Six
Matilda was just as much a morning person as a night one, and she was up by six just so she could say she beat her dad to the kitchen even if it was only by five seconds. When he got there she had already pulled the chair to the cupboards and was clambering up to grab a box of cereal off the shelf. Eugenio patted her on the head and slid past to start the electric water pot going for coffee. Janelle would have the bathroom occupied pretty much until the minute the coffee was ready. By then, Matilda had wolfed down her flakes, put the bowl in the sink, and run off to pick out her wardrobe for the day. She didn't own a wide selection but she made the most of every possible combination.
Eugenio in the meantime had his own toast and fruit and got around to preparing Matilda's lunch, a peanut butter sandwich and an apple, both properly separated in her backpack so they wouldn't touch, or in her words “smudge”, each other. He was just about to wash the knife he'd used when he realized he ought to make the same thing for himself. He laughed out loud how stupid he'd been not to do that before, but he'd been seduced on day one by Eco None's promise of “free lunches every day”. It had only taken him two days to give up on that little perk. There was a thermos somewhere too, he thought, so he rummaged through the drawers until he found it, stuck way in the back where it obviously hadn't been used in months if not years. Scrubbing it out and filling it with his own brew cheered him up. Maybe the job wouldn't be as bad that day.
He gave Matilda lots of hugs and kisses as he loaded her into Janelle's car for the ride to school. Janelle was in a rush, having forgotten to complete a couple of tasks the night before, so the two dashed off giving Eugenio five minutes to spare before he had to get in the car and head off. He didn't know what to do with that time. It wasn't enough to start on anything new, and he didn't have anything else worth spending five minutes on, so he just grabbed his jacket and got in the car anyway, telling himself that maybe there'd be more traffic than usual so maybe it wasn't a bad idea.
There wasn't more traffic than usual. There was exactly the same traffic. From his home all the way out to the fields it was the same, brown and dry with civilization thinning out into nothingness once he got past the shopping mall and the power plant and the little town of Trés Piños. He felt like he was tracing the route of the future, getting a head start on destiny. Going home at night was more like the Old West, the pioneer days, when the pilgrims emerged from the desert and built up the cities and the towns, and now it was all heading in the other direction and fast. Migration south was the latest trend, with American ex-pat colonies beginning to dominate the tropics, and not only near the vanishing coastlines but more and more up in the mountains and the hills, where rain still fell and the oceans couldn't wash away your house from one day to the next.
The whole country was all going to empty out to dusty plains and dry fields. You couldn't plant any trees around here anymore, Eugenio thought, so no wonder they're planting them up North, if they are planting them at all. He recalled one of Richie's notes in which it was hinted that the whole tree-planting thing was a fraud, like those companies who promise to scatter your loved one's ashes from a plane over the mountains but really just toss them in a pit in their own back yard. Did it even matter if the trees were really planted? The customers were only paying less to avoid paying more. They didn't give a shit about the actual trees, did they?
His mood had already soured by the time he reached the office. Too much time all alone. Listening to the car radio didn't help because his thoughts only drowned out the sound, and the motion of the car, in rhythm with all the other cars, made him feel like a helpless ant being carried along by the mob. There was no room for willpower in this commute, no space for being yourself, or maybe just enough for that one eccentricity that set you apart, the custom license plate, the funny bumper sticker, the selection of music and its volume. There was only one lane each way on this highway and the drivers were all lined up properly and doing their diligence, each one just the same as the next.
From the parking lot to the punch clock to the locker to retrieve the phone to the workbench, there was nothing any different about this day for Eugenio except for the brown paper bag which contained his sandwich and an apple and the thermos. He stowed it in the file cabinet below. All around him the others poured into the office and took up their positions with varying levels of clamor. He put on his headset, switched on the phone, and assumed his position. He only hoped it would be smooth sailing today, no wrong numbers, no one looking for Richie, nothing but sales, sales, sales.
The phone beeped.
“Good morning. This is Eco None. How may I help you?”
“Richie? Is that you?”
“This is Eco None.”
“Listen, I know you can't talk. I understand your situation. The thing is, The Front can't wait any longer. They're going to make their move. You have to be ready.”
“I'm sorry,” Eugenio said, “I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Richie, come on. Stop playing games.”
“Can you hold, please?”
Eugenio hung up and took a deep breath. I'll just pretend that didn't just happen, he thought. Move along, keep breathing, work on the script. But just in case, he made a mental note of the number that call had come from. When he saw that number again, he would simply disconnect it right away. That made sense, didn't it?
It made sense, but the caller or “The Front” or whoever was calling for Richie was living in another reality, one that involved clandestine tricks gleaned from countless television shows, where they switched out their SIM cards as a matter of course, and used voice disguising filters, and probably kept themselves on the move so not even super spies with GPS could track them down. Eugenio fielded several normal calls and even performed a couple of tidy upsells before they got through again.
“Richie. It'll be the day after tomorrow. Copy? The day after tomorrow.”
“I'm sorry but I'm not Richie.”
“Okay, so they changed your code name again? What is it this time?”
“Not Richie,” he answered, thinking on his feet. No way am I telling them what they call me here.
“It's still Richie for us. We're counting on you. The plan is set. You'd better not let us down.”
This time it was they who hung up. Eugenio bit his lip. That last part had sounded like a threat. He couldn't help but wonder, did they actually know Alejandro Martinez? Did they know what he looked like, where he lived, who he was? Or did they only know him as the person who answered extension 419 at Eco None? Now he was the one with questions, but no one else called for Richie the rest of the day.