Free Commune of Women by Suzan Still Page B

she opens her eyes. She’s got a nice way with her, firm but gentle.
    She keeps getting Erika to take tiny sips of water. She’s swallowed she doesn’t know how many pills. Each time they take effect, the voices of the women fade and she’s in that meadow again. It’s not bad, really.
    Sophia says she was shot by terrorists. That would make Erika laugh, if it didn’t hurt too much. That’s what they say about women over 40: that they have a better chance of being shot by terrorists than of finding a husband – and her, only 34!
    That’s our little Erika – always exceeding the norm. Ever the over-achiever.
    If they survive – and Sophia thinks they will – she’ll enjoy telling that one over lunch.
    With the lights out, everything’s quiet – except for someone’s snoring over by the vending machines.
    In a few hours, she would have been in Berlin in that Bauhaus hotel with the impossible name. All those clean lines and minimal furniture. Hot, hot shower. Duvet a foot deep in goose down. Dining room, featuring an impossible number of ways to cook schnitzel . Nothing like a steamed vegetable or garden salad within the national borders of Germany.
    She would have been tired, hungry, and bitchy at having to eat such heavy food.
    Albert was right. Everything’s relative.
    Instead, she’s opted for a life-threatening wound and a steady diet of water and assorted meds, while lying in deep pain in a hacked-up thousand-dollar Donna Karan suit on a blood-crusted couch. Apparently, one half of an eight hundred dollar pair of heels is lying out in the hall under a pile of dead people.
    Another stellar career move brought to you by Black Girl Makes Good Productions .
X
    An army has been steadily amassing all around the perimeter of LAX’s international terminal. X watches it all with growing alarm on the television news.
    “From the first frantic police responders in the morning to the black vans of SWAT teams rolling in from surrounding areas all afternoon,” the blonde reporter intones, “to the early evening arrival of a convoy of Elands and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, armored personnel carriers from the local National Guard Armory, an exotic Armada of high-tech and imperviously armored gadgetry is being assembled.”
    The television shows the view from the helicopters that continually circle the building, their searchlights strobing through the darkness. “The surrounding area is a sea of flashing red lights, a conglomeration of Police, Sheriff, FBI, FEMA, Red Cross, and OES vehicles, fire trucks and ambulances, all throbbing in the perennial starless dusk that is an L.A. night.”
    The reporter announces that the LAPD relinquished control before noon to the highest-ranking FEMA official in the L.A. area. He is shown conferring with a man from the Office of Emergency Services. Until late into the evening, it is reported, they are giving orders and organizing the fleet of vans arriving with everything from sensitive snooping devices – their antennae and broad dishes giving them a vaguely insect-like creepiness – to catered sandwiches. A second wave consisting of more and more media trucks and vans is fulminating at a distance.
    Finally, close to midnight, a black helicopter beats swiftly across the parking area and descends, all TV cameras trained on it. A tall man emerges from it, wearing black jeans and sneakers and a black jacket with FBI emblazoned across the shoulders in white. He is followed by a shorter man who looks like a box freezer in his chunky jacket of the same white on black design.
    Handshakes go around the small group assembled to greet the two men just arriving from Washington D.C. The tall man is introduced to the public as the incident’s Director of Operations, the number one spot, and the shorter one is number two, the On-Site Commander.
    By now, the commanders from FEMA and OES look exhausted and irritable, as if they are trying to disguise that they are out of their league. With