Nina, the Bandit Queen. Joey Slinger

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СКАЧАТЬ unshaven legs and propensity to engage in acts of physical violence with your neighbour, makes it clear that what you actually are is a bull dyke. And I wish to assure you,” he said, “that the welfare department will not tolerate this, especially considering that children are —”

      “Excuse me,” D.S. blurbled through a handful of blood. Stepping around the inspector, he opened the door, went inside, and shut it again. After awhile the inspector went away, leaving only Ed Oataway making a fuss. And he was gone when JannaRose looked out in the morning.

      JannaRose told Nina that because he was required to pay the parent company a premium for having lost the car he’d stolen, he’d driven up to visit Nina’s brother Frank in the penitentiary. He hoped that Frank might have some kind of an idea that would help him out of the jam Nina had gotten him into. JannaRose was especially careful not to put it the way Ed had when he announced where he was going, which was, “to see that fuckin’ lunatic woman’s asshole brother.”

      Nina could hardly believe it anyway. From one extreme — really stupid — where JannaRose’s personal safety could have been endangered because he might possibly have let his violent instincts take control of his actions, Ed Oataway had swung to the other extreme — really, really stupid. When she came right out and asked, “Does he honestly think my asshole brother might know anything about anything?” JannaRose pretended not to hear the question.

      But thanks to Ed going to see him, she found out that her brother had a bank robbery lined up for when he got released, which he expected to be soon, having completed three of the eleven years he’d been doing for fraud. For awhile after that, nobody talked about anything else.

      Four

      The failure of her next welfare cheque to show up should not be understated as a factor in Nina’s decision to raise charitable funds by alternative means. This made it six months in a row that she hadn’t been able to cash one. “It’s tough enough being a welfare queen even when the money is rolling in,” she said.

      She called about it, not expecting to reach anybody at the welfare department, but due to some freak circumstance, somebody answered the phone on the second day. She’d spent all the day before waiting because a machine kept telling her that her call was important to them, but the next day’s breakthrough occurred when she’d only been on hold for five hours.

      There was a welfare office in the underground mall at the high-rise towers, and she wasn’t at all afraid of being around The Intersection in the daytime, so she could have gone in person. But every time she did, the line of people waiting trailed out the door, past the empty windows of the shops that had gone out of business, and up the stairs and out on to the street. It seemed to her that there was something pointless about getting in that line, since it was always exactly the same. It never moved. It was always the same people in the same places. Once people started waiting in that line, they never quit. She said this was because standing in it had given their lives some positive direction, maybe even a purpose. As long as they did it, they had an identity that wasn’t limited to being poor and getting screwed by the welfare department. They had become the kind of people who did something about what was happening to them — who actively did something. They were seekers of justice, correctors of errors, unwilling to be victimized more than they already had been, believers in the rights of individuals, and bound and determined to get theirs. They would resent anybody who suggested they were wasting their time, resent it so much they would become a howling bloody-eyed mob that dragged whoever questioned them into the line — because the last thing they were ever going to do was leave it and lose their places — and tore them limb from limb. So no matter how careful Nina was about putting her observation into words, it would still amount to her calling them a bunch of dumb fucks, and who likes that?

      The person who answered the phone put Nina through to the wrong extension which, by coincidence, turned out to be the chief welfare inspector’s office, so she figured she might as well take advantage of the opportunity and complain about the welfare inspector who was spying through her bedroom window and confronting her on the street with vague threats and anti-gay slurs. She punched in her welfare ID number as instructed, and a computerized voice informed her that the registered client — “Nina. Carson. Dolgoy” — had been the victim of identity theft. It informed her that her last cheque had been diverted and/or intercepted and cashed by a person representing himself/herself as the previously named “Nina. Carson. Dolgoy.” Since the caller was evidently in possession of the Nina. Carson. Dolgoy welfare ID number, the caller was evidently the identity thief, or the recipient of materials acquired by identity theft, and must immediately turn himself/herself in at the nearest police station.

      Nina dropped the phone. Leaning her head against the tamper-proof coinbox, she watched it swing back and forth and the end of its vandal-proof cord.

      Of all the things that had been going on lately, it was hard for JannaRose to say which surprised her most, but finding this working payphone was right up there. So was finding it in the basement mall at the towers, considering that even the toilets had been smashed in the public washrooms down there, although it hadn’t stopped people from using them. And finding the same telephone the next morning, still working, was something she never would have predicted. But Nina said it made sense if anybody bothered to think about it. The gangsters would want at least one guaranteed way of communicating in case their mobile phones went dead, and there was nobody handy to steal one from. On the other hand, Nina had to agree that once she got through to whatever it was she got through to, although all she got do was punch in some numbers, the transaction went on a lot longer than any she’d ever heard of before. If things kept going like that, the next thing she knew, the welfare department would be coming around to where she lived, bringing her a nice lunch, and doing her wash.

      “Identity theft?” JannaRose said.

      “Somebody stole my identity and cashed my last cheque.”

      “But they didn’t send out your last cheque because your name was spelled wrong —”

      “That’s right.”

      “— and if you signed it, it would’ve amounted to forgery, and that would be a crime, and the welfare department —”

      “Yes.”

      “— didn’t want to be a party to a crime. But somebody cashed it?”

      “Yes.”

      “Unless,” JannaRose said, “they sent out another cheque with your name spelled right and you cashed it. But,” she said, “you have no memory of it because you immediately lost the money, which caused you to have a stroke. Or,” she said, “you had a stroke and can’t remember getting the money.”

      “Don’t stop now, sweetie pie,” Nina said.

      “But wouldn’t that mean you must have stolen —”

      “Yes?”

      “— your own identity?”

      “Yes!” Nina pumped her fist.

      JannaRose spread her fingers over her mouth. “That’s awful. How can you prove you’re the you the possible replacement cheque was issued to, and not —”

      Nina sighed.

      “— the you that stole your own identity and used it to cash the cheque? If it was two people, you and an identity thief, then it would be your word against theirs. But,” JannaRose said, “if there’s just one of you, and you stole you own identity, then it’s your word against yourself. СКАЧАТЬ