Demolition Love

2. CHAINS

  Actually, That Guy facilitates. I sit as speaker for the Bees and, when it’s my turn, give example after example of the success of peaceful demonstration, from Gandhi to Starhawk. These Kylie furnishes me in a soft whisper, leaning close like she’s feeding me bites of dinner, because the moment the speaker for the As sat down and suggested using nail bombs, my mind fled the discussion. Went back before the GeeGee, before D-town, before the Bees, all the way back to the night my parents died.

  “Nail bombs sure are a bitch,” I whisper out of turn, remembering.

  “Exactly!” The speaker for the As fills out his white t-shirt with muscle, and a strip of denim holds his dark hair in a short tail. I don’t know him by name, but I’ve seen him around Council enough to suspect he’s one of the A higher-ups. He slaps the condemned-sign-turned-round-table and points at me like the impossible has happened and we agree. “Those bitches get the job done.”

  Kylie reaches from behind to touch my arm, making me realize my hand is fisting on the table. Calm flows into me with the contact, and I unclench my fingers, shooting her a grateful look.

  “I don’t think that’s what Aidan meant,” That Guy says.

  He smiles at me, and it’s like a rare blue-sky morning, when the early sun reflects off the Three Street windows. My breath catches.

  “The Bees stand against nail bombs,” I tell him, chest tight.

  The A leans over the table, watching me like a wolf might watch a straggling reindeer, waiting for it to drop just enough behind the others.

  “But can the Bees stand up to nail bombs?” he asks.

  “Take it outside,” That Guy snaps.

  “Oh, I will,” the A promises, leaning back with a smirk. “Because the GeeGee could capture that one. They could cut it wide open, stick a bomb in its internal organs, patch it up and send it back to us.”

  By it, he means me.

  Their eyes lock in a silent but still obvious challenge. That Guy stares back impassively, except for the flutter in his throat when he swallows.

  The A looks away first. “We stand for nail bombs. And anything else that works.”

  “Including peaceful demonstration?” My voice quavers a little.

  “Maybe.” The A waggles his eyebrows at me. “What’s your stand on virgin sacrifice?”

  It’s not flirting; flirting doesn’t make the recipient sick to the stomach.

  “Are you volunteering?” That Guy asks the A, with real-sounding interest, then makes a note on his paper. “I didn’t think so. Nail bombs and peaceful demonstration are on the table.”

  “And anything else that works,” the A repeats.

  That Guy talks over him. “What else?”

  “Magic.” The High Priest and speaker for the Witches is a burly redheaded guy with skin so fair his sunburn never quite heals. His midsection needs exercise, and his beard could use some fertilizer, but he carries himself well.

  His co-leader, Crow, stands behind his chair with her hands on his shoulders. Her braids, woven with tattered feathers, mingle with his long hair.

  “Magic has been raised. Any objections?” That Guy asks.

  “Objection.” Gina is all sweetness as she faces down the speaker from her rival tribe. “This goes against Jesus Christ, our Lord. The Cross Bearers raise prayer instead.”

  “Consensus minus one for magic,” says That Guy. He flips the sheet and writes something at the top of a new page. “Magic passes Council. Prayer is raised. Any objections?” Frustration leaches into his voice.

  I know why. He wants action. Nail bombs, to the Real Dealer soul, are better than prayer, better than nothing. But, since he’s facilitating, he has no say. I make up my mind not to raise meditation. The Bees will meditate regardless. Witches and Love Childs will do creative visualizations. The Cross Bearers and Turbans will pray, which is close enough.

  “The Logic won’t block consensus, but we present that prayer and magic are a waste of time.” Tara, speaker for the Logic, has rich cola-colored skin and black braids. Most tribes rotate speaker duties, but not the Logic. Tara, their Leader, sits every time. They consider her smartest, and in the Logic brains count for everything.

  “Noted.” Dutifully, That Guy makes another note. “And prayer stands. What else?”

  Hours later, we’ve only come to consensus in favor of a fact-finding mission.

  We know the meeting is over when ever-rational Tara slams her hand on the table and shouts, “This is why direct democracy never stood a chance against totalitarianism!”

  She shoves back her chair and storms out of The Dance. One by one, the rest of the speakers leave the roundtable and slip out into the early evening. When the meeting started The Dance was half-full, but most spectators have long since moved on, convinced once again that Council is useless.

  Kylie, Sam, and I linger, lifting the CONDEMNED sign off its base of broken bricks and rolling it back behind the bar. That Guy remains as well, conferring with a handful of Real Dealers. We push the bricks off to the side, but I remain hyper-aware of That Guy. Kylie, Sam, and I stack the chairs, but eventually we’re out of excuses to put off the trip back to the Ashram.

  We exchange glances, then crowd close together and squeeze past the DEMOLITION sign. We walk three abreast down the broken street, me in the middle. Our unspoken understanding is that I’m the most fragile of our little group.

  Samantha is an in-between like me but, unlike my bird-thin boniness, that one’s body is soft and indistinct. More padding, Sam always says.

  Kylie is a femme, but her body type is more like mine than her sibling’s, so it’s hard to say what makes her a femme instead of an in-between, even though it’s something everyone knows just by looking at her. The ruffles on her shirt help, but I’m pretty sure her femme-ness would be just as obvious naked as clothed. It’s partly the way her hips sway when she walks, but the rest is just that mysterious something that makes a femme a femme.

  Like all Bees, Sam and I included, Kylie has a shaved head.

  The sound of running feet brings us up short, and before our pursuer rounds the corner behind us we’ve formed a triangle, back-to-back, with me facing forward. I hate that position, even though with a threat from behind it means I’ll be hit last. I hate not seeing the A coming.

  I wrench my head to look past Kylie’s shoulder just as That Guy rounds the corner. His cheeks are flushed like he’s been running flat out. When he sees us a smile breaks over his face, and his headlong rush slows. It seems the look on his face is one of relief, but I must be mistaken, because why would he care about us? His whole appearance is…pure, like a farm boy from one of Kylie’s old-world novels. I interpose the image of his knuckles covered in blood to remind myself of the truth.

  “Hey,” he calls. “Mind if I walk with you?” He joins us with the long, sure strides of someone not used to argument.

  But then, which of us would object?

  “Sure,” I say.

  That Guy falls in beside Sam. Kylie glances at me from under her eyelashes, touching my arm with two fingers, as though to lend moral support against the river of temptation.

  Temptation is definitely winning. He keeps speeding up and slowing down, trying to look beyond Sam. He might be trying to keep an eye on Kylie. Real Dealer guys are notoriously protective of their femmes, but that vigilance doesn’t even extend to their in-betweens, let alone members of another tribe. Of course, Real Dealer in-betweens can take care of themselves, but then, so can their femmes.

  I suppose he might be an exception to the rule and have come to look after Kylie. Real Dealers don’t usually jump into others tribes’s fights either, but he did come to my defense a few weeks ago, so he’s obviously a little unconventional. Or confrontational.

  My mind is yammering.

  That Guy circles around so he’s walking backward in front of us—okay, in front of me—with his hands in his pockets.

  “I’m Lawson.” He pulls out one hand and extends his arm a bit, t
hen seems to realize the awkwardness of trying to shake hands while walking. “Thanks for your contributions back there.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say.

  “It is our duty,” Kylie says in her clear, firm voice.

  Lawson and I nod. It’s one of those moments where we watch each other a little too long. Then he looks to Kylie.

  “Sorry it wasn’t a more productive use of your time.”

  “Not your fault,” I say. “It’s impressive that you kept them from each other’s throats as long as you did.” By each other’s throats, I mean our throats.

  He knows that but doesn’t comment.

  “This is you, then.” He’s right; we have arrived at The Ashram, and we stop walking. “Kylie,” he says, and shakes her hand. “Sam. Aidan.”

  His grip is firm, the pads of his fingers callused, and when he says my name, I can’t see anything—anyone—but him. I pull away just a little too quickly, disconcerted and embarrassed to be such a poor example of a Bee.

  Lawson lets his hand drop to the leg of his jeans. “See you at the next Council.”

  Then he’s jogging off, back toward The Dance. As soon as he’s out of sight, Kylie whistles for our doorman.

  Tanner, the Bee on ladder duty this evening, sticks his thick shoulders and clean-shaven head out of the hole in the wall two stories up. He gives us a grin when he sees we’re all Bees and ducks back out of sight. Moments later, the end of a ladder pokes out of the hole and descends toward us. Ladder keeps coming—three ladders, tied together—until the feet of the bottom one grind against the ground.

  The Ashram is the second floor of what was once an upscale department store. All the merchandise has long been looted, and broken light bulbs decorate the water-stained ceiling. I climb up first, into a jagged patch of fading light from the entry. The speckled floor is as clean as acid-infected rainwater will make it, but deeper inside the cleanliness becomes less obvious. Light is hard to come by, and mostly we go without.

  Tanner hauls up the ladders once we’re all up. With the entry at our back, we stand on the right side of the Ashram, in the area reserved for all social functions—group meditation, sleeping, eating, and just hanging. Farthest to the left is for unscheduled sitting meditation. The space between is dedicated to moving meditation, including yoga. Across from us, stacked bedrolls lean against the wall. Kylie’s needs mending, but someone lost our last needle. Time to steal a new set.

  There’s ongoing discussion about the ethics of this, but it doesn’t matter; in D-town, to live is to steal. In the wild, a human who doesn’t want to kill to live can drink only water and eat only fruit, but here they would starve.

  The only thing that grows in D-town is mold.

  Everything outside of D-town belongs to the GeeGee, and the one and only thing all D-towners agree on is that the GeeGee is the enemy. Even Bees don’t feel too bad about stealing from them.

  “What in the name of His Holiness was that?” Sam asks me, as we toe out of our sneakers.

  I consider pretending not to understand, but discard the idea. Lying is beneath me.

  “I need to meditate,” I say instead, and walk left, feeling the way between the moving bodies of my fellow Bees.

  They are practicing yoga, ecstatic dance, and other forms of moving meditation in the central area of the Ashram.

  “Aidan will find that one’s own way,” Kylie says to Sam as I leave.

  I mean to go all the way left and sit, but I stop in the middle section instead and let my feet find their firmness on the floor. I keep my eyes open, with soft focus, and the Ashram dissolves into blurring shadows. The Dance booms beyond the wall, giving me an anchor.

  My hearth is clenching hard. My breaths don’t go all the way out or in but tumble by halves, as though in a rush.

  His Holiness taught that we shouldn’t worry about past or future, so I try to let the worrisome thoughts go, but they are stubborn. What will happen to us without The Dance? Without that boom-boom-boom, there will be nothing to protect us against the sonic pulses the GeeGee uses to control emotions.

  Worse, there will be nothing to hold the tribes of D-town together.

  Boom-boom-boom.

  “You’re looking for him again.” Sam is warm and pillowy next to me as we stand in The Dance later, backs against the bar.

  To the other side, my elbow bumps against Kylie’s. My breath has taken up residence in the top one third of my lungs, and my palm sweats against the roughened plastic of the cup in my hand.

  “Thanks.” I take a swig, then stare into my cola.

  Kylie nudges me. “Don’t fight so hard for detachment, Aidan. Peace can’t be achieved through struggle. Observe. Notice what you’re feeling, breathe, let it go.”

  I nod and let out a breath.

  “It’s okay, hon. Happens to everyone.” She leans on the bar to see past me to Sam. “The hard time you’re giving this one”—she indicates me with her head—“is just a mirror of the way you treat yourself.”

  Kylie is one of the only ones who really gets what we Bees are trying to do, what we’re trying to be. I notice that my gaze is back to roving the room and force my attention to my drink again.

  “We need something to chain ourselves inside The Dance,” I say to distract myself.

  “Consensus hasn’t been reached on that,” Sam says.

  “In the end, the tribes will act independently,” I say.

  The other two turn toward me, bringing our heads closer together, keeping the conversation private.

  “Yes, but it sets a poor example if we don’t even give consensus a chance,” Kylie says.

  “They don’t have to know we didn’t have the chains already. Don’t you think the A are already making nail bombs?”

  “They probably keep a stash of them,” Kylie acknowledges.

  Sam runs a thick finger along the scarred wood of the bar. “Guess I was thinking that if we come to consensus, the Bees won’t have to be the ones to go out and get the chains.”

  “It should be us who finds them,” I say. “We have to stand for what we believe in, don’t you think?”

  “We should present it to the Lama,” Sam says.

  Kylie nods. “We will. Maybe that one will know where we might easily get some chains.”

  I purse my lips. “I might know where to find some.”

  “What? Speak up, Aidan,” Kylie says.

  I swallow, then try again, fighting to be heard over the beat and the shouting that has broken out on one side of The Dance. “I think I know where to find some.”

  “Let’s go.” Kylie sets down her glass and grabs my hand. She pushes away from the bar, tugging me along. “Come on.”

  We navigate through the crowd with a chorus of “Xuse me” and “Sorry,” until we’re out in the night. Kylie steps to the side of the door and leans against the edge of the DEMOLITION sign. Everyone, I suppose, has decided it’s not their job to get rid of it.

  “We should take this down,” I say.

  Sam gives a headshake. “Nah. It keeps people paying attention, reminds everyone that we need to work together. Besides, who knows what the G-spot’ll do if we take it down.”

  “You think you know where chains are?” Kylie reminds me.

  I nod. “My parents had some, and there were more in the FOLM supply house.”

  The group my parents belonged to called itself the Freedom of Lifestyle Movement (F.O.L.M.). Back then, the GeeGee went by the Global Empowerment Movement (G.E.M.). Maybe it should have been obvious, just by that, who the winners would be. In a battle of acronyms, FOLM was the clear loser.

  Kylie touches my arm. “Don’t you think that, maybe, those aren’t there anymore. It’s been years, Aidan. They could have been used or moved or taken.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but they could still be there too. We just need to check.”

  “If your house is still there,” Sam says.

  “Yes,” I say. “And the supply house too.”

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