Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

“Let’s get something now. Just a little.” Gloria’s voice went high and wheedling, and she twisted her lips into a smile that didn’t mask her thirst.

“Soon,” Cass said. “But we need to talk first.”

“I can talk during, you know. I can talk and we can share. We could share, couldn’t we?”

Her eagerness both repelled Cass and tore at her heart. It had been hard enough, Before, when she could drink her nights away in the solitude of her trailer. When she had a paycheck, no matter how paltry, to trade for the numbness. She’d never had to beg like this.

“How have you been getting by?” she asked Gloria softly.

Gloria blinked rapidly and glanced toward the far end of the Box, her fingertips going to her throat in a nervous, protective gesture. “I…do some things.”

Cass suddenly understood. The blue tents-the groping in the dark and muffled cries of release. A hand job for a six-pack of warm beer. Ten minutes on your knees to buy a few hours of oblivion. And yet Gloria seemed to prefer life in the Box-drinking down the wages of cut-rate blow jobs, sleeping on a cot out in the elements, marking time with the level in the bottle-to life in the Order.

She’d come here thinking of the Convent as a place of safety, of sanctuary. It was well guarded against the threats of Aftertime-Beaters as well as Rebuilders and raiders. But Gloria was clearly afraid of it, and she couldn’t even tell Cass exactly what had become of Ruthie. Now, staring at the tall curved walls lit up with the yellow sun of midmorning, Cass wondered what waited for her.

“Let’s just talk,” Cass said gently. “And then we’ll get you taken care of. I promise.”

The sun was high in the sky by the time Gloria finished telling her what she knew, which guards on which shift traded with the outside, which took bribes. Gloria’s words wandered and drifted and in the end Cass had no names to go by, just sketchy descriptions. Gloria said Cass should try in the late afternoon, which was the most coveted shift and hence the one that the most powerful guards in the Order-the crooked ones-kept for themselves. The Order’s ranks had swelled and they were turning away far more would-be members than they accepted.

Even here, cunning trumped good intentions. Had it always been that way? Sometimes it seemed to Cass that the way it had been Before, the codes and habits of social order, were shifting and changing in her memory, like a dream she was forgetting. But all that mattered now was that the odds of buying her way in were better than talking her way in.

It wasn’t much. But at least she could pay. It would have to do.

There was one last thing that Cass wanted, and Gloria knew someone who could take care of it. After Cass bought her a plastic soda bottle filled with cloudy liquor-the cheapest they had, signed for with Smoke’s name-Gloria led Cass through the rows of tents on their way to the Box’s only barber, sipping from the bottle along the whole way. Already she was more relaxed; the tremors in her fingers disappeared, and the deep grooves eased from the corners of her mouth and between her brows-almost making up for the vacancy in her watery eyes.

Near the end of the tents, where sleeping quarters gave way to a row of barter stands and shacks, a dusky-skinned man with a heavy, limping gait and chains looped from his belt stepped in front of them.

“Hey, Glor-i-a,” he said drawing out the syllables of her name suggestively. “New batch come in this morning. Young ones, guess they went to DePaul community college, been living in a dorm there. Lost a couple on the trip…they’re a mess. Better hope none of ’em decide to stay back here and cut into your business. They’re smokin’ hot, know what I mean?”

He pantomimed an obscene bump and grind, winking at Cass.

“Fuck you, Haskins,” Gloria muttered, pushing him out of the way and stumbling past. “You’ll be at my door by tonight begging for it.”

“Just ignore him,” Cass said, his laughter following them down the row.

“He’ll be back,” Gloria muttered, “Can’t stay away.”

But as they continued down the path it seemed to Cass that she walked with less certainty. Cass figured she understood: the biggest downside to making a living by selling off bits of your soul-what happened if one day they quit buying?

But by the time they reached the barber stand, Gloria seemed to have recovered, and when Cass tried to give her a hug she slipped away, her eyes already focused elsewhere. Cass watched her go, her long silver hair catching the sun despite its knots and snarls, and tried not to think about where she was headed.

A man tilted back in a deck chair under an awning constructed from a tarp, feet up on a stump, reading a paperback in the shade of a large straw hat. Elaborate vine tattoos snaked up both arms, disappearing into his t-shirt. He marked his place with a dollar bill and tipped his chair down. When he stood and took off his hat, Cass saw that his hair was shaved into an elaborate spiral pattern.

“At your service,” he said with an exaggerated bow. “I’m Vinson. Can I do something for you today?”

“Yes. I…thought you could even it up.”

She touched the jagged ends of her hair self-consciously. It was vanity, sheer vanity, and she felt her face color at the thought. She was doing this for Smoke, and that was not all right, so she forced him out of her mind and focused on her hair. It was her one pretty feature, according to her mother; at eighteen Cass had chopped it short and dyed it black, anything to further the wedge between her and Mim.

Growing her hair out had been a first step back, when she started to get better, when she started to believe in herself again. When she realized that to be good enough for Ruthie, she had to treat herself as though she was good enough. It had taken so long, so much hard work, to start to believe; and her hair had been a small daily reminder to take care of herself.

Now it was ugly again. But maybe there was a way to make it all right.

She looked over the table where the tools of Vinson’s trade were laid out: a straight razor, scissors, combs, mirrors, a spray bottle of water. Small towels were folded and stacked. “I can pay, later. If that’s okay. I-we-have credit.”

“Ah,” Vinson said. “You’re the girl who came in with Smoke.”

“You know him?”

“By reputation only, until last night. We had a drink together.”

Whiskey on his breath . The memory of their fevered coupling flooded Cass’s mind, and she felt herself flush, her veins throbbing with the mad coursing of her blood. “Oh, he’s, he’s…around here somewhere.”

“This one’s on the house, then. For what he did, standing up to the Rebuilders. Times are only going to get harder. We’ll need more like him.”

“You think they’ll come here?” Cass asked. “All this way?”

“They’ve already been here, make no mistake about that,” Vinson said, pulling over a chair and motioning for her to sit. “Just the scouts so far, coming around to see what we’ve got before they send their little army in. Only I figure your pal Smoke might’ve given them something to think about.”

He chuckled as he wrapped an old bedsheet around her, cape style, fastening it with a binder clip. He picked up the bottle and started spraying water on her hair, lifting it with his fingers. The cool mist felt good on her skin, and Cass relaxed a little.

“You mean, because he killed some of them.”

Vinson snorted. “Not just anyone, either, angel. He took out Tapp-the guy who started that whole mess. Remember when they used to hunt Bin Laden all over the place Before? Well, it was like that-Tapp was the big leader, the figure-head, and your buddy Smoke blew his head off and left the body twitching like a stuck pig. And you can bet the guys he let go ran back to tell the story all over Colima.”