With that, she slapped her story on me—diagnosis plus prescription—without so much as pausing to check my symptoms. Rage surged in my chest. Fuck her. Fuck this stupid island. Why the fuck had I fled here?
I thrust my fist up and gave her the finger.
This was my first gesture of protest at Zendik. It could have triggered others.
But she, stirring cream into her tea, didn’t see it.
[ chapter 13 ]
Break
MINUTES AFTER I’D TUCKED my finger back into my fist and quit the island for the living room, Arol opened fire: “Helen’s not sure she should be here,” she declared to whoever could hear. “That’s why she’s so uptight.”
I hadn’t been eyeing the highway. But my recent selling stats, like Adam’s mediocre total at Projekt Revolution, showed I’d lost heart: a few times in the past month, I’d made just $88. Maybe, sensing the cracks in my story, she’d shifted me on her balance sheet from asset to liability and chosen to purge me.
Expulsion had its benefits: a boost in pride for survivors, plus a reminder that Arol prized our service, not our selves. She would remove those who failed.
I told myself I welcomed Arol’s help; with my doubt exposed, I could gouge it out. The next morning, departing the Farm with Cayta, Mar, and Toba for a new scene—Virginia Beach—I vowed to kick butt and cleanse the taint of all those eighty-eights.
On Friday evening, as dusk descended, a cop threatened to arrest me if I kept selling. I’d been caught on film breaking the law.
First I cursed myself for drawing the cop. What the fuck’s wrong with me? How’d I vibe into that? Then I committed thought crime: Maybe we’ll all get popped and have to go home and it won’t be only my fault. Finally I shifted toward the storefronts, counting on their awnings and knots of patrons to shield me, as I stealth-sold, from the eyes fixed to every street sign.
If only I could dodge Cayta’s eyes.
Sure enough, when she saw me, she pounced. Why hadn’t I gotten “on” yet? Scrambling to hide my thought crime, I flung up a cover about feeling competitive. She shredded it. “Why don’t you focus on what you want, instead of what’s wrong with you? Can’t you relax and have some fucking fun?”
By “what you want,” she meant “your sales goals.” But I drew a burst of nerve from a slant interpretation: What if, instead of fighting my defects, I embraced my pleasure drive and let it guide me?
I rushed a couple in pressed slacks and got them to stop for my pitch. “We want a revolution for a beautiful world where we’re totally honest and do what we love and no one has to wreck the earth to make money.”
“We, we, we!” the man said. “What about you? What do you want?”
Normally I would have repeated the same speech, swapping “I” for “we.” But this time I risked honesty. “I’m sick of being afraid,” I said, checking to make sure Cayta couldn’t hear. “I wanna be free to think and say and do what I want without someone coming down on me.”
In tandem, the man and woman pulled out their wallets and gave me twenty bucks each for a shirt.
Yes! My big break! I glowed for a moment—then resumed my slide toward another shameful total.
By 10:00 p.m., Cayta and Toba had both been popped. They got Mar to quit. I scolded myself for feeling relieved.
I knew before counting what my number would be.
I didn’t dare dissent when the others agreed to move on to DC.
Saturday morning, we set up in Georgetown. Saturday night, Cayta, flanked by Mar and Toba, drove me off the street. “You can’t sell like this. You’re a disgrace. Go sit in the van, hang in a coffee shop, whatever. Put your stuff away.”
Sunday morning, Cayta gave me a choice: sell or leave the Farm.
I couldn’t sell. I knew I’d fail. And I dreaded exile. So I asked what I’d asked years earlier, in Chicago: a day alone. A day at large. A day to chase a miracle to heal my traitor’s heart.
Cayta balked; home overrode her. But it didn’t matter. Miracles don’t appear on demand to deliver happy plot twists. They storm stories too weak to resist.
On Monday, September 27, 2004, I woke to slivers of sun on my comforter and the sound of Cayta’s voice. I slept next to a shuttered window in a bedroom whose floor I shared with four others. The window—our only one—opened onto the dining room, where Arol sipped tea in the mornings and often held court. As I rolled over so I could hear better, the dread I’d gone to bed with clutched me in a suffocating hug.
Cayta was charging me with being incorrigible.
“I’m just so mad at her. I can’t believe she’s still pulling the same bullshit after all these years.”
Arol thunked her mug down. “She can’t go on like this. Call a meeting. Today. Maybe there’s some therapy you can try. Either that or she has to leave. You guys decide.”
I pulled the comforter over my head. Feigning sleep, I stayed cocooned till my roommates had risen and stowed their bedrolls. Then I fled to the bathroom, where I stared in the mirror and swore I’d fight: “If they tell me to leave, I’ll beg, I’ll plead, I’ll say I’ll do anything.” I might have stayed all morning, if not for the frequent knocks, the yanks on the knob. Yielding my cave, I longed for a shroud to shut out the eyes.
Yet I still believed those eyes could be kind. When the meeting—from which I was barred—convened shortly before noon in the living room, I settled on a warm patch of grass in sight of the sliding doors and wondered what fix my friends might devise. Surely some revelation would rise to my rescue from the pool of group mind.
The doors slid open. Inside I saw an empty chair, facing Cayta. Lips in a grim line, she waved me to take it. I tugged at my circle-Z amulet; the string bit my neck. Cayta pulled her braid over her shoulder. My seat creaked as I leaned toward her.
“We think you should go,” she said.
My head jerked back in shock. My resolve to stay snapped. A desert calm filled my chest.
“I think you’re right,” I said.
This was soul death. Yet I pulsed with life—which raised the question of how to survive in exile.
Packing to hitch to California, in search of a warmer winter, I recalled having left for Idaho with three hundred dollars’ worth of ammo and a vow to return. This time, I might stay gone—and I knew desertion would haunt me. My best hope of relief lay in bringing no trace of the cause I’d betrayed—not even my circle-Z or Book of Scriptures. Unmarked, I could pretend I’d never been a Zendik.
But how would I get cash, without ammo, once I hit the road?
I knew Zendik pledged nothing to those who left. Yet Adam—who’d lived at the Farm a mere eight months—had received a $54 bus ticket, plus another $21. Shouldn’t I get at least that much, after nearly five years?
For the first time, I felt Zendik owed me.
I found Cayta and asked for money.
“What do you need money for?”
To calm my fear, I thought. To insert the slimmest buffer between me and the Deathculture.
“Food?” I said.
She scowled. “I’ll ask Arol.”
Minutes later, she returned with $10—a slap, not a gift. A note inscribed, See how little you mean.
My one other request was a ride to the highway—ideally in the early afternoon, so I’d have plenty of time to find a kind driver who’d give me a place to sleep. With luck, I might even outrun the rain rolling in from the east.