The interview did not last too long, thankfully for Joseph, who was shaking with anticipation, ready to head out on his first mission, and he was sent out of the room to speak with another representative (he was hoping that epigamic fitchew would, at some point, come across his path and that she would actually be afflicted with galeanthropy and he will be required, by hospitality, to give her a good petting).
This was Joseph’s introduction to the Player’s.
* * *
Arthur, that Baudelairian sycophant of some strange excess, under investigation (this he was always aware of), sat unmasked in a make-shift sitting room in the recesses of the warehouse, after meeting Reagan’s recruit, just as Reagan was telling him: “Well, you should have talked to him about it, surely you don’t expect anything from a Director of the Continued Production of Isotopic Inhibitors to provide anything altogether too meaningful to the cause.”
“I only expect what I believe I can from my people,” Arthur offered between puffs of a personally rolled, completely carcinogenic cigarette he put in Elisa’s lips before drawing his first drag.
“How do you suppose you can gather from a chance, three minute meeting what you can expect from him? Has it ever dawned on you that the rest of us might not want to see some poor sap ousted simply for numbers? We’re talking about the man’s liberty here.”
“I see. You wanted me to initiate the poor boy fully. Give him a rank and a number and put him to work. He’s no writer, this is delicate business my friend. Besides, your friend there’s not what I would call altogether all there. If he proves useful, that’s when we call him up. Otherwise, he stews until I say,” Arthur explained, eyeing his darling departing to go work the new guy. “Darling, give him a sound entrance, but no info, darling,” he yelled after her.
“Useless. He knew how to decipher my message. He’s already on the wavelength, Arthur. We’ve got to continue onward, its forward or nothing,” sneered Reagan, waving away a large, blue plume of smoke.
“They’ve been busy my friend. Remember Auto; it wasn’t his real name. He was good for nothing, yet we let him in and let him have access. Now he’s disappeared. He deciphered the code too. He was here during our planning of the transit operation. Am I the only one wondering why our shipments are being delayed? Why we’ve got a big white van following us around? Why the other day I had to duck into some damn corporate building and sit there for two hours in a broom closet ‘cause I had a tail. The same’s going on for a lot of us. They’re onto something. I don’t know how they found out, whether it was Auto feeding them info or through another route. On any account, we’re not handing out passes right now.”
Looking away, shaking his head: “Well, at least let me have him run an errand or something, something that’ll let him know he’s involved.”
“Nothing real, you understand,” the Wolf replied, placing his mask over his face out of sheer boredom, “a mirage detail.” Leaning back and drawing on his cigarette, watching the flickering ashes creep towards the filter. Cough, cough. “Nothing real.”
* * *
“Joseph what are you doing?” his wife asked as she walked into their backyard and found her husband digging a large, rectangular hole, of which he appeared to be quite far along, since she could only see his shoulders and head. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“I decided not to go. I haven’t been for three days. I went to a book reading instead. I met Carl Reagan.”
“Who?”
“Carl Reagan, the children’s author. Kimball and Alexzen love his books.”
“What are you doing?”
“You won’t be surprised if I don’t astonish you?”
“What?”
“He bore me on his back a thousand times.”
“What are you talking about, Joseph?”
“No one would accuse me of virtue, but from vice I have been rewarded.”
“Joseph, what are you doing? Tell me.”
“Digging a grave.”
“Who’s grave.”
“Mine.”
“Are you okay?”
“I haven’t been able to kill myself, so I thought it might be better to build my grave first. It’s not the normal procedure, but it might help,” he replied almost Senecaly.
“Joseph, you’re scaring me. Why are you digging your grave?”
“I’m lying in it.”
“Okay, I’m calling Dr. Wheeler. Have you seen Theo?”
“Theo?”
“Yes, the cat, the orange cat we’ve had for six years.”
“No, not since I released him.”
“What? What did you do to Theo?”
“I opened the door and let him go.”
“Why?”
“To liberate him. He was not happy, he was going mad. Theo’s not the type of cat that can live in a house.”
“Theo’s our house cat. The children love him. How could you do that, Joseph?”
“Devious with words, and from practice doubly capable.”
“What?”
“Theo’s gone mad.”
“How’s that?”
“Strangely, very strangely.”
“Joseph, get out of there, come inside. You need to see a doctor.”
“A few more feet, or I won’t last nine years.”
“Did you kill our cat?”
“I will have to behave if I want to be unruly.”
“Is he dead?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“Get in here,” she said, walking up the steps of the back porch. “Joseph, get in here.” But, Joseph continued to dig and she ran inside to call his doctor.
“To dream, what wonderful dreams death has, dying and sleeping. The questions are all answered, simple verbs and nouns are bedded in the mind, the noble organ suffers no piercing superstitions, the vessel is safely moored to the shore. To be a feast, the numb death saving the heart, wishing for devout dreams. Pausing without respect, its carriage rides to immortality within a consciousness without boundaries or walls. Time is no longer our dominatrix, life is no longer baggage to be lugged about, it is a birth and a riddle of the will, a trip without a return ticket. Conscience makes heroes out of the petty. The dreams of death are fine acts, true illusions, spirits of remembered indulgences, a current carrying brooding corpses, where we do not refuse love.”
* * *
Lieutenant Tobias was positioned kitty-corner to the door in an unmarked van that had two cameras focused on the building. It was Morgan’s Distribution, a leading distributor of hardbound volumes of encyclopedias, children’s books, and cookbooks. Lt. Tobias had been stationed at the warehouse for two days and Arthur Dodger had not emerged since the captain saw him enter. He was still inside. Or, so the surveillance team thought.