by Jon Methven
Operation Touristcide
Chilly temperatures with a high pollen count, chance of felony conviction: sixty percent. I am sullen in my Subaru Forester and the situation. The corporate headquarters of Moveable Enterprises are tucked away in an office park in New Jersey. The planning for this mission began months prior to my involvement—the reason Josey Mateo took a job at Gopa. I am driving domestic terrorists to New Jersey to vandalize what I partially funded, while their purported leader, Phil, criticizes my satellite radio stations as bourgeoisie and mainstream.
The buildings look identical, two stories with the same number of entrances and windows, a loading dock, a parking lot, lawns that are cared for by the same illegal immigrants who unironically refer to this as the American Dream. The buildings house commercial businesses, an import-export operation, hotels, travel agencies, technology startups, all stationed along an unspecific corridor off the parkway. This is where the Sedlocks have invested our money, two new buses, office furniture, fresh paint for the lobby, several wall posters depicting the routes, other posters cross-selling bicycle and kayak trips through picturesque valleys. There are no lights on in the building, no sign at the entrance, an anonymous pile of real estate devoted to the working class. Lights in other buildings suggest the park is not abandoned, late-night go-getters or indifferent janitors, a security car that rolls past once an hour.
Josey and the others dress in black pants and stolen Gopa sweatshirts, bandanas over their faces, each of us issued a two-way radio purchased on Tug’s phone. Bill Chuck visits the guard station, friendly former NYPD, arriving with fresh coffee, just passing through and making faux inquiries about job opportunities in the business park. He can only bullshit for so long, buying us fifteen minutes. Josey is the eyes, seated in a darkened building across from Moveable Enterprises with views of the roads. Linda manipulates an oversized body with the skill of a marine, gliding through the property until she locates the loading dock, picking the lock and signaling. Whitman is with us in the ether, stationed near the parkway exit, his task to notify us if police cruisers approach. I am better suited for his job as watchman.
“Nothing on my end,” he says into the radio. “How’s Pisser holding up?”
Pisser is a wreck of nerves and paranoia, of jittery ganglia craving Luderica. Pisser has gone cold turkey. Pisser is jealous of their idealism, of their camaraderie and purpose. They have identified a cancer in the suburbs, and they will quietly destroy it not to earn glory, but because it must be purged for the worthiness of the future. Despite a job that pays him well, Whitman wants to be one of them, one of the worthy. So does Pisser, who is timidly preparing to go on three.
“Go on three.” Josey’s voice finds me crouched in bushes, tiny lives skittering past my knees, my heart thumping as I steady my breath, and my tribe thunders forth. And then we are sprinting across the business park, Phil and Little Petty and myself, the two getting ahead of me even though each hauls a canister of coyote urine while I lug hoses and spray nozzles. Note of pop culture phenomenon: one can purchase coyote urine on VillageShop in both small increments and canisters as large as propane tanks. Mostly used for rodent deterrent, Phil tells me strategically spraying this in an office setting can lead to headaches, nausea, complex dreams, low self-esteem, impotence, and an overwhelming need to depart work early.
Phil and Petty man the coyote urine while Linda secures a tank to my back, this one filled with actual propane. She outfits it with four feet of hose and then a buttoned torch that I am cautioned, for a fifth time, not to press until she advises. She wears her own tank, lovelier than I do, and we crouch beneath the buses, igniting the wheels, which turn from black to soft blue. If we are careful and not overzealous, the torches will give the rubber wheels a slow burn, a chemical sweat that will destroy the underside of the vehicles and creep casually toward the mechanics. Linda has already drained the engines of gasoline, benevolent terrorism, making it safer for the local fire units to salvage what will ultimately be an insurance dilemma: arson or accident? Linda blares music out of her phone, a 1967 version of “This Wheel’s on Fire” by Bob Dylan and The Band. She explains the significance over the liquid fire emitting from my hands.
“Six minutes,” comes Josey’s voice. “Tom, get the sub.”
The sub is my Subaru Forester that has sixty-seven thousand miles on it, and which I have been thinking of trading in but which now, as I sprint across an empty business park somewhere in Edison, New Jersey, strikes me as a utilitarian vehicle with a wide payload able to accommodate multiple tanks of coyote urine, or up to five-hundred Standcake delicacies, while at the same time blending in with local workforces and suburban roads.
“Tom.” The invisible voice. “You’ve got company. Stop moving now.”
Whitman from the highway, “Do what she says, Pisser.”
“Everyone stay put,” Josey says. “If we have to, we leave him.”
“We can’t.” It’s Little Petty, sticking with me. “He has the keys.”
Of course I do not stop, my heart clawing for an exit. Nor do I notice the large dog, German shepherd in force, running beside me at a steady clip to monitor my retreat. It has not attacked, a positive sign. There is no security in sight. If the animal changes its mind, nothing will prevent it from finishing the task.
The dog emits a low growl as it sidesteps, unsure how to assess my relation to its world. Most likely it is the scent of coyote urine keeping it at bay, but, in the way that men can embellish their control over nature, I believe the tribe I have uprooted from my core has garnered the respect of this killing beast. I stop running and make a fist and hang it over the dog’s nose. It turns, wanders a few steps, turns, growls, inches closer to sniff my offering. After a moment I am able to pat the dog gently, ferocity neutered. I give the dog a sophisticated rubdown as the radios erupt.
“Is he dead?” Whitman asks. “Is that why you’re all so quiet?”
“It’s time,” Josey says. “We have to go.”
From the maps on the walls, Moveable Museums has confirmed the national routes. They use the building to train tour guides, one being our very own Little Petty, otherwise unsophisticated college graduates with no other job prospects willing to travel the country to brief foreigners on our most flawed days. The unfortunate tales consist of second amendment privilege and destruction that forever alters lives, but the Sedlocks have used my investment money to hire storytelling experts to teach the guides to deliver the anecdotes with suspense and vigor and rationale and tearless explanation. We have spray-painted warnings onto the ivory walls and ceiling and desks, but it will not deter the Sedlocks, who have studied the analytics and demographics and can be breezy and positive about their convictions. There are people who will hate the shooting tours the way we do. Connor Mack will convince enough of them otherwise, tickets and word of mouth and heartbreak making Moveable Enterprises a viable business model.
At a diner, later, we celebrate. “Don’t forget Edison,” Phil tells us, toasting over ginger ale.
I raise my glass to them, to Josey who would have left me behind. She accepts my stare without flinching. “To Edison,” I say.
“To Edison,” Josey agrees. Whitman clinks her glass.
Little Petty, “Ever noticed how similar the words are: tourist and terrorist?”
To protect Laura, I have not discussed my involvement, that my rebellion does not cease with abandoning our investment. I have not told her that Edison is only the beginning. I do not like keeping things from Laura, but protecting my family eclipses marital loyalty. Also, I am certain my cohorts, if they suspected I was bragging about my involvement, would hide a bomb in a Standcake location to make a point.
“Bombs go off all the time,” Little Petty mentions between bites. “It’s the new broken shoelace.”
My Unborn Are Taken Hostage
Laura works from home, frantic over the two thousand standing pan
cakes decorated like wedding guests that were ordered for the Ferguson nuptials, an important function for Standcake. I, too, am “working” from home, mostly Googling Channel Fourteen and Penelope Garcia. I track the storm no other weather outlet is reporting, a gale on which I have staked my deteriorating reputation—the viewers having long forgotten me. I post my daily forecasts to the Gopa website, my streak of eighty-four days intact.
“Fog early in some of the lower altitudes with crisp winds out of the south and mostly sunshine. Expect periods of jealousy and intermingled rage but look softly at the moment and know there is something more vital lurking on the inner mesh. Mellow with instances of goodness, but carry a weapon.”
We meet at the counter when the mail arrives, both of us avoiding vocations to inspect our bounty, my face healing beneath the scratchy beard. Today there are bills, a magazine from AARP, and several letters. Laura and I each have a similar envelope, updates from the Cooperative Marriage. I set mine on the counter as she carefully peels the edge. I tear into a letter from the homeowners association, my tenth and final, revealing information too important for computer correspondence. Someone had to type it and address it and track its delivery to our home. The written notice informs me that legal proceedings have initiated to terminate my living arrangement.
The list of infractions is impressive. I have exterminated chipmunks that are not considered rodents, but instead designer creatures native to the local ecosystem, their likeness a branding initiative for the autumn, a calendar that will raise money to thwart erosion: “The Twelve Months of Slancy’s Indigenous Chipmunks.” I harbor a feral cat, the concept impossibly thrilling to see in ink. I am suspected of setting loose a population of deformed bunnies on the golf course, which are attacking the chipmunks. I own weapons, though the letter does not outline the projectiles I have fired at neighbors: Allie Sedlock, whom I missed; Harry Sedlock, who I struck; Rhythm, who was the unfortunate recipient of a wayward arrow. I tampered with Ray McClutchen’s tricycle. I cut down cell phone towers and shit in my neighbors’ driveway causing a black smudge that still has not been remedied. I believe I had reason for all these infractions, though reading them now in an official letter makes me feel badly. I am that neighbor. In order for there to be happiness, my family and I must depart. No one knows about the treehouses.
Laura smiles, and then weeps. She holds her hand over her face, waving her fingers to dehumidify the tears after a confusing few months through conjugal politics. She sets down her letter, the drama enough to well my interest in my own Cooperative Marriage update. It was most likely typed by Devin Brenner’s secretary, though the signatures at the bottom are from both Brenner and my counterpart in the mess, Olivia McClutchen. For ethical reasons, they have decided to excuse themselves from the Cooperative Marriage for the rational explanation that they have been having an affair. There is a long, psychiatric babble about when the attraction occurred, subtle blame aimed at the arrangement itself, which has the effect of shifting this situation onto Laura and Ray, and subsequently me. I know that is what goes through Olivia McClutchen’s head as she lays on white pillows in Devin Brenner’s Manhattan apartment, where she will reside until divorce or a more bizarre arrangement has been established, joint custody of her kids and bank accounts and real estate—that I am to blame for her diaspora out of Slancy.
The last letter is unstamped and addressed to neither of us. Inside the envelope is a single photograph, the inside of a freezer, three glass tubes with a milky substance. These are vials of semen, presumably mine, which I should have deposited at the Manhattan Cryobank in the past month. I rush to the icebox, empty, which causes Laura to cover her mouth.
“Tom, what?”
“Abraham and his siblings. Someone is holding my sperm hostage.”
“It’s not funny.” She smiles and then loses the grin. “It’s Olivia. Stay away from Moveable Museums or else.”
We contemplate the scenarios she could create with my semen—scatter it on her pillow, a child’s pillow, turn it over to the lacrosse parents and let them imagine my destruction.
“I’ll talk to Josey,” I say. “She’ll know what to do.”
“No.” Laura puts the letters into a drawer. “I’ll handle Olivia.”
Economic Benefits Of Sex Tapes
An Olivia-Devin affair would typically be endless gossip, an excuse to have dinner with the Jays and Sedlocks to discuss the McClutchens and all the ways it will affect our own livelihoods. We barely see our neighbors anymore, all of us keeping our doors shuttered and children sequestered in their tasks of becoming more lucrative adults than the neighbors’ brood. On the morning shuttle to school, we engage in antisocial busyness: typing, tapping, swiping, sending, reading the same blog posts on our mutually beneficial collaboration, avoiding eye contact.
More broadly, the Gopa community has again erupted into shameful behavior, parental cliques annexing other cliques to combat foreign cliques, all of us enemies. The dead bunnies instigated the new round of trouble. Police were called. The administration blamed an anonymous group of pet loving parents that had been sending letters for months and threatening legal action if the mammals were not removed from their children’s biology lesson. The Jays are suing the administration for releasing the video of Jason being sexually hampered by the dog, which has led to an investigation into how the video was leaked. Jason is on mental health disability for the remainder of the year, presumably watching his driveway to ensure it does not suffer further exudation.
Parents have made donations to radical political candidates and controversial charities in the names of other parents, their surnames arriving at the top of lists as Blue Chip Donors. Other parents share the lists on the Gopa website to publicly shame the intended, who deny the allegation without condemning the virtue. They neither support nor oppose Planned Parenthood; they are proponents of gay rights but libertarian on gay marriage; they do not support or despise a candidate for State Senate, Jeffrey Rears, who wishes to sterilize the homeless and felons. Like other Gopa parents, they toe the line. They are neutral. They are not getting involved in affairs that do not concern them.
The parents have put pressure on the chess coach, who has found reason to “bench” Gus. He has been placed on the injury list, something to do with carpal tunnel that was explained to me briefly in a gymnasium a week earlier, and to which Gus agrees because he hates chess. He wears a sling to the matches and sits with me in the bleachers, where I stare angrily at Sharon Li and her wretched disability. I had Josey hack the website to learn who GopaGirl9 was, Maria Sherwood, after she began a rumor that Iliza is dating a lacrosse player, presenting further intrigue to the Pistilini-Lacrosse confrontation. In turn, I accused Missus Sherwood’s daughter of spreading gonorrhea in the upper school, only to later learn the child is only six. My latest username was revoked soon after.
Fully flowered petunias arrive from VillageShop, most staying alive through the shipping, and the colors are bright and mirthful and, dare I say, playful planted in my backyard. The chipmunks, now properly attuned to survival of the fittest, have learned to steer clear of my flowerbed and lagoon, even though the concrete damage bears a price tag I cannot meet. I water my plants. The cell phone trees hiss. A golfer whiffs, curses. The dimpled projectile plonks into wood and scatters brush. A bicycle approaches. A moment later, Allie Sedlock is in my backyard. It is late May, too early for the tank top and tiny shorts, her legs impossibly tanned for this time of year. She holds a cactus that she tosses onto my porch, shattering the pot.
“Peace offering,” she says, crossing the wet lawn. “Harry’s idea. He sent me in this fucking outfit. Said it would soften you. Or harden you. I don’t remember.” She smirks, hates the hell out of me shoeless and bearded with water shooting out of the hose. “Let’s talk, Pisser.”
After we destroyed the Moveable office, no one came to interrogate or arrest us. There was nothing about the damage in the newsp
aper. As far as Bill Chuck could ascertain, it went unreported to the police. The Sedlocks did not mention it a night later at an emergency investment club meeting, according to Ray, although most of their employees quit, with the exception of their prized tour guide, Little Petty, who they know as Steven. Which means the terms are clear—we will handle this how it is meant to be handled by entities engaged in dispute, no media or authorities.
I shut off the hose and reach around to check the BB gun. She reaches for a hoe.
“You shoot me, I’ll bury this in your neck. Everyone will assume it was self-defense.”
“What do you want Allie?”
“The offices. You aren’t clever enough to do it yourself, but you know who did it. Olivia wants to hire someone to cripple you. I’d say things are out of hand in our tiny paradise, wouldn’t you?”
Olivia McClutchen: harlot, semen thief, hitman.
“We’re prepared to offer you and Laura your full shares, along with eighty percent of Russ’s investment.” We meet eyes, the tricky business of murder among neighbors. “He was Harry’s friend, not mine. You did more good than harm getting rid of him.”
“It’s too late, Allie.”
“Do you hear yourself?” My inability to barter shatters her sublime illusion of capitalism. “You have no job. Your life savings is tied up in this venture. Harry will see to it that you are reimbursed first. All for doing nothing.”
“I’ll have to keep my mouth shut.”
“Sure.”
“Which I can’t do. You’ve crossed a line with me. There’s no coming back.”
Furious, the beautiful Allie Sedlock begging in my backyard, near a cement-ruined Jacuzzi he and his wife refuse to enter because I may have killed an old woman here. “Think about Laura. Think about your children.”
“I am thinking of them.” For the first time in years, my wife respects me. I have begun looking my children in their eyes again. I watch Allie, see how willing she is to make amends. “Pull Tungsten out of the play,” I say.