"Of course you do. He could be OD'd in there."
"If he's dead, he's dead."
"He could be alive. People hold on for hours. A day, even. But nobody comes. Open the fucking door."
"Okay," said Nabeel.
Then the door swung open and Don stood before us, his pants held up in his fist.
"Milo," he said. "Come on in. I'm just finishing up a shit. Make yourself at home. Nabeel, you're welcome, too."
"No, I should go," said Nabeel.
I followed Don into the apartment. He slipped back into the bathroom, shut the door. The room looked brighter and bigger than last time, the red drapes heaped on the floor, the apartment stripped. He had never owned much, but now he was down to the card table, one folding chair, a saucepan, some smudged water glasses, a spoon. Papers lay curled under the radiator. I picked one up, a pencil sketch, a fairly good one, of a World War One-era military officer with a bushy mustache, his legs sheathed in shiny black boots. Phone numbers and email addresses and odd bits of math sprouted in the spaces around and between the soldier's thighs. One number was circled, the same figure I'd seen on the cashier's check in Lee Moss's office.
I picked up the spoon, saw burn marks on it, heard Don's girls creak on the floor behind me.
"Could have used that spoon in the john just now. Colon needs a serious scooping."
"Thank you for not sharing," I said.
Don flopped on the bed. "We're going to scoop shit and we're going to cook dope," he said. "The trick is to use different spoons."
"The teachings of Lee Moss," I said.
"That dude," said Don.
We sat in silence for a moment.
"So," said Don, "did you come here to tell me what a fool I was last night? Because I already know. Some others from your crew have already been by. It's all been explained."
"They're not my crew."
"Oh, no? Well, I don't care anymore. I'm leaving this goddamn city."
"To go where. Pangburn Falls?"
"That's right, Bangburn Balls, baby."
"Don, there could be more for you in life than that."
"Than what?"
Don stared at me, tapped his knuckles on the wall behind his head.
"I don't know," I said.
"No, you don't. Why would you even say that kind of thing? Did it ever occur to you that unless you have money, every place is equally shitty? You know, those guys, my father, they just wanted to pay me some money to shut me up. Like hell I'll take it, but at least it's understandable. It's scumbags of one breed dealing with a scumbag of another. But you, what are you about? What are you selling? Or are you buying?"
"I've never been clear on that."
"Don't work it out on me. And don't try to humanize me, you fuck. It's insulting. Why did you come here?"
"I wanted to make sure you were okay."
"I'm never going to be okay. Now leave, leech."
Back at the Mediocre suite, I slouched at my workstation and wondered how I'd gone so wrong. Where was my dignity? Also, where was my computer? I noticed now that my workstation lacked its primary instrument of work. The telephone looked forlorn by itself on the desk. I slid a pad and some pencils beside it, wrote: "Ask about your computer. And ask for more Post-Its. It's your time."
Horace walked by, hummed the theme song from a TV show canceled before his birth. I remembered the show, my devastation at its demise. It was maybe the first time I understood there were powerful people far away who could destroy your world without even knowing it.
"Milo, toosh dev warrior king, what's the fine word?"
"Hi, Horace," I said. "Where's my computer?"
"Repair guy took it to fix."
"Why couldn't he fix it here? And it wasn't broken. Who told him it was broken?"
"Calm down. Afraid he'll find the naughty stuff?"
"I wouldn't be dumb enough to use an office computer," I said.
"Me," said Horace, "I've got the whole system beat."
"How's that?"
"I'm back to actual magazines. Keep some in my desk, even. Who would ever bother to look? My hard drive is pristine. Not a dirty cookie in sight. I jerk it in the men's room with real glossy stock on my knees. Like my father, and his father before him."
"That's very clever," I said.
"If a vengeful theocracy took over this country tomorrow, they'd have nothing on me. Probably put me on the morals squad."
Horace walked off and I picked up my desk phone, dialed.
"Greetings. You have reached the voice mail of the Unknown Soldier. Please leave a massage. Happy endings preferred."
I'm not sure what I meant to say. I hung there in silence, waited for something unleechlike to arrive.
"Savitsky," I said. "The officer with the boots in the story your mother liked. His name was Savitsky. It's from a story by Isaac Babel. I read it in a literature class in college. Maybe your mother read it there, too. Goodbye, Don. Take care."
And that was, somehow, officially, that.
Just as I hung up the phone it rang again.
"Don?"
"Milo?"
"Vargina."
"Do you have a minute?"
"Sure."
"Conference room."
It occurred to me that calling from the Mediocre line was probably not wise. I'd only just found out six months ago there were surveillance cameras in the suite, and only after Horace directed a sieg heil toward a drilled hole in the ceiling tiles, received an email reprimand a week later. Maybe they tapped our phones, too. I'd always scoffed at conspiracy hobbyists, paranoid stylists. The corporate complex wasn't organized enough for master plans, I'd argue. We're all just flawed people with our flawed systems. But things had seemed rather organized in recent years. You had to wonder. Maybe the leaders of the global elite did all have secret lizard heads. Maybe my mother had a secret lizard head.
A whole trove of cockamamie theories deserved another look. Perhaps, for example, Lena had told me I was only moderately talented because she felt compelled to speak the truth. Maybe Maura still desired me but for her own sanity could stay in our marriage only if I chose to confront my rage and resentment. There was even a chance happiness had something to do with acceptance, and something to do with love.
No, this was ridiculous. These notions were all part of the trick, the scam. The asks had me nailed from the get-go, ever since they installed the selfware, back in Milo Year Zero. That's how the whole long con got started.
The conference room felt smaller than it had on my coronation the day before. A berry spritzer tallboy sat half collapsed on the conference table.
Another dented can.
Somehow Vargina and I ended up seated beside each other, the way some couples arrange themselves in restaurants. I'd never understood the appeal, though now I wondered if Maura and I should have given it a whirl. Maybe it granted you a whole new perspective on coupledom, or at least served as a welcome breather from having to look each other in the eye, glimpse all that mutilated hope.
Vargina re-angled her chair.
"This is weird," she said.
"You mean how we're sitting?"
"No, what I need to tell you. Your computer isn't broken, Milo."
"That's what I was trying to tell Horace. I was just thinking that…"
The truth sank in as I spoke. I tried my best to resemble a man in whom the truth had just been sunk, to the hilt. I owed Vargina that much, if only for elevating this encounter with use of the conference room.
"I'm fired again," I said.
"This time there's severance."
"Why? Why now?"
"I don't know the full story, Milo. Call came in from Cooley about it. Your absence was necessary for certain things to go forward."
"That's a nice way of putting it."
"I'm a craftswoman. And don't feel too bad. Sometime next month there's going to be a big bloodletting. Our endowment is in worse shape than anybody will admit."
"So, I'd be fired in a month anyway?"
"Probably."
"I can't do this anymore," I said.
"That's what we're saying."
"Sleep tight, you world, you motherfucker."