Does Not Love

by James Tadd Adcox

  “What is her condition?”

  “That she doesn’t love me anymore.”

  Hugo looks at Robert with concern. Antonio stares at the woman in the short orange dress, who is once more bumping Robert with her hip.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I met her at a party in Ann Arbor,” drunken Robert tells Hugo and Antonio, as the Black Box slowly fills around them. “It was a mixer that one of my housemates was throwing, with the express purpose of giving humanities students an opportunity to hook up with law students. My housemates were horrible people. One of Viola’s friends dragged her to it because she thought it would be hilarious. I think that Viola’s friend might have been a slightly horrible person, too. The friend left early, but Viola stayed, talking to me. She had mistaken me, at first, for another humanities student, and asked how I’d ended up there. I wasn’t dressed like a lawyer, she said. How do lawyers dress, I asked. She gestured around the room. ‘Kind of like assholes?’ she said. I laughed.

  “I remember she was wearing these earrings, they looked a little like black pearls. They were trilobites, she said, fossils. ‘Actual fossils?’ I said. ‘Yeah,’ she said. It turns out actual fossils aren’t that rare, anybody can just go and buy them in a rocks shop. That floored me, that there are so many fossils in the world that somebody could just go and make earrings out of them.

  “I think that we met at the exact right time, for both of us. I had just finished sowing my oats. I’d never expected that I would do much sowing of oats, when I was younger — I viewed myself, even as a child, as steadier than that; the idea of ‘wild years’ always seemed like something other people experienced — but then in my mid-twenties, much to my surprise, I had them. A series of wild years. I couldn’t get on the bus or walk down the street in Ann Arbor without longing. I dated several women during this period who I did not love, and had no intention of loving. I once or twice went out to a bar and bought women drinks and flashed money around, much to my present embarrassment. And then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, my wild years left. I found myself, at the age of twenty-six, ready to settle down, with no one in mind to settle down with. And then I met Viola.

  “She had been through a string of terrible relationships herself, with men who were worthless. Some of these men, I think, were physically violent. She told me that for a long time, she had no particular intentions of settling down, ever. For example, for most of her life she’d assumed that she wouldn’t ever want kids. But she got burned by too many men.

  “Perhaps I was too ready to see myself as an endpoint. To see her life as leading inevitably to me. I would be steady, for her, and we would settle down and be happy. I took the Indiana Bar and we moved here, to Indianapolis, and we fit ourselves into a certain narrative. Except then it didn’t happen. She experienced miscarriage after miscarriage, with no explanation. And it was like we woke up from something. It was like we had been watching a movie, and all of a sudden the house lights had come up, and ushers had descended upon us, with terrible looks that asked what we thought we were doing, still in our seats.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Trey returns to the table with another round. “See that little black box in the corner over there? There’s a guy at the bar, says you can put your ear up to the earpiece connected to it and you’ll hear the last five seconds of your life.”

  “I have tried it once,” says Hugo, nodding.

  “And? Did you hear the last five seconds of your life?”

  Hugo shrugs. “Hard to know. It is very possible.”

  “I don’t know if I would want to hear that,” says Robert.

  “You’re a bunch of suckers,” Trey says. “It’s a joke. Of course it’s a joke.”

  “So are you going to try it out?” Robert asks.

  “I don’t need to try it out. It’s a joke.”

  Hugo and Antonio talk about different types of guitar. Trey seems lost in thought. After a moment, he says, “Look, I’ll prove it’s a joke,” and walks over to the black box and puts the earpiece to his ear. Several minutes later he comes back to the table, visibly shaken. “It was my own voice,” he says. “It was my own voice, just like it sounds in my head.”

  “What’d it say?” Robert asks. But Trey doesn’t want to talk about it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Hugo tells Robert and Trey about the leader of the guinea-piggers, Jeremy, who came from a good family but fell into guinea-pigging after some financial difficulties. “He lives on the outskirts of town,” Hugo says. “In a storage facility purchased many years ago by Obadiah Birch Pharmaceuticals, and used as temporary housing for long-term guinea-piggers.”

  “That facility was shut down years ago,” Trey says.

  “Guinea-piggers?” Robert asks.

  “Volunteer human test subjects,” Trey clarifies.

  “Every few years there is a raid,” Hugo says. “The men in riot gear show up to force the guinea-piggers out of the storage facility by court order, and they are taken to hospital psych wards, or simply dropped off on the outskirts of town. But soon they return. Many have no other place to go. Many are illegal residents, or have bad credit, or feel as though they have found a community among the guinea-piggers.”

  “What you’re talking about — if it existed — would be illegal,” Trey says; then, to Robert, “The facility was shut down years ago. It would be trespassing. The state of Indiana would be well within their rights to force these people to leave the area.”

  “A single bus line runs by the storage facility,” Hugo continues. “Other than that, the only vehicles that approach are the white vans of the researchers, who arrive with their lists and call out: Male, in good health, 18 to 24. Female, in good health, 35 to 40. Male, in good health, 33 to 45.”

  “In good health?” Antonio asks.

  “It’s a phase I study,” Trey says. “In a phase I study you’re testing the safety of a drug, rather than its efficacy. Phase I studies start with healthy volunteers. Phase II studies are the ones that target people who actually have the condition you’re trying to treat.”

  “You take the drug, and they see if it does anything terrible to you, and then they give you some money,” Hugo says.

  “An honorarium,” Trey explains. “By law, all participants in a phase I study have to be healthy volunteers. You don’t pay volunteers. But it is reasonable to recompense them for their time. If you didn’t recompense them for their time, you wouldn’t have any healthy volunteers for your phase I studies.”

  Hugo frowns. “Many of the guinea-piggers are not in good health. Many have not recovered from previous phase I studies.”

  “Then they shouldn’t be volunteering,” Trey says. “They shouldn’t be signing forms that specifically say that they are in good health.” Then, turning again to Robert, “I mean, are we supposed to assume that our volunteers are lying to us?”

  Robert looks down at his drink, concerned.

  “That’s assuming, for the sake of argument, that any of this is happening. This fairy tale.” Trey gestures at Hugo. “I mean, who is this guy? Some trombone player. Some asshole making a few bucks on the side from pharmaceutical trials.”

  “Hey,” Antonio says, starting to stand up.

  Hugo motions for him to sit down. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, then continues speaking, in the same calm, sad voice. “Jeremy, the leader of the guinea-piggers, is a good man. He is trying to organize the guinea-piggers, to have a voice in the conditions of their labor.”

  Trey snorts. “For God’s sake.”

  “But there are other, darker forces at work. Guinea-piggers who strive toward violent revolution, who want to take revenge not only on the pharmaceutical companies, but on the city itself. Rumors of a man in black goggles and a fake fur coat who carries two pistols, and stalks the night for researchers who have been sloppy in their phase I testing. Some say that he is exacting vengeance for the death of his son, or perhaps his wife; others, that he himself was killed as the result of a phase I study
gone wrong, and it is his spirit who is carrying out these murderous deeds… ”

  ~ ~ ~

  It’s four a.m. by the time Robert gets home. Viola is not in bed. He wakes up several hours later, still wearing his clothes from the night before, minus his suit jacket. He gets up and wanders the house, trying to find the jacket. All around him he hears voices, a messy, conflicting jangle. His head feels thick, part hungover, part still drunk. These voices, he thinks. Is this an unintended adverse effect? Eventually he realizes that the television is on. He turns it off. The radio is on. He turns that off, too. He goes from room to room, turning off televisions and radios. I don’t remember turning any of this on last night, he thinks. Perhaps Viola did it. Perhaps she came home at some point while I was sleeping and turned on every television and radio in the house. Why would she do that, he thinks. Could that be an unintended adverse effect, the need to be surrounded by voices? To be blanketed by them? He can see how, in a certain way, it would be comforting. He tries to think back to the unintended adverse effects that Trey listed for him. He cannot remember if “needing to be blanketed by voices,” or some corresponding scientific term, was on the list.

  He finds the suit jacket several days later, at the bottom of a pile of laundry. In the jacket pocket is a note from Hugo, with a phone number on it. Robert calls the number. “Robert,” Hugo says. “I am glad you decided to call. We think that you could be very useful to us.”

  ~ ~ ~

  At the library no one talks about the FBI agent anymore. He is still there, but no one seems willing to indicate that they so much as notice him. It is as though he has become a shared secret. Has he issued National Security Letters to other librarians, Viola wonders. Who else is he fucking?

  ~ ~ ~

  Viola stands outside waiting for the FBI agent in a floral-print sundress with a halter-style top that someone once told her was flattering on her, but then she gets cold and decides that he’s probably not actually going to come and goes inside and puts on a sweater. Five minutes later her cell phone buzzes. The FBI agent asks why she isn’t outside. Viola goes outside and gets into the FBI agent’s car.

  This is the sweater with the oil stain on it, Viola thinks. I always forget that about this sweater. I guess I keep hoping that it will come out in the wash, but it never does. It’s not noticeable, though, she thinks. Or I don’t think it is. Only a little darker than the rest of the sweater, but it’s a dark sweater to begin with. It’s weird how I don’t ever really notice my body or my clothes when I’m by myself. Like I can have dirt and crap all over my skirt and not notice until somebody else comes into the room. And then I can’t not notice. Viola sits with her hands under her legs, thinking about the oil stain on her sweater, telling herself that it’s not noticeable.

  The FBI agent asks how her day was. “It was fine,” she says. “A little boring. I caught a kid stealing some books in the Children’s Section but then he got away before me or Jeanette could catch him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “The kid? He looked like a kid.”

  “It could be important, what he looked like. Did he have little things on his head?”

  “Little things?”

  “Like horns.”

  “Why would he be wearing horns?”

  “It was just a question.”

  Sometimes Viola likes to think that because of the NSL nobody else can actually see the FBI agent when she’s with him. She imagines the drivers of cars they pass reacting in horror at seeing her riding in a car that drives itself. She imagines the other drivers so surprised that they crash into railings and trees and other cars behind the FBI agent’s car. Viola sits beside the FBI agent picturing constant car crashes in their wake.

  They stop at a storage facility on the far west side. The FBI agent pulls a cloth tote bag from the backseat and steps out of the car. “Stick close to me,” he tells her. She wants to mock him: stick close to me, serious, eyes slitted, but she doesn’t.

  Smoke rises from the storage facility. There are little bonfires all over the place. For a moment Viola imagines that the storage facility has been carpet-bombed, pictures planes flying low. Then she notices people tending the fires. The people tending the fires are staring at Viola and the FBI agent. “Don’t say anything,” the FBI agent says, putting on a pair of sunglasses. “Just walk. Act like you own the place. Keep in mind that they’re more scared of you than you are of them.” Viola wonders if the FBI agent is going to flash his gun at anybody.

  They walk into a storage unit near the periphery. A man looks up from a battery-powered, hand-held television set and smiles as they enter. “Good evening, Agent. Business or pleasure?”

  “Don’t be cute,” says the FBI agent.

  The man pushes away the carpet that had been under his feet, and then pulls open the trapdoor that had been under the carpet. Viola follows the FBI agent down a metal staircase. The room beneath is filled with bins of VHS tapes, each of them, so far as Viola can tell, labeled in the same manner as the tapes she found in the FBI agent’s suitcase. Men, some dressed in suits like the FBI agent’s, others in uniform, scour the bins, shuffling through the videos, examining each of the labels. This is the black market, Viola thinks. The guy who let us down here, he was probably a member of the mafia or some other criminal organization. I suppose they exist everywhere. They serve a useful function in society. All of the other men in here, they’re part of the official power structure, but they still need the mafia in order to pass these videos back and forth. Viola thinks about stealing one of the FBI agent’s videos when she goes back to the motel room in Danville, sometime when his back is turned, just out of curiosity. But does she really want to see a video of the girl some two-star general’s fucking? It’s not really her thing, she decides. Though she doesn’t have a problem with it, in the abstract. She thinks about the two-star general watching a video of her. She wonders if anyone in here has already seen a video of her. She tries to catch their eyes. Nothing.

  After a little while Viola follows the FBI agent back upstairs and out the trapdoor.

  “Tell me if you see anyone you recognize,” the FBI agent says, on the way back to the car.

  “Why would I recognize anyone?”

  “It was just a question.” They get back into the car and Viola gives the FBI agent a long look. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, and they drive off.

  ~ ~ ~

  Viola and the FBI agent have dinner at a sushi restaurant on the near west side. The FBI agent is saying goodbye to a friend of his, a white-haired but healthy older gentleman who is retiring from his post as judge. He had presided for more than a decade over one of the most prestigious of the secret courts.

  “Many people believe that today’s secret courts, the ones that deal with Terror, are the only secret courts there have ever been,” he says. “But there are other courts, much older, much more secret, that deal with, for example, matters of the heart.”

  “Like what?” Viola asks.

  “Well I can’t go into any detail, really,” the judge says.

  They order a round of plum wine. It’s stronger than Viola was expecting. They order another. Music is playing in the background, a cover of “Volare” using traditional Japanese instruments. The judge recognizes the band. He’s been interested in their work for some time, and he talks about it, a little.

  “I don’t really like music anymore,” Viola says. “All of the music I used to like has too many feelings attached to it.” She looks down at her nigiri and worries that that was a stupid thing to say. She worries that the white-haired judge will think she’s a sad sack. After a moment she says, to clarify, “Not necessarily bad feelings.” The judge nods at this, and Viola suddenly gets the idea that he’s very understanding about how people can be overwhelmed, listening to music they used to like. Perhaps he’s just very understanding in general. Viola looks at his hands. He has very sensitive, wise-looking hands. The FBI agent’s hands look sensitive, but th
ey don’t look wise. They look something like a little boy’s hands. The judge’s hands are broader, more masculine, with red knuckles and wiry silver hairs. They make her think of the protagonist’s friend in Crime and Punishment, who was big but very understanding of others; she can’t remember his name, just now.

  “What do you plan to do once you retire?” Viola says.

  “I am retiring to study the secret body of case law,” the judge says. “The secret courts operate on a hierarchy of secrecy,” he explains. “For most of my career, I thought that I was presiding over the most secret court. Each court believes that, that it’s the most secret. Which is absurd, of course. There’s always a more secret court. I know that now.”

  “Always?” Viola asks.

  “Theoretically.” Viola wonders how he could know this, if he was on a secret court himself. Is there some absolute position from which each of the secret courts might be viewed, and to which each of the secret courts would be relative? Viola asks the judge about his family.

  “They’re doing very well, thank you.”

  “Are you looking forward to spending more time with them?”

  The FBI agent and the judge talk about certain aspects of the secret body of case law. “A particularly interesting case is when a court at one level of secrecy learns of the existence of a court at a higher level of secrecy,” the judge says. “Such cases function, mathematically, you might say, to create a series of imaginary or ‘shadow’ courts. Say for instance that court d learns of the existence of court c, which until that point had been operating at a higher level of secrecy. The court that had been court d, then, is no longer court d, rather now it is some other court, operating at a higher level of secrecy than court c. Call it court b. So court b now knows about court c, and court c still knows about court d. But what does court c know if it knows court d? It knows about a court which no longer exists — a court which is like court b in every respect except for one (and that one is precisely the most crucial): court b is a level of secrecy above court c, court d is not. Court d is therefore a shadow court, cast by court b. Each of them operates at its own level of secrecy within the hierarchy, and though their actions, to an outside observer — say, court a—appear the same in all respects, the meanings of those actions are radically different.”