Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

“I say if they pull us over that we just kill them, ask questions later,” said Zoya. That suited Fahizah just fine. She patted her personal sidearm, a revolver, snug in its shoulder holster, thinking: The only way to destroy fear is to destroy the makers of fear.

They continued east on Slauson for another half mile or so. Ahead of them, Cinque kept a steady course. Suddenly he signaled left. The van’s brake lights flared as it slowed and turned into a small street leading back into the bungalow maze. Fahizah noted its name as she passed: Ascot. Like a man in a whadayacallit smoking jacket. Like a man in a smoking jacket holding a whadayacallit snifter. Like a man in a smoking jacket holding a snifter taking a cigar from a whadayacallit humidor. Like a man in a smoking jacket holding a snifter taking a cigar from a humidor. Yeah. That’s what it was like.

“Nobody look!” warned Zoya.

Fahizah said, affecting a British accent: “Would you care for a cigar?” Zoya stared.

Why the hell would anyone look , man? Fahizah would feel her way back to her comrades. She had reversed the polarity of the Fascist Government transponder that had been subcutaneously implanted, and now she could home in on her comrades at any distance on Earth as well as Zibiriliax; she’d tested it.

Still, she tried to suppress the desolation of the thought: We’re totally alone.

They drove on, perhaps two miles, until they approached the dry bed of the Los Angeles River and the overpass that crossed the Long Beach Freeway. There the cruiser that shadowed them abruptly turned off to follow a course parallel to the highway. When their pursuers disappeared from sight, Fahizah pulled over, bringing the van to a stop amid the low industrial buildings.

“Now what?” said Cujo.

“We go back and rendezvous,” said Fahizah.

“Where’d those guys turn off?” said Cujo.

As Fahizah opened her mouth, Zoya answered: “Ascot.”

Such a display of diligence should have pleased General Fahizah. It pissed her off instead, as she was forced to add lamely, feeling the weakness of the imprecision, “It was kind of near Central.” Abruptly she opened the door and got out to stretch her legs. She felt drained and let down all of a sudden. Her mind felt flat and ordinary.

The street outside was quiet, with only a faded wash of noise from the nearby freeway. She was tired, and her eyes ached. She stared morosely across the street at the unappealing landscape, considering her last meal, a congenitally nasty farrago of canned spinach, okra, and mackerel. An ember of discomfort burned at the center of her stomach. She wanted a cheeseburger from the Zim’s restaurant on Nineteenth and Taraval, with french fries and an icy glass of Coca-Cola that burned the back of the throat as it went down.

She felt like nothing, a nobody from nowhere.

Inside the van, Cujo was absorbed in picking his nose. Zoya climbed out to stand beside Fahizah.

“That got kind of scary,” she confessed.

“Oh, man. I need, like, a fucking break. That wore me out,” said Fahizah.

“You want me to drive?”

Fahizah nodded. She leaned against the van and put a hand to her face, sensing some stifled impulse behind her eyes, the snots and tears that never came — never! She felt so sorry for herself she decided to fake it, a little, drawing in big gulps of air and shaking with a simulated passion that was totally counter to the crawl-in-a-hole thing she was feeling. Anyway, it was the wrong audience. Zoya just stood and watched. She’d spent the day with crying Gabi, Fahizah remembered. Gabi cried, Yolanda cried, Teko cried, Gelina didn’t cry much but you knew she would if it came down to it. Tania didn’t cry. An interesting thought. She pitied her, stuck somewhere with Teko and Yolanda; what a pair of royal pains in the ass they could be. If anything could make her cry, it would be getting caught with the two of them at a fork in the road; the arguing would go on forever. This made Fahizah smile. She lifted her dry face from her cupped hand and reached up to clap Zoya on the shoulder, then walked around to get in on the passenger side.

Zoya drove back to Ascot slightly above the limit. The cops were either after them or they weren’t, they figured. A certain jaunty fatalism seemed called for. They zipped down the dark street, and Cin’s van flashed its lights at them as they passed. Zoya slowed and parked at the corner (next to a fire hydrant, Fahizah noted. But she didn’t say anything) and the three of them walked back for a brief, excitedly whispered reunion with the others.

Cin suggested that now would be as good a time as any to institute the search-and-destroys, so they re-formed their caravan of two and began slowly driving through the neighborhood in search of a welcoming sign. It wasn’t long before they spotted the lights inside the stucco house at 1466 East Fifty-fourth Street.

AWAKENING IN THE 6:30 GRAY, Yolanda asks what time it is. All four of them are lying on the carpeting in the back of the van, and Tania wakes up confused and exhausted. When she opens her eyes, she sees Dan Russell is out from under the blanket and gazing at her, and his smile is a pretty nice how do you do first thing. Her hand reaches for the monkey.

Teko suggests hijacking a car, striding purposefully toward one stopped at a red light and ousting its fucking occupants at gunpoint. Yolanda intimates, though she does not come right out and say, that to allow Dan to return home while nearly simultaneously making their presence known to yet another, almost certainly more hostile party would undo all the hard work of the last twelve hours. She would prefer that she and Tania first pose as attractive hitchhikers (she guarantees that a typical sexist will bumble along) and then, after securing a ride, kidnap their benefactor, who’ll be in no position to alert the pigs. Yolanda’s will prevails, and Tania now hurriedly prepares to commit at least one more capital offense, as well as miscellaneous lesser felonies, adjusting her wig and pulling her shoes on. Yolanda gives her a revolver, which she tucks into her waistband, but Teko tells her that her blouse doesn’t cover it completely. She tries closing her jacket over it, but that leaves a curious bulge. Finally she places it in her waistband at the small of her back, then tries drawing it a couple of times. It appears in her hand smoothly enough, though Yolanda assures her, “I’ll draw first.” They leave.

“Dan,” says Teko, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to mention long as we’re alone for a couple of minutes.”

“Uh, OK.”

“We just want to let you know we think you’re really great. A big help, with the handcuffs and all. And when I think: some people would make a real big stink out of getting abducted. I remember I was a kid, around your age, something interrupted my plans I went apeshit, big time. But you’ve been aces: driving around, lousy fucking night’s sleep, wondering what was gonna happen.”

“Well, you’ve been real great too. All of you.”

“Well, good. Anyway I just was thinking, Yolanda and me and Tania too, that if you wanted to lead a youth unit of the SLA, I think you’d be perfect. You’re just the sort of young person we’re looking for.”

“Well, um. I don’t know what to say except that well, I’m flattered, first, but even though I can see your point?”

“Mmm?”

“Even though I can see your point of view politics really isn’t my thing? You know? No offense.”

“No, no. I understand. Just the same, if you change your mind.”

“Oh, sure.”

“We know where to find you.”

“Oh, sure.”

“We know where you live, OK.” Teko makes a little gun out of his thumb and forefinger and aims it at Dan, bringing down the hammer of his thumb. He grins. Then Yolanda and Tania drive up in a new Lincoln Continental. A man is sitting in the backseat, looking like a frightened bird.