Happy Utopia Day, Joe McCarthy

Chapter 10

Even if we do damage some of the honest employees, I must take the only method I know of whereby I think we can secure a housecleaning. 

—Senator Joseph McCarthy 

When i wake up, the holster I had left next to me on the dented metal nightstand is empty. I put on a pair of sixty-year-old black high-top Converse All Stars that are a size too big. With my sweat suit on, I look like I belong in this 1950s bomb shelter. I march down to the common room and then into the kitchen. I can’t find anyone. 

I return to my room and sit at the edge of the bed with the door open. I hear footsteps. I lean out the doorway. X-ray has come out of his room. He walks away from me down the hall with calculated steps. 

“Hey,” I call. 

He continues walking. 

I follow him. “My gun. Someone took my gun.” 

He looks at me with annoyance. “No need for guns here.” 

That may be, but the fact that someone took it is disconcerting. “You could have asked for it. Did someone have to sneak into my room and steal it?” 

X-ray walks into the kitchen. Fluorescent lights illuminate the stainless steel cabinets and countertops. An old-fashioned coffee percolator hisses. X-ray draws himself a cup of coffee and doesn’t offer me one. “Easier that way.” 

“Easier for you.” 

He takes a sip of his coffee. “You may be the liaison, but you’re a stranger and you’re untrustworthy. You’ll leave that way, too. Do your job, fill out your reports, and be on your way.” He sets the coffee on the counter and looks at his blurry reflection in the stainless steel. His eyes go cold. “You’ll get your gun back on the way up. Just behave yourself.” 

X-ray leaves. I make myself a cup of coffee, uneasy after his comments. 

I walk down to the lounge. Juice is on the couch, shuffling a metal Slinky back and forth. Flipper, Beach, and Clutch sit behind the old typewriters whacking away at the keys. They are still all dressed the same: clean, shaved, fastidiously neat. One of them groans when he sees me. 

I sit down on a couch and take a sip of my coffee. 

“Can I email someone?” 

X-ray walks into the room. “No email,” he says. 

“Can I use the Internet?” 

“No Internet.” 

“No Internet? Aren’t you an intel center?” 

X-ray hems and haws. “Not that kind of intel.” 

“So, you have no Internet, no TV, only a direct-line phone?” 

Silence. 

The one thousand feet of earth above me seems oppressive again. “No communication with the outside world?” 

“None,” Juice says. He looks disgusted. 

“Shut up, Juice.”

They’re hiding something. I try to keep the conversation going. “You guys are doing some serious typing.” 

Silence. 

I take another sip of coffee and then set it on a side table. 

Land walks past the common room reading a book. After a minute he walks back the other way. He walks from one end of the complex to the other, back and forth, like a frustrated polar bear at the zoo.