Free Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig Page B

tell you what confused me, sir. What really confused me was when the pretty people were falling from the sky. We need to think about that in an analytical way.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Alex, suddenly so tired he could hardly stand, supporting himself with one hand on the brick wall of the building. ‘I’m sure we do.’
    â€˜Anyway, thank you very much for the help, sir. Because you’ve got to add it up, you know? And when you get five dollars and seventy-six cents, that’s a very good one, because when you’ve got that you can get a breakfast. I’ll let you go now, sir.’ And he turned and walked away, his ankles collapsing in his ludicrous women’s boots, under the veil of the snow.

II
    The Susie year, he sometimes called that time in his life; and he hadn’t thought of it all that often, not recently, but there were pieces of memory, now and then, so bright and clear they were almost like fiction.
    He remembered this, waiting in the parking lot behind the newspaper office, Susie and Chris inside, fighting again about something. It was a warm September night, the sky clear, the noises of the street at a distance. He sat down on the hood of Chris’s old car and fished a joint out of his pocket, lit it up and waited. There was a steel band practising somewhere, and pop music leaking out of one of the student pubs, and if you listened to them long enough they gradually melted together into some quite new and original style, full of offbeats and strange harmonies.
    He wasn’t sure how long he waited. He never paid attention to how long it took, because he knew that she’d come in the end. That she always did. He’d finished the joint and was reaching for another when he heard the soft thud of the back door, and Susie-Paul walking across the asphalt towards him. His medic-alert bracelet flashed dull copper in the small flame from his lighter.
    â€˜When’s the last time you checked your blood sugar?’ she asked, pulling herself up to sit beside him.
    He passed her the joint, exhaling. ‘This afternoon.’
    â€˜You gonna check again soon?’ She took a drag and handed it back.
    â€˜I’m not sure it’s necessary. It was fine in the afternoon.’
    â€˜Check it, Alex. You’re working into the middle of the night. And you know you don’t notice when you’re going hypo.’
    â€˜That’s not even true.’
    â€˜It’s true enough. Jesus Christ. One ambulance ride was enough for me, thank you.’
    â€˜I have no memory of this.’
    â€˜Of course you don’t. You were having a fucking hypoglycemic seizure in an alleyway off Bathurst, for God’s sake.’
    â€˜Oh well. That was like months ago.’ He sucked in the harsh burn of the smoke. ‘Anyway, my brain’s been through lots of stuff.’
    She leaned back on the car hood. ‘Chris is such a prick sometimes.’
    â€˜Mmm.’
    â€˜Yeah, well. Never mind.’ She took the joint from him and held it up between her fingers, against the dark sky. ‘So, I got these two press releases today. One was from the police union saying this year’s Our Cops Are Tops parade is on the 27 th. Which, imagine them sending this to us, I just don’t know. The other one was from some of the communists, a talk they’re having about how great everything is in Albania. On the 27 th. What this says to me is that a frighteningly large part of the population is actively longing for a police state.’
    â€˜Mmmm,’ said Alex.
    â€˜We could declare a day.’
    â€˜We could what?’
    â€˜Declare a day. You know, like an annual thing. We Want A Police State Day.’
    Susie laughed. ‘No, it has to be more obsequious. Please sir, may we have a police state? Please May We Have A Police State Day. We could have T-shirts.’
    â€˜A logo.’
    â€˜Press releases from an untraceable fax