by A. R. Moxon
“Why don’t I start with the part of this I believe?” he says at last. “I believe this young man exists. I believe he is in some sort of trouble. And I certainly believe you’ve managed to get yourself caught up in it.”
“He’s definitely in trouble. He’s—”
“And I believe it has something to do with the Fritz Act, as you suggest.” Dave Waverly says. “The fact that these ‘loonies,’ as you so piquantly call them, have been released is alarming to say the least. The whole thing has been an absolute snafu. Look.” He tosses the previous evening’s edition on the table. The headline reads FRITZ FIASCO; the picture shows a man running to a car, face hidden by hat and coat. The caption reads: JAWPI Director T. Ivan Ragesalad Under Fire; City Board Calls for Immediate Removal.
“The loonies weren’t supposed to be let out?”
“You can read for yourself. Even if society has apparently determined to rid themselves of their concern about the risk abandonment poses to the patients themselves, still they recognize that those patients present various levels of risk to society. As such, they were meant to be furloughed in stages, beginning today, with some sort of oversight and some sort of triage. Certainly, there was meant to be at least some attempt to identify violent offenders among the population, and create some sort of exception list. Yet somehow, the whole kit and caboodle were unceremoniously pooped out the front doors the first morning of the program. It’s going to be a massive scandal before it’s all done. Heads, as they say, will roll. Something’s up.”
“Then you agree, we’ve got to get Gordy out.”
“Perhaps. But remember, we’ve only covered the part of your story I believe.”
“He needs to go Färland, he says,” Julius insists. “He says he won’t leave unless we take him out of there very specifically, and also not unless we can take him right to Färland. And it has to be secret, without any papers, which in any case he doesn’t have.”
From an inner pocket, Dave Waverly produces a frictionless cloth and makes a show of cleaning his glasses. “Julius, my dear friend. Are you aware I am not an international spy?”
“Yes, but you’re—”
“Certainly I will not arrange an extra-legal end-run around European Customs,” Dave Waverly says. “Nor do I have any intention of learning how one might do so, nor of making even the most cursory inquiries into how to do so.” He leans in. “Even the suggestion seems unwise,” he says in a lower tone, “Given that it would make me knowledgeable about violating the law, which might lead to me actually violating the law, which would make you accessory. Which could, among other things, jeopardize the trust. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Of course, Julius thinks—this is why you work with Donk. Here’s a request that’s at least adjacent to illegal shit. And Dave Waverly may be skilled at many things, but the primary reason he’s perfect for your needs is his stubbornness. There’s not a single thing anybody on the Slanty’s board can do to sway him from your principles, no scheme to divest you by trying to have you declared insane will ever tempt him, but it also means that you’re never going to get him to budge on something he thinks violates those principles. My God, the work you had to do just to get him to set up your monthly payoffs to Ralph Mayor, both from the Neon and from Slanty’s. He’d nearly quit over it.
“But we’ve got to do something.” Julius says, thinking of Gordy’s haunted eyes. They come so close sometimes, Gordy’d said. And they’re still trying.
“If either of us is going to do anything, I hope we both agree it shouldn’t be something unwise.” Dave Waverly ponders a while more, while Julius paces and frets. “I suggest you lie to your friend, kid,” he says at last. “Tell him he’s going to Färland, and then take him somewhere else in the city. He’ll still be hidden, and safe, and it’s far easier to do besides. And legal. If you like, I’ll drive you to pick him up tonight.” He tilts his chair against the wall, puts his well-shod feet up on his kitchen table, and folds his hands on his expansive belly, looking pleased with himself.
“Lie to Gordy?”
“Surely you’re familiar with the concept of untruth.”
Julius imagines it; realization dawning on Gordy’s face as he flickers out, once, twice, for good. And then what? Grab him? No—seize him? Tie him down? Be just the next kidnapper hauling this poor scared fellow around? “I won’t be able to see him unless he trusts me. When he realizes I’ve lied…”
Dave Waverly raps his knuckles on the kitchen table, once, hard, the action of an executive used to being heard and obeyed, used to reasserting control with ease. It works. “Your friend has a pressing need, which he refuses to address unless he secures an unattainable demand. And yet, you claim the need remains pressing. So: Tell him whatever you need to tell him to remove him from this danger, take him somewhere safe, and then when you get there, tell him whatever you think he needs to hear in order to get him to accept where he is. From there, perhaps, with time our ally rather than our enemy, we can make other plans. In any event, for the love of all that’s holy, never verbalize such notions in my presence again. Flickering men and bearded ladies. There’s enough talk about having you committed as it is. Do you understand how you appear to the board?”
“I think we need to get him to another city. A private flight.”
“I will not appropriate funds for a private aircraft until I have better ascertained the facts of this situation. Come on, kid. Surely you understand that.”
Julius sees it all at once—of course. Let Dave Waverly ascertain the facts. He’ll never believe in the flickering man by just hearing it, so show him. Let him contend with a man who flickers, and see how it musses the perfect part in his hair.
“You’re right,” Julius mutters. “Of course. Can we bring him here first?”
He sees Dave Waverly visibly relax, relieved his good common sense has finally taken root. “Here will be acceptable for a day, perhaps. From there we can determine what further accommodation and assistance might be appropriate to his situation, and provide it. We’ll collect him tonight. Is this acceptable?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.” Julius begins to feel dizzy. The events of the day are catching up; body and mind both feel sleep’s lack and the toll of hard miles of road. His system is coming to the end of itself. He thinks: Oh my God. I think that I know what I hadn’t known yet. How did you keep yourself from knowing? You’re not just getting Gordy out of Loony Island, you’re going with him. And for how long? And to what uncertain future? Julius suddenly has the feeling of being on a slide without knowing how he got on—you’ve been floating in a pond that’s turned into a river, and there are rapids ahead; how did this happen, where’s your paddle? Julius, can you swim? Do you know how to navigate? Are there waterfalls? What if the river takes you to an ocean? Are you too near the shore with its jagged rocks and crashing surf?
To the expectant stare of Dave Waverly Julius says none of this; there’ll be time enough for all that later. Instead he only nods, and adds: “We’ll want to be quick. Gordy’s paranoid. He’s going to want to be hustled out of the Wales into a car.”
Dave Waverly closes his eyes. “The car I can provide. You bring the hustle. Now,” he says, clearly changing the subject. He draws some papers from his satchel, sets them on the table, hands Julius a pen. “You may have no regular business for me, but I have some for you. And I’ll certainly have more for you tonight, if you’re planning on taking an indefinite sabbatical from our daily meetings. Are you ready?”
“I hope so,” Julius says, reaching for the pen, mind far from the task. A minute after he’s finished, he’s snoring at the table. Sighing, Dave Waverly cajoles him to a sofa, covers him with a blanket, and heads off to the day’s work.
BOX
No, in the end, I don’t think Donk was trying to endanger the priest. He even claimed to me he’d been trying to keep him safe. It was Julius, afte
r all, who’d made possible Donk’s project, his deepest secret, the children’s room…it’s the one thing Julius did that the Slantworthy Trust didn’t pay for. This is what I’m telling you about those two: They did each other favors over the years that cemented their regard into trust. Julius even knew the truth about Yale and Ralph, which placed Julius in a rare circle—rare but deserved.
As I said before, every kid in Loony Island has a situation at home; a presence or an absence. For those with an absence, or a bad presence, there’s a children’s room, the most secret of Donk’s secret places. Underground, inaccessible except from its secret door. Never guessed at by Ralph or anyone else. Originally the space had been Domino City’s huge shared subterranean storage and maintenance room, accessible from each tower’s subbasement. The room long ago fell into disuse and disrepair, and was finally forgotten…but Donk remembered. He had the subbasement doors leading to it bricked up, had a new hidden entrance built, then refurbished. Julius paid for the project from his personal account, leaving it nearly depleted—which for the priest may have been part of the point. A masterpiece of urban excavation and construction, built silently as possible, using decidedly non-union labor. Bailey knows of it, but she’s never seen it, nor has Julius. Nor has Donk—not from inside. His mother runs it. Donk meets with her once a month to discuss it.
A safe place to land and stay. A bed. A meal. Some toys. Some friends. Donk uses proxies to point kids in need that direction. Knowing him like I know him now, I think it’s a place he barely lets himself know exists, or even why he created it.
* * *
—
Donk, waiting through the wee of night for Boyd’s return, thinks—you’re a box within a box, just like the Fridge here. A man of compartments. Maybe it’s like this for everybody, and you’ve just made it a physical reality as well as a psychological one. You hide yourself within yourself, layer by layer, belief by belief, like boxes inside other boxes. You think this truth resides in that compartment, but within that compartment you find nested a truer truth, and within that truth you find what you really believe is something quite different than you thought you thought. And what do you find tucked within the nested compartment? What indeed, but yet another compartment nested? What truth is true in there? Donk knows what it is in his final compartment. It’s the place where he wants Ralph to die again and again and again. Why should Ralph die only once? Why can’t Ralph have nine deaths, or more? Ratchet up the pain each time. Die again, Ralph. Here, die again. Again. Are you capable of love, Ralph? I doubt it, but I hope so. I’ll turn all you love to dust, and then you die.
The reason for it is a box he opens rarely. The sight of Yale, suspended between heaven and earth, the wave of the ground about to slam up to him, knock him right out of the world. Had Yale looked at you in that moment, as he fell? Had he been surprised to see his kid brother, observing his unmaking?
Yes. He had. They’d had one last glance at each other, and then he was gone.
Now, after years of patience, the end is suddenly so close. The opportunity has materialized, the prize within grasp. You just have to be bold and quick enough to reach past danger and grab it.
“He’s not late yet,” Bailey says, pensively; sensing his impatience.
“He’s not early, either.”
“He’ll be here.”
“He’d better.”
Donk reads, glancing frequently out the one-way glass between the bookcases. From here he can see all the way to the checkout lanes, and now—thanks to their friend and the window he knocked out—into the parking lot. Watching as patiently as he can for the gray face and diffident shuffle of his worst best friend, the world’s greatest pickpocket and most terrible writer, Boyd Ligneclaire. They sit in silent familiarity.
“So?” Bailey’s a verbal knuckleballer; she can spin a single syllable with meanings that can be hard to hit.
“So?”
“You’re still going through with it?”
“Unless you can tell me what’s changed, I’m leaving as soon as your idiot brother shows.”
“Then I’m going along.”
This again. Donk stops himself from rolling his eyes. “You know better.”
“Daniel. He might kill you.”
“Second fly in the spider’s web doesn’t make the first fly safer.” Donk attempts an even tone as the silence around Bailey thickens—silence, because through her fear she knows he’s right. It has to be Donk, and it has to be alone.
Donk doesn’t get his information through threat or interrogation or bribery. His true gift is a knack for figuring out exactly what person his target needs him to be, and then fulfilling that need, becoming that person, all without compromising the believable essential Daniel Donkmien. He played it years ago, on Ralph Mayor, getting closer and closer to his target until, without Ralph realizing, he’d taken on the exact dimensions of the boss’s own right hand. That’s the trick: Modulate your personality without being perceived as having done so. Always make it seem as if you’re acting in your own selfish interest, redirecting expectations to make your interests appear naturally and foundationally aligned with those of whomever you’re addressing. Most important, don’t have a reality of your own; instead, mirror the reality you’re given—not the opinions, the reality. You can disagree on matters of opinion. In fact, it’s important you do so occasionally; imperative to be believably selfish to avoid rousing suspicion. But the reality—your target’s underlying philosophical framework—that’s the pot of gold. Everybody’s world has its own architecture. Discover theirs, understand it, and then move within it uncritically.
But…flickering? What the hell. This is the hub of Bailey’s concern, which is annoyingly persistent, but not entirely unfounded. Who’s ever heard of such a thing? The guy’s going to call bullshit if Donk goes with a story like that. This had been enough reason for Bailey to argue against moving forward; but to Donk’s thinking, while this part of the story didn’t make sense to them, it must on some level be true.
“Just don’t mention ‘flickering’ unless you have to.”
“I’ll have to. The detail sells the story. And even if it makes no sense, it fits. Explains the cardinals sweeping the air with those wooden swords. And then we finally get what we want. Unless you don’t want to finish our business anymore?”
To this Bailey says nothing. So, they’re resolved. Thank goodness; there’s the growing sense she no longer cares or has been trying to hamstring the plan, after all this time, all this work, biding time, waiting for this chance. Does she really want to grow old working her little donut shop? Did she seriously think that when the chance came it would be anything but desperately dangerous? Did she really conceive they’d wait until they got an opportunity that was safe? But no, of course not—she, like he, still remembers the first and deepest compartment. That old deep wrong is a blanket they’ve long shared, huddled together beneath, hands on each other’s ears, whispering bright incentives of retribution back and forth to one another, communing in revenge, warming each other in bed even as their dish grows cold. They’ve known each other so long. He looks at her and thinks this: I’ve known you so long. Her black hair arranged in a helmet of braids; wide, wary eyes always assaying your every motion, always ready to react; her slight frame hiding unexpected strength and brutal instinct. I’ve known you so long. You weren’t there right at the beginning, but so near the beginning what’s the difference? At the beginning was the door, and the open vent above it, and the cup and the ball, but after came Bailey Ligneclaire. And, moments later, brother Boyd. Ball and cup. Door and vent. Bailey and Boyd. He’d crawled out the vent above the door after the incident with the ball and the cup, and they brought him to Yale and the greenhouse. Yes, they facilitated your reunion with your own brother. It was all so long ago. It was only yesterday. Baby Daniel born yowling to Donald Donkmien and his lovely wife Daisy. Donk now remembers his father only
as a shape and a smell. One day the factory closed and he was gone. Older brother Yale already absconded into his criminal ambitions. Daisy, who had planned to stay home with their baby in their two-room hovel in Domino City, instead found herself sleeping the days away and selling herself down and around at night, leaving her beloved youngest boy to the ball and the cup, in the bad days after her husband split…
Ah! Here comes Boyd. Through the two-way glass, Donk sees his head pop into view and clip down the aisle, cautious not to be seen. Still dressed in his hoodlum outfit and looking exhausted. He’s breathing hard, sweat-shiny. “Well,” Boyd says, slinking in, “He’s indubitably a flickering man.”
“You took long enough.”
“Apologies. I was making discoveries of a highly important and substantive nature.”
Donk makes a noise. “Which means what?”
“As you predicted, your holy compeer went directly to the Wales, where he met with his new friend. Who, as I mentioned, is one hundred percent as advertised, though I would quantify him not as ‘flickering’ but as ‘partially visible.’ There and not. Not unlike one of those posters with the imbedded illusions.”
“Posters.”
“Precisely. You know the ones; the field of colored dots. He’s like that. A dimensional shift. Two suddenly gone to three. You can see him if you have the knack.”
“He’s covered with dots?”
“I was being metaphorical. He’s not there, then he is. You have to do something with your mind to see him.”
This is unnerving news; Donk has been expecting an explanation more definitive, more scientific. Mirrors or camouflage or something. Somebody partially visible would be…what would it be? Unpredictable. An infraction upon the rules of nature, introducing angles that will prove difficult to shoot. Then again, Boyd is given to flights of poetic fancy. Also, he’s an idiot. Better to wait until you have the opportunity to observe this allegedly flickering cat yourself before drawing any hasty metaphysical conclusions.