The Unbinding (2 page)

2.

[By courier]

DVD/VID/PPV—Ref 467396 AD—Subject ID: Sabrina Matilda Grant

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

King Kong (original)

Little Shop of Whores

Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo

Yoga and the One True Breath

March of the Penguins

Neil Diamond Live!

Activity: Norm

Educ/Soc Cult Index: Mid-Mid

Agent Notes: First porno all winter; guess she’s getting lonesome. Otherwise, colossal yawn as always, only anomaly the Diamond disk. (Maybe her granny was visiting that night.) Urge immediate termination of coverage. Or termination of program, even better, because it’s a SORRY INCOMPREHENSIBLE WASTE AND AN EMBARRASSMENT TO OUR GREAT REPUBLIC! Just joking, guys. Just frustrated. Just checking if anybody even reads these. OH, MY GOD, IT’S GODZILLA’S ENORMOUS FOOT ABOUT TO CRUSH A DARLING BABY MUSKRAT! No, didn’t think so. Feel stranded here. Abandoned. This brat and her pals are inconsequential, promise. No evildoers here. Will keep at her, I guess, and try to stir things up, but because it’s my duty, not because I’m buying this. (
Aguirre, the Wrath of God,
though—that impressed me. Maybe you’re onto something I can’t see. Cue Werner Herzog, cut to Neil Diamond? Maybe there are layers to this dope.)

I get tired of protecting America sometimes. I get tired of sifting the chatter to find the plots.

3.

[ExpressLink.com]

Dearest Small One,

Big news from Sabrina: I have another stalker. His name is Kent Selkirk; he lives across the courtyard; he drives an older black Ford minipickup with bumper stickers proclaiming that he’s a Democrat, a paintballer, and that he’d like other drivers to,
QUESTION AUTHORITY
,
FREE TIBET
,
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SATANIST
. On Wednesday I got a weird anonymous note quoting a diary the guy’s been writing about some tricky scheme of his to go through my file at AidSat, where he works (you know: “AidSat—Always at your Side”), and use the info inside it to seduce me.

The funny thing—and the thing that makes me think the letter writer must know both of us—is that I’ve been eyeing this Kent since he moved in here. He seems like my type: a fouled-up jock with brains who goes around wearing flip-flops and pocket T-shirts and a ridiculous pair of thick dark shades that wrap around his head like plastic bat wings and emphasize the squareness of his huge skull. He reminds me of one of my crushes at U Mass, that guy who supposedly date-raped all the swimmers but wriggled off because of his top tennis ranking, except that he’s less obviously psychotic in terms of his walk and posture and general aura. If he passes a dog, he pets it just like I would, and I’ve seen him hold doors for old ladies in his unit and carry a pregnant Hispanic woman’s grocery bags. He also happens to be about half-gorgeous, with one of those partly caved-in boxers’ noses, sprinkled across the bridge with sandy freckles. The only other thing I know about him is that early one Sunday morning at Starbucks, I noticed him reading a
Newsweek
in the corner and telling a girl whom he seemed to have spent the night with: “Forget the White House. Forget the Capitol. If somebody wants to kick us in the
balls,
he should attack the Library of Congress.”

Which all adds up to a favor, little sister. Is there somebody clever in your tech department, some nerd you can maybe bat your lovely lashes at, who can use this guy’s name to find out what he’s been up to before he spotted yours truly and fell in love? It’s pure high school, I realize, and totally unfair. But it might be good for shits and giggles. Maybe that isn’t how computers work, though. I wouldn’t know. I’m just a facialist.

Well, it’s time to head out now and do my Girl Scout’s duty. Or maybe I haven’t told you: I’m playing nurse. Every couple of days for a few hours I sit with this sweet older black man I met last summer during one of the volunteer mass searches for that poor little Hindu girl who vanished here. The guy got sick about five months ago, some vicious
new mystery bug
they haven’t named yet (it probably started when someone ate a monkey). And mostly he just lies in bed these days making lists for his doctors at the VA of all the people he might have caught the germ from or maybe given it to. They’re interesting lists because he’s been around. He used to be a special army officer
stationed in Hollywood
, of all strange places, where I guess he helped out with TV and movie battle scenes and slept with all the nasty
nympho starlets
. He has a tattoo of a
dog man
on his left forearm, but it’s all shriveled up and it looks more like a weasel.

But hey, guess what? In the courtyard now: It’s Kent. I’m peeking at him through my kitchen window. He’s just back from Costco, it looks like, with lots of boxes, and he’s wearing his flip-flops because of the weird warm spell here. I’m thinking I’ll change into a tighter top now and maybe freshen up my eyes and lips. I’ll vamp him a bit when I walk by, but nothing desperate or flagrant—just scatter my scent. I’m still seeing Lorin, that fruity laser surgeon who gave me the massive discount on my eyes, but I think I’ve worked off my debt there (lick and nibble!), and I’m ready for someone less artsy, with a few hangnails.

Wet kisses until the end of time, girl,
Sab

P.S.: Finally watched that old Neil Diamond concert film. You’re right; it has three shots of Dad in the front row, with a mustache and sideburns and the whole sad getup. And who’s that beside him—that redhead with the beehive and the mole on her throat that looks all rough and furry? Maybe that’s when he was separated from Mom, or maybe Mr. Stiff was a bad dog once. We’ll rent the thing for his sixtieth next summer, put it up on the big screen at the party, and see if it gives him a second heart attack.

Now, help me get the lowdown on Kent Selkirk!

4.

[MyStory.com]

Before AidSat I had no self, no soul. I was a billing address. A credit score. I had a TV, a phone, a car, an apartment, some furniture, and a set of leatherbound Tolkien novels, but nothing that was worth listing as an asset on the do-it-yourself last will and testament I bought online one night four years ago after watching a medical program about mad cow. I had a mother, a sister, and a nephew, but none of them lived within five hundred miles of me, and the people I thought of as my closest friends—a guy from high school, two other guys from college—lived even farther away. And while I had my share of girlfriends, they rarely lasted for more than a few months, which was how long it usually took them to acknowledge that the “real Kent” they kept pushing me to show them (and accusing me of hiding from them) wasn’t there, as I’d told them from the start.

Then AidSat hired me and gave me life.

And not just one life. Hundreds of them, thousands, attached to mine by fine, invisible cords that I can still feel on my skin when I leave work. It’s one of the reasons I’d rather walk than drive these days—it doesn’t shred the tender hooks and loops that fill up what most folks regard as empty space. There’s no such thing, though, I’ve learned. The air is dense. The “nowhere” from which people think their troubles appear—the cars in their collisions, the tumors on their X-rays, the letter bombs in their corporate mailrooms—is, if they’d just pay attention, packed solid with soul.

What’s happening with Sabrina is proof of this. I’m closing in on her.

It feels like fate.

It started when Peter P. sent me home last Thursday. My plan was to drop by the health club, grab a smoothie, and spend an hour on the ski machine before returning to my apartment and finally getting going on this journal, which I’d been putting off for the same reason I put off everything: a feeling that something else was more important. My problem was that I’d postpone those other tasks, too, and usually end up doing some needless third thing, which I’d leave unfinished when I realized it was needless.

At the health club, while I was changing into my shorts, I got to chatting with a new member, Rob, who, it turns out, is from Minnesota, too, and lives in the south unit of my complex. He told me he’d seen me in the parking lot and at the video store on Station Street, which is across from the building where he works. Rob’s in telecom, a new outfit called
Vectonal
, and he sold me a low-cost voice-and-data package right there in the club while we were skiing. He also talked up an old movie he’d rented recently, a movie he said he suspected I’d enjoy because he couldn’t help noticing at the video store how much time I spent in the foreign aisle.

I decided Rob had me confused with someone else (I don’t do subtitles; I’ll buy a Stephen King if I want to read), but then I remembered the way the foreign aisle snakes around into the action aisle and abuts the fantasy shelves. I asked Rob to describe the movie’s plot, but he told me its plot was its “least involving element.” We’d moved to the smoothie bar by then, and I sensed that Rob was talking for the benefit of the grad-school girls who run the blenders. He hadn’t mentioned yet whether he was single, but he seemed as single as I was just then.

“I like the spot behind their knees,” I whispered. “That’s the skin that never ages.”

“Because it’s untouched by the sun,” Rob said.

“By anything. Guys don’t usually touch it, either. Women are virgins there.”

“That matters to you?”

“At a certain level, maybe. I think it matters to most men, deep inside. It was obviously fairly important in the past, so how could it just have, you know, minimized? Evolution doesn’t work that quickly.” I studied Rob’s eyes as he listened but I wasn’t sure if they showed all the understanding I was hoping for. Then again, I’m not a skilled analyst of faces, perhaps because I can’t see them in my work.

“Virgins still have all their
charge
in them,” I said, laboring to refine my point. “They’re like a new car battery. They
crank.
A guy turns their key, he can really draw some
volts.
”

“Maybe we’ll have to wait till we’re in heaven. There aren’t a lot of them left, that I can see. Maybe it’s men’s fault for letting them go to school.”

We shared our first full laugh as buddies then, though it wasn’t a laugh I was proud of, or quite understood. Still, at the very beginning of a friendship, even fumbled attempts at humor should be honored.

“You in a relationship now?” Rob asked.

“I’m trying to be.”

“That’s sort of the air you give off. Good luck,” he said. “Anyone special?”

“That’s always the hope.”

The movie Rob recommended was out that night, so I went back for it on Saturday morning on my way home from the Costco. The DVD was resting on a box full of lightbulbs and dryer sheets and Metamucil. While I was unloading my Ranger it must have fallen, though, because when I reached the door of my apartment, I heard a woman’s voice behind me say, “If this is your disk, you have stupendous taste. I saw it last week with my film group. Stunning shit.”

It was Sabrina, but dressed for the wrong season—in pink velour tracksuit pants and a green halter top. Her nipples were perked out like little thimbles, and her pants rode up tight and graphic in the crotch. A real anatomy lesson, and not a welcome one. Women these days have no padding on their frames, and when they thrust their hungry bones at me I like a little cloth to soften the onslaught. Still, Sabrina’s mouth made up for everything. Her smile was like the flap on a white envelope: that clean, that even, and that wide. And glistening, like the flap had just been licked.

(Is anyone reading this? Write me if you are. It’s
[email protected]
.)

We stood around in my doorway for a while and jabbered about the amazing movie coincidence. (I didn’t let on that Rob had recommended it, pretending I’d heard about it from a professor during my “student days in the Bay Area.” It was a bit of pure inspired BS that I fear I’ll have to back up now with more BS, like maybe a Photoshopped snapshot on my fridge showing me standing under the Golden Gate Bridge.) When Sabrina used the term “seventies German cinema,” it put me on my guard. I’d slept with a girl in New York who’d spoken that way, and I’d found her unpleasantly stern and strict in bed, with too many rules about what parts went where and in what particular order and for how long. Her name was
Amy
, and she wrote short stories about her disappointments with men like me, who were the only men she liked, unfortunately.

Things got even scarier for me when Sabrina revealed that she grew up in Arkansas, the daughter of an influential lawyer who’d served as “chief counsel to Mrs. Bill” and now “represented some
other high-end evildoer
.” I don’t know what sort of records such men have access to, but after they booted me out of Cass Academy and before I landed at AidSat, in my stupid years, I kicked around with a crew of Saint Paul meth heads who smuggled damaged used cars down from Ontario and sold them to migrant grape pickers in Fresno. I did a lot of things like that. If Sabrina’s father got to checking, some murky old stuff might come out about “Kent Selkirk,” and I’d be good and screwed—not only with her but at my job. AidSat’s a high-morality operation, and their puzzling failure to thoroughly probe my résumé was the act of grace that saved my life. (I don’t know why I just admitted that. There’s something about this machine I’m typing on that makes me feel that I can tell it anything, especially after midnight, with the lights out.)

I invited Sabrina inside, but she begged off, saying she had an appointment with a sick friend whom she cleaned house for and read to every Saturday. From the way she called this friend “they,” not he or she, I guessed it was a man. She must have sensed my discomfort, since she explained then. She overexplained. This man, this Colonel Geoff, was well into his sixties, Sabrina said; he could barely get up off his mattress, and his illness had Swiss-cheesed his brain. Colonel Geoff was delusional, racked with fears and theories. The main one involved some event called “the Unbinding,” which he’d hinted to Sabrina might take place soon but had refused to discuss with her in detail because people her age, he felt, had “faulty mind seals.”

“Work on him till he coughs up,” I said. “Sounds chilling. Or tell me more over dinner sometime next week.”

“Only if you watch
Aguirre
first.”

“I’ll put it straight in when you leave. I’ll watch it twice. Your silver earring there, with the blue stone?”

“My AidSat Angel what’s-it?”

“I work for them. You ever get the willies in a dark parking lot, just ask for Operator Seven-S. I’ll call in the SWAT team. Or I’ll swoop down myself.”

Sabrina didn’t laugh or even grin, which is rare when I reveal my occupation and follow with that line. Instead she said, “Don’t be grandiose.”

“Why not? Why not, when I can back it up?”

We confirmed our dinner plans (when I asked her what sort of food she liked, she answered, “I want you to use your ESP there”), and while she was swishing away across the courtyard, I spotted her peeking back over her shoulder as though trying to catch me staring at her butt. And I was, but not in the way she probably hoped. I was thinking that if she ever became my girlfriend, I’d lay down the law about modesty in dress. I’ve done it before with other women I’ve dated, and though they’ve grouched at first and acted ticked, I think they respected my judgment underneath. They knew as well as I, the AidSat operator who’s been privy to rapes in progress and heard the screaming (and the silence when the screaming stops), that it’s a rugged world out there. The more of yourself you show off to the wrong people, the more they’ll eventually demand to
see
.