Chained

by Kim Fielding

  When the mission was complete and the Bureau stepped in, Edge’s fate would be grim. People—and creatures—who ended up in Bureau custody didn’t get court trials. Too much publicity, too much potential to scare the public. Lawyers had found some kind of constitutional loophole. If the arrestees were deemed too dangerous, someone dispatched them at once. Otherwise they were shipped off to a special prison in eastern Nevada, a place that made an ordinary supermax prison look like a pleasant vacation spot. A place where nobody was ever paroled or released.

  Terry dried off and pulled on a pair of underwear. It covered more of him than his swimming briefs, and Edge had already spent plenty of time eyeing him in those. Yet when Terry emerged from the bathroom and smiled at Edge, who was sitting in the armchair, Edge’s eyes widened and his pupils dilated. Although Terry knew very little about him, he was at least confident that Edge wanted him as badly as he wanted Edge. But he didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

  “Breakfast coming?” Terry pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer; he was almost out of clean clothes. Edge had said he could call for laundry service any time, and that was handy. Terry hated doing laundry.

  “Yes.”

  That amounted to a complex conversation with Edge.

  Terry put on the tee, a pair of jeans, and socks, and then he started some music on the stereo. Purple Rain, which wasn’t Prince’s newest album but was, in Terry’s opinion, his best. Terry perched on the edge of the bed. “Will you be at Mr. Whitaker’s shindig tonight?”

  Edge shrugged. Christ, his eyes were always soulful, but today they were downright haunted. Terry had a ridiculous compulsion to chase away those shadows and replace them with light. “Can I tell you about my first boyfriend?” That might not cheer Edge up, but it would pass the time, and it was a story that was safe to tell.

  “Okay.” A flat tone, as always, yet Edge leaned forward just a little. Good.

  “I was sixteen, and I had a friend named Gary Lee. I didn’t have a lot of friends because I was kind of a weird kid, but Gary and I were in the same math class and we’d hit it off. Just platonic at first. I had a job at McDonald’s that summer, and I used to work pretty late, but I’d tell my aunt I was working even later. Then Gary would meet me after work and we’d hang out at his house, listen to music, smoke a little weed. His parents didn’t seem to care what he did or who came and went from his room at all hours.” Mostly because they were either stoned or drunk most of the time too. But that wasn’t part of the story, so Terry omitted it. “Did you ever do stuff like that when you were a teenager?”

  Dammit! Edge’s eyes grew even more troubled. “No.”

  “Well, I did, at least when I could get away with it. Aunt Shirley kept me on a pretty short leash most of the time. Anyway, one night Gary met me like always, and we walked over to his house, which was only a few blocks away. God, I remember that night so well! It was just past sunset. The air was still sticky-hot, lawns sparkling with fireflies. We had big cups of Coke and we’d stuffed ourselves with burgers and fries.”

  “Fireflies,” Edge said slowly. Almost dreamily.

  And suddenly Terry missed them with a physical pang. “Yeah. Did you have them where you grew up?”

  “No.”

  “They’re…. I mean, they’re just bugs. I know that. But there’s something almost magical about them, at least when you’re a kid.” Terry sighed. “Anyway, we went to Gary’s house. His room was in the basement, with a bunch of old couches and a busted drum-set, and it smelled a little mildewy, but I didn’t care.” Gary could blast his records as loud as he wanted and nobody would complain. That summer he’d been playing Bowie’s Young Americans over and over, and sometimes they’d sing along with it, but sometimes they simply listened.

  “Gary and I had seen Jaws a few days earlier. We liked it so much, and that night we were talking about going to see it again. Then we started playing around, doing the dum-dum dum-dum music and chasing each other, with our arms going like shark jaws.” Terry demonstrated and was delighted to see Edge almost crack a smile.

  “I tripped over Gary’s bed—it was just a mattress on the floor—and he fell on top of me, and suddenly we were kissing.” Awkwardly, with the sweet taste of cola in their mouths, and the sheets bunched up underneath them, and with “Fame” blasting from the speakers.

  Edge was leaning even farther forward now, his hands loose in his lap and his head slightly cocked. As if Terry’s story were important.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “We made out. That was all. But— God, I guess I’d known I was gay, but I hadn’t really known known until then. Kissing Gary felt so right, like of course I liked boys. Neither of us freaked out about it either. It was too natural.”

  “So then he was your boyfriend.”

  “Yeah. We didn’t tell anyone, of course. Probably even Gary’s parents would have freaked out over it, and Aunt Shirley would have sent me to a monastery or military school or something. But we knew. After that, when we went to Gary’s room, we always made out. And pretty soon we advanced beyond that. The sex wasn’t great—we were sixteen and horny and inexperienced—but it was… good.” He smiled at the memory of their earnest fumblings and eager explorations.

  But then he frowned. “We had that summer together. But that fall, Gary went sort of… off. He dropped acid sometimes, and I wasn’t interested. We… drifted. He dropped out of school, shot up heroin, got arrested a couple of times for minor things, I think to feed his habit. He ran away. Maybe to Chicago, maybe New York; his parents weren’t sure. I never saw him again.”

  Later, Terry could have used his connections in the Bureau to track Gary down, but he hadn’t dared. Deep in his heart, he dreaded discovering that Gary was lying six feet under, like Amos, and Terry didn’t want that fear confirmed. It was better not to know and to instead picture Gary grown-up, happy, loved.

  And that had turned out to be a more depressing story than Terry had intended. Shit.

  He was going to ask Edge about his first boyfriend, even though Edge would likely just stare at him or maybe grace him with a shrug. But then a knock sounded on the door. Breakfast was served.

  Not long after breakfast, a man arrived with two assistants and a lot of clothing. Nice stuff. Expensive stuff. Most of it flashier than Terry preferred, but he knew he’d look good in it, and that was the point. He tried on a few things to satisfy the tailor that the fit was correct, and then Terry and Edge were left alone.

  As Terry was putting everything away, he asked, “What should I wear tonight?”

  Predictably, Edge shrugged.

  “Really, man, I need your help. I’ve never been to anything like this, but you have. What do people wear?”

  Edge scrunched up his face in thought. He most likely paid as little attention to fashion as to music. All Terry had seen him wear were black suits with white shirts or his workout gear. “The men wear colors,” he finally pronounced.

  “Colors. Okay, so nothing too formal, I guess.” Terry stared into the closet for a moment before pulling out a cobalt suit. “Like this?”

  “Maybe.”

  Apparently that was as much wardrobe advice as Edge was able to give. Maybe deciding on the right attire was part of Whitaker’s test for potential clients. Well, the cobalt suit would at least show off Terry’s eyes nicely. He chose a silky black T-shirt to go with it and then had to consider whether to take his gun. Better not to, he decided. It wouldn’t do him much good in a crowd anyway, so best to stay on the safe side and keep it hidden in his room.

  And suddenly exhaustion hit him like a wave. “I’m wiped. Maybe I overdid it in the gym. I’m going to take a nap.” He hadn’t done that in years.

  Edge didn’t move from the armchair.

  All right, whatever. Terry stripped to his underwear, closed the wooden blinds, and climbed under the covers. Even in the semidarkness, he knew Edge was watching him. That should have made him uneasy, but instead it comforted him.


  You’re fucked up, Agent Brandt. Yeah. But he fell into a sound sleep anyway.

  Ms. Stroman had called earlier in the day to tell Terry to be ready by nine. Full of nervous energy, he began primping a couple of hours before that, shaving away stubble and moussing his hair into various configurations. Edge didn’t move much, which was unusual for him—he tended to stand rather than sit, and would often pace. But today he sat, watchful and quiet as ever. Maybe he was still sore, even though he wouldn’t admit it.

  “So, do I look okay?” Terry spread his arms wide and did a quick spin, displaying his new outfit. “Will I impress Mr. Whitaker and his pals?”

  “Do you want to?” There was an undertone to the question, some subtext Terry couldn’t grasp.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  Edge pressed his lips together. It was strange. It had been years since Terry spent as much time with anyone as he had with Edge, yet he still barely knew the guy. He had no idea where he was from, whether he had family, how he ended up working here. And more importantly, he didn’t know what Edge’s motives were and how deeply Edge was mixed up in Whitaker’s shit. Friend or foe? The Bureau encouraged agents to think in those terms, and it was a rubric that often came in handy in the field. Especially when an agent had only seconds to decide how to react. It was a more useful question than asking whether something was human or a monster—a distinction that Terry had, at the beginning, assumed would be the most important. But sometimes humans were the monsters.

  Logic and common sense argued that Edge was a foe, yet some stubborn part of Terry’s psyche rejected the idea.

  Shit. Maybe Terry just needed to get laid.

  “I guess I’m ready,” he said.

  Edge nodded.

  “You’re not coming with?”

  “You can find the way by yourself.”

  “I guess I can. You’re just going to sit there in my chair?”

  A twitch of the lips might have been an almost-smile. “I like your chair.”

  “Then by all means, knock yourself out.” Terry gave him a mock salute before leaving the room.

  Edge was probably going to snoop through the room while Terry was gone. He might find the gun, which for want of a better place, Terry had hidden behind the dresser. But there was no way for Terry to retrieve the gun now without Edge seeing, so he tried to push that particular worry out of mind. Tonight he had bigger fish to fry.

  The area around the pool was brightly lit, yet nobody was there. Terry hesitated at the door to the big house, debating whether he should simply barge in, but then Ms. Stroman materialized in a dove-gray suit with wide shoulder pads. “Good evening, Mr. Brandt. Follow me, please.”

  They didn’t go far before reaching a space that Terry hadn’t seen before. Like some of the other rooms, this one was large and done up in grays and whites, with long, low furniture that looked as if it would be uncomfortable to sit on. Smooth jazz played over hidden speakers. Roughly three dozen people milled around, most of them holding cocktail glasses. As Edge had said, the men wore expensive suits in bright colors while the women tended to short, tight dresses in bubblegum hues. Terry recognized a few of the faces from movies and television, but he suspected that most of the guests held other positions in the industry. He hadn’t had time to brief himself on who was who, but a certain amount of naiveté and ignorance suited his undercover persona anyway.

  Ms. Stroman disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared, leaving Terry hesitating at the periphery of the crowd. But then a young man with a tray of drinks sailed over. “Would you like one, sir? Or I can bring you something else from the bar, if you’d rather.”

  “What are those things?” The tray contained Old Fashioned glasses filled with ice, red liquid, and a lime wedge.

  The kid grinned. “Woo woos.”

  “I guess I’ll have one of those.” Terry took one and tried a sip. Cranberry juice and something peach-flavored. Sweeter than he’d prefer, but not awful.

  The kid sailed away, and Terry spent a few more minutes at the fringes of the party, ignored by everyone, which was fine with him. That way he had a good opportunity to catalog and assess the attendees. None of them appeared malevolent. Just a bunch of rich people in expensive clothes, drinking, smoking, and laughing with one another. If something sounded a little dissonant about their laughter, Terry could chalk that up to his own nerves.

  “That outfit suits you.”

  Terry startled. He hadn’t heard Whitaker approaching from behind, but he regained his composure quickly. “Thanks. All the new threads are fantastic.”

  “That suit costs six months’ rent on your Culver City shithole.”

  “Wow.”

  Whitaker snorted. “Yeah. Wow. Come with me, kid.”

  Terry followed along like an eager puppy as Whitaker introduced him to his guests. They all looked Terry up and down—some speculatively, as if he were a set of clothes they might consider purchasing. The actors seemed to view him as a potential rival, smiling while their eyes remained cold and calculating. Terry played nice with everyone, gushing just a little at each introduction.

  “Meet Alan Snyder. He produced Gang School and Deadly Basement.” Whitaker clapped the whisper-thin man on the shoulder. Snyder and Terry shook hands, Snyder’s skin dry and crackly like old paper.

  “Oh, man, Deadly Basement scared the crap out of me,” Terry lied. “That part where the dead children’s arms are sticking out under the stairs?”

  Snyder’s tongue darted between his lips. “We’re doing a sequel later this year. Still making casting decisions.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re looking for, but if I fit the bill, maybe you’ll consider me.”

  “Maybe.” Another tongue-dart and Snyder cut his eyes to Whitaker as if they were sharing some hidden message.

  After a couple more minutes of chatter, Whitaker led Terry to a tall woman with an improbable bustline and thick makeup that didn’t quite hide her wrinkles. When Terry was in junior high school, she’d portrayed ditzy blondes in a succession of comedies, and her posters had been popular on teenage boys’ walls. Now she was probably in her mid-forties but looked older. “And who’s this?” she asked in a whiskey-soaked voice.

  Terry threw a little flirtation into his words and mannerisms. She smiled as she kept touching him—an arm stroke here, a hand pat there—but her eyes were as dead as a mannequin’s. Terry felt relieved when Whitaker spirited him away.

  They seemed to be heading for a duo next: a middle-aged woman in a subdued pantsuit and a slightly younger man who Terry recognized from a TV series about lawyers. As Terry was crossing the room, he caught sight of one of Whitaker’s dogs sitting in a corner, watching him. He wasn’t positive, but he believed it was the third dog, the one he hadn’t seen since his initial interview in the billiard room. He’d been wondering about the dog and felt absurdly reassured to know that nothing bad had happened to him. Terry also noticed how tense the dog looked, however, the lines of his massive body tight and his jaw firmly closed. All the party-goers were giving him a wide berth, but he seemed interested only in Terry.

  The woman, it turned out, was a casting director, and her companion had quit acting to take up directing. They talked about banalities like fashion and the weather while sizing Terry up. He smiled and pretended not to notice. When the kid with the drinks swung by, Terry gratefully took another.

  “Where do you see yourself in five years?” A round man with enormous glasses stepped in and took advantage of a lull in the conversation.

  Terry grinned. “Top billing. Being handed a shiny gold statue.”

  The man laughed much more loudly than the stupid joke called for.

  A little while later—Terry had lost track of time—another casting director wrinkled her nose when Whitaker introduced them. “Terry Brandt,” she said as if the name tasted bad. “It’s bland. Bland Brandt. Forgettable. Doesn’t tell
us anything about the product. Is he an action star? A comedian? A romantic lead? Who can say?” She turned to Whitaker. “What are your thoughts on a change?”

  Whitaker made a noncommittal grunt. Apart from introductions, he’d spoken very little tonight. He watched and listened instead, bright-eyed and thoughtful. Terry had no idea what he was thinking or whether Terry was passing his mysterious test.

  “I like my name,” Terry said to the woman. “It’s short, and easy to spell and pronounce. It’s more or less neutral, so I think it fits any genre. But I’m not the expert here, and if Mr. Whitaker thinks I need a stage name, that’s not a problem.”

  She nodded as if satisfied, then launched into a monologue about a casting disaster in her last movie: the star had dropped dead of an aneurysm halfway through filming. She didn’t show any sympathy for the deceased or his loved ones, just angst over how she had to scramble to find a suitable replacement.

  Another drink, and by then the party had grown louder, the laughing more strident, the conversations sounding more like arguments. Terry was certain he must have met everyone there, yet Whitaker kept dragging him around, throwing more names at him. He was tired of shaking hands and of the overly warm room. He wished he could escape outside, maybe sip a glass of water while dangling his feet in the pool, but he kept an affable smile pasted on his face and played nice.

  The drinks kid came back, except this time he carried a small mirrored tray containing a drinking straw, razor blade, and vial of white powder. He stood there, blank-faced, holding the tray toward Terry.

  “Help yourself,” Whitaker said.

  “I’m not a big fan of blow. I prefer booze.”

  But Whitaker simply stared at him, head tilted just a bit and eyebrows raised. Shit. Terry wasn’t exactly shocked that this was part of the game, but he’d hoped to avoid it. He preferred to stay as clear-headed as possible under the circumstances, and he didn’t want to damage his already fragile sleep patterns. No good way around it, though.