A Foreword by the Author

First things first: the story and characters of Dev/Null did not come from me. They came from the mind and pen of Lawrence Housel, in his award-winning screenplay, also named Dev/Null. Long before I had even heard that name, seeming eons before I was made aware of the world in which Guy and Faith and Lil’ John and Perry and Don Kirtley inhabited, Larry was laboring on the script, spinning the story out of the fat yarns in his head, and if this story is a good one (and I suspect it is), Larry deserves 73% of the credit. I did quite a solid bit of editing on the script, but… well, it’s probably easier to wipe around baby’s mouth than it is to actually give birth to the little bastard. Larry also inserted his own bit of prose into this narrative (see page 11).

Guy Anderson, the disgruntled Network Engineer and the ‘hero’ of this story, is a person not unlike Lawrence himself. But I’m also a short, white, over-intelligent alienist who has a difficult time forming relationships with women, so, really, Guy’s character wasn’t much of a stretch for me, either (though I don’t know much about computers). I assisted Lawrence on the script, than; after we wrapped filming Dev/Null in the late summer of 2001 I began writing the novel version of the story. I wish I could tell some kind of road-to-Damascus tale about the genesis of the novel idea, but I can’t do that, either. Charlie suggested it to me, and I followed up. Believe it or not, I do actually accomplish some things on my own. I’m about to go take a leak, for example, and nobody had to suggest that plan of action to me.

Oh, and another thing. I pretty much ripped off the chronological format of the novel from another source as well; Roadwork, a 1981 novel written by Stephen King’s nom de guerre, Richard Bachman. It contains a story that is superficially similar to this one- a middle-aged laundry executive, buffeted by the loss of his son to a brain tumor and the impending loss of his house to a state highway project, over the span of two months calmly and methodically takes his life apart piece by piece. It stretches from November 20, 1973 until January 20, 1974; a neat, square timeline that I couldn’t quite duplicate. The concept of that marked passing of time, moving smoothly and steadily and relentlessly behind Guy Anderson as he struggles and thrashes- that’s a very attractive symbiosis to me, because, more than any of the half-baked politics Lawrence and I espouse, more than the love subplot which was clichéd long before we came about, nay, more than all that stuff; time, or the lack of it, is the key element in Dev/Null (that’s pretty hackneyed, too. Fuck it). I would start rapping about time here, and how it keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, but I won’t. I wouldn’t dream of subjecting you to my tired musings. All I will say is, when you wake up one morning and take a shower, and look in the foggy mirror, and see that you’ve developed a paunch and a Nixon hairline, well- that’s when you know that, if you haven’t gotten down to business yet, you’d better climb up off your callused ass and do it. Now.

By the way, if you think writing the novel after the screenplay is a hugely back-asswards thing to do, you’d be right about that, too. I freely admit it’s not SOP. But there are, of course, advantages in this approach. Lawrence wrote the original screenplay for Dev/Null. Then he and I spent the next four-and-a-half months paring it like a potato-

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shaving this, slicing that, basically deconstructing it, until it was a slim, gleaming cigarette boat of a story (in a screenplay, The Story is God). We filmed the results. Then I got the deed and the keys to the boat, so all I did was attach a pilothouse, a couple of paddlewheels, passenger berths, smokestacks, a casino, a burlesque, and a good deal of back story, front story, side-story and no-story-just-bullshit. I swelled her up.

I’ve never written a novel before. Just thought I’d tell you that before you actually started reading it. About the reading of fiction I ever did as a lad were ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books. Wore ‘em out. Had an epiphany as a small lad of nine, in a fourth grade social studies class of all places. Since then… not much in the way of ‘stories’ (my pejorative word for pretty much anything not absolutely rooted in historical fact). Spent much time out of the fiction game. My idea of a novel goes as follows:

1. A straight story2. Anywhere from 200 pages (or more), and3. Exhausted blathering done only to fill up all that scary white space

Guy Anderson is a figure not unlike many of us in life. He feels himself an outlander, an exile in his own home, a fellow out of place in his baggy skin. All he really needs, of course, is a really good-looking thick young girl to fall in love with him for no apparent reason whatsoever. And then, having proven himself to be beautiful, he also proves himself very effective in the art of destruction. When the unlovable is loved, he gives flower to orange and yellow petals of will, and he is bright and fragrant, but his growth can be traumatic to surrounding weeds. So he scuttles his boats and he fucks some stuff, some property up. It’s kind of fascistic, but so what? The betterment of just one man is more valuable than all the treasuries.

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PROLOGUE:

THE ALTERNATIVE

“...patriarch of family of high-wire walkers: in 100-foot plunge from high wire strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 22”

- Obituary of Karl Wallenda, “Reader’s Digest 1979 Almanac and Yearbook”

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Excerpt from May 21, 2000, Scranton Times- Two Penn State University students hiking in Moshannon State Forest in western Clearfield County made a grisly discovery yesterday when they stumbled upon the skeletal remains of at least two people. The remains, which included ribs, upper arm bones, and two separate femurs, were discovered in a ravine not far from the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, in a desolate area of central Clearfield County. Sheriff’s Department is conducting a full-scale search of the surrounding forest for more remains, as well as dragging areas of the river near the site. Local law enforcement officials, as well as the Coroner’s Office in Clearfield County, are hard-pressed to determine just how long the remains have been in place. “The bones are in an advanced state of decomposition, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in itself,” police spokesman Dan Jacobs commented. “Factors such as weather, as well as the local fauna, make it hard to tell how long these remains have been out here.” When asked to provide an educated guess as to the length of time, Jacobs replied, “Months, at the least. Maybe years, but we really don’t know.”

Jacobs did reveal these details: the remains were of at least two people. One of the victims was apparently a smaller female, one a well-nourished male in young adulthood. Scoring of the bone indicated dismemberment with a serrated instrument, possibly some sort of saw. There were no visible signs of a cause of death on any of the bones. There were no signs of skulls, hands, and feet in the area.

Local police officials did not rule out a connection between the discovery of the remains and the disappearance of Ohio businessman Richard Snyder and his family near here in February of 1996. Snyder, an executive at a large Akron utilities company, suddenly vanished with his wife and teenaged son, shortly after being terminated from his position at the company. The family was reported missing by the parents of Snyder’s wife Greta, on February 15. Four days later Richard Snyder’s 1988 Jeep Wagoneer was discovered abandoned in a parking lot at Moshannon State Forest, one hundred and fifty miles from the Snyder home in suburban Akron. Authorities have long suspected foul play in the disappearances, particularly those of Snyder’s wife Greta and their sixteen-year old son Benjamin. None of the isolated sightings of the missing businessman from such far-flung locales as Cleveland, Buffalo, Toronto, and even Nairobi, Kenya, have included either Snyder’s wife and son accompanying him.

The discovery of the bones in Clearfield County has put a different spin on the unusual recent events at Snyder’s former place of employment, the XXXXX Company of Akron, Ohio. Two days ago an employee at the same company destroyed the main computer server and assaulted several co-workers, hospitalizing four, in an apparently unmotivated attack on… Continued on Page 5

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Part I

April 19-25

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy rush,Make me a slave again, well dressed and flush,Bondage, come back from the shoeless shore,And bring me the shackles I formally wore.

- Popular baseball poem of 1890

“Who are you?”“I’m nobody.”

- “Executive Decision”

“They’re not making friends,Cause now they understand,All they do is fade away”

- Blur

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APRIL 19

Guy was just finishing his lunch and preparing to see Mr. Kirtley when he noticed that the paper clip on the corner of the desk had at some point fallen off. It had been in a precarious enough position all right, squatting bare millimeters from the drop carpetward, but it had been there maybe two months- or longer, as far as Guy had known. Since that day, it had survived in its curly metal perch through all manner of hazards. Three weeks ago, Ed had accidentally butted the desk with a meaty hip, sending a shiver through the flimsy structure. Guy had ignored everything but the paper clip. After a tiny rattling dance, it had settled back in its former position.

Now it was on the floor, somewhere. As Guy enclosed the Tupperware dish, slick with the fat-free ranch dressing Jeni always bought, he leaned around and looked at the spot where the paper clip was most likely to be. It was not there. Guy regained his former position. They hadn’t found the Monitor overnight either.

It was still about five minutes till, so Guy took out what he thought of only as an “office book” (lower case letters). “Office books” were, well, office books. Business shit. Something nobody would actually want to read, unless they were forced to. It wasn’t that Guy disliked reading, per se. But Jeni had grown impatient with the kind of fare Guy liked to dip into (adventure novels for adolescent boys), especially at work, and one day when she came in and caught him reading a battered copy of Kidnapped, her frayed nerves snapped. Her girlfriends’ men read things like Tom Clancy or motivational tomes penned by Rick Pitino or, better yet, didn’t read at all. The thought of her fiancée devouring Robert Louis Stevenson while he should have been go-go-going for the silver tuna filled her with cotton-mouthed horror. She didn’t actually say anything to Guy, not to his face. But she did call one of said girlfriends, Janice (pronounced Janeese) that evening and cut him up while sitting on the cordless phone right in the middle of the living room of their apartment, a far more insidious and deadly tactic.

“So I found Guy reading this kid’s book when I stopped in at his work today,” she had said in a voice marbled with contempt. He hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation, because he had retreated to their room post-haste.

Jeni never made any suggestions as to what Guy should be reading. But, Guy being by now as skilled at his end of the game as Jeni was at hers, seemed to know exactly what would sooth the harridan. The office books made Jeni happy, and that was really what counted.

Also, they went great with his office. Desk, chair, shelves. A plaque that celebrated his promotion. A window that opened on skeletal April trees. About the best

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thing Guy could say about the office, as he swept his eyes over the place, was that it was… well, truth be told, Guy didn’t much care about the office. He cared about the door, which was closed up as much as possible, and which in fact was closed up right now. The brass didn’t like to see closed doors. It didn’t jibe well with the family atmosphere that they insisted was palpable in all the halls. The company only made suggestions usually, and Guy figured he could get away with ignoring mere suggestions. A couple of times, however, Ed came around, and he didn’t really make suggestions. So the door stayed open.

It was closed today, though, because Ed hadn’t come around yet. Ed didn’t bother to come around before a meeting with Mr. Kirtley. After all, Guy was about to get up and go to him.

12:57. He shook his head. It was really too much when you checked the clock quite literally every two minutes. Ought to get a hobby, he thought. But when you had to tell yourself that, it pretty much meant you wouldn’t. There were people who exercised on their breaks and people who did crafts and needlework, and there were people who just sat around and ripened on the Tree of Sedentary. Guy was one of these soft fruits.

What did he do, though? Well, he could still smuggle paperbacks in and out, and did, but anything else, well… Jeni found out weird things about him. The information she got had to have come from this place. He didn’t understand where it could’ve come from, because it could’ve come from everywhere. The weird stuff was generally what he did on his down time when he wasn’t reading paperbacks (it really wasn’t weird, but she thought it was, you know). He hadn’t worked up either the courage or the level of depravity needed to jerk off in his office, but he was close. At about three o’clock things slowed down a little bit, so if he could time it up right…

Geez! What a day. Arduous it was already, as it always was, as it had always been since he was named the… What am I again? Guy glanced up at the plaque. Oh yeah. Certified Network Engineer. Swell. All he knew was, he was in some kind of position of authority, supposedly. He knew this because every day, starting at nine, ending at 5:30, the phone on his desk rang nonstop with pleadings and keening from his fellow employees, begging for a second, a minute, an hour of his time, to please, please, please, help them figure out what the fuck was wrong with their computer. They sure as hell didn’t know. But they sure were the ones who fucked it up!

A minute and thirty-one seconds after he clocked in this morning Guy had received a call from Danielle Samuels down in Data Storage. Danielle was a willowy 30-year old brunette who wore bulls-eye red lipstick and short skirts and complained incessantly about her boyfriend being something she called a “choch”. Her voice raw and edgy with panic, she told Guy that her computer was “messed up”; that it “didn’t want to work”.

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“I don’t know what happened, it just froze up.” Danielle spoke in the beseeching-yet-coquettish tones of a woman who flirts out of ingrained habit. “Could you please come down here and help me? Please?”

So Guy, helpful soul he was, took his expertise down to Data Storage. Danielle was waiting by her troublesome computer, hands clasped together in front of her as if in prayer, gazing soulfully at Guy through eyes which had helped her through school, into this $35,000-a-year job, and no doubt into the arms of her faceless “choch” of a boyfriend. Guy didn’t look at her. Instead he looked at the computer, which had caused this poor, poor woman so much torment.

“What happened?” Guy had asked.

“It’s… I don’t know, it just, it… it just doesn’t want to work!” Danielle wailed. Guy wasn’t looking at her, but he heard a wet sniffle follow the words. Guy squeezed his eyes shut.

“It what way does it ‘not want to work’?”

“I don’t know!” Danielle squealed in a tone that chattered on Guy’s nerves. “If I knew I wouldn’t have called you!”

Guy had noticed a strange thing in his rise from lowly drone bee to office-bound functionary at the company. He noticed that the ‘smarter’ or more ‘qualified’ he got, the more deferential- or ‘stupider’, if you will- people got in their dealings with him. Three years ago this woman might have treated him like a bothering child had he darkened her with his shadow. Now, thanks to the magical title- Certified Network Engineer- she threw entreaties at him like a trembling junkie offering blowjobs for smack.

Now Guy turned to the supplicant and stared at her. She looked back hopefully. Enunciating his words carefully, he asked:

“What is the computer doing wrong?”

Danielle gave the computer a baleful glance, as if it were sitting there thumbing a nose at her. “The keyboard isn’t working.”

“You’ve tried typing on it and nothing’s happening?”

“Yes.”

“Does the mouse work?”

“I don’t know.”

Sigh.

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Guy re-started the computer. The grinding of the computer starting up, the rapid tapping of keys typing in a password, a couple of clicks, than a squeal from Danielle, this one of delight. The computer was “fixed”.

“Oh, thank you, honey!” Danielle threw her arms around Guy. Guy, who had always disliked the phony flirtations he encountered from women (actually, he assumed all flirtation from women was phony), tensed up and squeezed out of her grasp as soon as politeness allowed. Then he scuttled back to his office.

He hadn’t even warmed the cold leather of his chair when the phone buzzed again. He scooped up the receiver (he had a button that enabled the speaker phone, but he liked to pick up the receiver; its heft comforted him). “Guy Anderson”.

“The goddamned computer isn’t working again!” Danielle’s voice again, a raw, angry strain of her coquettish coo. The bad word had a really bracing, vinegary quality to it.

“What?”

“You heard me! It’s not doing anything!” She paused. Apparently she wanted Guy to ‘feel’ the words. Then “What did you do with it?”

“I fixed the problem,” he replied. “If a problem is really what you called it.”

Danielle had to have felt the tang of that answer. Guy smiled a bit.

“I have to talk to Ed later,” Danielle said quietly. “I can talk about your attitude with him, if you want.”

Please don’t, Guy. Please don’t just take it, oh God, please-

“I’m sorry.” Guy answered in the undertow of his breath. “Okay. I’ll be down there in a couple of minutes.”

He sat there for another thirty-five seconds, just to spite her.

Back to the computer, where Guy, after a couple of quick glances, noticed that, at some point between the time he had first departed and the time he returned, Danielle had accidentally unplugged the mouse from the back of the PC. Guy, the computer specialist, the Certified Network Engineer, plugged the mouse back in to its port.

Guy, the resident royal Wise Man of the company, had spent his morning plugging in mice and re-starting computers for people who treated him like a foreign worker on a visa, giving him unpleasant glances and ordering him around. It’s not that he didn’t have skills. Because he had skills. Real skills. Skills that netted a great deal of

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dollar bills, actually (Jeni didn’t let him flash the cash because she thought it was dangerous). It was not ‘money that mattered’, though. His salary was empty. It was liquid, black ink on a tax statement. He didn’t care about the money because it had never been about the money anyway. He could live and breathe and be in the wooded lots of Bath Township, Ohio. But so could he in Florence, Alabama, or Medicine Hat, Alberta, or dusty offices in far-off Algeria. The only reason he knew he wasn’t completely lost was that hard kernel, that essence, pulsing deep down underneath the fat and the cologne and the three-digit duds and the cloak of ennui- and that kernel could pulse anywhere and anytime and perhaps under any living circumstance. As long as he kept the skills.

See, Guy understood computers, and what they were all about. He fancied he understood them as Jordan understood the baseline, or as Prince understood music. That understanding and a 19’ inch monitor added up to a blinking voicemail light and an office with a door. Jordan got insanely rich and as famous as the Pope, Prince got to change his name to a symbol and Guy got… Well Guy got to do what he liked. He liked to fix computers. Too bad the structure had thought of people as things, and had put him in the position of fixing what it understood.

It wasn’t always that way, and Guy would sometimes forget that, and go about his work the mute, compliant prisoner, but sometimes, on the clear spring days, alone in his office, his mind wandered back through wrinkled calendar pages to his roots, and he longed for them. Back in Debbie Gibson time he would sit cross-legged in the center of his upstairs bedroom and push his new 2400Baud modem into his 286 workhorse. The internal modem card would sex itself into the 8-bit ISA slot. Guy loved the acronyms (ISA- Industry Standard Architecture). He liked the private language, the tongue that confused the uninitiated. He liked the acronyms (His favorite was TWAIN, for “Tool Without an Interesting Name”) The acronyms were his own Deep South town, a place he could tell the Yankee longhairs to clear out. Words were sticky triangular gobs that populated instruction booklets across the world for no other purpose than to confuse and disorient those who did not know. Because that’s what it was all about when it came to computers. There were two countries, one for those who knew and one for those who didn’t and fuck ‘em if they don’t know.

Dawned on him in junior high, when he simultaneous realized that he had no skills with women and some semblance of skill, at least, on these here boxes. Guy thought he knew about computers because he could install a modem and log onto a bbs to download a cracked game. More importantly, he didn’t know anyone else who could do this. What else was knowledge, really, other than the relativity of other folks’ ignorance vis-à-vis your own? Jesus walked on water, but he was only a badass because nobody else could do it.

So on a cool September afternoon his sophomore year, he went to a computer repair shop down the street and asked if they were hiring. He would be willing to work for free if they let him (Guy being Guy, he actually said this out loud when he was filling out his application). A greasy overweight man behind the counter gave the clean cut

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young man in front of him a weary eye for a moment them was called to the back of the store. Guy stood waiting for the greasy man to return, but he did not. A small tape recorder blasted Faith No More. He waited around until he started to feel stupid. Guy always felt stupid when he wasn’t working on computers, and he felt really stupid when he applied for jobs. He was getting ready to leave when another, younger man about Guy’s age came up front.

“Can I help you?” the younger man honked in a nasal tone.

Guy explained his purpose again and the young man ran his hand through his thin puffy Kleinfeld hair and favored Guy with a childish grin.

“So you want to fix computers, huh?”

“Yeah” Guy replied.

The young man gave him an evaluating look, like Gil Brandt scanning Street & Smiths. “What do you know about computers?”

“A lot.”

It was so true that it sounded like a lie. The young man hee-hawed nervous donkey laughter. It was the laughter of a man who is deep in the red and recently bought three heavy-caliber shotguns at the sporting goods store in the mall. And used his credit card to buy them.

“A lot” he murmured softly, still smiling. He seemed to become distracted by something behind him. Not that there was anything there, just green circuit boards and cables strewn about the walls and shelves. He looked at one as if it had made a movement he had not expected. Then he walked off toward the back of the room.

Guy looked at the workbenches in the back of the shop covered in tools and computer parts. Guy wanted one. He wanted his own workbench. He wanted to stand behind the counter and laugh in the face of anybody who dared walk into the store and say they knew anything about computers.

“Look I’ll work for free if your boss lets me,” he repeated. “I just want to learn.”

The young man ignored Guy’s statement as he walked back to one of the benches. He plugged a monitor into an open case and powered it up gazing at the screen. Guy watched the machine come to life, spitting the test of its BIOS onto the black screen.

Basic Input Output System, Guy thought to himself.

The machine’s hard drive grinded and then seized up. The tech. gave the screen a sham perplexed look and rattled some keys. A moment later he had Config.sys open in

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the DOS editor. He edited a line as he talked aloud. Guy realized after a moment that he was talking to him.

“You know about computers?” he asked, sounding as if he had found a challenger. He shook his head, determining that he had not. “No. I know about computers. It’s the people I don’t get.” He walked out of the room leaving Guy by himself at the counter.

Guy blinked heavily at being summarily dismissed by every person who had encountered at the store. He took one last look around at the displays that had been placed in the showroom area for him. That was as far as he was going to get in the computer business- the showroom. He thought about running out to a thrift store and finding a plaid sport coat.

The greasy guy was back, holding three memory sticks. Guy recognized them from looking at the ones in his own PC. He placed them next to each other on the counter. A grimy nametag on his shirt said ARKADY.

“One is bad,” Arkady said in a rounded Ukrainian accent. “How do I know which one?”

Guy was not expecting a test and again was sent into an inescapable state of silence. Arkady shrugged, dismissing his silence, and aimed a blunt finger at the sticks.

“You remove until is only good one left”

Guy scooped up two of the sticks and left an orphan SIMM on the counter. The corpulent Slav grinned with crooked teeth left all too long at the mercy of Soviet dentistry.

“You say you work for nothing?”

Guy nodded, feeling mute. Arkady’s grin widened. “Not even rubles?” He grunted sourly at his own joke.

Guy shrugged gamely. He would’ve worked for baht, or dinars, or krugerrands. Beaver pelts, too.

“Come,” Arkady said firmly. He motioned him around to the door leading back into the depths of the store. “I will show you how to work for money”

That was how it began. And that was how it continued, all through the years, while the shabby little store begat stores less shabby, and college classrooms, and eventually this sprawling company with its closed-door office, where he now sat, seated in this chair, staring at the blinking lights on his phone.

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Guy had seen some commercials recently- he didn’t know what they were selling, it could have been network solutions, it could have been Korean cars, it could’ve been TEC-9s and black trenchcoats for back-to-school, who knew- and the commercials showed young men and women with sculpted hair and black turtleneck sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses like badges of intellectual superiority, posing next to computers with smug smiles. Computer people, the new royalty. Maybe doing menial tasks for ungracious people was a sign of royalty. Like noblesse oblige, no? Maybe all Guy needed to be a bona fide member of this new elite was six inches off his waistline and a closet full of black turtlenecks. Or maybe he was in the elite, and he was just too stupid to know it. Hell, Charlemagne was illiterate. If the clean-cut, pretty people in the commercials hadn’t just been actors who were smug only over their good looks, perhaps Guy would have understood. He himself had learned the business from fellows who, at bottom, recognized that there was fundamentally no difference between them, the new royalty, and the grizzled grease monkeys who fixed carburetors and replaced distributor caps. One job was cleaner than the other, but that was it. You were in a cabal, and there was the temple, and everybody needed what was in there, but only you could actually go and get it. Because you had the key, and the knowledge- that thing in such precious short supply- that was the key.

It was 1:00. Guy carefully marked the place in the book where he had been reading. He put the book on the table. He slid open the silent desk drawer, whispering on its steel runners, brushed aside the wilderness of pill bottles in there, and put his lunch away. The lunch had fed him now. The pills would feed him later. He closed the desk drawer, got on his phone, with its red and green lights winking with the urgency of their messages, and punched the number to Gail, Mr. Kirtley’s secretary. The phone gave two quick rings and Gail came on, her crackling phone voice overlaid by the sound of her real voice, on the other side of the door.

“Don Kirtley’s office.”

Gail was a sweetheart. She was older, and she wore those huge glasses, and her hair was died red, but Guy still wandered occasionally, when he was bored, what she would be like if… well, he didn’t want to get into it just now. She was a secretary. You know.

“Hey, Gail, how’s it going?”

“Uh, this is Mr. Kirtley’s office, can I help you?”

Guy closed his eyes hard. Gail could never figure out who he was on the telephone. That was irritating. Oh, the pills, I need those motherfuckers right now, the blue ones… but Mr. Kirtley was waiting. He pushed the pills away from his mind like he had pushed them away from the Tupperware. He steeled himself. Jeni would steel herself, and so would he. He had to.

“Is Mr. Kirtley ready for his one o’clock appointment?”

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The voice brightened. Now here was something she could understand! “Yes, Mr. Kirtley is ready for his one o’clock appointment. Shall I tell him you’re coming?”

Guy’s response was simply to twirl the phone individualistically in his hand, granite bursting through grass, and set it in its cradle. He got himself heavily off the chair and went through the door. Time to talk to the boss.

Guy sat in a hard leather chair facing Mr. Kirtley’s desk. He was watching Mr. Kirtley, and Mr. Kirtley was watching him. Ed loomed behind Mr. Kirtley, thumbing through a manila folder with thick sausage fingers and occasionally throwing Guy a baleful look. Mr. Kirtley wore a dark blue suit. Ed’s was charcoal gray. It was a corner office, of course, and morning sunlight glared through two wide windows, casting hot points of light on the gold rims of Ed’s glasses, infusing a signet ring on Ed’s finger with red fire.

Nothing much adorned Mr. Kirtley’s desk, or his office for that matter, but there were little reminders around the joint- reminders of the length of time he had spent in power. The Greeks could point to the Parthenon and say, “We’ve been around a long time, see.” Kirtley didn’t have such a monument. What he had were momentos. Knick-knacks. Souvenirs. There were, of course, a few framed photographs; one from ‘87 or so, showing Mr. Kirtley in this very office, with a nice black suit and a silver tie, sporting brown hair stylishly cut. Another picture, this one of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the company building’s addition on a bright hot July day in ‘84, showed the boss outside in disarmingly casual shirtsleeves, holding a pair of scissors in one hand and gripping the hand of then-Congressman Dennis Eckert (D., Oh.) in the other.

A plaque sat on the corner of the desk. In small but relevant type it said:

DON KIRTLEYPRESIDENT

1978-

There was a silver blotter on Mr. Kirtley’s desk that Guy thought was pretty sweet. It was reflective. It didn’t have anything to do with, like, Mr. Kirtley’s tenure, but he liked it all the same.

Guy had a pretty good idea of why Mr. Kirtley had managed to stay on top for so long, in a business that seemed to treat anyone in a suit like a Gaines Burger to be torn up and devoured inside his cellophane wrapper (of course, perhaps it treated only him like that; it was hard for him sometimes to imagine an alternative). Obviously he had some kind of quality of hardness to him, but it was a little closer than that, and yet and beyond that, too. He had what all men of power had- a shimmering, radiating, uneasy mixture of charisma and threat, a shell game of kindness and brutishness. Under his tanned, seamed mask could be a trusted friend, or a flat executioner.

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Guy, as the youngest member of the youngest chair on the board- the IT chair-, knew he was the only man on said board who was really subjected to these ‘discussions’ of Ed’s. Certainly Berger wasn’t, or Brewster, or any of the others. They all went way back, and they dealt with each other like equals, like gents. He wasn’t their equal, and probably never would be. But what could he do? He was the IT guy. He was Tucker Motors. He was the American Football League. He was Jasper Johns in a room full of Rembrandts.

Mr. Kirtley broke the silence. “How are you doing, Guy?”

Guy half nodded, half-shrugged. “Good.”

“How’s Jeni?”

“She’s good.”

Ed did not take part in this by-play. He was too busy flipping through the folder and giving Guy dirty looks. Ed had been here for many moons, Guy knew that, but he still wasn’t sure what Ed’s exact purpose was at the company (he figured folks around the bunker weren’t sure what Mr. Bormann’s exact purpose was, either). He didn’t have an official title- at least not one Guy was aware of- and he talked about the business in halting, chunky tones, like a man speaking a foreign language with which he is only vaguely familiar. But a smoothly running machine needs plenty of grease. Employees had a certain amount of latitude when it came to fucking up, but once they got to the point where they started seizing up the works of the machine, Ed was willing to wade in there and get his hands dirty. Guy had been on the butt end of a couple of Ed’s “lectures”, and it was not hard to tell that the big man enjoyed his work. He got the gleam, men, Shottenheimer-style, when he really started to lay it on the said sack fell into his crosshairs.

Ed looked up at Guy from the manila folder, his glasses catching squares of office light. “Your network has a three-point nine times uptime,” he said. “Yet you are receiving a sub-par rating. Do you know why?”

Guy did not answer. He was intimately familiar with Ed’s “management style”. Ed liked to toss a question in the air, let it linger for a moment, then whack it with his own fungo bat of a reply. The questioner and the answerer were one and the same, giving Ed consensus hot and easier than Easy Mac. Guy had come to think of it as “truncated Socratic”. He fiddled with the creases of his pants and looked at Mr. Kirtley. Mr. Kirtley looked back at him with an expression as blandly pleasant as the April morning outside. Ed waited until Guy had assumed the proper countenance of chagrin, than he turned back to the manila folder and thumbed through it with a thick finger.

“You are receiving a sub-par rating because productivity is down. Do you know why that is?”

15

Guy waited for Ed’s final flourish. With a jab of his thick right index finger, Ed did not disappoint.

“Because you have no control over the users on this network!”

Guy was surprised by a sudden jolt of exasperation.

“I can’t make people more productive”, Guy said. “If they’re not producing, they should be fired.”

Ed shook his boulder of a head. “That’s not how things work around here.”

“We like to utilize our workforce, Guy, not cut them loose.” Mr. Kirtley dampened Guy with a light shower of reproach. “We didn’t hire these people to be fired.”

Ed shifted the manila folder from his right hand to his left, and half tossed it; half slid it over to Guy on the desk. “I have outlined restrictions I think need to be added to the computing environment in order to facilitate productivity.”

Guy opened the manila folder and flipped through its contents, much as Ed had done moments earlier. What he saw on the sheets of flimsy made him leave off his leafing and look up at Ed with jaundiced eyes.

Ed hadn’t been joking about the “restrictions”. Outlined in the folder was a list of measures that could only be described as draconian. No more unrestricted Internet usage on company PCs- surfing was to be outlawed, and all company-sanctioned browsing would be strictly monitored, by Guy (of course). No more games of any sort- no ‘Tetris’, no poker, no ‘Quake’; even the measly Solitaire program was to be removed, posthaste. E-mails and messages were to be monitored and the employees who used those tools for personal communication were to be punished severely. The other items on the list ran in the same vein. What Ed was proposing- and what he was expecting Guy to dispose- was nothing less than Beria-esque terror grip over the IT department.

“We want more productivity from our users,” Guy heard Kirtley say.

Amazing, Guy thought as he thumbed through Ed’s personal Night and Fog decrees. You get a degree, you get a job, you think you’re going to be a Computer Guy, and look at you now. You’re J. Edgar Fucking Hoover. You’re a goddamned cop. He sighed, closed the manila folder, and half-flipped it into a short, whispering slide on Mr. Kirtley’s desk.

“Look, with all due respect, I don’t think I’m the guy qualified to do this job.” Guy looked at Mr. Kirtley while he said it. His pebble did not ripple the boss’s smooth surface.

16

Guy heard Ed’s voice. “Well in fact, you are the guy who has to do it.”

“We all have to work within certain perimeters,” Mr. Kirtley assured him. “Just find yours, and act accordingly.”

With that, Mr. Kirtley slid his big leather chair over to his computer and began typing with long, slender fingers. Ed glanced at Guy, than at the door. Well, why the fuck are you still here? The meeting was over.

Guy and Jeni lived in a brand new apartment complex that just a couple of years earlier had sprung out of old farm fields like some kind of new synthetic crop. It was a sprawling development, all winding hot-top, green lawns, hexagonal brick flagstones and clean bright gravel arrangements like embellishments around the clusters of white buildings, weight rooms, barbecue pits, big rooms for grad parties and cookouts, and an outdoor swimming pool- all in all, hothouse for young professionals, divorcees, bachelors, and all other varieties of the white-collar genus. The complex was quiet in the deepening dusk, the white buildings purplish in the gloaming as Guy pulled into the parking lot. A sign by the entrance proclaimed the name of the place:

Stapleton Farms Estates

Guy pulled up to the gate and keyed in his PIN number. The wooden plank over the entrance rose in jerky motions, and Guy entered the parking lot. An airplane roared a few thousand feet overhead, taking off from the nearby airport, flying west- to Detroit, maybe, or Salt Lake, or even Vancouver. Planes were always buzzing the place, 24-7- it sounded like frigging Shea Stadium sometimes- and the thin walls of the condo would quiver when the big suckers passed over head-, but Jeni liked the airport so close. She liked to get out of town in a hurry, on her all-important business trips. She had recently expanded her territory to St. Louis and the Twin Cities, and she always got all kinds of giddy before she went out of town. She would sit on the phone for hours with her girlfriends (Janeese, Abby, Gwen and Sara) in their room and giggle like a schoolgirl while she packed all her shit. Right now, Jeni’s aqua VW Beetle (‘new’ Beetle, that is) was parked out front, but the lights to the condo were out.

The condo was blue with shadows when Guy entered. Jeni was not home yet. Out with the work friends, perhaps. Guy flipped the lights on and entered the condo’s vaulted living area. Sofas, coffee table, a 62-inch flat-screen TV (Jeni had bought it, surprisingly enough: she liked to have her friends over occasionally to watch TV shows in which death camp-thin professional women sit around tony Manhattan eateries and talk about gynecology) made up the part of the room closest to the door. Hanging behind the sofa was a monstrously ugly Gaugain print that Jeni’s boss had given her as a house-warming gift and which Jeni insisted on keeping hung, despite the fact that she despised it as much as Guy did. Further back was a small kitchen and a dining room table. The place was stiflingly neat, as per Jeni’s wishes. The kitchen countertops shone benignly in the light, unsoiled by foods or dirty dishes, because nobody in this residence ever cooked. Neither

17

Guy nor Jeni, two small parts of the larger socioeconomic group known in the parlance of our time as DINKS (double income-no kids), had the time to cook. Not when there was money to be made.

Guy dug into the refrigerator, looking for something to drink. Welch’s Grape Juice, Diet Rite, Vernor’s, Naya... ah! Here was a bottle of white wine, a remnant of past Jeni TV Nights and a reminder of ones in the future, and as Guy grasped the neck of the bottle, looking for the forgetfulness sloshing about inside, he noticed a thick black Sharpie mark just at the level of the wine inside. Jeni had marked the bottle. So he fished out a can of Diet Rite and took with him to the couch.

There he sat, drinking bad soda and watching over five feet of bad TV (an hour of “Who’s the Boss?” on Channel 19), thinking about what had gone down at the meeting today. He wondered what exactly it was that had upset him so much. After all, he’d gotten the occasional negative review of his work. Mr. Kirtley wasn’t exactly a kindergarten teacher (neither was Ed, to say the least). And it was true that, over the past few months, he had started to move just a tad slower, just a jot sloppier, had gone into an almost imperceptible decline in his efficiency, much like the Roman Empire in about 200 B.C.E. He could feel the decline more than see it, and it was very possible that his silver-haired boss and his boss’s hulking lieutenant could see it as well. That was okay. What was not okay was the notion that he should somehow act in a combined capacity as Certified Network Engineer (that’s what he was, that’s what the framed thing on his office wall said, yup, yup), and as some kind of... IT cop.

That was the rub, he thought. It was the insidious way he was being made to take on responsibilities that had nothing to do with his supposed mission at the company, yet at the same time he was being treated like a four-year old at a day-care center. It was wrenching. He had a sudden image of Mr. Kirtley pressing a Son-of-Sam style 44-caliber pistol into his right hand, and Ed pressing a pink-and-blue baby rattle into his left.

From outside came the sound of a car door shutting and faint good-byes. Jeni was home. Guy heard the whisper of her shoes on the stairs, than on the corridor outside, than a rattle of keys and she was in the condo.

“Hey, Guy” Jeni said. She looked at Guy, stretched out on the sofa, with a look akin to that of a kid who opens a Christmas box hoping to get the latest toy and finds three pairs of tube socks instead. Jeni was a tall willowy woman with long burnished red hair, who bore a mild resemblance to ‘Simone’ from Head of the Class. She had a hard face, tightly pursed lips, and at times looked considerably older than her age, which was the same exactly- almost exactly, they were born two months apart- as Guy. Guy had met Jeni not surprisingly, at a Wednesday Happy Hour a few years ago. They had been hanging out at Budd’s, Guy with his work pals, Jeni with hers, when they ran into each other at the pool table. Guy bought her a drink (a martini, if his memory served him correctly), they shared a plate of stuffed potato skins with chives, and the rest, as they say, is history.

18

“Hey,” Guy replied.

Jeni set her black leather purse on the glass coffee table, rattling the contents inside. She strode into the kitchen. “How was work?”

“It was okay. You?”

“It was good.” Jeni had a lot of ‘good’ days at work. “I spent the whole morning opening up accounts over on the West Side. Then the regional supervisor came in from Chicago at noon, so I met with him, and I think I really impressed him. Sandra overheard him talking to Ken-”

“Who’s Ken?”

Jeni gave Guy a look. “My supervisor. You know that.”

She had probably mentioned it a few times, to be sure. He hadn’t been a good listener when they got together, and he was awful now. His ability to listen to and care about what others were saying was the area of his greatest slippage.

“Oh.”

“Anyway, the regional supervisor- Dan Manning, that’s his name- was talking to Ken, and supposedly, according to Sandra, Dan was talking about what a nice job I’ve been doing on the accounts we opened in Toledo back in January, and maybe when it...” Jeni continued to prattle on about her job, but Guy was no longer listening. He was trying to remember the last time Jeni had given him a blowjob. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking this, but he was- it just came into his head, heh heh. He strained to remember but couldn’t. He distinctly remembered Jeni blowing him one night on the spur of the moment while CNN was carrying reports of Bob Livingston’s resignation, so... 1998. Late ’98. That was it.

Guy was pretty sure that if Jeni’s job had a penis, she would suck it.

“Guy? Hey!”

“Huh?”

“How did your meeting with Mr. Kirtley go?”

Guy shrugged. “Not particularly well. They want me to run a tighter ship in IT.”

“Well, maybe you should, then.” Jeni always sided with management. If she’d been around during the sit-ins at Ford Motor in ’37, Guy thought, she would’ve rooted for the strikebreakers. Guy had another sudden mind-image, this one of a Depression-vintage Jeni watching Movitone News footage of club-wielding company men bashing

19

strikers, wearing one of those lace caps on her head, sipping an Orange Crush out of the bottle with a straw and screaming Break their Commie heads! Kill those Red bastards!

Blissfully unaware of all this mindplay, Jeni reached into the fridge and fished out a Naya. “I think if you showed a little more enthusiasm about your job, you’d do better at it.”

“I’m enthusiastic when they let me do my job,” Guy said, but Jeni was already vanishing into their bedroom and closing the door, bottle in hand. Moments later Guy heard the sound of her gay laughter as she talked on the phone. He heard it through the wall that separated them.

APRIL 20

During the middle of the day, about an hour after lunch, Guy liked to allow himself a couple of moments getting a fresh cup of water to wash down the Blue One with. His mouth had a way of starting to feel like cold mercury around this time of day, and he found that a Blue One could wipe away that sour taste with as much ease as it performed its other happy miracles.

Guy walked out onto the work floor. He had once been here, back before his “promotion”. He hadn’t liked the cubicles; those flimsy ramparts barely head high, covered with his feeble personal trappings like a foxhole. He didn’t like the constant cacophony of ringing phones, conversations, whining machinery. The hell’s babble on the floor was the reason why he took the pills. Well, it really wasn’t. He was the reason he took the pills. But he still liked to think of the excuse to amuse himself.

Very clever, old boy! Guy smiled a little to himself. It was like the Blue One was up ahead, giving him a froggy grin and a come hither crooked finger. Guy quickened the pace. The floor rolled by him on wheels. The Clash was pounding out of the radio, which apparently was feeling feisty today- unusually feisty.

There were always people lingering in the cafeteria, no matter the time of day. For a big company, the room was pretty chintzy. There was an old radio with a small strip of tape fastened to 102.1 FM, where they played a lot of Celine Dion and “Waiting for a Girl Like You”-era Foreigner, (apparently “Jukebox Hero” was too prone to set the blood a-boil). There were lots of old magazines in a large wicker basket, stuff like Newsweek, BH&G, and a dog-eared copy of Redbook. Some of the magazines were from that year. Some were not. The Newsweek cover was Anwar Sadat, for example.

Kurt Berger, the Ribbentrop of the board, Don Kirtley’s lapdog, a man Guy deeply disliked for reasons that are too numerous and exhaustive to go into at this time, was in the room. He was standing next to the radio and turning the dial down from its

20

rebellious place, and he was looking disapprovingly at a young man and woman seated nearby. The young man was Steve Geldof, who was actually one of Guy’s IT people. Steve was an intense kid, a guarded individual with a tawny beard who passed through this place like a wraith, silently and resentfully. The young man glared at the radio, than at the Kurt, whose gaze did not waver. There was no need for Kurt to back down, because he had the real power. The woman watched the short standoff with a sandwich squeezed in her hand. She didn’t get a bite in before her friend cast his eyes back down at the table. The brief standoff was over. Kurt corrected the radio and it was now time for “The Power of Love”. The guitar solo came on and Kurt, wincing just a bit, turned it down. Just like Guy was about to turn down his own volume.

Perry was hanging out by the water cooler, sipping from a cone-shaped cup and regarding the radio standoff with obvious amusement. He was tall, bald and black, all taut skin and muscle stretched leanly over long bones, the bizarro version of pale, hairy, paunchy Guy who was approaching him now. Guy reached the water cooler and plucked himself a cone. He gave Perry a nod.

“What’s up?” The universal work greeting. Perry nodded and tipped his half-filled cone toward Guy. Guy filled his own cone and fished out a Blue One from his pocket. Perry watched this new spectacle with cool interest. He had been at the company for four years and had earned a reputation for the kind of bloodless, unblinking efficiency that is so prized in American business. In those four years he had rocketed from the file cabinets to the front desk, to the front of the work floor, and finally to the corner of the work floor, generally regarded as the last step in the long journey to a coveted office position- a position which nobody doubted would be within Perry’s talon-like grasp within a very short time. Guy had overheard Mr. Kirtley referring to Perry in impressed tones as a “stingray”. It was obviously a compliment.

Now the Stingray watched Guy swallow the Blue One with his cool interest. Guy felt the pill slide down his throat and cast his jaundiced eyes on Perry. “What?”

Perry shrugged. “Nothing.”

Guy liked Perry. Perry had cool relentlessness, a detached reptilian quality, a way of flicking his eyes over events like a brigadier sweeping a battlefield, seeking good ground. He was always dressed immaculately in crisp white shirts and blue trousers with blade creases. Like MacArthur, he never perspired. Guy once saw Perry at an office picnic. He held a condensing Aquafina in his hand under a 95-degree sun and never sweated a drop. Other paragons of ambition were toadies with flop sweat and sickle grins. Perry leaned against a break room wall at 1:13 in the afternoon and tipped his soggy cone at Guy again.

“Did you pass yearly inspections?”

21

“I have to take all the game programs off all the PCs,” Guy blurted. “Kirtley is concerned about productivity, so that’s what I’m supposed to do to solve the problem. Since, of course, it’s my problem.”

Perry nodded. It was expected. Numbers went down and the brass had to think of some band-aid corrective measure that could be applied and trumpeted as a real solution while the real solution went conveniently uncorrected. Anderson was acting all put out, but what did he expect? It went with the territory. He should have known. The aphids would be all bummed because they couldn’t play Minesweeper or Plinko or whatever it is they fucked around with on their computers. Not him. He only played people, and taking that game away wasn’t within this company’s power.

Guy let a small smile play on his face. He was putting the flaps down for the Blue One’s arrival, due in approximately six minutes. His head shook. “Sometimes I think the only reason they promoted me is so they have someone to scapegoat when other people don’t do their jobs.”

Perry gave a perfunctory nod, as if talking about a tornado in another state. “Of course that’s why they promoted you.” He killed his water and banked his empty cone off the snack machine into the waiting trashcan. “You just need to get with the program.”

Precisely the p-p-p- problem, Guy told himself. He told himself in the voice of a skinny Victorian diplomat in striped pants, a monocle glinting above a blade nose and a little Rollie Fingers mustache. It was the voice the Blue One affected when he was answering the door. He watched Perry nod his head toward the disgruntled couple at the table. Steve was seated gloomily, a Styrofoam coffee cup steaming in front of him, looking like the last minute of a lost game. The woman ate her sandwich with quick bloodless bites, not looking at him, like there was a runner of snot in his nose and she didn’t want to tell him. Phil Collins sang a cover of “True Colors”. Jesus, when did that come out? Guy thought with a stab of horror. A smile flitted across Perry’s face as he watched this tableau.

“Welcome to corporate America”, he told Guy. “Better get in where you fit in.” Perry walked out of the break room. Guy followed him, swimming through heavy air with thick, sloshing steps.

The server room, the nerve center of the company (to use the old cliché) was a hot, stuffy little alcove separated from the main business floor by a large, plate-glass window. Perry leaned against the window on the floor side, hands in pockets, long legs crossed casually, watching the goings-on of the place. Guy was in the server room, switching backup tapes. The Blue One and the heat had thickened the air in the room, making it almost gelatinous. The door of the server room was three feet away. It looked like ten to Guy. He finished switching the tapes and strode toward the door with

22

dreamlike strides. To the door, the cooler air of the floor bathing him, then Guy was closing the door and turning the key in the lock.

There was an idea bubbling and boiling in Guy’s addled brain now. He glanced up at the floor, at the worker drones in their identical clothes and haircuts. Guy’s brain popped and steamed molten with thought. He turned to Perry, still reclining at the window.

“Did you know,” Guy heard himself say, “that the first thing ever sent on the Internet was the letters ‘H’ and ‘E’?”

Perry shook his head. Guy gave a grin as cornered, hard and cold as a Soviet sickle and glanced back around the floor. “It was supposed to be the word ‘HELLO’, but one of the machines crashed halfway through the transmission.”

Perry shrugged. “About par for the course.” He didn’t make it clear whether he was talking about the Internet or about Guy. Guy didn’t ask. Instead he started to walk across the floor, in the general direction of his office. Guy followed. He was curious to know about where Perry stood on matters like these.

“That’s right,” Guy began. “See, computers, the Internet-“ here he groped for words that moved like the rudder on a long-rusted vessel, “- they’re built around failure. This whole business is predicated on it.”

Guy looked around the floor. He faintly heard his name called, followed the waves of the voice, and saw Russ, a middle-aged dude down in… Guy couldn’t remember the department off-hand. Russ had a widow’s peak and thick eyebrows and on casual Fridays dressed in tight faded jeans and a corduroy suit jacket, giving him an unfortunate resemblance to a Reagan-era standup comic. Russ was pointing at his monitor with his right hand and waving Guy frantically over with the other.

Perry briefly looked back at Russ, faintly registered him, and turned back. Guy gave Russ a Wait a minute! finger and kept walking. By now he saw other things. A man staring myopically at his screen and clicking the mouse over and over again. A fat woman suddenly banging the side of her monitor (oh how they always blamed the monitor!) and muttering imprecations under her breath. Everywhere, the seeds of something. But what?

Perry shrugged just a tiny bit. “So?”

“So, I wanted to be a part of that” Guy found himself a bit chagrined at the admission. He gave a half-hearted shrug. “I wanted to help build something based on failure, just to see how far it would go.”

Perry looked back at Guy, and now his face showed a species of mild exasperated amusement. He flicked his eyes over the floor, now mostly behind them. The expression

23

in Perry’s eyes told the story to Guy, told him that what Perry saw was in some very base way quite different than what Guy had seen. Perry stopped and spread a long spider-fingered hand.

“You want me to tell you what this is all about?”

“Sure”, Guy said wearily. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “Tell me what this is all about.”

Perry nodded, satisfied he had the floor. “Look around you.”

“I already did.”

“Well, do it again.”

So Guy did. He saw the incompetence, sure, but it was milked over, skimmed by something else. Something else…

“Do you see it?” Perry’s voice from over his shoulder.

Now he did, sort of. He saw the people out there, dressed the same, their expressions, their movements eerily choreographed, it seemed, a kind of silent waltz playing just below the surface. Even the ripples in the smooth tapestry seemed to dance along like a beat to the tune. Now he saw the supervisors reviewing the troops, he could almost see the riding crops in their hands and the coalscuttle helmets on their heads. He could almost stand there and enjoy it, hum the dancing-mop tune from Fantasia under his breath and tap his toes. And Perry saw that he saw it.

“It’s a farm system,” Perry’s deep voice floated over his shoulders like a collar. “An arena for us to demonstrate our strength.”

Guy looked back at Perry. A smile played on the tall man’s face and his eyes were as hazed over as… well, as hazed over as the ones on Guy’s fucked-up face. Perry’s long fingers straightened his tie. His shoulders wore imaginary epaulets. Perry carefully wiped invisible dust from invisible decorations, stars, crosses, ribbons, sparkling airily on his chest like a German field marshal.

“It’s a shame they don’t let us wear medals on our suits.”

Perry strode off toward his cubicle. Guy stood there and watched him. After a moment he walked off as well.

APRIL 21

24

Guy bent in supplication near a PC sitting stripped on the carpet of the business floor. The housing of the PC lay on its side like a dead dog, exposing the guts of the computer. A Phillips-head screwdriver with a worn rubber grip lay nearby. Guy was re-installing Windows and all its applications into the computer, which at some point this morning had had its memory wiped out as cleanly and completely as Carthage after the Third Punic War. The Wednesday bustle of the floor went on.

The computer’s owner, a burly 40-year old named Randy, sat gloomily in his seat and ran a meaty hand through his graying Prince Valiant hair. He wore the same kind of ‘Who, me?’ expression people occasionally get when their car breaks down on the expressway. Randy papered one wall of his cubicle with yellowing “B.C.” comics cut out of the newspaper, and there was a small radio on his desk that just now was broadcasting the bellicose tones of a local version of Rush Limbaugh, a man who could somehow denounce Bill Clinton, Internet pornography, the National Endowment for the Arts, and publicly-owned utility companies, all in the same tangent. Guy got off his knees and keyed in the installation. Then he looked at Randy and raised his eyebrows.

“What happened?”

Randy shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “I was working on something about an hour ago and everything just quit.”

So the computer had ‘just quit’. The drones always had explanations like these for the vagaries of the computers they relied on for their livelihood. Computers were always ‘just quitting’. Or they ‘didn’t want to work’. Or they were ‘acting fucked up’. There was never anything concrete he could go on from these stupid-

Easy, slow down there, Guy suddenly thought. He sat there for a moment, cooling his brain with mental ice water

I need a Blue One

and he gave Randy a look. Sometimes the game had to be flushed out this way, that’s all.

“It just quit.”

Randy nodded. “That’s right.”

“So you’re just sitting there, doing whatever, minding your own business… what?” Something in Guy’s head, shorted out briefly. “What is it you do here, exactly?”

Randy said something Guy did not hear.

25

“And without any kind of warning- on its very own accord, if I’m hearing you right,” Guy continued lugubriously, “the computer just spontaneously decides on its own to cannibalize all of its memory?”

Randy’s face reddened like a rare steak. He nodded slowly, giving Guy a darkening look. “Yeah. That’s what happened.”

“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Guy said. “What did happen, really?”

The thunderclouds on Randy’s face thickened. The dude on the radio, in a neat slight of hand, was blasting NAFTA and free-trade protesters at the same time. Randy glared at Guy.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Yes, I’m calling you a liar, you fucking lying sack of shit, liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as-

Guy fetched a sigh. “I’m just saying-“

“Because if you are, we can step outside for a minute and we can talk about what a liar I am out there, how about that?”

“Look, I’m just saying that computers don’t usually do that kind of thing, and there doesn’t seem to be-“

“Hey, I’m not the so-called computer expert, man. That’s you.” Randy took a pen from a cup on his desk and twisted it in thick fingers. “I just need you to fix the damn thing. I don’t give a shit how it happened.”

Three images clicked through Guy’s head like travelogue shots on an old Fisher-Price Viewfinder. One was of Randy in a high school football uniform, circa 1978, #70, a neck roll round his collar, hair over his ears, and a smug smile on his face. Then a snapshot of Randy’s fat body doing a boneless scarecrow flip after being hit by Guy’s SUV, thumping to the pavement, eyes open and lifeless and staring. Then the strongest shot, the money shot, of Randy running a magnet up and down the top of the PC, erasing the cumshots, threesomes, orgies, straight hardcore fucking, and all else that was Unsavory, Unprofessional, and otherwise present on the computer. The image hung in Guy’s mind for a long moment. Than his eyelids clicked and it was gone. The installation continued.

“Hey?”

“What?”

26

“Why did you guys have to strip all the games off my computer?” Randy demanded. “What kind of shit is that, partner?”

“It’s a company decision.” You got the memo, Guy thought resentfully. But so what? Nobody ever read anymore anyway. They didn’t write either. E-mail had a fall-of-the-Roman Empire effect on the literacy of just about everybody who used it.

“It’s shit.”

“You know it wasn’t my idea. Why are you complaining to me?”

“I’m not,” Randy said, but of course he was.

Ten minutes later Guy trudged slowly back into his office, closed the door gently, and sank wearily into his seat. He squeezed his eyes. Then he opened them slowly and gazed at his phone. A red light was blinking urgently- a message. Guy rolled open the desk drawer on its smooth casters and fished out a small bottle. The bottle rattled bonelike with its contents- shiny round red pills. The Crimson Tide. Guy removed the childproof cap off the bottle and, with two fingers, removed a Crimson Tide, popped it into his mouth, and dry-swallowed it. Crimson Tide’s voice was the booming twang of a Southern football coach (not a head coach- perhaps a red-faced linebackers’ coach, with a crew cut and a hairy gut bursting over tight polyester shorts), as opposed to the clipped English tones the Blue One employed. The Blue One was a soother. Crimson Tide was a kick in the slats, and a kick in the slats was surely what he needed right now.

Jeni’s voice came in bright and chipper on the voice mail. Her level of sweetness and light always increased and decreased in proximity to Guy. Now, separated by miles of land, highway, and phone line, she sounded positively radiant.

“Hi, baby! Hope your day is going well! Just wanted to let you know, that you need to drive down to the mall sometime before we go out to dinner with Doug and his fiancée on Friday and pick them up something nice. Give me a call on my cell when you get down there, and I’ll tell you what to get. Okay? Bye, sweetie!” Click.

Guy stared out at the window. The wind shook the trees, and they nodded and swayed, seeming to doubt him. He swiveled back around and closed his eyes again, closed them against the muffled sounds of the company.

You need to. You want to. You have to. Need to. Have to. Want to. Guy had been hearing those words for a very long time- ever since he was a child. He could remember his mother and father telling him those things, back in his misty memories, and it burned him even then, though he wasn’t sure why. Now, however, as he sat here in his shirt and tie, looking at his “office books”, the words seemed to dig and claw at him more than ever. Heck, look at all the things in his office he needed! He needed this desk. Needed the computer, and the Palm Pilot, and the cell phone. Needed a ‘plan’ for the phone. Needed a brand new operating system on his computer every two years. Needed that car. Needed

27

this job. That’s needed. Not wanted. Not desired, hoped for, wished for. Not the candy of childhood dreams. Everything he had, all this plastic and metal and synthetic fabric that engulfed him, was stuff he needed. Supposedly.

That was the biggest difference between childhood and adulthood, he thought. In childhood, you could disobey, could answer the commands with a truculent frown and a sharp, cracking “No!” What could happen? Groundings? Bed without supper? Not allowed to go on the field trip to Standing Rock, or the water treatment plant, or wherever. Worst-case scenario: Dad’s belt (almost never), Mom’s palm (a little more than that), but what after that? Back to normal. The concentric ripples created by childhood disobedience were small and fleeting.

What would happen if he, Guy Anderson, Certified Network Engineer, suddenly stuck out his lower lip, crossed his arms over his chest, and cried, “No!” What would happen to his office? To the condo? To the bank accounts, the stocks, and all the financial pies in which his digits were stuck? The SUV?

Jeni?

His sanity was still his prerogative, and he had given passing thought in the past to “having” a breakdown, letting all the responsibilities he was holding up suddenly crash to the floor. He pictured himself calmly parking the SUV by the side of the interstate, getting out, and walking blandly away, his jacket slung over a shoulder, squinting into the afternoon sun, startled motorists craning their necks to gawp at him as they whiz by. Or suddenly getting up from his desk even as the phone rang, locking his office with a brief rattle of keys, and striding through the company floor, down the elevator, and on through the polished marble foyer and out the glass doors into the afternoon sun. Or sliding out of the $899.99 polished oak double bed he and Jeni shared, padding on bare feet through the darkened condo and out into the night, his footfalls silent against the sounds of the dark and cool on wet grass. He thought of orders unfilled, tasks undone, meetings unattended, loans defaulted. Of being a deadbeat, a bum, a shirker, less than a man- all the labels they used to keep him fastened securely to the rails.

When Guy was a boy, he and his parents drove down to Atlanta to visit some college friends of theirs, and on the way south they had spent a day in Chattanooga. Guy had climbed to the top of Lookout Mountain, 2,000 leg-burning feet up wooded paths to the summit. It was a warming, misty March morning, and Guy leaned over the metal rail and gazed out into the fog. He could faintly see the wide bend of the Tennessee River through the murk, and he wondered about- for a brief second actually considered- the jump. What would it be like, before the inevitable crash? Would he simply plunge like a stone? Would he soar past the racing mountain? Scream? Smile sweetly and shut his eyes and fold his arms over his chest? As he thought, he let his toes hang over the rocky edge, letting chattering stones slide off.

What would it be like to jump now?

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He was willing to ponder on this all day, to sit quietly and muse on the possibilities of total breakdown, a tsunami breaking over his whole life and washing it away, a silent Krakatoa of balkiness exploding from the dormancy of his office. He glanced over at a picture of himself and Jeni, taken at Epcot a couple of years ago. The Guy in the picture wore a Hawaiian shirt and had a toothy grin plastered on his face as he stood with his arms around Jeni, who was also smiling. Flesh-and-blood Guy regarded Picture Guy for a moment. Picture Guy seemed to leer at him, Go on, man, jump, take the plunge, for Chrissakes it’s only your life, it’s not like it counts for anything, go for it-

The phone rang.

Come on, man, fuck the phone, just go-

The phone rang again.

Crimson Tide barked up into the fray. ANSWER THAT GODDAMNED PHONE, BOY! YOU GOT UP HERE, YOU PUT THAT TIE ON, YOU SIT ON YOUR FAT ASS IN THIS OFFICE, SO QUIT LOLLYGAGGIN'’AN’ ANSWER THAT-

Picture Guy was silent again, his frozen grin seemingly regretful. Whatever, man. Your funeral.

With a finger that trembled a little bit, Guy pressed the button on the phone.

“Guy Anderson?” Back to work. And the work diverted him, made him calm and busy, but no matter what he did that day, the image of a shiny steel magnet flying low over the computer never quite escaped his mind.

APRIL 22

During the halcyon early days of their courtship (a time which, to Guy, might have taken place sometime between the War of Austrian Succession and the invention of the cotton gin), Jeni used to breathlessly say that her and Guy were “connected”, in a spiritual, soul sense. She would grab his hands and look into his eyes and say excitedly, “It’s like we’re connected! Like we’re meant to be!” Actually, she had said it once, during a rare drunken night at a local bar, but still. Guy had agreed (or at least, the area below his belt had agreed, as it stiffened into a ramrod salute). Nowadays, they still were connected, but no longer in any kind of meaning other than the one espoused by cell phone commercials. Like Jack Cates and his woman in 48 Hours, you could measure the depth of Guy and Jeni’s devotion by the size of their phone bill.

Like now, for instance. It was seven o’clock, and Guy found himself in a position that he never quite anticipated being in as a strapping youth. He was standing in shirt and tie, in a gift shop called Unforgettables, in a shopping mall, talking to his fiancée on a cell

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phone and looking at baubles to buy the couple they were having dinner with the next night.

The couple in question consisted of a man named Doug, who worked with Jeni, and a woman, presumably Doug’s main squeeze. Doug was a lantern-jawed gent of about thirty who had worked under Jeni for six months, and just lately a powerful suspicion of Doug and what he meant to Jeni had begun to develop in the hidden recesses of Guy’s mind. There really wasn’t anything concrete to back up Guy’s suspicions- just the kind of feeling dogs seem to get when there is a tornado forming nearby. Jeni talked about Doug- all the time. She talked about how good of a job he was doing at work. She talked about how he dressed. The anecdotes he told at work that day. Jeni liked to tell random, meandering stories in which Doug played roles of ominous import. She once spun a yarn for Guy, over Pop Tarts, that had something to do with there being a power outage, and no phone line, and Doug going out in the rain and using eight different pay phones in order to order a pizza. At least, that’s how the story sounded to Guy.

At first, Guy couldn’t figure out why Jeni was saying these ridiculous things, telling these stories, and expecting him to be interested. It actually took a few tries before she was able to kick the meaning of her musings into his pill-addled brain.

Guy knew that Jeni didn’t talk about him to her work buddies as much as she talked about Doug to him. He trailed her gimp-like to employee get-togethers, and all the people had to snap their fingers before they remembered his name. Guy didn’t want to hear whatever she was saying about him, anyway. He was sort of afraid to.

“I don’t know what he likes, Jeni.” Guy said. He was staring at the walls of the shop, which were lined with candles, candlesticks, candelabra, baskets, wines, wine baskets, wine bottles you put candles in… the air of the shop was a thick miasma of votive candle smell. He felt light-headed.

“You know what he likes, I already told you!” Jeni’s voice, reeding over the line. “He would like something that can go on his desk at work!”

When he was still in school, Guy temped in the offices at some sheet metal company in an eastern suburb. For a while (a very brief while), the shipping and receiving manager, a fellow named Mooney, had kept a 12-inch white rubber dildo on the corner of his desk. Guy asked Mooney where on Earth he had gotten such a thing. Mooney replied that he had gotten it in the Philippines, where he also got his wife. Anyway, the dildo talked. If you grabbed it around the shaft and gave it a healthy squeeze, it would moan romantic entreaties like, “Oh, yeah, fuck me, you big stud!” in a Stephen Hocking drone. Guy considered telling Jeni about the dildo, but decided not to. Besides, there was nothing like that in this store. Guy scanned the shelves, seeking something to catch his eye.

“It all looks the same”, Guy said plaintively.

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Jeni gusted a sigh into the phone. “Okay”, she said. “Try and find something that is tasteful, doesn’t attract too much attention, yet at the same time calls attention to itself and fits well into an office setting. Guy, I’ve been in that store before. You shouldn’t be having so much trouble, really.”

Guy surprised himself by losing his patience. “This is a pain in the ass, Jen. I’ve been running around all day.” He surprised himself further by saying next, “Why don’t we just put a few hundred bucks in an envelope for them?”

“Are you serious?”

“Um…”

“Guy, quit being such a dumbass! That store is full of things you could buy that would be perfect. Now stop your bitching and grab something!”

“All right. Okay. Fine.”

“I ask so little of you, just this one little errand, this one favor for me, and all you can do is make a hash out of it. Why don’t you just-”

“All right!” Jeni wasn’t done yet, but Guy held the phone away from his ear and scanned the store industriously.

Ten minutes later, Guy, holding his cell phone in his right hand and a small white Unforgettables bag in his left, emerged from the mall into the chilly April gloaming of the mall parking lot. He briefly scanned the vast lot for his late-model Dodge Durango, and found it, glowing whitely like a fat gas-burning slug in the dusk, less than fifty feet away. The Durango was leaning in an awkward position, tilting backward, as if it was chopped in the rear deck like some kid’s hotrod. Since the car usually sat firmly and evenly on all four tires, Guy was puzzled. He was even more puzzled by the winking orange lights reflected on the Durango’s lifting front door and fender, and by the wheezing machine sounds that accompanied them. The Durango continued to lift, like a white hippopotamus gathering leaves in the gathering dark, and for the first time Guy saw the red-and-blue back deck of another truck, pulled ass-to-head with the Durango.

There was a man standing by the rising front fender of the SUV as well. He wore a heavy plaid button-down shirt, baggy brown Carhartt pants, and brown boots with untied laces resting on the concrete like rawhide worms. The man had a mesh ball cap tilted back on his shaved head, and as he turned, hearing Guy’s approaching footfalls as if on a seismograph, he showed a round face filled with a blonde Fu Manchu mustache and sharp, crackling aware green eyes that turned to dust any appearance of slowness and sloppiness in this man. The eyes quickly registered Guy’s trinket-shop bag, the cell phone, the $300.00 overcoat, and now Guy could now read the legend on the soft panel of the ball cap: DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP, written boldly, as if reassuring

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one and all that despite the eyes, yes this man is a mere tow truck driver. Because that was what he was, and that was what he was doing to Guy’s SUV.

Guy hurried toward the tableau. The tow truck driver stood and waited, wiping his hands calmly on a ball of waste. “What are you doing?” Guy asked. He intended it to sound forceful, demanding. It came out plaintive.

The driver’s answer to this query was eloquent and pointed. Never taking his eyes off Guy, he turned slowly away, pulled a lever on his truck, and sent the SUV into a steeper cant. The whine of the towing machinery intensified

“Why are you towing my car?”

The driver finished lifting the Durango and with great deliberateness began attaching the safety chains. He wore a serene, bland expression; paying no more attention to Guy than if Guy was a small child.

“Hey!” Guy yelled, with all the force he could muster. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on here?”

The word ‘hell’ brought the tow truck driver out of his private reverie. He turned to Guy and suddenly took a couple of strides toward him. Guy took an involuntary step backward, gushing a bile taste of shame in his mouth. The man suddenly stopped, and Guy stopped as well. Now the man fished in his shirt pocket, and brought out a business card made greasy and dog-eared with age. He handed it to Guy with a grimy, callused hand, yielding the card from fingers with blunt fingernails like sleeves rolled up for heavy work. Guy scanned the card. It said:

LIL JOHN’S TOWING SERVICE11285 MUTINEER AVENUE

Below that, a black-and-white picture of a tow truck, for the illiterate

As Guy scanned the card, he heard from ahead of him: “See the address? It’s where you can pick your car up. And don’t fucking cuss at me.”

Guy looked up, but all he saw were the wrinkles of skin in the man’s shaved neck as he opened the driver’s side door of his blue-on-red tow truck. Guy stood for a moment, aghast. Looked back down at the card. Shook his head. Looked back up at the driver, who apparently was Lil’ John himself.

“You won’t tell me why you’re towing my car,” Guy said slowly, intending to push a button, “but you will tell me how to fucking react to it?”

The button was pushed. Lil’ John stopped midway into his truck, looking down at the ground with a mixture of anger and sorrow. His round face crunched into a wince.

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Then he turned and strode back toward Guy. Guy took an involuntary step backward. Lil’ John got to within a foot of Guy and aimed a snub finger at him.

“I told you,” he said, slowly, like a dam struggling to hold back a torrent, “don’t… fucking… cuss at me.”

“You’re cussing!”

“Wrong!” Lil’ John barked, quite as if he was John McLaughlin hearing a contrary opinion. “I use these words in conversation. You’re using them on purpose.”

He walked back to the truck, began swinging himself aboard the worn bench seat, than stopped again. He turned back and regarded Guy calmly now, patiently, like a wayward pupil.

“I wasn’t telling you how to react”, he said, gripping the rearview mirror of his truck with one hand and gesturing floridly with the other. “I was telling you how to handle yourself. Your grasp of cursing is very superficial.” And with this last, he slid into the truck and slammed the driver’s side door. Guy stood there for a moment as the coughing roar of the old wrecker’s engine filled his ears. He looked at his Durango, hanging mutely from the tow truck’s back, awaiting its imprisonment. Then Guy walked quickly to the wrecker’s door and banged on it with a fist. Lil’ John turned his head promptly to face him, looking as if he quite expected Guy to do just this. Yes? The blue eyes asked.

“Can’t you tell me why you’re towing it?” Guy asked.

“Computer glitch!” Lil’ John replied happily, his voice loud but smooth over the choppy rumbling of his truck’s engine. “Happens all the time. Decimal gets misplaced someplace and your leasing company orders repos on all its cars.”

He squeezed the transmission lever with a greasy hand and dropped it into Drive.

“About 95% of the time we know it’s a mistake, so usually we’ll wait a few days before we tow.” He squinted at Guy, as if declaring him guilty of an unnamed crime. “But the way I see it, taking this Fisher-Price toy of yours is never a mistake.”

He stepped on the gas and the truck lurched into gear, spitting blue smoke from his exhaust as it dragged the bigger Durango out of the parking lot, looking for all the world like an ant dragging an enormous leaf across the ground. Guy stood and watched his SUV being trundled off. He stood by himself in the parking lot for a moment, than turned and slowly returned to the curb where the lot and sidewalk met. He sat down; setting the white Unforgettables bag (Doug’s precious gift in there, can’t let it meet harm, no no no) on the curb beside him, and began running through the memory of his cell phone. Its’ pale green figures illuminated the phone numbers stored in the memory:

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JENI’S PHONE330-672-1472

DR. SHIVARI’S OFFICE330-666-5665

JENI’S WORK440-232-2121

Guy sensed the cold ice feeling of seeing these three figures barren green on black LED, those three alone. He being twenty-six, wizened, and having three lousy numbers! The anger cut through the area usually fogged up by the Blue One and struck his brain with a force that made him blink. He suddenly reared back and heaved the phone like it was an old German potato masher grenade. The little monochromatic gadget flew end over end, catching its silver overlays with winks of light in the almost-faded day, and smashed on the hot top parking lot, scattering its plastic guts in a clattering radius. Guy waited until the tiny clatter was finished, snatched the white gift bag and got to his feet. He cut hard right and stalked off toward the greenbelt and the expressway beyond.

Guy figured that Jeni would be unhappy about the towing of the Durango, but even more unhappy about the destruction of the phone. He was right. Having accepted the fate of the SUV more or less with equanimity (at least by her standards), Jeni proceeded to use the ghost of the phone to knock Guy about the head and shoulders.

“I can’t believe you could just lose control of yourself like that!” she squawked over the soft hum of her own Beetle’s engine. She was transporting Guy to the address on the business card. “Did you really think throwing the phone was going to solve anything?”

Jeni’s father was a lieutenant with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s department down in Cincinnati. He was the kind of fellow who, upon finding a half-ounce baggie of marijuana in some stoner’s Microbus, would shake the sack in the red-eyed perp’s face and ask, with a faux expression of honest puzzlement on his face, “What’s this? What is this? Oregano? Are you making spaghetti? Is this catnip? Is this…” and on and on.

Jeni went on and on. “You do realize that that phone you threw, is the only way I have of getting a hold of you just in case something goes wrong during the day. What if something was to happen and I needed to get in touch with you?”

Guy frowned. “Like what?”

Jeni rolled her eyes. “Well, if I have an accident, or car trouble, or- oh! What if something happened at my job? Like if someone came in and started shooting or something?”

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Guy didn’t think his presence on the other end of a phone line would do much to hinder the progress of an unstrung salary man hosing the building down with gas-tipped AK-47 slugs, but he held his tongue. Jeni was not keen on being interrupted while talking. “And what if you got in trouble during the day? What if you got your car towed again and you didn’t have a quarter for the pay phone?”

“I didn’t ‘get my car towed’, someone towed it.”

“Whatever.”

The Beetle was heading down a steep hill into a dark valley, the grimy, industrial, unkempt section of the city. Headlights illuminated drab housing projects, small factories with cold smokestacks and panes of glass missing from their skylights like extracted teeth, smoke-and-wine shops with bars on the windows and malt liquor ads plastered on the outer walls. Older cars- A Nixon-era Pontiac, rusty Chryslers, Cadillac’s the size of cabin cruisers- lined the streets. Jeni looked out the window and shivered. Guy felt like he was with Charon, crossing the River Styx.

“God!” Jeni exclaimed. “This neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone!” Guy heard the phrase ‘demilitarized zone’ and realized with perfect clarity that Jeni would always use this exact phrase to describe the neighborhood. Didn’t matter if she talked to three people, or thirty, or three hundred. This gloomy stretch of urban fastness would always be ‘like a demilitarized zone’.

Using the same descriptive phrases ad nauseum was just one of the many little traits Jeni had, that had for a while now been sawing and filing industriously on Guy’s frayed nerves. There were quite a few. She laughed hysterically at Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. She didn’t do fellatio anymore- she thought it was “gross”. She once called Ben Stiller “the funniest man alive”. She referred to Dave Matthews chummily as “Dave”. She-

Guy was fully aware that he wasn’t exactly The Catch of the Day either. He reluctantly imagined himself in full screen, slouched in the suede passenger seat of the Beetle, and what he saw, in vivid relief against the cream backdrop of the seat, was not pretty. He was sallow. His paunch pulled up anchor in his prostate position, pressed against the fabric of his shirt, drooped ever more over his belt. At that moment, Guy resembled a bathroom rug that had been soaked with dirty sewer water and left to dry in the sun, and he honestly couldn’t blame Jeni for losing whatever interest she had shown in him.

“Guy, where is this place again?”

Guy extended the greasy business card. Jeni ignored it.

“Guy, I am not going to take that dirty-ass card. Tell me the address.”

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Guy’s brain reddened a bit, than subsided. Bit of the Blue One left to draw off of. “11285 Mutineer.”

“Mutineer? Nice name”

She didn’t really mean it. She glanced at the Unforgettables bag. “What did you get?” She dug around in there, saw what was concealed inside the bag, and nodded, somewhat satisfied. Guy glanced back at Jeni, briefly, than glanced back out the window, watching the belly of the city slide by.

Lil’ John’s Towing consisted of a small, ramshackle frame house, painted in aging yellow done to grime and peel. A single blue-and-red tow truck, an old GMC- the truck that had taken custody of Guy’s Durango, presumably- was parked out front on the bald dirt of the house’s tree lawn. A parking lot sprawled to the right of the house. Sitting in the lot, incongruous with the surroundings, were Cadillac’s, Lincolns, Lexus’s, Audis, BMWs. And Guy’s Durango, front tires splayed to the right like Jan-Michael Vincent’s El Camino in Hooper. Jeni pulled in front of the house and snapped the car into ‘N’. She drove an automatic tranny. Of course.

“Well, there it is,” she said. “Go get it.”

Guy mounted the rickety steps to the even more rickety front porch of the house. He could dimly hear the sounds of taunting, challenges, boisterous claims, all punctuated by the tinny whistles, squawks and squeals of a video game being played. Light filtered through musty curtains and cast a sour yellow light on the porch. The game issued boing boing sounds.

What game is that? Guy thought suddenly. He didn’t know, but it sounded familiar. He hadn’t played a video game since… God, he didn’t know how long it had been. Years, maybe. College. He had won fifty bucks in an NBA Live ’95 tournament held in his dorm. He thought he had a real moneymaking skill in the works, but Jeni had sold the Playstation the first month they were together. She had seen him playing with the system turned upside down, and she had gotten rid of it that evening. She said she thought it was ‘broken’.

There was a note on the door. The note was taped to an envelope that, in turn, was taped to the front door. The note read:

DEAR MR. DURANGO,YOUR KEYS ARE IN THE ENVELOPE

SIMPLY EXCHANGE THE NECESSARY PENALTY$80.00

FOR THE KEYS AND DRIVE AWAY

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Then this message:

NEVER TO RETURN UNTIL YOU HAVE REDEEMEDYOURSELF

Guy regarded the note for a moment. He peeked through the filmy curtain of the front window and into the living room of the house. Two men were inside. The driver of the tow truck- presumably Lil’ John- was seated on the coffee table, manipulating the ancient joystick of an Atari 2600 game system. He was puffing industriously on a cigarette. The other man, thin with scraggly blonde hair and a tight blue CHiPs t-shirt, sat on a ragged sofa.

He was poking away at a disemboweled computer.

Guy stood and stared in the window for a moment, just watching. He wondered what the blonde man was doing with the computer. He wondered what game Lil’ John was playing on the Atari. He-

HONK!!!

Jeni was now positively laying on the horn, with both hands. The windows of the Bug were rolled up, but she was yelling at Guy, he saw that sure enough. She left off the horn and began frantically gesturing toward Guy, bidding his return. Guy glanced back inside. The two men in the house did not seem to notice the sound of horns outside. If they did notice, they paid no mind.

There was a small clutch of Black Males congregated on the nearby street corner, all gazing intently on the tableau in front of Lil’ John’s house. No doubt they were the reason why Jeni was banging on the horn- every now and again she would snatch trepiditious glances in their direction- but to Guy, caught in the pale light of the porch like a bug on a card, they looked none too threatening. Actually, they looked rather amused at the sight of the red-haired harridan leaning on the horn of the $30,000 car while her beau looked around himself like the first sorry-ass man on Jupiter.

Guy waved his keys meekly at Jeni, and then walked around to the lot and his Durango. He didn’t think he would ever see this neighborhood, or the shabby yellow house at 11285 Mutineer, again. But he was wrong.

APRIL 23

“Hi, Jeni!”

“Hey, Guys!”

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Guy and Jeni had just arrived at the Old Sawmill, where they were to eat dinner with Doug and his squeeze. The Old Sawmill was just that- a sawmill, built during Civil War times to handle logs brought in from the Upper Great Lakes, closed in the economic contractions that hit the area during Vietnam, left to molder in its own brick shell for a couple of decades, then revived and rebuilt as a fancy restaurant specializing in steaks, chops, and other hearty foods, all delicious and all very expensive, at least by Ohio standards. Tonight the main dining room was just about filled with upscale Friday night custom, mostly younger couples in tie and dress, a few middle-aged men with iron hair and their younger wives with lacquered faces. A family of four sat in a booth near the door. Dad was reading a newspaper. Mom was talking on a cell phone. Brother wore headphones, and Sister was picking listlessly at a salad. Guy stared at them as he walked by, and the father caught his gaze and put his head back down. Guy was a little pleased. It had gotten kind of bad at work today. He had been fixing some woman’s machine and she said something, he couldn’t remember what, and he had snapped at her to just shut up and people had come out of their cubicles and were quiet. He had scuttled back to his office and closed the door, and for the rest of the afternoon he was sure that Ed or someone else would come in and ask what the hell the problem was, but nobody did. Guy hadn’t told Jeni that he was starting to flake out in rather large chunks on the job. As feeble on the stick as he was, any kind of forthrightness like that would be out of the question. But Jeni was pretty perceptive. She smelled his anxiety as they entered the restaurant.

“Don’t be a jackass tonight, Guy.” She warned him.

“What makes you think I’m going to be a jackass?”

“Because I can tell you don’t want to be here.”

“So why am I here?”

“Because you have to be.”

Greeting Guy and Jeni were Doug and his squeeze. Guy had seen Doug a few times, and he knew what would now transpire. Doug would stand up, grin with straight gleaming teeth at Guy and take his hand in a vice-like grip for three brief pumps. He would ask Guy ‘how it was hanging’ and then after this pleasantry would devote all his time and energy to making Guy’s fiancée’s thighs become wet and sloppy right in front of him. Guy would end each encounter mentally exhausted from having to act like he didn’t mind being humiliated.

Doug saw Guy approaching and stood up from his pre-dinner salad. He extended a manicured hand in Guy’s direction and shot him a grin.

“Guy!” he said. Then came the handshake, three pumps as quick and hard as pistons. “How’s it hanging, buddy?”

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“Okay.”

“Great, great.” Then he turned to Jeni, standing beside Guy with an expectant smile on her face. Doug made the teeth melt out of his smile and he extended his arms out a bit, as if in preliminaries to an embrace. Jeni mirrored the movement, clasping her hands and leaning back slightly, smiling back sunnily. Whenever the two did this, it looked like they were lifting an imaginary barrel.

“How’s it going, Doug?” she stated.

Doug actually showed Jeni a jaunty grin and shot her a thumbs-up, the card. Jeni reared her head back and laughed. Then, like kids who have tested lake water and found it hospitable, they plunged into an excited, mile-a-minute conversation about work. Guy heard names that registered but faintly with him. He and Doug’s squeeze (he didn’t know her name, he’d never asked, Jeni had never told him) stood uncomfortably there, by the dinner table, for a moment. She gave him a nervous smile. The girl was blonde, comely, with a lithe majorette’s body. She had a look of foggy confusion on her face that occurred too often to be anything but permanent.

“Hi,” she said in a soft near-whisper.

Guy nodded back. The foursome sat down at the table. Around them were murmured conversations and clinking cutlery, studded by the occasional whirring and burring of cell phones. Guy heard the sounds wash over him, amplified by the lack of drugs. He felt more aware, more cognizant of colors and faces. There was a strange trembling him inside him, and he felt a bit dizzy. He heard Jeni saying his name in a contemptuous manner, than the sharp voice of Doug’s squeeze brought him back.

“Your car got towed? Oh, my gosh!”

The girl was looking at him, wide-eyed. She turned to Jeni. Jeni was watching him with jaundiced eyes. The girl asked, “What happened?”

“Oh, you’d have to ask him.” Jeni said. She shot Guy a withering look. “While you’re at it, ask him why his cell phone is lying in a million pieces in the parking lot up at the Mall.”

Guy could almost hear the whine of neck machinery as the girl turned her head back toward him. “Oh, my gosh!” she repeated. “What happened?”

Guy broke from Jeni’s gaze and gave the girl a wintry smile. “I heaved it out of consternation.”

“Wow…”

“Yeah, wow, you child.” Jeni’s voice sounded like her face.

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Doug clucked sympathetically. “Man, I’d be pissed about the phone,” he said, quite as if the thing had thrown itself across the parking lot, away from his unwilling hand. “What plan are you on?”

Guy honestly didn’t know what to say to that, so he just kind of glazed at Doug, giving a little half-shrug. Jeni turned to Doug as well, giving an embarrassed smile and a dismissive wave of a hand. She’s embarrassed for me. Guy thought dully. No, not for me. Because of me. At me. Jeni reached over and squeezed Doug’s hand in hers.

“How’s everything going on the job, big guy?”

Doug flashed his white teeth in a grin, thankful to be treading on welcome ground. “Great. Just picked up three new accounts on the West Side, so I’m really busy.”

“Oh, yeah,” Doug’s squeezed chimed in. “Sometimes I can go for days without even talking to Doug.” She giggled. “It’s like he’s in the Navy or something.”

Jeni shot the girl the kind of sympathetic look one gives to a child with a learning disability who is drooling on her shoes. She looked back at Doug. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” she sighed. “Some days it seems like I don’t even have time to talk to all the people who want to buy.”

Jeni reached under the table and pulled out the white Unforgettables bag. Guy was faintly surprised that she had not handcuffed the bag to her wrist, like a suitcase full of heroin. She slid the back over to Doug. They shared a smile, just between the two of them.

“Maybe this will help those long days seem a little easier.” Jeni told Doug.

Doug ignored the bag- he was too busy sharing his smile with Jeni. So the squeeze took it. Guy saw a girl server (servestress?) go walking by and heard the rustle of the bag being opened. He watched the girl walk out the door to the patio. He heard the squeal of the squeeze as she pulled the small soapstone replica of Pontefract Castle (limited edition, retailed for $24.99) out of the white bag. She stared at it myopically, turning it this way and that. “Oh, my gosh!” she exclaimed for a record-breaking third time. “That is so nice of you guys! Wow! Isn’t that sweet, honey?”

Doug didn’t even look at the squeeze. He just nodded absently and favored Jeni with a slow, savory smile.

“Sure is,” he said.

“This will look so good on the desk in your office!” the squeeze cried, as excited as if she had been with Alex Fleming the day he found the healing mold. Doug continued to ignore her. He looked at Guy and nodded, flashing a grin.

40

“Thanks, Guy.”

Guy suddenly had an urge, sudden and surprisingly powerful, to pick up the four-inch serrated steak knife lying in front of him and drive it into his own throat, and grind it around in there, shredding his muscles and cords into a red spurting mass before he had time to think about it. He suddenly saw- saw- the looks they would get on their face. He would only be looking at Jeni and their eyes could widen together, but he would see them all, the color dropping out of their faces, the breathless scream of the squeeze next to him, Doug stumbling back in his chair, a napkin to his mouth, moaning, “Oh, Jesus Christ-”. Other diners, dropping what they were eating and when they saw this horror show they would panic themselves, get out of their chairs and stagger toward the door as if they could be in some way damned for seeing something so awful and bloody. He imagined a thick balloon of shock would inflate everywhere above the bloodletting and his eyes would bulge, his tongue reflexively wag out-

Guy suddenly pushed away from the table. It was time to go. Right now. He stood up, running a distracted hand through his lank black hair. His tablemates turned moon faces to look at him.

“Excuse me for just a minute please.”

Then he was walking toward the patio doors, walking fast like a man who needs to take a pee but doesn’t want to fuck up his dignity by breaking into a run. He vaguely heard Jeni start to complain about him again, wondering aloud what kind of man gets his car towed right out from under him in broad daylight in a mall parking lot, but Guy was beyond caring. He wanted to go out on the patio, look at the waterfall below, take a pill (if he could find one in his clothing), and hold off dying, though whether it would be for forty minutes, or forty years, he did not know.

The empty patio of the Old Sawmill hung directly over the rushing falls of the river, the falls that had given this elderly brick structure its original purpose. The air out here was cool, tinged with the vapor of the falls and the river, and Guy staggered out to the railing of the patio and sucked that cool air in like an elixir. Reflexively he reached into the pocket of his suit coat- what! Something smooth and small and round! He eagerly squeezed the little something, brought it out into the light and brought out a Blue One, a couple of pieces of lint clinging to it, a comfort among gum foils.

There is really no feeling akin to the one you get when you find unexpectedly something you really, really need. Whether it’s the degenerate gambler finding a wrinkled hundred in a pants pocket, whether it’s the boozer laying palsied hands on a long-lost fifth of bourbon, whether its the obsessive compulsive finding a new pair of shoes to tie and retie over and over and over again, well, there’s nothing quite like the pure unalloyed joy- no, not just joy, joy and relief- that bursts like a sunstorm when the

41

junkie gets his fix. He wanted to just pop that little pill into his gullet straightaway, but then Guy paused.

His sudden suicidal rage was dropping to a mutter. Wow! What emotions! He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a fit of clarity, raw feelings that came in vivid Technicolor and battered at the walls of his body with the force of typhoons. Puberty, maybe. He’d been sleeping for so long now, walking, talking, eating, working, shitting, but doing all these things in kind of a perpetual fugue state, numb to the old passions of his youth. He had always assumed that losing these kinds of emotions were simply part of growing up, a sign of maturation, like growing hair on your balls, or filling out income taxes. He thought the emotions were gone. Now he realized he was wrong, that all this while the old passions had been there, building, swelling like St. Helen’s. And if the way he had felt in the restaurant was any indication, they were not only there, but they were powerful- juiced up from their dormant years of sleep.

Guy looked at his hands, felt his thumping heart and beating brain. His hands clutched the cold metal of the patio railing, whispering over the smooth surface, hands that were always clever, hands needing only a signal to spring into action. He wondered what he could construct with his emotions and with his clever hands.

Wondered what he could deconstruct.

The Blue One was still resting placidly in the palm of his hand. He thought about the swirling inside him. He decided he’d think on it all later. Right now the siren song of the Blue One, its properly hectoring Sir Edward Grey tone, was too strong for him. He would pop this last pill and go back inside to whatever humiliations were waiting to be heaped upon him. He slid the pill between his thumb and forefinger and arced it toward his mouth.

“That’s bad for you, you know.”

The voice came out of the darkness to his right. Guy turned in that direction and saw the serving girl from the restaurant. She too was leaning on the patio railing, looking out over the wet rocks and splashing falls below them. She was smoking a cigarette that was a little more than filter and ember, and as Guy looked at her, trying to figure out how long she had been standing there, she calmly crushed the butt out on the railing and dropped it to the concrete floor of the patio. She looked up at Guy. The girl was young- eighteen, maybe nineteen. Guy raised his eyebrows.

“Come again?” Guy asked.

“Taking medicine when you’re not sick.”

The girl took a step toward Guy and Guy’s heart fluttered in time with the whisper of her foot. Guy saw her for the first time. She was short, several inches shorter than Guy, who was only about 5’8” or so himself. She had dark skin and thick tresses of

42

jet-black hair that shone with blue highlights in the white light of the patio. He couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, exactly, but he could tell that they were big and dark and looked deep enough to dive into. Guy tried to smile at the girl, show some Black Velvet game. He set his face to look cynical, sophisticated, world-weary, but he came off as merely plaintive and whiny, because that was what he was. He bounced the pill up and down in his hand.

“I am sick.”

The girl took another step closer and looked keenly at Guy. He caught a whiff of her scent now, and she smelled like a cool spring morning breeze coming through an open window. She was small, but she had big, gently sloping breasts and round hips that strained at the clean white button-up shirt and black pants she wore. She was young, but there was something in her eyes, some kind of teasing merriment mixed with motherly warmth that covered Guy like a thick down blanket. Guy looked into her eyes and knew that his measure had been taken, that a chasm had opened up and he was already falling into it.

“You don’t look sick.” She said.

Guy tried to shoplift a glance at the girl’s body. She caught him, but she was considerate of his weakness. She merely reached into a black woven purse it and brought out a pack of Marlboros. She held the red pack out to Guy. Guy shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. I’d rather not undermine the health I have left.” He tried to sound distant and came off snooty instead. A sudden wave of self-loathing engulfed him and he thought why do I have to sound like such an asshole all the time? And especially in front of this girl, who is so-

The girl shrugged, seemingly taking no notice of Guy’s discomfiture. She got out a cigarette of her own, lit it with a match, and inhaled deeply. She gave Guy the keen look again and gestured toward his right hand clutching the Blue One.

“All I’m saying is if you’re going to do a drug, you might as well do one that’s sane.”

Guy frowned at the cigarette in the girl’s hand. “It’s sane to suck toxic smoke into your vital organs?”

The girl regarded the cigarette, gray smoke curling placidly up from its end. She appeared to consider what Guy had said. Than she shrugged again, dismissively. “Yeah. So my drug kills me once, and your drug kills you every day. Right?”

She smiled at him. Guy smiled back, wanly and a little uneasily. She took a drag off the cigarette, and the end glowed bright in the cool night air. The girl never took her remarkable eyes off Guy.

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“Know how I get this drug into my possession?” she asked.

“Sure,” Guy said warily. “You walk into the store and buy it.”

“That’s right.” She nodded toward Guy. “And you? How do you get your drug?”

“You’ve never had a doctor give you a prescription?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Guy looked at the girl for a moment, trying to see if she was playing a game on him. He decided he didn’t care one way or another. The girl regarded him, eyes large and interested, mouth in that small secret smile.

“I go my doctor. He checks me out- shines a flashlight in my eye, taps my knee, that kind of thing. He writes me a prescription. I take the prescription to a pharmacy, hand it to a pharmacist, and he gives me the drug. Until today, that is.”

“What happened today?”

“He cut me off.”

“How come?”

“He said he didn’t think I needed it anymore.”

The girl’s expression was sympathy vying with amusement. “Exactly my point.”

“What is your point?” It occurred to Guy that if this were a man talking to him, he would have long since retreated to the familiar misery of Jeni and the dinner table. He got the feeling that if this girl was talking about dead chickens, or the last episode of Futurama or the Wilmot Proviso; he’d still be standing here, listening.

The girl took another drag. “My point is,” she began, peering through Guy with those liquid black eyes, “that the most important thing we have in life is choice. I chose my vice.”

She regarded her cigarette, and then regarded Guy.

“Did you choose yours?”

Guy was silent. The girl took another couple of steps forward. Now she was right in front of him, and Guy could feel her soft bosom just barely brushing his chest. Almost unconsciously he sucked in his slightly protruding belly. The girl noticed. She smiled, amusement having devoured sympathy. Then she cast out a hand toward Guy’s face.

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The girl’s hand was small and smooth. She wore her nails sensibly short, with silver polish. Guy watched the hand as it came up and made contact with his cheek, caressing it, her fingers exploring the lines of his right face, moving up, feeling his temple hair, mapping his red right ear, and finally winding up on the back of his neck, where it lingered for an excruciating second and withdrew. Guy felt stunned, as if some soft, warm, beautiful cartoon anvil had just been dropped on his head. The girl stood looking up at him, gauging his reaction. He looked down at her, glassy-eyed. The girl nodded.

“That was a moment,” she told him clinically.

Guy was still mute. The girl broke his gaze and killed her smoke on the railing. Her voice seemed to silence the rushing falls below. “I’m a big fan of moments.”

“I can see you are too.”

She stuck a shapely hand out over the railing, catching fugitive spray from the falls.

“Moments are the important things. Obviously. This moment is the most important one in your life. You’re born in a moment. You die in one. Not the last one or the next one, either.”

Guy finally regained his voice. It wandered blearily back to him like a zealot coming in sunblasted and insane from the Judean desert.

“And when you run out of moments?” he asked.

“Everyone runs out,” the girl replied, unconcerned. “Worrying about death is just the mind’s way of telling us we’re not living.” She continued to gaze out over the river.

“You talk like a fortune cookie,” Guy heard himself say. The girl took no notice. She merely turned back toward Guy with the smile on her face. Held out in front of her was a fresh cigarette. Guy glanced at the cigarette, glanced at the girl’s face, and reached out. Quickly she pulled it back.

“Got a light?” she asked.

Guy shook his head. The girl sighed and dug through her black woven purse again.

“Of course you don’t.”

She rummaged about in the purse for a moment, speaking as she searched. Presently she came up with matches in a black book.

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“I don’t pretend to know anything about being a man.” She fired a match alight and lit the cigarette with it. “But a man with fire, and a man without it… I mean, there really isn’t much of a comparison, is there?”

She handed Guy the cigarette. He held it in his left hand. His right hand still clutched the Blue One. She glanced down at the pill, glanced up at Guy, and glanced out toward the river and the falls, suggestively. Guy smiled a little, tossed between the Scylla of the pill and the Charibydis of the cigarette. It suddenly dawned on him that he was standing at some sort of crossroads in his existence, the nature of which he was only dimly aware. Was there some kind of dichotomy between swallowing a pill and taking a burning drag off a cigarette? Some kind of fundamental difference, the splashing of cool water on emotions and the searing of the lungs? Was there-

“Guy!”

Boy, did he recognize that voice. The girl recognized it too- or, at least, recognized the effect the voice had on Guy. She watched him as he reflexively pitched the burning cigarette end over end, sparks flying, into the rushing falls. She gave him a quizzical, amused look, eyebrows arching. Then, like a buxom little cat, she slid forward, dropped the black book of matches into his breast pocket, and melted back into the night. Guy could see the glimmering white of her shirt, the shine of her eyes, and then she was gone. Just like that.

Jeni was standing there by the patio door, leaning against the doorframe with arms crossed, Jim West-style. She was giving Guy what he had come to think of as her “Ferris Bueller’s Sister” look- head thrust slightly forward, eyes squinted and sending out bolts of shrewish lightning.

“Who was that, Guy?” she demanded.

Guy shrugged.

“Nobody. Just this chick that works here.”

“Well, if you’re not too busy, maybe you can get back in here. I ordered your food and it’s getting cold.”

“What did you get me?”

“Jesus, Guy, I’m not going to stand out here in the cold and tell you what’s on your plate.”

Jeni whirled and went back inside. Guy pocketed the Blue One, now slick with sweat from his clutching hand, and followed. While he stepped through the door from the cool outside to the stuffy noise and light of the restaurant, a thought suddenly occurred to him.

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He had forgotten to ask the girl for her name. Just never thought to do it.

Guy ordered coffee after dinner. He went to the bathroom- twice. He actually pissed once, but the second time he simply marched a trail to the head, walked in, walked right back out and retraced his footsteps back to the table. He went through a pantomime of forgetting his wallet and his credit cards when it came time to pay the bill. All the while he would occasionally crane looks around the restaurant. He would try and sneak these looks by Jeni, but, although she was deeply occupied with Doug, she was still too quick and too smart for him. “Looking for someone, Guy?”

“Nope.”

They were there for another hour. Guy didn’t see the black-haired bread girl again.

Guy and Jeni drove home from the restaurant in silence. His fiancee was staring straight ahead, her face set in a hard Pat Summit glare, taking in the road, but Guy was preoccupied with the way his stomach felt. It was tightening inwardly in a way that felt familiar through cobwebs of memory. He could place it immediately. It was the way he had felt in seventh grade when he had contracted a feverish crush on a girl from his English class named Kristen Smith. Kristen was an inch-and-a-half taller than Guy, including her bangs, and she looked like Heather Graham’s character from License to Drive. She had haunted Guy’s nighttime thoughts for four months, all of it metronome swings between hazy ‘infatuation’ and gutter self-hatred, and by the end of it the whole thing had so polluted his ego and his spirit that for a week or so he listened to the Jets and had actually liked it. Yeah, Guy remembered.

There was an explosion of talking to his left. Jeni was talking about herself. Again. He knew he was self-obsessed, but all she ever did was talk about herself, so in his own mind, his egoism was justified.

“Doug thinks you’re really weird, Guy.” She shook her head, forced to agree. “He was talking about it while you were standing out there with what’s-her-name.”

He wondered why it was so important to Jeni that he sit there and watch her heap dirt on the rapidly filling grave of their so-called relationship. Maybe she wanted him there as a witness, to give testimony to what she no doubt saw as his culpability in the disaster. Or maybe she just wanted to humiliate him. He wasn’t sure. In fact, as he rode in the passenger seat of Jeni’s Acura, buffeted by her silence, he was increasingly unsure what he had seen in her in the first place. What’s more, he wasn’t sure he really gave a shit anymore. Feeling that tightening in his stomach seemed to matter so much more.

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But he could think on that ooey gooey Urkel-loves-Laura sap at a later time. There was some kind of buzzing energy in the car; Guy could feel it, and he presumed Jeni could feel it too- the kind of energy that permeates the hot air before a thunderstorm. He sensed that the silence between them was temporary, that the roar of guns and the carrion stink of battle would soon rend the air between them.

He was right. Jeni had no sooner closed and locked the door to the condo when she whirled and faced Guy, her long, red-nailed index finger aimed in his direction.

“Unbelievable, Guy! You leave my sight for, what? Five minutes? And I catch you hitting on some teenaged girl who works at the restaurant?” Jeni laughed, a semi-shrill, mocking sound. “Are you kidding me?”

“What are you talking about?” Guy snapped back. “Every time I stand next to a girl and make small talk, it constitutes hitting on her?”

“Yeah, it constitutes hitting on her when you’re staring at her with your mouth open hanging on her every word!”

Guy turned his back on Jeni and headed for the couch. He sat down, spread his arms over the back of the sofa, squeezed his eyes shut, and took a deep breath. He felt nothing, so he knew he was free to “feel” any way he liked with Jeni. He decided he felt calm, parliamentary. At least he did now.

“Look,” he began in calm measured tones; “it’s not like I was climbing all over her.” He flipped his eyes open and glared at Jeni. “I don’t know why I can’t talk to whomever I want.”

If Jeni caught the inflection of what Guy had just said, she did not show it. “You chose me, remember?” she replied, looking at Guy as if he had just peed his pants and was wondering why his leg was wet. “You made a commitment to me. I’m sorry if you can’t just renege on your commitments just because you got a hard-on over some eighteen-year old hoochie with a big ass.”

“Okay.” How did he feel like now? He felt like a couple of beers. Or more. He started to think about beer and broke it off. He looked up at Jeni. Shrugged. Waved a dismissive hand at her and stared up at the ceiling, muttering, “Ah, what the fuck’s the use.”

Jeni’s eyes narrowed. “What? What’s that, Guy?”

“Nothing.”

“No, say it. Obviously you have something on your mind.”

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So she wanted him to say it. Okay. Finally, time to take the offensive. Guy turned and aimed his own finger at Jeni. “You know what you are, Jen? You’re a fucking hypocrite.”

Jeni’s formerly narrow eyes widened. “I’m what?”

“You heard me just fine, bitch. Yeah, you heard me.” Oh, nice, baby. “You’re a lousy fucking hypocrite, and I’m sick of it.” He suddenly let off the brakes and let the anger buzz thick and red in his black-haired head.

“Guy-“

“You talk shit when I spend a few minutes talking to someone you don’t pre-approve. You always do. I don’t say shit when you make me run all over this goddamned state looking for a present for Plastic Man” Not true, but Guy was up off the couch now, circling the room around Jeni like a British dreadnought avoiding bombs. He felt like shucking and jiving, rattling and rolling, popping his fingers and tapping his toes. “I don’t say shit when someone at the BMV fucks up and gets my car towed while I’m out on this stupid fucking errand for you, and all you do is whine about how badly I’m putting you out on whatever it is you do when I’m not around.”

Jeni’s face colored.

“You ridicule me, you tarnish my name to people I don’t know, to people I do know. I go somewhere with you, I have no idea what those people have heard about me. Yet I say nothing to muss our tidy mood.”

“I don’t talk about you at work,” Jeni spat. “You’re not that important.”

“You know I am.”

Guy sensed rather than saw the walls and the lights around him to gradually color to a deep, rich, mahogany hue.

“And furthermore, don’t- and I myself stand in awe of my own moderation- I

don’t say shit when I have to sit at a dinner table and watch you and Plastic Man talk shop for two hours.” Guy stopped circling and looked slack-mouthed Jeni dead in the eye. “Heck, Jeni. I don’t even say shit about all the other stuff you two do.”

Guy knew he had dropped his payload dead center. All the color went out of Jeni’s face, just drained out like someone had pulled a plug in her neck. She blinked fast and shook her head.

“Look Guy, I don’t know what you’re implying, but”

“Ssh!”

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Jeni shushed, more out of surprise than anything else. Guy stood there in the center of the living room, a finger crooked loosely on the end of an outstretched arm, legs spread slightly, staged out like Edwin Booth. The room went briefly silent. Aahhh…

“YOU’RE FUCKING HIM! I KNEW IT!” Guy shrieked. He slapped his hands together with a shotgun crack and took three rapid steps toward Jeni. Jeni slid back on her heels. Guy grinned wolfishly. “He was just too pretty for you, wasn’t he?”

There was electric silence. Guy’s grin hung in empty air. Jeni still looked stunned, her eyes blank. Then color- dull red, like old bricks- began to flood back into her face. Her eyes sharpened. Then narrowed. Then, with android stiffness, she stalked over to the door, unlocked it, and flung it open.

“GET OUT!” she screamed.

Guy stood there for a second, a bit off balance. Didn’t she want to argue anymore?

“GET OUT!” she repeated, louder this time. Outside a dog barked. Guy could vaguely hear other doors opening, murmured conversations from outside. Guy craned his neck to look out the door, from which issued cool night air.

“You’re kicking me out?” he asked.

Jeni nodded. “Get the fuck out of here, Guy.” She was quieter now. He hair had started to slip out of place, and there was a violent swirl behind her eyes, of anger, or hurt at Guy’s callousness, or pain at what was going down the drain- four years of hard work she had done on this fool- or maybe all of these things and something else. Relief, maybe. That’s what he was feeling.

“Right now?” He asked.

She nodded again. Guy glanced around at the condo, a new stranger’s residence, someone else’s home he had invaded. He glanced back into the hallway leading to the bedroom and the bed they had shared for four years. Then he looked back at Jeni and shrugged. The door yawned open behind him. All he had to do was walk right through it.

What the fuck.

“Okay,” he said.

50

APRIL 24

Guy drove down the darkened streets of the city in his reclaimed Durango, away from the condo and away from his life. There were a few of his belongings- some clothes, a pair of shoes, and a toaster oven- scattered about the back seat and back deck of the SUV. Jeni had thrown pretty much everything he owned out the front door of the condo and onto the grass within about ten minutes of giving him the bum’s rush. She would hurl various pieces of what-have-you at Guy, and he would duck the missiles until they landed, at which point they reverted back to their usual status as inanimate personal objects and Guy would scoop them up. It was like their final little game of courtship. While she did this, she also told several lurid stories concerning trysts her and Doug had enjoyed, most of them in a motel out by the Interstate near the company where they worked. Jeni claimed, in so many words, that Doug had a much bigger penis than Guy and displayed far more skill in bringing her off than Guy ever had. Guy had no reason not believe her on either count. She also insisted that the home-cooked dinners Guy thought he had been enjoying after work were in fact ordered from a local caterer’s. Guy believed that as well.

Guy was cruising by a small convenience store when he suddenly got a notion in his head. He pulled into the store, its lights still glowing open in the late night, parked, and walked inside. The bell over the door dinged briskly. He headed straight to the counter, manned by a single Hispanic man with a black brush mustache. Guy drummed his palms on the counter top.

“Pack of Marlboros, please.”

“Soft or box?” the counter man asked.

“Huh?”

“Soft pack or hard pack?” the counter man explained. Guy was grinning disheveled ignorance. The counter man looked at him impassively. Probably thought there was an under-aged girl in Guy’s car outside.

I wish there was.

“Um, box.”

The counter man reached up, his short stature straining, and brought down the Marlboros in their red-and-white box, familiar to even a novice like Guy. He placed the box on the counter.

“$2.05” the counter man said.

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Guy placed a five on the counter and the man made change. He walked back out of the store, got back into the Durango, and drove toward the city, toward his work site. Ten minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of the Company, empty at 12:45 on a Saturday morning. He parked, killed the engine, and climbed out of the car. He lay on the hood of the car, looked at the stars and the moon, and practiced smoking. And he thought about the girl from the restaurant, whatever her name was.

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Part II:

April 26-May 7

“You gonna get involved… or I’m gonna knock your ass out, too. Make a choice.”

- “Friday”

“A single man with a match can destroy and cut off communications.”

- Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman

“Too young to fall asleep,Too cynical to speak,We are losing it,Can’t you tell?”

- Radiohead

53

APRIL 26

Monday morning was a time for hurting heads. Heads fogged and clouded from lack of sleep, heads pounding and pulsing from one last Sunday night attempt to salvage the weekend, heads crabby and crying from the realization that it was just the outer cusp of a 40-hour week that stretched out like an eternity. With the head went the body- a body tired and heavy and bloated from the weekend and its exertions, or lack of them. Right now, at 8:51 on Monday morning, a couple dozen cranky heads and queasy bodies queued up to the outer doors of the company building, still locked and buttoning up its sleeping innards. The offices, gleaming from their weekend maintenance, were the only things around here that looked fresh and well rested.

At 8:54 an onyx 1999 Acura coupe pulled into the parking lot and headed straight for an open parking space on the edge of the still-dewy grass belt separating the lot from the building, zipping right past Guy’s Durango, sitting in an outer space, foggy with a weekend of dew and April showers. The Acura pulled into the space, stopped, quit, and its driver’s side door opened and out issued Perry Mechanic, resplendent in clean white and sharp blue, a pair of sunglasses over his eyes to block the slanting morning sun. He held a black leather briefcase in his left hand. He surveyed the scene for a moment, activated his car’s alarm with a high cheep-cheep, than stepped forward, guiding his own way through the crowd at the door, blacker and taller than the rest of them. No fatigue or dragginess betrayed his movements, which were as smooth and liquid as always.

Diana from Customer Service looked up at Perry with eyes that were purple and puffy from fatigue. She shook her head. Perry smiled blandly.

“Rough night?” he asked. Diana nodded.

“I went out to Rockin’ Joe’s with some of my old sisters last night. They have dollar-twenty five Long Island Iced Teas on Sundays.” Diana briefly tabulated in her head. “I had like six. Got so wasted. Didn’t get to bed until, like, three.”

Diana’s voice was rusty and clogged. “I don’t know why we have to come in so early anyway. I could come in at noon and stay till eight and do the exact same job I’m doing right now.”

“Don’t know what to tell you,” Perry replied. Which was the truth.

Diana eyed Perry up and down. “I hate you.” She said.

“Why?”

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“Because you always look so sharp, even on Monday.”

“I’m a morning person.”

Perry swiped in and walked with easy strides to his cubicle, located on the edge of the work floor near the offices. The work floor at 9:04 a.m. on a Monday was not subdued. The aphids might have suffered from headaches and hangovers, but they sensed they were among fellow sufferers, and typical of those who feel pain and share it, they were not averse to discussing their suffering and actually kind of wallowing in it. They hadn’t seen one another in two whole days either. There was lots of catching up to be done. And considering that Ed usually wheeled his black ’00 Cadillac Sedan De Ville into the company lot around 9:15, there wasn’t much time to do it. So there was an almost frenzied gaiety to the early-morning socializing, like Europe in 1913.

Perry settled in at his cubicle, booting his computer, turning on his multi-line telephone. The space was bare, free of all the yellowing comic strips, “funny” messages, and family baubles that crowded the other workspaces the aphids occupied. A lot of these people turned their cubicles into a kind of second home, a nesting place. Not Perry. This cubicle was not his home. It would do as a temporary bivouac, but he had eyes on a bigger place in a loftier space.

He’d had eyes for a more comfortable and lofty perch inside this company for a good long while, and he had little doubt that within an exceedingly short period of time he would have achieved that perch. Why wouldn’t he? His rise in the company ranks thus far had been nothing short of meteoric. For it to stop now would be to almost violate a law of physics. No, the question of whether or not Perry would rise to the loftiest heights wasn’t a question at all. The only question, really, was when.

Perry didn’t know when the when would be. He had more foresight than the average man, but foresight ain’t sight. He thought it might take quite a while, and he was willing to wait that long. The boardroom was clannish. They looked after and took care of their own, and they had the closed society’s fear and distrust of the interloper, which Perry certainly was. There had been precious few changes at the top of the chain. The clock moved slower up there. He would understand if the brothers would not immediately want to take such fellow as himself into their cabal.

Perry himself could only remember one case of a corporate suit being handed walking papers. There was an upper-management fellow- the IT manager, actually- a couple of years back, a guy named Snyder. Perry couldn’t remember his first name (Rick or Ronald), but he did remember him being fairly typical- white man, salt-and-pepper hair, suit over paunch, with one of those standard blonde wives (her name was Greta, can you imagine?) who were all the Prom Queen of Sweet Valley High back in 1968 or ’70 or ’72 and have progressed naturally to their status as Dutiful White Collar Spouse. All in all, the picture of the old/new American normality. One day, Mr. Snyder came in unshaved, blue stubble dotting his face. The next day Mr. Snyder came in with two days of beard growth and his tie knotted sloppy like Rollie Massimino in OT. Then it was

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three days of beard, no tie, and now a faint smell started to issue from Mr. Snyder’s person. Perry had played sports in school, and he’d been in enough locker rooms to recognize body odor when he smelled it. A week of this went by. Two weeks. Then three. Still, everyone at the company continued to regard (or at least pretended to regard) Rick-or-Ron as just a normal fellow, never mind the stained clothes, the scraggly beard, the old sweat smell, and a rank miasma that had lately started to issue from the man’s mouth, a mouth that hadn’t even been on nodding acquaintance with a toothbrush in weeks.

They’d finally pinked Snyder after forty-three days of steady degeneration. Nobody ever knew what happened to him, or why he had flaked out like he did. There were lively speculation- drugs, infidelity, the usual- but nobody really knew. What they did know is that at the end he had started to come in with bruises, great purple sunrises on his cheeks and above his eyes, a multi-hued goose’s egg on his forehead. It looked as if a policeman had stood over him in bed and had methodically beaten him with a truncheon. Also, he had simply gone mute. Ceased to respond to the simplest questions. Would, in fact, stare at the questioner with clouded eyes, stare through him, sometimes with his mouth gaping open and once- Perry saw this himself, watched in awe from a hallway perch- with a silvery runner of drool coursing down his bearded chin. Perry thought at the time that it was like watching a documentary version of “Flowers for Algernon”, and that he wished he had a camera so he could go Errol Morris and film the fuck out of this man turning himself into a ruin, presto-chango. Anyway, after forty-three days a blue sedan marked with the words FREDERICKS SECURITY pulled into the lot and two uniformed rent-a-cops came into the building and bundled up Mr. Snyder and led him out of the building with no protest and put him into the back of the car and drove him off somewhere, and nobody at the company ever saw him again. And that was the last time anyone in upper management had been fired. The next day Guy Anderson was appointed the new IT manager and the ship of state rolled on unimpeded.

Perry thought that if, by chance, someone else flaked out on the job, it might be a very good thing for him. Even if someone really flaked out, and came in there armed with more than their weak slow bodies, well, Perry was pretty sure he could get out in plenty of time. Which was more than he could say for a lot of the aphids who slugged around in here.

There was a short rap at the cubicle wall. Perry looked up. Mr. Kirtley was standing there.

“How are you doing, Perry?” Kirtley asked.

“All right.”

Kirtley nodded and looked at Perry.

“Did you handle that thing the other day?”

“Yes.”

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“Good. That’s good work, Perry.”

Perry waved off the mild compliment. “No problem.”

Kirtley walked away. Perry reclined in his chair. So many of the aphids here tried to suck up to Kirtley. It was pathetic, really. At the get-togethers they would walk up to him with drinks in their hands and talk about golf, or the business, or they’d proudly break out their wallets and show off photos of wives; babies. The women- God, the woman! They’d drop office gossip on Kirtley, for Christ’s sakes. They’d come up and be catty and chatty and throw useless words that melted on Kirtley like snow on warm stone. They might as well have talked to a picture on the wall.

Perry remembered taking an African Political Science class in college. The instructor, a gangly, avuncular Rwandan named Jonathon Kiryabanda, claimed that you could always tell who the coming men were by looking at their places in the group photo each new junta took after the latest coup. Colonel such-and-such would start out all the way to the right, moving closer to the middle with each successive picture (and coup) until finally he stood proudly dead center; the presidential sash hung securely around his uniform blouse. The instructor had been talking about Yakubu Gowan in Nigeria, but Perry supposed that what worked in Africa could work for him here at the company. Here there were also allies in the junta that could assist him in his rise to power.

Who could be Perry’s ally here?

Kirtley?

Kirtley was a good friend to have- the best friend to have, by far. Not to put too fine a point on it, he literally had the life and death of every employee in the palms of his hands. After all, he ran the company (and had been running it roughly since the French and Indian War). But Perry didn’t need a patron. Shit, he was G-7. In the absence of a genuine place in the boardroom/junta, what Perry was seeking, were proxies. And Don Kirtley, with his tailor-made suits and skinned tanned bronze by either the sun or the heat and light of power, was nobody’s proxy. Perry thought that the likelihood of playing Geppetto to Kirtley’s Pinocchio was about as likely as the Cavaliers sweeping the L.A. Lakers in the NBA Finals.

He thought about the other suits. All middle-aged, all white, all heavy and sticky with salaries and stock options and retirement packages and fat wives and kids in school and those $240,000 houses that were popping up like toadstools everywhere. Would those guys see with his eyes, think with his thoughts, speak with his voice?

Perry thought not.

His mind turned to Ed.

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Ed was not the world’s greatest saintly human being at any rate. Oftentimes Perry watched Ed stalk the narrow blue halls of the building, seeking fresh game. He found it endlessly amusing that Kirtley actually had a ball-crushing sidekick, who executed his orders faultlessly and ruthlessly. He hadn’t toiled under such a management style since junior high school, and just as then, most people did the erroneous thing and blamed the vice-principal. Even then, at fifth period lunch, he would argue: Sure, Bateman carries out the orders; but who makes the orders, huh? Who, you dumbasses? But no, people never saw the whole class thing. They always thought that the world was divided into nice people and mean people.

Ed intimidated a lot of people here. But Ed was nobody to be afraid of. He was a big old engine that spits a lot of smoke and bellows a lot of noise, and sometimes he emitted large amounts of heat, like an old furnace in the basement, but he was still just a machine. You could stand back out of his range, you could unplug him, or you could take a hammer and a box of tools to him and scramble his guts up. You could control him. Worrying about Ed was like worrying about an unloaded pistol.

What does a man do with an unloaded pistol, Perry asked himself rhetorically, when he wants to boldly take his place among the greats? Why, he picks it up, loads it, and fires it at his enemies. That’s what he does. And that was what Perry would do with Ed. Of course, he actually had to talk to Ed at some point this morning, but it would be all good. It’d be as simple as buying a Saturday Night Special- without the three-day waiting list.

Morning sunlight streamed in through all the windows of the Durango parked placidly in the company lot. It burned away the dew on the windows and revealed the huddled form, curled up in a fetal position under a jumble of clothes, jackets, and one tattered child’s afghan. Guy was inside, asleep in the area of the SUV he thought of as the “way-back”. He’d been sleeping in the car ever since Friday, when Jeni at long last had given him the old bum’s rush.

Guy had spent that first weekend feeling something like a duck that had been hit over the head. He was dazed and uncomprehending, wondering how his life could’ve been turned upside down with such scary rapidity. It felt as if he had spent the last several years dozing in the bottom of a child’s toy box, reclining among the soft plush bears and hard plastic trucks, then one day being upended and thrown out in a rough housecleaning. He was discombobulated. Worse, he didn’t even have the option of calling Jeni, crying or whatever, and begging her to let him come back. There was not even the remotest possibility that it would happen, so any kind of motivation for calling, even the masochistic pleasure he would glean from rejection, was tainted. He couldn’t bring himself to call and get some of his stuff back, because after looking over what he had hauled away from the apartment- some of his clothes and his toaster oven- he was forced to conclude that what he had was adequate for his needs. He could cover himself when he slept, clothe himself when he walked around, and he could cook (the Durango had an electrical outlet). That was enough.

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Saturday had been spent in a kind of clean blasted state. Guy had only left the Durango once, to walk to a nearby McDonald’s and pick up a twenty-piece McNugget box and some fries. He had talked to no one except for the McDonald’s cashier, a surly Hispanic girl who took his order out on the cash register buttons then practically threw his food at him. He scuttled quickly and furtively back to the SUV and ate there, feeling as if he had been run to ground.

A massive section of his life- or at least, the life he had grown accustomed to for the last four or five years- had just broken off with a shriek and sank below the waves, leaving nothing but popping bubbles in its wake. It had happened so suddenly and so rapidly that he hadn’t really had time to think about how he felt about it. But he was thinking now, as he sat in ragged shirtsleeves in the back of the $30,000 vehicle that had without warning become his primary residence.

He was discovering that he really wasn’t feeling much of anything. He really wasn’t surprised by his lack of feeling, because he was becoming increasingly sure that he hadn’t been feeling anything for quite a while now. Not about work, not about Jeni, not about his increasingly bedraggled appearance- he had been sinking in a pool of ennui for God only knew how long now, and his domestic life, his existence with Jeni, was merely the first personal landmark to disappear below the lapping waves. Guy was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be the last.

Sunday morning came up cloudy and drizzly, a fine mist penetrated only by headlights and the foggy breathe from mouths. Guy awoke early on Sunday. He lay there flat on his back for a little while, eyes open, his bladder throbbing from a long night without relief. He clambered out of the back of the truck and made for the belt of trees that separated the company parking lot from Commercial Parkway East. He peed for a long time under a tree, his head thrown back, catching droplets of rain as they fell on his face. A couple of cars drove by on Alva, which was generally deserted between six Friday and eight Monday. One honked at him. The simple fact occurred to him, as it had with bright suddenness numerous times that weekend: My fiancée threw me out of my house and hurled all of my possessions onto the front lawn. I am now living in my car and pissing under a tree. It was remarkable how the words threw the actions into sharp relief, transforming mundanities into absurdities. He suddenly felt a sharp need to see mountains. Mountains were not to be found in Ohio, on land pounded and kneaded by long-dead glaciers into soft hills and gentle plains. Real mountains- the Rockies- were a good two thousand miles west. Guy briefly thought about getting on I-80 west and driving and driving until he saw snow-capped peaks, than decided he wasn’t that far gone yet. On the other hand, there were mountains relatively near, craggy Appalachians and Alleghenies and Blue Ridges to the east and south of where he stood, pissing a frothy puddle under the tree. If he had such a hankering for rugged fastness, those impossibly ancient ranges would have to do.

So at 7:53 a.m. on Sunday- almost exactly twenty-five hours before Perry arrived at the company with his head full of Machiavellian plans- Guy clambered into the front

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seat of the Durango, turned the ignition, and pulled out of the company parking lot. Fifteen minutes later he picked up I-76 and set his compass east, toward Pennsylvania and the mountains.

As the rural expanses of eastern Ohio slid by him as if on a track, a mellow sun began to burn unhurriedly through the morning fog. Natural gas rigs, great steel mantises frozen in stubbled fields, dotted the landscape. He saw white frame houses, picket fences, and barns, some red, some wash gray, and some with the old CHEW MAIL POUCH advertisements painted on their flanks. He saw cows brown and white grazing in fields. The air in spots was redolent with the odor of horseshit. Sometimes the farms gave out to newer homes built by commuters, prefabbed fantastics that looked jarringly out of place in this old rural setting. Or there were thick stands of wood with the branches still skeletal and bare. Guy could have seen buds on the trees, ready to burst, but he was driving too fucking fast and he was looking at the road anyway.

About forty-five minutes in, Guy approached a bridge that spanned a reservoir filled with sparkling water and rimmed with thin sandy banks. Hunched on a flank of the reservoir was a trailer park, small shabby places, some Airstreams oddly futuristic in spite of their ‘50s manufacture, some newer, dingier models with aluminum siding and sour yellow racing stripes. The bridge was a good two hundred yards across and the road was poor, and right as he began crossing, Guy suddenly remembered the two pill bottles in the glove box. They were rattling in there, set alive by the pitted surface of the reservoir bridge, as if shrouded skeletons calling out for remembrance. Guy actually didn’t remember that the pills were in there. He hadn’t taken any the day before, now that he thought about it. He wondered why.

He was halfway over the bridge now when he suddenly leaned to his right and squeezed the latch on the glove box. The little upholstered door popped open, revealing the usual contents, dimly shown by the tiny light- the Durango’s thick manual, his registration, and the two pill bottles jouncing chummily off one another. He grabbed both bottles in his right hand- they clicked against each other in mute protest- transferred them to his left hand, and sent them flying out his driver’s side window. He saw one of the bottles glance off the guardrail and land in the rubbly curb, but the other one went up and over, where it vanished. The Durango crossed the bridge and reached the other side.

Guy was, frankly, astonished. He stared straight ahead at the unwinding road, wondering why on earth he would do such a thing to pills he had valued and had bent over backwards to obtain. How could he? He needed those pills.

Will you regret your rash actions?

Guy reached over onto the passenger seat for his smokes. Yes, hurling those Blue Ones and Crimson Tides out the window was just the sort of dumbass thing Guy had specialized in since about 1994. It would-

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The cigarette pack was light. Guy turned it over and shook it. A few flakes of loose tobacco drifted down to the seat. No cigarettes.

“Fuck me!” Guy yelled, to no one in particular. Then again, louder. “Fuck me!” Spurred by the juvenile pleasure that speaking in high volume can bring with a rush, he yelled again- screamed, really.

“Fuck!”

He jutted his head out the window and began yelling to other cars, sucking in mouthfuls of cold air and unleashing them as the barest semblance of words:

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!”

All told, Guy yelled the word “fuck” out of his car window twenty-six times on the stretch of I-80 immediately past the Meander Reservoir Bridge. Finally he realized that, no matter how free he felt at that moment, it did not mean that he wanted to become the kind of person who yells foul words out of moving cars. He brought his head back into the car and switched on the stereo. “Night Prowler” by AC/DC was playing on the classic rock station and Guy joined in Bonn Scott’s focal fray, feeling a bit like a benign Richard Ramirez (however the hell that felt):

I’m your Night Prowler,I sleep in the day…

Night Prowler,Get out of my way.

Guy didn’t actually sleep in the day. And he needed smokes. So, marveled by the natural ease, with which the thought, Oh, I need smokes, better go get them eddied into his mind, he turned the Durango toward the nearest off-ramp.

At a little after nine o’clock in the morning, Guy crossed over into Pennsylvania. I-80 became the Penn Turnpike. Guy paid his toll and kept going as the sun rose higher in the approaching east, eating the last of the morning mist. The terrain began to change, from the gently rolling hills and shallow valleys to more rugged, rockier hills- not quite mountains, but getting there. Signs of human habitation began to occur less and less. He drove long stretches between off-ramps, rugged spaces populated only by woods, belted only by the occasional country road or state route, crossing over or under the freeway. Guy realized that had he stayed on I-76 and swung through the southern part of this state (or taken I-77 due south into West Virginia), he would be seeing real mountains already, but oh well. What was he going to be late for? He kept going.

At about 11:00, over a hundred miles into the Commonwealth, Guy entered the mountains. The road began to rise imperceptibly. Large naked crags of sedimentary rock, announcing their years by layer and bearded at their tops by stands of pine, burst up from

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the ground. Guy’s ears began to fill and, as the Durango continued to climb upward, to pop. This stretch of highway went through land that seemed to have changed not at all since the first arrival of white men, and as he passed through this wasteland Guy felt an almost savage joy. He grinned through cigarette smoke. He was in the mountains now. On his own, in rocky fastness. He gave himself a mental pat on the back, and began looking for an off-ramp, the better to go exploring on his own, deep in the alien country.

It was at this point that he saw the sign.

Actually, he’d been seeing the signs off and on ever since before he got to Youngstown. The first one he saw had been only about twenty-five miles east of his starting point. It was green, reflectorized, and announced NEW YORK 396. Guy had passed the sign on numerous occasions, taking class trips to Washington or day trips to Pittsburgh, and he always marveled at the sheer balls it took to post a sign for a city that was almost a nine-hour drive away (of course, there were probably NEW YORK --- signs as far west as San Francisco). Now, deep in north-central Pee-Ay, he saw another one. It said NEW YORK 255.

He thought for a moment about continuing on I-80. Forget about finding an off-ramp, forget about turning back- he could gas up the Durango at the nearest service station and continue east, across the sprawled mass of Pennsylvania, over the Delaware Water Gap, through the short hump of New Jersey and into New York City. He could sell the Durango once he got there- he figured he could get a good fifteen grand from it, some Jersey suburban would buy it for at least that much and probably more, God knows they overpaid for other shit out there, fucking pop was like a buck a can- and along with whatever savings he had that Jeni hadn’t rifled, he could start anew. Get a shitty little apartment, pick up some hot little Dominican broad fresh off the boat, and bury his old Midwestern life completely. It would be easy, really. Easier than going back.

But then what? He would be gone from the scene, wiped clean. Meanwhile, Jeni, Mr. Kirtley, Ed, all his tormentors... they would remain. They would have possession of the field, and they would be the winners, undisputed victors in a war they might not have known they were fighting but was no less real for that fact. Meanwhile, Guy Anderson would have slunk off stage left, like the slithering worm he was. He would have run away, tail between his legs, the diarrhea of failure dripping down his legs, and no new life, no New York dream, no nubile young exotic could wipe away that simple fact. The bitter shame of that fact would grip him to the ends of the earth.

And, that bread girl was back there as well.

Guy thought as he drove. A resolve began to form, cool, and harden like fired clay in his head. He wasn’t going to run; like Corey Hart, he would “never surrender”. He was going to turn back. He would go back to Ohio and take his chances, and whatever happened happened, and he would see how the ball bounced, and every other cliché he could think of. And if he should happen to run into that girl, it was all the better. After all,

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it wasn’t like he had a woman to come home to. Or a home to come home to, for that matter.

Perry liked to kill the first hour or so of the day by playing ‘Age of Empires’, which he had secretly installed on his computer in the wake of memo banning such amusements (company employees were not allowed to tamper with their PCs under any circumstances, but Perry felt the rule was silly and did not heed it). He was playing right now, controlling the Hittites, and he was in the process of laying siege to the Assyrian town center, bringing up his stone throwers and catapults, preparing to break walls preparatory to bringing in the cavalry to finish the job, when he saw Ed leave his office and head for the work floor, on the first of what Perry thought of as his “sweeps” or occasionally “mopping-up operations”. Perry glanced at the digital clock on his desk. It was 9:41. He knew from experience that at this time of the morning, Ed would seek his prey, take it down in a cloud of blood and feathers, and return to his office straightaway. So he waited.

The morning sunlight sharply raised the temperature in the Durango, and the heat, combined with the violent light streaming in, woke Guy up. He opened his eyes and looked around. Saw the company parking lot filled with cars. Sat up, glanced at the car’s digital clock, saw it was 9:44. Work had started at nine.

“Shit!” Guy exclaimed. He grabbed for his shoes, his tie, and his jacket, lying in various places about the back of the SUV. Once he thought he had everything gathered in his arms he leaned against the back door, opened it with a couple of free fingers, and dove out like a Navy Seal to the pavement. He hit the shadow-darkened concrete next to the car, still cold and a little bit damp, lost a shoe skittering away, scooped it up on the run, and half jogged, half hopped in the direction of the company building.

Less than ten minutes later, Perry peered out of his cubicle and watched as Ed hove into view. He was walking with his usual purpose- stalking, almost- in the A-to-B direction of his office. In his mind, Perry suddenly heard the grave-sent voice of Lee Marvin: It’s a go; take him down! He stood up and smoothly fell into stride next to Ed. Ed did not glance at him.

“What’s up, Ed?” Perry asked.

“Not a lot.”

“How’s it-”

“What do you want?”

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Ed stopped dead and faced Perry. They were in the hallway leading to the offices now, away from the work floor. On contested ground, Perry thought dimly. He cleared his throat.

“Well,” he began, “I was just wondering something.”

Guy managed to creep into the building through a side door, and from there took a meandering, cautious route to his office, not unlike a soldier tiptoeing through a minefield. He knew Ed was out and about someplace. He slid into his office, shut the door, and sat down at his desk. The clock read 9:50. He sat there quietly for a minute and yanked open his top drawer. The drawer rolled back smoothly on its casters, revealing a riot of pill bottles as well as one of the “Office Books” he had gotten to impress Jeni. He stared inside the open drawer for a minute, regarding its contents with the stupid fixation of a man who has just committed a messy murder and left his DNA all over the place. He looked around the office, at his personal belongings, at the books, at the pictures of Jeni. Then he began grabbing the stuff willy-nilly, snatching it in handfuls, and tossing it in the drawer.

“Not interested.” Ed said simply. Than he began walking in heavy, creaking strides back toward his office.

Perry stood stock-still for a moment, unable to believe, unable to understand just why Ed had so flatly refused his generous offer of détente. He stared at Ed’s wide back as it conveyed away from him. He shook his head for a second and decided to be generous. Hell, even Truman had given Hiroshima a warning.

With long loping strides he caught up to Ed and stuck an arm out in front of him, stopping him. Ed turned to face him, his big face strained by annoyance, small flares of anger in his eyes, and just for a millisecond Perry realized that his assessment of Ed as nothing more than a brute was a few miles off base, and that persuasion of this man would be exponentially more difficult than he anticipated. He put his misgivings out of his mind, though.

“Look,” Perry began patiently, as slowly as if he was talking to a comatose man. “Ascension is in my blood. As long as we’re compelled to co-exist, we might as well help each other out. You won’t have a competitor. You’ll have an ally.”

A small smile bloomed on Ed’s face. Perry had never seen Ed smile before, and he was taken aback, caught just a tad off-balance. Ed briefly touched his own forehead, and pointed a thick finger at Perry’s chest.

“You know what your problem is?” he asked.

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“No.” Perry replied truth. He didn’t know what his problem was. As far as he knew, he didn’t have one.

“You’ve got the same problem as all the other young people. I’ve seen it. I see it on TV, on all those new shows where all you kids do is stab each other in the back and one of you gets buku money for it. I’ve seen it in this office. I’m standing here watching you try and do it right now.” Ed shook his head mournfully, as if he was saddened by Perry’s sorry attempt at ingratiation.

“You see, you all think you can talk your way into power, but you can’t.” Here Ed gripped his hand into a ham-like fist and shook it in front of Perry. “Because it belongs to those who take it.”

With that, Ed walked away again, and this time Perry did not try to stop him. He followed him instead, in the direction of the break room. He needed some water. Needed to clear his throat for the next battle.

He turned into the break room and what he saw froze him in his tracks. Guy Anderson was in there, standing by the wastebasket. He looked... well, he looked like hammered shit, really. His shirt was wrinkled and inexpertly tucked, and his tie was crude and sloppy, as if a child had put it on. A few days of bristly beard growth was blooming on his drawn face. Most amazingly to Perry, the laces of Guy’s left shoe lay untied. He held a desk drawer against his chest and was shaking it, letting its contents spill out into the trash. There was a blank look on his face, and his eyes were like small dead marbles. Pill bottles of various sizes, small-framed pictures, a book, more pill bottles- they fell into the wastebasket with rattles and thumps.

Perry had a sudden stabbing thought: He’s cracking! He’s going apeshit! Just like Snyder! Then, hard on the heels of the first thought: Great!

As if he felt his presence, Guy turned his eyes up toward Perry. Perry took an involuntary step backward, almost into the arms of Ed, who had stopped short and come back to see what he was staring at.

“Holy shit, man,” Perry asked. “You alright?”

“You missed the meeting this morning, Guy,” Ed asked. He seemed to take no notice of Guy’s appearance, which really was abysmal, or the fact that he was dumping the contents of his desk, including what looked to be a small pharmacy, into the wastebasket. Ed was all business. “Mr. Kirtley would like to see you in his office, immediately.”

At the mention of Mr. Kirtley’s name, Guy’s demeanor seemed to change. He straightened, looked blankly at the now-empty drawer as if he just realized he was holding it, and dropped the entire thing into the wastebasket with a loud thump. Then he straightened and marched to the break room door, left-right-lefting like a Marine recruit,

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his face never losing that marble sheen. At the door he stopped in front of Perry and held out the first three fingers of his left hand. Perry cautiously reached out with the first three fingers of his right hand and took Guy’s proffered digits. Guy gave Perry a short, surprisingly vigorous three-fingered handshake, threw Ed a blank look, and walked out. Perry watched him, gaping.

“Guy?” he asked. “What’s up, man?”

Perry walked out after Guy, leaving Ed all alone, his bulk tamped into the narrow doorway to the break room. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and shook his boulder of a head scornfully.

“Goddamn bunch of flakes we got here.”

“You missed the leadership meeting this morning, Guy.” Mr. Kirtley began mildly. He was seated at his desk, long fingers twined in front of him, looking as fresh and cool and John Forsythe-like as ever. Guy sat slouched in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Mr. Kirtley took no overt notice of his appearance, but Guy could see his eyes flitting busily up and down, and he had little doubt that the boss was storing this image away in his silver head, for recall at some point in the future. Presently, Mr. Kirtley reached a hand into his suit jacket and brought out a short stack of 5-by-7 cards. He laid them neatly on the desk in front of Guy. Guy stared at the cards mutely, than looked at Mr. Kirtley. Mr. Kirtley looked back at him. Apparently he had taken enough stock of Guy’s appearance, because now he looked him straight in the eye.

“Goal cards,” Mr. Kirtley said.

Guy looked down at the blank 5-by-7 cards.

“You can take them. They’re yours.”

Guy looked back up at Mr. Kirtley. The boss was leaning slightly forward, and though the look he was giving Guy was surface-earnest, a little predatory light gleamed in his eye. “I have my own set. Write down a goal you have for yourself on each one.”

Mr. Kirtley stood up and sat on the desk in front of Guy. “I will write down goals I have for you on each of mine.” He nodded confidently, as if already sure of the positive results this experiment would bring. “Ed told me you were having problems in your new leadership position, and I think this management technique will prove very rewarding.”

Guy sat mute, lolling in his seat, his head crooked to a side. Mr. Kirtley stood and rounded his desk again, seating himself in the leather executive chair. He began busying himself with the paperwork that covered the desk. Without looking up, he said, “We can compare our cards tomorrow, and see where you need to make changes.”

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Guy made a beeline for the side door to the smoking area as soon as his “meeting” with Mr. Kirtley was over. He hit the door bar with his shoulder and it flew open, sending him stumbling out into the cool morning air. The smoking area was like most of its ilk: a barren, gray place, located in a forgotten corner of the building, kept murky by the shadows of the building, hidden away from the main street like a shy woman hiding a social disease. A picnic table long grayed and warped by the elements sat hunched amid hundreds of butts littered on the concrete ground. The only other person in the smoking area was Steve Geldof, Guy’s underling, the same dude who had lost the radio showdown with Kurt Berger a week prior. He was leaning against a wall, catching the morning sun on his face and tawny beard. Guy threw his goal cards in the air like a graduation mortarboard, and they flew, dipped and scattered about everywhere. Geldof watched casually and tapped a Newport out of its green box.

“Got a light?” he asked.

Guy, in the process of hauling out his own smokes, nodded absently. He retrieved the book of matches from his breast pocket and flipped them over to the radio rebel, who snapped them out of the air with a Rickey Henderson flourish. Geldof made to open up the matchbook, than stopped as he read the cover. His eyebrows furrowed. Then he glanced up quizzically at Guy.

“Didn’t figure you for the type to be hanging out across the street.” He said.

Guy frowned, not understanding. Geldof took a match, fired his smoke, and handed the book back. Stenciled on the glossy black cover was:

Peabody’sPizza and Spirits

Geldof was pointing across the street. Guy squinted in the direction of his outstretched index finger. He couldn’t see anything through the sun... yes. There it was. Through the almost supernaturally bright sun, the screen of trees and the brisk traffic on Alva Parkway East, Guy could make out the dark, squat outline of a building catty-corner to the company building. A small canvas awning shaded the door, and over the awning was a neon sign, powered off against the natural light of the day. The sign was the exact same as the matchbook cover. The building shimmered, seeming to float in its hunch, looking as fragile as a desert mirage.

“What’s that place all about?” Guy asked.

Geldof shrugged and said, “I don’t know nothing about that place”, but Guy was not listening. He had slung his suit jacket over his shoulder and was traversing the expanse of pavement, walking in the direction of the bar. The radio rebel watched him impassively, the smoke curling from the cigarette jammed in the corner of his mouth.

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Peabody’s Tavern was cool and dark, a cave smelling of sour hops and cigarette smoke. It might have been shabby- hell, it probably was- but it was hard to tell, because the entire place was bathed in deep red light. Red pools were caught in the furrows of booths and spilled bloodlike on the floors. It spilled over Guy, deepening his eyes into black pits as he surveyed the scene. A bar curled around the middle of the building-sized room. Guy saw that the bar was equipped with an overhead rack for glasses, like on “Cheers”. Right now the rack was full of narrow beer glasses gleaming mellow in the red light. Two small televisions were hung above the bar. They were both off. Off to the right of the bar was a door, ajar, with music, white light, and the faint smell of pizza sauce issuing from it. Behind the bar Guy could make out a circular dance floor and, beyond that, a stage.

A longhaired blonde man who looked like a flesh-and-blood version of a “Masters of the Universe” character stood behind the bar, flipping through the newspaper want ads. A skinny young man in a red windbreaker and baseball cap sat at the bar, a drink set carefully in front of him on a small napkin.

Guy seated himself at the bar and placed the blank index cards in front of him. He wasn’t sure why he was here, but as long as he was- he tapped the bar with the knuckle of his left middle finger. The blonde man looked up.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Coke.”

“Coming up.”

There was a pen lying on the bar nearby. Guy reached out and took it, and looked down at the cards in front of him. They looked blankly back, faint blue and red lines running across white spaces, seeming to ask him: What? What will you write on me?

There was a dull clink as the bartender placed a glass tumbler filled with ice and brown liquid in front of Guy. The blonde man wiped his hands on a towel.

“Rum and Coke. Three dollars.”

Guy couldn’t recall ordering anything but a Coke, but he was a guest here. He got his wallet, dug out a five-dollar bill, and slid it across the bar, where the blonde man made it disappear. Guy waved a dismissive hand.

“Keep the change.”

The bartender gave Guy a no shit look and nodded. “Yeah.”

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Guy took an experimental belt of the rum-and-Coke. He gagged, threw his head back, and swallowed the stuff. It was nasty, sticky, and almost cloyingly sweet at the early hour. Guy sat for a moment; drink aloft in his hand, absorbing the stuff. Then he took a second, more cautious sip. A light head buzz almost immediately filled his head.

He wondered what on earth he was going to write on the goal cards Mr. Kirtley had presented him. He was acutely aware that at the company, you didn’t start being denuded with management tactics like goal cards, and “improvement lists”, and nagging memos, unless you were fucking up and they noticed. It was all a hidden gun, negativism disguised as positivism. They couldn’t tie you up by your thumbs and whip you anymore, so they drowned you in paper blandishments.

He wondered if they had noticed him sleeping in his car in the company lot all weekend. Wasn’t sure what their reaction would’ve been. He had twenty goal cards in front of him. Perhaps Mr. Kirtley would have given him more cards. Or less.

“What’s her name?”

Guy looked to his left. The pallid young man in the windbreaker was staring at him intently with black eyes. He was twirling the small red straw in his glass, making the liquid and ice slosh and swirl.

“What girl?”

“The girl who managed to get a guy like you in a place like this at ten-thirty in the morning.”

It suddenly occurred to Guy that he had gone into the bar on the off chance that the little bread girl from the other night would be in here. So he smiled a little. He tapped the index cards on the bar. “I have to fill out goal cards for work.”

“My girlfriend is deaf,” the pallid young man said immediately, as if he had not even heard Guy. “I met her because she read my lips on the bus as I mouthed the words to ‘My Philosophy’”.

Guy took a drink, not sure how to answer, or even if he should. He had a sudden, stabbing memory of eighth grade. Kicking through fall leaves on his way to his best friend Jeremy’s house. Jeremy was cool because he was a prankster, because he didn’t wear trendy clothes, and while everyone else at Davey Junior High was listening to shit like Bobby Brown and Tiffany, Jeremy had all sorts of shit like the Dead Milkmen, and Morphine, and Faith No More, and all the stuff that back in 1989 they used to call “progressive rock”, and “college music”. Jeremy had rap, too, exotic sounds by groups of guys with exotic names. Guy remembered Jeremy’s room, the Nintendo, playing “Blades of Steel”. Jeremy had an old cracked cassette player on his dresser, some very eclectic tapes… Finally he said, “I guess KRS-ONE is a good factor to start a relationship on.”

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The pallid young man’s expression, which before displayed merely studied contempt for Guy’s lame attempts at small talk, suddenly altered. His eyes narrowed and he stopped twirling the straw, leaving the liquid and ice to turn in an ever-slowing rotation. His back straightened, his left hand went to the back of his stool and for a second Guy thought that perhaps the young man would leave his perch and attack him. Out of the corner of his eye Guy could see the longhaired bartender’s right hand disappear under the bar, no doubt going for a weapon, perhaps a gun, perhaps simply a Louisville Slugger hollowed out and loaded with ball bearings. The barkeep’s eyes were a marvel, darting from Guy to the pallid young man, and to the door leading to the kitchen, and back.

Then the young man relaxed. He sat back in his stool and nodded calmly at Guy, a new consideration sparking in the dark eyes. “So you listen to KRS-ONE?” he asked Guy conversationally.

Guy shrugged. Jeremy had thrown out the cassette player and all his tapes, and had gotten a new CD player when they were in tenth grade. He went off to school in Wisconsin after graduation and Guy hadn’t seen him since. “I used to.”

The young man regarded Guy for a minute. Then his mouth curled and he shook his head. “I bet you used to be a lot cooler than you are now.”

Guy smiled wryly, remembering the cool fall days playing “Blades of Steel” in Jeremy’s room on his 13-inch black-and-white Philco. Eating Doritos and drinking Jolt and listening to KRS-ONE and Run-DMC and Kool Mo-Dee and all sorts of other crazy shit on that old cracked tape player. It hadn’t seemed like extravagant, blow-out-the-walls fun at the time, not like all those mythical parties he heard the popular people talking about all the time, but considering what came later… he shrugged.

The pallid young man seemed to read his mind. He said, “You’re never as cool as you are in your youth.”

Guy nodded. A silence fell between them. The bartender finally took his right hand up from underneath the bar and went back to his Want ads, the newspaper rustling softly in the quiet bar. The pallid young man looked expectantly at Guy.

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“Why do I suppose what is?”

“That you’re cooler in your youth than now.”

“I’m a victim of conditioning.”

“No!” The young man picked the straw out of his drink and slammed it down on the bar. It looked as if he had heard this answer before. Guy had a sudden image of the

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pallid young man seated at the same spot at this funky little tavern day after day, waylaying lonely white-collar drones and asking them why they weren’t as cool now as in their youth. “You are not a victim of conditioning. You’re a victim of yourself!”

Guy heard the rustling sound of the newspaper, this one louder. The barkeep was glaring at the pallid young man again; his right hand once again vanished under the bar like a jack-in-the box in reverse. The young man glared back for a second, than turned back to Guy, his voice dropping a couple of octaves. He leaned confidentially over to Guy, as if imparting priceless knowledge. “KRS-ONE and Chuck D. are right,” he said. “I think you might have known it at some point. But somewhere along the line, you just lost sight of it.”

Guy didn’t ask the pallid young man what exactly it was KRS-ONE and Chuck D. were right about. He got the feeling that what he was dealing with was less a Socratic-style Q&A session than a straight-up lecture from the soapbox. So he merely tapped his pen on the bar and shrugged. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

The pallid young man nodded vigorously. “I know I’m right.”

Guy attempted levity. “Maybe I lost sight of it around the time I realized I wasn’t black.”

The young man shook his head dolefully, as if regretting Guy’s impertinence. “See, you’re not white, either,” he said. “You’re one of them.”

Silence again. Guy and the pallid young man both tipped their drinks and drained them in unison. A grizzled-looking, tattooed man wearing a wife-beater shirt, pegged jeans, engineer boots and, heaven help us, a white chef’s apron, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. In his hands he held a large red insulated bag, the kind used to carry pizzas on deliveries.

“Hey!” he barked at the pallid young man. “You still work for me?”

The pallid man pantomimed mulling it over a minute, than nodded. The grizzled chef came forward, engineer boots clocking on the tiled floor, and tossed the insulated bag on the bar, where it landed it a flat fhump between Guy and the pallid young man. The chef pointed a nicotine-stained finger. “There’s two deliveries for you.”

The pallid young man stood, gathered up the bag, and turned to the door. Guy watched him go. Halfway to the door the man stopped and turned to Guy, eyebrows up.

“What?” Guy asked.

“What are you doing right now?” the pallid man asked in return.

“Filling out goal-“

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“Okay, that means you’re not doing shit. Come on, ride with me.” With that, the

young man threw open the door, briefly splashing the interior of the bar with white daylight, and exited. Guy watched the door close slowly on its hinges. He looked at his still-blank index cards, empty of goals, aspirations, inspirations, and anything else, for that matter. He looked around the nearly empty bar. Then he heard the sound of a honking horn outside the bar and that galvanized him. He got up and hurried out.

The pallid man’s car was an aging white Dodge Neon sedan speckled with rust, and graced with a single black-and-white bumper sticker on the rear deck. The sticker read: DON’T FUCK WITH MY REALITY. Guy hung on in the shotgun seat, his right hand gripping the door handle, as the pallid young man highballed the Neon through narrow residential streets at breakneck speeds. The insulated bag sat on Guy’s lap, warming his thighs. He dimly realized that they would be missing him at work. Monday was always the worst time for computer fuck-ups. The pallid young man palmed the wheel with one hand and squealed through turns like Ayrton Senna at LeMans. Guy saw small saltbox homes blur by. He looked at the speedometer. The needle was quivering at 50 mph, fully twice the speed limit.

“A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to be a getaway driver for a living,” the young man said suddenly, never taking his eyes off the road. “Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Get into the glove box for me.”

Guy opened the glove compartment. Inside was a packet of ‘Joker’ rolling papers and a Ziploc baggie filled with either marijuana or catnip. Guy doubted it was catnip. Underneath these items was the rubber grip of what looked to be a large pistol. Guy briefly considered asking Emerson if it was wise to keep a handgun in his glove compartment, and vetoed it. He didn’t know Emerson that well yet. He pointed at the baggie. “You want this?” he asked.

The pallid young man nodded. Guy took the baggie and the rolling papers and tossed them to the young man, who caught them on his lap. As Guy watched, he brought his knees up and began steering with them while he began working on a joint. A frown crossed the young man’s thin face.

“Where was I?” he asked.

“You wanted to be a getaway driver-“

“Oh yeah. That’s right.” The young man deftly fixed the joint, rolling, tightening, and twisting with long fingers while his bony knees worked the wheel. “You ever see Heat?”

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“The Burt Reynolds movie?”

The pallid young man squeezed his eyes shut in exasperation. “No. The one with DeNiro and Pacino.”

“Oh, yeah. Once, a few years ago.”

“Good. Well, I’ve seen it more than once. A lot more than once, actually. The very first time I saw it, that was when I decided I wanted to drive a getaway car for a living.”

The pallid man babied the Neon to a Stop sign, glanced around quickly, nodded, made a “West Virginia stop” and kept going, working the car up to a brisk double-nickel. The houses began to get bigger and younger as they entered an area of new developments, spanking new grids with street names that reflected one theme. Guy saw a green street sign blur by. It said SOLFERINO TRAIL.

“Driving pizzas is not a job so much as it’s a training regimen for my future career.”

SOLFERINO TRAIL came and went, and then AUSTERLITZ LANE. Guy saw finished homes mixed with incomplete homes, flimsy structures of plywood rising out of fields of mud. Seas of brown loam floated buoy-like signs for area realtors, many with narrow SOLD placards tucked into slots. He saw landscaping crews turning rocky wastelands into green lawns.

The pallid young man continued to roll the joint with one hand while he used the other to turn the steering wheel. He put the Neon into a high-speed, cop-show slew onto VIMY RIDGE TRAIL. The Neon’s pizza-cutter tires squealed with effort. “All the elements needed to perform this job successfully will come into play in my future vocation.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, logistical concerns- streets, shortcuts, and the like- driving on a timetable... fuck!”

The pallid young man had lost his tenuous grip on the steering wheel. The Neon gave a jerk and went up the hump of a curb, sending danger strip-dirt flying from its’ off-road right tires. The almost-completed joint broke apart, spilling its contents all over his lap. The car jounced wildly as it drove half-on and half-off the street. Guy could see the pizza man’s struggles as he attempted to salvage the joint and drive the car at the same time.

“You need a hand?” Guy asked.

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“Yeah, grab the wheel.”

Guy reached over with his left hand and gripped the steering wheel, guiding the Neon back onto the street. The pallid young man went back to work on the joint with renewed fervor. Presently he was finished, and he triumphantly held his creation up, inspecting it like a counterfeit dollar. With a flourish, he pulled a Zippo lighter from his windbreaker and fired it alight. He put the joint in his mouth and touched the other end to the flame. The end of the joint glowed bright orange as he inhaled deeply, turning paper to ash and filling the car with a sweet aroma that made Guy think of high school bonfires on chill fall nights.

“Give me the wheel back, dog,” the pallid young man said in a hoarse voice. Guy complied. The driver took the wheel with his left hand and held the burning joint in his right, puffing industriously. Guy watched curiously, startled a bit that people actually lived like this and worked like this while he was inside a glass-and-concrete prison, wired to a computer like a hamster is wired to a wheel. He felt like he was in on someone’s secret, an intruder from another dimension, an Old Testament character in a New Testament story. Guy smiled and shook his head at the passing street.

“I wish I had a life like yours.” Guy said.

“A life like mine?” The young man frowned and offered the joint to Guy, who waved a hand in demurral. He took another lung-busting hit and blew out a copious amount of thick white smoke. “Is that what you want?”

“Are you kidding? It’s ten o’clock-”

“Closer to eleven.”

“Okay, eleven o’clock. In the morning. And here you are, delivering pizza, getting high on weed, and talking about how you’re going to be a getaway driver in the future. Of course I want a life like yours.”

The pallid young man gave Guy a sidelong glance with his black eyes, which were still keen, if a bit red-rimmed. He smiled a little bit. “Tell me something...”

“Guy.”

“Okay, Guy, tell me something. What are you usually doing at this time on a weekday?”

Guy thought, but only for a second. “Let’s see. Theoretically, I could be down in Accounts Payable, trying to explain to some broad the differences between her computer monitor and a regular television, and why she can’t watch ‘The Price is Right’ on her monitor. Or I could be in another department, spending fifteen minutes listening to some

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guy scream bloody murder about how there’s a virus in his computer and that’s why he can’t get on the Internet when in reality he can’t get online because he disconnected the network cable with his foot, or-”

“You don’t have any idea how I live,” the tubercular young man interrupted brusquely. “How can you?” He gripped the joint between his teeth and rocked the Neon onto a new street (POLTAVA WAY, Guy read on the blurring sign), never slacking speed. “You’re a prisoner. You can only imagine a life like this.”

“How do you know I’m a prisoner, or whatever? You don’t even know my name.”

“I don’t need to know your name,” the young man replied. “I see how you’re dressed. I know who you’re dressed for.”

Silence. The Neon’s sewing-machine engine hummed busily. Guy looked down at his lap, thinking about what the young man had just said. The young man was scanning the big new houses, looking for addresses on mailboxes, a flea dancing on the flanks of the beast, a beast in whose belly Guy had been dwelling for as long as he could remember. He looked out the window of the car, watching the houses melt by. Jeni would love this neighborhood, he thought. She’d always talked about leaving the condo in a couple of years and moving into a development like this, just as soon as they had Chelsea and Eric.

The sweet smell and the sharp bite of smoke in his eyes aroused Guy from his reverie. The young man was holding the joint out to him.

“Take it,” he said.

“No, I can’t, I have to-”

“You’re not going back to work! Take it!”

Guy let the young man give him the joint. Then he closed his eyes and took a long, burning drag, hearing the dim crackle of paper and plant as the end of the joint flared and sizzled. Thick smoke poured down his throat and into his lungs and hit bottom, spreading to the corners of his air caverns. Immediately he began to feel the effects. His brain seemed to subtly detach itself from its stem and float in its own membrane of electric fluid. His extremities seemed to gain mass, turning into Popeye-sized hams weighing anchor on the ends of his limp limbs, and he could feel all the spit and snot in his head thicken. The body buzz, the skin like charged cotton- that was something he could recognize. The Blue One made him feel like that.

“Good shit, huh?” The pallid young man’s voice, in disembodied stereophonic sound. Guy nodded and passed the joint back. “By the way, my name’s Emerson.”

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“Emerson Boozer?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Guy turned to Emerson with grave hilarity. “My name’s Guy. Nice to make your acquaintance, Emerson.”

“Pleased.”

A giggle escaped Guy like a hiccup. An easy mixture of hilarity and paranoia suddenly bubbled up in his throat. Old silly stories and jokes began to flow into his brain, making him want to laugh uncontrollably. He swallowed his laughter, suddenly acutely aware that he was away from work, smoking marijuana and riding shotgun in a vehicle driven by someone he hadn’t even known a half-hour ago. In his unease he fumbled for a cigarette, put one in his mouth, and lit it with a Peabody’s match. Guy began puffing away industriously, the cigarette sticking up from the middle of his mouth at a jaunty angle.

Emerson glanced over. “Hey, FDR? You smoke?”

“Yup.”

“How long? Five minutes? Ten?”

Guy began to giggle- he hated the word, but there was no other way to describe it- around his cigarette. Emerson’s mouth curled.

“You see me laughing, man? It grieves me to see a man looking that ridiculous smoking a cigarette. It pains me to no end.” Emerson shook his head and turned back to the road, as if he couldn’t bear to watch anymore. His eyes flicked up and down the street moodily. The stately homes stood proudly on each side, each behind a sea of soft green grass.

“Look at these houses,” Emerson said. “Quarter of a million plus, all of them. At night, I drive through here all slow looking for addresses, because apparently these rich fucksticks don’t believe in streetlights, and they call the five-oh on me. This has happened at least twice. Once the people who called were the same people I was delivering to. You believe that?” Emerson glared at Guy. “They called the cops on their own pizza delivery man.”

Guy stared dreamily at the opulence around him. At the mud, cranes, and opulence. “It’s the American dream,” he said.

“It’s a pyramid scheme, is what it is.”

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The Neon suddenly screeched to a halt. Guy looked up; sure for just a second that Emerson was kicking him out of the car and leaving him on this bourgeois street in the middle of fucking nowhere with nothing on him but a weed buzz and a silly cigarette. But Emerson was staring fixedly at the house the Neon was currently idling in front of. With a rapid pumping motion, he rolled down his window (emitting a cloud of sweet smoke) and craned his neck, squinting.

“What’s the address on the bag?”

“Huh?”

“The address on the pizza bag, you fucking stoner.”

“Oh. Um, 1285.”

“Thanks.” Emerson grabbed for his door handle and suddenly froze, locked as if on PAUSE halfway in what for him must have been a dreadfully familiar ritual. He sat in this position for a few seconds, than, much to Guy’s puzzlement, calmly settled back in his seat, dropped the transmission shift into D, and sent the Neon on its way. After about ten seconds he was back up a brisk fifty, and picking up speed.

“The woman who lives there sends her three-year old to the door,” Emerson replied to Guy’s questioning glance. “She sends him so she won’t have to tip me.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to let her pizza cool off and go see Darrell.”

“Who’s Darrell?”

“You’ll see.”

“Okay. Shouldn’t I go back to work?”

“No.”

State Street was a slanting, four-lane artery that pumped rich blood to the steakhouses, fast-food joints, gas stations, bowling alleys, mini-golf courses, and retailers that lined its curbs. Many of the business were far-out affairs colored in burnt orange and avocado, structures as architecturally wizened as Ford Galaxies and pointy horn-rimmed glasses. Just recently, however, State had begun to be transformed by new arrivals, massive glowing structures that looked for all the world like alien spaceships that had just happened to touch down on Prime Commercial Space. The Video Megalopolis was one of these places. It was a vast, hangar-like building that glowed from the light within its

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plate-glass windows and from the green and yellow neon tubes that lined its exterior walls.

A-1 Video was directly across the street, housed in a defunct convenience store behind a small, pockmarked parking lot. A rusty panel truck, bearing the A-1 logo (childish stencils of a videotape and an ice cream cone), and almost groaning with age, sat outside. The store sat like a middle finger, an affront to the brand spanking-new edifice that faced it across four lanes of racing traffic.

Guy followed Emerson, who entered A-1 like John Travolta entering a disco and made straight for the Japanese animation in mid-store, ignoring the proprietor behind the counter. Guy looked around. The inside of the store was as unimpressive as the outside. Low dirty-white shelves filled with videotapes stretched across the length of the store. Most of the tapes were of films that aficionados would refer to as “vintage”, and laymen would refer to as “old as dirt”. There was one small shelf with a sign propped on top that read NEW RELEASES. It was empty. In the back was a refrigerated counter with tubs of hard ice cream, Bomb Pops, ice cream sandwiches, and other frozen goodies. The carpet was gray, threadbare, and seamed with thick black electrical tape. Guy smiled a little, thinking of Jeni: My God, they’re using remnants!

The proprietor was a tall, gaunt man who looked every bit as tubercular and hollow-eyed as Emerson. He wore a black ponytail hairdo and a red-on-black Umbro soccer goalie’s jersey with a small plastic nametag on the front. The name, not surprisingly, was DARRELL.

“Hey!” Darrell barked at Emerson’s turned back. “Rent or walk, asshole!”

“How’s business, Darrell?”

“My business is handled,” Darrell replied, glancing out the front window. “I’m a soldier, Emerson! I’m fighting for you and yours.”

Emerson ignored him as he thumbed through the Japanamation. Guy walked to the front window and looked out. Video Megalopolis loomed across the street, looking as if it might suddenly grow feet, stomp across State and gobble up its shabby competitor. Guy supposed that it might do so one day, in a matter of speaking.

Emerson found what he was looking for, a brightly colored box decorated with strident Japanese characters and a huge-breasted cartoon woman holding two enormous cartoon pistols. He carried the box to the counter and banked it off Darrell’s chest to the counter surface.

“Because with me out of the picture,” Darrell continued, ignoring Emerson’s provocation, “You’ll be punching a clock at some shiny company that’ll make you take drug tests.”

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Darrell glanced at Guy’s wrinkled back. Guy was still squinting myopically at Video Megalopolis across the way.

“And iron your clothes.”

From behind him, Guy heard Emerson reply, “Hate the game, not the player, Darrell.”

Guy heard the grind of Darrell’s cash register as he rang the rental through. Like the other day, standing on the work floor with Perry, he was starting to feel an idea beginning to boil in his head. The sucking hits he had taken off Emerson’s joint seemed to make him smarter, more nimble, bolder in the brain. He tapped the window with a knuckle and turned to Emerson and Darrell.

“When did that place open?” Guy asked.

Emerson craned his neck to look out the window. Darrell gave a pinched smile.

“Yesterday, actually. It was a gala affair.” He flapped his hands in mock celebration. “Cut short by my paying Eddie and Todd to stage a fight in the drama section.”

Emerson grunted laughter. Darrell’s look turned speculative. “I think I’m going to get a job there and stay just long enough to steal their mailing list.”

“What good would that do you?” Emerson asked.

“The list is of every frequent renter in a fifty-mile radius. It’d be like breaking the Enigma code. Once we have a list like that, well, the sky’s the limit.”

Emerson and Darrell began to animatedly discuss the repercussions of such a maneuver when they heard scuffling sounds. They both turned in unison to see Guy clambering over the counter.

“What are you doing?” Darrell demanded.

“You have a Zip drive, right?” Guy asked.

“Yeah, but-”

“Let me borrow it.”

Darrell was taken aback. But he waved his hand dismissively. “Sure, go ahead if you know how to unhook it.”

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Guy unplugged the Zip drive with the nimbleness of an expert. He placed the Zip drive and its accompanying cables on the counter, and banged the surface with his fist, sending Emerson and Darrell hopping.

“Jesus Christ, what?” Darrell asked.

Guy pointed to a Sony Dreamcast carrying case yawning open on the floor. “I need that, too.”

“Yeah, man, yeah,” Darrell said, spreading his hands in resignation. “Go to it. Rock out with your cock out.”

Guy threw the Zip drive and the cables into the empty Dreamcast case, closed it, latched it, slid over the counter Duke Boys-style, and strode out of the store into the morning, the case swinging in his right hand. Darrell and Emerson stared out at him wordlessly for a moment, too stunned to speak. Finally Darrell broke the silence.

“What the fuck is that guy’s damage?”

Emerson shrugged. “I don’t know that kid.”

A middle-aged Hispanic woman with a round friendly face greeted Guy like he was a long-lost relative as he entered Video Megalopolis.

“Welcome to Video Megalopolis, mega hits all the time!” she exclaimed in somewhat halting but amiable English.

Guy held up a hand to silence her. “Are you the manager?”

“Yes, my name is Maria, how can I-”

“Yeah, I’m Quinn, from Cyclical Computing.” Guy looked around the store. “I’m here to take a look at your database app. It needs a service pack.”

Guy was always amazed by the snap reaction most people seemed to have to the word ‘computer’. Maria’s eyes fogged over and her mouth drooped open a bit, as if catatonia was in the offing. She looked around the store for invisible assistance.

“Um... uh... okay. Do you want me to call Dave?”

“No, no,” Guy quickly replied, as if he himself had already considered calling Dave and ruled it out. “I’ll just leave a service order.” He pointed to the nearest PC, on the sales counter. “Is that it?”

“Is that...?”

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“The database.”

“Oh. Oh, no! That’s the register.” Maria pointed to another PC, nestled on the end of the counter near a machine that sold Snapple. “That computer there has the database on it.”

“Thanks.”

Guy quickly headed over to the machine and dropped to a knee in front of, taking a look at the store as he did. The place was cavernous; there was no other way to describe it. Shelves stretched as far as the eye could see, almost. A whole wall of televisions showed the same glossy Julia Roberts movie. It was a funny thing, really: there were vast sections devoted to almost every genre of movie, and there was probably hundreds of videotapes in each section, but there seemed to be only about fifteen films, total, in each section. Guy could see Ben Stiller’s face multiplied about a hundredfold in the Comedy section. A hundred Jackie Chans in Action. A hundred Meg Ryans in Drama.

Guy’s actions in the next minute or so were instinctive, the frenetic movements of fingers well trained in their work. He hooked up the Zip drive. Signed on as ‘Guest’ from a DR.DOS prompt. Assigned to Drive D. His fingers rattled over the keys. Hummed tunelessly to himself as he worked, feeling like Jack Ryan or some other Tom Clancy techno-thriller badass. Rapidly copied the mailing list from C:\database\maillist to the Zip drive. The computer growled out the copy, and as it did, Guy turned to Maria. She was standing at the counter, staring fish-eyed at the Julia Roberts movie. Julia was running down a street wearing a flapping wedding gown and tennis shoes and Richard Gere or Kevin Kline or her best friend played by Joan Cusack was chasing her. Or something like that.

“Maria?”

Maria jumped. “Uh? Um, how can I-”

“You’ll want to start formatting these drives at night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Guy got up from his kneeling position and calmly began unplugging the Zip drive from its foreign host. “Just type ‘format:c’ at the command line before you or whoever else goes home for the night. I think you’ll be pleased with the performance difference.”

Maria reacted with the vacant politeness of someone who doesn’t know what the fuck the other guy is talking about but doesn’t want to admit it. She fumbled for a Post-It Note and a Sharpie. “Wow, let me write that down.” She began scribbling frantically. “Format:C. Okay, thank you!”

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Guy looked over Maria’s shoulder as she wrote. He nodded gravely at her and threw the Zip drive unceremoniously into the Dreamcast Case. He tipped an imaginary hat. “You’re all set.”

Maria smiled brightly, but her smile turned to puzzlement as the computer man quickly slammed the lid shut on his case and bolted out of the store, tie flying like Kerensky’s fleeing American flag. She watched him out the window as he dashed across State Street into the shabby little video store across the way. It was curious, the way the man left in such an almighty hurry, but it wasn’t her job to speculate on the strange actions of the computer guys Dave brought in. They were nearly all strange anyway.

Darrell slid the Zip disk into the drive as luxuriantly as if he was sliding his rod into a woman’s hotbox. He closed his eyes and smiled with pleasure as he did so. Guy was sitting on the counter, munching on a French vanilla ice cream cone with chocolate sprinkles. Rummaging through the Drama section, he had found a copy of Gorky Park, and now he was watching the William Hurt classic on the TV bolted to the ceiling. His face was blank, impossible to read. Emerson leaned against the ice cream counter, hands in his pockets. He was looking at Guy and shaking his head.

“Hey,” Emerson said.

Guy raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“You haven’t filled out your goal cards yet.”

Guy smiled. The goal cards and the meeting with Mr. Kirtley seemed as lost in the murky past as the Punic Wars. “I know. My boss wants to see me about them tomorrow.”

“What are you going to do?”

Guy shrugged, as if the matter was of little concern to him since, after all, it was indeed of little concern. Precious little. “I’m going to see him.”

Emerson drove Guy back to his car at around 3:30, and if Emerson learned something about Guy in the bizarre first hour-and-a-half of their symbiosis, there was plenty that Guy learned about Emerson in the second four. A lot of Guy’s education consisted of simply listening for Emerson’s occasional lapses into blustery. The gaunt young pizza driver was the kind of master bullshitter who turned small bits of truth (like, his name) and half-forgotten encounters into roaring tales of money, lust, and violence; all of which took place in the conveniently recent past. Between the time of Guy’s act of corporate theft, which took place at exactly 11:13 a.m., and the time at which Emerson dropped him back off at the Durango, they; went to lunch at a local Bob Evans, where

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they both filled themselves with country fried steak & eggs and Coca-Cola; the bar, where Guy drank rum & Coke and Emerson drank scotch & Coke; and the various houses to which Emerson lackadaisically delivered pizza and chicken. No lust, no violence, and, other than Emerson’s tip cash, no money. Of course, Guy had only known Emerson a short time. They didn’t drink and drive. They just smoked marijuana out of Emerson’s seemingly limitless stash (charmingly situated in a pale blue music box hidden within a compartment underneath the Neon’s driver’s seat). The weed put Guy on the near-knife edge of hallucination, but surprisingly, it didn’t make him paranoid about missing almost all of work, about the drinking, about the strange people he met, about the theft of the mailing list, or about the goal cards, still lying stupidly blank on the bar at Peabody’s.

Emerson’s Neon, going south on Route 15 toward the city, zipped by a black 1999 Acura, going north. Perry was on his way home an hour-and-a-half early. He had begged off work at 3:25, explaining to Gail that he was feeling a little bit under the weather, but there was indeed something going on inside his bald head, and it wasn’t an ache. As he sped north away from work toward the wooded ring of suburbs he called home, he was in ferment.

He’d been caught by surprise, admittedly. He hadn’t expected to be rebuked so cleanly and decisively by Ed, and he’d spent the next several hours after the rebuff wandering about the halls, distracted and disjointed and more than a little put out. Ed’s actions, to him, defied explanation. Here was a fifty-year old man who was nothing more than a glorified flunky, had never been more than one and never would be more than one, and he had flatly refused Perry’s generous offer of assistance. Refused! What was he thinking?

So Track #1- enlisting Ed’s support in a peaceful, diplomatic campaign to take over leadership of the company, either de facto or de jure, had gone by the boards. At this point in time, Perry honestly wasn’t sure what Track #2 would be. He hadn’t thought he would need one. But he was going to come up with one now, that was for sure. Ed (and Kirtley) might think that they had thwarted him for good. Fine. Let them think that. In the meantime he would husband his energy, weigh his options, gather his resources, and advance with baby steps. After all, it was his mother who liked to say that it was easiest to chew in small bites. And who knows? Maybe something would happen, something out of his control that could advance his cause by leaps and bounds. It was difficult to believe that one of the aphids would cause the kind of upheaval that would create the kind of vacuum he would need to step in and seize power, but hey? You never knew, right?

Perry smiled and pressed down on the accelerator, nosing the Acura up to a sweet seventy. He smiled. Things were going to be all right. The prize was still there. He was just going to have to travel by a slightly different road, that was all. But he was still Perry Mechanic; he was still himself, still the smartest, the boldest, the most resourceful man alive. Nothing would change that essential fact- not any circumstance, and certainly not any man.

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APRIL 27

Guy walked past Gail, busy running envelops through a Pitney-Bowes stamping machine, and rapped on Mr. Kirtley’s door, which was ajar.

“Hey, Don, you got a second?”

Mr. Kirtley either didn’t hear Guy referring to him by his first name, or the fact did not register with him. He simply smiled his slightly wolfish smile and extended a well-manicured hand toward one of the leather chairs. “Sure, Guy, come on in. I have a meeting in a few minutes, but we should have plenty of time to go over your goal cards.”

Guy had learned a thing or two in his odyssey with Emerson, the getaway pizza driver, yesterday. He had learned that there was some kind of plug that connected the conscious action of his ego and the unconscious action of his body, and if he simply gave a slight yank on this plug deep inside himself- in his mind, in his consciousness, in his physical body- he was capable of doing, saying, or thinking just about anything. He could leave his fiancée. Sleep in his car. Cut out from work. Smoke and drink like Lee Marvin. Commit (albeit minor) acts of office sabotage. Sometime between now and last Friday he had yanked that plug. He probably hadn’t even known when he did it, but he had done it for sure, and he honestly didn’t know what he would do next, so it didn’t even do much good to plan, at this juncture. Maybe down the road a piece, when his burgeoning craziness was better developed, but not now. So he just kind of left himself to the mercy of his own involuntaries.

Mr. Kirtley was still looking at him as he entered the office. The boss knew that his IT manager had mysteriously vanished from work very early yesterday. He knew that said IT manager had shown a marked increase in slackness, sloppiness, and general flakiness over the past few days and weeks. He knew these things, Guy knew, because of yesterday’s meeting and the “offer” of the goal cards. He knew that he might have do what he had done so many times since taking control of the company in November 1978, the time of Jonestown. He knew he might have to take Guy’s measure. That was all he knew.

Guy had a hunch that Don Kirtley might know a little bit more before today’s meeting was said and done.

Guy walked into the office. His tie was askew, his hair was corkscrewed and there was a thickening bristle of black beard on his cheeks and chins, but he walked confidently to the chair. He pointed to the chair. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead, Guy.”

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Guy sat. He favored Mr. Kirtley with a spitless smile. Mr. Kirtley smiled back, a little uncertainly and, Guy thought, distractedly. He knows something is wrong, Guy thought. Really wrong. This isn’t just Guy fucking up, and he knows it. He knows and he just wants to feel me out.

“Actually,” Guy said, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Is it about the goal cards?”

“Kind of, in a way,” Guy furrowed his brows and rocked his head back and forth like a metronome. Then he frowned. He bounced a finger off the arm of the chair. “You know what?” he asked Mr. Kirtley. “I think I’m just going to stand up.”

“Okay,” Mr. Kirtley replied carefully, as Guy heaved himself to his feet. He sunk his hands deep in his pants pockets and began walking/meandering to the window. He fetched in a deep sigh.

“I don’t think I want to communicate on that level anymore.”

Whatever Mr. Kirtley had been expecting, this wasn’t it. His tanned face wrinkled in a frown. “Excuse me?”

“We’re animals, right?”

“What?”

“Like other animals, we… occasionally work in packs, to achieve a common goal. Right?”

Mr. Kirtley hadn’t answered either of these questions, but that didn’t discourage Guy. He knew he was right. He knew Mr. Kirtley knew, too. He took two fingers and spread the blinds on the window, eyeing the outside world, the parking lots, and the parked cars, their roofs reflecting hot glitters of sunlight. Cars zipped back and forth on Alva Parkway East.

“As a young member of your pack, I followed blindly.” Guy talked slowly, in measured tones, feeling his way in the dark. “Because I didn’t know any better.” He snapped the blinds back and looked up at the ceiling. “But I have had a coming of age recently. Much like young animals in the wild.”

He glanced back at Mr. Kirtley. The boss was watching him warily, fingers laced together in front of him, regarding him like a strange dog that may or may not bite. Guy smiled disarmingly at him. Walked about to the front of the desk and began methodically sliding an index finger across the silvered surface of the desk blotter. The reflected light from the blotter gave his eyes and cheeks a slanted, demonic cast.

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“I want the pack,” Guy whispered.

Then he frowned. Appeared to reconsider. “Or, at least, that’s what I thought at first. But then I realized that maybe I don’t necessarily need to lead.” Guy stopped fingering the blotter and spread his hands, palms out toward Mr. Kirtley. “I just need to know why I’m following.”

Guy paced the carpet in front of the desk. He was starting to warm up, starting to find the theme, and he knew he had to keep going, keep the pressure on, keep Mr. Kirtley sitting in that chair limp and quiet. Had to keep him passive.

“In the wild,” Guy continued, “leaders earn respect. They earn the right to be called leaders! But lately, we have just gotten into the bad habit of just assigning it, as if it’s some kind of fiat given down by God.” He glanced balefully at the Reagan-era portraits of Mr. Kirtley on the wall, seeming to implicate them. Then he turned back to Kirtley. The present-day version was rigid in his chair, hands gripping its arms (and for the first time Guy noticed liver spots on those knuckles long grasped the nettle of power). Mr. Kirtley stared back at Guy, and now Guy could see the beginnings of fire in those eyes. He grinned now, apelike down to the gums. And he leaned on the lacquered wood desk, knuckles down, and bent over to almost within kissing distance of Kirtley’s withered face.

“And since we did agree that we are animals,” Guy whispered, “now you can see why I need you to earn it.”

Mr. Kirtley sank slowly back into his seat, the rigidity seeming to rise off him like sour steam, and suddenly Guy knew that the boss had arrived at the moment of truth. Guy, like a driver knocking it down to third, let his grin sink into the old disarming smile, this one sugared with flattery. He leaned back to a safe distance. “A man like yourself, with your tenure, your stature at this company, your reputation… a man like you doesn’t just pick up the phone and ask for loyalty, do you? You didn’t achieve such a lofty purchase by happenstance…”

Guy lolled his head to the side and affected a look of overpowering puzzlement.

“… Do you?”

Silence in the office. The door was closed. Through it Guy could hear the dim hubbub of the work floor, of Gail’s phone, and now all that seemed like carnival ducks, and this was just a county fair showdown, two pistols drawn and ready to slap leather for the big brown teddy bear on the ceiling. Kirtley’s left hand began to creep toward the blinking lights of his phone. Guy could almost smell the funnel cake and hear the calliope music. He heard an imaginary ticket teller admonish him, stay in your seat while the ride is moving! So he sat back down in the subject’s chair.

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“You should be glad,” Guy declared, tapping his chest with both index fingers, “that a young warrior like myself has approached you, offering my loyalty. Because really, that’s what I’m doing. Because your paper won’t buy my loyalty anymore.”

“Only you can do that.”

Mr. Kirtley sat. Guy could see his eyes flick from his left hand, to the door, to Guy. Then all the tension flooded out of his body, he relaxed in his chair, and even before it happened, Guy knew. Mr. Kirtley leaned forward in his slump and punched a button on his phone. A mournful boop sound hummed in Guy’s ears. Mr. Kirtley gave him a smile as hard and dry as an alkali plain.

“Go ahead and clean your desk out, Guy.”

APRIL 28

“Perry, how are you doing? Come on in, take a seat.”

Perry strode into Kirtley’s office, arms swinging at his sides, shambling loosely, easily. He sat down in one of the leather chairs and stretched his legs. It was a warm, gray, muggy morning, making the lights of the office even brighter against the gloom outside.

Perry had made arrangements to come down here yesterday, just as soon as he’d heard the news about Guy Anderson getting shitcanned. He had originally thought about seeing Kirtley yesterday, right after seeing Guy stalk out of the office wordlessly, his face a blank mask, but had demurred, thinking that the boss might find it unseemly, like driving golf balls off a freshly turned grave. So he waited. For one day.

“What can I do for you, Perry?” Kirtley asked.

Perry shrugged and laced his hands together on his flat stomach. “I was wondering about the situation at the top of IT.”

“Were you?”

Perry nodded.

“Why?”

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Perry looked at Mr. Kirtley. The boss was sitting there with a look of honest puzzlement on his weathered gray face. Perry briefly searched for an explanation other than the true one.

“I was just wondering-”

“I only ask because, last time I checked, what did or didn’t go on at IT wasn’t exactly within your bailiwick. Why the sudden interest?”

Perry felt like he had just Lost a Turn. Kirtley was giving him a look that was either concern, or something that decidedly wasn’t. Perry decided to advance with caution.

“I was concerned about the present lack of leadership in IT.”

Kirtley was less than convinced. “Really,” he said flatly.

Perry nodded. Silence fell over the room. Mr. Kirtley raised his eyebrows to Perry: What?

“I think there’s a leadership problem at IT, and I think I’m in a position to maybe rectify that problem.”

“You?”

Perry nodded. Mr. Kirtley did not. A frown creased his face.

“Do you know anything about computers?”

“No. But your last two IT guys did, and look what happened to them.”

“Whatever happened to Snyder and Anderson, I don’t think their computer knowledge had anything to do with it.”

“Maybe not. But by the same token, how much does computer knowledge have to do with running that department?”

“It’s the IT department.”

“So?”

“So, it takes someone with a fair amount of computer knowledge to run the IT department, wouldn’t you think?”

“No, it takes a fair amount of computer knowledge to fix a computer. But I’m not talking about fixing computers.” Perry leaned forward in his chair, eyes keen. “What you

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need, is someone who knows how to run things smoothly around here who won’t go Section 8 at any minute.”

Mr. Kirtley gave Perry one of his arid smiles. “Someone like you, for instance.”

“Well, I’m not mentioning any names here,” Perry said expansively. “But if you want an IT manager who actually has an understanding of what it takes to keep that portion of the business up and running-”

There was a short rap on the door, and it swung open to reveal the bulky form of Ed. He gave Perry a baleful look from the doorway.

“Can I have a minute, Don?”

Mr. Kirtley glanced from Perry to Ed, than to his watch. “Sure.” He said. He smiled at Perry. “I’ll keep your recommendation under advisement, okay, Perry?”

“Okay,” Perry agreed. He stood up and walked to the door. As he approached Ed, the company’s right hand man touched him on the arm.

“Hey,” Ed murmured. Perry turned. The bright light caught the signet ring on Ed’s finger as he pointed it out the door.

“They’re taking applications for the opening in IT. Go to the corkboard and fill one out like everyone else.”

Perry gave Ed an expressionless stare and continued out the door. As he left, he heard Kirtley say, “Hey, Ed, what’s happening?” and the door swung closed.

Guy Anderson drank down a mug of beer three enormous gulps, let the cold malt beverage slide down his throat, threw back his neck and in his best Ogre-like moment, belched “Cocksucker!” as loud and as long as he possibly could.

Emerson, seated at the bar beside him, whooped and applauded. Guy doffed an imaginary cap and grinned through an imaginary plug like Shoeless Joe at the end of Eight Men Out. They had both been at the bar drinking since about noon on this warm afternoon at the gentle tail of April, and now it was getting on about five, and they were pretty well spiflicated on beers and Jaeger shots. The morning gloom had burned off and late day sunshine spilled through the distant windows, but Guy and Emerson and the rest of the weekday topers were protected by the bar’s dark cool redness.

“I don’t know what the fuck you expected,” Emerson told Guy, shaking his head dolefully. “Did you expect him to shake your hand? Congratulate you on your epiphany? Man’s going to be watching out for his own rich ass.”

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“Yeah, I know.” Guy rolled the empty mug briskly between his palms. “I did want to see some measure of credibility, though. I think I earned it.”

“Didn’t you say that cat’s been there for twenty-five years?”

“Twenty-three.”

“There’s your fucking credibility, than.” Emerson sat back and downed a slug of beer.

Things had gone on for Guy in this manner ever since pretty much the minute Mr. Kirtley pinked him, about thirty-one hours ago now. He had marched out the door to the smoking area and hadn’t stopped marching until he sat down in the very same seat he was planted in right now. He was three rum-and-Cokes deep when Emerson came back from a delivery. He got a lot drunker after Emerson appeared on the scene, and not coincidentally, Emerson got very drunk as well. After a certain point yesterday afternoon, things became increasingly murky and difficult to remember, and deep inside the pit of Guy’s brain, a small blue flame of sobriety was surprised when it told itself, I’m in the middle of a blackout. That thought was not one of the things Guy remembered today. What he did remember were snatches and flashes. He remembered Emerson pounding on the bar and yelling for “concoctions”, while the Nordic bartender wiped his hairy hands on a rag and yelled even more loudly at Emerson to shut the fuck up. He remembered a loud crazy car ride, crammed in the back of Emerson’s Neon, the lighted Peabody’s magnet still stuck to the roof. He remembered a bowling alley, squealing girls with high hair and tight stonewashed jeans, bright lights, waxy smell, the dropping stomach of a six-ten-split. He remembered moving his Durango from the company parking lot to the brick alley running alongside Peabody’s with all the palsied, feverish horrified concentration of Blondin crossing Niagara. And, truth be told, that was about all.

Guy awoke from a sodden sleep at about eleven-thirty this morning, expecting to feel hung over, and pleasantly surprised that he was not. That was the first of the day’s good news. The second was that he only had to walk about thirty feet to the front door of Peabody’s, where he promptly resumed his drinking, which had gone from a mere “jag” late last night, to a full-fledged “binge” at about three-thirty this afternoon. He had been okay for most of that time, too. Hadn’t even given much thought to what had happened at work, the sudden and total rout in Mr. Kirtley’s office. Then, not long ago, an older, affluent-looking, obviously gay man had come in to the bar to pick up a free copy of Valley Entertainment Journal. Guy had happened to catch a whiff of the man’s English Leather as he passed, and that alone was enough to forcibly remind him of the aquiline boss and what had happened in that office ten-thirty yesterday morning.

Guy was disappointed and hurt, and a bit disillusioned as well. He had thought Mr. Kirtley had more in him than that. He had thought that Mr. Kirtley would show some fire of his own, and they could really have had some kind of memorable showdown in there. Instead Kirtley had pushed the button. Kirtley hadn’t even given him his walking

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papers in person. Gail, the boss’s secretary, for God’s sakes, handed them to him. It was one last swallow of bitter medicine before the cooling swallows of liquor took the bad taste away.

Now here sat Guy in this dark room, plastered for a record smashing second day in a row, and it was only 5:30, and he didn’t know what he wanted to do right now, for gosh sakes.

“What do you hope to gain from all this?” Emerson asked.

Guy stopped short, but only for a moment. The almost non-stop toper he’d been on since 10:30 yesterday morning had already effectively answered that question.

“What am I hoping to gain?” Guy replied. A fresh mug of beer was slid in front of him, bearing a wisp of foam around its surface. He shrugged. “I’m looking to stop giving a fuck.”

“That’s a dead end attitude, you know.”

“Yeah.” Guy dug a cigarette out and lit it. He still looked awkward as hell, but it was starting to feel right, and that was what counted. “I can handle it.”

Emerson regarded Guy for a long moment, nodding slightly. Than he reached around his back, underneath the red windbreaker, and pulled out a large blue-steeled revolver with a black rubber grip and laid it on the bar next to Guy with a soft thump. Guy recognized the gun. It had been in Emerson’s glove compartment two days prior.

“Forty-four caliber Bulldog,” Emerson said softly, tapping the barrel of the pistol with his finger. “A collector’s item. Weapon of choice for the Son of Sam and Dirty Harry Callahan, among others. Custom designed for those who have stopped giving a fuck.”

Guy had seen guns but had never actually picked one up and held it in his hand before. This one, gleaming mellow in the dim light of the bar, seemed to beckon him. C’mon, pick me up, you big strong American man you, it seemed to whisper. So Guy wrapped his left hand around the grip of the pistol and did just that.

He felt a very brief, very strong exhilaration when the pistol was in his hand, when he realized at that moment he was one of the strongest men on earth, he was God with ring around the white collar. He looked around the bar, at the other drinkers, at the Nordic bartender. He did a moment’s calculation.

“How many bullets does this thing take?” he asked Emerson.

“Why?”

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“How many?”

“Count the chambers, dumbfuck.”

There were eight chambers. Eight bullets. Guy instantly felt eight times more lethal. Eight would tie him up with Speck, put him two up on Zodiac, give him more than enough for World War I ‘ace’ status. He scooped up the pistol and waved it menacingly at the end of his hand. A veritable flood of scenarios filled his drunken head. He was knocking over a shabby convenience store; the turbaned proprietor giving him fearful glances as he cleaned out the register. He was jamming it to the temple of the asshole bouncer from the club he used to frequent in college, making the guy cry, making him dump hot piss down his leg while his hot-ass girlfriend was relegated to watching helplessly and whimpering, “Todd!”… Guy waved the pistol in Emerson’s direction and the pallid young man reared back, eyes wide.

“Watch where you point that fucker, it’s loaded!” he cried.

“You act like I got my finger on the trigger,” Guy replied. The gun waggled and nodded on the end of his hand.

Emerson suddenly wrenched the pistol away and pointed it directly at Guy’s forehead. Guy heard a click as the hammer of the gun cocked, and he suddenly knew that if Emerson were to move his thumb a few bare centimeters, the stools, bar, floor, and wall behind him would be instantaneously splattered with blood, bright white bone fragments, and gray oatmeal lumps of brain. He stared into Emerson’s eyes. Conversation began to wane in the bar as people casually turned to look at the spectacle. The bartender stood frozen nearby, isolated at the cash register, fatally far from whatever weapon he had stowed underneath the bar.

Guy felt metal fear inside him, but he felt something else as well- hope. He had at some point disappeared into a dark tunnel, and right now, with the drinking, with the pistol, with Emerson, he was in the middle of that tunnel, tile walls hidden by inky blackness zipping by him. He knew he was in the tunnel. He also knew there was another side, a point where the tunnel emerged from the earth into the freshness of the day, a new day. He would get to that point, eventually. If Emerson didn’t blow his head off, that was.

“See this?” Emerson asked. He closed his left eye and widened his right, as if he was taking aim with his face. “The power of a loaded gun. Paralyzing, isn’t it? Most people can’t handle it.”

Guy didn’t think Emerson was really going to shoot him or anything like that- at least not on purpose. He just hoped some drunk didn’t bump his elbow on the way to take a leak. That would be wholly inappropriate. Right?

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“The thing you’ve got to remember about guns, the whole fetish,” Emerson continued, “is that it’s primarily about control. Control for the guy with the gun, and control over the guy without.”

Emerson relaxed the hammer and placed the gun back on the bar. Guy relaxed, visibly, in spite of himself. Emerson leaned back on his stool and shrugged.

“Once you gain control over yourself, you’ll realize that you don’t need to carry a gun to get your point across.”

The gun lay on the bar between them. It didn’t seem as big there as it had seemed when it was aimed between Guy’s eyes. “Then why do you carry the gun?” Guy asked.

“Huh?”

“Why do you carry it if you say you don’t need it?”

“Oh.” Emerson took the gun and slid it back into the belt of his baggy cords like admittance of weakness. “I’m afraid I might get robbed on a delivery.”

The bartender shook his head scornfully and went to serve a comely young patron an Amaretto Sour.

As night fell, the bar began to crowd with Wednesday night custom, the vanguard of the weekend drinking crowd. Clumps of people in fours and fives began to come through the front door. As the outside light faded, the mazdas inside the bar were turned on. Five ragged-looking guys came in through the back door near the stage, carrying instruments- a bass, a turntable, mixing equipment, and, fantastically, a big white piano, the kind of piano Billy Joel might sit at while he pounded out “Captain Jack” or “New York State of Mind” or some other hoary classic. Other disheveled young men followed, lugging sound equipment and extension cords. The second group of men began preparing the stage, setting up for the show. The five young men with the instruments repaired to the bar and ordered drinks, and had drinks ordered for them by starry-eyed girls and elbow-socking guys with crew cuts and paisley shirts. The volume on the music piped in over the bar’s sound system was ratcheted up. “The Safety Dance” came on, and some people with the unmistakable look of office workers on happy hour began to dance hilariously and awfully. Emerson looked at the dancing people and shook his head around a straw full of liquor.

“The dog’s dead,” Emerson said mournfully. “The barbarians are hammering at the gate. They’re picking the lock.”

He was saying something else, some kind of complaining about not being able to get a cheap beer in town without having to listen to Jimmy Buffett all fucking night, but Guy wasn’t listening. He was watching as the bar filled up like time-lapse photography,

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lost in his own little eye of this swirling hurricane. He saw the white lights above the stage blink out, replaced by house lights of blue and purple and red. The banter around the bar began to grow louder, more bellicose, more drunken. He saw two office-type guys, faces beet-red above white shirts and tires, arguing belligerently about politics. Four people at a booth were playing Yahtzee, whooping and downing mixed drinks with every roll of the dice. Three of the roadies who had been previously hauling in band equipment were brazenly passing a joint around. Guy glanced around; feeling like his head was stuck in a fishbowl filled with some kind of thick fluid- formaldehyde, or perhaps just Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup. Emerson was gone, off someplace. He saw his half-finished beer and grabbed at it with both hands like a baby and drank it down like Similac. He let out a bile belch. He promptly felt someone give him a kick in the big muscle of his thigh. He wrote it off as his drunkenness speaking loudly to him through phantom pain, and then he felt the kick again, harder this time.

“Ow, goddamn it!”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, that didn’t hurt.”

Emerson was back like a magic trick. He had resumed his seat at the bar, but now he had an accessory sitting on his lap. The accessory was a pretty young girl- she couldn’t have been more than sixteen- with wide blue eyes that regarded Guy with friendliness and curiosity. She had plastered on her face a smile, almost a grin for its toothiness and impishness. She wore baggie fatigue pants and a wife-beater shirt, like a cute little No Limit Soldier on a hot day, almost, and long curly blond hair that cascaded down her back. She had been kicking Guy- well, she was actually more Emerson’s proxy kicker, because he was giving her a light smack to her own thigh to trigger her foot in motion, like an old Super Toe toy. She kicked her foot out again and Guy, seeking to escape, overbalanced and capsized off the other side of the bar. He fell in a tangled heap of rumpled clothes and drunkenness, and as he went down he heard Emerson howl with laughter and pound the bar with his fist in abject triumph.

“Fuck off!” Guy yelled.

“That’s what I’m talking about, man!” Emerson’s voice cut through everything. “You’re so used to taking a fall you just can’t help yourself!”

Guy resumed his seat with shaky, sodden gravity. He sniffed, went through the motions of straightening himself up, and cleared his throat. He turned to the girl, smiled, and extended a hand.

“Well, how do you do?”

The girl nodded at him, still smiling broadly. She gave his outstretched hand a couple of surprisingly firm pumps. Guy looked up at Emerson, whose usual expression of narrow standoffishness had magically transformed. He was looking down at the girl with the foggy joyfulness of a pizza man who gets blown on a delivery by a hot grandmother.

94

“Is this your girlfriend?”

The girl nodded and suddenly kicked him again, this time without a prompt from Emerson. Guy reared back in pain.

“Ow! What the fuck!”

Emerson looked dolefully at Guy. “She would appreciate it if you addressed her with those kinds of questions.”

“Oh. Okay.” Guy looked at the girl, whose smile had reappeared on her face. “Are you Emerson’s girlfriend?”

She nodded impatiently.

“What’s your name?”

The girl dug her I.D. out of a woven red purse lying on the bar and handed it to Guy. It said SABRINA MACINTOSH. And the DOB, sure as shootin’, was 8/18/84. Oh, youth. Guy handed the I.D. back and nodded formally.

“I’m Guy Anderson.”

She nodded.

“Are you deaf?”

Guy definitely expected a kick for that one, but she merely nodded again. Guy frowned at Emerson.

“Doesn’t she speak?”

“Sometimes. Not very often.”

“Why isn’t she speaking now?”

“I just told you, she doesn’t speak often. Why would she speak to you?”

“Good point.”

One of the band members, a loose fellow with a green shirt and baggy brown cords, gold teeth a head full of dreadlocks, and a gold watch on a waist-chain, William McKinley-style, arrived at the bar and ordered a “tonic” in a porridge-thick British accent. While he waited for his drink to arrive, the apparition turned to Emerson and slapped him on the back of the head.

95

“Oy!” he yelled.

“Hey, Keith!” Emerson yelled back. He pumped the tall fellow’s hand, which was callused and tipped with long, thick yellow fingernails. The fellow- Keith- flashed Emerson his golden grin and nodded at Sabrina.

“Aye, Sabrina-girl. ‘Owe’s it?”

Sabrina nodded back agreeably and gave Keith a thumbs-up.

Keith saw Guy sitting there at the bar, morosely swirling beer in a mug with his finger. He pointed at Guy and addressed Emerson. “This your friend, Em?”

Emerson waggled his head. “Sort of. I was teaching him about control.”

“Ah.” Keith shook his head and rolled his eyes at Guy. “He pulled the gun on you, he did?”

“Yup.”

“The big bad Yankee with his big silver gun.” Keith looked sorrowful. “Course, you’d find that most blokes who wave the steel haven’t the minerals to use it.”

“I’d use it on you if the palaver failed.” Emerson aimed a finger at Keith and pulled an imaginary trigger.

“In that case, you’d better hope it don’t.”

Keith regarded Guy with interest. “You’ve the look of a school shooter, you do. It’s not a look I envy.”

Guy took a slug of the warm beer. “If you want to give advice, Lloyd George, you’ll have to stand in line.”

Keith nodded to himself. “Lloyd George? That’s good.”

Emerson grinned sickle-like. “Keith here fancies himself a man yet to be broken by this world.”

“When did you come over here?” Guy asked.

Keith mulled it over for a second. “1996. Or ’97. It’s a bit of a blur, actually.”

“Why did you come over here?”

96

“I became too big for the Isles,” Keith replied with his golden grin. “You want to know what made me want to leave Britain?”

“Sure,” Guy answered.

“Here we go,” one of the band members intoned.

Keith took no notice. “I drove across Britain. All the way from the Irish Sea to the North. The length and breadth of the island. Know how long it took me?”

Guy shook his head.

“An hour.” Keith paused. “Took me an hour.”

“How long is an hour in Britain?” Emerson asked.

“Sixty minutes,” Keith answered without a pause. “That’s not enough country, my friend. Not even close. I wanted to go someplace with plenty of-” here Keith waved his long arms about his head to illustrate his point.

“Wow,” Guy said. “You should have gone to Russia.”

“I did.”

“How was it?”

“A lot like Ohio, but the plumbing is quite a bit rustier.”

“You like it here?”

“Aye.” Keith’s “tonic” arrived, a pale green drink in a long skinny glass. He took a long draught, winced, and put the glass down half-empty. “Know what I like best about the States?”

“What?”

“The women.” Keith drained his glass and ordered another.

“That’s it? The women?”

“Aye. What, you expect profundities?” Keith was amused. “There ain’t profundities in this place, I can assure you.”

Guy looked around the bar, indeed but could see no sign of said profundities. He ordered another beer to wash away the disappointment and looked at Keith again.

97

“What kind of music do you play?”

Keith grinned again.

“The right kind of music.”

It was now past eight o’clock, and Guy found himself ensconced in a booth with Emerson, Sabrina, Keith, a couple of Keith’s band mates, and a couple of accompanying fillies as the bar filled, more rapidly this time, as if the deepening night were a faucet gradually opened by darkness. The place was getting louder, a murmuring, anticipating buzz starting from the knees and groins of the patrons and swelling to the pitched roof of the joint as the hour for in-house music drew nigh. Sabrina reached across the table and tapped Guy on the wrist urgently. He looked up at her from his semi-stupor and watched as she fired a serious of completely incomprehensible hand signs at him. Guy stared myopically at this display and turned to Emerson.

“What’s she saying?”

Emerson, nodding like he had heard this question before (as he certainly had), motioned for Guy to lean over and hunker. Then he replied:

“It took me about two weeks to realize that I could be either her boyfriend, or her translator. If you want to know what she’s saying… LEARN SIGN LANGUAGE!”

Keith, holding court, another “tonic” on the table in front of him, a starry-eyed fine young black thang squashed next to him, checked his watch and decided that the time had indeed arrived for profundities.

“Women!” he declared, taking a nice cool gulp of his tonic.

“Here, here!” Emerson replied, a drunken grin plastered on his face. Sabrina elbowed him and gave him a loud smack on the cheek.

“They are the truth,” Keith continued, more calmly. He gave a warm look to the young black thang next to him. She smiled back.

“A woman is the true quantification of beauty in this world,” Keith said loftily. “Everything and every one else just tried to emulate what they are. It’s why cars are referred to in feminine terms. It’s why countries are, too. It’s why I call my piano Beatrice. ‘Cause that’s as close as blokes get when they want to talk about all the good things they know.”

He turned to Guy, seemingly singling him out. Motioned with his head to the general outside.

98

“But you don’t learn that out there, do you? Real beauty- real music- are things that can only be discovered. ‘Cause they spring from the very well stone, here.” He tapped his chest, an absurdly hackneyed yet touching gesture. “ They can’t be taught or told, can they?”

Beatrice? Guy thought disjointedly. But Keith was turning back to the girl, the walleye to his casting hook.

“We each have our own definition of pure unadulterated beauty,” he murmured softly, rounding out his British accent to bursting Captain Cook-ness. “And everything we say and do- we do it only because we want to capture that beauty, and hold it in our arms.”

The words were like a tonic in themselves, apparently. The fine young black thang grabbed Keith and bodily dragged him off toward some dark corner of the bar, or a van, or some other place quiet and temporary.

“Fifteen minutes!” he yelled to one of his band mates as he was led away.

His bassist, a sharp-eyed little goateed fellow who resembled 1994-vintage Seth Green (and whose name, Guy learned later, was Toby Wolfowitz), yelled back, “You better remember that yourself!”

“I will!”

Guy smiled in spite of himself. “It’s a nice way of saying you do everything to get laid.”

Emerson shook his head at Guy with a little brother mixture of admiration and scorn. “I’m telling you, it’s the accent. That’s how he gets away with all the shit he talks.”

“And he plays a piano to boot.”

“Yeah.” Emerson’s voice was comically grim. “Man’s into battle with heavy ordnance.”

Guy had never gone into battle armed with anything other than a better-than modest bank account and his own sorry wit. That was why he’d been Jeni’s POW camp for four years. But, what with him getting fired and all, this was kind of his V-J Day, wasn’t it? People drank a whole shitload on V-J Day, right? He drank more to celebrate.

“His best pickup time is 37 seconds,” the Seth Green-looking bassist remarked.

99

“That’s only his American record,” drolled the keyboardist, a whip-thin gent with dog-ears and an Adam’s apple that made him look like he had just swallowed the island of Malta. “It’s 55 seconds in the U.K. The accent doesn’t do anything for him there”

“What kind of music do you guys play?”

“Why didn’t you ask Keith?” The keyboardist (he was Pelly Warwick, originally of Austin, Texas) asked himself.

“I did.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me ‘the right kind of music’.”

“Well, there you go.”

Guy was silent. It made sense, actually. God, when was the last time he had actually listened to a song? Not to sound like Bette Midler or anything, but damn. He’d been punishing his own brain with garbage radio music since he’d met Jeni and gotten that fucking job, and he drove to and from work and heard slack-jawed in the morning stupid shock jocks and in the evening pallid flaccid tunes that covered his head with another cool blue membrane, like the pills did. The membrane was LONG gone. It had been washed away in the tidal wave of Guy’s life, the one that had carried off everything but the Durango and himself, seated like the Lincoln Memorial in this booth, drunk as hell for, let’ say it again folks, just about 33 consecutive waking hours! Guy felt imaginary raucous cheers and smiled.

The deaf girl, Sabrina, saw his smile and smiled herself, making a sign at him.

Guy immediately looked up at Emerson. “Huh?”

Over Sabrina’s sigh, Emerson replied. “She wants to know what you are smiling about.”

Guy shrugged, still smiling a little. “Flying through the air.” Down, probably. Didn’t really feel down. Men who jump out of planes, they briefly ascend, too. “Feels like I’m flying through the air. I can’t remember what I was thinking about.”

“You’re drunk,” Emerson was saying drunkenly, but Sabrina was flashing another sign at him. She patted him on the wrist with one small hand and made a fluttering motion with her other hand in front of her face.

Guy dug in his pocket for a smoke, hauled one out, and was in the process of lighting it when a stabbing female voice cut through his unseen vision.

100

“Oh my God, you’re smoking now!” The voice screeched. Guy looked up. Sliding into the booth across from him sat none other than Faith. The chick from the restaurant.

She was even more luminous to Guy now than before, it seemed, like memory affirmed with trumpets. Her thick black hair seemed to give off its own light, and for the first time Guy noticed that here and there in that dark mane her small hairs shot with pure white- not many, but enough to notice. Under the heart-shaped face was a thin graceful neck plunging down to a black sweater. She held a tall frosted glass filled with something icy and pink. The dark eyes regarded Guy with that same teasing amusement behind their horn-rimmed lenses. Guy’s heart did an instantaneous leap into his throat. His face flushed red. Jesus, I’m such a fucking twelve-year old, he thought.

“You remember me?” he asked.

“Of course. You’re that boy from the restaurant.” The others at the table were twisted up in their own affairs and didn’t notice Faith, or perhaps Guy sponged their shared attention and released it as his own.

“Boy?”

She waved a hand daintily, dismissively. “That’s what I call all boys.” She nodded at the cigarette. “Smoking now?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” Guy replied coolly. He took a healthy, reasonable, professional drag off the cigarette.

“How long, if I may ask?”

“Few days.”

“Really?” Faith’s interest increased. “Tell me the truth. Is it because of me?”

“Uh, -”

“That’s okay.” She smiled at him. “I won’t make you answer that question.”

“What’s your name?” Guy asked. Good solid question.

“I never told you. That was rude of me.”

“I never asked.”

“Faith.” Faith’s smile warmed. “What’s yours?”

“Guy.”

101

“Nice to meet you, Guy.” Faith stuck a silver-nailed hand out and Guy took it. They squeezed. Guy felt the warmth of her hand again, finally, and flushed redder. She took her hand back delicately. She was looking at him keenly, now, but never losing that radiating warmth which seemed to just issue from her everywhere.

“So which Guy is it, Guy? The guy in the business suit on the patio at some fancy restaurant, with his fiancée, no less? Or is it you sitting here in this bar looking like Mad Max, all ripped up and shit?”

“Well, it went kind of like this.” Guy took a hit off his smoke and gave her a raised eyebrow. “Do you remember the woman who bid me hither?”

“The chick who yelled at you to come back inside?”

“Yeah, that one too.”

“Uh-huh.” Faith took a drink. “Is that your fiancée?”

“Yes.” Guy cleared his throat. “Ahem. That very night, just hours after you and I met, this beautiful, talented, utterly fascinating, endlessly multi-dimensional fiancée, and myself, decided that… the time had come to strike out on our own separate paths in this world. It was a sober, rational, mutually thought-out decision I elected to take the car. She elected to take everything else.”

He took a tougher drag off his cigarette, close to butt status now. “Then, just days later, at the apex of a protracted, violent power struggle within my company, my boss purged me and set me to my heels, into howling exile.”

“A power struggle?” Faith was impressed. Guy nodded gravely.

“What kind of power struggle?”

“Well,” Guy sighed, killing his smoke, “ever heard of the Night of the Long Knives? June 30, 1934? Hitler’s Blood Purge? Are you familiar with the events leading up to it?”

“Which one?”

“Huh? No, they’re the same. The Night of the Long Knives, also known as Hitler’s Blood Purge, took place on the weekend of June 30, 1934.”

“Oh. No, I haven’t.”

“Well, it was sort of like that,” Guy said. Faith still didn’t copy. Guy considered expounding on the Second Revolution, the pact with German industrialists, the bloody actions against Rohm and Strasser, but elected not to. He was pushing it as it was.

102

Faith looked at him for a moment, head cocked. Looking at his eyes, not gazing into them. Then she said, “Well, where have you been staying since you got kicked out?”

“I didn’t say I got kicked out.”

“Did you get kicked out?”

“Now that you ask, yes. I’ve been living in my car.”

“Oh,” she said, but the word was wondrous. “What have you been doing since you got fired?”

“I came over here a full day-and-a-half ago and started imbibing, and except for a brief interval of something resembling sleep, I have yet to stop.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Never.”

She looked at him with something like fascination. “You just let it all go?”

“I surely did.”

“No you didn’t.” She shook her head, grinning incredulously. “I refuse to believe you.”

“Oh, but I did.” Guy jabbed his head at the door. “Heck, my car’s parked right outside. I can show you where I live.”

“How do you live?”

“I retrieved some articles of clothing, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a toaster oven and a few basic toiletries from my condominium before I, uh, departed.”

“You have your own condo?”

“Had.”

“Aren’t you going to, like, get a lawyer or something?”

“Why would I what?”

“Why would you? Are you serious?” Faith tallied for a second. “I mean, you need to divide up all that stuff legally. You need documents, court orders, all that-”

103

“Oh, Jesus, no.” Guy looked at Faith like she was crocked. “I’m done with all that.”

Faith just stared at him for a minute, her eyes widening behind her glasses. Then she reached out and smacked the table with her hand, and for the first time, Guy noticed that Faith was not quite the dry lady tonight as well. She let out a loud, surprisingly boisterous laugh. “You are crazy, man! Get out of here! Why?”

“I was sick of it,” Guy replied. He lit another cigarette.

Faith shook her head, not satisfied. “That’s a lousy answer. It doesn’t explain anything. It’s a generality.”

“Okay, then. I can’t explain why because I don’t have an explanation. I don’t have an explanation for why I lived like I did before this all happened, so I can’t really give you an explanation for this.”

“Why did you hate your life so much?”

Guy briefly toyed with his collar, which was turned up on one side, making him a cartoon derelict figure. “I hated it for all the selfish reasons.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I hated it because I didn’t ask for it. I hated the bills. I hated the mortgage. I hated credit card statements. I hated car insurance. I hated having to constantly sustain myself. I hated obligations. I didn’t hate my fiancée, but I hated the situation I put myself into with her, which was close enough. I hated all of these things because I feel like I was tricked into sacrificing my youth and my labor in order to obtain them. I hated them because I earned them myself. And since I earned them, I feel I have the right to un-earn them.”

“So you just don’t want to be an adult, then. You have a Peter Pan complex.”

“If not wanting to pay bills or do a job you despise is a Peter Pan complex, than I guess that’s me.”

She took another drink of her pink stuff. “That’s it? You’re just going to drop everything?”

“No, I don’t think that is it.” Guy’s eyes became a bit distant. “It is for now. Right now, it’s all just physical, impulsive stuff. Break this. Drink that. I’m still in free-fall. I have to hit bottom first. After that I can focus my thinking. Concentrate on the existential nature of my actions. Search for spiritual components, if any. Then see how I can go from being affected by events… to affecting them myself.”

104

Faith gazed at him, seeking, perhaps, to reconcile what he was saying. Then she smiled a little and said, “You had to have a catalyst. A breaking point. What was yours?”

Guy smiled back at her, the warmest smile he’d given to anyone in a long time. He focused his gaze right on her eyes, catching her and holding her. She sat there, caught in his eyes, than she reddened a little. “What?” she asked.

He shrugged, never breaking eye contact. “Nothing.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, a bit devilishly. “You still haven’t told me your catalyst.”

“Maybe I have.”

Over his shoulder, Guy heard Emerson talking loudly to Keith’s band mates about his knowledge of police band procedures. He was inexplicably uneasy. “Who are you here with?” he asked Faith.

“Just some girlfriends of mine.” Faith looked vaguely out over the crowd. “What about you?”

“Just these guys.”

Faith scanned Emerson, Sabrina, and the band members. “Your friends?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She smiled, a bit wistfully he thought. “That must be kind of strange.”

“It is,” Guy agreed, “but it’s exciting, too. I just met these guys- all of them- in the last three days. Didn’t even know any of them existed at this time last week. I didn’t even know this place existed, and I worked across the street for years.” He shook his head. “Now I spend every waking minute with them, and everyone I knew from last week is gone. Never would have expected it.”

“Was it hard?” Faith was looking at him curiously.

“Was what hard?”

“Letting go of everything.”

“You know what?” Guy asked. “It’s very easy, if you do it right.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, it’s very easy if you make extra sure you fuck up everything totally being repair.”

105

She looked at him and shook her head, her smile widening. “You are very twisted. That’s definitely a good quality.”

He blushed and shrugged. “No big thing.”

The house lights were fading now, and the anticipatory buzz of the crowd was receding as it became apparent that the show was about to start. Guy looked out at the stage than back at Faith. “Would you like to listen to some music with me?”

Faith smiled. “Of course.”

Keith’s band played for almost two hours that night, and the music they played was unlike anything Guy had ever heard- some kind of rollicking, honeyed, loping, hip-hop, shot through with thick bass, fine piano, and Keith’s voice, which could go from a series of almost impenetrable grunts to high, wavering, plaintive melodies without a break. Keith seemed to control the crowd as surely as the pilot controls the dips and turns of his airplane, making it rock, shimmy, and fall back and forth like a single instrument in itself as he sang, grunted, stomped, and cajoled. The air was hot and hazy with sweat, hormone, and the smoke of a thousand joints passed from one friendly hand to another. Emerson was standing near the stage behind Sabrina, holding the girl gently by the wrists, leading her marionette-like through the revolutions of the beat.

Guy and Faith were in the back of the crowd, swaying to the music, lost in the heat and the sound. Faith’s eyes were usually closed as she rocked her head back and forth, but every so often during the show she would look at Guy and give him a smile that felt like pure quicksilver through his veins and tingling fingers. Halfway through, she laced her left hand with his right, and the two, connected now, swayed together, hand in hand. Guy was close enough to her now to smell her, to catch her scent, to really see her, and at close sight she only seemed more like the most beautiful girl on earth to him. He felt proud and silly and a little absurdly jealous, as if strange men were already trying to take her away from him. He squeezed her hand tighter and she responded by relaxing her whole body against him, sliding around to his front, taking his hand and curling it around her waist. She rested against him like this, her thick hair to his nose, softly moving in time to the music.

When the music stopped, they went outside together, to catch some cool air and have a smoke. Guy lit his own cigarette and coolly lit hers as well, making her eyes dance with more of that warm amusement. “You’re a real pro at this, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied. They were standing together against the back wall of the bar, a shabby area of trash dumpsters and splintery plywood pallets, lit from above by a single white bulb. From behind the metal door came the bar’s house music and the hubbub of post-show revelers, drinking and living it up.

106

Guy took a deep breath. “So…”

“Why did you do it?” Faith blurted. “I mean, for real. Why did you just go and drop out like this?”

“You.”

Faith managed to look flattered and alarmed at the same time. “Are you serious?”

Guy nodded.

“Was it something I said?”

“Sort of.” Guy smoked and considered. “More of just your reality, the reality of you standing there, and the reality of me standing there. We were both in the same place, yet it was like we existed on two different planes. Does that make any sense to you?” Made drunken sense to him.

Faith frowned. “Sort of. I guess.”

“Well,” Guy continued, “I knew my reality. I had for a long time. I knew that my reality consisted of working a job I disliked, working for people I despised, living with a woman I didn’t even know. That was my reality.”

“What changed, though?”

“Just seeing there was an alternative.”

Faith looked at Guy, confused and amused, perhaps thinking about her reality, one this disheveled young man had no idea of. “How did I represent an alternative?”

Guy shrugged. “You didn’t. I just liked your reality. I liked you. I knew I liked you in just that short time I spent with you at the restaurant.” Guy sighed tiredly and tapped out some ash onto the pavement. “I don’t know, maybe I’m complicating this. I liked you, I didn’t like where I was. That was it. So I changed where I was.”

“Hmm.” Faith put her head in her hand and looked at Guy keenly. A smile played on her face, and her eyes narrowed. Guy began to feel a bit uncomfortable.

“What?”

“You went through all this trouble,” she said. “Dumped your fiancée. Got kicked out of your condo. Lost your job. But you never came to the restaurant to see me!”

107

“Yeah, well,” Guy shrugged again. “I’ve grown up a bit, but it’s funny. I’ve found that tearing the fabric of your existence is still a lot easier than coming up to a girl you like and talking to her.”

“I liked you,” Faith said. She leaned in close to Guy. “That should’ve been obvious.”

She reclined on his shoulder, eyes, closed, cigarette done. They sat there for a moment.

“Guy?” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Why did you like me?”

“You’re hot.”

She flushed, pleased, to the roots of her black hair. “That’s not the only reason, is it?”

“No way.” Guy’s discomfort was gone, blown into dust by Faith and her words and her head on his shoulder. “I liked the way you talked. I like the way your eyes look- the way they look at things, you know?”

She nodded.

“There’s just this energy, this feeling of warmth about you that is incredibly attractive. I felt like, even in those few minutes at the restaurant, that you were a person I could lean on and be safe with.”

She was looking up at him through her glasses, not blinking, just gazing.

“But you’re smart, too. You don’t show all your cards. Makes me want you more.” He was finding remarkably easy to talk to her. Part of it was the alcohol (a big part). Part of it was how open and easy he could be with someone who just completely outclassed him in every way. Sort of like Finland’s relations with Russia.

She didn’t reply. Just smiled. Than she said, “I liked you from the minute I saw you.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “I liked the way you talked. Very dry. Funny. Your eyes, too.”

108

Guy gave his best aw-shucks smile. “What about my looks?” he asked, twenty-five percent in jest and seventy-five percent serious as cancer.

“Oh, you looked good.” She nuzzled his neck softly, sending chills crackling up and down the length of his body. “More than good. You’re just different.”

Guy looked at her questioningly. Faith lit another cigarette and softly tucked it in Guy’s mouth. She then took out another one, leaned in even closer to Guy, looking in his eyes the entire time, and lit her own off his. Another wave rippled through Guy. God, she was something.

“I’ve never really been around someone like you,” Faith was continuing. “You’re not… I don’t know, this is hard to describe.”

She paused, gathering her words.

“You’re not a part of anything. You know? Everybody I hang out with, every boy I’ve met since I ever wanted to meet boys… they’ve all been in the crowd. They talk the same, they listen to the same music, they wear the same clothes- sometimes, when I’m wasted, I get to thinking that it’s the same person, like that Denzel Washington movie…”

“I can’t remember what it’s called,” Guy said.

“Me neither, but you know the one. And it’s like that movie, this one boy, or this one girl, they’re just hopping from body to body, and they might look different, somewhat, but they’re not. And you are.”

“So I’m different?”

She squinted a little, considering. “You’re like Australia.”

“Huh?”

“You know how Australia just kind of drifted on its own, not a part of any continent, and so it’s got all these crazy unique plants and animals with pouches and that kind of thing?” Faith suddenly looked pained. “Do I sound stupid, Guy? Do I sound stupid and drunk?”

A car zipped by in the distance, and the wind carried the sound of “Honesty”, by Billy Joel. As if to dispute the song, Guy said, “Yeah, kind of.”

Faith smiled. “Thanks for being honest.”

“No problem.”

109

“Well, anyway,” Faith continued, “to me you’re like that. Like Australia, I mean. I think you’ve been drifting on your own for a long time, and now you’ve developed into someone very… singular.”

“You’re very perceptive,” Guy murmured. “And you’re very skilled with metaphors.”

“Thanks. It’s one of my many talents.”

They sat for another moment, quietly. Faith laced her smaller fingers in Guy’s own. She nuzzled the stubble on his cheek.

“Ever thought about shaving?” she asked.

“Did Castro?”

He frowned in mock gravity at her. She sighed and tsk-tsked. “You’re so full of yourself.”

“I know,” Guy replied. A note of melancholy had crept into his voice. “It made fucking everything up a lot easier.”

She shifted and looked up at him for a minute. Then she kissed him on the cheek once, quickly. That one was enough. A powerful burst of heat started in his feet, shot up his legs, spread through his torso, and surged into his heads, exploding his negative thoughts.

“Feel better?” she said.

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The door burst open, startling both Guy and Faith from their reverie. Two girls, both dressed in full hoochie going-out mode, came bursting out.

“There you are!” screeched one of them, a skinny girl with a blade-like Jennifer Grey nose. She was pointing at Faith. “We thought you’d left already!”

“No, I’m still here,” Faith said without much enthusiasm. “Brittany, this is Guy. Guy, Brittany.”

Guy nodded casually at Brittany. She gave him a confused glance. “This is the guy you were talking about?”

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Faith, for whatever reason, chose to ignore the question. “Guy, that’s Robin over there. Robin, this is Guy.”

“Charmed,” Robin deadpanned, holding an unsmoked, lit cigarette in her right hand. She was slightly chubby with bobbed black hair, and looked like she might have woken up one morning, seen she bore a slight resemblance to Janeane Garofolo, and decided to act the part. “Can we go back inside now, Brit?” she asked. “It’s cold out here. Better yet, can we go, period? This place is whacked.”

Brittany looked at her watch. “Yeah, in a minute. I want to get another Sex on the Beach before we go. Bye, Faith!”

“You have a ride, right?” Robin asked Faith.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Go ahead.”

“All right.” The two girls disappeared back inside the bar. Faith watched the door close, then turned back to Guy and shrugged and took a drag off her smoke. “They don’t like that kind of music.”

“What kind of music do they like?”

“Brittany? Mostly singing groups consisting of three lantern-jawed white guys wearing University of Michigan jerseys. Robin likes Fiona Apple.” Faith laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “My friends are like this bad old habit I’m trying to break. I mean, they’re okay, but…”

They sat there in silence, silence that seemed warmer, softer than the silence Guy had been hearing for years. It was a moment of silence richer than any of the talk-filled moments he had spent in the presence of Jeni.

“So...?”

“So, do you have a boyfriend? Currently?”

“I have boys that I hang out with.” Faith gave Guy that smile again, making all his nerve endings fire at once. “Like you.”

The metal door burst open and out cascaded Emerson, Sabrina, the band’s keyboardist and bassist, a couple of girls, and a small fellow with glasses who Guy recognized as a roadie for the band. They were obviously far along in revelry, whooping and hollering as they came onto the night and the two people previously standing out in it. Emerson had his gun out and was waving it around in the air like a Cuban revolutionary circa ’59. Sabrina leaped up, took it from him, and dashed off in front of him, sticking the gun in the waistband of her pants. As Emerson ran after her, he caught a glimpse of Guy and Faith and yelled out at them:

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“You kids clean up this mess out here!”

The clump of revelers moved past Guy and Faith and out into the alley. Joints were being fired up and passed from hand to hand. Shoulders were roughly grabbed, friendly shoves exchanged, the juices of adrenaline and drunken exuberance flowing. Guy was thinking suddenly of last Wednesday, what he was doing this very time last week, last life. Sleeping next to Jeni, her body a hump of turned back and rigid ass next to him under the covers. Like sleeping next to a well-preserved corpse, almost. He had had to get up for work next day, and the digital alarm clock next to his bed was set faithfully to 6:35, just like every other morning of the week (Jeni got up at 6:35; he didn’t have to get up until eight or so but he always woke up with her alarm and could never get back to sleep). The sweating glass of water and the two pale blue pills set next to his bed, like a grown-up substitute for the Scooby-Doo nite-lite. All that abnormalcy, before the craziness of the following week crashed through it like Principe’s bullet.

Emerson and the rest of the merrymakers were gone down the alley. Guy and Faith were left alone under the light. She relaxed against him, her body pressed to his, fitting like tectonic plates. They were smoking, both. She stirred against him sleepily.

“Guy?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I did last week.” He replied.

“You don’t now?”

“I’m not sure.”

She yawned and smiled. “I do. I believe in changing it.”

She relaxed again against him, eyes closed.

A pair of white halogen lights and the nearing whisper of tires on gravel broke the atmosphere. From the street came a car. Faith’s eyes flipped open.

“Oh, here’s my ride. Guy, it’s been-”

And as it emerged into view Guy saw that it was an onyx 1999 Acura with windows tinted dangerously close to the shade that made state troopers shake their heads and reach for the citations. The car stopped, the window rolled smoothly down, and the shaved head of Perry Mechanic seemed to emerge from the inky interior non-light. Perry squinted at Guy.

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“Hey, man, you got fired!”

Then, amazingly, Faith was pulling away from Guy and going to the car, swinging around the front and getting in the passenger side, and, illuminating the car for a split-second before closing the door, and all of a sudden Guy could feel the cold of the night rushing in on him from everywhere, like a man stepping away from a bonfire.

Perry hung by his long neck out the window, taking no notice of either Faith or Guy’s discomfiture. “I also heard you were sleeping in your car around here! Is that true?”

Guy suddenly turned on Perry. “How do you know her?” he asked in an almost accusatory tone. Faith’s face was a white sidelong blob in the dim light of the car.

“Huh? Oh, Faith? Oh, man.” Perry nodded his head in satisfaction. “You know how she works at that fancy restaurant down by the waterfall?”

Faith sighed from the car. “Perry-”

“Well, you know how I’m bread man, so I had to ask her out.”

Guy had known no such thing, but Perry was just so darned convincing that he nodded as if he had known. Perry dismissed the topic and shook his head at Guy. “So what happened, man? Did Ed drop the dime on you? Or did you go Section 8 like old Snyder did?”

Guy shook his head. He remembered Mr. Snyder with sympathy, but the man was unrestrained combustion. He had no plan, no vision. Wait a minute- Guy didn’t have a plan or a vision, either. Oh, and Faith had just gotten into Perry’s car. “No. I’m not really sure what happened, actually.”

Perry gave Guy a brief look of sympathy that may very well have been counterfeit, than a gust of internal wind filled his sails again. “So hey, man, you want to go to this club with us? Drown your sorrows?”

Guy had a sudden nightmare vision of sitting in the back seat of Perry Mechanic’s car, Perry driving, Faith in the passenger seat, headed for some collar-only club with double-digit drink prices. A spasm seemed to shudder through him. “No!” he replied quickly. “I’m staying here. Got to crash soon.”

“Are you sure? One time-offer only-”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Go.” Guy waved his hand and looked down at the concrete, knowing he looked like a self-pitying fool, hating it, not helping it. “Go have fun.”

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Perry stared at Guy for a second, looking as if he was trying to figure something out for himself. Then he shrugged and vanished back into his car. “Suit yourself.” The window rolled smoothly up. Guy caught a glimpse of Faith, looking back at him, her eyes behind her glasses, and the tinted glass swallowed her up. The car whispered off into the night.

Guy stood there for a second, shell-shocked, feeling the rushing of great emptiness in his ear passages. His car was there, fifty feet away, seeming to float like a white ghost in the darkness. He walked toward the Durango, his rumpled suit jacket thrown over his head and trailing behind him like someone’s idea of a cape.

He got back. Popped the back hatch. Perched there and made himself some grilled cheese sandwiches in his toaster oven. Faith had just left him and gotten into a car with Perry Mechanic. That single sentence- hear it again, Faith has just gotten into a car with Perry Mechanic. That statement danced madly around and around in his brain like a haunted carousel, spinning with leering eyes and bared horses’ teeth. The company seemed to just reach out from his should-be-dead past and smash a mailed fist down on his wide-eyed dreams, and he was a bit too stunned and drunk and tired and hungry right about now to think about it. So he decided to put it off. For now, he would sit there and eat toasted cheese and drink out of the warm can of Hawaiian Punch he had cadged out of the rear deck of the SUV and smoke cigarettes and watch the city night as it lived around him.

APRIL 29

Guy went straight from shallow, drunken, dream-crazed sleep to full wakefulness when his truck/home began shaking wildly and was bathed in frantically whirling lights of yellow and red and blue and white. He stumbled about in the pen of the SUV’s rear deck, flailing in a white undershirt and boxers, throwing up clothes and sending the toaster oven spinning and crashing. The Durango began to rise jerkily from the bow, and that was when Guy quickly gathered up some clothes and his smokes, flung open the back driver’s side door, and plunged out. He hit the concrete shoulder first and uttered a strangled cry as he bounced off the cold hard street and rolled, abrading bare skin harshly on the paving. He lay there for a second in the street, swaddled in wrinkled clothes, hand to his head.

“Rise and shine, Hugh Beaumont.”

Guy looked up. The blue-eyed fellow who had towed his car a week ago was standing over him. Lil’ John, his name was. Right now Lil’ John was looking down at him, a bit puzzled at seeing him go diving out of a seemingly deserted car on a seemingly deserted street in the small hours of the morning. He looked in the open rear door of the SUV and the puzzled look deepened.

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“What are you doing, man? Squatting? Get your shit out of here.”

“What the fuck?” Guy demanded.

“Better.” Lil’ John nodded and began securing the chains connecting Guy’s truck with his own. “But there’s still a little bit too much inflection there. Remember, they’re just words. Like hotdog, or basket.”

Guy came to his feet. First Perry takes his girl, than this cocksucker comes along to take his home. You had to know when to say when, and that time was now. Guy advanced on Lil’ John, a finger pointed out in front of him.

“I can’t let you take my car from me because of some glitch.”

Lil’ John looked impressed yet amused, like how Florida State would perhaps feel if Kent got up early on them. He even smiled a little, and he gave Guy a one-eyed glance. “You might not be able to let me take your car from you.” He wiped his hands. “But, uh, that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to just go ahead and take it.”

He walked to the tow truck’s driver’s side door and stopped. Looked back at Guy, who just stood there. “Besides, this time it’s a clean tow. Someone should have checked the fine print on their lease before they let themselves get fired.”

Guy watched helplessly as Lil’ John swung himself into the truck. He looked back out the window. “Hey!” he barked.

“What?” Guy replied, as he bent over to pick up his cigarettes.

“I’m just curious.” Lil’ John paused a bit and continued. “What is it, exactly, that you used to do for the machine?”

“Computer shit.”

Something about Guy’s answer changed Lil’ John’s expression from a sheen of superficial friendliness over contempt, to cool assessment. He slapped the door of his truck. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Lil’ John and Guy drove in silence for about ten minutes, through the streets of the city, deserted by the hour and left to the pale lights, the parked cars, steam through the grates, lonely traffic signals, and the tow truck with its trailing captive. Hip-hop music played on the old Pioneer cassette deck jammed awkwardly into the truck’s dashboard. They drove through four-lane boulevards lined with downtown office buildings. Then the ground began to drop under them. The streets grew residential, morphed into narrow wandering passageways of brick and cracked asphalt. Old oaks and old houses, great, shabby-yet-dignified three story structures, flanked the streets. The ground continued to

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drop into the neighborhood Guy vaguely remembered from the last time he had had the Durango towed on him. The trees vanished and were replaced by high fields of weeds, looking like tailor-made serial killer dumping grounds. The old houses still stood here and there, but they were leaching out too, replaced by dumpy little bungalows, dumpier apartment projects on mud flats, and the threadbare groceries plastered with malt liquor handbills and barred against the night. Guy sat silently and smoked a cigarette. Lil’ John finally broke the silence.

“I’m hauling away all your worldly goods, huh?”

Guy nodded.

“So now what?”

Guy shrugged and took a deep suck from the cigarette, making it glow. “I’m just going to survive for a while.”

“Pardon me, but it doesn’t look like you’re doing much more of that right now.”

Guy shrugged his shoulders again. “I just don’t think much more is really necessary for me at this point.”

“So you want to be a bum, then.”

Guy shrugged. Everyone had a way of looking at it. “I want to be a Bedouin,” he said firmly. Then he turned and looked moodily back out at the seedy neighborhood unfurling around him. He was getting very sleepy, really. “What do you care, anyway?”

“I’m thinking about letting you crash at my place until you get your shit together.”

Guy looked at Lil’ John, who was blowing cigarette smoke of his own out of the driver’s side window.

“Why?”

“Well, you are getting better at cussing.” Lil’ John looked straight ahead down the deserted street. His headlights caught his house, slumped low and peeling paint next to the parking lot. “Also, because I think you might be interested in what goes on there.”

Lil’ John swung the tow truck into the parking lot and parked it, leaving the Durango on the hook like a fruit freshly picked.

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The inside of Lil’ John’s house was pitch-dark and smelled redolently of old beer, old cigarettes and old dog. Guy fumbled for a light. “Don’t light it.” He heard Lil’ John’s voice. “There’s a couch over there.”

“Over where?”

“In the living room. To your right. There’s a blanket. A pillow, too. Lie on it and get some sleep.”

Guy began feeling/stumbling over to the area indicated by Lil’ John. He hadn’t gone a foot before he stubbed his stocking toe on something heavy and metal and feeling familiar. “Ow, Jesus!” he exclaimed. “What the fuck was that?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lil’ John’s voice trailed away and crossed with heavy creaking sounds as it headed up unseen stairs. “Just go to sleep.” Then the voice, along with its owner, was upstairs. Guy heard the heavy footfalls, the unmistakable crash of a falling body hitting a bed, and silence. He finally found the couch, an old ragged leather thing, cracked and split and weighed down with blankets and afghans and throw pillows. He lied down, stretched his feet, pressed his head down on one of the pillows, and fell asleep. And didn’t really wake up, fully, for almost two days.

May 1

Guy was having an incredibly vivid dream. He was dreaming that he was made out of some kind of crazy space-age stainless steel and he was running over the earth, stomping with metal feet, crushing great cities with a single bound. He flattened the great cities of Europe- St. Petersburg; Berlin; Paris, and London. He splashed across the cool Atlantic, reached the shore and began smashing Eastern Seaboard cities, all with a sharp ringing crunch that seemed somehow more vivid even than the rest of the dream. Boston; Providence; Hartford; New York; New York; New York- the ringing sounds were coming faster now, and Guy in his dreamlike state thought that was only because he was on the megalopolis, but then he realized that the sounds were coming from outside his sleep, that someone was in the room making those sounds in real life, and that was when he rose to the surface of his sleep and broke it and opened his eyes and woke up.

His eyes opened on bright sunlight and he squeezed them for a moment, adjusting them. He wondered how long he had been sleeping. The spit in his mouth felt like motor oil and the bones and sinew in his neck felt as if they had somehow petrified while he was sleeping. He was still lying on the coach, in what he had to assume was the living room of what he had to assume was Lil’ John’s house. The room was crowded and

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unkempt. An aging Barca-lounger sat marooned in the center of the room, listing perilously on one leg. A scuffed coffee table covered with old board games (Axis & Allies; Risk, the ubiquitous Monopoly) and a surprisingly graceful looking black-and-white glass chessboard ran alongside Guy’s couch. In the corner of the room sat a TV that might have been the hot new model back during President Ford’s WIN campaign. Hooked up to the TV, amazingly, like a visitor from a distant past, was a ‘Heavy Sixer’- a six-input Atari 2600 game system, one of the originals. 2600 cartridges were scattered about nearby, some on the floor, some in an old Avia shoebox.

The crunching sound Guy had heard in his dream was back. Looking toward the front windows, he saw both the author of the noise and the metal object he had tripped over back when he entered the house. The object was a PC, stripped of its housing and looking like an old jalopy ready for the junkyard. The author was a tall, lurpy fellow with mirror sunglasses and an overgrown blonde Prince Valiant hairdo, like Pete Rose had he gone California and not visited a barber for two years. The lurpy fellow wore a too-tight Ben Folds Five tee shirt, an old-fashioned pair of too-tight blue shorts with red piping, knee-length tube socks with blue and yellow stripes, and a pair of white Nikes. He was banging away at the PC with a Phillips-head screwdriver and paying absolutely no attention to Guy, watching him from the sofa.

Lil’ John entered the room holding a couple of returnable bottles full of Coke. He pointed at the lumpy fellow with the PC. “That’s Kenny. Kenny, this is Guy.

“Pleased to meet you,” Guy said. Kenny grunted and nodded and went back to his banging.

Lil’ John held out a bottle to Guy. “Coke and a smile?” he asked.

Guy took the bottle and noted with something like alarm that it commemorated the 1969 National League West Champion Atlanta Braves. He held the bottle up to Lil’ John. “You sure this is good to drink?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Look on the bottle.”

Lil’ John scanned his own bottle, than shrugged and opened it with a hiss of carbon. “It’s fine. They didn’t even have to ship it far.”

Guy opened his own bottle and took a swig. Old or not, it was the best damn Coca-Cola he had ever tasted, bar none. He drank deep and belched. “Thanks,” he told Lil’ John.

“Sho’ nuff,” Lil’ John replied amiably. He lit a cigarette and watched as Guy lit his own.

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“What time is it?” Guy asked.

“10:15.”

“Oh. It seems later.”

“It is. It’s Saturday.”

“What? How long have I been out?”

“About thirty hours.”

Guy’s eyes bugged out. “Seriously?”

“Yup. You needed the rest.”

Guy lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling while he smoked. After a minute or so, punctuated only by Kenny’s banging on the dismembered PC, he suddenly heard Lil’ John’s voice: “You remember the computer glitch that got your car towed the first time?”

“Yeah.”

“That was bullshit. My man Kenny here,” here Lil’ John tipped his Coke bottle toward Kenny, who nodded, “he hacked into the leasing company’s computers for me because he knows I like to tow Tonka Trucks out from under rich pricks like you.”

Guy grunted. He didn’t take it as an insult. After all, he may have still been a prick, but he certainly wasn’t rich anymore. He hit his smoke and shook his head. “They do and say whatever their computer screen tells them.”

“That they do.”

There was another dismembered PC sitting underneath the coffee table. An auto junkyard outside, a computer junkyard inside. Guy grabbed the PC, set it on the table, and began fiddling with it, the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Lil’ John watched, pleased, sipping his thirty-year old Coke. There were wheels turning behind the blue eyes. After a moment, he said:

“Have you ever heard of a group of hackers who call themselves the Midnight Marauders?”

Guy looked up. He had heard of no such group, of course, but it was the word- hackers- that set his backbone straight. He remembered grungy adolescent fantasies of sitting in a dark basement, pounding Mountain Dew by the bottle, his fingertips as orange as old Tampa Bay Bucs uniforms from Doritos, hacking into the Pentagon, or NORAD,

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or any other pulsating government supercomputer where the secrets ran wide and deep. Blowing the lid off. Lil’ John was smiling. Guy smiled back- a hungry grin full of the straight white teeth of a company man, teeth of a company man no longer.

“The American money machine can build up the Internet all it wants,” Lil’ John said, “but it still belongs to us.”

Kenny grabbed the PC away from Guy, slung it on a table next to the window, and set to work dismantling it further.

“If you could give yourself an alias, what would it be?” Lil’ John’s gentle smile had disappeared. He was looking at Guy keenly.

“Dev/Null.” Guy heard the words pop out of his mouth instantly.

Fully 95% of the American populace would not have known what the fuck Guy was talking about. The half-smile and nod of recognition showed him that Lil’ John knew exactly what he was talking about. “The Unix folder, right?”

Guy nodded back, the pirate’s grin fixed on his face. “Where data goes to die.”

Lil’ John sucked his smoke down to the ember, thinking, turning those wheels again.

“If all that information out there just disappeared,” Guy asked softly, “where would we go from there?”

The question hung in the air for a minute, replaced by a crackling speculation, like nervous swingers suggesting an orgy. The thinking look remained on Lil’ John’s face, the blue eyes clouded. Then he looked at Guy, and the clouds were gone. The blue eyes were sharp, sharp.

“I guess we’d all just have to start over.”

Kenny tore the hard drive out of the dismantled PC and walked away, its cable dragging behind him like a lifeless body.

MAY 3

Everyone should have an eccentric uncle. It’s like a birthright. Every wide-eyed childhood deserves to experience what it is like to have a totally insane relative who is greeted at every picnic, cookout and holiday like the arrival of some cartoon anarchist’s round hissing bomb. Occasionally the eccentric uncle can be an alcoholic, or a guy who knocks over 7-11’s, or even that perennial favorite, the Scary Man Who Drives the

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Bronze-Colored ’73 Dodge Van With the Desert Scene Painted on the Side. With Perry’s uncle, Ronald “Compulsive Gambler” Mechanic, it was, well, it was compulsive gambling.

Ronald was a figure of almost legendary vagueness from Perry’s boyhood- a phantom that alternately came and stayed, came and went, and sometimes never came at all. He was a small slight man, bespectacled, a wearer of plain white shirts and black pants, a cutout man with a demon. Many times he was only a loud voice on the other end of a phone, a nighttime honk of a car horn, whispered rumors between drawn eyebrows. He was often off the scene for long periods of time, and although nobody in the family really discussed why- certainly not to the little ones- Perry was always a kid with his palm to the tracks, and he could pretty safely guess that Ronald wasn’t in the merchant marine or whatever. And after a cool fall day in his fifth grade year, Perry didn’t even have to guess, or be told.

He’d actually spent the better part of an afternoon and evening in the company of Uncle Ronald. Not that he was intended to be any such place- it was just one of those logistical mix-ups you get sometimes, rides falling through and that kind of nonsense, and Perry had found himself transported from his homeroom at Taylor Elementary to a small house on the south side of town. A jackleg casino was set up, with two blackjack tables and a poker game in the corner, and Ronald was playing poker. A lot of the men down there were drinking, but not Ronald- the action was his intoxicant. And Ronald was winning. He had stacks of checks set up that looked like a Byzantine cathedral. He had won a bunch of money at blackjack earlier, Perry had gathered, and not fifteen minutes after he game downstairs, a glass of Kool-Aid in his hand, cadged out of the fridge by whoever the house’s owner’s common-law wife was, Ronald dropped down a full house in a no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em game and won about eight thousand bucks, right there. The place went fucking crazy. Uncle Ronald simply raked with a sweep of his cupped arms, leaned back in his cane chair and lit a cigarette. Then he caught Perry’s eye, winked, and said:

“Carlos, get that kid there a vodka tonic.”

Perry wound up drinking not one but three vodka tonics and puking off the house’s small porch, so that wasn’t a very good idea. But he could never forget the look in Uncle Ronald’s eyes when he revealed his sixes full, and he knew it was a winner. Perry didn’t think it was the money- money was really only important to Ronald as a means to further his compulsion. It was the winning. Perry took that look in Ronald’s eyes with him from that house, and from then on he considered himself somehow taught- taught that anything was worth that feeling, any kind of effort, chicanery, or sacrifice. It was why he had risen in this company so quickly. And it was why; he thought to himself as he stepped into the front doors on this womanly soft May morning, he was going to be the brand new manager of IT by this time tomorrow.

It had never occurred to him that the only time he’d ever really been around Uncle Ronald, the man had won. Perry had never seen Ronald lose.

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He entered the building. Swiped in. Made a beeline for the corkboard. Checked it. And saw that the bid list had been taken down. His name wasn’t there in its place. Instead was posted a small mimeographed sheet of paper that read:

CONGRATULATIONS LORENZO CORCORANNEW IT MANEGER

The unknown writer of the message had misspelled ‘manager’. They had also misspelled Perry’s name, apparently. It certainly didn’t start with ‘L’.

A tap on his shoulder. Mayez, the Filipino filing clerk who may have possibly been the sexiest woman in the Western World, was standing there.

“You didn’t get it, huh?” She said.

“No.” He stood there mildly, straightening his tie. It was all good. Oh, yes, it was

“I’m sorry.” Mayez was sympathetic.

“It’s all right. Lorenzo deserves it. He even knows computers, too.”

“Yeah, he does, that’s true!”

Unlike seemingly every one of these morons, Perry really, really didn’t think computer knowledge was in any way relevant to running IT. Did Mr. Goodwrench run the Ford Motor Company? Was being a glorified car mechanic (not a glorious Mechanic) ample qualification for the bonus, the fat new salary, the stock options, the brand new loaded Escalade, and the HAND NEAR THE GEARSHIFT OF POWER?

Perry thought not.

A dark, heavy shape walked past, brushing his sleeve and sending Mayez tiptoeing for the relative safety of her files. It was Ed, in a shiny brown suit that made him look like some kind of hysterically black, mod version of a Communist party apparatchik. Ed didn’t say a word to him, didn’t even look at him, both of which was odd. Just sailed right past him, a massive brown vessel steaming serenely down blue-carpeted rivers. Perry was left standing there by himself.

Perry caught up with Lorenzo as he moved in to the office that formerly belonged to Guy and now belonged to him. He was young- a compact, swarthy kid with fashionably ragged black hair and a blade-like black goatee, friendly and open to the salutations he received while he moved empty copy-paper boxes filled with his belongings. Lorenzo saw Perry standing in the doorway while he sorted through his new desk.

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“Hey, Perry! What’s going on, man?”

“Nothing much.” Perry replied. “Congrats.”

“Thanks! Hey,” a look of concern, genuine from its appearance, washed over Lorenzo’s face, “No hard feelings, huh?”

“No way,” Perry answered truthfully. After all, he couldn’t begrudge Lorenzo for his good fortune, even though he was only 22 and had only been out of school for less than a year, and had only been with the company for six months, at that. This wasn’t Lorenzo’s doing, that was for sure. There was a much heavier hand behind all of this.

“Say,” Lorenzo continued amiably, “I heard the last guy who held this position went soft in the head or something like that.”

“It’s true.” Perry was more than happy to volunteer the information. “Guy Anderson. I saw him last night.”

“Really? What’s he up to?”

“Let’s just say, you’re in a better place than he is.” Perry shook his head, as if sad about Guy’s fall from grace. “You should have seen the guy before him, though.”

“Who’s that?”

“Guy named Snyder. Went completely off his trolley. Stopped bathing, changing his clothes, talking; started coming in with these huge bruises on his face. Kirtley finally fired him as an eyesore.”

“Wow, that’s fucked up.” The mood in the room had changed. Perry’s face was a blank mask. “Maybe the job drove him crazy,” Lorenzo joked, and laughed nervously.

“Maybe it did.” Perry’s expression remained wooden, and a silence fell over the room. It continued thickly for about ten long seconds. Then Perry briskly clapped his hands, smiled, and leaned back from the doorway.

“Well!” he said briskly. “Anyway, congratulations.”

“Sure thing, man, thanks,” Lorenzo answered, smiling easy again. Perry turned and walked away.

“Hey!” Lorenzo suddenly blurted. Perry turned back. The new IT manager was on a knee by the desk, looking puzzled.

“What?” Perry asked.

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“You know what’s strange? You know who wished me luck this morning? Ed. Isn’t that out of character for him? Perry?”

A buzzing sound had suddenly filled Perry’s head with roaring intensity, than subsided. He blinked and furrowed his brows. “Sure is,” he replied. “I guess everybody in general’s just happy for you.”

“I didn’t think Ed got happy over anything.”

“He does. Trust me on that.” Perry gave Lorenzo a tight-lipped smile.

Guy had the house to himself this morning, or virtually to himself, at least. Lil’ John was out towing, once or twice dropping by throughout the day, but gone, pretty much, for the duration. Kenny was down in the basement, alternately working furiously on God knows what kind of machines and masturbating with furious wet strokes and loud grunts of triumph. It was bothersome to Guy at first, the pounding of metal competing with the pounding of pud for hellish cacophony, but like the El Train outside Elwood Blues’ window, it happened so much he hardly heard it after a while. Kenny came upstairs once. He was sweaty, his shorts were sticking to his crotch, and he was carrying a small blue plastic sand bucket that he carried out the side door. Guy briefly heard the garden hose running, than Kenny came back inside. He grabbed a pepperoni stick and a beer out of the fridge, and took his lunch, along with the rinsed bucket, back downstairs.

Guy smoked and played Atari games, games that he hadn’t seen since he was a boy in his parents’ house, a boy of eight manipulating the creaking joysticks, sending men and planes and cars and frogs that were little more than digitized squares through mazes and roadways and dogfights. He played Adventure, where he was quite literally a white glowing square escaping from a dragon while hauling about a key (very realistic looking) and a bridge (two parallel squiggly lines that looked like a map-key bridge). He played Haunted House (two frightened eyes; three floors of tornado-like ghosts, bats, and hey! More keys!). Apparently keys were all the rage in the world of Atari circa 1981.

He played Berserk. Almost forgot what a cool game that was. It had that kind of throwback paranoid sci-fi thing going- the big androids sending lozenge-like bullets slowly at him, the bouncing smiley face that destroyed everything standing in its path- and that was on the money, but the real silver tuna were the sounds. Especially the low G notes the android bullets made- beeeewwww!!!- shaking the room on the surround sound system Lil’ John and Kenny had found time to hook up. It got to when he was actually encouraging the androids to fire on him- just so he could hear that sound. Beeewwww! God, it slayed him.

Finally he came upon the piece de resistance. It was Pitfall- sorry, Pitfall! - its green label wrapped over the top of the cartridge, startlingly familiar despite the fact that Guy hadn’t played it since roughly 1984. Guy jammed the cartridge into the game system

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and flipped the little silver toggle switch to “on”. Immediately the opening screen- the jungle on top, the background canopy, the underground passage, a single barrel on the right, Pitfall Harry poised for plunder on the left- blinked onto the screen of Lil’ John’s old TV. Guy bent the joystick to the right. Pitfall Harry began to run.

Perry was seated in his cubicle. He hadn’t thought he would be back here, really. He had- well, he had assumed, hadn’t he? Assumed he had it. And why not? That’s the way everything had gone in his life. That was how he could come from the family he came from, from the free lunches and the second-hand clothes and Dad’s never-ending stream of $400 cars. How he could start up at the bottom of this company, a skinny kid holding a scrap of classified ad, applying for the most menial of tasks, a kid without a diploma from any college or business school. It was how he could rise to the aching cusp of power in less time than an Olympiad, how he could wear these silk shirts and drive that new (well, almost new) Acura outside. But it couldn’t carry him all the way, could it?

The flimsy cork walls of his cubicle seemed to press in on him chummily, whispering in his ear: thought you were rid of us, eh, buddy? Is that what you thought? No, no no! We’re just starting to have fun together! We’re just-

He could understand if his work performance had slipped, or if he’d lost out to a company veteran with the seniority, or if he was in some way unqualified for the position… but that wasn’t the case. He had simply been… rejected. Batted away like an Uwe von Schamann. And that little Hobbit-boy, that Lorenzo- he had fuck-all to do with it. If it were Isaac Newton or some toothless wino off the street bidding with him, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was sure of that. He was-

A rap on the cubicle wall- more of a thump, making the wall sway a little in distress. Perry popped out of his reverie. Ed was towering over him, holding a manila folder in his hand.

“Fix these charts.” He threw the folder on the desk, where it landed and slid right to Perry. “Have it on my desk by tomorrow”.

Perry frowned. “Your desk?”

“You heard me.”

“Why not”-

“I’m in charge of your department now. I’m also in charge of you.” Ed pointed a finger, the finger with that damned ring, down at the folder. “Tomorrow.”

“Hey-” Perry began, but Ed was already walking away.

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Guy had almost forgotten how long it took to catch dividends when you went right in Pitfall!. He swung over pools of water, deftly eluded expanding and contracting tar pits, hopped carefully over hungry gators. It was all flooding back to him now. He was actually starting to remember the positions of the rolling barrels, so he could time them up to jump them and not lose points. Once he foolishly got himself killed when he took the ladder down to the tunnels, mistimed a leap and landed directly on top of a fat white scorpion, but that was to be expected. He hasn’t a kid anymore. He’d lost some skills.

Finally the prizes started appearing. The moneybag. The little gleaming silver bar. The gold bar, glowing and burnished, so lovely on the other side of a screen. And the mother lode, possibly the greatest piece of eye candy reward ever in a video game- the diamond ring. Five thousand points, but it wasn’t the points. It was the prize, that circle with its sparkling gem, just sitting there, waiting for him. And all he had to do to take this glorious prize was run across a few inches of jungle ground, swing on a rope across a shrinking tar pit, vault over a guttering campfire, and it was his, all his. Didn’t have to suck up to a boss. Didn’t have to listen to some woman. Didn’t have to pay bills or taxes or condo payments or car insurance. Didn’t have to wake up before seven. Didn’t have to be cowed by some thug in a five hundred dollar suit. Didn’t have to sleep with his eyes open. All he had to do was run and jump over a couple of obstacles. It was so perfect in its simplicity.

He actually made it all the way through the allotted twenty minutes without losing all his lives- pretty good for a guy who hadn’t played the game in about seventeen years. He had 42,425 points, too- also not too shabby. It was a good score. But even better, there was still room to get better. He thought he would get better, too, before it was all over.

May 4

Perry sat at his desk, staring at a Solitaire game (re-installed) on his computer screen. He had played for fifty-eight consecutive minutes, and his brain felt as if it had eaten potato chips for the same amount of time. His head literally would throw up if it got even a bit more bored, but he thought he’d be okay, because it may not have been possible to get more bored. Ed’s charts lay on the desk in front of him, in approximately the same spot where they had been tossed yesterday. Perry hadn’t finished the charts- oh hell, he really hadn’t even started them. Such lethargy was unusual for him. Usually work that got on this desk was off it within an extremely short period of time, but not today. Today was different. Perry had a feeling that tomorrow, the next day, and most of the days after would be different as well. It was a subtle difference, a taste in the mouth, a single door painted a new color, but it was there, nonetheless.

He was increasingly disturbed by the turn of events yesterday, starting with the rejection of his bid to head up IT, and culminating in the discovery that he was directly

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underneath Ed’s thumb. Setbacks happened. It was a fucking fact of life and he accepted that, yeah, but it was just the timing of it… it didn’t seem like happenstance, there was a pulsating behind it, and it thumped red with the word Plan. Someone had gotten over on him, for the first time in a long time- the first time ever, maybe, and he felt blindsided and stupid. He could understand why he hadn’t been picked for the IT position. Well, he really couldn't understand, actually, but he could see how the people on top could rationalize their selection. He wasn’t from IT, he didn’t work with computers, he didn’t have experience as an administrator, blah, blah, blah. Okay, whatever. He could accept the wrongheaded, foolish decisions his superiors made (to a point). Maybe if it had been left at that, maybe he wouldn’t have smelled something rotten downwind.

He had attempted to meet with Kirtley this morning, trying to get some idea of what was going on. It was, in fact, the first thing he did in the morning. But Gail, that secretary of his, was surprisingly intransigent. “Mr. Kirtley is on a conference call.” she said when Perry showed up at her post, asking for a meeting.

“Tell him I just need a minute or two,” he pleaded.

“I’m sorry, I can’t disturb him right now,” Gail replied. “Come back later.”

As he was leaving Gail’s desk, Perry heard Ed’s voice behind the closed door of Kirtley’s office.

But now Ed was in charge of him, now wasn’t he? Was in charge, in fact, of his whole department. That was funny, considering that, as long as Perry had been at the company, and probably a whole hell of a lot longer than that, Ed hadn’t really had any duties other than simply the unofficial one of Kirtley’s ramrod. Kind of a minister without portfolio, really. Yet no longer.

There was a rap on the cubicle wall. Perry turned. Ed was standing there.

“Where are those charts, Perry?” Ed asked. “They’re still not on my desk.”

“Oh, well, I’ve been having some trouble with my PC,” Perry replied, giving his monitor a healthy slap, “but I’m almost finished.”

“Good,” Ed nodded. He started to leave, paused, and looked around the cubicle and its bare walls. He pointed his thick ringed finger and almost seemed to smile. “You should put more personal touches in here,” he said. “Make it more of a home-like atmosphere.” Then he walked off.

He had underestimated Ed, that much was true. Previously, Perry had thought of Ed as a simpleton, a machine that executed Kirtley’s commands with a single-mindedness that was almost autistic. That much was true. But there was apparently more to Ed than that. He had outflanked Perry, planting himself squarely between the boss and the ambitious young buck; he had thwarted his bid for power; and when he had Perry

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securely checkmated, he had turned the tables, placing himself in a position to wield direct authority over his younger counterpart who, Perry’s smooth demurrals to the contrary, he had apparently divined as a rival for power. Ed may have had some weaknesses in terms of how he dealt with people on a personal level, but there was nothing wrong with his survival instinct.

So what now? Perry had made the first move, and Ed had counteracted swiftly and decisively. He had come out second best in this opening salvo, it was true, but there was no thought of giving in, especially since he now had the perverse comfort of having a clearly defined and tangible adversary. It was no longer a matter of rising in the company like a ripe helium balloon until he reached the top. It was no longer that simple, and, thinking with the wisdom of experience, he was realizing that it probably was bound to be not simple. It was war now, war to the knife, but he was a warrior, and in his true heart, the war is what the warrior lives for. Now there were weapons to be chosen; strategies to be plotted; allies to cultivate; and a mighty, fearsome enemy to destroy. He knew his enemy. Now he had to find an ally.

“What can I do for you, Perry?” Mr. Kirtley asked.

“Wondering something,” Perry replied.

“Fire away.” The lined face revealed nothing.

“The rationale behind picking Lorenzo for the IT job over me.”

“You don’t have direct experience with computers,” Kirtley answered smoothly, almost as soon as Perry had finished.

“I thought we agreed that computer experience wasn’t relevant to running the department.”

“No, you agreed that it wasn’t. I happen to think it is. You have to have at least some idea of the field in order to run that department, and Lorenzo does.”

“He’s only been here six months.”

Mr. Kirtley was silent, and in that silence Perry suddenly looked at his feet and discovered he was right on the edge of a cliff. Mr. Kirtley leaned forward, brushed a speck of dust off his silver blotter, and gave Perry a stare.

“Do you have a problem with the appointments I choose to make, Perry?”

Oops.

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“No.” Perry leaned forward in his own chair, bringing his tall form closer to Mr. Kirtley. “It’s just… I guess I just wanted that job, you know?”

Mr. Kirtley’s face warmed with sympathy. “I understand that, Perry. You’re an impatient age.”

You condescending asshole

“But we like you where you are right now. We think you’re more valuable to the company in your current position. At least, Ed thinks so, and I trust his judgment on matters like these.”

Mr. Kirtley gave Perry a quizzical look. “How are the two of you getting along, anyway?”

“All right.” He didn’t want to start anything. Not yet, with the wounds of yesterday still fresh. And he was already trying Mr. Kirtley’s patience.

As if to confirm this, Mr. Kirtley rolled his chair back to the computer on his desk and turned away.

“Was there anything else?”

“Nope.” Perry replied. He got up and left.

He looked down at the digital clock on his desk and was surprised to see that it was already 3:09 p.m. He didn’t even know how long he’d been sitting here, blue skying. A couple of hours, maybe. The work floor was at its most silent this time of day, hardly a sound at all besides the rapid tap of computer keys, the whine of office machines, and the ringing of phones. Hardly a human voice was to be heard, making the floor sound like a ghost place, a Mary Celeste with spreadsheets as the aphids ground out the nub end of their work day.

Perry thumbed through the charts. It was a forest of numbers, figures, dates, scrawled signatures and turgid corporate letterheads. Perry didn’t much care for paperwork. He didn’t really like the work, period, and only paid enough attention to do whatever his job was reasonably well and fast. Especially fast. But he wasn’t an expert on electric company billing, or whatever it was this fucking biz did. Whenever Perry met a chick at a club, he never talked about his job, not because he was taciturn or anything, but because he could no more explain what he did than he could explain the ins and outs of barn raising, or animal husbandry.

Ed suddenly emerged from the hallway leading to the corporate offices. He stopped at the edge of the work floor and craned his neck about, as if looking for someone yet no one in particular. He stood in this attitude for about fifteen seconds,

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looking around, the big boulder head swiveling, then he hurried through the floor, moving fast for a guy that big. He brushed by Perry’s cubicle and headed for the front door.

Sounds began emitting from the offices- doors opening and closing, increased footfalls, raised voices. People began standing up, peeking over the edges of their cubicles. Perry stood up as well. Something was happening. The floor workers were beginning to leave their posts, hesitantly at first, then more decisively as they saw their colleagues doing the same. People were starting to speculate, to exchange rumors, to gossip excitedly about the merciful interruption in the most boring and tedious hour of the day. There was a casual interest among the aphids, but Perry’s interest was not casual. He wanted to see what was going on, if anything. Taller and rangier than most of the aphids, he easily maneuvered his way to the front of the crowd, and into the office area.

Mr. Kirtley was out of his office, a rarity at any point during the day, a sighting on par with Judge Crater at 3:15 in the afternoon. The tanned face was impassive, but the muscles were starting to work with consternation. Something had happened in Kirtley’s office, that much was clear. The nature of what exactly had happened was not, at least not yet, but the fact that he was out here- and that Lorenzo was emerging from the office, looking pale and running his hands through his hair- indicated that it was serious.

Gail was still seated at her desk, still posted bravely, looking uncomfortably dutiful among the growing chaos, like a Vopo when the Wall came down. Mr. Kirtley turned on her.

“Gail, did you see anyone in this office today? Anyone you didn’t recognize?”

Gail shook her birdlike head, uneasy with the direct question. “N-no, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t think, I don’t remember-”

“Well that’s typical.” Mr. Kirtley ran a hand through his silver hair, and for the first time ever, perhaps, he was flustered.

Gail made a stab at doing something. “Why-”

“Because somebody just broke into my office and destroyed my goddamned computer!” Kirtley snapped. A thrill rippled through the crowd. Nobody had ever seen Mr. Kirtley in this state, and it was shocking, as surreal as talking heads on Mt. Rushmore. Lorenzo stepped back, glancing fearfully at Mr. Kirtley, and walked back to his own office, walking urgently, like a man looking for a bush in which to piss. Mr. Kirtley was suddenly, acutely aware that he was playing to an audience of gaping mouths and wide eyes, a gallery of staring servomotors. He jammed his hands into his pockets,

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looked around, and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him. Gail began stamping envelopes frantically, almost viciously, glad for the make work, glad she had found something that would not yell at her or question her in any way.

Kurt Berger, one of the corporate guys and a worthless flunky if there ever was one, came walking busily through the crowd, clapping his hands like some kind of damned cheerleading coach. “Hey, hey, I think everybody here has something they should be doing! Let’s go do it! Come on, everybody!”

The aphids began dispersing sporadically, some marching back to their desks, most of the others congregating in small clumps, talking excitedly amongst themselves, completing ignoring Kurt. Kurt continued to clap his hands for a moment, then trailed off and just kind of wandered back into his office and shut the door.

Perry still wasn’t sure what exactly had transpired, but he had an inkling of its seriousness when, twenty-five minutes after the initial stirring from the offices, two uniformed cops came striding onto the work floor from the direction of the front doors. Looking out a window, Perry saw coursing red, blue and white lights playing on the panes. He looked out. Two police cars were parked in the lot, along with an Action 9 news van, and a small knot of cops, media people, office staff, and rubberneckers were gathering out there on the hot top. Perry saw Stephanie Shaeffer, the Action 9 reporter, wearing a blue suit and sensible shoes, sticking a microphone in the face of Mr. Kirtley. She asked Kirtley a silent question. He answered, uncertainly from the looks of it, and then Ed walked back and took him by the elbow and propelled him back into the building.

A group of workers were gathered at a cubicle, speculating on what had happened and, more interestingly, who was responsible. “I bet Rick Snyder did it,” an older man with gray hair and jowls declared. “That guy was crazy as a shithouse rat.”

“Snyder? No way.” A woman replied. “They wouldn’t let him into the building.”

“Nobody got into the building,” the older man said. “At least not that I saw.”

“Than how did they destroy Mr. Kirtley’s computer?”

A young man with a tawny beard and an intense look spoke up. “It’s easy. All you have to do is run some kind of a magnet on the other side of the wall.”

“A magnet?”

“Sure.” the young man replied. “Just throw a ladder onto the outside wall of the building, climb up until you’re at the same level as the computer, run an electromagnet over the right spot, and you can clean out the hard drive’s memory just as sure as pouring Spic-and-Span on a kitchen floor.”

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The older man was impressed. “Like a neutron bomb, huh?”

“Well, I’ve never seen a neutron bomb in action, but sure.” the intense young man said. “And furthermore, I bet I know who did it.”

“Snyder?” the older man asked.

“Not Snyder. There’s someone else I’m thinking of.”

The older man and the young woman leaned forward, eyes wide. Perry, five feet away at the window, listened as well.

“Who?” the young woman asked.

“Guy Anderson.” The intense young man replied.

“The IT guy who got fired last week?”

“Yup.”

He’s right. That’s who did it.

“I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I do know that Guy knows a thing or two about computers, and I also know that he was really starting to pull a burn the last week or so he was here. If it was an inside job- and I’m sure it is, whoever did this knew exactly where Kirtley’s PC was- he’s the one who was probably behind it.”

The older man was annoyed. “How can you be so sure who did it? Nobody knows. Stop convicting people for things they only might have done.”

“I’m not, I’m just saying-”

“Who cares?” the young woman cut in. “They’re going to find the guy soon enough anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“Here’s what I want to know,” the young woman said. “Why? Why would anyone want to erase Mr. Kirtley’s computer?”

The young man’s face became set and hard, the eyes gray and flint-like. He stood there for a moment, that look frozen on his face, seeming to deliberate whether or not to say something he clearly wanted to say. Then he shrugged. “Beats me. We all got our own reasons.”

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Perry’s black Acura sliced through the heavy late-afternoon traffic like an onyx bullet. As he drove, he punched digits on his cell phone, looking down at the note card on his lap as he did. The note card contained information on Guy Anderson- phone number, address, and social security number- that Perry had cadged out of a file drawer. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed very important to him that he find Guy, and talk to him.

The phone at Guy’s condo burred once, twice, three times. Then there was a loud click! and a woman’s voice filled Perry’s ear.

“Hello, you have reached Jeni’s residence, formerly Jeni and Guy’s residence. If you’re looking for Guy, you can go ahead and look elsewhere, because I kicked him to the curb last week-”

So much for that. Perry punched the END button on the phone and snapped it shut. So Guy had gotten 86ed. Interesting. Guy gets suddenly axed from his job for… what was it? Smarting off to the boss? Tries to pull some kind of raggedy-assed James Dean act and gets shitcanned, good fucking riddance. But now he hears his fiancée kicks Guy out of his condo! Whoa, man! That was a man with a hurt on, right there. Guy was becoming more and more interesting by the minute.

Perry tried to imagine Guy as some kind of bandito, dashing around with ladders and erasing entire computers with a few swipes of a magnet. He found he could. Probably couldn’t have a couple of days before, but after that night at Peabody’s, him running around looking like Burgess Meredith’s Twilight Zone character-

Peabody’s.

Yeah… that dive right across the street from the company. The place that served pizza? Christ, Guy hung out there? With that one girl? Fanny, or whatever her name was? Actually, he did remember her name- Faith, that was easy enough to remember- but, damn, he took her to Bar Graph, and all she wanted to do was drink Bloody Mary’s and talk about Guy. No thanks. He had to run her back there at like three a.m. because she left her friends, and he really didn’t think he would have to go back, ever.

He had seen Guy’s white Durango, the white elephant, parked at a meter right down the street from the bar, come to think of it.

The first thing Perry did was check the alley running along the right flank of the bar, on the off chance that Guy had nested in a pile of garbage bags or something. Apparently he didn’t, because Perry didn’t find him, or any clothing, or any bedding to indicate residence.

He was living in some motel room, probably. Some place with wrapped plastic cutlery and gold-colored ice buckets, he would wager. Depressing. Then again, who

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knows what the fuck the kid was up to in there? Maybe he was building a bomb or counterfeiting money or smuggling cigarettes up from Virginia in rickety Cessna’s. When you are swinging such heavy casabas that you’ll just walk up to your ex-company with a ladder and a magnet and wipe out you’re boss’s computer… man, people were full of surprises these days, weren’t they? First Ed, then Guy.

Was Perry Mechanic full of surprises? Who knew, who knew?

He ordered a Coke and looked around. The place was almost empty. There was one guy in there- the guy who delivered the pizza, a thin, pale young fellow at one of the two pool tables, arranging some kind of trick shot involving every single one of the dulled balls. He had them lined up, straight, balls in review in all their faded finery, and he had the cue sticking out of his back pocket as he eyed the angles. The guy looked up at Perry.

“Hey,” Perry asked. “Do you know a guy named Guy Anderson?”

The pale guy’s faced worked. God, what an exciting question for him. “Who are you?” he asked, putting on his best Charles Bronson Cold-Eyed Stare.

“That’s the wrong answer,” Perry replied. “Don’t worry about who I am. Do you know Guy Anderson?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Do you-”

The bartender broke in. “Three bucks.”

Perry gave the bartender a five and told him to keep it. Then he took a big drink, for he was thirsty. A shocking, awful, immense taste of alcohol filled his whole body, and he reared forward, holding on momentarily against vomiting. He stood there akimbo, holding the beverage in his mouth, and waited for the sickness to pass, while the driver chortled.

“Look at you. You suits couldn’t kick it with a junior high home economics class.”

With an effort, Perry swallowed the “Coke”, which was actually Coca-Cola with about three fingers of rum tossed in. “Sorry,” he replied. “I’m not educated in the art of self-destruction. Do you-”

“Yeah!” the sallow kid interrupted. God, he had a mouth on him. “I know where the fuck he lives!” And with that he thrust a hand into his pocket and drew out a greasy business card. He scaled it to Perry, where it landed about a yard short. Perry bent over and plucked it up with two E.T. like fingers. It was black and white, read

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LIL JOHN’S TOWING11478 MUTINEER AVENUE

and was illustrated with a little tow truck cartoon. For the illiterate, he guessed.

“I guess our mutual friend has officially gone off his nut,” Perry said to no one in particular.

The skinny driver muttered something under his breath. Perry thought about looking into whatever he had said, then let it go. Didn’t think it was a good time to accrue a bunch of enemies now. So he let him off easy. Walked over to the pool table with two ground-eating strides and simply knocked a ball- the purple solid- askew. It rolled placidly over to the other wall and stopped with a little bump. Then he walked to the door. The kid looked out at him.

“Don’t touch my balls, son!” Perry heard the skinny man cry. Then a mutter: “I don’t touch your balls.”

Here was Mutineer Avenue, such as it was. And here was 11478, in all its shabby glory. It was getting on six, the day was fading to that near-lavender light, turning the trees into construction-paper cutouts, and there was yellow light spilling out of the windows of the house onto the porch and bald front lawn. Walking up the creaking steps to the bowed porch, Perry heard loud music and saw glimpses of a brightly lit living room, murky with smoke. He crossed the porch, briefly debated knocking, decided nobody would hear him for all the music, and just went ahead and walked in.

Guy was in there, playing chess with a bald, muscular dude wearing hillbilly gear. Another guy, lurpy, with a shaggy blonde Beatle haircut, perched on a couch arm. He was polishing a detached headlight with a clean rag and watching television. The bald dude, facing the door, was on point. He leaped to his feet as soon as Perry walked in and struck a pose of challenge. Guy, his back to the door, craned his neck, saw it was Perry, and raised a stand-down hand to Lil’ John.

“Who the fuck are you?” Lil’ John asked.

Perry ignored him. “Thanks for letting me bear witness to your insanity,” he said to Guy.

He briefly wondered if Guy would just give him a puzzled look: huh? But Guy smiled, and Perry noticed that he was smiling around a fat marijuana joint, tucked into the corner of his mouth.

“You like that?” he asked Perry. “Wanted to give you all some excitement in an otherwise boring workday.”

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“Who is this?” Lil’ John asked.

“I wiped out my old boss’s computer today,” Guy told Lil’ John happily.

Lil’ John’s scowling face washed with alarm. “What?”

“I erased all the CEO’s data, his hard drive, and all the backup tapes with an electromagnet. So did Kenny.”

Kenny shrugged modestly.

Guy took a powerful hit off that white zeppelin, and he said something like this:

TWO MEN BOLTED ACROSS THE GRASS EXPANSE NEXT TO THE COMPANY BUILDING. ACROSS THE GRASS, THROUGH A GROVE OF TREES, OVER A PARKING LOT, ALONG THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING. TWO MEN, CARELESSLY DRESSED- ONE TALL, LUMPY, WEARING A TIGHT BLUE 20-YEAR OLD T-SHIRT WITH A KATHERINE BACH IRON-ON AND BALL-HUGGING BLUE SHORTS WITH WHITE PIPING; THE OTHER SHORT, SQUAT, TOUSEL-HAIRED, WEARING BITS OF CAST-OFF CORPORATE KIT- A WHITE PIERRE CARDIN SHIRT WITH RING AROUND THE COLLAR AND SLEEVES TORN OFF, A HEADDRESS POWER TIE. THE SQUAT MAN IS ALSO WEARING A BACKPACK. THE TWO MEN ARE CARRYING A LADDER BETWEEN THEM. NO ONE SEES THEM- IT’S THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, EVERYONE IS INSIDE WORKING, NO NICOTINE CRAVINGS, NO ONE SMOKES ANYMORE. THEY DON’T LOOK FOR SABOTEURS THIS TIME OF DAY.

THE TWO MEN STOP DIRECTLY BELOW DON KIRTLEY’S OFFICE WINDOW, FOUR STORIES BELOW. THEY PROP THE LADDER ON THE WALL AND SET IT UP. IT’S SO LONG. THE SQUAT CORPORATE MAN MONKEYS UP, ASS WIGGLING AS HE CLIMBS ALL THE WAY UP TO THE TOP.HE GETS TO A POINT WHERE THE TOP OF HIS HEAD IS SIX INCHES BELOW THE WINDOWSILL. HE ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT LOOK DOWN. HE PROPS HIMSELF AGAINST THE WALL, FINESSES THE BACKPACK TO THE FRONT OF HIS BODY AND UNZIPS IT, LETTING IT SLIDE OFF ITS CONTENTS LIKE A STRIPPER’S FAKE-LIBRARIAN OUTFIT. THE BAG DROPS TO THE LOT,WHERE IT LANDS WITH A WHISPER OF CANVAS AND LIES THERE, CRUMPLED, LIKE A SNAKESKIN.

INSIDE IS AN ELECTROMAGNET. THE SQUAT MAN RUNS THE MAGNET OVER THE SPOT ON THE CONCRETE WALL OPPOSITE OF WHERE HE REMEMBERS MR. KIRTLEY’S PC TO BE PLACED. HE HOPES NO ONE HAS REARRANGED THE ROOM. HE SLIDES THE MAGNET OVER THE WALL LIKE JOHNNY SANDING MIYAGI’S FLOOR FOR A GOOD AND THOROUGH MINUTE.

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HE DOES NOT HEAR THROUGH THE THICK DOUBLE-PAINED GLASS, BUT MR. KIRTLEY’S PC GIVES A STRANGLED BEEP AND GOES BLACK.THE BOSS IS UNSEEN SURPRISE. GUY CAN IMAGINE HIM CHECKING THE MONITOR TO SEE IF IT HAS SOMEHOW COME UNPLUGGED. HE SHOOTS A THUMBS-UP DOWN BELOW TO KENNY. KENNY RETURNS IT, HAIR FLYING.

GUY RAPIDLY BEGINS TO DESCEND, THE ELECTROMAGNET OF DEATH TUCKED IN THE CROOK OF HIS LEFT ARM. HE GETS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LADDER IN TWENTY-EIGHT SECONDS. HE AND KENNY FOLD THE LADDER, PICK UP THEIR GEAR, AND DASH OFF, BACK TO THE NONDESCRIPT GREEN ROOM FROM WHICH THEY EMERGED MOMENTS EARLIER. THE DEED IS DONE, AND GUY DOESN’T HAVE TO SEE IT TO KNOW IT.

“You participated in this?” Lil’ John asked Kenny disbelievingly.

Kenny shrugged modestly. Then he made a sudden bolt for the receiver, flipped the preset to TV, and jacked it all the way up to 22.

The screen was filled with the company parking lot. A pretty blonde reporter wearing sensible blue was in the middle of the screen- Stephanie Schaeffer- and Perry briefly felt the odd vertigo that goes with seeing a familiar scene at a new angle. Cops cars, cops, and office workers milled about in a background lit with cop car bubbles. Ed, Kirtley, and another fellow, an older cop wearing dark blues and a hat, a distinguished man, an officer, huddled back there too, a triumvirate of gray heads.

“Winthorp, a bizarre act of corporate sabotage has taken place at a downtown company this afternoon. Apparently someone has-”

She went on, describing the destruction of Kirtley’s PC. Perry looked over at Guy. He was seated at the edge of a coffee table, watching the TV with rapt attention.

Stephanie Schaeffer was interviewing the older cop. He cleared his throat importantly. “We,” he began heavily, “view the attack on this company as being tantamount to an attack on this city, this county, this region, and the society we live in as a whole. We are already taking steps to apprehend the perpetrator and/or perpetrators, and we are confident of a breakthrough very soon.”

Ed came up and put a strong hand on the cop’s shoulder. They walked away, talking earnestly. For a moment, Stephanie Schaeffer looked around blankly, looking for someone to interview. Finally she spotted Kirtley. The boss was standing there blankly, looking for all his silvery good looks like an old man that has sustained a knock on the head.

“Was anyone hurt?” she shouted at him.

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“Um,” Kirtley said lamely, “my secretary was very traumatized.”

Then Ed came hurrying up and led Kirtley away.

Perry glanced back at Guy. The former manager of IT, holder of a position of great merit and import at the company, was wide-eyed, agog and delighted in almost a childlike fashion.

“The police came!” he exclaimed. “Sweet! I wish I’d stuck around to watch!”

The news had gone back to the studio. The Action 9 News Team of Barbara Tyner and Winthorp Hershberger were stern, serious, caring.

“Any suspects, Stephanie?” Hershberger intoned in his creamy baritone.

“Winthrop, police won’t confirm they have any definite suspects, but Chief Rhodes told me they are looking into an alleged ‘hacker gang’ known as the ‘Midnight Marauders’.”

Lil’ John gave a start. So did Kenny.

“Any truth to the rumors that members of this hacker group peruse sights devoted to bomb-making on the-” almost spitting out the word “-Web?”

Stephanie nodded. “That’s right, Winthorp. Also sites featuring, among other things-” here she consulted a sheet of mimeographed paper in her hand, “- pornography, including sites devoted to having sex with minors.”

Lil’ John gave an even bigger start. Kenny just kind of looked around the living room, face hidden by sunglasses, revealing nothing.

Winthorp shook his head dolefully. So did Barbara.

“Barb, it looks as if I’ll have to keep a closer eye on that seemingly harmless computer in my den.”

“Well, let’s hope Harvey has some better news about the weather this week,” Barbara said cheerfully.

Lil’ John’s face was ashen. “What the fuck did you just get us into, Guy?”

“What did I get us into?” Guy sounded disbelieving. “I didn’t get us into anything. I’m simply building on what you guys had already been doing.”

“No, no, no. We were just taking some personal liberties. But what you’re doing is completely different.”

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“How is it different?” Guy asked. “You sat here in this room two days ago and bragged about how you don’t pay bills, you don’t pay for car insurance, how you’ve opted out. You don’t think that’s revolutionary?”

Lil’ John nodded reluctantly. Perry stood there, watching the exchange with tennis-match raptness.

“What you’ve been doing,” Guy continued, “Is every bit as subversive, every bit as revolutionary as what I did today. Maybe more so. You just don’t see it like that. You see it as simple opportunism. But what you’re doing is weakening the fabric of the society, by refusing to follow its most simple rules. Stop on red. Go on green. Pay your taxes. Pay your bills.”

Lil’ John was silent. Guy turned to Perry, who was standing stock-still by the door, still unable to quite comprehend what the formerly sad-sacked company man had transmogrified into. “Perry. What was it like at the company this afternoon?”

“Chaos.”

“There you go. Chaos, a sudden, violent change in the order of things- it affects people. None of the people who were there are going to forget this. Or at least, they would if it was the only time, which it will certainly not be.”

Perry blinked at Guy. There was a beer next to Guy on the coffee table, and the IT man-turned-revolutionary picked it up and began gulping it.

“Do you understand what you did today?” Perry asked softly.

Guy turned to him, looking honestly puzzled.

“I’m serious. Do you?”

Guy’s look of puzzlement dissolved into a look of patient condescension. The look looked very familiar to Perry. Then he realized why. It was the same look he used to give Guy himself, back in the break room at work, when Guy was an unhappy company man popping pills at the water cooler, and Perry Mechanic, Man on the Up and Up, was also the Man With the Inside Track. Back in that century.

“All I did,” Guy said slowly, “was change the way some miniscule pieces of metal lined up on a disk.”

He took a cooling gulp of beer.

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“There’s always a fine line between crime and change. Sometimes there’s no line at all.” Guy took another drink. “Lenin and Robespierre were criminals. Pancho Villa was a common bandito, right? Hell, so were Washington and Jefferson.”

He finished his beer, crumpled the can, and sent it flying at a nearby wastebasket with an overhand hook shot. The can landed two feet short of the wastebasket, bounced, and hit off its metal sides with a small clang. Guy looked at Perry.

“When do you take lunch?”

“12:30.” Perry replied.

“Okay. Be at Peabody’s at 12:31 tomorrow. You too,” Guy said, nodding at Lil’ John.

“What for?” Perry asked.

“You’ll see.”

May 5

“Communication is the center of the chessboard,” Guy began. He turned to Lil’ John expectantly. “How is the Internet different from all other forms of physical communication?”

Guy, Lil’ John, and Perry were gathered in a booth at Peabody’s, dark red as usual against the midday sun. A half-eaten large pepperoni pizza sat in its greasy white box on the table. Guy had a half-sheet of college ruled notebook paper and a pencil in front of him, and he tapped the pencil against the table nervously.

“It can’t be controlled.” Lil’ John replied.

Guy nodded. “That’s right.”

Perry worked another slice of pizza loose from its fellows and bit into it. He wasn’t sure at all where Guy was going with his spiel, but he was more than willing to listen. Sure beat anything anybody had been saying to him at work lately.

“Now, conditioning would have you believe that it can be controlled. That any kind of legislation pertaining to the Internet can actually be enforced.”

“They don’t try to enforce it, really.” Perry pointed out.

“Exactly! Don’t you think they would if they could?”

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Guy tapped his pencil against the table, momentarily lost in thought, thinking about what he was going to say next. Then he looked up.

“People debate it, though. Whether they should or shouldn’t. And they’re actually serious, which is funny. Because they shouldn’t be serious about it at all.”

Perry took another bite and glanced discreetly at the clock on the wall. 12:42. He hoped Guy would at least get to the point soon, before he had to go back. He wouldn’t have had to worry about the old Guy making a speech of Castroesque proportions, but as for the new and improved version-

“We’re conditioned to think that the Internet can be controlled!” Guy suddenly declared, almost yelled. “Hell, we’re conditioned to think we can control the weather. Maybe we the people can be controlled. But even storm clouds are at least tangible, physical objects, things with some semblance of solidity.”

Lil’ John frowned. “Storm clouds?”

“There’s only one kind of power we have over the Internet, as a matter of fact,” Guy said, suddenly stricken with inspiration. He got up, strode over to the jukebox on the other side of the bar, and yanked its cord loose from the outlet, cutting 2 Short off violently in mid-boast. The Dolph Lundgren-looking bartender looked up, startled by the sudden silence. Guy grinned wolfishly and said:

“And that’s power itself.”

Emerson tore out of the stage area, pool cue in hand. “What the fuck!” he yelled at Guy. “I can’t play without that shit!”

“Okay,” Guy said agreeably, and plugged the cord back into its socket. 2 Short lowed briefly than began boasting anew. Guy went back to the booth and heaved himself down, smiling. “See what I mean?”

Emerson watched the group of them, mistrustfully, pool cue in his grip. Then he went back to his pool table. Perry and Lil’ John waited for Guy to explain.

“What I mean is that when people find out this kind of power is right there at their beck and call… the revolution can begin.”

“You can’t have a revolution without an army,” Perry pointed out sagely.

“Yeah!” Lil’ John said. “What kind of people are you looking to recruit?”

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“Recruit?” Guy asked rhetorically. He had taken the pencil in hand and was scribbling furiously on the half-sheet of ruled paper in front of him. “Not recruit. College football teams recruit. All we have to do is let people know we exist.”

He finished his work and slid the paper across the table to Lil’ John. “We need to go to a copy center and run off a couple hundred of these,” he said.

The tow truck driver knotted his eyebrows. “What the fuck?” he asked. “Tomorrow? At my house?”

Perry leaned over to regard what Guy had written. It said:

PARTYTHURSDAY, MAY 6 2:30 PM11478 MUTINEER AVENUE

“LIL’ JOHN’S TOWING”

KEG

Perry smiled. Guy was nothing if not inventive. He wondered how many 1932 Bavarians had gotten plastered and accidentally voted for Adolf Hitler. “Who’s going to show up at a time like that?” Lil’ John asked. “Not enough to drink a whole keg.”

“I can take them down to the License Bureau,” Perry suggested.

“No,” Guy said. “I’ve got just the place in mind to find the soldiers I need.”

Guy gave Perry a tight-lipped smile. Perry’s forehead creased. “What?” he asked.

“We need access to employee mailboxes, Perry. You’re going to take the invitations into work with you tomorrow, and you’re going to stick one in every single mailbox.”

“Says who?”

“Says you. You want to do it, and you’ll do it.”

“What makes you think I want to do it?”

“You’re here.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, what’s the big deal?” Guy asked. “I used to work there. People were always coming in with invitations to cookouts and baby showers and shit. Dan Rosenberg

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invited everybody to his son’s bar mitzvah, for Christ sakes. It’s not like you’d stand out.”

Perry straightened. “I always stand out.”

“Then give them to someone else. I don’t give a shit. As long as they get them.” Gut took a hard look at Perry. “Will you at least make sure of that?”

“Will you?”

Perry nodded. “I will.”

Guy nodded, satisfied. Then he clapped his hands together. “Good! It’s settled. Okay, let’s go. We have work to do. Hey, Emerson!”

From unseen: “What?”

“Want to go to a party?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Fuck yeah. Where is it?”

“You know where Mutineer Avenue is?”

“In the ghetto?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Guy’s smile widened. “See? We already got one.”

Perry walked slowly back to work. Spending an extended period of time in the presence of Guy was not unlike being six inches tall and standing on a green felt pool table with all the balls whizzing around you. He had this look in his eye now; that was the really significant difference. It wasn’t really the clothes- Perry spent a lot on clothes, but he was smart enough to know they didn’t make any difference, they were just an obligatory- it was that dancing, happy vacancy in his eyes that weren’t alcohol, or pot, or any drug harder than the hardest drug of all, the narcotic of not giving a fuck and having nothing to lose. Cortez had it when he burned his little ships against the Mexican coast. Stonewall Jackson had it when he proposed the flank march at Chancellorsville. Now, by

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the love of everything sacred, the paunchy, thinning-haired, computer schmo from his company (formerly from his company, that is) had it.

He thought about Guy’s last words to him as he walked the familiar blue hallways, watching the aphids slithering about their appointed tasks, the beaming pudgy taskmasters, the painted single ladies who laughed a bit too shrill, Lorenzo scurrying around, trying desperately to control an animal that had too much buck for him, all the other small people rolling on their small wheels:

“They’re in the cage. They’re in there, stuck in there, stuck with all the other white rats. They’re fresh out of school and already they have the job they always wanted. They have all the money they can try to spend. But what don’t they have? They don’t have life, do they? Their life has been reduced to being handed a number and asked to perform a task.”

Perry caught a glimpse of the tawny-bearded young man with the angry eyes. The kid who had challenged Kurt Berger over the radio. The radio rebel. He was on a knee, attempting to protect peace and democracy on Syl Martinez’s PC, and he was bogged down in a triple-canopy of knick-knacks and stuffed animals and little foil balloons shaped like hearts. He struggled, knocking these things over in spite of his best efforts, and finally that exasperation boiling right under his surface boiled over and he began sweeping the little toys into the wastebasket. Some of the dolls tumbled onto the floor and lay there face-up like murder victims. The radio rebel got to his feet and walked stoically out of the cubicle, brushing by Syl, who was on her way back from a meeting with Mr. Kirtley. The radio rebel, walking fast and not looking back, swept by Perry and made a beeline for the break room.

He knows he’s a number, Perry thought.

“The employee knows he’s a number,” Guy had said, cigarette poking from the corner of his mouth like an exclamation point. “He knows that the only thing waiting for him at the end of the line is a chlorophyll gumball, and he can’t… fucking… stand it.”

From the break room, Perry heard the tinny sound of a radio turned suddenly up, Tool hammering from its two small speakers like a midget with a brave voice.

“The employee will receive an invitation to a party in his mailbox. A party during work hours, no less.”

“He’ll have a decision to make.”

Perry looked around the office. The people hurried around, frantic, almost. Like stagehands just before the curtain rises, and the lights fall, and the show begins.

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Perry left the bar at one, to go back to work. Lil’ John had a beer with Guy, then he left too, on his way out to make some tows. Guy stayed at the bar, alone, drinking beer at first, then steadily progressing to whiskey sours cold in their tumblers, then finally to shots of Jagermeister that turned his limbs to warm fuzz and his brain to soaking mush. He thought getting really, really drunk would make him feel better after the silly speech he had made today, would make him more confident that he was actually something more than a silly boy who was too full of shit and too full of failure. He didn’t get more confident. He didn’t think at all about the speech, or the invitations, or the wild-eyed exhortations to Perry. Instead he thought about Faith, and that was much worse. Thinking about Faith gave him this sinking, despairing crawl in his belly and in his balls, and the more alcohol he consumed, the worse and more painful the crawl got, the more tiny stomping feet it grew, until it felt like it would just turn him inside out and leave him a pitiful bag of ruined skin and stiff bones. Emerson came around a couple of times, once alone at seven or so, and an hour or so later with Sabrina in tow, and the two of them tried to cheer him up and get him to liven up and party a little bit, but it was useless, and they drifted off, leaving him alone, which was how he wanted to be. Alone. Any other face, even Emerson’s pinched tubercular countenance, reminded him of the fact that it wasn’t Faith he saw, that it wasn’t Faith that he smelled. So he didn’t want them around. He just went on drinking, until the alcohol destroyed all the power to do such an accursed thing as think. And that was when he dug up a quarter, and he called Lil’ John, and Lil’ John came out and picked him up.

May 6

Guy was right when he trusted Perry to get the invitations distributed properly throughout the company. But it wasn’t even a possibility that he, Perry Mechanic, would do the thing himself. So at 6:46 a.m. he picked up the telephone and called Lorenzo Corcoran

“Lorenzo. What’s up, man, it’s Perry.”

“Perry?” Lorenzo’s voice, clogged with sleep.

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Huh?”

“Can you pass some invitations around for me?”

“What?”

Perry briefly lost his patience. “Lorenzo!” he barked.

“Okay, okay!” Lorenzo’s voice sharpened. “What do you want?”

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“I want you to pass some party invitations around for me.”

Here is the long and short of it: Perry offered Lorenzo five hundred bucks to pass the invitations around. Lorenzo was easy enough. He wanted Perry as an ally and hell, who doesn’t need five hundred bucks? The way Lorenzo bounced around sometimes, eyes bloodshot and red nostrils flaring, Perry figured he’d put the cash to good use. And it was hush money, too.

“Should I say it’s your party?” Lorenzo asked.

“No,” Perry replied. “Don’t tell them anything.”

“Why not?”

Oh, man, this might be a deep game, kiddo. Deep as the Mariana’s. You don’t want any.

“Just don’t worry about it, Lorenzo.”

Steve Geldof, the man thought of by both Guy and Perry as the “radio rebel”, was the proverbial Angry Young Man. He’d been here at this company now for eight months, reeled in dripping and flailing from four years in Ohio State’s School of Business, and in that time it had seemed like not a day had gone by without some punk-ass, so-called superior running up in his shit about some damn thing or another. It was enough to give him a rupture.

Like that thing with the radio. Every day Steve rolled up in the break room at the same time, trying in vain to relax, hoping he can hear some tunes that would match his mood, and every day it was the same goddamned enforced stations, all spewing out that late 70s, hair-over-the-ears, ‘Precious-and-Few’ crap that sounded like bonging church bells in his aching head. And then one time, he tries to change things up, tries something new, something that actually sounds halfway tolerable, and what happens? That corporate running dog, that lackey with the SS name, Kurt Berger, goes and emasculates him. Right in front of Julie, too. Gee thanks, asshole.

What the fuck was he doing here, anyway? He wasn’t a businessman. He wasn’t “white collar”. He’d only learned computers because he wanted to be like Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames when he grew up. He wanted to play ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ on the WOPR and kick it with Falken in his maze, that was all. He’d only gone to school to get box and learn to drink beer anyway. He’d only stayed the entire four years because he wanted to get four years worth of box and drink four years worth of beer, and he liked to scalp his Buckeyes tickets for the money. He’d had the vaguest notion that at some point someone would hand him a sheet of paper with an embossment on it, and this embossed sheet of paper would lead directly to what was

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known in the circles as a “career”, and that this was supposed to be a good thing, but he really didn’t think it would end in this, this crawling around a tall building licking the tasseled shoes of these old cocksuckers and hearing awful music on the radio every single day. He really didn’t think it would end like this. He didn’t-

There was a bright yellow piece of paper in Steve’s mailbox. It was an invitation to a party. He got them often enough. He even went to one, Dan Rosenberg’s son’s bar mitzvah. It was appalling, by and large. Grows up Jewish in some redneck burg in the middle of Oh-Hah-Oh, for God’s sakes, finally gets to hang out with some real Yids, and all they talked about was money. Really. Just like work. But he remembered a girl named Amy, a dance they had…

Huh. 2:30, today. Interesting. Who had a party at 2:30 on a Thursday? And invited people en masse from this place? And who at this place lived on a shithole street like Mutineer anyway? Strange.

He thought about Guy Anderson. He’d worked for Guy in IT since he arrived here, and although he hadn’t seen much of Guy even in that time, at least not in a boss/employee capacity- Guy preferred to do his own work rather than delegating it, which made him a pretty decent guy to work for, actually- he was observant enough to see that Guy’s deck didn’t contain fifty-two cards. There wasn’t any doubt in Steve’s mind that Guy Anderson was responsible for what had happened here two days ago. He knew enough about computers, and he was crazy as a shithouse rat. Since it took a crazy guy with some semblance of computer knowledge to wipe out Kirtley’s hard drive, it wasn’t much of a leap in deductive thinking to conclude that Guy was the guilty party, was it? Didn’t take Roy Hazelwood to fill out that profile.

And wouldn’t this be like Guy, too? Pass out invitations to a party that takes place smack in the middle of the workday? Wouldn’t that be intriguing? Of course, right about now it was easy to think Guy was in the middle of everything, from computer sabotage to that horrible gourmet coffee some asshole brought in yesterday that tasted like old socks. It might be someone else altogether that was throwing this shindig.

Fuck it. It was during work hours. Steve began looking for Lorenzo. It was time to get sick and leave.

Julie LeHavre was starting to develop real, honest-to-goodness problems with the way business was conducted at the company. She had first arrived here five years ago, fresh out of school, bright and eager, expecting to make her mark. She had not. It wasn’t that she had been harassed or anything- she was a pretty girl, 5’9” with a good figure and honey-blonde hair to her shoulders, but she had a no-bullshit air about her that stopped would-be lechers in their tracks, roman hands and Russian fingers grasping at air- but there were other snags on her road to the top. Oh, yes.

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Julie had been hired in as a billing specialist, at the starting salary of $27,500 per year. Damn good money for a college graduate with an efficiency apartment and a paid-for ’92 Accord as her only bits of overhead. In those heady, halcyon days she expected swift promotion, coupled with increased financial status. She had received neither. She was still a billing specialist, and her salary had leapfrogged a total of six hundred dollars, to $28,100. Not exactly what she had in mind when she had started, especially given the radical change in her living standards. She was now was trying to make payments on a ’00 Bug, the Accord having long since been sold. She had relocated from the efficiency to a two-bedroom, $950-a-month place at Cavalcade Manor. What was more, she had just found out that she was pregnant, the unexpected result of a one-night fling with a handsome cad she had hooked up with at Freaky Friday’s six weeks prior. Her salary no longer seemed like “damn good money”, or even “good money”, or even “decent money”. Especially since she knew Kirtley and his cronies were probably wiping their asses with fifty-dollar bills.

Oh and where the fuck was her promotion, anyway? She was a good worker. She’d only taken three sick days since she started here, she’d always gone above and beyond her quotas, she was punctual, and she never complained, even when she by all rights should have. Yet here she was, still a lousy billing specialist, while all around her people with less experience and less tenure were zipping by her on the fast track like Beamers on the Autobahn. And what was with Lorenzo Corcoran’s fat ass falling into the IT job after, what? Six months here? This wasn’t a glass ceiling. This was a fucking glass mineshaft.

She went and saw Mr. Kirtley about her problem a few weeks back. She explained the situation- that she’d been doing damned good work here for half a decade, that she felt she deserved a promotion, and that if not a promotion, she at least deserved a raise commiserate with her altered financial situation. Mr. Kirtley listened, a sympathetic look on his leathery face. Then he spread his manicured hands and drolled, “All I can tell you, Julie, is that you’ll be in line for a promotion when the people in front of you in billing either leave or are promoted themselves; and we can really only look at significantly improving your salary when you are promoted to a position that calls for a salary increase.”

That was funny. Billing was headed up by Don Mihalik, a walrus-mustachioed fellow who had been in his position since approximately the fall of the Roman Empire. The chain of command in the department- heck, at this company- was frozen in ember. So was Julie’s status as “billing specialist”, two words that seemed to clang mockingly in her brain. If there was a single person at the company more vulnerable to playing hooky and partying at 2:30 on a Thursday than Julie LeHavre, he or she wasn’t stepping forward. So when Julie dug into her mailbox that morning and found the canary-yellow invitation, there was little doubt what she would do.

Derek Bailey found his invitation about an hour after Julie, and he was pumped, man. It reminded him of Senior Flick Day from high school. What a kick-ass time that

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had been. All the seniors showed up at school, went to class first period, then left as one huge group and went to Towner’s Woods Park- everyone but the fucking geeks that hadn’t been invited, that is- to drink beer, throw Frisbees and grill hamburgers for the rest of the day. It was fucking tits.

He wondered if there was going to be any snatch at this party. He certainly hoped so. If there was one thing Derek Bailey was interested in (besides car speakers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, that was), it was poontang. Which was ironic, because he was actually married. He’d exchanged vows with the former Debra Reinhardt a year or so before, and about a month had gone by before he had cheated on her, with a lithe brunette he had met down at Freaky’s. He hadn’t really felt guilty about it- well, he had, kind of, but it was transitory, the way James Gandolfini’s hit man character described his first kill in True Romance. It got better after the second time, and by the fourth or fifth time, he didn’t feel anything at all. And why the fuck wouldn’t he cheat, anyway? Debra was a nice girl and all, but she wasn’t, like, freaky (Derek had taken to referring to her to his friends by the sobriquet “Dead Fuck”, which slayed them). She didn’t like to kick it, or drink, or anything that remotely resembled fun activity. She just liked to stay at home and watch shit like “Will & Grace”. Fuck that noise!

The only snag in Derek’s otherwise flawless “game” was that not many of the broads at this company were willing to give him even the time of the day. They saw his youthful enthusiasm as childishness, his interests in speakers and the MFS’s (Mother Fucking Steelers, in his private reveries) as juvenile and callow. It was all good. He did okay for himself. He was a young enough guy, he had some coin, he could hit the clubs and come home with quality tail on a fairly regular basis. Besides, there was no doubt in his mind that the women here would at some point fall into line. He would be nothing if not persistent. It was an interesting thing he had discovered: you could actually nag some women into sleeping with you. True! Or so he thought. Anyway, he knew no other way.

So he would cut out a little early and go to this shindig. It was no biggie- he basically just dicked around on the job anyway. Besides, in the final analysis, the siren song of the hairy taco always rang the loudest.

Guy was right when he trusted Perry to get the invitations distributed properly throughout the company. But it wasn’t even a possibility that he, Perry Mechanic, would do the thing himself. So he picked up the telephone and called

Guy picked up the keg at a nearby beer distributor- it was Ohio, beer distributors grew like dandelions around here- at about noon. He stopped at a local store for ice and plastic cups (almost eight bucks at inflated ghetto prices) and was back at 11478 Mutineer before one. Then he, and Lil’ John, and Kenny, waited.

At approximately 2:24 p.m. there was a hesitant knock on the front screen door. Guy went to the door. Standing on the front porch was Steve Geldof, the fabled radio rebel. Steve looked at him with a mixture of awe and surprise.

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“I kind of figured it was your party,” he said.

Guy nodded. Steve stood there on the rickety porch, hands in his pockets, giving Guy a keen look. The invitation stuck jauntily out of his breast pocket. He opened his mouth to speak. Closed it. Opened it again.

“So,” he began hesitantly, “was it you who-”

“Yes.” Guy answered.

Steve smiled. “Good deal.”

Guy smiled back. “Yeah.” Then he opened the screen door. “Well? Come on in, man! Get fucking IT up in here!”

In came Steve, casting his eyes about at the scene around him, and Guy saw briefly through his eyes: the old white wall paint, peeling slightly and mildewed in the corners; the 1971 orange shag carpet, alternately clumped and threadbare; the cracked leather couch; an aging red plush easy chair that listed like the Andrea Doria; the coffee table; the living room; the dining room behind it; the keg in its wastebasket of ice; Kenny; Lil’ John; Guy.

“Are you recruiting?”

Guy considered, rocking his head back and forth. “I’m providing a healthy alternative. Want a beer?”

“You know it.”

Guy drew him a beer.

Julie showed up ten minutes later, holding the yellow invitation, in her right hand, bumping it softly and nervously against her thigh. Lil’ John answered the door, already weaving a bit from the four cups of beer (and half a fifth) he had gulped upon keg tappage.

“E-Yuh.” Lil’ John said.

“Whose party is this?” Julie asked.

“Guy Andrews. I mean Anderson.”

“Guy Anderson?”

“E-Yuh.”

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Julie came in and saw Guy standing with Steve. Her eyes widened.

“You look totally different.”

Guy nodded. “Feel different.”

“Better?”

“Maybe. Not sure yet.”

At 2:38 Derek came rolling up to the house in his pink ’97 Z-28 with the gold Dayton’s and the two 12-inch speakers thudding Jay-Z, setting the heads of the locals shaking with scorn. He parked the car in the gravel lot and swaggered up into the house. Nobody greeted him at the door. Derek poured a beer and heaved himself down on the ragged sofa next to Julie.

“What’s up?” Derek asked.

Julie, not looking at Derek, shrugged vaguely.

“Anybody else coming to this thing?”

Julie shrugged again.

“This house is a fucking dump.”

Shrug.

Lil’ John, disappearing rapidly into the proverbial bag, staggered up to Guy. “Where’s your boy?” he asked, blowing warm beer fumes into Guy’s face.

“Who, Perry?”

“E-Yuh.”

“Good question.” Guy wasn’t sure Perry would even show up. Cutting out of work in the middle of the day wasn’t the best way to climb, and Perry was a climber, that was for sure. He had passed out the invitations, though. That was something. Guy glanced at the clock on the wall. 2:53. It was time to get started.

Guy walked into the living room, a cigarette in one hand, and a beer in the other. The company defectors- his old subordinate, Steve; Julie, the girl from Billing; and Derek, the asshole from Accounts Payable- were seated on the sofa. Steve and Julie were looking at him expectantly. Derek was trying to talk to Julie, seated next to him. Julie wasn’t even looking to him, though. Guy smiled and cleared his throat.

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He said:

“Some of you may not know why you’re here. But I do.”

He took a drag off his cigarette.

“You’re waiting for something to happen. Everyone is.”

Derek leaned over to Julie. “What the fuck is-”

“Ssshhhh!”

Derek leaned back, his face a mask but his eyes flying around the room. Guy a drink, took a drag, and was ready to begin anew.

“There is no war for us to fight. There’s no Depression. No unmapped frontier. No hunger left for us to satiate. Everything is provided for us.”

He took another drink. Steve and Julie were listening. So were Lil’ John, leaning against the doorway to the dining room; and Kenny, seated on the stairs. Another drink, just to lubricate the throat:

“The American Dream is life on cruise control. You’re born in a bed, and now you even get to die in one. And you can spend every day in between sitting. You literally don’t have to move by your own power, either. You can be conveyed from your cradle to your grave.”

“Because you’re just a package now. You pop out, and someone washes the yolk off you, and you wrap yourself in pretty clothes and pretty smells, and learn to say all the right things that are required of you, and you put yourself into a nice shiny box and get sent right down the line.”

“Our lives have turned into their Value Meals.”

Guy, the cigarette dangling from his slack mouth, suddenly turned, made a furious window rolling-up gesture with his right hand, and craned his stubbled neck myopically. Putting his left hand to his mouth he cried:

“Uh, yeah, I’ll take a large job with a side of wife and kids, and…” Guy’s forehead furrowed in thought, “a Super Sized SUV.”

There was the sound of the screen door banging, and when Guy looked he saw that only Steve and Julie remained on the sofa. At some point, Derek had tired of Guy’s litany and, fully aware that he would be taking no conquests at this gathering, had made escape plans that were beautiful in their simplicity: a leap off the couch, then a straight sprint to the front door. He didn’t think he could stand being in this crazy fuck’s presence

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for all the beer in Budweiser’s twelve regional breweries, and this Julie chick was being a bitch, and he wasn’t trying to join their cult anyway, or whatever it was Guy was concocting here.

As soon as the silence fell Derek put the plan into operation, and it went as well as he could have hoped. Out the door, down the steps, and to his waiting Z-28, which he pointed in the direction of work. He thought he could fob off the brass with a cock-and-bull story about office supplies or something. He hoped the story would be as sound as the plan of escape. He couldn’t get over how well it had gone.

Guy smiled at the empty space on the couch, still wearing an ass-indentation on its worn cushion. “Then we go home and watch Must-See TV.”

He finished his cigarette and used its ember to light another, like a true pro. Shrugged. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t bother to get mad about it. We do it to ourselves anyway, so why care? But I do. Now.”

Smiled again. “Of course, I had to lose everything before I woke up. That’s just casualties of war. If you want to win, you’re going to take some casualties. But you guys are the lucky ones. It can be so much easier for you.”

Guy strolled to the window and flicked aside the flimsy curtain. There was a school bus outside, pulled up to the street, and kids were exiting, holding Trapper Keepers and knapsacks. High-pitched sounds of conversation and laughter issued from the gaggle of kids as they scattered either to the small barred store for snacks, or to the shabby apartments across the way.

“Time,” Guy said softly. He let the curtain fall back into place, shaking his head regretfully. “I wish someone had told me sooner that it was running out.”

The room was silent. Guy saw the tableau, from back to front: Lil’ John slumped against the doorway; Kenny to the far left, on the stairs; Steve and Julie on the couch. They all stared at him, wordless. Guy took another drink, emptying the plastic cup in his hand. Than he shrugged.

“What are you selling?” Steve asked.

“I’m not selling anything. It’s right there for you. With a little help, it can just be given away.”

“And you want our help?”

The speaker was Julie. She was giving Guy a look that made him simultaneously aroused and uneasy. It was the look that seemed at first glance far-off and stupefied, but on consideration it burned with shone with a fire that was no less for its exterior dullness. It was the kind of look men got when they were set to charge machine gun nests, or board

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an Egged bus with bandoliers of military-grade TNT strapped to their person. It was a look seen on the faces of all the Bar Kochbas and Fawkes’ that have wandered the world, wrenching societies through their own sheer madness/zealotry. Guy looked into that look. Wondered what would happen when that look, and its owner, was unleashed. He smiled.

“I need it.”

May 7

At 9:06 a.m., right at the beginning of the day, the telephone rang in Lorenzo Corcoran’s office for the fourth time since he had swiped in just eight minutes prior. “Lorenzo Corcoran,” he said.

“Hi,” a female voice said. Lorenzo attempted to fit a face to the voice and succeeded. It was Julie LeHavre, down in billing. “Could you help me out down here? I’m having a problem with my computer.”

“Did you page Steve Geldof? I know he’s supposed to be on the floor right now.”

“Yeah, I tried, but he’s still not answering.”

Lorenzo winced. At some point yesterday Steve had gone AWOL, and apparently he hadn’t shown up today either. That meant another day of running frantically from PC to PC, doing nuts-and-bolts work, ignoring by necessity the bigger responsibilities that came with running IT. That would inevitably bring Ed down to his office for one of those weird Socratic “discussions” he so enjoyed, with Lorenzo playing the part of the silent, chastened Gorgias. Fuck. This job was a ’57 Chevy with an oil leak. It was Tyra Banks with vaginal warts. He was making a lot of money and all, but so what? The fucking he was getting wasn’t worth the screwing he was taking.

Julie timed her call carefully. She knew that the guys in IT were at their busiest at the beginning of the day, and she knew that Lorenzo would meet her own simple problem with the simplest possible solution. After all, with his phone ringing off the hook, with employees wailing for help from one end of the building to the other, it was highly unlikely that Lorenzo would devote much time or energy to her “problem”, such as it was. At least, that was what she hoped.

“So what’s the problem?” Lorenzo asked when he arrived at Julie’s PC. She was seated forlornly in front of it, staring at the logon screen on the monitor.

“I can’t log in.”

“Why not?”

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“I forgot my password.”

“Okay, well, that’s no problem.” Lorenzo leaned over to the keyboard of Julie’s PC. “I’ll just use the administrator password to log you in.”

Bingo.

“In the meantime, just think up a new password and I’ll get you squared away later on in the day. When I’m not so busy.” As if to confirm this last statement, the pager attached to Lorenzo’s belt began to buzz frantically.

“Alright.” Julie replied placidly.

Julie stood up, allowing Lorenzo to sit in her chair as he tapped in the administrator password. She leaned over his shoulder to watch his fingers. Evidently he wasn’t terribly familiar with the password himself, or he was a lousy typist, because he entered the password slowly, almost gingerly, allowing her to more easily absorb the word he was typing:

G-O-D-C-O-M-P-L-E-X

She was logged in. Julie smiled neutrally at Lorenzo as he stood up and prepared to leave her cubicle. “Thanks!” she chirped.

“You bet,” Lorenzo replied as he bustled off. As soon as he was out of sight, Julie grabbed an automatic pencil and a pale green Post-It Note and scribbled down the password. She had it. Now it was time to take that glass mineshaft and shatter it open to the light.

Green dusk was settling over the land as Guy pulled the Durango into the parking lot of the Old Sawmill. He had decided to come out here quite on a whim, one that had suddenly drilled him in the gut while he was sitting around, unwashed, unkempt, in the living room of Lil’ John’s house.

“Where are you going?” Lil’ John asked incredulously as Guy suddenly lurched up from their game of Activision Hockey. “The game’s not over!”

“We’ll start another one,” Guy said gruffly as he moved to the door.

“When?”

“Later,” Guy replied, slamming the door and running out.

He realized about two-thirds of the way to the restaurant that he had absolutely no way of knowing whether Faith was working that night, or even whether she worked there

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at all anymore. He could’ve called, but didn’t. Had he called, and she had not been there, it would’ve been a little more time he couldn’t have thought about seeing her that night. So he just drove, knowing nothing concrete, nothing except absolute rock-solid surety that he had to see her, had to, or that spot in his stomach reserved for her was going to feed off him and devour him alive, and letting that happen would have been the death of him. She could cool that spot, calm it, and satisfy it. If she wanted to, that was. Of course, if she wanted to, she could smash him like an armadillo on a Texas highway. That was the fun of the whole enterprise!

He entered the front foyer of the restaurant just as a large group of white-collar workers were leaving. A business crowd. Six of them- men in expensive suits of dark material with red ties, perfectly coifed and nailed and bejeweled women, all engaged in excited conversation about some matter or another- the state of the Taiwan market, the Orange Free State, the state of their stools. A couple of them broke off and regarded Guy as he walked past. One of them was about his age, five-nine, clean-shaven, bespectacled. He looked normal enough on the outside, safe, but Guy looked into his eyes and he saw the same thing that had been coming out of his own eyes up until a couple of weeks ago- that same blasted ten-thousand yard stare that had been his own. Guy saw, but took no real notice, and took no care from it. He wasn’t thinking on plots, and confederates, and servers, and all that, because all his thoughts were occupied with Faith.

It was funny- she just happened to be walking by when he entered the restaurant proper, and she saw him first. He was looking to his right, same as his hand, and she was on his left, balancing a tray of food on her shoulder, and she saw him walk in, and a feeling leaped into her. It was that sweet unexpected feeling, because though she knew he liked her, and she definitely knew she liked him, she didn’t know if he could feel the mutual vibe. He seemed like the giving-up type. He had apparently given up on his normal existence, at any rate.

“Guy!” she said, catching his attention.

He turned and saw her, and he suddenly felt that spot go all cold and kind of amoebic inside of him, turning to jelly and dissipating through his crotch and into his legs.

“Faith,” he heard himself say.

She looked at him for a moment, the tray still perched on her shoulder. Then she astounded him by carefully placing the tray on the maitre’d’s podium, walking over to him and wrapping him in her arms.

“Did you come to see me?” she asked.

He nodded.

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“Did you know that guy who picked me up the other night?”

“Yeah. I work with him. Worked.”

“I know.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Guy. It was just a blind date, pretty much. I don’t want you to think I was leading you on.”

“I didn’t.” Guy replied. Which was true. Why would she bother?

“Good!” she pulled away. “I never told you what a good time I had the other night.”

Guy flushed, pleased. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. I told my friends about you.”

“You didn’t tell them too much, did they?”

“You mean about your fiancée dumping you?” She winced. “Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“If it’s any compensation, they don’t listen to me anyway.”

Guy grinned. “It’s cool.” Lil’ John had conducted an informal pool of visitors this week. The poll was simple. It was: What does one have to do, in your opinion, to lose his job, get kicked to the curb by his fiancée, and wind up living in his car, all within less than a week? “I’d be interested in what they said. If they listened to you.”

“Yeah.” They stood there, warmly, awkwardly.

“Are you going to stay here?” she was asking.

“Here? You mean, am I going to get a table?”

“No,” she replied. “I was wondering if you would wait until I got off work.”

“When do you get off work?”

“Right now.”

Faith’s car was a 1984 Monte Carlo, a brown coupe with a sunroof and velour seats, immaculately kept. Guy was impressed as he sat in the passenger seat. “Nice ride,” he said.

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“Thanks. I bought it from my Gramma Rae when I was seventeen. It’s got forty thousand miles on it.”

“To and from church?”

“Exactly. She was died-in-the wool.” Her eyes seemed to shine with the dim lights that lined the road. “She stopped going when she sold me the car.”

“To church?”

“Yeah. She said she wanted to try the other way, just for whatever time she had left on earth. She thought she could get away with it because she was sixty-eight at the time. She thought she had done all the good things that would get her into…” here Faith waved her hand by her ear, like she was swatting a fly.

“Heaven?” Guy prompted.

“Yeah, heaven. Big Rock Candy Mountain. Wherever. Anyway, she thought, through all her worldly good deeds- working hard, raising a family with the good values and all that- she had earned the right to a little bit of earthly self-indulgence.”

Guy suddenly had a sharp image of Faith’s grandmother (in his vision she looked almost exactly like Estelle Getty), sitting in a black-and-white checkered kitchen, downing Jack-and-Cokes and listening to Whitesnake (Whitesnake?) at 10:35 on a Sunday morning. “What does she do,” he asked, “when she isn’t going to church?”

Faith smiled. “She does whatever it is she wants to do. Just like me.”

She stared at the road unribboning in front of her. Then she looked at Guy and gave him a smile that waxed and waned with the shadows of passing streetlights.

“Where are we going?” Guy heard himself ask.

“I haven’t told you?”

“No.”

“Where would you want to go with me?”

“Anywhere,” Guy said truthfully.

She gave him that look again. She took her right hand off the wheel and slid it over her seat to his hand. Their fingers found one another and linked, squeezed, caressed. She extracted her hand from his and continued it on its journey up his arm, over his shoulder, to the back of his neck, into his hair. She pulled him to her by the hand and

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kissed him softly on the lips, her eyes never closing. A car honked as it passed. Her hand let go of his and moved to the back of his neck. She kissed him for a few seconds, gently brushed her tongue across his lips, and pulled back. That gaze never wavered. Guy was glad for perhaps the first time in his life that wore pants with a thirty-eight inch waist.

“We’re going to my house,” she breathed. Her smile had become a pointed, wicked version of it’s usual self. She continued to gaze at him for a few seconds, then dropped her head finally back toward the road. The dark mushroom shapes of trees zipped by in the night.

Ten minutes later Faith pulled into the driveway of a split-level house, in a late-60s era suburban neighborhood that would’ve caused Sherwood Schwartz’s chest to swell. “This is my mom’s house,” she said, whispering as if they were already inside. She was suddenly eager, conspiratorial. “We’re going to sneak inside.”

Guy was nonplussed. Wasn’t this supposed to end in ’94? “We are?”

“Yeah.” She opened her door gingerly. “She’s still up. She doesn’t like it when I bring home boys to spend the night.”

“Huh?” Guy started, but Faith was already out of the car. Guy slid out as well, and they faced each other. “Hey!” she said urgently.

“What?”

“We have to close our doors at the exact same time,” she said. Faith threw a brief, baleful glance at the lighted living room window. “So’s she don’t know there’s two of us.”

Guy was incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“Yes!”

“Hey, alright.”

“All right.” She nodded sternly at Guy. “Wait until I count to three.” They both pulled their doors back. “Ready?”

“Fuck yeah, girl, I’m ready.” Guy suddenly felt wolfish, predatory, like a Visigoth. He grinned at Faith. Faith threw her cigarette out and gave him that sharp smile again. She cleared her throat- quietly.

“One. Two. Three!”

They slammed their doors together.

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She led him into the house, gripping him by the hand. She opened the door for him. She led him through the tiny foyer and down the stairs to the darkened basement, to her room. Faith switched on a light and the room glowed green. She went around lighting candles, sending little wavering flames leaping up. Her face, glasses propped on his head, looked oddly pious in the candle’s glow. Guy stood in the doorway. Posters of James Bond movies lined the wall- The Spy who Loved Me, Octopussy. Moonraker (for the love of God).

“You like James Bond movies?”

“I like Roger Moore.” Faith regarded the posters. “He’s a cheese. He’s funny.”

Guy smiled. “What?” Faith asked in mock hurt. She started walking toward him, strutting, almost.

“Nothing. I just got this picture of you in some ‘70s James Bond flick, like you’re Barbara Bach or something.”

“Yeah, I bet that’s the picture you got.” Faith was on him now, and she put her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his hair and drew him toward her. They kissed, tentatively at first, more firmly now, and he could taste her now for the first time, and aside from the cigarettes, of course, she tasted just wonderfully. They kissed for a few seconds, then Faith pulled back, eyes wide, and said softly, “Can I be your Bond girl?”

Guy laughed. Faith did, too, and suddenly a wave of energy- happiness, euphoria, chemical attraction, good old-fashioned American horniness- hit him like a hot electric splash that penetrated everywhere. He never felt more alive than at that moment, more aware of what he was and where he should be, and whom he should be with. At this moment, with a beautiful girl in his arms, enfolded in that warmth, things like Ed and the Company and all-destroying magnets seemed ephemeral, distant. In this moment there was no confusion. As if to further clear his mind, Faith suddenly seized his head in her hands and drew his ear to her lips:

“Let’s do it, Guy. Now.”

“Okay.”

So they did.

It had been a long time since Guy had really made love to a woman. The tepid encounters, the spiritless wrestling with Jeni’s skinny sallow body, didn’t count. The combination of lousy sex and, and his own masturbating, which had grown more frequent

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as his frustrations with Jeni grew, had almost made him forget completely what a spectacular thing it is to be one with someone beautiful who you cared for, and as corny as that sounds, it’s too true. Being with Faith certainly qualified as spectacular.

She was a solid girl, wide through the hips, roomy, and she gave as good as she got. When he slowed down a bit she hissed between her teeth and fisted a hand in his hair. “Harder,” she whispered, staring into his eyes. “Be my man, Guy.”

“Am I your man?”

“Yes.”

They finished together, ten minutes later, and Faith cried out softly, squeezing her eyes shut and banging her forehead softly against his. She ran her nails down his back. He felt his final spasms, and they collapsed against each other. They lay there for a moment, breathing hard, tangled together.

“Oh my God, Guy,” she said. “Did you need that?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “You?”

“Most certainly.”

“Cigarette?” Faith asked.

“No thanks. Be kind of tacky, under the circumstances.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, and lit her own.

They lay in bed together, nude, enfolded. In places her skin clung to his by a mortar of light sweat. The lights in the room were off. The only illumination was the orange tip of Faith’s cigarette.

“This is weird,” Faith said. “Not bad, just weird.”

“Why?”

She ignored the query. Guy felt her hand in his hair. “You have gray hairs.”

“You have white hairs on your head.”

“That’s dye. Yours are real.”

“That’s funny,” Guy said humorlessly. “I don’t feel old.”

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“You’re not old,” Faith assured him. “If you were old, you wouldn’t be here with me.”

“Can you explain the gray hairs?”

She let the question float for a moment. Then she said speculatively, “Maybe you’re thinking too hard, and it’s drying up the pigments in your hair.”

He smiled into the darkness. “Okay, I’ll accept that.”

They lay there for a moment in silence. Guy thought how he felt- good. So good that the entire scene, this snow-globe moment, felt as fragile as glass. He feared the slightest word out of him, the slightest movement of his arm, could shatter everything around, send it crumbling like windshield glass, too small and fragmented for retrieval. So he didn’t talk.

“Does this change anything between us?” she asked.

He looked at her in the dark. He could feel her soft breath on his face. “I hope so.” He whispered.

He shrugged. She looked at him, and although it was dark, Guy could feel the look, could feel the concern in it.

“Remember when you told me you were eventually going to become proactive instead of reactive? That first night at the bar?”

“Yeah.”

Silence for a moment.

“What’s going on, Guy?”

He didn’t answer.

“Something is, am I right about that?”

He sat silent for a minute than sighed. “Yeah.”

“Will you tell me?”

“I will.”

“When?”

“Not now.”

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“Why not?”

“Because we’re in bed, Faith. Because I actually feel pretty good right now, for a change. Because I don’t want to think about all that stuff right now. I just want to lie here in bed with you and talk. I’ll talk about anything in the world, but I don’t want to talk about what’s going to happen.”

“Will you answer one question?” Her cigarette pulsed urgently.

He sighed. “What?”

“Are you going to hurt anyone? I mean, physically?”

“Come on. Do I look like a person who’s going to go out and hurt people?”

“I don’t know!” she cried suddenly. “How am I supposed to know? I hardly even know you!”

“You know me.”

“No you don’t,” she said, almost spitefully. “Not all that well.”

He could sense her frustration, the whirling, almost baffled sensation, having a strange boy- no, not a boy, not a boy at all- in her bed next to her, her mother upstairs, the empty night outside. He had to be a man. Had to soothe her. There was really nothing for her to worry about.

He kissed her. “Faith, will you be patient with me? Something’s going to be going down here, soon, and I promise I’ll tell you, when the time is right. But that time isn’t now. Can you accept that?”

He heard her sigh. “Is it always going to be like that with us?”

He shook his head firmly. “No. But right now it has to be. I’m sorry. Can you be patient with me, just give me a few days to get these things straightened out in my head?”

More silence. Than, “Yes.”

He smiled, relieved, and kissed her again. “Thank you, Faith.”

“You’re welcome, Guy,” he heard her say, and although the words were welcome, their tone was not. She lay there next to him. He lay there, in this strange girl’s bed, and though he slept, his eyes were open, and he was trying to think of how on earth he was going to explain to her what he had been up to, and what he had planned.

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Part III:

May 8-17

“Know what you fight for, and love what you know.”

- Oliver Cromwell

“Do not forget to show my head to the people. It is well worth the trouble.”

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- Georges Danton

“I don’t need anything but a good Christian fuck to stretch the vertebrae.”

- Arnie Cunningham (“Christine”)

May 8-9

Spring had arrived in Ohio, finally. It was still the second week of May and some of the trees were actually still just closed buds and bare branches against the clear sky, but it was right on the cusp, that was for sure. Right about this time in these parts starts a two or three-week stretch where everything capable of growing- flowers, bushes, trees, lawns- explodes, fed by the thaw and the almost constant rain of April, into a riot of fresh scent and the kind of vivid green color that looks as if it would streak your hand if you touched it. It’s the kind of green that would almost hurt the eyes of someone from, say, New Mexico. It’s the kind of green that only comes after a lot of brown, white and gray, in the kind of place that has seasons.

Nice thing about Ohio, seasons- probably the only real pleasant thing that sticks out when talking about this land of shallow lakes and low mountains- no mountains, actually. Places like San Diego or Miami, those places have the weather, the sun year-round, it’s always balmy… but if you get dropped into Miami Beach, whether it’s January or July it’s eighty-five degrees, ninety- percent humidity, and everyone walks around looking vaguely glossy with sweat, like John Candy’s character in JFK. L.A.’s the same way, only it’s a little cooler and drier and the sun is muted by blanket of solid-looking pollution that hunches over the mountains like a thunderstorm in neutral. But Ohio’s got the seasons, and it’s those transitional seasons- times of year- that are the best

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time of year. A crisp, burnished autumn day in Ohio, a day redolent of woodsmoke and the chill and the faint sound of football marching bands, makes all those dead leaden brown-lawn days of August worthwhile.

Same with spring. A February day in Ohio is cancer. It’s all a variation on the color gray- gray concrete, gray slush, gray dirty snow clumped on the ground and in the wheel wells of cars. It’s too warm to sled and too cold to do anything but soak your feet to the skin when you go out in it. Gets like this for literally months on end, when all one can do is sit inside, watch basketball, drink copious amounts of alcohol and try not to eat the barrel of a gun before spring. But it’s like Persephone around here- six months of hell and six months of heaven. When one of those perfect May days pops up, when the freshly blossomed trees seem almost weighed down with fat green leaves, when the leaves are so glossy they reflect the sunshine like solar panels (and there’s no sunshine as bright, so sky as perfect blue as May sunshine and May sun), when the air seems almost scented with the ephemeral smells of freshness and life, well, all the shit beforehand makes those days even sweeter.

Everybody has a way of celebrating the occasion of spring. The clubs do a land-office business this time of year, thronged with young folks made tanned and randy by the change in seasons. People air out the windows and clean their houses and apartments from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Men hit the golf courses. Women hit the jogging trails. Suburban playing fields live again with the sounds of kids playing baseball and softball. It’s like everybody’s born again, and if that’s a cliche, the extra bounce in the step the new season seems to give everyone is not. And this weekend, the first weekend spring was kissed with the promise of summer, was no exception.

Julie LeHavre celebrated in style. Using the stolen administrator password, she sent the financial records of the company (of particular interest to her was the exhaustive list of salaries, bonuses, perks, and “Annie Oakley’s” received by the company brass over the last fiscal year) to the e-mail address of everyone employed at the company. The list was formidable- a glittering treasure chest of cars, junkets, ‘research expeditions’ (including one for six grand charged to the Almighty expense account by the Gold Club in Atlanta), and pretty much everything else a rich, over-consumptive, lecherous businessman with a limitless budget could want while he was on the road. It occurred to Julie that at least a fraction of the money which could’ve gone to good use expanding her salary had gone into the g-string of some Georgia cocktease who no doubt drove a much nicer car than her and could go out partying exponentially more.

Julie performed this brazen act of sabotage without so much as a twinge of remorse, as cold-hearted and surgical as Whitley Streiber’s kidnappers. Unlike them, she smiled while she worked. It was time, she had reckoned, to take that glass mineshaft and blow it to shards- and let in the light.

Steve Geldof celebrated in style too, as he eagerly planned a campaign of in-house sabotage and disruption that he hoped would have the same effect CREEP’s tactics had on Edmund Muskie’s candidacy back in ‘72. Donald Segretti, eat your fucking heart

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out, he thought with vicious good cheer. Already he was planning the simultaneous delivery of singing telegrams, fifty sheet pizzas, a local juggling act called the Flying Peacocks, and a large cardboard cake filled with a 350-pound stripper named Fargo Margo, all due to arrive at the exact same time, at the exact same entrance, on the same day, to be determined when the time was right. He would charge the deliveries to the company, of course, using information gleaned from, yes, Julie’s theft of the administrator password. G-O-D-C-O-M-P-L-E-X was a Godsend indeed.

Perry sat alone in his apartment all weekend, not going out, not answering the landline or the cell, and talking to no one. He didn’t have time to talk. He could only plan. He sensed, like a wild horse that smells rain, that things were going to be coming to a head at the company very soon, and he would have to be very sure and very confident of his role in the festivities.

Ed braced himself for the storm to come. Like Perry, he knew that the next few days and weeks at the company would be tumultuous, a roiling maelstrom of “incidents and accidents, hints and allegations”, and he knew that in trying times vulcanized men, men of steel would carry the day. Ed fully planned on being that man.

As for Guy Anderson, the disgruntled ex-IT man who had set into motion this chain reaction of events... well, he celebrated in the best style he knew. He, Lil’ John, and Kenny sat around all weekend, drank beer out of 40-ounce bottles, puffed more Graf Zeppelin hoggers, played video games and board games and dice games, and generally chilled out. Planned further depredations to be visited on the company he once called home. Saved his strength for the storm to come. And thought about Faith.

May 10

The boardroom had been the brainchild of the building’s designer, M. Larry Fabregas, who personally oversaw construction of the edifice in the Johnson-pulling-dog ears days of 1965. Its’ design embodied the push-button wizardry of the day. Dominating the room was a large, shiny, lozenge-shaped table of pure mahogany, with eight richly appointed chairs of Corinthian leather, the most supple, the kind that might have given Ricardo Montalban some heavy, heavy wood of his own tenting out his Sansabelts. The room’s greatest luxuries were hidden inside the walls, however. With just a light touch of a bank of buttons hidden tastefully behind a dry bar and a massive mirror, secret compartments in the walls would give birth to a 60-inch high-def television, a row of stereo speakers, and there was even a door that could open up and disgorge a small kitchenette, complete with a fridge and a two-oven range. This marvel of a room was currently occupied by six middle-aged men, seated around the desk in various attitudes of sobriety, seriousness, gravitas and what you will. Seated at the head of the table was the man who had outlasted two Popes, four Presidents, four British PMs, five Russian Premiers, seven Israeli PMs, and countless African, Asian, and Latin American

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strongmen. That’s right, it was el jefe, senor Presidente, Donald Kirtley, B.A. Business, Pitt ’67.

Don Kirtley was nervous. That was unusual. He hadn’t experienced a whole lot of anxiety when he started at the company as a wet-behind-the-ears business school grad back in 1968. Nor had he exhibited much in the way of anxious twinges during his rise to the top of the company ladder in 1978, nor during his twenty-three years of interrupted, undisputed leadership. There’d been some bumps in the road, to be sure. Two young chemistry students from Kent State (play radicals, rich lefties from Shaker Heights) had attempted to blow up the building back in 1970 or ’71, or one of those goddamned hippy years. They had constructed a homemade bomb, had loaded it into the back of a Ford Econoline van (rented with one of the youth’s father’s Diner’s Club card, actually) and were on their way to the building when they decided to stop at the local Sparkle Market to get some Hostess Susy-Q’s and Tang. The bomb had exploded prematurely while they were inside the store. They were, needless to say, apprehended.

THE COMPANY WILL SURVIVE.

Indeed. The company had survived, hadn’t it? Thrived, even. Since then there had been whispers, comings and goings (there was a rumor about possible JDL activity involving the building during the exchange-visit of some Soviets in 1977- scotched) and of course there had been the whole thing with Snyder, the IT guy who went bananas. And of course there was Guy Anderson, but…

Something was different now. He could feel it, and he had a sense that the other members of corporate who were now assembled in the boardroom for an emergency meeting this Monday morning could feel it as well. He knew Ed could feel it. Ed could pick up just about anything. There was a crackle in the air, the humming electric sound of things that had happened, and the louder, faster hum of things that hadn’t happened yet, but might. Getting his computer erased, well, that was one thing. He could accept that as an isolated incident, one lone crazy in all black with a red “A” on his shirt, getting his Seattle vibe on. But there were the mysterious gaudily yellow party invitations some wraith had left in the mailboxes. A party for the middle of the workday, even! And people had left, too. Just up and left, like kids on summer break! Don knew who the defectors were. Did they think he would not know? Did they think they could run about under his nose and hatch their plots with impunity? He would deal with them when the time came. Yes, he would. But the real question still tugged at him: who had left the invitations there in the first place? Whose party was it? Would be nice to know.

And now there was this matter, which had come to Ed’s attention early this morning. Ed had called the meeting, actually, to discuss an e-mail that had come across his secretary’s desk. Don had no idea what was in the e-mail, the transcript of which was in a manila folder gripped in Ed’s ham-like fist. All the bigwigs were there: Ed was there, standing over his shoulder; the faithful Kurt Berger, and Don Mihalik, and Brewster, and Washington and, of course, himself, Don Kirtley, their leader, less a corporate CEO and more of an oriental-style mandarin. These were serious, sober men, excellent in their

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crafts (or at least presenting a uniform front of excellence, also important) and absolutely dedicated to the defense of the company. Long time in power, too, all of them. Average tenure here in the boardroom was 1986. There hadn’t been a change in the roster of this group since the early 90s. And that was good. Experience was good. Knowing whom your allies were- that was good. But…

Don suddenly felt old. He felt his fingers struggle and crack as he moved them. Sometimes his breath was short, and his heart ran gasping in his chest. The deterioration was so gradual as to be nearly imperceptible, like erosion. But it was there, and God, he knew it. Maybe there was someone else out there who knew it, too, and that was the reason for these… events.

Ed motioned to the door, which was ajar. Forms moved too and fro on its other side.

“Close the door,” he said to Mr. Brewster, a balding CPA in his forties. Mr. Brewster did it. As the door swung shut Ed caught a glimpse of Perry Mechanic. The young man was walking by slowly, his neck craned back for a glimpse of the proceedings inside the boardroom. The door closed. Perry was gone. It was time to get started.

Perry’s face creased in a frown as the boardroom door snicked closed. How many fucking doors had they been closing on his face these days, huh?

Ed dropped the manila folder to the desk in front of Mr. Kirtley. He flipped it open. The contents made Don’s wrinkled balls crawl even before Ed started transcribing it in his booming voice:

“Last fiscal year, Don, your base salary was $1,027,568 dollars and nineteen cents. With various so-called performance-based incentives, and stock options, that figure rose to $2,155,231 dollars. And twelve cents.”

Ed paused and looked around the room. The other men were dead silent, eyes confused and blasted. Ed was pleased with the reaction. He didn’t even look at Kirtley. He didn’t have to.

“You were also sent on numerous company junkets, including to Singapore, Ireland, and the Russian Republic. You are given the uses of three residences throughout the continental United States. You are given the free use of a Mercedes sedan and a BMW Roadster.”

The silence in the room was near total, broken only by the sounds of the offices outside the door, like distant radio signals. Kirtley looked as if he had aged since Ed began. Aged twenty-three years, maybe.

“Including various other expenses,” Ed continued mildly, “you alone drained close to five million dollars from this company in the last fiscal year.”

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He was done with Kirtley, for the time being. He tossed a baleful glance around the room, just to let the others know they weren’t exempt from the fun. “Every expense the men in this room have incurred over the last three years is now common knowledge, to the bottom of the company ranks.” They didn’t look stunned enough.

“Every expense.” Now they looked stunned. The tone of voice was importance.

You weren’t really allowed to talk about money at the company, least of all in front of the underlings. It was like prostitution in Victorian England. It existed, of course, the ridiculous disparity between the rank-and-file and these six men who sat in this room, but it was better to pretend it didn’t or, better yet, not discuss it at all. It was best not to let the ruled know just how “ruled” they were. Don knew that. So did Ed. So did all of them. Why would you be honest? So all those worthless assholes, who thought they were in a classless society, could start bitching, thinking they were worth something, when in reality there was a dozen, two dozen, a million behind each of them, ready to assume their places on a moment’s notice? Didn’t think so. Didn’t need that action.

Well, now they had it.

“I know all of this,” Ed continued, “because my secretary knows it. My secretary knows it because someone in this company e-mailed it to her.”

Don had to say something, do something to prove he wasn’t this impotent old man sitting shriveled at a table that was much too large for him. He looked at Ed. “Go get Lorenzo Corcoran.” He said in a husky near-whisper.

“No problem.”

As Ed left the room, it seemed as if his hands were filled by the pleasant heft of controls that were actually beginning to turn the machine.

Don thought about the thing he had hidden in the expansive closet of his office. It was a green silk Presidential sash, a souvenir from a junket to Chile in 1991. He had not told anyone at the company about it, but he thought about it often, glowing mellowly in the dark shadows. He thought of it now, and drew strength from it. The company would survive. So would he. So will I. So will I.

Ed was back less than five minutes later. Lorenzo, six inches shorter, seventy pounds lighter, and considerably more powerless in this assembly, came in first. Ed loomed behind him, gently guiding him with a hand light on his shoulder. Lorenzo didn’t look honored to be standing among giants. He looked worried. You should be worried, kid, Don thought. You’re in with the old dogs now. Be worried. The thought pleased Kirtley grimly, and just for a moment that hunger, that ancient taste for the game, bubbled up in his gut.

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Hmm. Maybe.

Don gave Lorenzo a stare and spread his hands. “Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“Do you have any explanation for the fact that you allowed someone access to the administrator password, and that someone has proceeded to send communications to the employees that are going to do untold damage to this institution?”

“Yeah, well?” Kurt Berger chimed in.

Lorenzo was slack-jawed. “Huh?”

“How else could they have done this, Lorenzo? There is no other way. Someone needed that password, and they got it.”

Large beads of greasy sweat were beginning to surface on Lorenzo’s brow. “Look, Mr. Kirtley, seriously, I honestly have no idea how-”

“Yeah, you don’t.” Ed broke in. “Of course you don’t. You’re only the one person in the building who knows the password. Unless, of course, you did it yourself.”

Lorenzo’s eyes widened. “No! I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”

“Then someone else did.” Don spread his hands like a reasonable man. “All you have to do is tell us who.”

“I swear, Mr. Kirtley- you guys- I had nothing to do with this, I love it here, I’m really happy with how everything is going, I just wouldn’t-”

“You know, I don’t know what would be worse.” Berger, piling on where the piling was good. “You giving someone the password on purpose, or just doing it out of stupidity.”

“All right,” Mr. Kirtley said softly. Lorenzo stopped. Don was convinced. Lorenzo was too stupid and surprised and shit-scared to be anything but a patsy.

Don smiled. It was a real smile. His confidence was starting to slowly come off the ebb. Having this weak link in the room was wakening the echoes. “Look, Lorenzo,” he said soothingly, “we’re sure it’s possible that whoever got their hands on the password did so… accidentally. And if it’s an accident, it’s an accident. We all make accidents.”

Lorenzo nodded slowly, chastened but hopeful for reprieve. “Yeah. Seriously, I mean, I have no idea of how I could’ve, but if I allowed someone to get his hands on-”

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“It’s alright,” Don assured him. He finally felt a little in control, and to prove it he relaxed in his big chair, lacing his fingers on the desk in front of him. “ Did you leave any written copies of the password around where they could have been discovered?”

Lorenzo shook his head forcefully. “No,” he said decisively. “I committed the password to memory. I never wrote it down.”

“Never?”

“No.”

A murmur in the room punctuated Don’s own surprise. “Did you work on anybody’s computer Friday?”

“Jeez, yes. A lot of people.”

Ed snapped a finger at Lorenzo. “Make a list of all the people whose computers you serviced Friday last. Make it exhaustive.”

“Okay. When do you want me to start?”

“Now.”

Mihalik shook his head after Lorenzo exited. “That kid’s as ignorant as the day he was born.”

“I agree,” Ed concurred. “Lorenzo’s the last guy we should be looking at.”

“Jesus Christ,” Don blurted, shaking his head in disbelief. “We really are slipping, aren’t we? What possessed us to hire that guy?”

“He knows about computers,” Mr. Brewster replied.

“Well, it might be about time we re-structured our thinking on that.”

“Whom should we talk to?” Kurt Berger asked, trying to keep the meeting on track.

“What about Rick Snyder?” Mr. Brewster asked. “He went around the bend far enough. It might have brought him back here.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” Mr. Washington agreed.

“No,” Kirtley said, shaking his head. “Snyder’s gone. Been gone. He went missing two days after we let him go. Him and his wife and son.”

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Mr. Washington’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“Really. You didn’t read about it? It was in all the papers.”

Mr. Washington shook his head. Snyder had just vanished, like a discredited Soviet leader, had become an unperson. That was all he remembered. But he didn’t know Rick Snyder had vanished for real. They all just stopped thinking about him after they cut him loose. He may have vanished that very day. He was dust when he left the building.

“So I don’t expect it was him.” Don continued.

“It’s probably someone a little bit more recent,” Ed interjected. “Someone familiar with the layout of Don’s office, at least.”

“PC’s in a different place than it was four years ago, anyway,” Kirtley said.

“So where should we look?” Kurt asked.

“Well, those three that skipped out on work last Friday, for a start. Geldof, LeHavre, and Bailey.” Ed nodded. “We can sit down with them and they’ll tell us where they went.” He didn’t say he would ‘ask’ them.

“What makes you think there’s any connection between those invitations and what happened this morning?” Mr. Washington asked.

Ed shrugged. He couldn’t explain hunches, and he didn’t feel like trying. “It’s something to start with, at least.” He closed the folder on the desk, covering the offending e-mail like a corpse. “Also, we’re going to see if there’s any connection between what happened on Don’s computer last Tuesday and this incident.”

“Good idea,” Kurt said.

“Yeah, well, to a point. The problem is, whatever happened last Tuesday was external. The guy that erased Don’s computer apparently never even had to get into the building, which means it was likely he or she was not an employee at this company. The problem we had this morning was internal.”

Ed turned to Mr. Kirtley and spread his hands. “I can’t secure this network against our own people, Don.” Then he turned to the other men in the room. “Everyone in this room needs to be mindful of their own employees. Find out whose side they’re really on.”

Everyone glanced at each other uncomfortably for a moment. Then Kurt Berger spoke up. “Are you saying,” he asked, “that our computer network might be at the mercy of our own employees?”

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“It’s gone beyond that, I think.” Ed’s voice was grim. “I’m saying that the entire company is.”

Evening descended, soft and blue-green and glorious with the promise of summer. It was even glorious down in the bottoms, on Mutineer Avenue, where the house at 11478 was convulsing with more party rhythms, lights and sounds and music pouring out of every window. The party at 11478 had pretty much been going on non-stop since last Thursday, as a matter of fact, and though the numbers of people drinking and kicking it at the house had fluctuated from day to day and hour to hour, the party mood, the existential element of fun, had never really ebbed. It was a dangerous kind of hilarity, the cynical, desperate jocularity adopted in places where the inhabitants don’t know if their doors will be broken down by cops at any minute. Sort of like at 11478 Mutineer, ever since Guy pulled that stunt last Tuesday.

Perry pulled up in front of the shabby little yellow house, killed his engine, and got out, holding a twelve-pack of Heineken in his right hand. Guy was seated on the porch, drinking a Busch Tall Boy and smoking a cigarette. He wore a serene expression that would have looked at home on the face of a man who has received a blowjob from Helen of Troy. Perry came up on the porch and sat down next to Guy.

“This is the fifth fucking party you guys are having this week,” he said. “What, did they declare world peace or something?”

“Do you know what our company does?”

“You mean my company?” Perry opened a Heineken and took a sip. “I don’t know, some kind of billing.”

Guy nodded and took a long draught of his beer. “You do the billing for electric companies. Every electric company in this part of the country, from Buffalo to Lake Michigan.”

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the occasional car pass. The night deepened. The ripe air was alive with crickets and cicadas from the greenbelt nearby. Guy blurted, “I need you to get a phone number for me. But you’re going to have to want to get it.”

Perry looked at Guy blankly, not comprehending. Guy frowned. “You don’t know anything about computers, do you?”

“Less than nothing.”

“Shit. Okay, then.” Guy took a deep breath. “You know Julie LeHavre? The chick from billing with the blonde hair?”

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“Yeah.”

“Well, she got us the administrator password at work, which allowed us to hack into the main billing server. Kenny and Lil’ John installed a batch file that is activated with a single phone call to the server’s modem.”

“A batch file?”

“A file that executes a set of instructions.” Guy took another drink. “This file in particular routes all the billing data coming into the server to the dev/null directory.”

Perry took a drink of his Heineken. “That’s gibberish,” he said.

“Alright. In layman’s terms, it takes all the billing data we receive from every electric company in the nation, and makes it disappear. Forever.”

There was another brief silence while Perry digested this statement. Guy sat there next to him, a proud papa’s smile on his beard-grizzled face. Perry’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to make sense of whatever Guy was planning. Finally he spoke.

“So, you want to- what? Give people free electricity? Is that your plan?”

Perry had a brief image of a beret-clad Guy, Tommy gun in hand, looking like a ‘50s Fidelista, handing out electric bolts to a cheering throng. But Guy shook his head. “When the electric companies stop receiving billing information, they shut down their grids.” He grinned. “They’re in business for the same reason everyone else is in business- to make money. They don’t want to provide free electricity any more than a bakery wants to provide free bread. Now do you see?”

Perry saw. He nodded. Guy finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the splintered floor of the porch. He shrugged, as if a bit embarrassed. “It’s a demonstration of the powerless of dependence,” he explained.

Perry thought about asking Guy just why he was taking this action, than decided not to. “’Why’ is a word that cannot be made straight!” his mom used to say to him sternly, and he guessed that applied here, too. This crazy fuck in his Babbitt-meets-Mad Max uniform couldn’t be made straight, either.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Guy replied.

“What do you need this phone number for? What’s to stop you from walking right into the server room and putting the server to sleep with an aluminum baseball bat?”

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Guy had another Busch Tall Boy sitting next to him. He picked the can up, cracked it open, took a long smile, and shrugged.

“The number is more powerful than the brute act. At least, I think it is. If you can knock out all the electricity in a five-hundred mile radius by pushing nine buttons in sequence on a ten-dollar Princess phone, that’s power.”

Perry shook his head. “You can’t claim your stake from the other end of the phone line.”

“I have no stake.”

“What?”

“I said I have no stake in this. I don’t want to lead any movement. I don’t want possessions- hell, I used to have possessions, and I went and pissed them all away. I’ve already lost everything. The only thing I haven’t lost is the power to show people that power exists. Not power for me; power for them.”

“What kind of power?”

“Any kind of power they want. As long as it’s theirs.”

They sat in silence, pondering this last, Perry most of all.

It was now 10:30, the time of night when a party really started to get loud- even a party that takes place on a Monday night. Lil’ John had rolled up two kegs tonight, and invited all his closest friends (as well as those who were not), and by the time East Coast ballgames were wrapping up there were close to forty people jammed into the small house, drinking, smoking pot, snorting a funky line here and there, and generally “raising the roof”. Most of the people were just strange faces to Guy, of course, but there were a few with whom he was familiar. There was Perry, of course, resplendent as usual in his crisp shirt and tie; there was Emerson, and there was Sabrina, Emerson’s girlfriend. Right now, as a matter of fact, Emerson was well-launched into a loud, drunken, across-the-room argument with one of Lil’ John’s friends, a burly type with a checkered wool shirt and the heavy black beard of a Civil War general. They were arguing about the Atari 2600 in Lil’ John’s living room.

“You talk your shit about Yars Revenge because you don’t have the stones to back it up!” Emerson yelled, throwing one arm around Sabrina and pointing sloppily at the man (Kenneth, his name was Kenneth) across the room.

“We ain’t got the game here, dog!” Kenneth yelled back. “You’re lucky we don’t!”

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“We will!”

“When?”

“Soon’s I go back to my house and get it!”

Emerson threw some quick signs to Sabrina, who apparently surprised him with her selection of signs as well as the fact that she was shaking her head vehemently, blonde hair flying. He stood there for a moment and spread his hands: well? She shrugged. A little bit miffed, apparently, was young Sabrina, and she didn’t need to say it. He stood there for a moment, hands frozen in the car, wavering a bit, than he whirled and began shoving through partygoers, headed for the door. As he went he yelled, as if to save a bit of face:

“All right, I’m goin’ to get that fuckin’ game!”

Sabrina was left alone with Guy, holding a cup of beer in his hand, only a couple of sheets to the wind. Guy looked at her and gave her his own shrug, this one apologetic: Sorry. Sabrina smiled. She looked unfazed from her recent heated encounter with her boyfriend, as she calmly took a cigarette from her bag and lit it. She gave a sign to Guy conversationally, as if he would understand. Gave a quick point to the door and shook her head.

“Yeah, well, I’m the last guy to talk about that kind of thing,” Guy answered casually.

Sabrina gave a sign wryly, and smiled at Guy. She didn’t know anyone at the party either. She hung close to Guy like a Siberian around a small fire, folding her thin young arms in front of her chest.

“Remember that girl Faith?” Guy said suddenly. “That girl from the bar who I was hanging out with?”

Sabrina looked at him pleasantly. He hadn’t been looking at her while he was talking, so she of course had no idea what he had said. It didn’t bother him. He was drunk and was sloshing over and wanted to spill.

“Well, I hooked up with her the other night. I mean, in the Biblical sense. And, I mean, that’s cool and all, but for some reason I feel kind of apprehensive about the whole thing.”

“I don’t really remember what I did to win her over. That, I think, is what bothers me a little bit. I can’t give her a good reason. Wouldn’t she need a good rationale for sticking around?”

Sabrina smiled politely and, of course, said nothing.

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“That was Jeni’s problem. I never really gave her a reason why she would want to waste time with me. At first the whole routine of it was enough for her. She wasn’t very imaginative, so that bought a couple of years. But she got bored. Who wouldn’t?” He gave Sabrina a smile with eyes that were a little loco. “You ever hear me talk about Jeni?”

She shook her head.

“You’re right. I don’t talk about her. Hell, I hardly even remember her.” It was true. He really didn’t remember her a whole heck of a lot. Could barely picture her face anymore. It was like trying to remember individual “A-Team” episodes from his childhood. All her rants, her annoying peccadilloes, all the worthless things that drew her ire… gone. Not gone, but very faded.

“I don’t know for sure, but maybe after all the shit with Jeni went down, I felt like I could just go ahead and accelerate my whole downhill slide. I couldn’t have gone ahead and done the things I did with her around. Couldn’t have gotten fired. Couldn’t have fucked up Kirtley’s computer, or started kicking it with you guys. Couldn’t have stopped shaving.”

She offered a helpful sign and nodded. She had made a point, which was actually more than he could say at this point. He shrugged in negation. “I just think that, essentially, you do or don’t do things based on what people you have a responsibility to- or desire to have one, at least- think. And now there’s nobody. Nobody cares. So what the fuck?”

Sabrina was looking at him. He smiled wryly, a cynical, bitter, loser’s smile if there ever was one. Here he was, drunk, forlorn, showing the wreckage of his old life in his hands like showing the insurance man glass shards, and there was a brief feeling of pathos that was so strong that it was worthless to worry about it. Especially since he was talking to a deaf girl. He continued.

“I realized that, and now-”

Sabrina suddenly elbowed him and pointed into the living room. He casually turned his head in that direction and saw, with some mixture of surprise, lack of surprise, and the most overwhelming feeling of seventh-grade lovesickness, that Faith was entering the house. She was dressed in her work uniform, actually, tie undone and hanging around her neck, and she was pulling off a black stocking cap, leaving that black hair a bit unkempt on her head. Faith was glancing around, seeking for someone she knew, and she saw Guy, and her face burst into a big smile and she started across the space, arms out.

“Guy!”

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Guy stood there, and his face almost in spite of him broke into almost a carbon copy of the huge grin on Faith’s face. He put his own arms out. Sabrina broke into a smile herself at the sudden transformation of Guy from the moody, rumpled outsider, the absurd teen-idol, into the goofy love-sap in front of her. Perry, leaning his long frame against a large speaker in the living room, saw it too. He not-watched, glancing obliquely at Guy and Faith as they seemed to swim through the crowded house toward one another.

Guy and Faith reached each other hands out, and they grabbed each other’s hands and squeezed, looking into each other’s eyes wordlessly, letting that heavy current travel between them and membrane them against everything else. They were still grinning, almost amused by their connection. Faith was squeezing Guy’s hands hard and soft. She pulled him close to her and put her arms around his neck.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Hi, Faith.”

They stood there like that for a moment, close. Like that old REO Speedwagon song, they let the world go on without them. She leaned her head in to his and she didn’t kiss him, but just lightly bumped foreheads with him, than noses. Guy dimly thought- no, realized- that the most beautiful sight there is, is a beautiful girl who you feel and who feels you, when her face is so close to yours that you feel her soft breath on your own lips as she whispers:

“I wanted to call you, but I had no idea where you were.”

“I was here.”

They looked at each other. He smiled.

“I looked for you at the bar.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

They stood together. Even their banal conversation sparkled. She nodded toward the window and the cool night beyond.

“You want to go outside together?”

Guy nodded. “Yeah.”

Her devilish smile, touching her dark eyes at each point, curled upward. “Can I get a beer first?”

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“You don’t need my permission.”

“No, I don’t.”

They were outside together, seated on the steps of the back porch, which was smaller and even more dilapidated than its streetside counterpart. A pale white porchlight, a weak 60-watt bulb, gave them dim light. The party went on behind them.

Guy had told her of his plan in a hurried, sodden rush almost as soon as they had gotten out the door. He wanted to know what she thought. Nobody had told him, not even those involved. He didn’t have a new car, or a new watch, or any neat little new work accessories to show off to Faith. Only his new life, and his Plan. And he had to show something to her. It seemed very important to Guy that he display growth and change to this girl. No shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging sheepishly and saying “Oh, I’m not doin’ much these days, you know, just working” and trying to be boyishly charming and failing dismally. He’d rather distract her with his grandiose plans for at least-temporary destruction of a portion of the state’s system of electricity. He could distract Faith from himself.

So he told her, and she sat quietly and listened, and when she was done she sat quietly for a little longer more. The seismic murmur of the party continued behind him. Muffled cars drove slowly by on Mutineer, occasionally crunching soft gravel under their tires as they stopped at the house. The front screen door banged like clockwork, almost always followed by the swelling of sound inside the house.

“I was looking at the stars the night I met you,” Faith said, pointing at the night sky. It was dark at night down here in the bottoms, not many streetlights, and the stars sprayed the sky above them. Far up to their right, a freeway overpass gleamed with headlights as it arched over the mid-city valley.

“You remember that?”

“Of course I do.”

She looked at him, almost cautiously, and smiled. She shook her head.

“You were a mess. You didn’t even look like you could change a tire.”

“I’m still a mess.”

“You’re a controlled mess now. And you’re talking about cutting off all the electricity in this part of the state-”

“Not just this state. And I’m not cutting it off. I’m just going to keep them from charging for it. They’ll cut it off themselves.”

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“Why would you want that?”

“Because it’s an interruption. Because people don’t sit down on back porches and look at the skies anymore. Because they just fall into place doing their assigned tasks, oblivious to the world around them.”

He smoked in silence, shaking his head. Faith was looking at him, round-eyed. Guy turned to her.

“Did you know that I used to eat the same lunch at the same time every day?”

“So do a lot of people,” Faith replied.

“Don’t you see something wrong with that kind of lockstep? Millions of people doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, five days a week, two hundred days a year, for thirty, forty years? Not even questioning?”

“Maybe that’s what they want.”

“No! That’s what they think they want. The only reason they think that is because they don’t know there’s another way. But there is. I’m going to be the one that shows them.”

She searched for something to say. “Guy...” she groped, “There could be trouble. There could be riots. People could be arrested, hurt. You could be hurt.”

She saw him looking at her.

“I could be hurt.” She said softly.

Guy shrugged and took a drag off his cigarette. “If people are angry they might hurt, and if people are weak they might get hurt, and maybe one of those people will be me. But I don’t matter here. I never did.”

Time for the Cameron Crowe line. He gazed into her eyes.

“I’m just giving them a moment. Like someone once did for me.”

Faith’s round-eyed gaze hardened into a stare of mixed awe, horror, and disbelief.

“Guy?”

She looked at him questioningly and spread her hands. Guy sat next to her impassively.

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“What do you want me to say?” she asked. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re welcome.”

“What?”

Guy had the sudden awareness of stepping into something deep and nasty that would lead him nowhere good. Possibly to oblivion with this girl. It was like quicksand, though, as any poor slob with a dumb tongue will attest. You get into it, you try hard to pull yourself out, but the harder you try, the deeper you go. So Guy went deeper.

“All this is... and I don’t want to sound crazy, or obsessive or anything, but I can’t help but thinking that everything I’ve done over the last few weeks I’ve done at least indirectly as a result of meeting you.”

Her stare had turned into a saucer-eyed goggle. John Hinckley had talked of kidnapping his beloved Jodie Foster after he was through dusting off President Reagan. Jodie might have given him this look.

“Guy, don’t do this to me. Please.”

“I’m complimenting you.”

“Guy.”

“What?”

She opened her mouth to say something, maybe a reproach, maybe a cautionary message; maybe just to tell him he was a fucking psycho. But she closed it and got to her feet instead, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Guy was alarmed.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going home,” Faith said. She took one step down from the porch toward the patchy backyard and faced him. She shook her head. “You’re going to have to find someone else to blame for your fucked-up life.”

She began to leave. Guy stood up. “Wait, Faith!”

“No, I really have to-”

“Faith!”

She looked at him, aggrieved, looking as if she would start to cry soon, and would, if she could only get away and be private in her own pain. “What, Guy? What do you want?”

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He sighed. “I need you in my life. I mean that.”

She gave him a long look. It wasn’t an angry look, which would’ve been bad. It was a look of pity. That was far worse. “You do?” she said. “Are you sure? Maybe you should think about what you really need.”

“Faith.” He said. “Faith.” But Faith was gone. He heard the slam of a car door, the whine of an engine coming to life and the crunch of gravel and a brief spray of headlight as she backed out into the street and drove away. He stood there in the backyard for a moment, the smoldering cigarette still in his hand. He looked at it and fired it at the wall of the house, where it struck with a splash of orange sparks. Then he stalked back into the house and slammed the door behind him.

May 11

The process of finding the guilty parties behind the recent disruptions in the company began almost immediately after the board meeting broke up. Prodded by Ed, Lorenzo made up a list of every single person whose computer he had personally worked on the previous Friday. The list was as exhaustive as Ed had hoped. There were seventeen people on it, company employees all (obviously), with problems that ranged from major (a core dump on Reginald Outlaw’s PC) to almost nonexistent (Julie LeHavre forgot her network password). Lorenzo had a good memory, if nothing else. The list was then crosschecked against the much shorter list of people who had ditched work the previous Thursday and gone to the party. There was one name on both lists. That name was Julie LeHavre. She, Steve, and Derek Bailey, the three Thursday defectors, were scheduled to have a little talk with Ed and Mr. Kirtley today.

Steve was called in first, and he sat hunched on the front of the visitors’ chair in Mr. Kirtley’s office, his angry eyes trained on the boss. It was the usual thing: Mr. Kirtley sat at his desk, Ed stood back by the door, out of sight of the interrogated, but not out of mind.

“So you left at... a quarter after two, last Thursday?” Mr. Kirtley asked Steve. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you went to...”

“A party.”

“A party?”

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“Yes.”

Mr. Kirtley nodded thoughtfully, then let a frown creased his leathery face. “Whose party was it?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not telling.”

Mr. Kirtley was stunned. “What?”

“You heard me. I’m not telling you anything. You know I left last Thursday, you know I went somewhere, but that’s all you know, and it’s all you’re going to know, at least from me. You want to write me up for skipping work, fine. Knock yourself out. But I’m not talking. And-” here Steve shifted in his seat, indicating Ed, “You can’t intimidate me, either.”

Mr. Kirtley nodded. Glanced wordlessly at Ed. Ed nodded back. Then looked back at Steve. The computer tech had leaned back in his chair, as if to absorb a blow, but the angry defiance in his hazel eyes had not changed an iota. Mr. Kirtley forced a smile and laced his long pristine fingers together in front of him. Reason won over brutality every time. “You know, it doesn’t have to be like this, Steve.”

Steve said nothing.

“We can make things easier on you, and I’m not just talking in terms of negatives, like lesser punishments. We can offer you positive incentives to-”

“No. I won’t be bought.” Motherfucking goy, Steve thought. Ever since Judas, you think you can just buy off the Heeb. Well, not this time.

Mr. Kirtley’s manner changed. To hell with this kid. “Ed, who else do we have today?” he asked briskly.

“Let’s see, there’s LeHavre and... Bailey.”

“Okay, good.” With that Mr. Kirtley punched a button on the phone, activating an intercom. “Gail?”

Gail’s voice came crackling through the intercom. “Yes?”

“Go ahead and get one of the big cardboard boxes from the storage area, and bring it in here for Steve right away.”

“Okay, Don.” Click.

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Mr. Kirtley looked up at Steve. “Take this box, take every one of your possessions from your desk and put them into the box, I want you to exit this building, never to return, and want you to be quick about it.”

“I’m fired?”

Mr. Kirtley nodded. “Oh, yeah, you are.”

Steve sat there for a moment, shaking his head, a small sardonic smile on his face. He didn’t protest. He didn’t beg. He was silent. Calmly he pulled a crushed pack of Lucky Strikes out of his breast pocket, shook one out, fired it up, and inhaled deeply. It was the first time anyone had smoked in this office since John Walsh sucked a Camel ‘shortie’ in here back on July 5, 1982. Geldof sat his ass in that seat and tugged on that smoke, and Ed let it happen just a little longer than normal, just to keep that ball of humiliation rolling on the old man. Before Ed could act, in fact, Steve heaved himself to his feet, walked straight-backed out the door, and slammed it as hard as humanly possible. The gunshot crack of the door closing echoed throughout the floor. As soon as Geldof was gone, Mr. Kirtley looked up at Ed. Silent alarm bells were clanging in his brain.

“He didn’t even say anything, Ed. What the hell?”

Ed shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Julie came next. She also refused absolutely to divulge anything about where she had gone or what she had done after leaving work on Thursday. When confronted with Lorenzo’s list and asked point-blank whether she had been the culprit in the theft and misuse of the administrator password over the weekend, she merely shrugged. “You’ll never find out who it was,” she said simply. In the end, she got the cardboard box and the free ticket out of her career, effective immediately. Steve had gone quietly, with a smirk and a few muttered imprecations. Julie, however, was much feistier. As soon as Mr. Kirtley hit the intercom button on his phone she went into action. There was a small porcelain vase on Mr. Kirtley’s desk, souvenir of a trip he and Mrs. Kirtley had taken to Morocco in 1988. Without warning or preamble, Julie sprang to her feet, grabbed the vase, and sent it flying across the room, where it shattered against the oak-paneled wall like a bomb.

Gail was outside the office on the intercom. This is what she heard: “Gail, I’m going to have to ask you to go get another- hey! Sit down- crash!” Then she heard lumbering feet; grunts, the brief sounds of a struggle, a heavy thud, and silence, as the connection was broken. Gail frowned at these signs of disorder. “So crazy right now!” she breathed, to no one in particular.

The ‘lumbering feet’ were those of Ed, who had set sail as soon as the Moroccan vase exploded against the wall. With speed surprising in such a big man, he thundered

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across the room and hit Julie with a cross-body block, sending her hard to the carpeted floor and landing heavily on top of her. Had Ed been wearing a Rams helmet, had Julie been wearing a Browns helmet, and had they been on the floor of the LA Coliseum instead of in Mr. Kirtley’s carpeted office, it would’ve looked like Deacon Jones sacking Frank Ryan, circa 1965. Julie grunted as she was crushed between the floor and 260 pounds of beef.

After Julie had left, dragged bodily out of the office and out of the building by uniformed security, Ed faced Mr. Kirtley and spread his hands in disbelief. The big man was breathing hard and sweating. He shook his head, eyes wide behind his glasses. Ed was as stunned as Guy now, and when Ed was stunned, Ed was silent. Mr. Kirtley looked down at his desk, and paled like Openshaw looking at the Five Orange Pips. Because his nameplate, that mark of authority so similar to the old royal scepter, was face down.

Derek Bailey lounged in the visitor’s chair, at ease with himself, at ease with his surroundings. He had a more casual, languorous air about him than Steve or Julie, both of whom looked as if they had come into this office spoiling for a fight. They had had the looks and postures of fiery young revolutionaries (which they very well may have been). All they lacked were the black berets and the anti-Zionist rhetoric. Derek’s laid-back physical attitude suggested Peter North getting a blowjob. Kirtley glanced up at Ed, who nodded. Derek might be the soft kernel they had been looking for.

“How are you doing, Derek?” Mr. Kirtley asked.

Derek nodded. “Can’t complain.”

“Good! You know why you are here, right?”

“Sure.” Derek gave Kirtley a lopsided grin. “It’s about last Thursday, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I came back to work, you know. I was only gone for, like, a half-hour.”

“Actually, closer to an hour, but that’s neither here nor there.” Mr. Kirtley gave Derek a tight smile. “We appreciate the fact that you did come back to work, and we’re willing to overlook your unexcused absence. Provided we can obtain answers to some simple questions we’re going to ask you.”

“Fire away.”

“Good! Where did you go last Thursday?”

“I went to a party.”

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“Alright. Do you remember where?”

“You know where Mutineer Avenue is?” Mr. Kirtley shook his head. “It’s down in the bottoms, where a lot of the old factories are. Inner city. Not a nice neighborhood.”

“Thank you. Did you recognize anyone at the party?”

“Yeah. Um, Steve Geldof was there, this girl Julie that works here- she was there. They were the only ones there from this company, beside myself. Oh- and Guy Anderson.”

Kirtley started. So did Ed.

“Guy Anderson was there?”

“Yeah!” Derek was grinning broadly now, amused by the memory. “Straight-up crazy, that guy went. What did y’all do to him?”

There was the sound of the door slamming behind them. Ed had left suddenly. Kirtley turned back to Derek. “You were talking about Guy?”

“Oh, yeah. Man, it was bizarre. He’s all wasted, I can tell- I only had one beer, I was fine by the time I got back here- and he walks into the living room of this little house where the party was, and he starts making this speech about, oh man, I can’t remember, he starts talking about time, and how it was running out, and all this other shit-”

“Shut up,” Mr. Kirtley said curtly. Derek closed his mouth with a snap. There was a long silence while Kirtley stared thoughtfully at Derek. Then he spoke again. “You’re sure this was Guy Anderson?”

“I’m positive.”

Another long silence. The only sounds in the office were the ringing of Gail’s phone behind the door, and the soft ticking of the digital clock on the desktop. Then Mr. Kirtley, with an arm motion that was almost a blur, reached for the phone and snapped a button.

“Ed. Don. Listen...”

Perry had been standing outside of Ed’s closed, locked office door for close to fifteen minutes now, and he wasn’t sure why he was wasting his time. Ed spent about as much time in his office as Ariel Sharon spends in his Arab Quarter apartment. A ship doesn’t stay in port; a roaming terror doesn’t stay behind a desk. Still, Perry waited, hands stuffed into his pockets. It beat working. And Ed had to come back sometime.

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He had something to tell Ed, after all. A plan had been slowly coalescing in his head, formed from the swirling rush of activity and information that had gone on around him and seeped into him over the past couple of weeks. It formed together like a tornado, made up of all the personal things- the wrangles with Ed, the failed meetings with Kirtley, the failed IT bid- and the erratic behavior of Guy Anderson, which had started out as lightning on the horizon but was now sucked up into this increasingly powerful storm that was gathering shape within him.

He was smart to avoid the party; that was clear now. The powers around here were on to the defectors, and they would take appropriate action against them. He was glad that he hadn’t taken the invitations into the building in person. He was also discovering that losing out to Lorenzo for the IT job may have been a blessing in disguise. Lorenzo was turning out to be the best patsy since von der Lubbe tried to burn down the Reichstag with Nazi matches. He had the personality, for one, and he had the luck, too. In his first week in charge of IT, he had only overseen the biggest act of corporate sabotage in the history of this company. He had allowed someone to steal the administrator password. He had carried the accursed invitations into the building; someone had to have seen him. Eventually it would catch up to him, and when it happened, Lorenzo Corcoran would take a nasty fall. That was too bad- for him. But Perry Mechanic had been an opportunist ever since they scraped the yolk off him, and this occasion had all sorts of opportunities, glimmering like quartz in a rock wall.

Ed finally showed up, looking a bit sweaty and disheveled, carrying a manila folder under his arm. He saw Perry and stopped, looking the way a man looks when he sees his car getting towed. “What?” he asked gruffly.

Perry took no umbrage. He smiled, as a matter of fact. “Got to talk to you, Ed.”

May 12

Guy dialed the number for the Old Sawmill Restaurant at six in the evening, hoping to speak to Faith. Roiling in his stomach was the unsettled feeling one sometimes gets after a big drunk- not a physical sickness, but an unease that bubbled up from the diaphragm to the throat, the haunted sensation of having done or said something stupid during the binge. He had called earlier, during the lunch rush, and Faith hadn’t been working at that time, but he had managed to jawbone the harried-sounding maitre’d into checking the schedule.

“She comes in at five,” the maitre’d said.

“Thanks.”

When Guy called back six hours later, he was immediately put on hold. Almost ten minutes went by before the phone clicked back on. “Hello?” Faith’s voice asked.

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“Hey,” Guy said.

“Hey.” Faith did not exactly sound overwhelmed at hearing Guy’s voice.

Guy was suddenly stuck for something to say. The coldness in Faith’s voice had frozen Guy’s ardor. He felt the ground shift uneasily under his feet, as if he was standing on a loose pile of stones. He faltered: “Uh, so, what’s up?”

“Guy, I’m busy. It’s dinner rush. What do you want?”

“Why did you leave the other night? Why did you get so upset?”

“It was late. I was tired.”

“No, you were upset.

“You’re right. I was upset.”

“You-”

“I what, Guy? What do you want from me? You want me to cheer you on? Tell you what a great thing it would be if you destroyed a bunch of computers and got yourself thrown in jail? Then I will. Good job, Guy. Go do whatever it is you’re going to do. Knock yourself out. Just don’t expect to hear from me after that, because I’m not interested in whatever happens to you if you do something that stupid.”

“How is it stupid for me to harm some corporation that harms the people who work for it?”

“Because it’s not about harming some corporation. It’s about making Guy Anderson feel better about himself because he thinks he wasted his life and he wants to engage in some grandiose act in order to, I don’t know, provide some kind of personal atonement. That’s selfish.”

“I’m not being selfish.”

“You’re about to engage in an act of self-destruction, for highly personal reasons that involve only your own sentiments and your own neuroses, and have nothing to do with the feelings of the people around you who care about you. What would you call that?”

Guy had no answer. Faith seemed to grope for a second for the right words, than found them. “What do you think is going to happen when you destroy this computer, Guy?”

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“Server. I’m going to destroy the server.”

“Sorry. server. You know what’s going to happen after you destroy this server? It’s a big company, you think they’re just going to give up? Put a For Sale sign on the lawn? Uh, no. They’re going to rebuild whatever you’ve wrecked, and they’ll be back up and running in a few days. And where does that leave you? Sitting in some cell someplace, for God knows how long. A year, or three years, or five. And what about me, Guy? I’m nineteen years old. I’m still a teenager. Do you really think that you’re so special, that I’m going to sit and wait for you to come out of prison? Do you think I’m going to show up during visiting hours and give you window love? I don’t even think so.”

“So you don’t want me to destroy the server.”

“I don’t give a shit about the server, Guy! I care about us. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“Faith-”

“Bye, Guy,” Faith said blandly, and then a dial tone. She had hung up. Guy stared at the phone for a second, stupefied. Then he slammed it back down in its cradle, hard.

May 13

Ed King, the de facto number two man at the company, stood outside the closed door of the boardroom, which was in session for an unprecedented second extraordinary meeting within three days. The atmosphere at the company had gotten stormier in that time. People were drawn, exchanging harsh whispered rumors, giving one another long looks as they passed each other in the hallways. Paperwork, quotas were starting to fall behind at an alarming rate. People weren’t being productive. The phones were ringing a lot more than usual, and the gravelly voices on the other end of those phones were asking snappish questions and giving brusque replies. Nobody was certain of the content of the meeting to come, but Ed had a feeling. Somebody (yeah right) was worried about the effect the attacks had had on worker morale, and it was getting on time to either catch the party involved, or catch someone else and call him the party involved. Whatever came first.

For almost two weeks now- nine days, actually- the company had seen an unprecedented number of attacks on its machinery, its security systems, and the very integrity of the men and women who labored there. It had never seen such an array of assaults on so many fronts, and it had never had an enemy quite as shadowy, fanatical, and implacable as this. These were not clumsy college kids playing revolutionary with half-baked plots and clumsy bombs. This was an opponent that knew the company inside and out, and knew how to mobilize the forces under his command. For nine days the

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company had been passive, hunched under the rain of blows at its vitals, husbanding its strength. Now it was ready to counterpunch. Ed King was going to be the man throwing the punch that would send a shiver through whoever the hell was pulling this nonsense.

He had worked for the company since 1974, a time when there wasn’t a single other black face in the building (the cleaning crew back then were Soviet defectors, all academics). He had risen in that time to the right hand of Donald Kirtley. Ed knew from history, and he knew from his own history, that extraordinary times call for extraordinary men. He long knew (or at least believed, which amounted to the same thing) that he was extraordinary. But the days in which he lived were ordinary, so he waited. He bided his time. Years slid by. Now the extraordinary days were at hand, and so was his time- his time to take the controls in his own big hands, the time when he would stop conducting the orders of others and start transmitting his own. Ed King planned to take full advantage.

He had learned the value of time, and the importance of patience, in Vietnam. He had gone there as a scared, skinny, eighteen-year old kid in 1968, the same year Donald Kirtley slid from Pitt Business into his cushy entry-level job at the company (it wasn’t that cushy, it was a demanding job, but not quite as demanding as manning point in canopy jungle, now was it?). He knew a lot of his colleagues had dodged the draft, either by college deferments or by joining the thickening ranks of state national guards, and he didn’t resent them for their choices. He would’ve done the same thing, had he been able. But he was a poor kid from Hough, and back then a kid from Hough could either stay home and get shot at by an Ohio Guardsman, or sail off and get shot at by the Viet Cong. Ed chose the latter. Over there they let him shoot back.

He had gone straight from the cracked sidewalks of inner city Cleveland to the mud, rot, and rain of Southeast Asia without a break, and it quickly became apparent (to him, at least), who would make it out of there, and who wouldn’t. It was funny, but399 ones who didn’t make it, by and large, were the ones most afraid of dying. The smart ones were the ones who followed the enemy, tracked his movements, knew where to be when he had an advantage and where he didn’t want to be when they had the advantage. The cowards, the stupid ones, got killed. They got out of their head, that was why. They stood up when they should’ve ducked. They made noise when they should’ve kept quiet. They cried and whined and moaned for mama and spent so much time being afraid of dying, that they forgot to concentrate on staying alive. Then, of course, there were the ones who weren’t cowardly or courageous but where just plain stupid, period. They were the ones who got lost and wound up tied to a tree with their balls hanging out of their mouths. The ones who lit cigarettes while they were on point and got themselves shot. The ones who didn’t clean their rifles and they got hopelessly rusted in the jungle dampness and then they found themselves face-to-face with some VC and their M-16 clicked benignly and little Duc Trang’s Kalishnikov fired straight and true. And there were the crazy ones. The guys with the vacant eyes who wore necklaces made of VC ears. Who raped five-year old girls and joked that they were the only broads in the country who didn’t have the clap. The two guys who had lost a poker game to the lieutenant of Ed’s platoon six months into his hitch and who, three hours and many drinks

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later, both walked into the lieutenant’s tent and wordlessly riddled him with gas-tipped slugs.

Ed wasn’t scared, at least not openly. He wasn’t crazy. And he was all the way around the block from being stupid. He was simply Ed, which meant one thing above all- he was in control. Had himself on lockdown, so to speak. He kept his shit locked tight at all times. Kept his rifle clean, extra socks in his knapsack, and kept his eyes on the ground.

You had to be patient in the jungle. Couldn’t go running around blindly, what with the VC and God knows what else out there in that riot of green like Max’s bedroom gone natural. Ed remembered one of his buddies; a skinny, jittery kid from Oregon named Jerry Flannery, who had been kicked to death by an angry water buffalo. That was the kind of shit that went down when you ran off half-cocked. Had to be patient because usually it was nothing but sitting in the rain, with your poncho over your head and your M-16 cradled in your lap, waiting. Waiting for relief. Waiting for Charlie. Waiting to eat. Ed saw guys who were so far gone with waiting that they would stand up and spread their arms and stagger out into the jungle, screaming for some of you fuckin’ nips (one guy called them ‘nips’ instead of the correct term of ‘gooks’. His uncle was in the VFW) to show some stones and come out and try shooting at him. There just happened to be no VC in the area that day so they didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. It was the ennui that drove some guys around the bend. Ed didn’t get bored easy. He could sit around and wait. And he made it out of there, without a scratch.

It was a lot of years later, but Ed smiled, thinking; I can still wait. The skills are still there. And so he had waited. He had waited for Perry Mechanic’s next move, and had been willing to wait, because he knew Perry would make one.

Ed had taken notice of Perry’s rapid rise well before, to be sure. He watched the comers, because he knew whom they were coming for. But he hadn’t expected the bid. Thought Perry was just an empty rubbery swagger and an empty silver tongue. He didn’t have work skills. He couldn’t type very fast. He didn’t know anything about computers. Ed wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what Perry’s exact responsibilities were. Which was why, he supposed, he was surprised at Perry’s sudden dash for the IT chief’s spot.

Maybe he thought he had a legitimate beef when Lorenzo beat him out. Ed actually thought he might have been right. Lorenzo was a tomato can, after all, and practically still slept in a bassinet. Of course, Ed had pretty much engineered the coup. The days were becoming harder on Don Kirtley, and if Ed just gave him a soft touch, he toppled over sideways, like a weeble-wobble. He had to parry the thrust, as surprising as it was, and he had to do it fast. He could prevail on Kirtley that Perry was too inexperienced with computers, and he knew that would do the trick. Kirtley had an almost superstitious belief that the IT guy had to know about computers. Just had to, damn everything else. It’s how you ended up with fruitcakes like Snyder and Anderson sitting in the boardroom, looking all jittery and making their expensive suits look like

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Halloween costumes. So Perry went down. Life was a bitch, but sometimes you got to be on the other side. Ed never stopped being appreciative of those times.

Since all that shit had started going down with the computers, and the password, Ed’s interest in Perry had by necessity taken a back seat to his interest of finding the saboteurs. But he still found time to keep an eye on him. And sure enough, along comes Perry the other day, to his office.

Ed turned and saw Perry striding down the hallway toward him. He held the folder in his left arm, had it just kind of tucked in the long crook like an afterthought. Perry nodded and smiled at him like they were old-time chums.

“You’re walking me in now,” Perry said. “That’s pretty damned nice of you.”

“You’re walking yourself in,” Ed retorted. “Stay out here until I tell you to come in.”

Perry nodded placidly, like it was no concern to him who walked in first, because it wasn’t. “As long as I come in at some point.”

“Got something for you,” Perry had said the other day, holding out a long hand to Ed. Ed enveloped the hand in his own meaty paw, and squeezed. It was an old schoolyard trick, but it worked. Perry’s face constricted briefly. For Ed, the feeling was the same as the one others get when they help little old ladies cross the street.

“Want to see what’s in this folder?” Perry asked when he managed to extract his sore hand.

“Sure.”

Ed took the folder and opened it. Inside were names and addresses. Lil’ John’s Towing. 11478 Mutineer Avenue. Guy Anderson. The Midnight Marauders. May 4. Guy Anderson. Guy Anderson. A copy of the damning yellow invitation in a small Ziploc bag, for God’s sakes. Ed looked up from the evidence. “Well? What’s this?”

“You know what it is.”

“There’s another meeting on Thursday. I’ll show it to Don and the rest of the board members then.”

“The hell you will.”

“Excuse me?”

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“I’m going to show all this to them. Me, personally.”

Ed’s eyebrows rose. “Says who, son? You?”

“Kirtley will. As soon as I grab this folder and show it to him. Dad.”

Ed looked at Perry for a long moment. He’d been ambushed a couple of times in Nam, and he had learned to prepare for those times when you went from being primarily interested in finding a hot meal to being primarily interested in trying to fight off about fifteen hundred men with Soviet-made rifles that were larger than they were. Ed nodded.

“Fair enough. The meeting is at 10:00. Think you can take time out of your busy schedule to come down?”

“I can make time.” Perry straightened his tie and gave Ed a half smile. “It’ll be nice knowing how the real players work.”

“Take a picture, then.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll have to, thanks.” Perry had the smug air of Jerry Jones on a Super Bowl sideline. “See you on Thursday. Look sharp, soldier.” He sauntered off down the hall, leaving the folder on Ed’s desk, open.

“Our progress toward solving our network security problems can best be described as stagnant,” Ed began. He was addressing the same group of men who had gathered in here two days ago. The only physical difference between the room today and the room on Tuesday was the fresh plate of croissants on the table, and the carafe of ice-cold orange juice placed next to it. Ed’s place at the table was also different. He was now standing at its head, across from Don Kirtley. Kirtley sat there and watched like everyone else as Ed took Perry’s folder from his suit jacket.

“But a recent development has changed all that.” Ed dropped the folder on the table, and its contents slide out tantalizingly. “Gentlemen, I would like you to meet our new, temporary, Chief Technology Officer.”

The door swung open and Perry came rambling into the room. He walked right past Ed and poured himself a glass of orange juice from the carafe. “Some of you might know Perry,” Ed stated dryly. “He has been actively working his way up through middle management.”

Kurt Berger made a snorting sound. “Yeah, I know him. He’s not even from IT. What does he know about computers?”

“What do you know about computers?” Perry snapped back.

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Berger’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘what do you know about computers’?” Perry repeated. He looked questioningly at Berger, who made a harrumph sound in his throat and glanced at Kirtley, as if looking for reinforcement. Kirtley was silent.

Heartened, Perry took a swallow of orange juice. Agh, terrible. Too much acid. “Now, I think we can all agree on one thing. Nobody in this room knows the slightest thing about computers.” He smiled. “So it’s a good thing I’m not here to solve your computer problem.”

“Because you don’t have a computer problem. You have a people problem.”

“We don’t need you to tell us what kind of problem we have,” Mr. Brewster injected sharply. “What we need from you is a solution.”

Perry stared at Mr. Brewster as he took another drink of orange juice. Put the juice down, still staring. Looked down at the table as if gathering himself up. Sighed.

“If I can finish…”

Then he looked up and continued. “The funny thing about this situation is, that the man behind all of it is your former Network Administrator.”

There was a start that flashed throughout the room. It seemed to galvanize Mr. Kirtley, briefly. He came to life, slamming his fist on the table. “Goddamn it, I knew it! That lunatic!”

“If you have proof of his involvement, than why haven’t the police arrested him?” Berger asked.

“Because they don’t have the proof. Yet. It’s not that simple anyway.” Perry put the half-empty glass right on the table, where he knew it would leave a ring. “Guy is the catalyst behind all the security problems you’ve had, it’s true. But he couldn’t have gotten into the building after April 27. He’s mobilized the people around him. The people around you.”

He nodded over at the folder on the table. “Their names and other relevant information are in that folder. “The ones directly involved are highlighted. There are also the names of those that aren’t involved, but know.” Perry looked at Kirtley. “Your contacts down at the police department should make it easy for you to have those involved arrested, and the bystanders at least detained, and questioned. Guy can be kept outside, at least for the time being.”

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Mr. Washington, a dark, taciturn man, spoke up. “Guy can hack into any computer in this office, with or without help. So why should we go after other people instead of him?”

“Because it will force him to take action, the action he’s been wanting to take. And when he does, he’ll fall, hard.”

“How do you know all this?” Mr. Washington asked.

“Because I’m going to give him a phone number he thinks is going to crash our billing server.”

The room fell completely silent. Perry calmly gathered up the folder, and then seemed to finally notice the utter quiet around him. He smiled indulgently.

“I left photocopies on each of your desks.” Then the door was opening, and Perry had disappeared out the door, leaving the stunned room behind him.

Ed caught up to Perry in the elevator. The tall young man gave Ed a saturnine look. “Pretty good performance in there, don’t you think?”

“Did you hear the word ‘temporary’ attached to your new title?”

Perry was silent.

“I just wanted to divorce you from the notion that this promotion of yours has any permanence. Your new position is by brevet only.”

Perry frowned. “By what?”

“You think anyone will remember any of this by this time next week?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Why would they? This is a nightmare. When people wake up from nightmares they forget. They’ll forget this, too. Because they want to forget. And when they forget, they’ll forget about you, too.”

The elevator rode in brief silence. The saturnine expression seemingly had migrated from Perry’s face to Ed’s. Ed’s glasses shone in the unnatural light.

“I’ve finally painted you into a corner, Perry,” Ed continued. “You’re the big hero of the Guy Anderson saga. Congratulations. After we fall on Anderson and his people you’ll get a big handshake from Kirtley, and maybe Action 9 will interview you, and you’ll see your name in the paper for a couple days. And there’ll be bonuses, and awards,

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and various baubles presented to you by a grateful company- not that you care about any of that shit anyway. Then what?”

“Then I continue onward and upward.”

“Not here you don’t. You’re finished here. Well, not finished- you’ll keep that fancy title of yours, for a while, and you’ll get an office, and a desk, and a nice neat certificate on your wall. Hell, we got to give you some kind of reward for services rendered. But you won’t be doing anything. You won’t have any influence. You’ll be another empty suit holding an empty title. And that’ll be that. You’ll have shot your wad. I was the guy really running things the whole time anyway. You just got lucky and came up with a name. Any asshole in this building could’ve done it, and the board knows it.”

“I’ll talk to Kirtley.”

“Go right ahead.” Ed was as serene as a Buddha. “He’s old, and he’s slowing down, but he’s not totally stupid. He knows what you’re all about, and he doesn’t like it anymore than I do. In fact,” here Ed flashed a rare smile, “I ran all this through him first.”

Perry looked up at the ceiling. Ed shook his head, his smile gone. “You’ve lost, Perry. You couldn’t finesse me. You shouldn’t have even tried. Just do yourself a favor and don’t be here when I start running this company. I mean officially.”

The elevator rolled to a stop and the doors trundled open. Ed stepped out. “See you around.” With that, Ed walked off down the hall, leaving Perry inside the elevator.

Ed walked down the hall with a warm sense of satisfaction spreading from his belly to his limbs. His patience had paid off, all right. He had trusted Perry to be impetuous, to overplay his hand, and sure enough, the young man had done exactly that. He felt a little bit of empathy for Perry- he was a bright kid, to be sure, and under the right circumstances he would have a bright future, but this was war. It wasn’t Nam, for sure, but it was close enough for government work, and in war you had to swallow those sentimentalities and just pull the trigger. He had kind of empathized with the Cong, too.

Perry trudged slowly to his cubicle, looking soaked and deflated, like a peacock drenched with water. He sat down heavily and stared at his computer monitor, which was turned off. His own face stared back from the smeared inkiness of the blank screen.

Ed had gotten over on him, that was a fact. He’d walked into that boardroom, filled to the brim with piss and vinegar, and he’d put on a big show for the corporates, and as it turned out Ed had been pulling his strings the whole time. Clowning him. Then the conversation in the elevator, and the sunburst reality had hit him- he was nowhere at this company. He could make good money here, and drive a nice big shiny piece of

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metal, and coat himself in fine threads and expensive scents, but what was all that? A placebo. Only the power got him off, and it was the only thing he could never have here.

So he would go someplace else. Where? Another company? Starting over again at the bottom, back in the mailroom, because without discernible skills, without a positive recommendation from this company, that’s where he would be. Fuck that. He might as well go down the street to the local food court and apply for a job holding out little pieces of barbecued meat on toothpicks. So he had to think of something else, he supposed.

May 15

The police got all the information it needed from the company on Friday but decided to wait a day, rather than make their move all at once. It was easier to catch people sleeping on a Saturday. When the call had come, at 7:45 on the last night on the week, nobody at the department was particularly surprised. The company, in addition to its usual monthly bill, had also accumulated a substantial amount of intangible credit in its relationship with local law enforcement over the years. Many favors had been done. The county happened to be cash-strapped. So was the state, relatively speaking. Tax abatements were few and far in between. The people, quite frankly, felt pretty secure even though their ostensible protectors were still driving LTDs (the D.A.R.E. guys got to drive a commandeered Corvette). Recently Mr. Kirtley had authorized the setup of a sort of pipeline leading directly from one end of the power constellation to another, and the health of the department improved exponentially. The department lot was now filled with new rolling iron, the uniforms were a crisp, creased blue, and the computers in the squad rooms were fully updated. The company had made this happen for a reason. Guy Anderson could’ve reminded the local bears that the company did not do anything for free.

But they knew that already.

At 10:45 on Saturday morning, John Edward Pitt, known to one and all as Lil’ John, owner and operator of Lil’ John’s Towing, was indeed sleeping, crashed out slack-jawed and snoring on the old vinyl couch in his living room. An empty Jim Beam bottle and an empty two-liter Coke bottle sat chummily on the table like old snakeskins in the dust. Both bottles were sticky with the remains of their recent contents. Significantly, there were no cups around. Kenneth Wayne Keys, known to one and all only as ‘Kenny’, sat on the edge of the table, smoking a cigarette, wearing a pair of ragged yellow skivvies and nothing else. He was playing ‘Enduro’, the high-pitched whine of the video game car’s engines filling the room, when suddenly the sound was overlapped by the sound of thudding footfalls on the rickety wooden floor, followed by a series of banging knocks on the screen door.

Kenny frowned around the cigarette. Nobody was supposed to knock on this door on Saturday morning, and that meant nobody. It would not be stood for, ever. Two weeks

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ago, two Bible-thumpers- a gaunt, thin, suited man and his sallow, disheartened teenaged son- had come to the door looking to spread salvation. Kenny had answered. He hadn’t been dressed and he did not have a nice body to look at, even for the saved. Also, Kenny had immediately started screaming invective at them, not stopping until they were off the porch, back in their car, and far down the road. He always felt very strange around other people- he was strange, period- and a Saturday morning was cool balm for the hot weirdness pulsing inside him.

He got to the screen door and had just registered the blue uniforms when the flimsy door flew open and two burly policemen came piling in. They dragged Kenny, struggling, lank hair flying, over to a wall, pinned him, and cuffed his hands behind his back. After Kenny was secured they went after Lil’ John, still unconscious on the sofa.

Lil’ John was lying on his back, his feet hanging off the edge of the couch like Andrew Borden. As soon as the cops tried to flip him on his stomach, the easier to immobilize him, he woke up. Like a bear aroused out of hibernation, Lil’ John gave a roar and with an open hand pushed one of the cops backward, to stagger off his feet into the jumble of disassembled computer parts with crunches and crashes. The second cop leaped on Lil’ John’s back and wrapped his arms around the tow driver, trying to ride him to the floor. Lil’ John tried to get up and throw the cop off him, but the cop went a good 240 pounds, and now the second cop, breathing hard, was back on his feet and joining in the struggle. Staggered under over four hundred points of cop-beef, Lil’ John went to his knees, then to his belly on the crusted carpeted floor. With a flash and a series of clicks, his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Not a word had been spoken. Not a word needed to. The brief, violent struggle was eloquent in its silence. The cops felt a sense of satisfaction when they piled John Edward Pitt and Kenneth Wayne Keys into the back of the shiny, brand-new cruiser. The back of the network built by Guy Anderson had been suddenly, irrevocably broken. Now it was time to sweep up the leavings.

At 11:03 a.m. on this bright, warm Saturday morning, the Saturday morning of happy childhood memories, two cops- different cops, from the same department- pulled into the parking lot of the Rentwood Apartments and killed their prowler’s engine, leaving the bubble lights slowly coursing around and around silently.

Their destination was Building 7515, Apartment C. The unit was let to Steven David Geldof, former computer technician and suspected saboteur wanted in connection with the springtime assaults on the infrastructure of the company. The officers had been warned to take care- there had already been a struggle at the Mutineer Avenue home of one of the suspects and this Geldof was known as an angry young man, a firebrand, an agitator. The officers approached the door with caution. They knocked. There was a brief click, a rattle of deadbolt chain, and the door swung open to reveal Steven David Geldof, his beard neatly trimmed, put out immaculately in a crisp white shirt and black pants. A

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satisfied look, the look of a happy martyr, was in his eyes. Somehow he had found out. Or perhaps he had simply sat and waited. He held his slim wrists out in front of him.

“Good morning, kids,” he said.

At 11:39, the cops picked up Julie LeHavre as she was jogging down her street, headphones clamped to her ears. They dragged her off the street like she was Adolf Eichmann and basically tossed her in the back of the car, which actually squealed its tires a bit as it sped off. She was taken in and locked in the same set of holding tanks as the others. The entire operation had taken less than an hour, as successful as Entebbe and a half-hour shorter to boot. The perpetrators had been taken care of- except, of course, for Guy Anderson. He hadn’t been present at the Mutineer Avenue residence (and neither Kenny nor Lil’ John knew- or would say- where he was). Not that it mattered, because there was as of yet no arrest warrant drawn up for Guy Anderson. Apparently they were waiting for Guy to draw up his own warrant, as Ed King had so warmly assured them he would.

“The intelligence says he will,” Ed had told Chief Rhodes, his bulk filling the narrow metal chair in the latter’s office. “So we’ll sit tight and let him. In the meantime, we-”

“-Gather up the remaining flock, right,” Chief Rhodes agreed.

Guy returned to Lil’ John’s house late in the afternoon. He had spent the night on the street near Peabody’s, in his old stomping grounds, rolled into a blanket laid out on the back of the Durango. He felt he needed a night alone to mentally fortify himself for the task ahead. He had also become immensely depressed over his all-thumbed dealings with Faith, and just wanted to lie moodily by himself, feeling that swirling sickness in the pit of his stomach, and listen to the radio. He didn’t want to be bothered by anyone who might try and cheer him up. So he spent the night alone. It was better that way.

He had fucked up, that was the high and short of it, and that was cool, that was alright. Sometimes you just fucked up with certain girls. You tried, and some kind of built-in circuit breaker inside you just threw itself, and that was that. They wandered away from you with quizzical looks and a vague ‘what the fuck?’ are about them. That sometimes couldn’t be helped, you couldn’t control when the breaker threw, sometimes. But this was worse. Guy had felt a sense of airy euphoria while he spilled to Faith his grand plans. It had been such a violent, jerking shift when he felt the ground crumble under his feet.

He awoke early, early enough to see bleached-out morning sunlight shining on lawns and devil-strips sparkling with the night’s wet. He didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, he didn’t want to drink, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He decided to drive around for a bit.

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There were a few ways to look at the whole situation with Faith. He broke down these scenarios when the landscapes along I-77 and smoking were not enough for entertainment. He was gratified that she showed enough interest in him to actually get pissed. That was something to take out of the whole affair. Of course, Guy had alienated girls in the past, and he was wise enough to be aware that alienation only goes so far. Sooner or later the girl would start seeing the relationship in those icily straight deposit-and-return terms, and he always returned far less than the acceptable amount, so that was that.

I-77 flowed into what was simply referred to as “country” less than fifty miles into Guy’s trip. This area, south of Canton, all the way to the Ohio River and West Virginia beyond, was the beach onto which washed Southern surf, and the hill country became pronounced, and there appeared every now and then, when you got obnoxiously close to the big river, stark white crosses standing against the sky. Like welcoming fingers, almost. There wasn’t the smart dressing of gentility that had appeared beside the road that led to Pennsylvania and NYC. There were trailers, woods, hills, sedimentary rocks, and those crosses, and that was that. Again.

She would think he was crazy. That wasn’t good. It seemed to be correct- he felt crazier more and more these days, and he was coming to realize that being natural, just flowing with the chemistry- that was the way to be. Was fully confident that it was the ‘way to go’, ‘just the ticket’ for successful and happy interactions. It would help him when it got time to take down that server. With Faith it had a somewhat different effect. Fuck driving, he suddenly thought. He turned around before he got to the river. He had to be getting back.

He expected Lil’ John and Kenny to be at the house, possibly still asleep from their Friday night exertions. So it came as a bit of a surprise when he found the shabby little place dark and deserted, late-day sunshine streaming through windows into empty, silent rooms. He looked around, hands in his pockets, and listened for movement upstairs. Nothing. He walked upstairs. Nothing. Nobody was home, obviously. Guy came back downstairs.

Her tone on the telephone had been worse, even, than her tone at the party. Her vibe at the party was hot, red. It struck at him like warm snow. She had cared. She had a stake. On the phone she had been almost preoccupied. Her impatience cracked through a few times. There had been seeming beads of sweat on his forehead. He wanted to get through to her, let her know how he thought about her, how he just thought about her in that abstract, wandering way the lovelorn think about those they think about. He hadn’t done it, apparently.

She had sought the way of water on him. She had danced in his grasp, and had sat with him and let him feel like he was warm and safe and he could be plain old Guy Anderson, a little short, a little bald, a little pudgy, a geek, a nerd, a dork, someone who had a bit of skill in an area to which most people gave the sign of the cross then forgot,

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and that he could be this flawed, almost reptilian creature and still bask under someone’s light. He hadn’t really felt it all that much, and he had forgotten to complain about it. He had always found that special formula that turned candy into poison. He had been invested with this power to be forgettable, this power that came on him and shot from him like beams, and then he had finally become memorable. By getting piss-drunk and mumbling about plots of destruction.

The house was dark and silent throughout. Aging sunlight was falling unenthusiastically through the living room window. Wherever Lil’ John and Kenny were, it was not here. Guy didn’t think Faith was off-put by his plan for the company’s server. It showed drive and initiative. The drinking was what had fucked him up. Showed sloth and a lack of self-control. She was too good for that kind of act.

Where’s everybody? Guy thought, and that was when he saw the small white card perched on the edge of the coffee table. The card was a bright bone white, a startling contrast to pretty much every other item in the house, which was grimy with dust and the grease that Lil’ John accumulated on his person each and every day. The card was facedown. Guy picked it up and looked at it. Printed neatly on the card were these words:

POLICE DEPARTMENT1099 HUDSON FALLS ROAD

EMERGENCY HOTLINE: 330-606-0666

Guy turned the card over and over in his hands. All his moping, self-involved thoughts swirling around the girl in his head seemed to dissipate like fog. The battle had begun, and it had begun in earnest. That didn’t surprise him. Couldn’t expect to buzz in the company’s metal ears without being swatted at, for sure. It was-

-How the fuck did they know I would be here? It was Guy’s next thought, riding right on the heels of the previous. He fingered through his recent history like it was a card catalog. He wasn’t getting mail here- it was presumably still going to the condo. He wondered for the briefest of moments what Jeni was doing with his mail. He hadn’t registered at any hotels or motels. He’d had his car towed by Lil’ John’s, but it was it. There was only one possible way, of course. Who, though?

He tried to call Steve, and got nothing but a voice mail message. He tried Julie and got the same result. He dialed Perry’s cell phone, and on the third ring, the dial tone was replaced by a small click, and Perry’s rich voice; “Hello?”

“Perry. It’s Guy.”

“What’s up?”

“I think the police came and took Lil’ John and Kenny.”

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A silence fell on the other end of the line. Guy could see Perry on that other end, dressed to the nines, phone in his hand, pondering. Finally: “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Guy paused. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

There was a smile in Perry’s voice. “You didn’t. So you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Then, again: “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. What would a revolutionary do in this scenario?”

“Why ask me? I’m not the revolutionary here.”

“Yeah.” Guy didn’t feel revolutionary at that instant. Unless revolutionaries felt like asshole ingrates standing in the home of someone who has been thrown in jail as a direct result of said revolutionary’s actions. “I should bail them out.”

“Can’t do that until Monday.” Left unsaid: who knows how much talking they’ll have done by then?

“Someone ratted me out,” Guy blurted. “I don’t know who, but that’s the only way they could’ve found out I was staying here.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Perry agreed. “Who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know.” Guy thought about the party’s attendees. Steve, Julie, Kenny and Lil’ John… and this one guy, this rake from the company who had left early. What was his name, Darren, Darrell… “Hey, Perry? You know that guy Darrell something, works up at the company, black hair, always throws game at the girls there?”

“Derek Bailey?”

“Yeah, that could be.”

“Yeah, I know him, sort of. Why, do you think he’s the rat?”

“He was at the party. He left early. He’s certainly not with our program.” Guy shook his head. It was hard to think, to decide. “What should I do with him? Anything?”

“No. You might need deniability, and you’ll lose that if you go anywhere near that guy. Besides, you don’t have any proof of his involvement.”

“He’s the only guy that could’ve done it. I don’t think Steve or Julie would’ve ratted us out. Certainly not Lil’ John or Kenny.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Perry said. “They’re onto you now either way. Especially since they have your people.”

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Guy grimaced. He had anticipated being arrested by himself. The idea that associates would roll over on him hadn’t occurred to him. Guy had a sudden vision of Lil’ John in a “Homicide”-style ‘box’, smoking cigarettes and calmly spilling everything into an old-school tape recorder, its fat twin wheels spinning as if interested itself. “Do you think Kenny or Lil’ John will talk?”

“Two days is a long time to be around cops without saying anything.”

“Well,” Guy said, “Can you come by? Tomorrow? I’m going to need that number soon, I guess.”

“No problem,” Perry replied. “Have you talked to what’s-her-name?”

“Who, Faith?” Guy chuckled emptily. “Last week. She didn’t seem real down for talking.”

“Maybe you should warn her.”

“About what? She’s not in any danger.”

“Okay,” Perry replied placidly. “I have to run. I’ll be by tomorrow night. Watch your back.”

“I will.”

When Perry hung up the phone, a feeling of utter loneliness settled over Guy. He sat down on the worn vinyl sofa in the empty house and thought about the people he had met since he decided to terminate his old life. The names flitted through his head: Lil’ John, Kenny, Steve, Julie, Faith. Faith. Faith. He hadn’t even been aware of their existence three weeks ago, back in those dim dead days when he had a short haircut and a nice blue suit and was Guy Anderson, Network Engineer. He had invaded their lives, and what had happened? Lil’ John and Kenny were in jail, Steve and Julie possibly in there as well. And what was he to Faith? A bizarre interlude, a biley hiccup, nothing more.

He sat there in the dark, alone, his grand plans falling rapidly to rubble all around him, and thought, as always, about Faith. He wondered what she was doing right now.

Chief Rhodes was pleased with the success of the day’s sweep. He was even more pleased when Ed King departed the station house, dropped his bulk into the leather seat of his Cadillac Sedan de Ville, and drove off. The sight of Ed dwindling over the horizon was always welcome to the Chief. He didn’t mind the company- they’d done some favors for the department over the years, he owed them, he understood- but there was something overbearing about the company’s leadership, particularly Ed. They always made the department and the men inside feel like some kind of rinky-dink proxy army, a gang of

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donut-shop Phalangists and nothing more. No respect for the uniform, those guys had. He could only imagine how they treated the people who worked for them. Actually, he didn’t have to imagine, did he?

Detective Starker, a squat, muscular man with squinty eyes, a bald head, and the flamboyant mustache and imperial of a GAR officer, rapped on Chief Edward’s door. “Chief? We’re going to start bringing the company people to the box.”

Chief Rhodes nodded. “Good.”

The problem, Guy hadn’t really done anything to get arrested. He supposedly had this big plan to knock out the company’s server, or whatever, but Chief Rhodes had been doing police work for many a moon, and when you’ve been around long enough, you know about how many of those big plans end up as nothing more than white blobs in the toilet water. He might have done the thing with the electromagnet, but how the fuck were they going to prove it? It’s not like he’d left fingerprints.

Detective Starker had said something. The Chief looked up. “Huh?”

“I said, what do we have on these four if Anderson doesn’t do anything?”

Rhodes uttered a short, humorless bark of laughter. “What do we have? Shit. We barely have enough for a charge.” It was true. The only one of the four who had done anything at all was the girl, and she had, what? Stolen a computer password? What was that? The other three might go up on conspiracy charges, but that was only if this Anderson cat did what Ed claimed he would do, and that, of course, was a very large, very imposing if. With any kind of halfway competent lawyer all four of those guys would be out by Tuesday, and never come back. Which would leave the company with nothing.

Boo-fucking-hoo for them.

Detective Starker was still hanging by the door, awaiting orders. Rhodes looked at him and sighed. “Go send some guys in to talk to them. Maybe they’ll shed some light on this whole situation. Oh, and Detective?”

Starker’s eyebrows rose. Rhodes pointed a finger at his office window.

“Send a car out to Mutineer. See if Anderson’s there.”

Starker nodded and started out. Before he had left, Rhodes snapped his fingers. “One more thing!”

Starker turned again. “What?”

“Find the girl, too. Faith. I bet she knows something.”

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May 16

Ed had arrived at the station bright and early, to lend impetus to the investigation. He had sensed the interest of the cops wavering, and he would not have any of it. He was fully in charge now, running the show, and he wanted to keep right on running it, long as possible, and the only way to do that was to put the hammer down on this particular situation. Ed was probably not aware of this, but he was much like a successor to Ludendorff- the prodigy advancing his cause under fire and under the cover of a wooden titan on aging wheels. Ludendorff had failed. Ed didn’t know that Ludendorff had failed, and he cared not a whit about long-dead German generals anyway, but he knew that he did not want to fail, and had absolutely no intention of doing so. Which was why he was again filling the small chair in Chief Rhodes’s office, staring across three feet of office and desk at the top cop. Chief Rhodes’s drawn face raised its eyebrows.

“Well?” he said.

“You know well, man. We need this wrapped up by morning.”

“I can’t promise you that. Investigations of these type need time to-“

“I can call some people, if you need help.”

There was silence. Ed was a lot of things, but he was not subtle. He would quite literally use the Chief’s phone to call the state bears, the FBI, Interpol, SAVAK and whomever else he saw fit to traipse around the dust of this city. Rhodes sighed. He had wanted to play golf this morning. It was so nice outside.

“We’ll do our very best, Ed. You know that.”

“I hope so,” Ed replied, shaking his head as if it might not be so.

This Sunday morning was one of those glorious days. The sky was azure, the sun shone winningly down on all those green leaves and green lawns, and although it was only 10:30, the mercury already stood at 71 degrees and warming. It was why Faith was seated on a splintery wooden bench in Indian River Park, watching the skateboarders negotiate the freshly built half-pipe in the park’s sunny clearing. The skaters had started their Sunday sessions three weeks ago, and Faith had been here every week, watching the kids soar through the air on their brightly painted decks, their baggy clothes rippling in the freshening spring wind as they deftly performed ollies and kickflips and all manner of stunts. She liked watching the skaters. They seemed to remind her by their very presence that there were alternatives to the lockstep existence that had cursed her for years.

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Faith had been growing steadily more bored and deadened by the pace of her life recently. She was a local girl, born and raised around these parts. She had gone to kindergarten here, and primary school, and junior high, and had just graduated from high school the year before, having wrapped up twelve full years of education, all of which took place in three buildings hunched within two miles of one another. It was as close as one could get to the old one-room schoolhouse. There was something comforting about seeing the same faces and walking the same walks over that era that spanned two intifadas and three Presidential administrations.

She had the same friends, too: Brittany and Robin. Faith had hung out with Brittany since fourth grade. Robin had moved to town from Michigan two years later, and by the fall of 1993 the three were fast friends. The three began to be known in the hallways of junior high and high school as the “mafia”, and the boys of their class began to speculate on the nature of their three-way relationship, like overheated teenage boys are wont to do, especially about the girls who were just “sort of” popular (which they were). They had the wrong idea, of course.

The skate park was built right over top of an old Little League field, phased out in the mid-90s when the area youth baseball league began to contract, as less and less kids went out for sports these days, opting for the air-conditioned summer comforts of Home and Couch and Video Game. A winding asphalt access road led down from the state route, and connecting the access road to the gravel parking lot of the ball diamonds was a small wooden bridge constructed of warped wooden planks that reverberated with dry spasms every time a car crossed its length. Behind her, Faith heard a car with a low, rumbling engine cross the bridge and begin its crunching crossing of the parking lot.

Brittany and Robin were pretty okay, Faith guessed. They’d all had some good times together, they’d shared laughs, they’d shared their first wine coolers and joints cadged from senior football players, but… it was getting old, kind of. Just the whole scene. Here they were, nineteen all of them, it’d been almost a year since graduation, but those two were still all about going to malls, and looking at guys, and talking incessantly about… Jesus, what did they all talk about, anyway? She couldn’t remember the contents of any of the recent conversations she’d had with either of her two best friends. They were just gone from the head, scattered like Oklahoma topsoil. Perhaps they hadn’t been there in the first place. Probably Brittany and Robin had told fast yarns that galloped under their tongues, pushed out under wide eyes and out front for waving arms, and in her bored stupor, Faith had just… missed them. It didn’t matter. Neither Brittany nor Robin listened to her anymore. They were just more tactful about it.

She’d told Brittany about her evening with Guy the other week. She’d injected him into the conversation at odd times, irrelevant times because to speak his name was like this warm little center in her chest, like with all the names of boys she had liked. She had spoken about the conversation outside the bar, his way of blanking his face totally when he spoke, making it still and wooden, but the way his eyes were alive and watchful all the while. He was such an odd juxtaposition, his hair and his strained face and the ruined clothes, all his outer body looking ready for the scrap heap, but the eyes looked

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like they had just… woken up. He had intrigued her, so bluff and distant sometimes, but when he looked at her… Brittany caught the tail end of all this. She had been smoking one of those ridiculous Virginia Slims she planted in skinny her face from time to time.

“Did you go out with that one guy that night?” she brayed.

“Guy? No-”

“No! That one guy with the Acura.”

She’d meant that tool, Perry. God, Mr. Smoothie himself. Dude actually took her to the cigar bar that night. Jesus. Nice try, buddy!

“Yeah.”

“He was cute, sort of.” Brittany frowned and took a puff, as if to consider her opinion. “What happened with him?”

Robin would have had some dour comment. She had been making these remarks she thought of as “dry” and “witty” since like seventh grade. She had pioneered irony and now she carried its proud banner into a new century. Faith had been watching TLC one night, this show about plane crashes, and she began to imagine exactly what pithy comment Robin would come up with if she were, say, stuck inside PSA Flight 182 as it careened in flames toward a San Diego neighborhood in 1978. Probably some very unironic things, she would wager.

Faith heard the car approach the skate park, and as it closed it began to slow down. The tires crunched louder as the car swiveled its frame toward the strip of grass and the set of bleachers on which Faith sat. Sounded like a big one.

It shouldn’t have surprised her any that Guy had some kind of radical terrorist act planned. She had probably freaked out on him a little, too. She was drunk and emotional. She got stupid sometimes. She’d been pleased when he called her the other day (didn’t want to show him though; wanted to make him work for it, it was more fun that way), but he hadn’t worked for it. Just tried to spin for that plan of his.

Well, if all he cares about is this hang-up he has about some company he used to work for, to hell with him.

Faith heard car doors slam behind her, two of them. Chunk chunk. Then feet in heavy shoes plodding through the grass, and suddenly Faith knew that whoever these people were, they were here for her. She didn’t know why, yet, but she knew anyway. She turned around.

The car was a black-and-white police cruiser. Standing by the bleachers and looking up at her expectantly were two city policemen.

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“Faith? Could you come with us, please?”

They couldn’t treat her like some kind of a criminal, because she wasn’t. But they came close. They put her in the box and slammed a white plastic cup full of coffee down in front of her and gave her a cigarette and went to work. Two of them- a swarthy guy, Arabian, skin and clothes various shades of brown or black, heavy with cologne; a tall, cold-eyed man who looked like Central Casting’s South African heavy. Detective Hassan and Detective Rodt. Detective Hassan grinned, revealing white teeth that were ruler straight. He scratched his pompadour and affected puzzlement.

“I don’t know, Faith, it just makes no sense to me. He likes you so much, he tells you everything, and he never mentions this plan of his?” The detective’s soft accent seemed to underline the gravity of Faith’s predicament.

“No.”

“Not once?” Detective Rodt wasn’t puzzled, just mildly perturbed.

“Never.”

“But he told you everything about himself.”

“Are you sure he told you everything?” Detective Hassan asked. “Maybe there are things he chose not to share. Men can be... taciturn at times.”

“Maybe. I didn’t know him too well.”

“That’s not what we heard,” Detective Rodt said.

“Whom did you hear that from?”

“Guy was a little strange, wasn’t he, Faith?”

“I don’t know.” Then with as much attitude as she could muster, “What’s the definition of strange?”

Detective Rodt gave Faith a patronizing look. “Oh. Did you hear that in some movie?”

“Maybe she did not think Guy was strange, Detective,” Hassan speculated.

“Maybe not. Say, was he still living in his car when you two were hanging out? Was he still unemployed?”

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“There’s nothing wrong with losing your job or the place you live.”

“There is if you lose both within a week’s span.” Detective Rodt retorted.

“True.”

There was silence. Then, “He never mentioned it?” Detective Rodt, as if she had simply forgotten earlier.

“No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

Detective Hassan sighed regretfully. “I don’t know, Detective. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“Nor to me.” Detective Rodt gave Faith a long stare, long enough to make her feel decidedly uncomfortable. She was already almost done with the cigarette, and she knew she would want another one soon, but she didn’t want to ask. Wanting a smoke was as good as a confession. She was lying, of course. Sort of.

“Of course,” Detective Rodt exhaled, glancing back at his partner, “Maybe she just is not remembering a few details.”

“That’s true,” Detective Hassan replied. “Do you think we should give her some time to jog her memory?”

They’d run this game a few times on a few sobbing shoplifters. That fickle stripe. Faith thought it was entertaining enough, but she hoped they would leave smokes. Detective Rodt was impressed. “That’s not a bad idea. Do you want to go to McNally’s?”

“What about Li-Chu?”

“Are you sure? That’s clear out in-” Detective Rodt went through a pantomime of remembering Faith’s presence. “Oh! Faith! You want a cigarette before we go?”

No, asshole.

“Sure.”

Both Detectives searched through their clothes in a somewhat cursory manner. Having found nothing, Detective Rodt gave Faith a doleful look. “Sorry, Faith. I’m fresh out.”

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“We will get you more while we are out,” Detective Hassan said on his way out the door.

Detective Rodt stopped at the door and turned to Faith. “Concentrate, Faith. Concentrate.”

An hour passed. Faith nursed her coffee until it was cold, but she was still starving for a smoke when the door to the interrogation room opened to reveal an older man, gray-haired and a little paunchy with the decades, wearing a blue suit. It was Rhodes, the Chief of Police for the city. Rhodes turned the chair around and sat down leaning on its back, old Mr. Big video-style. He gave her a sympathetic look.

“Do you-”

“Do you have a cigarette?”

“Of course.”

Rhodes produced a crumpled soft pack of Marlboros that had the musty, oft-used look of toys at the BMV. He shook out a smoke for Faith. She took it.

“Light?”

A book of matches slid across the table. Faith lit her smoke and dragged deeply.

“Do you know what Abraham Lincoln said to Harriett Beecher Stowe when they first met?”

Faith shook her head.

“She was attending a White House reception about a year or so after the war started. Lincoln looked at her and said, ‘So this is the little lady that started this great big war’.”

Faith looked down at her cigarette. They were going to try and bore her into submission.

“Can I have a phone call?” she asked.

“You haven’t had one yet?”

“No.”

“Well, alright,” the Chief smiled expansively. “But you see what I’m saying, right?”

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“Um-”

“He loves you, Faith. That’s what I’m saying.”

Faith wasn’t sure what Chief Rhodes was trying to accomplish with the Hallmark moment, but whatever it was, it was atrociously timed. Faith just stared at him, a cigarette frozen halfway to her lips. Chief Rhodes slapped his thighs explosively.

“So, Faith, what I am saying is… I think you have a lot more to do with this situation than you seem to realize.”

“You think this is my fault?”

“I didn’t say that.” Chief Rhodes lit his own cigarette and grimaced a bit as the dry smoke caught his lungs. “But you have to wonder. I mean, you were seen in conversation with Guy the other night. You were seen leaving angrily and in haste-”

“Who tells you guys all this?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is, you two were talking about something besides the weather. We want to find out what it is he told you, because we think it’s relevant.”

Faith was silent. Chief Rhodes gave her a sidelong look.

“Faith? Do you care about Guy?”

Faith looked down at the table.

“Faith?”

Still looking down at the table, she nodded.

“Good.”

Faith looked up at the Chief. He was sitting there, leaning back in his chair, wearing the concerned expression of a father. The cigarette smoldered in his hand.

“Don’t you want to help him out of this?”

Faith looked back down intently at her shoes. The Chief stared at her for a moment, waiting for the hot words to spill out. They didn’t. He might have been waiting for water to spring from the rocks. Finally he sighed and shook his head.

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“Okay, fine. You’re making things hard on yourself, and you’re making things exponentially worse for Guy, but that’s fine. Your pride’s intact.” The Chief heaved himself to his feet and aimed a finger at Faith, who continued to study her shoes.

“Here’s the deal, girl. You and your pride can remain planted in this chair for as long as we say so. Then we’ll tell you what happens next.”

He exited quickly and slammed the door behind him, leaving Faith alone.

At 2:30 Guy called the Old Sawmill and asked for Faith.

“Faith’s not here,” said the female voice on the other end of the line.

“Will she be in later?” Guy asked.

“Well, she’s supposed to be here now, but she’s not.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think she’s down at the police station for some reason. Who’s calling?”

“Nobody,” Guy replied, and hung up the phone gently.

He’d been back at the house on Mutineer since about eleven this morning, after an uncomfortable night spent in a motel rented with cash under the name ‘Bobby Greco’. He had left the Durango in Lil’ John’s lot for the night, took the bus out to the motel, and took the bus back this morning. He figured the cops would send a squad car by Lil’ John’s house, just to see if he was back, and sure enough, about fifteen minutes after he returned, a black-and-white cruised slowly by, moving at a steady ten, its two occupants craning their necks out the passenger-side window, hoping to get a glimpse of some movement. Guy watched from the shadows of the living room as the prowler stopped, idled indecisively in front of the house for a moment, then moved off, gaining speed as it headed on down Mutineer.

Now Faith had been caught in this snare of his. She was down at the station house right now, and as he stood there in the darkness of this abandoned house she was in the box, and they were sweating her out. Because of him.

Well, I at least had an affect on some woman.

The phone suddenly rang. A spasm started in Guy’s feet and fired up his body into his head, which shook briefly and violently. The phone rang again. Again. And again. Guy cleared his throat and picked up the receiver.

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“Hello?” he boomed, letting his best bass bounce through the line.

“Guy?” It was Perry.

“Perry, they’ve got Faith.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Well, what are you going to do?”

“I have to get her out of there.”

Perry was silent. Since Faith had committed no crime, there was only one way to “get her out of there”. It wasn’t bail.

“Are you sure?” Perry asked suddenly.

“Yeah.”

“All right, then. Oh-” Guy heard a scuffling on the other end of the phone, “-I need to give you something. You want to wait out there for me?”

“Absolutely.”

Chief Rhodes pointed Faith to a pay telephone in the hallway outside the interrogation room, and generously lent her a quarter with which to use it. Since it was the Chief’s quarter and not her own, Faith felt comfortable wasting it. She called her mother.

“Faith, where are you? Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I’m at the police station.”

“What? Why? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, Mom.” Faith’s mother was fifty, made-up, superbly dressed and composed and perhaps the most illiberal, liberal, person she’d ever met. She marched for civil rights in the ‘60s; she “preferred” Faith not see men of color. She thought Ronald Reagan was almost the anti-Christ; she claimed ‘a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush’. She engaged in polemics about the role of ITT and Anaconda Copper in Salvador Allende’s overthrow; she refused to pay for Faith’s college unless she majored in business. The usual bundle of contradictions that had the pleasant scent of quirk in Faith’s childhood, but now just stank of hypocrisy.

“Well, you didn’t just walk down to the police station and decide to call me, did you?”

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“No. I’m here because they want information on someone else.”

“Who?”

“This boy I met a few weeks ago.”

Faith’s mom gusted a sigh into the phone. “What, Mom?”

“Faith, it’s bad enough that you’re not in school. Now you’re messing around with criminals-”

“He’s not a criminal, Mom. He’s-”

“He’s not a criminal? Is that why the police are looking for him, because he’s not a criminal? Do they just want to congratulate him on being a law-abiding citizen?”

“Mom-”

“Faith, the police don’t arrest people unless they’ve done something.” Without pausing for breath, Faith’s mom continued, “I can’t come down there right now anyway.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. I’m busy. You can’t expect me to alter of my plans because you’re in jail. Why don’t you get your boyfriend to pick you up? The one who’s in trouble?”

“Mom, he’s not my boyfriend, I told you.”

“Well, then why are you there right now?” The silence on the line was heavy with disapproval, muted with a bitter taste of sorrow. “I don’t know, Faith.”

“What?”

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to you anymore. You know, you complain, you go out every night, you don’t sleep, you’re in trouble with the police, and I think sometimes I can maybe make some kind of suggestion, or help you in some way, but…

She trailed off. Faith waited for it continue but it didn’t, not immediately. A note of weariness had crept into her mother’s voice.

“I don’t want to talk about this, Mom.” Faith squeezed her eyes shut at the phone. “Not here.”

The silence continued. Finally her mother spoke. “I’m not coming to get you out, or whatever. They can’t keep you there anyway.”

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“They are!”

“They can’t. Not without charging you. If you want out so bad, you can walk out.”

“Mom-”

She was answered by the click of the phone line going dead. Faith hung up softly. She really didn’t want to go home anyway.

Faith sat in the now-familiar seat in the now-familiar interrogation room. A while earlier Detective Rodt had brought in a small tin ashtray, the kind you see at Burger King, and now it was filled with ashes and squashed white butts. The clock on the orange tile wall of the room now read 5:35. Faith had had plenty of time to smoke since she got here. It looked as if she would have plenty more.

The last time the two detectives had been in the room, they had engaged each other in a lively discussion of the possible charges they could bring down on Faith’s head for being so full of girlish stubbornness and frustrating their case against Guy. They were back in the room because the best efforts of Chief Rhodes had come to naught. The three cops gathered outside the interrogation room, Hassan short and dark, Rodt tall and angular, the Chief craggy and gray.

“She’s not going to talk,” Chief Rhodes stated.

“No shit,” Detective Rodt replied.

“She wouldn’t talk to me; she’s not going to talk to you.”

“She has proven her intransigence already,” Hassan complained, looking balefully into the room. Faith was seated at the table, smoking calmly.

“What should we do?” Rodt asked.

“Jesus, I don’t know.” The Chief was exasperated. So many questions! “We just have to find a way to hold her until Anderson comes around. Can I ask that of you, maybe?”

“How?”

“Stall her out.” The Chief shrugged. “She doesn’t have anywhere to go tonight, anyway.”

Detective Rodt’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

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“Trust me.” The old dog had his tricks. The phone in the hallway outside the interrogation room was one of them. There was a voice recorder stuffed inside- a shiny black ear, tucked discreetly into the mouthpiece. It was always on, and the Chief never used it, and his prisoners always did. If Steve Geldof was a son of Segretti, Chief Stew Rhodes was a wrinkly old rip-off of E. Howard Hunt.

“Just stall her out. Stop asking me questions. Figure out who’s the prisoner for tonight, because it sure as hell isn’t me.”

Ed called Perry that night. It was 9:47.

“Why are you still there?” Perry asked.

“I’m biding my time.”

“If you’re withholding, you can be arrested too. You don’t want that. Do you?”

“No.”

“All right, then.”

“Relax. He’s going out there for a girl. He’ll confess himself at some point.”

“I don’t want to go to bat on Guy Anderson’s romantic impulses. Neither do you.”

“I told you I’d go over there.”

“So go.”

“Wait. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just don’t feel like it yet.”

Perry hung up.

At 10:49, Faith fell asleep on a couch that the two detectives had manhandled into the interrogation room. She had still not given up any evidence against Guy. No hearsay, no nothing. She had her word, and if she had balls, she would’ve had those two, and that was it. Perhaps Guy was crazy and perhaps he was running pell-mell on fast rails, but it wasn’t like she was going to snitch on him. She wasn’t some stupid girl. Not all the time, at least. It wasn’t like she could mess up here even if she set her heart to do so. At one

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point, noticing that Faith was stifling an increasing number of yawns, Detective Rodt had offered to run out and get her Mini-Thins if it would help her stay awake and ‘concentrate’. Faith gave the tall Detective a look.

“Uh, I don’t think so, Officer.”

“That’s Detective, Faith. Now, you were saying that despite everything Guy had said to you during the time you knew him, he never...”

And so on and so forth. All Faith wanted to do at this point was just fall asleep. She would sleep on a ratty couch, sure, but so what? Ever wake up at seven in the morning? Sure you have. Everything is comfortable at seven in the morning. So she slept the relaxed sleep of the righteous.

Perry finally pulled his black Acura up to the faded yellow house at 12:27 in the a.m. Deep night in the neighborhood, but Guy was seated on the front porch. He was striking a dramatic pose, the lone sentinel on his watch under the gentle night sky, sprayed with the stars of soft clear spring. The neighborhood had a certain cache, Perry had to admit. There was really no noise on this street. The place seemed to merge with this blue new dimension and it muffled sounds, but, ghostly off above them came the whispering chorus of bridge-passing cars and the little beats as they hit strips in the pavement. That distant thump almost seemed to isolate the neighborhood, to turn it into its own private theater.

“It’s not your fault,” Perry said.

Guy smiled wanly. He wasn’t smoking. One of his hands was buried in his lank black hair. As Perry approached, Guy dug his smokes from his tattered white shirt, which was black around the collars and cuffs. Perry was mildly amazed that Guy was still wearing this shirt.

“Can I get a smoke?”

Guy handed him the entire pack. “Take them all.”

“Oh.” Perry peeled back a small smile. “Is that another one of your changes?”

Guy shrugged. Then he frowned, looking a bit startled. “Aren’t you worried that you’re next?”

“No, man. I haven’t done anything.”

“Oh. Can I get one of those cigarettes?”

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Perry handed him one, and Guy still had matches. The cigarette fired alight. Perry quietly pocketed the deck of smokes.

“Why aren’t you next?”

Guy shrugged. “I’ve been here most of the day. They must not be trying very hard.”

Guy took a sharp drag on his smoke. “It’s typical.”

“What is?”

“I try to change my own life for the better, and the only thing I accomplish is changing everyone else’s life for the worse.” He shook his head. “Especially Faith’s.”

“You try talking to her?”

“Are you kidding?” Guy looked pained. “I’m garbage to her. Best thing for me to do is just get her away from the cops, and just do my thing, and disappear. Don’t want to jack anything else up for her.”

“You know, it’s pretty arrogant to assume you’re responsible for everything that’s happened the last few weeks,” Perry said, setting his left foot onto the cracked concrete of the front steps. “Conditions changed. You changed with them. You evolved.”

“Yeah, well. Whatever.” Guy smoked moodily. “I sure feel the same. Except it used to be, I never knew what I wanted.”

“And now you do?”

“I think so.” He did think so. The whole deal with the company- with the password, the electromagnet, the cloak-and-dagger games with Kirtley and Ed- they all seemed distant and sepia-toned. Irrelevant. Guy was suddenly reminded of one of the stories of the fools of Helm, particularly the story in which the residents of the little town proudly built a bright, shiny new water mill on the top of the highest mountain around. “For a long time I had no idea what I wanted. Maybe I didn’t want anything. Then I realized what I didn’t want, and that went on for a while, but now...” but it’s too late. Too late.

Guy looked up. Perry had lit a cigarette and now was smoking and eyeing him keenly.

“I think I do know. Yeah, I do.”

Perry nodded. His eyes glittered in his face. Such sharp eyes he had! “That’s true for a lot of people, I think. Except some of us are lucky enough to figure it out.”

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“Yeah.” Guy smiled a little bit. “It’s nice when you figure it out on time, though.”

“You got that number?”

Perry nodded and reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a slip of paper with a telephone number written neatly on it in black felt-tip. He handed it to Guy. Guy looked at the number for a second, turning it over, as if something secret, some kind of clarifying message was on the back. Then he sighed and put the paper in his own pocket. Guy and Perry looked at one another for what seemed like a long time.

“What are you going to do?” Guy asked. “You’ve associated with me, openly. If Ed or Kirtley gets wind of us meeting you’ll be finished there.”

“I’ll be alright. I can pull some things off myself, you know.”

“Yeah, you’ve always been resourceful.” Guy looked up at the stars, and the overpass, that dark bar of sliding winks. “Too bad I wasn’t.”

Perry looked at Guy. “We’re not that different.”

Guy smiled again, that same tight dry movement of the lips. He heaved himself up from the porch and began trudging down the cracked flagstone walk toward the street. Perry watched him as he went.

“Hey!” Perry called.

Guy turned around, eyebrows up.

“You need a ride?”

Guy stood there for a second, a small smile playing on his face, considering. Then he shook his head, hesitantly at first, more forcefully a second time. It was twenty to one; he had a good seven hours, at least. Why not use them all? “I think I need a walk.” He said. Then he turned and showed Perry his back again, putting his hands in his pockets as he strolled up Mutineer Avenue. Perry still stood in front of the house, which was deserted and dark, its days as a nerve center extinguished. It was back to being its silent shabby ghetto self. The man standing in front of the house was responsible. That man stood there for a moment, regarding the empty house, almost as if it was a monument, its desertion quiet testimony in itself. Then Perry went to his car. He had to get some sleep. He had a big day tomorrow, too.

May 17

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Guy got to watch the sun go up as he walked the five-mile distance from Lil’ John’s house to the police department. It was full dark when he got started, and it stayed dark until about 4:30 or five, when the sky began to devolve from its inky night color, first to the deep heavy blue of pre-dawn, softening into shades of pale blue and gray, and when the sky turned gray its edges were rimmed with the promising orange of the sun. At this hour Guy had the streets pretty much to himself, even in the city, and it took an occasional trundling newspaper truck or early-morning commuter to remind him that he had company in the world. It was chilly this early, too. Guy saw his breath, and as the sky brightened he could see the dew still clinging to the grass and the hanging leaves of the trees. The neighborhood began its climb, the old grimy houses leeched out by the greenbelt that separated this enclave from the rest of the city. He crossed a small bridge that spanned a sluggish creek.

He wondered what Faith would think when she found out he had sacrificed himself for her. Somewhat less than grateful, probably- after all, if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be stuck down there in that can in the first place. It was like that old movie where the dude sets Brooke Shield’s house on fire, than tries to put it out and save her. She would leave the police station and pick up the pieces of the life she had had before Guy had so rudely interrupted it. Good for her. She would date and go out to clubs in revealing outfits and have sex with muscular guys with crew cuts and go on with her girl’s existence. He could write her a cautious letter from inside, on thin prison stationary, apologizing, wishing things would’ve been different. He could’ve agonized over every crossed ‘t’ and dotted ‘i’, painstakingly edited it, written drafts, tossed crumpled failures into the corners of his cell. He would fold it and tuck it neatly into a prison envelope and send it off from a prison mailbox. He could wait days, weeks, and months for Faith’s reply, knowing damn well she would not, knowing that she would quietly drop the letter in the trash without even the homage of anger or any other emotion, wishing fervently for that nibble anyway because sometimes you deserve to feel bad, you deserve to rub your own nose into your stinky failure poop. Went with the territory. Part of the awesome adventure of being Guy Anderson.

The narrow streets snaked their way through the greenbelt, rising up toward the rest of the city. Houses began to reappear, small tract homes mixed with auto body shops, the occasional convenience store, and a small, shabby bar & grille equipped with an outsized satellite dish. Then the first signs of urban gentility appeared- a Lutheran church, a day-care center, and the first pleasant-looking houses, places as old as their counterparts down below but making up for the years with care and fresh paint and cute manicured lawns. Lights glowed in a couple of the houses. Guy supposed they were the old insomniacs that waited up with their own head-voices for the morning paper. The first sounds of morning- the crickets- began to make themselves heard.

At around 5:40 or so (according to the revolving bank clock downtown), the gray morning skies released a slow, short shower of rain, wetting Guy’s clothes and matting his hair to his head in a damp black helmet. He began to pick up the pace a bit as the rising sun steamed the rain off. He was getting closer. He had been darkly depressed, all that shit with Faith and his failures lying in his stomach like movie popcorn that refused

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to digest, but as the curtain of overcast pulled back for the morning sun, his spirits began to lift along with the day. So he’d jacked everything up with Faith. So he was a hammer-ass with women, especially the beautiful good ones who he wanted. So what? That made him one in a billion. Yet how many men are right now walking to the police station to simultaneously turn himself in and destroy a big company’s productive capacity in one fell swoop? Not many. Guy smiled to himself, almost feeling his balls clank as he walked- strode, now. He began to feel the lightness in his step, a springy happy giddiness in his brain that perhaps went hand in hand with blind self-sacrifice. Not a whole lot of men get to feel that way; the kind of crazy bravado of the Man Who is About to Get Fucked Up- and Knows It. Suicide bombers and white possession receivers, maybe.

A misty sun rose in the east, to Guy’s right. His feet, starting to hurt in their loafers, slapped up and down on pavements still dark from the brief rain. Guy’s spirits rose with the orb. His last few minutes of freedom. Soon he would be reduced to an object, a sullen piece of a man in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, hustled from the basements of dark gray buildings to caged station wagons and back to different dark gray buildings, something to be moved like a pawn on the board. Guy wished he had one of those smokes, since he was thinking all moody and James Dean, and when he thought like this, smoking always made the thoughts taste better. He’d always been a prisoner. He’d chained himself to that job and that woman, and one day he had finally decided to wake up and make his play, and he’d failed. He couldn’t have- shouldn’t have expected any different. It’s harder to learn a foreign language at twenty-six. It hurts more to be circumcised at twenty-six. Some things are meant to be done by younger men.

Of course, perhaps a twenty-six year old could do time. He thought a more worldly man could be a bit more philosophical about having a hard, veined object forcibly inserted into his anus.

Relax. You’re going to a country club. You don’t get fucked up in the ass there.

Too bad. He supposed he would miss the complete prison experience. Not being anally raped in prison seemed roughly equivalent to visiting London and not seeing Big Ben. That was the ticket: prison as a sort of quasi-vacation. Good thinking. Maybe he wasn’t such a waste after all.

Faith woke with a start before six a.m. She didn’t know where she was at first and thrashed about on the couch, straining against the dark room that sounded and smelled unfamiliar. Than she remembered where she was. She was lying on a couch in a hallway in the police station. She was covered with a jacket and she was using one of the ratty couch pillows to hold up her head. She wondered what time it was. She got up and wandered into the squad room to find out.

A couple of beefy cops were in there, loafing. They looked up as the door between the bright room and dark hall opened.

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“Yeah?” the desk cop asked.

“What time is it?” Faith asked.

“Quarter of six.”

“Oh.” Faith scratched her head, black curls rumpled. “Can I go?”

The two cops glanced at each other. Some kind of unspoken signal seemed to ripple between them.

“You don’t want to wait on your boyfriend?” the other cop asked. He was standing a polite distance from the front door, his arms crossed.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. How many of you guys do I have to tell that?”

“What about Guy Anderson?”

Faith sighed, exasperated. “No. Not Guy Anderson. Not Guy Anderson, not Bill Clinton, not the Pope, not anybody. I’m going home. Now.”

The front door flew up and the Chief walked in. He looked around the room and saw Faith. His eyes, strained and puffy from lack of sleep, narrowed.

“Come with me.”

Faith spread her hands. “Where?”

“Back to the sweatbox. Need to ask you some more questions.”

“Fine. I’ll call my lawyer.”

“If you have one, call one.”

Ouch. Faith’s mom had a lawyer. She would’ve sooner expected Clarence Darrow to come in and lawyer up for her.

“Am I under arrest?”

“Now, that’s interesting. Should you be?”

“God, you guys and your NYPD Blue bullshit.” Faith snorted. “Could you please, pretty-please, get me a lawyer?” Faith flounced to the door, heaved it open, and stomped on back down the hallway. God damn it! “And get me some cigarettes!”

The two cops and the Chief watched her go. The desk cop shook his head.

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“That’s an ugly woman in the morning, man.”

“Tell me about it,” the Chief said. Ed King, he thought tiredly, balefully. You fat son of a bitch. Fifty-five years old, been here so many moons, and here he is on a graveyard shift trying to sweat out some mouthy teenage broad. It was enough to kill the dog, son. He looked around at the cops. “All right. Go grab this girl a lawyer. Take your time.” He followed Faith into the hallway and shut the door behind him.

Perry snapped awake to the alarm at six, forty-five minutes early. He swung his long longs to the rug and picked himself up to his feet. His bladder was full, so he went to relieve and did. He stood in front of the bowl for a full thirty seconds, letting it all flow out, and that was suitable.

He ate a breakfast of cold cereal in a white porcelain bowl. He showered. He dressed in his finery. Checked his watch. It was 6:25. Time to go.

He’d made up his mind the day before to take his course, and like all other decisions Perry Mechanic made, it was made on faith and intended to be followed to the letter. He had been watching the way Guy and Faith had dealt with one another ever since that night at Lil’ John’s house. He knew that once a woman got into the situation, things were quite possibly going to change radically. It was like putting a bumper on a billiard table.

And man, they did change. Guy had been in this strange zone beforehand, a single-minded bland little vessel, like Malcolm McDowell’s time machine in Time After Time. Whatever happened between those two had put the knock on Guy in a way getting fired and having his fiancée kick her to the curb hadn’t. He wasn’t such a machine anymore. He looked like a whipped cur.

Perry had always known that Guy had an internal clock- well, not a clock, but an hourglass, and as soon as all the sand filtered out, well, that would be the end of things. The sand had been running briskly but regularly before, and finally, perhaps the night of the party, Perry thought he had a handle on that clock. Good thing, too. Over the previous couple of weeks he’d been feeling like he was surrounded by circumstances that were racing along outside his control, and that was not a good feeling. Not a familiar one, not one he wanted to get familiar with now. He’d been blunted by Ed and his Buddy Ryan-style defense of the company’s (his) power structure. Blunted to the point of wanting to step back and shake his head and wonder stupidly what the fuck he was going to do next and, boy, that was really not a good feeling. Meantime, that crazy ass Guy is running around just out of eyeshot, planning hit-and-run raids and doing, from what it appeared, an exponentially better job of disrupting company business than Perry possibly could.

Perry didn’t know if Guy could do him any good or not at that point. Not the first time he saw him. But he saw what had happened when Guy dropped his magneto on

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Kirtley’s PC and that had opened his eyes. Guy, who at first glance appeared to be merely a slightly overweight, slightly balding, more than slightly crackbrained ex-computer tech, was actually a very handy weapon, potentially. So Perry dropped Guy in his holster, just in case.

In case of what?

Well, who knew? In case.

At 6:51 a.m. Perry zipped past Guy on Ohio state rt. 240. 240 led to Brand Road. Two miles down Brand was the police station. The four-lane road was thickening with morning traffic and Perry didn’t see Guy as he humped down the sidewalk, but even had he, he wouldn’t have stopped to pick him up. Perry was in a hurry.

He pulled the Acura into the department lot and got out. He walked across the hot top, the heels of his shoes ringing crisply. He wore shades against the glare. He had given quite a bit of thought to where the next theatre would be in his war with Ed, thoughts that went around and around and finally just went nowhere. At first he couldn’t figure out why. He knew how.

It was over; he knew that now. Ed had crushed him, and Perry felt sad, and he felt sad not because he had taken his chance and come up short (it happened, happened to everyone sometimes, even Perry Mechanic), but because it hadn’t had to happen. He had been stupid. He should’ve never tried to suck up to Ed. Ed was a watcher. He guarded his position against any comer he saw, real or imagined. Trying to suck up to a guy like Ed had been like putting a neon cowboy hat on his own goddamned head.

After that it hadn’t mattered. He had tried sneaking into IT and Ed slammed that door. Slammed the door on Kirtley. On the board. Then shoehorned him in to that ridiculous position, where he had no real power, no power base, where he was nothing but a piñata dressed up to look like a businessman. Ed could build Perry, he could tear him back down; he could build him again. It didn’t matter. He had Kirtley’s brain, the boardroom’s body, and his own iron fist.

“You going to say something?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Faith and Chief Rhodes had been staring each other down for the better part of an hour. She was waiting for a lawyer. He was waiting for Guy Anderson. Whoever showed up first…there was a knock on the door of the interrogation room.

“Yeah?” the Chief asked.

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The deep voice rumbled. “Perry Mechanic.”

“Oh,” the Chief said in light surprise. “Come on in.”

There was a rattle of keys and a cop swung the door open to admit Perry. He stood in the doorway, smooth and leonine as always, his head freshly shaven. His hands were in his pockets. Faith’s eyes widened.

“You?” Faith asked. “All this? Are you serious?”

Perry spared her a glance, then nodded affirmatively at the Chief. “He’s on his way over here right now to turn himself in. Wants to get his friends out of trouble.”

Chief Rhodes nodded.

“I gave him the number,” Perry continued. “He shows up, you hold him, you give him his phone call, and you can sit there and watch him hang himself in your arms.”

“You’re a sharp guy,” Chief Rhodes said firmly.

“You’re weak,” Faith said.

Perry ignored the Chief’s comment and turned to Faith. “What?”

“Weak is all you become when you use and sacrifice the people around you.” God, Faith thought dismally. First Guy, then this limp dick, then Guy again, than… what am I, wearing a ‘beat me hard’ sign?

The cop had been standing behind Perry this entire time. “Hey!” he barked at Faith. “Cool it!”

“It’s okay.” Perry aimed a finger at Faith. “Blame yourself. Maybe if you hadn’t been such a heartless wench with Guy, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Yeah, it’s my fault. I know. You’re right!” she suddenly shouted. “All you assholes! It’s my fault!”

“Hey,” Chief Rhodes asked, “You want to stop with the histrionics, little lady?”

“Maybe it won’t be your fault. You never know. Things could change.”

Faith looked up. Perry was looking at her. “Huh?”

“You heard me.” Perry was fading out the door. “Gotta go, fellas. Got to be at work in an hour.” And Perry was gone.

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Chief Rhodes suddenly smiled kindly at Faith. He sat back in his chair and assumed the slightly slumped posture of a man who done well and knew it was time to kick back and mellow out in the glow of triumph.

“Well, Faith, I don’t think we have to sit there and quarrel any longer.”

“Want me to call Carl and tell him to stay home?” the desk cop asked. He had joined his brother officer in the doorway to the interrogation room.

“Sure,” the Chief replied heartily. “Don’t think we’ll need him today.” The room was adopting the unfamiliar air of a place at ease. “I’m hungry, Larry. Want to run over to McDonald’s and grab some breakfast?”

“Sure,” replied the desk cop (Larry, presumably). “What’ll it be?”

“Hotcakes for me, thanks. Want some breakfast, Faith?”

“No.”

“Okay,” the Chief said, sighing as if she had turned down breakfast at Mike Romanoff’s instead of some greasy stuff that tasted like the Styrofoam it came in “Hey, Larry?”

“Yeah?”

“Get some for Anderson, too. He’ll be hungry. Oh, hey, Larry?”

“What?” Larry was impatient now.

The Chief smiled. “Get some for yourself, too.”

“I was going to anyway, but thanks.”

The Chief turned back to Faith. “You have a ride home, hon?”

Here’s your ‘hon’, cock. “I’ll call for one.”

“Sure we can’t give you a ride?”

Faith gave the Chief a look. “Uh, yeah.”

Guy missed Perry by about five minutes. He walked his aching dogs into the foyer of the police station at around 7:07 a.m. and headed to the receptionist, seated behind bulletproof glass and reading a copy of Cosmo.

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Guy leaned into the glass’s built-in microphone. “Uh, I’m here to see the Chief?”

“He’s busy. Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes I do. I’m the computer guy.”

“Oh!” the receptionist started, looking up from her magazine. “You guys work this early?”

“We never stop,” Guy lied. “We’re always on call, like tow truck drivers.”

“Wow. That must be rough.”

“It’s a living.” Guy was dimly surprised to find himself newly skilled at useless bullshitting. “Can I see him?”

“Sure. I’ll buzz you right in.”

“Thanks.”

They let Faith call her mom again on the hall phone. This time her mom didn’t answer at all. She would have to walk. She left by a side door and never did see Guy enter the building. She walked out of the back as he walked in the front.

Perry was still hungry, and he still had about forty-five minutes or so before work, so he stopped by a bakery to pick up a sesame seed bagel and a hot cup of coffee. He had arrived at his plan of action the previous day, a few hours before he had gone over to Lil’ John’s house to give Guy the number. He had arrived at the plan not long after he realized that there were no more means at his disposal to overthrow the current regime at the company. All his regular options were sapped. All that was left was the irregular.

He saw what Guy really wanted, and it wasn’t the destruction of some company he used to work for. That was what he had thought he wanted. But, crazy eyes or not, Guy really didn’t have the stomach for the kind of action that was needed to really rock that place back on its heels. His first real taste of the wool, he was running for the hills. Perry just had to look into his eyes as he watched Faith disappear into the soft spring night to see that Guy’s priorities had changed radically. And, as events developed, Perry’s had as well.

He left the bakery around 7:35 and began the twenty-minute drive to the company. Morning sun glinted off the shiny black hood of the Acura. Everything began to clarify. Every sense gained intensity. The leather of the car’s seat felt softer and suppler. The sunlight was violent and bright even through his shades. The sounds coming from the radio seemed tinnier, spikier. He felt his nerve endings beginning to crackle and

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sizzle. Perry had played tennis in high school and this was the way he felt before a big match, only magnified.

Guy sat in the interrogation room, collapsed a bit like a Raggedy Ann doll, in the very seat that had held up Faith just a short time earlier. Chief Rhodes was seated across from him. An old-style tape recorder sat on the table between them, a 38th Parallel with ears. The Chief looked patient and at ease. The bags around his eyes had seemingly contracted, the worry lines around his mouth receded. The Chief looked downright hale and hearty. He looked as if he could sit around in that room with Guy until Doomsday. The Chief pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered a cigarette to Guy, who refused.

“I never meet any real criminals?” the Chief said, not looking at Guy, just at the cigarette as he fired it alight. “Do you know why?”

Guy stared at the Chief’s cigarette. “That’s bad for you, you know,” he droned, echoing the words Faith had said so long ago.

“Because real criminals don’t put themselves in a position to answer to me,” the Chief answered himself. He put the burning cigarette in his mouth and took a slow, luxuriant drag. He immediately felt light-headed, dizzy, filled with euphoria. He had stopped smoking a year earlier, and after this weekend, he was going to start again- fuck it, he was starting again now, and he wasn’t going to stop until they tossed his carcass in a box and shoveled some dirt over the damn thing. Being in Ed King’s presence for the whole goddamned weekend had that kind of effect.

“I don’t think you’re a real criminal,” the Chief said earnestly.

No shit, Sherlock, Guy thought dismally.

“So I’m not going to treat you like a criminal, Guy, since you’re not one. I’m not even going to ask you any questions.” The Chief reached over to the tape recorder and snapped it off, confident of the non-incriminating things Guy would say. Then he smiled.

“Is there anything you want to tell me, Guy?”

Guy sat there for a second. The room was silent. The Chief waited and smoked, his eyebrows up. The silence stretched out for what seemed like a long time.

And in that time, which seemed eternal but actually lasted for only forty-two seconds, Guy suddenly found everything, every emotion of foolish bravado and fear and crazy obsessed love, suddenly breaking out of the hard liquid shell in which he had encased them. Everything went up in physically as well. Guy’s eyes bulged. His gorge suddenly lurched. And the silence ended when Guy scraped his chair back in a hurry and threw up all over the bare cement floor of the interrogation room.

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The Chief watched all this calmly, with the blank look of a psycho kid who traps bugs under glass in the hot hot sun. He had seen perps vomit in this room before. It was no big deal. It was nerves, nothing more. He wasn’t going to tell Guy that Faith was gone out the door, which robbed his visit of all its sacrifice chic (but not to the cops and not to Ed, no, not to Ed). Kind of mean of him, he thought.

Fuck him. Fuck him for burning my weekend on this horseshit. But he produced a Kleenex for Guy, to salve his own conscience.

“You got something to say, Guy?”

Guy nodded, wiping his mouth. His face was drained of color, but he looked a little better. He shook his head and gave Chief Rhodes a wan smile.

“It’s rough.” He said.

Chief Rhodes nodded, smiling himself. “Don’t be embarrassed. You aren’t the only one.”

“I bet.”

“I got arrested once,” Chief Rhodes said.

“Yeah?”

“Certainly.”

“Can I ask what for?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“No shit?” Guy was impressed, in spite of himself. He reminded himself that the story might have been a play staged for his benefit. “You remember when?”

“Wow. Long time ago. ’67, 1968. A broke into a boathouse out on the Summit Lakes- God, I can’t even remember why.”

“Long time ago.”

“You’re telling me. I went up for it.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Ninety days. In London Reformatory.”

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“That isn’t too bad,” Guy said. Actually, it sounded horrible, a fate worse than death.

“You know what?” Chief Rhodes asked rhetorically. “You’re right. It wasn’t that bad. I made it.”

“What was the worst thing?”

“Just knowing you couldn’t walk away when you wanted to.” Chief Rhodes nodded, the cigarette in his mouth. “That’s it, by far. But it doesn’t last forever. And when it’s over, it’s over. You’re free again.”

“Not always.”

“But if you’re just a kid, and if you really haven’t done anything violent or expensive, than what do you have to worry about, really?”

Guy was silent. The Chief’s eyes warmed with sympathy.

“You’ve been running around a lot lately, haven’t you?”

Guy nodded.

“Want me to get you anything? Coffee? We got some McDonald’s, if you want some.”

“No.” Guy played his fingers on the linoleum surface of the table. “Well, maybe a cigarette.” He figured that would be the first of his ‘new’ pledges to go by the board.

“Sure.” The Chief shook out a smoke and slid it across the table to Guy, along with a book of matches. Then he breathed easy and sat back in his chair. Guy suddenly had an uncomfortable bedroom-after-sex feeling emanating from the walls of the interrogation room. It wasn’t pleasant, at all.

“You know,” he said coolly, lighting his smoke, “I thoroughly enjoyed that story of yours. I give it three-and-a-half stars.”

“Yeah, well,” the Chief shooed of the praise, flattered. “that’s just one of a bunch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. This one was the ‘first-time offenders’ speech. It’s standard for people like you.”

“Standard? Who was the last person you used it on?”

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“I had an eighteen-year old kid in here on Saturday.”

“What was his offense?”

“Open container.”

“Jesus,” Guy suddenly saw what kind of arch-criminal he was, and he was pained and relieved at the same time. “You equate me with children who get caught with an open forty-ounce?”

“Yes, to be honest with you.”

Guy shook his head. Than he glanced up. His eyes were sharp. Now or never. It was either that or sit here and get insulted for the rest of the day.

“Can I make my phone call?”

Chief Rhodes’s face lit up in a smile not like his previous efforts. This one looked genuine, lightened, free of strain. The smile soared like a balloon.

“Go ahead. It’s right out in the hall.”

Faith was walking wearily down Route 240, feeling a fatigue in her bones from all those hours in the station house, when her cell phone suddenly rang.

Mom, she thought. The phone rang again. Or maybe not.

She reached inside her bag.

Yeah, they knew all right. Guy could see it in the Chief’s eyes. Someone had rolled over like a swamped goddamned boat and who could it have been? Did it matter?

He looked at the number. He picked up the phone. He dialed the number. And the phone rang, once, twice, three times.

There was a click on the other end. The phone was picked up. And Faith’s voice said, uncertainly, “Hello?”

What?

Perry walked into the company building at 7:55 sharp, long arms swinging at his sides. The aphids were filing in all around him. The first man who got within reach was a

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short, fat fellow holding a briefcase and waddling down the blue hall away from the front door. Perry suddenly rushed pell-mell at the man and brought his right fist down on the fellow’s fat head. The fat fellow squealed and tried to put his briefcase up for protection. Dim screams were heard in the background. Perry knocked the briefcase out of the man’s hands, snatched a lock of the man’s abundant brown hair, and began to pound him with his free fist, grunting with effort like Vulcan at the bellows. The man’s squeals turned to mewling. Finally, after six massive swings, Perry seized the fat fellow by the shoulders and shoved him, hard, into a cubicle wall. The wall collapsed under the 280 pounds of sudden weight, and people were rushing to the area, but Perry was gone, loping for the elevators with the strides of a gazelle.

Chief Rhodes, safe in his private listening enclave (the closet of his office, done up like an East Berlin border post with radio transmitter and headphones), frowned. Why was Faith answering the phone? Wasn’t-

“Hello?” Faith asked.

“Faith?” Guy’s tone reflected his near-total surprise.

“Guy?” Faith paused; “Why are you calling me?”

“Um-”

The lobby elevator was closing, a man and a woman inside, when Perry came around the corner on a dead run. He leaped and finessed his tall form into the elevator just as it closed, and then he turned on the man. Steve Holloway had enough time to look into Perry’s eyes and yelp “Hey-” before he was grabbed by the lapels and given the soundest thrashing of his life. Perry, in some kind of blood frenzy, was slamming his knuckles straight down into Steve’s head. This went on until the elevator reached the second floor and opened. The woman had been frantically striking the ‘2’ button the length of the savage attack. When the doors opened Perry, sated for now, shoved the man’s inert, bloody, unconscious body out into the hall. The woman shrank against the wall. Perry glared at her with hectic eyes, his hands and face and white shirt streaked with claret spatter.

“Get the fuck out of here, bitch!”

The woman ran. The doors closed. Perry continued to climb.

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The Chief came walking into the squad room. He stood at the door, puzzled. He was confused, very confused, and was becoming frightened of being so confused. The desk cop raised his eyebrows.

“Something wrong, Chief?”

“I- God, I don’t know.” Guy had been supposed to… what? “Larry?”

“Yeah?”

“Check a phone number for me, will you?”

“Guy, what’s going on?”

“Where are you? Are you in jail?”

“No, I was at the police station, but they let me go about forty-five minutes ago. Where are you?”

“I’m there right now.” Guy’s head was swimming. His feet were numb.

“Guy, have you made any other calls?”

“No.”

Faith gusted out a sigh, closed her eyes, and shook her head. Then she smiled.

“Good.”

Perry was on the fourth floor, the work floor, now. He had beaten down two other men and no one had fought back at all, but he knew that, behind doors and cubicle walls, dozens of fingers were stuttering at phone keys, and he knew the sirens would be filling the air soon, and he knew, as fast as he was moving, he would soon have to move even faster. So he did.

He leaped over a large potted plant. He cut corners beautifully, and employees, who had heard the screams, were scattering like quail. There was a long straightaway to the server room and Perry’s strides seemed to grow to freakish Dickerson lengths as he made straight for the server room, with its massive shimmering window and its gleaming bank of machines. The server’s green lights seemed to pulse like the top of the tower to a landing plain. Perry detracted his wheels and sailed in.

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The Chief didn’t have to think, as it turned out. The calls to the police station started to flood in at 7:58, and they were all coming from the company. The alarm was sounding. And with the flood of 9-1-1 calls washed the truth of what had happened. The Chief’s face seemed to pale, then darken to a bruised purple color.

“Get me cars out to that place! Now! Get everyone!”

Larry ran a hand through his hair. “How many cars do you want?”

“Goddamn it, didn’t you hear me? Every car you can contact, contact it and tell it to get its ass out to that building!”

“Guy-”

“Wait. Faith.” Guy was feeling better. He was starting to get his head together. A lot better, actually. “I want to tell you something.”

“Okay. Tell me,” Faith said softly.

Perry was only about a third of the way down the hallway when Ed saw him. Ed was standing in the hallway running the length of the server room, the crossbar to the other corridor, and he saw Perry’s bald head bobbing frantically along the tops of the cubicles. Ed knew immediately. He made for the meeting point between the two hallways, hoping he could cut Perry off before he made it to the server room and disaster truck. The door to the server room was right at that point. Mayez stumbled into Ed’s way. He powered through her like Larry Kinnebrew and kept moving.

“I spent, I think, my whole life trying to figure out what everyone else wanted me to be.” Guy said. “Until I met you. And you just overwhelmed me. Just seeing you that one night at the Old Sawmill, having you talk to me. I don’t know what it was. It was just a feeling that went deeper than anything I can remember. It had everything to do with you, that was all I knew. But I was selfish, of course. I made it all about me.”

Faith was silent.

“So I thought this whole time I had changed my mode of thinking, but really, at the bottom of it, I was really just trying to figure out what you wanted me to be. And instead of being what you liked and what you wanted, I just tried to mold myself into this poster man of what I mistook for your desires.”

“Why, Guy? Why did you put so much thought into this? You knew I liked you. I told you. That night-”

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“I know, I know, but I’m thinking, I’m thinking- What I’m thinking, is, I’ve got to keep finding ways to impress you, to keep you thinking that I’m different, just like you said. I wanted to be like no other man for you, but not only because I’d flushed everything down the toilet I wanted to be something positive. Something worthwhile.”

“So I’m thinking, thinking, thinking, and I’m just acting out, letting my thoughts jerk my actions around, because I looked at you and I just wanted to know what kind of man someone like you could want. And how I could be that man.”

Ed moved fast for a big man, and he had the angle. He closed the distance quickly, and Perry saw that he might not make it. But he smiled inwardly anyway, because wasn’t this what it was all about, anyway? Hadn’t they been working toward it, just the two of them, close as lovers? It had always been just a big old game of chicken with that big old motherfucker, and it was about damn time they played for real. Perry dipped his right shoulder, sent Derek Bailey spinning like a dredel, and jacked up the pace.

“Well, what do you think now, Guy?”

“That’s just it. I’m not thinking about it. All I’m thinking about is you. Not what you mean, not what you represent, not all that self-obsessed garbage. Not magic tricks for your amusement. Just you, Faith. Your scent. That smile you get on your face. Your hair. Your eyes. Your shoes, your glasses. That hat you wore to Lil’ John’s. The way your voice sounds on this phone right now. I just want to see you, and be close to you, and talk to you. I want us to be together, and I’ll let all that other stuff take care of itself. I’ll let it all go for you.”

“The sabotages, the crazy political stuff?”

“Forget about it. It’s done,” Guy said, and it was the windy feeling inside him that told him he was being truthful.

“It’s done?” Faith was skeptical.

“Yes. It’s masturbation. It’s not important.”

Faith let the line stay silent for a moment. She really hadn’t thought Guy was going to go through with it anyway. But why just say that? The boy could sweat. She smiled. The silent phone line stretched out to a minute. Than two.

Guy listened to the silence, aware of her breathing, aware that he was slowly twisting, and there was the creak of a rope, and she could kick him off the beam or let him up. His stomach began to thicken, and it suddenly became hard for him to breath. He had to say something. Now.

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“Faith?”

“I’m here, Guy.”

Perry snapped his head to the right and now saw that he couldn’t turn the doorknob without Ed barreling him over. He was going to have to

Go through

and he kept his right shoulder low as he swooped blade-like for the door.

Ed saw that he could make it after all, and like every good linebacker, he aimed for a point about three yards beyond the expected collision. He was going to drive right through Perry and break his skinny body and put a violent end to this business, and he didn’t give a shit that he was still wearing his glasses. The red signet ring glittered viciously in his closed right hand.

Oh, God, Faith. Let him up.

“Okay, Guy. I’m game.”

The world seemed to swim for a moment, to shiver in his face like Halls Mentholymptis. His knees trembled, but Guy only sighed a little. “Sweet.”

They walked together for a minute in warm silence. He could hear her soft breath on the other end of the line, and it comforted him. She was with him. Then, with a voice that sounded like a lover in a late-night bed, she murmured, “Guy?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask a favor of you?”

“Anything.”

“Could you come pick me up? I’m over near the corner of-”

“I didn’t drive.”

“Oh. Shit.”

Perry sent himself airborne. His shoulder hit the door and wood cracked like a pistol shot.

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Ed sent his big body forward, launching it, leading with that massive head. He was too late, God, he was grasping for Perry’s flying legs.

The door flew open against itself and Perry was in the server room, tumbling and rolling briefly, popping up like Rickey Henderson after a steal. Ed hit the floor shoulder-first, hands closing on nothing, and he rolled too. Now Perry began to hear the warble of sirens, and now the hourglass was almost empty, and he could see Ed start to get to his feet, the glasses askew on his face, the sweat of rage on his brow. Almost over now. He wrenched the server from its shelf, gripping its sides with arms like pincers.

Ed was in trouble now, and knew it, but he would never quit. Not against Perry Mechanic or anyone else alive. He could get to the door before Perry was done in there. Then he would have him boxed in, and it was going to take a good many cops and bystanders to pull him off that skinny son-of-a-bitch.

He turned to the window. A crowd was gathering on the work floor, an audience of dummies, a throng of bug-eyed mutes, watching this amazing scene. Ed was thundering back toward the window. Just as he passed in front of it Perry let fly. The window did not break. It did not shatter. It exploded. Glass and the server hit Ed full on, sending him staggering backward, surprised blood breaking from his hands and face. Ed roared like a wounded bear, fell heavily into a fetal position on the floor, arms covering his bleeding head, and continued to roar. They were scattering again. Perry was out the door and the sirens were louder and heavier and he fancied he could hear running boots on the stairs and the ‘hut-hut-hut’ sounds of SWAT team men rappelling down the building’s sides, and he was outnumbered a million, a billion to one, but it didn’t matter. Because he was Perry Mechanic, and he was one in a million, one in a billion.

He ran, and somehow as he ran, he knew he could get away.

“I haven’t given you this number, Guy.”

“I know. Perry did. He told me it was the number for the server.”

“Why do you suppose he would do a thing like that?”

Guy frowned.

“I don’t know.”

Then the sirens raced past both of them.

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EPILOGUE:

THE ALTERNATIVE

“It would not be America really if it did not produce men who suddenly tire of palaver and reach for the rifle on the wall, to use themselves or to hand to the underdog who needs it.”

- Karl Hess III

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Excerpt from May 18, 2000 Akron Beacon-Journal- An employee at XXXXXXX, in an apparently unmotivated act, suddenly entered company headquarters early this morning and, according to police sources, savagely assaulted several of his co-workers before destroying the company’s main computer server. The crime took place at the main offices of XXXXXXX just before the start of work, at approximately 8:00 am EST, when most of the company’s workforce and executives were at the scene. Witnesses saw the 27-year old suspect stalk into the building and, after tracing a path of violence through the building, assaulted the server with his bare hands. The perpetrator, who was apprehended at the scene and whose name will be withheld pending indictment, was an employee of good standing at XXXXXXXX for a number of years and was universally regarded by his employers and colleagues as a “model worker”. Accountant Daniel Aurelia, who was close by when the suspect reportedly hurled the server through a plate glass window, referred to the suspect as a “cool dude” who never seemed noticeably violent or ill tempered. Collator Jennifer Stanicek agreed that the suspect was of a uniformly calm temper and “never seemed aggressive enough to break glass, or anything else”.

Company officials were tight-lipped on the suspect’s background, admitting only that he had been in their employee since August of 1996. The lack of recognizable factors such as drugs, failed relationships, and work-related frustrations in the suspect’s past have reportedly led police to investigate possible political connections to the crime which was similar… continued on page A-8

… to an act of computer sabotage committed outside the main offices of the company some weeks earlier. In the previous crime, a still-unknown suspect reportedly used an electromagnet to destroy a large portion of data from the company’s computers.

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“Both crimes are similar in that involved attacks on the information system of the same company, and both were committed with relatively low-tech weapons,” said Police Chief Milton Rhodes. “In this case, the weapon was the suspect himself.”

No groups have come forward to claim responsibility for any of the attacks, either in an advisory or actively participatory manner, but a growing amount of suspicion has centered on…

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