The Standard Grand

by Jay Baron Nicorvo

  From the phone in his room, at 16:50, with a script he drafted three times and rehearsed, he calls the management office of Brookfield Properties. When a woman answers, Ray launches into his monologue: “I know you’re about to leave for the day but I’ve got a FedEx Custom Critical delivery requiring a direct signature from a Marisol Soto-Garza and I’m worried I’m not gonna get there before five, I’m running a couple minutes late, it’s all of my third day on this route and my guy showing me the ropes called in. No biggie if I miss her, I can still play dumb, I shouldn’t get canned, I’ll just have to do it first thing tomorrow before business hours.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Travis.”

  “Travis what?”

  “Travis Wright.”

  “From FedEx?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not what my caller ID says.”

  “I’m calling from the Crowne Plaza. Where I just finished a delivery. I am so late.”

  “Alright Travis. I’m the property manager. I’ll call over to the attendant.”

  “Loading dock on Louisiana?”

  “That’s right. And Travis?”

  “Yes?”

  “Relax, I know Marisol, and she’s never out of there by five.”

  * * *

  “—under current Army policy, you will be given a Chapter 10 general discharge under Other Than Honorable terms. Generally referred to as a Chapter 10 OTH. This discharge will not ruin your life. An OTH gives you TRICARE until you get your discharge papers. When you walk out these doors, you’re free to go where you please. Military resources are at your disposal. After your discharge, the federal government will still employ you. It’s untrue that you can’t get a government job with a Chapter 10. You get no GI Bill, but you’re still fully eligible for all other federal financial aid. All the good stuff to get you deep in the red. Now, once you have your discharge papers, you lose TRICARE. But if you get your OTH upgraded, you get your benefits back. Upgrade would help for any number of government claims.” Obviously devoted to the sound of his well-drilled voice, the JAG lawyer in PCUs waited.

  A man Smith couldn’t see said, “For example.”

  “Say, if you choose to keep your OTH, you can never re-enlist.”

  A woman asked, “And if I wanted to go back to my unit?”

  A man’s voice said, “You crazy?”

  “It’s a good question. An upgrade would help, but it’s no guarantee. Without an upgrade, you’d do time in the RCF, depending on your situation. One to two months is the norm, then back here to PCF while you wait for your paperwork to go through.”

  Someone said, “Without an upgrade, could I join the CIA?”

  The lawyer laughed. “You could not.”

  Thinking of Vessey, and trying to buck herself up, Smith said, “What if I wanted to start a nonprofit company?”

  The lawyer laughed again, this time with some meanness. “We’ve got a big-government entrepreneur in our midst.” He winked at Smith. “In all seriousness, if you wanted to start your own 501(c), I’d say an upgrade would help your application. Now,” he added, “this is your chance to write a statement asking to have your discharge upgraded. You’re not gonna get an Honorable, but if you’re honest, if it’s deserved, you may be granted an upgrade from Other Than Honorable conditions to a General under honorable conditions. Out of the some hundred discharges I’ve dealt with who were Chapter 10 seeking an upgrade, I’ve only seen ten or so denied. Who needs a pen?”

  * * *

  At the loading dock on Louisiana, Ray taps a rubber-gloved finger on the bulletproof Plexiglas, sweating and bowing, giving his name, holding the modest FedEx box like a late-arriving magi offering myrrh.

  The seated attendant has at his hip a small sidearm with yellow grips, a Taurus .38. The security monitors are four low-def color screens, all exterior shots.

  Ray says into the speaker, “My brother’s got one of those. Though his isn’t so yellow. That company issue?”

  “Tis indeed.” The squat guard holds up a finger like an uncooked bratwurst and pushes a button on the base of the desk phone, dials four numbers. Misdials. Tries again. Gets it on the third try. Must have a hard time finding the trigger on his sidearm. No way he could navigate the wee virtual buttons on a smartphone, his texts sent to women garbled, unreadable, man doomed to failure, unable to procreate, destined to die alone, all because he had the gene for ham hands—Ray can’t help feeling happy. He’s missed this, missed what happens to him on raid. Ready to kill and be killed, he’s most alive.

  Over the phone intercom, broadcast through the speaker of the security window, comes a woman’s voice; it seems to say, “Carousel.”

  “FedEx for you. Needs signature.”

  “Again?”

  “All day, every day.”

  “Okay, send him up.”

  When the guard buzzes the door and opens it, Ray says, “Brazilian make? Isn’t it designed to be a concealed carry?”

  “It is, small and cheap. But bright as sunshine.”

  “Why would they make you wear a weapon that looks like a toy?”

  “Got me. I keep telling them they might as well’ve issued me a DeWalt drill.” He waves Ray in and asks if he knows where he’s going. When Ray says he has no idea, the guard gives directions to the freight elevator.

  Inside the elevator car is the little fisheye of a camera lens. Ray stares into it for the interminable ride up, imagining what may come: when the elevator doors ding open, you’ll exit into a service hall. Marisol waiting for you. Closed doors on either side, an empty service corridor. Hand her the package and the handheld computer. Offer her the stylus, three things at once, fluster her. Then press your knees together. Say, Hate to be a tool, but I’m new to this route and haven’t figured when to take bathroom breaks.

  She’ll direct you down the corridor, using her keycard to the men’s room. Inside, wait a moment. Prop the door with the computer. Rush her and, from behind, slip a chokehold, latexed hand over her mouth, drag her kicking backward, into the restroom and a stall. Sit her on the toilet, your hand clutching her face, saying, Easy, Marisol. Easy.

  Ray blinks at the elevator’s fisheye camera lens, again focusing on it, rather than through it to a visualized outcome. Thirtieth floor, seven to go, now six. At floor 34, he imagines Marisol wearing the red-soled Louboutins pictured on the side of Canek’s shoebox. When the freight elevator door opens at 37, standing there, in a gray wool three-piece suit and old brown desert boots, is F. Bismarck Rolling.

  * * *

  I, Specialist Antebellum Smith, went AWOL to avoid my third deployment. I also needed to get away from my husband and his drug problem. In addition, we were having financial troubles. After returning home from my second tour, this one from Afghanistan, I was diagnosed with PTSD and medicated for anxiety. I believe these led to my neglidgent behavior. While AWOL, I wound up living and voulanteering at a halfway house called Standard Company for military veterans in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. While there, with Standard Company, I aided the owner/operator Milton Wright, a decorated Vietnam War Vet in the upkeep and maintainence of the shelter. We tended a herd of Alpaca, cut and split endless cords of wood to get us through winter, dug up winter crops, and etc. The experience taught me how to be self-suficent as a civilian; and has inspired me to maybe open my own such shelter some day, so that I might help vets who feel they have no where else to turn. I’m seeking an upgrade so that I might one day qualify to start my own not for profit organization. Thank you, and I’m sorry.

  * * *

  Rolling is trim as a retired greyhound. His eyes, too, are old-dog. The lower lids droop, wet and pink. He extends his hand.

  Ray offers the FedEx box, saying, “Sir,” slipping a loose fist into his unlined pocket.

  Rolling doesn’t take the box. The two men stand there a moment. Neither moves. When the elevator doors begin to close, Rolling stops them with his well-worn desert boot.

&nbs
p; Ray expected something a little more rodeo, more longhorn, maybe understated but a cowboy boot for sure.

  “Old man extends you his hand, son, even if you are wearing gloves, you take it.”

  Rolling is surveilling him, has been for a year or more. Evangelína, or her mother, tipped Rolling off. Maybe Bellum’s working for him. Wright, too, before he died—if he’s dead—and every vet at the Standard. Everyone in Ray’s path is under the employ of IRJ, Inc., all so they could entrap him. Urge him here, to this moment. His free will nothing but an illusion. His free will nothing. Nothing. Ray braces himself before he realizes he’s going nowhere. Needs something to grasp. Letting go the knife concealed in his pocket, he takes Rolling’s hand. In the old man’s grip, Ray regains some of himself.

  Rolling’s handshake is firm, not an affront, but he doesn’t let go. “When I heard you coming up,” he says, “I sent Marisol home. Come in.” Rolling pulls Ray off the elevator car, releases his hand, and—untethered, untouched—Ray again feels vertiginous, bottomless.

  Rolling doesn’t hesitate to turn his back and lead the way down the service corridor. His self-assurance is a product of supreme confidence in his security, an absolute certainty that Ray won’t, can’t, hurt him.

  To steady himself, Ray reaches into his pocket and pulls his knife, the dark blade dividing the air between them.

  From a side door, they enter Rolling’s office. He waves a rheumatoid hand at a bank of live-action monitors suspended from a corner. “I’ve seen you before. We record all security operations, for legal purposes, as you well know. I’ve reviewed the videos of a few of your jobs. One at the Baiji refinery, where you saved the life of your colleague. That stunt helped you get recommended for the Standard assignment.” He offers Ray a seat.

  Interrupted only by the ExxonMobil Building—flat and gridded as a sheet of graph paper—the view makes Ray feel above it all. Without facing Rolling, Ray adjusts his posture, loosens it the way he once would before contradicting a CO.

  Rolling steps behind the standing desk, leans on it. He points to a small mahogany cabinet. “Offer you a drink? Bourbon? Getting close to quitting time.”

  Ray shakes his head. “This view…”

  “One of the perks.”

  “I don’t know, sir. Behind glass? All the Southern-fried sprawl? Sad you ask me. Seems so dull compared to the gulf views I’ve come accustomed to. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they make Houston seem like such a shitty little backwater. A petrol latrine.”

  “That’s because,” Rolling tells him, “those cities didn’t exist as such before the sixties. Dubai didn’t have electricity, telephone service, an airport, till the fifties. And historically Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been at war. But oil heals old wounds. When it was found there, two of the most outrageous cities in history were born. To mention Houston in the same sentence, that’s like comparing apples and Gomorrahs.”

  Ray turns from the view. “But which is which, sir?”

  Rolling smiles. “Dubai and Abu Dhabi,” he tells Ray, “are Miamis with monarchies.” Rolling adjusts his bifocals and winks a pink-rimmed eye. “Houston’s an oilgarchy.” He points a bent finger at the FedEx box. “If I open that, will it explode on me?”

  “Inside, among some other gear, is a roll of duct tape.”

  “Few things with more uses.”

  “Planned on taping your secretary to the toilet while you and I talked.”

  “Not called secretaries anymore. You planning on taping me to the john?”

  “Thinking about it, sir.”

  “Then what?”

  “Not sure. Didn’t come up here with much in the way of preconceived notions. Wanted to see for myself, and hear.”

  “So you come to talk. I’ve got a five thirty. What if I cancel, take you to dinner? Early Bird special.”

  “Can’t be seen with you at your clubhouse, not if I’m here to bust out one of these windows.” He etches his knife point—scritch—down the plate glass. “Splash you all over Smith Street.”

  “If you were here to kill me, I’d be already dead.”

  “What if I want information first? After I get it—easy way or the hard way don’t matter, might even prefer the hard way—then I kill you.”

  “So what do you want to know?”

  “You get married in those ratty old tactical boots?”

  “You didn’t come here to ask questions about my boots.”

  “A starting point,” Ray tells him.

  Rolling looks at his boots. “No need to try misdirecting me, soldier. Too old for games.” He raises his foot off the ground, looking like a great blue heron, and hikes up his pant leg. “Been wearing these every workday for a decade. My lucky boots.”

  “And you didn’t wear them on your wedding day?”

  “Please. Got married in ’54. My wife would’ve put a stop to the ceremony before it got started. Wore patent leather wingtips, which I rented. But how about we cut to the chase. This about money? We not pay you enough?”

  “I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “Good for you. What then?”

  “Why was I there. And don’t give me that bunk about a stop on the PGA Tour.”

  “Your superiors,” Rolling says, “they thought highly of you. Your evaluations were outstanding. You fit the profile. You were collecting disability—says here thirty percent—but you weren’t operationally disabled. What?” Rolling taps the open file on his desktop. “Get the data, we like to say. We’ve had upwards of fourteen thousand employees in Iraq, but only a fraction are security contractors, and only a handful of those were collecting disability when we were looking. Of that crop, you stood out. Did your service with an elite unit. You’d been with the company since we acquired it. No red flags in your file—which is why I’m confident you’ll do the right thing here today.”

  “What else that file say about me?”

  “Not everything, never everything, but enough for us to make informed choices. It’s all actuary work. Financial impact of risk, uncertainty. Assessments—some expert, some not—of individuals, properties, of systems, of assessments. War, too, is actuary work.”

  “So you’re a bean counter. Sound like McNamara.”

  “Guy could do worse than be compared to the Whiz Kid. Man responsible for applying systems analysis to the most confusing decision facing an executive.”

  “Which tax shelter to use?”

  “When and how to wage war.”

  “This you killing time till security bursts in here and subdues me?”

  “You believe in evolution?”

  “All conversations with you go like this?”

  “Not all conversations,” he tells Ray, “no. But I feel like I’m making my closing statement before sentencing. Giving it all I got. Aren’t many people a guy like me can be candid with. Man holding a knife is one. Only other one’s my wife. I understand you could be recording all this, but I’ve got a hunch not.” He looks at Ray over the thin silver frames of his glasses. “Could you reassure me?”

  Ray shakes his head.

  “Maybe you know this already,” Rolling tells him, “but after Rumsfeld resigned, I was approached about succeeding him. Thought Wolfowitz might leave the World Bank for the post, but he was even more divisive than Rummy. Gates was a safe choice. Good man. He and I sat together on the president’s Iraq study group. I was kept out of serious consideration by the appearance of a conflict of interest, which is not the same as a conflict of interest but can be more insidious—few people know that better than the Bushes, except maybe Cheney. That, and Edith didn’t like the idea. IRJ was also going through a messy divorce at that time. Speaking of, when I don’t show up at my five thirty, folks will worry. You get to be my age and tardiness translates to lying dead somewhere.”

  “Let them worry. I want to hear what you have to say about evolution. Maybe after that you can work your way on over to why your company wanted the Standard, because I’m about to get impatient.”

  “We do
n’t want the Standard,” Rolling tells him, “not anymore. Sad fact of life—hard to want what you have. We’re now the proud owners of the Standard. Our bid won the foreclosure auction. Won’t tell you what we paid. Will say it was north of the ten million that the Concord sold for at auction. But evolution. In evolution, there’s no grand design other than the underlying order. What follows is awesome chaos. Now this is where you might be interested. War’s the same way. War is awesome chaos. Realistically, there can’t be long-term goals. Goal-oriented thinking doesn’t do war justice. Doesn’t take into account its humbling complexity. Once upon a time, war was simple arithmetic. Technology—from the first club on up to the atom bomb—complicated the calculations. These days, the systems are so grand war has entered the realm of higher mathematics.”

  “And what do you know about war. Other than the numbers and what you see on TV.”

  “I’ve got skin in the game.”

  “Investments and business interests isn’t skin,” Ray tells him, raising his knife.

  “Life is a conflict of interests. Competition—for food, for resources, for space, for mates—makes the world go round. Has now for some, oh, three billion years. Surely more, if you believe in Panspermia, which I do.” His tone shifts—like a politician about to go off-prompter—from speechifying to confiding: “But when I said I have skin in the game, son, I mean I served, and I mean my oldest grandson, who’s survived six deployments in the Middle East, is with the 4th Infantry Division.”

  “Ivy.”

  “That’s right. Iron Eagle. Alexander’s a Black Hawk pilot. Medevac unit. Airborne,” Rolling says, “like you. I’m wearing the boots he wore on his first deployment.”

  Ray lowers his knife but doesn’t sheath it, has to gather himself before he can go back on the offensive. “You serve during peacetime?”