“Nebraska,” he said once she told him. “Wow.”
There was a long silence. “Yeah,” she finally said. “I think she wants to leave after the school year is done.”
“But that’s in a couple months,” Shawn said.
“I know,” Kendra said. She sat on her bed, pushed her right palm beneath her thigh. “Hey, I was thinking . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking about you and me. I was thinking, and I’m not, like, one of those types of girls who get all clingy, seriously, I’m not, but I was wondering, like, what are we? Like are we, you know, going out?”
There was a long pause. Kendra’s entire body tensed, her bottom teeth pushing hard against her top. Fuck, she thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t even know why I asked.”
“Yeah,” Shawn said.
“Yeah?” she said, her voice a hideous squeak. “What do you mean, yeah?”
He hesitated. Kendra heard churning water, either a dishwasher or a washing machine. “Maybe we can talk about that later,” he said.
“Later,” Kendra said. “Yeah, sure.”
More silence. Kendra wondered if she should hang up. She looked out her window. Pink rays of dusk settled comfortably along the street. A streetlight flickered on.
“So,” Shawn said. “Nebraska.”
“Yep,” she said.
“You know that’s where the Quigley House is, right?”
“Huh?”
“You haven’t heard of it?”
“No,” Kendra said, irritated, wanting only to talk about that yeah he’d uttered seconds before. “Why would I have?”
“Because it’s amazing,” he said. “Because you’d love it.”
In a soft, measured voice, he filled her in.
Witness: Victor Dunlap
Cross-Examination Excerpt
September 16, 1997
Q. Mr. Dunlap, how did you get involved with the Quigley House?
A. I work at Calderon Bank in Des Moines. John Forrester was doing a promotion that involved area banks. We were one of them.
Q. What sort of promotion?
A. We were going to help him advertise. He was going to give us a free tour. We thought it’d be good publicity on both ends, given that he had so many devout followers. We talked to local news, got the word out. We were Team Calderon.
Q. And you got the free tour?
A. Yes. I was one of the contestants.
Q. And who were the other contestants from Calderon?
A. Just one other. Jane Roth, my fiancée.
Q. But a team needs to have four contestants, is that correct?
A. Yes. I roped Jaidee into joining.
Q. And how did you know Jaidee? Was he involved with the bank somehow?
A. No, he was a student at UNL. I’d been his English teacher in Thailand. We met again sort of coincidentally, I guess.
Q. And what about the fourth?
A. Quigley supplied Bryan.
Q. Meaning what, exactly?
A. Meaning if a group wasn’t able to round up a full team of four but had three people, the Quigley House had reserves of contestants.
Q. And you weren’t able to get four. You weren’t even able to get three? Why is that?
A. Quigley isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Q. How many people at the bank did you ask to be a part of your team?
A. Almost everyone.
Q. And how many is “almost everyone”?
A. Twenty-five?
Q. You approached twenty-five people and they all declined. What were their reasons?
A. They didn’t give any. Like I said, it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea.
Q. And you? Was it your cup of tea?
A. I’m the branch manager.
Q. That’s not what I asked.
A. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not my cup of tea. But it’s not not my cup of tea, if that makes sense.
Q. Why did you go, then? Just because you felt obligated as the manager?
A. Well, that and Jane.
Q. What about her?
A. She was ecstatic. She was so excited.
Q. So you went because of her.
A. Partly.
Q. Interesting. So what you’re saying is that out of twenty-seven employees, only one, your fiancée, was excited to take the tour?
A. I suppose. But I got excited later on. Just not right away.
Q. So the four of you—you, Jane, Jaidee, and Bryan—went through the house, made it through four cells together, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Did anyone take the lead?
A. Excuse me?
Q. Did anyone become the natural leader in these cells?
A. We worked as a team.
Q. Yes, I understand, but did anyone emerge as a team leader?
A. Bryan, I guess.
Q. Why do you think that was the case?
A. I don’t know. His cousin worked there, so we all assumed he had some information we didn’t.
Q. That, and he was one of the reserves.
A. Yes.
Q. And were you aware of how these reserves were picked?
A. No.
Q. So you didn’t know ahead of time that Bryan was related to one of the employees?
A. I didn’t know that until a few days before I went.
Q. And how did you find out?
A. Jaidee called and told me.
Q. And what was your reaction to hearing that information?
A. I guess I thought it was weird, like maybe he was joining to sabotage us? But Jaidee convinced me that wasn’t the case. He said Bryan was in it to win. He said Bryan could be a big help.
Q. I see. Mr. Dunlap, let’s fast-forward to Cell Five, okay? The defendant is behind Bryan with a knife, and you, Jaidee, and Jane are in front of them, watching. Put yourself in that moment, please. Try to remember Bryan’s face. Does he look genuinely frightened to you?
A. Yes.
Q. Genuinely frightened.
A. Yes. But I thought he was faking.
Q. I’m confused. He looked genuinely frightened but was faking?
A. Yes. I thought he was being a really good actor.
Q. An actor who could fake sincere terror?
A. Man, I don’t know. I just thought he was faking, okay?
Q. So you thought he was acting?
A. Yes.
Q. But why would you think that? Wasn’t he on your team? Hadn’t Jaidee convinced you that he was legitimate?
A. Yeah, but he’d been chosen by Quigley.
Q. And you thought he was in on it right up till the moment he was killed?
A. Yes.
Q. Even though he looked genuinely frightened?
A. Yes. No. Dammit. I don’t know. It’s all so confusing now.
Q. You thought the defendant was also an actor?
A. Yes.
Q. And when you witnessed him standing behind your teammate with a knife, how did he, the defendant, look to you?
A. He was acting like a maniac.
Q. How so?
A. He kept calling John’s name. Over and over.
Q. He was acting like a maniac but you still thought he was an actor?
A. Yes. All the actors in that place acted like maniacs. I just figured he was another one.
Q. Interesting. So he was acting like one of the actors?
A. Yeah, I guess.
Q. Was he wearing a costume? A mask?
A. No.
Q. But you still thought he might be an actor.
A. Yes! How would I know differently?
Q. Mr. Dunlap, you said that you thought Bryan was faking his fear, that he was playing you. Did you discuss this with the other contestants?
A. Yes.
Q. With whom did you discuss this?
A. Jane and Jaidee.
Q. And what was their response?
A. They thought he was playing us too.
>
Q. So they thought what was happening was a production. That both my client and the victim were actors.
A. Yes.
Q. You’re timed in each cell, right?
A. Yes.
Q. So while everything was going on down there in Cell Five, you thought you were running out of time?
A. Yes. The clock was still running.
Q. And the next cell, Cell Six, was the last cell?
A. Yes.
Q. And what happens if you make it to the last cell?
A. There’s a chance to win money.
Q. And you’d made it so far. You were almost there. You just had to get through this one obstacle.
A. That’s what we thought.
Q. So even though all the actors were there, and the production crew, and Cory Stout was trying to get Leonard to put down his knife, and the lights were on, you thought it was all still part of the game?
A. It was the last cell, like I said. Who wouldn’t think that?
Q. And the clock was ticking.
A. Yes.
Q. So what did you do?
A. Jaidee and I made a plan.
Q. You made a plan? Or Jaidee made a plan?
A. We both did.
Q. Whose idea was it? Who initiated discussion of the plan?
A. Me, but . . .
Q. Please describe this plan for the jury, Mr. Dunlap. Be as specific as possible.
Jaidee
Jaidee Charoensuk, age ten, crouched behind a tall, wispy bush just outside the Kanchanaburi city limits while his best friend, Aran, tied the neighbor boy, Narong, to the trunk of a tree. The rope was frayed. Jaidee imagined it itched and chafed, but Narong didn’t complain; he stood still with his arms against his sides, his forehead slick with sweat, his hands balled into fists. As Aran coiled the rope around and around the tree trunk, Narong stared out at the vast rolling greenery.
“Who’s going to save you now?” Aran said after he finished tying. “Your prince is in jail. He’s going to be killed by our master.”
It was late afternoon, hot. Around them, insects wheezed. Jaidee batted away a grasshopper, peeked above the bush. Though it was a good mile away, he thought he could see spokes of the River Kwai bridge poking through the trees. He wiped his forehead.
“I’ll be saved!” Narong said, shouting his lines to the sky. “Just you wait.”
“Nobody’s here!” Aran said, arm outstretched. “Nobody knows this place exists, princess.”
“I’ll be saved!” Narong repeated. “I’ll be saved!”
“No matter how loud you shout, nobody can hear,” Aran said.
Jaidee bit his lip. On this day, he played the hero and Aran the villain and Narong the damsel: this was how it usually went.
“He’ll come for me!” Narong shouted. “You just wait, he’ll come!”
“Nobody can save you now, princess!” Aran said. “Nobody!” He wandered around, picked up a long branch, dangled it close to Narong’s throat. “You know that I’m an expert swordsman, yes?” His eyes narrowed. “I have defeated thousands of men all on my own, some of them high-ranking people of the king’s court. Your hero, your Belly-Kos, is no match for someone like me. Renounce him and his family at once. Call me master and I may allow you to live.”
“Never!”
“Well then. Prepare to die, princess. You’ve made your choice.”
Jaidee’s knees ached. He hated crouching for so long—it was the worst part of the scene. He put his hands behind him, sat cross-legged. His right knee was now visible, but he didn’t care. He rested a hand on his cheek, thought about Teacher Halverson, his pasty, obese farang English instructor who’d asked him, one day, why he’d felt the need to be so bellicose. Jaidee hadn’t understood the word, of course, but he’d liked its sound—belly like happiness when full and kos like “kill on sight,” something he’d heard on American Blademan.
“Belly-Kos, Belly-Kos!” Narong shouted. “I know you hear me. Save me save me save me!” He wrinkled his face. “Please, Belly-Kos! I need your help!”
“Quiet now,” Aran said. “I hate it when women die screaming.”
They’d come up with the idea of writing and acting out stories in Halverson’s English class. The teacher, who panted and smelled like day-old meat, had broken the class into groups and assigned each to write and perform a play. Jaidee and Aran’s group wrote about a twenty-fingered alien that journeyed to Earth on a spaceship shaped like a teapot. When Earthlings threatened to destroy the alien, the alien snapped his fingers and the teapot-spaceship poured boiling tea over all the world, killing everything. The class cheered so loudly that Halverson shouted at them to stop. Jaidee and Aran, it seemed, had found their calling.
They met weekly at Jaidee’s apartment, scratching together scripts that detailed Belly-Kos the Great’s life. A story crystallized: Belly-Kos had been born in an emerald cave and raised by three-legged, two-faced creatures called Kos-Koses; he’d developed superpowers at age three, and thought often about his absent mother, who, Jaidee determined, had fraternized in some devious way with the teapot alien; his main enemy was Villain, an ugly, malodorous, deformed man who kidnapped members of the royal family and resembled Teacher Halverson; and he, Belly-Kos, symbolized goodness and freedom, while Villain symbolized tyranny and mayhem. It was all very serious to Jaidee and Aran, and many late afternoons were spent poring over stacks of papers that contained dialogue for hundreds of different scenes.
Narong—two years younger than the boys—lived next to Aran. Whenever possible, the younger boy inserted himself into the older boys’ projects, tagging along like a pesky gnat, and though he mostly irritated Jaidee with his high-pitched obsequiousness, Jaidee also found him necessary: Narong idolized Jaidee and Aran, so he filled all the ancillary and undesirable roles perfectly and without complaint.
“Belly-Kos!” Narong screamed again, “Save me, please! I know you’re out there. Save me, please!”
Jaidee, hearing his cue, sprang from the bushes, grinned, raised his stick in the air. “Not so fast, Villain!” he said.
“I told you he’d come!” Narong said. “I told you.”
Aran sneered, took his stick off Narong’s throat. “Well, well, well. Belly-Kos. I thought I’d locked you up forever.”
“Give her to me!” Jaidee said, pointing his stick at Aran’s heart.
“I don’t give anything away for free,” Aran said, looking down at the stick.
“Okay, then, prepare to die!”
Aran raised his stick, knocked it against Jaidee’s, and they fought. Their eyes dimmed; their breathing leveled. Jaidee feinted right. Aran lunged. Aran feinted left. Jaidee leaped back. The sticks clapped against each other in crowded bursts. Around them, heavy air dampened their shirts. They maintained eye contact.
“Kill him, Belly-Kos!” Narong shouted. “Kill him kill him kill him!”
Belly-Kos wore a simple black T-shirt, white shorts, and a mask made from a long banana leaf. Villain wore the same outfit, except his banana leaf was painted black. Jaidee wiped his free hand on his shirt.
“This is your last chance to save yourself!” Jaidee said.
“It’s you who needs saving!” Aran replied.
The fight went on. Left, right, back, lunge. Right, left, back, lunge. Jaidee twisted, turned, raised his stick behind his back, horizontal across his forehead. He danced, shook, flicked, bounced. On and on and on. Behind them, Narong yawned. Jaidee whapped his stick as hard as he could against Aran’s and Aran let go right at that moment. The stick flew.
“You were saying?” Jaidee said, panting, pointing his stick at Aran’s heart. “You don’t need saving, huh?”
Aran fell to his knees. “Please,” he said. “Spare me.”
“And why should I spare you, after all you’ve done?”
“I can change,” Aran said. “I can be good.”
“You will never be good.”
“I will. I can show you.”
“Prepare to
die, Villain.”
“Please. I—”
Before he could finish, Jaidee plunged his stick deep into Aran’s armpit. Aran gasped, coughed, and finally fell over on his face.
“My hero,” Narong said, trying to wiggle a mosquito off his face.
Jaidee beamed over at Narong, ran to him, began untying. “But you know he’ll be back,” he said. “Villain never dies. He just re-forms.”
“But you’ll be there again, to save whoever needs it,” Narong said.
“Of course I will,” Jaidee said. “I will forever protect this world because this world deserves protection.”
“You are such a hero, Belly-Kos,” Narong said.
“I am just a man,” Jaidee said. “That’s all I am.”
Jaidee took his normal circuitous route home that afternoon, biking up and down parallel streets, dodging the middle-aged ladies with their faux-designer purses, racing with the tuk-tuk drivers, circling around a few blocks, stopping at a food cart, buying some mango, eating it, then reluctantly pedaling to his parents’ apartment building. When he opened the door, he felt momentarily irritated, his family a reminder of the unreachable landscape of his other world.
Outside, dusk filtered through the windows, casting long shadows across the white tile floor. The pillows against the wall sat in perfect order, as if they’d gone untouched all day. The dining table was full of food, and everyone was around it, eating noodles and vegetables, their mouths smat-smat-smat-ing as they chewed.
“Jaidee,” his mother said, “hurry and eat.”
Jaidee sat down, began eating, and listened to his mother berate their upstairs neighbor for throwing his cigarette butts out the window. Instead of confronting him, she’d collected the butts that fell on her porch, put them in an envelope along with pictures of dead Thai TV stars, and slid them under his door. It was supposed to be a warning, she said, but the incorrigible neighbor didn’t seem to catch on: the more envelopes she slid, the more he smoked.
“I’m running out of pictures,” she said, her mouth full of noodles. “At this rate, I’ll have to wait until someone dies before I can give him his next envelope.”
“Perhaps you can find famous TV animals,” his father said.
“That’s not the same,” his mother said. “He’s not an animal.”
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