Swarm by Lauren Carter Page A

if the fact was only just coming true. I thought of telling them about my situation, but our conversation had taken a long time. It was after 1:00 AM .
    Thomson wiped his mouth with a towel Phoenix had brought over. The red broth smeared onto the fabric from his lips and facial hair. “What do you think of this?” he asked me. “Our project.”
    â€œIt’s great,” I mumbled.
    â€œWe should go,” said Marvin, standing. I nodded and pressed my hand against the torn vinyl and slid to the edge of the bench, but Thomson persisted.
    â€œWhat do you like about it?” I thought about it. My mother always used to say a change is as good as a rest and that’s what I liked. Going down there was different, entirely new, a foreign landscape. It had helped me stop focusing on my own miseries. But I knew I couldn’t say that. I dug around for another reason. And when I said it—“You’re doing something meaningful, you’re making a difference”—I realized I meant it.
    â€œMarvin’s found a nice girl,” Phoenix said. She sounded sarcastic. My face grew hot. It was like she could see through me, to my soft life, the frailness of my reasoning. When we said goodbye they hardly even looked at me. Phoenix had turned her back to finish the last of the dishes and Thomson was counting his dark dollars, licking his finger to move through the stack.
    When we walked away I considered all the things I could have said to impress them. The things I knew how to do, the skills I had. How to force rhubarb. How to save the best of the crop for seeds. Canning. Even making butter.
    Maybe I could help them.
    But Marvin broke into my thoughts. “They think you’re simple, but I know you’re not.” And he took my hand. Not like a lover but like a brother. Fingers folded over mine as he led me deeper into the dark zone.
    Along the street, nearly every neon store sign had been smashed, their letters broken into brightly coloured pieces that crunched as we walked. Nobody else was out. Up the way, I saw a dog and then another, working their noses in gaps under separate doors before coming back together. I pressed closer to Marvin, wanting him to take my hand again, to slide his fingers between mine, but his hands were shoved into his pockets. In a quiet voice, he filled me in on the neighbourhood’s history.
    â€œAfter the city cut power to the neighbourhood, most of the stores and houses were looted. I came down a few months later.”
    â€œHow do you know them?” We’d moved into the middle of the street, crossing to head south. Frozen tufts of pink insulation skidded past.
    â€œHe’s my uncle. In a way.”
    Thomson had come from the Czech Republic, Marvin told me. “Czechoslovakia then. He was a dissident. He and his friends fought for the revolution. They rallied in the city squares with Vaclav Havel until communism fell.”
    â€œWho’s that? Havel.”
    â€œPlaywright, dissident, first president of the Czech Republic.”
    â€œOh,” I said, and he continued.
    â€œThey were happy. Thomson and his friends. Those who wanted the change, who wanted freedom. But then capitalism moved in and he saw Operation Desert Storm T-shirts fill the shop windows. McDonald’s. KFC . Then he heard about his cousin Katja. Her husband had died in a labour camp before the revolution and she needed money so she did what women can do—she went to the German border wearing sexy clothes. Germans crossed over, probably still do, and picked them up and fucked them behind the border patrol buildings where the guards used to stand and shoot you if you tried to run across.”
    He glanced at me. I didn’t know what to say.
    â€œPeople needed money,” Marvin said, as if defending her. “They need to eat.”
    As if I didn’t know that.
    We turned the next corner. My eyes moved from one window to another, most of them