This Is the Night (28 page)

26.

Enough with the shit work. All those weeks of wooing Jane, her ally in reform, and one day Jane was plucked away. Over a breakfast of burnt toast and hard butter, Lorrie considered her tactics. She filed for the Center, she collated for the Center, she took notes on the Center’s meetings, subdividing and cross-referencing to ensure as many access points as possible. But she was not allowed to counsel. She could not sit behind the desk across from the quivering men with a gnawing at their windpipes—men so paralyzed by fear they could not even speak—and help them decide what to do. Jane’s disappearance didn’t scare her, but it did slow her down. Now she would have to go straight to the source. “Put me on the front lines,” Lorrie told Eric. “Let me get out there.”

The two of them sat in the back room, chairs swiveled across from one another, the power failed, the naked light of the window allowing their shadows to meet. It was morning, just after another one of Eric’s inspirationals, the same room in which Lorrie had repaired a sentence and Susan had splattered a radio.

Eric’s inspirationals had taken a new turn since the disappearance of his mother. The talks were less practical now, less focused on the progress of the Coyotes or the ineffectiveness of the prime minister’s latest troop surge. Now Eric tended to speak more broadly about the nature of mischief and disobedience, or instead focused on the historical, such as the Homeland’s slaughter of its Indigenous. But as for actual counseling, the advice the Center gave remained exactly the same. When and if his mother did come back, Lorrie could see that Eric wanted her to return to a world exactly like the one she had left behind. But Lorrie could not wait any longer. For the war, she knew, did not wait for anyone.

Eric’s deep curls were matted down, wilted plants that needed watering. “We seek,” he began, “to save the lives of our brethren—”

“We’re not in the morning circle,” Lorrie said, her good ear angled toward his graceful mouth. She rose from her chair and walked toward him. “Just say what you want to say to me. Can you do that, please?”

As Eric nodded, Lorrie saw that she could talk to men like this now. After she had sex with the peeled-skin artist, word had gotten around the Facility. Dozens of disgusting men had wanted to fuck her. They thought that because she had been available for one of them, she should somehow be available for all. Daily shame-reduction exercises had offered the gleaming realization that saying no did not leave her responsible for their feelings. Lorrie wondered if Eric could recognize that same thing in himself that she had finally learned, but doubted it. Some people can’t see themselves in anybody.

“Do you know the issues, Lorrie? You need to know them inside out in order to counsel.” He stood up. Men, Lorrie knew, don’t like it when a woman towered over them. “Do you read the papers?”

“Of course I know the issues. And what actual news has there ever been in the papers?” Lorrie read at least ten newspapers a day, but knew he would like this response.

“Fine, let’s do this. Question one: Should we support the Coyotes?”

“What good has come from any of our legislators?” Lorrie said, clearing her throat. “By participating, we become accomplices.”

Eric smiled in just the way she knew he would. “Exactly. Okay, where should we stand on Fareon?” A much more difficult question. Around the Center, Fareon was generally dismissed as some sort of collective pathological response to an extremely stressful situation. Certainly no one in Lorrie’s circles ever took the accusations seriously. Eric, of course, knew this, and the simple nature of his question made her suspicious.

“Nothing?” smiled Eric. They were faced off like boxers.

“Shut up for a second and let me think.” Crouched deep inside: the knowledge that Lance would be horrified and proud of her strength.

“So you don’t have a ready answer on the curious aging of our leaders? On the prime minister’s chief of staff fathering a child at eighty-four? On any of the Fareon rumors?” He untangled his crossed arms, allowing them to dangle by his sides, and Lorrie saw a faint hint of triumph in his actions.

The question was a ball, burning hot and furious in her hands. As Eric knew quite well, save for the tin bones of the prime minister and his fellow aging ministers, no one had any tangible proof of anything. None of these supposed octogenarian offspring had ever been photographed. Certainly, it was possible that the prime minister and his fellow cabinet members simply took good care of themselves, consuming some perfect amount of fiber and nutrients. After all, if anyone had access to fresh fruit and vegetables, it was these men. But the pictures: the ninety-something secretary of the interior out for a jog, the eighty-two-year-old national security advisor and his beaming thirty-one-year-old wife smiling for the cameras after a night at the theater.

She needed time, just a few more seconds to think. The prime minister, of course, always justified everything with the need for punishment. First Aggression, he had said, hurt our people, but did not kill our spirit. Even now, he often gave thundering speeches on how there could be no closure without justice, and no justice without the annihilation of the Foreigns, who had committed the ultimate in cruelty. Such a message, Lorrie knew, resonated deeply with huge swaths of the Homeland. Broad zones of Eastern Sector were still uninhabitable, even all these years later. Relocated Homeland citizens didn’t just forget where they had come from.

“Fareon, Lorrie,” Eric said again.

She knew that Eric wanted her to drown, that he saw his missing mother every time he looked at her. “Well,” she began slowly, “with Fareon. I mean, the thing is—” Lorrie stuttered, began a new sentence, stopped, and tried to start again. “You see, it’s just . . .”

A slow conversion ensued, and Eric’s handsome features began their ugly turn toward loftiness. Never the learner; always the learned.

“How about a clear answer, Lorrie,” he said, sitting back down.

“I don’t know, Eric. The Fareon question is a complicated one. There’s no proof, and when you tell the Fareon freaks that, they point to it as evidence. Some of them are just crazy. But really, I have no idea.”

Eric smiled. “So you don’t know. Good, Lorrie. That’s what I was looking for. That’s what this job is about, knowing when you don’t know. And for the most part, I’m with you. Those people
are
crazy. But every now and then, you have to wonder. I mean, so many of the prime minister’s people, all hearty and hale right into their nineties? You know I don’t go in for that Young Savior stuff, but there’s that one quote of His I’ve never been able to let go of: ‘All truths are double or doubled, or they all have a front and a back.’”

So the self-righteous little shit didn’t have an answer for everything. She felt a brief sadness at the loss of her image of him as a total prick. “So you’ll let me counsel?”

“I’ll admit to not having given this much thought. A woman counselor. I’ll think about it, I’ll talk to Jane and Tom, and I’ll open up a dialogue.”

Both of them paused.

“I mean Tom,” Eric said. “Just Tom.”

“Thank you, Eric.” Lorrie stood. “About your mother. I just wanted to say
—
”

“Look,” he said, standing up, “Susan’s gone, and the new girl isn’t here today. And we’re way behind on our filing.” With a wave of his hand, she was dismissed.

As she filed, she cursed herself for letting Eric once again dominate the conversation. Why had she answered all of his questions when the questions he asked were not the ones that needed answering? Where was the data about the effectiveness of the Center’s tactics, the continuing education for counselors in order to keep up with the latest shifts in Registry policy? Forget Fareon. Men wanted to know the best way not to die. That was it. Anything else was spinning in circles.

The Center, Lorrie saw, was a frozen field. And Lorrie was sure she knew how to thaw it. With the Homeland more than two decades into the sacking and bundling of boys toward their final acts, the Center was short on volunteers—solely, of course, because the only volunteers allowed to do anything substantial were men. And almost all of them were new, as the ones with experience had been dragged away.

She needed fresh air. Outside the building, the men in line covered their faces with bandanas, not willing to risk being seen. An older woman drove by in a taxi, screaming at the masked men for their cowardice. A few minutes later, a concrete mixer passed. Slowing down, the driver rolled down her window and shouted at the covered faces that had her husband been alive, he would kill them himself. After that, Lorrie decided the fresh air outside the Center wasn’t worth it. She took a ten-minute walk and then came back.

Upon her return, she saw Eric talking to Doug, the two of them laughing so hard that Eric felt moved to take his large fist and thump Doug’s back so as to help him breathe normally once again. Both men became silent as she approached, though she could see Doug suppressing a giggle. Lorrie threw her purse on the round table in front of them.

“Once the filing is done,” Eric said, “I have a few leaflets I’d like you to hand out.”

“What about my request to counsel?”

“It’s under consideration.”

“Under consideration by whom?”

Doug giggled. “Tell her about her special visitor.”

“What are you talking about?” Lorrie asked.

“He means some guy was looking for you,” said Eric.

“Who?”

The two of them shrugged, helplessly.

“Tall?”

Blank faces.

“Clean-cut? A wildhair?”

“I didn’t really take notes.”

As usual, Doug broke into a fit of halted little snickers at anything that came from Eric’s mouth. “Actually,” Doug said, catching his breath, “I did write down the time he came in.” He handed her a piece of paper.

As Lorrie bent to grab it, she thought she saw Eric glance down her blouse. Quickly she pressed her hand against her chest. The note had nothing but a time of day written on it, nothing to make the situation any clearer. “Come on, guys, I’m serious. Was someone actually asking for me?”

“Yes, Lorrie,” said Doug. “Someone was actually asking about you.”

“Was he, you know, how did he look?”

“A little tired,” said Eric.

“No. I mean, was he, you know, particularly handsome?”

Another flood of giggles.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Eric.

“I’d rather bone Eric, given the choice,” said Doug.

Eric punched him in the shoulder. Doug attempted a headlock, but Lorrie’s voice disrupted their scuffle.

“And you didn’t think about asking his name, or paying enough attention to tell me one little thing about the guy?” She passed her glare over both of them.

“C’mon, Lorrie.” Eric, the voice of reason. “You know how busy it gets in here. What do you want me to say? I see hundreds of faces a day. Some guy asked me, then Doug, if we knew you, what days you came in, that kind of thing. Said he was an old friend of yours from Western City North. Man, that’s a wild city, you know?”

I do,
thought Lorrie.

“Crazy eyes,” Eric said, “I remember that much. Super shiny and bright, but creepy, too.”

Lorrie felt her legs begin to crumble into cold grey ash. “Did he say he was coming back?”

“I don’t—”

“Of course he’s coming back!” said Doug. “If you were looking for someone and you couldn’t find them, wouldn’t you keep coming back until you did?”

Eric snorted, somehow finding the whole situation humorous.

“You’re nervous about some friend of yours politely asking to see you,” Doug said, “and you want Eric to let you counsel?”

At this comment, Eric’s interior world seemed to spill outward, and he was unable to suppress a hearty laugh.

“How dare you,” Lorrie said to him.

Immediately, Eric’s face exploded into a human spider web, all crossed lines emerging from a central point. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

The anger on his face was all too familiar. Shame and talk groups and a general sense of how people should be all coalesced in Lorrie’s mind, a screaming reminder that the nature of a man with this much hate wasn’t a state of affairs she needed to accommodate, no matter where his mother was.

“All I’m asking for,” Lorrie said, “is the chance to be taken seriously.”

But in Eric’s head, the elephants were still roaring. He stood up and screamed, “Men don’t want to sit across from you and take orders on how to protect themselves. What’s it going to take to get that through your head?”

Lorrie leaned forward, palms flattened against Eric’s desk, and spoke slowly. Let the asshole look wherever he wanted. “
Fuck
,” she said, curling and stretching her tongue around the sound, “
you
.”

She stood up, grabbed her purse, and walked toward the exit, pushing the glass doors open. On her way out, she slammed them behind her with a firework bang.

Only after she had walked a few steps did she realize Lance could be out there, waiting. The concealed men, their faces wrapped with scarves and bandanas, were now lined up under awnings, studying their reflections in the specular windows. Lorrie studied the rows of slitted eyes. None of these men wanted to be pointed. Thankfully, none of them seemed to be Lance, either.

The head coverings, the fear, all of it made sense. These were men, she knew, who had been told by their fathers to act like soldiers ever since they had first skinned their knees or been popped in the jaw by a ground ball that took an unexpected bounce.
That’s right, killer,
their fathers had told them.
Shake it off.
To a man, all of their fathers had served, though mostly in peacetime. To a man, all of them wanted to act in a way that was different. To a man, none of them knew how.
The advice of our fathers
, Lorrie thought, angling her shoulders through the clump of men blocking her path to the sidewalk,
is burying us alive.

On the walk home, she saw Lance at least twice, dissolved into dark corners, leaned against empty storefronts, eyes calling out to her. Each time she got close, he managed to convert himself into a strange, unassuming man as soon as she passed. This was not a way to live. Her privilege to wander had been ripped away the moment she knew Lance was in town. The streets were different now, and she could head no place other than home.