Project 17
Authors: Eliza Victoria
1
It was a cold, gray afternoon when Lillian showed up on the Dolores brothers’ doorstep, chewing the inside of her mouth, aching for a Candy Stripe. She had had so much coffee she was
practically crawling out of her skin. When the door opened and Paul Dolores appeared, Lillian stepped inside, showed him a winsome smile and said, “Hello, Mr. Dolores. Where’s
Caleb?”
Paul, according to the profile he’d sent her, was thirty-one years old, but looked older. He looked like a very weary man. At the mention of Caleb’s name, he took a deep breath,
sighed, and glanced over his shoulder. Maybe it was involuntary. Maybe he didn’t mean to take Lillian by surprise. Caleb was standing in the alcove behind him, in an oversized UP shirt and
pajama bottoms. He was wearing large, black-rimmed glasses. Lillian looked at Caleb, looked at Paul, and looked at Caleb again, her eyes flitting from one brother to the other without moving her
head. Caleb couldn’t be younger than twenty.
“Well,” Lillian told Paul, “fuck you, too.” She burst out of the house and heard a door slam behind her – Caleb turning on his heel and locking himself in his room
like the sick bastard that he was. Paul followed her down the driveway. “Wait!” he said. “Wait, Lillian, please let me explain!”
Lillian whirled around so fast Paul almost crashed into her. “I am sick of this!” she said. “This is the fifth time I’ve been burned. Why can’t you sick fucks just
contact Paraluman and order a fucking Dancer?”
Paul looked horrified by the accusation. “It’s not like that,” he said. “Please. Caleb really needs a caregiver.”
The Dolores brothers lived on a street modeled after the American suburbs of the last century: white picket fences around otherwise wide-open lawns, perfectly manicured grass, landscaped
gardens, houses with porches. It was a street for vacationers, and nobody stayed in this forgotten corner of Bulacan during the summer. The afternoon, threatening rain, was enveloped by a deep,
eerie silence. The Doloreses seemed to be the only residents living there. No Sentry in sight, but Lillian was sure one was within earshot, so she crossed her arms and tried to calm herself. She
couldn’t afford to get picked up for disturbing the peace.
“I’m a
baby
sitter,” she said, enunciating carefully. “You did read the ad, didn’t you? An eleven-year-old would have been too old for me.”
“But you have caregiver experience,” Paul said. “I checked your CV online.”
Lillian sighed in exasperation. “So I took a job at an Elders’ home when I was sixteen, so fucking what. Why didn’t you just tell me your brother’s age? You should have
been transparent.”
“Would you have come if I had told you the truth?”
Lillian didn’t answer.
“I’ve contacted so many agencies,” Paul said. “Most of them didn’t even bother to call back to reject us.”
“Why?” Lillian asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Caleb has schizoaffective disorder.”
“Great,” Lillian said before she could stop herself.
So he’s psychotic.
Paul saw the judgment on her face, and looked hurt. “He’s not violent. He has medication.”
Lillian looked at the street, the almost identical houses. She imagined tumbleweed rolling down the sidewalk, though she had never seen tumbleweed in her entire life.
“I’m desperate,” Paul said. He certainly looked it. “Please. At least come back inside with me so we can talk properly.”
Lillian stared at him. “Fine,” she said after a moment, and followed him back into the house.
*
It was a typical two-storey. Kitchen, dining room, and living room downstairs, bedrooms upstairs. Paul led her to the living room. She sat on the couch, facing the flatscreen currently on
Newspad mode and perpetually pinging to herald the news alerts. Paul put it on mute and sat on the chair opposite her with a grunt.
“No robots?” Lillian asked. “Not even a Cleaner?”
“We hire a Cleaner every other day,” Paul said. “Cheaper than maintaining one here.”
Lillian smiled. “Not a fan, are you.”
Paul just shrugged.
“Coffee?” he said. “Water?”
“How long have you been living here?” Lillian asked. Everything in the house looked threadbare, lived-in.
“We’re renting. Around five months. We move around a lot.”
“You hire a new caregiver for Caleb every time?”
“No,” Paul said. He sounded hesitant to talk more about the topic. “I stay at home to look after him. But stay-at-home jobs rarely pay well, and I need the benefits.”
“Where will you be working now?”
“Seton. It’s just a twenty-minute drive from here.”
“I know Seton.” It was the biggest furniture and fixtures supplier in Central Luzon. “You design?”
“I do, yes.”
“You must really hate the shabby chic thing going on here, then,” Lillian said, and Paul laughed.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s a nice house, quiet place.”
Too quiet, Lillian thought, but didn’t say.
“Are you in school?” he asked.
“Yes, just finishing up. Education.”
“Education.” Confusion, with a hint of admiration. Lillian decided she might actually grow to like him. “Most kids your age usually go for Robotics, or ITech.” He paused.
“Or Fashion.”
“It’s a saturated field,” Lillian said. “Anyway, when my menial pay starts to force me to eat crackers and peanuts, I can just go teach whatever field’s in
vogue.”
“Good plan,” Paul said. “Anyway, I asked because I’m going to need you here almost the entire day every weekday. Will that be a problem?”
Lillian had been wondering why the coffee table was so bare. Now she found out. It was a tabletop, top of the line. Its screen glowed pale blue and illuminated Paul’s face. He typed
something on the tabletop and flipped the window to show her. “Do you have summer classes?”
It was her salary. Lillian tried to hide her surprise. “No summer classes,” she said, and nodded at the figure onscreen.
“I’m sending you a list of emergency numbers, my contact numbers, and Caleb’s medication list and schedule,” Paul said. Lillian took out her own phone to check.
“He’s functional, you know. You don’t need to feed him or bathe him or anything. His only activity outside the house is walking around the block. He says the walk helps ease the
anxiety caused by the meds.”
“So I need to walk with him.”
“Yes, please. His meds are pretty strong and effective, but just in the off-chance he gets disoriented—”
Lillian nodded, looking at the med list.
Quetidol (.5 mg)
Volban (.5 mg)
Wellmax (.5 mg)
Topiramed (.5 mg)
Senerex (1 mg)
Neuropro (1 mg)
The usual suspects: quetiapine fumarate, lamotrigine, bupropion, topiramate. Mood stabilizers, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics. Lillian didn’t recognize the last two drugs in the list.
Probably more of the same.
“That’s a lot of drugs,” Lillian said.
“I know,” Paul said.
“What else does he do the rest of the day? Read? Watch TV?”
“He’s usually just on his computer.”
“He works?”
It took Paul a moment to answer, as though he’d forgotten. “No.”
“He’s had this condition his entire life?”
“Since he was a kid.”
“How is he now?”
“Quiet,” Paul said.
Lillian pored over the single word. Quiet, as in non-violent? As in numb? As in non-responsive?
“Oh, before I forget,” Paul said, and slipped out a card from his phone’s billfold. “For your meals.”
Lillian took the card. It was clear plastic, so it’s personal, not government or academic or corporate. Titanium band and emblem, so it’s VIP-level. She can use this almost anywhere,
from designer stores to charging stations.
“So,” Paul said, “let’s say two months? Or shorter, if I manage to find a professional nurse before summer ends. I can send you the contract later this
evening.”
“Okay.”
“If this proves to be too much for you, you can always quit.”
Before Lillian could say anything, the tabletop and the flatscreen started to beep.
“That’s the alarm for Caleb’s meds,” Paul said, turning them off. “Caleb?”
Caleb was already dragging himself down the stairs before the alarm ended.
“Hey,” Paul said, draping his arm over the back of his chair. “This is Lillian, by the way,”
Caleb looked disheveled, as though he had just rolled out of bed. Was there where he had hid himself, after Lillian started screaming? The big frames of his glasses made him look like a harmless
tech whiz, or Arthur Miller, or a pedophile.
“Hi,” Lillian said, and flashed him a smile.
“She’ll be with you starting Monday,” Paul said.
Caleb said nothing. He looked frightened of her.
Paul shook her hand. “Nice to meet you. If you have any questions, you have my number. All of my numbers, in fact.”
She stood up, and Paul led Caleb to the kitchen. Lillian, pretending to dig for something in the bowels of her bag, took a peek. The two brothers stood on either side of the kitchen island, Paul
counting off pills into a clear medicine cup, Caleb looking on like a man about to receive his death sentence.
“Good morning and welcome to—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Lillian stopped for a second to be scanned by the smiling Sentry posted at the entrance and walked briskly to the candy shelves, almost stepping on a Zoned-out
six-year-old throwing a tantrum on the grocery floor. He’d apparently lost the game and wanted to start over, but his confederates, with their blue Zoner screens covering their eyes like
blindfolds, wanted to play a new round.
“Come on, Greg,” one child, a girl, said, pressing a button to retract the Zoner screen and reveal her face. “Stop being a dick.”
Lillian laughed and took two whole packs of Candy Stripe. Sometimes this grocery store entertained her. The comm system, instead of playing soothing muzak, played one of those loud songs with
bass lines that filled you with dread as you shopped.
But change was coming to Hagonoy. Lillian ripped one Candy Stripe pack open and stuck the red licorice twist in her mouth, reading the new sign on the wall:
YOU ARE SAFE HERE.
This is a Sentry-certified facility.
No corruption.
No abuse of power.
No crime.
COMPLETE SECURITY.
Sooner or later they are going to replace the cashiers with robots
, Lillian thought.
She was contemplating what milk to buy when her phone rang.
“What do you want?” Lillian spat.
“And people actually trust you with their children?” Jamie said, no doubt staying with his cousin in Lillian’s one-bedroom apartment again. “I am astounded.”
Lillian lifted a carton of non-fat milk and placed it in her basket. “You will be further astounded to find that I just got myself a job for the summer.”