Signs, signs.
“So what if it’s alone? We’re all alone!”
It’s a truth too cruel to be spoken. Giles darts to the left. Elisa moves to block him. Their shoulders collide. He feels the impact in his teeth and stumbles; he has to slap a hand to the door to steady himself. It is, without question, the worst moment the two of them have ever shared, commensurate to a slap. His heart is pounding. His face is flushed. There’s something wrong with his toupee. He pats his scalp to make sure it’s in place; this only makes him blush more. Abruptly, he is near tears. How did things go so wrong so fast? He hears her panting and realizes he’s panting, too. He doesn’t want to look at her, but he does.
Elisa is crying, and still, the signs, the signs Giles can’t help but read.
“‘It’s the loneliest thing I’ve ever seen.’” He groans. “You see? You said it yourself. It’s a thing. A freak.”
Her signs slash and punch. He bleeds and bruises.
“‘What am I, then? Am I a freak, too?’ Oh, please, Elisa! No one is saying that! I’m sorry, dear, but I really have to go!”
There is more signing (“He doesn’t care what I lack”), but Giles refuses to repeat it aloud. His shaking hand finds the knob and pulls open the door. Cold wind crystallizes the single unfallen tear at the corner of each eye. He steps into the drafty hall, catching another sentence (“I either save him or let him die”), but he reminds himself that somewhere in the city is a building, and inside that building is an appointment book, and in that book is his name. That isn’t fantasy; those are facts. He takes a single step away before pausing and must raise his voice from a squeak.
“It’s not even human,” he insists.
They are the words of a quailing old man pleading to live out his days in peace. Before he can angle the portfolio case out of his own way and escape via the fire escape, just as he’s turning away, he catches her signed reply and it feels as if those signs brand themselves into his back, right through his jacket, his sweater, his shirt, his muscle, his bone, deep enough that the words ache like a fresh wound all the way to Klein & Saunders, where they begin their itchy conversion into scars that he’ll be forced to read for the rest of his life: “NEITHER ARE WE.”
17
WORD FROM WASHINGTON is that the asset is to be put to sleep, chopped like a steak, shipped off in samples to labs around the country. Hoffstetler has one week to wrap up his research. Strickland leans back in his office chair and tries to smile. Mission’s nearly finished. A better life waits on the other side. He should use this week to relax. Find a hobby. Get back to where he was before the Amazon. Maybe even visit the doctor like Lainie keeps nagging, get his fingers checked out. He strikes that idea. Looking at the fingers reminds him of jungle rot. Better keep them hid under bandages, just a while longer.
So he comes home early. He’ll surprise Timmy and Tammy by being there when they get back. Strange thing is, Lainie’s not there. He sits in front of the TV and waits. It’s the opposite of what he planned. He waits and crunches painkillers. What’s the point? He might as well be at work. Late afternoon, she finally returns. By that point, he doesn’t know what’s what. The pills smudge details until they are as unintelligible as General Hoyt’s shrieked orders: **** ** *****, ***. Strickland doesn’t see groceries in Lainie’s arms. The dress she’s got on, it doesn’t look familiar. She’s clearly startled to see him, then laughs and says she’ll have to go back to the store tomorrow, she’d forgotten her pocketbook.
Observation is what Strickland does. He can tell you which scientists are left-handed, what color socks Fleming wore last Wednesday. Lainie is talking too much, and Strickland knows that’s the truest tell of any liar. He thinks of Elisa Esposito, her soothing silence. She’d never lie to him. She hasn’t the power, or inclination. Lainie is hiding something. Is it an affair? He hopes not. For her sake, and also his, because of what might happen to him, legally speaking, after he dealt with the adulterers.
He compresses his emotions for the night. Next morning, after the kids catch the bus, he kisses Lainie good-bye over the hot ironing board and drives the Thunderbird to the next block. He parks under a giant beech tree. Not the cover he’d prefer. The limbs are skeletal from lack of rain. But it’ll do. He’s had his four breakfast pills, but that’s it. Needs to keep his observational ability sharp. He kills the engine. He silently prays that Lainie doesn’t appear on the road in front of him. This is their marriage. This is their life. Please, just stay home, clean the kitchen, unpack the boxes, anything.
Fifteen minutes later, she appears on the cross street, suddenly done ironing. He feels a needle of shame. He’d once promised her that no wife of his would have to take public transportation. He forces the needle from his mind with a mental flex. They’d both made promises, hadn’t they? He’s the one who forced his wedding ring back on only for his finger to bloat around it. He fights the Thunderbird for a good minute to get it started, then rolls out, creeping a block behind his wife. He idles as she waits for the bus, and when it pulls out, he follows.
The bus lets people off in front of a grocery store. Lainie isn’t among them. Strickland reminds himself that good surveillance requires an open mind. Maybe she doesn’t like the prices at that store. When the bus leaves an entire downtown shopping center without expunging Lainie, Strickland’s mind snaps shut. If his wife had some special errand today, she’d had all morning to tell him about it. Whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it behind his back. He grips the steering wheel so hard he feels a snap in one of his injured fingers. One of the big black stitches, perhaps, ripping from rotting flesh.
Then the car dies. No dramatic deathbed scene. It coughs weakly, one last time, and then Strickland is coasting. He throws it into neutral and tries to reignite it, but there isn’t a wisp of life. The bus swerves back into traffic with a noise like the asset’s squeal of pain, and there’s not a thing he can do about it. Through engine smoke far thicker than Lainie’s ironing steam, he muscles the Thunderbird to the curb. The only spot is in front of a fire hydrant. Just fucking perfect. He slams the gear into park. Shoves his way out of the car. Stares down the road. Vehicles swarming like wasps. People scurrying like roaches. The whole city a venomous nest.
He kicks the car door. It leaves a dent. His toes sing in pain and he hops in a circle, running every cuss word invented into a single, vulgar masterwork. He finds himself turned around, looking across the street. What he finds is a white-hot fireball. Beneath it are giant plates of liquid fire and smooth runners of lava. His head throbs from the overkill of light. He has to shield his eyes to make sense of it. Sunshine sizzles from the rotating-earth sign, floor-to-ceiling windows, and endless chrome trims of a Cadillac dealership.
Strickland doesn’t recall crossing the street. But he’s wandering the car lot. Under garlands of snapping flags. Beside an actual palm tree. Staring into headlight eyes turned angry by the V-shaped emblem between them. Trailing his fingers across the Cheshire grins of front grilles, those hundreds of slippery fangs. He pauses before one of the cars. Seals his hands to the scalding hood. Feels strong and smooth and sharp. Even his damaged fingers feel reinforced. He leans over the hood and inhales. He likes the hot-metal smell, like a gun after being fired.
“Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Most perfect machine mankind’s ever made.”
A salesman has joined Strickland. Strickland registers thin hair, razor burn, a flabby neck. Further details melt in the too-bright sun. The man is perfectly automatized, as metallic as the vehicles he sells. He sidles alongside the Caddy as if he, too, moves on hubcapped wheels, the creases of his suit and pants as sharp as tail fins. He strokes the hood, his watch and cuff links as bright as the chrome.