Half World: A Novel

by O'Connor, Scott

  * * *

  The two men circle the room, Lonnie stumbling backward, crawling over the bed, Dorn following, deliberate, until Lonnie has run out of corners and stands with his arms spread, his hands flat against the wall.

  Lonnie touches every place on his skin where he’s struck and lifts his fingers to his nose, smiling as if smelling a flower.

  * * *

  The night passes. Lonnie and Dorn stand almost nose to nose, a half inch of air between them. Dorn frustrated, asking the same questions, and Lonnie only smiling in return, lips pulled back, his face stretched almost to a death mask. Henry takes a picture just before Lonnie touches Dorn’s nose with the tip of his own and Dorn rears back and brings his forehead down, cracking Lonnie open and sending him back to the wall.

  * * *

  “Found out nothing.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Found out a lot of fucking bullshit. How his name smells.” Dorn’s forehead open, knuckles open, blood on his unbuttoned shirt.

  “You’re wrong.” Clarke standing in the bathroom doorframe holding a Dictaphone case, nearly manic with what he’s seen.

  Henry and Dorn are cleaning Lonnie in the sink. His lips and nose are swollen. He’s asleep or unconscious or just quiet with his eyes closed.

  “We need to keep him longer,” Clarke says.

  “No.” Henry wiping blood from Lonnie’s split lips. Water running red in the sink.

  “I need to observe him coming out of it,” Clarke says.

  “He can’t be here when he comes out of it.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “No.”

  “I have orders,” Clarke says.

  “We’re cleaning him up and getting him out,” Henry says. “We don’t know what we have here.”

  “I know what we have.” Clarke staring hard at Henry, then deciding something, switching focus to the recorder and microphone in his hands. “I need a place to talk.”

  “The room beside the office,” Henry says.

  “The bathroom?”

  “The other room.”

  “Can anyone hear me in there?”

  “No one can hear you.”

  Clarke leaves with his Dictaphone. Dorn pulls a towel from the back of the door, runs it over the top of his head, mopping sweat. Henry holds Lonnie alone, his face in the mirror beside Lonnie’s ruined reflection.

  * * *

  They leave Lonnie in an alley a few streets up from the wharves. Dorn has refilled his flask and is drinking hard while he steers the Lincoln, his nerves scraped raw from the night. When they return to Telegraph Hill, Clarke gets out of the car without a word, still clutching his Dictaphone. He walks toward his convertible, somewhere back in the fog. Henry watches him in the rearview mirror, disappearing into the mist.

  “I’m sure you’ve followed him, too,” Dorn says.

  Henry nods.

  “He’s a risk,” Dorn says.

  “He’s who we’ve been sent.”

  “They’re problematic, queers. Easily compromised.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “They talk.”

  “So do cops.”

  Dorn takes another long pull from his flask, holding the metal lip between his front teeth. Henry steps out of the car, shuts the door behind him. Dorn pulls the Lincoln away from the curb.

  * * *

  He found Emma sitting on the sofa in the north living room, her knees up under her chin, her arms around her shins.

  Henry said, “How long have you been here?”

  “The whole time. You walked right by me when you dragged him out.” Emma rocking a little on the sofa, hugging her legs to her body. “What did I give him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He won’t remember any of it.”

  Henry stood in front of her, took out his wallet.

  “Can I stay here?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Use the shower?”

  “No.”

  She took the money, folded it into her purse. Wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What if I don’t come back?”

  “Then Dorn will find you.”

  Emma picked up her purse, stood.

  Henry looked at his watch, crossed back to the front door.

  “You can use the shower,” he said. “But don’t touch anything else.”

  26

  Henry parked in the driveway, but found himself unable to enter the house. He backed out and left the car on an adjacent street and now stood up the hill, the warm day rising around him as if it was growing out of the ground.

  Blood on the cuffs of his shirt, dried and brown. Dorn’s or the musician’s or both. Dorn had stripped off his own shirt and tossed it, disgusted, into the brush down the hill toward the Embarcadero. He had seemed pained by this, losing the shirt. It had seemed to bother him more than anything else that had happened that night.

  Lonnie. The man had a name. The musician. Henry had written it in the ledger.

  He had the ledger in the pocket of his overcoat. It was too warm for the overcoat, but he needed to keep the ledger close to his body, needed to remind himself of who had done this, who was responsible. The name in neat columns across the first few pages of the book.

  Henry Gladwell Henry Gladwell Henry Gladwell.

  He had cleaned up the bedroom with the sound of Emma in the shower and by the time he was finished she was gone. He put the tape reels into the safe. He went back into the bedroom and stood on the bed and opened the slots in the ceiling, removed the film from the cameras.

  In the darkroom, the images rising. His fingertips dry, flaking from the chemicals in the pans. Lonnie and Emma. Lonnie and Emma. Lonnie sitting alone on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Lonnie crying, Lonnie shielding his face from Dorn.

  Henry stood at the worktable, cropping the extraneous information from the frame. Dorn, the furniture in the room. Then at the enlarger, focusing on one section, the central fact of the image. Lonnie’s face rising through the liquid in the pan. Then at the enlarger again, going closer. Just the man’s eyes this time, blurred from the imprecision of the lens and the effects of the drug. The look of horror there, and then nothing, his eyes lightless and flat.

  There were compromises to be made for a larger good. Amends for mistakes. He thought of Private Milt Whitman, Private John Stone. Boys locked in rooms far from home. Others out there, possibly, betrayed by Weir, by Henry’s ignorance, his blindness. Those men or the musician. It was reasonable, logical to trade one man for many. To trade two men, ten men. What they had done in that room, to that man, what they would do, could be distilled from the blood and noise, could be stripped down to pure mathematics, to accounting.

  Lonnie. The man had a name.

  Henry stood up the street from the house, the sweat drying on his back, his neck. The ledger in his coat pocket. He watched the front door. Ginnie and the children would be inside, starting their day.

  Henry Gladwell. He tried to expel the name, force it through his mouth, his fingertips. He would not move until the name had left him completely, until it was safely contained within the covers of the ledger.

  He watched the door. He waited for the name. He would not enter the house until he was sure he was the man they could trust.

  27

  Observation took place on night of 15 July. Observation took place on night of 18 July. Subject is Negro male in late thirties. Subject is Chinese male, approx. early fifties. Subject is Caucasian male, indeterminate age.

  Initial cannabis dose occurs in Powell Street bar. In Beach Street bar. Subsequent STORMY dose occurs in apartment. Approx. 350 micrograms. Approx. 500 micrograms. Onset period of twenty minutes. Onset period o
f thirty-five minutes.

  Subject loses interest in female companion. Subject begins to speak to walls of room. Subject begins to experience auditory hallucinations. Voices of ex-wife, deceased parents. Subject appears distraught, frightened. Subject becomes violently ill. Subject becomes agitated and accusatory. Subject becomes physically hostile, sexually aggressive.

  D enters the room. D enters the room. When D suggests Subject discuss certain aspects of business dealings, Subject spits in D’s face. Confrontation with D leaves Subject with minor bruises and contusions.

  Subject refuses to speak. Subject speaking rapidly in unidentified language. Subject believes self to be invisible. Believes self to be physical component of the room, an extension of the walls and floor. Subject frustrated by D’s lack of comprehension.

  C enters the room. Subject doesn’t appear to find C’s arrival unusual. Subject and C have lengthy conversation regarding Subject’s childhood and biography. Subject given additional STORMY dose. Approx. 150 micrograms. Approx. 200 micrograms. Subject uneasy. Subject agitated, requires restraint.

  Subject has forgotten name. Subject has forgotten biography. Subject disoriented, uncomfortable. Subject given name and biography of famous film actor by C. Subject quiet, considering. C speaks with Subject as if Subject is said actor. Subject considering. Subject answers to new name. Subject repeats new biography in its entirety numerous times as if it was his own. Subject able to answer questions about new biography, elaborate on details. Subject at ease in conversation. Subject calm. Subject calm.

  Subject addressed by C with Subject’s real name. No response from Subject. No recognition of that name.

  Subject cleaned and dressed and removed from apartment, deposited suitable distance from premises.

  Observation ended at 4:35 A.M. Observation ended at 5 A.M. Photographs developed. Recording reviewed.

  * * *

  Now on nights when there was no observation, Henry still drove into the city. He went to the apartments and opened the panel in the wall of the unused room in the south apartment where Clarke believed he spoke privately to his Dictaphone. Henry removed the small recorder he had hidden there and listened to Clarke’s observations.

  On the tapes, Clarke talked about how the project had gone far beyond what he had predicted. He spoke in an impassioned rush, describing the look in the johns’ eyes after they were drugged and questioned, or, more importantly, the lack, the absence of a look. The men removed of all history, all motivation. The drug had emptied them, left nothing but clothes, skin, bone.

  Ego-death. Ego-death. Clarke’s voice on the recording repeating the term, as if sounding an alarm.

  Henry erased the tapes after listening to them. He went to a coffee shop or an automat or a newsstand. He walked down to the Embarcadero and looked for men he recognized, men from the other room, not sure what he would do if he saw one. Imagining himself pulled into an alley and beaten with a bottle, sliced with a knife. Walking the streets by the wharf with the waves battering the docks and waiting for this to happen.

  He sat in coffee shops and listened to conversations, the waitresses behind the counter and the one or two other occupied booths. His teeth had begun bothering him, sensitive on the upper right, so he let his coffee cool in the cup before he took a sip and then only on the other side of his mouth. He waited for a man he would recognize to walk in the door. He imagined sitting in a booth across from one of those men and calling the man by his real name, the name they had taken from him. He imagined the man’s response, all the possible responses, the endless potentialities. The man grabbing the ketchup bottle, cracking it on the edge of table, jabbing the ragged remains into Henry’s chest. He imagined sitting in a booth across from Private John Stone, Private Jacob Weiner. He imagined asking for their forgiveness and the soldiers giving no response, reaching across the table for cigarettes, covering their mouths as they coughed.

  One morning he came home to find that Hannah had removed all of the postcards from her bedroom wall. At breakfast he asked her about this and she said that she no longer wanted the information secondhand. She didn’t know who had taken those pictures. Even the most basic of images, trees standing in a park, players at a baseball game, were suspect. They still harbored a sliver of doubt. She wanted Henry to take photographs. She wanted to see what he saw when he was in the city. Something he had seen that he brought to her, she knew she could believe.

  At a newsstand he stood under the awning, out of the midnight drizzle. Steam rising from the sidewalks, worms uncurling on the cement. Long racks, stag magazines, detective and science-fiction paperbacks. The newsstand attendant sat on a stool at the far end, picking his teeth with a match. Henry looked at the covers. Climax magazine. Frolic. Fury. True Photo-rama. He opened the magazines and looked at the photographs, the staging, the posed bodies. Seeing nothing real, nothing that shocked or frightened him.

  A noise from the side, a pulsing hum, the sound Thomas made when he was observing something from his tracks. Henry turned and a man was there, a few feet away, holding a magazine at arm’s length, making the humming sound, his whole body rocking with it. The man replaced the magazine and lifted another from the rack. The man slightly younger than Henry, tall and broad, bent at the shoulders. Thomas in thirty years, possibly, here through one of the time machines on the covers of the science-fiction paperbacks. A man, possibly, whom Henry would see soon enough, in the bedroom, on the other side of the glass.

  The man rocked and hummed until the attendant called down to him. The man smiled at this, or at something else, some private stimulation that just happened to coincide with the attendant’s voice.

  Henry watched the man until the attendant called out again. The man’s smile widened and Henry stepped away from the newsstand, back out onto the street.

  28

  Waiting in the darkened office, the three men, headphones on, cigarettes lit, cameras and recorders loaded, listening for footsteps on the stairs, watching the black window, the invisible room.

  They heard the front door open, then the sound of running, stumbling, someone topping the stairs and then pounding on the outer office door. Headphones off, all three men up. Dorn motioned for them to stay put. He moved alone into the outer room. Someone still pounding on the door. Dorn looked through the security eyelet, turned the locks. He opened the door and Elizabeth was leaning against the frame, breathless. There was blood on the shoulder of her dress, cuts under her eye, along her ear. Dorn ushered her across the vestibule, into the north apartment, Clarke following, Henry heading down the stairs to check the front door, the street.

  She sat on the sofa, looking thin and cold. They surrounded her, Clarke standing by the armchair, Dorn back by the windows, leaning with his face to the glass to see down the street. Henry was the only one in motion, pulling a pillowcase free in the bedroom, filling it with ice in the kitchen.

  Dorn lit a cigarette, shook the match. “Did they say anything?”

  Henry handed Elizabeth the rolled pillowcase and she pressed the ice to her eye, winced.

  “They told me they’d heard things,” she said.

  “What things?”

  “Things I was doing to men.”

  “And you came back here,” Clarke said.

  “Where else was I gonna go?”

  Henry stood by the record player, watching her. They were all watching her.

  Dorn said, “How many?”

  “Two, I think.”

  Clarke fumbled in his pockets for his own cigarettes. “You think?”

  “It was dark.”

  “What else did they say?” Henry said.

  “Nothing.” She shifted the ice to her ear. “Just that they’d heard things.”

  “What did they look like?” Dorn said.

  “It was dark, I couldn’t see right. They were behind me.”

  “And you didn’t tell
them anything?” Clarke said.

  Elizabeth looked up at him. “I didn’t tell them shit.”

  Dorn stepped toward Elizabeth, gestured with his cigarette. “This is it? The eye and the ear?”

  “And the back of my head,” Elizabeth said. “They hit me in the back of my head to start.”

  “You’re lucky.” Dorn turned back to the window. “You’re really goddamn lucky.”

  “I feel lucky,” she said. She shifted the ice back to her eye. “I feel like I won the fucking jackpot.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Dorn came through the apartment door, shook off his coat, hung it on the rack.

  “I gave her some money and told her to stay home for a while.”

  “Did you find Emma?” Henry said.

  “No.”

  “We need to.”

  “I will.”

  “Soon.”

  “I said I will, Hank.” Dorn stepped into the kitchen, poured a tumbler of vodka, added a handful of ice from Elizabeth’s melting pillowcase, slopping liquid over the sides of the glass, onto his fingers.

  Clarke was sitting on the sofa. He looked at Henry. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You want to shut us down.”

  “There are men out there who know,” Henry said.

  “Who know what?”

  “Enough.”

  “Who are they going to tell?” Clarke said. “The police?”

  “The fact that they know is sufficient.”

  “What do you think, Jimmy?”

  Henry said, “I’m telling you what I think.”

  “And I’m asking Jimmy.”

  Dorn took a drink, stared into his glass. “It’s a problem, but not a big problem.”

  Clarke nodded. “We’re not stopping now. We’re close.”

  Dorn said, “Close to what?”

  Clarke sucked his teeth, forced a yawn.

  Henry lifted a cigarette from his pack, lit a match. His hands weren’t steady. He struggled with the light. Clarke was watching. Henry could see his face reflected in the glass.