A Thousand Doors

by J. T. Ellison

  That voice.

  I peel open my eyes. A man kneels over me. He smiles and my heart stutters.

  “Garrett?”

  “Hello, darling.”

  “How?” I close my eyes, not believing, but when I look back up, he’s still there, still as handsome as ever. “Are you really here?”

  “I never left you.”

  My eyes burn with tears. I cry, deep, heaving sobs. “I missed you. I’ve missed you so much.” I want to touch him, but a monstrous weight sits on my arm. My body aches everywhere. I can’t move. I feel cold, so cold.

  “I’m sorry about the house,” I wail. “I never, ever should have asked you to buy me the house.”

  “Shush,” Garrett soothes. He cups my face, his fingers featherlight on my cheeks. Compassion warms his gaze, making his stormy gray eyes look like liquid silver. “You’re better than this, Mia. You deserve a better life.”

  No, I don’t.

  I cry, deep, gut-wracking sobs, and squeeze my eyes shut. “No, no, no.” I shake my head. But I can’t shake out the memory that intrudes.

  Before Garrett took on extra work in our attempt to save Heather, before our beautiful daughter was diagnosed with a disease that took her from me too soon, and before we bought the grand house I desperately desired and we couldn’t afford, I had wanted to audition for the role of Fantine in our regional theater’s production of Les Misérables. It wasn’t Broadway, or even off-Broadway. But it was a start, and I had dreams.

  I was nervous. I had doubts about my abilities.

  “I believe in you,” Garrett had told me when I shared my fears with him. “You need to believe in yourself. You’re the strongest, most talented woman I know, and I’m the lucky bastard who gets to have you as my wife. That theater troupe would be crazy not to cast you. You never cease to amaze me, Mia. You’ve achieved everything you put your heart and soul into. Auditioning won’t be any different. The role is yours for the taking. The world is yours. Go get it.”

  I did, and I landed the role, only to step down toward the end of the show’s run. Heather got sick, and I needed to care for her.

  Another sob escapes, bouncing off the sides of the brick buildings that towered above. I miss my little girl. I want to ask Garrett if he’s seen her, but he’s talking to me. It’s an order, demanding and insistent.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I do, and my vision sharpens. Across the street, a sign glows. St. Margaret’s Women’s Shelter. My fingernails scratch at the damp pavement under me. I stare, incredulous. I’d been walking toward the shelter all along.

  I glance quickly to ask Garrett if he guided me here, but he’s gone.

  “Garrett,” I whisper with despair.

  St. Margaret’s sign glows, beckoning me to get up, to come inside, to fulfill the promise I’d made Sal this morning.

  “I’d rather die,” I wail into the night. Heather’s waiting for me on the other side. Garrett’s there, too. “Just let me die.”

  But dying’s the easy way out.

  You’re better than this, Mia. You deserve a better life.

  “I’m such a disappointment, Garrett.”

  He wouldn’t have wanted this life for me. The old Mia never would have tolerated a life on the streets.

  What have I done?

  Get up.

  I deserve better than this.

  “Get up.”

  The words punch the air. But it’s not Garrett’s voice. It’s my own.

  “Get. Up!” I shout the order.

  Using my last ounce of strength, I rise to my feet and straighten my clothes the best I can. Wrapping my coat around my malnourished frame, I make my way across the street, the sign to the women’s shelter a beacon to a better life. The world is mine for the taking.

  I reach the entrance and, hearing a noise, I stop and listen. A phone rings, the sound shrill. It’s coming from inside the shelter. It rings again and again, piercing the air. It’s calling to me. Gripping the handle, I take a deep breath and open the door.

  The Spy

  Ariel Lawhon

  This conversation is being recorded. I know that, of course. I’ve been in Steve Cummings’ office more times than I can count over the last fifteen years. But if I am lucky—no, luck has nothing to do with this, it never has—if I am smart, this will be my final debriefing. There are microphones hidden throughout the small, carpeted office. Cameras tucked into corners and air-conditioning vents. A button, somewhere beneath the lip of Cummings’ desk, that, with a single tap, will begin the recording process. I don’t bother searching for any of this, however. It doesn’t matter. None of it can be disabled.

  Steve closes his laptop and looks at me with his small, mean eyes. They’re bloodshot and puffy. He needs to shave. I find this perversely satisfying. It’s been a long day for him, too.

  “Start again,” he says, “from the beginning.”

  “I’ve been over this four times already.”

  “Not with me.”

  That is, technically, the truth. Cummings oversaw my first statement, at 7:30 this morning, when I walked in and resigned. But the others were recorded by various agents in the fourteen hours since. I haven’t left the building. I haven’t eaten. I have simply been shuffled from one interrogation room to the next, giving the same statement over and over, waiting for my fellow operatives to direct the conversation back to its inevitable end: the Katawala incident.

  First Steve sent me to Wilson, a tiny little man-boy the Agency recruited from a jockey club in Liverpool two decades ago. Rumor has it he was once the personal jockey to the queen of England. My employers find that connection useful. He didn’t get anything out of me. Then came Paul—that was a low blow, we’ve been friends ever since I field-trained him eight years ago. Paul remained stoic and ruthless during the entire three hours. It was a bizarre form of gratification to realize my instincts have been right about him all along. He’s a stellar agent.

  I got a bathroom break before being subjected to Beulah Patterson, that wooly-haired mammoth of a woman they keep on hand for tough cases. Her interview was the hardest. If I let anything slip, it would have been during my time with Beulah. And I’m just paranoid enough to believe that’s why I’ve been sent back to Cummings’ office.

  “It isn’t difficult,” I say. “I want out.”

  “Why?”

  I settle deeper into the faded leather armchair across from Steve’s desk and meet his hostile gaze. He’s a pale man, bloated with self-importance. “Like I said this morning, I’m forty years old, my biological clock is ticking like a metronome, and this job isn’t conducive to having a kid.”

  He gives me that look, the one that says I’m full of shit and he doesn’t have a shovel. I think he might be ready to press that claim but then he changes tactics. Goes for the jugular. “Skip the preamble, Mia. Get right to Katawala. That’s why we’re here.”

  “I thought we were here to conduct my exit interview?”

  “I’ve met a lot of stupid women in my life, but you’re not one of them. Don’t start pretending now. We’re here because there remain a number of unanswered questions regarding the timing of your resignation and your meeting with Miles Katawala.”

  “Meaning…what…exactly?”

  “You two really hit it off on the plane.”

  I lean forward, elbows pressing into my knees. The fine linen weave of my slacks digs into my skin, and I focus on this, using the discomfort like a grounding rod, a way to channel my emotions. Steve Cummings is trying to provoke me, and I must give him a glimpse of the anger and exhaustion he expects. So I pull myself back into the chair and press the heels of my hands into my eyes in a show of fatigue, then drag my fingers down my cheeks. I groan.

  “That’s my job, Steve. That’s what you pay me to do. To hit it off with total strangers.”

 
; “I pay you to get information.”

  “Which I did. And I’ve given that statement about Katawala four times today. And once back in February. How many more times do you need it?”

  He lifts a pen from his desk, spins it in his fingers. “You want out of here, Mia? You want to go home to your empty apartment and eat dinner out of a box while you flip through that sperm donor catalog?”

  “Oh yeah, Steve. You know me. I’ve got the turkey baster all picked out.”

  He snorts, some bastard noise born of humor and contempt. “Tell me about Katawala. Again.”

  Every Steve I’ve ever known has been a dick. You’ve met one, you’ve met them all. A smorgasbord of douchecanoes. They are arrogant and inconsiderate. Dismissive. Ambitious. Pushy. Insulting. This one in particular is also a master of diversion and disdain, of making you feel stupid for answering the question he just asked. And he’s trying to get under my skin so I’ll slip up and contradict something I said earlier. The problem is, he knows what he’s looking for, and I don’t.

  So I ignore the heat in my face and the frantic ticking of my pulse. I squelch my rage and do the thing I’m trained to do. I begin the process of comprehensive recall. Giving a statement is as much physical as it is mental, so I get in position. Legs crossed at the knees. Eyes closed. Palms spread on the armrests. The pads of each finger pressed against the grain of the leather. Chin tipped toward the ceiling. I drop my voice half an octave and steady the tone into something soothing and melodic, the way you’d sound reading to a child. And then I tug at the memory, like pulling a loose thread on an old sweater. Only the sweater is attached to a moving object, and I hold the thread as it retreats. I watch the memory unspool and stretch taut before me. Then I follow the line.

  “I made contact with Miles Katawala as directed, on February fifth of this year, during Lufthansa trans-Atlantic flight 1194. Frankfurt to Chicago. It was an Airbus A380. Business class. Row Ten. Center seats E and F. German pilots. Swiss flight attendants. It was the red-eye, so the flight was only three quarters full.” I can see each of these details in my mind, like woolen strands, bright with color. I open my mouth to continue as I have each time I’ve given this statement, but Steve interrupts.

  His voice is impatient and grating. “Did you strike up a conversation with him immediately?”

  He knows the answer to this question already. I shake my head and keep my eyes closed, trying to focus on the thread. “Nothing more than pleasantries while we got settled and buckled in. Hello. Where are you from. What brings you to Frankfurt. Total shit weather they’re having, right. That sort of thing. It’s a long flight. People can be weird when they’re traveling. The jet lag does strange things. I take my time.”

  “Approximately how long before you began?”

  I swallow my sigh. His questions are purposefully distracting, a way to throw me off balance so he can detect any rehearsed lies or omissions. “Thirty thousand feet. Once the drink service began.”

  “And he was receptive to your conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think Miles Katawala was attracted to you?”

  I do open my eyes at this. “How would I know?”

  “It’s your job.”

  “No,” I snap—just enough to seem authentic but remain professional. “My job is to have very specific conversations with very specific people. Not read minds.”

  “Did he appear attracted to you?”

  “He appeared tired. And distracted, but he warmed up to the conversation soon enough. However, if you are asking whether he flirted with me or I with him, the answer is no. We were two strangers on a plane killing time during a long flight.”

  Cummings swats away my defensiveness. “Continue.”

  I wait for a moment to see if he will interrupt again, and then I close my eyes again and recite the entire conversation I had with Miles Katawala, from memory. How I took my glass from the flight attendant and, with a shrug, tipped it toward him and said, “Cheers.” From there we moved to introductions. He gave his real name, I did not. Anne Barrows, from Chicago, an ER trauma nurse, was my cover for that trip. We discussed our reasons for visiting Germany. Me: vacation. Him: work. Oh really, what do you do? Pharmaceutical sales. He went into the family business. His parents were both chemists specializing in research of infectious diseases, but he preferred sales to science so he put on a suit instead of a lab coat. His drug company had just been bought out by a European conglomerate. He was there to meet the new bosses but he wasn’t gonna lie, the German beer was a bonus. Ugh. Beer. Can’t stand the stuff, I’d said, I’m a wine and booze girl, myself. Then he gave me a mini-sermon on the virtues of the Deutschland breweries and made me promise that if I ever had the chance to taste a real, dark Augustiner Hell that I would. Sounds like hell, I’d said, and he’d laughed and we were off to the races from there. The conversation with Miles Katawala drifted in and out over the course of that ten-hour flight, stacked primarily at the beginning and end. He fell asleep for several hours in the middle—I did not.

  This is my job. Why I’m here—not only in Cummings’ office, but at the Agency in general. It’s simple, really. I have conversations with total strangers, and then I repeat them, verbatim, to my handlers. Usually Steve, but occasionally some other high-level manager angling for the director’s chair. I never use a recording device, and I always—without exception—deliver my reports in person. No land lines and never, under any circumstances, a cell phone. In the fifteen years that I’ve had this job, three of my colleagues have gone missing, and in every case, they gave their last statement over the phone. I’m not supposed to know this, of course. Then again, there are lots of things I’m not supposed to know. Like perfect recall, it’s another talent I’ve developed.

  I am a mnemonist. A human tape recorder. A chatty Kathy. The girl who talks you up in a bar, on the playground, in the TSA pre-check line, or in your dentist’s waiting room. I learn very specific things about your life: how you cheated on your taxes, the layout of your office, the details of your illicit affair, the employee you recruited from a shady Middle East country, your mother’s real maiden name—not the fake one listed on your passport application. I am able to learn this information because you want to give it. It’s a subconscious compulsion. The human psyche does not like secrets. They fester and boil inside of you until they can be extracted. Like a splinter or an ingrown hair, you’re only too happy to be rid of them. Sometimes I draw them out of you in a few random moments, and sometimes it takes a ten-hour trans-Atlantic flight. The flotsam and jetsam of your life, the very specific details I’ve been instructed to glean, are quite valuable to my employers. When we part ways, you will never see me again. Most of the time you won’t even remember me. I’m just that girl who stubbed her toe in the locker room and made you laugh with her creative expletives. You’ll only recall that I’m pretty, but not exceptionally so. Quite tall. Blue eyes. Unnaturally straight teeth. I aim to be pleasant but forgettable. Even that is purposeful. Men are distracted by beauty, and women are distrustful. There’s a balance in the middle that I strive for. I need you to talk but not realize that you have.

  It’s what I do with that information after we chat that makes my job a spectacular form of deceit. I deliver it to this very building, right to the greedy ears of Steve Cummings. And the file on you—the one you don’t even know exists—grows by a dozen pages, the information to be studied and brooded over until an opportune moment arises.

  Overall, it takes me just under two hours to relay my conversation with Miles Katawala to Steve Cummings. By the time I’m done, my voice is raspy and my mouth is dry. I pull in my cheeks, trying to draw moisture from the salivary glands that line my mouth. It’s a tell that will be noted by whoever is watching this video feed. There’s a water bottle on the end table beside my chair, but I don’t even give it a single longing glance. I did not bring it into the room, therefore
it is not safe.

  “I have questions,” Steve says.

  I am exhausted. My bones feel heavy. I need to pee, again, and I could murder someone for a greasy burger, a plate of fries, and a glass of red wine. “Okay.”

  “Start with his vitals.”

  “That’s not a question.”

  Oh, look at that. Now it’s Cummings’ turn to be angry. His upper lip twitches and his neck is splotchy. “What exactly did you learn about Katawala’s family history?” he asks, voice punctuated by irritation.

  “Miles Katawala.” I clear my throat and continue. “Forty-five years old. Of dual American and Indian descent. His father was from Mumbai and his mother from Omaha.”

  They will compare this tape to the ones recorded elsewhere today, so he has to be thorough. “Was?” he asks.

  “They are both deceased.” I pull the thread from the tidy folds of my mind—that unique hard drive built from natural memory and carefully honed artificial recollection. “Five months ago. House fire. They met at a Dartmouth frat party in 1973, a year after the college became co-ed—”

  “Cause?”

  I am careful to clarify. I will not give Steve Cummings one detail more than he’s asking for. “Of their meeting?”

  “Of the fire.”

  “Katawala said it was electrical.” His exact words were: Bastards that remodeled my parents’ kitchen hired some electrician—a fucking Irish Traveler—that was high as a kite. The whole damn house was a fire hazard after that. I watch Cummings for a moment, waiting to see if he has any more questions about the fire before I continue. “—he was born nine months later.”

  Steve loosens his tie and rolls his neck, tired. “Must have been some party.”

  I shrug, noncommittal, and wait.

  “Dev and Elizabeth Katawala were valuable assets. As a result, the Agency was set back ten years on our operation in West Africa.”

  Africa, not India. Interesting. I add this little fact to the mental file I have built on Steve Cummings. I blink at him in mock surprise. “His parents were assets?”