Devon Ford - The Fall

Returning the phone to his waistband he called Suzanne back in to the room.

“Sir?” she answered as she strode in confidently.

“Get a runner to go to D.C.,” he told her. “Taylor’s eyes only.”

“Replacement EMP?” she asked.

“No,” Butler said, unconcerned at the risk of collateral damage. “Plan B. There’s a bomb for him to collect.”

Suzanne had been navigating the desperately dull world of planning and development, and had been a bored woman. She was bored with life, bored with her job, bored of working hard and never actually seeing a difference to the people she felt mattered.

She had harbored this boredom for years, counting down the weeks of her life as just one catastrophic Tinder date and disappointing sexual encounter every Friday at a time. She wasn’t there because she really believed in the cause, although she did believe in many things the Movement stood for, but she was there all the same. She was there because she just wanted something, anything , to change. She wanted to see the cycle broken. She wanted to find a more fulfilling way to live her life.

The final straw had come when someone from the Office of Professional Integrity walked into her office one morning and shot her a steely, yet almost gleeful gaze as he bypassed her and walked straight into the office of her supervisor, another failed romantic involvement, and shut the door.

Ten minutes passed until her supervisor, a man who felt that wearing a bow tie to work made him seem young and relevant, when in fact it made him look a little like a child molester, smiled a fake smile and asked her if she would kindly join them.

She had packed up her purse, logged off her computer terminal for the last time, walked into the office, and sat down.

“Hi Suzanne,” said her boss, desperately hoping that their brief affair didn’t become public knowledge as a result of this, “thanks for joining us. This is Mr. Andrews from the—”

“I know who he is,” Suzanne interrupted, just about fed up with her life. “Well not who he is, but where he works.” She turned to regard the man sat next to her, and he returned her smile. She hated people like that; people who reminded her of snakes and grease, internal affairs people. “I could smell internal affairs when the elevator door opened, and that was before the temperature dropped twenty degrees,” she said, silencing the room as the smile on the face of Mr. Andrews dropped off the earth.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” she said, rising from her chair, “I quit. I haven’t taken a holiday in months so I expect my notice to be a paid absence.” With that she left the room, leaving both men stunned.

As an afterthought, the door burst open again and she leaned her head back inside.

“And say hi to your wife for me,” she told her boss. “Tell her I’m sorry she has to sleep next to you, because I sure as hell didn’t enjoy it.”

With that, she slammed the door and left an incredibly uncomfortable silence in the room.

“It was just an informal talk about her use of the internet during work hours,” said Andrews, openmouthed at the hostility she showed them both. The man opposite him was too shocked, too scared that Suzanne would say something to his wife, to anyone, to answer.

The internal affairs man rose to return to his office, and to tell his boss that the woman had quit before he even had chance to produce his reams of printouts showing when she had been searching the internet for things not related to work activity. He dropped the ream of paper in the secure recycling bin on his way out, saddened that he wouldn’t get to showcase how meticulous he had been in counting up all the hours she hadn’t been working when at her desk, even if he would get to gossip about the office manager not keeping it in his pants.

If he had taken the time to see what sites she had visited, had bothered to look further than the end of his nose, he may have discovered that Suzanne had been researching off-grid living, had booked herself on a wilderness survival course, had purchased another firearm and items of clothing and equipment a lady working a desk in the Planning Department shouldn’t have need of.

But he didn’t.

Suzanne went home, gave almost all of her possessions away to Goodwill, listed her house for rental, and sold her car for cash. She forwarded her mail to a PO Box, took a train and a cab to her survival course, and spent two glorious months in the woods where she met one Colonel Glenn Butler and seemingly became an eager convert. She didn’t want the ideology, she just wanted the excitement. And she found far more than she had expected to.

Cal regretted his decision to book a place on the first ferry of the morning. He regretted his decision this time not to bring a coat, thinking it would be as warm as the previous day, as the wind blew bitterly after he had passed through another airport-style security checkpoint and took his seat. He regretted drinking enough alcohol for two people and eating in the same restaurant as the previous night, and he now regretted booking his ticket through the reception desk and requesting his wakeup call.

When he woke to the sound of the ringing telephone by his ear, he almost cursed down the line and decided to forget the trip.

Lying on his back, tangled in the covers with both eyes covered by his hands, Cal groaned aloud as he accepted that he now had a hangover. The groan deepened and grew in intensity when he remembered how much he had spent on his credit card, not realizing the expensive kindness Sebastian had showed him by granting his first night’s meal on the house.

No, he told himself, get out of bed and experience life.

He got out of bed, brushed his teeth, and threw on his clothes. Rushing down to the lobby, he rounded a corner and almost cannoned into a man in a suit which cost more than his car back home. Smoothly recovering as though his DNA was coded toward always showing a publicly acceptable face, Sebastian turned to face him.

“Good morning, Cal,” he said. “I trust you slept well?”

“Yeah,” croaked Cal, “bit hungover to be honest…”

“And yet you’re up so early?” Sebastian asked.

“Yeah,” Cal said again, “I booked myself on the Statue of Liberty ferry tour and I’m running late.”

Sebastian took all this in, placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder and deftly steered him away. He glanced over his shoulder to the desk and said, “Lauren, please ask Mike to bring the car around.”

Before Cal could say anything, mostly that he couldn’t afford a private car, Sebastian steered him toward the coffee machine and poured him a coffee before adding cream and two sugars; how the man knew how he took his coffee was beyond his comprehension and the question struggled to compete in his half-asleep brain for priority, but it was headed off.

“Mike will get you to Battery Park,” Sebastian said, holding up a hand to stop any objection. “He isn’t needed for an hour, and it’s compliments of the Waldorf—”

“I know,” interrupted Cal. “Compliments of the bloody hotel. Why are you being nice to me?” he said, instantly regretting the harshness in his voice as he crossed way over into aggressive ingratitude.

“Cal,” said Sebastian, patient and calm, “don’t argue, just take the car, sir. ”

Cal locked eyes with him, seeing a kindred spirit capable of more kindness than he felt he deserved, and softened.

“I’m sorry,” he said, failing to fully convey how he felt, “I’m just angry all the time…”