MARCH 12, 2020
“We are the captains of the ship. We are the last to leave." - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 10, 2020
U.S. Cases: 1205
U.S. Deaths: 37
"I dn kn wht ttell yu ma --"
"What?"
"I sd I dnt knw wht tte --"
"I can't understand you. Can you take the damn mask off and talk like an American?" Monica said. "This glass is like two inches thick. No one's going to sneeze on you."
The woman behind the plexiglass slid her N-95 off her mouth. Around her neck it rested at the top of a red, cotton ("Hideous," Monica thought) vest. "The mask is for your protection as much as mine," she said.
Monica noticed the way the lids over the woman's eyes hung at half mast. "I don't give a chip," Monica said. "Just get me on the next Acela direct to Washington."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but Acela service between New York and DC was suspended last Thursday. It'll resume at the end of May, God willing."
Monica pounded her fist against her forehead. Of course her contact wouldn't know anything of how the common folk travelled, even if the Acela was as common to Joe the Plumber as an Arnold Palmer at Augusta. She blamed herself for not checking.
"We have a local departing at 4:15 if you'd care to wait."
The revulsion started at Monica's large intestine but fortunately stopped at her glottle. She couldn't remember the last time she'd taken a local regional train. Whenever it was, she had been flat-out drunk, that's for sure.
Monica dug in her purse for her credit card.
"And you can't catch it through sneezing."
"Huh?" Monica looked up from her purse at the woman and corkscrewed her face.
"The 'rona. You can't get it through sneezing. Only coughing is a symptom," the woman said, replacing her mask over her mouth.
Monica licked her credit card and passed it through the gap at the bottom of the glass. Grimacing with disgust the woman picked up between her fingers. "Why would you do that?" She cried.
Monica didn't answer. Instead she just leaned her elbow on the counter, stared hard over the grand hall of homeless humps huddled in wooden pews, and sucked the inside of her cheeks.
The sound of plastic sliding and she looked. The woman had returned her credit card and included a sticker for the 7th Day Adventist Temple for Christ on Weaver and Hoyt. Monica was going to slap the sticker on the woman's window, but she curbed the impulse. Maybe it was better to channel her anger toward what was really on her mind.
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The train car rocked along its tracks like a covered wagon. Out the window on her left Monica saw a black cat dart through the spill of a streetlight. It was moving faster than her train.
The occupancy was at less than 20% of its limit. A girl, who couldn't be older than 8, Monica guessed, stood in the aisle two rows ahead. She wore large headphones and had her nose stuck in what looked like a comic book. Over the grind of the axels Monica could hear the woman seated near the girl snoring. She wondered if it was her mom or grandma.
To keep her thoughts off her family, Monica tried to lock into a practice she had developed during long, uneventful shifts during her internship in Baghdad. She called it Counting the Funny Money. Wherever she was, when she played, she calculated what she thought the government had spent on what she saw. Then she'd try to connect the pork to the representatives in the district. Though it was pitch black outside, she recalled the conductors announcement for the next station. That put her about 85 miles away from DC. She closed her eyes hard trying to remember the numbers of the districts in these parts.
She felt the breath before she heard it. Opening her eyes she saw the young girl in the headphones staring at her off the row with her mouth hanging open like a fly trap. She looked over the girl's head, but her mom was still snoring.
"Can I help you?" Monica asked.
The girl pointed at a page in her comic book. Monica looked and saw a word emphasized with bold type. Unable to make it out upside down, she turned the girls book toward her and craned her neck.
Beelzebub
Monica shook her head. Rolling her eyes, the girl stomped dramatically back toward her governess. Stuffing her fists in the pockets of her oversized coat, she curled her knees into her and propped them against the seat back. She thought about the money Amtrak lost; she thought about the politicians who used the company's subsidies to prop up their districts. One of em was running for President, and the way things shook out after the last round of primaries, which had been most notable for the fact that in some states they actually happened despite a marinating pandemic, he might even get the nom.
Monica smiled to herself. She hated DC so much, but at the same time she loved it for its commitment to the game. Anywhere else in the country morals mattered; ethics mattered; law mattered. It was funny to her that the one place where rules went out the window fastest was where they were written. Sure, law enforcement, working for the Bureau, could lead to a noble career in public service, but Monica had seen where that had gotten her dad. To the bottom of a grave with ground glass in his lungs. Out of college she had thought the Federal status of her badge would give her an immediate gravitas, but she was still just a shit-kicker after more than 6 years. She'd all but given up on the idea of a family of her own because she was already so deep in the long game.
The conductor limped past her in the aisle and snapped the ticket of a man who'd gotten on two stops before. Turning her head back from the coin bank on the belt of the ticket taker, she caught her reflection in the glass. The sun was starting to come up over the Atlantic to the East. She could feel the cold of a new dawn, and her eyes sunk into her head with the voided sleep of a third consecutive night. Sticking her hands back into her jacket pockets, she watched her breath condense on the window.
No, the Bureau wasn't part of the bigger picture. If she was being honest with herself then she couldn't say being a cop lived up to her expectations. Like anything else it became a job, and the higher calling of service lost its luster fast amongst a group of middle-aged white men in unhappy marriages living in nondescript boxes they called town houses because the word home would've reminded them too much of what they missed. No, she wanted more out of her ride on this coil. She wanted her finger on the purse, her hand in the pork barrel. She wanted a district of her own.
43 miles to Union Station and its view of the Capitol dome. Checking her phone, she calculated she'd only be two hours late. Hopefully her contact would understand. Yeah, right. Monica knew she was going to get a new one ripped out of her, but she kept her mind's eye on the net at the end of the long, long play. She became aware of the paper in her pocket she'd been absent-mindedly rolling between her fingers.
Looking at the unfolded sticker for the 7th Day Adventist Temple on Weaver and Hoyt, she remembered the woman in the mask. Is that what the republic was coming to? An American rip-off of a Chinese trend? Christ, even the plagiarism was turning China's way. Not on her watch,she promised.
She stuck the sticker on the inside of her folding tray. She watched the light climb up its edge as the sun rose. She thought about Beelzebub and waited for the point of the Washington monolith to cut through the sky.