Charlie Huston - Sleepless

Elements in my apocalypse collection, they had occasionally served me as barometers of human nature, measuring the extent to which certain people had been deadened to revulsion by their reactions at seeing them lined up on a shelf in the bookcase. None of the men in the room had given them more than a glance. But they were worthy of a second look. Excellent craft had gone into their making. The jitterbugging squirrels and the cow eye were gallery pieces, the winged cat was a special commission I had waited over a year to receive. I’d requested a large cat, and the artist had had to wait until an appropriate corpse became available. In the end she’d asked if I would accept a calico dyed black. I did. The dimensions were my primary concern; the authenticity of color was never an issue. Its girth anchored the entire bookcase; everything on the shelves referred back to it. The black-winged cat in its book-lined aerie.

It became impossible to continue along that line of thought, however. The smell of burning hair and seared skin had become punctuated by a whiff of rendered fat. My scream shocked me from my reverie, and I became aware again of the questions that were being asked.

“Is your employer political or criminal?”

The question had been asked many times, but, for some reason, it was only at that moment that the humor of it struck me, and as my scream diminished, I laughed.

There was a general pause in the room. The man inventorying my data and records looked up from the laptop he was currently trying to access without my password. The man at the windows took the binoculars from his eyes. The interrogator glanced away from his script. And the man with the soldering iron pulled it from my leg, holding it poised in the air like a quill that he would soon dip again into a well of ink.

They waited out my moment of hysteria, knowing that if they forged on I might well slip over an edge and become insensible for several hours. My composure returned in a matter of moments, but I continued to laugh for a full three minutes. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. I have never accepted that bit of homespun, but I indulged myself nonetheless.

I used some of the time to flex my right leg what little bit my bonds would allow, reassuring myself that no permanent damage had yet been done to the ligaments and muscles in my knee. I used the rest of the few minutes to release whatever tensions the false laughter could shake loose. I needed a degree of relaxation from which to rebuild my concentration. Which is how I used the final moments I had to myself. Fixing, this time, on a canvas by Wu Shanzhuan, “Today No Water-Chapter 29.”

Covering most of the wall opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows looking over the city, the reds of the painting glowed when a proper Los Angeles sunset lit the sky. Dense with schematic images of architecture, religion, anatomy, geometry, and plumbing, all intertwined with English and Chinese text. My eyes settled of their own will on the words “open box.” I pictured lifting the lid from a shoe box. Peeling the tape from a cardboard carton. Prying the top from a crate. Easing open a clamshell jewelry case. I tried to reconstruct in detail the inner workings of a classic box escape no longer in vogue but very popular among stage magicians of the nineteenth century. Wishing, when the soldering iron was newly applied to my inner thigh, that it was only a box I was trapped in.

“Are your employers political or criminal?”

I did not laugh this time.

7/10/10

CAN THAT BE right? Is it still the tenth? This morning was what? Yes, it’s the tenth. This morning was when I sat in the car and wrote here before going to the high school. A little over twelve hours since I stashed the journal and travel drive in the spare before going.

Francine came out with the baby and told me Rose was in the bedroom trying to meditate. I took the baby from Francine, she started to cry. After Francine left I didn’t want to go into the bedroom and disturb Rose. The meditation doesn’t work as well as it used to, but sometimes she can still put herself into a slight trance. She says it’s not like sleeping at all, but she gets perspective.

Perspective.

Captain Bartolome didn’t say anything about the murders at the gold farm. He didn’t say anything about Hydo’s drive. The feds who came here didn’t search the house after they found the safe. They only took my police reports, the DR33M3R, and the slides. If they had known about the drive and the file with Cager’s name on it they would have looked for it also.

They don’t know about the drive.

Captain Bartolome and the Washington suits don’t know Cager did business with the gold farmers.

They only came for the DR33M3R and my reports. They took the fingerprints because they were right there in the safe.

My reports. I mention the murders.

The drive?

No, I didn’t. I hid it from Bartolome. It’s not in the reports. But the murders are. They won’t care. Yes, they will. If they know that Cager did some kind of business with Hydo Chang, they will care. But they didn’t know about the drive. So they don’t know I was there.

But they will when they read the reports.

What then?

What do they want? They want to keep the Afronzos clean. And? What else? Anything? Why am I here? Why am I working Dreamer? If they don’t want the Afronzos implicated in DR33M3R trade and they know Cager is using it for barter, why look for DR33M3R trade?

Perspective. They don’t think like I do. They think like they do.

Father used to say something about being posted on foreign soil: “It’s not their job, Parker, to accommodate our ways, it is our job to understand theirs. Once we understand how they think, we can begin to predict their behavior. Once our predictions become accurate, we can begin to manipulate their behavior. That is diplomacy.”

Perspective.

They know there is something to be found. They know Cager is selling Dreamer. They know that it will cause trouble if he is found. But they have the police, me, investigating anyway.

Because?

Because they don’t want anyone to know. Because they don’t want anyone they can’t control to find out. If it leaks, if their system leaks, they have to know first. People they control have to know first.

To find leaks. To find leaks that lead to Cager and the Afronzo family. To find the leaks before anyone else does so they can be patched.

I’m a plumber.

Rose. Are you reading this? You gave me this book. I write in it, and I think of you. Are you reading this?

I am a plumber.

They have me doing their dirty work for them. Rose. I thought. I don’t know what. I thought there was a reason for the time I spent away from you and the baby. I thought this was something that was essential. If the world is going to be normal again, if we are all going to be sane again, if the baby is going to be safe, I thought this was something that had to be done. I thought that I had to be a police officer. When Captain Bartolome offered it to me, I thought that this was the job I needed to do. To make things better. I am such an innocent.

No, that’s wrong; innocent is the last thing I am. You are wrong about that, Rose. But I am naïve. And proud. To think that I thought I was doing something to help save the world.

I am their plumber.

I am doing maintenance on the world they are making. I am a fool.

Perspective.

Don’t whine, Rose would say. Don’t fucking whine. Do something about it.

She won’t talk to me. Still. After Captain Bartolome left I went to the yard to try and talk to her. When I left in the morning I told her I would be back soon. And I wasn’t. Francine said she found Rose rigid at the foot of the crib, watching the baby cry. Talking to herself, saying again and again, “This is my baby, this is my baby.” She didn’t want to take her out of the crib. She was afraid that she would forget where and when she was, forget the baby, and put her down somewhere dangerous. She spent all day at the crib, afraid to touch the crying baby, telling herself who she is, when it is, and who the baby is. She shouldn’t talk to me.