The fur coat's first march

Turn 2 of 51

Give your name and say you came to listen. they know the last name and try to yell at you to leave. but you tell them that you can help with their problems. they stop and accept your answer as your the only new person in the group. you look at the outfits again, you see mostly punk, cyber goth and normal clothes, but have thhat feeling of liberal in them. they get to talking about ineuqaility.

"Marissa," you say, and your voice comes out smaller than you intended. "Marissa Van Doorne. I came to listen."

The name lands like a dropped glass. "Van Doorne?" The girl with the septum ring is on her feet.

"Van Doorne Logistics? Your family's company fired three hundred dockworkers in Newark —"

"That was two years ago!" someone else shouts.

"Non-union, no severance, my cousin was one of them —"

"Get out," the septum-ring girl says, pointing at the stairs. "You came to gawk? Fur coats don't get to sit in this basement."

You stand, coat heavy on your shoulders, and before you can decide whether to obey, you hear yourself say it: "I can help with your problems."

The basement goes quiet in a way that's worse than the yelling. Fifteen faces turn toward you. The marker girl tilts her head, curls swinging, and studies you the way you'd study an unfamiliar invoice.

"Help," she repeats. Not a question. A weighing.

"She's the only new person we've got," mutters the girl with the shaved head, and nobody argues. It hangs there — that you are, right now, their entire recruitment class — and slowly, one by one, they settle back into their chairs. The septum-ring girl sits last, arms crossed, eyes still on you like you might steal something.

"Comrade Marissa stays," the marker girl says. "For now. I'm Cleo. I run this."

You sit. You look at them again while the room restarts itself — the punk jackets, the cyber-goth girl with plastic beads braided into her black hair, the plain jeans-and-cardigan types, all of it stitched together by something in the cut and the dye and the patched knees, a uniform of not-caring that cares enormously. Liberal, you'd have said last week. Now the word feels too small for it.

Cleo uncaps the marker again. "Inequality," she says. "Comrades. Where were we."