Finishing his cigarette, the head bodyguard stretches his arms and legs. Through the muddy water, he can see the black shadows of the alligators twisting. Even though the head bodyguard is aware that he is surrounded by a 25,000-volt electric fence, monitored by twelve closed-circuit cameras, and standing next to a man-made moat, there is something about the arranged foliage that gives the head bodyguard a sense of being at peace with nature.
When the head bodyguard returns to the mansion, the Dictator has retired for the night. One of the other bodyguards is in the shower washing various fluids out of his hair while another drops a few soiled items into the washing machine and presses start. It is at this time that the four bodyguards can relax and discuss their bodyguard duties with each other at leisure. The last bodyguard has cracked open a few bottles of the Dictator’s imported Château Duras. The bodyguards hang their black coats over the backs of their chairs. They remove their black sunglasses, put down their black briefcases, kick off their black shoes, and wiggle their black-socked toes. The bodyguards play their cards and drink their wine, hunched over in their wooden chairs. They drink the red wine in gulps. The night grows long.
Although a short and almost unnoticeable man when face-to-face, it is after the Dictator has departed that his presence is felt most strongly. While the Dictator has retired for the night, the bodyguards have a slight nervousness in their eyes as they play cards. Every now and then, one of the bodyguards twists his head and hops slightly from his chair, as if a command has been barked only to him, before sitting back down and taking another gulp of wine.
The head bodyguard has not watched the news in many years. He wonders just what it is that the Dictator does. What does he govern? What enemies stalk him in the night? When the first bullet is fired, which of the four bodyguards will leap into its path? While the head bodyguard is pondering these questions, the youngest bodyguard gets drunker and angrier.
He has emptied a bottle and a half of wine himself, and his face has grown as red as the woman’s red dress. He bangs his fists on the table. He says he can no longer be a party to the Dictator, whom he calls the little twerp, making the head bodyguard cringe reflexively. The youngest bodyguard says the people are angry, and it will only be so long before these angry people put bullets into the Dictator and each and every bodyguard. Well, I’m not going to take a bullet for a kid who cried every time he got a wedgie, the youngest bodyguard says, and leaps up with his gun already in his hand.
Instantly, the head bodyguard’s training takes over. He whips his own chair from under his behind and knocks the gun out of the youngest bodyguard’s hand. The other two bodyguards join in. The four descend on each other as they used to do to boys on the dusty playground of their high school. With each punch, the head bodyguard is transported back to that innocent place.
All the crashing and yelling awakens the Dictator. He lies awake in bed staring at the door. His room is completely black, and he pulls the silk covers tightly over his face. There are many people who want to kill him, and he imagines each and every one working their way up the stairs. Thousands of imaginary feet march up the staircase of his mind. After a minute, the Dictator shouts down to the bodyguards.
Sir, please go back to sleep, the head bodyguard shouts back. We are only fighting over the inestimable honor of being the first bodyguard to accept your assassination bullet.
THE MAYOR’S PLAN
The new mayor thinks it would be good publicity to give out keys to the city to distinguished citizens. Not real keys of course — the gates to the city were torn down a long time ago — but gold-plated hunks of metal that have to be carried with two hands.
The mayor is a popular mayor, and his keys become popular items among businessmen, politicians, architects, and the like. The mayor gives out more and more keys, until soon they became de rigueur for any respectable member of high society.
I work down at the key factory. All day long I hammer away at those shiny lumps. I live in the old meatpacking zone in what used to be a slaughterhouse. Every morning I take the bus across town to the factory. Along the way, I watch the latest buildings shoot up like weeds. The city is booming, and sometimes heading home, I look around and don’t even know where I am.
But, as is the nature of things, the mayor’s popularity doesn’t last. There’s a scandal about misappropriated funds used to produce the keys and rumors of an illegitimate child. To keep up his popularity, the mayor increases the order for keys tenfold. He begins to award keys to all the wealthy and popular residents, then to all the artists and musicians of any stripe, and finally to anyone with full-time employment. Soon the mayor’s assistants set up a stand on Main Street and hand out the keys to anyone with proper ID. Everyone in the city has always felt they were special, and now they have a symbol to prove it.
The output at the factory is crazy. We’re popping them out like popcorn. To cut down on expenses, the mayor made us switch to fool’s gold, which glints just the same. I return home at midnight, my hands cracked and splintered by shards of fake gold. It’s winter, and my radiator is broken. I sleep shaking in the cold. In my dreams, thin golden planes plummet through lock-shaped clouds toward the earth.
I don’t know the mayor, and I’m not sure if the keys are saving his job. I do know that everyone I meet seems angry. They yell at each other on the streets over whose key is bigger or brighter. People carry their keys around and use them to knock others out of their path on the subway. Just yesterday I myself was mugged by two youths who held me against a wall with a shaft of fool’s gold pressed into my neck.
What has the city come to?
Recently the mayor announced a new plan to address the social unrest. He has worked with several top designers to come up with a beautiful bow that will be dispensed to the citizens and when worn will display one’s love of the city. I’ve already seen a few at the unemployment office. They’re a dazzling blue.
COLONY
I received my acceptance to the colony in the mail. Or rather my husband had laid it out for me when I got home. The letter said I should be proud of my acceptance, and that almost no one, or at any rate very few, was chosen.
The letter suggested I get my life in order so that I could come to the colony as soon as possible. I suppose it was just an odd way of phrasing, “get your life in order,” perhaps a phrasing that showed the artistic leanings of the colony.
“Good,” my husband said. “It will be good to have some time apart.” My husband was in the process of becoming my ex-husband. He was very eager to affix that prefix.
“But I haven’t worked on anything in a long time.”
“And now you will,” my husband said. He reminded me that I had that project I always talked about, the project I had applied with.
He stood up and extended his arms so that his hands alighted on my shoulders. “I’m glad. I’m glad for you.”