The clerk zapped my meat card and I went to the tray of carnitas and filled a tortilla and rolled it. You had to work for any meat you ate in this dining hall; it was a way to create a lot of vegetarians and leave enough meat for the rest of us, because few could stomach, ha ha, raising a piglet to food age and then killing it, even with the super-humane zappers we have, essentially an instantaneous lights-out. Lots of people go anthropomorphic and decide it’s easier to eat fake meat or become vegetarian, or eat out when they want meat. I myself had found by direct experimentation that the unavoidable anthropomorphizing of the farm’s pigs had no restraining effect on my fatal hand, because if you think of a pig as a human it is a really ugly human and probably appreciates you putting it out of its misery. So I usually thought of them as the super, or my uncle, and enjoyed the taste of them later in the week, not a qualm as I chomped, as really I have done them nothing but favors, from farm to fork, from birth to mouth. They wouldn’t even have existed without me and the rest of the carnivores around me, and had had a great couple of years along the way, better than many humans in this city got.
“Eating meat again?” Jojo asked as we met at the salad bar.
“Yes I am.”
“Do you do the qualification thing on the meat floor of the farm here?”
“I do. It definitely makes it more real, more of a commitment. Kind of like being a trader, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Just joking.”
And of course it was quite stupid of me to joke about our biz given the way the evening was going, but all too often I can shoot before aiming, especially in the hours after a long day in front of the screen. I finish those sessions and my sense of discipline relaxes, and then odd things can come out of my mouth. On many evenings I’ve noticed that. So I reminded myself to be cool on this night, and followed Jojo back to our table, entranced again by the set of her shoulders, the fall of her hair. Damn those boys anyway.
We reconvened at a single table: the boys and their ancient friend; Jojo and Charlotte the chairperson; the super, whose name was Vlade, very apropos, Vlade the Impaler, face like a Ukrainian executioner; and me. It was just a couple too many people to be able to have a single conversation easily, not least because there were a few hundred more people in the big dining hall, and it was therefore noisy. Especially since a group in the corner was playing Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” by clacking a set of variously sized spoons and singing wordlessly. Still, everyone started by asking the old man how he was feeling, and Charlotte, hearing his story and squinting unhappily as she no doubt contemplated our building’s nonexistent or even negative vacancy rate, offered him a temporary place to stay, “until you can get back into your place or find something more suitable.”
“Can’t he just stay here?” the littler kid asked her.
Charlotte said, “We’re full right now, that’s the problem. And there’s a waiting list too. So all I can really do is offer one of the temporary spaces. Even those are full, and not that comfy over the long haul.”
“Better than nothing,” said the littler one. He was Roberto, I was learning. Either Roberto or Stefan.
“Is his own building a goner?” I asked, to show interest.
The old man winced. The taller of the two boys, this was probably Stefan, said, “It’s tilted like diagonal.”
The old man groaned at this. He was still shell-shocked.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked him. Jojo didn’t seem to notice this, but Charlotte gave me a grateful look as I rose. I was certainly going to refill my own glass too. The old man nodded as I picked up his glass. “Red wine, thanks,” he said. He would learn to avoid the red if he stayed here more than a couple of days, but only by experiencing its mouth-puckering tannins directly, so I nodded and walked over to fill his glass, and refill mine with the vinho verde. Both were from the Flatiron’s small roof vineyard, which spilled picturesquely down both of its long sides, but their verde was so much finer than their roter gut. I came back with both hands full and asked, “Anyone else, while I’m up?” but they were listening to the old man describe his building’s meltdown and only shook their heads.
“The main thing is to get my maps,” he concluded, looking at the boys flanking him. “They’re in cabinets in my living room. I’ve got a copy of the Headquarters map, and a whole bunch of others. They can’t get wet, so the sooner the better.”
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Roberto told him, with a little headshake to his ancient friend that said Don’t talk about this now. I wondered what that could be about; possibly they didn’t want Vlade thinking about them going back to the intertidal. Indeed the super was frowning, but the taller boy saw this and said, “Come on, Vlade, we’re there every day.”
“It will have a completely different bottom now that building has melted,” he said.
“We know, we’ll be careful.”
They kept reassuring him and the old man. Meanwhile Charlotte and Jojo were getting acquainted. “And what do you do?” Jojo asked.
Charlotte frowned. “I work for the Householders’ Union.”
“So, doing the same thing you’re doing for Mr. Hexter here.”
“Pretty much. How about you?”
“I work at Eldorado Equity.”
“Hedge fund?”
“That’s right.”
Charlotte did not look impressed. She made a quick reappraisal of Jojo, then looked back at her plate. “Is that interesting?”
“I think so. I’ve been financing the rebuilding in Soho, it seems to be going really well. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your people have been housed there, it has a low-income element. And up until a year ago it was just a shell, like most of that neighborhood. It takes investment to bring a drowned neighborhood back out of the drink.”
“Indeed,” Charlotte said, squinting slightly. She seemed willing to entertain the notion, which made sense, considering her job. The city was always going to need more housing than it had, particularly in the submerged zone.
“Wait, I hear you sounding kind of positive about investment finance,” I said. “I need to get this on pad.”
Charlotte gave me a dirty look, but Jojo’s was even worse. I focused on the old man.
“You’re looking pretty tired,” I told him. “Would you like some help getting to your room?”
“We haven’t worked out where that is yet,” Charlotte said.
“So maybe we better?” I said.
She gave me a look that indicated she was not rolling her eyes only by dint of extreme muscular control.
I smiled. “The hotello in the farm?” I suggested.
“Isn’t that a crime scene?” Vlade asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “They’ve done what they need to there. Gen told us we could use it again. But does it stay warm in those?”
“My room was freezing,” the old man said. “I don’t care about that.”
“Okay then,” Charlotte said. “That would be easiest, for sure.”
The boys were looking at each other uneasily. Possibly they didn’t want to be tasked with being their friend’s roommates. Charlotte seemed unaware of their unease. Possibly they lived in or around this building without her knowing about it. Now was not the time to ask them. I was getting the feeling that nothing I could say at this table was going to go over well, and it seemed like my best option was to eat and run, with a good excuse, of course.
My plate was empty, and so was the old man’s. And he did look beat.
“I’ll help get you up there,” I said, standing up. “Come on, boys.” Their plates had been empty seconds after they sat down to them. “You can finish what you began.”
Vlade nodded at them and joined us as we headed toward the elevators, leaving the two women behind. I would have given a lot to be a fly on the wall for that conversation, but it was not to be; and if I had been present the conversation would not have been the same. So with a qualm I passed by Jojo and said, “See you later?”
She frowned. “I’m tired, I’ll probably just go home in a while.”