out of
it.” I stop and turn, putting a hand on his shoulder. “No matter where we go,
we can’t stay out of it.”

We turn right at the end of the next block. On the sidewalk,
there’s a wooden table with assorted clothes piled on top and a blue sign
outlining prices and a dark-skinned, middle-aged man smoking a cigarette while
he unpacks his goods. The man pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, looking up
at the dark clouds overhead. He takes a fresh drag, watching us as we pass.

The cheering of a crowd echoes around the corner of the next
block. I jog to the short gray apartment building at the corner and see the crowd
on the next street, more than a hundred of them all shouting upward at the men
stationed atop a narrow three-story building that’s been cordoned off with a
chain-link fence. The fencing is wrapped around metal poles dug into the brown
dirt between the sidewalk and the curb. The men on the roof are all wearing
bulletproof vests and short-sleeved shirts. They hide their faces with big
sunglasses.