The Jack in the Green

by Lee, Frazer

  A boarding gate announcement shook Tom from his thoughts. He glanced up and, seeing the American Airlines logo, was about to march up to the desk when he spied a familiar face in the crowd.

  Christ, he thought, I hope he didn’t see me.

  But it was too late. Dieter’s gleaming white teeth were already flashing their trademark sharklike grin as he made stiff little waving motions at Tom.

  What the fuck is he doing here? Tom wondered as he feigned a “pleased to see you” smile at Dieter, who was racing his way.

  “Leaving it until the last moment as usual?” Dieter chuckled; a sound entirely without mirth.

  Tom just looked at Dieter, unable to disguise the discomfort and suspicion on his face. The man had a pink sweater draped over his shoulders, sleeves tied loosely together. He looked like he was going on a golfing vacation, but back in time, to the early ’80s.

  “Lucky really,” Dieter continued.

  “What?”

  “I was just about to check in. Now they can put us together.”

  Oh, holy fuck.

  Only now was the “coincidence” of their meeting like this at the airport dawning on Tom.

  “Which flight are you on?” Tom asked.

  Dieter chuckled again robotically. “Same as you of course!”

  “You’re going to Scotland? To Douglass? With…me?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t get very far without me. Mathers told me all about your little handicap.”

  Dieter mimed a steering wheel, adding a little push of the horn for “comic” effect.

  “I’m your driver!” Dieter barked. Then, cackling, he slapped Tom hard on the shoulder. “Hey, where are you going?!”

  “Forgot something,” Tom muttered as he ambled away, clutching his stinging shoulder. He’d just remembered he needed to buy something—anything. With Dieter’s whiny voice ringing in his ears, Tom disappeared into the crowd in search of a retail opportunity.

  “Please switch off all electronic devices, including cell phones, during takeoff and landing. Keep your seat belt fastened with your seat in the upright position…”

  The recorded safety announcement droned on, the chirpy female voice bestowing further wisdom upon its captive audience; where to find the emergency exits, how best to affix an oxygen mask to one’s face in the event of a white-knuckle plummet into the ocean several thousand feet below, and so on. The jumbo’s interior lights flickered as the engines started and Tom checked, and rechecked, his seat belt. God’s cruel joke had placed him in a window seat, so he was sandwiched between the cabin wall and Dieter who, it seemed, would be unable to stop fidgeting for the entire goddamned flight. At least the on board safety announcement afforded Tom a few moments respite from his coworker’s irritating stream-of-consciousness banter. The world, to Dieter, was a vacuum that had to be filled at all times with hot air. No sooner than Tom had thought the small talk was over, another yawning gust of drivel flooded from Dieter’s mouth. Tom glanced at him and watched him fiddling with the switch next to a clearly nonfunctional air vent. The man must be single, either that or the cause of perhaps more than one suicide, Tom thought bitterly as he turned away from Dieter and back to the in-flight magazine he was pretending to read.

  The journey through customs had been torturous, Dieter a constant companion at his side despite Tom’s attempts to shake him off by visiting the bathroom, even though he didn’t need to. His coworker’s jocular disposition had begun to grate well before they took their seats in the Departure lounge. The shiny-toothed European cracked bad jokes and laughed uproariously every time anything in a skirt wandered within five meters of him, with Tom cowering in embarrassment nearby.

  Tom had tried in vain to talk shop for a while, running through their travel itinerary while a disinterested Dieter continued eyeing up the women and attempting an ill-informed Scottish accent at the merest mention of their final destination. Eventually, in desperation, Tom had managed to dislodge his idiotic conjoined twin under the pretence that he needed to make a private phone call. Wandering through the gray-carpeted corridor outside their departure gate, Tom fantasized about ditching Dieter and heading to the nearest bar. He pictured himself knocking back a bottle of Douglass Scotch on the parking lot, his chin heavy with beard after living rough at the airport for months. Driven mad, and to drink, by his yammering coworker, Tom would wear Dieter’s teeth on a necklace as an homage to his indomitable foe. Then the call to board the aircraft had boomed over the loudspeaker like the pronouncement of a death sentence and Tom had resigned himself to his fate. He hoped to God above it was going to be a short trip. Flying with Dieter was one thing, but then he had the prospect of a few days—exactly how many he wasn’t sure—on assignment with the jerk.

  Maybe they had contract killers in Scotland.

  Look into it, McCrae, look into it, he imagined Mathers booming, put the fool out of his misery. Both barrels, there’s a good man.

  Chapter Five

  Tom’s dream was always the same. But this time—it was different.

  There he was, standing between the Christmas tree and the fireplace. Those eyes like hot pinprick wounds piercing him from the coal black beneath the mantelpiece. Then, powerful, sinewy arms were upon him, pulling him up through the chimney flue at breakneck speed. Long bony fingers as sharp as talons clutched his wrists, their touch as cold as ice, their grip unyielding. Tom’s abductor, whoever or whatever it was, wore clothes. Or at least he imagined it did, as he could feel the cuffs of its jacket brush against the skin of his hands, soft as fur. Higher they soared, through coal-black dark, up and out into the freezing shock of night, arcing high into the air as though they’d been fired from a cannon. Yellow-white clouds churned overhead like spoiled milk and, feeling air sick, Tom looked down and wished he hadn’t. Droplets of blood were raining down on a thicket of fir trees below, a glistening crimson torrent of plasma coating the spiky branches of the trees. Tom felt sick and lurched—

  Awake.

  He was on the plane, complementary airline blanket tangled around his neck. He opened his eyes and found himself peering down at the armrest. Dieter snored next to him, loud as a train. Tom felt icy cold. Instinctively, he reached down to check the crotch of his pants. Static electricity, caused by the manmade fibers of the blanket and all the electrical gizmos on board the plane, snapped at his fingers. At least his crotch was dry as a bone, thank God. Tom sat up straight and blinked away the confusing afterimages from his dream. The deep black beyond the fireplace, the sickly sky, all that blood raining down on the branches. His stomach yawned. He felt bilious, uncomfortable and utterly perturbed by the conjurations of his subconscious. The nightmare never changed. Never, ever. It was always the same—until now. This had been something different, something new. For the first time, Tom felt an actual yearning for his old familiar nightmare, the same one that had jolted him awake and disturbed his sleep for as long as he could remember. His tired brain ached for the strange comfort gained from knowing what happened next, how his night terrors ended. Uncertainty terrified him most of all and, even now, he felt it closing in around him like the narrow confines of that chimneystack. Tom shivered in the air-conditioned chill of the cabin, pulled the polyester blanket around him with a crackle of static electricity, and tried not to sleep.

  The empty luggage carousel clanked and whirred as a crowd of passenger spectators stood watching it intently as though visualizing their bags would make them appear quicker. Their summoning didn’t appear to be working—Tom had stood at the loud metal runway of the carousel, listening to the beat of the black rubber blades clunking by for a good fifteen minutes already. A brief flurry of excitement had passed through the crowd with the appearance of a lone suitcase a few moments after the carousel had started up, but all present had quickly and silently ascertained that the bag in question was an unclaimed leftover from an earlier flight. Tom reached into his pocket and thumbed his cell phone again. He’d been putting off texting Julia since his flight had l
anded and, much as he’d like to continue doing so, he couldn’t justify putting it off any longer. His problem, as was so often the case, was deciding what to say in his message. Tom often wished there were text message templates available for any given scenario. He seriously doubted his phone’s on board suite of entreaties—“I am afraid I cannot help you with that right now” or “I am unable to make the meeting because (enter reason here)”—would cut it somehow. Neither would honesty. “Did we really have sex last night or was it a dream? I’m enjoying being on my own. Hope you and your meds are too. I’ll call you in—well, I’m not sure if I will call you to be honest. Bye, Tom x.”

  No that wouldn’t do either.

  Clumsily thumbing the phone’s touch screen keyboard he opted for, FLIGHT LANDED. HOPE UR WELL. MAKE SURE U EAT SOMETHING. LOVE, T.

  He still couldn’t fathom how to deactivate the caps lock function on his new phone, so those rare texts he did send always came out larger than life. He hit Send, then cursed under his breath that he’d forgotten to add an X at the end of his missive. Then the huge metallic mouth of the baggage claim carousel began noisily spewing forth suitcases of every size and color imaginable, affording Tom the welcome distraction of looking for his luggage.

  As the parade of personal effects whizzed by, Tom felt a large, muscular form squeeze into the scant space next to him, almost pushing him onto the conveyor belt. He didn’t need to look to know that it was Dieter, back from his trip to “the little boys’ room” as he’d so gleefully described it. For a few moments, Tom had mercifully almost forgotten Dieter was with him at all, but now he was back with a vengeance, helping female passengers with their bags. He made a show of lifting the heaviest bags from the carousel, handing them with a winning smile to their grateful recipients. Tom had the sudden and barely controllable urge to throw himself onto the carousel.

  That feeling stayed with Tom for the rest of the morning. As they shuffled their way through immigration, onto a crowded monorail and out into the stultifying microwave glow of Arrivals, Dieter had seen fit to provide a running commentary from the pages he’d torn from the in-flight magazine. The article was built around a list of -isms—those subtle yet oh so hilarious, in Dieter’s world, differences between American and British English. Dieter, with his European background, was already familiar with the subtle variations from “bathroom” to “toilet” and “pavement” to “sidewalk”. Taking great delight in showing off his linguistic prowess, Dieter’s voice drowned out the background noise of machinery and people that Tom felt so desperate to lose himself in.

  By the time Dieter had done the article to death and moved on to the weather, Tom had lost the will to live. The disorienting fog of jetlag was descending on Tom’s addled brain after sleeping so little on the plane. He tried not to snap at Dieter, who was trying his damnedest to chat up the pretty blonde working the car rental desk. The man’s appetite for attention was startling and seemingly unquenchable, but what Tom really could not fathom out was the fact that people seemed to like Dieter. The man was like some kind of idiot guru, beaming his vacuous grin as he saw fit to bestow a few of his sunshine rays upon another unsuspecting stranger’s bleak existence, and they basked gratefully in his glow—even as he tried to feel them up and take their phone numbers.

  The world makes no sense, Tom thought as he watched the blonde chuckling and blushing at Dieter’s jokes, maybe that’s why Dieter belongs in it and I don’t.

  Handing Dieter the keys and describing the route to the rental car bay, the blonde glanced at Tom. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and the young woman’s expression suddenly soured, her eyes accusing him somehow. Of being a killjoy, he felt sure that was the message behind her accusatory glare. And in truth Tom felt like a death ray next to Dieter’s warm glow. He’d managed to suck all the joy out of the blonde’s first encounter with The Laughing Guru just by being there.

  Tom turned away and pretended to look at a leaflet display on the counter, then yelped as Dieter’s hand came crashing down on his shoulder. Dieter urged him to come along; the car was ready and waiting. Tom felt a strong urge to run, just run, the heck away but followed Dieter’s quick—marching strides like a faithful dog. Thumbing the hard, smooth surface of the cell phone inside his pocket, Tom yearned for the familiar discomfort of home and the dependable awkward silence that dwelled there.

  The rental car proved difficult to find. So difficult, in fact, that even the effervescent Dieter’s mood had begun to sour by the time they had retraced their steps through the parking bays a third time. Tom remained silent as Dieter yammered on, flustered. Just as it looked likely that Dieter might head back to his blonde and tell her it was all over between them, they chanced upon the parking bay. It had eluded them by hiding under an overpass, the concrete pillars casting a deep shadow over the bays beneath. The serial number, painted onto the concrete was also partially obscured by an oil spill so dark it looked, from Tom’s distance, like a hole in the ground. A gunmetal gray Ford Focus stood waiting for them in the shadows. Dieter’s face filled with glee upon sight of the car; despite its budget status, it was still a symbol of America to him, of salesmanship. He punched the air and strode toward the vehicle in great lunging steps, overcompensating for his embarrassing failure to locate the car efficiently.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?” Dieter enthused.

  Tom kept his mouth shut and watched as Dieter popped the trunk with all the excited exuberance of a child opening a gift on Christmas morning.

  You’d think it was the fucking Batmobile or something, thought Tom.

  As he stepped across the threshold from light into shadow Tom felt a shiver pass through him. Muscle memory conjured icy, talon—fingered hands clutching at his wrists, an aftershock from his vivid nightmare during the flight. He’d be eager to step into the car and warm up a bit, were it not for Dieter being there with him. Maybe, with a little luck, Dieter would stop chattering long enough for him to sleep during the journey. If not, he’d do his best to pretend he was sleeping—that might shut the big man up.

  “Worth a try…” Tom thought out loud.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Jetlagged, huh? Didn’t you sleep on the plane?” Dieter didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll stop for strong coffee on the way. You’ll be right as the rain.”

  Tom glanced up at the gray skies, rain clouds churning darkly over the concrete shapes of the parking lot. Gritting his teeth, he accepted his fate and climbed into the passenger seat next to Dieter.

  Chapter Six

  “We’re not lost again? How can we be lost before we’ve gotten out of the airport?”

  Tom was feeling as fractious as his voice suggested he was. He did nothing to hide it.

  “We’ll be fine,” Dieter boomed. “Everything’s back to front over here is all, because they drive on the left. Been driving in America so long I forgot how weird it feels. Aha!”

  He’d spotted an exit ramp sign and accelerated towards it. The ramp was steep and gave way to a series of sharp bends that weaved through the concrete pillars of the parking complex like an obstacle course. Tom felt pressure on his knees and, looking down, saw that he was gripping them tightly with his hands. He did not like the way Dieter was driving. He was going much too fast, but Tom sensed that if he asked him to slow down, the fool would take it as a challenge to go even faster.

  “Whoa!”

  The shrill exclamation left Tom’s throat before he could quell it. Up ahead, around the last of the sharp bends, he’d glimpsed a splash of vibrant yellow, the color as bright as the sun amidst the oppressive gray of their surroundings. Accompanying the yellow streak was a flash of ochre light. Tom mashed the floor beneath the dash with his right foot, applying ghost brakes that simply were not there and praying for Dieter to slow the fuck down.

  As they cleared the bend, Tom realized the splash of color was the florescent jacket of a cop; the orange flash his bike’s spinning warning light. The
policeman stepped from away from his ride, which was parked up at the curbside, and held a black leather-gloved hand out to halt them. Tom felt the seat belt bite into his chest as Dieter overdid it on the brakes. Dieter opened his side window, electric motor whirring as the policeman stomped over to the car, a surly expression on his face. The juxtaposition of the electronic whirring sound over the image of the cop striding towards them made the officer look like something from a dystopian sci-fi movie.

  Whirr, stomp, whirr, stomp.

  Tom inadvertently grinned. The policeman leaned down and into Dieter’s open window.

  “Remain here until instructed to move off,” he deadpanned, robotically.

  “Something the matter, Officer?” Dieter asked.

  “Crowd of protesters outside.” Robocop’s expression soured further upon noticing Tom’s idiotic grin. “Something funny, sir?”

  “Jetlag.” It was all Tom could say without bursting into a fit of the giggles.

  The cop threw him a look of contempt.

  Great, thought Tom, I’m about to get myself arrested in a foreign country for laughing at a police officer.

  To Tom’s relief, the policeman withdrew and stomped back to his motorcycle. Dieter sighed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, only now glancing at Tom and noticing his mirth. The big man play punched Tom’s arm and laughed along as though they were sharing some secret joke.

  Great, now he thinks we’re best friends. Way to go, thought Tom, wiping the smile from his face.

  The cop waved them on and Dieter drove slowly and carefully through the remaining bollards to the outside world beyond the airport car park.

  Crowds of people were gathered outside, lining the sidewalks as far as the eye could see in all directions. Many of the gathered throng waved placards daubed with slogans—NO NEW RUNWAY and SPEND IT ON SCHOOLS being among the favorites. Hundreds of voices chanted in unison and Tom reached for the switch beneath his window to open it so he could hear what the protesters were saying. He clicked the switch but his window remained closed.