Thursday, October 21, 2004
This is where things really get messed up.
But first, some trivial notes. If you’re worried about Rence's job situation, Reader, don’t. He's going to be all right, at least for a little while. He called into work this morning and arranged to receive insurance case materials he can work on using my computer. It’ll be difficult, with his left arm still stiff, and he’ll have to get on the phone a lot, but… someone’s got to keep earning money in this relationship. The important part is that he won’t have to join the bread line anytime soon.
The fact that Rence did, finally, get something to work on was what made me insist that he didn't need to come along to lunch with Gwendolyn today. Though he certainly wanted to—I’m almost sure he’s sweet on her. An objective viewpoint thus goes out the window.
Besides, I thought that a break from my weird drama and a return to his own stuff for a while would be healthy for Rence. And, I admit, I kind of needed a break from Rence, myself.
You know Benjamin Franklin’s old saw about houseguests starting to stink after three days? Try a week and a half. He's my best friend in at least this world, but we’re getting on each other's nerves in small ways. The constant leg-bobbing that I'm prone to when sitting down. The farting that Rence has no compunction about letting out at any given moment. My apartment is too cramped... it'd only really fit two people if they were sharing a bed and a life, and though I love my old friend, that is not going to happen any day soon.
So, after rising at an indecently late hour— one of the few benefits of unemployment— I left Rence to his work and set off alone for the McPherson Square metro station.
Today was rainy and generally unpleasant, edging into real cold for the first time, as I'm sure you noticed if you live anywhere near here. And nothing puts a damper on fall like damp leaves, sticking to your shoes. It was a fine day for purples to be out... I assume, being evil, they cherish days like this. Yet I didn't see any on my walk.
Now that news had spread about the death of Brower, now that the Police had gone silent for good, would they hide from me? Scared of the big bad Mark? Ahhh, I wished I could have the confidence to believe in that.
That made me start thinking about Naomi as I walked through the rain, remembered her look mingling caution and forced courtesy from the night before. Didn't she know that I worried about her all the time now? She was scared of me?
I'd done horrible things in front of her, up on that tower in Silver Spring, but they were actions to protect her. And she'd seen the way the purple's gun dissolved... she had to know that there were gears turning under the surface here. Oh, especially after I had explained the whole fucking thing in the hospital.
Still, she held back. Still, she stayed away. And she was hiding things from me. We wouldn't be safe from the purples as long as we were apart— or, at least, she wouldn't.
By the time I'd gone down the station stairs and headed over to the platform, I was in a foul mood. The fact that my umbrella had splashed me when I tried to fold it up didn't help, either. We start with legitimate worries and fears, but it's the petty things, the goddamn petty things, that flip the last switches to darkness in our heads.
I boarded an orange line train in the direction of Vienna/Fairfax and sat on the outside seat of a double, glowering and silently daring anyone to ask me to move to the inside seat so they could sit too. My head filled up with thoughts that blotted out the outside world.
That was why I didn't take notice of the trio of giggling teenage girls in the seats across the aisle and a couple of rows back. If I'd been at my normal level of awareness, their inane laughing would have definitely registered on my Irritate-o-meter (already at a dangerously high reading, Cappie, somebody cool the fuel!).
But no, as it was, I was completely oblivious as one of them separated from the pack and approached me quietly. Crept up, one might say, if one were in a not so charitable frame of mind. She leaned down, braced herself against the back of my seat— and licked my ear. I jolted.
Her warm tongue lingered there for only a second, and then she was gone, having retreated back to her friends, sitting in the row in front of them.
I jerked around in my seat and stared the three of them down.
"What the hell was that?" I snarled. "Who are you?"
The girl's two friends, already shorter than her, hunched down a bit to make themselves even smaller. Their wide eyes suggested that they were rethinking their little joke, maybe that it wasn't so funny right now.
The licker herself, however, stared right back at me with calm brown eyes. "It was a dare," she said. "Sorry... sir."
I got up from my seat and took a few steps in their direction. The two girls sitting behind their tall friend shrank even more, as if trying to hide behind her. One of them let out a little shriek.
The girl in front didn't move, just kept looking up at me expectantly. Her brown hair was wild and spiky but didn't cross over the punk line. Sixteen-that-looked-nineteen, maybe, judging from the baby faces of her pals. Adding to the confusion, she dressed like a twelve-year-old. Multicolored plastic necklace over a tight blue shirt, with a lighter blue flouncy skirt bunched up over her thighs, knee socks, and on her feet a pair of Mary Janes that had their backs partially cut out. Half-under the seat, I could see a magnificent backpack riddled with over twenty buttons. The biggest was for Kerry/Edwards, but they also represented for South Park, Gwen Stefani, and world peace. A Stan keychain dangled from the zipper.
I could tell her not to bother voting, but she wouldn’t be able to anyway. I had different advice in mind, though.
"What's your name?" I said.
She met my eyes. "Alyce."
"There are plenty of monsters out in the world, Alyce," I said, as I loomed over her. Her cool cracked a little, her gaze wavered. By now, her friends were terrified.
"And you'd better thank your stars that right now, I'm not one of them."
With that, I turned from them and walked to a different seat, one that was several rows ahead of where I'd been. When I got up to exit the train at Rosslyn, the girls were gone.
I walked out into the wet pseudo-city. Downtown Arlington isn't a pretty place under normal circumstances, and persistent rain makes it fer-sure ugly. As I headed for the deli where I was supposed to meet Gwen (St. John, not Stefani), my cell phone rang. It was Ms. St. John herself.
"Hey," she said. "I'm stuck in the middle of a somewhat important phone call here. I hope you're not waiting at the deli?"
"Nah, on my way there. On Moore Street."
"It's going to be a tad longer than I expected.... would you mind coming to my office and walking me out? Tenth floor— I'll meet you in the lobby."
I said sure, and she told me how to get there. It was only a couple of blocks away. I turned right on 19th Street and then took a left on Lynn. I walked past a husk of a twenty-story building, condemned and already half-torn apart, and then I found myself standing in front of the Freiholt & Wagner office tower, equally high but in much better condition. I looked up at the building, impressed. Did this all belong to them? Had to be a pretty successful law firm. Gwendolyn had done well for herself, whatever her future ambitions.
Then I froze, as I happened to catch sight of a figure walking by a seventh floor window. It was too high up for me to see any details but the presence of a purple aura.
Well. All right. At least it wasn't on her floor, right? The dispersion of the purples throughout the D.C. area— throughout the nation, for all I knew— meant that there'd be pretty good odds that at least one worked in this huge building. Assuming the lack of a glass ceiling, you know, equal opportunity for everyone regardless of aura color. Maybe there was even a silver somewhere in there too. That would be a favorable sign. They were the good guys, weren't they?
I walked into the front lobby of the place. What a lobby. Expansive marble floors, free coffee, paintings by either the Old Masters or their close cousins. A shining paean to the benefits of greed, lacking nothing but a chocolate fountain. I signed in, walked over to the bank of elevators.
There were two people waiting there. One of them was a purple.
My stomach lurched. The purple glanced over. Its eyes widened. (In recognition?) It was pretending to be a young black woman in a sensible beige ensemble. My mouth began to tremble to a noticeable degree. Both the purple and I glanced at our companion, an older man with curly grey hair. He hadn't taken notice of our little exchange.
I wasn't there to kill purples. If she attacked me, that'd be one thing, but... I'd be damned if the purple wasn't as unnerved by me as I was by her. It.
I kept the old man between us. I didn't want to get too close, in case it automatically triggered the knife, the crazy voice that wasn't mine. Such was our uneasy truce, as the elevator doors opened and we all stepped in. The purple got off at the third floor. As the doors opened, I caught a brief glimpse of the busy staff of that floor, and there I spotted at least two other purples. The old man got off at the ninth floor— there, I saw another purple.
Freiholt & Wagner was crawling with them!
What did this mean? What in God's name did all of this purple presence mean? I entered the tenth floor lobby without an answer. There I sat and took a Family Circle magazine from the pile, waited for my pal Gwendolyn, wondering whether she was trying to kill me.
Certainly, if she was in on all this, luring me into a place overstuffed with muchos would present great opportunities to assassinate me. If she wasn't in on it.... she was in terrible danger. A mere association with me, now that the purples were fully aware of who I was, could get her chopped out. Chopped up. Never mind all that snooping into INER that she mentioned.
How could I even guess which was the case? In or out, girl of yesteryear? Gwendolyn's behavior had been strange, withholding, from the start. That didn't score well for the side of right and good. Still, my oldest friend that I could remember... she couldn’t have allied herself with my enemies. I stared harder at an article advising me how to make shortbread for the holidays. And then at the sound of my name, I looked up.
Gwen walked through the lobby, waving, looking about as cheerful as a chronically grave person like her could muster. I forced a smile back.
"Sorry about this," she said. "Ready?"
Whatever I chose to believe about Gwen, I knew I had to get her out of there. If she really didn't know she was surrounded by evil creatures from the planet Holy Crap, I couldn't tell her right there in that place. And if I was the one in danger, I didn't want to give up the facade yet. At a word from Gwendolyn, they could outnumber me in a flash.
I kept the smile on. "You betcha, buster."
Buster. Right. Good one.
As we headed back toward the elevators, I caught a passing glimpse of a purple talking with a regular old human, down the hall. The purple's head snapped up as soon as I looked over. He stared at me. I stared back. Then he walked out of sight, fast, and his puzzled companion hurried to catch up.
Gwendolyn and I rode the elevator down.
"Where's your friend?" she said brightly. "I half-expected you to bring him along again."
"Ah, he was indisposed."
“He's been visiting you for a while now, hasn't he?" said Gwen. "You must be really close friends."
"The closest."
"It was 'Rence,' right? Kind of an odd name..."
"Short for Lawrence." I glanced at her. When the doors opened on the lobby, would a squadron of purples be waiting for us? Who would they want to kill?
"Everything okay, Mark?"
"Everything's peachy!" I said, leaning on the false joviality too hard, so it came out almost a shout. I had to get it together. "What... uh... what have you been up to?"
"Working, mostly..." she said slowly. The cheer drained out of her face as she looked at me. She seemed to be doubting something that she'd been so sure of a moment ago. My inadvertent hollering at her must have set off an alarm... damn.
We came out into the lobby. No horde of muchos. That was good.
"And continuing to look into INER," she continued as we walked through the rain, heading for the deli where we'd originally planned to meet. She raised her eyebrows, paused before the next sentence, looked at me. "Though I'm kind of at a dead end... haven't been able to find out much more than what I told you the last time. I still need to find some way to meet with Dr. Lukasik."
Ah, yes. This would have been the opening for me to dangle the carrot. To hint that I had the connections to get her in the doors of NIH. But instead I just grunted. The original plan was irrelevant, now that I knew she worked in what could be the Pandaemonium of the purples. It could be their nervous system. The Archfiend could have an office on the twentieth floor.
We walked on in near-silence to the deli. I was fighting an internal battle about just what the hell I was going to do, and Gwen only spoke up once in a while, without getting much of a reply from me. All traces of her former good mood were gone, replaced by the gravity that I was used to seeing.
Once we'd gotten our sandwiches and sat down at a table near the window, the rain making a good mess of the world outside, she said, "What's up, Mark? You're awfully quiet for someone who suggested meeting for lunch in the first place."
All right. Straight to the main course... that's where I needed to go. I dropped the reuben on my plate. One of us was in deep-shit danger, and I needed to figure out who.
"We're friends, right?" I said. "Old friends?"
"Of course."
"And old friends don't keep secrets from each other," I went on. "Do they?"
"Mark, what—"
I leaned in. "I need you to be honest with me," I said urgently. "For your own good and mine. What have you—"
Suddenly her hand shot out and twisted my wrist painfully against the table. That was the last thing I'd expected to happen. I cried out. Somebody muttered something behind me at another table.
Gwen's grey eyes were cold, just like her tone. "Are you threatening me, Mark?"
What?! "Good Christ, no—"
"What does your mind look like right now?" she whispered. I felt like I'd fallen into another dimension, one that was mostly suffering. "Are there, are there impulses? Thoughts that don't sound like you? That you're not sure where they came from? If they're there, Mark, you need to fight them, and you need to tell me now." She twisted me. I bit back a scream. "Well?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" I said in a strangled voice. "Please let up—"
Gwen released my wrist.
I drew it back, cradled it in my other arm, and I stared at my old friend, someone I definitely didn't know any longer. Maybe I'd never known her. She had just basically asked me whether I heard the Voice, the voice of the knife. She knew. She knew about all of this, and she was on the purples' side.
Meeting her at that party… that had been engineered. So soon after Mr. Pool Party ran into me, and right around the time that my eyes really started to go loco. They’d known that I would be a threat, eventually. Maybe they’d been reading my journal from the start.
Of course they wanted me to resist the Voice, the silver influence that was able to destroy them. They'd co-opted Gwendolyn to try to make me do it.
What would happen next— would she try to convince me that I was going crazy? That the knife, the Voice, it was all a hallucination, and the sooner I resisted it all and turned myself in to the authorities, the medical professionals, the sooner I could make a recovery? INER-style, that was. This time they'd stifle my abilities for good.
No. No, no, no. Denial, then exit.
"I have no idea what you mean," I said. "And I can't believe you just did that to me!"
She just shook her head. Her eyes shone at the edges, which made no sense... I should have been the teary one at that point. Between the backstabbing and the lingering physical pain.
"I can see that you're lying," she said. A tear slipped from one eye and splashed her sandwich. "You're transparent. And you started in on that bit about old friends never lying to each other... I think that's some nerve."
Gwen got up from the table. I tensed. She just sniffed.
"Don't worry," she said, bitterly, "I'm not going to try anything else. I only picked up some self-defense moves in college—I'm not interested in attacks. But I want you to stay away from me, Mark. Don't contact me again. I'm going to try to help you, but I need you to stay away from me until I do. You can't fight it, can you? You're not strong enough. I'm sorry."
She backed away from the table, keeping her eyes on me. Her final monologue had bewildered me, through and through. I started to get up, but someone behind me caught my arm— the mutterer from before.
It was just some dude, burly like a construction worker, thick mustache. "Is there a problem?" he said.
"No," I said. "Let go of me, asshole."
"It sounded like there was a problem to me," he said. "She wants you to leave her alone."
Enraged, I wriggled out of the guy's grip and shoved him away. Just some fucking gallant stepping in, like I was an abusive boyfriend who didn't know how to keep from driving his girl to a restraining order.
The guy snorted. He probably would have kicked my ass then—with prejudice, and a willingness to break vital parts of me— if the owner of the deli hadn't come out from the counter right then and held him back and told me to get out of there before I caused any more trouble. I turned. Gwen was already gone. I headed for the door.
"Don't follow her!" the construction worker shouted after me. "I'll be watching you, fuckwad."
Fuckwad though I surely be, I didn't follow Gwen. I turned the opposite direction from her building (the Fortress of Purpletude) and headed for the Metro.
The things that Gwendolyn had said right before she left— she'd try to help me? self-defense moves?—just perplexed me. I couldn’t make them add up. I supposed I'd only understand if I learned all of the information she'd been holding back.
It was clear, though, that Gwendolyn St. John was not my friend. Maybe never had been. That was one more friend lost off an already limited roster. One more betrayal will be the end of me.
posted by Mark Huntley @ 6:45 PM
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