Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“It gives me strength for when I pull you out of the place by your hair.”

“Charming. I need to run home first real quick,” she said. “Why don’t you go and get us a table, order me a nice pinot, and I’ll meet you there?”

“Look for me in the knuckle-dragger section,” I said.

I made my way to Hoboken and easily found parking-a minor miracle-then proceeded to the bar, a cozy little yuppie breeding ground about a half block from Tina’s place. It being a Thursday night, the place wasn’t too full. I selected a booth with a semicircular table along the far wall. It was designed for a couple, and the lighting was just right, the kind of setup that announced to the entire establishment you intended to bonk like bonobos later in the evening.

I picked up the wine menu, but it was mostly just to kill time. I’m a total wine ignoramus. Making sense of the Torah in the original Hebrew would be easier for me. Eventually, I ordered Tina her pinot noir, selecting the name Fetzer because it amused me. Then I ordered myself a beer, earning a witheringly snooty look from the waitress.

When Tina arrived, she had ditched her work clothes in favor of a knee-length black cocktail dress with bare shoulders and a keyhole neckline. She looked stunning. It was all I could do to keep my jaw on its hinge.

“I just couldn’t stay in pants for another five minutes,” she explained.

I went to make a lame joke about how I wished all my dates felt that way, but my mouth was dry. It didn’t take much imagination to know that dress would go from body to floor in 2.1 seconds. As she sat down, the dress shimmied halfway up her thigh, making it impossible to decide which part of her to ogle first.

“You look great,” I managed to say.

She gave me an “oh, what, this old thing?” shrug. I couldn’t help but be impressed-not just at how stunning she looked, but at how effortlessly she was working me.

Most guys cling to this archaic notion we are the seducers and women are the seduced. And perhaps, where the less clever of the gender is concerned, that’s true. But in the presence of the truly skilled female, such as Tina, the myth of male domination is just another one of those wrongheaded ideas women allow to be perpetuated so guys never turn around to see the marionette strings coming out our backs.

It’s like lion prides. For years, researchers-sorry, male researchers-believed the boy lions duked it out for the right to breed with the girl lions, who were passive spectators in the whole thing. The record only got set straight when some female researchers came along and took a more careful look at the social dynamics in the pride that preceded the fight. It turns out much of the time the lionesses are really calling the shots, selecting the most fit breeding partner. The fights the boy lions have are merely a noisy confirmation of what the girl lions have already decided among themselves.

So there I was, as our drinks arrived, wondering if I had been selected to beat the other lions to the prize. I wanted to skip the flirting and head straight to the making out, because nothing is more fun than engaging in truly obnoxious displays of public affection-if only because it makes the loveless married couples so damn uncomfortable.

But Tina had subtly shifted her weight, crossing her legs in a way that made it impossible for me to move in without getting a knee in the thigh. Obviously, she wanted her puppet to talk for a while first. So she asked me about my story, and I answered.

Another round of drinks arrived, and I was still talking-but without her having to ask questions. By the third round, it really started pouring out of me, all the emotion of the previous few days that I had been suppressing for one reason or another.

I would say I was rambling, but it was worse than that. I was blubbering.

Somewhere along the line, a transformation occurred in Tina. She was no longer wooing me with her black dress and knockout legs. She was reassuring me with this look of tender concern. She had pulled a cardigan over her shoulders-where the hell had that come from? — and I could tell she was keeping a tissue at the ready, in case I started bawling.

What a nightmare. I had managed to wreck the surest thing this side of sunrise because I needed to share my feelings ? What the hell was my problem?

By the time Tina had comforted me and I paid the bill-my one manly act of the evening-I was just sober enough to realize an eighty-dollar bar tab meant I wasn’t going to be driving anywhere. As we departed, there was intimacy between us in that we had just shared an emotional experience. But there was no romance and certainly no lust. Nor should there have been. Don Juan never blubbered on his lover’s shoulder.

Before long I was back in a familiar place: on Tina’s couch, covered in a blanket, very much alone.

The Director awoke early, a habit he picked up in the military and had been unable to shake, even fifteen years after his last salute. It pleased him to know he started his day while most of the world slept. He noticed it was a trait common among the high-powered CEOs profiled on the cover of those business magazines. They were all early risers.

The Director considered himself their peer, even if he never got his due for it. So he set his alarm clock for 4 A.M.

He tiptoed down to the gym he had built in the basement of his suburban New Jersey home. His wife and three children complained about the noise of iron slapping iron interrupting their sleep, so he had soundproofed it like a recording studio. Only the softest ping escaped, not nearly enough noise to wake them.

The Director had been working out six days a week since he left the military. He once swore he would never allow himself to get soft-he would keep the same iron-hard stomach as when he had been the fittest colonel in the army.

Alas, civilian food agreed with him too much. And as his metabolism slowed with age, he made a new vow: he would never allow himself to get weak. He took pride in still being able to bench-press over three hundred pounds. At an age, fifty-five, when some men were thinking about whether or not they would be able to pick up their grandchildren, the Director was still putting up personal bests in his basement weight room.

He completed his workout and shower and was midway through a breakfast of bran cereal and yogurt when he heard the thudding of the newspaper against the door. The Director glanced at his watch, annoyed. It was 5:33. He liked to have his paper earlier.

All those high-powered executives the Director read about started their days by reading two or three newspapers. The Director felt one was sufficient, and his paper of choice was the Eagle-Examiner. He retrieved it from the front porch and took it to the breakfast table, but lost his appetite when he read the first headline: “Heroin links victims in quadruple murder.”

The Director felt sweat pop on his brow. He wanted to break something. But no. His wife would ask what had him so upset. He had to control his rage.

How was this even possible? Had the police figured it out? It couldn’t be. He had informants inside police headquarters. They’d mentioned nothing about this.

The Director started reading and realized this was just some reporter who had stumbled across some things and had managed to make a few lucky guesses. The Director relaxed. The situation could still be controlled if he acted quickly. He picked up the phone and called Monty, waking him from a sound sleep.

“What is it, Director?” Monty said groggily.

“Wake up, Monty,” the Director told him. “We have some damage control to do.”