Mark de Silva - Square Wave

“So it fits even more? I helped you put together a picture of a person—”

“Not a picture — not a physical description. Parts of it are that.”

“No, but a picture of a person, an idea of a person.”

“You did. It was vital, what you added to it.”

“But this idea fits twelve, and not even them so well you’ll call them suspects. Maybe it fits a hundred, really.”

“That’s true.”

“A thousand.”

“I don’t know.”

“And this was vital.”

“It could be. You were vital in creating it.”

“How is that even an idea of a person? What sort of picture matches everyone? What sort of picture is that?”

“Look, Ms. Best—”

“I think ‘Jen’ is better.”

“We haven’t had any incidents recently. Nothing in weeks, in any of the districts.”

“And that’s not good?”

“Well, of course it’s good. It’s—”

“But for the case. You need more. More beatings.”

“No. We don’t want to see any more—”

“You don’t want more. Obviously. Of course. You’re not evil. You only need more. It would help. And you wish I had more. But that’s what I mean. I can’t tell you very much about how it happened, not the way you want to know.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Well that’s just idle. ‘Fault.’”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you are evil, Carl.” She laughed and it mixed with the static and made the phone clip. “And my experience, my pain, it hasn’t moved anything, changed anything.”

“I just said it has. The profile.”

“It really is a stupid word you brought up.”

“Jen, we are going through what we have. What we know, in all sorts of ways, from every direction. Something can emerge.”

For a long time, they listened to each other breathe.

“You seem different today,” Stagg said finally.

“Different how?”

“Terse.”

“Just like you. Maybe it’s being off the pills. Or just the phone.”

“Maybe.”

“And does that mean you found me awfully chatty at the interview? You can be strange. Just like she said.”

“She?”

“My friend. The one who let you in.”

“Mariela.”

“Dress shoes and no socks. Wet pants.”

“The legs. She mentioned that?”

“You looked at my fingers the whole time I talked.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“The colors maybe.”

“I was listening.”

“You ran into Mariela on your way out.”

“That’s right.”

“She thought you were so strange.”

“Well, I’m not a cop. Maybe that’s who she’s used to dealing with.”

She laughed. “I’m sure she is. But there are lots of you now. Watches, I mean. That’s not strange, Carl.”

“Maybe I was bothered by your story. I’d only just heard it. It might have showed.”

“Maybe you were bothered?”

“Jen—”

“Do you have a girlfriend, Carl?”

“Your story—”

“Do you?”

“Yes, but this story—”

“She must be very understanding.”

“I’m sorry, if I didn’t—”

“Or she just tunes you out. I bet that’s it.”

“I was taking it all down.”

“I guess you’ve already got plenty to worry about, don’t you?”

“It’s a terrible story.”

Again there was a pause.

“You know,” Jen began, “what someone should seem like, why they should seem like anything in particular… Mariela’s ideas are definite. Not like the profile. The opposite problem. But maybe I’ve missed something. She’s managed to stay on her feet the whole time. And I’m still not better. Still, I was glad to go in the end.”

“Go?”

“Mariela’s too worried, too aware, whatever it is, to live with for very long. Does it even help? I wonder whether she took me in partly for that, to size up this threat. From a toll. I’m a toll. I don’t think that’s true. She did ask me a lot, though, long strings of questions, stretched out over days. She would pick up out of nowhere. About friends of hers I may have worked beside, people I saw that day, any signs there may have been, what did I miss, what did I not see. Or the lack of signs. Maybe I missed nothing, he was that good, or lucky. And how quickly I knew, and now that it’s happened, what will I do. She’s been trying to get me to call you, actually.”

“Strange as I am.”

“But I didn’t call you. You had to call. And that’s because I don’t think there’s much I know. She just assumes I must, that it’s only got to be fished out. I don’t mind talking about it. But the angle, the way it’s always a piece of a bigger puzzle. I can’t think like that.”

“You don’t.”

“Not as that. A reign of terror or whatever. And over a bunch of sluts.”

“But you’re worried about the profile.”

“I want to be useful, Carl. You aren’t calling me for personal reflections, ones that end there, tell you nothing about the future.”

“What about just your future?”

“I don’t think about that either.”

“It would be pretty hard not to.”

“It is hard.”

“Impossible almost.”

“No. But it doesn’t help, so I don’t.”

“And Mariela?”

“She thinks only of the future, as far as I can tell. That must be hard too. She has a kind of concern for the group at the front of her thoughts — her among the many. She’s helped me because of it probably. She might have helped anyway. But she thinks about things in this way I can’t. Like you.”

“About the city, the community.”

“The future of it.”

“Well, professionally, yes, I think about it.”

“This can’t seriously be your profession. This is about convenience. I’m sure of that.”

“It’s one of them.”

“Right, so there are others.”

“They pay me to consider the whole—”

“They pay you for the particulars, like these.”

“Yes, but for the benefit of the whole. I keep it in mind.”

“Professionally.”

“Right.”

“Maybe that’s what Mariela meant. That it ended there for you. Just a job to do. Or is that impossible too?”

“It could be. I’m not sure.”

“Anyway, she needed the space back. It was always temporary. Her boyfriend made it from Quito. Mariela’s the breadwinner now. Proud.”

“And—”

“I’m in my place, for weeks now. With my brother, for the meantime. He’s in the other bedroom. He’s helping me cover rent.”

“So things are okay.”

“He can work from here. Coding identity software. It’s kept our parents out of it. I think they think I’ll eventually go back to college. That’s what he — Reed — tells me. But they are less sure now, it’s been three years, not the year off they signed on for.”

“You were studying what, before you left.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Anything can help.”

“Classics, while it lasted. Is that funny? Is it strange?”

“They get you to pick something. Why not.”

“It’s more than that. But the incompletes were piling up.”

“And they think what?”

“My parents? Traveling, partly. And I am. I spent about half the time, less than that, in California, between San Diego and L.A. And then a bunch of places around here. I assume they think I’m figuring things out. That’s never totally false, I guess, whoever says it.”

“And nothing unusual, no trouble.”

“Things aren’t good between us, just in the last year really. My father won’t take the phone anymore. I’m not mad though. I see it. They’re wondering about college. Officially it’s odd jobs — waitressing, tutoring even. I’ve done a little of those things too. They don’t know why I want to keep doing this, though, and I’ve said some things along the way about writing. I guess that’s another thing you can say and never really be insincere. Everyone has that wish in them, somewhere. But I’ve written nothing. No journals. I don’t really think I will, when it comes down to it. I think I prefer reading.”