Джош Малерман - Inspection

“Here,” Warren said, rising from one of the lower bunks. “Take mine. I’m checking out.”

“Yeah? Where you going?”

Warren studied the man’s eyes. Why did he want to know?

“Greece.”

The man laughed the way most men laughed in this place: true but harsh. Warren picked up his case and coat and exited the room. Then the shelter soon after.

It was evening. He hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t been outside in two days. With the money he had on him he could take a bus to Florida. Take a bus to Wyoming. Hop a train somewhere, anywhere. Get a job at a local paper. Get a job flipping grilled cheese.

But first…

He’d seen the bar the morning he arrived at the shelter. And oh what a morning that was. Drenched and cold, out of breath and invigorated, righteous and free. But still caged, too. Institutionalized. He’d wanted to enter the bar, but even if it was open, he couldn’t. He simply didn’t have the nerve. Couldn’t find it.

Now he believed he did.

He looked up and down the street. To the windows of the apartments across the street. To the alleys. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was worried he might see. Richard crouching in red? Marilyn hiding behind a lamppost? Back when he was offered the job, there wasn’t any mention of how he might be tracked down if he ever wrote a book about women, printed it off himself, and left a copy for each of the Alphabet Boys. Nope. No word on that front. So…what? What might he see and how would they come after him?

Warren shuffled up the sidewalk. A homeless man, indeed. As he slipped inside the bar, he gave the street, the buildings, the windows, the roofs, one last look.

Inside, warmer, he cleaned the fog from his glasses and eyed the small room. Two unoccupied booths to his left. Two unoccupied booths to his right. Two women sitting at the bar, their backs to him. A young man behind the bar. My God did the young man look clean. Uncluttered. Happy.

“What can I get you, sir?” the guy asked.

Warren took an open stool. “Bourbon,” he said. “Please.”

The word please escaped him in such a genuine way that he almost felt like crying.

It had been a long time.

The bartender served him. Warren sipped. He looked down the bar. Of the two women, the one facing him smiled.

At him.

It had been a long time for that, too.

The woman was close to what he once would’ve called his type. Smart eyes behind kitschy big glasses. Brown hair. An old-school dress. Was this what people considered hip these days? He wouldn’t know. He’d been away for a decade.

Institutionalized.

Warren finished his drink. Considered his next move. Out of the country? It was probably the right thing to do. Leave. Get out entirely. Shave his head. Grow a beard. Devote his life to helping young people know the real ways of the world.

He ordered a second bourbon. The two women down the bar cracked up laughing, and Warren thought what a great sound it was. Oh, how many great sounds had he missed back when all he cared about was being the big fish in whatever body of water he swam in. Oh, what trouble that angry ego had gotten him into. Oh, how distorted the last ten years had been.

Oh boy.

He sipped. He thought of heading south. East. West. Anywhere but back north. Right? Yes. Anywhere but back north.

Yet…

The boys. They were going to need help. Weren’t they? How many of them were spoiled rotten by his book by now? How many young lives had he taken by deciding for them what they should and should not know?

Why hadn’t he pulled each aside? Why hadn’t he talked to the boys directly? He could’ve told them the truth, then told them to be quiet.

Why hadn’t he taken them with him?

Surely, given his state of mind, Warren could’ve killed an Inspector or two. Whoever was on duty that night. It made sound moral sense in hindsight. The murder of an ex-con hiding in the woods, in the name of rescuing two dozen boys from a life of slavery.

He sipped. The women erupted again and Warren looked over at them. Tried to get into the jolly mood. As if he might siphon some of what they were feeling.

Good God, these women. They had no idea what the man down the bar had been capable of. No more so than if he’d been a cult leader. A doctor who prescribed unnecessary medicine. A false prophet, a false author. Here to hurt, not help.

The woman smiled at him again, and Warren understood then that if he was going to begin a life outside the Parenthood, he was going to have to eventually tell someone what he’d done. Probably. Or…if he could just erase the ten previous years, start from there, pick up where he left off…

Could he?

As he smiled back at the woman and raised his glass, as she raised hers in return then blushed for the silliness of it, Warren understood that he couldn’t erase his part in what went on. Not only because a man wasn’t able to turn back time but because the man he had been then was the man who had decided to end up where he was now.

The two women got up and put their coats on, and Warren ordered a third drink and wished he could erase every year he’d lived, erase them all. Start the whole thing over. Identify with being an overly kind person this time around. Eschew a life of darkness. Bury the intellectually superior cloak he’d worn for so many years before agreeing to toss any and all of his soul into a fiery pit for profit.

The women had gone. Warren thought of the roads he’d taken once he fled the Parenthood. Imagined himself taking them again. In the opposite direction. Saw himself approaching the tower with a rifle in hand. Saw Inspectors falling in pools of blood, ex-cons shot in the back. Richard with a barrel to his chest.

The bartender looked over Warren’s shoulder.

Who’s there?

The one woman had come back. Just sat down right next to Warren. Her drunk eyes were huge behind her big frames. Like she was holding two magnifying glasses up to her face. Warren, trying hard to fit into the old world, the real world, ordered a round for them both. They talked, they laughed. Warren caught himself slipping back into old Warren: curt and snobbish. How? How was it possible any vestige of his former persona remained? He saw himself rounding up the Alphabet Boys. He’d answer their questions about the book. He’d tell them everything. They’d learn the truth of the world as the soles of their shoes soaked in Richard’s blood.

Warren was paying his tab suddenly, then leaving the bar with the woman, arm in arm.

It was cold outside, freezing, and she said, Don’t worry, we can go to my place. Warren smiled but he couldn’t stop thinking about the boys. Yes, this was good. A woman. A place to stay. But the Parenthood went on. Did it not? And if the base rule of the constitution was broken…wouldn’t all the boys be sent to the Corner?

And hadn’t he made that happen?

And had it happened already?

He climbed old stairs with the woman. The woman was clearly drunk, laughing, hanging on to him, as Warren held her up, held himself up, too. He hadn’t been quite this drunk in a decade. Good feeling, bad feeling, both. Oh, the boys the boys the boys.

The woman fumbled with her key and Warren helped her. He imagined Richard at the podium in the Body Hall, hands raised, crying out defiantly before his boys. Demanding they tell him who’d read what and how many pages. Surely Richard had to know that much. A simple game of Boats? Surely. The woman half-fell into her apartment and Warren stumbled after her. She turned on the lights and said, This way, more booze. Warren, torn up inside, aware that it was far too soon to make any attempt at lowering himself back into the real world, followed. More booze sounded good. So good.