SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE MARKABIA
A WHILE AGO
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“Hurry up, please!” The doctor called him. “This way!”
As far as Juzo knew, the Doctor was in his mid-forties. However, the person who was beckoning him from the office door appeared to be carrying one or two more decades on his shoulders.
The man had a thin, angular face, and wrinkles that looked like plantation furrows surrounding his small, slanted eyes. A long, shaggy, gray goatee hanging from his chin as if it were a badge of honor for premature aging, and hair that looked oily, pulled back into a small bun, plus several stray hairs here and there. Those crop pants looked pathetic on him, and those sandals even more. The last note of his decadent appearance, though, was given by his cheap liquor breath and the little yellow stains on his lab coat and on his old sleeveless shirt that peeked out from underneath.
He’s drunker than a… Juzo tried to find a word to finish the sentence with and couldn’t find it. He wasn’t good with comparisons that were meant to be funny. He wasn’t a funny person, nor was he interested in being one. After all, in a case like this, his sense of humor wouldn’t change that man’s drunkenness, would it?
The Doctor made a rude gesture for him to hurry up.
Why was that man so nervous? All right, what they were about to do was illegal, but hasn’t this ailing little guy been doing the same job for years? Over time, the routine should have allayed his fear of being discovered by the authorities, or so Juzo believed.
But no. That man’s paranoia was exacerbated by alcohol, not lack of experience. The answer to that expression of an inevitable tragedy was found in an empty glass, or rather an empty bottle. Yet another reason not to enter.
But there was Malin behind him; arms crossed and waiting for him to take the first step inside. He couldn’t disappoint her; he didn’t want to. Though he knew his life would change forever if he crossed that threshold.
Ugh! Forever was such a strong word! Too long of a time.
A few years ago, Malin had gone for the same treatment, and everything went all right for her. It didn’t have to end badly for him.
Although the reason that kept him in the corridor was not the fear that something would go wrong, the fear of walking into the room and leaving on a stretcher covered with a sheet due to a massive heart attack, as had happened with many others; his doubts came from a matter of principle.
According to Malin, doing so was getting ready to keep up with the enemy. According to him, it was becoming part of the enemy.
“Ninety-five percent DNA of Middle Ecuadorian origin, Juzo!” she had announced minutes ago, still in awe, while driving her truck through that seedy neighborhood in search of the doctor’s home.
The full moon was right in front of them, so huge that it looked like the ripe fruit of a dark tree, within reach of anyone who wanted to take it.
“Ninety-five freaking percent! See what I’m saying? I think you’re more than qualified to pass this test. You have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” he had retorted then; his eyes on the houses they left behind.
Around them, no soul could be found, no sound that could be heard—but the wind running between the houses—or movement that could be spotted but the litter on the streets, swirling with every breeze. Most of the buildings were abandoned, their windows were covered with wooden boards, and only a few of them had lights on. People lived in that neighborhood, yes, but very few, and those few were not interested in being seen.
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“You know something, Juzo?”
He muttered a disinterested, “Umm?”
“This is our eternal dispute,” she said, not caring that he didn’t want to hear her. “You are a straight-up-and-down rebel, a true Rowdy One, all right. But suppose one day you find yourself in a desert, with nothing, and you are starving—”
“In the desert, you probably feel more thirsty than hungry,” he surmised.
“It doesn’t matter,” she dismissed. “The point is, you’re starving, and all of a sudden you see something. ‘What is it? A mirage?’ you wonder, but no, it’s a Flag.”
Juzo tried to figure out where the conversation was heading.
“A Flag? As in—?”
“Yes, Juzo. A Flag, as in the fast-food chain.”
Juzo rolled his eyes.
“I know where you want to go, Malin, but your analogies... Ugh!”
“My analogies are great, so shut up. All right, you find a Flag, and you can choose between starving to death or pushing your prejudices aside, forget your convictions for a while, go in and order a burger—Or, since you’re in the desert, a soda to quench your thirst.”
Juzo remained silent.
“You know what I’d do,” he said later.
Malin enlarged the hypothetical scene as if she were doubling down on a bet.
“You’re in the desert and not only are you hungry,” she said; “but you’re about to die out of starvation, and that Flag is the only thing standing in the entire world.”
Juzo sighed. “I don’t know… Maybe.”
“Aha!” Malin smacked the wheel, victorious. “I knew it! You’d jump on those burgers like a hungry man on an all-you-can-eat buffet! It is pure survival instinct!”
They turned the corner, down another long and dirty street. A cat hopped from one garbage can to another, looked at them with wide, blazing eyes, and then went on with his business, searching for food.
“This is not a Flag, Malin. And what I’m gonna do won’t be ordering a burger.”
“Look, Juzo, I’ve already paid for it, okay?” she protested. “Do you have any idea how much money I’ve deposited so you could do it? The sum is astronomical, and I went bankrupt! All my savings have died here, in this miserable neighborhood. I won’t let you chicken out now.”
“I’m not chickening out,” he said. “And don’t overdo it. That treatment is too expensive for you to pay it all on your own with your salary as a hairdresser.”
Malin snorted, offended.
“Hold it! I make more than you, all right! I’m the manager of a big hair salon in Markabia, the best starting at the bottom. And come on! You, delivering vegetables in the morning, don’t make much money either!”
Juzo shrugged. “At least I don’t hack my father’s bank account to steal money from him,” he said.
“Because you don’t have a father to steal from,” Malin nodded. “If you’d had one like mine, you’d have taken every last penny from him, far more than the measly amount I’ve stolen from mine so far. And if that wouldn’t be the case, then my name isn’t Malin Marie Viveka. Besides, that money belongs to me in part. By law, the General should pass me a percentage, and he doesn’t.”
He gave her one of his glares. “He should do it if you were still under sixteen,” he pointed out.
“Bah! Details!” she shook her hand. “You think the old man doesn’t know his vault is leaking? You think he doesn’t know what pocket the small amount of money that vanishes from his account each month goes to? If you think so, it’s because you don’t know General Benetnash.”
“What does that have to do with what you do?” Juzo grunted.
“That the old man doesn’t give a damn what I do with his money, otherwise we wouldn’t even be in this truck because I could never have raised enough money to buy it. And now, Juzo, will you stop hooking me up in your endless talks? You won’t make me dizzy and make me give up. Whether it’s coming from my pocket or not, I’ve already paid for the treatment. It’s expensive, and I’m not going back to Markabia until I’m done with what I came to do. Besides—” Malin took a deep breath. “We’ve talked about it already. I need you to take this weight off my back. I can’t be the only one; it exhausts me as you have no idea. Please.”
Malin was right, and even when her example of the Flag in the desert made little sense, the message was clear. He couldn’t keep doing what he was doing in the state he was in.
Now, he was in the shadowy corridor of the building in question, under a weak bulb that was giving his last light samples, smelling the stench of mold staining the walls, and the breath of alcohol expelled by the man he had come to see.
The Doctor didn’t risk leaving his office’s threshold, but his call had ceased to be a waving hand and had become a bunch of frantic gestures begging him to hurry.
It was time to move on. Juzo puffed out his lungs as if he were going to jump into a dangerous ocean, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. Malin went after him.