DMV, page 18
“What’s this going to do to the budget?” John asked. “How’s it going to affect us?”
It was the question on everyone’s mind, and they all nodded.
“Repairs and cleanup are coming out of the city’s emergency fund,” the director told them. “None of this has any affect on our regular budget.”
That was a relief, although not much of one, since the rumored cuts were still on the table.
“They don’t need to fill Will’s position,” Michelle muttered next to her. “That’ll save a few bucks.”
Rosita almost laughed, but she put a hand to her mouth and turned it into a cough. Her friend’s comment wasn’t really funny, wasn’t even meant to be, but in this situation, under these circumstances, its grim gallows humor struck a chord with her, and suddenly it was hard not to start giggling.
Everyone’s salary was going to be paid, the director assured them, even while the building was closed for repairs. That one statement seemed to answer most of the remaining questions, and after a few more housekeeping items, they were all dispatched to their own areas of the library to assess and document damage.
Rosita and Michelle headed over to the Reference desk. A stray bullet seemed to have hit the square pillar behind the desk, exposing white plaster and a small piece of metal brace, but their area appeared to be substantially untouched, which was both lucky and surprising, since the desk faced the front of the library and had been directly in Will Caskey’s line of fire. Although the cardboard stand displaying a list of Frequently Asked Questions had been knocked over, and the multicolored informational pamphlets ordinarily displayed atop the Reference desk were scattered on the floor, nothing was permanently damaged. Rosita unlocked her drawer and found nothing amiss. Michelle’s drawer, too, was untouched.
Michelle turned on the Reference desk’s computer and waited for it to boot up. “What is this?” she asked, as an unfamiliar screen appeared.
Rosita rolled her swivel chair in front of the terminal. On the monitor, a cartoon red convertible filled with smiling blonde white people was speeding toward the front of the screen. An Up With People kind of vocal group was singing a vanilla version of The Beatles’ “Drive My Car.” The car appeared to crash into the screen, auto parts and people parts flying in every direction. On what looked like the opposite side of the glass, cartoon blood dripped down to form the letters DMV.
Michelle moved the cursor to the bloody DMV and clicked the mouse. Nothing happened. She pressed various keys, and still there was no change on the screen.
“The wires must’ve got crossed somewhere,” Michelle said. She turned the computer off, then on again, and the same screen reappeared, the same convertible barreling toward the screen. She turned it off and on again twice more with the same result before appealing to Rosita. “Do you have any idea how to fix this?”
She didn’t, and she wasn’t sure where the tech guys were right now. “Just turn it off,” she said. “Unplug it.”
Michelle turned off the computer and the screen went dead. Rolling her chair back, she bent forward and unplugged the terminal from the power strip beneath the desk.
Rosita said nothing as she moved around to the front of the Reference desk and started picking up pamphlets off the floor, but what she’d seen on the screen made her shiver.
Not just because it was apparently connected to the Department of Motor Vehicles. And not just because the little cartoon was creepily violent.
But because the caricatured driver of the car had looked suspiciously like Will Caskey.
NINETEEN
Durrell was not Durrell, Jean was not Jean, Al was not Al. Instructors were not the only ones who could easily be replaced here, Jorge had learned. His fellow trainees were gradually being swapped out, switched with others who shared their names and nothing else.
He thought of that hidden cemetery he’d found, the fresh grave on top of the rise.
Could Durrell have been buried there? The timing certainly made sense. Maybe his roommate had been eighty-sixed for not being able to gain Jorge’s trust. While he didn’t miss the obnoxious hillbilly, the thought that that might be the case did make him feel a little guilty. Which didn’t mean that he was acting any nicer toward the new Durrell. For although this guy’s approach was friendlier, his very existence made him utterly untrustworthy. Jorge knew this guy was a plant, and the powers that be knew that he knew, but were still going through with it, which meant that they wanted him to know.
This new Durrell was here to keep an eye on him.
Indeed, it had become nearly impossible for Jorge to spend any time alone. The ruse of his exercise routine had long since been discovered, and anytime he attempted to walk or jog, he was accompanied by runners who suddenly happened to be on the same path. No matter where he went on the campus now, someone was always there, either an employee or another trainee, and there was never an opportunity for him to explore.
With no clocks or calendars, and never any mention of dates or time, he had taken to tracking the passing of days in one of his notebooks, like a prisoner scratching marks on the cement walls of his cell. By his calculation, he had been here for over a month. That seemed impossible, but he was pretty sure it was accurate, and as always when his mind went to this subject, he thought about Beverly. Had the DMV given her some type of cover story that explained his absence and made it seem normal? Or was she going crazy trying to find out what had happened to him? He guessed that she was probably worried out of her mind and that even if they had concocted some sort of explanation as to why he’d disappeared, she didn’t believe it. If he knew her, she’d probably recruited Rosita, and the two of them were trying as hard to find this place as he was trying to escape it.
Another reason it didn’t feel to him as though a month had passed was because, even after attending classes almost all day every day, Jorge didn’t feel as though he’d learned a month’s worth of information. As far as he could tell, a cheat sheet and a week of on-the-job training would have prepared him just as well for a position at the DMV as this full-immersion. Not that instruction was the reason he was here. The real purpose of this facility was indoctrination. Learning how to perform a civil service job did not require weeks of education and isolation. He was here because they were trying to make him love the DMV, to join their damn cult.
But that was not going to happen, no matter how much time they spent trying to wear him down.
The new Durrell attempted to engage him in light conversation at breakfast, but Jorge ignored him—and everyone else—and ate his waffles in silence. As a goof, he disregarded the bells and remained in the cafeteria after everyone else had left. When an administrator told him that he needed to report to class, Jorge answered in Spanish, pretending he did not speak English.
Eventually two security guards entered the room, the same two who had ejected him from the restricted beehive area. The young one with the shaved head grinned at him. “Time to leave, beaner. Siesta’s over.”
The mustached guard said tiredly, “Come on. Let’s go.”
Jorge wondered what would happen if he punched that bald fucker in the face and then kneed him in the balls. But he wasn’t ready to go that far—
yet
—and he merely smiled obseqiously and in a lazy drawl said, “Si, senor,” as he sauntered slowly out of the cafeteria.
There was a line of ants, he noticed, crawling along the floor of the cafeteria, under the front door and outside. Walking along the concrete path to the classroom building, he saw that the procession of insects continued in the same direction. In fact, the marching ants went into the building, down the corridor and into his classroom, where they disappeared under the instructor’s desk.
“We’re moving to the next level today,” Mr. Plymouth said as soon as Jorge, the last trainee to arrive, had taken a seat. The instructor pointed out the window toward the faux DMV office at the center of the campus. “Soon, you’ll be ready to show us how you manage real-time pressure, and whether you are able to handle the type of situations that will come up in a regular office on a regular day.
“But you need to work your way up to that, so we’re going to go to a new classroom, where our public relations instructor, Mr. Lane, will prepare you for the scenarios you will encounter, and teach you what you need to know in order to staff specific desks and counters within a DMV office.”
He led them out of the classroom, down one corridor and then another, all of them walking single file, like the ants. At the end of the second corridor, they started down a narrow flight of steps. The stairwell was dark at first, but motion sensors turned on lights as they entered.
Three landings down, they reached an open doorway. Beyond it was a large irregularly shaped space, oddly lit by orange halogen lights placed at seemingly haphazard intervals. This did not look like a classroom. There were no desks, no chairs, no blackboard or whiteboard. There were instead boxes of various shapes and sizes, as well as assorted pieces of mechanical equipment. It looked like nothing so much as a storage area.
Mr. Plymouth moved to the side, ushering them in. A man wearing a suit so formal it was almost a tuxedo stood in the center of an open section of the room, and once they were all in, Mr. Plymouth said, “I turn you over to Mr. Lane.” He nodded at the other man. “Mr. Lane.”
“Welcome,” the new instructor said, smiling.
One of his arms was longer than the other.
Jorge could not be the only one to have noticed. The long arm was so obvious that it was distracting. What made it even more conspicuous was the fact that his suit was tailored in such a way that the left sleeve hung far below the hem of the jacket while the right one ended precisely at the jacket’s hem.
Jorge tried hard not to stare, but it was difficult. Focusing his gaze on the man’s face, he was suddenly sure that he had seen Mr. Lane someplace before, although he could not recall where or when that might have been. The instructor’s eyes scanned him, then continued on, taking in each trainee. “I’d like to start by talking about the pressure employees feel when they are first thrown into the shark tank known as the DMV.” He chuckled drily, and a few of the trainees chuckled sympathetically in return.
“This is not like working any other job. The challenges are unique, as are the rewards. But it takes a certain kind of person to adapt to the strains of this life.” Looking over the class, he pointed to a twentysomething hipster known to Jorge only as B.D. “You. You think you can handle stress?”
B.D. nodded.
“Get over here.” There was an edge to the instructor’s voice that forbade defiance, and the young man stepped forward.
Mr. Lane looked the trainee up and down. “One thing you learn at the DMV is how to suss people out, size them up, figure out who they are. Now let me guess. You’re a music fan. You collect vinyl. And you tell people you like jazz, don’t you?”
B.D. nodded smugly.
“You do that in order to impress them, to assert your intellectual superiority. And, of course, you only like vintage jazz, none of the new stuff. You’re a fan of Miles Davis, and your favorite albums are Kind of Blue and Birth of the Cool, am I right? But you make sure to let everyone know that you don’t like Dave Brubeck. Not enough hipster cachet these days. And while you agree that Thelonius Monk is a god, you don’t actually own any of his albums.”
The trainee shifted uncomfortably, not responding.
“You hate country music, don’t you?”
B.D. nodded slightly.
“Except for Hank Williams. Hank’s acceptable in trendy circles. So you tell people you like Hank Williams.”
Another uneasy nod.
The instructor rushed forward, shoving his face next to B.D.’s. “Give me the name of one Hank Williams record! Right now! Name one! Name one!”
The trainee stepped back, flustered. “I-I…” he stuttered.
“That’s what I thought. Take him, boys.”
Two black-uniformed guards came out from somewhere and flanked the trainee, one grabbing his left arm, one his right. They pulled him across the room to a well-lit corner where a thick metal pole ran from the floor to the ceiling. B.D. seemed too surprised to struggle, and probably thought nothing would happen to him, but within moments, he had been roughly chained to the pole and blindfolded.
“You see,” Mr. Lane said, “you have to be authentic.When you are working in the office, you are not merely representatives of the Department of Motor Vehicles but representatives of society at large, the same society that permits applicants to join the ranks of licensed drivers. You are the gatekeepers, the ones who determine which of them shall be granted the privilege of driving on public streets, and as such you need to be trustworthy, which means you need to be genuine.” He pointed toward B.D. “Not phony.”
The instructor led them over to where B.D. was chained.
“And one of the most important skills you will need in your job is the ability to judge character. It is how decisions are made in regard to who is allowed to drive a vehicle. I knew who this young man was just by looking at him, and I wanted to demonstrate the type of evaluative skills that will be required of you should you be lucky enough to work for the DMV.”
Jorge looked at the blindfolded hipster and shifted his feet uncomfortably.
“In our business, mistakes have consequences, and punishment, of necessity, is swift and severe.”
Mr. Lane nodded, and the two black-uniformed guards suddenly had sharp pointed sticks in their hands. The one on the right poked B.D.’s chest, drawing blood.
The trainee screamed.
The guard on the left jabbed his stick into B.D.’s right thigh, soliciting an even louder scream.
This couldn’t be real, Jorge thought. This was surely being done for his benefit, and B.D. had to be in on it. But there seemed nothing fake about the pain on the trainee’s face. Or his agonized cries. And there was certainly nothing fake about the blood.
“Pressure,” Mr. Lane said calmly. “Most people outside of the DMV family don’t know what real pressure is. But as you will learn, it can either be your friend or your enemy.”
B.D. appeared to have passed out. He was slumped against his chains, but the guards continued to poke him with their sticks, and the blood was running freely.
None of the other trainees said a word. Jorge wondered what sort of lesson they were supposed to take from this demonstration. Was it merely an attempt to keep them in line and intimidate them?
Or intimidate him?
Because despite the very authentic torture going on in front of him, he was still not convinced that all of this had not been set up for his benefit.
Moments later, Mr. Lane raised a hand, and the two guards moved away from B.D.’s limp and bloody form, fading back into the part of the room from which they had come.
The instructor remained where he was, and, with B.D. and the pole as a backdrop, began his lecture. Jorge glanced around. Apparently, for this class, they would be standing and listening, not taking notes.
“The job will not only put stress on you, but will put stress on your relationships. With your husbands, with your wives, with your children, with your friends. Many marriages have crumbled under the strain of the job. But, rest assured, it is worth it. Life as part of the DMV is more wonderful than you can possibly imagine.” He smiled, his face aglow with a fanatic’s certainty, and Jorge felt a chill pass through him.
“Now, if you become a member of our DMV family, you will not only have an impact on society, you will, in a very real way, be able to drive society in the proper direction. Particularly in regard to communities of color.” Here he looked specifically at Jorge.
There was a flare of anger, an immediate tapping in to familiar resentment, and Jorge steeled himself for what he knew would be coming next.
“Which brings me to another point. You process some jig or chink or cholo, that goes in the license. Not just on the license, on the line where it says ‘Race.’ Hell, that’s a stupid thing to begin with. A cop pulls someone over, he doesn’t have to read what race the driver is. He can see it. No, this info goes into the license. Part of the chip. This way the person can be tracked. If an officer’s driving by, it’ll ping an alert and let him know what kind of person’s in the car. That way he’ll be aware if he’s coming up on some bad hombre.” He looked directly at Jorge again.
“Chinga tu mama,” Jorge said, staring back defiantly.
The instructor smiled broadly. “You have a leg up on your compadres here,” he said. “You’ll be eligible for bilingual pay.”
The other trainees laughed, and Jorge felt a stab of hatred for all of them.
Mr. Lane stepped forward, putting both hands on Jorge’s shoulders, standing at a slanted angle because of the one long arm. Jorge wanted to punch him in the stomach as hard as he could, but looking past the instructor at the slumping B.D. chained to the pole, he knew this was not the time or place for such action, and remained stiffly still.
“I have high hopes for you,” Mr. Lane said. His breath smelled sweet, like honey. “Listen and learn, and you will go far.”
Jorge said nothing, and the instructor dropped his hands from his shoulders and stepped back, saluting Jorge with the long arm. He began lecturing again, a passionate monologue about the character traits necessary for an effective employee, making no mention of race this time. Gradually, he led them away from the corner and back toward the center of the irregularly shaped room. B.D. appeared to be stirring, and Jorge assumed that once he had revived, he would be unshackled and freed from the pole. One of the trainees moved, the light shifted, and, horrified, Jorge saw that what he had taken for independent movement was actually the swarming of thousands of ants. They completely covered B.D.’s form, the teeming mass of insects granting his motionless body the appearance of life.
