Victimization Retreat by David Serafino
Billionaire Chuck signs up for a ten-day retreat designed for privileged people to sample genuine everyday hardships.
Charles Alexander Asbury's wife prefers he go by Chuck. It's less geeky, and gives him that bootstrap appeal the board needs from its chairman. Chuck's company designs and manufactures flexible PCBs, printed circuit boards, with embedded HDI components and integrated surface mount technology. Chuck is a geek. Still, he calls himself Chuck and doesn't smile when he shakes hands, because smiling denotes servility. He also defers when Marcy books him into the victimization retreat. She's right. The media has been unsympathetic lately, portraying him as a daddy's boy, a lightweight. Marcy says this will give him gravitas. Chuck's daughter calls from Paris to insist. The experience will bring him closer to humanity.
Chuck thinks the retreat is a moderately funny, extremely lucrative joke. The park's holding company bought an abandoned town in Ohio, set up a helipad, hired a few hundred regional actors, and started selling ten-day packages at two grand a night, offering a range of authentic traumas. Their website calls it a therapeutic theme park for the privilege-afflicted.
From the helicopter the town looks dilapidated, but habitable. Most of the buildings have roofs. He sees people in the streets, a wealthier neighborhood with painted houses. Chuck's father grew up in a town like this, so Chuck doesn't see it as a shithole. There are far worse places than Ohio. The pilot helps Chuck with his bag, directs him to the reception center, and wishes him a cordial good luck.
Reception is a cinderblock box on the short road to town. The woman inside hands Chuck a clipboard with a liability waiver and checklist. A security guard frisks him for weapons. As instructed by email, Chuck's not wearing a belt or shoelaces. He signs the release form and reviews the checklist, ruling out most of the options immediately: slavery, genocide, rape, incarceration, war, war crimes, natural disaster, domestic abuse, terminal cancer. He could go with something theatrical, like death of a spouse or alcoholic father. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia all promise to exclude him from a society he already disdains, but the town has a police force so the risk of violent persecution, even simulated, seems unacceptably high. Chuck settles on poverty because he thinks he was poor in grad school and ten more days won't kill him.
The receptionist tags him with a blue bracelet and invites him to sit on a bench while she calls the orientation committee. Chuck sits in the sun, still cold from the flight, inspecting the town. Brick and more brick, badly weathered but apparently sturdy, punctuated by clapboard houses crammed into alleys. He can see a general store and restaurant, some other minor businesses. Snobs interviewed about this place described it as hell on Earth, but Chuck likes the fresh air, sunlight, people, stray dogs, traffic lights, trees, birds, everything he's missed over three decades locked in labs. Ten days of reality could be good for him.
It gets hot, so he stands in the shade. After a while he sits. When he gets cold again, he goes back to the bench, rolls his jacket into a pillow and lies on his back. Clouds drift past. Chuck looks for animal shapes, but only sees circuitry.
Voices wake him, some teenagers yelling at a bum. Chuck stretches and sits up, folds his jacket over his arm and looks for his suitcase. Porters must have taken it. He'll check at reception. The receptionist ignores him, filing her nails. A rock clatters by Chuck's feet. The teenagers threw a rock at him. They have his suitcase and take turns spitting on it until Chuck chases them off. He cleans his suitcase with a handkerchief and asks again at reception. Where is the orientation committee? The receptionist locks her bunker door. A security guard waddles over, asks her if there's a problem. She says Chuck is scaring her. The guard grabs Chuck by the arm and shoves him into the street.
Finally the orientation committee arrives, a cluster of men in dark suits and sunglasses, strolling, joking, taking their sweet time. They giggle when Chuck introduces himself. "You looking for a job, Chuck?" one asks. Chuck explains that he's just arrived and is waiting to be shown his accommodation. The men bray and clutch their guts, a local-theater enactment of hilarity.
"You're not the orientation committee."
"We're the reorientation committee." What's that supposed to mean? "It means I'll give you a token to suck my cock, hillbilly."
Chuck gets the shtick. The receptionist, the teenagers, these guys - they're all the orientation committee. They've done their jobs passably well. Chuck is oriented. He graciously declines their offer, takes his bag and walks into town to find somewhere to sleep, stopping at a sandwich stand for directions and a sandwich. The proprietor won't give him either. He tells Chuck clear out, he's frightening off customers. A woman in a black suit steps around Chuck to order a turkey and Swiss on rye. She's wearing a black bracelet. Does the shop owner take euros? Yes, but he'll have to give her change in dollars. That's fine, she says, and hands him twenty euros. Her change comes in coins.
"I'll buy that sandwich off you for fifty bucks," Chuck tells the woman. Sorrow and fear disfigure her face and she scurries across the street, glancing to see he's not following. Chuck shows the sandwich guy his wallet full of cash and repeats the offer. The guy looks at Chuck's bracelet, suitcase, clean cardigan and Oxford cloth, then beckons him closer.
"Blue bracelets need tokens," he explains in a Canadian accent. "Everyone else pays cash." When he speaks again, it's pure Akron. "Go starve somewhere else, hillbilly. You're bad for business."
The abandoned-looking houses are occupied by people in green, pink, purple and blue bracelets. Nobody will let him stay. These places cost a token a night and the landlords spot-check after dark. They'll turn you out, and if you get caught sleeping on the street you're automatically transferred to incarceration. The last person to refuse him, a Korean heiress with a British accent, says this is her third visit to the park. She started with racism because she wanted to hear what her white servants said behind her back. War crimes was good, she says, but not great. They would not waterboard her. So far poverty is her favorite, because of the verisimilitude. Her hunger is so real. She has scabies.
Chuck sticks near the door, asks how to earn tokens.
"There is the massage parlor, but it's women-only, unless you are ambitious?" He isn't. "Quarry work pays a token for ten hours moving rocks, but the rocks are very large and you must move all or you won't be paid. Have you met the teenagers? They will pay you to eat disgusting things, or masturbate, or fistfight with other blue bracelets. You must avoid the cocaine businessmen. The actors are paid in real cocaine."
"Where do I sleep?"
"Without a token you sleep in the wooden huts. You will find them here and there."
It's drizzling. Chuck peeks into three huts with the same bare bulb, piss-stained mattress, knee-high spigot, dirt floor and toilet hole. He chooses the room with the least water damage. There's a door, but no knob. There's nowhere to plug in his phone, though there's also no cell service here. They promote that fact in the brochure. Chuck changes his wet clothes, drinks tap water from his hands to quell the creeping hunger, then puts on a jacket to sleep.
He wakes at sunrise, gets briefly lost looking for the quarry, but arrives by seven. He's too late. The crowd is deep, and though Chuck yells and waves his arms like everyone else, the foreman chooses whoever's nearest. The gate opens for less than a minute while the lucky twenty are herded in. Teenagers mass behind the unlucky, spitting and cursing, throwing rocks that always fall short.
Chuck tries to slink off with the rest of the blue bracelets, but the teenagers single him out, chasing and trapping him against a dumpster. The leader unbuckles his belt, unzips his fly. Chuck waits until he's half-pantsed, then shoves him and runs, or tries to, but his knee pops. They catch him easily and pin him to the concrete, grunting with simulated kicks.
He lies there until they leave, then braces himself against the wall to stand. Limping back to his hut, Chuck focuses on tokens, how to earn tokens. Only staff members have access to them, so he'll have to cut a deal with an actor. He turns around, to start with the teenagers, and finds them sitting on the fountain ledge passing a cigarette. One throws the butt at him, the rest reluctantly rising to simulate another beating. Chuck waves them closer.
"I'm a billionaire," he tells them. "And I get out of here in nine days. I'll pay each of you a hundred thousand dollars for a handful of tokens. You get fired, so what? Get me tokens, you get the cash. You won't have to work here. You can go to college, start a business, get out of the meat grinder."
The leader shows Chuck the microphone sewed into his collar. Sorry, mister, they all signed contracts. They could get in big trouble. Besides, Chuck's only been here a day. He needs time to get into character. "That's when the healing begins." The hooligans chuckle. While their leader talks, one of his colleagues crawls behind Chuck. "Buying your way out? Weak, bro. You're broke, get used to it. Take the abuse, learn to love it, then do it to yourself. It's easy, everybody does it. And don't worry. We're here to help." The hooligan concludes with a listless shove, dumping Chuck over his turtle-shelled partner.
The pack drifts off, bored again, sharing another cigarette, but while Chuck dusts off, one kid keeps looking back. He's coming. Chuck mimes for him to cover his microphone, but the kid ignores him. "Dan has to say all that stuff in the script. But it's true. You're pathetic. One fucking day?" He tries to laugh, but looks like he wants to cry.
That night Chuck wakes to find three men building a fire in his hut. He protests, but they ignore him, coaxing the flame, rolling their sleeves. They're not wearing wristbands. When the scrap wood catches they simulate cooking up heroin, squabbling over the spoon and syringe until everyone gets fixed. Curled on the mattress in his spare clothes, Chuck watches them watch him. He wonders what they're earning an hour. Their make-up is impeccable. They look wretched.
He's awake before dawn and the second person to arrive at the quarry gate. The foreman picks him sixth, and the relief is overwhelming. He's going to eat today. His knee hurts and he's dizzy, but Chuck will manage. He's not afraid of hard work, because he's never done manual labor before.
Chuck hurts his back almost immediately, but is able to hide it until mid-morning, when the foreman calls him from the line. Does he need to replace Chuck? No, definitely not. Chuck is youngish, strongish, got a bit of a cold, but he's okay, really. "Please." The foreman waves him back to work. When the lunch whistle blows, Chuck isn't halfway to his quota. He'll have to work harder in the afternoon, and knows he can't.
Mercy is a food truck-owner named Miguel. He will advance Chuck a half-day's wage, meaning a half-bowl of rice and beans, but if Chuck doesn't meet his quota or is dismissed from the crew for any reason, he will owe Miguel a full token the following day.The setup is obvious, Miguel betting Chuck's too soft to finish and if he's right, he and Chuck will spend the next eight days simulating wage slavery. But Chuck can smell the food. It's right in front of him. If security weren't watching he'd knock Miguel down and take it. Instead he signs a form, then eats the most exquisite meal of his life. Miguel cooks his beans with lard and salt, a hint of garlic.
The setup was not totally obvious. The cramps are awful and the foreman won't give Chuck a toilet break until he's met his quota. He makes it another half hour, then runs behind a stack of rocks. The foreman docks him a half-day's pay for the mess, which he'd better clean up if he wants to get paid at all. He saw Chuck eating lunch. Chuck should know Miguel never forgives a debt. He's tasted Miguel's rice and beans, he knows the man could could set up shop in any truck stop in Ohio. But he works here. Why? Because Miguel loves calling the cops on a honky. So Chuck can get to work or go to jail, the foreman couldn't give a damn which.
Chuck works three hours unpaid overtime to meet his quota. Then he waits in line another hour to sign his pay stub, with a half-day's deduction for Miguel and another half-day for vandalism. He limps home with no money and no food to find the junkies have kept their trash fire going. The air is nearly unbreathable for the first few minutes. The actors are acting comatose, though, and nobody's touched his suitcase, so Chuck considers them welcome company. They keep the place warm and remind him things could be worse. He sleeps to stop the hunger.
At dawn Charles Alexander Asbury squats over the hole, waves and whispers good morning to the junkie watching him, then cleans himself with yesterday's sock, which he sets aside for later. He sees another sunrise from the quarry gate. It's overcast today, the sun only appearing for a few minutes between horizon and clouds. Chuck is selected again, but as the rain picks up and the stone gets slippery his knee goes from painful to unstable to useless. It doesn't hurt, exactly. It's just done working.
The foreman leaves Chuck lying in the rain to wait for the doctor. The doctor, when he arrives, is actually a claims adjuster. He confirms that Chuck has signed the relevant forms and that the injury took place during a labor simulation, then examines Chuck's knee. "Can you bend it? Stand up. Can you walk?" Chuck hobbles a few steps. "This guy's just lazy. There's no liability," he declares to the foreman, who shrugs.
Armed guards haul Chuck to the gate. He's grateful having someone to hold him up. Alone, he stumbles into town toward a plume of black smoke. From blocks away he knows it's his shack. His street is full of people watching it burn. Chuck's wallet was hidden in the rafters. Credit cards, cash, his phone. He finds park security questioning the gaggle of shamefaced actors. "We're method," one of them explains, scratching his arms. "We live the role."
Chuck crouches by the fire to dry out. Several people have mentioned incarceration. That might be his best bet. They'd hose him down, delouse him, give him bread and water, maybe a phone call. When the rain stops, he changes his mind and goes for a walk. There must be something in this town better than prison.
His thoughts are interrupted by a shriek and smashing glass. Chuck is passing the picket fence neighborhood. From behind a hedge, he watches a man smash a full plate of spaghetti against a wall. The spaghetti sticks to the wall, al dente. There were meatballs. Chuck drools. Tonight he'll break into one of these houses. He'll eat what he can, steal the rest and escape into the woods until check-out.
Each backyard has a toolshed. In the toolshed Chuck picks, he finds a weeping woman in a floral print dress, pearl necklace and earrings, white stockings, brown skin, orange bracelet. She looks at Chuck, limping and filthy, and smiles. "You look like I feel," she says. She doesn't have any visible injuries, but when Chuck reaches to help her up, she flinches. Her name is Anita.
"Chuck."
"Good luck, Chuck." She stands up, and leaving, she turns. "You can hide here. Vince only uses it to punish me."
"Have you got food?"
The house is full of food, but Vince has accused her of getting fat to make him look bad. He's put Anita on a thousand calories a day, and he keeps inventory. If she gets caught eating without permission he'll simulate a beating, she hopes. The drinking's no simulation. "I can smell it on him. He took a swing at me last night so tanked he fell on his ass and I laughed at him. I think he actually hates me."
Chuck tells her about the junkies posing as actors, the burning of his squat. "I've got cash," Anita says. "We can go through the woods, flag somebody down on the highway." It's a highway from nowhere to nowhere, Chuck says. It all belongs to the company. There's nothing out there but park patrol cars. From the house the actor bellows for Anita, slurring his slurs.
"Leave your door unlocked?" Chuck begs. "I'll mess the place up, make it an obvious robbery."
Anita says Vince is either a gifted thespian, or a drunken thug. Chuck should decide which before breaking into the house. Her impression is the company recruited him from a corrections department drama club.
"I'll try to get you something to eat," she says. "Tomorrow."
Chuck sleeps in the shed and is at the quarry by dawn, but the foreman won't pick him. "I got fifty men here fit to move rocks," he says. "You ain't one of them." In yesterday's trash Chuck finds nine beans. Miguel lets him keep them because Chuck is a man who pays his debts.
The coked-up businessmen find him skulking around trashcans in Domestic Violence. "There's five of us today, Chuck. Five tokens, half hour's hard work. You look hungry. Let us feed you." They fondle themselves while he considers until one, overexcited, grabs Chuck by the hair. Chuck elbows him and the actor falls backwards, bumps his head, then leaps up screeching. "That's a violation," he says, clutching his head. "That is a blatant violation." The actors back off, hands up, grumbling about Chuck's macho posturing.
Sprawled in the toolshed, he listens to Vince berating Anita, wondering how long until she brings food. He imagines a bacon cheeseburger, french fries, Coke in a bottle, for several hours while the verbal abuse continues. Long after dark, when Vince's wrath becomes sporadic and half-hearted, Anita shows up with a slice of white bread smeared with peanut butter.
He glares at the bread, then at Anita, who cowers and apologizes. The peanut butter is like glue, Chuck's so dehydrated. Anita fills the silence. He looks like he's been here a week. Four days, Chuck admits. Anita's on day seven. She used to think her life was bland, her childhood and schooling, her marriage and career. "I thought I didn't understand what it meant to be a black woman in America because I was happy."
Fine, Chuck says, but he needs food. She has to get him food.
"Vince watches me all day. I signed up for total immersion."
"When does he go to sleep?"
"Lock-up is eight forty-five, hygiene verification at nine, he belittles me for five minutes while we brush our teeth, then we go to bed. He snores like a pig. If you break a window pane in the kitchen door, you can reach in and unlock it. He won't hear."
What if Anita was right the first time? They could take the food and go, away from the highway, keep walking until they find a road or a town, someplace with cell service. Anita doubts she'll make it far. Vince wants her in heels, so he threw out her other shoes.
"Let's tie him up," she says. "Just for a few days. I know his routine. I'll use his tablet, fill out his checklists, submit his reports. When they let me go, you get to the highway and I'll send someone for you. In the meantime, we've got enough food for three. Liquor, too."
Chuck waits in the shed, whetting his hunger until the lights have been out for an hour. He breaks the window and twists the lock, but to reach the stairs he has to pass the fridge. He stops to scoop mashed potatoes with his fingers, gnaw on a chicken leg, with his free hand making a plate for the microwave. While it heats, he eats half a jar of pickles, dripping on the linoleum. His skin tingles, the hair on his thighs standing. He stops the microwave before it dings. Still no sound upstairs. Chuck sits at the dining room table with knife and fork, paper napkin on his lap, dismantling two thighs and the rest of the potatoes with butter and sour cream.
Standing in a daze, Chuck knocks over his chair. Then, about to whisper-curse, a belch escapes. He hears a man's voice, heavy footsteps overhead. Anita, trying to explain. "In our house?" Vince shrieks. "In our home, Anna?" Glass shatters, Anita screams, Chuck runs upstairs to find her curled in a corner under an overturned bureau, Vince's clenched fists quivering. Chuck, still running, headbutts him in the back. Vince bounces off the wall, tackles Chuck and they grapple on the carpet until Chuck sees Anita with a nightstand over her head. He holds Vince in place, closes his eyes, then feels Vince's breath knocked from his mouth.
They put him in a chair. Vince isn't breathing. When they finish tying him up, he isn't even bleeding. All his blood is on the floor, their hands, their clothes. "We'll say it was an accident," Chuck says. "He fell." Anita heard him, but doesn't answer. "A misunderstanding. I heard screams, ran in, hit him with the nightstand."
"So you killed him? You'll go to jail for me?"
"No. No, you're right. We stick to the plan. We leave him here, you fill out his reports, that gives us three days to think."
"There's one other thing," she says. "They do quality assurance checks. I've seen them peeping in the windows, listening from the street. You'll have to fill in for Vince."
The next day Anita leads him through the schedule and scripts. At six, a screaming fit over breakfast. Morning hygiene verification, filthy house scenario, then Chuck drinks and watches sitcoms while she cooks lunch. He eats, smashes his plate, talks dirty while watching her clean up. Usually Vince will stagger off for a nap while she mops and dusts and fixes dinner. They can use this time to refine the plan. For example, Anita thinks they need to bury the body and scour the room before check-out. If anyone asks about Vince, she'll tell them he skipped out, flighty actor, moved to L.A., maybe he'll turn up in a soap opera.
Or Chuck can leave. He didn't kill anybody. She won't tell anyone he was here.
Chuck closes his eyes, tries to picture Marcy, the house, his workshop. He sees nothing but the chicken downstairs. He can't abandon Anita. She fed him. He owes her. "In that case," she says, "you need to set fire to some of my clothes, then throw them out the window. It's almost eight-thirty."
After that Chuck locks up, examines her underwear and sniffs under her arms, they brush their teeth in silence, then make love to seal their complicity.
A black sedan pulls up during the filthy house scene. The man approaching wears a company ID on a lanyard, knocks and lets himself in while Chuck spits on Anita, swearing until he can't breathe. Sweaty and glaring, he turns to the man in the company ID. "Whaddaya want?"
"It's payday, you didn't come for your check. Wait. Who are you? Where's Mark?"
Anita tells the story as it happened. The supervisor wants to see the body. It's covered in flies. He'll have to call this one in. Did he smell coffee downstairs?
This time the claims adjuster arrives in minutes, with a deputy assistant section manager and an attorney from corporate. They confirm that the deceased was in character at the time of the incident. Chuck intervened with non-lethal force. Anita, in a moment of passion, took revenge on her simulated abuser. It's not unheard of. That's why we have the waiver.
Given the gravity of the incident, the attorney recommends they leave. They will receive a partial refund. If Anita and Chuck will just sign a few more forms, their helicopter should arrive shortly. The deputy assistant section manager suggests they might make a small donation to the actor's family. Mark had a wife, three children, and no life insurance.
Anita and Chuck wait at the helipad in silence. In-flight it's too loud to talk. Near Cleveland they share a rueful glance. Landing, they hold hands. Their separate limousines are waiting. Over the beating rotors they shout a solemn vow never to contact each other again.
A change of clothes and a shower later, Chuck sees Anita in the VIP lounge at the airport. Her flight doesn't board for an hour. His isn't until six. They sit at the bar.
After a few scotch and sodas, Anita admits that she's terrified of going home. She killed a man. A father. How can she hug her children? Tomorrow is Sunday. Trey will want to go to church. She cheated on him. Adultery and murder. She doesn't even know Chuck's last name.
"Asbury."
"Charles Alexander Asbury?" She read a profile on him a couple weeks ago. It said he lacked a killer's instinct. Anita laughs until she cries, then cries for several minutes. Chuck wonders how he's going to face the board. Even if they do reelect him, he can't work. His concentration is shot, his hands shake, he cries without warning. Most of the time he's angry or scared. He's going to give his money to poverty relief. He decided in the shower. Probably divorce Marcy, unless she divorces him first.
While Anita drinks, Chuck eats a platter of complimentary finger sandwiches and orders two milkshakes. Careful, Anita says. Don't lose that poverty bod. Chuck checks the bar mirror. This suit fits well again. His cheekbones stand out above a single chin. He sees a well-dressed mannequin.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
Chuck thinks the retreat is a moderately funny, extremely lucrative joke. The park's holding company bought an abandoned town in Ohio, set up a helipad, hired a few hundred regional actors, and started selling ten-day packages at two grand a night, offering a range of authentic traumas. Their website calls it a therapeutic theme park for the privilege-afflicted.
From the helicopter the town looks dilapidated, but habitable. Most of the buildings have roofs. He sees people in the streets, a wealthier neighborhood with painted houses. Chuck's father grew up in a town like this, so Chuck doesn't see it as a shithole. There are far worse places than Ohio. The pilot helps Chuck with his bag, directs him to the reception center, and wishes him a cordial good luck.
Reception is a cinderblock box on the short road to town. The woman inside hands Chuck a clipboard with a liability waiver and checklist. A security guard frisks him for weapons. As instructed by email, Chuck's not wearing a belt or shoelaces. He signs the release form and reviews the checklist, ruling out most of the options immediately: slavery, genocide, rape, incarceration, war, war crimes, natural disaster, domestic abuse, terminal cancer. He could go with something theatrical, like death of a spouse or alcoholic father. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia all promise to exclude him from a society he already disdains, but the town has a police force so the risk of violent persecution, even simulated, seems unacceptably high. Chuck settles on poverty because he thinks he was poor in grad school and ten more days won't kill him.
The receptionist tags him with a blue bracelet and invites him to sit on a bench while she calls the orientation committee. Chuck sits in the sun, still cold from the flight, inspecting the town. Brick and more brick, badly weathered but apparently sturdy, punctuated by clapboard houses crammed into alleys. He can see a general store and restaurant, some other minor businesses. Snobs interviewed about this place described it as hell on Earth, but Chuck likes the fresh air, sunlight, people, stray dogs, traffic lights, trees, birds, everything he's missed over three decades locked in labs. Ten days of reality could be good for him.
It gets hot, so he stands in the shade. After a while he sits. When he gets cold again, he goes back to the bench, rolls his jacket into a pillow and lies on his back. Clouds drift past. Chuck looks for animal shapes, but only sees circuitry.
Voices wake him, some teenagers yelling at a bum. Chuck stretches and sits up, folds his jacket over his arm and looks for his suitcase. Porters must have taken it. He'll check at reception. The receptionist ignores him, filing her nails. A rock clatters by Chuck's feet. The teenagers threw a rock at him. They have his suitcase and take turns spitting on it until Chuck chases them off. He cleans his suitcase with a handkerchief and asks again at reception. Where is the orientation committee? The receptionist locks her bunker door. A security guard waddles over, asks her if there's a problem. She says Chuck is scaring her. The guard grabs Chuck by the arm and shoves him into the street.
Finally the orientation committee arrives, a cluster of men in dark suits and sunglasses, strolling, joking, taking their sweet time. They giggle when Chuck introduces himself. "You looking for a job, Chuck?" one asks. Chuck explains that he's just arrived and is waiting to be shown his accommodation. The men bray and clutch their guts, a local-theater enactment of hilarity.
"You're not the orientation committee."
"We're the reorientation committee." What's that supposed to mean? "It means I'll give you a token to suck my cock, hillbilly."
Chuck gets the shtick. The receptionist, the teenagers, these guys - they're all the orientation committee. They've done their jobs passably well. Chuck is oriented. He graciously declines their offer, takes his bag and walks into town to find somewhere to sleep, stopping at a sandwich stand for directions and a sandwich. The proprietor won't give him either. He tells Chuck clear out, he's frightening off customers. A woman in a black suit steps around Chuck to order a turkey and Swiss on rye. She's wearing a black bracelet. Does the shop owner take euros? Yes, but he'll have to give her change in dollars. That's fine, she says, and hands him twenty euros. Her change comes in coins.
"I'll buy that sandwich off you for fifty bucks," Chuck tells the woman. Sorrow and fear disfigure her face and she scurries across the street, glancing to see he's not following. Chuck shows the sandwich guy his wallet full of cash and repeats the offer. The guy looks at Chuck's bracelet, suitcase, clean cardigan and Oxford cloth, then beckons him closer.
"Blue bracelets need tokens," he explains in a Canadian accent. "Everyone else pays cash." When he speaks again, it's pure Akron. "Go starve somewhere else, hillbilly. You're bad for business."
The abandoned-looking houses are occupied by people in green, pink, purple and blue bracelets. Nobody will let him stay. These places cost a token a night and the landlords spot-check after dark. They'll turn you out, and if you get caught sleeping on the street you're automatically transferred to incarceration. The last person to refuse him, a Korean heiress with a British accent, says this is her third visit to the park. She started with racism because she wanted to hear what her white servants said behind her back. War crimes was good, she says, but not great. They would not waterboard her. So far poverty is her favorite, because of the verisimilitude. Her hunger is so real. She has scabies.
Chuck sticks near the door, asks how to earn tokens.
"There is the massage parlor, but it's women-only, unless you are ambitious?" He isn't. "Quarry work pays a token for ten hours moving rocks, but the rocks are very large and you must move all or you won't be paid. Have you met the teenagers? They will pay you to eat disgusting things, or masturbate, or fistfight with other blue bracelets. You must avoid the cocaine businessmen. The actors are paid in real cocaine."
"Where do I sleep?"
"Without a token you sleep in the wooden huts. You will find them here and there."
It's drizzling. Chuck peeks into three huts with the same bare bulb, piss-stained mattress, knee-high spigot, dirt floor and toilet hole. He chooses the room with the least water damage. There's a door, but no knob. There's nowhere to plug in his phone, though there's also no cell service here. They promote that fact in the brochure. Chuck changes his wet clothes, drinks tap water from his hands to quell the creeping hunger, then puts on a jacket to sleep.
He wakes at sunrise, gets briefly lost looking for the quarry, but arrives by seven. He's too late. The crowd is deep, and though Chuck yells and waves his arms like everyone else, the foreman chooses whoever's nearest. The gate opens for less than a minute while the lucky twenty are herded in. Teenagers mass behind the unlucky, spitting and cursing, throwing rocks that always fall short.
Chuck tries to slink off with the rest of the blue bracelets, but the teenagers single him out, chasing and trapping him against a dumpster. The leader unbuckles his belt, unzips his fly. Chuck waits until he's half-pantsed, then shoves him and runs, or tries to, but his knee pops. They catch him easily and pin him to the concrete, grunting with simulated kicks.
He lies there until they leave, then braces himself against the wall to stand. Limping back to his hut, Chuck focuses on tokens, how to earn tokens. Only staff members have access to them, so he'll have to cut a deal with an actor. He turns around, to start with the teenagers, and finds them sitting on the fountain ledge passing a cigarette. One throws the butt at him, the rest reluctantly rising to simulate another beating. Chuck waves them closer.
"I'm a billionaire," he tells them. "And I get out of here in nine days. I'll pay each of you a hundred thousand dollars for a handful of tokens. You get fired, so what? Get me tokens, you get the cash. You won't have to work here. You can go to college, start a business, get out of the meat grinder."
The leader shows Chuck the microphone sewed into his collar. Sorry, mister, they all signed contracts. They could get in big trouble. Besides, Chuck's only been here a day. He needs time to get into character. "That's when the healing begins." The hooligans chuckle. While their leader talks, one of his colleagues crawls behind Chuck. "Buying your way out? Weak, bro. You're broke, get used to it. Take the abuse, learn to love it, then do it to yourself. It's easy, everybody does it. And don't worry. We're here to help." The hooligan concludes with a listless shove, dumping Chuck over his turtle-shelled partner.
The pack drifts off, bored again, sharing another cigarette, but while Chuck dusts off, one kid keeps looking back. He's coming. Chuck mimes for him to cover his microphone, but the kid ignores him. "Dan has to say all that stuff in the script. But it's true. You're pathetic. One fucking day?" He tries to laugh, but looks like he wants to cry.
That night Chuck wakes to find three men building a fire in his hut. He protests, but they ignore him, coaxing the flame, rolling their sleeves. They're not wearing wristbands. When the scrap wood catches they simulate cooking up heroin, squabbling over the spoon and syringe until everyone gets fixed. Curled on the mattress in his spare clothes, Chuck watches them watch him. He wonders what they're earning an hour. Their make-up is impeccable. They look wretched.
He's awake before dawn and the second person to arrive at the quarry gate. The foreman picks him sixth, and the relief is overwhelming. He's going to eat today. His knee hurts and he's dizzy, but Chuck will manage. He's not afraid of hard work, because he's never done manual labor before.
Chuck hurts his back almost immediately, but is able to hide it until mid-morning, when the foreman calls him from the line. Does he need to replace Chuck? No, definitely not. Chuck is youngish, strongish, got a bit of a cold, but he's okay, really. "Please." The foreman waves him back to work. When the lunch whistle blows, Chuck isn't halfway to his quota. He'll have to work harder in the afternoon, and knows he can't.
Mercy is a food truck-owner named Miguel. He will advance Chuck a half-day's wage, meaning a half-bowl of rice and beans, but if Chuck doesn't meet his quota or is dismissed from the crew for any reason, he will owe Miguel a full token the following day.The setup is obvious, Miguel betting Chuck's too soft to finish and if he's right, he and Chuck will spend the next eight days simulating wage slavery. But Chuck can smell the food. It's right in front of him. If security weren't watching he'd knock Miguel down and take it. Instead he signs a form, then eats the most exquisite meal of his life. Miguel cooks his beans with lard and salt, a hint of garlic.
The setup was not totally obvious. The cramps are awful and the foreman won't give Chuck a toilet break until he's met his quota. He makes it another half hour, then runs behind a stack of rocks. The foreman docks him a half-day's pay for the mess, which he'd better clean up if he wants to get paid at all. He saw Chuck eating lunch. Chuck should know Miguel never forgives a debt. He's tasted Miguel's rice and beans, he knows the man could could set up shop in any truck stop in Ohio. But he works here. Why? Because Miguel loves calling the cops on a honky. So Chuck can get to work or go to jail, the foreman couldn't give a damn which.
Chuck works three hours unpaid overtime to meet his quota. Then he waits in line another hour to sign his pay stub, with a half-day's deduction for Miguel and another half-day for vandalism. He limps home with no money and no food to find the junkies have kept their trash fire going. The air is nearly unbreathable for the first few minutes. The actors are acting comatose, though, and nobody's touched his suitcase, so Chuck considers them welcome company. They keep the place warm and remind him things could be worse. He sleeps to stop the hunger.
At dawn Charles Alexander Asbury squats over the hole, waves and whispers good morning to the junkie watching him, then cleans himself with yesterday's sock, which he sets aside for later. He sees another sunrise from the quarry gate. It's overcast today, the sun only appearing for a few minutes between horizon and clouds. Chuck is selected again, but as the rain picks up and the stone gets slippery his knee goes from painful to unstable to useless. It doesn't hurt, exactly. It's just done working.
The foreman leaves Chuck lying in the rain to wait for the doctor. The doctor, when he arrives, is actually a claims adjuster. He confirms that Chuck has signed the relevant forms and that the injury took place during a labor simulation, then examines Chuck's knee. "Can you bend it? Stand up. Can you walk?" Chuck hobbles a few steps. "This guy's just lazy. There's no liability," he declares to the foreman, who shrugs.
Armed guards haul Chuck to the gate. He's grateful having someone to hold him up. Alone, he stumbles into town toward a plume of black smoke. From blocks away he knows it's his shack. His street is full of people watching it burn. Chuck's wallet was hidden in the rafters. Credit cards, cash, his phone. He finds park security questioning the gaggle of shamefaced actors. "We're method," one of them explains, scratching his arms. "We live the role."
Chuck crouches by the fire to dry out. Several people have mentioned incarceration. That might be his best bet. They'd hose him down, delouse him, give him bread and water, maybe a phone call. When the rain stops, he changes his mind and goes for a walk. There must be something in this town better than prison.
His thoughts are interrupted by a shriek and smashing glass. Chuck is passing the picket fence neighborhood. From behind a hedge, he watches a man smash a full plate of spaghetti against a wall. The spaghetti sticks to the wall, al dente. There were meatballs. Chuck drools. Tonight he'll break into one of these houses. He'll eat what he can, steal the rest and escape into the woods until check-out.
Each backyard has a toolshed. In the toolshed Chuck picks, he finds a weeping woman in a floral print dress, pearl necklace and earrings, white stockings, brown skin, orange bracelet. She looks at Chuck, limping and filthy, and smiles. "You look like I feel," she says. She doesn't have any visible injuries, but when Chuck reaches to help her up, she flinches. Her name is Anita.
"Chuck."
"Good luck, Chuck." She stands up, and leaving, she turns. "You can hide here. Vince only uses it to punish me."
"Have you got food?"
The house is full of food, but Vince has accused her of getting fat to make him look bad. He's put Anita on a thousand calories a day, and he keeps inventory. If she gets caught eating without permission he'll simulate a beating, she hopes. The drinking's no simulation. "I can smell it on him. He took a swing at me last night so tanked he fell on his ass and I laughed at him. I think he actually hates me."
Chuck tells her about the junkies posing as actors, the burning of his squat. "I've got cash," Anita says. "We can go through the woods, flag somebody down on the highway." It's a highway from nowhere to nowhere, Chuck says. It all belongs to the company. There's nothing out there but park patrol cars. From the house the actor bellows for Anita, slurring his slurs.
"Leave your door unlocked?" Chuck begs. "I'll mess the place up, make it an obvious robbery."
Anita says Vince is either a gifted thespian, or a drunken thug. Chuck should decide which before breaking into the house. Her impression is the company recruited him from a corrections department drama club.
"I'll try to get you something to eat," she says. "Tomorrow."
Chuck sleeps in the shed and is at the quarry by dawn, but the foreman won't pick him. "I got fifty men here fit to move rocks," he says. "You ain't one of them." In yesterday's trash Chuck finds nine beans. Miguel lets him keep them because Chuck is a man who pays his debts.
The coked-up businessmen find him skulking around trashcans in Domestic Violence. "There's five of us today, Chuck. Five tokens, half hour's hard work. You look hungry. Let us feed you." They fondle themselves while he considers until one, overexcited, grabs Chuck by the hair. Chuck elbows him and the actor falls backwards, bumps his head, then leaps up screeching. "That's a violation," he says, clutching his head. "That is a blatant violation." The actors back off, hands up, grumbling about Chuck's macho posturing.
Sprawled in the toolshed, he listens to Vince berating Anita, wondering how long until she brings food. He imagines a bacon cheeseburger, french fries, Coke in a bottle, for several hours while the verbal abuse continues. Long after dark, when Vince's wrath becomes sporadic and half-hearted, Anita shows up with a slice of white bread smeared with peanut butter.
He glares at the bread, then at Anita, who cowers and apologizes. The peanut butter is like glue, Chuck's so dehydrated. Anita fills the silence. He looks like he's been here a week. Four days, Chuck admits. Anita's on day seven. She used to think her life was bland, her childhood and schooling, her marriage and career. "I thought I didn't understand what it meant to be a black woman in America because I was happy."
Fine, Chuck says, but he needs food. She has to get him food.
"Vince watches me all day. I signed up for total immersion."
"When does he go to sleep?"
"Lock-up is eight forty-five, hygiene verification at nine, he belittles me for five minutes while we brush our teeth, then we go to bed. He snores like a pig. If you break a window pane in the kitchen door, you can reach in and unlock it. He won't hear."
What if Anita was right the first time? They could take the food and go, away from the highway, keep walking until they find a road or a town, someplace with cell service. Anita doubts she'll make it far. Vince wants her in heels, so he threw out her other shoes.
"Let's tie him up," she says. "Just for a few days. I know his routine. I'll use his tablet, fill out his checklists, submit his reports. When they let me go, you get to the highway and I'll send someone for you. In the meantime, we've got enough food for three. Liquor, too."
Chuck waits in the shed, whetting his hunger until the lights have been out for an hour. He breaks the window and twists the lock, but to reach the stairs he has to pass the fridge. He stops to scoop mashed potatoes with his fingers, gnaw on a chicken leg, with his free hand making a plate for the microwave. While it heats, he eats half a jar of pickles, dripping on the linoleum. His skin tingles, the hair on his thighs standing. He stops the microwave before it dings. Still no sound upstairs. Chuck sits at the dining room table with knife and fork, paper napkin on his lap, dismantling two thighs and the rest of the potatoes with butter and sour cream.
Standing in a daze, Chuck knocks over his chair. Then, about to whisper-curse, a belch escapes. He hears a man's voice, heavy footsteps overhead. Anita, trying to explain. "In our house?" Vince shrieks. "In our home, Anna?" Glass shatters, Anita screams, Chuck runs upstairs to find her curled in a corner under an overturned bureau, Vince's clenched fists quivering. Chuck, still running, headbutts him in the back. Vince bounces off the wall, tackles Chuck and they grapple on the carpet until Chuck sees Anita with a nightstand over her head. He holds Vince in place, closes his eyes, then feels Vince's breath knocked from his mouth.
They put him in a chair. Vince isn't breathing. When they finish tying him up, he isn't even bleeding. All his blood is on the floor, their hands, their clothes. "We'll say it was an accident," Chuck says. "He fell." Anita heard him, but doesn't answer. "A misunderstanding. I heard screams, ran in, hit him with the nightstand."
"So you killed him? You'll go to jail for me?"
"No. No, you're right. We stick to the plan. We leave him here, you fill out his reports, that gives us three days to think."
"There's one other thing," she says. "They do quality assurance checks. I've seen them peeping in the windows, listening from the street. You'll have to fill in for Vince."
The next day Anita leads him through the schedule and scripts. At six, a screaming fit over breakfast. Morning hygiene verification, filthy house scenario, then Chuck drinks and watches sitcoms while she cooks lunch. He eats, smashes his plate, talks dirty while watching her clean up. Usually Vince will stagger off for a nap while she mops and dusts and fixes dinner. They can use this time to refine the plan. For example, Anita thinks they need to bury the body and scour the room before check-out. If anyone asks about Vince, she'll tell them he skipped out, flighty actor, moved to L.A., maybe he'll turn up in a soap opera.
Or Chuck can leave. He didn't kill anybody. She won't tell anyone he was here.
Chuck closes his eyes, tries to picture Marcy, the house, his workshop. He sees nothing but the chicken downstairs. He can't abandon Anita. She fed him. He owes her. "In that case," she says, "you need to set fire to some of my clothes, then throw them out the window. It's almost eight-thirty."
After that Chuck locks up, examines her underwear and sniffs under her arms, they brush their teeth in silence, then make love to seal their complicity.
A black sedan pulls up during the filthy house scene. The man approaching wears a company ID on a lanyard, knocks and lets himself in while Chuck spits on Anita, swearing until he can't breathe. Sweaty and glaring, he turns to the man in the company ID. "Whaddaya want?"
"It's payday, you didn't come for your check. Wait. Who are you? Where's Mark?"
Anita tells the story as it happened. The supervisor wants to see the body. It's covered in flies. He'll have to call this one in. Did he smell coffee downstairs?
This time the claims adjuster arrives in minutes, with a deputy assistant section manager and an attorney from corporate. They confirm that the deceased was in character at the time of the incident. Chuck intervened with non-lethal force. Anita, in a moment of passion, took revenge on her simulated abuser. It's not unheard of. That's why we have the waiver.
Given the gravity of the incident, the attorney recommends they leave. They will receive a partial refund. If Anita and Chuck will just sign a few more forms, their helicopter should arrive shortly. The deputy assistant section manager suggests they might make a small donation to the actor's family. Mark had a wife, three children, and no life insurance.
Anita and Chuck wait at the helipad in silence. In-flight it's too loud to talk. Near Cleveland they share a rueful glance. Landing, they hold hands. Their separate limousines are waiting. Over the beating rotors they shout a solemn vow never to contact each other again.
A change of clothes and a shower later, Chuck sees Anita in the VIP lounge at the airport. Her flight doesn't board for an hour. His isn't until six. They sit at the bar.
After a few scotch and sodas, Anita admits that she's terrified of going home. She killed a man. A father. How can she hug her children? Tomorrow is Sunday. Trey will want to go to church. She cheated on him. Adultery and murder. She doesn't even know Chuck's last name.
"Asbury."
"Charles Alexander Asbury?" She read a profile on him a couple weeks ago. It said he lacked a killer's instinct. Anita laughs until she cries, then cries for several minutes. Chuck wonders how he's going to face the board. Even if they do reelect him, he can't work. His concentration is shot, his hands shake, he cries without warning. Most of the time he's angry or scared. He's going to give his money to poverty relief. He decided in the shower. Probably divorce Marcy, unless she divorces him first.
While Anita drinks, Chuck eats a platter of complimentary finger sandwiches and orders two milkshakes. Careful, Anita says. Don't lose that poverty bod. Chuck checks the bar mirror. This suit fits well again. His cheekbones stand out above a single chin. He sees a well-dressed mannequin.
A fascinating account of a new-age psychodrama, planned and played out with rank amateurs who didn't plan for the worst. By employing out of work actors, they were setting themselves up fr disaster. Part of the responsibility is theirs; the rest is on chuck. Faced with hardship, his first instinct is to reach for his wallet. And when things turn even worse, his behaviors and attitudes devolve as well, making him no better than the user found in sprawled in the gutter in American streets. But we shouldn't have any qualms about Chuck's ultimate fate; prisons in America aren't made to hold billionaires.
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