On the Honesty of Urinating Canines
Jade rushes into the bedroom upon hearing the word, "miracle." Sure enough, Grigori's swollen foot is back to a normal size.
Ivy squeezes her son in a hug. She helps him to his feet. He's wobbly after so much time in bed, but for the first time in a week and a half, he can walk unimpeded. Grigori smiles without the aid of a video game.
I'm feeling better, too. All this sleep and room service are just what I needed.
Zandra allows herself a moment to feel satisfied. She leans against the wall and rubs her ankle, which remains, as usual, bad.
"It's no miracle," Jade says, turning to Zandra. "The energy work worked."
Zandra's palm hits a sensitive spot on her ankle. She winces.
A small celebration follows in the kitchen. Ivy runs across the street to Polito's, a by-the-slice pizzeria with an oversized interpretation of what constitutes a single "slice."
"Who taught you how to do that? Or did you teach yourself?" Jade says to Zandrawhile Ivy is still away.
"The power is in everyone, child," Zandra says. She draws a cigarette from its pack and brings it to her lips. She didn't abstain for three straight days, but she did cut back on the heaters quite a bit. "If you'll excuse me, I need to recharge outside."
Zandra hobbles out the apartment and down to the street level. Standing next to a blue Collection Box tagged with graffiti and dog urine, she lights up and cracks her neck side to side. The smoke curling up her nostrils pries at the aroma of the natural "cures" shellacked to her nose.
Energy work. Sure.
There are two ways to treat what ails you: start doing something or stop doing something. There's more money in the first if you're pushing products like tea and oils. There's even more if the second would be admitting something about the first. People don't like to be wrong, and they'll pay to keep it that way. Tea not working? Buy more tea. Oils not working? Buy more oils. Or maybe buy some mung beans.
Zandra looks at the health warning on her pack of cigarettes.
At least cigarettes are honest, in the way that a dog pissing on a postal Collection Box is honest.
Zandra closes her eyes and lets her head roll back so her face feels the warmth of the sun.
Grigori had a cold. He might also have an allergy to rooibos tea that caused his foot to swell. Hard to say, but it fits in the timing. They pumped him so full of that tea that it took 24 hours for the symptoms to stop once they switched to water. The other two days, I napped. If his parents would've knocked off the natural bullshit in the first place, this would've been over already.
But then I wouldn't be here.
"Bum a smoke?" a voice says.
Zandra's focus snaps back to the sidewalk. A young man holds his hand out a few feet away from her.
"Bum a smoke?" the young man says again. "Come on. I seen you with a whole pack."
The smokers aren't usually this aggressive.
Neither is a mundane smoke break on a sidewalk. A second man, using the distraction of the first, forces a blindfold over Zandra's eyes. A van on the street slows to a roll. The sliding side door opens, and the two men push Zandra inside. She doesn't have the time or the orientation to pull the lawnmower knife.
Well, this is fucking terrifying.
The two men slam Zandra into a seat and take spots on either side of her. They press her wrists into the seat cushion.
"Let me go," Zandra says through the cigarette between her lips that somehow hung on. Her heart pounds in her ears.
"You're alive. We spent days looking for you when we heard you were in the hospital," a familiar man's voice says from behind her in the van.
Oh. This again.
"Is it possible for you to communicate in a way that doesn't involve fucking abducting people off the street?" Zandra says. "Have you heard of phones before? Text? Fucking email?"
The man's voice remains steady. "Zandra, you don't have a phone. Or internet. This must be the way for now, as it was the last time we spoke. Remember? You were waiting outside the courthouse for a hearing. This was after Gene had his accident."
Getting blindfolded and pushed into a van isn't something I'd forget.
"I took care of Gene. You gave me those lawyers. There's nothing else for us to talk about," Zandra says.
"Gene is indeed done. Have you had a chance to admire the fallout? That video you gave me proved quite effective," the man says. "You'd be surprised—or maybe you wouldn't—to know just how valuable such a video can be when presented to the right people."
"Congratulations on finding your calling in extortion," Zandra says.
She keeps track of the speed and direction the van travels.
The downtown speed limit is ridiculously slow, and so is this vehicle. The driver made two right turns, and the speed didn't increase. We're circling the block.
And that means they aren't planning on taking me somewhere. Not yet, anyway.
This is mostly good news.
The bad news is now my wrists fucking hurt.
"Gene is out of the way, and what's left of his empire is crumbling. People are desperate. Jobs are leaving the state. It's time for someone else to step in," the man says.
"Someone like you," Zandra says.
"See? You get it."
"And I should care about this why?"
"Because you're a great investment. That's why we had to find you when we heard you were in the hospital. You've been hiding out at that apartment for some time. Just had to wait for the right moment to chat," the man says.
If this is him stepping in, I'd like to step out. The anti-Gene is just another Gene.
"There's an opportunity for you, Zandra, in what comes next. An important role," the man says. "I don't know the first thing about psychic powers, but you're a special person. It's time to see what you can do with some real resources behind you."
And how did that work out for Vince and Jo, the political operatives you hired? Or Zeena, that other "psychic?"
"I'm not taking on new clients right now," Zandra says. She lets the cigarette drop from her lips to the floor.
"And I'm not offering you a job right now," the man says. "Consider this a warm lead, and a bit of advice. Don't leave town. You want to be here when opportunity knocks. I guarantee it."
Before Zandra can respond, the van stops. The blindfold rips away, and the light of the day spears Zandra's eyes. She finds herself back on the sidewalk, outside Ivy and Jade's apartment, watching a van pull away. Her eyes can't adjust to the light fast enough to catch the license plate.
After Zandra rubs her eyes back into focus, she spots Ivy walking toward her from Polito's. Ivy balances a stack of large pizza boxes in her arms. Each box contains a single slice.
"Ready to eat? I got one of each kind," Ivy says.
Zandra hacks into her sleeve.
If I wasn't hungry before, I am now. That cough emptied my guts into my sleeve.
"Yeah, sure. Sounds great," Zandra says.
The pizza is indeed great, and the slices are the size of elephant ears. Zandra isn't fond of French fries on pizza, but she doesn't complain. The salt-on-salt combo makes her thirsty, not satisfied.
Not a fan of pizza in the first place.
After the empty pizza boxes stack next to the garbage and Grigori finds distraction with video games once again, Zandra receives her compensation. Ivy folds a thin stack of cash in half and hands it to Zandra.
"I'm sorry, but times are tight," Ivy says.
Zandra voids the courtesy of taking the money without counting it. She shuffles through the bills like a cashier.
There's barely enough here for another round of pizza. I fucking knew it. All the signs were right there in front of me. Of course they're broke.
Three days of room and board were nice, but I can't go back out there like this.
"We've been living off of credit cards. It's expensive to move, you know? And then with the layoff notice," Ivy says, trailing off.
Zandra walks to the window in the living room that overlooks the street below. She folds the stack once again and rifles the edges like a pack of cards while looking through the glass. From her perch, she spots two panhandlers arguing over prime positioning on one of the street corners. In bigger cities, that wouldn't look out of place. Stevens Point, despite all its character, is a far cry from a big city.
Fuck it. I need to get mine, too.
Still looking out the window, Zandra says, "The sprits, child, they tell me that my work isn't yet completed here."
Zandra watches Ivy's reflection in the window droop.
"I sensed it, too," Jade says from the kitchen. "Do you think the infection spread to one of us?"
Oh, there's an infection, alright.
Zandra unfolds the stack of cash and counts it again.
"Yes, child, and that is to...," Zandra says, trailing off.
A real bad infection.
"To what?" Jade says.
But maybe there's a cure.
Zandra turns and holds her palm out with the money. "To give you this back."
"No, no, you keep it. Really. We'll be OK," Ivy says. Her reassurance isn't matched by the relief across her face.
Zandra sets the cash down on the windowsill. "Thanks for the pizza. I'll be going now."
She doesn't get two steps before Jade says, "Wait. Tell her, Ivy. That thing we talked about."
Ivy cocks her head. "You think so?"
"Yeah. Tell her," Jade says.
Zandra pauses.
Tell me what?
"Zandra, how much money are you looking to make?" Ivy says. "Or maybe I should put it this way: what do you want? I mean, really want?"
Didn't Sunglasses ask me the same thing? Kind of. He asked if I was interested in staying alive. I guess I answered that already.
A van driving on the street below catches Zandra's eye. It's only a van, not the van. It drives in the direction of the remains of Sneak Peek.
"I want to retire," Zandra says. "I want to move far, far away from here."
And that's no bullshit.
"What if there was a way to make enough money to retire and leave something for the next generation?" Ivy says.
Thanks, but I think I've got that second part covered if you change "something" to "nothing."
Still, Zandra's interested in the first part.
"Even before the layoff notice, we've been working on a side business," Ivy says.
"A side hustle," Jade says, correcting her.
"OK, a side hustle," Ivy says.
Talking money now. Good.
"What sort of side hustle?" Zandra, the clairvoyant, asks.
"Teaching other people how to start their own side hustles. Help others while helping yourself. Everyone wins," Ivy says.
That's one way to lose my interest, I guess.
Jade picks up on Zandra's reaction. She says, "This isn't some scam. We're bringing people together to share knowledge."
So do prisons.
"We're hosting a big event on the water. We're bringing some top experts under one roof for two days of education," Ivy says like she's recited those exact words 1,000 times before.
"What do you mean by on the water?" Zandra says.
"A cruise down the Wisconsin River, starting in downtown Stevens Point," Ivy says.
"You know those themed cruises on the big ocean liners? It's like that, but our local take on it," Jade says.
"One of our gurus dropped out, so we have a slot open. All you'd need to do is host one class and perform one demo. You get a percentage of the ticket sales as payment," Ivy says.
This sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of payoff on a boat full of asshole multi-level marketers.
The couple grow more excited the more they talk about the cruise.
"Tell her about the other thing. It's the best part," Jade says to Ivy.
"Have you heard of franchising?" Ivy says.
"Yes, I've been to a KFC before," Zandra says.
"The attendees all have to sign franchising agreements. Basically, it means if they start a business in the same field as you, they have to pay you a commission in perpetuity," Ivy says.
"That means you can make money forever," Jade says.
Yes, I know what "in perpetuity" means, too.
What sleazy lawyer drafted that franchising agreement? And who would be dumb enough to sign that beforehand? Probably the same people who would pay for two days of glorified sales pitches.
"There's no limit to the opportunity here," Ivy says. "This could set you up for life, Zandra."
I'm definitely giving them a pass for "everyone wins." There's no connection to Gene here. These people are way too sincere. They don't know their bullshit is bullshit.
"When is this cruise?" Zandra says.
"A few days. You can camp out here until then. We'll help you come up with your class and your demo," Ivy says. "What do you say? Are you in?"
Zandra glances out the window at yet another van. This time, it's the van.
"I'm in," Zandra says.
Jade claps and squeals with delight.
"Let's get started," Ivy says.
Zandra doesn't know it at the time, but this will be the rockiest river ride she'll ever take.