Everything was different.
Every single assignment was different from the last. The first thing they made me do was, after getting a package at the headquarters, go to some apartment building. I told the building super who sent me and he took me to the mail room, opened all of the mail boxes, and allowed me to put the package in someone's mailbox.
After that, I had to steal someone's iPhone, run to someone's house, and slip it through that person's doggy door. The owner of the iPhone would track the phone to that location, and who knew what would happen when they got to the house? Who knew why I led them there or who was inside and if they were in on it? I certainly didn't.
Next, I snuck into a popular pastry and told the head chef who sent me. He allowed me into the kitchen, where I used a bottle of some liquid they told me they'd placed under the sink to poison someone's birthday cake.
This was my last assignment of the day. They always gave me three per day, it seemed. I went to clock out at the HQ and went home to find Yvette in the house. She was sitting on the bed with nachos, sharing them with Isaiah.
"Oh, hey Geneva." Yvette smiled. I opened my mouth to let out all of the disgust and irritation that her perky little grin always gave me, but Isaiah gave me one of his looks.
I sighed. "Don't spill any cheese on my side of the bed."
I pulled my sheets from under her, went on the couch, and went to sleep.
This repeated the next day. I got another three assignments. They were longer, more difficult, than the first six I got. I had to sneak into a news broadcasting room in the city (nobody inside was in on it, so I had to do everything myself) and turn off all the power in the building for three minutes. I had to stay in the building and turn it back on, since only I had the device that could fix it. Then I had to go to a daycare right at the end of their school day. I lured one of the kids out of the daycare and into a car that was waiting nearby the school, all by using a remote-control toy truck. I stood far away from the car, watching him. I locked the doors with a remote they gave me at the HQ.
Then, at ten at night (by this time the boy's parents and police officers were searching for him) I used the remote to unlock the doors and he escaped.
That left me with only two hours to complete my last assignment, which was to go into a health clinic and change the results on someone's STD test.
I got back to the HQ and clocked out just one minute before the deadline.
I reached the house by 1 AM, nearly too tired to keep my eyes open. Isaiah was lying down on the couch. He didn't acknowledge me when I walked in.
"Are you okay?" I asked him.
"Yeah. I just got a little tired from waiting for you." He said.
"Why were you waiting?"
He pointed in front of him. "To watch with me."
I hadn't even noticed it when I walked in: he got the television back. I stood there in the hallway, trying to find the words to say to him. I wanted to tell him that I'd gone on another walk or I met up with and old friend, but none of it came out. None of it was true. I was too tired to lie to him.
I made myself some hot chocolate and went to bed.
The day afterward, the card in the mail said not to report to base until three in the afternoon. That was good news; running around so much was making me tired. It was taking a toll on me. I got to stay with Isaiah for the first half of the day.
We watched movies on the new TV and made two red velvet cakes. I showed him how to hack his own computer (something I learned when I turned off all the power in the newsroom), and then we spent a long time trying to figure out how to get it back to normal. By the time that was done, I wanted to eat the cake.
"Why can't we eat it?" I whined. He was blocking me from going into the fridge.
"It's for the party today." He said.
"What party?"
He looked at me for a moment. "Oh, you don't know about it. Yesterday Yvette, Batul, Tyler and I met up to talk about the possibilities of everything that happened that night when we were stuck in here. After the meeting, we decided to throw a party today."
"Why?"
"Because it's Christmas Eve, Geneva."
"Really?" I asked. Just the other day, I'd been keeping track of the countdown. How did it suddenly get so close? "What time is the party?"
"Eight o'clock." He said.
Obviously, starting 'work' at three in the afternoon was no longer good news. Whatever they were going to have me do probably wouldn't be done between three and eight o'clock. I'd be late, if I even made it.
"I'll be there. But I have a job interview to get to right now, so I might be a little late. I'm going to try to keep it quick." I told him. I went to get dressed, put on my shoes, and headed for the door.
"Geneva." Isaiah called to me.
"Yeah?"
"I'm proud of you."
I turned around with the pain of his words on my heart. "Don't be."
I don't know what I did.
I was given another three assignments, and within those assignments were more assignments. It was all a very blurry memory by the end of the day. I'd met so many people and done so many things and worn so many costumes that none of it really made any sense anymore. Whenever I closed my eyes, all I saw was the plethora of faces that I'd interacted with all day.
My last assignment was to stay at the headquarters and write letters to the people who lied about completing their assignments before midnight. All the letters were just like the ones we got in the mail—anonymous and mocking. It was then, as I sat in a room on the fifth floor and heard people walking through the halls saying "Goodnight, Jim" and "Merry Christmas" and "Tell the wife I said hello", I realized what this was.
Someone else in my position was sitting in a seat like this, writing letters to people like me and putting them in mailboxes like Isaiah's. This was an incessant, genius cycle.
All the little things in my life that happened were caused by someone else. Just like I broke up Sarah and Josh's engagement, as minuscule as that may seem, if it happened to me it would be a big deal. I'd be saying "why me?". I wouldn't know that it was a setup. Josh maybe did. There could be someone else on the outside who did everything to else, all the bad things.
Yvette's sister could have only slept over at her boyfriend's for some other reason, something that was controlled by an employee like me. That employee probably didn't know why they were doing what they did. They didn't know how it affected us. The ad they put up for that hookah lounge that led Tyler to the blank neighborhood could have been created and posted by another employee. The letters were written and mailed by other employees. Other employees robbed Isaiah's place.
Carlos' drink could've been spiked by another employee.
The craziest part about this cycle was the anonymity. None of us knew each other, but we were ruining each other's lives each assignment at a time. If the puppet masters hired me because they had something that they could hold against me, then was that the process for the others? Was that the reason that all the security guards and other employees were working for them? This organization was built on blackmail. They were getting people to do bad things to each other, and then holding those things against them. I used to think of the people who did bad things to us—robbing us and locking us in our homes and terrorizing us in other ways—as criminals. But really, they were puppets just like us. The puppet masters were like the Devil, and the employees were the demons sent to torment regular human beings (who were soon to become demons themselves).
I was used to hurting people, but only for my own benefit. I'd take advantage of others to survive, to get money for clothes on my back and food in my gut.
What I was doing now only made sure that my dirty little secret was kept safe.
I finished writing the last letter of what felt like hundreds, and then fell asleep with the pen in my hand.
No one woke me up until the next morning.
~~~
"Rise and shine, 256." A male voice woke me up in the morning. If he didn't sound so unthreatening, I'd think it was God. For a couple moments after I woke up, I had no idea of where I was or who I was.
The latter had always been that way, but I gained knowledge of the first when I raised my head to see a man standing in the doorway wearing thick, tinted glasses. I was still at the headquarters.
"What'd you just call me?" I asked, wiping drool from my mouth.
"256. It's the last three letters of your Red Liquor ID number. That's how we address each other around here." He said.
"Oh," I nodded. The envelopes that I'd written were gone, probably taken away by the person who had to mail them.
I took my bag from the floor and made my way out of the room. "Should I just pick up my assignments now since I'm already here?" I asked him.
"No assignments, 256. You're done today." He told me.
"Done? Am I off because it's Christmas?"
"No. You're done. You were only a temporary employee, a call-in. The bosses call you in when you've done something you have to pay for, and when your payment is up, they let you go. You're free to go...that is, until you piss the bosses off again." The guy chuckled for a while, and then cleared his throat and stopped when he saw me staring at him.
"Are other people off today, though? The permanent employees?"
"Are you kidding? Absolutely not. Christmas is our busiest day. It's the day when everybody wants to be happy, so that's good for us, because our job is to ruin people's happiness."
This whole system was starting to sound a lot like hell.
I left the headquarters like it was my first time outdoors after 25 years of prison. That's what it felt like, anyway. With four days of three assignments, adding up to twelve (and the last day consisted of a lot, so it should count for more than that), I could comfortably say that I spent a lifetime working for them. I almost felt like I'd aged since working for them.
The streets were fairly empty, due to the fact that anyone with some sense and a family was inside opening gifts.
Fuck. Gifts.
I ran through the streets like I was being chased. Not only did I miss the entire party that my friends threw, but I had no presents for them? I couldn't do that. Not them. They went through all of this together with me. The least they deserved was a little gratitude.
The only stores open were non-brand stores, surprisingly. Usually the smaller business were the ones closed.
I found a Capezio's shop open and instantly thought of Yvette. Anyone who cared about dance knew Capezio's; they were the best place in Tennessee to satisfy your dance needs, from leotards to the best hair gel for ballet buns. Although her name put a bad taste in my mouth, and I passionately detested her entire existence, all she ever tried to do was impress me (for reasons beyond my knowledge). She looked up to me, and was slightly intimidated by me, so for that she deserved something. I bought her some pointe shoes.
There was a bar open where I got Tyler one of those beer-guzzling helmets. It was purple with a fake mohawk running across the top.
For Batul, I had to go all the way across town to find a culture shop. When I asked why they were open today, they said that Christmas was a holiday created and cultivated for the economic benefit of 'The Man', and recognizing such a holiday would defeat everything that they stood for.
This was the right store for her.
I bought her this sphere-shaped crystal called rose quartz. The cashier told me that the crystals were the only stones that had their own frequency, or rather a frequency so high that it bounced off of our own. "They all have their individual purposes. They're personal little enhancers, like pets," he said. Apparently, rose quartz was good for opening the heart chakra and promoting universal love.
Isaiah was the only one left. I had no idea what I wanted to get him, so much so that I almost broke down in tears on the way home. He deserved more than I could ever get him, at least with the little money I had now (the only reason I had money was because part of yesterday's assignment was to take money from someone, and I took a portion for myself). But then a blessing came my way. A miracle.
A short, dark-skinned man was sitting behind a table filled with goodies for last-minute Christmas shoppers. Judging by the quality of his clothing and other products, the only people who shopped here had to be desperate.
I was, but I wouldn't even have stopped if I didn't see something he had on his table.
"Excuse me sir," I smiled, "where did you get that pillow?"
"This?" He held it up. "This pillow is straight from Spain, handmade. The patterns you see here are authentic drawings of moors from Nigeria, Spain, and Europe."
It couldn't be. It was too good to be true.
"Where did you get it?" I asked him.
"From Spain."
I sighed. "Sir, I truly believe you when you tell me that this is a Spanish pillow, and I am seriously considering buying it, but the only way that's going to happen is if you stop bullshitting me. So let's try this again: where did you get this pillow?"
The man swallowed and batted his eyes. "G-garage sale. I got it from a garage sale."
I gestured for him to give me the pillow. All I had to do was smell it to know that this was it. It smelled like Isaiah, like his house and his smile and his voice. I looked at that pattern and remembered the imprint it left on my face the first night I slept at his house. This was it.
This was his gift.
I got the pillow, along with a traditional Santa Claus bag to put all the gifts in, and walked down to the condo. I didn't run this time; I didn't want to. Running would take me there faster, and taking me there faster only meant that I would have to see them. I'd have to give my apology sooner. I'd have to give an explanation sooner.
Thinking about how much I didn't want to do it was an easier way to pass time than I thought, and suddenly I was standing on his doorstep.
Before unlocking the door, I glanced back the mailbox. Isaiah was the one who had that key, and even if I did, would I care? Would I even want to see the contents of that mailbox? What if it said 'hey, we were wrong, we actually have another twelve assignments for you'? What would I do then?
I didn't want to think about that. Not now. Not ever again.
As soon as I unlocked the door, I walked inside a web of pure happiness. There was music playing, the smell of food cooking, and the sound of laughter and joy. I closed the door softly behind me so they wouldn't hear, and took small, gradual steps into the condo. I couldn't exactly identify what they were talking about, but it put a smile on their faces. It lightened their mood.
While they were here having fun, being happy, my brain felt like it was being crushed under a thousand tons.
"Hey, you!" Tyler was the first to look up and see me standing in the doorway of the living room. The rest of them looked up at me, then looked at my Santa bag.
Tyler came and squeezed me into one of his tight, annoying big-brother hugs. I finally writhed myself free and escaped to the living room.
"I was worried about you, man." Batul came to give me a much more pleasant, normal hug.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your party. I got caught up with an interview." I told her.
"Interviews don't take all night, Geneva." Isaiah said.
I looked at him. He had his head down. "After the interview I went out for drinks with a friend of mine. We were celebrating the interview. I slept over at her house."
He did not look up at me, but he didn't have to look up for me to see it in his eyes. The hurt. The anger.
This disbelief.
"I come bearing gifts." I tried to smile. The others, besides Isaiah, stood up and flocked to me to see what I had. I led them to the couch, where I gave them their gifts individually.
Tyler, of course, was so astonished by my thoughtfulness and how well I knew him that he again had to wrap me in his arms, this time adding a wet, slobbery kiss to my forehead. In return, he bought me a free coupon to get my nipples pierced at the mall.
Next was Yvette. She was completely shocked, and did the whole 'oh my god you didn't even have to' routine. She also confessed that when she told me she'd found another studio after Valery's closed down, she was lying. I was kind of disappointed that she didn't know I already knew she was lying. She was supposed to know me better than that.
But, the gift she got me did prove that she knew me quite well. She bought me a deluxe package of honey-berry flavored Backwoods, and when I asked her how I was going to use them with no weed, she gave me the phone number of a friend of hers who I could get anything I needed from for a low price.
I'd been missing having a consistent plug. "Thank you, Yvette."
Batul, surprisingly, didn't know about the power of crystals. She said she saw people with them at gatherings and festivals she used to go to from time to time, but she never knew what they could do for you. She thanked me not only for the gesture, but to exposing her to the vast world that was crystal healing.
"Now, as for your gift," She started, "I thought long and hard about this. I realized that you stay in your own headspace a lot. You think a lot. Everything you do happens in your mind and you keep a lot to yourself. If you keep going at this rate, you'll go schizo. So, I'm giving you something. It's something outside of yourself, something that you can talk to. Company."
She handed me a box wrapped in a satin bow. I stared at her for a few seconds; the excitement in her eyes made me even more hesitant. But then again, I'd seen a lot in the past four days that I would rather forget with the humor and lightheartedness that would probably come from Batul's gift.
I opened the box and found a snake. A real, live snake. It was two shades of orange and fit in the palm of my hand. There were holes in the box for it to breathe, and as soon as I took off the cover, it slithered out and wrapped itself around my palm.
"It's called a corn snake." Batul said.
This was an exact embodiment of anything and everything that my parents wouldn't let me have when I was younger. I named it San (the number three in Chinese) in honor of the three legs of Simon's dogs.
I didn't look at Isaiah once the gift giving was done. His pillow was the last thing in the bag, but I wasn't ready to give it to him yet. By the looks of things, he wasn't ready to receive it. He sat in the corner of the couch with his hands folded and a candy cane hanging from his lips like a toothpick. There was ripped-up gift wrapping under the Christmas tree, and I wondered what gifts they all gave each other. I could ask, but I'd find out later. Right now there was something else to be done.
"We need to talk." Isaiah and I said it at the same time, in perfect unison. This caught the attention of the others; they watched us as we stole away to the bedroom, almost storming down the hallway. I locked the door behind us.
"What's your problem, Isaiah?" I asked him once the door was closed.
"Me?" He asked, taking slow, long strides across the room. "I should be the one asking that. For the past few days, the amount of time I've spent with you only adds up to about five hours. It's like you don't even live here. Trust me, Geneva, I wouldn't have a problem with it if you were staying at a friend's house or actually doing something productive, something tangible, but I don't know what the hell you're doing. It clearly can't be good if you're keeping secrets about it. And don't think that the others and I haven't been talking, because we have."
"Whoa, hold on. Talking about what? There's nothing to talk about where I'm concerned." I said.
He glared at me and opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped himself. He replaced it with something else. "I don't know if you've noticed, but something in our lives have changed. They aren't 'our' lives anymore; instead, they're in the hands of a group of people we don't know. We can't trust anyone. It could be the illuminati or the KKK or...you."
"Me?" I had to look away from him to make sure that what I heard came from his lips. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Geneva, you're a genius, alright? You're capable of a lot, which we all know, and you have proven that you have no problem hurting people. The icing on the cake is that of late you've been very reserved, very secretive, and very dishonest. So don't act like you wouldn't suspect one of us if we were doing the same."
I watched him continue to pace back and forth across the room, walking back and forth as if he was the one being accused. I wanted to...I wanted to punch him. Or kill him.
I wanted some kind of validation that I was actually hearing this and it wasn't just a bad dream.
"No, I wouldn't," I said. "I wouldn't suspect any of you if you were doing what I was, I'd mind my own business. How could I suspect any of you guys of being in on it? What kind of dickhead would put himself through all of the things that we've been put through by these people?"
"Well, you are the only one who wasn't caught doing anything." He said.
"What?"
"In the videos during the exposure, everybody was caught doing something. We saw Yvette steal the money. We saw Batul with her grandmother, so she couldn't lie about muffling her. We saw Tyler talking to those two boys, so he couldn't lie either. You saw me in the car, so I couldn't lie. Everyone's story went up to a point in the video where they couldn't lie. But your video barely showed anything. It left you a lot of room to lie. I'm not saying you're the mastermind here, but if you were, I wouldn't be surprised that your video was so vague."
Isaiah and I held a straight, steady gaze for a long time. He looked at me, throwing daggers with his eyes along with the ones in his voice, and I tried to stare back. I tried to block and dodge them, to make him feel remorse for his words, but it was useless. He'd never regret something that was true. He was right. They had every right to suspect me. They were paranoid victims.
I couldn't blame them, especially since I had actually been on the other side of the fence.
"Remember that day when I was throwing up?" I asked him the question without looking at him. I didn't want to remember what his eyes looked like by the time I was done telling my story. "That was...I have a childhood friend named Simon. He moved away to California recently, but before he did, I used to go to his house a lot. This has been happening since way before I met you guys. We used to talk about my life and all the wrong things I've done. He's the only person who knew me as a child that I still talk to, so it was nice to go to his house. It was...comforting. Anyway, one night we had a big argument. We were talking about how much I've changed and I told him to step off, but things changed. We stopped arguing and started making love. A couple weeks later, I was pregnant. That's what you saw when I threw up."
"I needed money to pay for the abortion," I continued after a short pause, "and I didn't want to ask you for it. I knew a guy who had a way to make fast money, so I called him up and asked him to help me. He, in essence, hooks up teenage girls with older men who pay for sex, and takes a percentage, or sometimes all of, the money. He did this on his own and gave me the money for the operation, and he told me that in exchange, he needed me to do it for him whenever he asked. So for the past four days, I've been repaying my debt. He took me to find the little girls, set them up with old creeps, and take the money."
It wasn't true. The majority of it was, and the percentage of the entire story that was actually a lie was small enough for me to overlook but I couldn't. I couldn't ignore the fact that I just told him something that wasn't true when he was looking at me as if I'd just ripped his heart out, as if I was a drug addict who promised I was clean and then stole from him. I couldn't act like a half-truth wasn't a full-lie, because I cared about him too much, despite how much I hated this conversation.
"You killed someone's child, Geneva? And you didn't tell him?" Isaiah asked.
That's what is was? That's what disappointed him?
"How do you know I didn't tell him?" I asked. "I mean, you're right. I got the abortion and never told Simon I was pregnant."
Isaiah ran both of his hands through his hair and let out a long sigh. He rested his two hands behind his back, just standing there staring up at the ceiling like that, and then he laughed. It started as a chuckle and then turned into that long, sarcastic drawl of a laugh that people only do in the least funny situations.
"I knew you were low, but I didn't know you were that low."
If only I could count how many times I'd heard that one before.
"First of all," I backed away from him, for if I was too close I might put my hands on him, "it's none of your fucking business. I didn't have to tell you that. I chose to tell you because I knew you and the others wouldn't get off my back if I didn't. If I didn't care about whether you all were suspicious of me or not, I would've given you the finger and went on with the rest of this holiday. So be grateful for the privilege of that little peek into my personal life. And second of all, you don't know me, Isaiah. The past two or three months may have seemed like a long time, but there are people I've known for just a week who understand me better than you do. You're not part of the world that I'm a part of. You don't get what it means to literally have no choice but to deceive and 'con' people. Think about that before you go around calling someone 'low'. You might think I'm low—someone who only has experience of 'struggling' with a roof over their head and clothes over their back—but for the people who slept right next to the bums shaking coins in a can, or in the bunk across from the single mother with triplets at the homeless center on the night of a snowstorm, you don't know what the fuck low is. The lowest you've been is out of a job. Any other hardship you've experienced, like hitting your dad with a car, was a choice you made consciously. Lastly, why do you care about the child that I aborted? Any normal person would be concerned about the girls that I pimped, not the baby. What does that have to do with you? I mean, are you jealous?"
The whole time, Isaiah watched me with eyes of shame. He was reflecting every word I said and then internalizing it, and the reaction it had on him showed all over his face. But at the very last part, something changed. He let out his sarcastic laugh again and shook his head.
"Jealous? Of you?" He chuckled. "Geneva, have you listened to yourself lately? I mean, shit, have you seen yourself lately? You're the classic definition of a cold bitch who thinks what she's been through makes her better than somebody who's had a good life. All you do is lie to people and you get high off of hurting the people who trust you. Since the first night I met you, all you've done is act like you don't want to be where you are, and everything that frustrates you is someone else's fault. So why should I be jealous of the man who impregnated you, a man who probably isn't the first and definitely won't be the last? You, and him, can keep what you're dishing out."
I expected him to do a classic turn of the heel and walk out at that moment, leaving me with his words. But he stood there, watching them destroy me. He watched my arms sag and watched whatever energy I might've had slowly dissipate. It wasn't because his words were true that they hurt me; in fact, they were far from it. I've only had sex the amount of times I can count on both of my hands. I didn't think I was better than others who have the good life; I just despised people who complained about their woes but ignored the widely ignored plight of the ones like me. I didn't get high off of hurting people who trust me; I've never deceived or intentionally hurt a friend, only people who trust me for things they think they're going to get from me, like money or sex or emotional support. And even that wasn't for recreation, but instead for survival. Since the first night I met him, all I've done was state how I'm feeling, and I only blame people who were at fault. He proved my point—he didn't know me. He had a sick, warped, judgmental reality of who I might be.
And because of that, I was done with telling myself I owed him something.
"Well, Isaiah, I'm sorry that I can't be the glamorous, naive, tall, light-skinned pin-up girl of your dreams if that's what you want, but I don't care what your preference is. If you haven't noticed, I never once dished anything out to you. Then again," I opened the bedroom door, "maybe that's why you're so bitter anyway."
I walked out of the bedroom, threw the pillow down the hall at him, and left.
What a merry Christmas.