crying. I phoned Sabrina and left a message admitting that I’d been abrupt and cruel to her after our night of pricey sushi, lofty conversation, and awkward breachings of her aging hymen. I begged her for another chance. Caring for a crippled pet, I told her, had softened me inside.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I said.
And because there was a small dog involved, she did.
15.
[By courier]
Agent’s Memo: In the grounds at the bottom of her low-fat lattes? In the stains underneath her polyester mattress pad? In the S-curves and loops of her discarded dental floss? Where was it written? And why couldn’t I read it? And why can I discern it so plainly now, from so far away, in this dim and silent room where I’m sitting naked on the floor encased in a tightening rind of drying mud and breathing the fumes from a dish of burning oil whose wan blue flame is just moments from going out?
I see the plot now because I want to see it. Maybe that’s what’s changed.
The truth is simple: Sabrina Grant and Kent Selkirk, I know now (and might have known before, had I not been so desperate to find “proof”) are the deeply embedded, plainclothes vanguard of an immensely dangerous new foe whose goals are murky even to its members. What makes our job so much harder than it should be is that these moronic shadow soldiers don’t view themselves as soldiers at all, but as harmless average citizens. Nor do they regard their orders as orders; they experience them as impulses and notions formed independently in their own minds. No wonder this adversary baffles us. It’s like none we’ve ever faced. It can’t be subverted because its loyalists aren’t aware of being loyal to anything other than their own vague instincts. Its instructions can’t be intercepted because they’re never formally issued. Its commanders can’t be captured because they don’t, in fact, command.
Do I have it right? Is that a fair description? A volunteer strike force of the unaware executing a plot that they can’t fathom? But which we’re in the process of fathoming for them, so that we can foil it just in time? (By election time, ideally, when we foil most plots. Or announce to the world that we’ve foiled them, that is.)
I’m back on the team, boys. I’m rested and I’m ready. Outlook: open. Attitude: adjusted. Disbelief: suspended. Hammer: cocked.
They annoy me, these kids, and it’s time to make examples of them. “Guilt” is an obsolete category, anyway. Guilty is as guilty acts. Let the Trap-and-Trace show trials begin!
But here’s what I need to complete my mission: your patience. I’m not on station at the moment (I’m knotting the belt of a clean white terry bathrobe and padding in hemp slippers across a hallway to ask my new gal pal if she’s finished with her pedicure), but I’ve started to realize that physical proximity isn’t needed to follow this new movement. The scanning devices we use are highly portable, and the signals scattered by the enemy fill the atmosphere from pole to pole. Indeed, the farther away one moves from the signals’ specific points of origin the more telltale they become.
And odd little victories occur at random. To wit: Out of some lingering sense of loyalty to a man she’s described to me, three times, as “gravy without a biscuit,” my flighty young slut decided the other day to warn Mr. Selkirk about my interest in him. This only caused him to boast and joke and showboat in an attempt to hold my gaze. He even confessed to a small theft (the abduction of a dog) that I’m considering reporting to his local police department. He also showed vulnerability to blackmail. In mocking what he took to be my predatory bisexuality, he displayed a knowledge of the tendency that can be gained only by having it.
I’m finally having fun, is what I’m saying. I’m getting my patriotic spirit back.
But here she is! Behold: mauve toenails. And no more calluses or cracks. Toting a pretty
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I said.
And because there was a small dog involved, she did.
15.
[By courier]
Agent’s Memo: In the grounds at the bottom of her low-fat lattes? In the stains underneath her polyester mattress pad? In the S-curves and loops of her discarded dental floss? Where was it written? And why couldn’t I read it? And why can I discern it so plainly now, from so far away, in this dim and silent room where I’m sitting naked on the floor encased in a tightening rind of drying mud and breathing the fumes from a dish of burning oil whose wan blue flame is just moments from going out?
I see the plot now because I want to see it. Maybe that’s what’s changed.
The truth is simple: Sabrina Grant and Kent Selkirk, I know now (and might have known before, had I not been so desperate to find “proof”) are the deeply embedded, plainclothes vanguard of an immensely dangerous new foe whose goals are murky even to its members. What makes our job so much harder than it should be is that these moronic shadow soldiers don’t view themselves as soldiers at all, but as harmless average citizens. Nor do they regard their orders as orders; they experience them as impulses and notions formed independently in their own minds. No wonder this adversary baffles us. It’s like none we’ve ever faced. It can’t be subverted because its loyalists aren’t aware of being loyal to anything other than their own vague instincts. Its instructions can’t be intercepted because they’re never formally issued. Its commanders can’t be captured because they don’t, in fact, command.
Do I have it right? Is that a fair description? A volunteer strike force of the unaware executing a plot that they can’t fathom? But which we’re in the process of fathoming for them, so that we can foil it just in time? (By election time, ideally, when we foil most plots. Or announce to the world that we’ve foiled them, that is.)
I’m back on the team, boys. I’m rested and I’m ready. Outlook: open. Attitude: adjusted. Disbelief: suspended. Hammer: cocked.
They annoy me, these kids, and it’s time to make examples of them. “Guilt” is an obsolete category, anyway. Guilty is as guilty acts. Let the Trap-and-Trace show trials begin!
But here’s what I need to complete my mission: your patience. I’m not on station at the moment (I’m knotting the belt of a clean white terry bathrobe and padding in hemp slippers across a hallway to ask my new gal pal if she’s finished with her pedicure), but I’ve started to realize that physical proximity isn’t needed to follow this new movement. The scanning devices we use are highly portable, and the signals scattered by the enemy fill the atmosphere from pole to pole. Indeed, the farther away one moves from the signals’ specific points of origin the more telltale they become.
And odd little victories occur at random. To wit: Out of some lingering sense of loyalty to a man she’s described to me, three times, as “gravy without a biscuit,” my flighty young slut decided the other day to warn Mr. Selkirk about my interest in him. This only caused him to boast and joke and showboat in an attempt to hold my gaze. He even confessed to a small theft (the abduction of a dog) that I’m considering reporting to his local police department. He also showed vulnerability to blackmail. In mocking what he took to be my predatory bisexuality, he displayed a knowledge of the tendency that can be gained only by having it.
I’m finally having fun, is what I’m saying. I’m getting my patriotic spirit back.
But here she is! Behold: mauve toenails. And no more calluses or cracks. Toting a pretty
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