Nice Work if You Can Get It (closed)

[Apollo Wilde]

1945

Most Americans could tell you where they were when they heard Captain America died. And Elizabeth Simone was one of them.

She was in jail.

Had been there overnight, amid the leering of the white, drawling police officers, that hadn’t offered her or her friends any sort of privacy or modesty when they went to the bathroom in that dirty, cold, stinking cell. Had laughed at them and made sure that they overheard their disgusting remarks. She’d been terrified - there had been nothing that would have stopped those officers from coming in and doing what they wanted with her, her friends - and there wouldn’t have been any justice for them. Not here - not anywhere. And as much as she had wanted to believe in that shining symbol of American justice and righteousness, beating back the Nazi menace, it was a bitter reminder, her ship crashing back down to earth, when she finally realized that Captain America wouldn’t save her. Not now, not ever.

And as she sat on the thin cot covered by a threadbare blanket, knees pulled up to her chest, her skirt pulled down as far as she could to cover her legs, the faint flash of her garters and panties, she swore that she would never believe in another hero again. From here on out, she would be her own savior. And though America was great and strong and powerful and ready to help the rest of the world, they couldn’t give a damn about the people suffering on their own streets.


1955



The country had pulled itself together, neatly mopping up the remnants of Nazis: either putting them to trial or secretly absorbing them into their ranks of scientists, or looking the other way as they flocked to South America. The men returned home, the women vacated the factories, and the American Dream was firmly baked into every picture perfect cake and tract home out in the suburbs. Life was good, people were prospering, and nylons were in every store. There had been another war, yes, but nothing like the greatness of World War II - this had been quieter, with a more vague enemy, but people still signed up, still went, came back with the same thousand yard stares and nightmares of horrors that language hadn’t caught up to explain yet.

And yet, in the South, life still continued as it had - nearly 100 years earlier. It had been fooled into accepting its antiquated nature, resting back on the laurels of a past that never was, an antebellum myth of shining dresses and expansive plantations with happily singing negroes and blushing Southern belles. Now it was but a shell of those memories, the jobs going north, or to California, with the great munitions factories exploding into being behind the first War effort, and, finding more warmth in a distant sun, folks that left didn’t come back.

Elizabeth was one of them.

A few years older, a few years wiser, when she left the verdant cane fields of Louisiana first, then the stagnant humidity of Houston later, she’d been moving with a mission. That mission was not lessened as she stepped off the Greyhound bus into the sunshine of California, where it never rained and the stars shone even in the daytime. She’d packed with her in her beat up suitcase not just her meager possessions, but the hopes and dreams of all she’d left behind. Through her own bargaining, wit, and the occasional act she didn’t like to think of, she’d begged, borrowed, and stolen her way here, and by God, she was going to make it count.

The Communist Party of America hadn’t promised her the world; she knew that, but they were where like minds could meet. They hadn’t forgotten that she’d gone to jail for them; didn’t seem to care that she was a woman, and a black one at that; never saw her lesser, or her personal sacrifices as something that was a given, because that’s what women did, they were givers, and every grassroots movement could be traced back to their blood, sweat, tears, injuries, their murdered sons, brothers, fathers, their raped daughters. They gave her something to believe in, a something that over time, she could feel, was starting to be twisted by her hatred, something she knew all too well, its bitterness keeping her alive and slowly poisoning her. Once upon a time, when Captain America was alive, she’d believed in holding hands and true equality, in that great war where black, brown, yellow, and red blood had been shed as easily as white.

Looking up, shielding her eyes from the sun, she took in a deep breath of exhaust and decay that each city had, unique only in how rapidly it’d spread, and felt resolution billow in her chest. Here, she’d have more money, more support, more organization. To others, her being chosen to go would be an honor; to her, it was her rightful due. She’d worked hard to be here, and was going to keep working hard. When she left, she left behind the legacy of the first black union in her town, job securities, a framework for improving schools for faces that looked like hers.

And now, walking into the lion’s den, her name a recognized one in the Party, she knew her life was always in danger, and if she were killed, that it would mean little. But she was here now.






196X - The Present


“Betty, please!”

“Frankie, you call me ‘Betty’ one more time, I’m going to skin you alive.”

“We have to be more cautious now - we just barely survived the 50s and that zealot McCarthy; now you’re threatening to bring the whole of the government down on our heads. Some of us have families to consider now. We can’t be cowboys like we used to.”

“If you want to call this ‘surviving,’” Elizabeth waved a hand around her office. It’d seen better days; open windows with views into the expanse of downtown LA. Now, this office, if it could truly be called that, was little more than a janitor’s closet, lit by a naked lightbulb, distorted shadows scattered by its timid pull string. Her desk was a second hand thing from some sympathizer years ago, purloined from a school. There were still ancient wads of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of it, and initials carved into the once butter colored wood. On her worst nights, Elizabeth would run her fingers across it and wonder if Mary-Ann was really a whore, or if Jimmy and Janey were still together.

“That’s just my point, Elizabeth,” sighed Frank, pushing his thick black framed glasses up his nose. Anywhere else in the world, a covert meeting between a white man and a young black woman would have been cause for alarm, but California always was a bit different, a bit warped in its sensibilities. “We just don’t have the funds that we used to. People have moved on. People don’t care anymore.”

“They got their tv dinners and autos and that’s all she wrote.” She leaned up against the desk now, careful not to push it. Crossing her arms, she stared at the creeping bloom of a water stain on the ceiling. “While folks down south are still worried about being strung up from trees. This world is fucked.”
“What do you want, Elizabeth?” Frank sighed. It was a long argument, stretching into its second year, and he was growing weary.

“Some of Howard Stark’s money.” A peace gesture, an attempt to lighten the mood.

“You’re not blonde enough for it.” The peace gesture accepted; all was forgiven. Tentatively, Frank spoke again, turning to walk out. “Look, I know you want the best for everyone. But nowadays, we gotta count our blessings, no matter how small they are. You implemented that school lunch program down in those housing projects, and you made sure there was transportation to get them there and back again. And the book mobiles. You’ve done more than enough. Every tub’s got to rest on its own bottom, and every man has to sit under his own vine. Sit back, Elizabeth. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.”

She sat back down with a sigh. “I’ll try, Frank.”

A wan smile from the older man. He knew a dismissal when he heard one. “You wanna come over Saturday night? Midge is making brisket.”

A wave of her hand of dismissal. “I appreciate it, but I’ll probably pass. Send my regards to her and the kids.”

“Levi’s been asking about you - wanting to know when you’re going to come over again.”

She laughed now, the tension finally broken, though her shoulders were still heavy, still weary. “Levi just wants my beignets.”

“He’s a man of good taste. Goodnight, Betty - be careful on your way home. Call when you get in; Miriam worries.”

“Frankie, Miriam is 3 years old.”

“Ya got me, chief.” A friendly smile, a wrinkling of the fine skin next to his brown eyes, and he was out the door, his footsteps heavy on the stairs. Elizabeth waited till the tell-tale creak of the second to last step on the landing before she allowed herself a heavier sigh. Standing up, she walked over to the lone window in the whole of the room, a meager thing lop-sided in the old red brick of the building, an afterthought. Pulling up the broken blinds, her eyes automatically looked past the familiar sight of the ever changing billboard right outside (this month was advertising Maxwell House Coffee), past the ever rising skyscrapers, to the murky blue of the night sky. Something about nights in the city - it was never truly dark outside. Not like the pitch black of home. Regardless - it was still the night sky; still a window into something wider, greater, bigger than she could ever hope to be, and that alone was enough to give her hope. Leaning against the window now, she rested her forehead against the glass, and sighed again, her breath fogging it.




Home was something of a creature comfort, in the barest of meaning. It was furnished comfortably enough, enough for a single woman, and the apartment was equally safe, a melting pot in a city that still wasn’t sure how it felt about it. Her neighbors were friendly enough without being nosy, and somehow, all the children in the building knew just when she’d caught a wild hair up her ass about home and was making beignets.

As the key slide effortlessly into her lock, she was thankful that it was late enough that she didn’t have to talk to anyone. She wasn’t in the mood. Inside, the dull red light she kept on to keep her apartment from being in total darkness was still cheerily going, throwing warm light across immaculately polished wooden floors and crates of records, haphazardly piled here and there. Tossing her keys to the table just inside, she kicked off her heels with a reassuring clatter and, as her usual ritual, slid in her stockinged feet across the entryway into her living room. Flopping down on her couch, she threw an arm over her forehead - huh. Her fingernail polish was chipped; she’d have to redo it sooner than later.

Tilting her head back across the arm of the couch, she waited until the familiar strain in her neck started, and then stretched her legs out, pointing her toes as delicately as a ballerina. “Money, money, money. Gimme gimme gimme.” A strange ritual, but one that brought her some sense of comfort. Maybe if she kept asking the void, someone would hear her.

 

[desperado1089]

1945

Most Americans could tell you where they were when they heard Captain America died. For Sam DeLauder, he was helping on his father's ranch when his mom called out to him from the house. For the next twenty minutes, he listened to the President give a live radio speech about how "Cap" had been a shining symbol of American heroism, and that he will be greatly missed.

Sam's sixteenth birthday was the next day, but all he wished for as he blew out the candles were two things: that one day, his abolitionist ancestors would finally be able to rest in peace as America finally embraced Steve Rogers' ideals. The second was that, until that day came, he himself would be that hero for somebody, somewhere that needed one.

1955

It had been a few years since Sam had joined the Strategic Scientific Reserve, which was ultimately responsible for Captain America's very existence, it turned out. Thankfully, his status as an agent excluded him from the Korean War's accompanying draft, and a couple years later he and everyone else were being absorbed into a new agency--the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division. Sam, for one, hoped that SHIELD would catch on sooner rather than later. At least he was able to visit his family on time off with relative ease--one of the primary SHIELD headquarters buildings was located a few miles outside Los Angeles.

1965

"Agh, are you fucking kidding me?" Sam had gotten used to bad or mixed news, but this whole thing about a war in Vietnam was just ridiculous, to him. What business was it of theirs, anyway? HYDRA had abandoned its Asian holdings a decade ago. Yet here he was, listening to a junior analyst--he couldn't remember his name--deliver the news before scurrying off to wherever they hid from the big bad field agents.

Sam swiveled in his chair and looked at his partner, a man barely a year younger named Chet Fisher. They both wore slate-gray suits, but there the similarities ended. Sam was tall, lean but still strong, with jet-black hair and a kind face, and his suit was accentuated with a cobalt blue silk tie. Chet, meanwhile, was almost a head shorter and it was a miracle he passed his fitness tests, his sandy blond hair sticking out of what was basically a paler version of Mr. Potato Head. "Well, least we aren't involved," Chet drawled lazily. Sam couldn't help but like the guy, though. For all his annoying tendencies, he was a good friend, and a crack shot to boot, something that had saved Sam's ass on more than one occasion.

"Small mercies, Chet. Hopefully we'll be getting an assignment soon. I'm getting bored." He really was, too, and later that afternoon, not even running the assault course with the new M-16 assault rifle could cure his cabin fever. Finally it was time to call it a day, and as he collapsed onto his bed in his south LA apartment, sleep took him without preamble.

 

[Apollo Wilde]

Another day - and she wished she could say it was another dollar. But since the heat of the 1950s, the donations had dried up. And with her activism marked squarely on her record, finding a “regular” job would have been out of the question, and things that paid under the table weren’t consistent or lucrative enough to keep the programs running that she wanted. Still, every day, she went into the offie, went through the same motions, waiting for something, anything, to change.

Resting her pen on her upper lip, she made a face, curling it up to touch the bottom of her nose. Plucking the pen from her lip, she began to drop it and pick it up, bouncing it on the top of the desk. This invasion of Vietnam - she could think of nothing less to call it- was still riding high off of the political currents of the Red Scare, and of course, Americans were going in to do the right thing. How could we not? With a sigh, she bounced the pen a bit harder against the desk.

“It’s always the same thing, isn’t it?”

The voice her made her jump; nearly fall out of her chair. Trying to pull herself together (and try, horrifically), to hide her surprise, she resettled herself in her chair, and slipped her shoes back on. It had been her fault; apparently pen bouncing was so riveting that she hadn’t paid attention to the door right in front of her, let alone the fact that someone had entered.

In front of her stood a decidedly average man with a decidedly average smile and a blandness that was like milk spilled across a desk. There was simply nothing memorable about him - not his voice, his glasses, or his clothing.

“What’s that?” she managed, once she pried her heart out of her throat and could trust her voice.

“Why, money of course,” he replies, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. And to him, perhaps it was. “Such organizations as your own; they’re always scrambling for the next penny, nickel, dime. Too much need, not enough wealth. I’ve seen it all before.” He had no accent, no way of leaning into his words that could identify him. He was the perfect everyman.

She narrowed her eyes a bit; not wanting to scare him off, but not buying what he was selling. He seemed unfazed; smiled.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself," and he took off his coat, hanging it up on the meager coat rack next to the door, “I’m John. John Collins.” He took out a card; held it out to her. She took it, and, glancing down at his name finely embossed on it. “Elizabeth Simone.”

“Oh, I know who you are, Miss Simone, and what you do. You could say I was a secret admirer.” A beat, then a soft chuckle from him, “That was a little joke there. Secret admirer. Anyway, I heard through the grapevine that you might be having some financial troubles, and I wanted to offer my company’s assistance. Company’s right there on the card, you see.”

She picked up the card again, and looked at it. John Collins, of AmeriMax. A company she’d never heard of.

"We're a fairly new operation, you know, started right after we got out of the war. Well, the company itself. Our parent company was under a munitions factory, Riverbank Army Ammunition Plant. Peacetime means ‘beating swords into plowshares’, and all, so we’ve branched out into making things that make modern life easier. Microwaves, refrigerators, that sort of thing. We even started branching out into TV dinners; we make a pretty decent Salisbury steak, I’ve heard.”
“That’s…interesting.” She didn’t want to seem rude, and truly, he wasn’t wasting her time. It wasn’t like she was busy. “But who did you hear this from, and why would a company like yours risk being tied to an openly Communist organization?”

“See, that’s the beauty of it all - with large companies, you get all sorts of folks working for you. And AmeriMax is no different. We pride ourselves on ‘hiring the unhireables’ - you know, folks that have been blacklisted, caught on the wrong side of the law. True rehabilitation doesn’t come from restricting people’s rights; it comes from re-introducing them into society and removing the temptations and pitfalls from before. We have a diverse selection of employees - why, we just promoted a Japanese to our Pasadena branch management team.”

He seemed to read the incredulity on her face, and let out that strange, strangled sob of a chuckle. “Word gets out. Some of our employees have had children, family, helped out by the things that you do. ‘Communist’ gets a bad rap around here, that’s true, but with your organization, it’s much more than picket lines and hot air. You see, I’ve done some digging, and I know that you take the smallest salary possible and all of the money that you get goes right back into the community. Equality programs, bookmobiles, even some health care - Miss Simone, you are a wonder and a half and you are worthy of the Noble Prize, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Elizabeth folded her fingers into one another - listening. He was laying it on thick, she knew it, but it proved that he had actually followed what her company did. “Any name in particular?”

“I’m so pleased you’d ask! It was David; David King. His is just the first name that comes to mind. Once he got hired on, he brought on some other family members. Ralph, and a Jean-Paul, if memory serves.”

David - it was a name that rang a familiar bell. She’d personally delivered hot meals to his folks more than once. At the mention of his name, the suspicion dropped, and she didn’t bother to hide her smile.

“I’m glad they were able to find work.”

“Oh, yes - and paid a decent wage. Mr. King’s one of our best - swears up and down if it hadn’t been for your organization, he would’ve been put beneath the jail.”

Sounds about right.

“So…”

“Well, let get started!”





Over the next 45 minutes, John Collins laid out his entire pitch. The donations would be on a monthly basis, no strings attached, since through some creative, though entirely legal, book-keeping, whatever was donated would be considered a tax break. And that meant the more that they could donate, the better. Of course, he’d need to see an itemized budget for each expenditure, just to keep things on and up and up, but he knew she was trustworthy and only hired trustworthy people.

Elizabeth felt like she was dreaming while she was awake. It was hard to focus on what he was saying - past the point of realizing that he was writing her essentially a blank check - and the only thing she had to be held accountable for was to note where the money went. And that was no problem for her - that was what Frank was for. And apparently she needed to hire someone from AmeriMax, but that wasn’t a problem. If what he was proposing was true, then she would need more help anyway. It simply sounded perfect - perhaps too good to be true, but there were enough check and balances that John was setting up that she realized that, no, it actually made sense - and was simply the result of hard work.

So of course she shook on it, signed the contract, and sat back, still a bit stunned, but fairly vibrating with energy. She could barely wait to get started.




Mr. Collins was as good as his word. With the recent influx of money, she was actually able to DO things. Really inject blood into the programs - from the school lunches to the reading programs, she felt like she could say for sure - those who said money couldn't buy happiness never had enough of it. She was making a difference; and where it actually counted. The guy that Mr. Collins had sent over, Thomas Steinbeck, was on the up and up, as far as she was concerned. The man could do the job of 5, and in less the time. He was instrumental in making sure that she kept track of things in the way that AmeriMax wanted them to - not too different from what she was already doing, but still, it was great to have the extra help. Even Frankie seemed to be less dour when he came into the office.

After three months of her first meeting with Mr. Collins, things were going swimmingly. The money kept coming in, the programs were flourishing, and it seemed like literally nothing could go wrong.