by John Altman
He looked at her for a moment more. Then he said: “Why not?”
“I have a few more rooms to clean.”
“All right.”
“I’ll be done in a half hour.”
“All right.”
“I’ll knock on your door.”
“All right,” he said.
Before going to his room, she returned to the apartment behind the office and took the pack of cigarettes from its hiding place. She checked herself in the mirror. Her color was high. Be cool, she thought. Be cool. Hold your chin up. Be … willowy.
Presently her color lowered; but the excited tingle remained.
She went and knocked on the man’s door, keeping her chin held high.
They walked together into the forest without speaking. It was late afternoon, approaching what in Hollywood was called the Magic Hour. The Magic Hour came twice a day—at dawn and at dusk. It was the time when the light turned golden, when starlets and heartthrobs looked their most attractive. Sonya had read all about it in her friend Paula’s magazines. Paula subscribed to Premiere and Entertainment Weekly and Teen People, and last year they had spent most of their afternoons together, sitting in Paula’s bedroom, poring over the magazines and talking about their favorite stars. That had been before Sonya had met Jimmy Batterberry, before she had discovered cigarettes and Stoli. Now she and Paula were no longer friends. Paula treated Sonya with brittle condescension, these days. But that was because Paula was jealous. She didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t have older men taking her into the woods at the Magic Hour to drink vodka and smoke cigarettes. All she had were her stupid movie magazines.
Fallen trees and old logs dotted the landscape; the creek wandered down from Devil’s Peak, smelling green. They moved for twenty minutes, until the sound of the distant highway was completely lost. Then they reached the small clearing Sonya had been seeking. She sat down on a flat rock by the creek. The man sat beside her, not touching her. She began to work at getting the vodka open.
“This is when they like to shoot movies,” she remarked. “Things look their best at this time of day.”
He said nothing. Sonya got the bottle open, then took a swig. She managed to refrain from coughing, and passed it over.
In the branches above them, a bird was singing. The creek babbled and gushed. The water was wonderfully clear, with rocks of all different colors forming a mosaic just beneath the surface. Sonya took out her cigarettes and lit one with a pink Bic. This time she did cough—but just a little.
“Last year?” she said. “I only drank beer. I never even tasted vodka until February. But it’s much better, I think. And it’s not so fattening, either.”
He gave a wan smile—which felt like a major victory, to Sonya—drank moderately, and handed the bottle back to her.
“Do you like it out here?” she asked.
“It’s very nice.”
“I come here to be alone. When I need to think. This is my special place. Is that stupid?”
He didn’t answer.
“You’re only the second person I brought out here,” she said, and then paused significantly.
A beat passed. “Who was the first?” he asked.
“My boyfriend. Kind of. Except he’s not really my boyfriend. I don’t like him very much, actually. He’s very jejune. Women mature faster than boys, you know. He’s a nice person, though.”
Her cigarette had gone out. She lit it again, shielding the flame from the wind with a cupped hand. “What’s your deal, anyway?” she asked around the filter.
“My what?”
“Why are you here? Don’t you have a job?”
He tossed a twig into the creek and watched as the water took it away. “I’m a researcher,” he said.
“What kind of researcher?”
“A geographical survey analyst. I’m surveying the land.”
“Why?”
“After I submit my report, they’ll come here with a telescopic ranging pole and a thread adapter—to make a Global Positioning System.”
“The things they have in cars, that tell you when to turn?”
He nodded. She drank more vodka and passed him the bottle. “I hate those things,” she said with a giggle.
He smiled again.
“That sounds like a boring job,” she said. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“When I get a job it’s going to be something … I don’t know. Something different.”
She dragged on the cigarette and then tossed it into the brook, where it followed in the path of the departed twig.
“Maybe a porn star,” she said, and looked directly at him.
His face was blank, impossible to read.
“My friend?” Sonya said. “She’s going to be a porn star. Not me—not really. Next year I’m going to college. But if I was going to do it, I know what my porn name would be. Ginger Bayard. Do you know your porn name?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Everybody has a porn name,” she told him. “You take the name of your childhood pet, and the name of the street you grew up on. Before we moved here, we lived on Bayard Street, in Philadelphia. And my dog was named Ginger. So I’m Ginger Bayard. Or I would be. If I was a porn star.”
“Huh.”
“Did you have a pet?”
He nodded. “A dog.”
“Named?”
“Ringo,” he said.
“And the street you grew up on?”
“Birch Street.”
“So: Ringo Birch.”
“Huh,” he said again.
She felt giddy. She moved an inch closer to him on the flat rock. “Ginger Bayard and Ringo Birch.”
He said nothing.
She tilted up her head, inviting him to kiss her. Drunk already, just a little, yes. Her breath drifted onto his cheek. Why wasn’t he kissing her? Why had he come out here, if he wasn’t going to kiss her?
Maybe he was just shy. She tilted her face away, letting her breath tickle his neck. If he was shy, then she should play hard to get. Cool and willowy, she thought.
For several minutes, neither spoke. The sun dropped lower; the shadows lengthened. A chill ran down Sonya’s arms, raising gooseflesh. She hugged herself, shivering, and took another sip from the bottle.
He stirred. “Are you cold?”
“A little.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. She huddled into him. His arm beneath the sleeve was unexpectedly hard. He had the musculature of a runner or a swimmer: slim and ropy. She offered him the bottle again, and he shook his head. She took another swig herself. Getting very tipsy now. She moved still closer to him. Somehow she felt cold and hot at the same time.
Then she kissed him—a brushing of the lips, lingering.
She leaned away, looking into his eyes.
He looked back at her coolly.
Sonya began to laugh.
At first it was only a nervous chuckle. Then it became a giggle; then a full-blown cackle. “Oh, my God,” she said around the cackle. “This is so weird.”
He smiled.
“This is crazy,” she said. She capped the bottle and set it down, uttering a strange snorting guffaw in the process. The snort only cracked her up more. “My … God,” she managed.
She drew hard breaths, controlling herself.
The laughter trickled off.
He was still looking at her.
She kissed him again.
This time it was a real kiss; her tongue poked boldly into his mouth, exploring. She straddled him on the flat rock. He did not kiss back actively, but nor did he push her away.
She nibbled on his ear. “Simon,” she breathed.
His hands were on her hips. She tugged at his earlobe with her teeth. “Simon,” she murmured again. “Why do you have a passport, if you’re a—what did you call it?”
“A geographical survey analyst.”
“But you’re not American?”
He didn’t answer.
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br /> “You’re lying,” she whispered, and then pushed him flat onto his back, pressing herself into his body.
She kissed him again. Now he was taking her head in a very particular way, with care. At last, he was going to kiss her back. It would be very different from kissing Jimmy Batterberry. This was an older man—a knowledgeable man. Some kind of mysterious foreigner, with something to hide. When he removed her bra, he wouldn’t fumble around for five minutes, trying to find the clasp. He would be more like Fonzie, from that stupid old show she saw on Nickelodeon. Just snapping his fingers.
She was laughing again.
It was that picture of him snapping his fingers, like Fonzie. She should control herself, she thought. She was going to ruin the moment, just when he had been on the verge of kissing her for real. But she couldn’t help herself. The vodka was buzzing through her head, adding to the intoxication of doing something really terribly, horribly, undeniably wrong. Before she knew what she was doing she said: “Ayyyyyy.”
Then cracked up again, sagging against him.
“Sorry,” she managed between giggles. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
His hands continued to explore the back of her head: finding the lean muscles in her neck, locating the base of her skull.
She returned her mouth to his.
But he wasn’t kissing back. She had ruined it. The moment had passed. And it was growing chilly, out here with the sun going down. Her arms were stippled with gooseflesh again. Suddenly she didn’t want to be here. Maybe that was why she had laughed, sabotaging the moment. Because some part of her saw this from the outside, and that part knew that what she was doing was wrong.
She began to pull away, but his hands on the back of her head were firm, holding her in place.
“Simon,” she said.
He moved her head again—tilting it to a slightly uncomfortable angle.
“I don’t know if … I don’t think I want to.”
In fact, she knew she didn’t want to. Again she tried to pull away. But he held tight, one hand on the base of her skull, the other moving to cup her face. He was going to kiss her now, whether she wanted it or not.
“Simon … please.”
“Relax,” he said.
She closed her eyes, and braced herself.
Finney sneezed explosively.
He couldn’t find a handkerchief. But Joseph Quinlan was holding out the napkin on which his drink had been resting. Finney took it, nodded his thanks, and blew his nose. He folded the napkin, pocketed it, then looked from one face to the other before continuing.
Behind the octagonal lenses of his glasses, Joseph Quinlan’s eyes were cool and neutral. Perhaps there was the slightest flicker of pity there—spring colds, that flicker might have said, they’re the worst. Or perhaps not. The man’s air of frigid distance was all but impenetrable.
Quinlan, Finney thought, had cultivated this air as a defense mechanism. Some part of him felt ashamed of what he did for a living—manipulating and interrogating prisoners, treating men like playthings—and he used chilly aloofness as a preemptive strike against criticism. Yet the frigid distance was not enough to salve his conscience. This was why, once again, there was a tinge of liquor on Quinlan’s breath, which Finney caught when he leaned in close. If he hadn’t been certain before, he was now: the transparent liquid in Quinlan’s glass was more than water.
By contrast, Thomas Warren’s eyes were hot. He was not pleased by the recommendations Finney was making for the direction of the interrogation. Warren wanted fast progress; after all, he was the one who needed to deliver results to the various agencies involved with the case. If it was up to him, Finney suspected, they already would have progressed to more “aggressive” methods of questioning—torment, or torture. The line between the two was kept purposely blurred. According to the Geneva Conventions, torture of a prisoner of war was illegal. But according to the laws of the United States, torment was allowable. In this particular euphemism, torment involved a withholding—of food, sleep, water, or medical attention—as compared to an active administration.
Finney sniffled, then continued.
“When dealing with the psychology of the interrogatee, the thing to keep in mind is that Zattout actually wants to cooperate with us. He wants this for two primary reasons. First, because cooperation results in rewards—being let out of his cell, allowed more amenities, and eventually allowed his freedom. Second, and just as important, he wants to gratify his captors. Seeking to please a perceived authority is only human nature. Put simply: He wants a gold star.”
Quinlan was nodding.
“Yet at the same time,” Finney said, “he’s been conditioned to believe certain values. To cooperate with us strikes him, deep down, as a betrayal of those values.”
“So our job,” Quinlan offered, “is to give him an out.”
“Precisely. We want to show him a way to cooperate that still lets him feel right about the choices he makes. As the interrogation progresses, we need to convince him that the values on which he’s been raised are misguided. This involves gaining the subject’s trust. The longer he remains in captivity, the more he naturally will come around to our way of thinking. In this sense, time works to our benefit. Even once the first phase of the interrogation is finished—once it seems that we’ve gotten everything he knows—the process should continue for at least six months. We must remain in a position to catch anything else that happens to shake loose.”
Zattout’s pretense of cooperation, he suggested, should be met with concrete rewards. Only then would the subject learn to expect further rewards following further cooperation. Offering the man a nightly glass of wine might be a good start, compensating Zattout for his assistance while loosening his tongue.…
Warren’s mouth was tugging into a frown. “Wine,” he repeated.
“He’s role adaptive—able to align himself with a new situation easily. We should take advantage of this natural tendency to conform by making his new situation as pleasant as possible. Furthermore, he’s an externalizer. As such he should become talkative with the consumption of alcohol.”
He proceeded to explain the Personality Assessment System, developed by Dr. John Gittinger in Norman, Oklahoma, during the 1940s. Tramps and vagrants on their way to California frequently had managed to get themselves admitted to Gittinger’s hospital during frigid winters. He had used the opportunity to run psychological tests on these “seasonal schizophrenics,” many of whom had worked as short-order cooks or dishwashers before the cold weather drove them to feign mental illness.
Soon Gittinger had seen trends emerging in his data. The short-order cooks demonstrated a talent for remembering numbers, the better to keep track of multiple orders behind the grill. But the dishwashers fared poorly with the digit-span subtest of the Wechsler IQ test. They were better suited to work that could be done alone in a corner, removed from hubbub and distractions.
These observations had become the foundation for the PAS. The short-order cooks were internalizers, Gittinger proposed, who could turn within themselves and block out commotion. The dishwashers were externalizers, too concerned with outside stimuli to manage the trick.
As the system developed, other personality distinctions revealed themselves. The block design subtest could be used to define a man as a regulated personality or a flexible one. The regulated person was able to learn tasks easily, but did not understand the task he had learned; he simply executed it. The flexible person was unable to learn a task without first comprehending the various ins and outs.
Observation proved that internalizers tended to withdraw after consuming alcohol; externalizers became more animated and garrulous. And so a man’s reaction to drink could be anticipated simply by a study of his performance on the digit-span subtest. The system worked both ways—one could observe a man’s behavior after a few drinks and then categorize him with the PAS, anticipating his ability or lack thereof to remember strings of digits.
Warren looked dubious. “You recommend rewarding the subject, Doctor. Yet you’ve made it clear that in your opinion he’s already withholding information—concerning his knowledge of sleeper cells, at the least.”
“Zattout isn’t stupid. He understands, in his conscious mind, that we are not his friends. So it’s hardly surprising that we see some evidence of withholding information. As I said, his entire life has reinforced certain values. Those values are not going to go out the window overnight. You might take some satisfaction, Mr. Warren, from the fact that he’s clearly not here as a double agent. If he wanted to provide us with disinformation, he would be considerably more generous with his lies.”
“But the fact remains—he is lying, at least by omission.”
“To press the issue now is to risk a confrontation. And that would put an end to the trust-gaining part of the cycle. We must show him a way to proceed, and then guide him along it.”
“Hypnosis?” Warren said.
“A man cannot be hypnotized against his will. We can increase his suggestibility, to help him attain a state of self-hypnosis. But we must keep in mind that we are allowing a natural desire—the desire to cooperate, to end the interrogation—to come to full fruition.”
“Why stop at wine?” Warren said. “Why not a fine cigar? Maybe a visit to a spa.”
“I don’t like him any more than you do,” Finney said tartly. “But do you want revenge, or results?”
“I’m not convinced we wouldn’t make faster progress using more aggressive methods.”
“When a man is subjected to pain, he’ll say anything to make the pain stop. What he says does not necessarily bear any relation to the truth.”
“And if we hit a dead end,” Warren said. “What then?”
Finney paused.
“Then,” he allowed, “we may indeed need to explore more aggressive methods.”
“Such as?”
“A worst-case scenario: he withholds completely. Our efforts to develop trust are dashed. Then we might try to access the contents of his mind without his cooperation. But there’s no guarantee of results.”
