The Power(29)

Tom tries to say something else, but Kristen just carries on: ‘I think this is a great idea, Mayor Cleary. If you want my endorsement, I’m right behind this plan.

‘And now the weather on the ones.’

Email from: [email protected]





Email to: [email protected]





Saw you on the news today. You’re having trouble with your power. You want to know why? You want to know if anyone else is having trouble, too? You don’t know the half of it, sister. This rabbit hole goes all the way down. Your gender-bending confusion is just the start of it. We need to put men and women back where they belong.





Check out www.urbandoxspeaks.com if you want to know the truth.





‘How fucking dare you?’

‘There was no movement in your office, Daniel. No one was willing to listen.’

‘So you do this? National TV? Promising to roll the thing out state wide? If you remember, Margot, I am the Governor of this state and you are just the Mayor of your metropolitan area. You went on national TV to talk about rolling it out state wide?’

‘There’s no law against it.’

‘No law? No fucking law? How about, do you care about any of the agreements we have in place? How about, no one’s going to find you the fucking funding for this thing if you make this number of enemies in one morning’s work? How about, I will personally make it my mission to block any proposal you put forward. I have powerful friends in this town, Margot, and if you think you can just railroad over the work we’ve done so you can become some kind of celebrity …’

‘Calm down.’

‘I will not fucking calm down. It’s not just your tactics, Margot, not just fucking going to the press, it’s this whole cock-eyed plan. You’re going to use public money to train basically terrorist operatives to use their weapons more effectively?’

‘They’re not terrorists, they’re girls.’

‘You wanna bet? You think there won’t be some terrorists in amongst them? You’ve seen what’s happened in the Middle East, in India and Asia. You’ve seen it on the TV. You wanna bet your little scheme won’t end up drawing in some fucking jihadis?’

‘You done?’

‘Am I –’

‘Are you done? Because I have work to get on with now so if you’re finished –’

‘No, I’m not fucking done.’

But he is. Even as he stands in Margot’s office spitting on to the fine furnishings and the shaved-glass awards for municipal excellence, phone calls are being made, emails are being sent, tweets are being posted and forum posts composed. ‘Did you hear that lady on the morning show today? Where can I sign my girls up for that thing? I mean, seriously, I have three girls, fourteen, sixteen and nineteen, and they are tearing each other apart. They need someplace to go. They got to let off steam.’

Before the week is over, Margot’s received over one and a half million dollars in donations for her girls’ camps – some cheques from worried parents, all the way up to anonymous gifts from Wall Street billionaires. There are people who want to invest in her scheme now. It’s going to be a public-private initiative, a model of how government and business can work hand in glove.

Before a month is done, she’s found spots for the first test centres in the metropolitan area: old schools shut down when the boys and girls were segregated, places with good-size gymnasiums and outdoor space. Six other state representatives arrive for informational visits so she can show them what she’s planning.

And before three months are out, people are beginning to say, ‘You know, why doesn’t that Margot Cleary run for something a little more ambitious? Get her in. Let’s have a meeting.’





Tunde



In a dark basement in a town in rural Moldova, a thirteen-year-old girl with a faint moustache on her upper lip brings stale bread and old, oily fish to a group of women huddled on dirty mattresses. She has been coming here for weeks. She is young and slow-witted. She is the daughter of the man who drives the bread truck. He keeps lookout sometimes for the men who own this house and the women who are kept here. They pay him a little for the stale bread.

The women have tried asking the girl for things in the past. A cellphone – couldn’t she bring them a telephone somehow? Some paper, to write a note – could she post something for them? Just one stamp and a paper? When their families hear what’s happened to them, they’ll be able to pay her. Please. The girl has always looked down and shaken her head fiercely, blinking her moist, stupid eyes. The women think the girl may be deaf. Or she has been told to be deaf. Things have happened already to these women to make them wish they could be deaf and blind.

The bread-truck man’s daughter empties their bucket of slops into the drain in the yard, rinses it out with the hose and returns it to them clean, apart from a few flecks of shit under the rim. The smell will be better in here for an hour or two at least.

The girl turns to leave. When she’s gone, they’ll be in darkness again.

‘Leave us a light,’ one of the women says. ‘Don’t you have a candle? A little light for us?’

The girl turns towards the door. Looks up the stairs to the ground floor. No one is there.