Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [54]
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway they could use your help, and they’re good guys. Interesting. I think you’d enjoy them. You should at least meet with them and see.”
“Yeah okay. My plate is kinda full right now, but I could do that. No harm in meeting.”
“Oh good. Thanks Sridar, I appreciate that.”
“No problem. Hey can I have Krakatoa too?”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
After that Charlie was in the mood to talk, but he had no real reason to call anybody. He and Joe played again. Bored, Charlie even resorted to turning on the TV. A pundit show came on and helplessly he watched. “They are such lapdogs,” he complained to Joe. “See, that whole studio is a kind of pet’s bed, and these guys sit in their places like pets in the palm of a giant, speaking what the giant wants to hear. My God how can they stand it! They know perfectly well what they’re up to, you can see the way they parade their little hobbies to try to distract us, see that one copies definitions out of the dictionary, and that one there has memorized all the rules of pinochle for Christ’s sake, all to disguise the fact that they have not a single principle in their heads except to defend the rich. Disgusting.”
“BOOM!” Joe concurred, catching Charlie’s mood and flinging a tyrannosaurus into the radiator with a clang.
“That’s right,” Charlie said. “Good job.”
He changed the channel to ESPN 5, which showed classic women’s volleyball doubles all day along. Retired guys at home must be a big demographic. And so tall muscular women in bathing suits jumped around and dove in the sand; they were amazingly skillful. Charlie particularly liked the exploits of the Brazilian Jackie Silva, who always won even though she was not the best hitter, server, passer, blocker, or looker. But she was always in the right place doing the best thing, making miraculous saves and accidental winners.
“I’m going to be the Jackie Silva of Senate staffers,” Charlie told Joe.
But Joe had had enough of being in the house. “Go!” he said imperiously, hammering the front door with a diplodocus. “Go! Go! Go!”
“All right all right.”
His point was undeniable. They couldn’t stay in this house all day. “Let’s see. What shall we do. I’m tired of the park. Let’s go down to the Mall, we haven’t done that for a while. The Mall, Joe! But you have to get in your backpack.”
Joe nodded and tried to climb into his baby backpack immediately, a very tippy business. He was ready to party.
“Wait, let’s change your diaper first.”
“NO!”
“Ah come on Joe. Yes.”
“NO!”
“But yes.”
They fought like maniacs through a diaper change, each ruthless and determined, each shouting, beating, pinching. Charlie followed Jackie Silva’s lead and did the necessary things.
Red-faced and sweating, finally they were ready to emerge from the house into the steambath of the city. Out they went. Down to the Metro, down into that dim cool underground world.
It would have been good if the Metro pacified Joe as it once had Nick, but in fact it usually energized him. Charlie could not understand that; he himself found the dimness and coolness a powerful soporific. But Joe wanted to play around just above the drop to the power rail, he was naturally attracted to that enormous source of energy. The hundred-thousand-watt child. Charlie ran around keeping Joe from the edge, like Jackie Silva keeping the ball off the sand.
Finally a train came. Joe liked the Metro cars. He stood on the seat next to Charlie and stared at the concrete walls sliding by outside the tinted windows of the car, then at the bright orange or pink seats, the ads, the people in their car, the brief views of the underground stations they stopped in.
A young black man got on carrying a helium-filled birthday balloon. He sat down across the car from Charlie and Joe. Joe stared at the balloon, boggled by it. Clearly it was for him a kind of miraculous object. The youth pulled down on its string and let the balloon jump back up to its full extension. Joe jerked, then burst out laughing. His giggle was like his mom’s,