Dispatch (23 page)

"That's a load of shit and you know it," Bill said. "We write letters. That's it. Period. We write them because we're good at it, because we like to do it, because it's who we are. We have no idea of the reasons behind any of it. We have no idea where the letters go or what they're used for."

A small argument broke out between Bill and several other men.

"The point is," Virginia said, "we've been hired to do what we love to do. And what more can you ask from a job?"

I believed her. Sort of.

But...

But something was not quite right. I glanced around at the others, and there seemed something false and a little desperate about some of their smiles. I suddenly had the feeling that this was a show being put on for my benefit, that they were not all one big happy family here and that behind the party facade was something darker, a truth I was not meant to see.

There was a knock at the door. Three knocks, actually. And just like that, the party broke up. Several people walked out of the front room into the kitchen. Virginia, ever the polite hostess, opened the door, and as the bureaucrat with the binder stepped into the room, Ernest, Bill and John sneaked around him and out. It was no longer light outside, I noticed. It was night. The fog may still have been there, but it was so dark out that it was impossible to tell.

When had that happened?

And where were we? On the bottom floor of an office building? In an actual house? It was impossible to tell. I felt disoriented.

"Enjoying yourself, Mr. Hanford?" the man asked. He was the same height as me, I noticed for the first time. And the same build. If I'd been an actor, he could have been my stunt double. For some reason, he didn't seem quite as nice or quite as friendly to me as he'd been when he'd escorted me to the party.

Jane mouthed a good-bye to me and left through the front door.

Within a minute, maybe two at the most, we were alone in the room, perhaps in the house.

Was
this a house?

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Hanford." The man smiled broadly. "Rest assured, we appreciate your talent here, and not only do we want to make use of it, but we want to cultivate it, nurture it."

"Who's 'we'?" I asked.

He ignored my question. "Salary is negotiable, but you will be recompensed handsomely, never fear. As the commute each day from Orange County would be, shall we say,
impractical
, the company is willing to provide you with a place to stay free of charge, as well as with transportation or a vehicle allowance. A house and a car, basically. As you've already discovered, we have a rich social life here—"

"Here?"

Again he ignored me. "I think you're going to be very happy in your new position."

There was something intimidating about the man. Not him personally, but what he represented. He was the public face of something much larger, and that was why the other Letter Writers had scattered upon his arrival. They were afraid of this gray little man in his nondescript clothes.

He watched me blandly, awaiting my response.

I didn't give him one.

"It's much more satisfying than writing computer instructions."

Still, I didn't respond.

"Would you like me to take you to your new home?"

"What new home?" I asked.

"The house we're providing you," he said, and I was gratified to hear a tinge of annoyance in his voice.

"I'll stay in my own house," I said.

"But the commute—"

"I'll deal with the commute," I said. "In case this doesn't work out, in case there are layoffs or I'm fired or the company goes bankrupt or I don't pass my probationary period—I assume there's a probationary period—I'm not going to completely uproot myself." Besides, I thought, once I got Eric back, he'd want to be in his own house. And once I got Vicki back...

I refused to let go of that fantasy.

"Very well," he said rather stiffly. "But as I'm sure you know, letter writing is not just a vocation. It's an avocation, it's a lifestyle, it's—"

"Right now, it's a new job," I said.

He nodded, and I decided not to push any further. The truth was that he was starting to creep me out a little. I recalled those screams in the next room when he'd visited me in the office, and I shut up.

I had the feeling that he had put the party together for my benefit—not to welcome me, exactly, but to recruit me, to win me over, to convert me. We walked outside. The fog seemed to have lifted, but it was dark; it was night. Halogen streetlamps illuminated a nearly empty parking lot. We had been, not in a house, but in an office building, one of those generic rectangular glass and concrete high-rises that could have been built in 1950, could have been built yesterday. The building was located in what appeared to be Century City, miles and cultures away from the slummy neighborhood in which I'd parked my car and walked into the—

Shangri-La

—apartment complex, but my Toyota was still sitting across the street. Someone had obviously towed it here.

A business card was pressed into my hand. "Report for work tomorrow morning. It's your first day, so you won't be expected to be on time (you'll find we're very flexible here). Just make sure you get plenty of sleep. Then, after you eat breakfast, drive to the office. They'll get you settled in." He offered his hand. "My work's done. It was nice to meet you."

I shook his hand and for some reason felt as though I was sealing an agreement.

He chuckled. "Enjoy."

I wished he'd been more specific. Enjoy what? But that was all he said, and I was as much in the dark now as I had been before he'd shown up. I watched him walk back into the building, then started across the parking lot toward the sidewalk.

I felt tired as I drove back home. I pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment with the headlights off, staring at the dark empty house that until recently I'd shared with Vicki and Eric. I felt sad and depressed, thinking of what I had lost and where I should be in my life.

But
was
that where I should be?

Or should I be where I was now, with other Letter Writers, doing the only thing I knew how to do, the only thing I was good at, the only thing I cared about?

I got out of the car, went inside. Throwing my keys on the coffee table, I did not even bother to turn on the lights but trudged down the hallway to the bedroom. Wanting to escape from everything, not wanting to think about any of it, I kicked off my shoes, took off my pants and shirt and climbed into bed in my underwear.

The bed felt too big with Vicki gone, the room too quiet.

I should write to Vicki and Eric
, I thought.

I closed my eyes.

I fell asleep.
 

I awoke with the dawn, and as I lay there staring up at the ceiling, I was not sure if I'd dreamed about the events of the past few days or if all of it had really happened. I reached over to the nightstand, picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. The
Today
show was on.

Whether it had happened or not, I felt happier and more energized than I had in a year. I sat up, kicked off my covers and got out of bed. I felt like Scrooge on Christmas morning, and I pulled on a bathrobe, casually glancing at my car through an opening in the curtains.

My car.

My car was supposed to be white.

The one in the driveway was black.

I yanked open the drapes, not trusting my own eyes. Sure enough, there was my jack-in-the-box head on the tip of my antenna, the small round crack in the corner of my windshield where a rock expelled from a gravel truck had hit the glass last year, my license plate with its battered Toyota of Orange frame.

All on a black car.

It wasn't possible. It didn't make any sense. I backed away from the window. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I walked out to the kitchen. On impulse, I opened the cupboards. There was cereal, coffee, jars of salsa, cans of refried beans, all of my usual foodstuffs. And boxes of muffin mix and stacks of granola bars.

Muffins and granola bars?

It
hadn't
been a dream.

The phone rang, and I jumped so hard I nearly slipped on the floor. I stared at the phone, hanging in its cradle next to the broom closet. I was afraid to answer it, unsure of who—

what

—might be on the other end.

It stopped after three rings, and I finally forced myself to move, to walk across the kitchen to the refrigerator. Inside were three new containers of orange juice. Thank God. I was thirsty as hell. I took one of the containers out, found a glass and poured myself a drink. From the cupboard, I took out a package of granola bars. I sat down at the kitchen table and forced myself to eat. In the center of the table was a business card. I didn't remember leaving it there, and the sight of that small white rectangle sent a chill down my spine.

And caused my heart rate to accelerate with anticipation.

For despite all of the weirdness, despite my trepidation, I wanted to write letters. I tried to rationalize it, tried to pretend that this was a great career opportunity, but the truth was that I yearned to write letters. I
hungered
for it. And this job gave me a reason to do so, granted legitimacy and purpose to a clandestine activity I had long felt guilty about.

I picked up the card and for the first time read the words on it. The street address was nearby. In Brea.

But how could that be? Did the company have an Orange County branch office? The man yesterday had specifically told me that my commute would be long when he offered to provide me with company housing.

None of this made any sense.

A part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep until all of this was over. But a much stronger part of me wanted to see this through, wanted to find out what came next.

The closet in the bedroom was filled with my clothes—and quite a few items I had never seen before. I put on a pair of black pants, one of my nicer shirts and my dress shoes. I found my wallet and the keys to my—

black

—car and went outside. Locking the house behind me, I got in the car, backed out of the driveway and drove slowly down the streets to my new job.

The office to which I was supposed to report was very close, only a few miles from my house. I saw few cars along the way, though I took the easiest and most straightforward route there. True, the rush hour was past, but the streets were as empty as they should have been at three in the morning rather than ten. Still, when I pulled into the lot next to the multistory building, nearly all of the spaces were taken and I ended up parking at the far end, next to the sidewalk.

It was the same building I had left yesterday in L.A.

I refused to think about that.

My new supervisor, Henry Schwartz, was waiting in the lobby by the front desk, and, the second I passed through the front door, he waved me over, introducing himself. I liked him instantly, trusted him implicitly. He was a nice guy, a real guy, and there was a definite connection between us. I was with my own kind, and as much as I prided myself on being an individual, a nonconformist, there was something welcoming, soothing and comforting about at last finding kindred souls.

"So what have you been told about our work here?" Henry asked.

"I was told I'd be writing letters," I admitted.

He laughed. "That you will. We all do. A lot." He nudged me with an elbow. "And you know how much we love that!"

I felt strangely warmed by this acknowledged kinship.

"Come on," he said. "We'll go up to the fourth floor, where you'll be working."

We took the elevator, but while I studied the small cubicle carefully, it looked nothing like the elevator in which I'd ridden with my two guards. Likewise, the fourth-floor corridor did not look as though it was even in the same building as that other one. Henry led me through two fogged-glass double doors into a large, well-decorated office suite. "Sit down," he offered, motioning toward an overstuffed leather couch.

I declined. "I'd rather stand," I said.

Henry walked over to a small bar set into the wall, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. "Want one?" he asked. "Fresh squeezed."

I shook my head.

"So ... I suppose you're wondering why you're here and what you'll be doing and all that good stuff, huh?"

I smiled. "It crossed my mind."

"We're an independent organization, not affiliated with any government, corporation or institution. I would say we provide a service, but that would imply that we have customers, that we answer to clients. We do not. We, very simply, write letters. On a whole host of topics to a wide range of recipients. I suppose the company is comparable to a think tank, only our job is not to provide ideas or create theoretical scenarios. Instead, we use our talents and abilities to get real-world results. We're doers."

"But—"

He held up a hand. "You're a Letter Writer. I know you know that term, but I'm not sure you're aware of everything it means and the rich history behind it. We have been watching you for quite some time because your letters are not only well written, they get results. They're also smartly targeted and cover a wide range of issues." He smiled ruefully. "They also trumped a few of our own letters, and that was very impressive indeed.

"You see," he said, "we write the letters that matter. Sure, people send notes to lovers, friends and relatives. And a few here and there write to newspapers or politicians to complain about this or that. But we're the ones whose letters get in, whose letters get read, whose letters have import.

"We're part of a long, proud, if largely unknown, tradition. Who do you think wrote the Bible?" he asked. "Letter Writers. The Letter of Paul to the Romans. The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians. The Letter to the Hebrews. The First Letter of John. Letter Writers have been framing the debate since the beginning. How are biographies written? How is the veracity of historical events determined? By reading letters. Correspondence is the bedrock upon which societies are built." He closed his fist. "And we now have a stranglehold on that. Letters are our business, our industry, our raison d'etre. And because of that, we can make history; we can change history; we can determine the course of human events.