Children of Paranoia

by Trevor Shane

  “Okay, then, what are we going to see?”

  You turned again and looked up at the marquee. There were about ten movies playing at the theater. The light from the marquee shone down on us. You were glowing in the light. “You pick,” you said, spreading your arms out as wide as you could and motioning to the marquee as if to embrace the possibilities.

  “Why do I get to pick?”

  Without removing your gaze from the listing of movies, you replied, “Because I’ve already seen them all,” as if I had just asked the silliest question in the world.

  That night, after the movie, I walked you home. The night had grown cold and you walked with your hood pulled up around your face, just like the first two times that I saw you. It felt good, already having memories of you. It had only been three days and I knew that you would live in my mind forever. The cold didn’t bother you much. You teased me about my thin American blood. You talked about the movie, about the things that you saw that you hadn’t noticed the first time. You said you liked the movie more the second time. You nearly danced around me as we walked, moving in circles, light on your feet. I barely spoke, already dreading saying good-bye to you. When we finally got to the front of your apartment building, snow had begun to fall. You stepped inside the doorway and slipped your hands inside the back pockets of your jeans. You leaned back against the doorframe and smiled at me. I tried reading the signals. Then I leaned in to kiss you for the first time. We held the kiss for a moment, barely moving, and I lifted a hand and placed it against your cheek. The kiss was sweet and innocent but sensuous. It was an old Hollywood movie kiss. When our lips finally parted, I spoke. “By the way,” I said, “what’s your name?” Maria. You told me your phone number. Despite the fact that you claimed to be quite fond of the nickname “Perv,” I told you my name. Then we said good-bye, seemingly for the night, although I’m not sure that either of us wanted to let the night go yet. I know that I didn’t. I watched you until you were safely in your stairwell, moving my eyes away only after I couldn’t see you anymore. Then I started the lonely walk home.

  When I got back to the safe house, I climbed into bed and, as usual, couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t anxiety or guilt keeping me awake this time. It was loneliness. I missed you already. Only moments after seeing you disappear behind your apartment door, I missed you. After an agonizing hour or two, armed with your name and your phone number, I picked up the phone and dialed. You answered after only a ring and a half. You weren’t sleeping either.

  “Maria,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I knew it was you. I just wanted to say your name.

  “Joseph,” you replied, saying my whole name.

  “Come over,” I requested.

  “Now?” you asked.

  “Now.”

  “It’s too late.” You laughed.

  “It’s never too late,” I replied. There was optimism in my voice. I wasn’t used to that. I repeated the words just so that I could hear them again, just to make sure I had actually spoken them. “It’s never too late.”

  “We already said good night, Joe. I don’t want to ruin a perfect evening.” There was something in your voice—a blend of fear and excitement.

  “But it wasn’t perfect,” I replied.

  “It wasn’t?” You sounded disappointed.

  “No,” I said again.

  “Why not?” you asked.

  “Because I’m here and you’re there,” I answered.

  There was a pause on the line. I heard everything I needed to hear in that pause. “I’m afraid, Joe. This is going too fast.” I should have told you that I was afraid too. I was afraid that if it didn’t go fast enough, I’d lose my chance. Days would go by and I would be gone. I wanted at least this moment—at least this night. Good things can’t happen too fast where I come from. They can only happen too slowly, and if they happen too slowly, they are lost.

  “Well, if you don’t come over here, then I am coming back there.”

  “You can’t come here. I have a roommate.”

  “Then come here. Be with me. Don’t be afraid. Life’s too short to be afraid.”

  Another pause. “Okay,” you finally said. “Where are you?” I told you the address of my apartment. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  I dressed again. Then I sat on the sofa and waited. Despite the cold, I opened a window, hoping that I could hear you as you approached the building. Fifteen minutes went by. I spent those fifteen minutes watching the clock tick time away. Then the buzzer rang. I didn’t stop to ask who it was. It had to be you. I pressed the button to let you in. I stood by the door listening to the footsteps in the stairwell as you bounded up the stairs. You moved quickly until you were right outside the apartment door. Then there was that moment. It was that moment when anticipation and reality caught up to each other. It felt like a cosmic event. I could feel you on the other side of the door. You hesitated before knocking. I decided not to wait for you to knock. I wasn’t going to give you a moment to doubt yourself. I opened the door and there you were in front of me. You looked scared but excited, excited that you were ignoring your fears, and scared about how excited you were. I waited a moment. Then I grabbed you by the hood of your jacket and pulled you close to me. I kissed you hard on the lips. I still remember how you tasted. You tasted different than you had just hours before. There was a musky flavor on top of the sweetness that I had tasted before. It was the flavor of whiskey. You must have downed a shot before getting the courage up to venture out of your apartment. The flavor was enticing. We moved together as we kissed. You took the lead. Without our lips separating, you led me slowly into the bedroom. You kept your eyes open. We fell onto the bed, clutching each other. I reached down between your legs and pressed my hand into you. You gasped, slightly, quietly. Then you pushed me away from you for a moment.

  “It’s freezing in here,” you said to me. Until that moment, I hadn’t even noticed. I had forgotten to close the window.

  “Wait here,” I said. I looked down at you lying on the bed. Your lips were red and glistening. I could see your chest rise and fall with each hard breath. “Don’t move.” I ran into the living room to shut the open window. I was back in the bedroom in a moment. You had moved. I should have known better than to believe you’d wait passively. I returned to see that you’d already ventured under the covers. My eyes drifted to the small pile of your clothes sitting next to the bed. I stood in the doorway for a second, dumbstruck, watching the covers move on top of you as you slowly pulled off your final piece of clothing. With that, you dropped a tiny pair of pink underwear on top of the pile of discarded clothing.

  Then you smiled. The fear was gone. It had been murdered by excitement and whiskey. “So, you going to come under here and keep me warm or what?” I stepped to the side of the doorway and turned off the bedroom lights. Only the illumination from the window, a mix of soft blue light coming from the moon and the distant streetlights, was left. The soft light made everything glow. It was like a dream. I slowly slipped off my clothes as you watched me. Then I joined you under the covers.

  We woke up the next morning curled up in each others’ arms. I felt hungover, like I had just awoken from a long slumber, confused as to what had happened the night before. The sun was shining brightly in the window. Your hair was disheveled, your eyes sleepy, but you looked beautiful. I woke up before you. While you were asleep, I lay there, gazing down at you. I wasn’t sure what to make of what had happened. You opened your eyes and caught me staring at you. You smiled. I could feel my life changing. For a moment, I was torn. I knew that I couldn’t be good for you. I should have chased you from my life right then. It would have been the right thing to do. I should have protected you from me. Instead, looking at you in the bright morning sun, I began to believe that maybe you could save me. I just didn’t know what from.

  Give it the weekend, I thought.

  We each had things to do that day. You had a paper to write. I had a gun to purchase. I think we were bot
h relieved to be apart for a little while, to take stock of things, to try to understand what was happening, but we didn’t dare be apart for too long. We agreed to meet again for dinner, near the apartment. It was the first time that I had ever really felt at home in a safe house.

  After you left, I went out in search of a pay phone. I could have called from the landline at the safe house, but knowing that you’d be spending more time there, I decided not to take any more chances. I didn’t want anyone to be able to trace anything back to you. Finding a working pay phone was a major pain in the ass. I was on a short list of people whose job was made more difficult by the fact that everyone was getting cell phones. Eventually, I found a pay phone. I dialed. After a few rings a woman answered. “Global Solutions. How can I help you?”

  “Victor Erickson, please,” I replied and was transferred. Leonard Jones, Elizabeth Weissman, and I was finally patched through.

  The first words out of Brian’s mouth were “Shit, is he dead already?”

  “No. I need a gun,” I answered.

  “In Canada? You’re nuts. I thought you weren’t going to call me until he was dead.”

  “Shit happens. Can you help me out here?” I wasn’t in the mood for a long discussion. I just wanted to do what I had to do for the day so that I could be with you again.

  “You know that we don’t like to use guns, right?” This was standard policy. Guns were to be used on a need-only basis. Guns were traceable. Guns aroused suspicion. You strangle someone, knife someone, bash someone’s head in with a bat, and people get scared but no one thinks that there’s something bigger going on. Hate crime, crime of passion, no way there’s an organized war going on where people are killing each other with kitchen knives. Anyway, standard policy or not, for this mission, I needed a gun. I wished I could call Jared. He’d know where to get one, but I’d already cashed all those chips in. I was on my own.

  I told Brian what I thought of his policy. “Yeah, well, you want to explain the policy to my mark’s bodyguards, because I’m not sure they care. You know, I’d prefer not to die taking this guy out. So can you help me out or not?” In the past, I might have tried to pull this off without the gun. Death just seemed like an especially bad idea at the moment.

  “I can’t help, but if that’s what it’s going to take, I can point you toward some people that can. I’d prefer it if you didn’t die too. For some silly reason, I’ve grown fond of your bullshit.”

  “Yeah, that silly reason’s called pity. Who do I need to see?” Brian told me to hold on while he checked some things on his computer. I could hear him clicking away on his keyboard. Then he put me on hold while he made a couple phone calls. I had to drop a few more coins into the phone. Finally, he clicked back on and gave me an address not far from the safe house. I was to go in, ask for Sam, give Sam a password, and then get down to business.

  “Brian—” I started before the voice on the other end of the line cut me off.

  “Joe, it’s Matt. Remember. It has to be Matt.”

  “Sorry. Matt. I’m curious, is there anywhere where you guys don’t have connections?” I asked.

  “Go everywhere,” Brian responded. “You’ll find out.”

  “Thanks, Matt.” I tried to clear my mind so that I’d remember the code. Clearing my mind usually wasn’t this difficult.

  “You got it, Joe. Just don’t fuck this one up or it’ll be my ass. Carol Ann Hunter. Robert Mussman. Dennis Drazba.” Click.

  I went to the address that Brian had given me. It was a shop that sold sex toys down near Chinatown. Sex and guns. It was just like being in the States. I thought for a minute that this might be Brian’s idea of a joke. I walked into the store, through the aisles of dildos, novelty lingerie, and porn DVDs, and up to the counter. At noon on a Saturday, the store was empty except for a woman standing behind the counter. I walked up.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, sounding nothing like the receptionists at Intelligence. Even though she was young, her voice had the raspiness of a longtime smoker. She wore leather pants and a sleeveless, army-green top. She had tattoos running up and down both of her arms, angels and devils in some sort of battle. The devils seemed to be winning on her right arm but the angels had the upper hand on her left.

  “I’m here to see Sam,” I replied, hoping that this girl was in the loop.

  “I’m Sam,” she answered. I gave her the password and she told me that she’d been waiting for me. She walked to the front of the shop and locked the door. She flipped the sign on the door to Closed. Then she walked past me again and motioned for me to follow her. We walked up a flight of stairs. We passed a bunch of video booths where you could plunk in a couple of bucks and watch five minutes of porn.

  “Wouldn’t want to be the guy who has to clean these floors,” I joked. Sam glared at me. It dawned on me that she might be the guy who had to clean the floors. Past the video booths was a door labeled Staff Only. We pushed through the door into the stockroom. The stockroom was nearly as big as the floor. It was immediately obvious that they weren’t just selling sex toys.

  “So, what is it you need?” Sam asked.

  “What do you got?” I replied playfully, hardly able to control my good mood. I felt giddy.

  Sam wasn’t amused. “What do you need?” she repeated.

  I finally got the point that this was not time for fun and games. “A handgun. Preferably something powerful but quiet. At least eight rounds before I have to reload.”

  “Okay.” Sam walked over to a shelf about three rows from us, climbed a few steps up a ladder, and opened a big cardboard box. She lifted a few boxes of lubricants out of the box and set them aside. Then she reached deeper into the box for something that was buried beneath the other products and pulled out a small black handgun. “This should do the trick.” She handed me the pistol. “Lightweight. Can carry a silencer. Can kill a horse. You’ll get twenty-five shots before you need another cartridge, and with a little practice, you can reload a cartridge in about a second and a half.” For the first time since I had entered the store, Sam seemed to be enjoying herself. I took the gun in my hand. I held it out in front of me, aiming it. It would do.

  Once the sale was completed, I put everything—the gun, the silencer, and three cartridges—in my backpack. Three cartridges, but if I needed more than three shots, then something went drastically wrong. After we got back downstairs, Sam unlocked the front door and reopened the store to other customers. I walked toward the door but stopped before I was halfway there. Sam was on her way back to the counter. I turned toward her. There was a question that had been burning in my brain since I first laid eyes on her. “Sam?” She looked up at me. “I was just wondering. Are you in this for the cash or are you one of us?” It wasn’t a question that you were ever supposed to ask. I didn’t care. I couldn’t help myself.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam answered, her voice even, her eyes emotionless. She walked back behind the counter. I turned again and headed toward the door. Before I could open it, Sam spoke again. This time her voice wavered slightly. I turned and looked at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated, “but I’m rooting for you.” Before I walked out the door, I took one last look at the tattoos on her arms. Angels and devils. I wondered which side I was on.

  That night we had dinner, our first meal together. You plowed through your food. There was no pretense, no self-consciousness. We shared a bottle of wine. Then we went back to the safe house. We made love on the sofa, not patient enough to make it to the bedroom.

  “So, if you’re not a student here, what is it that you do?” you asked, propping your head up sideways on your hand, your elbow resting on my chest.

  “I can’t tell you. I wish I could,” I answered. I didn’t want to lie to you.

  “Is that because you have a wife?” You tried to pretend that you were kidding. I could tell that you weren’t.

  “No. No wife.” You were already the longest re
lationship I’d ever had. Before this, everything had been a series of one-night stands.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “Do you count?” You laughed. “Listen, Maria. Now that there’s you, I have two women in my life—you and my mother.”

  You paused to consider my comment, still trying to figure out my secret. I knew that my secret was safe, too unbelievable, to be guessed. “So, are you sleeping with your mother?” As you laughed I pulled your face toward mine, catching your head in my hands and kissing you again. I knew then that I would never be tired of kissing you. I wanted to stop you from asking any more questions that I couldn’t answer. I was hoping the kiss would be answer enough. It wasn’t.

  You began an inventory. “So, no girlfriend. No wife. Do you work for the government?” I shook my head. “Then what do you have to hide? Just tell me what you do. I want to know you.” You kicked me under the covers.

  “I can tell you,” I finally answered, “but I’d have to lie. Do you want me to lie to you?”

  You thought about it for a minute, seriously thought about it. Then you looked me in the eyes. “No. I don’t want you to lie to me. I don’t ever want you to lie to me.” Then you kissed me. I could feel the kiss in my toes. The questions stopped for the time being. I knew that one day I would have to answer them. I thought that on that day, you would be able to choose whether or not you wanted to stay with me. I guess sometimes life makes decisions for you.

  The next morning, Sunday, you snuck me into one of the school libraries. You had some research to do. I took the opportunity to use one of the library computers to do research too. I looked up security cameras and took note of everything that I could find—coverage angles, heat sensors, everything. We spent Sunday afternoon in the park. I tried to steer us as far from my mark’s house as I could. I tried not to think about tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. We walked through the park to the top of Mount Royal. We stood there and looked down on the city, our city. Standing there, that day, Montreal was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. You stayed over again that night.