R.Scott Bakker: Disciple of the dog

On and on, everywhere I looked…

A million and one places to hide a Dead Jennifer.

The Compound had that well-heeled rural manse look, everything prim and oh so agricultural, only with an inward Waco air. Us against the world-you know. The iron gates stood ajar. I clattered down the lane in my old Vee-Dub, craning my head this way and that to get a sense of things. Gravel popped loud through my open window. Two monstrous willows swayed their skirts in the summer breeze-a whiff of paradise in that, I suppose. The original farmhouse towered grand over a series of white-brick additions. Despite the obvious age of the original structure, everything about it had that tight, buttoned look- like new windows nailed down. Wood chip gardens sprawled around the foundations, bright with flowers. The lane hooked around, opening onto a lot hedged on two sides by long, low barns that had been renovated to house human livestock. The place was huge, I realized. At least thirty thousand labyrinthine square feet. Maybe more.

Just another factory, I told myself.

A guy appeared from behind a sun-flashing glass door. He looked like someone out of a pharmaceutical commercial-you know, middle- class good looks and an unflinching hope-for-the-future smile, only with crooked teeth. He wore a uniform-a white suit of some kind with no collar on the jacket.

Not a good sign. A belief system with its own outfits. Fawk.

He timed his stride to reach me the instant I slammed my car door. He shook my hand in a firm, dry grip, introduced himself as Stevie. I found him instantly irritating.

I gave him my card, and while he struggled to read the print along the bottom of the giant iris and pupil I used as my logo (I fucking told Kimberley that nobody could read the print, but apparently I was the only one with vision problems), I explained that the Bonjours had sent me to investigate the disappearance of their daughter, Jennifer. Stevie nodded sagely, returned the card.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

“I was hoping to talk to Baars… “

“The Counsellor? He’s teaching a class.”

“Cool. Would it be okay for me to sit in?”

He blinked and smiled-like a Buddha listening to a child.

“Have you crossed the Lacuna?”

“Lacuna?”

The fucker knew I had no clue as to what the Lacuna was, and yet he baited me with the question anyway.

“Sorry. You’ll have to wait in the Clink.”

For a second I pondered smacking him. Everything about the guy made me bristle. I understood immediately that he was one of those smug little pricks who could only laugh to himself-you know, laugh that insipid self-congratulatory laugh, either because he thought he had said something witty or because he thought himself clever for getting something witty said by someone else. Stevie. Cult member.

What a fucking loser. All these people organizing their lives around an invisible world. I had an uncle who was a missionary, who would always probe me about my relationship with Jesus in warm, gentle tones, like I was the world’s last orphan or something. Then, late at night, I would hear him screaming at my mom, telling her I was damned to blister in hell.

So I learned early on that when you’re with people, you’re never really with people-not simply, anyway. Not only do they tow their histories around with them, they carry their ideologies with them as well. You can’t serve pork chops to just anyone, you know.

But then, this assumes it’s possible to organize your life in any other way. If you think about it, there really isn’t that much practical difference between things like Wall Street and Paradise: You believe that certain numbers in certain circuits will grant you life after labour-retirement- simply because you’ve diligently attended to these numbers. Because you’re one of the righteous.

Not knowing shit and yet acting in all ways as if you do: this is the essence of human civilization.

They’ve even invented a name for it.

Trust. Either way, I was having none of it.

The Clink, it turned out, was simply their nickname for the Compound’s waiting room. I was at once surprised and more than a little relieved that the Framers had some kind of sense of humour. Strange when you think about it, the antipathy between religion and humour, worship and ridicule. Ruthless ears on the one side, ruthless voices on the other.

The Clink ran parallel to the south end of the parking lot, a long room with tinted plate glass along one wall and floor-to-ceiling mirrors across the other. Of course Stevie-boy planted me in a seat opposite the mirrored wall. I’m pretty easy on the eyes-dark with those avian features that so many women find irresistible-so that wasn’t a problem. But being stuck with your reflection is something altogether different. There’s the whole Taxi Driver thing, the slippage between being and posturing. Otherwise, there’s just something damn creepy about watching yourself watching yourself… Something wrong about seeing the guy behind the seeing.

And confusing. I mean, really, just who was that good-looking, two- dimensional man?

We may never know.

My cell crunched out the riff to “Back in Black.” It was Kimberley, of course.

“Where are you?” she asked in a higher than usual tone. I knew instantly that something was wrong.

“At the hotel, checking in.”

“Look…” A moment of cigarette-inhaling silence.

“Look what?”

I winced at my tone, as well as at the crash of recollections that followed. I have more than a few bad habits when it comes to managing women and their fears and expectations.

“I just need to know what you meant when you said… “ Another draw on her cigarette, then a dead-air pause. “What you said.. ”

I shot a questioning look at the guy in the mirror. He shrugged.

“Said what?”

I could feel the anger balling into fists on the other end.

“You know… Love you, babe…’”

Fawk.

A head-scratching squint from the dude in the mirror.

“Just an expression, honey,” I said. “You know, ‘Love you, baby!’ My way of saying, ‘Good work!’”

“Good work,”she repeated in the voice of the undead. I’ve heard people talk about STDs with more enthusiasm.

“Yeah… you know…”

But the phone was already dead.

Shiyit.

“Mr. Manning!” someone called across the tiled foyer.

Xenophon Baars. The guy was a physically impressive specimen: tall in that angular, Honest Abe kind of way, with a slight stoop that paradoxically suggested strength rather than infirmity. His face had a boyish air that no amount of aging could dispel, one accentuated by the long-banged unruliness of his hair. His eyes looked sharp behind the reflections gliding across the lenses of his glasses. He wore a white suit identical to Stevie’s in every respect save that it sported a red collar. Nice touch, that, I thought.

Real Star Treky.

“So what do you think of our place?” he asked.

“Looks like a juvenile detention centre.”

Not very diplomatic, I suppose, but something about the guy suggested that my peculiar brand of cynical honesty would be appreciated. He was a former philosophy professor, and I have enough egghead friends to know that cynicism is their favourite way of hiding hypocrisy in plain view.

We spent a couple of minutes commiserating about Jennifer before he led me deeper into the Compound. She was well loved and sorely missed and all that ya-ya crap. I got the sense that her room, wherever it was in this labyrinth, had already been “repurposed.” Baars himself, at least, didn’t seem all that sentimental. I found myself thinking of Amanda Bonjour crying while she tied her shoes. The inaudible tap-tap of tears across cracked and raised lineoleum.