Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

Today the driveway is full of cars. There are balloons taped to the English plane tree that shades the front yard. A hand-printed sign that says “Denise & Barry,” with two entwined hearts, is stapled to the trunk. More hand-printed signs, arrows, guide arrivals around the house to the backyard, from which music can be heard, the sound of a Fender Rhodes keyboard that bangs out “Happy Together” from the muzzy depths of its sonic register.

It’s Angel’s sister’s wedding. Angel’s home from the land of the nuts. You seen Angel? What a mouth she’s got on her. Beautiful wedding, yeah, but so what’s up with Angel?

Gelina is stewing in her polyester floral sheath, counting the covered dishes being brought out from the kitchen, where the caterer is working, and laid on the white tablecloths clamped to the three long folding tables near the pool. She catches one of the waiters staring at her unshaved legs, and she gives him the finger.

She’s got a real fuckin attitude today.

You know how many people all this shit could feed? She gestures toward the table, laden with trays and tureens and platters and chaf ing dishes abubble over cans of flaming Sterno. You know how many people are dying so you can eat this shit? Gestures with a lit cigarette, ash tumbling into some macaroni salad. Plus she’s just a little pissed off she’s not maid of honor.

Take it easy, Angel.

That’s Angela .

Her sister: Cries. Cries and cries, how could you?

Her father: You know this is your sister’s day, blah blah blah.

Her sister’s privileged status notwithstanding, Gelina has no intention of just silently taking it. Soon she and her father are toe to toe, arguing intensely. There is a dusky blush to his face as he attempts to preserve decorum. The last time most of these people, the guests, were together was at her mother’s wake. They look on through their crushed recollection of the saintly young daughter in mourning. She ruins the day.

You’ve ruined my special day, says Denise.

How dare you lecture me … as long as you’re in my house … She doesn’t need to hear the end of a single one of these sentences.

The next day she calls Pan Am to change her ticket. She takes a New Jersey Transit bus to the airport and pointedly stuffs the bridesmaid’s dress in the garbage as she walks to the corner.

Postcard two shows the Great Electric Underground. A fake “mod” cocktail lounge on the ground floor of the B of A building, a place for horny businessmen and their pet toupees. About the hippest spot you’ll ever find in a building named after a huge commercial bank. A month after participating in the assassination of the Oakland superintendent of schools, Gelina is finally ready to quit her day job.

Susan Rorvik, a friend she met while in the cast of a Company Theater production of Hedda Gabler, is quitting with her. She was Thea, Susan Hedda. They both are sick of being exploited in order to earn money, and neither of them is willing any longer to work for “agents of the ruling class,” as their five-page parting letter describes their employers, much less in the revealing dresses that accompany the job’s compulsory flirtatiousness. They quit flamboyantly, dropping copies of the letter on the tables of their customers. Who look up in sleepy confusion, seeking the source of these unwanted gifts. Whatzis? Before leaving, Gelina turns around to survey the room. A bunch of affluent white men working on an afternoon buzz amid the weekday torpor of the gray holiday season. Composed. Serene, even. She raises a fist.

“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the People!”

Hey—’sChristmastime. Take it easy. A self-congratulatory laugh circulates softly throughout the carpeted room, like a shared secret, or the punch line to a dirty joke at her expense.

She and Susan send copies of the letter to KPFA and to the Bay Guardian . The one never airs it and the other never prints it. Angela moves in with her friends from Indiana, Drew and Diane Shepard, to cut costs and prepare for life underground. She stays in their closet-size spare bedroom, listening every night as they fight. She and Susan fall out of touch.

Cin was funny today, Gelina thought. She watched him, wondering what could be bothering him, as he sort of pitched and yawed behind the steering wheel, peering out into the night as if they were surrounded by a thick fog, turning to see that the other van still followed them, sighing and muttering inaudibly to himself. She sensed an approaching decision, a big one, judging from his behavior. Actually, she’d spent most of her life thinking about what could be bothering men, what it was that would please them. She wanted to hate her father, but as much as she tried to politicize all the “discoveries” she’d made about her banal upbringing, he was just another dumb daddy aching for the little girl he’d loved. The agitator’s role didn’t come naturally. She was a born conciliator, felt the memory of her sister’s wedding as a bayonet.

And deep down she did think it was a special day. That’s what she’d tell Denise when she saw her again, after.

She was basically a stuffed animal — type person.

Memory is a bayonet. Mail it to some distant isle / with palm trees and a beach / where your daily troubles all will be / safely out of reach. Postcard three: Gelina’s body goes unclaimed for days. Her exhusband finally signs the necessary paperwork to have it shipped for burial.

Cin had a penciled list of addresses he consulted now and again, but apparently something at each of those locations disturbed him, because although he would slow the van as he approached them, he never stopped except once, on which occasion he’d gotten out and stood for a while on the dark lawn before a small house, the wind ruffling his jacket, before climbing back into the idling van, shaking his head. Something about this man today: not talking. Gelina held her wrist to the window to read her watch under the passing streetlights. Close to 3 a.m. There was zero traffic out at this hour, and the unmuffled engines made a lot of noise. Cin signaled a turn and headed the van toward Slauson, a big road where they wouldn’t seem as conspicuous as they did crawling through residential streets. Behind Gelina, Gabi was sleeping, mouth agape and with her cheek pressed unattractively against the window. The only people she liked to watch sleeping were children. Through the rear window she saw the other van turn onto the avenue and begin to follow a few lengths behind. They rolled through a landscape of raw cinder-block meanness, past empty service stations, liquor stores, pawnshops, and check-cashing places. A used car lot sat behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and multicolored plastic bunting that flapped noisily in the warm breeze. A patrol car heading in the opposite direction cruised toward them. Cin stared straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw bulging. Gelina tried to look unconcerned and happy. The two cops in the cruiser slid jaded eyes over them in the instant in which the two vehicles passed each other and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, apparently making the same decision about the van containing Cujo, Zoya, and Fahizah.

TANIA HAS BEGUN TO drop off to sleep when Teko speaks sharply to her, telling her to check her weapon to make sure there isn’t a round in the chamber. She knows there isn’t, but recognizing that this is to be a command performance for their captive, she chambers a round, and she’s pleased that he watches avidly as she then easily ejects the bullet, removes the clip from the weapon to reinsert the cartridge, and then rams the clip home. She handles the rifle with the little showy flourishes that her familiarity with it will allow. All its working parts engage with satisfying clicks and snaps.