Timemaster
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June 15th: Sun City, Arizona
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The Lucky Gent was rich with the raw lumber smell of unvarnished wood, mixed with the heady scent of beer. Waitresses plied each table, dressed in skirts propped by ridiculous fluffy petty-coats, much shorter than the 19th century garb they mocked. The dealers at the game tables wore pin-stripe vests over baggy white shirts with arm garters and green visors like bankers from westerns. On a protruding stage in the middle of it all, two men who looked exactly like Mark Twain played "Blue Moon of Kentucky" with a fiddle and a banjo.
The hokey Western theme only extended to the employees. Patrons could be told apart by the modernity of their clothes. Taytu sat at a blackjack table next to a young man in a suit that was much to big for him. He talked the dealer's ears off. That was good enough for Taytu, since it saved her from speaking.
"Say mister, you've been following the election?" the boy asked. He signaled when he wanted to hit or stand.
"Only the headlines in the papers. Isn't it too early for that?"
"Well I want to get ahead of it, you know? Be a good citizen. I've been watching Eric Fernandez. You hear about that guy?"
"I can't say that I have." The Dealer said. Taytu won. The dealer went about his business mechanically, and nobody acknowledged her.
"He's the left-winger. A real visionary. You should look into him."
"Left winger? Are you a socialist?"
The boy won a round, but didn't seem to notice. The game for him had become a backdrop for the conversation instead of the other way around. "Naw, I'm no socialist. I'm a transactionalist." he said self-importantly.
"A transactionalist? What's that?"
"Well, I believe everything is a transaction. All people want to do is know that they got a good deal. Good deals are what run the world, see. It don't matter of you are a capitalis', a monarchis', or a communis', so long as the people think they are gettin' more than they are putting in, well, they'll be fine with it."
"That's just common sense." The dealer won. Taytu went through the motions, waiting until her bodyguard returned from his phonecall.
"Sure, but nobody thinks like that. People in this country, they think it's all about the scratch. But that ain't it at all. If some red Chinaman thinks he got a good deal in joining the commune, lets say ten Chinamen with tiny rice paddies live next to some cat with a great big paddy, and Chairman Hou comes along and tells them to communilize. Them ten poor Chinamen will be happy because they got a good deal. Sure, the cat with the big paddy won't be too happy, but what's he going to do about it? I think that's the problem with people going around saying its all about the scratch. What's money to a Chinaman if he don't gotta pay rent on his paddy?"
"Say, this sounds like communis' talk. Do I need to call the authorities?" This was the first time the dealer made eye contact with the young soap-boxer.
"Aw, why would you go and do that? Don't Sun City got a sayin'? What you do in Sun City don't get said anywhere else?"
"Something like that." The dealer went back to his business.
"You misunderstand me anyway. Say I'm a workin' American man and my boss is real good to me. I take home a great big roll every week, maybe save some extra for a rainy day. Well, that's a good transaction. Why'd I ever think about being a Communis'? A Worker don't care he's being exploited if he got a car, and can buy a swell dress for his wife now and then. Why's he care if the boss is fat and livin' uptown? All the workin' man wants is a good deal for himself."
"I still think that's common sense."
"Sure, but it goes further then that. Transactions decide everything. Love ain't nothin' but a man and a dame haggling for a good deal. That's what it all is. What was God doin' with Abraham and Isaac on the mountain? That was haggling. You tell a man he gotta be your servant forever and he won't be so happy about it. But you tell a man that he has to kill his kid, then you change it and say 'we got a sale on the holy spirit now, all you gotta do is kill a goat and pledge your never-ending loyalty, and suddenly the man is excited about the prospect. Why? He got a good deal."
"I don't know if you're a communis' or a Jew."
Noh came back and took his place standing behind Taytu. She looked up at the dealer and smiled. "Deal me out."
The dealer nodded, but the young man looked hurt. "You don't have to go, miss. I was gettin' to enjoy your company."
"I have places to go." she said. She took her chips and left. The wood floor creaked beneath her shoes.
"What did the Embassy have to say." she asked.
"Nothing." Noh replied, "I updated them. They had nothing for us." Taytu wondered if he'd updated them on everything the two of them had been up to. Did they know she'd seduced him? It didn't matter. She had nothing to hide. They went to the cashier and cashed out. "Do you want to eat here?" Noh asked. "It's as bad a place as any." she said. They walked toward the restaurant, navigating the dawdling knots of patrons and tourists that clogged the main aisles.
The employees in the restaurant were dressed as ridiculously as those on the floor. Their maître d had pigtails. "How many?" she asked. "Can you count?" Taytu replied. The maître d's smile wavered for just a second, like a brief glitch of static before the radio went back to playing exactly has it had before. "Right this way!" she led them to a two-seat table, a napkin dispenser in the middle shaped like a pig. She opened the menu, and was pleasantly surprised they had a wine selection. "Château de Poster Fagot" she requested, "The whole bottle." The waitress left them.
"None of this looks familiar." she said, reading through the menu items. This wasn't what they served in DC. Not at any of the places she went to anyway.
"Try the Chili." he said, "It's like the food at home."
"How do you know that?"
"At church. They told me about a place. The spices are different, but otherwise it's about the same thing."
"Chili it is." she said. They both folded their menus. A waitress came over and took their order, leaving them to wait with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. Taytu poured.
The restaurant was accessible from the street, and she could see outside the window. The sidewalk was bathed in the flashing glow of colorful light. Blue, to white, then back to blue. It repeated this cycle. She knew it was the massive neon image of a steamboat hanging above the entrance because they'd went under it to enter the Casino. People passed by in groups, their skin looking ghostly under the light. As she watched them, she noticed something. Motorcycles. A dozen of them or so all parked in front. She remembered what the old Native woman had said about the Highway Rangers; Southerners still bitter about the war. She looked around, and saw a table across the way where four bearded men in leather jackets stared at her. Leered at her.
"I think we are in danger." she whispered to Noh.
"What?" he looked where she was looking. "I think those are Highway Rangers. Remember the old woman at the desert motel?" She said.
"You're safe." Noh said, "This isn't the middle of the desert. Don't worry about it."
Their food came, and Taytu tried to shake the Rangers from her mind. Both of them had bowls of spicy ground beef with a couple of flour tortillas on the side. Noh ripped off a piece of tortilla and used it to pinch a glob of meat.
"Is it supposed to be eaten like that?" she asked.
"I don't know, but I like it this way." She shrugged and followed suit. 'When in Rome only' counted with things that were worth while, and this kind of restaurant was certainly not that. She ate, ambivalent to the American cooking, and tried not to notice the Highway Rangers. When she did steal a furtive glance in their direction, she was always spooked to see at least one of them looking at her. She wanted to get away. "Let's get out of here." she asked, taking the check and the bottle of wine. They paid at the front and went out. Noh gave the valet their ticket.
They were under the flashing steamboat wheel now, on the other side of the window. The motorcycles stood in front of them, making her feel caught, like an antelope stuck between a lion and its den. The crowd walked around them uninterested.
"Hey, niggers!" A dreaded voice came from behind. They turned around, and to her horror, faced the four men she'd seen in the restaurant. "Why y'all dressed up so fancy?" Their leader taunted. They looked like vengeful wraiths under the light of the neon sign.
"This is Princess Taytu of Ethiopia." Noh said, standing between her and the Highway Rangers, "We are diplomats under the protection of the United States Government."
"Oooh, la-tee-dah" one of the Rangers walked toward them. They moved slowly, wolves circling a buffalo, finding the best time to pounce. "We got more then enough niggers as it is, we didn't need no more from overseas. If I could, I'd build a big ol' wall all around Africa, and on the inside it'd read 'NIGGERS KEEP OUT' in big ol' bloody letters 'bout ten feet tall." His eyes flashed.
Taytu screamed. Pedestrians avoided them all together rather than get involved. She felt helpless and alone in a way she hadn't felt since childhood. Her scream spooked the Rangers. One of them rushed toward Noh. A fight started. She saw the silvery gleam of a knife, and at once the entire world seemed to slow down around her.
"Put away the skiv and back off." A hard voice came from the doorway of the Casino. Three men in pin-stripe suits stared down the rangers.
"Who called the wops?"
"We don't need you tramps on the strip. Get back on those grease-machines and go south. South, you hear? Go anywhere else and we'll follow you. You get that?"
The head Ranger looked hard at his challenger, then looked around, and started to appear nervous. "Come one boys. This ain't nothin' but a town of damned-fool nigger lovers." They climbed on their bikes, started them, and proceeded to make as much noise as they could, revving their engines and screaming at the top of their lungs, filling the air with the stink of gasoline. But as they did this, they headed south.
"Thank you..." she turned around to her saviors, but she saw their faces were as hard for the Ethiopians as they had been for the Rangers.
"I know you didn't bring the trouble on purpose, but you brought it all the same. Now our patrons are gonna look at you and think 'Trouble'. You can go wherever you want, miss, but you can't stay here."
"We were going anyway." Noh said.
"Good." the hard-faced man seemed to relax. "Pleasant journey. And a piece of advice: Don't go south."
June 15th: Sun City, Arizona
----------------------------------------
The Lucky Gent was rich with the raw lumber smell of unvarnished wood, mixed with the heady scent of beer. Waitresses plied each table, dressed in skirts propped by ridiculous fluffy petty-coats, much shorter than the 19th century garb they mocked. The dealers at the game tables wore pin-stripe vests over baggy white shirts with arm garters and green visors like bankers from westerns. On a protruding stage in the middle of it all, two men who looked exactly like Mark Twain played "Blue Moon of Kentucky" with a fiddle and a banjo.
The hokey Western theme only extended to the employees. Patrons could be told apart by the modernity of their clothes. Taytu sat at a blackjack table next to a young man in a suit that was much to big for him. He talked the dealer's ears off. That was good enough for Taytu, since it saved her from speaking.
"Say mister, you've been following the election?" the boy asked. He signaled when he wanted to hit or stand.
"Only the headlines in the papers. Isn't it too early for that?"
"Well I want to get ahead of it, you know? Be a good citizen. I've been watching Eric Fernandez. You hear about that guy?"
"I can't say that I have." The Dealer said. Taytu won. The dealer went about his business mechanically, and nobody acknowledged her.
"He's the left-winger. A real visionary. You should look into him."
"Left winger? Are you a socialist?"
The boy won a round, but didn't seem to notice. The game for him had become a backdrop for the conversation instead of the other way around. "Naw, I'm no socialist. I'm a transactionalist." he said self-importantly.
"A transactionalist? What's that?"
"Well, I believe everything is a transaction. All people want to do is know that they got a good deal. Good deals are what run the world, see. It don't matter of you are a capitalis', a monarchis', or a communis', so long as the people think they are gettin' more than they are putting in, well, they'll be fine with it."
"That's just common sense." The dealer won. Taytu went through the motions, waiting until her bodyguard returned from his phonecall.
"Sure, but nobody thinks like that. People in this country, they think it's all about the scratch. But that ain't it at all. If some red Chinaman thinks he got a good deal in joining the commune, lets say ten Chinamen with tiny rice paddies live next to some cat with a great big paddy, and Chairman Hou comes along and tells them to communilize. Them ten poor Chinamen will be happy because they got a good deal. Sure, the cat with the big paddy won't be too happy, but what's he going to do about it? I think that's the problem with people going around saying its all about the scratch. What's money to a Chinaman if he don't gotta pay rent on his paddy?"
"Say, this sounds like communis' talk. Do I need to call the authorities?" This was the first time the dealer made eye contact with the young soap-boxer.
"Aw, why would you go and do that? Don't Sun City got a sayin'? What you do in Sun City don't get said anywhere else?"
"Something like that." The dealer went back to his business.
"You misunderstand me anyway. Say I'm a workin' American man and my boss is real good to me. I take home a great big roll every week, maybe save some extra for a rainy day. Well, that's a good transaction. Why'd I ever think about being a Communis'? A Worker don't care he's being exploited if he got a car, and can buy a swell dress for his wife now and then. Why's he care if the boss is fat and livin' uptown? All the workin' man wants is a good deal for himself."
"I still think that's common sense."
"Sure, but it goes further then that. Transactions decide everything. Love ain't nothin' but a man and a dame haggling for a good deal. That's what it all is. What was God doin' with Abraham and Isaac on the mountain? That was haggling. You tell a man he gotta be your servant forever and he won't be so happy about it. But you tell a man that he has to kill his kid, then you change it and say 'we got a sale on the holy spirit now, all you gotta do is kill a goat and pledge your never-ending loyalty, and suddenly the man is excited about the prospect. Why? He got a good deal."
"I don't know if you're a communis' or a Jew."
Noh came back and took his place standing behind Taytu. She looked up at the dealer and smiled. "Deal me out."
The dealer nodded, but the young man looked hurt. "You don't have to go, miss. I was gettin' to enjoy your company."
"I have places to go." she said. She took her chips and left. The wood floor creaked beneath her shoes.
"What did the Embassy have to say." she asked.
"Nothing." Noh replied, "I updated them. They had nothing for us." Taytu wondered if he'd updated them on everything the two of them had been up to. Did they know she'd seduced him? It didn't matter. She had nothing to hide. They went to the cashier and cashed out. "Do you want to eat here?" Noh asked. "It's as bad a place as any." she said. They walked toward the restaurant, navigating the dawdling knots of patrons and tourists that clogged the main aisles.
The employees in the restaurant were dressed as ridiculously as those on the floor. Their maître d had pigtails. "How many?" she asked. "Can you count?" Taytu replied. The maître d's smile wavered for just a second, like a brief glitch of static before the radio went back to playing exactly has it had before. "Right this way!" she led them to a two-seat table, a napkin dispenser in the middle shaped like a pig. She opened the menu, and was pleasantly surprised they had a wine selection. "Château de Poster Fagot" she requested, "The whole bottle." The waitress left them.
"None of this looks familiar." she said, reading through the menu items. This wasn't what they served in DC. Not at any of the places she went to anyway.
"Try the Chili." he said, "It's like the food at home."
"How do you know that?"
"At church. They told me about a place. The spices are different, but otherwise it's about the same thing."
"Chili it is." she said. They both folded their menus. A waitress came over and took their order, leaving them to wait with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. Taytu poured.
The restaurant was accessible from the street, and she could see outside the window. The sidewalk was bathed in the flashing glow of colorful light. Blue, to white, then back to blue. It repeated this cycle. She knew it was the massive neon image of a steamboat hanging above the entrance because they'd went under it to enter the Casino. People passed by in groups, their skin looking ghostly under the light. As she watched them, she noticed something. Motorcycles. A dozen of them or so all parked in front. She remembered what the old Native woman had said about the Highway Rangers; Southerners still bitter about the war. She looked around, and saw a table across the way where four bearded men in leather jackets stared at her. Leered at her.
"I think we are in danger." she whispered to Noh.
"What?" he looked where she was looking. "I think those are Highway Rangers. Remember the old woman at the desert motel?" She said.
"You're safe." Noh said, "This isn't the middle of the desert. Don't worry about it."
Their food came, and Taytu tried to shake the Rangers from her mind. Both of them had bowls of spicy ground beef with a couple of flour tortillas on the side. Noh ripped off a piece of tortilla and used it to pinch a glob of meat.
"Is it supposed to be eaten like that?" she asked.
"I don't know, but I like it this way." She shrugged and followed suit. 'When in Rome only' counted with things that were worth while, and this kind of restaurant was certainly not that. She ate, ambivalent to the American cooking, and tried not to notice the Highway Rangers. When she did steal a furtive glance in their direction, she was always spooked to see at least one of them looking at her. She wanted to get away. "Let's get out of here." she asked, taking the check and the bottle of wine. They paid at the front and went out. Noh gave the valet their ticket.
They were under the flashing steamboat wheel now, on the other side of the window. The motorcycles stood in front of them, making her feel caught, like an antelope stuck between a lion and its den. The crowd walked around them uninterested.
"Hey, niggers!" A dreaded voice came from behind. They turned around, and to her horror, faced the four men she'd seen in the restaurant. "Why y'all dressed up so fancy?" Their leader taunted. They looked like vengeful wraiths under the light of the neon sign.
"This is Princess Taytu of Ethiopia." Noh said, standing between her and the Highway Rangers, "We are diplomats under the protection of the United States Government."
"Oooh, la-tee-dah" one of the Rangers walked toward them. They moved slowly, wolves circling a buffalo, finding the best time to pounce. "We got more then enough niggers as it is, we didn't need no more from overseas. If I could, I'd build a big ol' wall all around Africa, and on the inside it'd read 'NIGGERS KEEP OUT' in big ol' bloody letters 'bout ten feet tall." His eyes flashed.
Taytu screamed. Pedestrians avoided them all together rather than get involved. She felt helpless and alone in a way she hadn't felt since childhood. Her scream spooked the Rangers. One of them rushed toward Noh. A fight started. She saw the silvery gleam of a knife, and at once the entire world seemed to slow down around her.
"Put away the skiv and back off." A hard voice came from the doorway of the Casino. Three men in pin-stripe suits stared down the rangers.
"Who called the wops?"
"We don't need you tramps on the strip. Get back on those grease-machines and go south. South, you hear? Go anywhere else and we'll follow you. You get that?"
The head Ranger looked hard at his challenger, then looked around, and started to appear nervous. "Come one boys. This ain't nothin' but a town of damned-fool nigger lovers." They climbed on their bikes, started them, and proceeded to make as much noise as they could, revving their engines and screaming at the top of their lungs, filling the air with the stink of gasoline. But as they did this, they headed south.
"Thank you..." she turned around to her saviors, but she saw their faces were as hard for the Ethiopians as they had been for the Rangers.
"I know you didn't bring the trouble on purpose, but you brought it all the same. Now our patrons are gonna look at you and think 'Trouble'. You can go wherever you want, miss, but you can't stay here."
"We were going anyway." Noh said.
"Good." the hard-faced man seemed to relax. "Pleasant journey. And a piece of advice: Don't go south."
