Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

Then, of course, the pigs had annihilated them, and what Teko had noted well was his own sense that some safety circuit that should have tripped before things had gone too far had malfunctioned or been entirely absent to begin with. What he couldn’t shake was what no one else could shake either, in the aftermath: the index of juvenile achievements attributed to his dead comrades, the glowing faces and carefully styled hairdos of their yearbook photos, the fact that it wasn’t their commitment to revolution or justice or even their having had their hearts in the correct place that he, personally, would have submitted as corroboration of their right to continue living, but the penumbra of utter conventional ordinariness that fell upon them to veil and contradict all that they insisted they were. All he insisted he was. It was the good people, from the comfortable houses and safe neighborhoods, turning out to bring those tortured bodies home and pass through those same leafy streets, a sad suburban cortege, to bury them in mahogany coffins with polished brass handles. It agitated him to realize that he had thought this marked them as different, exempt, that because their bail would have been made, because they had college degrees, because albums were filled with faded snaps of their birthday parties they would, at the critical moment, be allowed to avail themselves of privileges never before denied them. It agitated him to realize that despite all that had drawn him to Cin, filled him with near veneration, he had accepted Cin’s subfusc forecast as tongue-in-cheek rhetoric.

His belief in Cin’s prescience now is in fact the most prominent of the differences marking Teko from the new group of Susan, Roger, and Jeff Wolfritz. Overall, a bookish and chatty bunch, which is one reason why he’s chosen to involve them all in the Bakery Operation, so called. Get them out there, pointing guns at people and making elemental demands. Give me, give me, I want. The pure playground logic of it, get the superego the hell out of the picture for a change. It might even help if they actually were to shoot someone, to scorch the cost of commitment in their minds. Simple as yes/no, on/off, with us/against us, alive/dead; strictly zero sum, the reality from which they hide behind books and talk. That was the mistake he made last summer, allowing Guy Mock to talk him into disarming and laying low and then allowing the bitch, Shimada, to set a lackadaisical and insubordinate tone. If he’d been smart, they would have shaken up one of those hick towns, but good. It would have bound them together, made them stronger, announced to the world that the revolution had arrived on the East Coast. Instead they whiled the time away, drinking draft beer and playing shuffleboard in local taverns, loading change into the jukebox.

Another reason, then, to involve the others in the Bakery Op is to make them criminally complicit in the revolutionary activities of the SLA and end any conflict between their divided, their treasonously bifurcated loyalties. Which of course gives rise to a third reason (which he admits to himself only cautiously): He has to get these people serious because their casual attitude presents an obvious and attractive alternative to his own martial approach.

The wind stirs briefly, ruffling his collar and kicking up trash that has gathered at the curb. The barest threat of sun at the corner of the somber sky. Winter in Sacramento. He gets into the car beside his wife, putting the bag of supplies between his feet.

“Why didn’t you just buy it?”

“Buy what?” His hand moves to the pocket where he has concealed the knife.

“The paper.”

“Oh, God. And deal with the bitch preening all day? The star?”

Yolanda reaches over to pat his hand mockingly. Then she asks, “Oh. Did you remember the cat food?”

She backs carefully out of the diagonal slot. Too slowly to suit the guy behind her, mug in a pickup who hits the horn with the heel of his hand, once, twice, three times as she straightens out the wheels and then begins rolling forward, arriving at the intersection and bringing the car to a stop as the yellow light turns red. The guy edges forward, annoyed, until the pickup’s grille fills Yolanda’s rearview. Then he revs the engine, vehement bursts of noise as he toes the accelerator. The moment the light turns green his horn begins to sound.

“What a creep.” She turns around to see if she can get a glimpse of the guy, sees only the grille.

“Well, don’t make a scene,” says Teko.

Yolanda heaves a sigh. There are many questions she might ask, rhetorical questions, concerning the man beside her, concerning their marriage, that cry out for the intuitive second sight of a Dear Abby. Would the astute Abigail Van Buren, whose cornerstone opinion seems to hold that all problems are universal and that the practical solutions to them may thus be universally applied, agree with Yolanda’s unhappy conclusion that the only hope the marriage has is (deep breath) separation?

Ask yourself. Are you better off with him or without him? I suggest that both of you attend counseling. If he won’t go, go alone.

Though even Miss Van Buren might find herself stumped by Teko himself, if not by the reasons for Yolanda’s most recent bout of alienation from her husband. For the first time in more than a year, for the first time since she and Teko abandoned their neat, white-painted, plant-filled apartment to go underground with Cin and the SLA, Yolanda yearns for the unrestricted sanctuary of normal life, open, free, and sunny. It was while she and Teko were sightseeing in her hometown, Chicago, as they traveled leisurely westward, that these feelings had first intruded. They went to the Art Institute. They went to the zoo. They sat at the edge of the sand, the elegant facades of Lakeshore Drive to their backs, the first hint of winter in the wind that traveled to them across the choppy surface of the lake. All the rigors and trials of the long summer, all the objectives they’d held fast to melted away when she sank her strong teeth into a Vienna Beef hot dog. When they walked on Addison in the shadow of Wrigley Field, quiet now that the season had drawn to another unsuccessful conclusion, Cubs buried in the cellar twenty-two games out, Yolanda realized that she would be happy to perpetuate all this, that coming home and behaving like a tourist made her feel as if all the pleasures of the city had been arranged for her comfort and delight. When Teko suggested that they take a little trip to the West Side — he had a list of public housing projects he wanted to inspect — she’ d resisted, oh so slightly, just enough to put him off until it was time to head to the Greyhound terminal. The tired sign there, yellow with cigarette smoke, still said LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US, but beneath it a man wearing a vinyl jacket and jeans dirtied to a shiny greenish brown nodded, his chin bouncing on his naked chest. This was the sort of found wit that had always delighted roving photographers for the Sun-Times . Yolanda watched him offhandedly, marveling at the spindly prison tattoos that blossomed on his neck, clutching protectively in her hand the paper bag of goodies she’d bought at the five-and-ten. She felt as distant from the man, from that victim of society, as she possibly could. She felt, even, a spark of indignation that he’d allowed himself to fall into that condition.

Then they’d arrived in Sacramento, and there were Susan and Jeff and Roger and Tania, all cozied up in the tatty little W Street apartment. Yolanda couldn’t help noticing how tidy and clean things were, how sweetly Tania kissed her hello, how thoughtful and amiable Jeff and Roger were. And then Susan had performed for them, for an evening of safe house recreation, a dramatic reading from Telephone , a San Francisco Mime Troupe skit, raising the paperbound anthology, Guerrilla Theater, to proudly declaim the piece’s final triumphant line: