I don't like to smoke. Under any circumstances. Whenever I hear Cindy go on and on about how she almost quit, but it has "been one of those weeks," while she twirls her wrist like a wheel on a badly paved road and the ash falls off the tip of her cigarette onto my desk another two inches wide of the ashtray I keep as a stinking reminder not to light up, I want to hang myself until my tongue falls out of my face like a drugged frog. I can understand why she justifies, but I know that's all it is. Justification of an addiction. I don't pretend that I am so stressed at Weeks & Smith Security that the only way I can push my shoulders square through another day is with a drink. I know that I am an alcoholic. How the hell else am I supposed to focus on anything besides drinking if I don't take a taste now and then.
However, it has been one of those weeks. One of those weeks where you have to look at yourself in the same collared shirt and stripes you rode the tubes to work in yesterday just to make sure your head knows that it really happened; that you are still there, that all of you is still the same bunch of organs and skins that saw those same eyes in that same mirror the day before. One of those weeks where you have to ask yourself every day if they're getting sharper or if you're getting dull and you have to answer yourself because no one else wants to be the one to ask. One of those weeks where you have to make sure you know which way the lies are flowing and to what end and you have to know before you touch a shoelace, before you close a belt buckle, before you even think about where you tucked your pants and your gun, and you have to know that it doesn't matter which way is up if you're the one at the center of it all, pushing the field lines and watching the facts fall into place. Some people forget that. Some people don't live to regret it. Those people don't have weeks like these.
I'm not trying to stay awake, but with a trail of bodies as numerous as there were sunrises and sunsets after a drought that nearly killed my division's funding and public interest, I haven't kept my windowsill stocked with the stuff strong enough to put me down for anything close to restful sleep. At this hour of the night there is no bartender serving that would seat a man as well known as me for any reason less than a handcuffed interrogation with my pistol on the table and pointing like a compass needle toward their heart. It isn't times like these that I ask myself personal questions, or dive into regret, or wonder at the "why"s and "how come"s of leaving the coast and the commissioner's appointment at the head of special operations for, what did Cal call it, shit post in a division of a shit organization staffed by shit for brains gunmen in a shit hole of a city. Only half of those shit stickers are valid on any given day anyway. It is times like these I ask myself why I am not having enough sex with Cindy to convince her she should come stay at my house so I can at least have something to put me to sleep when the liquor runs dry.
I tried a radio not too long ago, but the stations in Deeprath are worse than empty static. Half a conversation can keep you awake a lot longer than the buzz of a dead antenna. Half of an investigation can keep you up at least as stubbornly. Weeks and Smith takes subcontracts at a lot of the facilities the state can't afford to keep its thumb on, partly because they're less glamorous posts, but mostly because the state is about out of thumbs between City Hall and plugging what spews out of its asshole and with the kind of week that my eyes saw and still cannot believe I'm sure the state badges are happy to have the hose pointed in anyone's face, but their own.
I don't know when I will get to sleep. If anything I may just have to stop at Gimmie Goodies on the corner where the el stops and pick up whatever they've got for breakfast in a bag and malt in a bottle and ride Friday out like a horse to pasture.
"The tapes. I know you wanted them tomorrow, but I put them together today because I may not be in tomorrow with my," I can't remember if she said birthday or first date, "tonight." A stack of burgundy cases are on the windowsill where the square body of Ox Horn should be. Weeks and Smith was running an investigation, a quiet one, into the spate of killings at the industry giants. No one important bit the dust. Most of them were night shifters looking to make a buck or two staring at dials and pushing what levers couldn't be pushed by a stop watch and bunch of oiled gears bolted to an electric motor. It wasn't until the Executive Officer and the majority holder of Era Proof were both dead, and both under our lock and key that things went public faster than a homeless man shitting himself on a rush hour bus. "Eddie said that the internal probe is about 40% complete and the rest of the interviews will wrap up tomorrow. Cal left you a message as well. He said it was really important that you call him back today."
What time was it? It was probably tomorrow by now. Or today. Whatever the hell people want to call it. I had not intention of listening to Cal's message. At least not until the internal probe ran it's course. The state demanded it as a token gesture. It was, I still think, a shit way to say thanks for covering the other 390 square miles of the citizenry we can't afford to keep an eye on. The topmost case came away from the rectangular stack and popped open. The foil of the compact disc shone in the dim light of the street lamps doing there best to reach through the high darkness and into my bedroom thirty floors up before I slipped it into the top feed of the boom box I had yet to return.
Cindy's voice came shallow and nasal. Maybe it would be enough to put me down for a little while after all. "This is the taped recording of Matthew Shelly, the receptionist assigned by Weeks and Smith to Era Proof's main archiving center at 48th and Wesleyan Ave. He has held the position for approximately three years and two days and has four write ups on file and zero flags. Cindy Cuthers, custodian and assistant to Don Exel." She said something about the date and time and several more bits about Matthew Shelly before the poured sand of Eddie's voice eased in and the snap of a deadbolt marked Cindy's exit from the interview paddock.
"How long have you been working here Matt."
"I prefer Matthew. I don't really work here, per say, Mr. " Matthews soft, but skin stiff, voice hung a space for Eddie to fill.
"I know you don't work here in this building Matt. I think you can understand that what I meant by here was here, as in, this company," he didn't fill the space or sit down. Eddie never sat down until he could make a point by doing so.
"It's been about three years."
"A good three years?"
"A good three years. Why, exactly, am I here?"
"We, as in, Weeks and Smith, have some soul searching to do and we are going to start by looking in the mirror, as in, we are going to start by looking through the mirror at you and everyone else we see through that little pane of glass." Eddie was very likely leaning with his shoulders against the wall where the wide expanse of the two way mirror joined up to the corner of the brightly lit paddock, comfortable as a weathered bat in a toy box and a hint as threatening.
"Well, I didn't do anything wrong. I love it here," a chair creaked well away from the microphone. I don't allow more than one interviewer to a holding pen, but from the sound I could almost see a third person. Eddie couldn't have been ready to sit down just yet.
"No you didn't. We have some personal questions to ask you though and you can answer them honestly whenever you're ready to answer each one and then you can leave and our driver will take you back to work or, if you choose, to your home," Eddie clasped his hands together with a dull pop. A chair scuffed against the hard fibers of the orange paddock carpet. Matthew was pulling himself closer to the heavy table, probably in response to Eddie's jacket coming off his shoulders to drape around his seat on the opposite side of the table, and the fat brown leather holster coming into view beside his white shirted bicep.
"Okay, well I'm ready now so let's get this over with. Do I still get paid if I go home?"
"Certainly" Another chair's legs rumbled and skipped on the hard looped plastic of the cheap carpet and squealed sharply beneath Eddies lanky, but tough, frame. "Let's begin."
"Let's."
"Do you like dinner parties?"
"Yes."
"Your wife is at a dinner party and almost forgot to invite you because she assumed you'd be at work. You rent a tuxedo at the last minute. It looks just like another man's tuxedo at the party. She appears to hit it off with him, but it turns out, she tells you later, she's known him since grade school and they're best friends and she never told you about it until you saw them together. How does that change your relationship with her."
"That never actually happened."
"What never actually happened?"
"The guy's tuxedo was just like mine, but she didn't hit it off with him. He told a joke and she thought it was funny and they were laughing and I happened to catch them laughing together. That's all it was."
"You caught them laughing?"
"Yeah. I caught her laughing. And - and she even told me the joke later and it wasn't even funny. It was stupid."
"It was stupid?"
"Yes. It was about the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life."
"Can you tell it to me?"
"Sure," there was a pause that stretched several beats longer than I expected, but Matthew picked up the next thread in lieu of continuance. "I can't remember it now though. It was a long time ago."
"Two years ago." Another pause pulled like taffy. Matthew was probably beginning to frown by now, but still conscious of the mirror behind Eddie and leery of who else might see him in a moment of discomfort.
"Two years ago?"
"Do you like driving to work?"
"How do you know that? I know everything I do at work is recorded, but, I mean, come on. I'm a receptionist. How important could it possibly be to keep extensive surveillance on me."
"I honestly don't know how important it could be, but because we can't know how important it could be wouldn't that make it potentially of infinite importance until we can know?"
"Infinite importance? I write names in a ledger," Matthew laughed, but the sound came like a dead mouse in a sealed tin can.
"I'm sure if you think about it some more you'll feel similarly. Do you like driving to work?"
"No. Are you kidding? I work downtown. The el drops me off a block away from the front door. Plus whenever I drive I get anxious because I hardly ever do it."
"You're on the subway-"
"I don't take the subway, I take the el."
"You're on the subway and you know you're late for work because you saw the station clock on the street level, but the tube stations don't feature prominent clocks and your watch battery has died."
"I'd ask somebody for the time. Is that what you were going to ask me?"
"The only other person on the tube is a man who is sleeping, but who looks like he has had a long day at a job that is much more difficult than the one you do."
"Then I don't ask him. The subway is usually on time. It has to be if people need to change between the tubes and the el for whatever reason."
"He wakes up and is frantic as though he is or already has missed something very important and asks you what time it is?"
"I tell him I don't have a watch."
"He asks you why you don't have a watch and then makes a comment about how wives should take care of these things. He rubs his wrist and mumbles something about how he's going to fix his wife when he gets home."
"That's why I don't ride the tubes."
"What is why?"
"People like that."
"People like whom?"
"People like the one you just described."
"If you didn't leave your house late you would have taken the el?"
"I only left my house late because my wife didn't set the alarm by the bed the night before."
"If you were already late and knew you were going to get written up, why would you take the tubes if you hate them and they would not get you there before you would be counted by the I.D. scanner as late?"
"It's a twenty minute difference."
"You know that would make no difference. Of all people, you would know that. You write names and times in a ledger." Another pause spun outward and tangled with the twirled fist of seconds left floating over the table several minutes before.
"I wasn't thinking," Matthew offered, his tone more a question than an answer to Eddies implication. Matthew rubbed his hair, the buzz of his short trimmed hair on his dry palm picked up by the sensitive microphone on the table.
"Were you not thinking, or were you looking for an outlet?"
"An outlet?"
"An outlet." A dull thunk sounded as Eddie draped his gun arm behind his seat back and his holster caught and smacked the thin wood there.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"A setting in which you could release your frustrations."
"I haven't been late to work in almost as many years as I've worked for Weeks."
"Were you frustrated about being late?"
"No. Obviously I would have preferred to be on time."
"And you hate the tubes, yes?"
"Yes. Sometimes. Most of the time. Where are you going with this?"
"Do you like the furnishings in the break room at the archive center?"
I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but somewhere in there I did. The time on the boom box's readout said 131 minutes when I realized I was still sitting in bed and it was still dark outside. Cindy's voice was in my ears again, "will make a recommendation with respect to termination for due process and judicial diligence and compliance with rights upheld and summarily waived by the admissible testimony herein recorded by Weeks and Smith Securities, a fully recognized and incorporated arm of the judicial system of Deeprath county." The recording snapped to a halt and the disc spun out its momentum to a standstill. My home phone rang and the answering machine picked up the digital record where Weeks and Smith left off.
"Donnie, its Chuck over at the office. We've got another one. Era Proof engineering division at the river complex. Four technicians and one of ours. A lot of machinery missing too. Just thought you'd want to hear it now before you came in tomorrow. I'll see ya in a bit." My fingers felt cold on my eyes. Damned liver sweats, but at least my head felt a little less jammed with balls of heated wire. "It's looking bad Donnie. I don't think this is anywhere close to finished. We're at the beginning of something huge and, I tell ya what, I don't like it."
I'm not too bothered by working weekends. At least, not when I get a chance to grab some shut eye before things wind up for the weekend stretch. This weekend was going to be different. I wanted to think back to the uniform crime reports for Deeprath that I read in the months before I transferred so many miles away from a bucket of piss I thought was gearing up to be a thousand gallons deeper than where I am now, but I couldn't pick a fact from the mess of information already up there to save my life, let alone build any expectation of what it would take to save another man's life in the next 48 hours.
One hundred feet below the el blew by on its express jaunt downtown. If my apartment faced East I could see the big "W" and "S" of the Weeks and Smith main building.a dozen floors above me. I got dressed. It was already Friday. The way I see it, when it's been one of those weeks, you can't fight it in the last hours of the last day and expect to fall into Saturday with a somehow different perspective on the previous four days. As far as I'm concerned today is Monday and I've got some time to beat traffic if I want to scrape up a bite to eat around here before I hit the office.
No comments:
Post a Comment