The Chief of Persona was aghast as he watched one of his news anchors break from script and began babbling the truth while on-air. Yells went up from everyone in the Control Room as the Anchor went dead-eyed and, in a soulless monotone, began speaking the actual god-forsaken truth and announcing that the Administration had known about it all along. The Chief ordered the feed cut and the crew switched it to La Sal’s newest pop song, “Everyone’s a Refugee!”
It was already too late, though. The hyper-critics were waiting to pounce, recording everything they could as the Anchor blathered about facts and statistics, metric tons, number of households effected, the name of the party boss that had cleared the decision. It’d only be a matter of minutes before they posted it on every social feed, micro-blog, news aggregation and discussion site. It would take the censors minutes to clean it up. The truth, even just a little bit, would get out. Again.
Off the air, it only took a minute to discover the damned fool of an Anchor had been hacked, probably slipped a neural worm while out late partying. An excessive lifestyle was one of the few benefits of being part of the administration’s mouthpiece. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault, but someone was going to have to take the blame for this. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the Chief.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
On the tram, as awkward as our height difference made it, Sophie rested her head on my shoulder. It was only then that I remembered she had been up as long as me, keeping me company while the danger of possible concussion receded. The small kindnesses of the world shone a bit brighter that morning. I was tempted to carry her up to our apartment, but she moved forward of her own volition. Which was good, because I barely got off my shoes and shirt before I collapsed on the bed.
My sleep was bookended by the sun, just risen when I had fallen asleep, peeking through the tenement window, and now on its way down when I arose almost a dozen hours later. I got myself up to shit, shave, shower, and shine. Despite my bruises, I decided to head to my shift at the casino. I would need to make a drop for Atwell as well. Sitting on the couch, bent over the coffee table, I tried to figure out what to write in my message. I wrote a quick note that I had told Mitnick about Inspector Rotella and that Sartre was watching me. It left out a world of information, but it also had the virtue of being true.
By the time I was pulling on my peacoat Sophie was awake as well, handing me an apple and the umbrella, letting me leave with a quick peck on my stubbled head. I smiled, unsure of what to think or what she would get up to while I was out, and decided none of those things needed answers right then.
The cathedral, with its blue onion domes, peaked arches, and gold stars, was surrounded by tourists, most gawking and snapping pictures of the Czarist relic. I watched the crowd for awhile, hands in my coat pockets, using the time to try to evaluate what type of shape I was in, how my recovery from the beating was going.
After determining I wasn’t going to fall down, I headed down the side-street to the telephone booth. Inside, I chewed a bit of gum, pretended to make the usual phone call, and stuck the message to Atwell in the usual place. It wasn’t until I came up to mark the glass that I saw the three Idiots waiting for me. Groaning as I straightened myself, I blamed my fatigue and bruises for letting them get so close without spotting them. Almost certain they wouldn’t know what it meant, I marked the glass anyway.
I stepped out of the booth, putting the pen into my breast pocket with such an exaggerated slowness that it might suggest that I had something else in there. I shifted the umbrella with its steel core to my right hand.
When they didn’t close the distance to me I said, “Hello boys.” I thought about where we were and couldn’t help but ask, “How’d you find me?”
Balaclava, the bags under his eyes even heavier than usual, his short black hair slick with the grease of having not washed in awhile, replied, “You shouldn’t eat breakfast in the same place.” Judging by the look of him, they had been waiting for me to show up for awhile.
I nodded, pretending to admire their cleverness. Then I held out my hands slightly out from my sides, as if I were about to shrug my shoulders. “Well?”
“Why don’t you come with us?” He scooped the air around him with a hand, throwing it out someplace else into the world.
I thought about the last time someone had made me that offer and that I had wanted something from them when I agreed to it. Contemplating the current situation, I couldn’t think of a single reason to do that for these three. I shook my head, slowly, and said, “No.” I thought about offering an excuse, that I needed to get to work, something to appease their egos. But then I didn’t.
We all let that hang in the air, Fatty and the Algerian shuffling their feet, uncertain or waiting for a signal from Balaclava. Balaclava had apparently learned a thing or two about me from our encounters, so didn’t bother with the bluster or threats. Instead he asked, “What did Sartre want with you?”
It took me a moment to recall the scene at the Factory. Certain that Sartre hadn’t said anything that would reveal the nature of our relationship I asked, “What do you care?”
His dark eyes hardened, perhaps reconsidering violence. Instead he continued with, “We want to talk to him.”
I tried to conjure up what Sartre’s reaction might be to me introducing him to these three. I could easily see him being buoyant about meeting three boys that probably weren’t that different than him when he was young. I could also imagine him taking off my hide because I had bothered him with these peons. That made the natural question, “About what?”
Balaclava spoke in a self-important tone. “We have a proposition for him.”
I waited for more, but when it didn’t come I asked, “And?” That deflated Balaclava a bit, but didn’t impact the other two, confirming for me what I had suspected: The Algerian and Fatty didn’t speak English or spoke it very poorly. Not a huge surprise, but might be useful information.
I let a few seconds go by, thinking about the collapsible truncheon from the first encounter in the cafe and wondering what weapons they might have this time. I glanced around and confirmed the area was as abandoned as any other pay phone in the 21st century.
With no response forthcoming I expanded my question. “You don’t expect me to take you to Sartre without knowing what the deal is?”
Fatty and the Algerian shuffled their feet, sensing Balaclava’s hesitation and knowing they had already deviated from the plan of taking me somewhere else. Balaclava went back and forth in his own mind, then stepped forward so quickly that I nearly cracked him across the face with the umbrella. He didn’t raise his hands, though, only getting close enough to whisper, “We are going to ransom a girl.”
I think I might have have managed to hide my considerable surprise under, “What?”
Jacob found himself somewhere at the beginning of the 21st century with what felt like a very anachronistic life. Commuting home in his sedan, he was grateful for the lighter traffic the pandemic had wrought, even as it caused him to reflect on his life. Most people were still working from home, if they were lucky enough to have a job, but here he was, traveling after a long day of work as the director of engineering at his firm. It was the old way of doing things, and those things had served him well; They had allowed him to provide for a family, allowing his wife to stay at home and raised their children, paid for the house and the cars and the savings account, and all the other stereotypical middle-class trappings. He rolled down the window of his car and allowed himself to feel the small bittersweet joy of being one of the last of his kind.
Jacob knew that something was wrong, though, the moment he stepped into his house. The usual rambunctious noise of three children was replaced with a quiet that only had the murmurations of a television laid over it. Setting down his blazer and laptop case, he walked through the kitchen and into the living room to find the twins sitting on the couch and very quietly watching their favorite cartoon. Both of them watched the screen with a languid intensity, neither of them breaking from the show to greet him.
Unsettled by this break from routine, but reluctant to disturb, he said, “Hey girls. Where’s Mom?”
Jacob watched the television’s images reflect in the eyes of the girls, who only nodded at the question. When he was about to repeat it, Regina removed the corner of the blanket from her mouth to say, “She’s upstairs with Sam.”
“OK,” Jacob nodded, “you two stay here.”
At the foot of the stairs, Jacob could hear his wife’s voice, loud but not quite yelling, a sure sign that she was truly upset. She didn’t like to scream at the children, didn’t approve of people who did, and this level of volume was the closest her restraint would let her get when she was tested. It was with this in mind that he slowly opened the door to his son’s room where he could hear her voice.
On the bed, hands in his lap, staring at the floor was Sam. Visible, just under his right eye, was the beginning of a black eye. Rather than the anger he was expecting, Jacob found he was filled with sympathy for his son. Judging by the expression on Sam’s face, he wasn’t the winner of the altercation. It was only after he focused past this paternal concern that he heard what his wife was saying.
“I never want you playing with that boy again!”
Those kind of eternal edicts were things Jacob and Sabrina had agreed to try to avoid, so he stepped into the room and brought himself up to an adult height, hoping his presence might calm things. He touched her on the shoulder and said, gently, “Hi.”
The anger in Sabrina’s eyes fled at seeing him, a relief flooding in to take its place. “Oh, thank God. Please talk to your son.”
“Sure,” Jacob nodded, turning to Sam. “You want to tell me what happened, buddy?”
“Me and Antoine got in a fight.” His son didn’t make eye contact, keeping his eyes on the tips of his shoes, which he swung out from the bed. After a moment’s consideration, the boy added, “We were arguing over who won four square.”
Whatever anger Jacob might have felt at his son causing his wife to be upset was cooled further by his son’s expression. Jacob didn’t detect anger or pain, only regret. “Well, I mean,” he sat down on the bed next to his son, keeping a few inches between them. “That doesn’t sound like a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” Sabrina’s voice carried a shrill tone that Jacob had never heard before. “Did you look at his face?”
Suddenly uncertain who needed his help, Jacob stood having just sat down. He took a moment to make certain his examination of the bruise was obvious. “Sure,” he nodded, paused to indicate he understood the seriousness of this, to play his role in the drama. He brought his gaze to Sam. “But it’s the kind of thing we learn from, right? So it doesn’t happen again?”
Sabrina continued, “Learn from? Antoine smashed in your son’s face!”
Eyes still on his son, Jacob blinked, the image of Antoine coming into his head. Antoine, soft-spoken, smart, a kid with a good laugh who didn’t seem to care he was the only boy on the block without a pigmentation deficit. The evidence of his son’s face suggested he was as capable as any little boy of losing his temper, but ‘smashed’ seemed like a very strong word.
Processing all of this, Jacob said, “OK, so they fought and Antoine hurt him.” Jacob caught his son’s gaze and asked him, “Did you hurt Antoine?”
There was a blushing on his son’s cheek’s that Jacob recognized as the residue of shame. After a bit of urging from Jacob, he continued, “I gave him a bloody nose.”
Jacob turned to his wife. “This sounds like a mutual thing. We’ll let things cool off and I’ll speak to Mark. We’ll get the boys together and have them apologize to one another.” Back to Sam, Jacob said, “That sound OK with you?”
Jacob could tell his son was about to nod when his wife interrupted, “No! I don’t want him near our son again.”
Jacob stared uncomprehendingly at his wife for a moment. Then he asked, “Aren’t you over-reacting? Just a little?”
“No! Look how he hurt my baby!”
“There boys, Sabrina. Boys fight.” Jacob felt a twinge of guilt at the “boys will be boys” logic, but it was also true. You could only teach children to overcome their worst impulses by being honest about them.
That was something he and Sabrina had discussed but her response held none of the compassion her voice had back then. Instead she said, “Not like this. Look at what that little savage did!”
At the word ‘savage’ Jacob felt something in his mind fall into place. Slowly and carefully he took his wife by the elbow and gently began to guide her out of their son’s room. “Sabrina, I want you to think about this carefully.” On the other side of the threshold he asked, “Would you be reacting this way if Antoine were white?”
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
As usual Cheryl’s voice became louder in my head when I began to think of Sophie in certain ways. Her kiss, transactional as it might have been, reminded me of my own involuntary celibacy and that mixed with my anger from the henhouse to leave me fuming. I thought about getting myself my own hooker, maybe one of Sophie’s friends, just to be an ass, but Cheryl’s voice pointed out that I was just being vindictive and mean and, as it often did, pled Sophie’s case. I didn’t have the experience to understand what Sophie was going through or how it was informing her actions now that we were back in too-familiar territory for her. Whatever emotion I had felt back in the henhouse might well be cubed for her. But she just fiddled with her necklace and stared at the early morning condensation on the car window, keeping a cool enough head to play a long game.
Cresting the mountain I could see the early morning light had begun to paint the ocean, which meant it was early enough that Simon’s cafe was probably open. I asked Alon to drop us off there. He nodded enthusiastically and yanked on the steering wheel like it was a firehose.
In the pre-dawn Simon stood up from the bucket and brush he was scrubbing away graffiti from his storefront with. He dried his hands on his apron as he watched me and Sophie get out of the cab. I paid Alon, who reached for the cash with a reticence that suggested he would have rather had his contact card back. But then he looked at Sophie, shrugged, and took the money.
Seeing me with an impossibly tall blonde, rouge still on my neck, presumably after a long night out, Simon smiled. As Sophie slipped an arm into the crook of mine, he took one of his cigarillos out of his breast pocket and placed it in his mouth. In English, he said to me, “Much better company you’re keeping.”
Patting my forearm with her free hand, Sophie said in French, “Oh, I like him.” Simon chuckled a little at this and grinned wider, thumbing a match but not lighting his cigar. Instead he put it away and made a welcoming gesture for us to enter the cafe.
We sat at the usual table in the back, just below the mirror that had captured the three Idiots, what felt like an impossibly long time ago. Sophie took Simon’s usual place across from me, back lit by the dawning day and the slightly tarnished brass fixtures of the entrance.
I ordered the usual and Sophie requested a croissant and fruit. Simon took our order without comment. Sitting there for a moment, despite my bruises, I could have thought we were two normal people enjoying an early morning breakfast before heading out for a day in the Old Town.
Sophie and I sat in silence until Simon brought us our coffee and I remembered another reason I had wanted to come here. In French, I asked Simon, “Could I see the phone?”
Simon took a moment to translate my terribly pronounced French, then shot a sideways glance at Sophie. After what might have been momentary disappointment that the burner wasn’t just our secret he nodded in the most perfunctory way and went behind the marble-topped bar. He rubbed the phone with the towel hanging from his apron as if polishing a glass and then handed it to me.
I thanked him, taking a pack of matches off the table and offering to light his cigarillo for him. He smiled at the gesture of thanks but held up a hand to refuse. He said simply, “I must cook.” Then disappeared into the back to perform his culinary duties.
Knowing that I should sleep soon, I sipped my coffee anyway and opened the phone. Not to my surprise, there were two missed calls and a voicemail. The numbers meant nothing to me, but the icon for an envelope filled me with an almost unexpected dread. Fumbling a bit, I followed the minute instructions for retrieval. I found myself chewing on the matchstick as whatever invisible and distant apparatus geared up to play the message.
There were actually two. The first was a hang-up. The second was Mitnick himself, which surprised me. I had expected to be communicating via underling. He had said as much. Perhaps that had been the first call. Regardless, his baritone came through without introduction. “No one saw you leave the house my friend. I hope you are O-K.” He pronounced the letters of the last word so distinctly it almost sounded like a code. “I think I had found a solution to the problem you presented to me. Let us meet. I have a reward for you.”
And that was it. I stared at the phone a moment, wondering if I’d accidentally hung up. How was I supposed to meet him with no instructions? I guessed I was suppose to call the number back, but I decided to do that after my next shift at the casino.
The eggs, which arrived shortly after, allowed me to forget about that for a moment. After an evening built out of the darkest and hardest edges of reality, to be served something warm, soft, and delicious granted some reprieve. Biting into the crisp warmness of the galette, it was a reminder that someone could make something with love, even for strangers. I raised my head from my plate and breathed through my nose as I chewed, taking a moment to savor it rather than simply scarfing it down. Simon stood nearby, and gave me a happy, almost salacious smile, enjoying how much I appreciated the meal.
I nodded slightly with a chopped exuberance and then bowed my head to eat. So wrapped in the meal and its juxtaposition to suffering that some time went by before I noticed that Simon and Sophie were talking. Speaking in French, natch, I didn’t understand everything, but I caught that Sophie was very happy with her meal as well and was asking if Simon baked his own croissants. Simon played coy for a bit, teasing Sophie as if this were a state secret, but relented when she promised only to buy them from Simon in the morning. And who among the French buys them at any other time of the day?
With a small smile on his lips all the while, Simon took out a tiny paper pad from his apron, a piece of standard issue equipment for waiters but one that I had never seen Simon use to write down an order. Here instead he wrote down an address, also in Les Moulins, not far but closer to a better neighborhood.
I took my time finishing and even asked for a glass of juice. It complimented the bitterness of the coffee and gave a tang that emphasized the smoothness of the eggs. I finished it and everything on my plate, ending satisfied, drinking what remained of the coffee with the occasional smile at Sophie, the kiss forgotten.
I paid, in a stubbornly American fashion, leaving payment as well as a tip sitting under the phone on the table. Simon wouldn’t count the cash until after we were gone and by then it would be too late for him to protest. He wouldn’t like it, but I couldn’t shake the idea he deserved something extra for doing something so simple, so well.
Outside, headed to the tram, Sophie put her arm into mine again, and we walked across the still empty cobblestones, only interrupted once by a nun in her habit, sweeping out the cloister’s vestibule, putting dirt out into the street. We stepped around her, smiling at each other, me and her in our own kind of rapture, mine brought on by the warmth of the cafe, the breakfast in my belly, miles of fatigue, and Sophie by my side.
Moving forward, I realized that, despite my initial resistance, Sophie’s plan granted me the knowledge that we might do something about what we had seen last night, that we had resolved into action against an entrenched and numerically superior foe. I wasn’t sure what it was or what to call it, but it was the closest thing to happiness I had felt in a long while.
Charles Jardin took the cage from his Soho gallery and walked it up to Times Square. Like a man with a crucifix in a Good Friday procession, he it carried on his back along 5th Avenue, attracting stares as he did. The strangeness of his burden meant that his fellow pedestrians gave him a wide berth.
When Charles arrived at Times Square he first found one of the police officers there. He provided his papers and explained what he’d be doing. While the officer scratched her head, everything appeared to be in order so she showed Charles to the area designated for his “art exhibition.” Only then did Charles set his cage down and began to assemble it. Tourists stared while the natives passed by, pretending not to notice.
The cage, when completed, was only four feet by four feet, the largest Charles’ permit allowed. He climbed into it, taking the bucket he had brought with him, and locked himself in. For the month that he was allowed to remain there, his only real contact would be his an assistant who would come to bring him food and water, and empty the bucket.
And a long month it was, sweating in New York’s famous June humidity, protected from the sun only by the concrete canyon’s shadows. Most people ignored Charles, while a few benign ogled him or posed in front of his cage for pictures. A few taunted him, some throwing their garbage at him. Charles only watched it all.
Eventually, a reported at the Village Voice got word about a man that had been sitting in a cage, permits and sundries paid for by government grant. Smelling an odd story with a possible hint of scandal, he headed to midtown and asked Charles, “So why are you doing this?”
Charles, battered and dirty, replied without guile. “I’m hoping to go mad.”
“Why on Earth would you want that?”
Charles stared out of his cage and the parade of humanity he had been observing for weeks. “I’m hoping it will make sense of all this.”
