Surge

by Frank McGuinness

  Terry used it to wipe Elle’s hands clean before they could do any more damage. ‘I’m late for work. I’ll have to change. I can’t go into the office spattered in God-knows-what,’ Terry said.

  Rebecca was at the sink, pouring bleach and scrubbing. ‘Can’t you feed Elle before you go? I’m late too, and I’m not even dressed yet!’ Rebecca protested. It was true. She was still in her pyjamas, and it was after eight. Terry looked imploringly to his son, Michael, who was staring catatonically into his corn-flakes. ‘Michael, help me feed your sister would you?’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’ said Michael.

  ‘Your sister. Help me feed her?’

  ‘I’m, uh, late for school,’ Michael said. He looked exhausted. Terry knew to look at him that he’d been up half the night again, playing Medal of Honor. Terry held up a spoonful of porridge to Elle’s face, like an angler hoping his quarry will bite, and Elle regarded the spoon for a moment, then regarded her father, then looked around to her mother, who was still working at the sink. ‘What’s Mummy doing?’ Elle said.

  ‘I’ll tell you if you eat a bite of your breakfast,’ Terry bargained.

  Elle thought about it for a moment, then ate a slurp of cereal and repeated through a full mouth: ‘What’s Mummy doing?’

  ‘She’s cleaning out the sink.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Terry looked at what he thought Elle was pointing to. ‘It’s bleach,’ he said.

  ‘Why is it bleach?’

  Rebecca looked over her shoulder, and she and Terry exchanged indulgent smiles. Elle was so sweet when she wanted to know why. The innocence! ‘Because it’s made of chemicals. It kills the germs.’

  ‘What’s germs?’

  ‘Bacteria.’

  ‘What’s ke-teria?’

  ‘Meanies.’

  ‘Meanies are Bad Guys, aren’t they?’

  ‘They sure are.’

  ‘Is she killing them all?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know. Millions.’

  ‘Why is Mummy killing millions?’

  ‘So the sink will be clean.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’

  Elle chewed her lip a moment and thought about this. Then she said, ‘What’s that?’ And Terry supposed she meant godliness.

  Terry had to admit he wasn’t much help in the mornings. His work started earlier than Rebecca’s, and he had a commute to contend with, so he tended to worry about getting himself out the door, which meant Rebecca was usually left holding the baby, literally. She didn’t mind Terry taking priority, not usually, she understood that Terry had a stressful job and that that job paid the bills and allowed the family to live as well as it did. Rebecca’s job, caring for children without parents, paid barely enough to cover the costs of her doing it. ‘I need to keep in touch with the workforce,’ she often said, always the same slightly metallic tone, always that same exact phrase. Terry wondered where she’d heard it first.

  While Terry had been thinking about this, Elle had picked up her spoon and started feeding herself with gusto. Terry loved it when she ate. He drew sustenance from watching her literally draw sustenance, and it had sometimes occurred to him that there was probably something quite poetic about that. When he rose from the table, Rebecca handed him a sandwich wrapped in cling film, an apple and a lunchbox, and he put the sandwich and apple inside the lunchbox. He noticed that Rebecca kept checking the clock, and when he looked at it too, he realised was going to be late. ‘Crap,’ he said.

  He changed into a sky-blue shirt, which complemented his tan chinos rather fetchingly, and went to pick out a clean tie but decided that today he would go open-necked. Why not? You never saw Zuckerberg, Brin, Page, Gates or Jobs, rest his soul, wearing a tie. Nobody with real balls wears a tie any more, he thought. He knew his boss, Adam, would give him a hard time about it, Adam was such a little pedant, but Terry already knew what he was going to say. He was going to say, ‘I didn’t realise we had a uniform in this office. I must’ve missed the memo.’ That would show him.

  When he came back to the kitchen, Elle was wailing in the high chair, and Rebecca seemed stressed. ‘Are you okay?’ Terry said. When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘I’d better go.’ He kissed Elle, kissed Rebecca too. She seemed annoyed but allowed him a kiss. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. He left.

  As he drove the thirty minutes to work, the traffic was heavier than usual. Terry noticed people in bright-coloured shirts, families packed into people-carriers, cars with bicycles and even surfboards attached, among the traffic. The weatherman on the radio said it was going to be a scorcher. Terry would have liked to have been going to the beach too, instead of looking at a screen all day. He inched through the traffic and wasn’t far from work when he remembered that today was the day Rebecca was interviewing for promotion. He cursed bitterly and took out his mobile phone to call her immediately. Rebecca picked up. Elle was bawling in the background. ‘I’m so sorry I forgot about the interview,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rebecca in her stoic voice. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m driving. I’d better get off the phone before I kill somebody.’

  Terry arrived at the airy, pristine new building where he worked, a gleaming cube of glass and natural light. It was a great improvement on the dirty, dark, Byzantine stockade where the department had been based previously. This place was much cleaner. But he’d been under a lot of stress in the office lately. Before, he’d been much freer to make things happen; if he wanted to push a button he could push it. Now he had to get a green light from Adam, and, though Adam never refused, it was still an inconvenience. He was sure it did nothing to help him accomplish the goals he’d been set, and probably hindered him. But the higher-ups were only interested in covering their own asses.

  Terry swiped his pass at security, then placed his fingers on the panel. His palms were sweaty with the heat, and, not long ago, this might have prevented the computer from reading his prints properly, but there was no problem any longer because the technology was so much more sophisticated these days. He scanned his retinas, and the door opened. Inside, sitting at the X-ray metal detector, Mick and Herb wore their usual bored expressions. Terry placed his keys, coins and mobile in a tray. ‘Morning, guys,’ he said.

  ‘Morning, Mr Nelson,’ said Mike, the younger and more acutely overweight of the two. ‘Glorious day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Terry replied. He noticed Herb hadn’t looked up from the screen on which Terry’s X-ray scan showed up. He hoped he didn’t have a coin in the bottom of his pocket. ‘We okay?’ he asked, slightly nervously.

  ‘Clean as a whistle,’ said Herb.

  Terry always tried to be friendly to Mike and Herb, but he always found himself staring at their prodigious waistlines and voluptuous breasts – attributes that identified them as private-sector hirelings. When Terry had started working here, everyone had been public sector, and Terry was fairly certain his own job still was, technically. When they’d first brought in the private contractors, the argument put forward was that the private sector was leaner. But when Terry looked at Mike and Herb, he thought, They don’t look all that lean to me.

  Terry got to his desk in the open-plan office and found a pile of paperwork awaiting him. At a glance there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary so he decided to have some coffee before getting started. In the canteen he met Leona, one of the younger staff, who said she was making a cup and would make him one too, if he was interested. ‘Two sugars, right?’ she said.

  ‘You know me so well,’ he replied.

  Leona was probably ten years Terry’s junior, but as he got closer to forty that seemed less and less like a significant age gap. ‘Milky?’ she said.

  ‘Black. And scalding.’

  ‘You got it.’

  Terry enjoyed flirting with Leona. If he wasn’t married he’d have asked her out, and he though
t she’d probably say yes. But he had a rule when talking to women: never, ever say anything you wouldn’t say in front of Rebecca. He was straying towards the boundaries with Leona, but he had never said anything he couldn’t defend. Rebecca wouldn’t leave him or anything like that, not over a bit of harmless office frisson.

  After coffee, Terry went to Adam’s door, which was ajar, and Adam beckoned him inside. Terry said, ‘I took a look at last night’s reports. Just a couple of clean-up jobs, nothing unusual.’ He waited for Adam to comment on his lack of a tie, but if Adam noticed he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Fine, fine, that all sounds fine,’ Adam replied. He seemed peeved to be distracted from whatever was on his tablet. ‘Oh, there’s a wedding party I want you to look into.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘One of the usual breeding grounds. It’s all in the report.’

  ‘Can I take that as a green light?’

  ‘I trust your judgement,’ said Adam.

  ‘That’s why you’re such a good commanding officer,’ Terry said sweetly, and Adam smiled back viciously.

  The day passed. Terry sloughed through briefing documents on his desk, ticking this box and exing that one. When he looked out the window, he could see the haze rising on the tarmac of the car park, and he thought, Thank God for the air con. The paperwork was stultifyingly dry stuff so he went into the conference room with its twenty large screens. He liked to call this room the Eye in the Sky, but hadn’t managed to make the name catch on yet. On the screens were grainy aerial pictures of various sites, and Terry took a seat at the back of the room, behind the banks of desks at which staff were watching the screens carefully. He spotted Leona at desk six and sidled over to her.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ he said.

  ‘The so-called wedding party,’ Leona replied.

  ‘How many eyes do we have in that area right now?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘What’s your gut telling you?’

  ‘Intelligence isn’t convinced.’

  ‘Intelligence isn’t everything. Let’s keep an open mind. We have to be extremely judicious,’ he said.

  Leona looked at him like he was Solomon. He thought, If I weren’t married …

  ‘But be ready to move when I give the word,’ he added. He didn’t want her to think he lacked the moral courage to give the order.

  ‘Doesn’t Adam have to give the green light?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Adam. Just keep watching and wait for my order,’ said Terry.

  Adam: the snivelling little shit was five years Terry’s junior both in age and experience but had leapfrogged ahead because of a well-connected uncle. Terry had got to his position without help from anyone. He knew that sooner or later Adam would screw up, because he had been promoted way ahead of his readiness. And when he did, Terry would move seamlessly into his office. Unless there was another snivelling little shit with a big-shot uncle. And there was always another snivelling little shit with a big-shot uncle. Terry wished he had a big-shot uncle.

  Terry checked back later in the day, rubbing an apple against his shirt as he bowled towards Leona, who said she’d noticed some suspicious-looking activity on her monitor. There seemed to be a couple of figures standing forty or fifty metres apart from the rest of the crowd. ‘Some wedding party,’ Leona said. ‘Why would anyone even want to get married in an area that’s swarming with bad guys? Who do they think they’re kidding?’

  Terry leaned in over her desk, looking closely at the monitor. He could smell her perfume. It was cheap and pungent, the sort of stuff Rebecca would never wear. It turned him on. ‘Take me closer,’ he said.

  ‘If we go too close, the payload could damage the hardware.’

  Good, thought Terry. Adam won’t like having to answer to his superiors for that. Of course, Terry would have to answer to Adam, but it would be worth it. ‘Closer. Go closer. I want to get a good look at these guys. We have to be so very scrupulous,’ Terry said.

  Leona complied.

  ‘Even closer.’ Terry went further. He wanted to be like a giant wasp buzzing around their heads. Leona flew in as low as she could but the figures below were still dots. Terry watched them scurrying around. They looked like germs under a microscope.

  ‘If they aren’t doing anything wrong, why would they be running?’ said Terry, mainly to himself.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘All right. Clean them out.’

  ‘Don’t I have to clear that with Adam?’

  ‘Let me worry about him. They’re getting away. Do it. Clean them out.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Leona grinned, and snapped a childish salute. She tapped her keyboard, and a something projected from offscreen into the centre of the picture. Then the screen went white. ‘Shit. I think it’s busted,’ said Leona.

  ‘We have three more in the area. Nothing to worry about. Get me some estimates on how many bad guys we got. Then you can call it a day.’

  ‘Sure thing boss,’ said Leona, her eyes twinkling.

  Boss. I like the sound of that, thought Terry. He took a bite out of his apple as he swaggered out of the conference room. He was just finishing the apple when, a few moments later, Leona appeared at his desk and said, ‘Twenty-four males of military-service age, that’s confirmed.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘The all-seeing eye-in-the-sky.’

  ‘Collateral?’

  ‘Still working on estimates. But I think it was pretty clean.’

  ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’

  Terry knocked again at Adam’s door. Adam was still engrossed in his tablet. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting?’ said Terry.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Two things. One, I need to leave a little early on Friday. We’re heading away for the weekend.’

  ‘That’s fine. What else?’

  ‘The wedding party. Just confirmed. It was no wedding party. We cleaned out twenty-four bad guys.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Adam, still not looking up from his tablet. ‘Just put it all in the report.’

  ‘But we may have lost a piece of hardware.’

  At last Adam looked up. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ he exploded. Terry had to fight a smirk. Adam at last put down the tablet, and Terry saw it lying on the desk. He’d been playing online poker.

  Terry stopped off for flowers on his way home, and Rebecca gave him an embattled smile when he handed them over. ‘How was work today?’ she asked.

  ‘Same old, same old,’ he said. ‘But never mind me! Today is all about you! How’d it go?’

  ‘Okay, I think. I mean, I know I nailed all the questions they asked, and I know I’m qualified. Fingers crossed, I guess.’

  ‘They’d be crazy to even consider anybody else,’ said Terry. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry I forgot about it this morning. It wasn’t good enough. I should have remembered. I know this was a big deal for you. It’s a big deal for all of us. I’m a hundred per cent behind you. I bet you knocked ’em dead.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca, and Terry could tell she appreciated his words.

  ‘I’m really proud of you. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know,’ said Rebecca. ‘Thanks for saying sorry. You’re always so good to admit when you’re wrong.’

  Terry considered the compliment his wife had paid him, and he felt good to think it was true. He remembered reading at college that one of the philosophers had said the unexamined life was not worth living, and he had tried to live by that quote. It was important to step out of yourself and to empathise with others. His wife had needed his support, and he’d been too wrapped up in his own thing to remember to give it. He felt a pang of shame, but it was tempered with a sense that he knew he’d been wrong, and there was virtue in that. He gave Rebecca a big, wet kiss that made her laugh, then gave his daughter Elle a big slobbery smacker too, and crouched down beside his son Michael, who was engrossed in Medal of Honor, and laid one on him as well.

 
; ‘Ahhhh, get off! Gross!’ cried Michael, and they all laughed.

  After dinner, Terry watched some TV – first the news, then a documentary about the Nazis – before shuffling off to bed. He thought he might read for a while but found he was too tired. He fell into a deep and peaceful sleep within seconds and never stirred till his alarm went off the next morning, calling him to rise for another day’s work.

  Charcoal and Lemongrass

  Ruth Quinlan

  He hears the woman rummaging on the thatched veranda. She doesn’t interrupt him, just leaves another gift of food under an upturned basket before padding away through the bamboo forest. Until she arrived, the American hadn’t realised how long he’d been working.

  His joints click as he straightens from his kneeling position on the floor and the old wound in his leg flares into a familiar ache. When he reaches up to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he notices the charcoal on his hands. There are thick black crescents under each fingernail and soot fills every crease. He scrubs them in a basin of water, the scrap of soap turning a darker shade of stippled grey.

  Outside, he lifts the basket to find a small mound of banh chung – parcels of sticky rice, mung beans, lemongrass and pork wrapped in banana leaves. It is Tet again, when the local women boil stacks of the parcels in their largest pots, sending clouds of steam billowing from stilt-house windows. He piles the banh chung into the basket and carries them inside. One he reserves for the kitchen gods and places it as an offering on a tiny altar strewn with orchids and the charred, powdery remains of burned joss sticks. Then he sits cross-legged on the floor and carefully unties the bamboo-fibre bindings on another parcel. He blows on the stuffing to cool it and eats it with his fingers. As he eats, he realises that this is his solitary celebration of yet another new year. Time is passing.

  Billy Larsen was born on a farm of golden cornfields, the kind of place with a rusting pickup out front and a lazy creek out back. He grew up working side by side with his father, husking crops of corn and sorghum and tending their herd of calving cows. Like the other young men, he drank beer to a soundtrack of rock and blues, hunted raccoons with his father’s rifle and chased girls, pinning them behind the cornstacks and kissing their soft, bubblegum mouths. Unlike the others, however, Billy dreamed of things beyond the placid rhythms of a Minnesota homestead.