Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

This has been an uncommon week for Trout. By now he’s just about completely lost interest in the project Guy had made sound so exciting. Conned him into, really. It took him maybe two hours after his arrival to realize that Teko and Yolanda were completely indifferent to literary matters, to questions of style, flavor, pacing, wit, and spontaneity. Chiefly, they were concerned with compulsively controlling all aspects of the making of the book. First the questions. Then the answers. Well, to be honest, at first Trout had thought the scriptwriting thing might help, if only because he figured it would disabuse them of the notion that the book was just waiting out there — free, ambient, ready to be harvested. Writing one was a bitch of a job and he was happy to have them know it. But it only encouraged their obsessiveness. Even after they’d begun working from the scripts — Trout rattling off the inane prompts he’d been supplied and fidgeting through the even more inane answers, like David Susskind in Hell — he’d watched them resisting their own words, suspicious of what they themselves had composed only hours before. They’d stop the tape to go back and examine some abandoned draft, make sure it didn’t contain the precise turn of phrase they felt was required. During playback Teko and Yolanda would express their great disapproval with the tone of voice in which certain of the questions had been asked or their answers provided.

As if it mattered, any of it; each of them spoke in the voice of the revolutionary automaton. The committee of three would withdraw into its little floating ministry of truth — the creamery, the woods, the funky-smelling sleeping loft — to shape and vet these anodyne dialogues. Trout had begun taking long walks alone in the woods after the sessions to avoid whichever of the three might attempt to take him aside to privately rebut the lies of another. Or it might be Joan, blowing off steam of her own.

It’s become clear to him that his function is first to humor them, second to offer a shoulder to cry on, and third to serve as a buffer between them and Guy. Guy, who, when Trout phoned him from town the other evening to kvetch, had grievances of his own to air. Worked his ass off and not a word of gratitude, etc. Did he have any idea how much all this was running him? Etc. Poor Trout. He’d had to rummage through his pockets for change to feed the pay phone at the operator’s command, while Guy rambled on.

Eventually they decided that Guy would drive out today to pick him up. Trout’s had enough, and now he’s ready to head back to Canada, transcribe the tapes, and await further instructions. He does not anticipate receiving his share of the six-figure advance Guy had talked about so, ah, rashly. Not exactly Book-of-the-Month Club material they have to work with here. Guy had thought that by some osmotic process he could turn these dogmatic wackos into a group of impassioned moderates bearing a message of uplift, ha-ha. A summer in the country, juicy berries and sweet corn on the cob: It would be like the Fresh Air Fund, right. Big, big mistake Guy had made, appealing to their vanity while dangling big bucks over their heads. They had amped up, not toned down. These tapes couldn’t possibly depict the adoption of a temperate way of thinking.

What they hadn’t quite gotten was that the fascist insect was interested only in Tania.

He finishes the last scrap of toast and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. Then he notices Yolanda gazing steadily at him from the top of the ladder leading to the sleeping loft.

“Good morning,” he says. He reaches to lift yesterday’s shirt from on top of the clothes piled in the open suitcase, patting the breast pocket for his cigarettes. When he raises his head again, Teko has replaced her up there.

“So today you’re leaving.”

“I spoke to Guy. He thinks we have enough for a start.”

“And how’s it going selling the book?”

“I couldn’t say. Guy’s department.”

Teko nods. It’s a rhythmic nodding, a bobbing, really. There’s silence. Trout feels the cellophany semicrumple of the cigarette pack in his hand.

“And so you’re going off to do what, exactly?”

“Well, as I said, Guy thinks we have enough to begin. I’m going back up north, and, you know—” He puts down the pack and mimes the act of typing, fingers flailing away. Then he picks it up again, lightly squeezing the butts through plastic, paper and foil.

“Huh,” says Teko. He expels the sound with a rank sourness, like some gaseous discontent. He lowers first one leg and then the other and begins climbing down the ladder.

“I don’t know, man,” he says.

“I’m sorry?”

“Just. I don’t know. Never mind.” Teko waves a hand and heads for the kitchen.

Trout feels his release as surely as if he’d been held there on the lumpy, sprung couch by force. He looks and finds the pack of Larks still in his hand. The suitcase still open. The tapes still there, beside the shot glass glazed with yolk.

What Trout doesn’t know is that Teko and Yolanda have arrived at a sour, exquisitely paranoid consensus: The reason that Guy Mock wants all the material taped and in his possession is so that he alone can reap the financial benefits from the sale of the book when, having removed the tapes, he calls in the police death squads, which will then kill the occupants of the farm. To demonstrate the authenticity of his material, he will have the tapes of their voices. To facilitate their murder at the hands of the cops, Guy has relocated them to this particular isolated and indefensible property in Jeffersonville.

This fever dream quickly becomes the only possible scenario.

What Trout also doesn’t know is that Teko and Yolanda have come up with a counterplan. Today, after Guy and Randi arrive, Teko and Yolanda intend to kill them, along with Trout, and bury the bodies in the woods.

What about Tania and Joan?

Good question.

At the last minute, early in the morning, Yolanda decides to send them to town to buy some groceries.

Trout’s in his tweed jacket and gray flannels again. Traveling clothes, as he thinks of them. His watch tells him that it’s a little early to expect Guy, so he’s taking the air, waiting. He strolls toward the dark boundary of the trees, grasshoppers leaping out of the tall weeds ahead of his every footfall, his hands jammed into his pockets, shoes glistening and pants darkening from the heavy dew. He climbs a gentle incline at the edge of the woods and pauses. Turning, he sees the house, the lawn, the shaded entry to the road, the creamery, all laid out in the near distance below him. He also sees Teko, striding across the lawn, carrying an air rifle in one hand. Spotting him, Teko stops, then raises the rifle. Its barrel gleams as it catches the sun. A greeting? Or? Before Teko continues on his way toward the creamery, Trout notices that he awkwardly cradles something against his chest with his other hand. Trout peeks at his watch again. Then descends, quickly.

Inside the house, Trout can see that the cassettes are no longer on the coffee table.

“You’re wondering about your tapes.” Yolanda smiles at him serenely, but her body is taut, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Yes.”

“We’ll be holding on to those.”

Trout’s mouth falls open to form a question, though he’s not quite sure what it will be; his mouth is just following his upper body’s lead: head jutting forward, shoulders hunching — a pantomime of skeptical incredulity. He shrugs and juts his head, mouth agape, as if an insect has suddenly stung him on the back of the neck.

His question turns out to be: “Why can’t I have my tapes?”

“It’s a question of we have to safeguard our security. So they’ll be staying here with us.”