He loves her for saying that too.
Loves her for all of it.
She is the living prize he has endured so much pain all the days of his life to achieve.
He knows even then that it will be a big, big problem later.
• • •
Mark never notices that Jackie-Boy is watching them for most of the night. Watching and basking, like he always does. Little brother, still in the game, passed out before dawn, curled up in a corner with his bong.
Mark and Jollie get their second wind just after dawn.
It never even occurs to Mark that he should make a romantic move on her that first night—that’s how pure it is. Not that she isn’t gorgeous and flawed in all the right ways. Not that he won’t have those thoughts and feelings for her a million times in the days, weeks, and years that follow. But it’s okay. There is time. They have nothing but time.
So she comes in that night and never really leaves.
She is back a million days in a row, kicking in the door (which is never locked because who cares in a stoner neighborhood like this?) and running straight for Mark’s room, jumping in his bed and yelling that it’s already one in the fucking afternoon (and who needs sleep when we have worlds to conquer?) and dragging him out of bed to go march on the Capitol with all the other hippies and hipsters who know—beyond anything that even looks like a shadow of a doubt—that it is enough to aim at the moon. She comes back to read every damn thing Mark ever writes and to say that the words are brilliant. She comes back to encourage Jackie-Boy to have more courage with the ladies. She comes back to fall in love with Andy’s lost-boy spirit, like every other girl eventually does (because what is love but a series of silly lies you tell yourself when you’re young?), and to tell Mark she isn’t, so that Mark won’t be jealous.
She comes back to be a citizen of the Kingdom.
The house she named, because it was so cool.
Andy helps to get her a job at Kerbey Lane and she moves in officially two months later. After that, the fight for Jollie’s affections that busts out between Andy and Mark is full of loving passive-aggressive silliness—the regulars who hang out at the house, like Jackie-Boy, call it the Forever War of the Kingdom. It goes on for nearly five more years. They try to one-up each other in casual conversations about movies, but Andy is never a match for Mark’s encyclopedic knowledge. They try to be cooler than each other at parties and Mark always ends up looking like an idiot because Andy is one of the beautiful people. All the while, they lavish attention on Jollie in stereo. They each sneak off with Jollie when they think the other one is not looking. Mark grows to hate Andy a little because it’s just not fair that the Boy Prince should have all the other girls and his girl too—the one he waited all his life for. Andy hates Mark a little because he knows Jollie will go with him eventually—but only after the Boy Prince of the Kingdom has put up one hell of a fight.
Andy tries so hard to seduce her, but only gets those stolen kisses.
Mark lives in tortured denial about it and kisses Jollie when they are alone, and she pulls away from him with endless longing in her eyes. He needs that so much—more than the drugs, more than anything. It’s a strange, warm, icy-cold passion in his blood he cannot assign a name to.
So he just calls it love.
He turns forty and Jollie makes him a cake.
It’s a chocolate cake with peanut-butter icing, his favorite.
It feels like his final reward.
For so many years of pain.
• • •
And as for Jollie?
She walks down the yellow brick road with her two amazing men and lives the dream with them, awash in the glow of youthful firelight, set against the battlements on both sides of the Forever War, lost in the passionate aloneness of the Boy Prince and afraid of the secret darkness that lives inside her one true love.
And, yes, she knows that Mark is her one true love.
She knows it, even now, years later, as he tells them the truth, locked away in a safe house, hiding from evil men who want to kill them.
5
the sacrifice of sacrifices
Jollie leans forward on the couch, looking right in Mark’s eyes. “I don’t know if I can believe any of this. It’s just too bizarre.”
“What’s bizarre?” Mark says, shrugging. “I mean, we’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, is all.”
Jollie smirks. Breakfast Club quotes.
Still maintaining his cover, even now.
“You’re saying something that’s damn near impossible for me to comprehend,” Jollie says. “You’re saying that everything about you has been some well-concocted forgery—that everything that ever made me love you is bullshit.”
“No. That stuff is real.”
“How many . . . jobs have you done?”
“Seventeen. All drug people. Mostly mid-level dealers, I think. I never know what it will be about or who it might involve. But I’ve been able to make a few educated guesses.”
“You killed seventeen people?” Jollie says.
“More than that, really. Now and then, someone else is in the room with your target. The rule is no witnesses.”
“How many of them did you kill after we were living together?”
“A lot. I used to sneak out through the back door in my room. Sometimes I would have my stuff ready in the trees. Sometimes I’d work with another operative who’d pick me up on the back street with my equipment ready.”
“You would sneak out and kill people?”
“Yes. It’s my job.”
“I don’t know if I can really believe that, Mark. It’s just not you.”
“But it was. It is. My instructions were to learn as much about the inner-city drug scene as possible. Make friends with everyone on the street and as many people as I could meet in a certain age bracket. They place a lot of us, so that we’re positioned like chess pieces. But we’re real people who live real lives, just like anyone else. We have dreams and hopes, just like anyone else. My dream was to be a writer. They made me want that and I kept wanting it.”
Jollie rubs her eyes. “And meanwhile, you report back from the trenches—spy on all of us counterculture revolutionaries?”
“No. They don’t care about your revolution, Jollie. They don’t care about anything going on in the blog scenes. Or even the drug scenes, really. At least I don’t think they do. I’ve never been required to fill out a single report on anyone or anything. They just need my talents handy, so I can go in the field and bring back what they need.”
“And what did they need this time?”
“It was a major deal, my last assignment. I was told to make the pickup and cut off all the loose ends in that room. That’s the thing I’m trained for.”
“I’d believe it,” Andy says, then looks at Jollie. “You should have seen the man. He was, like, The Ninth Configuration.”
He means Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane. The terminal man who looks like a normal Joe—until his back is against the wall.
Jollie gets it.
She shivers. Then chooses her next words very carefully.
“What was the pickup? What did those men want from us?”
“Six million worth of ecstasy. Uncut dope, right off the boat. Imported from a lab somewhere overseas. That’s what Razzle told us anyway.”
“Jesus,” Andy says. “Could have gone on a bender for years with that.”
“Not likely,” Mark says. “A half a hit would make you feel terrific for about a second before it killed you dead. You don’t snort that stuff—you step on it and turn into a millionaire. It was part of the retirement score for Razzle. The big deal a small-timer like him waits all his life for. I was supposed to get the dope and the buy money, erase my tracks, and get on an airplane with it three hours la
ter.”
“How?” Jollie says. “You’d never get through airport security with a score that big.”
“They gave me special equipment. A carry-on bag rigged with really high-tech software plates, designed to throw the X-ray machines. METRO uses the most advanced technology you’ve never seen. I’ve got a gun in my box made by the same lab. It’s called a Vestika. You can get through metal detectors with that too. Real sci-fi stuff.”
“Christ . . .”
“I’m serious, Jollie. These guys can do anything.”
“So where is this big score anyway? Why didn’t you just give it to those creeps when they came in? Were our lives all so expendable?”
“You weren’t expendable at all, Jollie. That’s why I came back. I wanted you to come with me, but I knew bringing the package there would be dangerous. So I left it in my storage locker. It’s one of those outdoor twenty-four-seven places. A maze of concrete bunkers with roll-doors. You just drive right up to your unit, stash your shit, and drive off. I went there, dropped off the bag, and came back to the Kingdom. I wanted to explain things. I wanted you to get on that plane with me. Obviously, we got distracted.”
“Yeah,” Jollie says, remembering why.
Remembering that almost-perfect love.
Her first love.
Andy sees the look on her face—sees it and knows it. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, distracted?”
She almost snarls at him. “It’s none of your business, Andy.”
“I think it is.”
“It’s not important.”
“I think it is.”
Mark sees the jealous flare in his face, the contempt in his voice. Mark doesn’t want to believe what’s probably true—he’s lived in denial about it for months. But it probably doesn’t even matter now. Jollie is lost to him, regardless. She’ll never look at him the same way again. Never love him like that again.
He’s finally officially lost her to the Boy Prince.
It breaks his heart, but he steels himself and presses on.
“We have to stick together, guys,” he says. “We can sort out all the personal bullshit later. I have to protect the two of you. It’s not just the drugs they’ll be coming after. There was almost three million in unmarked bills in that room too.”
“Christ,” Jollie says. “That means we’re sitting on a damn near ten-million-dollar package. The bad guys find you when that much is up for grabs.”
“And Razzle wasn’t dealing alone,” Mark says. “He was fronting for Eddie Darling and the Monster Squad. I didn’t know that until I saw those hatchet men back there. And it’s going to get real personal when their bosses do a head count. Eddie’s bad enough, but Marnie Stanwell’s brother is who I’m worried about. I’ve only heard stories about him.”
“Like what?” Jollie says.
“Like nobody can touch him. He’s not like those goons back there. He’s high up in the food chain and he’s hands-on about his work. A professional surgeon.”
“This is terrific, Mark,” Jollie says. “So later on we get to be sliced and diced on some fucking maniac’s operating table?”
“I won’t let it happen. No matter what you may think of me now, I love you both and I won’t see you get hurt. That’s a priority.”
“That’s real good to know,” Jollie says. “But aren’t we dealing with some scary shadow agency that tells you not to love anything?”
“I can handle them.”
“What are these fucking people of yours anyway—who the hell even runs METRO?”
“I don’t know, Jollie. I’ve never known. I just work here.”
“Jesus creeping shit.”
“I’ll do right by you, Jollie. I swear I will. We can find a way to live again, and I’ll help you rebuild everything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to. But I’m telling you the truth. When my contact gets wind that I’ve protected two civilians during a hit, she’ll want to make sure I never see either of you again. But you could be valuable to them, Jollie.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me . . .”
“I’m serious. People like you are assets that my people keep an eye out for. You have communication skills that are amazing. Your network could be a database worth a lot to the right agencies.”
“So I get to sell out everything and become a part of some king-shit conspiracy to run the world from a dark room?”
“You’d rather be dead?”
“That doesn’t scare me, Mark. Not one bit.”
“I’m not trying to scare you. And that room isn’t nearly as dark as you think it is.”
“How do you know that? What evidence can you show me to prove that?”
“I just know, Jollie. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You haven’t been where I’ve been. My theory is that our branches work completely independent of any government agencies—at least the ones I know about.”
“Your theory?”
“Yeah, you come up with a lot of them in my line of work.”
“Jesus creeping shit.”
“But here’s the thing: I was trained by military personnel. Master sergeants and drill instructors who were definitely down there in the trenches. One of them told me his grandfather was on the black-ops team that assassinated Adolf Hitler at the end of World War II.”
“So these METRO guys have been running the show since the beginning of time, huh?”
“Since the beginning of the most important phase of human development, I think. That was at the end of the sixties. It’s all about technology, Jollie. Before World War II, we were still in the jungle.”
“Okay, so what does that even mean?”
“It means the stakes went up and people started getting scared. I think METRO was invented to make sure the transition was smooth and we didn’t kill ourselves doing it. That’s part of what they told me. That’s all I know for sure.”
“A network of endemic spies and assassins.”
“Yes. There are field generals we call dictators, and lower operatives that run buffers between us and them. Above the dictators, it all gets pretty scary. You could go probably straight to the top with a machine gun and kill some pretty important people.”
“Christ . . .”
“You could do it, Jollie. You could go straight to the top.”
“What are you saying to me, Mark?”
“I’m saying there’s a reason you came to live with me in my house. A reason for all of it. Another thing they teach you in METRO is that there are no accidents.”
“So, what? We get recruited, like you were?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re a little old for that, aren’t we? Didn’t they get you when you were, like, six years old?”
“It doesn’t matter. They recruit little old ladies too. I’m not kidding. You’ll see.”
She rubs her eyes, feeling the cold residue of the Molly as it finally leaves her with nothing. Another long, long silence in the room. Then she almost whispers:
“I need to sleep. But I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, ever again.”
“I’ll watch over both of you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“That’s good to know,” Andy says, repeating something smart Jollie just said a minute ago, like he always does. He even does it with that same mighty-damn-unconvinced lull to his voice. Mark thinks it’s pathetic how he does that.
Jollie isn’t paying attention to Andy at all.
She’s thinking about Mark’s face, from less than two hours ago. When he came to her and there was blood dried on his temple, just like it is now, and he said Come with me, Jollie, come with me now—I can’t live without you and I want to show you the real world you’ve been searching for. Was it really his sacrifice of sacrifices? Did he really ge
t halfway out the door with a fortune in white gold—not to mention a cool three mil in untraceable buy money—and then turn on one heel, only because he loved her?
Has anyone ever loved anyone that much?
And now she’s looking down deep, into the abyss that binds them.
All the years that defined everything they ever were to one another.
“So,” Jollie says. “What about the drugs? They really trained you to be a junkie?”
“Oh yeah. There’s lots of guys like that in the field. Junkies, alcoholics, garden-variety potheads. It’s what makes us so hard to spot. You said it yourself. Nobody can lie that well.”
“And your killer instinct or whatever is determined by the level of dope in your system?”
“Not always. But some of the time. Let’s say it helps a lot.”
She gives him a bad look, like Really, man?
He smiles back, sadly. “Actually, there’s a lot of irony in that, Jollie. One of the reasons I fell asleep with you back there was that I took Xanax before the hit. I mean, what we did—it was amazing. I’ll never forget it. But I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”
The enemy NEVER SLEEPS, you dumb FUCK!!
Jollie shakes her head. Still not believing.
Then she comes over to him.
“Your hands, Mark. Let me see them.”
Mark smiles at her. “You want more proof? A little parlor magic?”
She shrugs again. “Whenever you say you’re God, they always want you to make it rain in their car, don’t they?”
She thinks about the first time they saw Oh, God! together. That cute little movie with George Burns as the Almighty and John Denver as his modern-day prophet. She always said to Mark that John Denver was like a live-action Kermit the Frog, and Mark always laughed when she said that. George Burns made a thunderstorm happen inside Kermit’s car when Kermit demanded proof. Because you always demand proof.
You have to demand proof.
Mark offers up his hands, and she runs her fingers along them. His hands look perfectly normal. You’d never know.
“Put your hand around my wrist,” he says. “Hold it tight.”
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