Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  James Beach sat on the old cot in the basement with Syed on his left and Karim on his right. Abu sat backwards on an old dining room chair, his legs spread to each side. Ariana pulled the curtains in the small windows that were high on the wall, level with the ground outside.

  “He’s American; we can’t trust him,” Abu started.

  “I agree,” Syed added, stroking his chin.

  Karim remained silent and watched as Ariana unfolded a large map and put it on the floor.

  James spoke in his defense. “I’m American but I am also a Muslim.”

  “It’s not the same,” Abu added.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you do not share a thousand years of spilled blood at the hands of the infidels. You are an infidel.”

  “Do I need to have relatives who have died in the name of Islam? I thought our faith was measured by faith. Faith and action. What else is there?”

  “Pure blood. You are American, right down to your blue eyes.”

  James opened his mouth to respond and Ariana intervened. “Enough,” Ariana repeated. “We don’t have time for this. I will deal with it later. There may be reasons that an American was sent. For one, his name would not raise suspicion if, for example, he were the driver of a truck that was pulled over.”

  “What’s the name on your driver’s license?” Abu asked.

  “James Beach. But I have also taken the name Moham-med Al-Jabar.”

  “Enough,” Ariana repeated. “We have a more urgent problem. I need to take care of the truck outside.”

  “I can drive it,” James offered.

  Ariana thought. “You will wait here with everyone else. I will be gone a few hours. If anything happens to me, I may need to call.” She pointed at Karim. “Only you answer the phone.”

  “Why him?” Abu asked.

  “Because his voice is similar to my husband’s.”

  She turned her attention back to James who spoke. “I have a pre-paid phone. It is clean.”

  Ariana’s mind was on the cargo in the back of the truck. “No. From this moment on, every step we take needs to be erased. There are no retreats. No going back. No duplication of activities. If we use a computer, the computer gets destroyed before we move to the next phase. If we use a cell phone, it gets destroyed. I will get us all new phones this afternoon. It will take me a few hours. Once I have the phones, I will give them to you when the time is right. I also need everyone’s clothes size. Shirts, pants, shoes. Head, feet, waist, inseam, chest. Everything. But first, I need to get that truck out of the driveway. That is a delivery truck. Every minute it sits in the driveway it draws more suspicion. Every minute it spends in the driveway without someone delivering something is another second that I have to cover with a lie. Delivery trucks generally deliver and leave. I’m a Muslim woman and the delivery man is a good-looking American. People could start talking. Even if they are joking, it may help them remember an important detail later.”

  The knock on the kitchen door made everyone jump. “Shit,” Ariana said. “No one move. I’ll be right back.” Ariana ran up the stairs and peeked out the window.

  The dark blue government-issued hat bounced around the small window in the door. “Is that you, Mel?” Ariana asked.

  “Yes,” he said stretching the word into two syllables. “I have a package for you,” Mel the postman said from under the brim of his USPS winter hat.

  “Just leave it on the porch,”

  “I need a signature.”

  Ariana opened the door and offered her arm for the signature. Mel handed her a pen and Ariana scribbled her name in the small blank on the green receipt. “You having something delivered?” Mel asked motioning towards the truck in the driveway.

  Ariana looked quickly at the name on the side of the truck and the wheels in her mind spun. Piedmont Delivery. “Yes, my husband ordered a handmade dresser from an arts and crafts place near Front Royal.”

  “Super, super. New furniture is always nice.”

  “Yes, it’s quite a piece. Thanks for the package, Mel.”

  “Thank you. Have a great day.”

  Ariana looked at the package and watched as her mailman walked down the driveway next to the truck. She cringed as Mel Edgewood studied the name on the side of the van before he cut across the corner of the yard to Mr. Stanley’s.

  Chapter 8

  Allan Coleman’s thick belly sat on the edge of his desk, resting just in front of the keyboard. His body strained to breathe, bands of fatty tissue pushing his stretch pants to their limits. Unhealthy bulges of cellulite rode up his chest, a deep fold of flesh drawing the boundary between the top of his stomach and flabby man-boobs. Oversized buttocks oozed from the sides of the chair under the armrests, his fat ankles squeezed into a pair of white sneakers.

  The newly built office in Coleman’s Castle was a roadmap to obesity. An empty bag of Frito Twisters protruded from the trash can supported by a box from the dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts he had eaten earlier in the day. A thirty-two ounce plastic cup rested on the corner of a small table, away from his computer and the spaghetti of wires that ran along the floor in every direction. His nails were chewed short and dandruff dripped off his shoulder, rolling down his arm in the direction of his elbow.

  By most accounts, Allan Coleman was wasting his life. His cholesterol level was over 300. His blood pressure was a monumental 220 over 160. His doctor told him to lose weight. Allan ate to compensate for the stress of the doctor’s orders. Gastric bypass was suggested. Allan refused. He believed he had an exercise routine. Every thirty minutes he walked to the small refrigerator on the far side of his office and retrieved a Coke Classic. With the completion of the two-story addition and the onset of winter, he augmented his usual workout by going down one flight of stairs, opening the side door, taking two steps, and retrieving another log to put on the fire. It was as much exercise as he cared to do.

  The oversized ergonomic chair was little compensation for the natural stress his frame endured by carrying an extra average-sized human on his skeleton. Allan Coleman rolled his neck, cracked his knuckles, and quickly pounded out an email to a team of programmers and help-desk gurus halfway around the world. Allan was a work-induced shut-in. He couldn’t even recall the year of his last date, unless he counted Little Debbie — the vixen of desserts who held a strategic, immediate gratification advantage over the second most important woman in his life — Betty Crocker.

  “Ping,” the speaker on his computer screamed with another message. He was living in a high-tech world where email wasn’t fast enough. The homegrown instant messaging system forced on its employees by his company was the bane of Allan Coleman’s existence. Thirty seconds to reply was the standard. It didn’t matter if you were in midstream of urinary relief or performing the Heimlich on a lunch guest. Any longer than thirty seconds and his phone would start ringing. Allan didn’t live on Eastern Standard Time. He was on telecommuter time. And his conversation of the night was identifying a software bug with a pack of Indian programmers in Mumbai.

  But what Allan didn’t qualify for in the superficial world of size two dresses and six-pack abdomens, he made up for in knowledge of ones and zeros. They were the building blocks of digital life, the binary DNA of every computer system and piece of software in the world. As the head of level five technical support for the graveyard shift, working for the last American computer maker, Allan got the tough cases. The unsolvable electronic mysteries that his underlings in India couldn’t handle.

  Allan’s eyebrows jumped at the rumble in his own stomach and he reached to the right and grabbed his black wireless headset. As his intestines churned, he fumbled to hang the upper portion of the device over his ear. He adjusted the mic so that it was a comfortable distance from his mouth, close enough so he could be heard, far enough away so that he could cover it with his free hand and so that it wouldn’t impede food consumption. He turned off the speaker function on the expensive phone, stood, and adjusted the angle o
f his flat-screen monitor. He was now free to move about the cabin. He wasted no time in running straight up the aisle.

  The third wave of pain hit as he was turning to face the still open door and pulling on the elastic of his pants. The exodus began before his butt hit the seat. He fumbled for the mute button on his hand-free device and tried to concentrate on the conversation as unearthly sounds resonated around the new bathroom. His computer pinged twice and he tried to look through his now tearing eyes at the flat screen across the room. There were two beeps on the line and Allan let them ring unanswered. He had bigger problems.

  Twenty minutes later, still in the seated position on the throne, Allan stammered through a few clarifying points, trying to control his bowels for a moment of silence.

  With shaking legs, he stood and flushed the evidence of severe internal bleeding into the sewer system and on its way to the Chesapeake Bay watershed. He exited the bathroom weakly, sweat dripping, trying to catch up with the conversation, giving orders to colleagues who were looking out their window in Mumbai at one of the largest metropolises on the planet. Allan looked out the back of his castle at the single light in the kitchen window of his neighbor’s house.

  “You don’t have time to get the flu,” Allan said to himself as a case of chills ran down the skin on the back of his neck. He walked slowly to the corner and reached for another log to throw into the large stone hearth on the far side of the room. He pushed the log into the fire with a poker and returned across the floor to his computer and a new set of “pings.”

  Allan tried to open the attachment on an incoming email. His vision blurred and he mis-clicked three times before he found his target and the Excel spreadsheet opened. He continued to fumble with the mouse, his first inclination that something was wrong, something beyond the leftover Chinese take-out he had eaten as a late night snack. A man like Allan, someone who had spent ten years with a mouse attached to his finger, eighteen hours a day, didn’t make a habit of mis-clicking. The pointer finger on his right hand was the only part of his body that was Olympic-athlete caliber. He noticed his head beginning to throb and his throat was sore. Eighty-hour workweeks were catching up with him.

  By three in the morning, Allan had lost his appetite. He made two additional trips to the bathroom and was now feeling pain in his kidneys on both sides of his back. He went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom for another dose of Advil and stared at what looked like traces of blood on his lips. He opened his mouth and pulled on his cheeks, worried by the bleeding gum lines. He rinsed his mouth with water and swallowed the ibuprofen-based pain killer. He washed it down with twelve fresh ounces of Coke.

  Allan vomited bile to begin his last call of the night. By the time he wedged himself back into his seat he had lost most of the feeling in his arms. He struggled for the prescription bottle he kept at the back of his cluttered desk. He ripped the top off the brown plastic bottle and pills spilled over his desk and keyboard. He scooped up two and put them under his tongue. He leaned his head back in his chair and waited for the magic to work. The pain was everywhere, his back, his head, his kidneys. His heart felt as tight as a marathoner’s calf. He tried to breathe, tried to imagine relaxing on a beach.

  His computer screamed “ping, ping, ping” as the big man’s head crashed into his keyboard and his chair rolled back.

  Sitting in the dark, Ariana watched her neighbor from between the blinds in her bedroom. She was sitting in the same spot she had sat the first time she saw her neighbor watching her, his eyes focused on the back end of a high-powered pair of binoculars. Unfortunately for her neighbor, he had caught her practicing her martial arts. She had thought about calling the police, but didn’t want to be on record with any law enforcement agency. She knew there would be a time for paybacks.

  She marked the time in her head and waited to see if Allan Coleman would reappear in the window. Twenty minutes later, with the lights still on in the room and no sign of the King of Coleman’s Castle, Ariana let a small smile escape her lips.

  Chapter 9

  Ariana placed a piece of duct tape over the drain in the sink, just as she had done to the drain in the shower. Another thick layer of duct tape was crossed in an X over the toilet seat. The handle on the toilet was covered with additional straps of the adhesive-backed, all-purpose material. Finished, she looked around at her handiwork. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she liked what she saw. Her eyes were calculating, working. She felt alive.

  At the foot of the stairs to the basement, Ariana turned on the lights and clapped her hands several times. Her guests were on the floor, sleeping as much as the rest of the neighborhood in the hours before dawn. Karim stirred first, squinting through one eye before forcing the second open.

  “Turn off the lights,” Abu said, his head under a pillow. James Beach rolled over on his side, still in his sleeping bag in the corner.

  Ariana clapped again. “Everyone wake up. Now!”

  The room stirred with a sudden sense of urgency. Syed was the first on his feet, standing almost at attention in a loose-fitting pair of boxer shorts. The white t-shirt he had on was too short for his torso and his midsection showed.

  “Pack up everything you brought with you. Everything. Leave nothing behind. When we walk out of this basement, we will not return.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the room was spotless. Each member of the group had their backpacks and a sleeping bag in hand. The rest of the room was sterile. A sofa and two old dining chairs were pushed against the wall. A small table sat in front of the sofa.

  Satisfied, Ariana said, “Get everything and bring it upstairs. James you go up the stairs first. Then Abu, then Syed, and then Karim. I want you to walk in single file towards the bathroom in the hall and stop at the door.”

  “What is this?” Abu asked.

  “Shut-up and do it,” Karim said. “For once, try not to think that you know everything.”

  The four men got in line and Ariana stood behind them. “Let’s go,” she said, and the formation moved up the stairs.

  In the hall, James stopped at the bathroom door as instructed. His backpack was on his right shoulder, his sleeping bag under his left arm. Behind him were Abu, Syed, and Karim. The four men and their belongings filled the narrow hall. Ariana walked past the men and stopped on the other side of the bathroom door. She turned around and continued the routine she had devised earlier in the day.

  “Place your belongings on the ground in front of you and remain standing.”

  Four backpacks thudded quietly as they hit the carpeted hall. In turn, Ariana picked the bags off the floor and dragged them down the hall into her bedroom. Next she carried the sleeping bags from in front of her guests. The four men remained, clothed only in their sleepwear, standing in the hallway. James’ blue eyes grew wide.

  She opened the bathroom door and looked at the only American. “Get in and strip down. Naked. Leave your clothes on the floor. The door will remain open. You will take a thirty second shower, long enough to thoroughly wet your hair. You will then turn off the water, get out of the shower, and I will give you new clothes to wear. All the drains are sealed, as is the toilet.”

  “Is this necessary?” James asked. “What does this prove?”

  “Yes, it is necessary. It may not prove anything, but you are still going to do exactly as I say.”

  “What if I refuse?”

  “Then I’ll kill you.”

  “You can’t kill all four of us.”

  Ariana took one step towards James. She reached up and put her finger at the base of his throat before pushing downward and hooking the inside of his sternum. Immediately both of James’ hands shot towards his neck. “I didn’t say I would kill all four. I said I would kill you.” She pushed her finger deeper into James’ body cavity and he gasped. Then she let him go and took two steps back. “Besides, the four of you can’t do anything without me.”

  James stepped into the bathroom and undressed. Ariana waited until
he was in the shower with the water running before collecting his clothes and throwing them down the hall towards the bedroom.

  When the water stopped, Ariana handed him his new set of clothes through the still-open door. When James was dressed, Ariana nodded and he stepped from the bathroom. “Sit down to my left,” Ariana said.

  In turn, all four men went through the sanitation process. When they were finished, all were dressed in jeans and other American clothes typical for a winter night.

  The four moved to the living room in silence as Ariana continued to execute her plan.

  “We are leaving tonight. This is going to be the routine. Everyone will leave with the clothes on their backs. Nothing else. Everything you brought with you is gone.”

  “What about our passports?” Karim asked.

  “They are gone. I may be able to get us driver’s licenses for IDs if we need it. That depends on time. Right now you need to understand that everything you brought with you into this home will stay in this home. No exceptions. Our success will be determined by our deaths, and we will not need these items.”

  “Where are we going?” Abu asked.

  “I’ll be taking you to our new location. We need to hurry. We need to finish before the sun comes up. Given our time constraints, your travel accommodations may not be first class.”

  It was before six in the morning when Ariana helped Karim into the trunk of her Toyota Camry, against a protesting Abu.

  “Both of us won’t fit.”

  “Both of you have to fit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s going to be light in an hour. The neighborhood is going to come to life and I don’t have enough time to take you individually.” She paused for a moment, pushed on Karim’s back and said, “Think thin.”

  Karim climbed into the trunk, his legs laying over Abu’s. He moved the sleeping bag that their heads were resting on and tried to get settled.