by M. E. Roufa
At that point Abe did the only reasonable thing a man in his position could do. He passed out.
It was clear the question and answer period was over. Dr. Sandberg and Harold grabbed Abe under the arms and ran, nearly wounding each other and cracking Abe’s skull against the doorframe in their haste to be the first one back in through the motel room door. Practically airborne, Harold still remembered his role. “Thanks for coming, everyone! If you’re interested in bookings, check the contact sheet—those are all my numbers!” he yelled, smiling graciously as he slammed the door shut behind him.
The first thing Abe heard as he regained consciousness, slumped against the bed frame, was Harold’s grumbling voice.
“I still think you should have worn the hat.”
22
When Abe returned home that evening, his phone was blinking wildly. More than a hundred messages. That couldn’t be promising. He called up his voicemail, then changed his mind. He needed a shower. He needed a shower and then he needed something to eat and then he needed to crawl under the covers and die. The phone rang as he was adjusting the hot water. He picked up, reflexively, only to hear a voice he didn’t know.
“Mr. Finkel-STINE, this is the—”
“Not interested.”
Abe hung up the phone with a mixture of relief and disgust. Telemarketers had been illegal for as long as Abe could remember, but they still somehow found new loopholes that allowed them to barge their way through from time to time. And yet this voice didn’t sound pre-recorded. Abe shrugged it off and stepped under the showerhead, turning on all the side jets to loosen up. As the steam rose around him and his brain finally started to relax, he heard the phone again. He would let the voicemail get it. If it was important, they would call back. From the shower, Abe stepped into his pajamas and slipped into a bottle of sleeping pills, then into the most welcoming bed he could remember in ages.
By the end of the night, they had called back eight times.
Abe awoke with the familiar dehydration and disorientation of a SleePerfect™ hangover, relieved himself at a slightly off-kilter angle, flushed without checking and headed for the kitchen. His coffee was brewed and waiting for him, which was a welcome relief. The automatic timer had been broken for weeks, but it must have started functioning again, maybe because of the cold. This too was good. One less thing he needed to take care of. Even after he tasted the deliciously unfamiliar coffee blend, he was still chalking it up to a lack of memory or surplus of luck, when he saw the shoes. Black, polished, conservative shoes that had nothing to do with a history teacher’s life, let alone his salary. There were feet inside the shoes that were also unfamiliar to him, and there were two pairs of them, apparently attached to legs that were descending from his couch. Two of the feet were female. Working his way up their bodies, he soon found himself looking at two people he had never seen before, smiling what were clearly meant to be reassuring smiles. Reassuring under pain of death, perhaps, but still reassuring. Trying to find any sort of conclusions among the clutter of an already overloaded head, Abe quickly arrived at three truths. They were strangers, they were in his living room without an invitation, and they came with their own hazelnut-mocha blend coffee.
Abe was unsure which of these things was the most disturbing.
An hour later, now dressed and slightly more oriented, Abe had learned a few more facts about his visitors. Their names were Ed and Nita, they were affiliated with an unnamed major university, and they Didn’t Work For The Government. He knew this last bit because they told him. Repeatedly.
It was not going to be a very long conversation, Ed and Nita assured him. They were unfailingly polite, and never for a moment dropped the air of reassurance with which they first greeted him. If they were the government agents which all of Abe’s instincts (and all of their pre-emptive denials) told him they were, it was hard to tell which was the good cop and which was the bad. Ed gave off the air of a professor seeking tenure, his dark suit a bit tweedier, his necktie a bow. Nita seemed more like a lawyer—polished and upright. Abe looked for the gun-bulge. In movies, government secret agents always had gun-bulges. But despite his expensive-but-not-too-expensive suit and his air of complete comfort in unfamiliar surroundings, Ed didn’t look like he’d ever held a gun in his life. Meanwhile, Nita looked like she never needed to. From the shine of her shoes to the sharp crease of her suit pants to the tight weave of her hair, Nita was poised like the business end of a cleaver. Should push come to shove, she was probably the bad cop. Probably. Abe immediately resolved to neither to push nor shove.
“How did you get into my apartment?” Abe asked, making one last attempt to be the one in control. Neither bothered to respond directly. They were there, Ed said, because they had watched the press conference on TV. They were intrigued by a certain comment—or set of comments—which Abe had made. Did he by any chance remember which comments they were referring to?
Of course he did, Abe thought, his stomach tightening just thinking about it. “I’m not sure. There were a lot of questions.”
Abe’s and Nita’s eyes locked. She blinked first, but he gave a nervous swallow and blew his moral triumph.
Abe decided to meet them head on. “Joshua Speed.”
“Yes. From studying the video of the conference, we were given the distinct impression that you weren’t just answering questions. It seemed like you were actively remembering something from your past. What happened, Mr. Finkelstein?”
“Abe.” He paused. He didn’t know what happened. Even thinking back now, trying to remember exactly what happened, it was as if it had happened to someone else. Even if he hadn’t been asked by two People Who Didn’t Work For The Government, it still seemed terribly important that he remember, that he conjure up the same mix of emotions and knowledge and memories. But it was beyond him. He took a deep breath and decided to do something that would either be incredibly wise or impossibly foolish. He decided to trust them.
23
They headed out of the house into the driveway, directly into the blinding late-morning sun. In tandem, Ed and Nita reached for and put on their sunglasses, in a beautifully choreographed Not-Working-For-The-Government maneuver…. so well choreographed, in fact, so perfectly timed in rhythm, that for yet another time in a series of times in a row, Abe had the distinct sense that maybe they did, in fact, Work For The Government. Abe’s eyes watered.
“I need to go back for a second,” he said.
“You don’t need to go back,” Nita replied.
“I just need to get my sunglasses. The sun…”
“The sun will be just fine,” she answered, “without your sunglasses.”
He tried to make eye contact with her, but it was useless. Even if he could focus through the glare of the sun without his eyes watering, he would have to contend with locating her eyes through the near opacity of her highly polished UV-protected lenses. Not to mention the complete opacity of her turned head, as she continued walking just behind him, suddenly interested in the remarkably uninteresting view.
Still, Abe wasn’t ready to give up, even as she angled her body in that subtle way people angle their bodies to let you know that you are going to keep walking forward, without actually touching you and forcing you to acknowledge the conclusion as foregone.
“But how am I going to drive if I can’t see through the glare?” As if on cue, Nita turned toward him. Apparently there were some glares you could see even through the darkest sunglasses. Lesson learned.
As if in answer, Ed called out from the end of the driveway. “We’ll take my car. Whyever would we need two cars for just the three of us?” He laughed cheerfully. It was a strange laugh, defusing the tension like a kitten in a bomb shelter. Something wasn’t right, but you still felt better.
Abe got into the back seat, with Ed and Nita in the front. It was an ordinary car, a late-model American sedan, ordinary ordinary ordinary. Not particularly clean, not particularly messy. There was a broken crayon on the floor
under the passenger seat; apparently Ed had kids. The letters “crayo” and “periw” could be read on the side of the blue paper before it tore, the jagged edge of the break and the edges of the flat “end” were already worn smooth. This was a color that had gotten a lot of use. Ed’s kid—he assumed it was Ed’s kid—was probably missing it. He started to say something, then thought better of it and put the crayon in his pocket. You never know.
It wasn’t until three or four miles later that he realized that the back seat had no door handles.
24
While there were probably all sorts of logical explanations as to why a perfectly ordinary car driven by a perfectly ordinary person might not have any inside door handles, Abe couldn’t think of any. This led him to two conclusions. Either this was not a perfectly ordinary car driven by a perfectly ordinary person, or… Okay. This only led him to one conclusion. Car was not ordinary, therefore Ed was not ordinary. Unless it wasn’t Ed’s car.
“So, um, is this your car?” Abe asked, hopefully. “Or just what you drive for work?”
“Little of both, really,” Ed laughed. “It’s a company car. But I own it. My wife and I sometimes use it for long trips with the kids. Little monsters.” He winked at Abe. There was a lot in that wink. It was a wink that said the back seat of this car has no door handles, in case you haven’t noticed. Isn’t that amusing? It was a wink that said There may also be a far more restraining seat inside the trunk. Which is also pretty amusing, when you think about it. Abe thought about it.
Abe laughed along with Ed. “Kids!” Abe said, trying to sound lighthearted and one-of-the-dads, despite the fact that he didn’t have any children. Doing everything in his power to telegraph Please don’t put me in the car seat—I swear I’ll be good. Despite his huge height, he suddenly felt very small. Deep down in his pocket, his hand wrapped around the bit of crayon and clutched it tightly.
“You got any kids?” Ed asked, jovially. The mood stayed light.
“You tell me,” Abe said. He still didn’t understand the game they were playing, but so long as it was a game, he might as well figure out what the rules were.
“Oh, okay. We know you don’t have any kids. I was just trying to make small talk till we got there.”
“Where’s there?”
“Where we’re going.”
“Yes, I—Well, I was kind of wondering where that might be.”
“Ah, you see? That’s why small talk would have come in handy.” Ed laughed.
Ed laughed a lot after he talked, Abe noticed. It was a hearty laugh, reassuring. In fact, it was a great laugh, almost perfectly calibrated to put someone at ease. Disarming, that was the word. As in, drop your weapons. Abe contemplated this, then refused to contemplate it. This was silly. He was a history teacher. This was a Buick. Granted, there were no door handles and he was going someplace they wouldn’t tell him and they wouldn’t let him go back for his sunglasses, but that didn’t mean there was anything ominous going on. He was going out of his way to find menace for no reason.
He looked out the window. So far they hadn’t passed anything he hadn’t seen before. Themed mini-parks, Themed shops, Themed restaurants, all clamoring for attention.
At least he still knew where they were. The car came to a halt at the intersection of McDonald’s and McDonald’s. Not the streets, but the fast-food joints. For years, two nearly identical franchises had stood head to head in a wary standoff across a busy roadway. In a flame-broiled experiment in class warfare that even the Montagues and Capulets might envy, they diverged in menus and décor, forcing the uninitiated traveler to take sides. To the north, the “ordinary” McDonald’s, true to its roots across America, claiming to be untouched since the restaurant’s inception but truthfully as updated with the times as every other franchise to meet the needs of yearly focus groups. Across the street to the south was the “updated” McDonald’s, with table service, a healthier menu, and every item specially created for a new, more “upscale” clientele. And since neither one announced what made it different, most diners still chose the way they had from the chain’s inception: proximity. As a result, both were a success. So long as people continued to travel north and south in equal numbers, both restaurants continued to thrive equally, and the experiment was either a colossal failure or a huge success, depending on how one looked at it. And so for years, McDonald’s continued to look at it, and the standoff continued. A third, genuinely “original” McDonald’s franchise had been discussed, its menu not just evocative of but actually identical to its 1954 original, but without a fourth idea for the fourth compass point to guarantee success, the idea had been scrapped. The novelty of originality, after all, was no guarantee against the proven novelty of novelty, which this town already provided in spades.
So he knew where he was, even if he didn’t know where he was going. That was in his favor. He had his wallet and his cell phone, even if he had no idea who he could call for help. Or what he would say he needed to be helped from. Did he really need to worry about one and a half friendly people (after all, Nita still seemed half-friendly, Abe decided) who wanted to ask him some questions about something that frankly, he wanted to know the answers to himself? People who made him coffee? Hazelnut-blend coffee? So far Abe was the one who most seemed like he needed help, sure, but he didn’t think the people who might come to rescue him would be any more to his liking than Ed or Nita. He was fine. Ordinary people, ordinary car. History teacher, regular car, going to regular place. Driver named Ed. What kind of bad guy was named Ed? Bad guys were named Edward, tops. Or Rocko. Or “The Professor.” Abe forced himself to calm down. This wasn’t a bad movie. This wasn’t a theme park. This was real life.
Fuck. In real life, no one was named “The Professor.” In real life, people were named Ed.
25
Entering the complex, they were joined by two more People Who Didn’t Work For The Government, much larger and less congenial-seeming, but still wearing ties. Their footsteps made all the usual echoing steps they make in similar hallways in all the bad movies Abe had finally convinced himself this wasn’t, but the fact that this wasn’t a movie, bad or good, suddenly wasn’t quite so reassuring. They seemed to be in some sort of medical facility, or perhaps a science lab. The walls were painted a soothing but off-putting glaucous green, with all of the color’s attendant mixed hints of comforts and illnesses and garden-variety heebie-jeebies. This was clearly not a good place to be.
His regular footing having been assumed by the large men, Abe aimed for any sort of mental footing. He took in every detail he passed, from the floors (Nev-A-Staintm speckled linoleum), to the halls (many and long), to the signs on all the doors they frog-marched him past. There were nameplates on most of the doors, almost all of them indicating their occupants were doctors. He passed office after office of MDs, PhDs, and one disturbing DVM with a cute little picture of a ferret under the name. There were no signs anywhere. There were no water fountains or bulletin boards or colored lines on the floor to help you find your bearings. A person working here would have to know this building by heart. Though the use of the word “heart” in relation to this building was definitely a stretch.
The room they let him into was unmarked by any nameplate. The green of the walls was less soothing, more irritating. This was not a room you wanted to spend a lot of time in. There was nothing inside it but a small table, two chairs and a couch. All three seats were covered in some sort of thin moss-colored velvet embroidered with small frolicsome kittens and large fanciful cabbage roses. If the walls made you wanted to leave the room as soon as possible, the upholstery encouraged you to run from it screaming. There was no art of any sort, but one wall was taken up entirely by a large mirror—the kind that was never purely reflective. Abe waved at the mirror. He wanted whoever might be standing on the other side to know he was friendly. The two burly men stayed behind. But after the door closed behind them, he distinctly saw two similarly burly shapes silhouetted against the frosted wind
ow.
Faced with a choice between the chairs and couch, Abe opted for a chair. As his body sank into the cushion uncomfortably, he wondered if he had made the right choice. Especially when Ed and Nita remained standing. He couldn’t remember if they told him to have a seat or not. He just assumed they had. What kind of people lead you into a room filled with lounge-type seating and don’t expect you to take a seat? Was this some sort of test? Had he failed? Abe glanced at the mirror, then back at Ed and Nita. They were standing casually, as if waiting for something, not looking at him. Not looking at anything in particular at all. But decidedly not sitting. Feeling foolish, Abe stood up too. He decided to take a closer look at the mirror.
“Abe,” Ed said, “do you mind taking a seat?”
Abe turned around. Somehow, in the 5 seconds it had taken him to walk halfway across the carpeting, Ed and Nita had taken seats in each of the two chairs, leaving Abe the sofa. His instincts about preferring the chairs had been correct. This was not a happy couch. The springs made a high-pitched crunching noise in resistance as he sat down, almost as if there were real kittens inside, and he found himself tilting slightly to starboard due to some sort of imbalance in the stuffing. He wedged a pillow underneath his backside to right himself as best he could, hoping that any loss of dignity would be more than made up for by the fact that even at 6 inches deeper than everyone else, he was still a good 3 inches taller than anyone in the room. He sat up straight. Three and a half inches taller. He hoped whoever was behind the mirror was catching this. No wait, he didn’t. He went back to hoping there was no one behind the mirror.
“If we could just start with a little formality,” Ed began, seeming a bit embarrassed. “I need to ask you to empty your pockets.”
Abe hesitated. Could he refuse? He figured it was worth a try. “I’d rather not, if that’s okay.”