After twelve days Allegecom took all of Josh’s work down. But not before a lot of people saw it and a lot of papers reported on it. The Times article not only revealed Josh as the author but even showed a picture of Josh at his computer, looking angular and cool, decidedly unhackerish. Miranda thought talking to a reporter was a little reckless. Josh was practically begging to get busted.
“Guess what?” Josh smiled and closed his eyes as he lay back on his bed. They were in the clean and perfect house. More and more they stayed there instead of at the Black House. Josh preferred it. More privacy. Fewer fleas.
“What?”
“Allegecom’s personnel department wrote me a letter.”
“Why?”
“Next month they want to fly me out to New York to meet with Leslie Winters, the project director for their new community.”
Miranda laughed and shook her head. “You’re kidding.”
“I think they want to offer me a job. New tactic — instead of prosecuting me, hire me. Sort of like promoting a union organizer to management.”
“Did you tell them to fuck off?”
“No. Are you kidding? This is a great opportunity to see Allegecom from the inside.” He sat up and squeezed her hand. “Don’t you want to come with me?”
Sure.
Visitors
HENRY WANTED to go out for a beer with Nash. They walked down the street to the salty British-style pub and sat in one of the back booths. Henry looked a little shaky. He smoked with his inhaler on the table. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“What’s wrong? You look like you haven’t slept,” Nash said.
Henry turned his head and took a quick look over his shoulder. “Look, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, some of the shit I’m going to tell you, I don’t know.”
“It’s cool.”
“I don’t care at this point.” Henry took a long swallow of beer. “I sometimes have these dreams — but not exactly — waking nightmares.”
“Like night terrors,” Nash said.
“Yeah, but baroque, elongated, all-sense trances.”
“Like what?”
“Like really detailed hallucinations of spraying Agent Orange all over jungles and riverbanks. Spraying villages.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I’m dropping white phosphorus and napalm bombs. I can see it — smell it burning through skin. My skin, too.” Henry looked down at the table. “One nasty one I had — glass jars filled with formaldehyde and these fetal disasters. I see these faces and wake with these near smells still in my hair, and odd, off tastes in my mouth.”
Nash watched Henry stub out the cigarette. His breathing was getting heavier and shorter.
“Have you ever heard of anything like that — incongruous, inexplicable odors? Unexplained smells can be profoundly disturbing — I tried to find out about it,” Henry said.
“They’re hallucinations, just like hearing things or seeing things,” Nash said.
“The dead bodies of saints don’t smell like decay, you know. They smell like roses and perfume. They call it the odor of sanctity.”
“So what?”
“This is like the opposite of that — awful smells for evil things.”
Henry’s hand shook as he took out another cigarette and lit it. He inhaled and then started to sniff. He grabbed a bar napkin off the table and wiped his nose and forehead.
“God, that’s a hell of a thing,” Nash said. “You must have had some tour. No wonder you have this kind of trauma all these years later.”
Henry was nodding and then stopped, looking straight at Nash. “What are you talking about?”
“What happened to you. In Vietnam.”
“Nash, certainly something has been happening to me, but I was not in Vietnam.”
“Post-traumatic stress. Very common in vets—”
“I was 4-F for my hearing. I have never been to Vietnam.”
Nash watched Henry take another swig on a beer.
“What? You weren’t in combat?” he said.
Henry shook his head and swallowed.
“I wasn’t even hard of hearing. I faked out the test. It was the easiest test to fake, you just hesitate when they give you the graduated sounds, you wait a few seconds until you indicate you have heard something. The funny thing was that I ended up actually losing my hearing in one ear almost to the exact extent I faked it. You know — if you are out of sight, I don’t get much of what you say. Funny.”
“I’m stunned.”
“And I kind of feel like I deserve it. I knew all about that war, and I never did a thing to stop it. I made sure my ass was safe, and then I drank my way through those years. And I knew it was wrong. I didn’t do anything. And ever since I have paid and paid.”
“What do you mean?” Nash said.
“I mean I started getting symptoms a few years after the war ended. Of dioxin exposure, although I didn’t know what it was yet. I started researching about the war, and what we did there. I got rashes and asthma. I read everything I could. Then, about three years ago, I started in with these night and day terrors. The symptoms got much worse: insomnia, shaking, acute respiratory problems.”
“Are you getting help for this?”
“I’ve taken Nepenthex for years. And lately Blythin. They are designed specifically for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Henry, did you tell them you aren’t a vet?”
“They didn’t ask me. They said I have severe PTSD.”
“But it’s different, it isn’t related to experience.”
“But it is — I can’t explain, but these memories I have, these proxy memories, they are real.”
“Real memories…”
“Of things people have experienced. I’m certain. But that is not what I want to talk to you about.”
“You certainly have real physical symptoms.”
“The point is that up until now, I have only had dreams about combat. Last night was different.” Henry glanced behind him again and then leaned in toward Nash.
“It was also during the Vietnam War. But I was not a soldier, or at least not in the military. I was organizing to blow up houses. Big summer homes of some high-level corporate executives. I was working in someone’s empty home, setting explosives. The house workers had been warned to leave, I guess, because it seemed empty of humans. It did have family pictures and furniture and beds. Teacups and board games. I saw it all blown to bits. Some board member of Monsanto or General Electric or Dow Chemical. To protest against the war.”
“Really? But I guess it sort of makes sense. In a nonsense kind of way.”
“But.”
“What?”
Henry put his hand on the table and leaned toward Nash. “It wasn’t me, that’s the weird thing,” Henry said.