‘It didn’t have to go this far.’ She didn’t mean to say this, especially now when anything she could say would sing with too much purpose.
He wasn’t responsible, he said. It wasn’t his fault.
Rem wasn’t prepared. He took it in for a moment, she could hear this in his pause. He never could keep up in any kind of confrontation. Coming back from the movies that last time they’d argued, and Rem, unwilling to stick with it, had changed seats, moved along the carriage, and left her to feel the solidity of the houses speeding away from them, the flat roads, the weight and volume of the city.
She understood that the discussion wasn’t going to go further. A second piece of news, she decided, she’d save for another call. This was about Nut, and Rem would need a little more time to process this.
According to Cissie, Matt had come to see Rem the day that Rem came over to see him — if that made any sense. Rem had made some plan, but Matt wasn’t sure if they were supposed to meet at Clark Street, or if Rem was going to come over to theirs. Around ten o’clock Matt had walked up Lunt to Clark, and found the doors unlocked. At first he thought Rem had just slipped out, was probably in the store downstairs or something. Anyway, Rem hadn’t come back, so he must have left in a hurry without locking the doors. He must have been preoccupied. What happened — somehow, Cissie didn’t know how — but Matt had let the dog out. It was his fault. It wasn’t deliberate.
‘He didn’t tell me at first. Waited a couple of days. I think he thought you’d find him. But he felt bad about it. I’m really, really sorry.’
* * *
On the day Rem heard the news about Matt Cavanaugh, Fatboy’s replacement, Stefan Kiprowski, arrived at the section base. Seconded from Food Services at Southern-CIPA, the regional government agency, the post was intended to be temporary. Geezler hadn’t lied: HOSCO ran everything, food, water, sleep, employment. Kiprowski reminded him of someone. Not because of his height, and not because he was thin. He couldn’t place the reference.
Rem loved the complexities. Each morning when they returned to ACSB he sat with Santo in the commissary. They drank coffee while they watched the TCNs gather and prepare for their drives.
‘You can always tell where they’re going.’ Santo nodded at the drivers. ‘The smilers are southbound, Kuwait. The shitters are heading north,’ he deepened his voice, ‘to a land of desolation,’ then more sweetly, ‘bye, boys. Say bye-bye.’
Santo offered to refill the coffees so he could hum ‘One Headlight’ as he passed by the drivers. When he returned he told Rem he looked happy. ‘Happier, I should say. Don’t get me wrong.’
‘I might stay here.’
‘Here? Iraq?’
‘Safer. I just heard news.’
‘Home?’
Rem nodded.
‘Thing is. You aren’t there. You’re here. Can’t do one thing about it. It’s win — win.’
Rem began to explain about Matt’s walk across Lake Shore Drive: how cars hadn’t hit him and how he’d survived a tumble over a parapet, and something like a fifteen-foot drop. ‘Didn’t even hold out his hands to save himself.’
‘I saw that,’ Santo cooed. ‘The jumper. You know him?’ He sat back, hands on his thighs, impressed.
Rem gave a slow nod.
‘I heard they opened him up and found everything pushed up.’ Santo heaved his hand from his chest to his throat. ‘They had to take it all out and put it back in the right place. He had shit coming out of his ears you wouldn’t want coming out of your ass. Can you believe that? Some people die falling off a chair. Man, you know him?’ Santo shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why would a person do that?’
Rem said he couldn’t believe it himself. Some things are beyond imagining.
Santo, seeing the conversation heading in a bad direction, pointed out the new manager. ‘Speaking of Chicago. He’s from your town.’
Rem looked across the commissary at the tall thin boy, still couldn’t place him, but doubted that they knew each other from Chicago. More robust than Fatboy: corn-fed and wholesome. ‘Looks lost.’
‘Talking of dumb-assed, you hear what KCP did to him yesterday?’
‘KCP?’
‘Transport. They hear this new guy is coming in from Southern-CIPA, which is right on the other side of Amrah. He’s here three hours and he has to go back for one last duty. This is a journey you can’t make without security, without armoured cars, guns, SWAT teams, nuclear devices. So he goes to Transport, places his request, says he has to get to CIPA, as soon as. They take a dislike to this guy, because, well, I don’t know, they just don’t like him. So they give him the brush-off and tell him to come back in an hour. So, he’s back in an hour, and the office is closed, and there’s a sign saying come back in another hour. These guys are just messing with him.’ Santo took in a deep breath. ‘An hour later he’s at the counter, and there’s a new sign saying “back in five”, only they aren’t back in five. So he calls them, tells them he has to be back at Southern-CIPA in two hours for a function. He’s supposed to be laying on the food for this function. Cutting sandwiches. Making coffee. He goes away. He comes back a third time. Still nobody there, this time the sign says, “vehicle in loading dock”. He goes to the loading dock and there’s nothing there except a fat-assed BFV. A tank. And just for good measure they’ve leant a bicycle against it with a dishwalla and one of those headscarf turbans. You know what he does?’
‘This already didn’t happen.’
‘You know what he does? He dresses up. He puts that shit on, he dresses like a fratboy heading to a hazing. He takes the bike, and he cycles all the way to Southern-CIPA.’
‘It’s not true.’
‘It’s true. Fact! Jalla Road. Ask him. Ask him how he got to the tea-party at Southern-CIPA yesterday. Ask him.’ Santo shook his head. ‘What is it with Chicago these days? Is there some kind of crazy in the water? I’m putting money on him for a kill.’
Rem looked across the room. The boy checked items on a clipboard. Something about the turn of his head, not directly down, but tilted, gave Rem the reference he couldn’t place. Nut. The boy looked like his dog.
* * *
Matt survived two strokes in his first week in hospital, and suffered a blood infection in the second, which temporarily turned his skin yellow, but responded immediately to treatment. He held on. This is what they told themselves: Cathy, Cissie, the attending medics. Matt was holding on with superhuman determination. The doctors ordered scans and tests, amazed that he demonstrated any brain function at all given the damage caused by his fall. They depended a good deal on the word instinct.
Cathy came to the hospital when she could, and kept in touch with Cissie by phone on the days she could not visit.
Cissie’s quiet unnerved her. She ran her day to a bare routine of arriving and departing, picked the same seat, sat in the same attentive poise, wrung her hands and waited. On the phone Cissie had nothing to say, and in her stillness Cathy saw a kind of madness.
The news that Matt had been transferred to Kansas City came as a relief.
* * *
The arrival of the Division Chief signalled another change in HOSCO: a potential reshuffle of directors and deputies assigned to the regions. No one could put a name or a face to the Division Chief for the Middle East, or could find such a man on the company website — that the position might be vacant meant little to the men of Unit 409 who were bothered only by the disruption that accompanied any such visit or site inspection. Since the assault on Jalla Road resentment had begun to grow and the Iraqi Ministry for Infrastructure and Sanitation had become more diligent. Permits for clearances and demolitions were stalled. Rem guessed that the delay depended on the right amount of money hitting the right person or the right clan before they would be able to continue with their work. This, he thought, would be the real motivation behind the visit. He doubted it had anything to do with Fatboy and substandard equipment.