Ange glared at me. “I’d never become one of them. I’d live in a better place, sure, but never in one of those obnoxious gated fortresses.” Ange kicked a soda can out of her way. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m not getting my Ph.D.”
I stopped in my tracks. “What?”
She let her head loll back until she was staring at the sky. “I had that meeting with Charles, my thesis advisor. A dinner meeting, of course. At the Pink House.”
“Typical,” I muttered. The Pink House was a silk tablecloth, sniff- the-wine-cork place.
“Yeah. It was his usual shit—the grope-hug greeting, reaching over to brush my hair out of my eyes, all the sexual innuendo crap. I asked if we could schedule my defense, and he said no, he thinks I need to run another fucking study. Then he pulls out his appointment calendar and says his wife will be out of town the first half of next week, and why don’t I come over to his place Tuesday night for dinner, to discuss the new study?”
Uzi strained hard on his leash, eager to get moving. We continued walking.
“It suddenly hit me that he’s not going to let me defend my dissertation until I let him fuck me.” She started to say something else but choked up. I waited as she took a few deep breaths and got herself under control. “He’s going to throw one obstacle after another in front of me, make me sit through a thousand excruciating dinners, because that way he has power over me.”
A Jumpy-Jump lounged on a stoop up ahead, watching us approach. Watching Ange, really. He was dressed in a mock-mailman outfit, the “U.S. Mail” shoulder patches executed in ornate calligraphy.
“For four years I’ve been dreaming of walking across that stage, with my whole family—even my bitch grandmother—watching. What do you think of your crank-addict loser, drug-rehab dropout, gypsy granddaughter now, you old bag? I wouldn’t even have to say it out loud. Probably none of them but my mom and Cory would actually show up, but the fantasy works better when they’re all sitting in a row on those metal folding chairs, watching.”
“That’s a big dog for such a little peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump said as we drew near. We kept our pace steady. I’d seen the guy around—he was ethnic, maybe East Indian. Long braided hair. He spoke with the singsong accent that Jumpy-Jumps evidently had invented out of thin air.
“Where are you two and your big dog so urgently needed?” He stood lazily, not exactly blocking the sidewalk, but impeding it. Ange veered into the street, cutting a wide path around him, and I followed her lead.
“I’m talking to you, don’t disappear me,” he said. He moved to block our path.
Uzi snarled and lunged. Ange held his leash tight; the Jumpy-Jump leaped clear of Uzi’s snapping teeth.
A heartbeat later, there were blades all over the Jumpy-Jump, jutting from his belt, his boots. He clutched what looked like machetes in both fists. “You think your big dog can protect you?” There was blood and a ragged gash on his thumb—Uzi had just caught his retreating hand.
I grabbed the leash and helped Ange drag Uzi backward. He was barking and snapping, scrabbling to get at the man. We just kept pulling, retreating the way we’d come, until Uzi finally relented and reversed direction as well.
“I can fuck you any time I want, Little Peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump shouted at our backs. “Right here on the daylight street. Strip off your false security and live in constant fear, where you belong.”
We ran five blocks before slowing.
“I hate that I can’t walk the streets without being afraid. I hate it,” Ange hissed.
“I know,” I said. My heart was still thumping like mad. “What’s wrong with those people? And what happened to the police? Or even the Civil Defense? What happened to their whole thing about taking back the streets?”
“Now they all just look out for themselves,” Ange said. “Just like Charles.”
A street sweeper rumbled along a side street, churning up plywood and cardboard shelters, its whooping alarm warning tenants to get clear or be swept up with their houses.
“Have you complained to the Department Chair about him?”
Ange nodded. “I was there this morning. She says there’s nothing she can do, that I should switch advisors. But Charles is the only botanical biotech person left on the faculty, so I’d have to start my dissertation over in a different area. When I told her I couldn’t afford to start over, because my financial support ended this year, she suggested I let him fuck me.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
Ange shook her head. “She said when buildings are being bombed and politically outspoken faculty are disappearing in the middle of the night, ‘small incivilities’ don’t mean much.”
“I can guess what you said.”
“I bet you can,” Ange said. She stopped in front of the Savannah College bio building. “This is where I get off.” She waved. “Bye, sweetie.”
I waved back. No public displays of affection. Somehow we’d made it work for four years, the friends-with-sex thing. Probably because neither of us had met anyone, or really wanted to meet anyone at this point. Things with Ange were comfortable and easy. Uncomplicated.
Truth be told, I was beginning to doubt that I would ever find someone to love in any case. I suspected that the sort of relationship I was looking for just wasn’t possible any more, that it was an artifact from the time when those photographs I missed so much were taken. There was a line drawn in my memory that separated my life before The Decline from my life after. I imagine everyone has that line. Everything else had changed after The Decline; there was no reason to think that love had some special dispensation.
I headed home. The sun was low in the sky, filtering through the twisted, moss-covered branches of the oaks, adding a gold tinge to the red brick path. I felt so bad for Ange. She was so close. A two-hour defense, three signatures, and she had a Ph.D. She could teach at a university, or continue her research for an agro corporation. The stakes were so high. Once upon a time if you didn’t make it into a lucrative career, there were plenty of semi-lucrative alternatives. Now it seemed as if the divide between rich and poor was a chasm. There was no middle class any more. On one side there were the rich—safe and comfortable, living in luxury—and on the other, on our side, it was a challenge just to stay alive.
As I approached Jackson Square, I stopped short. Sebastian was sitting on a bench in the square, with the Jumpy-Jump who had threatened us a half-hour earlier. They were laughing like old pals. Sebastian spotted me and waved; the Jumpy-Jump turned, smiled.
“Little Peanut’s big brother! Come join us.”
I headed toward the bench.
“You two know each other?” Sebastian said as I approached.
“Yes indeed,” the Jumpy-Jump said. He held out a bandaged hand without getting up, looking amused, as if we’d shared a joke rather than an altercation. I ignored his hand.
“We began our song with the wrong note, I fear.” He dropped his hand, stretched out on the bench and sighed contentedly. “So, Mister Peanut, what do you think of our Dada Jihad?”
I’d read everything I could about the Jumpy-Jump movement since that night at the art show. It had started in Detroit, after the Foxtown Massacre, when the police broke up a protest using nerve gas. A Native American street singer named Dada Tanglefoot began preaching a weird mix of anarchism, Zen, and Dadaism that spoke to the people. Tanglefoot was assassinated in quick order, probably on orders from the feds, but her words spread like a virus through the poor and angry neighborhoods. As far as I could tell, the actual doctrine was incoherent bullshit. Maybe Tanglefoot’s teachings had gotten tangled as it passed from person to person.