"Scott, you fuckin' failure. I hate everything about you and wish you dead. God, help out by striking this man dead before the night is through. Fuck this guy!"
He was talking to himself.
Scott was feeling bad and looking for a hornet's nest to stick himself into. Something had come in the mail—he knew he had something to do. His memories of the past few days were hazy, fuzzy recollections of some squat hotel and a kindly-demeanored friend who didn't really want him to be there. There was never enough beer in these people's places, anyway. He needed to step off into the cyclone.
Everything was disconnected, had been stripped and sterilized. His memory felt like a rake had been dragged through it, catching up and removing anything solid.
He'd lost his job not that long after his old lady kicked him out that third or fourth time. He remembered this much. He hadn't kept it for long—his record washout, actually. It had been less than seventy-two hours; he'd been drinking on the job, just like she'd been yelling at him for, the day before she'd dropped the bomb. Hers had only been one, the biggest but only one of many. Nobody gave him a fair shake. You couldn't blame him for needing his medicine. He'd always been that way.
He was thirsty, real thirsty. All he wanted was his poison. Maybe he'd go downtown and see if he could scare up any action. He felt fuzzy, something not right in his head; maybe something to drink was a bad idea, maybe it was exactly what he needed. He'd made up his mind—he was gonna wet his throat.
And then a jolt went through the universe, a blip so brief as to be hardly noticeable but leaving its impression wherever it touched, and then it was gone.
Scott didn't notice it, but it touched him. Somewhere along the line, he changed his mind and switched directions unexpectedly. He couldn't explain it: he was going one way, and then he was going another. It was just like that. It didn't need to be explained.
He'd been stumbling down the sidewalk, pushing against the relentless river of people blowing against him and threatening to knock him aside. They were all going the wrong way. And then his foot caught in a crack in the sidewalk between two adjacent stones, and he flew through the air with his arms spread wide and flailing, expecting someone, anyone, to catch him as he fell, and no one did. Scott hit the pavement face-first and heard his teeth shatter on the concrete. Blood filled his vision and he blacked out, again.
He came to. He'd been going somewhere... He'd been going somewhere, and then changed his mind, and hadn't gotten around to finishing with the thing he'd been trying to do. Something prevented him? It had a lot to do with whatever it was that was causing him so much pain—pain, of an incredible nature, not just in his head. The voice started up, right on cue: "Was it necessary to hurt yourself?"
"Do you love her?"
It was a needle poking him in the face, the voice, and something caught in his throat, making him cough up a large, splattery chunk. It was his blood, clotting in the back of his throat. He felt like he'd swallowed a handful of broken glass. Something was wrong; he had to get to a mirror, a private room, someplace he could check the damage done to him. What the hell happened? If only he could get just one drink, just one beer, he'd be better equipped to deal with this bullshit. It was stupid.
It was purely by luck and the grace of God that he had such good friends. Mike was looking out for him. "Scott, hey buddy, you want a beer?" Mike was such a good friend.
"Yeah, sure, that would be alright with me. Beer me up."
Mike handed it over with the top already popped, just the way he liked it, but something tasted funny.
"Hey Scott, you wanna tell me what it was that was so important you had to ditch me to get to it? Come on man, you can tell ol' Mikey. I'm your friend, remember?" and Mike touched him on the side of the head, just above his ear, and Scott didn't hear another word Mike said for the rest of the evening, though the conversation they had was long and involving. It has something to do with running, like he was supposed to be in a marathon race or something, but he couldn’t remember the last time he'd jogged down to the end of the block, much less any such thing as a race. Who did he think he was kidding, anyway? He was a complete and total loser. God, he needed a drink. Losing was thirsty work.
He was alone, alone, alone. Mike had left, gone off someplace doing Mike-things, leaving him to himself and the company of the voices in his head. "Do you love her?" all the time, all the time. He'd almost gotten used to it.
Sometimes, when he paused before answering, he could hear other muttered utterances between the phrases, things that didn't make any sense. There were bursts of static, and ringing tones, whispers. A string of numbers meant nothing to him—why was he hearing this stuff in his head? Where was Mike with the beer?
And why did he have to listen to this shit all the time? He was starting to smell bad from it.
"Do you love her?"
"Yes! No! I don't know! I don't fucking care anymore if I do or not! What does it matter?" Something in him popped.
Mike came back with the beer. "Howya holdin' up, buddy? Everything alright?"
Mike was such a good friend. He gave him a place to stay, food and access to a shower. Mike had opened himself up to him in ways no one else had. And now he was sharing his beer. Mike was his only real friend in the world.
"Yeah, I'm better now."
""I got you taken care of. Here, drink your medicine." He passed the cold can over. "Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. Bottoms up, it'll put some hair on your chest."
"I don't need any more of that."
"Well then it'll put some stick in your spine. Drink up." Mike was such a good friend. "So, dude, that's pretty fucked up about Ella. Bitches, huh?"
"Yeah, whores all of 'em. Who needs them anyway?"
"Yeah, right. Drink up."
Scott emptied half the can in one long, guzzling swallow and belched.
"Fuck 'em all. They never done nothing for me." He could feel the liquid warmth starting to work its magic on his frazzled nerves. The ground shook under his feet.
"Mike, have you ever wondered why we're here? Like, what are we really supposed to be doing right now? Am I here for a reason? Was I supposed to be like, trying to get something done?"
“Those are dangerous questions you're asking, Scott. How'd you like to get another couple teeth knocked out again? I bet you wouldn't. So I'm gonna cut you off right there and encourage you instead to drink the rest of your beer. Or I'm gonna have to cut you off another way, and I guarantee you won't like it. Drink up. Alpha code two, seven, seven, nine-plus-one, right now, chum. Drink your drink."
He blinked slowly, several times. "Yeah, alright." Scott upended the rest of the can into his mouth and down his throat. He ran his tongue around its contents, tasting the strange liquid on the roof of his mouth; he ran his tongue along the backs of his teeth and could have sworn he remembered a painful accident, but everything seemed okay there. Mike was such a good friend.
The feeling had come back? It seemed familiar, he was almost certain that it was important to him before, but he still couldn't place it. Was it that he was supposed to be doing something, something specific and maybe even desperate... he couldn't be sure what it was. He groaned and rubbed his forehead. "Man, what did we do last night? How much did we have to drink?"
"I don't know about you, but I think we had just enough. There's still some left over. You want one?"
"Oh God no. My head feels like a jackhammer ran over it. Punched fulla holes. I keep thinking I gotta do something, something important."
"Relax, buddy. Your boss called and said not to bother showing up. He says he don't need you anymore, so you got no place you need to be. You got nothing to do but hang out with me and shoot the shit and drink some more beer."
Scott was starting to get tired of it, tired of Mike's one-track-mind approach to things. It was almost like Mike was trying to prevent him from getting...something...done. He wanted to tell Mike this and see what Mike thought about it, but the next time he
came to consciousness, he was back sitting on the couch again in front of the TV with a cold can in his right hand and his two front teeth in his left. Mike was talking to him but so was the TV and, through the racket the two of them were making, it was difficult to make out anything at all; he could only put together a patchwork-conversation, cobbled out of bits and pieces yelled at him from all directions at once:
Mike: "The hole! The rabbit jumps down the hole!"
TV: "And then all will be forgiven. You'll go to a better place, with His love—"
Mike: "All over your face! All over your face! Broken system Alpha niner!"
TV: "Elly-a-hoo, elly-a-hoo. Papaqui. Elly-a-hoo, elly-a-hoo, papaqui."
Scott was starting to wonder just what the fuck that was supposed to mean, when the TV shut itself off.
He wondered what Ella was doing.
He held his teeth in his hand, the starless sky blackening as the moon sank behind a skyscraper. It was the first time he'd thought of her, directly, in days. He remembered her face, her voice, the way her hair flattened to her scalp as she rose up out of the water. She never really needed makeup; her eyelids were naturally bluish and her wide, perfect lips a deep red. Her voice was melodious, naturally in the higher range because of a slightly-deviated septum. Her beauty made his heart tick a beat out of rhythm, and he remembered how her lips curled like snakes writhing when she snarled at him, how the blue lids framed bloodshot eyes that told of drinking with strange men, and maybe more as they drooped half-shut and her voice took on an ugly purr and she told him about things uglier still. She had a knack for knife-twisting, a natural. And still something in him felt the tugging in his chest at long strings more terrible than anything they'd done to each other and tangled in ways he couldn't untie, even if he'd wanted to. Did he love her?
There was the voice again, hammering hammering hammering, always hammering. Why now? He was trying to get over her, yet images of her kept intruding on his mind. There were memories of road-trips, their honeymoon, long summer nights spent in their first apartment together. All the time they'd spent homeless. The bad decisions. It was a never-ending torrent, the buffeting images, seeming to shake him by his psyche and flipping him around at its whim. For a very brief moment, Scott became aware of how much time he'd spent in a daze, and then it became again fog.
His mouth was full of a clear jelly when he awoke, and it hurt. It hurt real bad. He wasn't sure how many of them they'd broken out this time. He knew something was wrong, that he must have screwed up again or else they wouldn't be giving him the 'corrective treatment'. But it was different somehow—why had he awakened during the recuperative phase? The doctors usually kept him under for this part. It took a long time and was filled with pain, nothing but. He had to get out of this tank, right now, and get himself some liquid painkiller. They'd said they made him need the booze, but he liked it well enough on his own, without any encouragement. It made dealing with them easier. Huh. So maybe they did make him need it, after all. It would be just like them to be that way.
He hated the doctors.
When he came to again, he felt much, much better; it was still a far cry from feeling well, but he knew that he was much better off than he had been before. At least the torture was over.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than it had been blocked from his memory, was already gone, had never been there.
He instinctively ran his tongue across the backs of his teeth. All there, this time. And the thought vanished again. At least the doctors let him keep his teeth this time... There was a flash of light and a sound like a champagne bottle uncorking. He counted the tiles in the ceiling, trying not to look directly into the overhead observation lamp. Too long staring into that bright light hurt his eyes and left a blue spot in his vision that lasted for hours. He was pretty sure he was coming down with something; the doctors really only held onto him so long when he was sick, right? Something must be wrong with him.
The doctors always knew what they were doing, with their white smocks and their clipboards and their needles and stunguns and droning, droning voices. Nothing seemed to phase them, either. He'd tried yelling and screaming at them, he'd even once managed to pick up and throw a gurney at them. They had not been pleased with that stunt, to say the least, but it hardly slowed them down. His outburst went against the series of actions they'd prescribed for him. They always knew what he should be doing, even if he didn't. He was glad somebody knew what was going on; he needed structure in his life.
It seemed that this time they were telling him he was going to go back and visit his wife and try to beg her to take him back. He didn't really want to and wasn't positive he could make it sound convincing, no matter how hard they tried to persuade him to push his heart in that direction. And they could sure be convincing when they wanted to. The business with the teeth was the worst—he was sure that was why they kept going back to it. Pulling them out, smashing them out of his head, breaking them out piece by piece, forcing him to pull them out himself—and then they'd heal him back up and get him ready for the next time. It seemed to him like they used it to motivate him for the more important missions...
Something snapped and crackled within him and the thought was gone again, but not quite soon enough. He had the feeling he was letting a lot more of them through than the doctors would say was okay. He'd had to tell them everything. There was a terrible, shattering 'crunch' that resounded through his bones, and one of his front teeth dropped out.
The next thing he knew, he had his hands around another man's throat, squeezing the life out of him while images of his wife flashed before his eyes.
Ex-wife, he reminded himself. The bitch deserved to die for letting those secrets out; this was important stuff, concerning the security of the whole country. How could she run her mouth like that? Fuckin' state secrets were secret because it was important they be kept quiet. Fuckin' loudmouth bitch. The man was good and choked; he wasn't getting up again. Scott could leave now. He dropped the man at his feet and turned away, scanning the empty parking lot. No witnesses but for a squirrel who'd already run up the backside of a tree. Squirrel probably knew well enough to keep its fuckin' mouth shut.
Mike handed him his teeth. "You've done well, Scott. You did the job right this time. Good boy. Here, you can have these back." Scott took what was handed to him.
"Thank you. I'm a good boy." He didn't remember anything else for a while.
He'd killed his wife. Ex-wife, whatever. He'd killed her, choked her with his bare hands. How could he live with himself? There was only one thing left for him to do now, only one more killing that could even the score—his own. It wouldn't be hard or take very long or anything; there were a number of ways he could ensure his passing. Maybe he'd take a dive off the bridge over the freeway, or maybe tie up a rope under that bridge some dark night. A bottle of booze would make it easier to carry out.
It wouldn't be all that hard, really.
He'd been given a bottle of whiskey by his last boss; it seemed impossible to him that she wouldn't have found it by now, but he could hope... He could call her. Call her.
Call home. Right now.
Scott found a payphone and pulled out his last dollar bill, then put it away—he wouldn't need it for this phone-call. He punched in a string of twenty-three digits, waited for the silence and the three tones, and spoke into the hand-piece: "Two bravo alpha query eighty-eight...," before stopping himself and hanging up. It immediately began to ring, but he ignored it and hurried away, looking for another payphone. He found one before too long.
Why was he doing this? He didn't need to make the phone-call, he'd done the job. Why was he calling in? Neither was it the call he wanted to make. He pulled the dollar back out of his pocket and slid it into the machine's face. Did he love her? God, he'd questioned it so many times, but now he couldn't even be sure whether or not he'd killed her. Why was he trying to contact her anyway? She'd said she hated him so many times there was no question she ac
tually meant it. She'd been pretty damn clear about that; to question it was pointless. And yet...
And yet, he couldn't help himself. The buttons seemed to push themselves under his fingers. He almost hung up when it started ringing. He almost hung up when someone answered. He almost hung up when he heard her say 'Hello? Who is this?'
Instead, surprising them both, he said "Do you think something weird is going on? I think something weird is going on."
"Scott, what the hell are you talking about? Why are you calling me?"
"I think something's wrong with me. I keep seeing myself as different people. And I think I have the flu."
"What different people? What are you talking about? Is this some kind of trick, Scott? What is this bullshit you're pulling now?"
"It's not a trick, Ella. I think I need help. My head hurts."
"Have you been drinking again? Oh, who am I kidding, of course you've been drinking. It's what you do."
Scott drew in a deep breath and tried to explain: "No, look Ella, it's not like that. I haven't had anything to drink in a while. Days, I think. It's hard to tell, I'm losing track of time."
The gloating expression she wore leaked through the phone in her tone of voice: "Can't handle life without me? Well, too bad, Scott. You fucked it up this time, for good."
His next question seemed to puzzle her, but only for a second. "What again did I do? I can't even remember."
"You know what you did, asshole. Don't try and play dumb with me. I'm not falling for that bit anymore."
"No, seriously, what did I do? I'm drawing blanks—you gotta help me out here!"
"I don't have to do anything, especially not when it comes to you, not anymore. Call me tomorrow." and she hung up on him.
Scott rubbed his forehead; he felt a terrible headache coming on, and with it a terrible thirst.
He'd done something bad; he couldn’t tell what it was, didn't remember what wrong he might have done, but he knew—he knew. Something had happened, and he'd been involved and it was all bad. The doctors were gonna get him. He pushed out of the telephone booth and staggered onto the sidewalk, swaying. To his right, a man in a long trench-coat and sunglasses approached menacingly; to his left, a city bus just pulling away from the curb still had its back door invitingly open. The idea occurred to him... he was pulled around by the shoulder and trench-coat planted a hand squarely in the middle of his chest, and spoke the master word:
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