Supervolcano All Fall Down(89)

Men and women who’d been standing took the chairs of those who’d risen to get in line. The waiting area didn’t empty out; new people kept coming in all the time. The SoCal economy sucked. The whole country’s economy sucked. Jesus H. Christ, so did the whole world’s. But the USA was screwed worse than everybody else.

If the government didn’t keep printing dollars and handing them out, no one would have any. If the government did keep printing them and handing them out, pretty soon they wouldn’t be worth anything. That was well on the way to happening. The prices these days! But Washington seemed to have decided that inflation at least put a Band-Aid on disaster.

Even though Louise had major doubts that that was wise, she grabbed everything the law said she was entitled to. If she lost the condo . . . She had no idea what she’d do if she lost the condo. Live in her car with James Henry? Beg money or a room in the old house from Colin? If it were just her, she would sooner have jumped off a high building and ended things in a hurry. But you couldn’t do that when you had a little guy to worry about. She couldn’t, anyhow.

The refugee from whacking kids on the knuckles with a ruler raised the bullhorn to her mouth again. “Ten o’clock appointments!” she blared. “Take your places in the lines, ten o’clock appointments!”

Louise jumped up. All the lines were long, but one she particularly wanted to avoid. A chunky woman named Maria—Anglo, not Hispanic—proved that the EDD didn’t discriminate in hiring on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or competence. She always took twice as long to accomplish half as much as any of the other clerks. Some of the rest were better, some worse, but only fools and newbies got into the line that led to Maria. It was the shortest of them all—and with good reason.

Only a couple of minutes before ten now. So said the clock on the wall. It worked whether the power was on or not (it was this morning), which meant it ran on batteries. You got to try for your appointment at the scheduled time. You got it . . . when you got it.

Slowly, she moved toward the window. The EDD wasn’t so heavily fortified as the post office on Reynoso Drive, but the windows were barred like the ones in an old-fashioned bank. The twenty-something guy in front of her wore a stingy-brim fedora that would have been ridiculously out of date when he was born but had turned hip again with the passage of the years. He also had on a loud houndstooth jacket; as far as Louise was concerned, that went beyond hip to tacky. From one of the jacket’s inside pockets he pulled out an airline-drink-sized bottle of vodka. He drained it in a quick gulp, then stuck it back in there again.

That was one way to make time in line go by. Bringing booze into the EDD office was Against the Rules, too, but Louise wouldn’t say anything unless the man in front of her got loud and rowdy. He didn’t seem likely to. He just wanted to numb the world a little. How could you blame him?

She’d got to within three people of the front of the line when the Asian woman at the window turned out not to have some bit of paper she needed. She didn’t savvy much English. The clerk, a prim white man with a neat gray mustache, knew not word one of whatever language she spoke.

The hipster in front of Louise performed a theatrical half turn. “Give me a fucking break!” he said, and then, faintly embarrassed, “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “We could all use one.”

He grinned at her. “Yeah!”

After what seemed like much too long, the clerk got a rush of brains to the head and asked if any of his fellow civil servants could communicate with the Asian woman. The EDD personnel were as diverse as the people whose employment they were supposed to be developing. Sure as hell, somebody proved able to talk with her. Then they had to figure out what to do about the paper she didn’t have. Louise didn’t know what they decided; they still weren’t speaking English. But the woman left the window. By the unhappy look on her face, Louise guessed she’d have to come back when she found whatever the hell it was. With a loud sigh of relief, the blocky Hispanic guy behind her stepped up.

“He better have his shit together,” the man with the stingy-brim muttered darkly. Louise found herself nodding.

Evidently, the Hispanic fellow did. He stepped away from the window folding his check and sticking it in the right front pocket of his jeans. You’d better have your shit together, too, Louise thought as the hipster took his place. He must have, because he collected his check and got out of there in jig time.

“Name and Social,” the clerk with the gray mustache intoned as Louise took Mr. Stingy-brim’s place.