The Unbinding (7 page)

18.

[Via courier]

Agent’s Memo: Returning from my vacation by the sea, my skeleton aligned, my organs cleansed, and all my buildups flushed, I decided to press on with this assignment in the manner that you, my supervisors, perennially warn against and thereby subtly recommend. First convict and then investigate. And by investigating, instigate. If the new science has it right and (as I understood it from a seminar)
to observe is to disturb
, it should also be true that to follow is to push.

But would pushing do the trick? My experience tracking Grant and Selkirk had shown me that pressuring certain people only causes them to skid in circles, like shopping carts with broken front wheels. To bring them to justice (or, rather, to determine what justice might consist of in their case) would call for a slyer maneuver. I had to
tempt
them to push back. Otherwise, they might move but never advance. They might envision but never execute.

I think it’s working. I’m turning them toward evil.

Last Sunday night, alone in my apartment after breaking things off with my new crush over her contact with her ex-boyfriend—whom, I’d learned from her cell phone records, she’d kept calling even after I’d ordered her to stop—I looked up from a tray of Lean Cuisine lasagna to see a dark figure pass my curtained front window. I assumed that my brat had returned. They always do. (And I always let them, if only for an evening.) As I went to the door to check the peephole, though, my gut said trouble. I stepped back. A moment later I heard breaking glass and saw the curtain billow inward. I was en route to my bedroom and my sidearm when another pane shattered, the curtain flapped again, and a cheaply framed poster of Marilyn hanging on the opposite wall suddenly slipped cockeyed on its nail. The bright violet stain on her stomach told the story, but I wiped it with a finger to make sure.

Fluorescent water-based ammunition.

Paint.

Fired by multiple gunmen. Or that’s what I concluded after inspecting the window and the curtain and finding gaudy splotches of pink and green. In the shadowy courtyard, reconstructing trajectories, I called out for Selkirk and his comrades to behave like males and show themselves. When no one came forward, I went to call in a work order to the maintenance staff. That’s when I saw the words on my front door, written in orange children’s sidewalk chalk.

THE WRATH OF TWIST
!

He’d guessed, though it had taken a few days. He’d guessed that I’d sent the law to grab the dog that he’d confessed to abducting in his MyStory journal. I’d expected this. I’d also hoped it would start a fight.

In bed that night, out hard, I dreamed that my late wife, Jillian, had given birth to twins and hadn’t, as in reality, died from a drug interaction while carrying twins. The dream was blissful, but I tried to make it heavenly by practicing the “directed wishing” trick that I’d learned from a psychic at the spa. By issuing firm commands to my subconscious, I sought to turn the imaginary babies into imaginary young adults with solid educations and stable careers. It worked, but not as smoothly as I’d hoped. Perhaps because I’d refused to learn the gender of my late wife’s four-month never-borns, my invented descendants lacked definition. Dumpy, ambiguous physiques. Dull midrange voices. Collar-length blah hair. And, for clothing, identical gray jumpsuits. Worse, the twins seemed to be married to each other—miserably married. They bickered. They nitpicked. They sulked. They never kissed.

And the source of their gloom? Sterility. They longed for little ones but lacked the glands. I ordered my mind to furnish them with genitals, but when they unzipped their ugly jumpsuits there were small oval mirrors in their groins. When they thrust them together the mirrors cracked and bled. The blood was silvery, like mercury, and when it dripped it burned my children’s legs.

Struggling to wake myself from this slick nightmare, which had started as a dream of resurrection, I fell out of bed for the first time since fourth grade and horribly torqued my three smallest right toes, which swelled into one indivisible bruised clump. I spiked a pint of bourbon with crushed Excedrin, hoping to endure until the morning, when I could visit a well-slept specialist, but just before dawn I opted for the ER and a groggy intern. I hopped across the courtyard toward my car, was soaked by the surge from a broken sprinkler head, and ended up resting on a bench trying to light a soggy Salem with paper matches that sizzled but wouldn’t flame.

And then there they were, not thirty yards away, exiting Selkirk’s second-floor apartment and heading for a staircase whose bottom step I could reach and touch with my good foot. Grant looked tumbled and pulverized by sex, her hair a static-charged loose thatch, but Selkirk’s hair was wet and combed. Just hours ago he’d played the urban guerrilla, costumed in camo and war paint, probably, but now he was dressed Caucasian-casual, like a Today’s Man sales rack come to life. His banality did have a certain dazzle, though, and as he descended the stairs, I had a thought: He’s the prince of the kingdom we wish we didn’t live in.

I nodded first. Proactive. Very frontal. I would have stood but my knot of fractured toes might have made it a wobbly performance. And I looked scary enough seated: a grimacing, wet, Excedrin-addled smoker sporting one polished dress shoe and one soiled tube sock. Miss Grant, who sometimes passed me on the walkways and had smiled at me once or twice, faded back and let Selkirk bear the brunt of me.

“It’s Rob. Hi, Rob. You’re back from somewhere sunny. Incredibly reckless tan there,” Selkirk said.

“My family all gets cancer anyway.”

“Forewarned is forearmed. So how was Jesse? Fun?”

“Deeply. From every angle. Fore and aft.”

“And Rob’s an aft man. Thought so.”

Quick. But meaningless. Wit can be adrenal. All animals are speedy when they’re threatened. When Selkirk felt safe again, he’d slump and slow, though.

“Why such an early start today?” I asked him, though most of my attention had moved to Grant, whose meekness, wariness, or muddledness had caused her to almost dematerialize. Now
there
was a talent: auto-self-erasure.

Selkirk ignored my question. “Wounded, Rob?” He pointed at my sock.

“It’s self-inflicted. Any excuse for a pop of liquid morphine. I’m only half-homo, Kent, but I’m all junkie.” I chuckled to keep things light and sinister, then haltingly drew myself up on tender toes and extended a hand to Miss Invisible. “Robert Robinson,” I said, because obvious fraudulence is the most ominous. “Noticed you here and there but never met you.”

She replied with her name, including her dressy middle name (always the mark of a born dullard), but if she shook my hand I didn’t feel it. What a magical nullity she was, odorless as aluminum even after her wee-hours screwing.

“Some jackasses fucked my apartment up last night.” My diction was brutal but my tone was neutral. Nothing but the morning news.

“How?” Grant said. This meant she knew. Because, in this case, the “how” was everything.

“The usual bullshit. Stink bombs. Silly String. Burning bags of dog crap. Jars of piss.”

“Ish,” said Grant. Then, “Ish,” again, to Selkirk. If she’d been briefed about the plan, she was feeling misled about the methods. He said paint but I said flaming excrement. It might be a day of lively phone calls.

“It’s nothing worth calling the cops about,” I said, “but it’s certainly worth some vigilante payback. I won’t hit their houses, though; I’ll hit their vehicles. More personal. More perturbing. More like rape.”

I hadn’t met Selkirk’s eyes yet, but I did now. They appeared untroubled but oddly filmy, as though he possessed those translucent inner lids that God gives to animals that swim and dive. And that’s what he seemed to have done: He’d submarined.

“I need my narcotics,” I said. And it was true. There’s no pain worse than foot pain. Nor is there any diversion that can numb it. When the hurt comes from the bottom up, when it’s agony at the root, the self-important top two-thirds of us becomes an irrelevant dead trunk.

“Too bad about your mess. That’s sick,” said Grant, still needling her beau, I sensed. “Hope it wasn’t superhard to clean. And hope you get the shot you need. Nice meeting you. There’s someone I need to cook a healthy breakfast for.”

And then, with no farewell to Selkirk, no pat on the arm, no smile, no blown kiss, she set out across the courtyard for the parking lot, abandoning the winding sidewalk for a straighter route through the wet grass. She thought she was being cold and cutting, obviously, but Selkirk seemed fine with it, even a bit amused. He’d already forgotten her, but her attempted snubbing meant she’d missed it—and that she’d always miss it. Which is right where you want a woman you don’t care for but periodically have use for. Until you’re truly done with her, that is, and need the poor fool to believe it.

This gave me an idea. An idea that, if it worked, I might regard someday as
the
idea. To clear the way for it, however, I’d have to come clean about my last idea.

“I shouldn’t have joked like that. You had every right. I fucked you. I fucked your dog. You should have used pipe bombs. Hollow points. I’m sorry. My broken toes here? Karma. Kent, forgive me.”

Selkirk rigid. Selkirk seizing up. Hands in pockets, elbows straight, knees locked. Selkirk convinced that if he warms to me, if he relaxes, I’ll get him with a shiv. Never trust a Robert Robinson. And I might just do it. Better safe than sorry. Selkirk adds nothing to society’s plus side. Anyone with lips can man a phone bank and read out canned advice on using jumper cables and treating spider bites. In the negative column, the traumas he might cause, if he’s allowed to continue, are sure to be unique.

Still, he’s valuable to us. If we lose Selkirk, we lose Grant, and then the old colonel, who may be our true target, and the whole toothpick castle will fall before it’s built. And just when I’m laying in the central crosspiece.

“You want the rotten truth? I took your new pet because I’m jealous, Kent. I’m not a drooling aft man, no, but I am most definitely jealous. Meeting you, reading you, dating your old girlfriend (who I’m shit-scared still loves you), I’ve started to wish I could be you. But I can’t. I can’t even get your attention on the street. I don’t have a lot of friends here.”

Tentatively, in a whisper, calmer now: “I ignored you or something? When? I don’t remember that.”

“I know you saw me waving. I whistled, too.”

“Sometimes I get caught up in my thoughts. Was I in the plaza on my lunch break? I’m a basket case on my lunch breaks. I’m still buzzing from the AidSat chatter. It’s like the calls just keep on coming in.”

“You want the dog back? I can do that. I’m ex-ATF. I can fix things. And I’m sorry.”

“You were federal once? Really?”

“Low-middle federal. That’s where everyone gets stuck, though.”

“I hear it’s not great pay.”

“It buys the beer. And believe me, you start to need the beer.”

He nodded. “Burnout. That’s what a lot of our calls come down to. Burnout.”

“In my case, flameout.”

“Huh.”

“Complicated episode.”

“Describe it.”

“Frankly, I’m in no mood right now. My toes. I might need a shoulder there, Kent. I hate to whine….”

He gave his full support. He offered to drive me. I thanked him. We reached his truck. He apologized for my windowpanes. I thanked him. We shared squares of gum from a packet in his ashtray and turned on the radio and watched the sun rise. And then I made my great request.

“Would you and your girl want to go for steaks sometime with me and Jesse at the W? Next weekend, say? My treat? As one big gang? Sometimes it’s isolating to be a couple. For me, I mean. It’s too head-on.”

He nodded, but not enthusiastically. He said the idea sounded “nice,” but it depended. I said that of course it depended. It all depends. But it’s best to ignore this, if possible, and try things.

“I do try things,” Kent said.

“So let’s get steaks.”

I’d lost him, though. He’d submarined again. I sensed that he was practicing staying under and that he planned to live down there someday, with Jillian, the twins, and, eventually, me.

Men can’t rage forever.

19.

[Via satellite]

“AidSat? It’s Sabrina Grant. I’m calling for my Active Angel. My PIN is—”

“Executive Autoforward.”

“—is 765432.”

“Sabrina?”

“This is Sabrina. Is this North Platte?”

“It’s Kent, Sabrina.”

“Malpractice. Wrong. Unfair.”

“I EAF’ed you. We need to talk. It’s serious.”

“This is invasion of privacy. Use a phone! And no, I will not eat ribeyes with your ex-girlfriend and Mr. Fake Name who took your runty dog. Whom you’re suddenly buddies with again even though you paintballed his apartment. Or stink bombed or peed on it. What-fucking-ever.”

“That’s not why I EAF’ed you.”

“Get off my satellite!”

“Do you understand what ‘passive coverage’ is? When we open the line and listen in on people in case they’re in danger or unconscious? Did anyone ever go over that with you?”

“AidSat can listen to me without permission?”

“For up to an hour, and then we have to signal you. Unless there’s a warrant or something. A subpoena. Let me ask you this: At any time in the last three weeks or so have you gotten the cicada tone?”

“The one that reminds you to pay your bill?”

“That one pulses. This one’s very different. It starts as a mild buzzing sound, but after ten minutes, if there’s no response, the pitch and the volume rise at intervals until it’s impossible to wear the ear jack, and anyone in a range of fifty feet will hear it and render assistance, hopefully. Even if your vital signs look good, we assume that you’re incapacitated by then. If your GPS signal is working, we also send in an emergency responder.”

“I’m starting not to feel so good.”

“No incredibly shrill and distracting cicada tone?”

“I think my lunch is coming up.”

“When I told you about my dreams of raping Rob, were you wearing your ear jack? Think. I hope you weren’t.”

“It might have been on a shelf at Colonel Geoff’s. I’ve been taking it out. It bothers me. My stomach…”

“Are you indoors or outdoors?”

“At the day spa. Shit…”

“Move to a toilet or a sink. If unable to reach a toilet or a sink, locate a suitable widemouthed receptacle. If you feel dizzy or light-headed, remain in place and kneel with head tipped forward—”

“Don’t tell me how to puke! Oh, God. Oh, shit…”

“Relax, Sabrina. Let it come. That’s good. If it feels like it wants to come again—”

“Oh, hell…”

“It’s scary, I know. Just let it have its way. Good one. Be sure not to aspirate the vomitus. If vomitus should lodge inside the airway, clear it with a finger. Another good one. Breathing looks normal, pulse is…Sabrina?”

“Guggh…”

“Entirely natural muscular contractions.”

“It’s over now. I’m emptied out, I think.”

“It’s best not to stand yet. Stay kneeling. Proud of you.”

“Will you please, just please, please stop it, Kent? I soaked my whole station. I soaked my towels, my tweezers. What are those things? They’re rice. They must swell up. I’m definitely feeling better, though.”

“I’m glad. So what you’re saying to me is you don’t think you had your ear jack in at my place?”

“I hate you now. In whole new ways.”

“Take all the time you need. My only concern was, I spoke to someone earlier, someone in Portland, in our Storage Sector, and you’ve been on passive coverage for a while now, kind of a pretty unprecedented long while, and after I found this out I called North Platte, and—”

“Never phone me, never visit me, never bump into me at Starbucks, and never, ever EAF me. Understand?”

“If you do think you left your ear jack at Colonel Geoff’s, you might want to try to remember your conversations there. I know you’ve been helping with his memoirs, his Hollywood stories, his myth-ops tales—”

“I’m tasting Mexican again.”

“Forget I said that. Portland’s tight. It’s solid. As far as data storage, Portland’s like a cross between Fort Knox and the tackle box where my father kept his
Playboy
s. Laugh. That was funny. I hate it when you hate me.”

“That tiny jack can hear across a room?”

“Probably not. But I meant it about Portland. It’s like a bank vault locked inside a tomb shot on a rocket into a black hole. How much do you two talk about Tom Cruise? He sent me his picture. I forgot to tell you.”

“I want my lady in Nebraska. Put me through to her. Then get off my satellite.”

“Your Active Angel’s gone, Sabrina.”

“Gone on vacation? She said she had a trip planned. Czechoslovakia?”

“Hungary. That’s where it happened. I’m so, so sorry.”

“This is a day that needs to be all over.”

“She was already bad, but in Hungary she got worse. Her linings. Her organ linings. They lost ‘integrity.’ They’re testing all our people in North Platte in case it’s airborne, or maybe fluid-borne, but so far it seems like it was only her. From what we’re hearing, her husband was a hunter and the family ate a lot of game. Including rabbit, which is risky.”

“Kent?”

“I’m sorry, Sabrina. AidSat’s mourning, too. That wise old lady was a legend here.”

“Impossible. I don’t believe you. She was right here with me, in my ear. I can still hear her voice. She wasn’t ill. She sounded healthier than me.”

“Maybe because she knew that’s what you wanted.”

“Good-bye, Kent. I need to be sick again. Alone.”