by James Grady
“Just a tip,” said Doug. “Straps first is more comfortable.”
Vicki—made it through night school working as a grocery checker and sitting vigil beside a hospital bed where the patient never stirred—Vicki fastened Safety Straps across the prone man, tucked the blanket over him to his chin, knew he could have been her father, knew she could have made him one, knew that wasn’t—isn’t—what mattered or what decided what were never going to be more than stolen heartbeats of rebellion and escape, comfort and yearning, the fever of beasts.
Let it go. Let it go.
“Do you remember the new name you picked?” she asked him. “Not Condor.”
“How can I not be who I am?”
“That’s part of the deal to get you out of here. Back to the real world.”
“So that’s where I’m going.” His smile was sly.
“So they tell me.” Her smile was honest. “Who are you, Condor?”
“Vin.”
“V for Vicki,” she said, like it was nothing.
“Yes,” he lied to let her have everything he could give.
She pressed her crimson lips to his mouth: Last kiss.
Floated out of the van, a blur of white, the night spinning as Doug whirred the side door closed, climbed into the shotgun seat, slammed his door thunk.
Condor, Vin, whoever he was dropped into a black hole.
Drugged sleep. Flashes of sight, of sound, dreams in a heartbeat rhythm.
… white stripes flick through a night road’s headlights …
… Springsteen guitars State Trooper …
… beeping machines web a hollow Marine to a hospital bed …
… naked thighs straining yes yes yes …
… snap-clack of a chambering .45 …
… red lips …
… Arab Spring crowds: “Lib-er-te! Lib-er-te!” …
… footsteps behind you on Paris cobblestones …
… the mailman clings to his pouch …
… drone’s view of a rushing closer city square …
… plopped on a closet toilet, no pants, some guy saying, “OK, here you go” …
… walk into the alley, a friend waves you forward …
JOLT. Awake. He felt himself … awake. Sunlight through black glass windows.
Blink and you’re flat on your back on a bed in a van. That’s stopped.
Coffee, that wondrous rich aroma.
“OK, man,” said … Doug, his name is Doug. “Straps are off. Sit up, have a cup of the good stuff from inside.”
Inside where? Where am I?
He sipped coffee cut with milk from a paper cup logoed ’bucks!
“You gotta go again?” said Brian from the behind the wheel of the parked van. “We took you in the middle of the night, but … Hey, you’re a guy that age and your med’ reports say—score, by the way! The daily use pill with the TV commercial of the man and woman sitting in side by side bathtubs.”
“Let’s get you together before we meet the world,” said Doug.
The Special Ops guys let him cram himself into the closet bathroom.
“Remember,” Doug said through the closed bathroom door: “Your name is Vin.”
After he flushed the van toilet—Such a weird concept!—Doug met him in the cramped aisle between the beds. Passed him a paper cup of pills to help him forget what he wasn’t supposed to remember and act like he believed what other people saw.
A plastic bag labeled “For Our Forgetful Guests!” that had been repurposed from a Los Angeles hotel waited beside the metal sink. The bag held a disposable toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste trademarked with a notorious TV cartoon squirrel.
“We figured,” said Doug, “feel fresh for a fresh start.”
Brian called out from behind the van’s steering wheel: “Don’t be impressed, he’s had the whole ride here to think of that one.”
Mouthful of minty toothpaste.
The sink faucet worked— Amazing! He rinsed, spit.
Raised his eyes to the metal plate polished to reflect like a mirror.
Saw a silver-haired, craggy and scarred faced, blue-eyed man staring back at him.
Whispered: “Your name is Vin.”
Thought: “Condor.”
Radio Voice from the van’s dashboard:
“—is it for this edition of Rush Hour Rundown on New Jersey Public Radio, but throughout the day, stories we’ll be following include attempts to bring Occupy Wall Street movements to middle America, life after Gadhafi in war-torn Libya, the last days of that Ohio zookeeper who freed his wild animals and then killed himself, and the billionaire brothers who’ve bought a chunk of America’s politics, plus the latest actor to play Superman talks about his divorce from the, um, generously proportioned socialite hired by reality TV to play someone like herself, and one of our only two surviving Beatles is getting married—again. Finally, remember: today we’re supposed to be terrified. Go forth in fear.”
WHAT?
“Coming up, the third in our six-part series on how climate change—”
Click, off went the radio as Brian turned: “Did you say something?”
Doug held out the black leather jacket to Vin, said: “You ready to go?”
Then slid open the van’s rear compartment side door and with the nostalgia of a paratrooper, hopped out into the rush of cool gray sunshine.
The silver-haired man put on his black leather jacket.
Stepped out into the light.
I’m in a parking lot.
Low gray sky, cool sun glistening on rows of parked cars surrounding a tan cement, crouched dragon building. Waves of sound whooshing past.
Slouching from the dragon building came a trio of zombies.
“No fucking way!” muttered Vin, muttered Condor.
Zombies, but their make-up and costumes were so lame you could tell who they weren’t.
“Happy Halloween,” said Brian as he posted beside Vin.
The zombies climbed into a five-year-old car with New Jersey license plates.
Doug said: “Today, everybody else is in costume.”
His partner shook his head: “Don’t be impressed. He’s had the whole ride to think of that one, too.”
“Go figure,” said Doug. “It’s fucking 2011 and everywhere you look, zombies.”
“If we’ve got zombies,” said Condor, said Vin, “do you got guns?”
Call it a pause in the cool morning air.
Then Doug answered: “We’re fully sanctioned.”
Condor shrugged. “As long as what you’re full of is sanction.”
The Escort Operatives stared at him with eyes that were stone canyons.
“You expecting trouble?” said Brian.
“Always. Never.” Condor shook his head. “My meds are supposed to suffocate expectations.”
“You just need some breakfast,” said Brian. “Stand here a minute, get your land legs under you, get your breath, then we’ll get something to eat.”
“Want to do T’ai chi?” Doug gestured to a white gazebo in the corner of the parking lot. “Get your Form on?”
“That’s not low-profile,” said Vin, said Condor. “Citizens might think I’m weird.”
“Really,” said Brain. “That’s what would make you seem weird?”
“Remember, Vin,” said Doug: “We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are. You know that’s the heart and hard of any Op’, so play it cool. Low key. Absolutely normal.”
“Normal has been a problem.”
“You’re past that now,” said Brian. “Remember?”
“Meanwhile,” said Doug, “welcome to the Nick Logar Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“Monday morning, Halloween, 2011,” said Brian. “Zer
o-nine-three three.”
Doug frowned. “Who was Nick Logar?”
“Who cares?” said Brian.
Condor surprised them: “Poet. Black and white movie days, tough times, people working hard to just hold on, rich guys on top even after the stock market crash, bad guys savaging the world. Kind of quirky getting a rest stop named after Nick Logar. Rebel politics, road crazy. But nobody likes to talk about that, just his Congressional Medal of Honor and Pulitzer Prize for poetry no one reads, except for that famous one that doesn’t flap the flag like— God, it feels good to just talk!”
“And look at you!” said Doug. “Got a lot to say and up on literature and shit.”
“My first spy job was to know things like that.”
Brian shrugged. “My first was a take-out in Tehran. We’re not talking dinner.”
“Let’s talk breakfast,” said Doug.
“Fuck talking,” said Brian. “Let’s eat.”
The silver-haired man brushed his hands down the front of his black leather jacket, amateurishly revealing worry over not finding a gun hidden under there and thus implying that years of confinement had succeeded in making him not Condor but Vin.
“Chill,” said Brian. “Everything’s normal and OK. Just look.”
Condor didn’t tell his Escort Operative that normal and OK are not the same.
But he did look.
The parked gray van faced a chain link fence that made the north boundary of the rest stop. Beyond the fence, a yellowed marsh filled the median between Northbound and Southbound lanes of the Turnpike. The van sat closer to the Southbound lane, and that route’s exit into the rest stop made a sloping hill behind the white gazebo.
The van’s rear bumper faced four rows of cars parked in white striped spaces on the side of the rest stop’s crouching dragon “facility” building, tan cement walls and a New Mexico meets Hong Kong green roof. The facility sat on a raised knoll to stay above rainwater runoff. Glass doors front and centered the facility, a dragon’s face where a protruding tongue of concrete steps led down to the pavement between a mustache of two sloped ramps. The glass doors reflected the nearly full front parking lot.
People. Lots and lots of people.
A squat bleached-blond woman in a pink mohair sweater rummaged in her car’s open trunk with one hand while her other held a straining leash clipped to the collar of a yippy terrier. The dog’s and the bleached blonde’s pink sweaters matched.
A young guy wearing a padded black costume, hip or horror, Condor couldn’t tell, carried a brown paper sack as he walked toward the facility’s rear and waiting green dumpsters below circling seagulls, plus the entrance to the Northbound road, the direction a mouse named Stuart Little took looking for love and a life to call his own.
A smiling family of Japanese tourists clustered together in the parking lot for pictures one of them took with a cell phone.
Call him twenty-four looking nineteen, baseball cap on backwards, gray sweatshirt, low slung blue jeans, sneakers shuffling toward the facility.
Two men in suits parked their dark-colored car.
A married couple who’d seen fifty in their rearview mirrors stepped out of their parked Chevy, slammed its doors and sighed as they shuffled in to use the bathrooms.
My next is now, thought Condor.
Brian said: “Let’s get something before.”
“Before what?” said Condor as his escorts walked him toward the facility.
Doug said: “Before your transfer ride shows up. Should have been here already.”
“What about you guys?”
“Places to go,” said Brian, “people to see.”
“Is this the time you’re going to do more than just see?” said Doug.
“Shut the fuck up,” said his partner. Lovingly.
Three soda machines selling bottles and cans of caffeine and sugar and chemical concoctions stood sentinel near the ramp Condor and his escorts took to the glass front doors, past a bench where three probably just graduated high school girls sat, two of them wearing hajib headresses, all of them smoking cigarettes.
What struck Condor inside the rest stop facility was its atmosphere of closeness, of containment. The densely packed air smelled of …
Of floor tiles. Crackling meat grease. Hot sugar. Lemon scented ammonia.
Ahead gaped entrances for MENS and LADIES rooms. The wall between the restrooms held a YOU ARE HERE map and a bronze plaque with lines of writing that travellers hurrying into the bathrooms only glanced at but Condor read:
Drive, drive on. These are the highways of our lives.
Dwell not on the sharp quiet madness of our collective soul.
Call us all New Jersey. Call us all Americans, as on we go alone together.
Nick Logar
Off to Condor’s left waited the gift shop, wall racks of celebrity magazines and candy, glass coolers with yet more cans of syrupy caffeine, displays of key chains dangling green plastic models of the Statue of Liberty, T-shirts and buttons that “hearted” New York, postcards that nobody mailed anymore.
He turned right, toward the food court, a long open corridor with garish neon signs above each stop where money could be exchange for sustenance.
There was ’bucks, the coffee-centered franchise intent on conquering the world.
DANDY DONUTS! came next in line, sold coffee, too, essentially the same concoctions as ’bucks but somehow not as costly.
The red, white, and green logo for SACCO’S ITALIA seen mostly in airports, train stations, or rest stops centered the food stops wall.
Italian green gave way to broccoli green letters on a white background: NATURAL EATS & FRO YO, where display cases held plastic sealed salads and silver machines hummed behind the counter.
Last in the line of eateries came BURGERS BONAZA, the third biggest chain of hamburger and fries and cola drive-ins of Condor’s youth, still clinging to that national sales rank partially because a dozen years remained on the company’s fifty-year exclusive lease for this state’s Turnpike stops signed with an unindicted former governor.
“Come on,” Brian told Condor.
Gray tables lined the red tiles between the wall of eateries and the not quite ceiling-to-floor windows. Travelers sat on hard-to-shoplift black metal chairs.
Brian took a chair facing those front windows. Condor sat where he could look down the food court to the main doors, or look left out to the front parking lot through the wall of windows, or look right and see Doug shuffling in service lines. Behind Condor, a door labeled OFFICE waited near a glass door under a red sign glowing FIRE EXIT.
“What time is it?” asked Condor.
“No worries,” said Brian. “We’re where we belong and when we should be.”
Doug came to them balancing cardboard trays like a man who’d worked his way through college as a waiter. The trays held ’bucks cups, plastic glasses of white yogurt and strawberry chunks, containers of raisins and granola, bananas, spoons, napkins, a white plastic knife almost useless for cutting someone’s throat.
“And six donuts?” said Brian.
“The secret to life is knowing how to mix and match,” said his partner. “Evens out health-wise with the yogurt. Gives us some bulk and energy for the ride back. Three classic chocolate donuts, three seasonal special pumpkin maple donuts. In good conscience, how could we pass those up?”
“You guys are driving back to Maine?” said Condor.
“Brooklyn,” said Brian as he sliced a banana into his yogurt.
“Somebody’s insisting on an overnight there,” explained his partner.
Two kindergarten-aged boys ran past the table trailed by their harried mother.
“You wouldn’t believe Brooklyn now,” Brian told Condor.
“I didn’t believe it then.”
Doug said: “Ther
e’s this ultra-hip coffee shop not far from—”
“Hey!” said his partner.
“Come on,” Doug told his partner. “You can’t just show up hoping she will.”
The silver-haired man who was old enough to be the two gunners’ father smiled.
Said: “We’ve all done that.”
“What’s the worst that could happen if you finally talked to her?” said Doug.
Condor shrugged. “You could watch your dreams die in her eyes.”
“Me,” said Doug, “I was gonna say alimony, but troop, if you do not engage the enemy, you create no chance of success.”
His partner whispered: “Who’s the enemy?”
“Ourselves,” said Condor.
Brian blinked at the silver-haired legend. “My man: Welcome back!”
Condor ate his pumpkin maple donut as he stared out the window at travelers walking to and from their steel rides. Saw the guy dressed in padded black close the door on … yes, it was an old black hearse, walking away carrying a gym bag toward the south end of the rest stop and the rows of gas pumps controlled by attendants whose jobs were protected by state law. A yellow rental truck drove through Condor’s view.
Buzz went cell phones in his escorts’ pockets.
Doug read the text message, said: “Link-up ETA twelve minutes.”
Seven minutes later, these three men were at the facility’s main doors, Doug going through first, Brian posting drag, and Condor—
Flash!
From a cell phone held by a curly-haired woman on the other side of a glass door from Condor: blurry picture at best, and sure, she appeared innocently overwhelmed by carrying her purse and a takeout tray with two coffees, probably just clumsy fingers on her device, plus she didn’t seem to notice that Brian followed her to her car, cell phoned photos of her and her license plate and her driver who stereotyped husband as they drove to the Southbound exit just ahead of a rusty black hearse, while hundreds of miles away near Washington, DC, their metrics became an I&M (Investigate & Monitor) upload.
Doug and Condor posted near the parked van.
Forty feet away, an easy (for him) pistol shot, Brian drifted amidst parked cars.
Zen. They were here. They were now. Not waiting: being, doing. Ready for.