“Get in there!” Philipe ordered.
I didn’t want to “get in there”. I didn’t want to —
An Armani-suited jerk bumped into me. He was heading toward the fight, ready to get into it. He obviously hadn’t seen me and had run into me accidentally, but he didn’t even bother to apologize. “Get the fuck out of my way,” he said instead, pushing a fisted hand toward my face.
That did it.
The crowd suddenly had a face to me. The man in the Armani suit instantly came to symbolize everything that was wrong with these people, everything that I hated about them. They were no longer innocent victims of Philipe’s random attacks. They were deserving recipients of justice.
These were the people who had kept us down, kept us Ignored, and after all this time, we were finally striking back.
I punched Armani hard in the back.
He stumbled, grunted, whirled around, but Don was already on him, hitting him in the stomach. Armani doubled up, but took it, and was about to retaliate when Buster, behind him, kicked the back of his left knee.
He went down.
“Retreat!” Philipe announced suddenly. “Move back!”
I didn’t know why he said that, what he had planned or decided, but like the others, I instantly, instinctively obeyed. All ten of us gathered around Philipe. He grinned hugely. “Look,” he said.
My gaze followed the nod of his head. The fight was still going on, although between whom I did not know. Two security guards had rushed over and were trying to break it up.
No one had noticed our absence.
I got the point.
Philipe caught my eye, grinned, nodded when he saw that I understood. “We’ll spread out, start up conflicts throughout the crowd. Bill and John, you go to the other side of Nieman Marcus. James, Steve, Pete, start something near Silverwood’s. Buster and Junior, you do something by the far bleachers. Tommy and Don? You two attack near the sign-up table for the drawing. Bob and I will take this area.”
The plan worked perfectly. We would pick one man and then set upon him, pummeling him. Others would join in, expanding the fight, and we would bow out.
Soon there were several pockets of turmoil in the crowd, a free-for-all melee with us unseen at the center of the storm.
The band had stopped playing by this time, and an announcement was made from the stage that unless order was restored immediately the concert would be canceled.
The fighting continued, with an ever-increasing number of security guards emerging from some reserve area in an attempt to bring the crowd under control.
Philipe surveyed the scene, nodded with satisfaction, dropped a handful of cards on the ground, placed some on the bottom bleacher seats. “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s go. We’re outta here.”
The next day we made the front page of the Register.
GANG VIOLENCE ERUPTS AT FREE CONCERT, the headline read.
Junior laughed. “Gang violence?”
There was no mention of our exploits in the Times.
“The concert was sponsored by the Register,” John said. “That’s why.”
“First lesson,” Philipe said. “Avoid partisan media events.”
We all laughed.
“We should start a scrapbook,” James suggested. “Cut out all the articles about us.”
Philipe nodded. “Good idea. You’re in charge of that.” He turned toward me. “And since you have the best VCR here, you’re in charge of taping local news broadcasts, in case we ever make it onto TV.”
“Okay,” I said.
He continued looking at me. “By the way, you know what today is, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“It’s your one-month anniversary.”
He was right. How could I have forgotten? Exactly one month ago today, I had killed Stewart. The morning’s lighthearted mood disappeared instantly for me. My hands grew sweaty, the muscles in my neck tense as I thought of that scene in the bathroom stall. In my mind, I again smelled the blood, felt the knife push thickly through muscle, deflect off bone.
At this time of day, one month ago, I had been sitting at my desk in my clown suit. Waiting.
The clown suit was still on the floor of my bedroom closet.
“Let’s go back there,” Philipe said. “See what’s happened since then.”
I was horrified. “No!”
“Why not? You can’t tell me you’re not even curious.”
“Yeah,” Don said. “Let’s go. It’ll be great.”
“What did he do a month ago?” Junior asked.
“He killed his boss,” Buster explained.
The old man’s eyes widened. “Killed his boss?”
“We all did,” Buster told him. “I thought you knew that.”
“No. I didn’t.” He was silent for a moment. “I did, too,” he admitted. “I killed my boss, too. But I was afraid to tell you.”
Philipe continued to look at me. “I think we should go back to your company,” he said. “I think we should go back to Automated Interface, Incorporated.”
Even hearing that name sent a strange shiver through me. “Why?” I asked. My hands were trembling. I tried not to let it show. “What good would it do?”
“Catharsis. I think you need to go. I don’t think you’ll get over it until you confront it.”
“Is this because of last night? Because I didn’t want to just start beating on people for no reason?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. You can’t have pussies in a terrorist organization.”
I thought of a thousand retorts to that, a thousand things I could say, a thousand things I should say, but for some reason I backed off. I looked away from him, looked down at my shoes, shook my head. “I don’t want to go.”
“We’re going,” he said flatly. “Whether you want to or not. I’ll drive.”
James, on the couch, glanced up from the newspaper article. “Are we all going?”
“No, just Bob and me.”
I wanted to object, wanted to refuse, but I found myself nodding. “Okay,” I said.
Philipe talked on the drive over. This was the first time we’d been alone, with none of the others anywhere around, since he’d first approached me on the street after Stewart’s murder, and he seemed anxious to explain to me the importance of what he termed “our work.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” He shook his head. “I never know about you,” he said. “John, Don, Bill, and the rest, I always know where they stand, I always know what they’re thinking. But you’re a mystery to me. Maybe that’s why it’s so important for me to make sure you understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“I understand.”
“But you don’t approve.”
“Yes, I do. It’s just… I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“Sometimes… sometimes some things seem wrong to me.”
“You still have your old values, you still have your old system of beliefs. You’ll get over that eventually.”
“Maybe.”
He looked sideways at me. “You don’t want to?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re with us? You’re one of us?”
“Always,” I said. “What else do I have?”
He nodded. “What else do any of us have?”
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
It felt strange to be driving back to Automated Interface again, and my palms were sweaty as we pulled into the parking lot. I wiped them on my jeans. “I don’t think we should do this.”
“You think they’re going to see you and immediately put two and two together and arrest you for killing your supervisor? These people don’t even remember you. They probably couldn’t describe you if their lives depended on it.”
“Some of them could,” I said.