Interface (41 page)

He dodged out the door and across the hallway and made a
diving grab at his own telephone, then burst into a good-natured,
booming, masculine welcome. Whomever Shad Harper was
talking to, if he had been there in person, Shad would have
been pounding him on the back and possibly even giving him
noogies.

Eleanor set her box of stuff down on her desk, went around
behind it, and looked at the silently ringing telephone. She wanted
to sit down, but there was no chair in the office, just a desk.

She knew the deal here. Shad Harper, being a boy, had figured
out how to turn off the telephone's ringer. And she, being a girl,
was supposed to sit helplessly for a while, and then go across the
hallway and meekly ask him to turn it back on for her. Ten minutes
into her job, she would already owe him one.

She already knew that she would rather shove a freshly sharpened
pencil into her eye than ask Shad Harper for a favor. She picked up
the telephone, clamping the handset down into its cradle with her
thumb, and rotated it around, looking at all the tiny little switches
and jacks and plugs and connectors. It took some looking and some
experimenting, but eventually she found it. She flicked a switch.
The phone rang.

She picked it up. But before it even reached her ear she could
hear a conversation, already in progress. It was Shad Harper
listening to a crusty old rancher somewhere complaining about the
cultural and genetic deficiencies of the Mexican race. He was doing
this by listing all of the ways that, in his view, they were similar to "niggers." After the man made each point, Shad Harper would say,
"Uh-huh," in a chuckling and indulgent tone of voice.

Her phone was still ringing. She pushed another button.

It was Senator Marshall himself, now in D.C., talking to some
one about polls. Her phone was still ringing; she pushed another button.

It was a young black woman who apparently worked here in this
office, talking trash with another young black woman who
apparently worked in someone else's office. Her phone was still
ringing; she pushed another button.

"Hello?" a voice said. White female. Screaming kids in
background.

"Hello, Senator Marshall's office," Eleanor said.

"I know I already reached the Senator's goddamn office," the
woman said, "but who am I talking to?"

"Mrs. Richmond. Health and Human Services Liaison."

"Finally. Jeezus, I been on hold for a quarter of an hour and my
kids are going nuts here. Kin you hear 'em?"

The sound of the kids got louder for a few moments and Eleanor
realized that this woman must be holding the phone out toward
them, waving it around a motel room or trailer full of screeching
and fighting rug rats like a rock star pointing his microphone at the
crowd. Another Commerce City resident, no doubt.

"Yes, I believe I can, ma'am," Eleanor said. "How may I help
you?"

A brief moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line.
"Well, didn't I already just explain that about three times?" Then,
her voice farther away: "Brittany! Ashley! You stay away from your
goddamn brother or I'll tan your hides!"

"I don't know, ma'am," Eleanor said, "you never explained it to
me."

"Well, I explained it to the other gal."

"Well, ma'am, I'm not quite sure who the other gal is. But I'd
be happy to listen if you'd care to explain it again."

Another silence. Eleanor couldn't figure out why this woman
was being so quiet until her voice came back on again, and it was obvious that she had begun to cry. "Well, I ain't going through the
whole goddamn thing again! But let me tell you, bitch, that if it don't get taken care of today, I'll-

"You'll what, ma'am?"

"I'll go out and find wherever it is that I'm s'posed to register and
get myself registered to vote and go out and vote against that old
fuck that you work for next time he comes up for reelection!
Bitch!" Then the woman slammed the phone down.

The phone began ringing immediately. Eleanor was starting to get the hang of this now; she pushed the button with the blinking
light next to it.

"Hello, Senator Marshall's office," she said.

"Finally!" someone said. Black female. Then, away from the
phone: "Hey, I finally got through!" Then, back into the phone: "You have any idea how long I been waiting on the line?"

"A quarter of an hour or so?"

"Shit, I been waiting all day."

"It's only 9:13 - but I'm sorry for the delay, ma'am. How can I
assist you?"

"I took my little daughters to a unlicensed day-care at my neighbor's house down the street and when I come home from
work, her boyfriend had come in during the day and molested 'em,
and I want to know if I can force him to take an AIDS test."

"Did you call the police?"

"Shit no. Why would I want to call them?"

"Because a very serious crime has been committed."

"Shit. I called you for serious advice, girl."

"I'm giving it to you. Call the cops. Tell them what happened.
Send the bastard to jail."

"This G done already told me if call the cops he come kill me."

"Ma'am, how could being killed possibly be any worse than
having your daughters raped?"

Stunned silence. "What kind of an attitude is that?"

"It's a reasonable attitude. It's the kind of attitude that any parent
should have."

"Well, who are you to be telling me this?"

"I'm a woman who was raised right by her parents and who's been trying to raise her two kids right."

"What are you saying, that I ain't been raised right?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying, if you care so little for those two
precious daughters of yours that you won't even seek justice for
them. If anyone in my family ever got raped, nobody would rest
until the perpetrator was dead or behind bars."

"Well, I didn't call you up so you could give me abuse."
"Girlfriend," Eleanor said, "I'm gonna tell you something
real
important right now and you better listen."

"I'm listening," the woman said. She sounded cowed and meek
now.

"This that I am saying to you is not abuse. It's the truth. It's just
that sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it
spoken, it sounds like abuse. And one of the problems we got in
this country, not just among black people but with everyone, is that
everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say
the things that are true. Now, I just told you what to do. You go
and do it. And if you have to go out and get a gun to protect you
from that son of a bitch that raped your daughters, you damn well
better do it, because that's your responsibility, and if you can't
handle it, then you don't deserve to have those two little angels that
are a precious gift from God."

Eleanor slammed the phone down. It started ringing.

"Senator Marshall's office."

The creaky voice of a very old man said, "Help! I've fallen and I
can't get up!"

"Good morning, Senator Marshall, how are you?"

"Wide awake and full of inspiration, after that!"

"After what?"

"Your motivational talk to that young woman. Well done!"

"You were listening to that?"

"I always listen in on my liaison staff," Senator Marshall said. "It's
an essential part of the job. And if I had managed to get through to you before you actually swung into action, I would have given you
fair warning. But now you know."

"Well, I don't normally shoot my mouth off this early in the
morning, but-"

"You weren't shooting your mouth off. You were doing just
fine. All those people out there are crying for more welfare checks
when what they really need is to have someone like you pound
some common sense into their heads."

"I don't necessarily agree with that," Eleanor said, mortified.

"Anyway, nice to see you changed your position on gun control.
You're going to fit right in at the Alamo!"

"Who said anything about gun control?"

"You did," Senator Marshall said. "You were pro-gun control,
weren't you?"

"In theory, yes," Eleanor said, "but I have a gun, and I know
how to use it."

"Well, tell me something. If that woman you were just talking
to had to fill out a bunch of forms and get permission from the government to have a gun, she wouldn't be able to take the advice
you just gave her, would she?"

Eleanor shook her head in exasperation. "You are just full of piss
and vinegar, aren't you?"

"No, I just like a good discussion, is all."

"I have important people to talk to," Eleanor said, and hung up
on him. Her phone rang immediately.

25

Aaron Green put his feet up on his desk at Green Biophysical
Systems in Lexington, Massachusetts, enjoying the first lull in
the action since his big conversation with Cy Ogle back in
January. They had ironed out all of the problems that they could
think of having to do with the PIPER miniaturization project.
Responsibility had been transferred to the shoulders of the
Pacific Netware people. Aaron had brought in a
New York
Times
and a
Boston Globe,
and was reading some astonishing
results from the Illinois primary, which had taken place the day
before.

Several members of the party in power had challenged the incumbent President. Usually such efforts were purely symbolic,
but the President's policy on the national debt had provided fodder
for a more serious challenge this time around, and these candidates
had racked up some surprisingly high numbers.

The situation in the other party was even more interesting.
There were two announced candidates - three, if you counted the
Reverend William Joseph Sweigel, which almost no one did.
Everyone knew, and had known since Super Tuesday, that the real
race was between Tip McLane and Norman Fowler, Jr., the boy
billionaire of Grosse Pointe.

But apparently in the last week before the Illinois primary, unspecified persons had initiated a write-in campaign for William A. Cozzano, the Governor of Illinois, who was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. It seemed to be a genuine, spontaneous
ground swell. People had begun showing up in T-shirt stores and
asking to have Cozzano printed on shirts and hats. Crudely
fashioned, xeroxed Cozzano posters had begun showing up on
mailboxes and in car windows.

In yesterday's primary, a lot of people had written in the
Governor's name. A
lot
of people. So many that the counting of the ballots had been delayed. But the results available as of the middle
of the night before, when the newspapers had gone to press,
suggested that Cozzano had actually won a number of precincts,
made a strong showing overall, and might actually come in second
to Normal Fowler, Jr. He had been so strong, in fact, that he had
actually gotten several thousand write-in votes in the
other party's
primary.

When Aaron saw the preliminary numbers printed in the paper,
he turned on the TV in his office to see if he could get some up-to-date numbers. He never used to pay attention to this stuff, but since he had started hanging out with Ogle he had become very
election conscious.

The news networks were full of Cozzano. Cozzano in Vietnam.
Cozzano being carried around on the shoulders of fellow Bears.
Cozzano raking leaves in front of his big house in some backwater
town in Illinois. Cozzano waving from the window of his hospital
room in Champaign. And the name Cozzano, crudely printed
on T-shirts and homemade yard signs.

He was startled to realize that someone was standing in his office
doorway. It was Marina, the office manager, word processing and
desktop publishing genius, fixer, diplomat, you name it. She looked
a little dreamy. If this had been a Warner Brothers cartoon, she would have had stars and birds circling around her head.