Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

It’s a small, bland room. There’s a round wooden table in its center with five chairs pulled around it. One chair is empty. At the bend opposite her, Eva can see Wilson, still in uniform, holding a bottle of beer up near her chest with both hands. Jacobi is to her right, Bromberg to her left. That means the person with his back to her is Rourke. They each have something on the table in front of them, what looks like a tiny manila envelope, like a miniature pay envelope, maybe only an inch long.

Eva gets nervous and brings her head down below the level of the grille. She listens:

ROURKE: Don’t be an asshole, Jacco. You let me worry about the Paraclete. You don’t trouble yourself about it.

BROMBERG: Have you got a location picked out yet? We’ve got what … how many days?

ROURKE: We’ve got plenty of time. Jesus, would you people get a grip, take a few Valium or something? Goddamn.

BROMBERG: Screw you, Billy. It makes sense to be nervous. You’ve never worked anything like this before. You’ve never even come close.

ROURKE: Will you relax, for Christ sake, it’s a broker situation. You’ve brokered one deal, bang, you know the ropes. You bring people together, you arrange the terms, you find the common ground.

WILSON [ laughing ]: Common ground? You been reading a book or something?

JACOBI [ laughing ]: He’s been watching cable. He’s been watching those guys in the shiny suits with the cassette tapes …

BROMBERG: You ever deliver a set of those things? Those home study things? Weigh a ton …

ROURKE [ yelling ]: Shut up … Will you all shut the fuck up? Goddammit, this is serious here. For Christ sake.

BROMBERG: Why don’t you tell us how serious, Billy?

There’s a few beats of silence, then,

ROURKE: What do you mean? What do you mean, how serious?

BROMBERG: Well, I don’t know about Wilson these days, but Jacobi and I, we haven’t seen dime one for all this serious business …

ROURKE: You’re an impatient little bitch, you know that, Lisa? Huh?

BROMBERG: Just didn’t know if you only gave a cut to the people you were drilling.

WILSON [ yelling ]: Oh, screw you, you jealous little brat.

ROURKE [ yelling ]: Hey! Shut up! Just everyone shut up! Right now.

There’s a couple of seconds of silence.

ROURKE: You keep this up and nothing’s going to work out. Now, I’ve brought us this far, am I right? I’ve got both sides involved here. I’ve brought them to the table. I’ve made the connections, communicated the offer, communicated the negotiations, complimented everyone, kept the wheels turning, kept the cogs free. Now it’s about to come together. Don’t screw us up now. Jesus. This will be the sweetest move you’ve ever walked into, if you just let it happen. You’ve just got to learn some patience. All of us have to learn patience. You people don’t understand the kinds of people we’re dealing with here, the type of mentalities. There’s a whole cultural thing going on here. From both sides, both directions. That’s why we’ve got to be extra careful, make sure no one gets accidentally insulted, rubbed the wrong way, culturally, you know. Now, Lisa, you’re all tight about the money end, which I understand. You’ve put yourself at risk, like the rest of us. We’ve got to remember, we’ve all shared equally in the risk. That was part of the price of admission. You’ve got to be a risk-taker to achieve anything in this world, right? Okay, today is a little preview. A little advance, a little look at what the future holds for everybody …

BROMBERG: You’re kidding me. You’ve got some cash? You really got some cash?

ROURKE [ laughing ]: Relax, Lisa. What I’ve got is something better than cash. What I’ve got you can’t get out of your all-night teller machine …

BROMBERG: No money, do you believe this?

JACOBI [ quietly ]: Let the man talk.

ROURKE [ quietly ]: You can open the envelopes now.

Eva raises her head slightly until she can see out the grille again. Everyone at the table is busy ripping open the flaps of the small envelopes. Jacobi gives himself a paper cut on the thumb and says, “Oh, shit,” and plugs the thumb into his mouth and starts sucking.

Bromberg is the first to spill the contents on the table. Eva can’t see much, just something tiny and reddish, smaller than a dime.

“Oh, you stupid mother,” Bromberg says, her voice so low and halting, Eva thinks she might fall off her chair.

Rourke seems to be dancing slightly in his seat. There’s another uneasy silence, as if no one knows what to say. Eva gets nervous and ducks again to listen.

ROURKE: Yeah, yeah, so I scammed a little off the top. Who’ll notice? They’ve all got enough to worry about. Think of it like we’re these quality-control guys, okay? We’ve got to randomly sample some of the merchandise before we can vouch for it.

BROMBERG: No one’s asked us to vouch for it.

ROURKE: Relax. Think of it like the way you read Playgirl before you deliver it. Or how I’ve seen you take home those detergent samplers when the people are on vacation, right? Relax.

WILSON: Weird stuff. Kind of like a noodle, you know. Like the noodles in soup or something.

JACOBI: Little harder than a noodle. But just a little. A little more rubbery.

BROMBERG: Is everyone’s in the same shape?

JACOBI: The letter Q?

ROURKE: Like alphabet soup. Like one letter plucked out of a bowl of alphabet soup.

WILSON: Why the letter Q?

ROURKE: Who freakin’ knows? These chemist guys are weird mothers. Who knows what reasons they got?

Eva lifts her eye to the grille and watches them all studying the substance in their palms until Rourke says, “Since this is our first time, I think it might be a good idea here to go easy, if you know what I mean. Why don’t we just break them in half if we can?”

“Just half?” Jacobi asks.

“Better make it a quarter,” Rourke says, hunching over the table and going to work on his Q. The others follow his example. Someone says, “Not that easy to break.”

When they’re all done, Rourke says, “Cheers,” and brings his hand up to his mouth. Then they take turns swallowing while the rest watch, no one swallowing at the same time, as if a capacity audience were needed for the ritual to be legitimate.

BROMBERG: How long does it take to kick in?

ROURKE: Guess we’ll find out. We’re explorers.

WILSON [ upset ]: What about the beer? What if it doesn’t mix with the beer? Maybe we shouldn’t have drank the beer.

ROURKE: Knock it off. Don’t you think they would have taken that into consideration?

WILSON: Who? Who’re you talking about?

ROURKE [ exasperated ]: The chemists. The freakin’ doctors who invented the shit in the first place. You think they’re morons? You think they’ve got no feel for their market? For the social settings this thing will be introduced into? They think crap like this out. They take stuff like this into consideration. You people have got to learn to relax or you’re not going to make it—

WILSON [ interrupting ]: Not going to make it? Do you mean like in general, in life in general, we’re not going to make it, or do you mean right now, when the thing takes effect, like if we’re tense or nervous or upset it will have some awful side effect—

ROURKE [ yelling ]: Just cut it out right now. Knock it off right now. Let’s just take it easy here and give this thing a chance.

There’s a second of silence and then,

BROMBERG: Yeah, okay, I feel something happening already.

WILSON: I think I feel something too.

JACOBI: Is it getting hot in here?