Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  So, step one: over the course of the following days, Cyril begins the slow, tedious task of performing an update on his professional life. The postal system is taking its sweet time with his bank card, but now that he has access to his account, he can link it to PayPal. He considers purchasing a laptop, but it would only be a stopgap measure; any employment he manages to secure will require a far more robust desktop system. His finances being what they are, he selects a refurbished Android phone with a shitty data plan and a pay-per-day option for establishing a mobile hotspot. Not having to use Robin’s computer for internet access is at least one small step towards emancipation.

  After dispensing with the necessities, he establishes an anonymizing VPN and dives deep. He spends hours catching up on current events in tech, trying to trace the subtle undercurrent of Anonymous as it springs up, seemingly at random, to shift the course of the political stream. Waves of opinion form, crash, and re-form as he encounters some new nugget of information. He loses himself upon a vast shoreline of ever-shifting sand.

  After two or perhaps three days, surfacing only to cook and play Minecraft with the kids, his unsavory little corner of the internet begins to feel less alien. Still, he can’t escape the feeling that there’s been a fundamental shift. Hacker culture has never been wholesome, at least not where Anonymous and its various splinter groups are concerned, but during his forced sabbatical things seem to have taken a particularly antagonistic turn. His go-to securities forums are overrun with trolls and shitposters, and even in the more moderate communities, “edgy” humor has given way to explicit racism and jingoistic insanity. Marching on Wall Street hadn’t upended the world, so all the young, unlanded knights had exchanged their Guy Fawkes masks for swastikas. Russian bots proliferate, with only the barest pretense of passing for something other than what they are. Disruption, not persuasion, is the tactic of choice. It’s not entirely a surprise; the CIA had expended so much effort quashing domestic leakers and whistleblowers back in the Occupy Wall Street days, it hadn’t stopped to think about what might rush to fill the void. Better the hacker you know.

  He considers letting a few old contacts know he’s looking for work, but decides to hold off while he's still living under Robin’s roof. His release is public record, but his location isn’t, and the last thing he wants is a bunch of news vans camped out on Robin’s lawn. Instead, he ferrets out a closed message board that seems promising and jumps through the hoops required to prove he’s worthy of an invite. He’s approved, and after scrolling through the most recent posts he searches the archives for his name. There are several massive threads devoted to analyzing his exploits, and he clicks on the most recent one. There has always been a large “fuck the man” component to his hacktivism, so the anger and vitriol from his erstwhile fans is expected. What he doesn’t expect is to see himself heralded as a hero of white supremacy. Apparently because... he’s white? And his face has been used in some alt-right memes?

  Once, this asshole existed on the hazy borders of legality and morality; he has not moved, but the world has shifted around him, and he finds himself become moderate. He feels old.

  Robin leaves him alone, or at least doesn’t insist on watching any more television, but at some point—the kids are running out the door with backpacks, so, morning—she informs him that he has a choice between taking a shower or relocating to the barn. She leaves to ferry the kids to Greta’s house and he showers, wrapping himself in a sheet afterward because her towels aren’t big enough and the entirety of his limited wardrobe is, as Nora put it, “super smelly.” He starts the wash, tossing in the kids’ martial arts uniforms to pad out the load. Nora had also extracted a promise of chocolate chip cookies, so he pulls out the ingredients and gets the first batch into the oven before returning to Robin’s laptop at the dining table.

  His initial Craigslist search had revealed that Healdsburg rents are off the charts; he’s studying a studio listing in neighboring Windsor when a voice says, “Nice toga.”

  He jerks backward. “Fuck!”

  Robin laughs, long and loud. “I was not being quiet,” she says, rattling her tool belt to illustrate the point. She gives his bare shoulder a smack with the back of her hand. “You were really in the zone. What’re you doing, reading my email again?” She leans over his shoulder and sees the apartment photos. “Oh.” He is not sure whether he imagines the hint of disappointment in her tone. “Cyril, before you—”

  The oven timer beeps. He shuts the laptop and shoves himself to his feet, gathering the corners of the bedsheet with one hand. Not that it matters—at his size, nothing really conceals. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” He works his free hand into an oven mitt.

  She sighs faintly, letting go of whatever it was she had been about to say. “Nope. Got my last job wrapped up yesterday.” In one swift stroke she slides the hammer out of her toolbelt and uses it to point at the boarded-up stairwell and, by extension, the skeletal second floor. “Priority numero uno is getting this place buttoned up before first rain.”

  “Good luck with that.” He doesn’t need to be a carpenter to know the house is a wreck.

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” She holsters the hammer. “How about you give me a hand?”

  “A hand?” he echoes, and then, realizing she’s serious: “Uh, no.” He trades the mitt for a spatula and begins transferring cookies from the sheet to a cooling rack. They’re flat and slightly crisp, but it’s not like the kids will mind. He startles slightly as Robin’s hand snakes under his arm to grab one. “You’re gonna—”

  “Ow!”

  “—get burned.”

  She passes the cookie, hot-potato-style, from one hand to the other, and then nibbles gingerly, pulling her lips back into a grimace. “Mmm. Worth it.” She eats the rest slowly, savoring every bite.

  He swallows, though his throat is bone dry.

  She yanks the fridge open and pulls out a gallon of milk. “You’re an ungrateful son of a bitch, Cyril, but as long as you’re sleeping on my couch and eating my food, I think you can probably manage to help me out for a couple hours.”

  Does she think he’s an idiot? “Five years on your own and suddenly the damsel needs my help? That’s some grade-A bullshit, Chica.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t need you. But setting up the scaffolding’ll take half the time if I have a second pair of hands.” She chugs directly from the carton. “We both know your idea of a workout is hauling your ass off the couch, Cyril. Seriously, all you gotta do is stand and hold.”

  He considers this. Fuck her, but the fact remains that he’s a guest in her house. “Fine.”

  Robin failed to mention that step one is dragging eight steel frames up the hill from the garage. Two trips down and back and this asshole is drenched. He pulls his shirt off over one shoulder, wads it into a ball, and uses it to sponge his armpits and other crevices. (If he were going to be self-conscious about showing skin in her presence, he’d have made better life choices.) “You said this wasn’t going to be a workout.”

  “Did I?” She’s sweating freely, but still fresh and filled with energy. She grins. “Because I don’t think I did.”

  “So. This is who you are now? A duplicitous bitch?”

  She shrugs. “You manipulate people to get what you want. Why shouldn’t I manipulate you?” She waves him toward the half-completed back porch. It covers a dip in the terrain, with steps on the left and a ramp on the right that extends to the sidewalk. The unfinished edge, looking out over the hill to the barn, drops off sharply. “Have a seat. I’ll—holy crap, what happened?”

  He follows her stricken expression downward, toward the left side of his lower back. “Oh. Right.” He can’t see what she sees, but he stretches a hand back to finger the puckered crater of a scar. “Not as bad as it looks—prison docs are not exactly known for their sewing skills.”

  Her hand hovers over the spot for a moment, not quite touching. “Have you actually seen it? Because it looks pre
tty bad.” She tugs her phone out, snaps a photo, and offers it up for inspection.

  He shades the screen with a hand. She’s right—it's a botched job, even by prison standards. “Well. The other guy looked worse.” Cyril had slammed the attacker’s head against a table, ending the fight with a couple of broken teeth. Nobody had touched him, after that.

  She laughs. “You couldn’t even keep your trap shut in prison. What did you say to make someone that mad?”

  He shrugs. “Fuck if I know.” Instead of taking a spot on the porch, he mounts the steps and lets himself into the kitchen. After drinking half a gallon direct from the tap, he fills two plastic tumblers with ice and water and slaps together a pair of sandwiches. When he steps back outside, Robin is just propping the last scaffolding frame against the house. She dusts her hands off on her jeans, then takes one of the tumblers and a turkey on rye. “Thanks.” She seats herself on the top step, all the way to the left, and pats the redwood plank on her right.

  He lowers his bulk to the second step down, though the top step digs into his back, so he’s not looming over her. The sun is on the other side of the house now, and there’s a bit of a breeze, so the shade at least is nice. “What’s the deal with the ramp?”

  “Oh—Greta’s husband. You remember—”

  “Do I remember the little prick whose company’s military contract I hacked to gain access to the data for which I went to prison? Yeah, I actually do kinda remember him.” Cyril had been the one to suggest Robin when the guy needed someone to renovate his condo. “He spends a lot of time at your place?”

  She laughs. “He’s actually never been here. But he cosigned my loan, so it seemed kind of rude to remodel the place without giving him access. Plus?” She tosses a thumb at the back door. “It makes moving appliances a cinch.” She takes a bite of her sandwich, and then uses the remainder to sketch a rough outline in the air. “My plan is to build a big deck out over the hill. Maybe sink a hot tub over there, trellis with some planters or something on that side to block the street. Dunno if I’ll get to it, though.”

  “Before what, you sell the place?”

  “Before I run out of money and have to go back to work, before the market picks up, before...” She sighs. “Well. Lots of things.” She polishes off the last crust of rye and takes a long drink of water before speaking again. “So.” She glances at him. “What’s your plan? In terms of, uh, moving out?”

  “Now that I’m a felon? I’m sure there’s at least one slumlord willing to look the other way in exchange for cash.” Finding a place isn’t what worries him—it's getting enough work to keep it. Living in the granny unit behind the house he’d inherited from his mother had allowed him to exist on what he made renting it out, plus whatever odd securities jobs piqued his interest, but the money left over from its sale, after legal bills, wasn’t even enough for a down payment on a port-a-potty, in California. For the first time in his life, he would need to actually hold down a steady job.

  “No, I mean, were you... Are you planning to head back down south?”

  He’d forgotten he’d only discussed sticking close with Seth. “I was thinking I might stay, uh, nearby.” He shrugs off her look of surprise. “An air-conditioned room with a computer is the same up here as it is in SoCal, and, you know, it would be nice to see the kids.” Like he has some sort of visitation rights. “Assuming that’s okay with you.”

  She puts her hand on his arm, and when she speaks, her voice is full. “I’d love that, Cyril.”

  He doesn’t want to look at her, but he does anyway, and in that split second glance he takes in the fullness of her lips, the wetness in her eyes. Why does she have to—God damn it.

  Abruptly, she shifts back into her own space, picking up the glass to take another long drink. Then she twists to look at the tray sitting behind them. “Did you not bring any cookies?” With a grunt of exasperation, she gets to her feet and clomps into the house.

  He lifts his elbows, letting his pits air-dry in the breeze.

  “Here.” She hands two chocolate chip cookies over his shoulder and drops back down onto the steps. “I’ll ask around. About housing, I mean.” She nods toward town. “The way zoning works here, something like every five acres of vineyard is permitted a barn or a farmhouse, so there’s a lot of little places sitting around gathering dust. George, from the donut shop? Oh—right, you didn’t come in.” She waves a hand in dismissal. “George hired me to shore up one of his barns, and when he took me out there, I opened up these big old just-about-falling-off doors, and there’s—I am not a-kidding you—a vintage nineteen fifty-seven Chevrolet Bel Aire sitting there like it just drove off the lot.”

  Her speech becomes less precise as she relates the anecdote, sinking comfortably back into the colloquial patterns inherited from her father. Her hands move with her lips, providing punctuation and emphasis. She is radiant.

  He could spoil this with sarcasm. Would have, in times past, lest she suspect he felt anything for her other than unadulterated disdain. Even now, he shuffles through half a dozen possible insults in his head—but this time, he chokes them down. Because he doesn’t have to keep up the pretense of hating her, anymore. All he has to do is keep his goddamn mouth shut, and he can just sit here and watch her glow.

  She shakes her head in remembered disbelief. “Fifty thousand miles, Cyril. I’m like, what the hell, George, and he says, oh, this old thing? I drove it around when I was in high school. Turns out whenever he gets a new car, he just parks the old one in a barn somewhere. There’s antiques and who knows what else just boxed away in attics and barns and spare rooms all over around here. It’s crazy. Anyway.” She slaps his knee. “I’ll see if someone’s got anything without rats.”

  “I can live with rats. What I really need is fiber optic cable.” Although, if his tenancy happens to be off the books, so much the better.

  “No promises. I’ll see what I can do.”

  The cookies are gone and his shirt seems not-completely-soaked, so he finds the neck hole and drops it back over his head. As he feels for the armholes, Robin reaches to pull the rumpled cotton down over his back.

  “I missed this,” she says.

  “What, helping a fat guy get dressed?”

  She rolls her eyes. “No.”

  “Homemade cookies?”

  “Warmer.”

  “My B.O.?”

  She snaps and points at him. “Yes! Definitely that.” She shakes her head. “You know. Just—having someone to talk to.”

  Five fucking years she could have visited, or called, or sent a letter, or—no. He has no right to blame her for that. Not really. “You have people,” he says. “Cooke’s wife, apparently, and this guy George—”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Do I?” He absolutely does not.

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you. My life was—is—complicated. Even more so now that everyone thinks they’ve seen the truth on the news. You get it, because you were there.”

  He had almost entirely forgotten about the public aspect of his arrest, or the effect that scrutiny might have on Robin’s life after the initial uproar. None of that mattered, in prison. “Maybe you forgot, but I was there because I’m the one who made that shit happen.”

  She shrugs.

  “Seriously?”

  “You saved a kid, Cyril. You want me to condemn you for that?”

  “Tavis. Saved a kid.” As if that one tiny pearl in the giant pile of pig shit could possibly redeem everything else. Jesus. “You’re nursing a serious case of Stockholm syndrome, Chica, you know that?”

  She leans back to look up at him for one long, cool moment. He has the sense that she is reevaluating him, somehow. “I wonder,” she says, finally. “Who do you lie to more? Me, or yourself?”

  The sound of the refrigerator opening is what wakes him, next morning. And then: “Well, bust my buttons, there’s food in here! You might not bankrupt me after all.”

  He manages a
grunt. Then he lifts a hand to rub his face. “Oh.” His biceps are on fire. “Oh, God.”

  Robin saunters into the living room, holding an eight-ounce cup of yogurt. She looks down at him as she spoons a bite into her mouth. “You fell asleep while I was putting Nora to bed last night.”

  And apparently hasn’t moved in the twelve hours since. He grabs the arm of the couch, and for one terrifying moment he can’t get up. But then he rocks forward, gritting his teeth, and staggers to his feet. Everything hurts. “ ‘Give me a hand,’ my ass.”

  She licks the spoon and uses it to tap his shoulder as he hobbles past. “You’ll live.”

  “Not sure I want to. God. I’m not getting the kids ready for school.”

  “Neither am I. It’s Saturday.”

  One long, hot shower later, he emerges to find the kids at the table, dousing pancakes in syrup. A Costco-sized box of Bisquick sits open on the counter.

  “Cyril!” Nora says, brightening. “I want Cyril pancakes!”

  Robin plops another fluffy golden disc onto her plate. “You will eat Mommy’s pancakes or no pancakes at all.” She tosses another plate onto the table and waves Cyril toward it. “I don’t know what makes yours so much better, anyway.”

  He can answer that one: “Butter. Lots and lots of butter.”

  After breakfast the kids claim their right to cartoons, so he shares the couch and they introduce him to The Dragon Prince. Robin clomps through in her boots, says, “I’m gonna work for a little while,” and a few minutes later he hears the table saw’s long, low whine.

  Two episodes in, the mail-person knocks. She’s gone, walking swiftly down the sidewalk, before the kids have time to scramble to the front door. Along with a handful of junk mail, there are two packages. The one addressed to Cyril contains his phone—his first taste of true freedom. With this small black brick, he can do whatever the hell he wants without worrying about how it’s going to affect Robin.