Margaret St.Clair listened to Mina’s story about the incident in the DZ with a mixture of wonder and dread. What must it have felt like to be in that situation? How would it all play out? The last question stuck in Margaret’s brain. Somehow it didn’t seem likely that she had heard the end of the story. No. There had to be more....Oh, shit!

"You say you got out of the car?"

"Yes. The officer was going over the fence...."

"I know. You said that. You didn’t say if that Shag Man guy got a good look at you. Did he?"

The question brought Mina up short. She hadn’t thought of that. "I...I don’t know."

Margaret frowned. "You got into the police car and told the cop a bunch of stuff about yourself and your sister."

"Yeah," said Mina cautiously, "What are you getting at?"

"Did you know that Detroit police cars are bugged."

"No," said Mina. "It didn’t have a two way window so I know—I don't think we were being watched. But the officer kind of hinted that somebody might be listening in so we didn’t take any chances."

"Somebody like who," asked Margaret, "the police?"

"Who else?" replied Mina, as though there could be only one answer and only a fool could fail to see it.

Margaret let the question hang where she left it and watched Mina’s eyes for the answer that was certain to show up there now that the question was out in the open. Sure enough, it did.

"Excuse me," said Mina....

At the faint sound of the opening outer door, the old, black powder room attendant lifted her wide bottom off of the wooden stool by the inner door and stood at attention. Her navy blue uniform with its frilly white apron and cuffs looked like they belonged on her large, dark-skinned frame. Her large, dark-skinned frame looked as though it belonged where it was, ready to serve whoever showed up in whatever way suited the patron’s station and needs.

The name tag high on her chest said, "Tiffany Everts," but the women who knew enough about Duncan’s to know she was there, knew enough to call her "Tiffy."

Mina breezed past her and around the corner of the well-appointed lounge without acknowledging her presence. She hadn’t intended to be rude, and only when her hand was touching the knob of the last door she had to open did she realize that she had been. As she turned the knob and pushed the door in she made a mental note to be more sociable on the way out.

Mina could not think of the room she was entering as a stall or even a half-bath. This was a soundproof, carpeted, bathroom, with a shower stall an elegant bathtub, a medicine chest and a closet, in addition to the kind of commode and sink one might expect to see in a mansion. Its only concession to the establishment’s need to accommodate more such chambers, was its long, narrow shape. This was the one place in Duncan’s that the metro tour guide’s telewindow camera never visited, so it was the one place that Mina knew nothing about.

When she closed the door, it locked behind her. The mirror over the sink turned into a telewindow and a full length hologram of Tiffany Everts appeared inside of it.

"Good evenin’, she said in a soothing voice that almost anyone in America, with nothing more to go on, would have identified as belonging to a lower class African-American woman. Mina involuntarily pictured the woman with a red rag around her head knotted in front and a half eaten watermelon in her hand.

"My name is Tiffy. If you wont anythang that you cain’t fine in da cabinet or da closet, jus’ call my name an this here thang I’m talkin’ to you on will come on and I will hear you." Mina was grateful to Tiffy for saying "I’m" rather than "I’s" or "I is." She was so embarrassed by her that she forgot why she had excused herself from the table. Why can’t these people learn to speak proper English? she thought, Don’t they care? Are they really too dumb or too lazy to learn? Did they realize how bad it made them look?

As Mina listened to Tiffy, she saw the hefty black woman in her mind fifties as an ante-bellum mammy on a cotton plantation, then, as a savage in the wild with a bone through her nose. Her slave dialect and the surviving 18^th century images of "niggers" which was another name for slave, went together like earthworms and slime. That dialect and that image held the truth to be self-evident that blacks were created unequal; that they were endowed by their creator with certain unalterable traits; that among these traits were aptitudes and limitations that best suited them for the kinds of jobs they were imported from Africa to perform as "Negro property."

It was easy for Mina to see why people like Tiffy could be enslaved and the people who enslaved them could do so in good conscience.

Mina now saw why the Confederate flag and the people who fought for it were still honored in popular American culture. Confederates were children of America who had divided the family house against itself over the institution of slavery and the lengths to which states could go to preserve that institution.

In all of the generations since the family of white America was reunited, events had yet to prove to most Americans that the Confederacy was wrong about blacks. About secession, yes. About slavery, maybe. About the role of blacks in a free and prosperous America, maybe not.

Blacks were never a part of the family. They were two-legged beasts of burden from the wilds of Africa needed to fill a cheap labor shortage. Absent that need, there was little to expect from them, nothing constructive for them to do in large numbers and much to fear.

Mina grew up with the simple idea that crime was caused by criminals. That idea was given focus by telewindow images of rape, riot and ruin of one kind or another in the drug-ravaged, bullet-riddled black communities now called New Economic Zones. She also grew up with images of the Confederate battle flag as a harmless symbol of regional pride that all decent Americans were expected to honor. She never saw what those two things had to do with each other until now.

It was the same peculiar phenomenon that allowed the swastika and the men who fought for it to be honored these days in Europe. Those who complained were condemned for living in the past. The men who murdered all of those Jews and Gypsies and other social misfits of Nazi society, were all dead and mostly forgotten. But descendants of their victims, with the help of CBI and Tanaka, still caused some to wonder whether the Nazis might have been right. Not about World War II, but the wisdom of trying to rid the continent of Jews, Gypsies, sexual deviates and other social misfits. Europe had its own New Economic Zones.

When will people ever learn? thought Mina. She closed her eyes, threw back her head and cried out, "Ohhhh God!"

Vivian.

Damn!

Mina tried without success to call her sister as the telewindow image of Tiffany Everts displayed the practical and the frivolous contents of the closet and the medicine chest. Mina wasn’t interested. All she wanted to do now was to close the window and to talk to Vivian. After a few minutes of failing to do either she decided to leave.

Out of force of habit, she turned on the tap to wash her hands and the window instantly became a mirror again.

Mina shook her head, washed her hands, and dried them on a fluffy white towel with an embossed Old English "D." She reminded herself to say a few friendly words to Tiffany Everts on the way out....

The large, black ladies room attendant was on her feet when the pretty, young, African-American patron rounded the corner. She wondered whether the girl dressed like somebody with a little authority would deign to speak to her on the way out. Since the young woman hadn’t acknowledged her on the way in, it wasn’t proper for the attendant to acknowledge her unless the patron spoke first.

Such women were a rare sight in Duncan’s. Most of them looked away from her. She had yet to meet one who did speak to her when white women were around. She made herself a wager of a generous bedtime snack that the girl would speak. Since no one else was around, the odds were with her.

"This is some place," said Mina, looking around as she neared the dark-skinned, broad-nosed, thick-lipped attendant.

The woman looked at her and broke out in a smile so broad that one would have thought she had won the lottery. "It show is," she said. "I been workin’ here thuddy-two years—ever since they built it and I likes ta keep it that way."

"I have to hand it to you," said Mina, trying not to show how much the sound of the woman’s language hurt her ears, "you do a terrific job."

Tiffy’s chest swelled with pride, "Why, thank you," she said, earnestly. "Jus’ between you and me," she whispered, "some a dees rich white folks is so nasty you cain’t hardly keep up whit’em. An’ day cheap, too. Befo’ the management started includin’ my tip in the bill, I couldn’t hardly make it on what they was givin’ me. They thank black folks is sposed’ta work fa nothin’.

"Now, I ain’t like most a dees lazy niggas out here, wont the white man ta give’em somethin’ but don’t wanna do nothin’ fo’ it. They sposed’ta be two’a us here all da time but you see who here." She pursed her lips and shook her head, "Niggas; what you gone do?"

Mina could imagine a parade of proud young black women using that same word to describe Tiffany Everts and asking themselves the same question. She had intended to do no more than exchange a few pleasant words and move on but she couldn’t think of a good exit line in time to make good her escape.

Tiffy kept on talking, putting as much social distance as possible between herself and the shameful blacks that she might be mistaken for if she didn’t point out the differences.

"Niggas don’t even vote," she said. "I been votin’ American ever since the Party got started. We don’t believe in givin’ nobody somethin’ fa nothin’. Niggas say they cain’t fine work. I work fo’teen, sixteen hours a day, every day but Sunday. Been doin’ it all along..."

Mina stumbled for that elusive exit line as she leaned for the door hoping Tiffy would pick up on the body language and let her go.

She didn’t.

"You know," said Tiffy, "Clarence Leighton was a black mayor’a Detroit befo’ he was a white President’a da United States—the firs’ American President. Lotta folks criticized what he did back then—I mean gittin’ his race changed an’ all dat. Not me. You was too young to remember how it was. You might not’a been born yet. Anyhow, niggas was the same den as they is now and I don’t blame him. I didn’t blame’em then. Who wont a nigga runnin’ the country?

"I raised me fo’ kids on my own cause they daddy was a worthless nigga didn’t wanna do nothing to support us. I sent’em all to private schools in Birmingham. They all talk proper like you and three of’em done had the operation. They all doin’ good. Real good..."

Mina had the feeling that she was telling the truth, but the dull look in her eye near the end hinted at another, sadder tale that Tiffy wasn’t likely to tell.

"Somebody comin’. I cain’t talk no mo’."

Thank God, thought Mina, with a smile that she hoped would match the one she got from Tiffy as two chattering young white women in bright, translucent tops walked in together. Mina stepped back and let them pass between her and the large black woman who no longer seemed to know she was there.

She headed back to her table wondering how a woman working fourteen hour days, six days a week to send four kids to a private school could feel that she raised them alone. There must have been tutorial foster care involved, probably linked to a charitable foundation for the sons and daughters of women like Tiffany Everts. That did not explain everything but it did explain how her children would be able to learn standard American English well enough to qualify for a race change.

That, however was only background noise to what Mina was thinking about Vivian and Margaret and Rick.

How odd it was to hold such dissimilar thoughts in mind at the same time. She did that often. She wondered if other people did. She wondered if it was a female thing—or a black thing....

"Ah," said Margaret, "That was fast."

"False alarm," said Mina, pulling back her chair and sitting down. "I spent more time talking to the ladies room attendant than anything else."

"I doubt that," chuckled Margaret. "If you said two words to Tiffy, she probably didn’t give you a chance to say anything else. You have to be abrupt with her. It’s my fault; I should have pointed you in the other direction. Lois can be a little surly sometimes but she does her job and she doesn’t chew your ear off if you say something to her on the way out."

"Lois? I thought the other attendant’s name was Ruth."

"It was—last month. Tiffy is the only one I know who’s been on the job for more than 90 days. She’s a born ass-kisser and a back-stabbing old bitch. The management thinks she’s wonderful because she does two times the work for one and a half times the pay plus two thirds of the tips. You can imagine what the turnover is like. Besides, Ruth had too much education and she didn’t have ‘the right look,’ if you know what I mean."

"Yeah," said Mina, "She wasn’t black enough."

"Exactly. I bet poor Ruth is still trying to figure out why they canned her.... OK, enough of that. Have you figured out what you’re going to do about that guy in the alley?"

"No. I tried to call Vivian but she wouldn’t answer."

"What about Rick?"

"Rick?"

"Yeah, the cop."

"Oh, Officer Tyler. Maybe I should."

"Maybe he’s been trying to call you."

The suggestion left Mina feeling like a low grade moron. Of course! Maybe Vivian had been trying to call her, too. She touched a button on her wristband computer and it started beeping. She pushed it again and heard Rick’s voice.

"Mina, I have to talk to you..."

She touched the button a third time and the audio message turned into a muted written display across her wristband T-window. In exchange for a look that asked to be excused for turning off the sound, Mina received a look from Margaret that told her not to worry about it. But Margaret made no attempt to hide the fact that she was trying to read whatever message appeared on her face.

Margaret could see that something was askew, that Mina was worried, that she was about to announce her departure. She seemed to be in physical pain.

Mina pushed back her chair, "I have to go. I’m sorry. I don’t know exactly what’s going on but I have to find out."

"Just a minute," said Margaret, reaching in her purse for a light pen like the one Rick used to transfer his phone number to Mina’s wristband file. She and Mina went through the same procedure. When Mina returned the pen, Margaret took her hand in both of hers and locked eyes with her. "If you need me for anything, don’t hesitate to call. Whatever is going on, I have a feeling that we’re in it together."

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