Andrew Vachss - Choice of Evil

“How long does what take, Zoë?”

She smiled, perhaps at my use of the name she had selected. “For them to. . . I mean, don’t you have to talk to them? So you can. . .”

“Oh. I understand what you mean now. There is no set rule. Sometimes it takes several weeks for the entire arrangements to be worked out.”

“What’s the shortest time it ever took?”

“Nine days,” I answered without thinking. Immediately, I began to berate myself internally for my foolishness. The answer I gave the child was an honest one, but it would not be as reassuring as I had hoped.

“But this will probably take longer, won’t it?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” I told her, grateful that she was not going to fixate on a nine-day period and become anxious if it were exceeded.

“You’re hard to draw,” she said.

“Why is that?”

“Your face keeps. . . shifting. I don’t know, I’m not sure. You have to draw the skull.”

“The skull?”

“The skull beneath the skin. You have to draw that first. That’s the part that stays the same.”

“I’m not sure I follow you exactly,” I told her. “May I have a look?”

“No!” she replied, the first hint of sharpness in her voice since I had captured her. “I don’t like anyone to see my drawing until I’m done. Sometimes I don’t get it right, and I have to keep doing it. So I don’t like anyone to see it until it’s true. Please?”

“Certainly,” I assured her. “Every artist must work in his or her own way.”

She smiled gratefully and went back to work.

On her first night, I asked the child her normal bedtime, but she was vague in response. Offered a choice of evening meals, however, she became animated. When I told her that, yes, she could mix several of the meals I had planned, incorporating components as she wished, she clapped her hands in delight. After great deliberation, she chose spaghetti, spinach, and liver.

“Do you think that’s gross?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I think it is quite creative,” I told her. “I believe I’ll have the same.”

The child helped with the cooking. She ate her meal with relish, but watched me anxiously until I assured her that, indeed, her mixed selection was delicious.

“And very good for you too,” she added.

Realizing that, for whatever reason, she was not going to be precise about her normal bedtime, I told her that she could, while she was staying with me, go to bed anytime she wished. After all, there would be no school for her in the morning.

“Are you going to do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Teach me. I have a friend. Jeanne Ellen. She’s home-schooled. Do you know what that is?”

“Certainly. Some states permit—”

“Are you going to do it?” she interrupted.

“Do. . . what?”

“Home-school me,” she replied, as though I were a bit slow.

“Well, I. . .”

“I have most all of my books with me,” she said, a pleading undertone to her voice. “And you have *lots* of books here too, the ones you got for me, I mean.”

I began to protest that I was not familiar with her coursework, but quickly self-edited. After all, how complex could a fifth-grade curriculum be, especially given the abysmal state of American education generally?

“All right,” I agreed. “But you had better get ready for bed, just in case you fall asleep.”

“I don’t have any pajamas.”

“My apologies. I showed you the books, but not the clothes. Over there in the chest of drawers. Take a look. It’s all new, of course. I had to guess at your sizes, but I believe I was quite accurate.”

The child immediately ran over to where I had indicated and began pawing through the clothing. It was all of good quality, but not up to her usual standard, I assumed.

“Can I keep all this?” she asked, surprising me. After all, if she was not permitted an excess of books, why. . .? Still, I did not pursue the issue.

“Of course,” I said. “But now go put on your pajamas, all right? You can use the bathroom.”

She trotted off without a word, emerging in about fifteen minutes. I had no anxiety about the time lapse—escape from the bathroom was impossible and it was devoid of potential weaponry.

“I brushed my teeth,” she announced when she emerged, wrapped in the pink terry-cloth bathrobe I had purchased in anticipation of a little girl’s natural modesty in the presence of a stranger.

I made up the bed for her, and sat down to read. I left the television on. In the past, that had always succeeded in eventually lulling the children to sleep. But this one proved remarkably resistant. It was almost midnight when I looked up to find her wide awake.

“Are you having trouble getting to sleep?” I asked her.

“No. I’m just not sleepy.”

“All right.”

“But I *should* sleep, right?”

“Well, of course. At some point, everyone—”

“Could you read me a story?” she asked. “That would make me sleepy, I know it.”

“I—”

“There’s lots of books,” she reminded me. “And I haven’t read hardly any of them.”

“Do your parents usually read to you before you—”

“No,” she said, her voice flat. “Please?”

I found a book about a mother polar bear and her cub and their various adventures as they crossed the Arctic ice cap in search of food. True to her word, she was fast asleep before I got a dozen pages into it.

She appeared to sleep peacefully.

I felt Xyla in the room, but she wasn’t standing where she could see the screen.

“This was a lot longer one, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah. I don’t know what it means. . . .”

“I thought he was limiting transmission time to prevent us from fingering him, but he has to know there’s no way to do that with these little cookies—they’re files with programs—he keeps mixing in there. Not going over an open line.”

“But when you send him the answer to all his questions. . .?”

“I don’t think he’s there, waiting for it. I think the program he’s using just files it someplace else. He could open it whenever he wanted. I think maybe—”

I held up my hand to silence her, watching his question pop up:

>>Age first contact?<<

I wasn’t going to guess what he meant anymore. I played it the way it looked: how old was I when I first met Wesley? Truth is, I wasn’t sure. But I gave Xyla a number for him anyway.

12

I could never bring Wesley’s face into my mind. Never see it clearly. He didn’t look like anything. He was a generic. . . never got a second glance from anyone. Most of his targets never saw him at all. This is where I’m supposed to say “except for his eyes,” right? People who write those serial-killer porno books never met the real thing. Anyway, Wesley was no serial killer. He was an assassin. And his eyes didn’t show you anything. Nothing about him did.

I can hear his voice, though. Clear as if he was right next to me. It was a machine’s voice, lifeless, no inflection. Just a communication device. I remember every word from the last time we talked:

“Something about a kid?” the ice-man had asked me, wondering how I had stumbled across his business.

“Yeah.”

“That soft spot—it’s like a bull’s eye on your back.”

“Nothing I can do,” I said. Lying to Wesley was. . . wasted.

“It’s not your problem, right?” he asked me, trying to understand. “Not your kid.”

“I didn’t want it like this,” I told him. “I wanted to be. . . something else.”

“What?”

I dragged on my smoke, knowing I’d finally have to say it. I looked deep into the monster’s empty eyes. “I wanted to be you,” I said.