The agent, if that is what you call him, carefully examines
the nine sheets of paper she has so far signed, or done her best to sign. Her
signature is shaky; her hand is trembling slightly.
“These look okay,” he says in his pale voice. “Everything in
order. More or less. Enough that is, to get us started.”
“So when do you…” Kathy made a gesture, which, once she
realized what it looked like, she aborted, horrified. “…you know…”
She signed instead the last three sheets.
“Soon,” the man says, somewhat enigmatically, gathering up
the dozen pages.
He stands up, or is going to. First, he packs up everything in
his briefcase and snaps it shut with authority. The briefcase bears a logo, or perhaps
it is a crest, that at least looks official in that vaguely governmental way
that such crests have. The man himself has, overall, the “faded” appearance
typical of spooks, governmental and otherwise. He’s made a lifetime habit of
taking parts in conversations just like this one, where one gets one’s point
across without saying anything, or as close to that as possible. Even looking
at him now, Kathy has no idea, really, what he looks like.
“Okay then,” she says, smoothing, unnecessarily, her
navy-blue skirt, “I guess that’s…” She thinks about having a cigarette but
doesn’t. “That.”
* * *
Morgan is watching him, from the sedan, through a pair of
high-powered opera glasses, while his partner, Talbot, sketches something,
maybe that elm tree by the playground, or is it a linden?
“That’s him,” he says, and adds reluctantly, “I think…”
Talbot looks up from his sketchbook, almost disinterested,
and gazes vaguely off in the direction of the basketball court at which Morgan half-heartedly
directs his attention. “Which one?” he asks, reluctantly, as if prompted by
someone not in the sedan.
“The blonde.”
“Which one?”
“The one in the red shorts.”
Talbot looks confused, somehow, still. So Morgan adds, “He’s
the one who can’t seem, for the life of him, to go left.”
“Ah…” Talbot says, but without conviction, or maybe not
paying enough attention, once again bent intently, even more intently than
before, over his sketchbook, trying to render a fence-post, or, perhaps, it’s
supposed to be a fire hydrant. Let's face it, he's earnest enough, but just not
very good at rendering reality.
* * *
“Hmm?” she says, smiling, pretending she’s still chewing.
“The right thing about what, exactly?”
“About Kenny…you know.”
“Oh yes…oh Kenny…” Alyssa, formerly Beth, waved her fork,
momentarily empty, in a little circle in the air, “…he’ll get used to it…I
guess.”
It was possible, Kathy mused, sipping her white wine again,
that her friend had no idea what they were talking about. Sometimes, she
thinks, I’m not sure I do either. Maybe, just maybe, it’s true that all her
more or less happy friends, like Alyssa, are right when they tell her: it’s
much better that way.
* * *
Mary Pat is holding him, stroking his limp penis, comforting
him, telling him it’s okay to make a mess, they will have to strip the bed
anyway. In all likelihood, they’ll probably roll him right up in the sheet when
they’re finished, to get rid of, as she, rather matter-of-factly, puts it,
“what remains of the evidence.”
“She’ll find out…she knows…she…?”
“Its okay,” Mary Pat says, and Kenny notes the tone of her
voice: tenderly amused. It’s meant to be reassuring and it really does calm
him, momentarily. “Its okay” she repeats herself, and, surprisingly, it really
does seem okay until he decides to ask the next question.
“When…will they…”
“Oh darling…”
Mary Pat’s own penis, shall we say it, is still inside
Kenny’s ass right now, and she is moving her hips ever so slowly, letting Kenny
feel it inside him, filling him, as she kindly strokes Kenny’s indecisive
little member, which harden and softens, hardens and softens, endlessly, as if
he has an entire lifetime to cum, but he doesn’t.
* * *
Across from him, his visitor nodded, politely, accepting the
compliment. J. Loft had a reputation as a man who could please men who were
difficult to please. Unlike some men with a similar reputation, J. Loft also
had the talent to back it up, which was fortunate because such men were often
irascible, unreasonable, and dangerously negative. The man who sat opposite him
was such a man. He had lost his voice, and much of everything else, to what it
is easiest to simply call “cancer” and leave it at that. But it’s much more
complicated than that. He has been
kept alive, marginally, with certain experimental medicaments. The ingredients
to these not-quite-miracle drugs, although not exactly uncommon or even expensive,
were, how can we put this as delicately, as diplomatically as possible?
Let’s just say they are “inconvenient.”
"What is extra pleasing," continued the man in the
armchair (let's call him R.), "is the symmetry of the entire operation.
There is an aesthetic circularity to it all that is rare to find these days. In
evil, I mean. Do you understand?"
J. Loft did not understand, not really, but he nodded, like
a fellow adept at these matters, instead of a businessman, a provider of
special services to those who could pay handsomely for the provision of special
services. He found it a pleasure, really, after so many years in covert work,
not to be pestered with a thousand-and-one unnecessary questions from above:
did you cover your tracks, leave any witnesses, clues, hints, loose ends, etc.
and to work instead, sans supervision, under the assumption that he was
competent enough to do the job he'd been hired to do, to be treated, in other
words, like the professional he was.
"I am a man who enjoys being a man," his employer
continued, "even in my…somewhat…erm… diminished…capacity. Perhaps…"
and he gazed outside, fondly, towards the pool, where three turquoise dolphins
were playing, "all the more so for my diminution."
J. Loft didn't speak; he wasn't paid to speak, so he was
fairly stingy with his words. He wasn't paid to listen, either, but, of the
two, the latter was by far the more appropriate, closer, in any event, to what
he was getting paid to do. Using his time economically, he thought of his next
job as the man spoke, making a mental checklist: silencers, curare, a pear-shaped
vibrator, a chastity belt, and plenty of pink electrical tape. Tools of the
trade.
"It's not exactly as if the boy will be separated from
anything he'll really miss," the man in the armchair was saying. His
voice, naturally not his own, had been programmed and remixed from old movies.
It was a mash-up of the voices of Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, and, of all
people, Marlene Dietrich. "Well…" he started, but could not go
further. He was doubled over, guffawing uncontrollably, the tears streaming
down his face. Apparently, he’d accidentally pressed the button that activated a
laugh track.
J. Loft supplied what should have been the punchline.
"Not anything except, perhaps, his life."
* * *
The man in the black suit looks at a small pastel-colored
business card in the palm of his hand and says: "Are you Mr. Gregory
Tanner?"
"No," Kenny says, but the encounter has him, admittedly, unnerved. He has been getting
phone calls for the last three weeks, every day, the anonymous voice on the
other end asking the same disembodied question. "No," he repeats, but
without much conviction. As if he knows instinctively it is pointless: he can't
convince anyone of anything. "I'm not this man."
"That's funny," the man in the black suit says,
checking the business card again. "It seems quite impossible from the
information that we’ve gathered that you aren’t Greg Tanner. Are you quite
certain?”
“Why…yes. I’m sure. I don’t even know any Gregory Tanners.”
“How can you be so certain that you aren’t Mr. Tanner then?
If you don’t even know who he is?”
They are in a supermarket where Kenny has gone to pick up
some milk and bread and a few other items Kathy has asked him to bring home.
They are standing, for no good reason, in front of the frozen food section,
where they have the Indian dishes, various sorts of masala and makhani and saag
paneers and whatnot.
"Sir…I really should go…"
"Yes you should."
But the man in the black suit, his name, what he claims his
name is, anyway—Talbot, wasn't it?--doesn't move and it's clear that he doesn't
intend to let Kenny pass either, not yet. Instead he lifts his left hand to
Kenny's face, and lays it almost paternally against Kenny's right cheek. What
Talbot says next, he says in a very soft voice, "You are warm,
sweetheart…"
Kenny imagines, wildly, that this anomalous gesture is some
kind of signal to hidden cohorts. That he is about to be arrested, thrown
against the freezer doors, cuffed, driven away to an undisclosed location.
"I want…to buy…wildflowers…" he says, desperately,
and gestures, feebly, towards the front of the store, where the exit is, and
the floral bouquets, both of which are impossible to see from where they are
now standing.
"Yes,
naturally, but they must be red carnations," Talbot says and allows Kenny
to think that he's finished with this unsavory encounter by the frozen foods
for some blessed seconds before he adds, "no, white. The red will show
wonderfully against your alabaster skin. "
* * *
Pam is looking at her right nipple, squeezing it between the
thumb and forefinger of her right hand, examining it, as if seeing it for the
first time, wondering what it was doing there or, as if she weren't really
seeing it at all and trying to convince herself of its presence.
"Sweetie?"
Kathy prompts.
Pam looks up, pouting, automatically, and for some reason
Kathy thinks of her husband, standing in front of a full-length mirror, on
painted tiptoes, following with his similarly feminized hand the delicate curve
of his arched spine and pantied tush. The photograph, taken, supposedly, at an
oceanside hotel resort, did not seem to be of Kenny at all, but when she
questioned the man who slid it, along with others, across the glass-topped
table in the atrium of the downtown Marriott, she remembered him saying,
"Oh, but it will be."
"Huh?" Pam says, looking, with her new haircut,
remarkably like Alyssa, who looked like red-headed Beth, only with her hair
pinned up and blonde; Beth, who was, of course, her mother. "Did you say
something?"
"Yes…no…never
mind…your mom, she's in Bucharest, isn't she? She told me last Tuesday."
"No, I think its Gdansk."
"Hmm," Kathy hums. "Well, anyway, I guess I
should be getting…" and she notices just how spacey the hashish, or the
champagne, or the sex, or all three are making her feel and sound. "…Somewhere."
"I haven't come yet," Pam says, sounding
unashamedly spoiled, petulant, childish. She picks up a joint, already lit,
from somewhere, from a small change pocket in the side of her neck is what it
seemed like, but, of course, couldn’t be. Her eyes look, somehow, inverted.
Kathy absently strokes the girl's soft white belly, just
below the navel, pierced, as expected, and the intention, clearly, is to return
to licking her moist, very lightly furred pussy, now oozing chocolate chiffon,
but that's not what's in the cards, so to speak.
"Lick my toes," Pam says urgently. "That will
get me off quick."
Kathy, who knows this kid's body as well as her own, never
suspected this about Pam, but the idea excites her, and she immediately thinks
of placing halved strawberries between the girl's notoriously perfect white
toes, the image reminding her, effectively, of strawberry shortcake.
"Could you please," Kathy says, thus inspired, her
breath hitching a little, "ring the kitchen?"
* * *
He is aware, of course, that he may have been followed, or
that the room itself, as improbable as it might seem, is being monitored, and,
how improbable is that really, nowadays? Is Kathy having him watched? Does she
suspect something? Is she preparing papers for divorce?
He slips his hand over his soft tummy to the front of his
panties, silk, impossibly cool, under his trembling fingertips. He isn't hard
at all, which makes perfect sense; it comes as no surprise. He’s been taking
those pills that come in the mail, sent, by god knows who, to his office. The
packages come on the sixth, ninth, fifteenth, and twenty-seventh day of each
and every month since he can't even remember when.
* * *
The man in the black suit is standing against the railing of
the boardwalk, his back to the colorless ocean, which lies flat and dull behind
him, like a razor blade used too many times. He puts the cigarette case back
into the breast pocket of his black suit, returns the light to the pocket of
his black pants, and folds his arms, looking down at Mary Pat with a false benevolence.
"We understand," he says, as if speaking for the
majority of people in the world. “You might even say it is the very reason that
we chose you."
"He is my friend, goddammit…" Mary Pat dragged
nervously on the cigarette, which tasted, surprisingly, normal. He shifted his
weight on his long legs, his short skirt riding upward, almost over the tops of
his stockings. His white blouse, partially unbuttoned, showed a pink bra, and
not as much in it as he would have liked, but that was a situation he was in
the process of correcting, even as he spoke. "It's just not fair…what you
are doing…to me, to us…"
Talbot,
or whoever it was, nodded. “Duly noted.”
* * *
When he resumes speaking his voice might be coming from a
different person altogether. In fact, it is. His head, immobilized for his own
safety, doesn’t move, but his eyes flick left-right, right-left, left-right,
right-left, etc. to the two photographs pinned side by side on the light-box.
Kenny-Kathy, Kathy-Kenny, Kenny-Kathy, Kathy-Kenny, etc.
“…which confirms,” and he struggles to form the words out of
the poisonous phlegm thickening his windpipe, “that we only love ourselves.”
* * *
On a canvas lounge chair, on the porch, Kenny lies, his
thin, tanned, well-toned body barely dressed, he can't help but notice, in a
royal-blue bikini, very skimpy, and a needle stick in the back of his left
hand, an IV dripping into him, slowly. What is dripping into him, however, is a
mystery, and although he could theoretically ask one of the nurses, or whatever
they are, who come by occasionally to change the bag on the metal pole, he is,
in practice, either asleep when they come, or somehow, he forgets to ask.
"Don't I need to get back…to something?" he asks
someone, maybe it’s Mary Pat, who sits beside him, reading an old fat novel.
It’s not the sort of book anyone really reads, although it’s
creased and worn as if a thousand hands have flipped its pages. Something she
must have found in the day room, something by someone named…oh, he can't see
the name, what's the difference anyway?
Mary Pat, if it’s her, lowers the book. Her eyes are hidden
behind very dark glasses. She smiles.
"There’s no hurry," she says.
The way she says it brings tears to Kenny's eyes.
"I'm very tan," he says irrelevantly.
Just for the
hell of it, he tries to remember when the last time he ate might have been, but
he can't think back that far. "And very thin. I guess…" and his eyes fall
level on the ocean, swollen and blue, over the porch railing. Suddenly he has a
thought: "…will they drown me, then?"
Mary Pat pretends not to hear, or maybe she really doesn't,
but some time later, in response to some other dreamy half-sentence that Kenny
utters almost without knowing it, she chuckles affectionately, and says,
"You're so silly."
* * *
That woman in the photo looks so much like me, she thinks,
it’s a good thing they found the body in a motel room where…?
She checks the article again.
In Minnesota.
The glass door slides open and Kenny stands there with two
tall frosted glasses of lime-slush and gin. He’s wearing a tiny bikini bottom
and a pink pair of her rubber thong platform sandals. His oiled body is smooth
and slender and tan all over. Looking up at him, she knows the news story of
the murdered woman is all wrong, full of misstated facts, faulty deduction, and
wrongly arrived at conclusions, but that doesn’t make it any less eerie.
“Mojitos, sort of,” he shrugs and smiles with the forced
cheer of someone with a gun at his back.
Then, mirroring Kathy’s troubled
expression his demeanor suddenly changes to something slightly less faux, “…is
something…wrong? You look…” but he’s waiting for Kathy to fill in the blank,
which she never quite gets around to doing. Or maybe she can’t, and she’s
waiting for him to…what?
Whatever it is it remains unspoken, a blank space, but
underscored, highlighted, set off in parenthesis, to remind them always that
something, some crucial something, will always be missing.
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