Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Patty-cakes:

Today is my last day at the Flatiron Building. I have no plans to come back. I know it’ll seem awfully sudden to you, because I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how unhappy I’ve been here lately. But in truth, I’ve been thinking about getting out for some time now, and loping quietly off into the sunset. Yesterday’s executive meeting cinched it. The ant farm analogy that Lipson introduced (and which Livingston and DeFeo cleverly embroidered) was an aptly droll one, and I laughed along with everybody else, and maybe it’s because I’ve been at this job for so long that I didn’t think at the time about what it all really means.

But now that I’ve had a few hours to let it sink in — to consider everything that was said (including how truly depraved most of that gallows humor shit was), after digesting all the gruesome details of how this is to be “effected” (how clinically Medina chooses his words) — I’m not only put off by it, Pattycakes, I’m quite nauseous. We always knew there had to be an end to it — I just never thought I’d be here when that final chapter got written. And I suppose, officially I won’t be. Because this little rat is preemptively jumping ship. At least I plan to jump ship once I clean out my desk and my computer files and make that final farewell trip to Pennsylvania on Monday. It’s there that I’ll make my obligatory “cut me loose” appeal to Yelavich and Brentano. Brentano will understand. I think she’s sensed that I’ve wanted out for a while now. Yelavich, on the other hand, might make things difficult. I do, after all, know where a lot of the bodies are buried. (That statement goes from the figurative column to the literal on a very grand scale in just a few short weeks.)

Fact is, Patty-cakes, I just never acquired in totality that tough leather hide that the rest of you seem to wear with pride. Last time I looked, I still hadn’t sprouted cojones beneath these comfortable K-Mart cotton panties. I mean, Campbell had been Special Ops for Christ’s sake, and Reyes and Wilson and Weinberg would shove their own mothers down the basement stairs for the right amount of money. But I kept getting hung up on the fact that the subjects of our study are actually — all right, drum roll, wait for it, wait for it — people. (I also have a soft spot for kittens.) And there you have it: Michelena Martin’s big dark secret. A lot of lives are about to be snuffed out and I’m not altogether happy about that. Now don’t misread me here, Cakes. It could be a very good thing that one of our richest playfellow-subscribers has decided to have a go at oldfashioned brick and mortar enterprise again. That Langheart’s actually going to turn that cobweb-covered Victorian amusement park into a vehicle for Rust Belt job growth. Who’d have thunk it? And who wouldn’t commend him for it?

But it doesn’t quite pass my personal smell test — you know, the smell of dead bodies not really being one of my favorite scents. And here’s the other thing, Patty: I’m tired. I’m bored with the Dickensian freak show. And I’m ready to do something else with my life. Michelena Martin has left the building.

BTW, my prediction: Phase Seven isn’t going to be the perfectly-executed piece of hydraulic theatre everyone thinks it’ll be. Wam, bam, thank you, dam! Because nothing ever goes the way it’s planned. And things WILL get out. Just you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, just you wait! All those horribly messy facts and details of how this modern day Atlantis met its end. Things that historians will be writing about for decades. The carnage will not stay hidden within that drowned valley. Bodies will someday be exhumed from that erstwhile iron pit, both those newly dead and all of those corpses of yore that will have to be dug up and transferred from the cemetery. Just how DOES one kill off 11,000 people and keep the whole thing safely beneath one’s hat?

And I will walk away with my twenty-year pin and my desk tchotchkes and wonder how a project with such relatively innocent beginnings became in the end so spectacularly wicked.

The Flatiron is a beautiful building in its own slendiforously funky way. But sometimes just looking at it makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

Love to Nichole and Layne and Valerie G.

PS: If your I.T. boyfriend McSprinkle doesn’t nuke all traces of this transmission, I will personally come looking for you and kill you.

abber wept. He could not help himself. In less than an hour he would be turning his steps permanently from Dabber Hall, his lifelong home, inherited from his ironmaster father. He would be letting go of a lifelong collection of fine furniture and exquisitely fashioned art objets and everything that his income and his class had bestowed upon him. Sir Dabber could have had much more, had he made friends with other members of the gentry, had he served in the Petit-Parliament, had he not made the choice to live his life of wealth outside the usual margins and thereby unwittingly inoculate himself against the sins of his compeers. In exchange for his independence, Sir Seth Dabber had, most importantly, been kept uninformed of the details of the Great Lie. His novelty as a rich and powerful man who had nary a single rich and powerful friend now served him and served those of us who had used his good offices for our own benefit. But with his departure those days would come to an abrupt end.

For Sir Dabber was now poised to steal away with his newly reconciled son and the woman who stood a very good chance of becoming his daughter-in-law. And such a thing was far too great for the man to absorb in so short a span of time. So Sir Dabber wept. As he and his valet Fips performed the chore of selecting an article or two of clothing that Dabber could stuff into a knapsack, the large man put his handkerchief to his cheeks to wipe away the silent tears he shed without recess over all that he was leaving behind and for every uncertainty that the future now held for him. For his part, Fips’ own eyes were anything but dry, nor could Arabella, Dabber’s housemaid, withhold a vocalised expression of her own grief. Standing in the doorway to Dabber’s bedchamber, she sniffed and snorted and blew her nose and wondered aloud in a bit of a word-wail what was to become of her.

“I’ve left you with plenty of money, my dear,” snuffled Sir Dabber in return. “Upon my soul, dear girl, I’ve deeded to you and Fips the whole blooming house! No master would ever be so generous as I.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir Dabber, that isn’t what saddens her,” corrected Fips. “It is the simple dismal fact that you are leaving.”

“But leave I must. For I shan’t be apart from my son, and he has no desire to part with his beloved. It is as simple a story as any you would read in English or in French. Now take this slip of paper, Fips. It’s the combination to my safe in the library downstairs. Go and take out all of the silver therein — I have a little store of Outland pieces from my dealings with those who trade with the Beyonders. Silver is of great value in the Outland and will help Bevan and Miss Wolf and me to better make our way to safety there. Keep a coin or two for yourself and for Arabella, to provide for that day in which you may also find yourself abroad. And look sharp, man! We haven’t much time.”

Downstairs in Dabber’s library, Bevan and I paced. Miss Wolf sat upon a sofa and watched the face of the grandfather clock that had been one of Dabber’s most prized possessions. (It was one of the finest made in the Dell; its several companions had drawn top trades from the Outland brokers.)