Michelle Min Sterling - Camp Zero

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For A & A

The Blooms receive their new names on the shortest day of the year. Six women in total. All strangers. They stand in an empty parking lot and wait to be checked in. Snow has scrubbed the landscape clean, capped the roof of the run-down mall that is one of the few buildings still standing on this frozen stretch of highway.

The Bloom last in line pauses to appreciate the freeze. Its colder in the North than she expected, and the snow is more delicate. She takes off a glove and watches a flake vanish in the palm of her hand. Shes never seen snow before, and the snowflake feels refreshing on her skin, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish forehead.

When she reaches the entrance to the mall, her new Madam introduces herself as Judith. She is nothing like the Blooms previous Madam, who drifted around in a linen caftan and calfskin sandals. Judith wears a fur-lined parka, black snow pants, and a pair of steel-toe boots, as if she was hired to demolish the dilapidated mall theyre standing in front of.

Judith reads off a clipboard. Your name will be Rose.

Rose, she repeats. A cloying, sentimental name. Like a grandmother who keeps apple pies in the deep-freeze. She had expected one of the pseudonyms shared among the Asian Girls in the Loop where she used to work: Jade, Mei, Lotus. It never mattered that the names were clich, or that she is as white as she is Korean. Back in the Floating City, ethnicity was a ready-made brand.

Judith lowers her voice. I wanted to let you girls choose your names for yourself. But Meyer likes things his way.

Is Meyer my client? Rose asks, careful to sound casual.

He doesnt want us to use that word here, Rose. Think of him as your collaborator. Judith opens the front door of the mall and Rose follows inside. Welcome to the Millennium Mall.

The Blooms quarters are at the back of the mall in a department store that has long since been pillaged. Metal clothing racks are scattered in jumbled piles, and the beauty counters mirrors are mottled. Rose can smell the faintest trace of artificial gardenia as she rolls her suitcase past a perfume display, where an ad of a womans glowing face pressed against the bristly cheek of a male model still remains. Her mother never wore perfume and hadnt allowed Rose to either. She wanted them to smell as they actually did, like the saltwater breeze of the peninsula.

When did the mall close? Rose asks.

Fifteen years ago, Judith says. It was the first place to shutter when the rigs stopped drilling.

Judith leads Rose to the former furniture section where the Blooms lodgings have been built out of plywood along an echoing corridor. Each rooms entrance is framed by light, and Rose can hear the sounds of the other Blooms unpacking behind the closed doors.

Judith opens Roses door and deposits her single suitcase on a mahogany four-poster bed. A bear pelt is splayed across the floor, and a rickety plastic chandelier is bolted to the ceiling. A vanity mirror with a small, upholstered stool in front of it is against the wall. The room reeks of damp pleather.

Damien, her former client who set her up with this job, warned her that the camp would be spare, but he said nothing about squatting in a derelict shopping mall. Its too late to give Damien shit now. Rose wont speak with him again until her assignment is complete. All she has is her contact in camp, who Damien promised would reach out when the moment is right. She wonders if Judith might be her contact, but then decides this clipboard-wielding woman is too straightforward for that level of deception.

Water is heated to tepid, Judith says, and shows Rose the sanitizing schedule tacked to her bedroom door. Judith explains that the Blooms are expected to share the malls washroom, where a nozzle attached to one of the sinks faucets functions as a makeshift shower. We run on oil and have to conserve energy to maintain our supply.

Oil isnt illegal here? Rose asks in surprise. In the Floating City, oil usage is treated with the same moral outrage as murder.

Nothing is illegal in camp, Judith says. Thats why we live off-grid. Were lucky enough to make our own rules here.

Rose wonders if the rules of the camp are like the rules of the Floating City, created to benefit those who made them. If this is the case, then she doubts Judith is the one who made the rules. Judith strikes her as a middle manager, a local hire paid to oversee the Blooms, whose influence in camp is confined to the domestic arrangements of the bedrooms. But Judith is technically Roses boss, so she will have to adopt the blas disinterest of a jaded escort to keep her new Madam from becoming suspicious of her. Even if Judith only runs the Blooms side of camp, she still holds some form of power, which is more than Rose can openly say for herself.

Judith tells Rose to unload her suitcase on the bedspread. Rose dumps the contents into a pile: two slips, a bodycon cocktail dress, a black silk dress, a silk robe, linen pajamas, a merino wool sweater, two pairs of pants, a few blouses, socks, lingerie sets, back-seam stockings, shiny heels, calfskin boots, hair ties, and cosmetics. Judith is quiet and focused as she inspects each item.

What are you looking for? Rose asks.

Sharp edges. And drugs. Judith flicks on the jet-black lace lamp on the nightstand, illuminating a stack of books. We keep a clean house here. Only booze and cigarettes allowed.

Judith runs her fingers along the seams of Roses clothing, rifling through the cosmetic bag, opening the lipsticks and powder. Rose feels an impulse to snatch her clothes away from her. She picks up one of the books on the nightstand instead, a hardcover titled Building in Ruins, with a photo of a young, bearded, solemn-looking man printed inside the dust jacket. His shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows, and he appears to be standing in a parched acre of desert next to a modernist house.

An indispensable manifesto on finding silver linings in annihilation, Rose reads from the back cover. Is it any good?

Oh, you like to read? Judith sounds surprised. Youre welcome to find out for yourself. Thats Meyers first book, published right after he graduated from architecture school. Youll find all of his writings here. Judith taps another book titled Utopia after the Anthropocene. He likes to keep us educated.

For a moment, Rose doesnt care about the mildewy smell in the room, or that a panel in the ceiling is caving in, or even that her new Madam assumes shes illiterate. Meyers books are here for her to read. A small victory, but an essential one. Reading what Meyer thinks and feels will be the first step to gaining his trust. Everything Damien promised her depends on this.

The room is very Rose searches for the right word. Cozy.

Judith looks at her and then laughs. Thats bullshit and you know it. It smells like a dead animal in here. But we have to make do with what we have. Let me show you the kitchen.

Judith leads Rose down a dark hallway into a room that smells of fresh paint and industrial glue. The kitchen is nothing like the polished dining rooms of the Loop where she used to dine with clients. This kitchen looks like it was once the department stores staff break room, complete with a microwave, an electric two-burner stove, and a fridge that hums in the corner. A white plastic table, the kind left to mildew in a backyard, is positioned in the corner of the room next to a stack of patio chairs.