Termination Shock

Saskia, whose primary excuse for being a queen was to support philanthropy, had been frog-marched through her share of Third World shantytowns. Most felt ancient. She was fascinated to see a new one budding. For now, the RVs were clean, their tires properly inflated, ready to roll onward as soon as conditions improved. The tents were bright and new, and a festive atmosphere prevailed as most here felt the unity that comes of shared hardship. But what might it look like if people never went home? The tents would deteriorate and be mended with duct tape and blue tarps. The tires of the RVs would go flat and they’d end up on concrete blocks. Proper sewage connections would never be made. The stink would never go away; people would learn to ignore it. None of these people would have legal title to the land they lived on and so they could be evicted at any time, or pushed off by rivals with more muscle. They couldn’t accumulate equity in their homes so they’d have no incentive to make improvements beyond slapdash repairs. They would not be paying taxes so there would not be schools, clinics, vaccinations, social workers. In what would seem like the blink of an eye, the shantytown would be a year old, then ten years, then a hundred. Its origins would be lost to memory, overlooked by historians. It would become something that had always been there.

She didn’t actually think that would happen here. The floodwaters would recede, people would go home. The north bank landowners would evict campers by force if need be. The state police would see to it that the campground on the south bank was returned to normal. All the urine and feces and litter going into the river now would be flushed out into the Gulf of Mexico and the Brazos would go back to being as clean, or as dirty, as it had ever been. But she was willing to bet that in other places within an hour’s drive of Houston, during the last few days, shantytowns—not seen as such by their occupants, of course—had taken root that would still exist generations from now, unless they were forcibly cleared in merciless pogroms. That was the way of most of the world. Texas would be no different. Which was not a judgment upon Texas. It could happen in the Netherlands too.

Lotte, her daughter, kept late hours in the Netherlands and tended to text her when it was early evening here. At that time of day, Cajuns were especially likely to be preparing food. Saskia, who enjoyed cooking, had got into a rhythm during the last couple of days where she would text, send selfies, or (using earphones) just talk on the phone to Lotte while chopping onions or whatever else needed doing.

On the first day of the adventure, distracted Saskia had been brusque with her daughter, who had been in the middle of some interminable teen freakout over a matter that struck Saskia as being of much less significance than crashing a plane and fleeing the scene of the accident while fighting a rearguard action against man-eating beasts.

Lotte had texted:

> I hope you get some vitamin D in Texas, maybe it will improve your disposition!

Saskia had replied that the weather was sunny and that she would probably get plenty of natural vitamin D, even in spite of careful application of sunscreen. This had elicited an eye-roll emoji and an LOL from Lotte.

Puzzled Saskia had even sent her a photo of the label on the sunscreen container, which was touted as a “natural” and “green” product that would not have toxic effects on aquatic life. She thought that this would please Lotte, who could not shut up about environmental politics.

But later Saskia had realized that the “D” was actually short for “dick” and that Lotte had really been suggesting that her mother ought to take advantage of this opportunity, while out of the usual press spotlight and among new friends, to get laid. And that doing so might make Saskia happier and somehow a more easygoing and approachable sort of mom.

Now, this was new. Of course, they had had the obligatory Talk some years ago. But with the usual sense of unbearable tween embarrassment on Lotte’s part. She’d just barely contained her desire to fly out of the room. Since then it had never again come up, until the vitamin D remark. Lotte had never dared to bring up the topic of Saskia’s [nonexistent] sex life, much less make suggestions.