Speaking of numbers, you realize that the cute bartender gave you the wrong change just now?
The shattered roof came down in the middle of the night. It crashed into their dreams and spasmodically jolted all but the slowest out of their beds. It wasn’t a tragedy or anything; most of the building had been evacuated of human life. Look, the elderly made it out in time. There was even enough time to take favorite books, pets and peanut butter. If one were to tally the loss of life, it would only amount to greater than zero if one were to include the rats. They’d been crushed beneath broken beams and shattered parquet. The rain soaked and bloated their corpses. In the deluge, the little furry balloons floated down the overflowing gutters. Candy wrappers, old underwear, stale refrigerators, all modern pieces of domesticity now street side and waterlogged. Splintered wood and twisted metal are everywhere. Our protagonist steps on a rusty nail and considers his limited understanding of tetanus as he kneels beneath dripping eaves. He is struck by the thought of Belgian assassins with their immaculate mustaches and tiny knives glinting in the dark. It doesn’t take much to sever a carotid artery.
It’s a long line of people in the night. Faint, flickering yellow streetlights dripping with rain above their sleepy heads. Even some of the cars that had been parked near the complex are destroyed. Plumes of dust are settling, beaten down by the rain. There are strange comforts out here. For instance, the landlord is out here in tattered striped pajamas. He is still bald and that’s comforting, somehow. The twins have vague smiles on their faces, clutching briefcases in opposing hands, as if a dark mirror stood between them. The entire Rodriguez family is out here. How many is that? Eight or nine? They seem fine, all things considered. Miss Ziegler is sitting across the street on the curb. Her ass must be cold and wet. She has a look on her face like she’d just been waiting for this moment. Did she know that this moment was coming? Was she the one who blew up the building? Wait, was it an explosion? A missile? Terrorism? Are there corpses somewhere in there? No, our protagonist thinks, he recalls the narrative has already established that only rats have made the ultimate sacrifice tonight.
Katie Sedgwick has a special talent for getting the wrong change back whenever she purchases something. The amounts usually vary from a few cents to a few dollars on a relatively consistent basis. She tends to get more incorrect change on weekends. The reasons for this are not entirely arbitrary. This small but significant phenomenon has nothing to do with how Katie looks because it happens when she’s masked (Halloween, Christmas, robberies) as well as when she is: wearing make-up, not wearing make-up, just waking up or having stayed up for more than the recommended amount of hours (which is even just a minute longer than seventeen hours, according to the CDC). Today, just before she went to bed with the protagonist, she got $1.11 incorrect change from the Seven Eleven two blocks down from the newly demolished apartment complex. She has never returned the incorrect change. Maybe this is not a big deal to some people. It certainly is not a big deal to Katie. But check it out; this wrong-changeness doesn’t always happen. Let’s say it happens roughly nine times a month (which it does). And let’s say it’s been happening for four years (because it has). She’s accumulated roughly four hundred and thirty two dollars in incorrect change in the past half-decade. She doesn’t know it, but two and a half employees have lost their jobs because of these oversights. One of them had it coming. The other did not. That half employee back there, Gerald, was put on probation after their manager discovered the discrepancy in the till. He did the other half of losing the job himself. It doesn’t particularly matter because Katie doesn’t know any of that and neither does the protagonist.
But he does know she gets incorrect change very often. And he’s standing here, now, in the rain, in the rubble of the broken and smoldering apartment complex, thinking about it. Katie is there, too. Her smell is faint, floral, hangs between raindrops. Mouth half open, rubbing her eyes, staring about herself in standard-issue disbelief. He watches her and thinks about the wrong change. Why doesn’t she ever give it back? And he watches the corpse of a rat float by in the gutter. It gets caught on a torn bra which is in turn caught on an intertwined series of bent clothes hangers. The rat floats around onto its belly, the watery current trying to sweep it away. He keeps watching; he cannot stop watching. The rat bobs there in the water. Wet and furry, up and down. Why doesn’t she give back the wrong change?
Here are the police, now. They are helping out. And here, also, is the fire department. They came blaring onto the scene and they are all muscular. They are doing fire department things. Watch: this one is lifting rubble and that one is taking a cat down from the twisted fire escape. In a way, it’s very nice. Quaint. There are videos now on the internet about it.
One short video in particular has gotten a lot of views. Fireman Rescuing Cat From Exploded Building. Most of the comments are relatively civil and rife with admiration. Except one: “All firemen are motherfuckers”. SinclairSingular is the username.
Les Cactus by Jacques Dutronc is playing inside The Black Query. This diner has been on this corner for longer than anyone remembers. Well, that’s not entirely true but it is within the experience of our protagonist. The building was erected in 1946. Bill Bevers was riding high on some hot post-WWII inheritance money. Dad was a weapons man and Bill couldn’t have fallen farther from the tree. Even so, the lot was a cheap buy and the diner seemed like a no-brainer. An avid fan of the occult and the tarot (due to his wife’s influence, Orza, an old-world heretic and medium) Old Bill plotted the building and used it during closing hours as a portal into the Realms of the Dead. Quiet corner on East and 42nd. We’re talking late 1960’s magic, here. The real deal: séances, hooded figures, candles, disembodied voices, stock market predictions, hexes, curses, potions, poisons, suicide pacts, summoning of ancient gods, communing with the dead, prophecies. Old Bill and Orza made a good deal of money. They were hunted down for it (perhaps killed?) and the money is still buried out there somewhere. Nazi gold, they say. These things tend to linger, in the quantum sense, as we shall soon see. Bill and his wife are long since absent but their essence haunts The Black Query. Their coffee is also fairly decent.
Our protagonist is sitting in front of a cup of coffee. Opposite of him is Katie. She wrings her hair dry in a kitchen towel that the staff has kindly provided her with. The waitress is supplicating, taking the towel, providing another. She is in disbelief. The apartment complex exploded and the block is host to dusty, confused, wandering people. The twins are at the counter, briefcases still in hand. The landlord is there, too. Still bald. It’s less comforting now, in the sterile light of the diner. Miss Ziegler is nowhere to be found. Cold-assed and missing. Only our protagonist (and now, you) notice. What wickedness awaits her now in the chilly, rainy night? Katie clears her throat.
What should we do? She says.
He looks at her from over the rim of his coffee mug. A sudden influx of Exploded-Apartment Refugees (henceforth referred to as EARs) flood into the diner. At the same time, Katie pays for their coffee. The bill is a little over five dollars. Katie pays with a five dollar bill and two single dollar bills. She turns down our protagonists money (You bought dinner last night, she says). Now, there are aggressive voices behind the booth Katie is sitting in. Our protagonist looks back to see some of the EARs arguing about the explosion. He looks back at the table just in time to see the waitress bring the change. It is three dollars. The waitress smiles. Katie smiles. But, he thinks, this is the wrong change! Katie pockets the money without a second thought. He thinks: she is a thief.
Behind them, a fight breaks out in the diner. It is impossible to discern why people are fighting but it’s escalating. There is yelling, screeching chairs, breaking glass. Katie is getting nervous. A steel-legged stool (the kind with a red faux-leather seat covering) flies through the air. Its going for Katie. The stool is now possessed with the Spirit. It has the intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Really, uninterrupted, this airborne thing has the potential to, at the very least, partially blind our Katie. It could get really bad. It could go so far as to make her infertile. It is gaining a tremendous amount of speed. These things are not to be trifled with. Would she still get the wrong change if she had an eyepatch?
Our protagonist is young but ex-military. Trained also in the lethal (and lesser known) branches of Feng Shui. There’s some wing chun in there, too. Not to mention that our protagonist has seen nearly every single martial arts film in existence. He has The Firm to thank for that. Watch now as he moves swiftly and intercepts the stool with such ease and grace. The ill-intent is redirected, is pushed towards Saturn, whom, by chance (it is not chance) happens to be in Sagittarius. He swings the stool down unto the Earth and easily plants himself upon it. The Hidden Hosts are foiled and relatively displeased with the protagonist but will settle with the EARs and the mayhem they conjure. The protagonist looks now at Katie.
Will you not return that wrong change? He says, asking honestly.
Baffled, she looks at him and says Why would I? It wasn’t my mistake. I mean, it’s not my fault that she gave me the wrong change.
He wants to think that somehow it is her fault.
The EARs, now content to sustain an elevated atmosphere of destruction, violence and mayhem, proceed to maim and batter each other without much regard to the quiet couple sitting in the booth back there. They shatter plates on heads, throw each other through the plate glass windows. The waitresses cower behind the register. The EARs have no desire for money or brotherhood. An unbridled bloodlust courses through the gathered throngs. The allure almost pulls the Chef into the melee but he is held back by some vaguely recalled obligation to his parole officer, who, by chance, is also one of the waitresses.
A waitress parole officer? Absolutely. Her name is Sophie Sinclair. She’s been working in The Black Query for three years now, which is a long time for her. She is haunted by nightmares about work. Are they the ethereal workings of long-dead Old Bill and Orza? Absolutely. Spirits feed on this sort of thing. Sophie, our parole officer waitress, is a single mother who is secretly in love with the chef. Ever since he’d been assigned to her (intent to commit robbery due to relentless amphetamine addiction) she has been, for lack of a better word, smitten. This behavior is unbecoming of her and, frankly (according to her sister Liza Sinclair), it is completely and utterly uncharacteristic. Could the Hidden Hosts of The Black Query be exploiting a spiritual imbalance in the waitress parole officer? Of course they are. The Chef used to be a cashier. Then he got fired. Was he fired because of a till imbalance due to Katie? The answer is yes.
But it’s dishonest, our protagonist says. Taking the money without saying anything is dishonest. Even if it’s just a small thing like incorrect change, there is a wrongness in it.
Oh please, Katie says. Is it wrong to step on ants?
Our protagonist and Katie leave the diner through the back door. Echoes of the brawl inside The Black Query reach them across the dark expanse of the rainswept parking lot.
He watches her walk ahead of him in the rain. She says something about staying at her mother’s tonight. That’s good, he thought. Could it have been a bomb? An airplane? An airplane with a bomb in it? Was it a rocket? Did they destroy the building trying to get him? A whole building just to kill one man? Was it because of that assignment in Antwerp? Or was it some freak accident? No, he thought. There is no such thing as freak accidents. Antwerpian assassins, then?
At her mother’s house:
Our protagonist awaits the Golden Hour, sometime between 3:30am and 4:30am. He slips out of the bed (Katie snores and is thus undisturbed by pedestrian activity) and glides down the stairs. Safely tucked into the bubbly auditory cover of an active washing machine, he dials The Firm. They answer, as always, on the first ring.
We already know, Charlie says. We have our Int guys on it.
What do you mean ‘on it’? My apartment building e-exploded, Charlie.
Okay. Would you feel better if I told you we have our Psy guys on it, too?
No, because they’re lunatics, Charlie.
Lunatics with a calculable record. That means something in this line of work.
D-didn’t I hear something last week about one of them being found dead, hanging from a doorknob, Charlie?
Why are you whispering?
I’m at Katie’s mother’s house. Because my apartment building exploded. Answer the question.
Yeah. It was Eddie Swirls. We leaked that it was an auto-erotic mishap but it looks like murder. The Int boys are digging around but they’re totally lost on it. I mean, this murder has them baffled.
Okay, Charlie. Just tell me you don’t think these Euro g-guys bombed an entire apartment complex just to get to me.
I can’t. Because it looks like that’s precisely what happened. Look, we’ll induce coma ASAP. Let our Psy guys have a little peek. Boley is with you on this one.
Our protagonist sighs, hangs up the phone and then opens the refrigerator. He drinks milk for a long time. I mean, he really works through it. There goes two gallons. And considering the extreme circumstances, he really doesn’t have a choice. You see, Mrs. Sedgwick keeps no lentils, no beans, no chicken no seeds or nuts. There isn’t even a shred of cheese in the house. And so, our protagonist is near to bursting, distended, before he waddles over to the couch, burps milkily and falls asleep. He is steeled and ready for a session of dream espionage.
—
He’s looking upwards. The treeline is neatly matching the horizon. The sun comes up and then it goes down and then it comes up again. A plane flies out there, above the trees. Pine smell. The plane dips and, unbelievably, recovers. There is a midair explosion. Cartwheeling birds and flaming bits of metal, of people rain down all around him. He climbs down, lands on the forest floor. He probes into the woods. There are survivors everywhere. He knows now that everyone except the pilot has survived. One of the survivors is Katie but she walks past him. She doesn’t recognize him in this form. He sniffs in her direction. I am some kind of animal he thinks. Sense of smell is very strong, like having extra eyes and hands and tongues. And then he thinks: She smells wrong. Like money. She doesnt need it but she does it for the money. Some link with the subconscious. Other peoples’ subconscious. The money world. The vivid image of an abacus is conjured. People seem to forget numbers when they’re around her. She has that skill, to make you forget math. It strikes him now, suddenly, that she has been trained somewhere, too. That place in Rome? Coin Archetype Manipulation training. Thought it was an academy joke. Modern money is mostly paper after all. Paper would be easy to manipulate, too, if you had image archetype training on all the classic metals down. Gold, copper. Or…
Boley’s silky smooth baritone comes through:
Keep it on track, Jack. Trypto levels look good.
Sorry. I saw Katie and got distracted.
Right, Jacko. We have visual so, uh, no need to explain. We saw her, too. Don’t follow her.
Right.
Head to the crash site. Something to do with our Int guys, surely. We got eyes on your girl, too. Her history, anyway. Just focus. This is expensive, you know.
Yeah, I know.
We can hear that, too. That’s why it’s fuckin’ expensive.
Right. Goddamn it.
Treebark scorched and scarred. There are a lot of people out here. Who was the pilot and where is he? The forest floor is moss-covered cobblestone. Cobblestone? There’s a small convenience store, right there, next to the gigantic parasol mushrooms. People with animal heads. A sun-mottled alleyway of trees. There is a crowd of people out here, man, really. Normal people. Europeans. This is a European forest. It’s much more ancient than it should be. As if the world were built inside this place. Our protagonist is close to ground zero now. Fire and chaos but somehow calm shopping Europeans, too. A Christmas market in the forest? There is blood on the air. His animal nose can sniff it out. Human blood on the air. The plane crashed at the end of a long alley of trees. A smoldering mass of twisted metal. Remains of a silvery fuselage. Is that a noose in the cockpit? And a doorknob? A creepy-crawly sensation across our protagonist’s animal flesh. And right there, in the corner of his eye. Was that a lion?
Back on that, Jacko. Go back to that thing there. We need a clear visualization.
I can’t seem to keep my eye on it.
Then don’t. Use your nose. You’re an animal for God’s sake.
Someone is bleeding over there.
Yeah, we see it. End of the alley. We already know he’s hurt, Jacko. He called it in an hour ago. We don’t need to know about our wounded guy. Or, rather, we already know. It’s the tiger we’re after.
It ain’t no tiger, Boley. It’s a lion.
The scent of raw meat on the air. Meat-smell. Mixes with the pine, the smoke, the metal and the sweaty people. Who are these people? There are so many of them. Collective unconscious. Some group of people, anyway. Is this spatially coherent somehow? Does it overlap with consensual reality? Animal ears, now, attuned to the thought-rhythm of the mass:
Als hij de politie had gebeld, was er geen probleem.
Flemish Dutch, goddamn it!
Relax, Jacko. The talk is in reference to our injured Intelligence guy. He took a lickin’ to cover your exit at some kerstmarkt. Got busted in a tight spot but we’ll have medics on him soon. They can’t detect you like this. Not like you’re back on the scene of the crime or anything. The Europeans don’t know this trick yet. Well, they know it but the technique simply isn’t on the global market yet. Besides, they hit your apartment already so… what’s the harm?
This is no good, Boley. Bad feeling in this place.
Buddy, we dropped you in the op zone. Like I said, your tryptophan and melatonin levels are just fine. Who cares? Like I said, this is fuckin’ expensive and we’re really ridin’ the line here. Budget is to be considered. Charlie’s already pissed up the Old Man’s leg so, for goodness sake, please, keep your eye on the tiger.
It’s a lion.
Lion. We just need a lock on it.
Alright. No choice on this one. He walks further into the forest, his feet (paws? claws? pincers? fins? hooves?) dwarfed by the paw prints of the predatory feline. It’s dark here and the fire of the crash is now behind him. Long, skinny tree shadows. Fish in the trees. Fish? Smells like a urinal in this place. No more cobblestone. High-noon. It’s a showdown. They know. They might not have the technology for it but they know. They can feel it inside of them. You would be able to feel it, too, wouldn’t you? Some interloper between your ears, like a little nasty tickle. Maybe even worse, he guesses, depending on who you ask. And now the sensation is crawling up his spine. Behind you, man! When he turns it’s nearly too late. There is enough time to see the animal’s eyes, reflective, green, human blood on his breath. Obsidian claws. Amphetamines. Dexedrine? A vague cartoony feeling. All the fur on his animal body stands on end.
Alright, we got him, Jacko. We’ll get you up.
—
This is the second time Dodger has hit his thumb with a hammer in the last hour. There’s no point in hiding that it hurts so he hisses, biting his tongue, remembering the image of the little girl in the booth. He doesn’t swear around children.
The Hidden Hosts must be hungry for pain today. The waitresses at The Black Query all (as if choreographed) cringe at the same time. Except for Sophie Sinclair. She’s too melancholy to care. Our poor waitress parole officer. The Spirit has a really good vampiric thing going on with her and, in general, The Black Query benefits from this relationship.
Dodger lines up another nail and manages to drive it home. He is nearly finished repairing the counter top. Those pesky EARs really did a number on the place and Dodger has been the go-to repairman for The Black Query for nearly a decade now. Sure, he gets the heebie-jeebies from the place but the staff sure is friendly and the coffee is pretty damn half decent. However, he will never again use the toilet in this joint. Really. After what happened seven years ago (the first time he’d used the toilet in The Black Query, somehow overcoming his natural reluctance to use public toilets in general, due to the sudden and unnatural circumstances) he vowed to never again set foot in the W.C. of the place if it was the last thing he’d ever do.
Mirrors, too, were still a problem for Dodger after that toilet encounter in The Black Query several weeks ago. After that conversation (and subsequent bargaining in the second to last stall, the one with, unbeknownst to Dodger, the formula that, when memorized, can cause what The Firm’s Psy Department refer to as Narrative Disassociation Disorder, of which our protagonist suffers a mild case) Dodger went to some lengths to remove all mirrors from his own home. To be safe, he got all the glossy or reflective surfaces finished in matte, too. He was a thorough man.
Just the coffee darlin’?
Sure, Sophie. Just the coffee is fine. So what the hell happened, anyway?
With some effort, Sophie tore her eyes away from the chef and said: These righteous bastards, I don’t know, it’s all about that apartment what exploded the other night.
Read about that in the news, Dodger says. Read that it was a planned thing. Like they planned to demolish that building.
Tell you what, says Sophie, that weren’t no planned demolition. It was an explosion. Like a big bomb.
—
Katie has just finished work and instead of going home to her mother’s place (to get another earful of how our protagonist could have possible consumed two gallons of milk and why) she heads to La Lanterna to have a drink with Liza Sinclair.
They are, every each and single one of them, motherfuckers.
Like, literally? I mean, in your case it is literally, right, Liza?
Are you trying to be funny Katie? You really shouldn’t try to be funny.
I mean, he slept with your mom, right? Wait, this was that big fireman?
Correct, Liza says as she takes a long pull of her beer. Timothy Taggart. He was the fireman. And then he slept with my mom. My ex-Miss France mother.
What an idiot, Katie says.
—
And besides, what did Dodger Dallas have to gain from dealing with mirrors ever again anyway? And who would believe him? He had to sell his car, too, because the eyes staring back at him from the rear view mirror were not his eyes. He tried telling psychologists right after it first happened. They told him it could be any or all of the following: Multiple Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsion, Agoraphobia. One even said it was depression. No one in his family had ever been diagnosed with any kind of psychological disorder. His grandfather and great grandfather had served in each of the world wars and didn’t even come back with a hint of shell shock. The Dallas family was stoic, historically anti-histrionic. Dodger sat there and listened to the shrinks tell him that fifteen minutes in the toilet of The Black Query could have landed him with everything the DSM-5 could hit you with. He didn’t buy it for a minute. So, he stopped seeing the shrinks and got rid of all his mirrors.
—
So, I take it you’ll be seeing this David again, then, Katie said.
Maybe. He is much smarter than the motherfucking fireman, that’s for sure. He works a lot, though. If he ever gets a day off, I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Hey, hang on a second, Liza said as she polished off her beer and straightened her back against the edge of the hard bar top.
Can we instead talk about you surviving that goddamn apartment explosion?
Katie brushed the hair out of her eyes. After another shot, perhaps.
—
Sometimes, Dodger would catch a reflection while passing shop windows. Not his reflection. A reflection. The distinction is the problem. Now, he has mapped (physically and with the assistance of his smartphone) a route to all the places he frequents (including The Black Query) that circumvent any and all chance of running into a reflective surface. There are some variables, of course. Cars. Sunglasses (particularly aviators). Most of the time, however, it’s a good system. It has only failed one time.
—
I suppose, Katie says as they order another drink at the bar, that it was luck. I mean, not a single person was injured during the collapse.
I heard it was a bomb or something. A rocket or something.
My guess is as good as yours, Liza. All I know is that we got out safely.
You and the protagonist.
The protagonist and I.
—
It’s just me, Dodger. We had a DEAL, buddy. You let me ride along and I won’t mess with you. Remember? Few weeks we’ve been ridin’ together. We’re buddies, buddy.
The problem is that Dodger never agreed to anything. He keeps his head shaved because it’s easier than screwing up a hairstyle. Really, it is. Even if he just looks at a small portion of himself in the mirror it simply ain’t him. It’s someone else. Some dorky guy. Someone who, without asking, is hitching a ride. It happened in the toilet at The Black Query. Who would believe him? It’s okay, though, because the hitchhiker doesn’t speak often and, really, thank God for that. Dodger is a simple, thorough guy. He’s a carpenter. He fixes up a few places in town. Asks a fair wage. Though, it’d be nice to see his own face again. Instead of, what was his name?
How many times I gotta tell you? It’s not cool, Dodger, to ignore me how you do. It’s not easy for me to speak. I’m not real in the same way you are. Hell, I can only exist like this at all, in your brain, because of that waitress woman. Like a tapeworm. It’s atrocious.
Something Swirls.
Eddie.
That’s it. Eddie Swirls.
—
What does David do again? I mean, I know what he doesn’t do. He doesn’t do your mom, which is good. Right?
Again with the jokes, Katie.
Sorry. I couldn’t help it.
It’s okay. Liza sips her chartreuse and makes an easy throw at the dartboard. She’s in the lead, now.
Anyway, Liza says, you are correct, Katie. He is a faithful boy. He works at The Firm. He’s an accountant. I think. I know he’s mostly in on their numbers game. Budgeting and so on.
Budgeting, Katie says slowly.
Right. That’s what I said. You’re sort of into numbers, too, hey?
Katie smiles.
Speaking of numbers, Liza says as she leans in conspiratorially, you realize that the cute bartender gave you the wrong change just now?
—
I’m telling you right now: he has been living here for a week and a half. I don’t know, long enough for a virus to incubate. He has not left this building in that time, at least not in the conventional sense, and yes, I know that his project is way over budget. Okay, sorry, your project. We have it all under control. It’s going well. He plays chess with me just like he’s supposed to. Yes, I am employing several Nabokovian problems on the board. At night we have him induced. Yes, sir, we keep him local. The other guy? Seems there’s some kind of Spirit that Eddie has employed to help him. Yes, but the main hypothesis is that he’s a Secondary. The Primary? ID’d some days ago when our guys went under. A lion tattoo. Yes. The money? We’ll use the Sedgwick woman. Yeah, we were watching her for a while. She was sort of playing around with what she learned in Rome. It very much is real, sir. Coin Archetype Manipulation. Sure, if you want to get Jungian about it, then yes. She was just fooling around with it. Averaging pocket change for fun. Oh, it was easy. We just had to put her in front of David. Who, the younger sister? She’ll probably just post some vitriol on the internet about it. Seems to be her go-to reaction to these kinds of things. Precisely, sir. Now we have the all-green. As long as it’s not too extreme the money will just make sense on the spreadsheet. David will iron it out. Unless she really baffles him but I have a feeling that her technique is subtle and sublime. Yes, true, our definitions are different. Etymologically? Sure, Psy just opened that department. Oh, the other one? Well, he brought something back with him from the first trip inside. And his apartment was destroyed. Of course it’s for monitoring purposes but, also, sir, he brought something back with him. We’re not sure yet. We’ll just keep him here. For how long? Well, I don’t know how to answer that, sir.
—
Ben Canadine was gutshot in an alleyway during the Kerstmarkt in Maastricht. He’d managed to figure out he was being tailed but when push came to shove, he got shot in the gut. He laid bleeding there, looking up into the eyes of his would-be murderer. Before the guy could finish him off, the protagonist ID’d the assassin. Jan van der Straeten. Lion tattoo on the left quadriceps. Jan couldn’t shoot Ben in the face (though he’d wanted to) because there were children coming into the alleyway. The Firm had already dispatched a medic. Ben just had to hang on for around twenty five minutes. That’s the average response time. Not bad, all things considered. After the Etymology department was established, The Firm managed to shave ten minutes off of medic response times.
Ben lingered in a hospital for a week before he could walk again. Local Forces Agent (code for non-military, civilian-recruited) Analies was instrumental in his recovery.
Before all that, on the evening prior to the missile attack, Ben had been outside the silo. A pillar of light, brilliant, a glowing stalk growing out of the Earth and arcing towards the west. He’d been an hour too late to prevent the launch. He was seen, too, by Irish ex-MI6 defector and notorious underworld addict Aoife Eirzmann. She’d been sitting in a crows nest, tucked just beyond the launch pad in the shady veil of the copse nearby. Ben, three shades of red through the thermal goggles, skulking around the missile silo in a stolen, ill-fitting Belgian Special Forces uniform. She scoffs at the rolled up pants leg, untied laces. Asshole, she thinks. She places the thermal goggles into their holster at her hip and dials Jan from her cellphone. She describes Ben to him.
Now Ben is here, right here, standing on home soil for the first time in six years. The Old Man has personally called him in from his European cover. They need him. Ben doesn’t mind. He’d miss the frietjes. Actually, he doesn’t know yet how much he’ll miss them but he will, soon.
Some sort of mutiny, son, the Old Man says.
Mutiny?
Right, son, some kind of traitorous trend. We’ve known about it. Our inside guy was wiped out.
Ben didn’t know what to say.
‘Wiped out’, I say, but it’s more like he had ideas, son, ideas that one is better off not having. He’d second guess our plan, the reading of the Page and so forth.
Okay, sir. And how should I proceed?
Well, son, the Old Man says, pushing the frames up on the bridge of his nose, according to the Page, you just have to stand watch.
The Page?
Right, son, the only Page in the Book. Ah, excuse me. You weren’t cleared for this sort of chat, were you? The Old Man crossed his arms and looked at Ben. He made a clicking sound with his teeth and continued. You just have to not be in Europe anymore. You have to be here. Specifically on East and 42nd.
I just have to be there, sir?
Correct, son. You have to be there tomorrow afternoon. You’re on watch duty now, son. Welcome home.
The next day Ben walked into The Black Query and had a coffee. He was officially ‘standing watch’. After two hours he went into the toilet to take a piss.
—
Katie is watching David from the kitchen. The apartment is on the 27th floor of the Gutierrez building uptown. It’s an open floor plan so the line of sight is clear. He has his back to her. He is outlined by green computer monitor glow. She yawns, sips sparkling water. She watches the small little balding spot on the top of his head. The protagonist didn’t have that. Not that it matters. David is a nice guy. She sips the sparkling water again. When all is said and done, though, even with the money and even with the sex (which is utilitarian at best) David is just… boring. He never gives her a hard time about anything like the protagonist used to. Everything is just always fine. It’s fine. Though, sometimes she does get that creepy feeling that someone is watching her. It’s always late at night, too. Very late at night she senses someone watching her.
She misses the protagonist. Will it be bearable? Sure. Katie has been through much worse. Where she is now, uptown, in this dark apartment, she doesn’t even need to get dressed if she doesn’t want to. Will this apartment collapse some night? Probably not. Because it’s David, the accountant, who lives here. Buildings don’t collapse for David the Accountants. She hasn’t even been back to The Black Query in two weeks. What would Liza have to say to her now? Katie grimaces in the dark. Would Liza want to fight? Most likely.
And what about these files she’s been peeking at while good boy David slumbers? Narrative Disassociation Disorder? All she knows is that the protagonist is stuck, now, in a place where all the kung fu in the world won’t help. They’ve got him by the brainstem. Something about someone wanting to write themselves back into the Central Arc. Katie doesn’t get a word of it but, wow, wouldn’t it be nice to see the protagonist again.
Has she been ‘placed’ here? Her skills seem awfully and particularly useful here, in this apartment with David, Liza’s most recent ex-boyfriend. It wouldn’t be so unusual if she had been placed here by some Higher Power. Most of the people she’s acquainted with are somehow connected with The Firm, after all.
Another week passes and then in the middle of the night a bald man is standing outside David and Katie’s bedroom balcony window. A night bird crosses the moon. David wakes up when the glass shatters.
Katie is snoring until the bald man says:
This is the Golden Hour.
And then, Katie wakes up and sits up in bed next to David.
Who are you? David says.
Katie watches the bald man. He has a bandage around his thumb. His face has strange twitches. Is it a facial tick? No, something else is going on there. His eyes quickly scan the room. Strange aversion to the mirror. And the picture frame. Ah, yes. Look. Isn’t that weird? He won’t look at the mirror.
Do I need to ask you again, sir? Are you here to rob me? Please, all of the money is in the safe in the living room, David says.
Oh, sweet David. Even as a child he was always pleasantly complacent. Brilliant with an abacus. His mother, later on when she’s at the funeral, wailing and beating about her chest in grief, won’t be able to make any sounds resembling words. The grief is too strong. The Firm’s Etymological Department (newly formed, christened the TFED, they had great wine at the party) will later issue a game-changing report on these maternal grief-wailings and how they contain root essences of crippling hexes within them.
Katie has moved, silently, to the closet door. You see, there is a mirror on the door. She hides behind it now. The bald man cannot address this problem at the moment. He pulls a small revolver out of his jacket and levels it at David.
I’m sorry, the bald man says. There are three gunshots and the sheets are ruined.
Afterwards, the bald man goes into the living room and pulls the hard drive out of David’s computer. He tucks it into his duffelbag and returns to the bedroom.
Put on some clothes and come with me, he says.
Katie remains silent.
I can kill you through the mirror. I don’t need to look to be able to kill you from here. I’ll just keep shooting until I hear your death sigh.
Katie believes him, gets dressed and steps out from behind the mirror.
My name is Dodger Dallas. You must be Katherine Sedgwick. You need to come with me. I have a car outside.
Katie sits in the convertible with her murdered ex-boyfriends leather jacket on. Dodger speeds down the highway. There are no mirrors in the car.
—
In 1999, in the face of a technological apocalypse, Alicia Ziegler gets married. The groom’s family doesn’t like her very much and she does not change her surname. The groom doesn’t mind this very much (right now) but he will come to resent her. They eat wedding cake together and watch horror films in their cheap apartment. Alicia has never met his daughter (from his first marriage) but she hears good things about the kid.
At the first family reunion, Alicia is all but ostracized from the goings-on. Behind Cabra castle walls she smokes a cigarette for the first time in four years. She doesn’t cough. After grinding the cigarette butt beneath her red heel, she nearly knocks the girl down as she rounds the corner. Sorry, Alicia says, I didn’t see you there. No problem, says the pretty girl. She’s young but has a dark air about her what normally takes years of resent to cultivate. Teenage blues, Alicia thinks.
And now domesticity: Alicia works at the library. They call her Miss Ziegler even though she’s newly married. It’s fine, though. After all, she didn’t change her last name. Library work is fine and her new life at home is lovely. Her husband is a gentle (if somewhat complacent) man. He is slow to anger, patient, relatively intelligent. It’s working out just fine.
The first time Aoife came to visit, two summers later, Alicia Ziegler and her husband had moved out of the apartment and into a house. Aoife and Alicia did not get along well. Alicia had no experience in motherhood. And now, suddenly, a moody teenager is living in her house. Not just any moody teenager, mind, but the daughter of her husband. Alicia Ziegler is now, officially, a stepmom. She doesn’t remember any cool stepmoms from her past. Do they exist? Surely. Alicia is not aware of how to be one, though. Aoife hates her at first. They cannot communicate without a subtle yet marked decline into insufferable passive aggression. The husband does not assist in these endeavors; watch as he sits on the sofa, sipping cognac, watching Brazilian futbol.
The summer ends and the devil Aoife is spirited away. It’s like the removal of a cancer; Alicia is in relief but she knows (as is the inherent nature of parenthood) that this is a remission. Oh, but dearest Alicia, it’s not so bad. And when Aoife returns, four summers later, she is a changed girl.
Now in her early twenties, Aoife is stabilized. Womanhood descends upon her, lifting the dark veils of pubescence, parting the Venusian shawl, etc, etc. Aoife tells Alicia about her new lover, the young man with a lion tattoo, his dark hair, military demeanor. She tells Alicia about moving to London to be with her Real Mother. She tells Alicia that they should stay friends Forever. And, for the most part, Forever is a very long time. But, they do their best.
After the divorce, Alicia loses her job. She takes it with good comport. In degrees, her life is utterly dismantled. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be, she thinks. In six months, she is living in a (somewhat) shabby apartment complex and working at a convenience store. She nearly loses her (new) job due to a till imbalance (she gave someone the wrong change) and finds herself constantly put off by her bald landlords less-than-subtle advances. Somehow, it rolls off of her. It’s like the real Miss Ziegler is somewhere else, untouchable, aloof. Aoife stays in touch with her. They videochat sometimes. For Alicia it is never strange that she’s still close friends with her ex-daughter-in-law. But Aoife has fallen on hard times and Alicia can tell, despite the stoic digital smile. There is some kind of dependency problem and she never talks about work. They’ll talk more about it when Aoife comes to visit in a week.
When Alicia Ziegler’s apartment complex is struck with a low-load missile, she is sitting awake on her bed. When the tenants line up in the street outside, she sits on the wet curb across the street and watches the flaming detritus still drifting down from the night sky. When the melee breaks out in The Black Query, she is at La Lanterna because she has never been able to step foot in that diner for some reason or another. Many a date has tried to invite her there but somehow, as soon as she sees that marquee, the logo (All Souls Drift) and that nauseating aquarium lighting, The Black Query seems the least appealing (nearly physically revolting) place that she could imagine. No wickedness tonight could compare to an evening at The Black Query!
Alicia Ziegler sits at La Lanterna in her pajamas and sips on sherry. Somehow, she wishes Aoife were here. And she will be, in a few days. But not now. Not when her apartment has exploded and she’s on the verge of losing her shitty clerical job (which she needs) and her gross landlord keeps hitting on her and everyone is at that weird diner around the corner. She finishes her sherry and calls for a taxi. The next few days are uneventful stays at a nearby motel. Nothing of note occurs aside from strange music that comes out of the room next door at the motel at odd hours of the night.
Miss Ziegler Picks Aoife up at The Airport
On their ride back, they stop at the zoo. Aoife insisted on it.
“They’ll be closing in an hour,” Alicia says once they walk past the turnstile.
“Oh, I know. I heard the lady. I just wanted to see if I recognized an animal.”
Alicia is at once feeling three things: Confusion, Happiness (her ex-step-daughter is one of her closest confidants!) and Irritation.
“What do you mean by ‘recognized an animal?’”
“Well,” begins Aoife (she’s a bit shaky, now, due to Jan’s dexadrine, ingested in the cramped airline toilet whilst soaring over the Atlantic two hours prior) “I sort of have this assignment to identify an animal.”
“Couldn’t you just describe it and then search it on the internet?”
“Sure,” Aoife says. “I could do that but Inspiration works in mysterious ways, Alicia. I thought that actually seeing them, smelling them, touching them (I know you’re not supposed to) would help.”
“What’s the assignment, anyway?” Alicia asks as they pass the Reptilian section.
“Well, it’s sort of for Jan. You know, my boyfriend? It sounds crazy buy he had this dream that an animal was chasing him. A furry animal, prominent nose, humanoid-ish or maybe just on all-fours.”
Alicia ponders on this for a moment. And then she stops walking.
“A dream-animal?”
“Correct,” Says Aoife, turning to face her. “Crazy huh?”
“Well, it’s stupid. I mean, it’s stupid to be in a real zoo looking for a dream-animal,” Alicia says, adjusting her purse on her shoulder.
“Why do you say that? We’re fairly certain it’s a real animal.”
“Are you certain it still exists?” Alicia says. “What if it’s an extinct animal?”
Aoife purses her lips and then, after sighing, smiles, says:
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
—
Dodger pulls up to The End at around 7am. He is eating a glazed doughnut and drinking water out of a styrofoam cup. Katie is drinking a cappuccino. It’s pretty good but the little foam cup is exceptionally hot. Dodger carefully avoids gazing into The End’s glass windows, though they have enough fliers to nullify any chance of him seeing his own reflection. Dodger plays it safe. When gazing into that maddening visage (which he has accidentally done only a handful of times, thank God) it is difficult for him to hang onto any sense of reality. He pulls the car into a vacated parking lot across the street and carefully watches The End for any signs of activity.
The parking lot is totally empty save for one rusty Subaru that looks like it’s been there for a few years. All the wheels are missing and there are weeds growing out from beneath the hood. Katie looks at it, watches the rain sluice down the cracked windshield of the Subaru. Something about how the water slides down the glass. She recalls David’s brains sliding down the bedroom wall a couple hours ago. Those brains will no longer contemplate numbers. She won’t be able to baffle those brains ever again. She turns to the lunatic in the driver’s seat. He is munching a doughnut and sipping water from a styrofoam cup which is dwarfed by the size of his hand. He rolled up the convertible’s soft top an hour ago when they stopped for breakfast. He seems completely insane in the most mundane way. Ultimately, her thoughts boil down to this: What the fuck is his deal?
At 7:45am, The End shows signs of life. A teenager is opening the place up. Finally, after 15 minutes of displays clicking on, old CRTs being adjusted to VCR trackings and cardboard cutouts being minutely readjusted, he unlocks the front doors. The End is officially open.
Dodger Dallas steps out of the convertible and shoulders the duffelbag. He tells Katie to get out. She obeys. They both walk around the side of the car and cross the street. Dodger holds the door to The End open and Katie walks in. She spots the holster of his gun just inside his windbreaker. He is big, this Dodger guy.
You guys open? Dodger asks.
The Teenager looks up from behind the counter, eyes both Katie and Dodger openly, then looks back down at his smartphone.
Yeah man, the Teenager says.
Don’t worry, I’ll handle this, just do what I tell you, buddy. Say this:
I’m looking for The Exterminating Angel, Dodger says.
Perfect.
The Teenager coughs. Looks up again (this time much slower) and gets to his feet.
Uh. Buñuel?
That’s the one.
That’s the one.
Uh, the Teenager stammers, I mean, you’re both looking for The Exterminating Angel? He motions towards Katie with his head.
Yes, we’re both looking for it.
Yes, we’re both looking for it.
Alright man, look, I don’t know. I have to call them downstairs and check because I think Eddie still has it checked out. The Exterminating Angel, I mean. Besides, I’ve never let in two at once before. And anyway, about Eddie, I heard he offed himself in some public toilet a month ago or something…
Katie has found a VHS copy of Breakfast Club. She reads the back of it and then recalls her childhood crush on Bender. I wonder what he looks like now, she thinks. She puts the VHS tape back down and browses another aisle. She casually makes her way towards the register, towards the Teenager and Dodger. She inches towards Dodger’s right side. She wonders how hard it would be to make a play for the gun. Not yet. Let the weirdness play on for a minute longer. She carefully browses the exceptionally robust kung fu section.
The Teenager looks down at his phone and starts to text something. Somehow, he mis-dials The Firm. He looks at his keypad, then his thumb, and tries to dial again.
We can’t let him call downstairs, Dodger. Everything is ruined if they know we’re coming. Tell him you are Eddie. I mean, it’s sort of true, anyway. The woman just being here, present, might help buy time but we can’t totally count on it. Tell him you’re me, buddy.
Dodger grimaces at the sound of this hitchhikers voice inside his head. This dirty, bathroom hitchhiker. What is he, anyway? Dodger hates it. But he doesn’t really have a choice.
Hey, kid, Dodger says, listen: I am Eddie. Don’t call downstairs.
Katie watches the exchange in a state of cautious befuddlement. She catches the Teenager eyeing her. She looks at him and shrugs. His fingers hesitate on his smartphone.
Dang, the Teenager says. Alright then.
Listen, kid, Dodger says as he moves towards the register, towards the Teenager. Don’t worry about how I look: I am Eddie Swirls. Let me go down and there won’t be any problems, okay? You don’t want any problems, do you?
They walk past boxes of VHS tapes, VCRs, LASERDISC players, beta players. Katie watches the holster bulge in Dodger’s jacket. They duck beneath a curtain, pass through an iron door. They go down what feels like two flights. They turn a corner. Green plastic seals the passage into a room. They go past that and down another flight of stairs. That Teenager is topside, Katie thinks, working the front for whatever operation this is. She pushes aside those thoughts and stays focused on Dodger’s bulging holster as they walk. This Dodger fellow is pretty big. In a flat out fight, she would have her neck snapped, easily, like stepping on a twig. But if she could just slide her hand into his jacket, take the gun…
Got bad vibes, big boy. Watch that woman. She’s got some archetype shit going on inside that pretty head but aside from that, she’s got some ill will, too, buddy. Maybe ’cause we perforated her boy toy?
Dodger stops in his tracks. Katie nearly walks into him. He turns and looks down at her.
You sore I killed your boyfriend?
Katie looks away. She looks back at him and says nothing.
I didn’t wanna. You gotta understand. I have this… uh, well… I didn’t want to do it, okay? But we just have to do all these things here and then, well, then you can leave.
Tell her I have NDD. Maybe they covered that in Rome.
Dodger points to his bald head and says:
This guy, uh, in here, Eddie. He has NDD. He says you’ll understand.
Katie looks at the hulking bald man in the darkness of this subterranean passage and suddenly remembers Paolo. They spent a weekend in Cinque Terre together. Suntanning, drinking, eating, sleeping together. He had a hairy chest and always wore red shorts. Paolo. She was finishing up her Coin Archetype Manipulation training. He’d promised their professors not to teach her some of the Secrets but he did anyway. He mentioned something…
Narrative Disassociation Disorder. It had something to do with the Page.
Ah, right, Katie thinks. I also saw it in David’s files. Narrative Disassociation Disorder. Hey, what’s going on here, anyway?
Right on, big guy. Think we’ve got her for now. Let’s mosey on, buddy.
Dodger turned around and continued down the dank passageway. After a while, Katie followed, ducking beneath a massive dripping pipe.
—
Sophie Sinclair is furious. She slams the apartment door behind her when she enters. It’s not even her apartment. Thankfully for her, her child is with his father tonight.
Well? What was her name, then?
The chef from The Black Query is a bit frightened. He’s never seen her like this. It’s like she’s possessed or something.
I don’t know baby. Nothing happened. I already told you. She has a boyfriend. She just wanted some dex.
But Sophie is furious. A drug deal is as good as cheating. He said he’d quit. She shakes her head, sinks onto the sofa opposite of him and rubs her eyes into the palms of her hands.
What was her name?
I don’t know, he says. She was Irish or something. She’s here on business. Said she heard from someone at The Black Query that I could hook her up. I don’t know nothing really baby.
And really, even with the fury, she feels some kind of itchy thing inside that won’t let her let it go. Her sister Liza is perhaps right to be concerned; this is wholly uncharacteristic behavior for Sophie.
Tell me her name.
I told you baby I don’t remember. Maybe it was Eefa?
What the hell kind of made up name is that?
He shakes his head, stands up from the sofa and walks to the window. He lights a cigarette and sits on the windowsill.
She was Irish or something weird, Sophie. I don’t know. Could have been Eva or something.
So, Sophie says, her elbows on her knees, you two were in a motel room, alone, together, doing drugs?
And listening to music, the Chef from The Black Query says. He realizes (too late) that this detail is:
A. Inconsequential
&
B. Irrelevant
He continues: Please put the lamp down, Sophie. I’m sorry. I mean, yes. Erm, I mean no. We didn’t do the dex together. She just wanted me to sell her some. She’s not from here, you see, so she doesn’t know anyone in town and she’s really into dex and back home, in Europe. her boyfriend is her normal hookup for the shit so… it really doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re thinking, babe, because, well, because I was just there making some money, you see, so that I don’t have to work all these goddamn hours at The Black fucking Query!
Sophie nods. So, now, part of her obligation as a parole officer is to report this lying sonofabitch and have him arrested for violating his probation. The complexity of the situation lies with the romantic underpinnings of the thing. Not to mention (unbeknownst to Sophie) that she is the host for a parasitic spectre who has (in turn) made a deal with Eddie Swirls. Sophie’s fury doesn’t have anything to do with anything aside from the Chef’s indiscretions. So, she gets up, checks her phone for the time and leaves. She slams the door on the way out.
—
This place is lumpy. A very cold, lumpy, dark place. Hairy, too. He looks around and can grasp no meaning in the darkness. It is pure black. The sound of his breath bounces off of the walls. He thinks it must be a relatively small space. He feels about himself and can discern only obtuse, ice-frozen shapes. He tries to sit up and smacks his head on what he guesses is the ceiling. A metallic clang echoes out beyond. He thinks, then, sinking back down into a laying position: Is that the chemical smell of formaldehyde? Embalming fluid?
The protagonist tries to sit up again, slowly. With reluctant fingers he feels the frozen metal above him, smooth and unyielding. Next, he reaches down about himself in the dark. It feels like he is sitting atop frozen corpses. There, just there! Didn’t that feel like a frozen hand? A frozen face with gaping eyes? A furry, frozen thigh?
Out there, beyond the darkness, there are sounds.
A heavy door unlatches, scrapes against the metallic floor, opens. Fluorescent lights click on with a persistent buzz. A stranger speaks:
“…to be dissected and whatnot. And yeah, this is it. You said your cousin is training here or something?”
“Or something.” Wait, thinks the protagonist as he strains his ears, is that the deep baritone of Boley’s voice?
“Well, this is it. We keep them all in that big container over there. Uh, separated parts, as you can see, are kept in that clear container there. All frozen, obviously.”
“Obviously,” says Boley.
And while Boley makes small-talk with the other man, the protagonist can make out the sound of a latch coming undone above him. He holds his breath, waits for their voices to die off and the sound of the door scrape closed behind them as they leave. The automatic fluorescent lights click off. After another minute of waiting, he gingerly lifts the lid open of the container and the motion-detecting lights come back on. Dead monkeys? Yes, that’s what they are. He has been sleeping atop a stack of frozen monkey corpses. He steps out of the container and shivers. He has no recollection of being transported to this place. In fact, the last thing he recalls is finally winning a game of chess against Charlie. He had the night off, too, so there was no induced coma. How did he end up in this freezer?
He walks to the door and finds it swings open rather easily. Pushing it open he stalks down clinical-white hallway and climbs up two stairwells rather briskly before losing his breath. How long had The Firm kept him in their facility? How did he get out? Where is he? The walls have numbers on them. Floor numbers? He’s now on floor B2. There is a vague academia smell to the place. The protagonist scratches his head and then sneezes. He realizes for the first time that he’s barefoot.
How you feelin’, Jacko?
Above him, in the light filtering down from a window two flights up, stands a dark figure holding a trash bag. He squints and recognizes the round man up there.
Been better, Boley. C-can you tell me what’s going on?
—
At The Black Query, Sophie focuses on her role as a waitress. Her sister Liza visits for a while and they have a good talk about their bad luck with men. She convinces Sophie to call in and report the Chef’s relapse and subsequent breaking of his probation. Sophie makes the call on her lunch break.
A woman comes to Sophie to pay her check. She pays with a kind of credit card that Sophie has never seen before. It’s an ING credit card. The name on the card reads Aoife Eirzmann.
How do you pronounce that, Sophie asks.
Oh, Aoife says, it’s sort of like Eva. You say it sort of like EE-FAH.
Sophie is over the bar and choking Aoife (or, trying to) before the card hits the counter. As an MI6 defector, Aoife is not to be trifled with. None of that matters much, anyway, because before the ladies can really have it out, Ben (currently ‘standing watch’ at The Black Query) walks out of the toilet and intercepts.
I’ve been here a couple hours and there’s already a fight, he says as he helps Aoife to her feet. Liza escorts her sister Sophie to the back of the diner.
Aoife looks at Ben and dusts herself off. Then, she looks at him again. Jan’s discreet photos, the surveillance captures from the missile silo, the same untied fucking shoelaces. It’s the same guy. A few seconds hang on the air like a feathery mist. She can hardly believe that its the same man she’d spied trying to break into the missile silo. The same guy her boyfriend shot in the gut back in Maastricht. The guy she’d come here, to the United Goddamn States, to find and torture until he provided the information she was after.
You, Aoife says, snarling, full dexadrine comedown settling into her nervous system, eyes widening.
Me, Ben says, baffled, reflexively touching his bellybutton (where he’d been shot by Jan).
Aoife takes a deep breath. She conjures every ounce of her Willpower to suppress her dexadrine comedown. The Black Query swells on her suffering. You must think, Aoife. Now is the time for thought, not action.
She smiles at Ben (her best MI6 smile, the one she used on the Turkish ambassador in order to steal his room keys) and then thanks him for breaking up the fight. She offers to buy him a coffee but he just had one so he says no thanks. Okay, she thinks. She must keep this man’s attention. She insists on thanking him and offers to buy him a slice of cherry pie. Ben eyes the pie rack, the light, flaky crust, the golden brown latticed dough, the blood-red cherry filling gleaming in the subterranean light of The Black Query. His stomach, with the fresh memory of having been shot through, aches with desire. He cannot resist.
Sure, Ben says. I’ll have a slice of pie with you.
When they are seated at the booth farthest from the counter (Sophie is still glaring in their direction), Aoife asks him:
By any chance, do you know anything about thylacines?
Ben, wiping the bits of pie crust off of his lips, shakes his head. He swallows and asks her what a thylacine is.
It’s a type of extinct mammal, Aoife says. Long nose and kind of cute. It sort of looks like a dog or a hyena.
Ben shrugs, forks another bite of pie, thinks of the protagonist’s Spirit Animal. He imagines his head as a snowglobe; all glass and snowy and holding the image of the protagonist directly in the center of it. He, with some effort, pushes the image aside (though the Hidden Hosts of the Black Query dredge up facsimiles to imposes on Aoife, such as an erroneous reflection in the newly-repaired plate glass window) Ben Canadine dons his best poker face. It seems to work.
—
Tell him to keep his hands up.
Keep your hands up.
Charlie does as he is told. He leans back into his leather chair and runs his hand, supple and thick brown fingers, through his hair. There is something vaguely familiar about this big bald man, though, Charlie thinks, and it would be much more fascinating to contemplate that familiarity had it not been for the gun in his hand.
And take your glasses off, Dodger says, two of his carpenter’s fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. Charlie obeys.
Where is he?
Where is he?
Charlie finds it hard to maintain eye contact with this man. There is a rabidness in there. A starving and feral animal somewhere inside the iris. Much like some of the guys in the Psy department. Ah, the Psy department, could that be it?
I’ve already told you. I have no idea where he is. We played chess last night, as usual and today, well, he’s gone.
The Firm has at least–
The Firm has at least–
-eighteen, no, buddy, don’t say any of this, I’m just thinking out loud- eighteen subterranean entrances and exits all throughout this place. I only personally know my old departments entrances and exits. The Psy department ones. By the time we figure out which one he used, he’ll be long gone. Here, try this…
Dodger reaches into his duffelbag and produces the small metal hard drive that he’d stolen from David’s computer. He holds it up in front of the Charlie’s face.
Got enough here-
Got enough here, Dodger says as he clicks off the safety on his handgun, got enough here to prove that you’ve been going against the Page. You’ve been trying to alter the Central Arc. I know it. You told me that you’d sent him to France to capture a defector but that was a lie, wasn’t it? You’d actually sent him to the Netherlands where he got a peek at the Page. He took a night train to Belgium, dodged each assassination attempt (with the combined assistance of Psy and Int) and caught a flight back here. Then, two days later, they fired a missile at his apartment complex. Did he tell you part of what was written on the Page? Is it true, then, that if you read enough of it protagonism occurs? Accessibility to the Page approaches zero if protagonism is left unchecked?
Is that you, Eddie?
Of course it is, Charlie. And I’m going to kill you if you don’t start talking to me. You had the Int boys scratch that formula into the bathroom stall at The Black Query. You knew I’d see it, didn’t you? Knew I’d get unstuck from the narrative.
Well, Charlie says, like with most of our Psy department heads before you, there is an expiration date. I mean to say that the leadership role in your department is doomed, in a functionally dependent way, to succumb to some sort of madness. You knew this. We knew this. And your date was just about up. With your considerable ability the Old Man and I thought to, well, to spare you a more gruesome end.
You thought to make me
irrelevant.
Well, don’t be so dramatic, Eddie. Irrelevance can be a blessing in this line of work. And it looks like you’ve dodged that bullet, no? Though, one has to ask: at what cost?
Even knowing that he’d just lied to Eddie (that bit about having dodged a bullet), Charlie sits back and sighs in way that could be interpreted as resignation (due to being held at gunpoint and likely breathing his last) but it was actually Relief. This was because of two reasons:
One: If Eddie was here (or whatever was left of Eddie, anyway) then that means he could never be at the Veterinarian University party.
&
Two: Eddie Swirls, despite having a bad (and very effective case of Narrative Disassociation Disorder) can, now, firmly be identified as a Secondary Antagonist.
—
Along the rows of brown, faux-wooden desks salvaged from a defunct WWII warehouse, the accountants hardly, at first, noticed her. It started as a gentle murmur, at one end of one row, and slowly snowballed until it would truncate, briefly, as the murmuring neared her. Waves of little rumors, stapler-and-desklamp obfuscated glances stolen quickly from corners of eyes. All this beneath the sound of keystrokes, clicks, clock ticks, papers printing and sheaves crumpled.
And she’d just been dumped here, she thought, in this weird subterranean office complex. Where did that, sick, hulking bald guy go? Dodger? She supposed it was a relief, anyway, to be out of that sweaty madman’s company. Not to say that the previous twelve hours hadn’t been nightmarish in their own right, with the body of her ex likely still folded over on a bed somewhere above ground, brain matter matted against the the back wall. She rubs the exhaustion from her eyes, walks down the weird aisle, catches a woman staring at her, meanders down another aisle. As far as the eye can see there are wooden desks, men and women in suits typing on computers, answering phones, swiveling in their chairs to talk to the person behind them. And all the while, just behind Katie, there is a cresting wave of stolen peeks and whispered comments. In the history of corporate espionage, there has never been a bigger heist. Katie’s presence alone in The Firm’s Central Business Division has caused (not without the aid of her succinct and elaborate archetype manipulation training) staggering financial damages. It is one of the central reasons why, in four hour’s time (though they don’t yet recognize its death-throes) The Firm will financially implode fantastically, leaving aimless psychics, intelligence agents and very thorough (yet susceptible) bureaucrats to wander the city streets aimlessly, for weeks, as if they were all refugees of some calamitous and baffling war. More than a few will end up in The Black Query and its no surprise, really, that their abilities may fall into precisely the ‘wrong hands’.
Even with the looming disaster, The Firm will still manage (merely hours before their utter and complete dissolution) to execute its main prerogative of All Mankind’s sheer disassociation with the Page. Even now, the golden-texted spiraling pillar of layered scrolls (said to contain ‘everything, ever’ in the most Borgesian sense) is drifting somewhere in Outer Space, bumping from port to starboard in a sound-less zero-G dance, locked tight within the emptied payload of a salvaged MIRV missile.
Katie ducks into a nearby alcove tucked into the colorless concrete wall and rounds a corner into the women’s W.C. She splashes her face with water and towels off with exceptionally thick paper towels from a silver dispenser hanging next to the mirror. She can still hear the Business Division working away down the hall. As she leaves, she passes some vending machines and watches for a moment in order to test a theory. She observes as each and every prospective snack-getter fails to appropriately gauge the amount owed to their respective vending machines. 1.25$ for a Coke? Watch as he fumbles with eight quarters, settles on inserting two and, in a state of vexed embarrassment, abandons the entire operation for a sip from the water fountain. Are her powers somehow amplified in this place? Is she losing control? Perhaps it’s due to stress or the full moon or her menstrual cycle. Katie looks around, finds the nearest fire-exit and quickly leaves.
She stalks featureless, smooth concrete hallways. Wooden doors with labels such as “Antagonist Identification Testing Facility”, “Jello Room”, “Hypothetical Party Simulation and Outcome Room” and “Voyeurism Room” pass by on her left and right. And then there are a series of labyrinthine exit passages marked by colors and numbers. Katie is now operating on what her father (during hunting forays in the Adirondacks) would have called ‘gut feeling’. She skips exits Red 1A and Blue 2G. She turns a corner and ascends a short flight of stairs. In the loft she passes, she spies below her exits Fuchsia 12R and Aquamarine 7Q. She thinks these do not particularly call out to her. She wades through a thick marsh, the colorless concrete walls obscured by a low-hanging fog. Typha and milkweed sway in an unseen current. Something slithers past her leg. She climbs out of the other side dripping wet and strips out of her soaked jeans. She winces at the sight of her stubbly, quasi-hairy legs but shrugs it off. At least it’s not the middle of winter. She wrings out her jeans and carries them with her.
She passes an archway labeled Intelligence Department and feels no inclination to investigate so she continues onward towards exit Yellow 5H. This one feels pretty good, she thinks. She ascends a dark, narrow corridor whose incline seems to increase exponentially. She’s crawling on all fours when she emerges into an open, dark space. After a bit of stumbling around she finds a door and emerges from an accessway into a clinical-white corridor. There is an icy chill riding on the draft which whistles through the hall. To the left there is a sign which reads “Cold Storage” and to the right there is another stairwell.
– – –
After some struggling, Ben Canadine manages to reach the single razor that he keeps tucked inside a little slot in the sole of his boot. He can hear Aoife talking to someone on her cell phone just outside the bathroom stall. She has locked the door to the bathroom with the chain and the bolt. He can see her feet from his vantage point on the floor; black military boots as she stalks in front of the sinks. Her FN Five-Seven mk2 is brandished in her right hand. She is speaking what he assumes to be Dutch and he can only make out the name ‘Jan’. Soft ‘J’, naturally.
He quietly works at the zip tie binding his wrists together. He writhes on the stall floor but strives to keep his struggle to an aural minimum lest the assassin hear him. Aoife, meanwhile, is incensed:
Hoe bedoel je dat je een deal hebt gesloten? Welk feest? Je bent hier?
It’s gibberish to Ben and, more importantly, he’s made it through the zip tie. Now to work through that which binds his ankles.
The bathroom stall slams open as Aoife comes in. She makes the same demands she’s been making for the past thirty minutes. ‘Who is the thylacine?” over and over again. This time, however, Ben manages to catch her off guard. She was not expecting the razor or for him to be freed from his plastic restraints. Ben suddenly manages to yank Aoife down to the toilet above him. He quickly stands and forces her head into the toilet (unflushed since at least two days prior) and attempts to drown her. She splashes the shitty water all over the stall and Ben, disarmed by the smell and stumbling back due to his bound ankles, releases his grasp, drops his razor somewhere on the ground and falls out of the stall. Aoife bolts upwards, wretches, kneels down and vomits again on Ben’s legs. He kicks the gun out of her hand and dry heaves from the unidentified chunks now liberally dispersed among them (its vomit and feces) as he struggles to his knees and makes for the firearm skittering across the floor. Aoife recovers and stands. She lifts Ben up to his feet and slams him into the bathroom stall door. The door unhinges with the force of her blow and they tumble, entwined, upon it. In the confusion, Ben has gained the upper hand. He sits astride Aoife, points her gun at her and checks the chambered bullet. They both catch their breath. The toilet gurgles.
Next to Aoife, ignoring her enraged eyes, Ben spies a line of text carved into the stall door beneath her. He cannot tear his eyes away. He nudges her head out of the way with the muzzle of the gun. Sopping, shit-logged blonde hair trailing against the cheap metal. It’s a formula, he thinks. It’s very simple and in reading it, he has automatically memorized it. He feels suddenly wholly unburdened, childlike, free to shed each and every article of care he has thus far carefully stored and neatly labeled in the cabinets of his mind. But there is also a sublime sadness in there, somewhere. He immediately understands what he’s read. Aoife blazes beneath him, but her brow slowly unknits, anger making way for confusion and curiousity. What has drawn Ben’s attention so suddenly and completely? Ben allows her to turn and read the formula carved into the bathroom stall door at The Black Query.
They emerge from the bathroom separately but in similar states of repose. Aoife Eirzmann exits the front of the cafe with Liza and Sophie Sinclair staring and snickering at her wet and filthy back in bemused awe. Ben Canadine walks out of the back door, crosses the parking lot and looks forward to a hot shower.
– – –
And this, too, says Boley as he produces the wig from his black trash bag.
The pigtails, admittedly, were a nice touch but if the protagonist were to ever do it again, he’d leave Boley out of it. Who knows where he’d even found the dirndl dress. Why not wear lederhosen?
A costume party?
That’s right, says Boley. Our guy is gonna be there. Finally. All you gotta do is beat him at a game.
W-what kinda game?
Chess, says Boley as he helps the protagonist button up his dress. Don’t think all those games against Charlie were coincidental. It was training.
Okay, and what are the s-stakes?
It’d be much simpler if you didn’t know, Jacko.
They entered the Veterinarians University housing complex late in the evening. The sun was just dipping beyond the trees at the edge of the sprawling campus. Up here, among the buxom blondes and fresh breeze blowing in from the eastern farmlands it was difficult for our protagonist to imagine the hundreds of frozen simian samples that were piled up not so far beneath their feet. He adjusted the bodice piece of his dirndl and resisted the urge to rip off his wig and scratch his itchy scalp. Boley bid his farewell as he walked off into the darkening parking lot and into his black van. He’d provide supplementary support, he’d said, via remote viewing from the van. The protagonist couldn’t help but admire the needless complexity favored by the Psy department.
He hadn’t meant to get drunk but he was and there was nothing to be done about it. Punch bowls and piano players and overflowing bubbly hot tubs were severe distractions for a man who’d spent so long underground with moldy old men and talks of dream-causal interference. Besides, look at all the shabby costumes. There are knock-off Hollywood actors. Modern urban mythological creatures. Terrorists, vampires and a giant inflatable phallus. Even when Katie showed up in her underwear, it served little to sober him up. They kissed and perhaps she did fall prey to his dirndl and apparent vulnerability but it was short-lived. When Jan van der Straeten sat down on the sofa out on the second story veranda (curiously un-costumed), high on the purest dex he could get his hands on, and challenged any comer to a game of chess, the protagonist did not hesitate to call out his victorious intentions. He then proceeded to slip, fall onto his face and chip his front tooth on the way out to the sofa. He passed out right there on the floor.
Boley, having been monitoring this situation through an intermediary medium (the guy spent twenty hours of the day asleep, dream-spying and thwarting USSR revivalists) who’d been installed in the black van complete with his own bed, issued a drone delivery from The Firm. The drone appeared within six minutes and dropped off Boley’s package before swiftly buzzing away. He opened the package, removed the sheathed epinephrine syringe and pocketed it as he made his way to the housing units down by the treeline of campus. Boley walks into the party nonchalantly and plunges the needle into the protagonists plump (and slumbering) dirndl-laden ass.
Still drunk but considerably more aware, our protagonist is led (with Katie’s assistance) to the sofa on the veranda where he sits across from Jan Van der Straeten. And then they play chess. Each man is an extension of the interests they serve and each interest is the manifestation of a master. When the thylacine trumps the lion, a corporate deal goes down which fulfills every prophecy of the Page, which is then, in turn, sent into geosynchronous orbit. Two hours later, the Firm collapses under massive financial missteps which are seemingly untraceable.
– – –
Dodger Dallas could have shot himself in the head, he guesses, down in the belly of The Firm. But he didn’t. It’s not a decision he regrets. And yes, it is true that he still (even to this day, the days of post-Page) cannot un-see the visage of Eddie Swirls in puddles and miscalculated glances at reflective surfaces. Even so, Dodger (in his thoroughness) decides to tie up some loose ends. The murder confession mysteriously concludes with a hung jury (was that Charlie in the jury?) and after some time, Dodger’s life congeals into something not far removed from routine and pleasantness. He doesn’t even hear Eddie’s voice anymore. Ah, Dodger thinks, the true bliss of irrelevance.
He maintains the buildings in his neighborhood at a modest price. He watches movies with middle-aged dates (and really, a couple of them seem very promising). He drinks coffee at The Black Query, shoots the breeze with Sophie Sinclair and remembers to never use public toilets.
