1) please use the navigation bar to the left.
2) Please understand that this is an exercise on getting words on paper
3) Please also understand that no editting has taken place whatsoever.
The idea here is to get it written.
Even if it's shit.
And then go back and fix what needs to be fixed.
My highest hope for this is that it keeps your attention.
If it does that, then its done enough at this stage.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Chapter 7
“Well, she’s quite the woman,” was Andrew’s understatement of the day.
“We women have a word for women like that.”
“You women have a word for every type of woman, so that’s not particularly surprising.”
“Look, if she were a man…”
“Honestly, I don’t see how gender enters into this. She drugged, practically kidnapped, and half-tortured our boss. How exactly is this a gender issue?”
That ended the conversation.
“Look,” as I tried to interject a little peace, ”the fact of the matter is that she has a great deal more information than she first appeared to. Also, its obvious this case, as with most of our cases, is operating on many different levels. Some of which I may now have access to.”
I’d told them about my fun afternoon with Ms. Beaumont, though I’d left out a few of the more embarrassing bits. This wasn’t the first, nor was it likely to be the last, time this kind of thing had happened and I believe Megan and Andrew were starting to get sick of it. Given that it had happened to me and not them, I was touched by what I could only assume was their concern for my well-being. It was kind of nice.
“So, where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure, Megan. I’ve got all this crap in my head that doesn’t seem to make much sense. I’ve done a couple tosses of the tarot, and that doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m not getting at the stuff I need. And I don’t know how. But I can very much feel it there.”
“I have an idea.”
“Yes, Andrew?”
“I think we are making this too complex. The tarot and other tools you use are primarily symbolic and you use them to get at the information you keep pushed as far outside your consciousness as possible. The data you want now is much closer. Lets use something simpler. A kind of mnemonic free association.”
“That feels like a pretty good idea. Martin?”
“I agree, Megan. Where do we start?”
“Simple things. Scents, shapes, colors. Scents especially. Very few things cause us to access memory more than scent.”
“Please, for the love of god, tell me we aren’t going to the mall.”
“Martin, he’s right. There’s two places there that will help. The perfume counter is one.”
“And the other?”
“Silly as it sounds, the candle store.”
“My life is a very odd thing to be.”
“Indeed,” came Andrew’s usual insight.
“Can’t I just stay here and get drunk?”
“I promise, when we get back.”
*
I hate the mall for obvious reasons. To prepare, I spent two full hours in meditation. The mall can be information overload for normal people. For me, it was like having all the fans at the superbowl screaming at me and me alone. It was crippling. And not just metaphorically. I mean, I would get so overloaded that I couldn’t keep my balance. Given what we were going to try, I had Megan get out the wheelchair. For those of you who haven’t ever been ferried around by an attractive internet sex goddess, I highly recommend it.
Unfortunately, Megan has her own problems.
“C’mon. It’s a gorgeous dress and its on sale. PLEASE can I go try it on?”
“No. This isn’t a shopping trip. This is work. Be a fashion plate on your own time.” Thank you Andrew.
“I’ll model it for you.” Megan winked in my direction. Totally unfair.
“No.”
Andrew was a much strong man than me. Then again, I was starting to think that everyone, male and female, were much stronger men than me.
“Did we have to park at the other end of the mall?” I asked.
“Did you see another spot? No, I didn’t think so.”
“Have I mentioned that you lose all sympathy for the handicapped when you don’t get your way?”
“Have I mentioned how great I’d look in that dress?”
“Endlessly.”
“Then lets call us even.”
I was completely unsure how that made us even in any way. I was, though, completely sure I should keep my mouth shut.
“You are sweating.”
“Yes, Andrew, I am. I am not having a very fun time keeping out all this signal. I really haven’t gotten deep enough into my meditation to handle all this. There’s lots of spill over. Like that kid over there. He just stole a video game and feels lousy about it. But he’s hoping it will impress his little girlfriend.”
“Always worked for me.”
“You never had a girlfriend.”
“Yes, but it always worked for me in the stories I made up in my head.”
“We have very different definitions of reality, don’t we?”
“Indeed.”
I sighed.
“We could put the bag on.”
“I am NOT getting pushed around the mall in a wheelchair by an attractive internet sex goddess with that bag over my head. I’ll look like someone who might bite the ear off of children.”
“OK, no bag then.”
“Awwww, you think I’m an internet goddess? That’s so sweet!”
“Yes, but I might nosh on children, so take that for what its worth.”
“To each his own.”
“If we can get back to the task at hand, we’ll start at Macy’s, get Martin to start sniffing some of the purfumes there, see if any of them click. I don’t expect them to, but we might get lucky. Do you remember if Ms. Beaumont was wearing anything?”
As we rolled past the food court, I contemplated giving them a very thorough rundown, which I’m sure would have pleased our employer.
“Not off the top of my head. Most of the time I was there I was, y’know, drunk and drugged.”
“Yes. Nicely done with that.”
“Hey! That is not my fault. She offered me a drink. She didn’t ask ‘Would you like a drink of this seriously and very illegally doped up whiskey’. I had no clue what was going to happen.”
“And if she HAD said that?”
“It would have depended on my mood.”
“You inspire confidence in all of us.”
“Someone’s got to.”
We arrived at the Macy’s fragrance counter. An hour later, I was half drunk from all the alcohol in the various scents I’d had sprayed at me. I’d also wasted a lot of effort fighting off Megan’s attempts to get me to try on make up. She was very playful today and I was beginning to wonder if there was a seed of jealousy planted thanks to Ms. Beaumont. Not that I had any illusions about my relationship with Megan, but I think she might have just been pissing a circle around me. As it were.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“This one, whatever it is, I think this one is important.” I sniffed again.
“Was she wearing it?” asked Andrew.
“No clue. Maybe. It might just be part of whatever that painting put in my head. But its like someone adjusted the sharpness on the TV. Things are less hazy.”
“Hm. This has a lavender base. Lets go to the candle store. We’ll try and focus on lavender candles.”
“I think we should also pick up a map.”
“We aren’t lost.”
“Of the world.”
“We still aren’t lost.”
“Just do it.” The wit of my companions is not always what I’m interested in.
We spent another couple hours in the candle store, sniffing each one like a 5 year old getting high off of markers. Then we picked up a big wall map and headed back to the office.
Megan was still upset about the dress, but had let it drop.
“OK, here’s the plan,” I started to explain, “We turn down the lights except for the one by the map. I sit here, have a few drinks, you light the candles, then you stay very quiet.”
“While exceedingly romantic, and much more so than I would have thought you had in you, it makes little sense.”
“As wonderful as a romantic evening with you would be, Andrew, its not that. I’ve got a shape forming in my mind. I want the candles to keep helping me sharpen it. Then, with any luck, I’ll be able to find a corresponding shape on the map. Smarter than I look, ain’t I?”
The lights went down, the candles were lit, the alcohol poured.
And all of us waited.
I breathed in the scents and watched the lights flicker.
“You know, if whatever shape you are seeing is anything other than a country or a state in the U.S., we’re out of luck.”
“Yes. I am aware of that. Now hush.”
The shape in my head was becoming more and more defined. And then is was perfect. My eyes crawled over the map again and again.
“Well?”
“Well what, Andrew?” I said, aggrevated.
“Do you have a match?”
“Obviously I don’t.”
“Obviously. Is the shape clear?”
“Yes. Very. Picture. I can actually visualize it on the map and nothing seems to fit.”
“What does it look like?”
“A blob.”
“Great.”
“I’m guessing it’s a city which, as you noted, means we are out of luck.”
“OK. I think we need to move on then. We’ll either stumble onto it later, or we won’t. What else creeped into that creepy head of yours?”
“Emotions, mostly. It was that kind of painting. A lot of anger and frustration. But I also get the image of a girl. And a secret. A quest or goal. And…”
I doubled over.
“Martin!” screamed Megan.
“No, no, its OK. Blood. There’s blood. Lots of it.”
“So it sounds like Mr. Beaumont is dead,” Andrew offered while Megan helped me back into my chair.
“No. I don’t think so. He’s definitely involved, but its not his blood.”
“You mean like that case with the exorcist?”
“Christ, I hope not.”
The silence signaled their agreement.
“Look, “ I said, trying to drive us away from this topic, and turning on the lights, “Let’s assume that it ISN’T as bad as that, but that Mr. Beaumont is indirectly involved. Its better for all of us.”
They nodded.
“Beaumont is a powerful man. And I believe more powerful than his paper trail would imply. His house is huge and the furniture is unreal. All three of us together couldn’t furnish a single room of his place. Ms. Beaumont says that its inheritance.”
“Not a chance. Or, at least, none of that paperwork every came my way and, in theory, it all came from his accountant.”
“Yes, Megan, I agree. My point was that it obviously didn’t come from an inheritance. And it didn’t come from his job. So we have to start looking at that. And, if possible, see if we can get on that mailing list.”
“What, I don’t make enough additional income for you?” she winked.
“Can’t hurt to get more. That said, I think we need to go over things in more detail. First, find the money source. Second, we need to try and piece together his physical movements. Third, we need to try and find his personal connections outside of the obvious list his wife and work gave us.”
“Gotcha.”
“I’ll take number 3. Megan, you might want to call our cell phone service. I’m about to rack up some minutes.”
*
It is amazingly boring to keep calling phone numbers and trying to convince people on the other end to tell you who they are. Luckily, the internet keeps a disturbingly large amount of information. Again, it is amazingly boring to keep plugging numbers into a search engine. However, a couple interesting things did come up.
“This is very strange.”
“What is?” Megan asked.
“Two things. One, I wasn’t able to get a hold of any of these ‘friends’ that are on vacation. Either they didn’t answer, or the service had been disconnected.”
“Could be that they are somewhere without service.”
“Unlikely. These are high-powered people. The idea of being out of touch would be kryptonite to them,” Andrew deduced.
“And the likelihood of one of them not paying their bill is low enough. But there were three who had disconnected service.”
“That bodes poorly.”
“You continue to be a master of understatement, Andrew. Thanks.”
“Part of my service.”
“Odder still are these five-digit phone numbers.”
“Wrong numbers, I’d assume. He started dialing, hit connect too fast.”
“These calls go on for 15 minutes or more.”
“That’s a long time to listen to a silent phone.”
“Oh, I dunno…sometimes it sounds like it might be nice.”
“Did you call them?”
“Yes, I called them. And I got what I expected. Nothing.”
“Well, that’s a first.” Chuckled Megan.
“But given that these numbers are in his call log and show way too much time spent on the line, we can assume that he wasn’t getting ‘nothing’. I think its time to call in your geek, Megan.”
“He is NOT ‘my geek’. He’s just this guy I know.”
“Yes. Who follows you around like a puppy.”
“He’s gay.”
“All the more reason to consider him ‘your geek’. He’s utterly enamored with you for non-sexual reasons. Let him call you ‘mommy’ and I’ll be he’ll work for free.”
“You are a complete and utter bastard.”
“Maybe. But I’m also right.”
“Can’t argue there.”
*
“Honestly, I don’t know what I can tell you. Your phone simply won’t connect this way.”
“Davey, we know he made calls using these numbers. We know these calls went through. But we can’t make the calls. There must be a reason why he could and we can’t.”
“Oh, there is. His cell is modified to use a pirate network. Someone has piggy backed their own communication network onto his provider’s. His network picks up the seemingly incomplete numbers, and, after a time, rejects them. When they get rejected, the pirate network checks to see if there’s a special code attached to the signal, and if there is, it picks them up and connects them using its own systems. His phone generates that code.”
“Wow. OK. So what do we have to do to find out where this is all going?”
“Get his cell phone.”
“If we could get his cell phone, I assume we could find him. If we could find him, I’m not certain we’d need to be paying you 300 dollars an hour for a consult.”
“I see your point but theres really not much I can do. I’ll talk to some friends though. They might know something. Might cost ya, though.”
“Of course. Look, get results, you get paid. Now go.”
He skipped off, literally. I hate clichés. No, sorry, that’s just untrue.
“Andrew, I think I need you to go be scary for a bit.”
“Oh, goodie.”
“Go find out where his friends went on vacation. I’m starting to have a very bad feeling about this. Start with the company’s travel agent.”
“Or, alternately, I could start with the people these people answer to.”
“Which means that they would have had to actually told people where they were going. The travel agent would have purchased the tickets. That’s the closest thing to a fact that we’ll get. Start there.”
“And if they didn’t use the company agent?”
“Dunno. Ask me later.”
“Just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”
“Seems to be working so far.”
“’Working’ is an interesting choice of words. May I remind you that not very long ago, we had to spend 4 weeks cleaning fish to get home from hunting down a man who thought he was a bear. ‘Working’ is not quite how I would describe this operation all the time.”
“Did you get home?”
“Yes.”
“Did we get paid?”
“Yes.”
“Did you earn a new respect for the working man and, on top of that, a new love of showers?”
“No and Yes.”
“Then I’m batting .750. I’ll take that.”
“I do not believe that that particular situation is an adequate sampling nor do I believe that your analysis weighed the positives and negatives of the whole situation.”
“No, but then again, what else do you have going on these days?”
“Not very much, I’ll admit.”
“And if you weren’t here, what would you be doing.”
“Probably staring at a blank wall waiting for you to come home and amuse me.”
“So, are you better off here with me improvising or home watching paint while waiting for me in hopes of entertainment?”
“Touche.”
“And now you’ll be doing what?”
“Going out to intimidate the unfortunate person who made reservations for our missing friends.”
“Thanks. Glad we could have this talk.”
I smiled.
Andrew left laughing.
“My, you do seem to be a grumpy gus at the moment, don’t you?
“Megan, if I’m right, I’m pretty sure that we’re going to be getting on an airplane soon, going someplace relatively exotic, trekking over desolate land to some beautiful hideaway.”
“Yes, I can see the source of your misery.”
“And there we are going to find a whole lot of dead bodies.”
“Dead bodies.”
“Murdered bodies.”
“Exotic murdered bodies?”
“Probably.”
“But we’ll also be in an exotic vacationesque area, right?”
“How the hell do you manage to push all that into the background and think about vacationing?”
“It’s a gift. Try it sometime.”
“I’ve had worse advice. Anyhow, when Andrew calls in, do whatever you have to to get us on a plane where ever it is we need to go. And take care of everything else involved too, like if we need to rent a burro or something.”
“Sure, moneybags.”
“Oh, right. Use this.” I handed her a platinum card.
“OK, you’ve been holding out.”
“Read the name.”
“Andrea Beaumont.”
“I figured it was the least she could do.”
She laughed.
“And, y’know, order us a couple pizzas. I’m still really hung-over. And a bottle of expensive champagne. That’ll help too. All on the card.”
“It’s the least she can do. Should I get anything for Andrew?”
“Nah. I think he’s gonna be a while. I plan on being very unconscious when he gets back.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Just to show him I do, in fact, know how to plan.”
“Or fall down drunk. Which ever.”
“Hey, you can plan to fall down drunk. I do it often.”
I started to think about how all this had started, and what I’d just said.
It got funnier by the minute.
“We women have a word for women like that.”
“You women have a word for every type of woman, so that’s not particularly surprising.”
“Look, if she were a man…”
“Honestly, I don’t see how gender enters into this. She drugged, practically kidnapped, and half-tortured our boss. How exactly is this a gender issue?”
That ended the conversation.
“Look,” as I tried to interject a little peace, ”the fact of the matter is that she has a great deal more information than she first appeared to. Also, its obvious this case, as with most of our cases, is operating on many different levels. Some of which I may now have access to.”
I’d told them about my fun afternoon with Ms. Beaumont, though I’d left out a few of the more embarrassing bits. This wasn’t the first, nor was it likely to be the last, time this kind of thing had happened and I believe Megan and Andrew were starting to get sick of it. Given that it had happened to me and not them, I was touched by what I could only assume was their concern for my well-being. It was kind of nice.
“So, where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure, Megan. I’ve got all this crap in my head that doesn’t seem to make much sense. I’ve done a couple tosses of the tarot, and that doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m not getting at the stuff I need. And I don’t know how. But I can very much feel it there.”
“I have an idea.”
“Yes, Andrew?”
“I think we are making this too complex. The tarot and other tools you use are primarily symbolic and you use them to get at the information you keep pushed as far outside your consciousness as possible. The data you want now is much closer. Lets use something simpler. A kind of mnemonic free association.”
“That feels like a pretty good idea. Martin?”
“I agree, Megan. Where do we start?”
“Simple things. Scents, shapes, colors. Scents especially. Very few things cause us to access memory more than scent.”
“Please, for the love of god, tell me we aren’t going to the mall.”
“Martin, he’s right. There’s two places there that will help. The perfume counter is one.”
“And the other?”
“Silly as it sounds, the candle store.”
“My life is a very odd thing to be.”
“Indeed,” came Andrew’s usual insight.
“Can’t I just stay here and get drunk?”
“I promise, when we get back.”
*
I hate the mall for obvious reasons. To prepare, I spent two full hours in meditation. The mall can be information overload for normal people. For me, it was like having all the fans at the superbowl screaming at me and me alone. It was crippling. And not just metaphorically. I mean, I would get so overloaded that I couldn’t keep my balance. Given what we were going to try, I had Megan get out the wheelchair. For those of you who haven’t ever been ferried around by an attractive internet sex goddess, I highly recommend it.
Unfortunately, Megan has her own problems.
“C’mon. It’s a gorgeous dress and its on sale. PLEASE can I go try it on?”
“No. This isn’t a shopping trip. This is work. Be a fashion plate on your own time.” Thank you Andrew.
“I’ll model it for you.” Megan winked in my direction. Totally unfair.
“No.”
Andrew was a much strong man than me. Then again, I was starting to think that everyone, male and female, were much stronger men than me.
“Did we have to park at the other end of the mall?” I asked.
“Did you see another spot? No, I didn’t think so.”
“Have I mentioned that you lose all sympathy for the handicapped when you don’t get your way?”
“Have I mentioned how great I’d look in that dress?”
“Endlessly.”
“Then lets call us even.”
I was completely unsure how that made us even in any way. I was, though, completely sure I should keep my mouth shut.
“You are sweating.”
“Yes, Andrew, I am. I am not having a very fun time keeping out all this signal. I really haven’t gotten deep enough into my meditation to handle all this. There’s lots of spill over. Like that kid over there. He just stole a video game and feels lousy about it. But he’s hoping it will impress his little girlfriend.”
“Always worked for me.”
“You never had a girlfriend.”
“Yes, but it always worked for me in the stories I made up in my head.”
“We have very different definitions of reality, don’t we?”
“Indeed.”
I sighed.
“We could put the bag on.”
“I am NOT getting pushed around the mall in a wheelchair by an attractive internet sex goddess with that bag over my head. I’ll look like someone who might bite the ear off of children.”
“OK, no bag then.”
“Awwww, you think I’m an internet goddess? That’s so sweet!”
“Yes, but I might nosh on children, so take that for what its worth.”
“To each his own.”
“If we can get back to the task at hand, we’ll start at Macy’s, get Martin to start sniffing some of the purfumes there, see if any of them click. I don’t expect them to, but we might get lucky. Do you remember if Ms. Beaumont was wearing anything?”
As we rolled past the food court, I contemplated giving them a very thorough rundown, which I’m sure would have pleased our employer.
“Not off the top of my head. Most of the time I was there I was, y’know, drunk and drugged.”
“Yes. Nicely done with that.”
“Hey! That is not my fault. She offered me a drink. She didn’t ask ‘Would you like a drink of this seriously and very illegally doped up whiskey’. I had no clue what was going to happen.”
“And if she HAD said that?”
“It would have depended on my mood.”
“You inspire confidence in all of us.”
“Someone’s got to.”
We arrived at the Macy’s fragrance counter. An hour later, I was half drunk from all the alcohol in the various scents I’d had sprayed at me. I’d also wasted a lot of effort fighting off Megan’s attempts to get me to try on make up. She was very playful today and I was beginning to wonder if there was a seed of jealousy planted thanks to Ms. Beaumont. Not that I had any illusions about my relationship with Megan, but I think she might have just been pissing a circle around me. As it were.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“This one, whatever it is, I think this one is important.” I sniffed again.
“Was she wearing it?” asked Andrew.
“No clue. Maybe. It might just be part of whatever that painting put in my head. But its like someone adjusted the sharpness on the TV. Things are less hazy.”
“Hm. This has a lavender base. Lets go to the candle store. We’ll try and focus on lavender candles.”
“I think we should also pick up a map.”
“We aren’t lost.”
“Of the world.”
“We still aren’t lost.”
“Just do it.” The wit of my companions is not always what I’m interested in.
We spent another couple hours in the candle store, sniffing each one like a 5 year old getting high off of markers. Then we picked up a big wall map and headed back to the office.
Megan was still upset about the dress, but had let it drop.
“OK, here’s the plan,” I started to explain, “We turn down the lights except for the one by the map. I sit here, have a few drinks, you light the candles, then you stay very quiet.”
“While exceedingly romantic, and much more so than I would have thought you had in you, it makes little sense.”
“As wonderful as a romantic evening with you would be, Andrew, its not that. I’ve got a shape forming in my mind. I want the candles to keep helping me sharpen it. Then, with any luck, I’ll be able to find a corresponding shape on the map. Smarter than I look, ain’t I?”
The lights went down, the candles were lit, the alcohol poured.
And all of us waited.
I breathed in the scents and watched the lights flicker.
“You know, if whatever shape you are seeing is anything other than a country or a state in the U.S., we’re out of luck.”
“Yes. I am aware of that. Now hush.”
The shape in my head was becoming more and more defined. And then is was perfect. My eyes crawled over the map again and again.
“Well?”
“Well what, Andrew?” I said, aggrevated.
“Do you have a match?”
“Obviously I don’t.”
“Obviously. Is the shape clear?”
“Yes. Very. Picture. I can actually visualize it on the map and nothing seems to fit.”
“What does it look like?”
“A blob.”
“Great.”
“I’m guessing it’s a city which, as you noted, means we are out of luck.”
“OK. I think we need to move on then. We’ll either stumble onto it later, or we won’t. What else creeped into that creepy head of yours?”
“Emotions, mostly. It was that kind of painting. A lot of anger and frustration. But I also get the image of a girl. And a secret. A quest or goal. And…”
I doubled over.
“Martin!” screamed Megan.
“No, no, its OK. Blood. There’s blood. Lots of it.”
“So it sounds like Mr. Beaumont is dead,” Andrew offered while Megan helped me back into my chair.
“No. I don’t think so. He’s definitely involved, but its not his blood.”
“You mean like that case with the exorcist?”
“Christ, I hope not.”
The silence signaled their agreement.
“Look, “ I said, trying to drive us away from this topic, and turning on the lights, “Let’s assume that it ISN’T as bad as that, but that Mr. Beaumont is indirectly involved. Its better for all of us.”
They nodded.
“Beaumont is a powerful man. And I believe more powerful than his paper trail would imply. His house is huge and the furniture is unreal. All three of us together couldn’t furnish a single room of his place. Ms. Beaumont says that its inheritance.”
“Not a chance. Or, at least, none of that paperwork every came my way and, in theory, it all came from his accountant.”
“Yes, Megan, I agree. My point was that it obviously didn’t come from an inheritance. And it didn’t come from his job. So we have to start looking at that. And, if possible, see if we can get on that mailing list.”
“What, I don’t make enough additional income for you?” she winked.
“Can’t hurt to get more. That said, I think we need to go over things in more detail. First, find the money source. Second, we need to try and piece together his physical movements. Third, we need to try and find his personal connections outside of the obvious list his wife and work gave us.”
“Gotcha.”
“I’ll take number 3. Megan, you might want to call our cell phone service. I’m about to rack up some minutes.”
*
It is amazingly boring to keep calling phone numbers and trying to convince people on the other end to tell you who they are. Luckily, the internet keeps a disturbingly large amount of information. Again, it is amazingly boring to keep plugging numbers into a search engine. However, a couple interesting things did come up.
“This is very strange.”
“What is?” Megan asked.
“Two things. One, I wasn’t able to get a hold of any of these ‘friends’ that are on vacation. Either they didn’t answer, or the service had been disconnected.”
“Could be that they are somewhere without service.”
“Unlikely. These are high-powered people. The idea of being out of touch would be kryptonite to them,” Andrew deduced.
“And the likelihood of one of them not paying their bill is low enough. But there were three who had disconnected service.”
“That bodes poorly.”
“You continue to be a master of understatement, Andrew. Thanks.”
“Part of my service.”
“Odder still are these five-digit phone numbers.”
“Wrong numbers, I’d assume. He started dialing, hit connect too fast.”
“These calls go on for 15 minutes or more.”
“That’s a long time to listen to a silent phone.”
“Oh, I dunno…sometimes it sounds like it might be nice.”
“Did you call them?”
“Yes, I called them. And I got what I expected. Nothing.”
“Well, that’s a first.” Chuckled Megan.
“But given that these numbers are in his call log and show way too much time spent on the line, we can assume that he wasn’t getting ‘nothing’. I think its time to call in your geek, Megan.”
“He is NOT ‘my geek’. He’s just this guy I know.”
“Yes. Who follows you around like a puppy.”
“He’s gay.”
“All the more reason to consider him ‘your geek’. He’s utterly enamored with you for non-sexual reasons. Let him call you ‘mommy’ and I’ll be he’ll work for free.”
“You are a complete and utter bastard.”
“Maybe. But I’m also right.”
“Can’t argue there.”
*
“Honestly, I don’t know what I can tell you. Your phone simply won’t connect this way.”
“Davey, we know he made calls using these numbers. We know these calls went through. But we can’t make the calls. There must be a reason why he could and we can’t.”
“Oh, there is. His cell is modified to use a pirate network. Someone has piggy backed their own communication network onto his provider’s. His network picks up the seemingly incomplete numbers, and, after a time, rejects them. When they get rejected, the pirate network checks to see if there’s a special code attached to the signal, and if there is, it picks them up and connects them using its own systems. His phone generates that code.”
“Wow. OK. So what do we have to do to find out where this is all going?”
“Get his cell phone.”
“If we could get his cell phone, I assume we could find him. If we could find him, I’m not certain we’d need to be paying you 300 dollars an hour for a consult.”
“I see your point but theres really not much I can do. I’ll talk to some friends though. They might know something. Might cost ya, though.”
“Of course. Look, get results, you get paid. Now go.”
He skipped off, literally. I hate clichés. No, sorry, that’s just untrue.
“Andrew, I think I need you to go be scary for a bit.”
“Oh, goodie.”
“Go find out where his friends went on vacation. I’m starting to have a very bad feeling about this. Start with the company’s travel agent.”
“Or, alternately, I could start with the people these people answer to.”
“Which means that they would have had to actually told people where they were going. The travel agent would have purchased the tickets. That’s the closest thing to a fact that we’ll get. Start there.”
“And if they didn’t use the company agent?”
“Dunno. Ask me later.”
“Just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”
“Seems to be working so far.”
“’Working’ is an interesting choice of words. May I remind you that not very long ago, we had to spend 4 weeks cleaning fish to get home from hunting down a man who thought he was a bear. ‘Working’ is not quite how I would describe this operation all the time.”
“Did you get home?”
“Yes.”
“Did we get paid?”
“Yes.”
“Did you earn a new respect for the working man and, on top of that, a new love of showers?”
“No and Yes.”
“Then I’m batting .750. I’ll take that.”
“I do not believe that that particular situation is an adequate sampling nor do I believe that your analysis weighed the positives and negatives of the whole situation.”
“No, but then again, what else do you have going on these days?”
“Not very much, I’ll admit.”
“And if you weren’t here, what would you be doing.”
“Probably staring at a blank wall waiting for you to come home and amuse me.”
“So, are you better off here with me improvising or home watching paint while waiting for me in hopes of entertainment?”
“Touche.”
“And now you’ll be doing what?”
“Going out to intimidate the unfortunate person who made reservations for our missing friends.”
“Thanks. Glad we could have this talk.”
I smiled.
Andrew left laughing.
“My, you do seem to be a grumpy gus at the moment, don’t you?
“Megan, if I’m right, I’m pretty sure that we’re going to be getting on an airplane soon, going someplace relatively exotic, trekking over desolate land to some beautiful hideaway.”
“Yes, I can see the source of your misery.”
“And there we are going to find a whole lot of dead bodies.”
“Dead bodies.”
“Murdered bodies.”
“Exotic murdered bodies?”
“Probably.”
“But we’ll also be in an exotic vacationesque area, right?”
“How the hell do you manage to push all that into the background and think about vacationing?”
“It’s a gift. Try it sometime.”
“I’ve had worse advice. Anyhow, when Andrew calls in, do whatever you have to to get us on a plane where ever it is we need to go. And take care of everything else involved too, like if we need to rent a burro or something.”
“Sure, moneybags.”
“Oh, right. Use this.” I handed her a platinum card.
“OK, you’ve been holding out.”
“Read the name.”
“Andrea Beaumont.”
“I figured it was the least she could do.”
She laughed.
“And, y’know, order us a couple pizzas. I’m still really hung-over. And a bottle of expensive champagne. That’ll help too. All on the card.”
“It’s the least she can do. Should I get anything for Andrew?”
“Nah. I think he’s gonna be a while. I plan on being very unconscious when he gets back.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Just to show him I do, in fact, know how to plan.”
“Or fall down drunk. Which ever.”
“Hey, you can plan to fall down drunk. I do it often.”
I started to think about how all this had started, and what I’d just said.
It got funnier by the minute.
Chapter 6
Ms. Beaumont had mentioned that her husband wasn’t making as much money as he probably should have been. I’m not sure what amount ‘should have been’ was referring to, but this couple was so far out of my price range that it gave me vertigo.
I was greeted at the door and welcomed in. She was dressed in a long grey skirt slit high up the back, a grey sweater and boots. Even with my limited knowledge of fashion, I recognized that the outfit must have cost a couple grand. That wasn’t including the ornate necklace.
“So what brings you here, Mr. Alexander? I mean, besides the obvious. Have you any idea what has happened to my husband?”
“No, Ms. Beaumont. But, as you noted, that’s why I’m here.”
“Please, if you’d like, you may call me Andrea. I’d certainly like.”
I’m pretty sure I blushed. But I don’t like to think about it much. She turned and guided me in.
“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Alexander?”
“Yes. Whiskey, please. And you may call me Martin, if you’d like.”
“No, I believe I’ll stay with ‘Mr. Alexander’ if that’s OK.”
We crossed a room roughly the size of my entire apartment. Entering into another room, a little smaller this time, I continued to be impressed with the sheer opulence of their lifestyle. The leather sofa and matching chairs looked almost cloud soft. And I think the end tables and coffee table were hand carved out of the same 2000 year old tree by a single man. Andrea poured me a half a tumbler of 300 dollar bourbon. I nodded to indicate a full glass.
“Here, Mr. Alexander. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”
I took a sip. It was silk. It was smokey sunlight.
“I could die happy drinking this.”
“Many have. Well, not many. But more than a few.”
“No doubt. The price would be prohibitive.”
“And the fact that this particular batch is distilled with the slightest amount of opiates. The legality of which prevents it from being brought into the country”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Which word was confusing you?”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“While I’ve hardly lead a pure life, and have had more than my share of chemicals introduced into my system, both voluntarily and otherwise, when it happens on the job, it generally is followed by a lump on the head and ropes.”
“Ropes, Mr. Alexander?”
“Well, last time I was doped up, I was held hostage for three days by a gentleman who had assembled a veritable army of children aged 5 to 11 as part of a plan to bring the second coming.”
“Do tell!”
“Not much to tell. He thought he was staging a modern childrens crusade. He was waiting for the right time to take back the holy land from, well, the Prussians.”
“The Prussians don’t control Israel. And I’m not sure there are any Prussians anymore.”
“No. It made for very interesting conversations.”
“How ever did you escape?”
“I convinced them I was, in fact, the second coming. Or, at least, a herald thereof.”
“Really? But how?”
“Luckily, the schitzophrenically dulusional are open to suggesting if you know how.”
“And you do?”
“Yes. I have certain…understandings that helped out.”
She thought about that for a moment.
“You are a very interesting man, Mr. Alexander.”
I was still smiling like an idiot.
“Yet I’m still smiling like an idiot.”
“Well, you can’t blame a man for that all things considered,” she glanced down at my glass.
I followed her eyes and noticed I’d finished it.
“I suppose not.”
“Can I show you around the house? I rarely have guests these days.”
“Well, I do have some questions.”
“And you can’t walk and ask questions at the same time?”
“Usually, yes. I’m not certain at the moment, though.”
“Oh, I think a man of your caliber can pull it together for my interrogation, can’t you?”
“I’ll endeavor to live up to your expectations.”
I followed her from the room. Not like I had any choice. We made small talk as we walked up a spiraling staircase. I suppose it was, in fact, a spiral staircase, but it was definitely spiraling for me.
“Andrea, your husband, you’ve made some insinuations that he wasn’t bringing in the kind of cash he should have been. How do you have this sort of house then? I mean, its massive and opulent, to say the least.”
“Oh this? Michael had a relatively who died about a year ago. He actually had to visit his family numerous times to help with the paper work and such. He was gone quite a bit. Sixth months ago, he got a letter saying that this relative, who Michael had barely ever known, had left him a large amount of money. So we bought this. And all the furniture in it. And, well, everything in it. Including the whiskey you seemed to enjoy.”
“That’s quite the relative.”
“I believe my husband described him as ‘quite crazy’.”
“We should all be so lucky to have that kind of crazy in our families.”
She laughed softly.
I tried to laugh but got too dizzy and almost choked.
“Ahem. Excuse me. Your husband was gone a lot from work, especially around lunch. Three hours, maybe more. Did he ever mention this? Or what he might be doing?”
“No, but he’s been so busy. And he’s been gone a lot.”
“A lot?”
“He’s been spending a number of nights…elsewhere.”
“Ms. Beaumont, that’s what we generally call ‘significant information’. Is there any reason you didn’t mention this before?”
“I’m mentioning it now, Mr. Alexander.”
I felt my skin flush, then go cold.
“Did your husband…did he…”
I went dizzy.
“Mr. Alexander?”
I went horizontal.
“Mr. Alexander? Is it comfortable down there?”
I knew where this was heading. I decided a nap would be a good idea.
I woke up sometime later. Ms. Beaumont wasn’t kind enough to place a clock in the room. Needless to say, I was bound to a chair. On the plus side, the cords were silk and the chair amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see her, but I could ‘feel’ her behind me.
“Well, this is certainly the most comfortable way I’ve woken up in a while. At least, the most comfortable way I’ve woken up in a while after being drugged.”
“That’s a barrel chair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was commissioned by an elderly gentleman of great wealth but little distinction until he was revealed to be a Nazi who fled Germany two days before the allies arrived. Ebay. 24,000 dollars. A steal at twice the price.”
“One has to wonder if my ass is really worth 24 grand.”
“Trust me, it isn’t.”
“Are you putting me down just as part of some sort of kinky game?” I pulled at the silk cords. “I mean, seriously, did you think you had to drug me to get me to play good?”
“Mr. Alexander, do you think I don’t get what I want anytime I want it?” She came around carrying what appeared to be a very heavy, ornate chair in one hand. She was either very strong or the chair was much lighter than it appears. My luck implied the former. She placed it down backwards a few feet away from me, slowly hiked up her long skirt, and straddled the chair, resting her arms on its back.
“I believe this is how I am supposed to sit during interrogations. Am I getting it right?”
“First time, Ms. Beaumont? Oh, that makes this all very sweet!” I contemplated vomiting but I realized I couldn’t lean forward enough. Being bound to the chair was unpleasant, being covered in my own vomit was unacceptable.
“Given that I have ‘slipped you a mickey’, bound you with silk straight from China to a chair you could never afford to buy in your life, don’t you think this level of intimacy might warrant you calling me ‘Andrea’?”
“Given that you have ‘slipped me a mickey’, bound me with silk straight from China to a chair I could never afford to buy in my life, this level of abuse warrants me calling you ‘Ms. Beaumont’.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Though my way is more pleasant, I think.”
“Who am I to argue?”
“Then we are agreed?”
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont.”
She sighed and chuckled.
“Annoying, aren’t you?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to notice.” I contemplated the nature of our conversation. It was unusually flippant for, you know, our seating arrangement, but it certainly seemed better than what was likely to come next.
“I’m not planning on torturing you,” she read my mind. “Don’t get me wrong. I can and will if I must. On top of that, I can and will get people in here much more skilled than I am. I would rather avoid that. I am no sadist, Mr. Alexander. But I do expect results.”
“Results? Its been 48 hours. Well, assuming I haven’t been unconscious for a week.”
“Oh, yes, I wasn’t criticizing your performance so far. That’s been fine. My goal here was to drive home the urgency of this investigation and to make sure you had a vested interest in finding my husband quickly and efficiently.”
“Ah. I see. So you are of the ‘stick’ school of encouragement. I really do prefer sugar.”
“No doubt. Alas, sugar rarely seems to be effective. At least, the sugar I offer.” She shifted her hips.
“That was absolutely awful.”
“I know. I apologize. But the point still stands. You simply must find my husband.”
“I believe you made that abundantly clear.”
“Yes, but now there’s this lovely little threat involved.”
“Right, sorry, forgot.”
“Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn’t choose you at random.”
I was unsurprised.
“You were diagnosed paranoid schitzophrenic, committed to Revegate Hospital 18 months ago, and released 12 months ago. But you aren’t sick, are you, Mr. Alexander?”
“Depends on which of my girlfriends you ask.”
“You see things which aren’t there, but they really are, aren’t they?”
“That’s an interesting sentence.”
“Not as interesting as ‘I was dead. Now I’m not’.”
“Wait, did you…”
She reached over and turned around one of the cavases.
I almost vomited. It was some abstract painting. Not very good from what I could tell. But the problem was it screamed information at me, blasting through any defenses I had. The winds of data that I kept at bay, the eye in which I kept my sanity buckled and shrank. I caught glimpses of, I don’t know, things. Places, people. I saw them for hundredths of a second. Nothing I could grasp.
She turned the painting away from me.
“Yes. I expect this would cause you a certain amount of distress. Being drugged, I guessed, would weaken your ability to keep all this out. Yes, Mr. Alexander, I do have a certain amount of understanding regarding your abilities.”
“Agooba,” was all I could manage.
“So I do have your attention. Now, this painting was done by my husband. And I’m hoping that all this input you are now receiving will help in your attempts to find him. I’m sorry that this is unpleasant for you, though. I know about the training you’ve received and how you now access these perceptions. However, that indirect path wasn’t going to work here. I need you to get this in your head and I need you to do it now. This is, trust me, the best way. I know.”
“Wait, how do you…”
“Mr. Alexander, do you really think you are my first? That there weren’t others?”
“Others?? Wait, I…”
She turned the painting around again and that was all she wrote for me.
I came to on the same sofa I started this out on.
“Agooba,” I repeated.
“Yes. Agooba,” she repeated, sitting in the matching chair sipping what I assumed was the same whiskey I’d had earlier.
“How long has it been?”
“Oh, 8 hours or so. You’ve had quite the day, Mr. Alexander.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.” My head hurt. Information migraine.
“Its all in the interest of the case. Trust me.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.”
“Do you always repeat yourself?”
“You mean there’s something you don’t know about me?”
“No, there really isn’t.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you know all this? And who else you know like me?”
“No, I really don’t. All I’ll say is that when you have money and motivation and absolutely no scruples, you meet the most interesting people.”
“Goodie.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Alexander. I’m done with the stick for now. I’m moving on to the obligatory bribe. Should you accomplish your task, and should the results be what I am hoping for, I’ll have certain offers for you that I believe will be mutually beneficial.” She crossed her legs. Her boots, I noticed, had been replaced by strappy, leather pumps. “Did I mention I was also aware of your foot fetish?”
“No. I have to say that I’m find all of this to be really intrusive.”
“Of course you do. It IS intrusive. But these techniques tend to get me what I want. And, as I said, they may end up getting you what you want.”
“And exactly why do you think they won’t get you a black eye, a broken lip, and a jail cell?”
“Because, while you are inexperienced, and trapped in a film-noir fantasy, you aren’t an idiot. If I end up in jail, my people will still be out there. As will you. And the bullet proof glass in your office won’t withstand a SWAT team issue high-powered sniper rifle.”
“Ah. Yes.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that, but I wasn’t going to let her know. Not my fault, really. I was still drunk and stoned.
“Find my husband, Mr. Alexander. Find my husband, get me what I want, and I’ll give you at least a little of what you need.”
She grinned.
“I’ll even let you beg.”
I blushed so red it burned.
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont.”
“Now, did you ever imagine things like this happening when you opened your office?”
“Unfortunately, yes, I did. Is that sad?”
“Probably. But its OK, just part of one long sentence.”
“Thanks.”
“You can go now.”
“Can I take the bottle?”
“Why not. Consider it a tip.”
I took my present and left. A car was waiting for me and took me back to the office. Once inside, I contemplated getting stark raving drunk, but the whirlwind of data that was spinning in my head made that feel like a colossally bad idea. Thought about meditating, trying to repair some of the damage that had been done. I wasn’t sure I could though. More so, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I could almost see words and images dancing over my retinas, all based on that painting. Which surprised me. It really was just from the painting. Everything else, all the other input that I should have been getting from, well, everything, wasn’t there. It was all still in the jetstream. Just the painting data had infiltrated my safe zone. Nothing had ever quite worked like that before. I was surprised, then less so. She knew something about what was going on in my head. She knew others like me. And she said something. Something familiar. ‘One long sentence’.
One long sentence.
Which, I’m pretty sure, was how this all began.
I was greeted at the door and welcomed in. She was dressed in a long grey skirt slit high up the back, a grey sweater and boots. Even with my limited knowledge of fashion, I recognized that the outfit must have cost a couple grand. That wasn’t including the ornate necklace.
“So what brings you here, Mr. Alexander? I mean, besides the obvious. Have you any idea what has happened to my husband?”
“No, Ms. Beaumont. But, as you noted, that’s why I’m here.”
“Please, if you’d like, you may call me Andrea. I’d certainly like.”
I’m pretty sure I blushed. But I don’t like to think about it much. She turned and guided me in.
“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Alexander?”
“Yes. Whiskey, please. And you may call me Martin, if you’d like.”
“No, I believe I’ll stay with ‘Mr. Alexander’ if that’s OK.”
We crossed a room roughly the size of my entire apartment. Entering into another room, a little smaller this time, I continued to be impressed with the sheer opulence of their lifestyle. The leather sofa and matching chairs looked almost cloud soft. And I think the end tables and coffee table were hand carved out of the same 2000 year old tree by a single man. Andrea poured me a half a tumbler of 300 dollar bourbon. I nodded to indicate a full glass.
“Here, Mr. Alexander. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”
I took a sip. It was silk. It was smokey sunlight.
“I could die happy drinking this.”
“Many have. Well, not many. But more than a few.”
“No doubt. The price would be prohibitive.”
“And the fact that this particular batch is distilled with the slightest amount of opiates. The legality of which prevents it from being brought into the country”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Which word was confusing you?”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“While I’ve hardly lead a pure life, and have had more than my share of chemicals introduced into my system, both voluntarily and otherwise, when it happens on the job, it generally is followed by a lump on the head and ropes.”
“Ropes, Mr. Alexander?”
“Well, last time I was doped up, I was held hostage for three days by a gentleman who had assembled a veritable army of children aged 5 to 11 as part of a plan to bring the second coming.”
“Do tell!”
“Not much to tell. He thought he was staging a modern childrens crusade. He was waiting for the right time to take back the holy land from, well, the Prussians.”
“The Prussians don’t control Israel. And I’m not sure there are any Prussians anymore.”
“No. It made for very interesting conversations.”
“How ever did you escape?”
“I convinced them I was, in fact, the second coming. Or, at least, a herald thereof.”
“Really? But how?”
“Luckily, the schitzophrenically dulusional are open to suggesting if you know how.”
“And you do?”
“Yes. I have certain…understandings that helped out.”
She thought about that for a moment.
“You are a very interesting man, Mr. Alexander.”
I was still smiling like an idiot.
“Yet I’m still smiling like an idiot.”
“Well, you can’t blame a man for that all things considered,” she glanced down at my glass.
I followed her eyes and noticed I’d finished it.
“I suppose not.”
“Can I show you around the house? I rarely have guests these days.”
“Well, I do have some questions.”
“And you can’t walk and ask questions at the same time?”
“Usually, yes. I’m not certain at the moment, though.”
“Oh, I think a man of your caliber can pull it together for my interrogation, can’t you?”
“I’ll endeavor to live up to your expectations.”
I followed her from the room. Not like I had any choice. We made small talk as we walked up a spiraling staircase. I suppose it was, in fact, a spiral staircase, but it was definitely spiraling for me.
“Andrea, your husband, you’ve made some insinuations that he wasn’t bringing in the kind of cash he should have been. How do you have this sort of house then? I mean, its massive and opulent, to say the least.”
“Oh this? Michael had a relatively who died about a year ago. He actually had to visit his family numerous times to help with the paper work and such. He was gone quite a bit. Sixth months ago, he got a letter saying that this relative, who Michael had barely ever known, had left him a large amount of money. So we bought this. And all the furniture in it. And, well, everything in it. Including the whiskey you seemed to enjoy.”
“That’s quite the relative.”
“I believe my husband described him as ‘quite crazy’.”
“We should all be so lucky to have that kind of crazy in our families.”
She laughed softly.
I tried to laugh but got too dizzy and almost choked.
“Ahem. Excuse me. Your husband was gone a lot from work, especially around lunch. Three hours, maybe more. Did he ever mention this? Or what he might be doing?”
“No, but he’s been so busy. And he’s been gone a lot.”
“A lot?”
“He’s been spending a number of nights…elsewhere.”
“Ms. Beaumont, that’s what we generally call ‘significant information’. Is there any reason you didn’t mention this before?”
“I’m mentioning it now, Mr. Alexander.”
I felt my skin flush, then go cold.
“Did your husband…did he…”
I went dizzy.
“Mr. Alexander?”
I went horizontal.
“Mr. Alexander? Is it comfortable down there?”
I knew where this was heading. I decided a nap would be a good idea.
I woke up sometime later. Ms. Beaumont wasn’t kind enough to place a clock in the room. Needless to say, I was bound to a chair. On the plus side, the cords were silk and the chair amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see her, but I could ‘feel’ her behind me.
“Well, this is certainly the most comfortable way I’ve woken up in a while. At least, the most comfortable way I’ve woken up in a while after being drugged.”
“That’s a barrel chair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was commissioned by an elderly gentleman of great wealth but little distinction until he was revealed to be a Nazi who fled Germany two days before the allies arrived. Ebay. 24,000 dollars. A steal at twice the price.”
“One has to wonder if my ass is really worth 24 grand.”
“Trust me, it isn’t.”
“Are you putting me down just as part of some sort of kinky game?” I pulled at the silk cords. “I mean, seriously, did you think you had to drug me to get me to play good?”
“Mr. Alexander, do you think I don’t get what I want anytime I want it?” She came around carrying what appeared to be a very heavy, ornate chair in one hand. She was either very strong or the chair was much lighter than it appears. My luck implied the former. She placed it down backwards a few feet away from me, slowly hiked up her long skirt, and straddled the chair, resting her arms on its back.
“I believe this is how I am supposed to sit during interrogations. Am I getting it right?”
“First time, Ms. Beaumont? Oh, that makes this all very sweet!” I contemplated vomiting but I realized I couldn’t lean forward enough. Being bound to the chair was unpleasant, being covered in my own vomit was unacceptable.
“Given that I have ‘slipped you a mickey’, bound you with silk straight from China to a chair you could never afford to buy in your life, don’t you think this level of intimacy might warrant you calling me ‘Andrea’?”
“Given that you have ‘slipped me a mickey’, bound me with silk straight from China to a chair I could never afford to buy in my life, this level of abuse warrants me calling you ‘Ms. Beaumont’.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Though my way is more pleasant, I think.”
“Who am I to argue?”
“Then we are agreed?”
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont.”
She sighed and chuckled.
“Annoying, aren’t you?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to notice.” I contemplated the nature of our conversation. It was unusually flippant for, you know, our seating arrangement, but it certainly seemed better than what was likely to come next.
“I’m not planning on torturing you,” she read my mind. “Don’t get me wrong. I can and will if I must. On top of that, I can and will get people in here much more skilled than I am. I would rather avoid that. I am no sadist, Mr. Alexander. But I do expect results.”
“Results? Its been 48 hours. Well, assuming I haven’t been unconscious for a week.”
“Oh, yes, I wasn’t criticizing your performance so far. That’s been fine. My goal here was to drive home the urgency of this investigation and to make sure you had a vested interest in finding my husband quickly and efficiently.”
“Ah. I see. So you are of the ‘stick’ school of encouragement. I really do prefer sugar.”
“No doubt. Alas, sugar rarely seems to be effective. At least, the sugar I offer.” She shifted her hips.
“That was absolutely awful.”
“I know. I apologize. But the point still stands. You simply must find my husband.”
“I believe you made that abundantly clear.”
“Yes, but now there’s this lovely little threat involved.”
“Right, sorry, forgot.”
“Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn’t choose you at random.”
I was unsurprised.
“You were diagnosed paranoid schitzophrenic, committed to Revegate Hospital 18 months ago, and released 12 months ago. But you aren’t sick, are you, Mr. Alexander?”
“Depends on which of my girlfriends you ask.”
“You see things which aren’t there, but they really are, aren’t they?”
“That’s an interesting sentence.”
“Not as interesting as ‘I was dead. Now I’m not’.”
“Wait, did you…”
She reached over and turned around one of the cavases.
I almost vomited. It was some abstract painting. Not very good from what I could tell. But the problem was it screamed information at me, blasting through any defenses I had. The winds of data that I kept at bay, the eye in which I kept my sanity buckled and shrank. I caught glimpses of, I don’t know, things. Places, people. I saw them for hundredths of a second. Nothing I could grasp.
She turned the painting away from me.
“Yes. I expect this would cause you a certain amount of distress. Being drugged, I guessed, would weaken your ability to keep all this out. Yes, Mr. Alexander, I do have a certain amount of understanding regarding your abilities.”
“Agooba,” was all I could manage.
“So I do have your attention. Now, this painting was done by my husband. And I’m hoping that all this input you are now receiving will help in your attempts to find him. I’m sorry that this is unpleasant for you, though. I know about the training you’ve received and how you now access these perceptions. However, that indirect path wasn’t going to work here. I need you to get this in your head and I need you to do it now. This is, trust me, the best way. I know.”
“Wait, how do you…”
“Mr. Alexander, do you really think you are my first? That there weren’t others?”
“Others?? Wait, I…”
She turned the painting around again and that was all she wrote for me.
I came to on the same sofa I started this out on.
“Agooba,” I repeated.
“Yes. Agooba,” she repeated, sitting in the matching chair sipping what I assumed was the same whiskey I’d had earlier.
“How long has it been?”
“Oh, 8 hours or so. You’ve had quite the day, Mr. Alexander.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.” My head hurt. Information migraine.
“Its all in the interest of the case. Trust me.”
“Yeah, thanks for that.”
“Do you always repeat yourself?”
“You mean there’s something you don’t know about me?”
“No, there really isn’t.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you know all this? And who else you know like me?”
“No, I really don’t. All I’ll say is that when you have money and motivation and absolutely no scruples, you meet the most interesting people.”
“Goodie.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Alexander. I’m done with the stick for now. I’m moving on to the obligatory bribe. Should you accomplish your task, and should the results be what I am hoping for, I’ll have certain offers for you that I believe will be mutually beneficial.” She crossed her legs. Her boots, I noticed, had been replaced by strappy, leather pumps. “Did I mention I was also aware of your foot fetish?”
“No. I have to say that I’m find all of this to be really intrusive.”
“Of course you do. It IS intrusive. But these techniques tend to get me what I want. And, as I said, they may end up getting you what you want.”
“And exactly why do you think they won’t get you a black eye, a broken lip, and a jail cell?”
“Because, while you are inexperienced, and trapped in a film-noir fantasy, you aren’t an idiot. If I end up in jail, my people will still be out there. As will you. And the bullet proof glass in your office won’t withstand a SWAT team issue high-powered sniper rifle.”
“Ah. Yes.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that, but I wasn’t going to let her know. Not my fault, really. I was still drunk and stoned.
“Find my husband, Mr. Alexander. Find my husband, get me what I want, and I’ll give you at least a little of what you need.”
She grinned.
“I’ll even let you beg.”
I blushed so red it burned.
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont.”
“Now, did you ever imagine things like this happening when you opened your office?”
“Unfortunately, yes, I did. Is that sad?”
“Probably. But its OK, just part of one long sentence.”
“Thanks.”
“You can go now.”
“Can I take the bottle?”
“Why not. Consider it a tip.”
I took my present and left. A car was waiting for me and took me back to the office. Once inside, I contemplated getting stark raving drunk, but the whirlwind of data that was spinning in my head made that feel like a colossally bad idea. Thought about meditating, trying to repair some of the damage that had been done. I wasn’t sure I could though. More so, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I could almost see words and images dancing over my retinas, all based on that painting. Which surprised me. It really was just from the painting. Everything else, all the other input that I should have been getting from, well, everything, wasn’t there. It was all still in the jetstream. Just the painting data had infiltrated my safe zone. Nothing had ever quite worked like that before. I was surprised, then less so. She knew something about what was going on in my head. She knew others like me. And she said something. Something familiar. ‘One long sentence’.
One long sentence.
Which, I’m pretty sure, was how this all began.
Chapter 5
But all that is ancient history.
Well, maybe not ancient. But history. A year can seem ancient, but I suppose it really isn’t. Especially since I still have the track marks on my arms. I suppose that, until they go away, everything is closer to current events than history.
Now, if you can believe it, I’m a private investigator. It seemed a natural thing to do.
The office was perfect, simple, but cluttered. Bottle of Jack Daniels in the filing cabinet, and a window placed perfectly for dramatic lighting. The rubber duck on my desk.
All we needed now were cases.
We’d had a few, but not as many as I’d have liked.
“Martin, we’ve got someone coming in an hour,” Megan yelled from out front. She hated the intercom.
I felt badly about stealing Megan away from Dennis, but I really needed the instant revenue her other ventures could generate. Plus, I was beginning to think she liked me. At least more than she liked Dennis.
“Excellent. Get Andrew in here too. I like having him around for the first interviews.”
“Sure things, Boss.”
Yeah, I still had him around. Besides being my best friend, he was also very efficient and could be surprisingly intimidating when needed. And, of course, I owed him what sanity I still had. He’d found the man who could teach me the meditative techniques I needed to block out all the peripheral data coming at me. All the noise.
I needed to get into the right mindset for the interview. I dimmed the lights just a bit, leaned back in my chair and let my thoughts swim around me. All the information that still screamed at me from, well, just about everything in the outside world swirled around and around in my head. I visualized it all like a huge chaotic wind. I guided it, shaped its movements into a circle, like a cyclone I could control. There, at the center of the cyclone, where it was calm, I placed myself. There I could catch half-glimpses, hear tiny fragments, but nothing could really get to me. I couldn’t even pick out just what I wanted. To do that might disrupt the flow and have it come crashing down on me. The last time that happened, I spent 2 days almost catatonic.
But I had been taught very well how to keep myself safe, and, more, how to access the information a little indirectly.
The phone rang.
“Yes, Andrew?” It was almost always Andrew on my phone, unless it came through the front desk.
“You need me?”
“Yes, ya big lummox,” I was trying to improve my noir-speak, “in about an hour or so. New client. First interview.”
“About?”
“Dunno. I felt like going in a bit blind. Actually, I’m not sure I did. Megan is sending me in blind. But I go with it.”
“Are you becoming a Taoist now?”
“No. Maybe. Would I know if I was?”
“Probably not. Not if you were doing it right.”
“Then lets assume I am, or, lets assume I’m not. Let’s assume I need you here in 30 minutes.”
“Done.”
I went back to my meditation only to be brought out of it 15 minutes later by Andrew. He was wearing a long black duster and a fedora, if you can believe it. I was happy to see how into this he’d gotten. We didn’t speak as he wandered the room, looking for the best place to stand for the most effect. We’d found that giving off an image that spoke a little of danger worked very well. And Andrew had spent several months on an exercise binge to bulk up. He’d ended up being pretty intimidating. And that was problematic. We wanted to exude strength and competance, but not make the client feel threatened, hence his need to find the right location.
He ended up in the back corner, face semi-illuminated.
“You done now?”
“Yes, this will do.”
“You sure? You look pretty shady back there.”
“Indeed. But given the unknown nature of the client, it seemed that a bit more presence might be a good idea.”
“Nice. I appreciate it. But that brings up a point. What if some dame came in here and pulled a gun on me.”
“I’d miss you very much.”
“Thanks.”
“I did point out the new Kevlar vests you can get on the internet.”
“For me or for you?”
“Two-for-one deal.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
This was, of course, mostly a joke. We’d had a gun pulled on us once, by a junkie who was significantly more likely to shoot himself in the foot than do damage to any of us. However, it had woken up a level of concern we’d previously avoided thinking about.
“You know, Martin, it’s entirely possible that we are starting to make enemies.”
“It’s also entirely possible that you are starting to get into character. Or, even more, that you simply want a present.”
“Indeed.”
“Have I mentioned I hate waiting?”
“I would have thought that the meditation would have helped with that.”
“It has and it does. But it’s still an issue.”
“That is a good thing. It shows there’s still room to grow.”
“And you were worried I was going to end up perfect, suddenly?”
“It kept me up nights.”
“Thanks for worrying.”
“That’s my job.”
We waited.
The door opened and Megan, her hair up perfectly, wearing a long, grey skirt, white blouse, and pumps that made my calves hurt, stood next to a woman I could only assume was our prospective client.
I am amazingly perceptive.
“Ms. Andrea Beaumont, may I introduce Martin Alexander.”
Ms. Beaumont moved gracefully into the room, her ultra-fashionable black slacks making the softest of wisking sounds as she did. Her black, cashmere sweater hugged her body like the tires of a high-performance car gripping the turns on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Yes. I was definitely ‘in character’.
I took her hand in greeting.
“Ms. Beaumont, this is my associate Andrew Sloan. How can we help you?”
As she sat down, eyes flickering over the office, taking in everything she could in the slightly dim lighting, I reached inside the file cabinet and pulled out the whiskey and two glasses.
“Mr. Alexander, its 10:30 in the morning.”
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont. It is.”
I filled my glass halfway.
“I will drink alone if I must.”
Her laquered fingernail tapped the rim of her glass and I filled it.
We both took a drink. Her auburn hair tickled her chin as she did.
Andrew waited.
There was a silence.
“Mr. Alexander, I need you to find my husband.”
“We can do that. How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks. The police, of course, have been useless.”
“Ms. Beaumont, let me be blunt. It’s been my experience that, when the police can’t find a man, he’s either dead or doesn’t want to be found.”
Actually, that hadn’t been my experience at all. I hadn’t had much ‘missing persons’ experience, but it seemed reasonable.
“Be that as it may. If he’s dead, I want the insurance. If he’s not, I want to know why he’s hiding. You don’t have to bring him back if he’s alive. Just where I can find him.”
“I assume you’ve given all the documentation you have to my secretary?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s explained our fees and payment structures?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now tell me about your husband.”
“We aren’t rich, but we do just fine. My husband works in finance and has had his ups and downs. Before he left, he was complaining about work a great deal. How he seemed to be in endless meetings, how every deal seemed to be falling through, how he kept missing out on the ‘big money’.”
“Was that his thing? The ‘big money’?”
“Yes. He always wanted that huge windfall, that thing that would push him to the top. It wasn’t about being rich, it wasn’t about having money, per se. It was about the success and prestige.”
“Sounds like he’s still stuck in 1987.”
“Mr. Alexander, while the criminal element of the 80s may have gone away, the ruthlessness and drive have not. And those are two characteristics my husband possessed plenty of. Unfortunately, luck came in a distant third.”
“And intelligence?”
“Brains? He was no genius, but no idiot either. In the end, he got where and what he got through being tenacious and cold.”
I glanced back at Andrew. He nodded slightly.
“Well, Ms. Beaumont, we’d be happy to have your business.”
She reached for the bottle and filled her glass almost to the rim.
“Thank you, Mr. Alexander.”
In one slow, almost lingering drink, she downed it entirely. She rose silently and left, her pumps clicking ever so slightly along the hardwood floors. But before closing the door, she half turned and said, “Nice rubber duck.”
“My kind of girl,” I said after she had left.
Andrew raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. My kind of broad? Dame?”
“I suppose that remains to be seen. Please hold off on making an ass out of yourself until after we are completely paid.”
“Deal.”
Megan came in.
“Very nice with the whiskey. Very ‘hard boiled’.”
“Thanks. Loving this, aren’t you?”
“Very! Shall I assume we have a new client?”
“Yup. She left you a dossier?”
“Yeah, a few papers and pictures and a CD with tons of legal and work documents. It’ll take me a while to go through it all.”
“OK, make three copies of all the documents and the disc. Put one set in the safe and give Andrew and me the others so we all can get started on it.”
“Sure. I should have a profile worked up on him by tomorrow morning.”
“Great.”
“And then?”
“Then I do what I do.”
*
We met in the morning. I had spent the night watching TV, and letting my eyes wander randomly over the various papers and files we’d gotten. I was just letting it all sort of sink in as it felt like, coupled with all the crap on the tube. It was sort of like getting fed intravenously. Plus, it was the only safe way for me to eat, as it were.
Megan had finished her profile. Thank god SOMEONE here knew something about business.
“So Mr. Michael Beaumont was pretty decent at his job. He made his firm a reasonable amount of money, and earned a pretty reasonable amount himself. I cross referenced the work he was doing with general business trends as well as how other financial investment companies were doing, what they were buying and selling, and who was moving up the ladders. It looks like Michael was making the ‘easy scores’, bringing home the bacon and all, but he kept missing the big ones. I don’t know enough about how all this works, but judging from what other guys with his experience and position were doing, Mike was really dropping the ball. He was missing out on a lot of hits he should have been making. But he was working hard, and bringing in enough predictable money that he kept his head above water. My guess, though, was that he’d be fired within the next year.”
“Had he ever gotten the big score?” I asked.
“Not really. Which is also unusual. Most guys in his spot had bagged at least a couple big scores. His wife was right. He’d gotten there by being tenacious. Like a pit bull, I’d say. However, given his recent behavior, and the drop in his ability to even hit the ones everyone else was, I’d say he was distracted, had something going on outside of his actual work.”
“An affair?” I hazard a guess.
“I can’t say from this. Maybe. Ms. Beaumont didn’t have him followed or anything, so we don’t have any evidence of a sexual liason. But something was obviously keeping him off his game.”
“Drugs. Or maybe some sort of side-project.”
“That’s what I was thinking, Andrew. Probably not drugs. His company tests. If it was drugs, it would be something new. Something invisible to current testing procedures.”
“And if it was that, well, that could also be his side-project. A drug that couldn’t be detected, well, that would be money.”
“Money, and danger. Both of which could cause him to no longer be in the vicinity of his wife.”
“Dead from a deal gone wrong, or far too rich from a deal gone right to want to share.”
“Exactly.”
At this point, I felt the need to break in. These two were running away.
“Guys. Yes. This sounds like the seeds of a theory, but it posits objects not in evidence.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Hey, I’ve been reading up on Occam’s Razor. Anyhow, all we really know is that he’s gone now, and there appears to have been something keeping him distracted from his normal work.”
“You don’t trust my analysis?”
“OK, yes, there was something keeping him distracted. It seems to me that the next step will be to find out what that something was.”
They both nodded in agreement.
“Then you two are on interview patrol. You know the drill. Go talk to anyone who seems interesting first. Then the boring people. And Andrew, try not to intimidate anyone more than necessary. The last lawsuit was really a bitch.”
“I thought it was part of my job. And the insurance covered it.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to fill out all those forms which, I might add, were written in something closer to Sanskrit than English.”
“I’d like to point out that you didn’t fill them out either, I did,” Megan interjected.
“Yes, but I was with you in spirit. I felt your pain.”
“Pain can be arranged,” she winked.
They both left, presumably to do what I told them, but who knew.
Here’s where things get dangerous.
I still had my increased perceptions, I was just able to keep them at bay with some concentration and meditation exercises. The problem was accessing them without going banana-wacky. I’d spent enough time drooling on myself for one lifetime.
The only way to do this was indirectly. We, my guru and I, had come up with a number of methods, but all of them broke down to complex, somewhat guided, Rorschach tests. We used things like the Tarot, and other fortune telling devices. I could have waited until I got more information from Andrew and Megan, but doing this early on was a good idea. It kept my ‘reading’ more open, and also more focused. Too much information might lead me somewhere interesting, but still not where I wanted to be. And, doing it early just kept us on track instead of wandering off in random directions.
Given how early on we were in all this, and the nature of the client and investigation, the I-Ching seemed to be a logical choice.
I lit a cigarette to go with the whiskey.
Letting the smoke waft from my lungs and lips got, I watched it swirl and found myself seeing patterns forming, hints of faces, half-landscapes. I was getting myself into a mental place where this thing I do could work.
And that’s the only name I could give to it. ‘This thing I do’. I still didn’t really understand it. No one did. None of the shrinks in the hospital. None of the shrinks before the hospital, for that matter. And, of course, it wasn’t like any of them believed me. They mostly assumed I was ‘fucked up’. While that’s not a very technical diagnosis, its pretty accurate when dealing with terms like ‘paranoid schizophrenic’. If it hadn’t been for Andrew finding my meditation guru, I’d have stayed in that damn room wearing my favorite jacket.
But he did. And slowly the maelstrom in my head got easier to deal with. Actually, it wasn’t even that bad when I was locked up. But put me in the rec room with the others and, well, it was overpowering. I mean, you think that normal people give off a lot of tells with their body language and such? You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been around the stark-raving-mad. It was like I was watching everything that had ever caused anyone to completely snap. It was like the worst, most painful avant-guarde film in history. And I didn’t even have any popcorn. And if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to get any into my mouth, unless it was a feed-bag. Usually, I’d start crying, then screaming, then other ‘guests’ would start crying and screaming and then its thorazine Big-Gulps all around!
Eventually, though, I learned to see the input as wind. Then to turn into it, like a boat and let it just gust around me, which was disturbing, but much better then how it was before, buffetting me every which way. And then I was able to guide it, cause it to blow around me instead, like some sort of strange tornado of words and images. And then, finally, I learned to create a safe place in the eye. Where it was calm and I could rest. And then, after a few more months of observation and more medication than I’d like to admit, I was able to go home.
And then there’s the rubber duck.
Its become something of a spirit guide for me. When I talked with my guru about my dreams, he took to it instantly. Now it sometimes helps me focus, keeping the noise out, or letting it in as I need it. Mostly I just feel better having it around.
And no. I don’t take baths with it.
Usually.
The I-Ching is The Book Of Changes. It guides one through spiritual growth. I looked at the start of a case as the start of a journey, and so the I-Ching fit with that. Some forms of ‘divination’ required questions of a specific nature and right now we didn’t have enough information to ask an intelligent question. Not that intelligence, or lack thereof, had ever stopped us before.
The problem was, of course, asking the right question. I could throw the reeds without thinking, I suppose, but they might get me, say, advice on my next food shopping, or how to adjust the office to conform with Feng Shui, or when to have children.
I thought about this for quite some time before realizing I was running around in mental circles. I took the ornate box from my desk drawer and pulled out the yarrows.
I went for simple.
“What should I do next?”
I tossed the yarrows on my desk.
The results were Hexagram 42 and 48.
42’s interpretation for the present was:
I (Increase):There will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken, and it will even be advantageous to cross the great stream.
The first (bottommost) line, undivided, shows that it will be advantageous for its subject in his position to make a great movement. If it be greatly fortunate, no blame will be inputed to him.
The second line, divided, shows parties adding to the stores of its subject ten pairs of tortoise shells whose oracles cannot be opposed. Let him persevere in being firm and correct, and there will be good fortune. Let the king, having the virtues thus distinguished, employ them in presenting his offerings to God, and there will be good fortune.
The third line, divided, shows increase given to its subject by means of what is evil, so that he shall be led to good, and be without blame. Let him be sincere and pursue the path of the Mean, so shall he secure the recognition of the ruler, like an officer who announces himself to his prince by the symbol of his rank.
In the sixth line, undivided, we see one to whose increase none will contribute, while many will seek to assail him. He observes no regular rule in the ordering of his heart. There will be evil.
The situation is changing rapidly, but neither Yin (the passive feminine force) nor Yang (the active masculine force) is gaining ground.
And 48 for the future:
Ching (The Well): We think of how the site of a town may be changed, while the fashion of its wells undergoes no change. The water of a well never disappears but never receives any great increase, and those who come and those who go can draw and enjoy the benefit. If the drawing has nearly been accomplished, but before the rope has quite reached the water the bucket is broken, this is evil.
The things most apparent, those above and in front, are embodied by the upper trigram Sun (Wind), which is tansforming into K'an (Water). As part of this process, penetration and following are giving way to danger and the unknown.
The things least apparent, those below and behind, are embodied by the lower trigram Chen (Thunder), which is transforming into Sun (Wind). As part of this process, movement, initiative, and action are giving way to penetration and following.
I sighed.
Deep down inside, I hated the I-Ching. It has a couple nasty tendencies. First, I had to use a book. The Hexagram’s don’t visually imply much. That meant that the interpretation came between me and my ‘intuition’. Second, what information came through had a tendency to only become apparent AFTER the fact.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough information to use any other technique. My life, or, more importantly, my head was complex and, more to the point, aggravating. My kingdom for a crystal ball.
However, the reading was basically positive, and implied triumph over evil. Looked like I was going to be on my own for at least some of this. But, that the foundation of my world would still be around.
I’ll take what I can get.
Of course, one doesn’t need an oracle of some kind to get help.
Sometimes, one just has to get in a cab.
Which, of course, I did. I’m not an idiot.
When I got to Mitchell’s office, I stood outside for a while. I always felt like an idiot doing this. But still I was here.
I rang the buzzer.
“C’mon up, Martin,” came the voice. The door buzzed open and I went upstairs.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Because you have a new case.”
“I dread the answer to this but…how did you know that?”
“I know things. Did I mention I’m a private investigator?”
“So I hear. Actually, that’s why I’m here.”
This wasn’t an uncommon conversation.
“Sooner or later, son, you are gonna have to learn how to start these things yourself.”
“Hey, I’m getting better. I’ve got Andrew and Megan out interviewing everyone they can. When they get back, I’ll go over whatever they’ve found and see what to do.”
“So, the question isn’t what should be done first, but rather, what should YOU do now.”
“Well, yes.”
“What do you do when you are looking for someone who is either dead or doesn’t want to be found?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, in case ‘A’, if he’s dead, don’t worry too much about it. Chances are, if he’s dead, he’s in a hotel somewhere after eating a gun or hanging himself. He’ll be found within the next two weeks.”
“You think?”
“Well, its unlikely anyone would kill a financial consultant and go to great lengths to hide the body and any evidence of the murder. And if they DID try to go to those lengths, its probably because the perpetrators aren’t good murderers and evidence of the murder , if not evidence of the murderers themselves, would have shown up. We’d know that he’d been killed.”
“Hm.”
“A smart student knows when to keep his mouth shut. Good job.”
“Hm.”
“In case ‘B’, his body will be found within a month of his suicide. Most motel’s only take payments for up to a month in advance, so sooner or later someone is going into that room. Also, he’ll start to stink pretty fast. Any way you look at it, if he killed himself, he’s going to be found in 2 weeks.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Of course. A smart student knows when to ask questions, too.”
“What if he didn’t kill himself in a motel room?”
“Its possible, but statistically, its a motel room.”
“OK. And if he’s hiding?”
“Well, you’ll have to wait until the Mousekateers get back. Look at what they bring you and go ask new questions. The follow his footsteps. This is simple stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. I find the start of projects to be paralyzing.”
“Its inertia. The only reason you actually do anything is because someone walks through your office door and won’t pay you for sitting on your ass.”
“Sometimes they call.”
“Sure. And you want to know why they come through your door and not mine even though I have better advertising, and more experience?”
“Please.”
“Its either because their cases are so weird that they don’t feel comfortable going to a ‘respectable’ investigator, or…”
“Or ?”
“Or its because your last name is Alexander and mine is Tiskevich.”
“Thanks. Because my ego needs this sort of support.”
“And I’m more than happy to get the normal boring work. Thanks for taking one for the team.”
“At least I’m good for something.”
“Look, you actually are good at this. At least at the weird ones. You solved that clown extortion thing a couple months ago.”
“I was hoping to pitch that as a movie-of-the-week thing. But neither of the restaurant chains involved seemed happy with the idea.”
“And those vanishing dogs stopped vanishing because of you too. You do good work so long as everyone involved is vague deranged.”
“Maybe. That came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago. Someone took a shot at me through my window.”
“Yeah. So I hear. Lucky your associate is as paranoid as he should be.”
“I fought Andrew tooth and nail against installing the bulletproof glass, but I was wrong.”
“You’ve commented a number of times about wanting to be ‘hard boiled’. Welcome to the club.”
“Are all P.I.s this silly about image?”
“Nope. Just the ones who really get things done. Its like rock music. Or poetry. Its all about the image. And the image is all about the girls.”
“You get girls?”
“No, but I keep trying.”
“Want a free membership to Megan’s webcam?”
“She already gave me one.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you associating with the help.”
“That’s unfortunate. But I don’t make enough money to pass up a freebie at 150 a month”
“Kind of makes you wonder why I bother taking cases anyhow.”
“Not really. You have something inside you that needs to express itself or you’ll blow up.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“How did you…?”
“Because you aren’t the only one.”
There ended the lesson. Without a word, I left.
I found myself, three hours later, on the subway, still thinking about why Mitchel did what he did. Why he wasn’t a musician, or a poet, or something else. But it wasn’t just about girls. It was something more and maybe it was something more like me than I realized. And even if it wasn’t the same as this weirdness that had grown within me over the past couple years, I still felt less alone. This would significantly reduce the amount of time I needed with my shrink this week.
I made it back to the office and started going over the case materials again.
Dead or alive, I was still doing a job.
Megan was right. There was something off about this guy. His call log has some weird names in it. Credit card charges showed he’d taken a few trips on his own that didn’t appear to be business related. I couldn’t open myself up to the information the way I’d like, but I could feel something tickling. A rapping at my chamber door. Unfortunately, I couldn’t let the raven in.
Unless I felt like 6 months of playing with my own poo.
Which was cool for the first couple weeks but got old very quickly.
Regardless, something more was happening with our missing friend. Dead, or alive, either he was up to something that wasn’t just stocks and hedge funds, or something other than his wife or mafia was pulling strings.
Or I was being paranoid.
I had to work on my confidence.
*
I’d been waiting in the office for a few hours when Megan and Andrew finally returned.
“Where have you two been?” I asked.
“Well, we bumped into each other on the way back and decided to exchange notes before coming here for a summary,” Megan replied.
“Good. Then hit me with it.”
“Well, Andrew talked to Mr. Beaumont’s friends, and I talked with his co-workers. They all confirmed that he’d been distracted. The coworkers, specifically his secretary, noted that he’d been going out for these very long lunches.”
“Well, that’s certainly a sign of…hm. Of what?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But the secretary said he was coming back smelling oddly.”
“Oddly?”
“Oddly.”
“Not of alcohol.”
“If she knew it was alcohol, she would have said ‘He came back smelling drunk’, woulnd’t you think?”
“Maybe. But not if she was trying to cover for him.”
“I am impressed by your new awareness of people’s behaviors. However, if she was trying to cover for him, she wouldn’t have mentioned it at all.”
“Touche. We might make a P.I. out of you yet.”
“I was talking with Tiskevich. It always gets my head working this way. That said, did anyone know where he was going during lunch? I know this is an obvious question and almost certainly won’t have an answer, but I’m obligated to ask.”
“Nope. Unfortunately, the people he was friends with at work are all on vacation.”
“How many is that?”
”How many what?”
“How many friends of his are on vacation?”
“Uh, wait…” Megan began going through her notes, counting.
“Looks like…fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Doesn’t that sound like a lot?”
“Fifteen people on vacation out of a company of 250 does not seem like a significant percentage,” Andrew chimed in.
“No. But doesn’t it seem odd that fifteen of this guys friends are on vacation at once?”
“Hm. Yes. Perhaps they all went together?”
“Without our target? Nice friends.”
“There might have been some reason he didn’t go.”
“Like the thing distracting him that we keep coming back to? Yeah.”
“What about his boss?”
“Out sick.”
“For how long?”
“A couple weeks, apparently.”
“Hm.”
I thought about that.
“Andrew, his out of work associates?”
“There weren’t a whole lot of them. Generally, they said, he worked too much and too late to make any friends. Neighbors noticed that his car wasn’t around very much the past couple weeks.”
“And it took you two this long to tell me…what?”
“honestly, almost nothing.”
“Great.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“Could be worse.”
“Really? How so, Andrew?”
“Well, you could be sitting in front of a pile of dissected dogs looking for a ring by hand.”
“Yes. That was certainly a thrill. Did I tell you he was making almost 2500 bucks a week selling those organs online? I mean, even after the ones he was keeping for his own medical purposes?”
“Really? Off of ads in Occult Monthly?” Megan was also interesting in business models.
“And alternative medicine sales. And I’m pretty sure he was selling the blood to ‘vampires’.”
“Christ. Could we not get one normal case? Just one?”
“All things considered, the case at hand seems pretty normal.”
“Outside of the lack of any real information,” interjected Andrew.
“Actually, I don’t think the lack of evidence really is significant. Assuming that he’s either trying to not be found, or he’s killed himself, wouldn’t it make sense that we wouldn’t see very much? I mean, even the blind spot of his extra-ciricular activities would make sense.”
“And his friends all on vacation at the same time.”
“Yeah yeah. Sometimes, just sometimes, it might be a coincidence.”
“Martin, has it been your experience that anything we encounter that might be a coincidence is, in fact, a coincidence?”
“Unfortunately, Andrew, no. But I’m willing to accept the possibility.”
“Unfortunately, indeed.”
Again with the silence.
“Well, regardless,” I said, “we aren’t any closer, really, to figuring out what actually has happened. If its not a coincidence, I’m sure we’ll be lucky enough to find out sooner or later.”
“Unfortunately, indeed,” parroted Megan.
“OK. You two are creeping me out. Go home. I’ve got things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ve got more than a few hundred documents to start going through again. And another interview.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Ms. Beaumont.”
Well, maybe not ancient. But history. A year can seem ancient, but I suppose it really isn’t. Especially since I still have the track marks on my arms. I suppose that, until they go away, everything is closer to current events than history.
Now, if you can believe it, I’m a private investigator. It seemed a natural thing to do.
The office was perfect, simple, but cluttered. Bottle of Jack Daniels in the filing cabinet, and a window placed perfectly for dramatic lighting. The rubber duck on my desk.
All we needed now were cases.
We’d had a few, but not as many as I’d have liked.
“Martin, we’ve got someone coming in an hour,” Megan yelled from out front. She hated the intercom.
I felt badly about stealing Megan away from Dennis, but I really needed the instant revenue her other ventures could generate. Plus, I was beginning to think she liked me. At least more than she liked Dennis.
“Excellent. Get Andrew in here too. I like having him around for the first interviews.”
“Sure things, Boss.”
Yeah, I still had him around. Besides being my best friend, he was also very efficient and could be surprisingly intimidating when needed. And, of course, I owed him what sanity I still had. He’d found the man who could teach me the meditative techniques I needed to block out all the peripheral data coming at me. All the noise.
I needed to get into the right mindset for the interview. I dimmed the lights just a bit, leaned back in my chair and let my thoughts swim around me. All the information that still screamed at me from, well, just about everything in the outside world swirled around and around in my head. I visualized it all like a huge chaotic wind. I guided it, shaped its movements into a circle, like a cyclone I could control. There, at the center of the cyclone, where it was calm, I placed myself. There I could catch half-glimpses, hear tiny fragments, but nothing could really get to me. I couldn’t even pick out just what I wanted. To do that might disrupt the flow and have it come crashing down on me. The last time that happened, I spent 2 days almost catatonic.
But I had been taught very well how to keep myself safe, and, more, how to access the information a little indirectly.
The phone rang.
“Yes, Andrew?” It was almost always Andrew on my phone, unless it came through the front desk.
“You need me?”
“Yes, ya big lummox,” I was trying to improve my noir-speak, “in about an hour or so. New client. First interview.”
“About?”
“Dunno. I felt like going in a bit blind. Actually, I’m not sure I did. Megan is sending me in blind. But I go with it.”
“Are you becoming a Taoist now?”
“No. Maybe. Would I know if I was?”
“Probably not. Not if you were doing it right.”
“Then lets assume I am, or, lets assume I’m not. Let’s assume I need you here in 30 minutes.”
“Done.”
I went back to my meditation only to be brought out of it 15 minutes later by Andrew. He was wearing a long black duster and a fedora, if you can believe it. I was happy to see how into this he’d gotten. We didn’t speak as he wandered the room, looking for the best place to stand for the most effect. We’d found that giving off an image that spoke a little of danger worked very well. And Andrew had spent several months on an exercise binge to bulk up. He’d ended up being pretty intimidating. And that was problematic. We wanted to exude strength and competance, but not make the client feel threatened, hence his need to find the right location.
He ended up in the back corner, face semi-illuminated.
“You done now?”
“Yes, this will do.”
“You sure? You look pretty shady back there.”
“Indeed. But given the unknown nature of the client, it seemed that a bit more presence might be a good idea.”
“Nice. I appreciate it. But that brings up a point. What if some dame came in here and pulled a gun on me.”
“I’d miss you very much.”
“Thanks.”
“I did point out the new Kevlar vests you can get on the internet.”
“For me or for you?”
“Two-for-one deal.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
This was, of course, mostly a joke. We’d had a gun pulled on us once, by a junkie who was significantly more likely to shoot himself in the foot than do damage to any of us. However, it had woken up a level of concern we’d previously avoided thinking about.
“You know, Martin, it’s entirely possible that we are starting to make enemies.”
“It’s also entirely possible that you are starting to get into character. Or, even more, that you simply want a present.”
“Indeed.”
“Have I mentioned I hate waiting?”
“I would have thought that the meditation would have helped with that.”
“It has and it does. But it’s still an issue.”
“That is a good thing. It shows there’s still room to grow.”
“And you were worried I was going to end up perfect, suddenly?”
“It kept me up nights.”
“Thanks for worrying.”
“That’s my job.”
We waited.
The door opened and Megan, her hair up perfectly, wearing a long, grey skirt, white blouse, and pumps that made my calves hurt, stood next to a woman I could only assume was our prospective client.
I am amazingly perceptive.
“Ms. Andrea Beaumont, may I introduce Martin Alexander.”
Ms. Beaumont moved gracefully into the room, her ultra-fashionable black slacks making the softest of wisking sounds as she did. Her black, cashmere sweater hugged her body like the tires of a high-performance car gripping the turns on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Yes. I was definitely ‘in character’.
I took her hand in greeting.
“Ms. Beaumont, this is my associate Andrew Sloan. How can we help you?”
As she sat down, eyes flickering over the office, taking in everything she could in the slightly dim lighting, I reached inside the file cabinet and pulled out the whiskey and two glasses.
“Mr. Alexander, its 10:30 in the morning.”
“Yes, Ms. Beaumont. It is.”
I filled my glass halfway.
“I will drink alone if I must.”
Her laquered fingernail tapped the rim of her glass and I filled it.
We both took a drink. Her auburn hair tickled her chin as she did.
Andrew waited.
There was a silence.
“Mr. Alexander, I need you to find my husband.”
“We can do that. How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks. The police, of course, have been useless.”
“Ms. Beaumont, let me be blunt. It’s been my experience that, when the police can’t find a man, he’s either dead or doesn’t want to be found.”
Actually, that hadn’t been my experience at all. I hadn’t had much ‘missing persons’ experience, but it seemed reasonable.
“Be that as it may. If he’s dead, I want the insurance. If he’s not, I want to know why he’s hiding. You don’t have to bring him back if he’s alive. Just where I can find him.”
“I assume you’ve given all the documentation you have to my secretary?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s explained our fees and payment structures?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now tell me about your husband.”
“We aren’t rich, but we do just fine. My husband works in finance and has had his ups and downs. Before he left, he was complaining about work a great deal. How he seemed to be in endless meetings, how every deal seemed to be falling through, how he kept missing out on the ‘big money’.”
“Was that his thing? The ‘big money’?”
“Yes. He always wanted that huge windfall, that thing that would push him to the top. It wasn’t about being rich, it wasn’t about having money, per se. It was about the success and prestige.”
“Sounds like he’s still stuck in 1987.”
“Mr. Alexander, while the criminal element of the 80s may have gone away, the ruthlessness and drive have not. And those are two characteristics my husband possessed plenty of. Unfortunately, luck came in a distant third.”
“And intelligence?”
“Brains? He was no genius, but no idiot either. In the end, he got where and what he got through being tenacious and cold.”
I glanced back at Andrew. He nodded slightly.
“Well, Ms. Beaumont, we’d be happy to have your business.”
She reached for the bottle and filled her glass almost to the rim.
“Thank you, Mr. Alexander.”
In one slow, almost lingering drink, she downed it entirely. She rose silently and left, her pumps clicking ever so slightly along the hardwood floors. But before closing the door, she half turned and said, “Nice rubber duck.”
“My kind of girl,” I said after she had left.
Andrew raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry. My kind of broad? Dame?”
“I suppose that remains to be seen. Please hold off on making an ass out of yourself until after we are completely paid.”
“Deal.”
Megan came in.
“Very nice with the whiskey. Very ‘hard boiled’.”
“Thanks. Loving this, aren’t you?”
“Very! Shall I assume we have a new client?”
“Yup. She left you a dossier?”
“Yeah, a few papers and pictures and a CD with tons of legal and work documents. It’ll take me a while to go through it all.”
“OK, make three copies of all the documents and the disc. Put one set in the safe and give Andrew and me the others so we all can get started on it.”
“Sure. I should have a profile worked up on him by tomorrow morning.”
“Great.”
“And then?”
“Then I do what I do.”
*
We met in the morning. I had spent the night watching TV, and letting my eyes wander randomly over the various papers and files we’d gotten. I was just letting it all sort of sink in as it felt like, coupled with all the crap on the tube. It was sort of like getting fed intravenously. Plus, it was the only safe way for me to eat, as it were.
Megan had finished her profile. Thank god SOMEONE here knew something about business.
“So Mr. Michael Beaumont was pretty decent at his job. He made his firm a reasonable amount of money, and earned a pretty reasonable amount himself. I cross referenced the work he was doing with general business trends as well as how other financial investment companies were doing, what they were buying and selling, and who was moving up the ladders. It looks like Michael was making the ‘easy scores’, bringing home the bacon and all, but he kept missing the big ones. I don’t know enough about how all this works, but judging from what other guys with his experience and position were doing, Mike was really dropping the ball. He was missing out on a lot of hits he should have been making. But he was working hard, and bringing in enough predictable money that he kept his head above water. My guess, though, was that he’d be fired within the next year.”
“Had he ever gotten the big score?” I asked.
“Not really. Which is also unusual. Most guys in his spot had bagged at least a couple big scores. His wife was right. He’d gotten there by being tenacious. Like a pit bull, I’d say. However, given his recent behavior, and the drop in his ability to even hit the ones everyone else was, I’d say he was distracted, had something going on outside of his actual work.”
“An affair?” I hazard a guess.
“I can’t say from this. Maybe. Ms. Beaumont didn’t have him followed or anything, so we don’t have any evidence of a sexual liason. But something was obviously keeping him off his game.”
“Drugs. Or maybe some sort of side-project.”
“That’s what I was thinking, Andrew. Probably not drugs. His company tests. If it was drugs, it would be something new. Something invisible to current testing procedures.”
“And if it was that, well, that could also be his side-project. A drug that couldn’t be detected, well, that would be money.”
“Money, and danger. Both of which could cause him to no longer be in the vicinity of his wife.”
“Dead from a deal gone wrong, or far too rich from a deal gone right to want to share.”
“Exactly.”
At this point, I felt the need to break in. These two were running away.
“Guys. Yes. This sounds like the seeds of a theory, but it posits objects not in evidence.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Hey, I’ve been reading up on Occam’s Razor. Anyhow, all we really know is that he’s gone now, and there appears to have been something keeping him distracted from his normal work.”
“You don’t trust my analysis?”
“OK, yes, there was something keeping him distracted. It seems to me that the next step will be to find out what that something was.”
They both nodded in agreement.
“Then you two are on interview patrol. You know the drill. Go talk to anyone who seems interesting first. Then the boring people. And Andrew, try not to intimidate anyone more than necessary. The last lawsuit was really a bitch.”
“I thought it was part of my job. And the insurance covered it.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to fill out all those forms which, I might add, were written in something closer to Sanskrit than English.”
“I’d like to point out that you didn’t fill them out either, I did,” Megan interjected.
“Yes, but I was with you in spirit. I felt your pain.”
“Pain can be arranged,” she winked.
They both left, presumably to do what I told them, but who knew.
Here’s where things get dangerous.
I still had my increased perceptions, I was just able to keep them at bay with some concentration and meditation exercises. The problem was accessing them without going banana-wacky. I’d spent enough time drooling on myself for one lifetime.
The only way to do this was indirectly. We, my guru and I, had come up with a number of methods, but all of them broke down to complex, somewhat guided, Rorschach tests. We used things like the Tarot, and other fortune telling devices. I could have waited until I got more information from Andrew and Megan, but doing this early on was a good idea. It kept my ‘reading’ more open, and also more focused. Too much information might lead me somewhere interesting, but still not where I wanted to be. And, doing it early just kept us on track instead of wandering off in random directions.
Given how early on we were in all this, and the nature of the client and investigation, the I-Ching seemed to be a logical choice.
I lit a cigarette to go with the whiskey.
Letting the smoke waft from my lungs and lips got, I watched it swirl and found myself seeing patterns forming, hints of faces, half-landscapes. I was getting myself into a mental place where this thing I do could work.
And that’s the only name I could give to it. ‘This thing I do’. I still didn’t really understand it. No one did. None of the shrinks in the hospital. None of the shrinks before the hospital, for that matter. And, of course, it wasn’t like any of them believed me. They mostly assumed I was ‘fucked up’. While that’s not a very technical diagnosis, its pretty accurate when dealing with terms like ‘paranoid schizophrenic’. If it hadn’t been for Andrew finding my meditation guru, I’d have stayed in that damn room wearing my favorite jacket.
But he did. And slowly the maelstrom in my head got easier to deal with. Actually, it wasn’t even that bad when I was locked up. But put me in the rec room with the others and, well, it was overpowering. I mean, you think that normal people give off a lot of tells with their body language and such? You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been around the stark-raving-mad. It was like I was watching everything that had ever caused anyone to completely snap. It was like the worst, most painful avant-guarde film in history. And I didn’t even have any popcorn. And if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to get any into my mouth, unless it was a feed-bag. Usually, I’d start crying, then screaming, then other ‘guests’ would start crying and screaming and then its thorazine Big-Gulps all around!
Eventually, though, I learned to see the input as wind. Then to turn into it, like a boat and let it just gust around me, which was disturbing, but much better then how it was before, buffetting me every which way. And then I was able to guide it, cause it to blow around me instead, like some sort of strange tornado of words and images. And then, finally, I learned to create a safe place in the eye. Where it was calm and I could rest. And then, after a few more months of observation and more medication than I’d like to admit, I was able to go home.
And then there’s the rubber duck.
Its become something of a spirit guide for me. When I talked with my guru about my dreams, he took to it instantly. Now it sometimes helps me focus, keeping the noise out, or letting it in as I need it. Mostly I just feel better having it around.
And no. I don’t take baths with it.
Usually.
The I-Ching is The Book Of Changes. It guides one through spiritual growth. I looked at the start of a case as the start of a journey, and so the I-Ching fit with that. Some forms of ‘divination’ required questions of a specific nature and right now we didn’t have enough information to ask an intelligent question. Not that intelligence, or lack thereof, had ever stopped us before.
The problem was, of course, asking the right question. I could throw the reeds without thinking, I suppose, but they might get me, say, advice on my next food shopping, or how to adjust the office to conform with Feng Shui, or when to have children.
I thought about this for quite some time before realizing I was running around in mental circles. I took the ornate box from my desk drawer and pulled out the yarrows.
I went for simple.
“What should I do next?”
I tossed the yarrows on my desk.
The results were Hexagram 42 and 48.
42’s interpretation for the present was:
I (Increase):There will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken, and it will even be advantageous to cross the great stream.
The first (bottommost) line, undivided, shows that it will be advantageous for its subject in his position to make a great movement. If it be greatly fortunate, no blame will be inputed to him.
The second line, divided, shows parties adding to the stores of its subject ten pairs of tortoise shells whose oracles cannot be opposed. Let him persevere in being firm and correct, and there will be good fortune. Let the king, having the virtues thus distinguished, employ them in presenting his offerings to God, and there will be good fortune.
The third line, divided, shows increase given to its subject by means of what is evil, so that he shall be led to good, and be without blame. Let him be sincere and pursue the path of the Mean, so shall he secure the recognition of the ruler, like an officer who announces himself to his prince by the symbol of his rank.
In the sixth line, undivided, we see one to whose increase none will contribute, while many will seek to assail him. He observes no regular rule in the ordering of his heart. There will be evil.
The situation is changing rapidly, but neither Yin (the passive feminine force) nor Yang (the active masculine force) is gaining ground.
And 48 for the future:
Ching (The Well): We think of how the site of a town may be changed, while the fashion of its wells undergoes no change. The water of a well never disappears but never receives any great increase, and those who come and those who go can draw and enjoy the benefit. If the drawing has nearly been accomplished, but before the rope has quite reached the water the bucket is broken, this is evil.
The things most apparent, those above and in front, are embodied by the upper trigram Sun (Wind), which is tansforming into K'an (Water). As part of this process, penetration and following are giving way to danger and the unknown.
The things least apparent, those below and behind, are embodied by the lower trigram Chen (Thunder), which is transforming into Sun (Wind). As part of this process, movement, initiative, and action are giving way to penetration and following.
I sighed.
Deep down inside, I hated the I-Ching. It has a couple nasty tendencies. First, I had to use a book. The Hexagram’s don’t visually imply much. That meant that the interpretation came between me and my ‘intuition’. Second, what information came through had a tendency to only become apparent AFTER the fact.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough information to use any other technique. My life, or, more importantly, my head was complex and, more to the point, aggravating. My kingdom for a crystal ball.
However, the reading was basically positive, and implied triumph over evil. Looked like I was going to be on my own for at least some of this. But, that the foundation of my world would still be around.
I’ll take what I can get.
Of course, one doesn’t need an oracle of some kind to get help.
Sometimes, one just has to get in a cab.
Which, of course, I did. I’m not an idiot.
When I got to Mitchell’s office, I stood outside for a while. I always felt like an idiot doing this. But still I was here.
I rang the buzzer.
“C’mon up, Martin,” came the voice. The door buzzed open and I went upstairs.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Because you have a new case.”
“I dread the answer to this but…how did you know that?”
“I know things. Did I mention I’m a private investigator?”
“So I hear. Actually, that’s why I’m here.”
This wasn’t an uncommon conversation.
“Sooner or later, son, you are gonna have to learn how to start these things yourself.”
“Hey, I’m getting better. I’ve got Andrew and Megan out interviewing everyone they can. When they get back, I’ll go over whatever they’ve found and see what to do.”
“So, the question isn’t what should be done first, but rather, what should YOU do now.”
“Well, yes.”
“What do you do when you are looking for someone who is either dead or doesn’t want to be found?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, in case ‘A’, if he’s dead, don’t worry too much about it. Chances are, if he’s dead, he’s in a hotel somewhere after eating a gun or hanging himself. He’ll be found within the next two weeks.”
“You think?”
“Well, its unlikely anyone would kill a financial consultant and go to great lengths to hide the body and any evidence of the murder. And if they DID try to go to those lengths, its probably because the perpetrators aren’t good murderers and evidence of the murder , if not evidence of the murderers themselves, would have shown up. We’d know that he’d been killed.”
“Hm.”
“A smart student knows when to keep his mouth shut. Good job.”
“Hm.”
“In case ‘B’, his body will be found within a month of his suicide. Most motel’s only take payments for up to a month in advance, so sooner or later someone is going into that room. Also, he’ll start to stink pretty fast. Any way you look at it, if he killed himself, he’s going to be found in 2 weeks.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Of course. A smart student knows when to ask questions, too.”
“What if he didn’t kill himself in a motel room?”
“Its possible, but statistically, its a motel room.”
“OK. And if he’s hiding?”
“Well, you’ll have to wait until the Mousekateers get back. Look at what they bring you and go ask new questions. The follow his footsteps. This is simple stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. I find the start of projects to be paralyzing.”
“Its inertia. The only reason you actually do anything is because someone walks through your office door and won’t pay you for sitting on your ass.”
“Sometimes they call.”
“Sure. And you want to know why they come through your door and not mine even though I have better advertising, and more experience?”
“Please.”
“Its either because their cases are so weird that they don’t feel comfortable going to a ‘respectable’ investigator, or…”
“Or ?”
“Or its because your last name is Alexander and mine is Tiskevich.”
“Thanks. Because my ego needs this sort of support.”
“And I’m more than happy to get the normal boring work. Thanks for taking one for the team.”
“At least I’m good for something.”
“Look, you actually are good at this. At least at the weird ones. You solved that clown extortion thing a couple months ago.”
“I was hoping to pitch that as a movie-of-the-week thing. But neither of the restaurant chains involved seemed happy with the idea.”
“And those vanishing dogs stopped vanishing because of you too. You do good work so long as everyone involved is vague deranged.”
“Maybe. That came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago. Someone took a shot at me through my window.”
“Yeah. So I hear. Lucky your associate is as paranoid as he should be.”
“I fought Andrew tooth and nail against installing the bulletproof glass, but I was wrong.”
“You’ve commented a number of times about wanting to be ‘hard boiled’. Welcome to the club.”
“Are all P.I.s this silly about image?”
“Nope. Just the ones who really get things done. Its like rock music. Or poetry. Its all about the image. And the image is all about the girls.”
“You get girls?”
“No, but I keep trying.”
“Want a free membership to Megan’s webcam?”
“She already gave me one.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you associating with the help.”
“That’s unfortunate. But I don’t make enough money to pass up a freebie at 150 a month”
“Kind of makes you wonder why I bother taking cases anyhow.”
“Not really. You have something inside you that needs to express itself or you’ll blow up.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“How did you…?”
“Because you aren’t the only one.”
There ended the lesson. Without a word, I left.
I found myself, three hours later, on the subway, still thinking about why Mitchel did what he did. Why he wasn’t a musician, or a poet, or something else. But it wasn’t just about girls. It was something more and maybe it was something more like me than I realized. And even if it wasn’t the same as this weirdness that had grown within me over the past couple years, I still felt less alone. This would significantly reduce the amount of time I needed with my shrink this week.
I made it back to the office and started going over the case materials again.
Dead or alive, I was still doing a job.
Megan was right. There was something off about this guy. His call log has some weird names in it. Credit card charges showed he’d taken a few trips on his own that didn’t appear to be business related. I couldn’t open myself up to the information the way I’d like, but I could feel something tickling. A rapping at my chamber door. Unfortunately, I couldn’t let the raven in.
Unless I felt like 6 months of playing with my own poo.
Which was cool for the first couple weeks but got old very quickly.
Regardless, something more was happening with our missing friend. Dead, or alive, either he was up to something that wasn’t just stocks and hedge funds, or something other than his wife or mafia was pulling strings.
Or I was being paranoid.
I had to work on my confidence.
*
I’d been waiting in the office for a few hours when Megan and Andrew finally returned.
“Where have you two been?” I asked.
“Well, we bumped into each other on the way back and decided to exchange notes before coming here for a summary,” Megan replied.
“Good. Then hit me with it.”
“Well, Andrew talked to Mr. Beaumont’s friends, and I talked with his co-workers. They all confirmed that he’d been distracted. The coworkers, specifically his secretary, noted that he’d been going out for these very long lunches.”
“Well, that’s certainly a sign of…hm. Of what?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But the secretary said he was coming back smelling oddly.”
“Oddly?”
“Oddly.”
“Not of alcohol.”
“If she knew it was alcohol, she would have said ‘He came back smelling drunk’, woulnd’t you think?”
“Maybe. But not if she was trying to cover for him.”
“I am impressed by your new awareness of people’s behaviors. However, if she was trying to cover for him, she wouldn’t have mentioned it at all.”
“Touche. We might make a P.I. out of you yet.”
“I was talking with Tiskevich. It always gets my head working this way. That said, did anyone know where he was going during lunch? I know this is an obvious question and almost certainly won’t have an answer, but I’m obligated to ask.”
“Nope. Unfortunately, the people he was friends with at work are all on vacation.”
“How many is that?”
”How many what?”
“How many friends of his are on vacation?”
“Uh, wait…” Megan began going through her notes, counting.
“Looks like…fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Doesn’t that sound like a lot?”
“Fifteen people on vacation out of a company of 250 does not seem like a significant percentage,” Andrew chimed in.
“No. But doesn’t it seem odd that fifteen of this guys friends are on vacation at once?”
“Hm. Yes. Perhaps they all went together?”
“Without our target? Nice friends.”
“There might have been some reason he didn’t go.”
“Like the thing distracting him that we keep coming back to? Yeah.”
“What about his boss?”
“Out sick.”
“For how long?”
“A couple weeks, apparently.”
“Hm.”
I thought about that.
“Andrew, his out of work associates?”
“There weren’t a whole lot of them. Generally, they said, he worked too much and too late to make any friends. Neighbors noticed that his car wasn’t around very much the past couple weeks.”
“And it took you two this long to tell me…what?”
“honestly, almost nothing.”
“Great.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“Could be worse.”
“Really? How so, Andrew?”
“Well, you could be sitting in front of a pile of dissected dogs looking for a ring by hand.”
“Yes. That was certainly a thrill. Did I tell you he was making almost 2500 bucks a week selling those organs online? I mean, even after the ones he was keeping for his own medical purposes?”
“Really? Off of ads in Occult Monthly?” Megan was also interesting in business models.
“And alternative medicine sales. And I’m pretty sure he was selling the blood to ‘vampires’.”
“Christ. Could we not get one normal case? Just one?”
“All things considered, the case at hand seems pretty normal.”
“Outside of the lack of any real information,” interjected Andrew.
“Actually, I don’t think the lack of evidence really is significant. Assuming that he’s either trying to not be found, or he’s killed himself, wouldn’t it make sense that we wouldn’t see very much? I mean, even the blind spot of his extra-ciricular activities would make sense.”
“And his friends all on vacation at the same time.”
“Yeah yeah. Sometimes, just sometimes, it might be a coincidence.”
“Martin, has it been your experience that anything we encounter that might be a coincidence is, in fact, a coincidence?”
“Unfortunately, Andrew, no. But I’m willing to accept the possibility.”
“Unfortunately, indeed.”
Again with the silence.
“Well, regardless,” I said, “we aren’t any closer, really, to figuring out what actually has happened. If its not a coincidence, I’m sure we’ll be lucky enough to find out sooner or later.”
“Unfortunately, indeed,” parroted Megan.
“OK. You two are creeping me out. Go home. I’ve got things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ve got more than a few hundred documents to start going through again. And another interview.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Ms. Beaumont.”
Chapter 4
Poker and women sounded like a good idea.
Poker and women sounded like a fantastic idea.
Poker and women translated to money and sex.
One would think.
I should have been fantastic at poker. I should have been able to read everyone at the table perfectly. Even though I knew virtually nothing about cards.
I should have been fantastic with picking up a girl. I should have been able to read her like a book and say exactly the right thing. Even though I knew virtually nothing about women.
Here’s how the evening went:
I hit the casino. I figured I’d start at a low stakes table.
I was utterly useless. The whole point was that I’d be able to read the players to figure out what they had. Unforutnately, these guys weren’t taking the game seriously at all and so I could read, say, the fact that they were worried that they were going to have a fight with their spouse, or that they should get going home because they had to be up early for work. But I couldn’t tell what cards they had.
I lost a lot of money.
Then I figured that a higher stakes game would work out better.
I tried that.
For a while, things went very well. For all their abilities to hide their body language, I could see exactly what they had each and every hand.
That’s a great skill for poker.
After a while, I started to lose money.
Not a lot.
Just slowly but surely.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure that, as accurately as I was reading them, they were reading me. Plus, they knew the odds at the table. They knew how likely it was that they’d get a better hand than me, how likely it was that, by the end of the hand, they’d have mine beaten.
It would appear that, in cards, I am a sprinter, not cross country.
That was unfortunate, but OK.
I had my backup scheme.
I had women.
I was almost giddy with anticipation.
I went to the bar.
A reasonably nice bar, but not a great bar.
I found a reasonably nice girl, but not a great girl.
I learned something about bars and girls.
The whole point of meeting a girl at a bar, the whole point of one of these mindless, passing, one-night encounters is the illusion.
The illusion that someone is something they aren’t, that they are something you want. A wonderful lie you can believe for a while.
But me…I can’t find the lie. Its completely not there for me. When I was talking with the girl, trying to get myself into the situation, and completely succeeding at getting her into the situation, I discovered my problem. I kept picking up every bit of truth. At first it was that she wasn’t hugely interested in talking with me, then that she had to get home, and then she started to buy into my banter, but by that point I had learned that we had less than nothing in common, and that we’d probably kill each other in different circumstances. And it just kept coming at me.
I couldn’t find a lie to believe.
So poker and women turned into me coming home broke and alone.
Not that this was anything new.
“How did it go, Martin?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Do you see my new car in the driveway?”
Interestingly, he actually looked out the window.
“No.”
“Hm. That’s strange. I was pretty sure I had sex in that car with some girl I met.’
“Hm. That’s very odd.”
“Oh, wait, I remember now. I lost all my money at poker so I couldn’t but a new car and that’s OK cause I couldn’t find a girl worth having sex with.”
“Hm. Unfortunate.”
“Yes.”
I explained how the evening went.
“I apologize. I should have thought it through better before suggesting it.”
“It’s OK. I should have known better. I’ve never been much good at turning negatives into positives.”
“Well, that’s simply untrue. You turned your bizarre love-affair with schlock TV into a career.”
“Well, I can’t deny that. Anyhow, I’m now back where I started. And I’ve got a migraine. Not even from the ‘noise’. Its from the effort of keeping it out.”
“Hows that working out for you?”
“Not so well.”
“I understand. I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me sleep on it.”
“OK.”
“Try not to pass out on the stairs.”
“No promises.”
“OK.”
There was a long silence.
“I could tell you a joke.”
“Do I look like I’m in the mood to joke around?”
“No.”
“Then lets assume I’m not.”
“OK, I’m going to bed.”
“Night.”
Night. It was going to be a long one of those.
I could hear the crickets and they told me what the weather was going to be. I could hear the traffic and knew that someone was having a baby. I could hear a car very quietly pulling into a driveway and knew what that meant, though his sleeping wife didn’t, and the closing of the deli next door that was almost certainly going to be robbed.
Yeah. I didn’t think I would be sleeping anytime in the foreseeable future.
Fuck.
The morning wouldn’t come soon enough.
Then again, it was all going to get worse then.
More people.
More activity.
More noise.
TV wouldn’t be any escape. The characters gave off almost as much noise as the actors who played them. On top of that, I got echos from the writers and directors and producers.
And the commercials were even worse.
I was beginning to wonder what was going to happen to me.
I could only withdraw but so much from the sensory world.
Sensory.
Sensory deprivation.
I wondered.
Could I live in one of those tanks?
How long could someone stay in there.
And how much did they cost?
I could get a feeding tube.
Could I piss in the water?
Maybe.
I’d be willing to wear a catheter.
OK, maybe I was getting a little too extreme.
I suppose all I really needed was a room with some soundproofing.
And maybe a little sliding door though which food could be passed. Like prisoners in solitary confinement.
That would be very OK.
Megan’s work was generating more and more every day. I’d still be part owner of the company. I’d still get checks whether or not I showed up. In fact, I could probably get Dennis to throw his back into it and double the revenue. Which, really, would get me a bigger paycheck than I was getting now.
And then I could sit alone.
Maybe I could read then.
I hadn’t tried reading. I didn’t know what would happen.
And right then, I wasn’t up for experimenting.
I just wanted to shut it all out.
To sit quietly.
Quiet.
It felt like I’d never have quiet again.
It was all seeping in.
A couple hours of Jack Daniels closed all doors.
I can’t tell you how sick I was getting of that damn duck.
This time he was staring at me.
He was very still.
Very still.
Creepily still.
Stuffed animal still.
I reached out and went knock-knock on its bill.
He snapped at me with a quack.
And so we stared at each other.
Like he was waiting for me to do something.
To say something.
But even in dreams I don’t speak waterfowl.
And I wasn’t sure what I would say anyhow.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear my own voice.
Here it was quiet.
Here, with the duck, it was quiet.
Here, with the duck, it was safe.
The duck went ‘quack’
And that’s all it was. All I heard was ‘quack’.
Then I woke up with a hangover that I could only assume was the first sign of the coming apocalypse. Either that or I had a whole lot of jews in bondage and really ought to set them free.
“Andrew, please, free the Jews!”
I rolled over and fell out onto a rather harder than I remembered floor.
“Martin…we have no Jews. I could go round some up, if you like.”
I whimpered with pain.
“No, that’s OK. Jews hate being rounded up. Historically, that’s the first sign of things going horribly wrong.”
“Might I remind you of something?”
“Please do.”
“You’re jewish.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“How are you this morning?”
“Dying. But the sheer, metallic pain in my skull is keeping everything else out of it.”
“It got that bad last night?”
“Yes. Maybe worse. Its getting worse.”
“Go to work. I’ll see if there’s anything I can come up with.”
“I don’t want to go to work.”
“The noise?”
“The noise.”
“This noise you’ll understand. You’re used to it.”
“I guess so. Hey, why don’t you make any?”
“Cause I always say what I mean. I have no subtext.”
“Liar.”
“Yes, but its close enough.”
He left. I got dressed without showering. I took a couple more drinks and called a cab. There was no way I could handle driving or taking mass transit.
*
I could barely look at Megan as I walked by. Everything about her screamed that she needed to get laid, and that, deep down inside, she had never gotten over her parents’ divorce. Or her Daddy’s eventual suicide. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to take care of her or fire her just to get her out of the office.
The art we’d hung in the reception area spoke of cheap wine and desperation and bad grades. I tried to remember if I’d painted any of them. I was pretty sure I hadn’t and I was pretty annoyed I was finally identifying with them.
“Whats up, Martin? Meet the geek?”
“Yeah, said it would take a week.”
“Well, you’ll probably still be blacking out and hearing voices.”
“Thanks Megan. Now back to whoring it up.”
”Hey!”
“That’ll learn ya.”
“Ass.”
I went into the workspace.
“Martin.”
“Dennis.”
“Nice of you to make it to work. Its been a couple days, dontcha know.”
“Do we have money coming in?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have lots of money coming in, especially with Megan the webporn queen?”
“Yes. But don’t call her that.”
“Sorry. Regardless, we have plenty of cash. I took a couple days off. Whats the issue?”
“Nothing. Whatever. Can we do something productive or must we bicker like we’re married.”
“Sorry, no, really, I am. Its been really rough our there.”
“Its OK. Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need a medical leave?”
“Do we have medical leave?”
“We do if you need it.”
“Nah. It wouldn’t help anyhow.”
“HHow about installing a bar?”
“Nah.”
“Then lets do some work.”
We went through the letter. Dennis came up with questions.
It went for hours.
I Hated it.
More than that, I hated that I hated it. I loved my job. Loved the freaks who wrote us.
The last time I loved my work was when I read that letter from the exx-dead guy.
It hit me.
Hard.
I almost threw up.
“Dennis, something just occurred to me. All of this started with the ex-deadguy.”
“Yeah, I know. Didn’t you notice?”
“Yeah, for a while,, I think. But I completely forgot. I mean, that’s when I started having my blackouts, but so much has been coming at me I must have lost the connection.”
“Easy there, killer. I can’t deny the coincidence is there, but I don’t see how there really could be a connection. You never even found him.”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember most of that day or the next.”
“Which only implies you were out drinking.”
“Look, I gotta go.”
“Martin, wait!”
I was already out the door.
Megan said nothing on my way out.
By the time I hit the ground floor, I’d already decided this was a bad idea.
But at least I was out of work.
Andrew was waiting on the sofa when I got home.
“Long day.”
“Shut up.”
“Dennis called. He was fairly upset. He seems to think you are supposed to, you know, work.”
“I can’t work. There’s too much to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like carving my eyes and ears out.”
“Indeed.”
I went up to my room.
Even through the windows I could hear everything.
Here I was again.
I turned on the TV onto a dead channel. Static. Nothing more.
I drank most of the bottle and passed out again.
When I woke, it was 2am. It was almost quiet. Not completely, but almost.
I went out to walk around. The room was echoing too much.
I could hear someone else walking a couple hundred feet away, with guilt in his mind. I could hear a baby crying and a mother worried about the teething. I listened to a girl laughing with her boyfriend and heard just a little bit of love.
There’s been worse nights.
I was going under a bridge when I saw a large cardboard box. Through a small tear I could see a homeless guy with a bottle. I couldn’t help but think that that would be the solution to all my problems. A box under the bridge and a bottle. It would be perfect. Solitude, no one talking, unconscious as much as I possibly could be.
Poker and women sounded like a fantastic idea.
Poker and women translated to money and sex.
One would think.
I should have been fantastic at poker. I should have been able to read everyone at the table perfectly. Even though I knew virtually nothing about cards.
I should have been fantastic with picking up a girl. I should have been able to read her like a book and say exactly the right thing. Even though I knew virtually nothing about women.
Here’s how the evening went:
I hit the casino. I figured I’d start at a low stakes table.
I was utterly useless. The whole point was that I’d be able to read the players to figure out what they had. Unforutnately, these guys weren’t taking the game seriously at all and so I could read, say, the fact that they were worried that they were going to have a fight with their spouse, or that they should get going home because they had to be up early for work. But I couldn’t tell what cards they had.
I lost a lot of money.
Then I figured that a higher stakes game would work out better.
I tried that.
For a while, things went very well. For all their abilities to hide their body language, I could see exactly what they had each and every hand.
That’s a great skill for poker.
After a while, I started to lose money.
Not a lot.
Just slowly but surely.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure that, as accurately as I was reading them, they were reading me. Plus, they knew the odds at the table. They knew how likely it was that they’d get a better hand than me, how likely it was that, by the end of the hand, they’d have mine beaten.
It would appear that, in cards, I am a sprinter, not cross country.
That was unfortunate, but OK.
I had my backup scheme.
I had women.
I was almost giddy with anticipation.
I went to the bar.
A reasonably nice bar, but not a great bar.
I found a reasonably nice girl, but not a great girl.
I learned something about bars and girls.
The whole point of meeting a girl at a bar, the whole point of one of these mindless, passing, one-night encounters is the illusion.
The illusion that someone is something they aren’t, that they are something you want. A wonderful lie you can believe for a while.
But me…I can’t find the lie. Its completely not there for me. When I was talking with the girl, trying to get myself into the situation, and completely succeeding at getting her into the situation, I discovered my problem. I kept picking up every bit of truth. At first it was that she wasn’t hugely interested in talking with me, then that she had to get home, and then she started to buy into my banter, but by that point I had learned that we had less than nothing in common, and that we’d probably kill each other in different circumstances. And it just kept coming at me.
I couldn’t find a lie to believe.
So poker and women turned into me coming home broke and alone.
Not that this was anything new.
“How did it go, Martin?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Do you see my new car in the driveway?”
Interestingly, he actually looked out the window.
“No.”
“Hm. That’s strange. I was pretty sure I had sex in that car with some girl I met.’
“Hm. That’s very odd.”
“Oh, wait, I remember now. I lost all my money at poker so I couldn’t but a new car and that’s OK cause I couldn’t find a girl worth having sex with.”
“Hm. Unfortunate.”
“Yes.”
I explained how the evening went.
“I apologize. I should have thought it through better before suggesting it.”
“It’s OK. I should have known better. I’ve never been much good at turning negatives into positives.”
“Well, that’s simply untrue. You turned your bizarre love-affair with schlock TV into a career.”
“Well, I can’t deny that. Anyhow, I’m now back where I started. And I’ve got a migraine. Not even from the ‘noise’. Its from the effort of keeping it out.”
“Hows that working out for you?”
“Not so well.”
“I understand. I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me sleep on it.”
“OK.”
“Try not to pass out on the stairs.”
“No promises.”
“OK.”
There was a long silence.
“I could tell you a joke.”
“Do I look like I’m in the mood to joke around?”
“No.”
“Then lets assume I’m not.”
“OK, I’m going to bed.”
“Night.”
Night. It was going to be a long one of those.
I could hear the crickets and they told me what the weather was going to be. I could hear the traffic and knew that someone was having a baby. I could hear a car very quietly pulling into a driveway and knew what that meant, though his sleeping wife didn’t, and the closing of the deli next door that was almost certainly going to be robbed.
Yeah. I didn’t think I would be sleeping anytime in the foreseeable future.
Fuck.
The morning wouldn’t come soon enough.
Then again, it was all going to get worse then.
More people.
More activity.
More noise.
TV wouldn’t be any escape. The characters gave off almost as much noise as the actors who played them. On top of that, I got echos from the writers and directors and producers.
And the commercials were even worse.
I was beginning to wonder what was going to happen to me.
I could only withdraw but so much from the sensory world.
Sensory.
Sensory deprivation.
I wondered.
Could I live in one of those tanks?
How long could someone stay in there.
And how much did they cost?
I could get a feeding tube.
Could I piss in the water?
Maybe.
I’d be willing to wear a catheter.
OK, maybe I was getting a little too extreme.
I suppose all I really needed was a room with some soundproofing.
And maybe a little sliding door though which food could be passed. Like prisoners in solitary confinement.
That would be very OK.
Megan’s work was generating more and more every day. I’d still be part owner of the company. I’d still get checks whether or not I showed up. In fact, I could probably get Dennis to throw his back into it and double the revenue. Which, really, would get me a bigger paycheck than I was getting now.
And then I could sit alone.
Maybe I could read then.
I hadn’t tried reading. I didn’t know what would happen.
And right then, I wasn’t up for experimenting.
I just wanted to shut it all out.
To sit quietly.
Quiet.
It felt like I’d never have quiet again.
It was all seeping in.
A couple hours of Jack Daniels closed all doors.
I can’t tell you how sick I was getting of that damn duck.
This time he was staring at me.
He was very still.
Very still.
Creepily still.
Stuffed animal still.
I reached out and went knock-knock on its bill.
He snapped at me with a quack.
And so we stared at each other.
Like he was waiting for me to do something.
To say something.
But even in dreams I don’t speak waterfowl.
And I wasn’t sure what I would say anyhow.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear my own voice.
Here it was quiet.
Here, with the duck, it was quiet.
Here, with the duck, it was safe.
The duck went ‘quack’
And that’s all it was. All I heard was ‘quack’.
Then I woke up with a hangover that I could only assume was the first sign of the coming apocalypse. Either that or I had a whole lot of jews in bondage and really ought to set them free.
“Andrew, please, free the Jews!”
I rolled over and fell out onto a rather harder than I remembered floor.
“Martin…we have no Jews. I could go round some up, if you like.”
I whimpered with pain.
“No, that’s OK. Jews hate being rounded up. Historically, that’s the first sign of things going horribly wrong.”
“Might I remind you of something?”
“Please do.”
“You’re jewish.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“How are you this morning?”
“Dying. But the sheer, metallic pain in my skull is keeping everything else out of it.”
“It got that bad last night?”
“Yes. Maybe worse. Its getting worse.”
“Go to work. I’ll see if there’s anything I can come up with.”
“I don’t want to go to work.”
“The noise?”
“The noise.”
“This noise you’ll understand. You’re used to it.”
“I guess so. Hey, why don’t you make any?”
“Cause I always say what I mean. I have no subtext.”
“Liar.”
“Yes, but its close enough.”
He left. I got dressed without showering. I took a couple more drinks and called a cab. There was no way I could handle driving or taking mass transit.
*
I could barely look at Megan as I walked by. Everything about her screamed that she needed to get laid, and that, deep down inside, she had never gotten over her parents’ divorce. Or her Daddy’s eventual suicide. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to take care of her or fire her just to get her out of the office.
The art we’d hung in the reception area spoke of cheap wine and desperation and bad grades. I tried to remember if I’d painted any of them. I was pretty sure I hadn’t and I was pretty annoyed I was finally identifying with them.
“Whats up, Martin? Meet the geek?”
“Yeah, said it would take a week.”
“Well, you’ll probably still be blacking out and hearing voices.”
“Thanks Megan. Now back to whoring it up.”
”Hey!”
“That’ll learn ya.”
“Ass.”
I went into the workspace.
“Martin.”
“Dennis.”
“Nice of you to make it to work. Its been a couple days, dontcha know.”
“Do we have money coming in?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have lots of money coming in, especially with Megan the webporn queen?”
“Yes. But don’t call her that.”
“Sorry. Regardless, we have plenty of cash. I took a couple days off. Whats the issue?”
“Nothing. Whatever. Can we do something productive or must we bicker like we’re married.”
“Sorry, no, really, I am. Its been really rough our there.”
“Its OK. Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need a medical leave?”
“Do we have medical leave?”
“We do if you need it.”
“Nah. It wouldn’t help anyhow.”
“HHow about installing a bar?”
“Nah.”
“Then lets do some work.”
We went through the letter. Dennis came up with questions.
It went for hours.
I Hated it.
More than that, I hated that I hated it. I loved my job. Loved the freaks who wrote us.
The last time I loved my work was when I read that letter from the exx-dead guy.
It hit me.
Hard.
I almost threw up.
“Dennis, something just occurred to me. All of this started with the ex-deadguy.”
“Yeah, I know. Didn’t you notice?”
“Yeah, for a while,, I think. But I completely forgot. I mean, that’s when I started having my blackouts, but so much has been coming at me I must have lost the connection.”
“Easy there, killer. I can’t deny the coincidence is there, but I don’t see how there really could be a connection. You never even found him.”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember most of that day or the next.”
“Which only implies you were out drinking.”
“Look, I gotta go.”
“Martin, wait!”
I was already out the door.
Megan said nothing on my way out.
By the time I hit the ground floor, I’d already decided this was a bad idea.
But at least I was out of work.
Andrew was waiting on the sofa when I got home.
“Long day.”
“Shut up.”
“Dennis called. He was fairly upset. He seems to think you are supposed to, you know, work.”
“I can’t work. There’s too much to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like carving my eyes and ears out.”
“Indeed.”
I went up to my room.
Even through the windows I could hear everything.
Here I was again.
I turned on the TV onto a dead channel. Static. Nothing more.
I drank most of the bottle and passed out again.
When I woke, it was 2am. It was almost quiet. Not completely, but almost.
I went out to walk around. The room was echoing too much.
I could hear someone else walking a couple hundred feet away, with guilt in his mind. I could hear a baby crying and a mother worried about the teething. I listened to a girl laughing with her boyfriend and heard just a little bit of love.
There’s been worse nights.
I was going under a bridge when I saw a large cardboard box. Through a small tear I could see a homeless guy with a bottle. I couldn’t help but think that that would be the solution to all my problems. A box under the bridge and a bottle. It would be perfect. Solitude, no one talking, unconscious as much as I possibly could be.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
I decided that my day was done.
I needed therapy.
I needed attention.
I needed something that could turn this chaos into sense.
I needed TV.
Kind, soft words.
Soothing dramas to let me escape.
Simplicity and closure.
Home.
I spent 15 minutes flipping channels.
“We have way too much cable,” came from Andrew, sitting beside me on the sofa.
Actually, I was sitting beside him. He’d been there when I got home, just staring at a black screen.
“No. There’s your fatal mistake. We don’t have enough cable.”
“I am well aware of your opinions on the topic. 157 channels is, obviously, not enough. Has it occurred to you, in your dire quest to find the perfect entertainment, in your almost psychopathic need to watch all there is, that there are channels that you’ve never watched yet?”
“Yes, well, I’ll admit that perhaps we don’t need 12 sports channels, 3 of which are devoted to ‘classic’…”
“’Historic’”
“’Historic’ games. I didn’t say that all the channels were good. Just that we don’t have enough.”
“Do tell.”
“If I can watch a show on each channel in a week, we don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“Is this your view from a professional stance, attempting to increase your market base, or your personal opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Look, this is man talking to man. You know, stories around the campfire taking place way over the mountains.”
“You’ve been listening to people at the coffee shop again, haven’t you.”
“I think I like you better in one of your other states.”
“Yes. But this is who I am now. If you must, at least turn on the news.”
“Done.”
I flipped on one of the 23 around-the-clock news channels.
The two anchors were going on about some political event in France. I didn’t really understand what it meant. My ears were hearing the story. My brain was getting something else.
“Andrew, the guy on the left. He just said something about eating too much fast food.”
“No. He said the Prime Minister was considering abolishing the Value Added Tax.”
“No, I mean yes, but he’s saying something else. THERE! Did you get that?”
“He pointed with two fingers at the chart showing all VAT compliant countries.”
“Yes. He’s worried that his wife will find out and there’ll be a big fight. There! I think its…the color of his jacket and the way his upper lip keeps pulling a bit to the left.”
“I understand that discussions on VAT are not particularly interesting and that making up your own dialog may be more fun. But you turned on BBC, not me.”
“I’m not making it up. I don’t know how, not exactly, but everything he’s doing is telling these things to me.”
“His body language? You can see that in his body language?”
“Not just his body language. Like I said, his clothes, his hair, the timber of his voice.”
“This is very odd.”
“Its sort of been happening all day.”
“You’ve been watching news all day?”
“Yes, Andrew. I’ve been tele-stalking this gentleman for 16 hours. No, I meant I’ve been hearing things that I shouldn’t hear. When I was at lunch, it was like all the conversations going on around me were meshing together to form one whole sentence. But I couldn’t quite hear it. Oh, and I had a 15 minute conversation with Dennis before we even had it.”
Andrew thought about that for a while.
“It sounds to me like you may have passed out of my ability to understand. If you’d like, I can suggest some medications that might help. By the way, people who hear voices…”
“Yes, yes, I know, subvocalizing. I’ve had this discussion before.”
“You talked with me about this before? Just now?”
”No, no, Dennis told me. He implied the same thing you are.”
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then maybe it is. Maybe you should be taking the advice.”
“Maybe.”
I thought about the duck in my dream.
“Well, so far, nothing has told me to kill the child next door, or release toxic gas into the neighborhood.”
“Yet.”
“Your attempts to comfort me will not go forgotten. I’ll be surely adding you to my list.”
“You are keeping a list?”
“Dammit, Andrew. We can either be serious about this or we can joke around. It doesn’t matter to me which. Kindly pick one and run with it.”
“I’ve been serious this whole time. If you are hearing voices, if something is telling you things, feeding you information, then its only a matter of time.”
“But I’m absolutely certain that I’m right about everything I’ve been saying. I do NOT know how, but I’m telling you there’s no doubt in my mind about this.”
“Have you ever met anyone more certain than a crazy person? That’s what makes them crazy.”
“Fuck. Now my head hurts. I’m going to take a nap.”
“Sudden mood changes and headaches. Yes.”
*
At least the damn thing wasn’t talking anymore.
But I’m telling you, riding a duck along a lake isn’t anywhere near as comfortable as it might seem. The fact is that ducks are just too plump to wrap your legs around like a horse, and too narrow to just sit on safely.
All in all, though, I’ve had worse dreams.
The glowing pink trees were whistling pleasantly as they always do at the height of spring and the zebras were trying to hide behind them, to little avail. Black and white doesn’t blend that well with ANYTHING that shade of neon.
When the baseball team finally finished signing autographs, it became very quiet.
The breeze stopped blowing.
The trees stopped whistling.
And the duck stopped paddling.
The lake was completely calm and serene.
Glass.
Mirror-like.
I pulled out a straight razor and used a little of the mallard’s down as shaving cream.
Hey, he had plenty. He’d never miss it.
I shaved off a surprisingly large amount of facial hair, especially since it had only been a day since my last shave. I guess my testosterone was really in surplus at the moment. I’d never grown 2 inches of beard in 24 hours.
More significantly, it had never been made out of moss.
But it left my skin nice and smooth.
I checked myself in the lake and looked good.
Damn good.
Next time, I’d bring Megan.
Damn it.
I’d cut my neck.
I touched the wound and a droplet of amber blood fell into the water, disrupting the mirror effect completely.
I guess ducky thought it was a bit of bread or a bug or something and dipped underwater, tail up.
And took me with him.
And that’s when I saw them all.
Thousands of little gnomes working like crazy.
They were building what seemed like random structures and towers.
And they were building them VERY quickly, like watching a documentary about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in time-lapse.
“Jesus, guys, whats all the rush? It’s the weekend, and I’ve got a duck!”
“Well, Billy,” which, according to my name tag was me,” we gotta keep up. If we don’t, the lake’ll fall down!”
“Oh, ok, then keep up the good work.”
“Want a candy cane?”
“No thanks.”
Ducky popped back up.
We both shook ourselves dry.
Then he took off with me still on him.
From the sky, I could see the lake, still see our reflections, but also the gnomes.
It was funny.
It looked like one of the structures had a string attached to our reflection.
*
My rejuvenating nap turned into a 12 hour coma. Disoriented, I staggered downstairs and flipped on the TV. I surfed the channels until hitting some porn. We didn’t subscribe to any of the porn channels, much to my annoyance. I assumed it must be a glitch and thanked the cable god.
“I don’t like my new alarm clock,” I told Andrew as he came downstairs.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t have two alarms. So I have to remember to reset it every time I take a nap.”
“And after spending 10 dollars on it. The shoddiness of American design these days. For shame.”
“It was all they had at the time.”
“You could get a new one.”
“But this one works.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you purchase a broken one. Nor was I advocating that we go and find the dump where the bag you put the old one in was taken. They do sell ones that work.”
“Yes. But for how long? For how long?”
“Martin, what are you doing?”
Andrew was making an annoying habit of catching me with erections.
“I am watching porn, Andrew. If you leave me be, I’ll be doing something more soon.”
“First, I’d like to thank you for granting me a mental image that can replace the unfortunate plumbing scene that been in my head for days. Second, you are not watching porn. You are watching snow. Static.”
“No. I’m watching porn and wondering if the blond is going to hurry up and get the redhead naked. I believe she’s an undercover cop, but the storyline is surprisingly complex.”
“No. You are watching snow.”
He smacked the back of my head sharply.
I saw static on the screen.
“What did you do to the TV?? It was just getting good!”
“So we now have reached concensus on our viewing choices?”
“Yes.”
I could still see half-images of the impending girl-on-girl scene.
And I had an idea. I reached for the phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling at 3am?”
“The cable company.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the cable. We don’t get this channel and for obvious reasons. Actually, for reasons becoming more obvious tonight.”
“Shut up. I need to…Yes. Hello. I want to sign up for whatever package gets me channel 221. No. I don’t need the Super Adult Package. No. Yes. Please. Thanks.”
“I don’t understand why you aren’t just putting in one of your DVDs. Our cable bill is already beyond excessive.”
“Wait for it.”
In a moment, the picture cleared again. Well, again for me.
“See? Blond. Redhead. Girl-on-girl.”
“Yes, indeed. I am certain that this is a most unique situation for the Steam Channel.”
“Granted. Watch with me for a few minutes.”
“I’ve been told that, normally, this can be a bonding experience.”
“True. Hows it working out for you?”
“Not so bonding.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll get the bondage later.”
“You sure you don’t want a couple of pipes?”
“No, thanks, I’ll wait til later.”
We shifted into an awkward silence.
Until 5 minutes later the blond pulled out a badge.
“See? SEE? I told you! It wasn’t snow! I was watching it! Ha! HA HA! What do you say now Mr. ‘I’m Crazy So You Must Be Crazy’? What do you say NOW?”
“Hm.”
“Indeed.”
HAH!
I woke up again around noon, still in front of the TV. Andrew was still awake.
“I’ve been thinking about last night.”
“Yes. It was special for me too.”
“Thanks. My first time, you know. I hope I did alright.”
“You were wonderful.”
We paused to let the humorous-turned-awkward moment pass.
“I want to try something. Watch the TV.”
I turned to the box.
Andrew starting flipping channels quickly. Very quickly. Not even half a second on each station When we got back to the first channel, he stopped.
“Now, what did you see?”
“You scanning through channels very quickly.”
“Hah. Tell me whats on TV?”
I knew.
“Michelle was about to break up with Darren because he was actually the guy who killed her brother. Adam is two seconds away from walking in on his wife talking with his best friend and he’s going to interprete that as them having an affair. Hilarity will ensue. A purple dog is going to come very close to catching his nemesis, but the trap won’t work because of a broken spring and he’ll end up catching his master instead. Tomorrow, it’ll be 58 and cloudy. Miyoko Sakai nailed the triple lutz and will get near perfect scores. The forensic team on Crime And Justice is analyzing the blood samples that will show the break-in was done by the mayor’s brother…”
“Amazing. Quite astounding. Now, what did you REALLY see? What was in all that?”
“Um, TV is, mostly, tripe? I’m not really in the mood for Media Criticism 305 this morning.”
“No. You told me what was on, what was going on. Which, as I said, is amazing in and of itself. Now tell me what you saw.”
The after-images floated about in my head. I let them. I relaxed. Let them mix into a pond of pictures. I floated on them. Quack Quack.
“The owner of Classic Movies is about to sign a deal to make video games. The Prime Minister of Israel is going to step down. Some producer’s little boy is sick and probably dying. The lead actor on Crime And Justice is going to divorce his wife.”
“None of that was on the TV.”
“No it wasn’t. But that’s what it all said to me. All together. You asked. Everything together, it says things. Like when you watch a friend do the same things they’ve always done, and you just know whats going to happen.”
“Hm. There’s only one thing to do then.”
“Drink until I legitimately black out?”
“Maybe later.”
“Unhealthy amounts of coffee?”
“Bingo.”
The local coffeeshop had closed a couple months earlier thanks, in no small part due to the multi-national mega-chain and its nazi-esque marketing.
“Yeah, this is much more comfortable. And the old place didn’t have white chocolate mochas.”
“The variety here is certainly more varied. And, more importantly, the cups are twice the size. I greatly approve.”
“You are, without doubt, a creature of extremes, Andrew.”
“I’ve never said otherwise.”
“So why are we here?”
“Your new, shall we call them, perceptions are difficult to define. More importantly, we’ve yet to really prove if they are the results of new understandings or if you are just delusional.”
“Look I told you all that stuff I saw on TV.”
“First, we never really checked to see if any of those shows turned out the way you ‘predicted’. And its not as if TV isn’t predictable by its very nature.”
“And the porn in the static?”
“Well, besides that being a rather beautiful turn of phrase, you could easily have caught a tiny glimpse of it before I came down. If your grip on reality were slipping enough, you might not even remember.”
“Y’know, this continuing harping on the fact that I may be twice as nuts as you isn’t appreciated.”
“You aren’t twice as nuts as I am. You just aren’t as thoroughly medicated.”
“To which I can only reply ‘goody’.”
“The insane often have an openness to information that the normal do not. You’d be surprised how many schitzophrenics can spot a lie that would make it past a seasoned detective.”
“Again with the crime drama.”
“It isn’t my fault that the concepts and themes contained in such programs find application in the real world.”
“Riddle me this. Are they finding application for situations, or are you finding situations for their application?”
“Riddle me this, do you have any idea what you just said?”
”No.”
“Then back to the situation at hand. Here, I am sure, we can find a way here to start some more convincing tests.”
We sat there for a couple minutes in silence.
“Uh, I’m not really sure how to do this.”
“I suspect you don’t have to ‘do’ anything.”
“I’m good at that.”
We continued to sit.
I just let my eyes wander and continued to consume my white chocolate espresso. And ordered another one.
There was this girl. Pretty, but not oppressively so. Something about the way she was playing with her spoon. Something about the way her pump dangled from her toes.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“That girl.”
“Yes. She’s a girl. I would have expected that your education in pornography would have crippled your ability to recognize anything with less than a D cup as a girl. But it would seem I was mistaken.”
“Hey! Just cause I watch a little skinflick once in a while…”
“What about the girl?”
“What, the redhead with the badge?”
“No. Please focus. The girl you pointed out to me.”
“Sorry. Too much caffine. So you see that girl?”
“Yes.”
“She’s waiting for her boyfriend. She’s going to break up with him. Soon.”
“Interesting.”
There was something else. Behind me.
“And do you hear that boy behind us?”
Andrew’s eyes glazed as he focused his hearing.
“Yes.”
“He’s talking about his day at school, right?”
”Yes. Apparently he didn’t do very well on his math quiz.”
“That’s what he’s saying, but its not what he’s SAYING.”
“Something bad has been happening. I think…wait…”
We waited.
“Kid’s been playing on the school football team. His mom wouldn’t let him try out but he forged her signature on the permission slip.”
“So he’d rather be playing sports than in class. That applies to a lot of children.”
“No. That’s very general, and very true. But what I’m hearing is that he is, very specifically, playing football and forged his mom’s signature to do so.”
Andrew’s eyes glazed over for a moment.
“Then all we have to do is find out if its true and then we are one step closer to understanding whats happening to you.”
“No. We’re one step closer to you believing me.”
“Yes. But given your inability to determine the goings on in your brain, that’s a big step forward. My insight will no doubt be crucial.”
“No doubt.”
“Come. Lets go ask him.”
“Yes. Because there’s nothing a kid likes more than getting busted in a lie to his mother. Especially while she’s sitting right there. And, of course, there’s nothing a mother likes more than strange men coming up talking to her son and apparently knowing quite a bit about them. Even more so when one of them looks like he might be gay.”
“You look gay?”
“No. You do.”
“I do?”
“You dress well, are in decent shape, and speak very eloquently.”
“I was unaware that these qualities would place me in that subclass.”
“Well, now you are.”
Actually, I had no idea whether or not Andrew was gay. I honestly didn’t know if he was sexual at all.
“Then what do we do,” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Perhaps we could read his team scores from the local newspaper out loud. Then we could guage his reaction.”
“No good. He could just have some school spirit.”
“True enough.”
“We could go over and just start a conversation with the mother, mention how her son looks like and athelete and go from there.”
“I believe that puts us back in the ‘strangers with candy’ scenario.”
“Yeah.”
“If we can not approach the pair, then we must proceed discretely. Find out on our own.”
“I can’t believe you are suggesting we stalk a 12 year old.”
“Then we are at an impass.”
“This is unbelievably frustrating. I know things, but they aren’t things we can really confirm since, of course, those things are private. And if I knew the people well enough, then I might, reasonably, know those private things. And then you’d just write it off.”
“Round and round we go.”
We turned back to the girl. In the time we’d spent discussing the situation, her boyfriend had shown up.
“Watch this, Andrew.”
The two were talking, we watched the man’s smile fade. She was speaking quietly, gently and slowly. She reached to touch his hand but he pulled it away before she could. I thought he might cry. Then I thought he’d yell. But all he did was get up and walk away.
“So, I think I’ve proven my point.”
“A small step. Very small. Your ability to read body language is impressive, but explainable. I think you’d agree that something else was going on with you. Be it actual or imagined.’
“And we have no real way at the moment to prove it, do we.”
“No. Not as such.”
I sighed. While I had, at moments, doubted my sanity, doubted that what was happening, what I was seeing hearing and knowing, was real, mostly I was frustrated. And growing very tired of this. On some level, I’d stop caring whether I was mad or not. Whether I’d gained some strange ability. I really just wanted to know either way.
And I wanted a pizza.
“Let’s go home and order food.”
“That’s fine. I need a nap as it is.”
“You’ve had 4 espressos.”
“Caffeine puts me to sleep.”
“You are very odd.”
“Indeed.”
*
At home, Andrew went up to his room and I called for food.
As I paid the pizzaboy, I suggested he stop stealing from the shop.
He suggested I perform inappropriate acts with a sparrow, and left.
I suppose I’d missed an opportunity there.
An easy one.
All of this should have been easy but somehow I just wasn’t thinking of the right ways to do it. To prove what was happening. It was beginning to feel like my brain was working against me. Then again, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
I sat down, frustrated, and opened the pizza box.
Patterns.
I saw patterns.
Patterns within patterns drawn on the pizza.
A scattering of different paths in a haze and one more clearly drawn but incomplete.
I half-glowing line of where I was.
Where I’d been.
But not where I was going.
I blinked.
And I saw cheese.
“Ok, now this is just getting weird. Kindly leave my food alone. A man can take a great deal so long as he can eat.”
I blinked again.
The cheese remained cheese.
More importantly, the pepperoni remained pepperoni and didn’t turn into, for example, eyes, as they had on other, more chemically induced, occasions.
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” I said aloud to, well, whomever.
“We can return to our regularly scheduled chaos in 30 minutes.”
I ate.
I thought about my recent dreams. They’d seemed strange at the time, but given my life at the moment, they didn’t feel out of place anymore. Something was bubbling its way up. Something very very odd, or something very very odd that was going to rate me a thorazine Big Gulp on a regular basis.
I decided.
It was real.
I still didn’t know what ‘it’ was.
But I wasn’t crazy.
I made the decision to not be crazy.
The streets were crowded as I wandered through them. That was just fine by me. I didn’t feel like having to make eye-contact, didn’t really feel like looking at anyone, didn’t really feel like knowing any secrets.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing inside a person’s life through their body language, and whatever secret language I was hearing now was great. Or, at least, not boring. And I do so hate being bored. But it was starting to keep me from being able to think. All this background noise, this visual static was turning into input, into information that was coming at me faster and faster. I don’t like being bored, but theres only so much a boy’s brain can take before he needs to turn off the TV. Keeping my head down seemed to do the trick, so long as the noise level was high enough.
I did keep hearing half parts of sentences.
I was starting to notice something though.
Behind everything, behind even the new stuff I was hearing, was something else.
Something being said.
A sentence made up of every other sentence.
And it was starting to annoy me. Like someone talking about you a little too far away to hear. Half a word here, half a word there, but nothing you can really tell. Its enough to make a guy paranoid.
And it wasn’t like I wasn’t being given reason to be paranoid.
You have a couple severe blackouts in the space of a week for no apparent reason and you’ll start to get a little worried about what you’ve been doing in your ‘spare’ time and who you’ve been doing it in front of.
I wondered if I should hire someone to follow me. A private eye, or something. Andrew knew something about what was going on, but honestly, I didn’t trust him to tell me if it didn’t fit whatever idea that was going on inside his head at that particular moment. He could shift gears faster than a sports car driver doing a quarter-mile. And he had a sardonic sense of humor which, though I often appreciated, wasn’t really appropriate for this situation.
“Megan!” I said out loud.
She had that tech guy. He must have something as simple as a camera that could keep eyes on me.
I called her on my cell.
“Megan, its Martin. Got a sec?”
“Sure. I’m not doing anything much except walking around in my bare feet. At, I’d like to mention, 50 bucks an hour. That doubles the moment I can pick up a piece of paper with my toes. You don’t even want to know what happens if I learn to write with a pen like that.”
“Is there really any reason for us not to focus our business on your escapades alone?”
“Not one that anybody has mentioned to me. Mostly, though, I think you both are afraid of the sheer power my few pounds of luscious flesh command.”
“I think its mostly that I’ll never be able to impress you if you are my primary source of income.”
“One, you haven’t impressed me yet. Two, check the books. I may very well be your primary source of income.”
“Number two isn’t real reliable. You keep the books.”
“Yes. Yes I do. You can see them when you are ready.”
“Ready?”
“To crawl and kiss my toes and worship me like the Queen I am.”
“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we?”
“Oh, most certainly. I made sure a few of the audience members caught the last few bits of our conversation. One of them may have just had a seizure. Luckily, I have the credit cards.”
“You are truly a strange, powermad bitch. Thank goodness for that.”
“Anyhow, we’re muted now.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“You’re repeating yourself, you know.”
“Sorry. Its been a strange week.”
“So I’ve been lead to believe. Hearing any voices but my own right now?”
“Yes. But it’s OK. They aren’t telling me to kill anyone or anything.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Now stop it. And you really shouldn’t even consider getting back together with that guy. He’d go apoplectic if he saw your website.”
“He’s seen it, and that’s why he called, drooling.”
“For now.”
“And just how did you know about him?”
“Oh, just voices in my head. You need something done to him, you let me know. I’ve got a great alibi.”
“No, thanks, that’s OK. You’d only hurt yourself.”
“Ouch. Anyhow, that geek you’ve got doing work for you, I need to talk with him.”
“Oh,, he’d love to set up a site for you. He’s very cute and very single. You’re just his type.”
“Glee. No, really, I need him to help me keep track of myself.”
“Try Buddhism.”
“No, not spiritually. Physically.”
“Huh. OK. I’ll let him know. But I’m sure he’d be happy to keep track of you himself.”
“Exactly when will this sophomoric line of humor end?”
“If you are lucky, when you hang up.”
“Well, then…”
“Yes. I have to go paint my toes now, anyways. Girl has to make a living.”
“Thanks.”
Megan had a point though. I wonder if Dennis and I were, in fact, threatened by her success. It had been our idea, but mostly as a joke. Now it was just running wild. If it was making the money she claimed it was, then maybe we did have to shift our focus. I’d need to review those numbers first. But I wasn’t ready to crawl for them. Yet.
She called back 15 minutes later.
“OK, Scott thinks he can help you. You should meet him around 2:00 at his office.”
“Great. Thanks, Meg.”
“Sorry, no time for banter. I have to fold my laundry.”
“Ok, just…wait…no, I don’t want to know.”
She gave me the address which left me with a couple hours to kill.
Which, to me, says its time to start drinking.
I thought about that for a moment.
No. I was blacking out enough without alcohol.
I decided that food was a better idea instead.
Alternately, I could go find a cybercafe and watch Megan.
“So, I take it you didn’t go watch Megan.”
“No, Andrew, I didn’t go watch Megan.”
“Why not?”
“Well, reason one: I didn’t feel comfortable watching porn at a cybercafe, no matter how suggestive it actually is instead. Assuming the place would even let me connect to such a site.”
“Ah. Yes. And reason two?”
“Why must there be a second reason?”
“There doesn’t HAVE to be a second reason, except you noted that the previous reason was ‘reason one’. Of course, this implies, at the very least, a reason two.”
“I can hardly argue with that. Reason two is that it borders on sexual harassment.”
“The fact that you didn’t argue with me on topic is a promising sign given that you’ve been arguing with me near constantly. That said, it seems improbable that watching your employee do her work could be construed as harassment.”
“While I can’t help but agree with you, I also can’t help but realize that I’d be the target of the lawsuit if we were wrong. And when I say ‘we’, I mean me, the target, and you, the guy who wouldn’t be involved at all. So I’ll stick with the end that goes safe with me.”
“Excellent. We are back to you being testy. I’m no good at these quick shifting of gears.”
“Look, if you had, I don’t know, whatever it is I have, you’d be testy too.”
“Make believe I don’t have no understanding of what you are talking about.”
“That’s either surprisingly modest or less-surprisingly condescending.”
“Does it matter either way?”
“No, probably not. Look, whether you believe that whats happening to me is objective or subjective, it feels like there’s more and more noise all around me. Visual, and auditory.”
“And, now that I think about it, that particular aspect of the situation falls outside the objective/subjective issue.”
“Thank you, I think. Anyhow, the relevant issue is that its starting to get louder and more crowded.”
“More crowded?”
“That’s the only way I can describe it.”
“So you are feeling more than a little overwhelmed.”
“Yes. I am.”
“And what, exactly, would you have me do?”
“Show some sympathy?”
”No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, c’mon. Just a little?”
“Why bother? It won’t rectify the situation.”
“No, I suppose it won’t.”
“Unless you actually are crazy, and my sympathy would be so comforting that it made the bad voices go away. I could do that, if you think it would help.”
“And if I think it would help then I’m basically admitting I’m crazy.”
“More or less.”
“I am unthrilled with my options.”
“There you have my sympathies.”
“Well, that’s something. I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“Make no mistake, I do feel sympathy with your sanity dilemma. I have been there more than a few times myself. However, I don’t know how to help with your expanding of perceptions or your perception of your expanding perceptions. It seems that the best idea is to, well, make the best of it.”
“Which means?”
“As we have noted, you are experiencing something new, be it real or imaginary. I would suggest that temporary relief might be found in going out and taking advantage of these new senses.”
“Really?”
“Really. Either it takes your mind off of things, or brings you a certain amount of personal gain.”
“Go on.”
“Poker and women.”
“Ah. Yes.”
I decided that my day was done.
I needed therapy.
I needed attention.
I needed something that could turn this chaos into sense.
I needed TV.
Kind, soft words.
Soothing dramas to let me escape.
Simplicity and closure.
Home.
I spent 15 minutes flipping channels.
“We have way too much cable,” came from Andrew, sitting beside me on the sofa.
Actually, I was sitting beside him. He’d been there when I got home, just staring at a black screen.
“No. There’s your fatal mistake. We don’t have enough cable.”
“I am well aware of your opinions on the topic. 157 channels is, obviously, not enough. Has it occurred to you, in your dire quest to find the perfect entertainment, in your almost psychopathic need to watch all there is, that there are channels that you’ve never watched yet?”
“Yes, well, I’ll admit that perhaps we don’t need 12 sports channels, 3 of which are devoted to ‘classic’…”
“’Historic’”
“’Historic’ games. I didn’t say that all the channels were good. Just that we don’t have enough.”
“Do tell.”
“If I can watch a show on each channel in a week, we don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“Is this your view from a professional stance, attempting to increase your market base, or your personal opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Look, this is man talking to man. You know, stories around the campfire taking place way over the mountains.”
“You’ve been listening to people at the coffee shop again, haven’t you.”
“I think I like you better in one of your other states.”
“Yes. But this is who I am now. If you must, at least turn on the news.”
“Done.”
I flipped on one of the 23 around-the-clock news channels.
The two anchors were going on about some political event in France. I didn’t really understand what it meant. My ears were hearing the story. My brain was getting something else.
“Andrew, the guy on the left. He just said something about eating too much fast food.”
“No. He said the Prime Minister was considering abolishing the Value Added Tax.”
“No, I mean yes, but he’s saying something else. THERE! Did you get that?”
“He pointed with two fingers at the chart showing all VAT compliant countries.”
“Yes. He’s worried that his wife will find out and there’ll be a big fight. There! I think its…the color of his jacket and the way his upper lip keeps pulling a bit to the left.”
“I understand that discussions on VAT are not particularly interesting and that making up your own dialog may be more fun. But you turned on BBC, not me.”
“I’m not making it up. I don’t know how, not exactly, but everything he’s doing is telling these things to me.”
“His body language? You can see that in his body language?”
“Not just his body language. Like I said, his clothes, his hair, the timber of his voice.”
“This is very odd.”
“Its sort of been happening all day.”
“You’ve been watching news all day?”
“Yes, Andrew. I’ve been tele-stalking this gentleman for 16 hours. No, I meant I’ve been hearing things that I shouldn’t hear. When I was at lunch, it was like all the conversations going on around me were meshing together to form one whole sentence. But I couldn’t quite hear it. Oh, and I had a 15 minute conversation with Dennis before we even had it.”
Andrew thought about that for a while.
“It sounds to me like you may have passed out of my ability to understand. If you’d like, I can suggest some medications that might help. By the way, people who hear voices…”
“Yes, yes, I know, subvocalizing. I’ve had this discussion before.”
“You talked with me about this before? Just now?”
”No, no, Dennis told me. He implied the same thing you are.”
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then maybe it is. Maybe you should be taking the advice.”
“Maybe.”
I thought about the duck in my dream.
“Well, so far, nothing has told me to kill the child next door, or release toxic gas into the neighborhood.”
“Yet.”
“Your attempts to comfort me will not go forgotten. I’ll be surely adding you to my list.”
“You are keeping a list?”
“Dammit, Andrew. We can either be serious about this or we can joke around. It doesn’t matter to me which. Kindly pick one and run with it.”
“I’ve been serious this whole time. If you are hearing voices, if something is telling you things, feeding you information, then its only a matter of time.”
“But I’m absolutely certain that I’m right about everything I’ve been saying. I do NOT know how, but I’m telling you there’s no doubt in my mind about this.”
“Have you ever met anyone more certain than a crazy person? That’s what makes them crazy.”
“Fuck. Now my head hurts. I’m going to take a nap.”
“Sudden mood changes and headaches. Yes.”
*
At least the damn thing wasn’t talking anymore.
But I’m telling you, riding a duck along a lake isn’t anywhere near as comfortable as it might seem. The fact is that ducks are just too plump to wrap your legs around like a horse, and too narrow to just sit on safely.
All in all, though, I’ve had worse dreams.
The glowing pink trees were whistling pleasantly as they always do at the height of spring and the zebras were trying to hide behind them, to little avail. Black and white doesn’t blend that well with ANYTHING that shade of neon.
When the baseball team finally finished signing autographs, it became very quiet.
The breeze stopped blowing.
The trees stopped whistling.
And the duck stopped paddling.
The lake was completely calm and serene.
Glass.
Mirror-like.
I pulled out a straight razor and used a little of the mallard’s down as shaving cream.
Hey, he had plenty. He’d never miss it.
I shaved off a surprisingly large amount of facial hair, especially since it had only been a day since my last shave. I guess my testosterone was really in surplus at the moment. I’d never grown 2 inches of beard in 24 hours.
More significantly, it had never been made out of moss.
But it left my skin nice and smooth.
I checked myself in the lake and looked good.
Damn good.
Next time, I’d bring Megan.
Damn it.
I’d cut my neck.
I touched the wound and a droplet of amber blood fell into the water, disrupting the mirror effect completely.
I guess ducky thought it was a bit of bread or a bug or something and dipped underwater, tail up.
And took me with him.
And that’s when I saw them all.
Thousands of little gnomes working like crazy.
They were building what seemed like random structures and towers.
And they were building them VERY quickly, like watching a documentary about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in time-lapse.
“Jesus, guys, whats all the rush? It’s the weekend, and I’ve got a duck!”
“Well, Billy,” which, according to my name tag was me,” we gotta keep up. If we don’t, the lake’ll fall down!”
“Oh, ok, then keep up the good work.”
“Want a candy cane?”
“No thanks.”
Ducky popped back up.
We both shook ourselves dry.
Then he took off with me still on him.
From the sky, I could see the lake, still see our reflections, but also the gnomes.
It was funny.
It looked like one of the structures had a string attached to our reflection.
*
My rejuvenating nap turned into a 12 hour coma. Disoriented, I staggered downstairs and flipped on the TV. I surfed the channels until hitting some porn. We didn’t subscribe to any of the porn channels, much to my annoyance. I assumed it must be a glitch and thanked the cable god.
“I don’t like my new alarm clock,” I told Andrew as he came downstairs.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t have two alarms. So I have to remember to reset it every time I take a nap.”
“And after spending 10 dollars on it. The shoddiness of American design these days. For shame.”
“It was all they had at the time.”
“You could get a new one.”
“But this one works.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you purchase a broken one. Nor was I advocating that we go and find the dump where the bag you put the old one in was taken. They do sell ones that work.”
“Yes. But for how long? For how long?”
“Martin, what are you doing?”
Andrew was making an annoying habit of catching me with erections.
“I am watching porn, Andrew. If you leave me be, I’ll be doing something more soon.”
“First, I’d like to thank you for granting me a mental image that can replace the unfortunate plumbing scene that been in my head for days. Second, you are not watching porn. You are watching snow. Static.”
“No. I’m watching porn and wondering if the blond is going to hurry up and get the redhead naked. I believe she’s an undercover cop, but the storyline is surprisingly complex.”
“No. You are watching snow.”
He smacked the back of my head sharply.
I saw static on the screen.
“What did you do to the TV?? It was just getting good!”
“So we now have reached concensus on our viewing choices?”
“Yes.”
I could still see half-images of the impending girl-on-girl scene.
And I had an idea. I reached for the phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling at 3am?”
“The cable company.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the cable. We don’t get this channel and for obvious reasons. Actually, for reasons becoming more obvious tonight.”
“Shut up. I need to…Yes. Hello. I want to sign up for whatever package gets me channel 221. No. I don’t need the Super Adult Package. No. Yes. Please. Thanks.”
“I don’t understand why you aren’t just putting in one of your DVDs. Our cable bill is already beyond excessive.”
“Wait for it.”
In a moment, the picture cleared again. Well, again for me.
“See? Blond. Redhead. Girl-on-girl.”
“Yes, indeed. I am certain that this is a most unique situation for the Steam Channel.”
“Granted. Watch with me for a few minutes.”
“I’ve been told that, normally, this can be a bonding experience.”
“True. Hows it working out for you?”
“Not so bonding.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll get the bondage later.”
“You sure you don’t want a couple of pipes?”
“No, thanks, I’ll wait til later.”
We shifted into an awkward silence.
Until 5 minutes later the blond pulled out a badge.
“See? SEE? I told you! It wasn’t snow! I was watching it! Ha! HA HA! What do you say now Mr. ‘I’m Crazy So You Must Be Crazy’? What do you say NOW?”
“Hm.”
“Indeed.”
HAH!
I woke up again around noon, still in front of the TV. Andrew was still awake.
“I’ve been thinking about last night.”
“Yes. It was special for me too.”
“Thanks. My first time, you know. I hope I did alright.”
“You were wonderful.”
We paused to let the humorous-turned-awkward moment pass.
“I want to try something. Watch the TV.”
I turned to the box.
Andrew starting flipping channels quickly. Very quickly. Not even half a second on each station When we got back to the first channel, he stopped.
“Now, what did you see?”
“You scanning through channels very quickly.”
“Hah. Tell me whats on TV?”
I knew.
“Michelle was about to break up with Darren because he was actually the guy who killed her brother. Adam is two seconds away from walking in on his wife talking with his best friend and he’s going to interprete that as them having an affair. Hilarity will ensue. A purple dog is going to come very close to catching his nemesis, but the trap won’t work because of a broken spring and he’ll end up catching his master instead. Tomorrow, it’ll be 58 and cloudy. Miyoko Sakai nailed the triple lutz and will get near perfect scores. The forensic team on Crime And Justice is analyzing the blood samples that will show the break-in was done by the mayor’s brother…”
“Amazing. Quite astounding. Now, what did you REALLY see? What was in all that?”
“Um, TV is, mostly, tripe? I’m not really in the mood for Media Criticism 305 this morning.”
“No. You told me what was on, what was going on. Which, as I said, is amazing in and of itself. Now tell me what you saw.”
The after-images floated about in my head. I let them. I relaxed. Let them mix into a pond of pictures. I floated on them. Quack Quack.
“The owner of Classic Movies is about to sign a deal to make video games. The Prime Minister of Israel is going to step down. Some producer’s little boy is sick and probably dying. The lead actor on Crime And Justice is going to divorce his wife.”
“None of that was on the TV.”
“No it wasn’t. But that’s what it all said to me. All together. You asked. Everything together, it says things. Like when you watch a friend do the same things they’ve always done, and you just know whats going to happen.”
“Hm. There’s only one thing to do then.”
“Drink until I legitimately black out?”
“Maybe later.”
“Unhealthy amounts of coffee?”
“Bingo.”
The local coffeeshop had closed a couple months earlier thanks, in no small part due to the multi-national mega-chain and its nazi-esque marketing.
“Yeah, this is much more comfortable. And the old place didn’t have white chocolate mochas.”
“The variety here is certainly more varied. And, more importantly, the cups are twice the size. I greatly approve.”
“You are, without doubt, a creature of extremes, Andrew.”
“I’ve never said otherwise.”
“So why are we here?”
“Your new, shall we call them, perceptions are difficult to define. More importantly, we’ve yet to really prove if they are the results of new understandings or if you are just delusional.”
“Look I told you all that stuff I saw on TV.”
“First, we never really checked to see if any of those shows turned out the way you ‘predicted’. And its not as if TV isn’t predictable by its very nature.”
“And the porn in the static?”
“Well, besides that being a rather beautiful turn of phrase, you could easily have caught a tiny glimpse of it before I came down. If your grip on reality were slipping enough, you might not even remember.”
“Y’know, this continuing harping on the fact that I may be twice as nuts as you isn’t appreciated.”
“You aren’t twice as nuts as I am. You just aren’t as thoroughly medicated.”
“To which I can only reply ‘goody’.”
“The insane often have an openness to information that the normal do not. You’d be surprised how many schitzophrenics can spot a lie that would make it past a seasoned detective.”
“Again with the crime drama.”
“It isn’t my fault that the concepts and themes contained in such programs find application in the real world.”
“Riddle me this. Are they finding application for situations, or are you finding situations for their application?”
“Riddle me this, do you have any idea what you just said?”
”No.”
“Then back to the situation at hand. Here, I am sure, we can find a way here to start some more convincing tests.”
We sat there for a couple minutes in silence.
“Uh, I’m not really sure how to do this.”
“I suspect you don’t have to ‘do’ anything.”
“I’m good at that.”
We continued to sit.
I just let my eyes wander and continued to consume my white chocolate espresso. And ordered another one.
There was this girl. Pretty, but not oppressively so. Something about the way she was playing with her spoon. Something about the way her pump dangled from her toes.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“That girl.”
“Yes. She’s a girl. I would have expected that your education in pornography would have crippled your ability to recognize anything with less than a D cup as a girl. But it would seem I was mistaken.”
“Hey! Just cause I watch a little skinflick once in a while…”
“What about the girl?”
“What, the redhead with the badge?”
“No. Please focus. The girl you pointed out to me.”
“Sorry. Too much caffine. So you see that girl?”
“Yes.”
“She’s waiting for her boyfriend. She’s going to break up with him. Soon.”
“Interesting.”
There was something else. Behind me.
“And do you hear that boy behind us?”
Andrew’s eyes glazed as he focused his hearing.
“Yes.”
“He’s talking about his day at school, right?”
”Yes. Apparently he didn’t do very well on his math quiz.”
“That’s what he’s saying, but its not what he’s SAYING.”
“Something bad has been happening. I think…wait…”
We waited.
“Kid’s been playing on the school football team. His mom wouldn’t let him try out but he forged her signature on the permission slip.”
“So he’d rather be playing sports than in class. That applies to a lot of children.”
“No. That’s very general, and very true. But what I’m hearing is that he is, very specifically, playing football and forged his mom’s signature to do so.”
Andrew’s eyes glazed over for a moment.
“Then all we have to do is find out if its true and then we are one step closer to understanding whats happening to you.”
“No. We’re one step closer to you believing me.”
“Yes. But given your inability to determine the goings on in your brain, that’s a big step forward. My insight will no doubt be crucial.”
“No doubt.”
“Come. Lets go ask him.”
“Yes. Because there’s nothing a kid likes more than getting busted in a lie to his mother. Especially while she’s sitting right there. And, of course, there’s nothing a mother likes more than strange men coming up talking to her son and apparently knowing quite a bit about them. Even more so when one of them looks like he might be gay.”
“You look gay?”
“No. You do.”
“I do?”
“You dress well, are in decent shape, and speak very eloquently.”
“I was unaware that these qualities would place me in that subclass.”
“Well, now you are.”
Actually, I had no idea whether or not Andrew was gay. I honestly didn’t know if he was sexual at all.
“Then what do we do,” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Perhaps we could read his team scores from the local newspaper out loud. Then we could guage his reaction.”
“No good. He could just have some school spirit.”
“True enough.”
“We could go over and just start a conversation with the mother, mention how her son looks like and athelete and go from there.”
“I believe that puts us back in the ‘strangers with candy’ scenario.”
“Yeah.”
“If we can not approach the pair, then we must proceed discretely. Find out on our own.”
“I can’t believe you are suggesting we stalk a 12 year old.”
“Then we are at an impass.”
“This is unbelievably frustrating. I know things, but they aren’t things we can really confirm since, of course, those things are private. And if I knew the people well enough, then I might, reasonably, know those private things. And then you’d just write it off.”
“Round and round we go.”
We turned back to the girl. In the time we’d spent discussing the situation, her boyfriend had shown up.
“Watch this, Andrew.”
The two were talking, we watched the man’s smile fade. She was speaking quietly, gently and slowly. She reached to touch his hand but he pulled it away before she could. I thought he might cry. Then I thought he’d yell. But all he did was get up and walk away.
“So, I think I’ve proven my point.”
“A small step. Very small. Your ability to read body language is impressive, but explainable. I think you’d agree that something else was going on with you. Be it actual or imagined.’
“And we have no real way at the moment to prove it, do we.”
“No. Not as such.”
I sighed. While I had, at moments, doubted my sanity, doubted that what was happening, what I was seeing hearing and knowing, was real, mostly I was frustrated. And growing very tired of this. On some level, I’d stop caring whether I was mad or not. Whether I’d gained some strange ability. I really just wanted to know either way.
And I wanted a pizza.
“Let’s go home and order food.”
“That’s fine. I need a nap as it is.”
“You’ve had 4 espressos.”
“Caffeine puts me to sleep.”
“You are very odd.”
“Indeed.”
*
At home, Andrew went up to his room and I called for food.
As I paid the pizzaboy, I suggested he stop stealing from the shop.
He suggested I perform inappropriate acts with a sparrow, and left.
I suppose I’d missed an opportunity there.
An easy one.
All of this should have been easy but somehow I just wasn’t thinking of the right ways to do it. To prove what was happening. It was beginning to feel like my brain was working against me. Then again, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
I sat down, frustrated, and opened the pizza box.
Patterns.
I saw patterns.
Patterns within patterns drawn on the pizza.
A scattering of different paths in a haze and one more clearly drawn but incomplete.
I half-glowing line of where I was.
Where I’d been.
But not where I was going.
I blinked.
And I saw cheese.
“Ok, now this is just getting weird. Kindly leave my food alone. A man can take a great deal so long as he can eat.”
I blinked again.
The cheese remained cheese.
More importantly, the pepperoni remained pepperoni and didn’t turn into, for example, eyes, as they had on other, more chemically induced, occasions.
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” I said aloud to, well, whomever.
“We can return to our regularly scheduled chaos in 30 minutes.”
I ate.
I thought about my recent dreams. They’d seemed strange at the time, but given my life at the moment, they didn’t feel out of place anymore. Something was bubbling its way up. Something very very odd, or something very very odd that was going to rate me a thorazine Big Gulp on a regular basis.
I decided.
It was real.
I still didn’t know what ‘it’ was.
But I wasn’t crazy.
I made the decision to not be crazy.
The streets were crowded as I wandered through them. That was just fine by me. I didn’t feel like having to make eye-contact, didn’t really feel like looking at anyone, didn’t really feel like knowing any secrets.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing inside a person’s life through their body language, and whatever secret language I was hearing now was great. Or, at least, not boring. And I do so hate being bored. But it was starting to keep me from being able to think. All this background noise, this visual static was turning into input, into information that was coming at me faster and faster. I don’t like being bored, but theres only so much a boy’s brain can take before he needs to turn off the TV. Keeping my head down seemed to do the trick, so long as the noise level was high enough.
I did keep hearing half parts of sentences.
I was starting to notice something though.
Behind everything, behind even the new stuff I was hearing, was something else.
Something being said.
A sentence made up of every other sentence.
And it was starting to annoy me. Like someone talking about you a little too far away to hear. Half a word here, half a word there, but nothing you can really tell. Its enough to make a guy paranoid.
And it wasn’t like I wasn’t being given reason to be paranoid.
You have a couple severe blackouts in the space of a week for no apparent reason and you’ll start to get a little worried about what you’ve been doing in your ‘spare’ time and who you’ve been doing it in front of.
I wondered if I should hire someone to follow me. A private eye, or something. Andrew knew something about what was going on, but honestly, I didn’t trust him to tell me if it didn’t fit whatever idea that was going on inside his head at that particular moment. He could shift gears faster than a sports car driver doing a quarter-mile. And he had a sardonic sense of humor which, though I often appreciated, wasn’t really appropriate for this situation.
“Megan!” I said out loud.
She had that tech guy. He must have something as simple as a camera that could keep eyes on me.
I called her on my cell.
“Megan, its Martin. Got a sec?”
“Sure. I’m not doing anything much except walking around in my bare feet. At, I’d like to mention, 50 bucks an hour. That doubles the moment I can pick up a piece of paper with my toes. You don’t even want to know what happens if I learn to write with a pen like that.”
“Is there really any reason for us not to focus our business on your escapades alone?”
“Not one that anybody has mentioned to me. Mostly, though, I think you both are afraid of the sheer power my few pounds of luscious flesh command.”
“I think its mostly that I’ll never be able to impress you if you are my primary source of income.”
“One, you haven’t impressed me yet. Two, check the books. I may very well be your primary source of income.”
“Number two isn’t real reliable. You keep the books.”
“Yes. Yes I do. You can see them when you are ready.”
“Ready?”
“To crawl and kiss my toes and worship me like the Queen I am.”
“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we?”
“Oh, most certainly. I made sure a few of the audience members caught the last few bits of our conversation. One of them may have just had a seizure. Luckily, I have the credit cards.”
“You are truly a strange, powermad bitch. Thank goodness for that.”
“Anyhow, we’re muted now.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“You’re repeating yourself, you know.”
“Sorry. Its been a strange week.”
“So I’ve been lead to believe. Hearing any voices but my own right now?”
“Yes. But it’s OK. They aren’t telling me to kill anyone or anything.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Now stop it. And you really shouldn’t even consider getting back together with that guy. He’d go apoplectic if he saw your website.”
“He’s seen it, and that’s why he called, drooling.”
“For now.”
“And just how did you know about him?”
“Oh, just voices in my head. You need something done to him, you let me know. I’ve got a great alibi.”
“No, thanks, that’s OK. You’d only hurt yourself.”
“Ouch. Anyhow, that geek you’ve got doing work for you, I need to talk with him.”
“Oh,, he’d love to set up a site for you. He’s very cute and very single. You’re just his type.”
“Glee. No, really, I need him to help me keep track of myself.”
“Try Buddhism.”
“No, not spiritually. Physically.”
“Huh. OK. I’ll let him know. But I’m sure he’d be happy to keep track of you himself.”
“Exactly when will this sophomoric line of humor end?”
“If you are lucky, when you hang up.”
“Well, then…”
“Yes. I have to go paint my toes now, anyways. Girl has to make a living.”
“Thanks.”
Megan had a point though. I wonder if Dennis and I were, in fact, threatened by her success. It had been our idea, but mostly as a joke. Now it was just running wild. If it was making the money she claimed it was, then maybe we did have to shift our focus. I’d need to review those numbers first. But I wasn’t ready to crawl for them. Yet.
She called back 15 minutes later.
“OK, Scott thinks he can help you. You should meet him around 2:00 at his office.”
“Great. Thanks, Meg.”
“Sorry, no time for banter. I have to fold my laundry.”
“Ok, just…wait…no, I don’t want to know.”
She gave me the address which left me with a couple hours to kill.
Which, to me, says its time to start drinking.
I thought about that for a moment.
No. I was blacking out enough without alcohol.
I decided that food was a better idea instead.
Alternately, I could go find a cybercafe and watch Megan.
“So, I take it you didn’t go watch Megan.”
“No, Andrew, I didn’t go watch Megan.”
“Why not?”
“Well, reason one: I didn’t feel comfortable watching porn at a cybercafe, no matter how suggestive it actually is instead. Assuming the place would even let me connect to such a site.”
“Ah. Yes. And reason two?”
“Why must there be a second reason?”
“There doesn’t HAVE to be a second reason, except you noted that the previous reason was ‘reason one’. Of course, this implies, at the very least, a reason two.”
“I can hardly argue with that. Reason two is that it borders on sexual harassment.”
“The fact that you didn’t argue with me on topic is a promising sign given that you’ve been arguing with me near constantly. That said, it seems improbable that watching your employee do her work could be construed as harassment.”
“While I can’t help but agree with you, I also can’t help but realize that I’d be the target of the lawsuit if we were wrong. And when I say ‘we’, I mean me, the target, and you, the guy who wouldn’t be involved at all. So I’ll stick with the end that goes safe with me.”
“Excellent. We are back to you being testy. I’m no good at these quick shifting of gears.”
“Look, if you had, I don’t know, whatever it is I have, you’d be testy too.”
“Make believe I don’t have no understanding of what you are talking about.”
“That’s either surprisingly modest or less-surprisingly condescending.”
“Does it matter either way?”
“No, probably not. Look, whether you believe that whats happening to me is objective or subjective, it feels like there’s more and more noise all around me. Visual, and auditory.”
“And, now that I think about it, that particular aspect of the situation falls outside the objective/subjective issue.”
“Thank you, I think. Anyhow, the relevant issue is that its starting to get louder and more crowded.”
“More crowded?”
“That’s the only way I can describe it.”
“So you are feeling more than a little overwhelmed.”
“Yes. I am.”
“And what, exactly, would you have me do?”
“Show some sympathy?”
”No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, c’mon. Just a little?”
“Why bother? It won’t rectify the situation.”
“No, I suppose it won’t.”
“Unless you actually are crazy, and my sympathy would be so comforting that it made the bad voices go away. I could do that, if you think it would help.”
“And if I think it would help then I’m basically admitting I’m crazy.”
“More or less.”
“I am unthrilled with my options.”
“There you have my sympathies.”
“Well, that’s something. I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“Make no mistake, I do feel sympathy with your sanity dilemma. I have been there more than a few times myself. However, I don’t know how to help with your expanding of perceptions or your perception of your expanding perceptions. It seems that the best idea is to, well, make the best of it.”
“Which means?”
“As we have noted, you are experiencing something new, be it real or imaginary. I would suggest that temporary relief might be found in going out and taking advantage of these new senses.”
“Really?”
“Really. Either it takes your mind off of things, or brings you a certain amount of personal gain.”
“Go on.”
“Poker and women.”
“Ah. Yes.”
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