Skinner

by Huston, Charlie

  He kicks it against the door again. And again no one looks up.

  His mother kneels next to the bright orange Envirofit cookstove. Envy of the neighbors. A bed of wood-chip coals glowing in the base of the small cylinder; on the cooktop, a kettle coming to the boil. Tea soon. She arranges cups on a brass-colored tin tray.

  Another kick. Thump of the ball against hardwood.

  Only two eyes turn his way. The baby, Tajma, nestled in another of his mother’s retired saris, at the foot of the cot that mother, father, and baby all share. Too big now to have a place on the cot, Raj has a mat and blanket. No problem, he says. A mat and a blanket, more than so many boys his age.

  The baby’s eyes are on the ball. Raj kicks it once more, her eyes dart to follow it, her mouth opening in surprise when it bounces sharply off the door.

  It goes this way, and then that way!

  She waits for more.

  Raj kicks again, a little more force, a little backspin, a slightly different angle; the ball skips to a stop just against the door frame, half its circumference exposed to the sun.

  Taji’s eyes widen, her mouth an O.

  Outside the door, dirt packed hard against the hump of an enormous water main running half-buried down the middle of the narrow lane between the shanties and their patchwork walls of cinderblock, corrugated steel, scrap wood, waddling, tin, and cardboard. At the far end, a scrum of filthy boys passing in and out of sight where the street opens onto a small square in front of the great shed that serves as shared factory space for the many industries of Dharavi Nagar, in the heart of Dharavi slum.

  Raj’s gaze travels from the boys to the ball at his feet. With his toe he scuffs the dust just inside the door on his mother’s otherwise spotless floor. Fighting the dirt and mud, an endless task, like keeping her family fed. He brings his foot back; a light kick, an accident, will send the ball outside. What choice but to follow? And once outside. Well, he will deal later with the consequences of not returning immediately. When he returns, hero to the boys. Bringer of the ball.

  “Rajiv.”

  He jerks his head around at the sound of his father’s voice, his bare toe stubbing against the tile.

  “Close the door.”

  He hops, lifting his throbbing foot from the ground.

  His father snaps his fingers.

  “Now, now.”

  On one foot, Raj bends, picks up his ball, the sun falling full on his face as he does so, the screams of the boys in the square coming to his ears clearly.

  “Inside, Rajiv.”

  His mother, hooking the collar of his overwashed Transformers t-shirt, pulling him inside as she swings the door closed and seats the latch.

  “Sit with your sister.”

  Raj, looking at the door, ball tight to his stomach.

  His mother yanks his collar again.

  “Later, later. Sit, sit.”

  Raj backs away from the door, limping slightly on his bruised toe. Eight steps to cross the room, this tiny journey an epic today because of all the guests he must edge around and squeeze between, his path taking him past the little table and its mismatch of chairs filled with the most senior and honored of their visitors.

  His father grabs his arm.

  “Come see.”

  Raj’s mother, the rattling tray of tiny cups in her hands.

  “Aasif.”

  His father looks at her.

  “I want him to see.”

  “Let him play with Taj.”

  His father still with a grip on the boy’s arm.

  “He should see. Why else if not for him? He should see.”

  She sets the tray suddenly on the table, one of the men pulling the laptop out of the way.

  “Yes, yes. For him.”

  Without serving, she takes three steps to the cot and scoops up Taj.

  “And also for her.”

  Aasif raises a hand.

  “For her also, yes, Damini. Bring her here.”

  One of the men at the table is staring at Raj. The one who brought him the ball. He also brought a stuffed tiger for Taj, almost as big as her. And a bag of aavakaaya for his mother. Pickled mangoes from his home to the east in Gadchiroli district, now heaped in a bowl on the tea tray. Small, dark, hair cropped close; hands calloused thick and smooth, compact muscles suggesting years swinging a hammer or an axe, but a potbelly at his middle. A voice, Hindi accented by the forests. They call him Naxalite sometimes, but Raj knows that his real name is Sudhir.

  “Like the ball, little Raj, for you.”

  He holds up his hands, ready to catch. Raj tosses the ball and it smacks into the easterner’s hard hands. He spins it between his fingers.

  “Someone will tell you that it’s not real. They’ll say, There’s no hologram, Rajiv. How can it be real if there’s no hologram. As if the only way we know a real thing is if it has a sticker. A hologram that says FIFA. But don’t believe them. The ball is real. It was made by real hands. Feel.”

  He throws the ball, shoving it two-handed so that it sends the boy back a step when he catches it.

  “Real?”

  Raj nods.

  The man reaches for the teapot, using a small square of clean rag to pick it up by its wire handle so as not to be burned by the heat conducted by the cheap tin. He begins to pour, filling the cups one by one, setting the pot aside, adding the milk and sugar he also brought, making thick chai, passing the cups to the others at the table, Raj’s mother first. There are some mutters from the old men of the nagar panchayat, the informal local council and arbiters of disputes: Should they not be served first, and by the hostess rather than this jungle communist? But Sudhir seems not to notice, pouring tea as if he were a wallah in an office, passing the cups to the women of the Social Ills Assistance Foundation, the representative of the Dharavi Business Is Booming Board, the boss of the electricity goons whom Raj’s father has known for many years, a Bombay Municipal Corporation man who has something to do with water treatment, the heads of the potters’ and tanners’ guilds, and also men speaking for the welders and recyclers, a smalltime boss from the gangwar, a woman from a Muslim microbank that loans tiny sums to women of all religions to start small businesses, and a young policeman. These, and several other dignitaries and lowlifes of the slum, are packed into Raj’s home, being served tea by this outsider, Naxalite. Not here are any of the water goons or men from the Shiv Sena or the Congress party. The water goons have threatened the entire proceeding and pledged their noncooperation unless they are paid an ungodly sum. The Sena were approached, but communications broke down. And the local Congress man seems most content to pretend nothing is happening.

  Raj has seen all of them here at one time or another, but never all at once. Things are happening, exciting things, but still he only wants to go play with his new ball.

  Sudhir passes the last of the cups, many of them borrowed from neighbors to accommodate such a large gathering.

  “People will tell you, Raj, your whole life, what is real and what is not. What you can believe in and what you can’t. Don’t let them say, This is something you don’t think it is. You don’t understand, you couldn’t understand. It is what you think it is, you do understand it. Believe me.”

  He smiles.

  “Or don’t believe me. You decide.”

  He sips his chai.

  “Rajiv.”

  A whisper.

  “Rajiv, if I tell you that your father is a very rich man, do you believe me?”

  Raj looks at his father, the educated outcast of Dharavi. Madman of the wires. His quest to bring the wire to every home of the nagar, safely engineered. His family lacks for nothing that can be had in the slum, but rich?

  He shakes his head.

  The man puts a hand on Raj’s father’s shoulder.

  “But he is. He’s rich. He owns a castle, Rajiv, in this wealthy land.”

  He gestures with his other arm, taking in the hut and its contents, drawing some laughter and some discontent from
the gathering. This is serious business they are here for, not games.

  Aasif touches Sudhir’s hand with his own, brushing it off his shoulder.

  “Don’t confuse him.”

  The man stares at Raj, brown eyes, jungle green in their depths.

  “I’m not teasing him. I’m telling him the future.”

  Raj’s father looks into his teacup.

  “It is his future. If there are riches, they are not mine. Here.”

  His fingers dip into the breast pocket of his loose orange short-sleeved collared shirt, coming out holding a Nokia 1100. Indestructible brick phone of the slums. He looks at the screen of his laptop, his thumb working the phone’s rubberized buttons. He studies the tiny LED screen, his lips moving as he reads something, reads it over again, and once more.

  “Yes. Correct.”

  He weighs the phone on his palm, looks around the room.

  “This. And then after. I don’t know.”

  Some of them nod, some don’t move.

  Raj’s father looks at his wife and his baby girl, then at his son.

  “Rajiv.”

  He offers the phone.

  “Take it.”

  Raj tucks his ball under one arm, scooping the Nokia from his father’s hand. He looks at the screen. A string of letters, numbers, and symbols. He tries to let it translate itself into something intelligible. Some lengthy equivalent to lol or ;(. Sees only randomness.

  He looks from the screen to the others in the room. More than one set of lips is moving in silent prayer to one of many gods. He looks at the one they call Naxalite, sees the forest in his eyes. Trees, tall and green, creaking in a breeze, footsteps muffled by layered mulch and deadfall, single-file, booted feet. Guns.

  He looks at his mother and sister, his father. The family it will be his job to provide for one day when he is older.

  His father touches his shoulder, light press, then gone.

  “Send it, Rajiv.”

  Raj rests his thumb on the large select button marked with a short green horizontal line. On the screen, SEND, highlighted. Waiting for the button. He presses down, satisfying firm click of sturdy technology, slight give of the button’s thin rubber cover. The message on the screen blinks; a little bar, empty of color, appears, quickly filling, liquid crystal gray.

  MESSAGE SENT

  There are many exhalations in the room, more prayers, a few laughs, someone is crying.

  His father takes the phone and drops it back in his pocket.

  Sudhir rubs his palms together, wood on wood.

  “They will say it is not the future, Rajiv. But do not believe them. It is the future. You have touched it with your own hands. You have made it.”

  Aasif places a hand on his son’s head, pushes him gently.

  “Go play with your ball.”

  Raj turns, five steps to the door, snagged by his mother’s finger, held as she bends and kisses his cheek.

  “Play, Rajiv.”

  She unlatches the door, sending him sprinting into the light, ball held tight to his chest, bare feet slapping the curve of the water main, hot metal. The boys, seeing him from the square, the ball, starting to scream his name. He runs to glory, raising the ball high, as if it is the future the man they call Naxalite has said is his.

  patriots

  THEY KNOW WHEN they are being lied to.

  Terrence reminds himself. They are very smart. They know when they are being lied to. They’ve been trained for it.

  And he begins to lie.

  “I’m a little lost. You asked me here for what?”

  Cross allows a sigh to escape from his nostrils. The spycraft equivalent of a spit take. But he refrains from any further comment regarding Terrence’s transparency. He’s sitting behind a mirror-finish black desk comprised of four legs of slightly more then pencil thickness and a slab top with the profile and thinness of an iPad. No drawers, a few papers, a pen set made of the same graphite carbon material as the desk; mouse, monitor, and keyboard, no visible wires, not even a power cord. A desk meant to project the same ideas about its owner that a massive chunk of oak would have communicated in decades past.

  Leaning back slightly into the black webbing of an elaborately counterweighted and cantilevered task chair, Cross looks at Haven where he sits on a long, low black leather and chrome couch against the far wall.

  “He wants to know why he was asked here.”

  Haven tugs at the armpit of a jacket that Terrence recognizes as having been tailored to conceal a shoulder holster.

  “Old times?”

  Cross looks from Haven and back at Terrence.

  “No, not for old times’ sake. Haven is trying to be funny.”

  Terrence studies the sharp hairline that delineates the southern border of Haven’s crewcut. Hair freshly clipped, the back of his neck pale. Where was Haven recently that he was wearing his hair to the collar? Where has his forehead and nose burned so deeply red-brown? Where has the skin around his eyes been raccooned so white by the constant wear of huge sunglasses? His cheeks and chin left as pale as his neck by the thick beard he’d been sporting until a recent return. So many deserts he could have been in. Shaggy, bearded, Gargoyles over his eyes. Terrence has been in those deserts himself. Khakis, a blue oxford button-down, Altama desert boots, and a sweat-stained USS Ronald Reagan ball cap, his Ivy League version of the local paramilitary mode. Clearly articulating that he would not be marshaling for an extraction in Nuristan. Judging by the deep, horizonless focus in Haven’s eyes, his mind is still in the desert, while his body is here, back home, wearing a suit cut for a gun, but not wearing a gun, adapting to management, brigade tattoos hidden by navy blue wool blend.

  It is unlikely that he is trying to be funny. In Terrence’s experience, Haven’s sense of humor is limited.

  “So what you want is?”

  Cross nods as if in agreement with a concept with which he is somewhat familiar.

  “We’re interested in exploring an avenue, Terrence.”

  Haven looks at the ceiling.

  “An avenue.”

  Terrence touches the plastic sheathed visitor’s pass clipped to the breast pocket of his houndstooth check. He’d been given it in the three-story atrium where all guests are received and cleared for entry on the Kestrel Dynamics campus. That atrium had been designed both to impress and to serve as a killbox for snipers who would ring the third-floor balcony rails should hostiles ever penetrate so far along the Dulles Corridor. Be they terrorists or budget allocators threatening cuts to the dozens of Homeland Security contractors lining the strip that runs from Loudoun to Fairfax counties.

  Until seven years ago Terrence hadn’t needed a visitor’s pass. He’d had an office here. This office, in fact. But times change. Witness them here, together, now. An unlikely reunion.

  “An avenue toward?”

  Cross looks at a chronometer display mounted above the door. Analogue, vintage, salvaged from Cheyenne Mountain Directorate during a NORAD renovation. Back when Terrence had the reserved parking spot closest to the front door, he had bought it for Cross from an online auction house specializing in cold war military memorabilia. Current times in the hot spots of the nuclear age. A birthday present for his protégé.

  Cross’s eyes are on the clock on the far right, a small black plaque: Moscow.

  “How far is Russia from Ukraine? Time zones, I mean, how many time zones?”

  Haven looks at one of the five narrow slits of armored glass along the wall behind Cross; the Kestrel campus outside is warped by their thickness.

  “Time zones.”

  Terrence points at the clock.

  “Kiev is an hour behind Moscow. GMT plus two.”

  Haven’s lips are compressed, the rest of his face impassive.

  “Kiev. Tea. They drink tea in Kiev, right? Glasses of tea. Hacker tea time in Kiev.”

  “Probably they drink Starbucks.”

  Cross fingers a small cube of clear Lucite that is perched on hi
s desk. Encased within, a coil of wire and a battery, the detonator from an IED that a Kestrel contractor disarmed in Anbar Province.

  “If they’re state actors, they get Modafinil. B-12 injections.”

  Haven relaxes his lips, amused.

  “State actors. Ukraine state actors.”

  Terrence draws a squiggle in the air with his index finger.

  “An incident? Ukraine origin? Is that verifiable?”

  Cross stares deep into the cube, as if willing it to blow something up.

  “Alarmingly so.”

  They will know if you lie.

  “And you need an avenue.”

  Cross rotates the cube a few degrees, setting off rainbows instead of a bomb.

  “Need. Well.”

  Terrence nods, touches one of the buttons of his jacket, the garment a remnant of the days when being in the CIA meant affecting the style of an Ivy League dean. Days before his own. Romanticized.

  Stupid. Foolish. Romantic. Killer. Are you going to do this or not? They will know. Do they already know?

  “A cyber attack. Out of Ukraine.”

  Cross drops the cube, letting it bounce and tumble across his desk before settling, a gambler’s fixed die coming to rest.

  “Bravo. How do you ever put together such apt analysis from unconnected scraps like time zones and Haven talking about hackers?”

  Terrence takes a pen from the inside breast pocket of his jacket, a notebook. Terrence the note taker. And the burner. A joke at both the CIA and at Kestrel, Terrence’s incessant note taking and burning of his own notes. He never met a piece of paper he wouldn’t just as soon fill up with Top Secret notions and then burn. For the sake of security.

  What have I forgotten? Are you doing this? They will know. They already know. They must know.

  “Details?”