Resistance
I’m inside an abandoned shopping mall and a hooker’s chasing me with a kitchen knife. It’s 6 a.m. Goddamn Martin for getting me into this shit.
Would you believe me if I told you he was a nervous wreck around girls? Perpetual stutter, tics skirting across his face, legs shaking like rattles on a rattlesnake. He was the really nice, quiet guy at work, not the guy who was going to start a sex cult and get me killed.
There was that one late night when he said, “Is any of this shit worth a damn?”
“Course it is.”
“We’re testing computerized Playmates so they can lay off card dealers in Vegas,” he said.
“I don’t mind staring at Playmates all day.”
He sighed. “We’ve made it too easy to ignore our conscience.”
Martin’s parents were poor farmers in rural China. They passed away when he was young, so an uncle heading to America agreed to raise him. I met him twenty-three years later at the LA branch of SolTech Industries where we both did quality assurance for whatever new machines they were developing to replace jobs in America.
He had brown eyes, a pale face, a fastidious bowl cut. We were buddies five years and must have had eighteen different bosses during that time. Every one of them was a schmuck. Some were nicer than others, with nicer meaning better bullshitter.
Martin and I bitched about girls who rejected us and the cheap pizzas they brought in at work to excuse making us work free overtime. I felt guilty about testing software meant to replace school teachers, and Martin hated the whole ‘digitized friend’ trend that had gripped the States. The concept was simple. Most of our friendships are already digitized: digital calls, emails, links. Just take that to the next level and actualize the digitalization so that lonely manic depressives can pay money for pseudo-friendships.
It bothered Martin that this corporation preyed on the mentally ill, forming alliances and sponsorships with various psychological associations. “No one gives a shit,” he said, then quit. Though they found his replacement literally five minutes later, everyone at work was stunned. My supervisor summed it up best: “Who quits a job over moral compunctions?”
I took him out for drinks. As usual, rejections were manifold. Most of these tall, lithe women with short skirts and gazelle legs wouldn’t even look my way. Martin laughed at my ass. “You need to work on your pick up lines.”
“I think it has more to do with my looks than my delivery… your turn. Go talk to that Chinese girl over there.”
“Right now?”
“Dude!”
Martin approached her, orbiting, hovering. I saw him make a few attempts at conversation but she didn’t hear him over the loud music. Eventually when she did notice, she gave an indifferent glance and walked away with her friends.
I laughed.
“Thanks,” he muttered dryly.
I put my arm around his shoulder and toasted him. “To losers.”
“Losers.”
“Where you going to find work?” I asked. “It’s hard as hell to get QA jobs right now.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have to work. I never told you I got a quarterly stipend?”
“For what?”
“Donating my blood.”
“You need more than twenty bucks a month to survive.”
“What about fifteen thousand every four months?”
I nearly spat out my beer. “Fifteen thousand bucks to donate your blood?”
He grinned. “I have a special type.”
“What kind?”
“It’s HIV-resistant.”
If I hadn’t been so drunk, I’d probably remember his explanation better. Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV for short, could destroy your immune system, breaking down all the barriers that kept you safe, increasing apoptosis rates or executing the cells outright. Call it the Genghis Khan of cellular biology: it was fucking ruthless. Martin’s resistance had something to do with cytotoxic T-lymphocytes and immunoglobulin A, a rarity that made him a valuable specimen for biotech companies trying to discover the vaccine for HIV.
Next morning, I didn’t hear from him. A week passed, a month. He’d vanished. Cell phone disconnected. Apartment abandoned. Email box overloaded.
The next six months were brutal at work: two rounds of layoffs, me acting like a fucking mendicant, lucky to keep my job, my boss lording it over us like he was a duke. My life was a penitentiary, a prison cell of wanting useless shit and having to please my unpleasable supervisors, who smugly pretended they were on our side. ‘How do you think these layoffs make me feel?’ they loved to ask.
One night, I got a late phone call. “You been trying to reach me, Walt?”
“Martin?”
“Come and visit me.”
“Where are you?”
I’d heard about the shanty towns forming outside of major cities throughout America. I headed towards one about two hours east of Los Angeles. The building I was supposed to go to had been a shopping mall until the housing crisis hit and the real estate in the area plummeted 1700 %. A booming slice of suburbia became a derelict ghost town, complete with tumbleweed and dusty roads. A musty, putrid smell oozed out of melted concrete and dank wool that had dried. The mall was enormous, faded logos and outlet signs that were falling apart. The parking lot resembled a landfill and my car, being the jalopy it was, blended right in.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t Martin who greeted me, but a young Chinese woman who was a couple of months pregnant. She appeared as though she’d once been beautiful under her layers of withered mascara and cheap rouge. Hard to say though, especially with the gaudy leather boots and skimpy crimson skirt.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Amber,“ she replied. “A friend.”
She led me into the mall, which was filled with people who looked like they’d belong in a Starbucks, lined up for cappuccinos and non-fat blueberry muffins. They had their belongings in anthills next to them, families carting behind.
“Are these people homeless?” I asked Amber.
“This is their home,” she replied.
Martin was lounging in a furniture store full of discarded goods. His skin was tan, and there were bruises along his face and a scar on his cheek. He looked gnarled, like he’d been inside a microwave too long. His hair was a disheveled mess. Surrounding him on velvet couches and broken mattresses were about twenty girls — twenty pregnant girls — of varying ethnicities, all generally attractive.
Martin embraced me. “Thanks for coming.”
“What’s going on?”
“A lot.”
“Who are the girls?”
“I…”
There was a scream, a blonde with a big belly sprinting our way. “Martin! He’s here.”