The Program

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “No...?”

  “Of course not. Skate just gave him a ride down the hill.”

  “Oh my God I’m so relieved I saw the dog and it was bloody around the muzzle and I should have known I’m so sorry for even thinking—”

  “Sh-sh-shhhh. It’s okay. I’m sure he just got into a squirrel or something. See how negativity can corrupt your thoughts?”

  Her head nodded earnestly.

  Nancy and Lorraine were waiting back at TD’s cottage. They’d prepared his bed and laid out all his nighttime toiletries. He touched them each on the head, palm flat against their crowns. Smiling, Nancy scurried to the kitchen counter and presented a glass of mineral water and a tray laden with vitamins.

  A former born-again and TD’s first Lily, Lorraine shuddered, her plain features twisting. “Nancy, I told you vitamins were for the morning only. “

  Nancy’s lower lip was already starting to tremble.

  TD said, “It would be nice to have milk and strawberries.”

  Nancy scurried into the kitchen and emerged with a glass and another tray, strawberries arranged around the edge. TD washed down the first mouthful. Eyes on Nancy, he extended his red-stained fingers and dropped the strawberry’s leafy hull. It hit the wood floor with a wet tap.

  Balancing the tray, Nancy bent, wide knees cracking, and swiped at the floor with a napkin. As she rose, TD plucked another strawberry from the tray and bit into it. The hull landed about a foot from the last stain.

  Tears started down Nancy’s cheeks as she bent over. By the time she stood, TD had another strawberry poised before his mouth. A satisfied bite. She offered the trembling tray for his refuse, but he reached past it. Another wet morsel hit the floor.

  Leah watched, her face hot.

  Gasps escaped Nancy as she squatted again. She lost her balance and fell back, tray clanging off the plastic mail tub by the door. He extended the glass, gripping it with umbrellaed fingers at the rim, and released it. It shattered beside Nancy, splattering her with milk. Continuing to scrub with the dumb, repetitive gestures of a stuck pool cleaner, she started to sob, big blubbering cries.

  TD said gently, “Negate victimhood.”

  Lorraine stepped forward and twisted the skin at the back of Nancy’s arm. Nancy wept but made no effort to defend herself.

  The door swung open, and Skate’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, startling them all, even TD.

  Streaks of sweat cut through the sheen of dirt covering Skate’s arms. “Done.”

  “I think you’re due for a reward.” TD fanned his hand at the three girls. Having found her feet, Nancy picked bits of glass from the folds of the sadly outmoded denim dress that she’d worn so cheerfully to the Orae.

  Skate’s boots knocked on the wood floor. He paused beside Lorraine, eyeing her profile. She stared straight ahead, blinking hard. The color had left her cheeks. Another step brought Skate before Leah. A squint narrowed his brown eyes. He smelled of dirt and wet dog, and his knees were stained with soil. A sturdy finger rose from his fist, the knuckle caked with dried mud. It tapped her, leaving a stain on her shirt.

  Leah felt no wave of revulsion, no horror, just the sucking of the void that had become her insides.

  “No,” TD said. “Anyone else.”

  Skate nodded, a thoughtful bounce of his head. He turned and studied Nancy’s swollen face. His eyes dropped to her generous thighs, visible beneath the sweat-damp dress. He stepped to the side, a double tap of boot heel and toe, leaning to get an eyeful. He looked back at TD.

  TD nodded at Nancy. “Go on.”

  Nancy’s tears started again. Her voice was little more than a squeak. “I want to stay with you, TD.”

  “Go.”

  A meaty fist encompassed Nancy’s considerable arm. Skate tugged, and she followed him out into the night. Her choked cries were audible all the way across the clearing. Then Skate’s shed door slammed, and there were just the crickets.

  TD stroked Leah’s arm. “Come.”

  Lorraine sat down on an old love seat in the corner, pouting. On his way to the bedroom, TD told her, “I’d like my morning routine to go more smoothly than this.”

  He closed the door behind them and pressed a button on the wall-mounted stereo. A severed wire was all that remained of the radio antenna. As familiar music swelled, TD said, “Opera is one of four meaningful contributions mankind has made to the world.”

  She was too nervous to ask the other three.

  He undressed by the side of the bed, his lean, sinewy muscles shadowed by the candles Nancy and Lorraine had dutifully lit before his arrival. He fell onto the bed, torso propped on silk pillows, an arm thrown back over his head just so. “You’re stopped-up, Leah. Repressed. I’ve seen how you react to men. I want to lend you my body. You can experiment with me. Do anything that you want. TD wants to do this for you and your growth.”

  Through the speakers, a tenor moaned, “La donna è mobil qualpiuma al vento.”

  She felt impossibly small, a peasant girl before the throne. “I... I don’t think I can.”

  “A normal woman would feel aroused. You’re just holding back. Go on, give it a try. Put your mouth on me.”

  She shuffled forward, tiny steps on numb feet, but then doubled over clutching her stomach. “I can’t.”

  His face creased. “It’s this kind of behavior that got your dad killed from cancer.”

  “Wh... what?”

  “You killed him by accident. I think you were always difficult and obstinate. I think dealing with you backed him up, stymied his development on a cellular level.”

  A dead weight tugged at her inside. “No. Don’t say that. No.”

  “If that makes you angry with me, too bad. Being nice doesn’t interest me. I have more important responsibilities—to reveal, to provide insight, to speak the truth. If you want to stay with The Program, listen, admit, and learn. If you want to paddle around in your denial, go do it elsewhere. I can call Randall right now and have him take you back down the hill, just like he took Chris.”

  A flash of an image—the dog’s moist muzzle—struck her.

  “You can make your way out there if you’d like. Now, what’s it gonna be? Well?”

  Leah fought her lurching gut still. She crouched bedside and bent her head. TD leaned back among the opulent pillows and emitted the faintest of groans.

  SIXTEEN

  When Tim and Dray got back from their morning run, the light was blinking on the answering machine. Tim hit the button and lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table.

  Will’s voice filled the room. “Listen, this stylist just got in from the Friedkin thing in Prague. Bill assured me he’s the top of the A-list. He goes by Luminar—it’s a one-name thing. Anyway, he’ll be at your house at nine.”

  “Luminar,” Dray said. “Top of the A-list. Christ help us.”

  The machine beeped again, presaging the second message. “Hello, Timmy. Listen, I gave some thought to our talk about your mother’s drafting table. I thought perhaps we could have lunch and make arrangements. Give a call.”

  Tim stared at the quiet machine. “Maybe he does have blood moving through his veins.”

  Dray leaned on the counter. “When our child died, the man didn’t send us a card. He left the funeral early, as if he had somewhere to be.”

  “I’m not putting him up for beatification.”

  “And besides”—Dray, once she picked up steam, was not easily de-railed—”I don’t want your mother’s desk in there.”

  “The room is so... empty.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be so eager to fill it.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Goody,” Dray said flatly. “That must be Luminar..”

  When Tim opened the door, a dainty figure stood at the doorstep facing the street, one arm cocked in a V, cigarette holder and smoking butt leaning from a sharply bent hand. Porcelain skin, narrow shoulders, a sweeping kimono of some sort. The shock of red hair taken up in a
silk scarf did little to provide Tim with gender cues.

  “Nice neighborhood,” a soft, decidedly male voice purred. “It’s so street.”

  Tim regarded the oversize metal box on the step distrustfully. “Lu-minar?”

  “Actually”—the man swished around to face Tim, robe flaring, reddish eyes gleaming—”it’s Lumin-yae.” He halted. His splayed arm dropped. He seemed to descend from tiptoes, lowering in his fabrics, the regality departing. In a completely unaffected masculine voice, he said, “Tim Rackley?”

  Tim blinked to refocus on the spectacle before him. “Pete Krindon?”

  “Oh, thank God.” Pete stormed past him, dumping his robe on the floor and snapping the cigarette from the holder. He sucked a deep inhale, eyes rolling with relief. “What the fuck are you doing, Rack?”

  “You look like Liberace on the Zone and you’re asking what I’m doing?”

  Dray entered—a third baffled participant in the bizarre sketch. “Who’s this?”

  “Pete Krindon.” Tim eyed him. “Or whatever name he’s using this week. He’s the surveillance guru Bear and I tap when we don’t want to go through official channels.”

  “This guy? Luminar?”

  “The r is silent,” Tim and Pete said together.

  Tim retrieved the makeup box and closed the front door. “What the hell are you into now?”

  “Just doing this thing for this guy.”

  Pete Krindon, Master of Specifics.

  “He wanted eyes on the inside. You’d be amazed the shit people tell stylists. Like, I really need to know who douches with Evian.” Pete looked at Dray. “Sorry. Anyway, what better job for me? After working undercover all these years, I can run circles around the cosmopolitan-swilling pre-Stonewall stereotypes who call themselves makeup artists in Hollywood. They’d give their Jack Russell terriers for my skills.”

  Tim eyeballed his getup. “I’m doing some UC work myself. I’ve already made contact, so I can’t show up a different person. I need some minor alterations, just enough that nobody I come across will recognize me from the media.”

  “Great shit, by the way,” Pete said. “Last year. I was pleased to see you finally elected to pursue a more head-on means of conflict resolution.” Tim couldn’t adjust to the familiar voice issuing from the rouged face. “Okay. So we skew you a little. Who are you?”

  “Thirtyish, earnest, wannabe hip, just came into some money.”

  Pete tapped a finger against his chin appraisingly. “Colin Farrell in Phone Booth meets Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man.”

  “Who are you working for?” Dray, occasional Us reader, had her interest piqued.

  “That’s not important.” Pete’s body suddenly transformed, limbs and joints angling to refashion Luminar’s persona. “What is important”—a bored hand drifted out, finger swirling to spotlight Tim’s sweats, T-shirt, year-old Nikes—”is that we get sister over here looking presentable.”

  Tim left the blue contacts at home and wore a baseball cap to hide his blond highlights and tweezed-back hairline, but his father’s eyes zeroed in on the scruffy goatee right away. Pete had claimed that the facial hair would close off Tim’s mouth and fill out his chin, and he’d shaped Tim’s brows to alter the appearance of his eyes and forehead.

  Tim’s father rested his laced hands on the table, napkin in his lap, glass of water untouched, his stillness a mute criticism of Tim’s three-minute tardiness.

  Bracing himself for a put-down, Tim slid into the booth, nearly striking his head on a copper colander dangling from a ceiling hook. A clutter of wall-mounted black-and-whites showed hearty Italians sampling from tasting spoons, steering gondolas, whistling at girls. Franchise décor—Buca di Beppo by way of Pasadena. Tim’s father had chosen the location, Tim assumed, to make convenient the retrieval of the drafting table from his nearby house.

  They engaged in small talk until the entrees arrived, at which point his father steepled his fingertips over his steaming plate of linguini. “I’ll tell you, Timmy. That community service is really wearing on me.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You spoke to Carl. My P.O. That’s how you located me, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you find him to be?”

  Tim experienced the all-too-familiar sensation of getting lost in the labyrinth of one of his father’s not-quite-hidden agendas. He answered warily. “Fine.”

  “He always liked you, didn’t he?”

  “I suppose so.”

  His father neatly cut up his chicken breast, drawing out the silence. “I thought maybe you could put in a word. You and he have some contacts higher up. I’d bet a few well-placed calls could get my hours reduced.” Tim pushed around his rigatoni with his fork; he’d yet to take a bite. “I don’t think so.”

  “I see.” His father took a sip of water, using his napkin to pick up the sweating glass. “You know, about that desk, I was thinking of holding on to it.”

  “Right.”

  “Memories of your mother.” His father was studying him, his lips faintly curved to indicate the slightest touch of satisfaction.

  Tim started to speak but caught himself. He shoved his rigatoni around some more until he could no longer contain the question. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, Timmy.”

  “Clearly you take some enjoyment in”—he gestured with his fork— “this thing we do. Like it’s reprisal for something.”

  “That’s not a question, Timmy.”

  “What did I do wrong to you? As a son?”

  His father speared a cube of chicken breast and chewed it thoughtfully. “You acted superior. All the time. Like my brother. You and the VIP, birds of a feather. It was there, built into your personality”—his mouth twitched with remembered abhorrence, a rare show of emotion—”as soon as you could move or walk or speak. This indomitable superiority.”

  An affliction ancient to Tim arose from its buried confines. It enveloped him, tingling across his face, dampening his flesh, constricting his lungs.

  “I endured enough of it for one lifetime at the hands of the VIP. I never thought I deserved to encounter it in my only offspring.”

  Tim’s throat felt dry—the words stuck on the way out. “You weren’t much of a father to me.”

  His father studied him intently. “You weren’t much of a son to have.”

  Tim sat in silence as his father cut and chewed. When the waiter passed their table for the third time, Tim’s father raised a single finger to him, then gestured for the bill. He crossed his utensils neatly on his bare plate and wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin.

  When the check arrived, he pulled his fake eyeglasses from his pocket, set them low on his nose, and perused it. Removing the glasses and placing them beside his bunched napkin, he tapped his jacket pockets, then those of his pants.

  Tim waited, knowing the routine.

  “It seems I’ve left my wallet in the car. Would you mind?”

  Tim may have nodded, he may not have. His father rose, administered a curt nod, and departed. Tim sat staring at his twinning reflections in the lenses of his father’s forgotten prop.

  SEVENTEEN

  A stack of hundreds money-clipped around a farrago of false identifications in the back pocket of his dark brown Versace corduroys, Tim eased up to the curb in a school bus-yellow Hummer H2. He left his wedding band in the glove box beside his .357—he couldn’t risk revealing a gun beneath his loose-fitting Cuban day shirt. The pale line around his finger worked nicely for pitiable Tom Altman, who, despite a hairline that climbed high at the part, was striving fretfully to reclaim his youth in the aftermath of an unsolicited divorce.

  It was a long step down before his light tan ostrich Lucchese roper hit pavement, and then he was strolling to the Encino apartment complex, a colossal stretch of building that took up the entire block. The outfit he wore, chosen by an embarrassingly animated Luminar from a variety of posh boutiques on Sunset, c
ost more than Tim’s entire so-called wardrobe.

  His genuine discomfort in the clothes, which were slightly too young and laboriously hip, contributed to the aura of susceptibility he was hoping to convey. His father’s faux glasses topped off the ensemble, lending his face a nerd-banker’s cast.

  Winding through the endless halls, he came upon Shanna outside the apartment. When she saw him, she reached quickly for the doorbell, clearly self-conscious that he’d caught her standing by the door working up her nerve.

  “This place is a maze. It’s good to see a familiar face.” She angled her head, taking him in. “You look good. New haircut?”

  Before he could respond, Julie pulled the door open, her grin accompanied by a waft of scented candles. In the modest living room behind her, Lorraine and about ten others lounged on pillows and cushions on the floor.

  No Leah.

  Julie spoke in a hushed voice that connoted they’d interrupted something of great importance. “Tom, Shanna, glad you could make it.”

  Shanna picked up her whisper. “Hey, Julie.”

  Julie clutched their hands and tugged them inside, nodding at the stack of shoes on the square of tile that passed for the entranceway. Tim wordlessly removed his boots, Shanna her sandals.

  “Excuse me,” Julie said, her voice still lowered respectfully. “I’d like to introduce you all to some new friends. Tom is a very successful businessman”—a low hum of impressed voices—”and Shanna’s a very cool girl we met.”

  The others, all in their late teens and early twenties, rose to greet them. Handshakes were coupled with lots of friendly touching—elbow grasps, rubs on the back by the girls, shoulder squeezes by the guys. They smiled continuously, enigmatically, as if sharing a secret.

  Tim felt a keen disappointment that Leah wasn’t there. A small group of kids this age was easy to control—he could’ve flashed tin, thrown around some copspeak, and hustled her out the door before anyone knew what was going on.