BODY SCISSORS
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Prologue
The
eighties came and went. The president who ruled over them
flashed one last fatherly smile, bowed and exited the
world stage to thunderous applause, with skyrocketing
homeless rates, the '87 stock market crash and a hundred
thousand AIDS victims at his feet. Replacing the communist
boogeyman with the liberal boogeyman, he passed the reins
to a new leader, the most powerful man ever to claim Texas
residency as a tax dodge.
Texas,
where politicians and other influence peddlers test out
crimes they plan to commit nationally, faced the double-edged
economic recovery of the early nineties. Quality of life
eroded further than before for Texas's non-millionaires:
Countryside and farmland paved themselves to make room
for malls. Old neighborhoods got "renewed" for
wealthier residents at a greater rate than ever. High-tech
industries rolled over the northern part of town where
small houses once stood, the industries spawning beehive
apartment complexes and neighboring strip malls to house,
feed and entertain the laborers who would build and buy
the laptops, pagers and mobile phones of the new decade.
Progress. Unemployment was down, at least on paper: in
real life, the grunts struggled harder than they had in
the depths of the recession, as rents climbed, social
services were cut back and homelessness—under the
"anti-camping" law-was made punishable by arrest.
That's where I come in.
At
street level, an economy based on self-reliance equals
every man for himself A free market cures all ills, and
if it doesn't, screw the schools, screw housing, screw
financial aid, don't tell us the details, just arrest
everybody. Figure the twelve-year-old junkie you busted
for dealing gets replaced by a new recruit before nightfall.
Figure a joke among cops: "What's the best thing
about crack? It lowered the price of a blow job to five
bucks." Figure if your kid is lucky he goes to UT
or maybe out of state; if he's not, maybe he's sleeping
next to you in the back of your pickup, and dealing drugs
looks better to him than flipping burgers. Figure it's
the wrong time to be born unlucky.
So
you're no dope, you go with the winner, you become a black
conservative, a gay conservative, a poor conservative.
Invite yourself to the party and sit at the back table,
they'll get to you, sooner or later. Carve out a little
corner for yourself, and to hell with everybody else,
you've got dreams of your own. If you feel a little pang
of conscience, for the friends and family you stepped
on to get where you are, eat something, drink something,
snort something, BUY SOMETHING! Anything. Because we need
you to buy things.
And
all this weaves through my mind at night as I dream my
cop dreams. I'm stepping blind in this bricked-up department
store, a shopping graveyard, dark and booby-trapped. My
mouth is pasty dry, my eyes burn from the fumes of home-cooked
crystal meth on the fire. Suddenly Rachel's with me, she's
supposed to be safe and separate from this. And the building
isn't gimmicked to keep people from getting in, it was
easy to get in, anyone can get in: you can never leave.
We can't get back the way we came. We can hardly see,
save for cracks of light. My foot goes through a floorboard—Rachel
cries out and grabs me. Snakes wrap my feet and I shake
them off. Any step could send us plummeting through the
floor. The building is crumbling, the wrong time to visit
him, a trapped, wounded animal, and the wrong night to
bring a date. I might feel the cold of a gun barrel at
the back of my neck, or not feel it, not see the bullet
coming. No sooner do I think that than suddenly he's behind
us, and I whip around, draw my weapon in slo-mo and fire
and my bullets spit from the chamber; one, two, three,
and fall flaccidly to the ground, and he's facing us down,
and I realize too late that the guy I thought I trapped,
trapped me; he's the cat, I'm the mouse, I'm weak and
helpless, helpless to protect Rachel or even myself, and
he's smarter than me, because he's high on the best stuff,
and he's motivated by greed, and greed trumps justice
and greed trumps vengeance even, and greed trumps love,
and I'd trade my .38 for a flashlight and a way out, making
bargains I can't make, like please God, please please
please God, just get her out of here alive.
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