Inhabited. Charlie Quimby

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       No kidding. Let’s talk about the girl.

      What did you think of her?

       If only Mom and Dad had named me something cool like Pandora!

      You didn’t need the help.

       I will take that as a compliment.

      Do. I miss you, Hel.

       You have made that plain, Madge, and I appreciate the effort.

      So you approve.

       Yes. She’s the best one so far.

      But not the best ever.

       No. That would take a miracle.

      An unknown number from AZ, USA, sat in Meg’s missed calls the next morning. No message. A robocall or an out-of-state prospect? She sensed it was neither. She only knew one person in the 928 area code. Reaching out and retreating was about the only way she ever heard from Brian. His last actual words had come postmarked from Tuba City two years ago. No salutation, signature or return address. Nothing precisely personal in the eighteen lines of semierotic free verse that fell out of the envelope. She granted him the occasional bout of longing. On the chance his call on the day of Helen’s remembrance was something more than a coincidence, she called the number.

      A woman answered—Food Mart—in what sounded like a Native American lilt. What sort of tale had Brian told so he could use the phone? He wasn’t a charmer, exactly, but he was trustworthy, definitely the type a woman would let behind the counter.

      “I’d like to leave a message for Brian Mogrin if he comes in. Do you know him?”

      “Maybe.”

      “Then please write this down. Ready?”

      “Go ahead.”

      “No message is still a message.”

      “That’s it?”

      It was not. She wanted to say: Do you think you’re the only one with yearnings? If Brian had tired of his exile, she understood. Penance should have an end. But he must do better than no-return-address poetry and convenience store cryptograms.

      “He’ll know the rest.”

      Do you have any problems concentrating and/or remembering things?

       —Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults

      A shrill buzzing rose and fell, approached and departed, chattered as it slowed and then screamed away again. Two circuits. Three. Then quiet. Not a weed whacker; they burned weeds out here. He checked the sky. The sheriff’s drone flew as high as four hundred feet so it might be hard to spot. Shouldn’t surveillance be silent? If the point was sowing intimidation, though, it was working. His noise-infected thoughts circled the idea of retreat.

      Same reason he’d left the river. To choose a camp you had to understand who was there as well as who had been there the longest or who was strongest, because they set the rules and vetted the campers. Then you had to know who was allowed to ignore the rules, because there were always exceptions and hidden power struggles, and watch the watchers, looking for something to steal. The worst was all those voices worse for wear: pointless quarrels, selfish complaints, the ignorant things people said. The call and response of sleepers yelping at the drunks to shut up! and the drunks bellowing at the sleepers to go to hell!

      At the first sign of Lord of the Flies, it was time to get out.

      The zeeeeEEEEEEEEE started up again like line spooling from a hot reel. He saw three of them now, too big to be playing in the road with a radio-controlled car, drinking from what looked like tennis ball cans. They didn’t seem that dangerous but danger didn’t always look like itself. He checked the sheath in his sock, just in case. He hated carrying a knife but he didn’t want to be someone who died for disregarding the wisdom of the pack. Isaac was that fool who got robbed clubbed stabbed choked kicked to death in his camp because he didn’t listen, because he made himself too easy to take. So he listened and slept with Jake’s knife beneath his pad where he could find it. And each night its cold point edged a little closer to his heart.

      Way too much sugar. Sometimes the bagel shop gave Isaac a day-old freebie if he’d take his coffee to go. None today but he took his order outside anyway. Always too much of this or not enough of that, a buzz in his head or a rumble in his gut. He didn’t starve or pig out but he had no routine, either. Non-refrigerateds, pull-top cans, cereal out of the box, denteds and expireds. Peanut butter, canned meats and beans for protein. Salted snacks, energy bars, pepperoni, Little Debbie cakes can’t go bad. Pickles had vitamins but no calories. He wasn’t a fan of fruit; if it was free, it was already too ripe. Cabbage was okay, just peel off the bad leaves. Brick cheese, scrape off the mold. Priced-for-Quick-Sale baskets, BOGO, Manager’s Special, Tuesday Tacos. Five-Dollar-Friday whole roasted chicken, too much to eat by himself so share it with somebody who shared back. Soup kitchen closed on weekends, so today it’s church-basement Wonder Bread sandwiches served with blessings at Whitman Park. Filling, but who puts margarine on a cheese sandwich? Some guys speed-bus the tables at the food court, but he had strict standards. Nobody’s leftovers for him. Creamer, sugar and ketchup packs only—but no more sugar today! No shoplifting and stay out of dumpsters, too. Isaac left that to the ones who couldn’t do any better. A pride thing. It saved money to live rentless but it cost you years, sniffles, soggy clothes, lost belongings, shrinkage of yourself. Living small made you seem smaller, less significant. Not many fat people living on the river. No master bedrooms or two-car garages. They had nothing but that wasn’t what put people like Isaac in a tent. It was having too much of something. Thoughts, panics, blues, smoke, drink, drugs, attitude. Like the sugar shakes he had right now. Maybe if he biked hard back to camp he could burn it off before he crashed.

      Isaac Samson’s camp was almost perfect. Miles from the river and even further from the aimless flutter around the Bermuda Triangle of the shelter, Walmart and the mental health clinic. It was concealed in a thicket of ditchwater trees next to a leased hay field back from a stub road that ran between an office park and the Goodwill, where they didn’t care if he used the restroom. The Express Suites had a free breakfast where half the guests looked like they came from a shelter with their flannel pants and blank eyes. It was good to grab a banana, honey and some hard-boiled eggs, but he didn’t overdo it. The nearby mall was depressing in a bus-station-the-day-after-Christmas way and Security stink-eyed anyone with a backpack, but he could keep cool in the summer if he dressed clean, carried a book and stayed out of the stores.

      Across the road were a few dozen vinyl-clad townhouses built right before the crash. The owners not foreclosed were too stunned from being underwater to do much of anything but work and watch TV with the blinds closed. Next door, a scatter of outbuildings behind a small house farmer-built with no particular style, now occupied by renters who either turned over quickly or whose appearance changed drastically according to the meth supply. On the face of it, maybe not a premier set-up but Isaac had a notarized letter from the landowner informing To Whom It May Concern that Isaac Samson had Barry Lester’s permission to camp there.

      Barry collected rent off the books from the rough clan next door while waiting for the housing market to resume its northward march across his property. Isaac camped at the edge of the field in exchange for a couple hours a day at Freedom City, where Barry signed the paychecks. Well, not paychecks; Barry paid only in cash and only СКАЧАТЬ