2. Meeting Mex
971 Words
Chapter Two
Meeting Mex
“After all, someone had to get their hands dirty, and it wasn’t going to be her cleaners.”—Bette
Every woman in the city wanted to egg pop1. It was considered a cushy job, the easiest on the planet; in fact, many saw it as a holiday.
It required lounging about in a room with a skylight, a mirror with a remote, and hemp on tap. One spliff, one pot of hemp tea, and a woman, glaze-eyed and chilled, laughed her way through the whole removal of her eggs. Then, as high as a nineties raver, she’d stagger into the free-of-charge, on-the-house transporter to sleep it off at home.
At first, any egg would do—until one morning, pondering by her window, Bette spied a crowd of market stall owners jostling at the entrance.
We have flooded this place with stall owners, she thought and decided genes was the only way to go.
“We need to file the eggs,” she said to the committee.
“What, in a drawer?” said Bigwig One.
Bette looked at her like she was an imbecile.
“I mean store them according to whom they came from: warrior, organizer, teacher, layabout.”
“Like in a filing cabinet?”
Bette threw her another look.
“And maybe give the market stall owners a rest for a while.”
“But they are the cheapest. Apart from the layabouts, one spliff and they’re out like a light,” said the voice from the back.
The others nodded.
“Yes, well, we could probably give the layabouts a miss altogether,” said Bette. “Walking down the street requires a full purse, and by the time I get to the market, I’ve bugger-all to spend and a sea of pissed-off stall owners staring at me.”
She stopped; the committee looked at her.
“You walk down the street?”
“What do you think I do, fly?”
“But you’re the leader.”
Bette looked at them with a “so?”
“We always send out . . .” muttered the voice from the back, avoiding her dark look.
❖
Beryl loved the gene theory, and while the others were trying to grasp why a leader would want to walk down a street full of minions, Beryl had planned a leaflet. After all, it was merely a reworking of Manifesto the Great’s ideas.
“It’s all in the labelling,” she said, passing around the leaflet at the next committee meeting.
The Voted Ins, with an unimpressed sniff, eyed each other.
Beryl was such a smart-arse.
As she spoke of her plans to not only catalog the fertilized eggs but control the whole upbringing of a baby, the bigwigs, staring at her blonde beehive piled high like an ice cream sundae, argued.
Bette, saying nothing, flicked through the leaflet.
“I see you have other plans.”
“Well yes, education on many levels.”
“We have nans for that,” jumped in Bigwig One.
“What the galaxy does a nan know?” said Beryl.
“More than that speakeasy mother of yours,” snapped another.
Beryl stiffened. “Leave my mother out of this.”
Bette slid the leaflet across the table. “Let’s start with the nurturing, see how you get on with that.”
Beryl huffed.
She was more than a nurturer, she was a planner, an order-giver, designed to lead and boss, not take orders from ex-mop welders who didn’t know their arse from their eggs.
She snatched back her leaflets, shuffled them into a pocket, and marched to the door, her beehive wobbling with each step.
The women stared at the slammed door as she left. Normally they’d make fun of her hair, but this time they were silent.
“You’ll regret that,” said the posh bigwig. “That woman will not be satisfied running the nurturing rooms.”
“And she’ll drive the white coats right off their trolleys.”
❖
Beryl marched into the nursery like she owned the place. She passed the egg popping station, where not that long ago she’d hidden and watched; now she was to supervise.
How did it happen? How did she end up working for a mouthy cleaner and five idiots laughingly calling themselves a committee? Who knew as much about test tubes as, well . . . the eggs in the Petri dish?
The room was silent; you could hear a fish gulp.
She breathed in the smell of baby talc, caught sight of the only baby awake eyeballing the solitary fish in the aquarium.
Beryl’s stern face loomed into view of the pale-faced baby, blocking out her view of the fish.
The baby blinked.
Beryl stretched to touch. “You’re the first,” she whispered, “but not the last.”
The baby grabbed her finger and clung to the warm flesh. Beryl almost smiled, until she saw the name tag around her wrist.
Casandra Winthrop—that’s a mouthful.
She slid the name tag off . . .
“We’ll call you Mex,” she murmured. “It’s short and to the point, just like your nose.”
Two women sporting white coats appeared at the door.
They stared at the crumbled name tag.
They had as much time for Beryl as she did them.
She was not a cleaner, but a woman who used to work for “that ex-leader’s mob.”
“Are you trying to be funny?” said the taller white coat.
“She’s the first of a few,” said Beryl. “And she needs a name that is something special.”
“Pfff—a name like a blender,” said the tall one.
“Mex is new, crisp, and easy to spell,” said Beryl.
“And blends at five different speeds,” said the tall one.
The short one smirked.
“Yes, well, when she goes down in the great records of history,” said Beryl, “no one will be spelling her name wrong.”
“It’s a baby,” said the tall one. “Her future is as blank as a man’s appendage.”
The short one continued to smirk.
“Very funny. It must be absolutely fabulous to have both brains and wit,” said Beryl.
“We do our best,” said the tall one. “Why not crack a joke along with a code?”
Beryl let out one of her “who’s in charge” sighs, which went completely over their heads, then looked at Mex.
She had the genes to be great.
1 Egg Popping: an accepted profession. Eggs (also known as valuable real-estate) from a successful woman can earn her a tidy commission.
- Writer
