by Dermot Davis
"If you're back here to gloat, I'd appreciate it if you took it someplace else. This dungeon is hard enough to face each day, without having to deal with jumped up little farts like you," Simon said sourly in his upper crust British accent.
"This isn't a friendly visit," Andrew said nervously. "I mean it is a friendly visit, I am being friendly, it's just that it's about work. Abigail sent me," he then said while looking straight ahead at Simon.
"Abigail sent you for what, exactly?"
"It's about Balik," Andrew said, watching Simon closely for any tell-tale signs of facial twitches or movements of the eyes.
"What about Balik?"
"He ratted you out," Andrew said boldly.
"He what?" Simon asked, looking closely at Andrew like a seasoned poker player.
"He gave you up," Andrew said, hoping that he wouldn't have to continue the charade longer before procuring some kind of admission or denial from Simon. "Got himself a very nice promotion and most of your first choice clients."
Simon looked quietly at Andrew with his steely blue eyes and squinted a little, as if trying to discern if Andrew was being truthful or bluffing his pants off. "So, you've become Abigail's latest recruit, huh?" he asked without blinking. "The latest addition to her growing network of spies? The role suits you."
"She wants to take Balik down," Andrew then said, coming clean. "I don't know if the guy's clean or dirty but I thought I'd come ask you first."
"So, Abigail didn't send you?" he asked with a knowing grin. "You're working off your own bat, going solo."
"She knows I'm here. I didn't want to send down an innocent man. If he is innocent."
"What makes you think I'd tell you, either way?"
"I don't."
"If I said, yes, he's dirty, you'd believe me? What if I had an agenda or I had my own reasons for taking the man down?" Simon asked like a poker player who was certain that he had the better hand. The younger man stared at Fiona’s father.
"I don't know," Andrew said, as if he were putting all his cards out on the table. "Maybe it's not a decision that I can make and so I'm passing it on to you. His life and career is in your hands now. What way do you want this to go?"
"You're a tricky little devil, aren't you, lad?" Simon said, as if it were a backhanded compliment. "You turned out to be quite the surprise, didn't you? Quite the little schemer."
"If he's your friend and if he's in on the conspiracy with you, then you'll tell me that he's clean. If he's against you in some way, then you'll tell me that he's dirty. Either way, if Abigail has her way, the guy is pretty much doomed," Andrew said, laying out his entire argument. "So, what's it to be?"
"You want me to make it easy for you, is that it?" Simon asked like he wasn't going to play the game. "What if I told you to go take a running jump? Would that help you sleep better at night? Or worse?" Turning, to look over and signal to the guard that he was ready to go back, Simon stood. "I think we're done here, old son," he said with a sneer. "Toss and turn in your sleep but I don't rat out my friends."
Annoyed with Simon's lack of cooperation, and more especially his scornful attitude, Andrew had to force himself to avoid saying something hurtful and nasty to the man who used to be his father figure. As he watched Simon turn, Andrew’s eyes were drawn instantly to a pair of convict eyes: a pair of eyes that were staring into him like laser beams in a light fog. Duke the gang member, his old arch nemesis, was sitting at the end of the long table and had clearly recognized him.
In an instant, a scene emerged in Andrew's third eye: Duke and his gang were beating the living daylights out of Simon, at the back of the same communal shower where Andrew himself had received similar punishment.
Time slowed to a standstill as Andrew had all sorts of thoughts, images, and ideas flood his mind and consciousness. Gleeful that Simon would soon be getting his comeuppance at the hands of the white supremacists, Andrew considered that the older man had it coming. Now Simon would feel exactly what Andrew had felt not too long ago.
In an ironic twist, in the bizarre way of the world, it was justice being served: Simon was getting what he justly deserved. If the prison gang beat him up badly enough or even killed the man, then it would be one less A-hole in the world and Andrew would get to live in the Palisades home and stay in Simon's office, indefinitely. Things were working out very nicely in Andrew's favor and, as Andrew saw the way that Duke was taking stock of Simon, as he walked towards the guard, Andrew knew that he was actually seeing the likely future.
"Simon!" Andrew heard himself call out, the loudness and suddenness of his exclamation shocking him into the present.
Simon turned and checked with the guard, as if asking permission to return to the table. "You have five minutes," the guard said, as he nodded his head in the affirmative.
Revisiting the table, Simon stood and looked expectantly at Andrew.
"Sit down," Andrew invited.
"Yes?" Simon asked impatiently, as he slowly sat back down.
"Don't turn around but there's someone here you should know about; someone that wants to do you harm."
"Why would anyone here want to do that?" Simon asked skeptically, as if he was assuming that Andrew was employing some kind of trick.
"Last time I visited my old cellmate here, he got seen by the same people. He ended up in the hospital. It's the same guys that hurt me bad; they have a vendetta against me, long story," Andrew said in full seriousness. "Trust me, I know this guy has tagged you. They'd beat you up for the hell of it."
"Which guy?" Simon asked, giving Andrew the benefit of his doubt.
"End of the table on the right. White supremacist… goes by the name, Duke. He's got maybe five or six other guys as his main posse. They'll hit you in the showers; a few guys keep watch and him and the others take you out. It's over in a minute but that's all they need; they'll hit you hard."
"Why are you telling me this?" Simon asked as he casually looked over and spotted the culprit. "Why say anything? Instead, you could have let them take me out. You don't like me and I caused you pain. You could visit me in hospital and gloat. I don't get it?"
"You don't know how close it almost came to that," Andrew admitted. "I guess I saw it coming and felt like I needed to say something. I'm not trying to be a hero, trust me."
"I still don't have any answers for you," Simon then said, as if he was probing to see if Andrew was playing a trick on him, after all.
"Not a problem," Andrew said, like the issue was irrelevant. "I'm so over it."
"Time," the guard said as he approached to escort Simon back.
"Thanks for the tip," Simon said to Andrew, still looking skeptical. "Balik is clean," he then said and winked, as he was taken back towards his cell.
Having left the prison, Andrew stalled outside the building in the hopes that he would still get a chance to bump into Fiona. It worried him that she hadn’t shown up. Had she had an argument with her father? Considering the state that she was in, the last time they visited together, did her father tell her to stay away because it was just too upsetting? Was it too much for her, to see him incarcerated? Was Fiona still even living in the city?
Distressed that Fiona might actually not be living in the same city as he, Andrew walked towards the parking lot with a heavy heart. Unable and unwilling to drive back downtown to the office tower, when he got to the parking lot, he walked right past and kept on walking, aimlessly. Was his persistent pursuit of Fiona a hopeless task? Did he totally blow their relationship beyond repair? He felt sorrow and anger over the idea.
Having no one to talk to, he increasingly felt despondent. Yes, he talked to his mother, but that was generally about nothing beyond the price of groceries or what new TV series looked promising to watch. He felt like he could never talk to her about anything important, least of all, matters of the heart. His own father was a washout; a complete absconder who bailed on him before he even got to puberty. Now the man had an entirely new family. Andrew never saw him a
nymore.
Walking further, sometime later, Andrew realized that he was getting close to Dowling's neighborhood and his goofy little house. The old guy always had time for him and Andrew found himself grinning when he saw Dowling's smiling face in his mind's eye. Even on the very first day that they’d met, Dowling had greeted him amiably and with respect. He idly wondered what the old gent was up to. Maybe he was still continuing his paranormal research.
Deciding that he had better call Abigail with a report on his visit with Simon, he dialed her number hoping to go straight through to her voice mail. "Yes, Andrew," Abigail answered, sounding as if she were relaxing on the veranda of her English home, while sipping a nice hot cup of Earl Grey tea. "How did it go with Simon?"
"It went well," Andrew replied, stretching the truth a bit. "Balik is clean."
"Oh, it's too late for Balik now," Abigail scoffed. "They just took him down for questioning."
Shocked that Abigail had already moved without first hearing his report, Andrew wondered if she even cared to hear his opinion about things. Why had she bothered to let him speak to Simon? Did she really hold Andrew in high regard as she so claimed? Was Abigail going to do what Abigail wanted to do, regardless?
"What else?" she asked, sounding impatient.
"I'm, uh, following up on a few other leads," Andrew lied. "I'll be back at the office later."
Hoping that Abigail wasn't going to ask for further details, Andrew contemplated pretending to be unable to hear her due to a bad signal.
"Very well, then," she said, much to his relief. "We may have already extracted some names from Balik before your return."
"Yeah," Andrew said, hoping to hang up quickly. "Sounds good. Talk to you then."
As he anticipated, Dowling opened his front door with a welcoming smile. "Andrew, what a surprise!" he said and the older man opened the door wider. "I've missed seeing you. Is everything okay?"
"Yes," Andrew said with as much reassurance in his voice that he could muster. "I was in the neighborhood."
"Well, you're always welcome here, you know that. How about some iced tea?"
"Sounds perfect," Andrew said, his spirits beginning to lift.
"How are things at work?" Dowling asked in the kitchen as he searched for some clean glasses. "Or are you allowed to talk of such things?"
"Yeah, I don't want to talk about work, if that's okay," Andrew said. He looked around and wondered to himself if Fiona had left behind some clues after a recent visit. It would be amazing if Dowling had seen her recently.
"So, how are things with you, in general, then?" Dowling asked as he filled the glasses with ice.
"Not so good, to be honest," Andrew answered, surprising himself with his honesty. "I've kinda lost my way, a little bit, I guess."
"Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Nah, just something I have to figure out for myself. Have you seen Fiona lately?" he asked casually.
"She comes and goes," Dowling replied as he poured out the tea. "You two guys?" he asked without finishing the question.
"No, I think I blew it, for good. No idea where she is or what she's doing. She goes out to spend time with this guru guy in the desert; no idea what his deal is, to be honest."
"You went out there?" Dowling asked, unsure what kind of questions to be asking. "To the desert?"
"Yeah, quite a number of times but the closest I got to finding her was buying this guy a coffee. Ever talk to someone that talks in riddles all the time? You've no idea what he's saying, I mean you kinda do… but not really?" Andrew asked with a pained expression on his face.
"I think so. Usually when someone's thinking isn't very clear," Dowling suggested.
"No, his thinking seemed clear enough. Just the way he spoke, like he kept switching his personality all the time; like one minute he sounds wise and then the next, he's talking like he's a down home kind of guy… and then a raving lunatic the next."
Shaking his head, it was clear that Dowling wasn't sure that he had met many people like that. "Could be psychotic or multiple personality disorder, maybe?" he ventured.
Laughing hard, for the first time in a long while, Andrew barely stopped himself from spitting out his mouthful of drink. "Multiple personality disorder, that's funny," he then said, yet it only partly explained his laughter.
"I don't think they call it that anymore," Dowling responded as he tried to remember the correct, more modern term. "Dissociative Identity Disorder, maybe?" he finally ventured.
"I don't think the guy's psychotic, doc," Andrew said, reassured that his sense of humor had returned. "I mean, he could be, living out there in the middle of the desert and everything, but his eyes look sharp, you know? Ever meet a guy that looked like he was smart? Almost like he has a secret or he knows something important that no one else knows? Or maybe he just looks smug, I don't know," Andrew said, taking another sip of his drink. "He told me that I wasn't connected to my soul; that I was in soul pain, yeah, that's what he said: I'm in soul pain."
"Are you?" Dowling tentatively asked.
"In soul pain?" Andrew asked, like he didn't believe Dowling was asking such a question. "I don't know. Isn't everybody?"
Unsure how to hold up this kind of conversation with the young man, Dowling shrugged his shoulders. "Carl Jung seemed to think so," he then said, trying to draw on his academic background. "I don't think he ever called it soul pain, however.”
“Huh,” Andrew said when he couldn’t think of any other response.
"Hold on a minute," Dowling said as he grabbed a book from the shelf.
"One of my favorite Carl Jung books," he said as he quickly leafed through the heavily highlighted pages. "Ah, here it is," he said, when he found the passage:
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul," he read. "Maybe he's a student of Jung?" Dowling suggested.
Shaking his head, like the conversation had gotten seriously off-track, Andrew swirled the remaining tea in his glass, rattling the ice cubes.
"He told me I needed to do a vision quest," Andrew said pensively.
"Ah," Dowling said as he put down the Carl Jung book. "He told Fiona the same thing."
"Yeah, she came back all changed," Andrew recalled. "Not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. No, you know what? It was a good thing. She did come back different but it was like she was more sure of herself; like she wasn't going to take anybody's BS anymore. The old Fiona wouldn't have left me like that. Just up and left, like, no discussion, one moment she was there and the next she was gone. Can I tell you something I wouldn't admit to anybody else? Not even myself?"
"Sure, yes, of course," Dowling said softly and looked into the young man’s soft brown eyes.
"I'm glad she left me."
"You are?" Dowling asked, hiding his shock.
"What good was I doing her? I was so wrapped up in myself..." Andrew said and stopped when he felt tears well up in his eyes. "What kind of a life was she going to have with me being so... focused on something else; job, money, possessions. It's like I got blinded by my ambition. Ever see a junkie that had to have his next fix?" he asked, although he wasn't expecting an answer.
"Yes," Dowling answered anyway.
"She did me a favor, you know?"
"Yes."
"When she got up like that and drove away so fast? It was like a slap in the face. It was like she put up with my self-obsessed greed and stupidity for just so long until she couldn't put up with it anymore; and then she snapped. She said she was going to the desert but she didn't know where she was going; she was just going. She's like that, you know?" he continued with affection in his eyes. "She’s amazing that way. It's like something inside her just explodes and off she goes; she doesn't even know what she’s doing herself, she's just outa there, see ya."
"Impulsive, yes," Dowling agreed when Andrew got silent.
"It was a wakeup call," Andrew
said as if he were only now in this moment understanding the true importance of what had happened between himself and Fiona. "Ever hear that expression? Wakeup call?"
"Yes."
"It's like, if she hadn't left... well, who knows?" Andrew said, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't blame her one bit," he said and looked deeply into his glass of melting ice. "She did us both a favor."
"Sounds like maybe you want to do that vision quest experience?" Dowling asked gently. "Same as Fiona?"
"I thought about it," Andrew said, looking back up at his friend. "There's no way I could get away from work for like days on end. Besides, who knows what shape I'd come back in? I couldn't pack up one day and leave everything to go off into the desert or anyplace else, for that matter. If I leave that job, I'll be so screwed."
"Well," Dowling said and paused as if he was thinking of something. "I could have a solution for you," he finally said with more certainty.
"You could? What?"
"Come with me," Dowling said and led Andrew out of the kitchen and through a door that led out into his garage. Packed with cardboard boxes and lab equipment, the garage was a jumbled mess. Dowling removed a mass of boxes from the center of the garage to reveal a wooden object that looked to Andrew very much like a very large funeral casket of some kind.
"Here we are," Dowling said as he found a cloth and wiped away a serious amount of dust. "The sensory attenuation tank," he said proudly. "It's an early model, of course but still a hundred percent effective. I can vouch for that myself."
"What is it?" Andrew asked, examining the object from one end to the other.
Lifting up the lid, Dowling checked its overall condition. "Looks in good shape," he said, bending down to get a good view. "Needs a little work but I'd need to clean her out, get lots of Epsom salts and maybe I could have it up and running in a couple of days?"
"Okay," Andrew said, still looking clueless. "But again, what is it?"
"This…” indicating the strange object, “is the answer to your vision quest," Dowling said with enthusiasm. "Thirty minutes in here would probably save you spending three days in the desert. The man was a genius," he said, standing back to take in the design with his full appreciation.