Eight
The next day began no different than the few before it for Eugenio and his family. Matilda was all go-go-go and Janelle was there but not there and in a big hurry. Eugenio had taken Calvin's warnings seriously. He decided to tell Gabby about the “personal calls” coming in for Richie and maybe she could change his extension or move him to another desk and that would be that. He was not going to ask any more questions about “Mundo”, and the only reason he gave himself for not throwing out the papers and the toys was in case they were needed for evidence someday. He figured that if a shady guy like Calvin was freaked than the whole thing was nothing to go anywhere near.
He almost went through with this plan. The only problem was that Gabby wasn't around in the morning and his phone was beeping non-stop as if suddenly all anyone in the world wanted to do was offset their carbon footprint. He had forgotten about the deadline. It was the next to last day to avoid the first stage penalty surcharge. The whole process was incredibly complex, but the law was taking effect in phases, and if you didn't sign up by the first date, you'd have to pay a penalty plus a surcharge, and then there was another date a few months down the road where the surcharge itself had an additional fee piled on to it. Finally, by the end of it, the penalty plus the surcharge plus the additional fee plus the “aggregate bonus” ended up equaling double the original penalty itself. The offsets weren't all or nothing, either. You had to pay for so many “bonus points” in order to qualify for “levels of exemption”.
Eugenio didn't really understand it. He and Janelle qualified for the minimum level in any case. The whole thing only cost them twenty bucks, but for people who made more money, drove fancier cars, lived in bigger houses, had more children, owned more stuff and traveled by plane, it could end up in the tens of thousands. No wonder there was a rush to pay a few hundred to avoid that extra cost. The politics had gone crazy too. There was the “personal responsibility” party who believed that no one actually had any personal responsibility for anything, and then there was the “socially conscious” party who believed that social consciousness stopped at the pocketbook. Neither group was capable of any effective action, especially since they completely blocked each other's efforts all the time. The only reason the offset tax went through in the first place was the federal fiscal collapse brought on by the cascading costs of the constant climate crises.
It was the wealthier people who were calling now in the final days of phase one, and they were desperate to offset as much as they could. Eugenio had no problem selling them the glories of entire evergreen forests, prairies full of wind farms and desert-spanning aqueduct discounts. The whole office was busily buzzing. Even the web designers and programmers were manning the phones now, and extra bodies had been trucked in from who knows where to line the hallways, cell phones in hand. It was kind of exciting. Eugenio was getting into the spirit of it and even thought of mingling with his fellow phone folks during the upcoming lunch break. He'd brought another sandwich and apple, but lingered in the parking lot rather than escaping to the bush.
The lot was crammed and the frozen burrito line was chaos in the kitchen, with people lining up nearly halfway around the building. Eugenio was jostled and jostling back but even though he was surrounded and jumbled up with other people he didn't manage to find a single one to talk to. Everyone was far too busy pushing one way or another or trying to squeeze through or stuffing their face. Rumors were spreading of an approaching food truck, and a roar rippled through the crowd when the horns of a bright green taco-mobile blasted out a trumpet salsa melody and people began shoving each other to make room for the thing.
The truck inched its way into the lot with the driver leaning out of his window, yelling and gesturing for everyone to clear a space where he could pull in sideways. There was a lot of beeping and back and forth until the truck managed to position itself exactly the way it wanted. Then the side shutters flung open and people began hurling themselves at it. In the midst of all that, the sound of a sudden gun shot split the air. The chaos up to that point was nothing compared to the madness that followed. The news later reported that twenty-six people ended up in the hospital from the trampling alone. Nobody seemed to have been hit by a bullet.
Eugenio had already been on his way back into the building so he was able to reclaim his station upstairs without much trouble. He'd kept in mind his plan to not get involved, to pay no attention to anything but the work itself, but as he still hadn't seen Gabby he hadn't gotten around to snitching on Richie yet. He just went right back to the phone, switched it on and continued as if nothing else was happening. Most others around him did the same thing. From the busy and noisy big room upstairs you wouldn't know about the ambulances rushing to the scene below, or the cop cars sirening, or the taco truck dishing it out and raking it in.
He didn't look to his right or to his left or straight ahead or anywhere else, so he didn't know how long the little man in the light blue suit had been standing right next to him. The man wasn't talking, either, but he was staring at Eugenio through light brown eyes. He was short, but strong and solid, sporting long, slick-backed black hair and a small tuft on the bottom of his chin. He waited patiently while Eugenio sold a pile of Earth-friendly goods to some rich guy from Newport. When the sale was done, Eugenio put the phone on pause so he could take a little breather. That's when the little man spoke.
“So they're calling you Alex now, eh, Richie?”