ELADATL. Sesshu Foster
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she was okay. So she leaned over and drove as far as she could—her windshield was smashed and she couldn’t really see through it— without looking where she was going, peeking around every once in a while. Then she got dizzy and had to pull over to the side of the street and stop. But a woman had seen her. The woman told her to move over and stay down, and drove her out of there. She looked ten years younger when I saw her. She’d lost weight. She was taking care of herself. She looked like the sister of the Isaura I knew. That was the promise she’d made to herself the day it looked like—”
“You believed her?”
“Whatever she said to herself when she got through that intersection, it carried down through the years. She changed her life.”
“Hard to believe.”
“Some of this shit is real. Exact words. Verbatim.”
“Was she happy?”
“She seemed very happy, yeah.”
“There’s hope for us all?”
“There is, yes.”
“If she can do it, we can do it?”
“We can do it.”
“Maybe I can do it. Not sure. What about you?”
“Maybe, eh?”
“Is that a dead reservoir there, by those white buildings?”
“Hahamongna. Most of the big shore places are closed now, there’s hardly any lights … And as the moon rises, over there that’s JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratories. You may not believe this, but at one time they had hundreds or thousands of people working on a Mars mission. There’s plywood on the windows now. Check your altimeter, we’re catching a rising draft off the San Gabriels. Time we start the climb.”
“Where is she now? Why aren’t you hooked up with her? Is that all over? She burned even you one too many times? End of story?”
“You know, I looked for her.”
“She disappeared again? Where to now? Maybe she’s over in Ethiopia somewhere.”
“I always knew where she was, before. I could always call somebody who knew.”
“What now? Now what?”
“I checked my people. New York, no, eastern seaboard, nada, I even checked Miami. Texas was out, Chicago was a blank. St. Louis, somebody there pointed back to L.A., San Diego pointed back to L.A. The same thing with the Bay Area.”
“Montana?”
“Overseas! London, Lisbon, Brazil, nothing. Capetown, nothing, Melbourne, the same. Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, some of it by Internet, but still. Not even a whisper, no trace at all, and, anyhow, it all pointed back to L.A. as last residence. L.A. is like the black hole you can’t escape from.”
“Except apparently she escaped. Maybe you missed something.”
“Could have, but we found her last apartment, talked to the landlord. Her family boxed up her stuff and cleaned out the place after she’d been gone for a couple months. I talked to her sister. Her sister was worried about her for the first time ever. I promised I’d keep looking. But she was the one who realized where Isaura must be.”
“Where?”
“That’s where we’re going.”
“El Monte?”
“We’re underway already.”
“Coachella Valley? Victorville? I thought we were on a run to rescue illegals from dehydration or transport sneaky drugs expressed from cochineal beetles or something. Or to conduct mysterious scientific research over a crater in the desert.”
“I admit I mentioned some of those possibilities.”
“That was a cover story.”
“I had to say something halfway plausible. It’s not like we don’t find ourselves engaged in practical pursuits to pay the bills. We can’t all be like you—spend our days selling revolutionary newspapers on street corners along Figueroa Boulevard and then spending all night in The Echo or The Airliner or dives like that.”
“Oh, low blow!”
“Deny it.”
“I stopped going to The Echo last year. But, wait—where to now, then?”
“Exactly about the time Isaura disappeared, the National Oceanic and Atmospherics Administration published its data on atmospheric anomalies caused by global warming. Hurricanes along the Gulf Coast and eastern seaboard chronically engorged, Florida swept under the sea surge, gone like Bangladesh. Tornadoes hopping from Oklahoma to Colorado, touching down in Pittsburgh. Africa turning into a hellish baking continent of Saharas to the north and Namib deserts to the south. Australia and southern Europe burning off, desertifying. Vast areas of the earth depopulating, turning into heat-blasted wastes.”
“Didn’t Al Gore win the Academy Award for that?”
“The earth is turning into Venus. We’re churning out thick stratospheres of smoke, debris, waste gases that have a measurable cooling effect. Making a dark planet of blasted ideologies, bloated sick passions, corrupted by viral pandemic apathies—”
“Tell me something I don’t know. That’s why the working class has to subscribe to the Daily Red Revolutionist. Then the revolution—”
“We’re going up to check out that ring of litter, particulates, and trash that rains down on the globe now. That’s why you brought the radio transmitter aboard in your cute Guatemalan bag, right?”
“You knew about that? I didn’t mean—”
“My police scanner picks up all frequencies. For this airship to remain invisible, I’ve got to monitor all currents. These multicolored gauges and flashing lights aren’t Christmas decorations.”
“Where to, then? What’s the course adjustment?”
“You’re the one driving.”
“We’re on a heading 130 degrees, 80 knots, 60-mile-an-hour wind speed from the northwest, resulting in heading correction of about five degrees.”
“Perfecto!”
“But where?”
“You just said—”
“You know what I mean. On this heading, we won’t see much out this way except vast freeway interchanges, concrete flood plains and flood control channels, gravel pits, the Budweiser brewery and the Rose Hills Cemetery, Fry’s electronics, massive warehouse districts, and truck distribution facilities. Chino Hills.”
“See, even you—”
“When the moon comes out, they’ll be able to see the dirigible’s shadow sliding across all that cement. It’s all parking lots and gravel down there.”
“We’ll be climbing.”
“We’re already at 13,000 feet. How much higher can we safely ascend?”
“We’re going to the Sky City, rookie. That’s why you’re flying this ship. You aced the interviews, and I collated a whole file on your skills.”
“But then you must’ve, I mean—you knew? You knew about my membership in the Punk Faction of the Red Underground Party, affiliated with I.T.S.C. point one?”
“I knew about all of that except for the I.T.S.C. point one part—I don’t give a damn about that! I’ve seen you around the neighborhood since you were carried around in diapers by your mom when she was looking for your MIA dad. Basically, I see that you got heart; who else would sell those damned newspapers on the street corner and even get me to subscribe to that fishwrap?”
“It’s true, then? It’s really there?”
“Sky