by Chris Vola
“Opportunity.”
“His job. You’ve done good work, but that’s not enough. I need someone who believes in it. Who won’t let time on the outside fuck with what we’re trying to accomplish. At least tell me you’ll think about it.”
“I’ll think about it.” Davis’s replacement. I wouldn’t mind a field trip once in a while. Actual sun rays are certainly a perk.
“Great, man.” Titus says, runs his hand through the gray shag. “OK guys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Rogers and Philippe throw up sloppy, sarcastic salutes, roll their eyes when the door closes.
The prisoner feels the vibration and erupts. Straining against the shackles, the veins on his wrists popping, bruising. His neck whips violently against the chair, trying to knock it over, but it’s bolted down.
“Damn it,” Rogers groans.
While Philippe stabs a syringe into the prisoner’s arm, Rogers comes over and shows me another of his drawings. Donkey Kong with long gray hair rubbing one out on Miss Piggy’s face.
“Not bad, eh?”
MILLER IS WASTED in the happiest way possible. My watch says 8:53 and he’s literally bouncing against the walls of Thompson’s room, his motor skills down to negative one, hugging any of the dozen other agents at the party when they make the mistake of getting in the way of his unpredictable lunges, showering them with standard, spit-infused I-Love-You-Man drivel, forcing them to drink from the moonshine jug. His joy is manic, infectious. Agents are bobbing awkwardly to the metal blasting from Thompson’s boombox that keeps skipping when it gets knocked into. Miller is the veteran bringing the clubhouse to life with kid-size momentum, the more pronounced because he feels his future closing in, knows that his best games are behind.
Except his future is going to be great, a pension in the sun for service rendered to his nation and its primate population. The agents seem to agree. Their smiles and guffaws are real, but they aren’t enough to disguise the traces of envy. Everyone wants to be Miller.
Davis, in an uncustomary tee shirt, is seated alone on Thompson’s bed, not getting down with the love fest. It’s not that he’s somber – he grins and nods at the agents when they pass by the bed to get refills from an orange Gatorade cooler perched on Thompson’s crust-infested sink, laughs when Miller sits down next to him and babbles away about a funny torture slip-up from a couple years ago – he’s just distant. The rising senior syndrome – he knows that his own time is coming to an end here and Miller’s departure is the event that’s forced him to finally realize it. To come to terms with what he’s done, to decide what to do with what’s coming. Maybe he’s tired. And maybe is as far as I’ll get, because the work environment is better for both of us if we stay on different sides of the office. He knows how I feel. So does Titus.
So be it.
A sweaty, hairless arm wraps around my neck, moonshine breath. “Wheresyerjug, X?” Miller asks.
“Forgot it,” I say, grinning as I shake free from his He-Man grip. “What should I do?”
“Wellll,” he mumbles, pondering the next move, “that cooler aint drinking itself over there. Comeonanget a glass from the bathroom, Thompson’s gottafew more. Jesus,” he puts his arm around me again, the gruff but eternally optimistic father figure reaching out to his constantly disappointing child. “Whatareya gonna do when I’m gone, X?”
THE LIGHTS ARE off and my head is stabbing itself from the inside, but I find the bed OK. I collapse, grinning, remembering a stupid joke Fortune kept telling about Tiger Woods and a duck’s asshole. When I shift a little to my right there’s an extra lump next to the one made by the shank. I jolt up, blood and adrenaline rushing, as sobering as police lights in the rear-view. What the fuck, what the fuck… I rip off the blanket and sheets, toss the mattress aside. I grope across the box spring, find the shank. Seems intact. I keep searching until my hands find what feels like a wool pouch with several smaller bundles inside.
My eyes adjust to the bathroom light and it’s a ski mask without eye-holes – the open end tied together with a rubber band.
I empty the contents into the sink: a U.S. Army name patch with Billy’s name, a small piece of rolled-up blue fabric, and a folded, ripped-out page from a book with something written over the text in black Sharpie. When I smooth out the piece of fabric, something falls out, makes a tiny clink. A gold tooth settles near the drain. Billy’s the only person I know who had a gold tooth, an irony (Nice grill, rap star!) Davis and I never let him forget. Billy didn’t see the humor in the comparison, so we filed it in the war-injuries-we’re-not-supposed-to-talk-about folder.
My head. Shocked free of the moonshine. Billy’s snuck in or Annabelle’s his messenger.
I unfold the piece of book paper. A page from The Human Stain. The Sharpie scribbles are from the same sloppy hand that wrote on the index card. This note seems urgent, underlines and gratuitous capitalizations:
TOMORROW at 8:30 PM – after dinner – Leave your room and walk to the Storage Closet (3 drs down). You know where. DON’T WORRY about the cameras. No One is watching You. They trust you enough NOT to care about you. URGENT!!! Pls come, Bro.
How did I not recognize the handwriting? Billy’s still in the compound, snuck into the meth room and recruited one of them. If all of this is some weird trick Annabelle’s managed to orchestrate… I have to check out the storage closet.
My face in the mirror – boozy sweat droplets running down the gaunt, sparsely freckled cheeks. Mouth agape, the hospital-white teeth.
I put everything back into the ski mask, close off the bottom with the rubber band. I shut off the bathroom light and try to slow my chest.
THE HALLWAY LIGHTS seem brighter than usual, my sun-deprived skin gauzy, translucent. Maybe my senses are heightened because I was bugging out too hard to force down any grub at dinner. The initial…well, not joy, but an indistinct hope, I felt when I saw the note has faded into a vaguer dread, like a kid still clinging to god and Santa Claus.
The beady cameras scan the must-strewn concrete, the constant droning electric buzz, or are they silent? The note – DON’T WORRY about the cameras. No One is watching You. They trust you enough NOT to care about you. Is my commodity-level the same as the meth heads’? No. The lifeless black lenses stare back icily, reveal nada.
The storage room. The hallway’s empty, minus the grease-sick kitchen aroma from what the guy in the camouflage hat behind the cafeteria counter described as “a close cousin” of chopped liver.
I open the door and there’s someone in cargo pants bending over a box, facing away.
“Billy.”
He turns around. It’s Davis, grinning, holding an AK-47. The door closes behind me. Fuck. He points the scope at my chest. I reach for Harry’s bone in my back pocket, but it’s too late. He pulls the trigger and there’s a POP, some smoke. I reel backwards, expecting the piñata-candy stream of blood and drama, but there’s nothing. I look up. Davis is chuckling, adjusting his cargo pants’ fly.
“It’s a prop, man,” he says, “you’ve used these before. Why so jumpy?”
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I hiss, wiping fake gunpowder residue from my face.
“Sorry, Josh,” he says, smile evaporating, “I just thought that since you’ve spent so much time around these guys, you’d be used to …whatever. I’m sorry.”
“Where’s Billy?”
“Not here,” Davis says. “Not yet.”
Not yet. “But the handwriting,” I say, “it was –”
“What about it?”
“It was real sloppy, like Billy’s.”
“Shit,” he says, “whose handwriting isn’t sloppy? When’s the last time you had to handwrite something?”
The scribbled replies to Harry’s questions, before that... He has a point - the keyboard and how it’s reduced us to chicken-scratch, a Titus speech. “What about the book pages?” I ask.
“I can drop by Titus’, grab anything off his shelves,” he says, a little douchey. “By t
he way, that thing under your bed, is that a piece of –”
I nod.
“Wow,” he mumbles. “Wow, wow. That’s what I assumed, but, I didn’t think you were capable of something like –”
I’m capable of more than that. I reach for my shank but stop when I realize how stupid I sound in my head. Capable of more than… What am I really capable of, desecrating the corpses of pudge-faced Brits and still not being able to tell the difference between a real rifle and a prop? I take my hand out of my pocket. If it was that easy for Davis to find the bone, Titus must know. Probably thinks it’s funny. “What is this, then?” I ask. “The Canadians are waiting outside to sedate me? Or were you really that upset by the silent treatment?”
“They’re in Titus’ office,” he says as he takes a seat on one of the boxes, crosses his legs. “Listening to some avant-garde Quebec fusion crap on vinyl or something. I’m supposed to be hanging out with them while we wait for new assignments from D.C. They could care less about anything going on in the wing.”
They trust you enough NOT to care about you. “You wrote that in the note. If they don’t care, why the cameras? Why is the schedule so rigid, down to the lights in our rooms?”
“Like everything else,” he sighs, “the cameras aren’t real. No one’s watching. I doubt if they’re functional. And the lights,” he chuckles, “there is a budget. This place shits out a ton of electricity.”
Nights sweating in the darkness, listening to the whir of the black lenses, nothing. “OK,” I say, taking a seat across from him on a large off-white plastic bag filled with clothes. “No one’s watching. But why the effort to get me here? You couldn’t drop by? Why risk recruiting a meth head who, because of some freakish coincidence, happens to know who I am? Why are you standing here talking to me, risking this info when your martyr video is only what, a few days away?”
Davis stiffens at martyr video. His mouth opens and his face twists into a grimace, the killer’s mask from Scream. “Titus talked to you about it,” his voice cracking. “Did he say when it would be?”
“Soon. I don’t know. What difference would it have made if he told me September 6 or April 17? What year is it? I don’t know why I’m still standing in this closet. Later, bro.”
I brush some lint off my pants, get up to leave. “He told you he wanted you to help out, right?” Davis asks, blocking my way.
“Yeah, so?”
“You need to listen,” he lowers his voice to a scratch. “I’m the reason you’re here and I don’t want you to die like the rest.”
“Like the rest of who? What –”
“The martyr video, it’s exactly what it is. A real execution. There’s no happy send-off. The paychecks are all bullshit. Do you really think the military is going to pay ex-Army retards millions of dollars to perform a service any stoner high school kid with half of his brain cells could do? We’re in a fucking recession, man. The martyr video is the final stamp, There’s no rebirth.
“The operation is going to be terminated. Titus is slipping. Let you make contact with Lauren, a civilian. D.C. wasn’t too happy about that. He’s a hollowed-out fossil, it’s too late to reel him back in, they’re taking the next logical step.”
“Which is.”
“Send in a cleaning crew. Erase the fossils.”
“Cleaning crew.”
“Think Pulp Fiction. That dude, the Wolf who tells Vincent and Jules to hide the body in the trunk of his car? Picture fifteen of him wearing SWAT armor, strapped with explosives.”
The real military. Not a vague client, but the vague Boss. “You pretended to be Billy,” I say. “You pretended to be have my best interests so you could bring me to this compound, and now you’re telling me that it’s literally a dead-end. This is a long way from trust.”
“I’m in the cleaning crew,” he says. “So is Billy. Last year, after the election, we were both contacted. The new administration confirmed my role in the group. Billy’s been active in covert ops since he’s been back from the Middle East. They ordered us to collaborate, to get in and decide what action needed to be taken. I’d already been in the group for three years. When Titus decided he wanted to start recruiting non-military personnel and wanted me to head the recruitment effort, we knew we had a window to get Billy in. But we also needed someone who really didn’t have any idea about what was going on, who we knew wouldn’t crack. That’s why we decided to bring you here. Not that it means anything to you now, but I’m sorry, I really am. I’ve regretted that decision.”
“You regret it. You destroyed me, and you’re sorry. So thoughtful.”
He stares into the white space behind me.
“What about the drugs?”
“Drugs?”
“The one’s you’ve been feeding me since my parents died. Billy said they were part of a mind control program, the same drugs in the organic food we eat here.”
“No, the drugs were always a legit front for me. They were exactly what the bottles said they were. I was a dealer and you weren’t my only customer. There isn’t a program. They put Billy through a lot of shit before Titus decided he wasn’t going to work out, a lot more than just pill-induced nightmares. They took him out of your room and that was supposed to be it. I volunteered to kill him and throw out the body, told Titus I’d do better a better job recruiting next time. I got Billy out of Virginia. He’s with the rest of the crew, half a mile away, waiting for the green light. This place is going to turn into a firepit. I gave them my report and that’s the order I got back. No differentiating between agents and non-military. If you want to live, listen.”
“OK,” I say. There’s no hesitation because even if there is no cleaning crew, my own martyr video will come around sooner than later. The fear in Davis’s face when I told him Titus talked to me about helping out with it is something I’ve never seen before.
Miller’s happy face at his party, the neat stack of yellow paychecks under his bed.
His sallow head rotting on a pole in the desert.
“OK,” Davis says, looking at his watch. “I have to be at Titus’s. I’ll hit you up again in the next couple days.” He extends a hand for me to shake. “Josh,” he says, “I’m going to make it up.”
“Don’t be wrong.” I step into the hallway.
I’M FLIPPING THROUGH the pages of my assignment packet before meeting starts when the front row erupts in excited commotion. Rogers, to my right, leans forward, whispers something to Miller. Miller nods, whispers back. Everyone’s staring at them, glances of shock and amusement.
Rogers leans back in his chair, goes back to reading his script.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“Good news for Miller,” he says. “His video got bumped up a couple days, the set’s ready. He’ll be done for good, leaves tonight. Flying out of Dulles.”
“That’s uh, that’s great,” I say. Rogers ignores me, goes back to his packet.
Can’t let Miller go out like this. I lean toward the front row, about to put my hand on his shoulder to get his attention when my eyes catch Davis staring at me from his seat behind the podium. Doesn’t smile. His neck twitches.
They trust you enough NOT to care about you.
I tap Miller’s shoulder. He turns around.
“What’s up, X?”
“I, uh, I…” Davis shakes his head, barely noticeable. “I wanted to you know, wish you good luck. It’s been fun working with you.”
He swivels around to shake my hand. “Hey,” he says, “that means a lot, buddy. Look me up when you’re in the South Pacific.”
LATE AT NIGHT, images blend into half-real truths, what I’ve seen versus what I want to have seen.
Driving through a nature area, upstate, over the familiar road that’s little more than a gravel path overgrown with prickers and other vines, past the green metal sign that says NO OUTLET, through the potholed parking lot and the woods to the rock formation on the banks of the Connecticut River. Davis and I are nineteen
, home from college, and now we’re caked in river water, soaking up the sun that ignites the tops of the tallest trees in the late-afternoon shimmer. We’re taking a break from jumping off the rocks, talking about internships, whether or not to accept the ones we were both offered at our fathers’ company, to take a different one, or to do nothing. I’m mumbling some yuppie-in-training garbage about how we need to work somewhere, how we can’t keep acting like this forever, how even we aren’t free from doing what everyone else knows you need to do.
“Everyone is so preoccupied about the future,” Davis says, “what they’re going to do, what I’m going to do, that they can’t have fun. This, right here, is what we’re going to do and I’m not looking beyond that. I figure something’s got to fall into place eventually and when that time comes, I’ll be ready. But you need to be ready too, Josh, because when my destiny comes, I’m not leaving you to be some rat in a cubicle. I’m taking you with me.”
A mosquito flutters around Davis until it finds a landing spot in the crevice made by his elbow joint. It starts sucking. He pinches the skin around the stinger, forcing blood into the insect’s swollen abdomen. Overwhelmed by the pressure, its belly explodes in one noiseless blast. Davis lifts his arm and examines the cherry-colored residue.
Before I can say anything, he jumps off the rock facing me, tucks his back forward as he plunges toward the river. For a millisecond it looks like he might have misjudged the bank, that he’s heading straight for the ground, but he manages to complete a perfect back flip with barely any splash.
As he’s swimming back to the bank, laughing, he shouts something I can’t understand. But when he points at me, then the water, I realize he wants me to follow his lead.
My turn to jump.
I’M HEADING UP the street from the beach toward the cottage. The wind cuts through my clothing as I try to hug some warmth back into my body. My BlackBerry vibrates in my pocket. As I fumble through my jacket to answer it, I see the car. A black Range Rover in my driveway. Titus in a red shirt leaning against one of the passenger-side doors. Jean-Paul is next to him, manning a camcorder that’s been positioned on a tripod, filming me. ‘Hello, Josh!’ Titus bellows. I keep walking toward them because what are the other options? Turn around and duck into a neighbor’s house? Call the police? Running is pointless. The sickening rush of helplessness. Titus nods at the cottage. The porch door swings open and Alaska scampers out, wearing a blue party dress and red slippers, smiling, takes a direct line to Titus, reaches for his hand. He gives her a grandfatherly pat on the head. She smiles at me. Titus nods again and Philippe appears, carrying something in a brown paper bag and dragging Lauren by her wrist. Her eyeliner is smeared, her face puffy. When she sees me she screams. Philippe hands Titus the paper bag. He, in turn, hands it to Alaska, whispers something in her ear. She reaches into the bag, pulls out what looks like the head of a shopping mall dummy. Still smiling, she runs into the street, bends over, and rolls the head like a bowling ball in my direction. The head catches on some gravel a few feet away and stops face-up on the pavement. The wide, golden eyes covered by a thin, gray film, still alive in a freeze-frame of perpetual terror. The Cheshire Cat grimace twisted by the shock of a life leaving too soon. Davis. ‘We’re all a little upset,’ Titus says, ‘even him.’ He points at Davis’ head. ‘You never made your martyr video. We can’t terminate your employment until you do.’ Lauren tries to break free and run to me, but Philippe clamps down hard on her shoulders. Jean-Paul keeps filming. I can feel Billy’s presence, hear his voice. ‘This is bullshit,’ he whispers. ‘You don’t have to go through with this. We could –‘ ‘No,’ I cut him off, staring at Lauren, ‘we can’t. Let me go.’ There’s a brief pause and then I feel him release me, feel my body move forward by itself. I feel Billy’s invisible stare burrowing into the back of my head.