Manuel Gonzales - The Regional Office Is Under Attack!

She felt her face flush and she clenched her fists at her sides, then remembered herself and remembered the man standing in front of her, and she closed her eyes and relaxed her arms, both of them.

“Don’t let them get to you,” he said once she had opened her eyes and looked at him again. Then he smiled and said, “Man, that sounded pretty dumb. It always sounds better in a movie or something, doesn’t it.” He smiled again and held out his hand and said, “Henry. My name is Henry. Heard you’ve had a rough go of it.”

“Well,” Sarah began, reaching for his hand.

“Is it your left?” Henry interrupted. “Arm, that is. I’ve got a guy who bet me it was your right arm, but that seems just way too obvious.” She pulled her hand back. He laughed an awkward but disarming laugh and said, “I’m kidding. I don’t have a guy, or a bet. It’s just easier for me to get the awkward thing out right away because I’m going to say it eventually. I know I am. But this way, I say it, and there’s a weird moment, and then it’s over, and then I’m not spending the whole conversation thinking about when I’m going to accidentally say the thing I’m not supposed to say.” He held his hand out for a moment longer, then pulled it back, too. He shrugged and frowned. “It’s a quirk. Now. How’s training going? Pretty shitty, huh?”

“It can only go up from here, right?” Sarah said, and she felt like crying. She’d managed to contain all of the emotions that she should have been feeling about her arm, about being in the city and not with her aunt, about discovering the truth about her mother, about the way the other women had been treating her, and would have kept them all in check so long as no one asked her about any of it. But as soon as anyone said the first nice thing to her, all of it threatened to come out.

“Let’s go get a drink,” he said, doing a fine job of ignoring the tears welling in her eyes, which gave her a moment to wipe them away and shove the feelings that caused them back deep down inside herself. “Because, frankly, there’s still down. Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but… Things can always go down.

“Your problem,” Henry said, “and it’s not just your problem, but your problem is you have this sense about you that there’s something different about you.”

Henry had taken her to a hotel bar not far from the travel agency. It wasn’t yet two in the afternoon. They’d taken the elevator back up to the travel agency, had walked through the travel agency, had crossed Park and walked a few blocks, had come into this bar, and not once had Henry stopped talking. Henry hadn’t given her time to change out of her training outfit and Sarah felt self-conscious, or she would have if anyone had been in the bar but the two of them and the bartender.

“There is something different about me,” Sarah said, almost frustrated by how much she needed to talk to someone about all of this.

“Right. I know. Trust me, we all know. But there’s something different about all of the women here. All the Operatives and trainee Recruits, anyway. They’re all different from the rest of us, and from each other. But the difference between their difference and your difference — do you want to know the difference between their difference and your difference?” he asked. He knew she did, otherwise why would they be here talking about any of this? He liked to hear himself talk, Sarah could tell, and since he was the first person not Mr. Niles she’d found any sort of connection with, she humored him. She nodded and even went so far as to say, “What’s the difference between their difference and my difference?”

He nodded back at her and took another drink of his beer, his third, but Sarah was trying not to judge him by it. “The difference,” he said, “is how they carry that difference. Even the Recruits, even before they’re recruited, even before we’ve sought them out, they carry what makes them different in an open and, I don’t know, kind of loud way. You’ve seen them around the office, you can’t not see them around the office. They’re bigger than life, these women.”

“But they are bigger,” Sarah said, interrupting him. “Jesus, have you seen Jasmine? She’s like a hundred feet tall.”

Henry shook his head and paused to take another drink and then dropped his empty glass too heavily onto the table and said, “No, no she’s not. You know how tall Jasmine is? It’s in her file. I measured her myself.”

“You measured Jasmine?”

“S’my job. Stop interrupting. I measured her myself and I kid you not. Five feet three inches.”

“No she isn’t.”

“S’true. I’m going to get another drink. You want another drink? It’s entirely true. You’re what? Five four? Five five? You’re taller than Jasmine. But. It’s part of her power, or the mystical property of her. Or who knows what the fuck it’s about, I just find them and train them. I’m no expert. But! I’ve watched them, I’ve observed them all, and they each have different strengths and different — but not many — weaknesses, and they all have this one thing in common. Every. Single. One of them.”

Henry picked up his empty glass and tried to take a drink from it and looked a little perplexed and said, “I drank that one way too fast.”

Sarah considered telling him that he’d never gotten his next drink but thought better of it.

“What?” she asked. “What do they have in common?”

Henry rubbed his face and his eyes and then looked at her and said, “Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said?” He waited for her to say something and when she didn’t he sighed. “They carry their difference, the way they carry their difference. They have differences, see, they each are very different from the rest of us, and the way they carry this difference, well, it’s like their difference, they carry it with a sense of pride. Like it makes them better. And it does. It makes them stronger and faster and smarter and more powerful. They know it and they make sure everyone else knows it, too. That’s the difference between their difference and your difference.”

“That their difference makes them better than my difference?”

“Christ,” he said. “You’re smarter than this, you know.” He took her hand and squeezed it tightly, his fingers pulsing against her fingers and her palm with every syllable, and said, “No. They act like it makes them better. You don’t.”

“But,” she began, and he let go of her hand and grabbed her other hand.

“But nothing,” he said. “You’ve got a mechanical fucking arm, right? That’s not nothing, right? A mechanical fucking arm that — Jesus, which one is it?” He held up her hand and pressed his fingers deep into her own and pulsed them again and studied it through squinted eyes. “I mean, it’s remarkable, isn’t it? Your hands. Exactly the same.” He dropped her hand and sighed and said, “I can’t tell. Weird. I thought I’d be able to tell.” Then he looked at his watch. “Ah well, we should get back to work. I’ve got a Recruits meeting in twenty.”

He paid. Sarah was surprised walking out of the dark bar into the bright afternoon sun. They didn’t say much of anything else walking back to the travel agency and riding down the elevator to the Regional Office, even though she wanted to say more. As they stepped off the elevator, he told her, “I’m around, you know. If you want to chat or get another drink.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“It’ll get better,” he said. “I mean, first, it’ll probably get worse, but then it will get better. If you remember what I told you, that is.” Then he turned and then, walking to the men’s room, he said, “Or not.”