shya scanlon's forecast, chapter 34.

I'm pleased to be hosting Chapter 34 of Shya Scanlon's Forecast, a novel which is being serialized across 42 Web sites in the span of 21 weeks. Find the full Forecast schedule at www.shyascanlon.com/forecast and read more about web serialization on the LA Times blog. Get the hardcover in your pretty little hands come spring 2010, courtesy of Flatmancrooked.

Chapter 33 is posted at Unpacking my Library.

34

Zara turned the corner and rolled her eyes. She’d never met anyone as entirely awkward as Handpepper. And though she’d felt bad only moments before about her contribution to this chronic state, she now, out of his eyesight, found herself able to focus on what was obviously the root cause of her own vaguely rude behavior: her former teacher’s fundamental lack of social skills. She shed her guilt like winter fur in an early spring, and continued her way back home, unaccountably content. She felt optimistic about her new job, and looked forward to her first day. She was relieved not to be in Handpepper’s classroom anymore, and though her parent’s encouragement was a seemingly limitless source of frustration, she saw no way around it for the time being, and forced it from her mind. The sun shone. The wind was nowhere. The streets were clean but Zara forgave them.

Zara walked the next few blocks toward home in a silence I read as happiness, as something resembling a sort of inner peace I know little about, but saw, if rarely, in the subject of this still quite new service I was chosen to provide. And these were the moments when I felt truly blessed, when watching Zara was even more than a joy: it was ecstatic. She didn’t have to be doing anything. She didn’t have to be saying anything. She didn’t need her perversions or pyrotechnics or falters or farts; her smarts and her strength, while impossible to ignore, weren’t always the keys to her beauty. Sometimes all she had to do was turn a certain way, or glance, or walk with a step that snapped you back to basics. Sometimes it was a clear, noble vision of a clear, noble soul, and I understood, of course, why she must be protected.

For isn’t that the root of it? Beneath all the explanations we’re given about why this particular person must be watched, must be monitored and explained, isn’t it that we have some basic, inarticulate grasp of their significance, and that we must, at all costs and in honor of this intuitive understanding, ensure the protection of those things, those people, we hold most dear? I’ve looked through the Surveillant guide book for something akin to what I’ve written, and though I can’t find the words, the spirit is everywhere throughout. It’s in the necessity of logging every step, however intimate. It’s in the power to intervene, backed by an enormously complex infrastructure of potential energy. Finally (and perhaps most tellingly), it’s in the elaborate restrictions concerning the exercise of such power. This is a profession built on profound respect of the sanctity of the individual, on an acknowledgement that the ability for the individual to grow, to become what and who he or she is destined to become depends, first and foremost, on autonomy, and on the belief, above all, that these things are worth protecting. For these reasons I am honored to have been a part of this operation since its inception. For the reasons of Zara’s grace and effervescence I am honored to be alive.

She hit Jackson and began to turn left. The wind was still deep in thought, but little fingers of fog had found their way through downtown, and were pointing straight up the streets that fed First Hill with a newly employed workforce finding its way back home. Zara had long since ceased paying too much attention to the weather, but the slow, certain movement of the opaque, street-level soup was still novel enough to cause her pause, and she stood on the corner, peering down in the direction of a downtown she had to trust was still there. The fog was moving quickly, visibly, but the workers moved faster. They emerged from the pillowy white-out as if from a dream, ghostly patches of color gaining features until they took on human form, skin color, and expression. They looked exhausted. Finally available, work was in those early days a reward in itself, and people drawn to it put in long hours. They worked hard, and when the day was over, they lived hard: parties pushed on, seeking a second, third, forth wind, as though by falling asleep we might extinguish the magic spark that lit this new lucky new direction, and we’d all wake up back in darkness. It this very enthusiasm that would, Zara hoped, make her Thursday show a success, and for this reason she watched it closely, marking the colors that emerged from the fog, and inspecting the faces that passed her. She looked for encouraging signs. What sort of performance would these people—mostly men—be interested in? What would turn them on? Would a little girl echo the birth of their new era, and cause the optimistic fire inside them to grow, flicker behind their eyes, greedy for what the future might hold for them? Would a strong, mature, advanced femininity stir them – a maternal figure to guard them, and praise them for having survived the hard, cold years of social collapse? Zara scanned the faces for answers, or hints. She didn’t know how she’d be able to tell, exactly, but she could sense a certain warmth, she swore, from the multitudes. She could feel an acceptance for the gift she was attempting to give, and it filled her with gratitude, there, on the street, the fog now lapping the tips of her toes. She stood in place, allowing the fog to eclipse her feet, and curl around her ankles, legs, and up to her waist. She closed her eyes and felt its cool, unthreatening moisture against her clothes, the skin of her hands and, finally, her face.

“Zara,” said a familiar voice.

She opened her eyes. Asseem stood no more than a foot in front of her, his own smooth, dark brown face seeming to float in the fog. As recognition washed over Zara’s initial shock, Asseem’s trademark scowl transitioned too, taking on the softer shapes of amusement and adoration.

“Hey woman,” he said. “You gone let diss crazy fog each you?”

Zara rolled her eyes for the second time in fifteen minutes.

“You’ve been at work, I take it,” she said, and pulled him close to kiss him before swinging herself around by his arm in Asseem’s direction and urged them both forward, backs to the fog, up what remained of the hill to their neighborhood.

“Bitch I ain’t even tryin’ ta hear dat.”

“You wouldn’t believe,” she went on, ignoring the “second language” her boyfriend used at work, “who I just ran into.”

“Damn girl, you be runnin’ into mad niggas out her, ain’t you.”

“It’s a small town,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “But seriously, I just saw Handpepper."

“Huh. What’s at fool ass nigga be up to.”

“Uh, being characteristically awkward?” Zara said, shaking her head. “I don’t know. Anyway, you should know – he said he’d just seen you.”

“Say what?” Asseem stopped, turned toward Zara.

“Whoa there, champ.” Zara watched the familiar angles of anger intrude on the playful face he’d worn a moment before. “I’m just saying he said he’d seen you. I assumed he’d been at the movies.”

“Tse. I told you I ain’t been at work.”

“You what?” Zara was running out of patience for Asseem’s affectation. “Look Asseem, I don’t know what you say or don’t say when you talk like that.”

Asseem shook his head, opened his mouth, but closed it before anything came out. Normally this is where he’d launch into a diatribe about his right to speak however he wanted to speak, and that, moreover, she should make an effort to learn more about this side of him. This time, however, his shoulders sagged, his head sank, and he seemed defeated before they’d even begun. This wasn’t like him.

Zara reached out and turned his head up toward hers. She looked him hard in the eyes, and she realized he was utterly exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot, and she searched his face to find that just below the superficial movements of skin was the sallow, slack-muscled indifference of someone who’d either seen too much, or seen very little for too long.

“Jesus, Asseem, what’s up?” She decided to drop the Handpepper thing altogether. “You’ve been working too much, haven’t you.”

“The orders keep coming in,” he confirmed. “What can I do?”

Indeed, what had started as a solo street slang translation service had in fact, upon the advent of emotional energy, blossomed into a much larger project. From whispering into the fleshy ears of rich people while the movie was happening—something he still did, but only for a few well-paying customers who had him on retainer—he’d been recruited to aid in the actual production of dialogue. And this effort required a team. The nimble response to this demand turned out to be a company called Street Cred, Inc. Not that there was the type of governmental infrastructure necessary to legitimize such a project, but save for the official paperwork, Street Cred was organized, run, and maintained by Asseem in a formal, logistically savvy manner that would eventually impress the local government enough to earn him the first Mayoral Entrepreneur Award that had been awarded in decades. Or so I heard. That was after Zara had split town, and long after the afternoon at hand.

But something was different that day. He was hiding something. Zara was used to being left out of certain elements of Asseem’s life. In fact, she’d asked to be left out – she had reservations about the ethical implication of his business model, and, in particular, the odious people like Mr. Stiles. When her alternative was being swept up in a sea of slimy people making themselves slimier by the minute, she was used to being left in the dark. But she was also used to compensating for this hole in their communication with an ability to see through to the emotional core of her lover’s behavior, a core which betrayed at least the broad strokes of his secret life, telling of trials, troubles, and triumphs in sufficient detail for her to respond to: showing him more care when it was clear things weren’t going well, or rewarding him in ways any man would appreciate when they were. But this time he was hiding even that. His mood seemed irritable, but also anxious. She couldn’t lock down any particular sense of success or failure.

“Sweetie what’s wrong,” she said. She reached a hand up to smooth his hair.

“I need you to help me tomorrow night,” he answered dully.

Zara felt slightly queasy.

“I need you to be part of a scene.” Asseem avoided her eyes.

This was exactly what she didn’t want to hear.

“Yeah, well I want you to come watch me strip at Knuckle’s,” she said, too quickly. It just spilled out of her. Out of anger, or fear, or revenge, she wasn’t sure, and didn’t have time to think about it before hearing a loud, abrupt sound that left a ringing in her ears. At the same time, her head suddenly jerked off to the right and tears formed in her eyes. It took her a second to put these things together, and realize that she’d been slapped.

“That son of a bitch,” I said, bolting upright in my chair. Neither of us saw that coming.

“You son of a bitch,” Zara said.

Then she hit back.

Within seconds they were both on the ground, tumbling in one another’s grasps, choking and pulling hair and biting and attracting a small crowd of people walking home, hard worked people who, though at first appalled by the sight, began to cheer the minute they figured out that it was a fair match. And being a fair match, it dragged on. Zara spent as much time under Asseem as she did on top of him, and in the process her clothes were torn, her face, muddy from the mud, and bloody from the blood, was swollen, and a clump of her hair was torn out. Asseem wound up worse, but he kept fighting. And all the while, the fog drew more and more near, devouring the people farthest down the hill from the fight (those who probably couldn’t see anyway), and working up and appetite for people on the inner rings.

Just before the fog eclipsed them all, however, a well-place knee to the groin ended it. And as contact was made, the dull, hollow thud ringing through everyone’s ears, the whole audience winced. Asseem rocked back and forth on the ground as Zara stood, dazed but triumphant, and, looked around from face to face, waiting for them to respond.

There was a long pause. The men looked around among themselves as though needing some kind of sign of agreement. The fog lapped against their legs. Then out of the silence came one lone whoop from the back of the crowd, someone obscured enough by distance to risk it. After another pause the entire crowd exploded into an enormous cheer. There was applause and laughter and garbled voices retelling the highpoints of the fight. In this way, it became clear to Zara which attitude her strip tease should take. These men wanted strength, and she could deliver. Zara raised an arm above her head, and loudly beseeched the group. “Come see me dance this Thursday night at the Dirty Doghouse!”

As she looked around, meeting people’s eyes and shaking their hands, Asseem finally got up and came over to where she was standing.

“Okay, you win,” he said, dusting himself off. His lip was bleeding and his eye was puffed up and his face, covered in grime, hid any trace of what was going on inside his head. “I’ll come see you dance if you help me out tomorrow night.”

Zara stuck her hand out.

“Deal,” she said.

Asseem shook it, then turned around. “Meet me tomorrow at five,” he said over his shoulder. The people were beginning to move on but the crowd was still thick, and Asseem dodged in and out of it, retreating until all she could see of him was his afro, debris hanging from it at all angles, bobbing through the crowd.

“Where?” she called out, realizing they’d not talked details.

“Here,” she heard, and she watched him vanish.

But as she turned back to her fans his voice rose up above the din. “Look presentable,” it said.

Zara received a couple more praises and encouraged a few more people to come on see her on Thursday, then headed in the same direction Asseem had gone. She need to clean up, assess the damage, and dress her wounds. She didn’t want to play the busted broad on stage.

She also couldn’t help anticipating the opportunity to contradict her mother’s condescending doubts about whether Asseem would support her with his attendance on her big night. She walked, with a slight limp, the rest of the way home, and just barely beat the fog to her front door. She closed the door behind her with a bang. Her father, standing by a window in the living room and looking out at the blank gray matt of moisture that had consumed the house, turned briefly to acknowledge her, then looked back out the window.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said in a studied manner. “It’s fascinating, don’t you think?”

“Sure dad,” she said. “Whatever.” She had more important things to discuss than the weather.

“Where’s mom?”

“Your mother is in her study,” he said without looking at her again.

“Oh.”

Zara stomped down the hall to her mother’s room, making sure she was heard – her mother hated to be startled, as could easily be by interruptions during her research.

“Mom,” she called out as she approached the door. “Mom, I’m coming in.”

Her mother was deeply absorbed in her work, which was normal, and Zara trudged up to the chair in front of the desk and sat down with a huff. She’d actually forgotten about what bad shape she was in until she sat, and realized her tailbone was a bit bruised.

“Mom?”

“Yes dear, how are you doing?” Jennifer asked distractedly.

“I told Asseem about the dancing thing,” she said.

“Did you dear? And what did he say?”

Zara couldn’t tell if her mother remembered their little talk that afternoon or not. Her voice didn’t betray any particular interest.

“He said he’s gonna come.”

“Really? Well that’s wonderful dear, that’s…” Jen looked up, and saw her daughter for the first time. “Zara! What happened to you?” She quickly stood up and ran around to the other side of the desk, then turned Zara’s chair to face her and crouched to examine her daughter’s face.

“Oh my god!” She exclaimed. “Who did this to you? What happened?”

“I…” Zara had forgotten to make something up on the way home. “I ran into some punks on I-5,” she blurted out. She knew the street had been mostly cleared, but maybe there were some patches of it that remained overgrown, that remained dangerous.

Fortunately, it didn’t matter either way. Her mother was completely oblivious.

“I-5? You mean the highway? What do you mean? No, never mind, that’s not important. We just need to get you cleaned up.”

“It’s okay, mom, it’s—”

“It most certainly is not okay, honey, now come on.” She stood and helped Zara stand. “Let’s get you out of those clothes and into a bath. Marshall!”

Zara stood, and followed her mother into the bathroom. She watched her mother turn on the water—newly hot—and slowly pulled off her shirt, then her pants. They were soon joined by her father, who, though not too helpful in himself, held things that needed to be held, and acted as an all around support for Jen’s quick, decisive action. It was sort of comforting, she thought, to be taken care of. When her parents weren’t trying to force something of supposed philosophical or sexual significance down her throat, they could be normal people. And that was alright. She let herself be attended to, her face gently cleansed, her hair brushed out, as she sat in the tub. No one spoke.

Finally, when everything had been done that could, Jennifer ushered Marshall out of the room. “Let’s leave her be for a while,” she said. “She could probably use some time to herself.”

Her mother looked her in the eyes to determine whether this was true, and Zara didn’t protest. Sure, she thought. Some time to myself. She sank below the surface of the water for a few seconds, and remembered the fog, the fight, and her boyfriend’s final capitulation. Then she thought of Handpepper. Why had he said he’d seen Asseem if he hadn’t? Likely, he may have just thought he saw him, she decided.

After a couple minutes she heard a quiet knock on the door. It was her mother. She poked her head in and smiled, wide-eyed.

“I just wanted to say, honey, that I’m very glad Asseem will be there on Thursday night. I’d hoped he would be. Your father and I are looking forward to meeting him!” Then, with a wink, she pulled her head back out, and closed the door.

Read chapter 35 at PANK Magazine.