ANTARCTICA: A BAR CALLED JUNIP NESTLED BETWEEN FEATURELESS FACTORIES AND WAREHOUSES

Inside it was so dark, I couldn't see anything. The music consisted of a steady grind and what I imagined were the perverted mutterings of a hunchback. The place smelled of body odor, spilled mash, and darkness.

From the low ceiling, crusted with decades of forgotten and unlit lighting options-including two dilapidated chandeliers, missing most of their faceted teardrops, and several cracked low-hanging sconces-the only source of illumination was a strange swirl of red plasticott that looked like some amateur's representation of the beginning of the universe or a massive nosebleed.

Once my eyes began to adjust and the walls and floor came into view, I could see twenty slubbers slumped over a flock of small black tables to the left. All were dressed in ill-fitting t-shirts. Among them I recognized recent versions of uniforms by M-Bunny, L. Segu, Bestke, and even two Wans-with their five useless empty eyelets down the front. The men were mostly all the same, except for the thickness of grime on their faces, the shapes of their frizzy beards, and the degree of misery curving their spines.

On the right, a dozen more sat before a dark bar, decorated with a backlit rack of bottles of cheap liquor-corn mash, green-o, and what they called white maze.

If any of them looked up when I had first entered, they had repositioned their heads at precisely the same angle of desolation and misanthrope as before. When I moved toward the bar, I saw only one overtly watch-his eyes glazing my suit and tie with suspicion as his left index wiggled halfway up his right nostril.

I saw two empty plasticott stools at the bar: one just a foot away at the end and the other halfway down. I stepped toward the second and I took my place as the men on either side inched away. After studying the bar surface, I found a relatively clean spot to rest my elbow.

I sat there for at least sixty-four bars of the noisy robotic music until a middle-aged woman in a tiny and too-tight red plastic dress finally emerged from behind a dank curtain and took up her place behind the bar. Her hair was florescent pink; her rubbery mouth liberally smeared with a sparkly green lipstick. From the middle of her red plastic necklace, a simulacra of a scrotum hung between her breasts and above that a long red erect phallus curved toward her mouth like a pacifier or microphone.

Once she had freshened the drinks of several others, she slopped her rag at the bar around my elbow and said, "Yeah?" Her voice was as smooth as crackers on sheets.

"I'm looking for a yarn mill."

"To drink?"

The men on either side of me laughed.

Without acknowledging her joke I just said, "Xi yarn."

She rolled her eyes "I don't make it!" She got another laugh from her audience, probably hoping for comps.

"Of course," I said, abandoning that tack. I gestured at the shelves behind her. "A bottle of your best acid mash."

"That's three thousand!"

But before she had finished her sentence, I had flipped out three fresh bills. Once she had registered the Calvins, I added another. "Three for you and one for the handsome red lad around your neck."

When one of the men laughed at my joke, she swiped his drink away and scooped up my bills in the same motion. A moment later, she smacked a bottle of Sir Admiral Dooganberry's Hot Pink Mash down in front of me. Then, in a clearly practiced move, she sucked the dong far into her mouth only to spit it back out in disgust, before turning on a heel to retreat behind the filthy curtain.

A show barely worth one Calvin. I unstuck the bottle, slipped off the stool, feeling the plasticott momentarily cling to the high-twist wool of the seat of my pants. Holding up the bottle like a lure, I spoke over the music, "I'm looking for a Xi yarn mill around here."

For several beats, no one even moved. Then a man with a red-and-gray-peppered beard knocked back his drink, and burped. Glaring at me, he blew out and let a wad of snot hang from his right nostril. A moment later, as if playing yoyo, he sniffed it up.

Undeterred, I caressed the flat bottom of Sir Admiral Dooganberry enticingly, and then turned and headed out into the sulfur-filled air outside. I strolled toward the Chang P, leaned against the side, and waited.

There was something tragicomic about the single-minded machismo ire of the modern slubbers as they oscillated from horny to angry and back again. In the last ten years, freedom and sympathy movements in the cities had put an end to the harsh chemicals and hormones once added to the B-shirts. But given this new alternative, my placid childhood in the corn had been a blessing.

I examined the bottle in my hand. The man on the front- Dooganberry I supposed-was elaborately decorated with medals and ribbons on his white jacket, golden epaulettes, a thick black handlebar moustache, a monocle, and a pink iguana on his shoulder.

After a few minutes, the man who had laughed at my joke exited the bar and started toward me. When he was fifteen feet away, he stopped, and pointed at the Chang-P. "This thing go?"

"Xi yarn?" I confirmed.

He nodded. We both got in and zipped off.

"The bottle." He held out a worn and trembling hand.

I tightened my grip on Dooganberry's neck. "Once we find the mill."

After a tremendous sniff, the sort of slubber thing I had forgotten about, he raised his chin toward the road. "Ten miles straight." He reached for the bottle.

"When we get there." I nestled the prize in the storage bin of my door.

"Don't believe me?" he grumbled.

"Yes and no."

In my peripheral vision my passenger eyed me suspiciously. "You from the cities?"

"Yes and no," I repeated.

"It's one or the other!" he argued, confusion lining his voice.

"It's both." Turning to him, I met his stare. "Right?" I asked when the road forked ahead.

"Yeah." The man sniffed again. "The Xi for you?"

"Yes."

He loosed a typical two-huff slubber laugh. "Got yourself spun on it?"

"Basically." This man could have been me, had I stayed. I wanted to ask him about his life, what it was like out here these days, but I didn't want to get too friendly either… too close to my past.

Two more amused huffs. "No one liked you at the bar."

"No new friends," I agreed. "A shame."

We drove a mile in silence. Then suddenly, as if the question had been building up inside him, he blurted out, "What are you?"

"A tailor."

"For clothes?"

"Exactly."

"Okay… up here," he said, pointing. "Turn here. Past that tank… turn left. Then it's down there until we get to a gate. It's blue. I forget what it says."

We had been driving past warehouses, sheds, non-descript factories, and stacked containers colored with logos of shipping concerns, the ornate flags of ports, and the stylized fury of taggers.

We passed a large beige cinderblock building on the left. Beyond it was a small road under a blue sign. "That it?"

"No. It's bluer. And it's a gate gate." A beat later he asked, "What kind of car is this?"

"A Chang-P," I told him. "You're riding in the 660 with fifteen custom forward engines."

He snorted in disbelief. "How fast?"

"Quite."

"Hard to drive?"

"Somewhat." I felt bad for the man, for how little he knew, for how little he had experienced… and for how far I had come in comparison.

"Okay," he said, pointing, "up there. Past that barrel on the right."

I slowed. A blue gate was open. From one of the sides hung a jangle of chain and several locks. Beside the road a sign read: Warning. Clearance Required-By Order of M-Bunny Corporation a Division of MB-I. I didn't see a guard-or anyone-for that matter. I nosed the Chang through the gate and continued. The road sloped down and to the right past more forgettable buildings. We passed a fenced courtyard, where a dozen slubbers stood. Several watched us pass.

"How much farther?"

"Uh… well… not much." His confidence seemed to be fading.

I wondered when my friend was going to make a move, or if he had called ahead to arrange a trap with his buddies. I glanced at him, the wet shine below his nose, the filth in his matted beard, and told myself he didn't have communications; he probably didn't have friends.

The buildings grew more and more sparse. Between them sat fields of junk planted with gloomy, undersized corn.

"Stop here!" the slubber barked, his voice startling me in the silence.

The Chang came to a crunching stop. To our right was a pile of slag and sand; to the left, another windowless two-story structure.

When I glanced back at the man, he held a six-inch serrated knife in his right fist. The tip was slightly bent. "I'm an honest corn," he began, his voice tight, "and I want to help you. It's just that things cost more in Antarctica… especially for a shirt tailor." He punctuated his sentence with a laugh.

Here it was, I thought. "What do you want?"

"You tossed three papers at Pricilla. Five is good for me."

I glanced around at the buildings and nothing outside. "So, you're saying there's no Xi?"

The man laughed again. "There's Xi here. Pay me and I'll tell you where."

I pretended to consider his offer for a moment, then grasping the Admiral by his neck, I flipped open the door, and jumped out before my knife-wielding friend had even moved. I closed the door and glanced about. Straight ahead were three buildings guarded by men holding flash sticks.

I heard the slubber pounding on the windshield from the inside. After rolling my eyes, I said, "Passenger door." The lock clicked open. His breath was swear-strewn as he scrambled out and stumbled around the front of the Chang with his knife extended. "Don't corn me again!"

"If you cut the yak upholstery," I told him, "I will skin you and use your hide it to repair the seat. Now, do you want to earn the pink mash or not?"

The slubber stopped and squinted at me for a long beat. In the orange light, his eyes were hazel, complicated, and beautiful. A bubble of saliva formed at the side of his mouth as his whole face twisted into a disappointed frown. Then his eyes dropped from mine to the dusty bottle I held at my side and, just as quickly, his urgency and power faded. Turning, he gestured with the bad tip of his knife. "It's the far one."

I started for the building, but after five paces, turned, and tossed the bottle to him. The bottle somersaulted through the air. Flinging the knife to the side, he caught the bottle in both hands, but then fumbled and juggled it all the way down. The glass clinked against the dry hard ground, but didn't shatter. Relieved, he blew out a sigh, and wrenched off the top for a long desperate drink.