Other confirmed performers include Bruce Springsteen, DJ Max Dare, The New Draculas, Madonna, Displacer Beast, and Big Furry.
It went on and on like this. But I was more interested in the map.
I don’t know if I’ve ever bought that whole America-as-Melting-Pot thing, but now that the whole melting pot had been dumped in Arizona’s lap, I thought we might all mingle a little more. No.
The city of Payson was now something like ninety-nine percent white. There were really large numbers of senior citizens in places like Green Valley, Sun City, and Prescott. Prescott had been renamed AARPtopia, for some reason. Environmentalist and hippie types were living around Flagstaff. The incense should have tipped me off. There was a section of Tucson called Mallville, where a big group of the sort of girls who wished they could live at the shopping mall were now actually living in a shopping mall.
A lot of communities had already moved around because of wildfires. I guess Arizona just catches fire from time to time. So nearly all the Mormons in America had relocated from the northern border to a town called Mesa, around which they were building a very strong wall to keep out Phoenix.
Phoenix was apparently this shaky military dictatorship ruled by a warlord who called himself Beloved Leader the Angel of Death Sir Magnífico Excellente. Not his real name, I think.
J.Lo wanted to know where we were, and what it said next to my finger after I pointed.
“We live…” he said, “in the…Hempire of Flags Staff?”
“Actually, we might be in Hippietown.”
“Hippietown.”
“Explains all the naked people.”
There were some short human-interest stories in the back of the paper. It seemed that getting conquered and shipped to a new home where no one’s really in charge doesn’t bring out the best in most people. A surprising number of arguments were being settled with the kind of challenges you used to see only on reality shows. Proving you were the owner of a truck by eating the most cockroaches, for example. And since cockroaches vary in size a lot from place to place, let me just say that Arizona cockroaches are big enough to help you move.
Anyway.
Here are a few other things I learned the first couple weeks in Arizona:
—Most folks will steal if they can get away with it.
—Most people want to break other people’s things and roll cars over, but won’t unless their planets are invaded by aliens, or their basketball team wins the finals.
—About one in a hundred people resents having to wear clothes all the time.
—Alien invasions make people stick flags on everything. Not just American flags, either. The Jolly Roger made a real comeback around this time.
“Enough reading,” I said. “We have an appointment at the BMP.”
It was hot enough outside to make asphalt soft. That’s not a figure of speech. You could walk across one of the campus parking lots and feel your shoes sink like they were in dough. J.Lo said it was the sort of hot that made you want to gather animals in twos and keep them in a huge jar of water with holes poked in the lid. He had to keep his ghost costume wet all the time so his skin wouldn’t dry out. He happened to be dumping a bucket of water over his head, in fact, when we reached the steps of the Bureau of Missing Persons.
I was just about to partake of my daily exercise of visiting the BMP and shouting “Where’s my mom?!” and listening to Mitch tell me how I “need to show a little patience?!” while J.Lo walked around the office eating things. We were halfway up the steps when I heard Phil from the Lost List behind me.
“Gratuity! Gratuity!” he shouted. And even though we stopped and turned around, he kept shouting it anyway. When he reached us he was out of breath, and for good reason. Guys like Phil are not built for running. They are built for sitting in front of radios and for growing curly red Abe Lincoln beards that make their bald heads look wrong-side-up if you squint.
“Why…” Phil panted, “…are you squinting?”
“No reason. What’s wrong?” I asked. And then it hit me.
“Did you find my mom?”
Phil nodded. He nodded hard, like he was trying to shake a bug off his scalp. After that he had to sit down for a bit with his head between his knees.
“She’s near Tucson,” he said, after a minute. “Living in a casino. She’s so excited, she’s been looking for you for weeks.”
I hugged J.Lo and even hugged Phil. He smelled milky. Then we went inside the bureau to tell them to call off their search.
“I think you must be mistaken?” said Mitch, looking unsteady. His aides stood behind him as usual, and I wondered if they might finally have something to do.
“Nope,” said Phil. “We’re sure. She’s living in the Papago lands south of Tucson, in the Diamond Sun Casino.”
Mitch blustered. “Tucson? Tucson. I’m sorry, but we checked that area thoroughly? I checked it myself. I told Williams to check it myself.”
The hope in me flickered a little. I didn’t have much faith in Mitch, but what if he was right? I couldn’t get my hopes up.
Mitch hadn’t stopped talking. “Why, we even have some of our most reliable census figures from that area. Michaels! What portion of the new Tucson population have we on record?”
Michaels looked at his own clipboard.
“Forty-two percent, sir.”
“Forty…forty-two percent! Well, that’s really very good!” said Mitch. “You have to admit? That’s quite good so soon after Moving Day?”
It did seem pretty good.
“No,” said Michaels, “I’m sorry. That’s not a four, that’s one of those ‘less than’ signs. Less than two percent. I thought it was a four.”
Mitch exhaled. Phil and I exchanged looks. J.Lo sat in the corner licking the glue off a Post-it.
“Michaels,” said Mitch, “bring me the file on Lucy Tucci?”
Michaels hesitated. “There’s bound to be more than one,” he said.
“She’s thirty,” I offered. “Dark hair. Daughter named Gratuity.”
“Black,” said Mitch.
I coughed. “Black?”
“I’m sorry,” said Mitch. “Do you prefer African American?”
“Uh, no, I prefer you call her white, actually, because that’s what she is.”
“The file says she’s black.”
“Are you really arguing with me about this?”
Mitch looked tired. “I wrote down ‘black,’” he said.