Flash Point

  “That’s it.”

  “Not even a . . . a courtesy of some sort? ‘Thanks for coming in, we had only one slot and there were so many great candidates’? Nothing?”

  “You need to go now, miss.”

  Amy glared at him. But he was probably just doing his miserable job. She lifted her chin and stalked out the door, hearing it lock behind her.

  And she had hoped for so much.

  She faced an alley, so narrow that looming buildings darkened it to shadows, lined with high, closed blue Dumpsters. Trash littered the ground. Amy picked her way through, keeping a sharp eye out for rats. She passed the largest Dumpster and came upon a man lying on the ground, moaning. Blood soaked one sleeve of his ragged jacket.

  “Hey! You all right?”

  “Help . . . me . . .”

  “OK, yes. I don’t have a phone but I’ll run to get—” Fresh blood gushed from his shoulder. Apply pressure to the wound before he bleeds to death.

  She knelt beside him. “Stay still. I’m going to stop the blood flow. Just stay still. . . .” She yanked off her sweater, an old one with a hole in one elbow, put it on his shoulder, and pressed hard.

  The man screamed in pain, then began to gasp for breath.

  “Oh God . . . Just a minute, I’m going to—” He passed out and stopped breathing. Keeping one hand on his shoulder, her own heart gonging in her chest, Amy pushed down on the man’s chest with her other hand. Keep the rhythm going, breathe breathe dammit breathe. . . .

  He seemed to be breathing again, but his face was still slack. Unconscious. The shoulder seemed to have stopped bleeding, too. Should I go for help now?

  The man reached up and grabbed her.

  Instinctively Amy threw him off; he was in an awkward position without much leverage. She scrambled to her feet but then he was on his feet, too, and from somewhere he had pulled a knife. No breathing difficulties, no wounded arm. She’d been played.

  “You fucker,” she said.

  He smiled.

  His body blocked her from running down the alleyway. She hadn’t brought the pepper spray she carried when she came home from the restaurant at night. Wildly she looked around for something to use, anything. A broken piece of lumber leaned against a Dumpster, short but thick, a four-by-six. She snatched it up. “Let me go by!”

  “Not a chance.” He didn’t move.

  If she went toward him, he could probably get the wood away from her before she could hit him with it, since it was a clumsy weapon and he looked strong and fit. So she stood still and tried screaming. “Help! Help!” That went on for a full minute. No one came. The man kept smiling.

  “I’m going to do some interesting things to you,” he said.

  All at once she put the stick of lumber vertically on the ground by the nearest Dumpster, set the ball of her right foot on it, and leaped. The wood wobbled under her weight but by that time she was on top of the Dumpster.

  “Hey!” the man called. He started toward her.

  Amy leaped to the next Dumpster. The blue plastic was slippery and she barely kept her footing. She was now a short distance farther down the alley than he was, and above him. He grabbed for her, but the Dumpster was too wide to reach across and by then she had gone to the top of the next Dumpster. One more, leap, dismount. A perfect landing and she was running, ahead of him by a few feet. A blank wall ahead but the alley turned and Amy turned and—

  Another wall, with a recessed door. Amy grabbed the handle. It was locked. “Help!” she screamed again, rattled the lock. Nothing. He was right behind her. All right, if it’s a fight, then it’s a fight—go for the eyes, the instep, the crotch—

  He had stopped several feet short of her. “Hey, Amy,” he said.

  She gaped at him. The door behind her opened and the kind-faced, middle-aged woman stepped out. “You did very well, Amy.”

  “What—”

  “That was the interview, dear. And you did very well.”

  Amy thought she’d known rage before—at Kaylie, at hunger, at fear—but not like this. Not like this. “You fuckers—”

  “Now, dear—language. Yes, this was perhaps unfair, but it was an interview and the young man there is of course an actor. You were never in any real danger; we wouldn’t permit that. You were carefully observed. And you did very well.”

  “I—”

  “We would like to offer you a job with TLN, on a new show we’re developing, aimed at young people. It’s a rather unorthodox show, but I can promise you it will be interesting. And of course, as I mentioned before, it carries full union salary and medical benefits for your entire family.”

  The phantom slammed hard into her mind: a mountain of glass, with tiny figures sliding helplessly down the mountainside to fall onto sharp mirrored splinters. But . . . full union salary. Rent due Friday. Mrs. Raduski. Gran, too weak to get to the clinic. Medical benefits for your entire family.

  “How much salary?” she choked out past the rage.

  The woman told her.

  Amy gaped at her. The actor said, with sullen envy, “Take it, idiot.”

  Amy said, “I’ll take it.”

  “Good,” the woman said briskly. “Then come inside. We have contracts ready, and a lawyer for you.”

  Lawyer? “Why do I need a lawyer?”

  “Just a formality,” the woman said. “Nothing you need to worry about at all.”

  She gave Amy a friendly smile.

  * * *

  A long polished table in a small polished room. Legal papers. Legal talk. Hurry, hurry, hurry, the job needed to start right away. Why? Amy couldn’t seem to get an answer; so many people talked so fast on so many topics. You want the job, don’t you, Amy? Sign here, initial here, sign here. . . . A few things she did get straight.

  The lawyer worked for TLN but she signed something that said she accepted him as her representative.

  Since the Collapse, sixteen-year-olds were considered adults, so she didn’t need Gran’s signature. Well, no one needed to tell Amy that—she knew sixteen-year-olds had been declared adults in order to save the debt-ridden government billions of dollars in welfare aid to children.

  The woman who had hired her was a producer, Myra Townsend.

  The job was for three months only, a probationary period. “To see how you work out,” they said.

  “Thank you, Amy, you can go home now. Report for work on Monday,” Ms. Townsend said. She and Amy’s lawyer and the other people—more lawyers?—all stood.

  “No, wait! I have some questions!”

  Ms. Townsend said, “I thought I said that your duties will be explained to you on Monday.”

  “Other questions. Please. I need to . . . to know some things.”

  Ms. Townsend shot a look at the other people, who all left the room. The woman sat down again, frowning. Even then, her face looked kind. “How can I help you?”

  Amy said, “Are you the person who called me on the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re my boss?”

  “Yes, I am. Myra Townsend. You report to me.”

  “What will I be doing on this job? Just generally, not the specific duties.”

  “You will be testing products which we hope appeal to young people. Video games, mostly.”

  “In that alley why did you—”

  “It was a game scenario, obviously,” Ms. Townsend said. “Amy, I have another meeting now.”

  “With other candidates? Did you hire more than just me?”

  Ms. Townsend hesitated, then smiled. “Yes, we did. You’re quick, Amy.”

  “If the thing in the alley was a video game, why test it on me in real time?”

  “Because that’s the way we do things here. Now, I have another meeting. See you Monday.”

  “Wait, I—no, please, one more thing . . . I need an advance on my salary. I’m sorry, but I do. Today. Now.”

  Ms. Townsend turned back to gaze at her. Amy, to her intense discomfort, felt herself redden. ??
?I’m sorry, but I need the advance. Our rent is due Friday. I’m sorry.”

  “Of course,” Ms. Townsend said with sudden and bewildering gentleness. “Just stay here and I’ll have the guard bring you a check.”

  “Cash,” Amy said. “We . . . I don’t have a checking account.” Banks charged fees.

  “Cash, then. And on Monday we’ll open an account for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The cash appeared with startling promptness, along with a family health-insurance card. Amy signed a receipt—at least this paper was short enough for her to actually read!—and was ushered out. The money and her precious card both safe in her bra, Amy treated herself to a bus ride home. I have a job, I have a job, I have a job—but like hell it was “testing video games.” They were testing something else in that alley. What? And why lie about it? Well, whatever it was, she hadn’t been hurt, only scared. And for this amount of money, the scare was worth it. Whatever else was going on, Amy would discover it eventually. Meanwhile, she had the rent for Mrs. Raduski and health care for Gran and money for groceries—

  I have a job, I have a job, I have a job!

  The words sang in her head all the way home, acquired a beat, and then a tune. Her foot tapped on the bus floor, her head bobbed in time. Amy couldn’t stop smiling. She didn’t notice the boy with the sunglasses and heavy backpack. She didn’t notice the woman emerging from the grocery store as Amy got off the bus. She didn’t notice any of the microcameras.

  * * *

  “So we have our five,” Myra Townsend reported to the gray-haired man in his exquisite hand-tailored suit in his penthouse office. He sat behind an antique mahogany desk, the city forty stories below like his own personal carpet. She stood on the actual carpet and held up one manicured finger after another. “The slumming socialite that viewers can despise, the desperate little climber they can root for, the gorgeous hunk they can drool over, the dummy they can laugh at, and the geek they can be confused by. Plus Lynn, of course.”

  The man looked up from his desktop, the surface of which shimmered with changing graphs. “What about the dancer?”

  “We eliminated her.”

  “Put her back in. We can have six plus Lynn.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want to see the completed pilot by the twenty-first.”

  She looked startled. “But that’s only—yes, Mr. Taunton. By the twenty-first.”

  “And on Saturday a rough cut of the first footage.”

  “We already agreed on that.”

  “Fine. And Myra—this time, no legal ends dangling. No room for lawsuits, no matter what you devise for those kids.”

  “There won’t be any legal issues.”

  “There better not be,” the gray-haired man said, and went back to studying the graphs shimmering on his desktop like living jewels.

  Four

  FRIDAY

  BY THE TIME Amy’s bus reached her neighborhood, her elation had been replaced by cunning. She was going to need a strategy. Two strategies: one for dealing with Gran and one for dealing with Kaylie.

  She pondered tactics while buying bread, milk, cheese, butter, and sliced turkey at the ramshackle grocery store two blocks from her building. The store, no bigger than Gran’s apartment, was run by Mr. Fu. His name, he had told her once, meant “happiness” in Chinese, but Mr. Fu never looked happy, and neither did his wife. He gazed at her mournfully from behind his sagging counter.

  “Mr. Fu, do you have any bananas?” Gran loved bananas.

  “No bananas.”

  “Oh. Well, just these things, then.” The Fus had emigrated from Beijing just before the Collapse. Very bad timing. America, its economy in such a shambles that many had predicted the country would not survive, had disappointed the Fus. This made Amy try extra hard to be nice to Mr. Fu, which in turn made her feel vaguely resentful at being someone bouncier and more upbeat than she actually was. Amy Pollyanna.

  “Bananas no come. Times be tough man,” said Mr. Fu.

  “Do you think the bananas might come tomorrow?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Banana country very far. Boats have no oil. No go, maybe never.”

  Amy doubted that every boat importing bananas was completely out of fuel, or that bananas would never show up in the grocery store again. She smiled wider, felt stupid, and paid for her groceries. “Have a nice day, Mr. Fu!”

  He shook his head sadly and she escaped. Have a nice day—she never said stuff like that. Mr. Fu had a bad effect on her by making her too sweet. Just as Kaylie had a bad effect on her by making her too sour.

  Kaylie and Gran were both in Gran’s room, Gran in bed and Kaylie perched on a chair jammed in beside it. On the wall behind Kaylie hung her double: their mother’s picture, beautiful and unsmiling, her dark curls cut in an old-fashioned style. Gran gazed often at the picture, although she never spoke about her dead daughter. She was not one to dwell on the past. Amy knew little about her mother and even less about her father, a journalist kidnapped and murdered in Iraq when Amy was barely three. But she did know that she had his coloring, so much less dramatic than Kaylie’s.

  Gran and Kaylie were eating lunch or maybe a late breakfast: oatmeal again. Amy said, “Wait! I brought stuff for sandwiches! I got a new job!”

  They both stopped eating, spoons halfway to their mouths, looking so identically comical that Amy would have laughed if she weren’t so tense about the coming conversation. She had decided on her strategy.

  “Well, actually, it’s not a great job, but it pays better than the restaurant, if only because it’s full-time. So it really doesn’t matter that it’s going to be so boring.”

  “Is it at the TV station?” Kaylie demanded.

  “Yes. I’m going to—”

  “Are you going to be on television?”

  “God, no. I sit in a back room, call people on the phone, and ask them questions about what TV shows they watch and do they like them, blah, blah, blah. You know, ratings surveys.”

  Kaylie relaxed. Amy could see the jealousy leave her, the green monster subsiding behind those green eyes.

  Gran, who was not so pale this morning and even seemed to be eating, still looked suspicious. “Amy, why would a TV station give a full-time job to an untried sixteen-year-old when unemployment is over twenty-seven percent?”

  “Because the shows I’m calling about are aimed at teenagers. So they wanted somebody young to talk to the survey takers. You know, more relatable.”

  Gran bought it. Amy saw the moment she, too, relaxed, her head sinking against the pillow. Kaylie hadn’t brushed Gran’s hair. And as Amy moved closer, she could smell the burned oatmeal.

  “Don’t eat that,” she said, keeping her temper under control. “Kaylie and I will make sandwiches—I brought turkey! And Gran, I didn’t even tell you the best part—I got full family medical! As soon as I can get an appointment, I’m taking you to a real doctor!”

  “Amy . . .” Gran said softly, and didn’t go on. But the single word, plus Gran’s soft, admiring gaze, was enough for Kaylie. Her eyes narrowed; she bit her lower lip.

  “Kaylie,” Amy said, “come help me make sandwiches.” She dragged Kaylie to her feet and into the other room, “accidentally” bumping the bedroom door closed behind her. This would be the tricky part with Kaylie.

  Her sister said, “Well, aren’t you just the little family savior. Saint Amy, swooping in to save us all.”

  Amy pulled out the envelope with her advance. She had carefully divided it; the remainder stayed in her bra. “This job you’re sneering at saved your bacon. This is Mrs. Raduski’s rent, Kaylie, plus ten dollars over. They gave me an advance on salary. You’re going to take the rent downstairs and then you’re going to take the ten dollars for yourself, because we’re a family and my good luck is everybody’s good luck.”

  Kaylie stared at her. Amy got what she’d hoped for: a phantom in her mind, just for a quick second, of the Kaylie that Amy remembered, the bouncy little g
irl who had adored her big sister. The phantom Kaylie, dressed in pink overalls with a bunny embroidered on the front, laughed and reached out her arms to Amy before vanishing.

  The sulky fifteen-year-old beauty in front of Amy said, “You’d trust me with the rent?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know I won’t just spend it instead of giving it to Mrs. Raduski?”

  “I know.” Was knowledge the same as hope?

  “You’re right,” Kaylie said. “I’ll go now.”

  “Then come back and have a sandwich.”

  “OK.” But at the door Kaylie turned back. “Is there an extra ten dollars for you, too?”

  “Yes,” Amy lied.

  “Good. Then get yourself something to wear at the Thrift Value so you don’t have to steal my good sweater again.”

  Amy didn’t answer. Kaylie took the rent downstairs. Amy opened the apartment door a crack and held her breath as she listened to Kaylie’s footsteps on the worn wooden stairs, her knock on Mrs. Raduski’s door, the frantic snarling of Buddy on his choke chain. Kaylie started back upstairs and Amy darted back to the tiny counter in the galley kitchen. Kaylie had given over the money. Of course, Amy had warned Mrs. Raduski how and when it was coming, and if Kaylie had headed out the front door instead, she would have been followed by both the landlady and her vicious dog.

  Always best to hedge your bets.

  “Amy?” Gran called feebly.

  “Right there, Gran!” She opened the bedroom door.

  “Are there any bananas?”

  “No, Mr. Fu said the delivery didn’t come. But I’m making you a cheese and turkey sandwich. Here, drink this milk—just like you used to tell me to do!”

  Gran said quietly, “But you were a child, and I am not. Amy, is Kayla in trouble?”

  “No. She was. It’s OK now, I fixed it. Kaylie’s just . . .” What? Trouble, yes. From the time she’d outgrown those pink overalls, Kaylie had been trouble.

  “Is she using?”

  Looking at the intelligent old eyes in the pain-ridden face, Amy couldn’t lie anymore. “I don’t know for sure. I hope not. But she’s running with a rough crowd.”