The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

huddle around its meager light, suffer the punishing heat it gave off as byproduct, and choke on its noxious exhaust. The city, the country, and the economy are machines constructed of obsolete components, with necessary inputs, outputs desired and undesired. But Fahima’s improved it. She dreams in machines. She’s inventing something better.

A Polaroid picture is taped to the upper-left corner of the window, high enough Fahima had to stand tiptoe to reach it when first she spotted it a week ago. She had looked at it and slapped it back on the glass, shaken. It’s watched over her since, insistent on its own unlikely existence. 5:45A.M. WEDNESDAY JUNE 8 is written in black marker in the white space under the image. Fahima knew the time was coming and tried to sleep through it, watching the clock next to her bed click over to 5:46, 5:47. She rolled over and tried to will herself back to sleep. When that failed, she managed a solid fifteen minutes of puttering before going to the window and pulling the photo back down off the glass. She examines it again, comparing it to the scene on the street below. It isn’t a perfect match; she’s twenty minutes late and some things have moved, the light shifted with the speed it does in the early morning. But the angle is right and the parked cars are the same, the lighting rigs and the trailers that weren’t there yesterday but are here today. The photograph was taken from her apartment window this morning and stuck to the glass a week before it was taken. She removes the tape, which pulls flecks of the picture off as it goes. She puts the photo on the desk and tries not think about it. She doesn’t have the time.

Fahima dresses and starts the coffee. There’s a collective growing strains of Ethiopian yirgacheffe out in Nyack, creating microclimates to mimic its home, adjusting chemicals in the soil just so. People swear by it. There’s plastic in the palette, a burnt-rubber taste as if the plants are rebelling, aware they’ve been displaced. Fahima gets Sumatran coffee in the Bed Stuy black markets. It’s an indulgence, a confession that capitalism has perks for those in the ruling class. For all her egalitarian plans, Fahima lives in a tower.

She looks into the guest bedroom where Sarah Davenport sleeps. Some days she doesn’t wake up at all. Others she screams in the middle of the night because she doesn’t know where she is. People with small children talk about how beautiful and peaceful they look when they’re asleep, but Sarah’s rest is fitful, if prolonged. She mutters names without context, twitches like she’s being hit. Fahima quietly closes the door.

She sips her coffee as her mind rattles through lists of the people she’s about to meet. Omar gave her dossiers, and a cheat sheet, with names spelled phonetically, position and country of origin, fun facts about or predilections of each one. Eito Higashi, Japan’s minister of economy. Two daughters, a dog, a list of proclivities Fahima hadn’t known there were names for. Malik Antoun, low-level Saudi prince and avid horse breeder, with a penchant for alcohol while abroad. Niklas Babisch, former German ambassador to the United States, now the grosunkle of the New Left in the Bundestag. On paper, Babisch is Fahima’s greatest ally out of the dozen in the group. It means he’ll be a pain in the ass.

All men, powerful but not too powerful. Each one has a reason for being here that avoids the perception their country is reopening diplomatic relations with the US. Everything is run through the Bishop Foundation, orchestrated by its executive director, Fahima Deeb. Last night she dreamed Kevin Bishop came back from the dead and saved her from having to go through with this.

She goes over the dossiers, comparing her incorrect and incomplete recollections with the facts as written, then puts them in her bag. She tucks the photo in as well, quickly, like she’s trying to pull a sleight of hand on herself. She picks out a hijab Ruth bought her in Chicago, a piece of shimmering blue cloth with whorls of deep green that coalesce into a map of the earth, spin like a globe, then sublimate back into abstraction, repeating on a hypnotic loop. Fahima thinks it’s on the nose. Ruth reminded her these are government employees and the most obvious symbolism might fly over their heads. Fahima arranges the hijab perfectly, tucking in errant strands of hair, then clasps it with a gold pin in the shape of a handshake. I might as well wear a fucking tie-dye and beads, she thinks as she steps out her front door.

Omar Wright waits for her in the hall. His tan Yves Saint Laurent suit offsets his dark skin. Omar perpetually informs Fahima, and anyone else who’ll listen, about the brands of his suits and has tried to encourage Fahima to be a little less schlubby for big events, going as far as to pick out her outfit for this evening. Between Omar and Ruth, she feels like a doll being dressed by enthusiastic children. Muslim Barbie.

Omar looks up from his Hivelink device. “Oh hi,” he says, as if surprised to see her. Omar’s official title has never been decided. He calls himself her major domo, but refuses to tell her what that means. He takes the edge of her hijab between his index and middle fingers and lifts it to assess. He gives a slight shrug. “Sort of on the nose,” he says.

“Ruth,” says Fahima.

“Sweet kid,” Omar says. He shimmers and divides into two identical copies of himself, each in the same Yves Saint Laurent suit. They face each other, then launch into a game of rock paper scissors that takes five rounds before one of them loses. The winner gives a triumphant hmmph and proceeds into Fahima’s apartment.

“Should it bother me I get the loser every morning?” she asks.

Omar shakes his head. “Watching Ms.