War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

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  To our parents

  Nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint, homines enim sumus et occupati officiis . . .

  Nor do we doubt that many things have escaped us also, for we are but human, and beset with duties . . .

  —PLINY THE ELDER, THE ORIGINAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST

  CONSPIRACY

  1

  * * *

  It was the Friday before Independence Day and the twentysomethings of early-millennium Seattle were celebrating alcohol and freedom as they had done every Friday since time immemorial. And though they breathed and imbibed as one massive citywide organism, each group thought itself discrete, with its own goals and exclusions, its own play­list gurus and backroom smoke-outs. On Fifteenth Avenue, in Capitol Hill, Mickey Montauk and Halifax Corderoy were hosting their sixth event as “The Encyclopaedists.”

  They had no real artistic talent, but they had a knack for carrying stupid jokes to their absurd conclusions. Six months ago, following one about the arbitrary nature of modern art, they decided to put on an art show themselves. They chose their subject, “monocularity,” by flipping randomly through a 1914 Anglo-American Cyclopedia. They built a multimedia installation involving cyclopean monsters, monocled British financiers, a chandelier made of dildos and periscopes, and a video loop of the burning eye of Sauron. They wore eye patches and threw a raging party. They both got laid, which was reason enough to continue the monthly “exhibits.” After their third event, whose theme was “pupa,” The Stranger, Seattle’s widely read and ever-relevant free arts weekly, had profiled “The Encyclopaedists of Capitol Hill.”

  Tonight’s theme was “conspiracy.” The cavernous Great Room on the main floor of Montauk’s house had been retrofitted as a lunar soundstage—papier-mâché craters, glow-in-the-dark stars, and tripod-­mounted lights and cameras. Montauk was dressed as an astronaut, welcoming guests with slow lunar movements.

  • • •

  Corderoy and his girlfriend, Mani, were four miles north in the Roosevelt neighborhood, where the I-5 overpass shadows a park-and-ride littered with brown-bagged forties and the occasional hypodermic needle. Corderoy stood at one end of a fourth-floor hallway in a rundown apartment building. He was facing a police officer.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” the officer asked.

  Corderoy wore a dark blue suit with a red tie; his lapel was pinned with an American flag. His eyebrows, so blond they were normally invisible, had been dusted with white makeup, his reddish-blond hair was covered with a neatly combed powder-gray wig, and Mani had given him wrinkles around the nose and eyes with eyeliner pencil. Corderoy was six-one (though a mere one hundred and fifty pounds, with a posture reminiscent of Gumby) and he wasn’t used to looking up at people, but the officer must have been at least six-four.

  “President Bush,” Corderoy said.

  “And she’s what, bin Laden?”

  Mani stood at the other end of the hallway near the open door to an apartment, opposite another police officer. She wore heels, a low-cut white minidress, and a camouflage bolero jacket, which was little more than a pair of sleeves and two short flaps near her bust that could not possibly fasten together. Her long black hair spilled out from a white turban, and the olive skin of her face was obscured by a scraggly black beard with streaks of gray. Her costume was perfect, or it would have been if they’d managed to retrieve the pièce de résistance from inside the apartment. Mani was smoking a Camel Light.

  “Sexy bin Laden,” Corderoy corrected.

  The officer clenched his jaw. “Why are you dressed up?”

  “We’re going to a party. We just came by to pick up her AK.” He was speaking faster than he could think.

  “Her what?”

  “Her AK-47. It’s a toy. A toy gun. For the costume. It has an orange tip.”

  “Take your hands out of your pockets.”

  “Sorry. So, we had to get the AK, and she’s been living here with Steph—”

  “She’s on the lease?”

  “Well, no. She just met Steph a few months ago, when she moved to Seattle. Steph usually leaves the apartment unlocked because Mani doesn’t have a key. But when we got here, the door was locked. We knocked and knocked and tried calling Steph, but no answer. So . . . I tried to pick the lock.”

  The officer stopped writing. “You picked the lock?”

  “No. I tried to pick the lock.” Corderoy had read the MIT Guide to Lock Picking when he was in high school and had made his own picks out of coat hangers. It had taken him two weeks to pick the lock on his own front door. That had been his only success.

  The officer’s face was expressionless.

  “So Mani said maybe go up to the roof and I tried that and it was easy enough to hop down to the balcony. The sliding glass door was locked, too, but—”

  “Hands out of your pockets.”

  “Sorry. Can I just take my jacket off so I’m not tempted to do that?”

  “No.”

  “So, I checked the window, which also opens onto the balcony, and it wasn’t locked. All the lights were off, so I thought, No one’s home. I was just going to climb in, open the front door from the inside, take the toy gun, and leave. But when I opened the window, there was Steph, sitting by herself in the dark, and she screamed, ‘Get the fuck out of here I’m calling the cops!’ So I climbed back onto the roof and came down to the hallway. And then you got here.”

  “You entered the room?”

  “Well, I opened the window and leaned in.”

  “But you crossed the threshold of the window.”

  “I suppose, yeah.” Corderoy looked over at Mani. Her officer was speaking with Steph just inside the apartment. Steph’s hands flashed into view through the doorjamb. Mani looked away from Corderoy, then lit another cigarette. Corderoy felt like an idiot. Sure, he thought, I’ll break into someone’s house for you. Because you’re hot, no biggie. I do that all the time.

  “Son, do you know what that’s called, what you did there at the window?”

  Corderoy took a moment to respond. “Breaking and entering?”

  “We don’t have breaking and entering in Washington State. It’s called burglary. And it’s a felony offense. That’s a minimum of five years in prison.”

  “Oh.” Corderoy’s eyes slipped out of focus.

  The officers went to converse with each other, and Corderoy and Mani were finally able to speak.

  “Steph’s crying,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think they’re going to arrest you.”

  That’s when Phil arrived.

  Before the officers could stop him, Corderoy yelled down the hall, “Hey, man, can you talk to Steph?”

  “Do you know these two?” one of the officers asked Phil.

  Corderoy and Phil were on good terms, but they barely knew each other. Phil was Steph’s friend, and business partners with a guy named Braiden, whom everyone called “Bomb,” as in, That shit’s the bomb. Braiden and Phil were pot dealers and they routinely smoked out Steph, who was flirtatious enough to get her pot for free. There was no guarantee that Phil’s intervention would be positive, and in all likelihood he had drugs on him, which wouldn’t be good for any of them if the offic
ers found out.

  The cops let Phil through.

  Corderoy couldn’t hear Phil’s voice, but he heard Steph’s high-pitched exclamations. After a minute, they emerged and Steph spoke with the officers.

  “You’re dropping the charges, then?” one asked.

  Steph went catatonic.

  “Steph . . .” Phil said.

  She nodded.

  “What about my stuff?” Mani asked.

  Steph whispered to Phil, then ducked inside.

  “It’s in the parking garage,” Phil said.

  The officers took their information, gave Corderoy a stern warning, and left.

  Mani wobbled down the stairs in her new heels. Corderoy was about to follow, but Phil pulled him aside. “I’m looking out for you, man. Get rid of that girl. She’s trouble.”

  “I know,” Corderoy said.

  “Seriously.” He leaned in closer and spoke softer. “She’s a thief. Ditch the bitch.”

  Corderoy resented that. Whatever else Mani was, she wasn’t a bitch.

  “Sooner the better,” Phil said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “I know,” Corderoy said again. But he didn’t know. And of the many things he didn’t know, this uncertainty in particular had been gnawing at him for the past few weeks. Even Montauk had pointed out that Mani had been mooching off him since they’d met. He’d paid for her food, her drinks, her tickets to shows. He’d bought the plastic AK and the turban for her costume. He’d even bought the heels she was wearing. But he’d done it all gladly. And she’d been gracious and grateful and goddamn beautiful, and somehow, though she didn’t have any money, she’d been generous, generous with her time, her heart, her self. Corderoy was convinced she was a much better person than he.

  When he reached the parking garage, Mani was sifting through a trash bag filled with her scant belongings, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. He could see the strap of her bra beneath her white dress. “This is crazy,” he said. “She just threw all your shit down here?”

  Mani started laughing, dropping her forehead into her hand.

  “It’s not funny,” Corderoy said.

  “It’s hilarious,” Mani said. “My charcoals and sunglasses are missing, but Steph made sure I had this.” She pulled out a half-eaten avocado swaddled in plastic wrap. “Hungry?”

  They tossed the bag in the back of Corderoy’s (dad’s) Suburban and pulled out of the garage. Corderoy thought about telling Mani to throw the cigarette out—his dad hated the smell, and Corderoy didn’t look forward to admitting that he had not, in fact, quit. Instead, he rolled both their windows down, lit one of his own, and tried not to think about it as they drove to the Encyclopaedists party at Montauk’s house.

  Mani leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. His face flushed. It had taken a few minutes, and that kiss, for him to realize that he hadn’t been arrested, that everything was fine. And now that he had, a warmth flooded his body, the relief of being alone, safe, with a beautiful girl, this beautiful girl, who excited him, who was dangerous, whom he couldn’t be mad at. He drove in silence for a moment, riding out that feeling, but his confusion slowly welled back up to the surface.

  “Okay,” he said. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “Right? It’s like we’re in a Beckett play. I guess Bomb and Phil started dealing coke. And they were keeping the cash at Steph’s. Neutral territory for their joint bank. Then last night Phil did the count, and it was four hundred dollars short. Phil asked Bomb about it, and he said I must have taken it.”

  Corderoy glanced at her as if she were an imposter. What have you done with the real Mani? “But then who . . . ?”

  “Bomb probably blew a couple eightballs himself, and there was no money to begin with.”

  “But what was Steph’s deal?”

  “I don’t know, she’s known Bomb for years. I’ve only known her two months. It was his word against mine, and Steph decided I had to go.”

  “But why didn’t she tell you? She just threw your stuff in a trash bag. That’s insane. Even if you did take the money—”

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “I never said you did. It’s just weird, right, that Steph would kick you out and not even tell you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. It’s just really weird on her part.” Corderoy turned the AC up a notch. “You look cute, you know.”

  “I didn’t take the money.”

  “Even in that bin Laden beard, you look damn sexy.”

  “You look old,” she said. She looked out the window for an unbearable second. “But I like older men.” She reached over and rubbed her hand on Corderoy’s crotch as they pulled onto Fifteenth Avenue to look for parking.

  Normally, Corderoy would have been hard at the instant the muscles in her shoulder alerted him, subconsciously, that her hand was about to reach over to his lap. But the lust centers of his brain were confused by Mani’s sexy bin Laden getup. Worse still, he was beginning to think Phil was right. That he should get rid of her, cut his losses. It had only been two months. And besides, he’d started dating her with a Get Out of Relationship Free Card: he was moving to Boston at the beginning of August, for grad school. She knew this. He’d told her the night they’d met, at the fourth Encyclopaedists event. It would have been a simple decision, if not for one problem: Corderoy loved Mani—maybe—and she was now homeless.

  • • •

  Capitol Hill had been the nesting place of Seattle’s early patricians—gold rush and logging men, mostly. Now it hosted Seattle’s hip post-college crowd with divey-chic watering holes, gay karaoke bars, fringe theaters, and tattoo parlors. At the top of the hill, though, the neighborhood still felt regal. Like many of the houses there, Montauk’s dated to the early nineteen hundreds and could be considered a mansion, with its bay windows and colonnaded porch. He lived there with eight other people. Since the article in The Stranger, they’d been referring to the house as the Encyclopad.

  Montauk had a stout, muscled frame, and in his bleached-white jumpsuit, stuffed with newspaper, his thick white gloves, and an old white motorcycle helmet, he made a fine-looking astronaut. He opened the front door in slow motion and watched Corderoy and Mani stare at their own reflections in his visor, then lifted it to reveal his goofy grin. He was already several beers deep.

  He eyed Mani’s legs as she and Corderoy slipped into the party. Death Cab for Cutie played over conversations about JFK and Roswell; everyone clutched keg cups. The Great Room, which was almost the whole first floor of the mansion, was terrible for soundproofing. With each new Encyclopaedists event, Montauk had worried that the neighbors’ noise complaints might finally tip the scales and the cops would shut them down for good. But today he had found the official Department of the Army letter in his mailbox, and Encyclopad-based concerns had dissolved. A new reality was setting in. He had called his platoon sergeant and his four squad leaders, who would notify the rest of his forty-man platoon, completing the chain-of-command phone tree, which likely originated in some flag-draped office in the Pentagon. He was Going to War.

  He had yet to tell Corderoy. They had planned to room together in Boston, and now Montauk was essentially being ordered to bail on his best friend. It wasn’t the right time to bring it up. He found Corderoy and Mani drinking red box wine from a gravy boat and a teacup, looking at the first items on display: the old Anglo-American Cyclopedia and a Black’s Law Dictionary, both laid open on music stands to “conspiracy.” “More people than last time,” Montauk said.

  Corderoy toasted him with his gravy boat. “Mission accomplished,” he said in a Texan drawl.

  Montauk smiled. He found Mani’s slutty bin Laden costume disconcerting. But it fit the party, which was full of the kind of people who would laugh at it. Mani was still a bit of a black box to him. She seemed to be reeling in his buddy like a hook
ed trout. On more than a few occasions he had reminded Corderoy that she was basically a freeloader; by her own admission, she’d trekked from Massachusetts to California on her ex-boyfriend’s generosity—meaning credulity. Corderoy was certainly credulous, but when Mani was around, he was also happy, and who could argue with that?

  “Gotta make the rounds,” Montauk said, and he dipped into the crowd.

  “You okay?” Mani asked Corderoy.

  Corderoy turned to her. “You’ve barely touched your wine.”

  “I always drink slow.”

  “Cheers to that,” he said, and he took a drink, holding the gravy boat to his lips for a long time, trying to get her to match him. She did.

  “So . . . you’re homeless again,” Corderoy said.

  “We’ve got bigger problems,” Mani said. “I think they’re after us.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “You know, them.”

  • • •

  They drank. They smoked. They danced in slow motion on the lunar soundstage. They trampled a crop circle in the neighbors’ grass. Corderoy and Mani told the story of the burglary again and again, with differing degrees of hyperbole. But the issue of where Mani would sleep that night went unmentioned. And Corderoy had to keep his keg cup filled and frothy to hide his preoccupation. Did he actually love this girl enough to invite her to move in with him? Into the basement of his parents’ house, no less? His parents wouldn’t bat an eye—their hospitality was nearly a form of psychosis, and it had been a great boon to Corderoy in the past. Now it meant that the onus of this decision was on him. And Mani, unaware of his parents’ attitude, would likely interpret an invitation as a serious move, which would leapfrog their relationship over the months of courtship it normally took to reach a place of domestic intimacy. And so he filled his cup, he lit a cigarette, he made out with Mani on the porch, he avoided Montauk because he needed Montauk’s help, he clung to Mani because he feared he would leave her, because he imagined her down in Santa Cruz bumming around with potheads and surfers, playing guitar on the beach. He imagined her back in Newton, Massachusetts, living under the strictures of her immigrant parents. He imagined her warm breasts pressed against the side of his torso, her leg angled across his waist, sleeping through the night until tomorrow morning and forever.