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Jimmy’s other complication is that he’s got a tiny green giant living under his slop sink. Tiny giant sleeps in a bucket, next to the plunger Jimmy’s ex left him. The plunger is institutional quality. In fact, you could clean out a prison shitter with that thing. When he’s feeling giddy, the tiny giant uses the plunger as a stripper pole. Just for laughs. Jimmy’s ex stole the plunger from work along with some cleaning supplies, a crappy old laptop, and some Vicodin. It was her pathetic, silent protest against the abuses she saw there. Jimmy’s ex ran the sleep disorder chamber over at Resource. Resource is an attitude more than a place. Or so the official aphorism goes. Really it’s a bunch of Quonset huts and hopelessness. Resource is where all the brain-dead go to die. The ones that don’t jump off buildings or smash their cars into bridges. There are long lines of people who are not sure of why they are standing in line. They seem dazed and confused. Lots of them enter the buildings, but few ever come out. Little girls skip rope in the dirt until they fall over from exhaustion. Men in Hazmat suits rake leaves into piles. A group of soccer moms sit in a circle around the flag pole, making scarecrows out of her dead husbands’ clothing.
Resource is made up of about fifty modular units spread out over an abandoned Army base that Congress closed down after the Cold War. There are no names on the buildings, only letters and numbers. A few weeks after the Pestilent Maize outbreak, a bunch of semitrailers rolled in and set up a perimeter. Scientists with Rybogerm patches on their uniforms unloaded computers and hyperbaric tanks. They began to conduct experiments on the victims of the Pestilent Maize. The researchers were overrun with test subjects and had to advertise for support staff. Jimmy’s ex answered an ad on craigslist. She was a psych major in college, with a theatre minor, and Rybogerm offered to pay off her student loans if she took the job. Each hour served knocked five bucks off the balance. The Resource chick told the interviewer that she was hoping to do some drama therapy with some of the victims, but really all they were just looking for was warm bodies who could wield a taser and shove the crazies into the tank.
Jimmy met his ex at a bar. He called her “the Resource chick,” and the name stuck. She was shit-faced and trying to forget what she’d seen that week. Jimmy bought her a drink. Made her forget the ice baths and experimental drug cocktails. Jimmy and the Resource chick had sex in the parking lot. They lay down behind a Dumpster. It was quick and dirty, but they got their rocks off. The Resource chick smelled the sour milk and saw rats scurrying around, but she closed her eyes and pretended she was in Hawaii. She moved into Jimmy’s RV the next day. She felt embarrassed and ashamed but told herself she needed a sense of place and wanted to be with a man who knew how to handle himself in times of trouble. She just wanted to be planted somewhere.
About David Hancock
