Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  Jamie Gellhorn leaned back, craned her head, and swiveled her chair and attention yet again. “Sebastian Rios: agree or disagree?”

  The vortex of talking-head tribalism whirled around Sebastian in all its slobbering idiocy. It sought his scalp, his voice, his critical thinking, and the other sorts of thinking, too. All or nothing, it demanded. Nuance is weakness. Us. Them. You. Him. We. They. There was power in the black, there was clarity in the white. Equivocate now and be branded a moral coward, in front of millions. This wasn’t the time or place for contemplation, for consideration. This was cable television.

  Sebastian knew all that, already. He believed some of it, too.

  “First, that’s not the preferred nomenclature, my man. And it’s an interesting term to use for a guy held hostage last month by… who again?” Sebastian asked, rhetorically. He saw Jamie Gellhorn’s mouth hint at an upward twist while Noonan’s jaw clenched. “Oh, I was there, too. American war veterans. Mostly white ones, if that matters. One fight, one enemy, whatever. Let’s answer Jamie’s questions here without any posturing. Maybe we’ll educate a viewer or two in the meantime.”

  Such nonsense, Sebastian thought as he looked into the cameras and smirked his smirkiest smirk. Such glorious nonsense.

  “I was going to ask about that night, it’s so incredible,” Jamie Gellhorn said, and they were off. Sebastian’s fears, over his sunglasses, the bright lights, the hotness of those bright lights, they all fell away like old coins. They talked terrorism and fanaticism, and the expansion of the Freedom Infinity island base in the Mediterranean. They talked American invincibility. They talked about what should happen to the jailed vets awaiting trial and what might happen to the comatose governor awaiting surgery. Noonan barely got in a word. Sebastian had been the one who saved an Empire City ballroom, after all. He’d been the one who vanquished Veteran Zero. He’d been the one who shot the enemy.

  Sebastian couldn’t talk about going invisible. But he could talk about becoming a hero.

  “Only thirty seconds left,” Jamie Gellhorn said. “We must have you back, and soon. Before I let you go—Sebastian, care to shed any light on the rumors that you’re now an honorary Volunteer? A ‘Page Six’ item today.”

  Sebastian smiled, wide and happy. He’d done well, and he knew it. You too can lead at life and dominate, he wanted to tell Noonan. But he didn’t. Instead he said the one thing he could think of even more obnoxious.

  “That’s too much. They’re friends, sure. They’re the best of us. They’re warfighters. Me?” he asked. “I’m just a normal citizen who cares.”

  * * *

  The segment finished and Sebastian and Noonan made way for a discussion on the recent flurry of anti-colony demonstrations. A panelist compared their potential to the peacemonger movement that had marked the early Vietnam War days. Sebastian found the analogy intriguing. Divisive as they’d been, those protests had led to the all-volunteer military and the International Legion. Could these also effect positive change? Maybe they need an almost-famous propagandist to help lead the cause, he thought, casually. He wanted to stay and listen to the entire thing but he was meeting up with Pete and didn’t want to be late.

  Sebastian turned on his phone in the cab. It lit up like a glow bug. Text messages from friends, from family, from numbers he didn’t recognize, congratulating him, letting him know they’d seen him from everywhere. “Looking good, kid,” read one. “You made that meat-rocket look like a fool, yo!” went another. “Drink soon?” asked at least four. There was even a voice mail, just one, from his mom, saying he’d made her proud.

  The cab stopped and Sebastian overtipped. “Share the cheer,” he told the driver, who responded with a thumbs-up. An Indian summer greeted him outside, the air washed and sticky. Global warming or good fortune? Sebastian didn’t care. He felt too right to care about things beyond his control. He passed through the gates of Columbia, inhaling what he imagined to be bright air. The quad green was an ocean of frisbee and idle gossip. They’re all so clean and beautiful, he thought, admiring more the untouchable energy than any specific person or body. Not for the first time Sebastian thought about applying to grad school here. Which program didn’t matter. He wanted to hang a framed Ivy League degree someday.

  He found Pete sprawled across the library steps in jeans and a long-sleeve thermal. The other man had taken to walking the city in his combat boots, ragged and torn and caked in the dust of faraway lands. A man in repose, Sebastian thought, yet a soldier in wait. When would the Volunteers return to the war? The War Department had extended their leave indefinitely, much to Pete’s chagrin. “Why?” he kept asking. No one who knew would say.

  Pete’s eyes opened at Sebastian’s approach, dark eye blending with the twilight, the coral one piercing through it. He’d grown out a half beard and hair had reached the top of his ears. A folded envelope lay on his chest like a chevron.

  Pete untangled himself and sat up, flexing his back with a wince. He handed the envelope to Sebastian.

  “Can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  Sebastian opened the envelope and looked over the enclosed letter. It was from the IRS. “You need to report your income for the past four years.”

  “I’ve been deployed.”

  “You still need to file. For their records.”

  “Fucking Christ.” Pete spoke loud, an iceberg of heat beneath his words. Passing students turned to look at the large man in his anger. “Goddamn stupid.”

  “Should be straightforward enough. I’ll help you with it.” Sebastian put the letter and envelope in his back pocket. “See the segment?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Pete put out his arm to be helped up and Sebastian obliged, though it didn’t feel like he provided much lift. “Good work. Liked that bit about the wars being everywhere now.” He rotated his neck. A sharp popping sound followed. “That last part, though. Super douchey.”

  “Oh.” Shame chilled Sebastian, but so did defiance. How many super-douchey things has this guy said to reporters? he thought. “Good to know.”

  They walked the campus, free and youngish. They split a six-pack Pete had brought and talked about how much Navy SEALs sucked and how much Liam Noonan specifically sucked. The beaux-arts buildings and walls draped in ivy gave the school a sleepy quality; there was a soft and gentle quiet that Sebastian at once wanted to bathe in and shatter. They passed the famous alma mater statue, the one of Athena seated on a throne that’d been bombed in the seventies by homegrown radicals. They passed the new business school and the antique liberal arts center. Along the eastern border of campus, beneath the cliff occupied by the school on the hill, loud yellow lights roared up from Old Harlem streets.

  Sebastian considered asking where the others were, but there was no need. Britt and Flowers were together, doing something. Dash was alone, doing something else. Pete slept on Sebastian’s couch now. He said he found the lofts boring. Maybe that was it, maybe it wasn’t. He’d fought with his sister about something. Sebastian had steered clear of knowing much about it, or anything at all. It seemed personal.

  In front of the dining hall girls too young for them asked if they wanted to party. Pete said no but Sebastian asked where, just in case. Near the bookstore an international affairs professor asked Pete if he’d come visit his class to talk policy. Pete said sure, maybe, but then again, probably not. Only policy I care about is right here, he said, holding up his trigger finger. Near the school pond a group of young Republicans in polos recognized Pete and thanked him for his service. He thanked them for not serving. Someone’s grumpy, Sebastian realized, later than he should have. Pete had been deep in his own head for much of their walk.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Sebastian said. The insulted youths were slinking away. “Do something different.”

  “Different, huh,” Pete said. “Got just the thing.” As always, he had a plan. This one involved going west, to the river, past the large Gothic church with a social justice bent, then north along
muddy banks to a tomb of white granite a bit out of the way with a cupola and a façade of two angels and the epitaph “Let Us Have Peace.” West to the river, then north, to the resting place of the man who wrote in his memoirs, “Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”

  It was a quiet place. Tranquil too, Sebastian thought. A fine place to spend infinity. The river churned and crickets trilled and the two free and youngish men sat along the tomb’s front, leaning against marble columns under an arcade of pine trees.

  “Best spot in the city.” Pete took a long drink from a bottle and held it against the moonlight as tribute. His plan had also involved buying chicken sandwiches and a fifth of Old Crow bourbon on the way there. The bourbon tasted like castor oil to Sebastian but it’d been General Grant’s favorite. “No bullshit, no hysteria. Just…” He paused to take another sip. “Hard-earned grace.”

  Pete nodded to himself again, pleased, and handed over the bottle.

  “Glad the bomber left this alone,” Sebastian said. Pete raised an eyebrow. “Jonah Gray. Such a stupid fucking name.”

  “Even terrorists bow down to the savior of the Union.”

  Sebastian laughed. He took a short drink and passed back the bottle. Pete seemed to relax over his sandwich and bourbon. Sebastian wanted to ask what’d been bothering him but didn’t. That wasn’t how Pete worked.

  “California,” Pete said. “Good part or other part?”

  “Miss the pinecones.” Sebastian thought about that some. “About it.”

  “I’m never going back to Troy. Nice place to grow up. But.”

  “Hector, leaving home is one of our primary duties in life.”

  “You pirate bitch.” Pete laughed at himself. He was drunk, or close to it. They both were. “Still, though. What if you stayed? A funhouse mirror for the brain.”

  “What you see in yours?”

  “Someone wishing he’d had the testicular fortitude to try something else. What is hell again, Sebastian?”

  “Something about meeting your other loser self but him being a better loser than you? And you being like, fuck, I wish I was that loser.”

  “Close enough.” Sebastian lay across the ground, wrapping his hands behind his head. Pete braced himself against the column and eased up his body. He didn’t look old but he moved it. “Hang cleans. Merciless.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Leak.” He took five steps and unbuttoned himself under a pine, singing a cadence about bayoneting wogs.

  Through the dim Sebastian glimpsed the top of Pete’s ass. It had a strange, gnarled shape on it. A flesh tattoo, Sebastian thought, like he’d been branded. He narrowed his vision, trying to focus. It was the Volunteers’ “V,” banshee blue and stout and enclosed in a circle. The one from the comic books. Sebastian had read an interview with the artist who’d designed it. The government bought it from him and he’d become rich. And now his emblem was on the ass of Justice. Was this life imitating art imitating life? Or the other way around? Sebastian couldn’t figure. Pete pulled up his pants. Sebastian lowered his eyes and pulled out his phone.

  “What’s new in the world,” Pete asked, sitting back down.

  “Well. Chuck Robb died.”

  Pete shook his head. “That guy,” he said. “Didn’t agree with him on much. But at least he was true. He was a true person.”

  “Probably our last president who went to Vietnam,” Sebastian said, repeating an idea he’d read somewhere. “Whatever that means.”

  “I doubt that. I doubt it very much. There’ll be one more.” Pete sounded certain. “What was that slogan from his campaign?”

  “A Third Way?”

  “No. The other one.”

  “Ahh. The Man in the Arena.”

  “That’s it.” Pete picked up the bottle and raised it against the moonlight once more. “To the old lions. Robb. Grant. Sherman and Teddy. To hard-earned grace.”

  “Yes. I like that.”

  “Me, too.” Pete returned to the ground, lying out on his back. Then, some minutes later, “Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.”

  “You pirate bitch.” There was something liberating in calling the great Pete Swenson that, but also something reckless. Pete whistled, low and without melody. Then he laughed.

  “Let’s play a game,” he said.

  “No cards or marbles. I travel light.”

  “Twenty Questions, then.”

  “Sure. You start.”

  “Okay. It’s… a thing.”

  “An action figure of the brave Justice.”

  “Hah. No. Nineteen left.”

  “Have I seen it?”

  “Doubt it. I have.”

  “Something from abroad? From the wars?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “I’ll use both.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Is it specific to a culture or society?”

  “No.”

  “A weapon?”

  “Hmm. Not in the obvious sense. But definitely.”

  That answer was interesting to Sebastian. He considered it.

  “You asleep?” Pete asked.

  “Just thinking. Those little blue pills you all give sheiks for information. The ones for their wangs.”

  “Good guess. No. Twelve left?”

  “Can you drink it?”

  “I wish.”

  “Snort it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Smoke it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Is it tangible? Like can be held?”

  “In the palm of your hand. Well, mine. Not your baby hands.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Can’t miss something you’ve hidden away for yourself. Down to five.”

  Sebastian had mostly been screwing around but now he wanted to win. He stayed silent for a minute. “Is it something of value? Like more than sentimental.”

  “Hell yeah. Four.”

  “How much would it cost if I wanted it?”

  “Best question yet. Would need to get it appraised, but a few thousand bucks per.”

  “I got no idea.” Sebastian narrowed his eyes into the dark sky. “The cythrax vaccine.”

  “Oh man.” Pete loosed a contrived laugh, the kind that came from the top of the throat. “That goddamn thing. What a sham.”

  Sebastian didn’t understand. He asked Pete to explain.

  “Maybe dud is a better word? They thought it’d work. It didn’t. Obviously. Why’d you live when the rest of our platoon became deaders? We asked in Germany. They said the vaccine had worked in trials. They said they’d been certain. Cost thirty-seven good men, good Rangers, to show otherwise.”

  Sebastian tried to reason with Pete’s newest Tripoli scrap. The cythrax vaccine being worthless did explain the dead Rangers. It didn’t explain the survivors. He felt his skeptical bone being tapped at again. He was still coming to terms with his own expendability to the American government. Would a Ranger platoon be treated likewise? No way, he thought. He knew from his time at Homeland Authority that bureaucratic incompetence explained the unknown more than conspiracy ever did.

  Still, though. It was all very weird. He pushed Pete for more.

  “If I knew, I’d share.” Pete’s words were bored, not defensive. He paused to burp into the night. “Should’ve said it earlier. We’re just like you. No one knows why we lived. No one knows why they died.

  “Chance or fate,” he said again.

  Sebastian didn’t say anything to that. Through his drunkenness, he felt a searing need for clarity. Ever since Tripoli, he’d gotten by to get by, glad to be alive, certain with his uncertainty. For some reason—for whatever reason—that didn’t feel good enough anymore. Not even close.

  “One last guess.” Pete wanted to finish the game. Sebastian went with it.

  “Your mom?” he offered.

  Pete made a buzzer sound. His green eye shined through the black, triumphant. “Time’s up, fr
iend. The answer you were looking for? The shah’s missing gold.”

  They played again, switching roles. Sebastian’s answer was a pint of Guinness. Pete guessed it in twelve questions. A flock of geese passed overhead in an irregular V. Church bells sounded midnight through the space between. Today was now tomorrow and tomorrow promised more of today. Sebastian found the bottle and took a long swig.

  “You asleep?”

  “No,” Pete said. “Just thinking.”

  “Say,” Sebastian said, “what about this Mia thing?”

  “What about it?”

  “You ever in love with her?”

  “Not really. Maybe for a bit.”

  “I’m sorry, dude. I’ve known her a long time. She can be, I don’t know. Selfish.”

  “All good. I don’t care.”

  “You know, uhh, she’s pregnant, right.”

  “Yes.”

  “All these young lasses around the city. Poor things. Communicating their feelings to you must be like trying to negotiate with a vending machine.”

  “Funny. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Like what?” Sebastian steadied his words. “Tripoli?”

  “No, like…” Pete pointed to the church and laughed. “Like God.”

  “Big fan,” Sebastian said. He tried to focus on what Pete wanted to talk about instead of what he did. “Just wish He’d show up a bit more.”

  “So you’re a believer.”

  “Hell. Why not.”

  “I used to be. Trying again.”

  “What happened?”

  “Life. War. Books. The usual.”

  Sebastian knew he was one of those people for whom things just tended to work out. He always had been. Life wasn’t fair, but what could you do? It could all go awry any instant. Pete and Britt’s father had taken the wrong metro one morning and been exposed to sarin. A life of joy, a life of success, all gone in seconds.

  “I barely remember pulling the trigger,” Sebastian said. “In the ballroom, I mean. I was hammered, you know? I’m just glad I didn’t hurt someone else. People died in there, man.”