Beggars and Choosers (18 page)

BILLY WASHINGTON: EAST OLEANTA

The floor of the State Representative Anita Clara Taguchi Hotel was
covered in leaves. It was late August—no leaves falling yet, them. That
meant these leaves were left over from last year, blowing into the
hotel last October and November and lying around ever since, without no
‘bot to clean them out. I hadn’t been nowhere near the hotel, me, all
those months. But I was now.

The funny thing was that for a few days I didn’t even notice the
leaves, me. I didn’t notice nothing. My head was a fog, it, and I
stumbled toward the hotel HT on its red counter and didn’t see nothing
else.
Lizzie
was too sick.

The HT turned on when I come near, like it’d been doing for the past
four days. “May I help you?”

I put both hands, me, on the counter. Like that would help. “I need
the medunit, me. An emergency.”

“I’m sorry, sir, the County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater
Medical Unit is temporarily out of service. Albany has been notified,
and a technician will shortly—”

“I don’t want Albany, me! I want a medunit! My little girl’s sick
bad!”

“I’m sorry, sir, the County Legislator Thomas Scott Drinkwater
Medical Unit is temporarily out of service. Albany has been—”

“Then get me another medunit, you! It’s an emergency! Lizzie’s
coughing her guts up, her!”

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no medunit immediately available, due to
the temporary inoperability of the Senator Walker Vance

Morehouse Magnetic Railway. As soon as the railway is repaired,
another medical unit can be rushed in from—“

“The gravrail ain’t inaccessible, it’s busted!” I screamed at the
HT. I would of busted it with my bare hands if it’d helped. “Let me
talk to a human being!”

“I’m sorry, your elected officials are temporarily unavailable. If
you wish to leave a message, please specify whether it’s intended for
United States Senator Mard Todd Ingalls, United States Senator Walker
Vance—”

“Off! Turn the hell off!”

Lizzie’d been sick, her, for three days. The gravrail had been down
for five. The medunit had been out for who knows how long—nobody’d got
sick, them, since Doug Kane’s heart attack. The politicians had been
assholes as long as anybody could remember.

Lizzie was sick bad. Oh sweet Jesus
Lizzie
was sick bad.

I squeezed my eyes shut, me, and my head swung down, and when I
opened my eyes what did I see? Leaves, that no cleaning ‘bot had swept
out in nearly a year, and that nobody else didn’t bother with neither.
Dead leaves, brittle as my old bones.

“There’s a HT with override at the cafe,” a voice said. “The mayor
can contact your county legislator directly.”

“You think, you, I ain’t tried that? Do I look that stupid?” I was
relieved, me, to yell at somebody, I didn’t care who. Then I saw it was
the donkey girl dressed like a Liver, the one who got off the train a
week ago. She was the only person, her, staying in the State
Representative Anita Clara Taguchi Hotel. Since the gravrail breakdowns
got worse, there ain’t much traveling. Nobody knew why this donkey was
in East Oleanta, and nobody knew why she dressed like a Liver. Some
people didn’t like it, them.

I didn’t have no time to talk to a crazy donkey.
Lizzie
was sick bad. I shuffled back through the leaves to the door, only
where was I supposed to go, me? Without no medunit…

“Wait,” the donkey said. “I heard you, me. You said—”

“Don’t try to talk like no Liver when you ain’t one! You hear me,
you!” I don’t know where I got the anger to yell at her like that. Yes,
I do. Lizzie was sick bad, and the donkey was just there, her.

“You’re quite right. No point in unnecessary subterfuge, is there?
My name is Victoria Turner.”

I didn’t care, me, what her name was, although I remembered her
telling somebody else it was Dark Jones. I’d left Lizzie gasping and
clawing for breath, her little face hot as a bonfire. I broke into a
run, me. The leaves under my boots whispered like ghosts.

“Maybe I can help,” the donkey said.

“Go to hell!” I said, but then I stopped, me, and looked at her. She
was a donkey, after all. She must be here, her, for something, just
like that other girl in the woods last summer, the one that saved Doug
Kane’s life, must of been there for something. I couldn’t guess for
what, but I wasn’t no donkey. Still, sometimes donkeys could do things,
them, that you didn’t expect.

The girl stood. Her yellow jacks had a tear in them, like
everybody’s since the warehouse just stopped opening up for distrib,
but they was clean. Jacks don’t get dirty or creased—dirt don’t stick
to them somehow, or it washes off easy. But the girl wasn’t really no
girl, her. When I looked closer I saw she was a woman, maybe as old as
Annie. It was the genemod violet eyes and that body that made me think,
me, that she was a girl.

I said, “How can
you
help?”

“I won’t know till I see the patient, will I?” she said, crisp and
no nonsense. That made sense, at least. I led her, me, to Annie’s
apartment on Jay Street.

Annie opened the door. I could hear Lizzie coughing, her, a sound
that pretty near tore my own guts out. Annie pushed her big body out
into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her.

“Who’s this? What are you bringing her here for, Billy Washington?
You, get lost! We already seen, us, how much help you donkeys are when
everything’s going wrong!”

I never saw Annie so mad. Her lips pressed together like they’d been
mortared, and her ringers curled into claws like she was going to rake
this Victoria Turner across her genemod donkey face. Victoria Turner
looked at Annie coolly, her, and didn’t step back an inch.

“He brought me because I may be able to help the sick child. Are you
her mother? Please step back so I can try.”

I
stepped back, but then forward again because it hurt me,
Annie’s face. It was furious and scared and exhausted. Annie hadn’t
left Lizzie, her, to sleep or wash, not in two days. But Annie was used
to letting donkeys solve her problems, and that was on her face. too.
Along with just the start of hone. Annie wanted something to hit and
something to trust, her, and I thought I was both of those things, but
here was this Victoria Turner and she was better, her, for both.

Annie reached behind herself and opened the door. Lizzie lay on the
couch where I usually sleep. She was burning up, her, but Annie tried
to keep a blanket on her. Lizzie kept kicking it off. There was water
and food from the cafe, but
Lizzie
hadn’t taken any, her. She
tossed and cried out, and sometimes her cries didn’t make no sense. She
threw up just once, but she coughed all the time, great racking coughs
that tore my heart.

Victoria Turner put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead, and her violet
eyes widened. Lizzie didn’t seem to know, her, that anybody was there.
She gave another cough, a small one, and started moaning. I felt
despair start in my bowels, the kind you feel when there’s no hope and
you don’t see how you can bear it. I hadn’t felt that kind of despair,
me, since my wife Rosie died, twelve years ago. I never thought I’d
have to feel it again.

Victoria Turner took a scarf out of her pocket and knelt by Lizzie.
She didn’t seem at all afraid, her. One of the thoughts I’d had in the
night, God forgive me, was: Is this sickness catching? Could Annie get
it, her, and die too? Annie…

“Cough for me, sweetheart,” Victoria Turner said. “Come on, cough
into the scarf.”

In a few minutes,
Lizzie
did, her, though not because she
was asked. Big slimy gobs of stuff from her tortured lungs, greenish
gray. Victoria Turner caught it, her, in the scarf and looked at it
closely. Me, I had to look away. That was Lizzie’s lungs coming up,
Lizzie’s lungs rotting themselves away.

“Excellent,” Victoria Turner said, “green. It’s bacterial. Now we
know. You’re in luck,
Lizzie
.”

Luck! I saw Annie curve her claws again, her, and I even saw what
for: This donkey was
enjoying
this, her. It was some kind of
exciting. Like a holovid story.

“Bacterial is good,” Victoria Turner said, looking up at me,
“because the medication can be far less specific. You have to tailor
antivirals, at least grossly. But wide-spectrum antibiotics are easy.”

Annie said roughly, “What’s Lizzie got, her?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But this will almost surely take care
of it.” From another pocket she drew a flat piece of plastic, tore it
open, and slapped a round blue patch on Lizzie’s neck.

“But you should force more water down her. You don’t want to risk
dehydration.”

Annie stared, her, at the blue patch on Lizzie’s neck. It looked
like the ones the medunit put on, but how did we really know, us, what
was in it? We didn’t really know nothing.

Lizzie sighed and quieted. Nobody said nothing. After a few minutes,
Lizzie was asleep.

“Best thing for her,” Victoria Turner said crisply. I saw again, me,
that she liked this. “Not even Miranda Sharifi herself could equal the
benefits of sleep.”

I remembered, me, hearing that name, but I couldn’t think where.

Annie was a different woman, her. She gazed at
Lizzie
,
sleeping peacefully, and at the patch, and Annie seemed to shrink and
calm down, both, like a sail collapsing. She looked at the floor, her.
“Thank you, doctor. I didn’t realize, me.”

Dr. Turner looked surprised, her, then she smiled. Like something
was funny. “You’re welcome. And maybe in return you can do something
for me.”

Annie looked wary, her. Donkeys don’t ask Livers to do favors, them.
Donkeys pay taxes to us; we give votes to them. But we don’t tell each
other, us, more than we got to, and we don’t ask things of each other.
That ain’t the way it’s done.

But, then, donkey doctors don’t go wandering around East Oleanta
dressed in torn yellow jacks neither. We ain’t even seen a doctor in
East Oleanta, us, since a new plague broke out four years ago and a
doctor came from Albany to vaccinate everybody with some new stuff the
medunit didn’t have.

“I’m looking for someone,” Dr. Turner said. “Someone I was supposed
to meet here, but we apparently got our data confused. A woman, a girl
really, about this tall, dark hair, a slightly large head.”

I thought, me, of the girl in the woods, and quick tried to look
like I wasn’t thinking of nothing at all. That girl came from Eden, I
was sure of it, me—and Eden don’t got nothing to do with donkeys. It’s
about
Livers
. Dr. Turner was watching close, her. Annie shook
her head, cool as ice, even though I knew she probably remembered that
other girl, the big-headed one she said she saw at the town meeting
when Jack Sawicki called the district supervisor about them rabid
racoons. Or maybe it was the same big-headed girl—I hadn’t thought, me,
about that before, me. How many big-headed maybe-donkey girls did we
have running around the woods near East Oleanta? Why did we have any?

Annie said, polite but not very, “How’d you miss your friend? Don’t
she know, her, where you are?”

“I fell asleep,” Dr. Turner said, which explained nothing. She said
it funny, too. “I fell asleep on the gravrail. But I think she might be
around here someplace.”

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” Annie said firmly.

“How about you, Billy?” Dr. Turner said. She probably knew my name,
her, even before Annie said it. She’d been in East Oleanta for a week,
her, eating at the cafe, talking to whoever would talk to her, which
wasn’t many.

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” I said. She stared at me hard.
She didn’t believe me, her.

“Then let me just ask something else. Does the name ‘Eden’ mean
anything to you?”

A gust of wind could of blown me over.

But Annie said cool as January, “It’s in the Bible. Where Adam and
Eve lived, them.”

“Right,” Dr. Turner said. “Before the Fall.” She stood up and
stretched. Her body under the jacks was too skinny, at least by me. A
woman should have some softness on her bones.

“I’ll come back to look in on
Lizzie
tomorrow,” Dr. Turner
said, and I saw, me, that Annie didn’t want her to come back, and then
that Annie did. This was a doctor.
Lizzie
slept peaceful,
her. Even from by the door, she looked cooler to me.

When the doctor left, Annie and I looked at each other, us. Then
Annie’s face broke up. Just went from solid flesh creased with worry to
a mess of lines that didn’t have nothing to do with one another, and
she started to cry, her. Before I even thought about it I put my arms
around her. Annie clung back, hard, and at the feel of her soft breasts
against my chest, I went a little crazy. I didn’t think, me. I just
raised her face to mine and kissed her.

And Annie Francy kissed me back.

None of your grateful-daughter crap, neither. She cried and pointed
to Lizzie and kissed me with her soft berry lips and pushed her breasts
against me. Annie Francy. I kissed her back, my mind not even working,
it—the words only came later—and then it was like we just met instead
of knowing each other for years, instead of me being sixty-eight and
Annie thirty-five, instead of everything breaking down and East Oleanta
coming apart like it was. Annie Francy kissed me like I was a young
man, me—and I was. I ran my hands, me, over her body, and I led her
into the bedroom, leaving
Lizzie
sleeping peaceful as an
angel, and I closed the door. Annie was laughing and weeping, the way I
forgot, me, that women can do, and she lay her big beautiful body on
the bed with me like I was thirty-five, too.

Annie Francy.

If that donkey doctor in yellow jacks had come back then and asked
me again where Eden was—if she’d of done that, I could of told her, me.
In this room. On this bed. With Annie Francy. Here.