her to attention, bolted toward the coffee table and madly searched for the remote.
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“Hijo de puta!” the girl cried when she bumped her head on a hanging punching bag, bringing on a prickly headache.
The pile of DVDs, magazines, books, empty cans, and paper plates didn’t make the search any easier. Try as she might, the television wouldn’t turn off. The power button always got stuck. Her slim back shielding the screen couldn’t cover all of Tad Wanky’s endowments. The giant poster of a grinning open-shirt Jim Kelly directly behind the television seemed to be laughing at her mortification. She really shouldn’t have pinched the poster from the movie rental store next door, but she loved Kelly’s cotton candy hair so. Out of desperation, she resorted to yanking out the cord from the small generator.
“And how do you defend that one, Goss?” Sister asked sarcastically. “I suppose that’s more pop culture she needs to be exposed to?”
“Don’t look at me, Sis,” he said, waving the responsibility away. “She’s been watching that crap since she was eight – years before we ever found her.”
He cleared his throat, “The girl says she enjoys the background music.”
The two of them trained their accusing eyes on Poe, still guiltily clutching the remote control in her hand. At last they found something they could agree on.
“The m-music,” Poe said lamely, avoiding their disapproving look and cringing at her own speech impediment that sometimes came and went whenever it suited itself. Boku no shiri ni kisu siro, she thought, conjuring up her knapsack of Japanese curse words and coming up with a lame ‘kiss my ass.’
The nun was right about certain things, though.
The dialogue and storylines were pretty weak, and the men looked nasty. But those were the best things about 15
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dirty flicks because they made Poe laugh by grossing her out. For a minute or two, she could forget that everyone she knew or loved was dead. And no, she would not give up her movies as easily as the confiscated video games Sister claimed would damage her eyes and wrists.
Truth was Poe simply loved the Superflyish background music of certain films from the 1970s.
Later, she got into repetitive techno beats from really bad 1980s and 1990s San Fernando Valley-produced videos. She popped them in while she trained and read, to occupy all the years of dead silence living underground. It wasn’t because she was sex addicted.
On the contrary, the tapes never acted as a stimulant but were more like a boring commercial people watched because there wasn’t anything else on TV. In this case, she’d burned through all the movies worth watching.
“Anyway, here’s some Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie for you as promised,” Sister Ann said as she handed Poe the CDs. They were from the nun’s private collection. “Consider them an early birthday present.”
She would have listened to the emo and indie-rock bands her older brother Joseph used to like, but her friends would never take the time to sort through the mess in a cobwebbed record store to find her any. Even her mother’s late-1970s and early-1980s punk band favorites would have sufficed. Instead, Sister Ann and Goss tried to indoctrinate their own tastes upon her.
She smiled and accepted them for she found that Louis, Billie, and Ella weren’t so bad. In fact, they had a knack for improving her mood when life was in the toilet.
Not to be outdone, Goss excavated some Thelonius Monk and Coltrane from his jacket.
“A pre-present before your birthday bash.”
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They had differing views on how to civilize the girl and an unspoken rivalry that kept Poe wary of choosing between the unbranded survivors left she personally knew of. The only parenting skill they had in common was to outfit Poe with guns and ammo.
“Thanks for the goodies, Sister and Goss,” she said, perusing the CD covers capriciously.
Sister Ann once told her that love was the most powerful amulet against life’s travails. In a sense, she was right. Poe got another chance at life because two people loved her enough to teach her guerilla tactics.
Goss energized her with his zest to bring down the fanged powers-that-be. Sister Ann shared the dead aim secrets her family had passed down since the Civil War.
Fending for herself in an eerily silent city since she was eight years old gave her a skewed view of the world. Poe knew that love meant squat next to fear, hunger, and hate. Her bunker contained thousands of pilfered videos and