The discussion made everyone anxious. Willing changed the subject. “Nollie’s started writing again. I caught her.”
Nollie glared. “It’s not more of my famous egotism. I’ve nothing else to do.”
“I was glad,” Willing said. “It may be free, but there’s some brutal writing online now. Like the art. People have better stories. ‘Real stories.’ The kind you said you only like when they happen to someone else.”
“Anyone who remembers what one says that verbatim is a menace,” Nollie said.
“I read Better Late Than,” Willing said.
His great-aunt looked discomfited, and pleased. “A pirated copy.”
“Of course. We burned the hardbacks. Some of it was good.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” Nollie said.
He didn’t realize she’d be so touchy. “The story didn’t take place immense long ago. But it felt like ancient history. It was hard to identify with the characters. They live in an economic vacuum.”
“You mean they’re rich?”
“You don’t even know if they’re rich,” he said. “They make decisions because they’re in love, or they’re angry, or they want adventure. You never know how they afford their houses. They never decide not to do something because it costs too much. The whole book—you never find out how much these characters pay in taxes.”
“Great,” Nollie said. “I’ll make my next novel about taxes.”
“Good,” Willing said, turning a blind eye to her sarcasm. He had accomplished something this evening. She would get it later, when she recovered from feeling injured.
“Hey, how’s it going at Elysian?” Bing asked.
“Okay. After all”—Willing nodded at Nollie—“I’ve done geriatric care most of my life.”
“None of your new charges is doing three thousand jumping jacks a day,” Nollie snapped. “You’ve hardly been wiping my butt, kid.”
So predictable. He loved getting a rise out of her. “Yes, Nollie’s what the orderlies call a walking shriv. She can make it to the bathroom, which is all staff at Elysian cares about. Then there are the blithers, who are demented. And the morts—bed-ridden, comatose, vegetative.”
“Not a very compassionate lingo,” Savannah said.
“No,” Willing said. “It’s not.”
“So is it mostly toilet duty, changing sheets?” Savannah was groping. The jobs they all did were dismal and repetitive. It was challenging to express interest in other people’s work when they weren’t interested in it themselves.
“Yes. And cleaning crevices the robs have missed. But the most important thing I do is listen. Especially to the walking shrivs. They seem hungry to talk to someone who isn’t a hundred years old. Just because you’re ancient yourself doesn’t mean you like being around a bunch of relics any more than we do.”
“God, I know what you mean,” Fifa said. “On the bus this week, the biddy next to me started yakking. Grabbed my arm, really sank her claws in. It was like sci-fi, and she was sucking out my life force through her fingernails. I got off, I felt weak.”
“And they stare at you,” Savannah said.
“Because you’re beautiful,” Nollie said, with a rare wistfulness. “Because you’re as beautiful as we used to be, and we didn’t know we were beautiful at the time.”
“I don’t feel beautiful,” Willing said.
“You’re a devastatingly handsome man,” Nollie said. “You should.”
Willing’s cheeks burned. She was his great-aunt, she was ninety years old, and she was flirting with him. “I didn’t realize before this job how many Chinese shrivs have been shipped here. At least a third of the residents are from Asia. It’s cheaper to get Americans to take care of them than to pay the higher cost of labor over there.”
“They have an enormous cohort that’s over eighty,” Nollie said. “Result of the one-child policy. Their age structure looks like a mushroom.”
“They don’t speak English,” Willing said. “But I listen to them anyway. American residents get cross, and demanding—you know, the way younger Asians are now. But the Chinese at Elysian were raised in another time. They’re quiet. They curl up. The problem is, they don’t ask for anything. You have to check, because they’ll sit in their own waste for hours. Last week, one of them died from dehydration. He couldn’t lift a glass by himself, but he wouldn’t ask for a drink of water.”
“Isn’t nursing home work getting chancy?” Bing asked. “All those shootings.”
“Nothing’s happened at Elysian yet,” Willing said. “So their security is lax. No X-rays or searches. But you’re right. It’s a fad. And it’s spreading. How many did that last lunatic in Atlanta take out?”
“Twenty-two residents,” Bing said.
“Twenty-four, really,” Savannah said. “That’s the one where a ninety-something veteran tackled the killer into the hydrotherapy pool, and they both drowned.”
“The shooter did those useless old coots a favor,” Fifa said, “and everyone else.”
“Your girlfriend,” Nollie said, “is a misagenist.”
“Don’t worry, I take precautions,” Willing said. “I don’t advertise it, but I carry the revolver from Prospect Park to work.” Technically, his trusty protection was a Smith & Wesson .44 called an X-K47 Black Shadow. For Willing, it was simply the Shadow. True to its nickname, the classic pistol with an amber grip went everywhere he went. His mother would be horrified. A fact that he rather enjoyed.
“Not rusted out yet?” Bing asked.
“Great Grand Man taught me how to maintain it—after which he showed me how to use it.” Regarding this aspect of their shared past, Willing preferred to be matter-of-fact. GGM had left this world with a selfless act, and wouldn’t want them to avoid its mention. “The real trouble is that I could work at Elysian indefinitely. Same as you guys. We’re all at a standstill. There’s no trajectory. None of us will ever be flush enough to have kids. We could be frozen, in the same moment. We could be dead.”
“Let’s have none of this ‘dead’ business! The United States of America needs its able-bodied to look alive! You’ll report to work every morning if we have to prop up your corpse with a stick!”
With dread, Willing rose to unlatch the door. Most of their contemporaries’ speech was trailing, wispy. Goog’s voice was booming.
“How long have you been eavesdropping?” Savannah asked.
“Long enough to know this is one splug bash. You letting the doomster here prophesy another fiscal Armageddon? When, to our shaman’s dismay, everything’s turning over tickety-boo.”
Goog spurned the floor for the broken-down recliner, the better to hold court. He banged down a bottle of real cognac. The luxury perk would only partially compensate for his demolition of their evening. Willing had wanted to talk further about his sensation of running in place. He’d have liked to canvass his cousins about whether they thought anything might credibly happen to them that wasn’t terrible. Now there wasn’t much point. Everyone would be careful.
“I take exception, Wilbur, to your claim that ‘none of us’ will have kids,” Goog said. “I personally plan to sow the Stackhouse seed. Just haven’t decided between a lab job—blue eyes, high IQ—or the old-fashioned route. No lack of candidates in that department!” Bearded, barrel-chested, and shorter than he struck people at first meeting, Goog was almost good-looking. He only got over the hump when women learned what he did for a living.
“Poor little tyke,” Savannah whispered in Willing’s ear. “I’ve never felt so sorry for someone who doesn’t exist yet.”