Free Curse the Names by Robert Arellano

the Hill.
    I crowded up to the counter amongst those they served, well-dressed people with healthy-looking skin and serene smiles that hinted at substantial assets. We were taking advantage of the time before work to get our morning sweets, little treats that would make the day go by. This was the demographic that had weathered the recent recession without need for concern, most of them millionaires who can’t and aren’t allowed to explain what it is they work on, who don’t want to know my name, just good morning, nice day, see you tomorrow, for the next thirty-five years or so.
    While the sun beat in through the windows of the café on a scorching summer morning, I had a brief flash of satisfaction. These are your subjects: the sources of your profiles, puff pieces you pen for Surge , but also subjects of your rule, because don’t you, in ways that matter to many of them more than who is head of the DOE or even president, determine their destinies, frame their fates, and tell their stories in the place that most counts—this insular community of scientists?
    I walked back out to the Spider and gave Oppie the cheese from my breakfast panini. He gulped it down before knowing what hit him.
    At eight o’clock I pulled into the parking lot at Le Salon des Chiens and put Oppie on the leash. In the reception area I overheard a woman tell the girl at the counter, “Harvey said, No kids, my career is our kid, so he got me this dog.” There was no irony in the woman’s voice, a Prozac vacancy to her eyes, and no apologies for the little blue coat on her pet.
    Kitty, too, was becoming like this. I would hear her on the phone with friends: You’re never going to believe what Oppie did today .
    I handed the leash to the grooming assistant. “All right, Op. Your mom will be here by ten.”
    When I got to the Lab, the closest parking space I could find was about a half-mile from my office. I would get in my ten to twenty minutes of aerobic exercise today. I took my briefcase and my skinny latte.
    In the foyer I put my hand on the ID screen and the door opened to the offices of Surge . It had excessive security for an employee magazine that published nothing other than fluff, but my building had once housed a classified division, and palm-reader screens were SOP for the Lab.
    I said good morning to Golz and asked how her long weekend was.
    “Not as long as yours,” she accurately observed. “MQR for you.”
    Golz is sexy in a skinny, spinsterish (even though she is supposedly married) sort of way. I remember coming in sweating for the interview because I hadn’t known it was going to be such a hike from the parking lot. The way Golz studied me across the conference table, large enough to seat eight without elbows touching, I could tell I was a finalist. I had tasted salt on my lips, along with the word salary , but I would not say it. That time would come. The office was air-conditioned, but not the kind that throws you into shivers. It was just Golz in her red wool, Hillary-wannabe skirt suit and me in my coat and tie around a big conference table. What was Golz wondering about me? I knew: can this guy deliver decent copy, keep his nose clean, preserve reasonably chemical-free blood, and not fall from grace with the added factor of classification, clearance, and keeping an eye out for breaches that was known organizationally as SAP?
    Security Awareness Protocol, they call it, and everyone who works for the Lab has to follow SAP. Like everyone else on the Hill, I have gone through the training, and like everyone I have been subjected to clandestine checkups at stores, the supermarket, restaurants—these are little tests SAP gives you, from a stylish dinner party where you realize a guest is baiting everyone to ask him about his division, to a clever rendering of the clueless fellow at the home-improvement store asking, Excuse me, do you happen to know what kind of parts I need to make a detonator?
    If I was always a little