Джош Малерман - Inspection

Richard, still standing, his red jacket upon the carpet before his desk, shirtless and angry, tried to assure himself that the problem, the disease, the ruination, had been quarantined indeed. But how could he know how many Letter Girls B spoke to? Or how many were with her on her journey through the pines?

Marilyn said it was out of character. B wasn’t the type to explore.

Was she the type to lie? To hide? To shatter a psychological masterwork?

And how many boys had read Warren’s book? And who had J told about the girl out his window? And what other boy looked out his own window as well?

Oh, the word girl sounded so rancid out of J’s mouth. So foreign. As if Richard hadn’t heard it himself in so long that he’d forgetten it existed.

Boats.

Already on his third drink, Richard imagined knowledge spreading through the towers like Rotts, like Vees, like Placasores. For five hallucinatory minutes, he imagined that these diseases were real and not made up by the Parenthood to explain the Inspections. Staring glassy-eyed, he shuddered, imagining those never defined (and certainly never photographed) Placasores spreading from one Alphabet Boy to another until they fanned out into the Yard, where the Letter Girl B picked them up and carried them with her back to the second tower. He imagined Warren loosening the lid on a jar Richard once thought impossible to open. He imagined bugs, millions, scurrying about the Turrets, hiding in cracks, under pillows, in the windows and walls.

He absently brought a hand to his bare arm, swiped at the Moldus crawling there, plucked Vees from his knuckles.

“Kill ’em all,” he whispered.

If this was what the end looked like, he refused to be embarrassed by it. So long as one boy was still clean (and there were many, right?), the experiment was without stain.

He tried to imagine a clean boy in all that gray area. Tried to recall his magnificent Alphabet Boys only a week back, before Warren Bratt betrayed him.

He crossed to his desk, picked up his phone, and pressed the number 1. He and Marilyn had their limited time together, by appointment, in the Glasgow Tunnel, an effort to respect the philosophy of their own experiment. A Plexiglas wall to separate even themselves from each other.

But sometimes a woman’s touch was crucial.

“No,” Marilyn said when she answered the phone.

“No?”

“I will not abort.”

“We could begin anew.”

“A new what, Richard?”

Richard didn’t have an answer for this. In the beginning it was easy to contemplate attempting the experiment more than once. But twelve years deep, it was clear this was their only shot.

“Do you feel it, Marilyn?”

“Feel what?”

“Revolt.”

Some silence. But Marilyn rarely allowed silences to grow. “I think it’s time to do a little parenting, Richard.”

“Speaking of parenting…”

“Yes. The man we found in the Orchard is in your Corner now.”

“How many times has he come?”

“Does it matter?”

“To me. It does.”

“He’d been watching your Turret for many months. It appears ‘Mister Tree’ makes for a reasonable hiding spot.”

“Do we know which one he is?”

“He made no effort to hide it. Told us right from the very beginning who he was here to see.”

“Which one?”

“He’s J’s father, dear. Come to assuage the guilt for having sold him.”

Richard stared into his drink. Believed he could see the ice melting.

“J,” he said. He didn’t like that two controversies surrounded one boy. The odds didn’t feel right.

“You’ll get your answers from him by way of Boats.”

“Oh, Marilyn…to hear him use the word girl. ”

“Did he?”

“I told you. He saw B outside his window.”

“But did he use the word girl ?”

“Yes. I told you, he—”

“No. You did not.” Some silence. A shuffling of papers. “In Warren Bratt’s book titled Needs, he used the word woman seven hundred times. Her four hundred and fifty. She about the same. But girl …”

Richard brought his drink to his lips, already knowing what Marilyn was about to say, already feeling the bricks of the Turret loosen a little more.

“Not once, Richard. He didn’t use the word once.”

“Oh God.”

“Where did J learn the word?”

“Oh God.”

“Who told him the word, Richard? Who knows it other than…my girls?”

Richard was seven drinks deep by the time the game got under way. The sky was not dark beyond the windows of his first-floor quarters, nor would it be by the conclusion of any average game of Boats.

But this was no average game.

I saw a girl outside my window.

GIRL

Richard knew what questions to ask. Knew he’d have to answer some along the way. But what did it matter, telling the truth to a dead boy walking?

They had all day. After all, no parent was coming to pick up the boy.

“How about a game of Boats?” Richard asked.

UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES J would have marveled at D.A.D.’s rooms. His private quarters, the place to which the man retired to privately improve the Parenthood. On a different day J would have been proud to be shown this inner sanctum.

But now J only saw D.A.D.’s lips opening and closing, opening and closing, repeating the one unfathomable word:

UNCLEAN

He’s going to explain to you why you’re okay. He’s going to make you better.

Even now he turned to the Parenthood for comfort. J was the one who had failed. Not them.

“Comfortable?” D.A.D. asked.

D.A.D. did not look at him as he spoke. He arranged the Boats on the board, the muscles in his arms slinking under his skin like a buried reality. His voice as icy as Q’s ladder.

“I’m fine,” J said. The Inspectors stood by the door, blocking J’s view of it.

A woman stood against the wall.

M.O.M.? J didn’t think so. But whoever she was, he couldn’t stop looking at her, over D.A.D.’s shoulder, until, visibly uneasy, she crossed out of view, behind him.

“Need anything to drink, J?”

D.A.D. smelled like he’d drunk a bottle of medicine before sitting down. But J didn’t want anything himself. Felt too nervous to lift a glass of water.

“No, thank you.”

Water

D.A.D.’s board was nicer than the ones the boys used. The water on the surface was much bluer and the individual waves were as detailed as if K had drawn them. The boats, made of metal, shone, just polished perhaps, and looked so real they could be carrying passengers, students of the game, here to watch them play.

To J, the deeper waters at the center of the board looked real enough to drown in.

“You like Boats, J?”

“Yes, of course. I love Boats.”

J hardly recognized his own voice. Sounded younger than he was when Z was sent to the Corner.

“You hear that, Burt?” D.A.D. said, acknowledging the woman standing behind J. “He loves Boats.” Then, looking J in the eye without humor, without fatherhood, “Let’s connect the nodes.”

They both did, man and boy, sticking the small rubber ovals to their necks, their chests, their wrists.

D.A.D. gripped the line switch. The board hummed to rattling life.

“How did you learn the word girl, J?” D.A.D. asked calmly, sipping from a glass J hadn’t noticed was on the table. “You can’t win a game of telling the truth if you don’t talk.”

J knew the rules well enough. If you lied, your boat did not advance. And if your boat did not advance, everyone in the room knew you lied.