David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

He listened carefully to all of it.

“Motherfuckers,” he said when she was finished.

“I know, right?”

“I’m going to figure out a way to help. You want some dinner? The fish is gross. It was in the freezer way too long, I think. But the rice is good.”

“No. I gotta drive home.”

“To LA?”

“Yeah.”

“Lola, that’s, like, fifteen hours.”

“I know.”

“You can’t drive that now. You’re wrecked. Stay here. Leave in the morning.” He said it plainly.

He was right. So they ate rice for dinner and she told him more about Burma and he told her about a bookstore he once owned. It seemed like he could talk all night, and though she liked him, she couldn’t keep away from thoughts of the nightmare waiting for her at home: Her father accused of child predation. Dressler’s syndrome. A fucking bed in the den, like for a dying man. How was she going to beat these evil fuckers? How was she going to save her dad?

Before the light had even left the sky all the way, she said she had to go to bed.

“Let’s both think on it, Lola,” he said to her as she climbed the stairs. “Maybe there’s some other way I can help you. There’s gotta be. I’d do anything to help you save your family.”

She woke before dawn, packed quietly, and crept downstairs. In the kitchen, there was only the refrigerator hum and the daylight beginning to spread from the windows. She found a notepad by the phone.

Leo —she wrote— you are fun and smart and kind, but you have your own problems right now. I mean, I have my own problems and they’re different from yours and I don’t see how we can help each other. Though we did try, didn’t we? That’s definitely something. Good luck with convincing your sister you’re okay now. I’d vouch for you. But that wouldn’t help, would it?

She wanted to say more, but the thing about making a clean getaway was that you really had to commit, so she signed it: Thanks, L. PS: to keep us both safe, you shouldn’t try to contact me. She snuck out the back door and across the new blue dawn light of the backyard and into the alley behind.

He had shifted the blackberry vines so that they nearly covered the car; she had to part brambly strands to open the driver-side door. But the car slipped easily out of its hiding place, and she crept out of the alley and quickly found the on-ramp for I-5, only blocks away.

These dreams Mark was having, in the three days since he’d choppered away from Sine Wave 2 .

It was as if every night he clumped into a basement theater to watch a cycle of dark, allegorical one-acts, but he was the actor as well as the audience. Once he dreamed that he was sputtering up a dead-end street in a dying car and came to a brick wall on which was tagged — beautiful and sparkling, like on a New York City subway car before Giuliani— Who You Kiddin? Another dream had him as a human squirrel who realized too late that he was supposed to have been gathering nuts. Most every night there was one in which he was given some simple task that turned out to be totally beyond his abilities.

Last night it had been a very realistically shot one in which sunglassed agents were walking up to his front door, which was made of papier-mâché.

Mark had returned from London to find that his general contractor — a suave Quebecois named Maurice who had a two-year waiting list — had made zero progress on the loft. Maurice had somehow sensed the dwindlement of Mark’s available funds and gone on to greener pastures. So Mark camped out in his gutted one-bedroom with its plywood subfloors and electrical wire curling from junction boxes.

When he’d gutted the place, it had never occurred to him that he might lack the funds to put it back together again. He thought seventy-five grand and nine months were totally reasonable figures.

Blown and blown. What an idiot. He’d spent twice that. He’d paid Maurice for materials that never materialized, for subcontractors who never got paid. He still owed ten grand to the Croatian for stonework in the bathroom. He seemed like a very nice guy, the Croatian. But the last time he came to ask Mark for his money, he’d brought his son, who was six foot eight and just stood there in the doorway the whole time.

It had been a perfectly good apartment too before Mark had torn it apart. But back then he’d wanted steam showers and wine cellars and pocket doors. Now he’d settle for floors and plumbing fixtures and five thousand dollars’ worth of Ikea whatever.

Lying there clammily on furniture blankets, Mark decided to run through his options. Again.

Option one was to take Straw’s job and become SineCo’s storyteller-in-chief. Advise Straw while he and a faceless consortium “secured” all the information in the world. Abet the crime and provide cover for it. Continue to plug and evangelize the Node but now also be a “pioneer” of the new socialverse, SineLife.

Say yes, and his money troubles would vanish. Poof. And Straw definitely implied that if Mark became SineCo’s SIC, the Blinc book — or at least its looming deadline — would also vanish. When Straw had pressed him for a firm decision as he left Sine Wave 2, Mark had tried to buy a few weeks by reminding Straw that he had to “finish that thing for Marjorie.” He had to shout these words. They were standing near the helipad at the bow. “Don’t worry about that, Mark. I’ll talk to her,” shouted Straw. And then his last words to Mark: “You know, Mark, that I assured the principals that you would take the job. That’s why we let you come aboard before your commission.”

Maybe he even should take this job, morally speaking. So that he might influence it for the good. Seemed unlikely, but still.

Option two: Don’t take Straw’s job. Disappoint and piss off his Croesus-rich patron. Finish — well, start and finish — the book he owed Blinc in two weeks, its deadline twice extended. The book would be crap, most likely. His shtick would be laid bare. He would run out of money, owe still more; he would have to find a real job again. This last part might be difficult, as he had few skills and had pretty much told his last employer to eat shit, and anyone interviewing him for a job would probably be unable to resist saying, Wait, aren’t you the guy who wrote that book about how you would never have to work again?

Who was he kidding? It was like being between a rock and a feather bed. Unless he personally had to drown puppies or whatever, this was a job he was likely to take.

But just in case some new information arrived in time to stop him from taking Straw’s job, in case he did indeed have to deliver the Blinc book, Mark was working on it as hard as he ever had.

“I am a writer,” he said aloud to himself, and he rose from the dingy pallet, wandered past his six-burner French cast-iron stove — marooned and plastic-enshrouded in the middle of the living room — and went into his bathroom, the floor gritty with mortar spatter.

There were moments — high and drunk moments, let’s be clear — in which he saw that there might be a third way. The book was so late now that maybe they would have to publish whatever he submitted. A great work could be hidden in that inane title. It was conceivable that he could write something very, very good in a couple of weeks, his reaching mind told him. Didn’t Jack Kerouac or whoever just put a scroll of paper in his typewriter?

It would have to be good enough to make up for the crap that already bore his name. But if it was good enough, maybe he’d be allowed to write more. Not for Blinc, obviously, but for a real publisher. He knew he didn’t need as much money as Straw had offered him. There was the slim relief in this, in finding a limit to his own greed.