No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

by James Smythe

  ‘Please don’t freak out,’ Lane says.

  ‘At what?’ Deanna leans back and he sees Alyx as he enters the room. Her face is lost and confused and sad, bleary-eyed, tears streaming down her face. He sees her, with her hair so short, and she looks so much like her dead brother. She is a reminder. He rushes into the room and stands over her, and touches Alyx’s head. He puts his hand to it, gently, to turn it and see the damage, and he looks at Lane as he feels the thin, soft stubble.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asks. His voice is quiet, though not calm. It quivers. He feels the vibrations of his anger, through his chest and arms. He sees his hand shaking. ‘What did you do, Lane?’ he screams, sudden and vicious. He spits with each word, and Lane falls to her sister’s bed in shock.

  ‘Laurence,’ Deanna says, trying to calm him. She lets go of Alyx and stands up, moving to the end of the bed, almost blocking her daughters from him. He’s usually a calm man: his angry moments are quiet and tempered, and always borne of frustration, not fury. He clenches his fists, his arms at his sides.

  ‘What did you do?’ he roars. He turns away from them, trying to control his breathing, to calm himself down. He sees himself, standing there on one side of the room, Deanna and Lane and Alyx on the other, terrified of his rage. This is not the same as the video, he knows – a coincidence, nothing more, because they are not as scared of him now as they are in that, not even close; and he is not blank, but incandescent with rage – but otherwise this is the same: the layout of them, the three of them separated from him as he stands alone. He feels his throat close and his eyes well up; he cannot breathe. He puts his hand out, to find the doorframe so that he can steady himself.

  ‘I know it’s bad,’ Deanna says, ‘but we can fix it, I’m sure.’ She steps towards him and touches Alyx’s head with one hand, reaches out the other to touch him, to calm him down. He flinches away from her. ‘It’ll be okay, Laurence.’

  He doesn’t say it, because he can’t; but he thinks that nothing will ever be okay again.

  7

  He lies on the bed and sobs. Deanna asks him what’s wrong but he won’t tell her. He brushes her off, and she touches him, and he acts as if her fingers are burning him. Her touch: it’s a reminder of something else, somehow.

  Eventually he stands up and he goes to the girls and wakes them and holds them. He tells them that he loves them and he says that he’s sorry. He doesn’t know what made him do it, he says. Afterwards he doesn’t go back to bed. He looks at his laptop in the kitchen and he hides the screen every time Deanna walks near him. She makes him a drink – decaf coffee with whisky in it, a ratio of one shot to three, designed to calm him right down while he thinks he’s being kept awake – and as he drinks it he paces. He doesn’t talk. Instead, he bites at his nails. They’re meant to be manicured for the sake of handshakes and signings and television close-ups, but they’ve been destroyed by stress. He hasn’t bitten his nails in years and he has started at the flesh around them as well. Deanna sees how red they are, where a couple have started to bleed.

  At one point he stands at the window and looks out onto their garden. She sees his reflection in the dark of the glass, and his eyes are closed. She wonders what he’s thinking.

  ‘So where is he?’ the Texan asks. Amit has a breakdown of this man’s actual worth, right down to the cent. He knows the boards that he sits on, the people he employs, the properties that are in his name. The chances of major investment in Laurence’s campaign at this point are small, but the promise of it in the future is what they’re really after. If he decides that Laurence is the man to run the party – and, therefore, the country – his money will buy support and votes from the rest of the party. It’s a simple process: you get the big guns behind a candidate and the smaller ones will all turn their sights in procession.

  ‘Laurence really had to go back to see his family,’ Amit says. ‘He’s been travelling a lot.’ It’s universal: everybody’s been there. No need to go into further details, keep the lie clean. ‘He wanted to come, you know that.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ The rings on the investor’s fingers are too tight, the fat of his hands bulging over the gold. ‘You know, I like Laurence, I really do. He’s a good man.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘No bullshit with him, either. That is, so I thought. Maybe it was just no bullshit until now?’ He smiles, full and broad. ‘Tell me, son, are you bullshitting me?’

  ‘No,’ Amit says. He knows that something’s wrong but that there’s a story that has to be stuck to. The Texan pushes his phone across the table, the screen bright with a webpage. It’s one of the political gossip blogs, and there’s a photo taken in a supermarket in Staunton, grainy and out of focus, but clearly Laurence. He’s on the floor, being attended to. Amit hasn’t seen that yet, it must have just gone up, and he’s blindsided.

  ‘Here’s what I think happened,’ the Texan says.

  ‘I haven’t seen that,’ Amit interrupts.

  ‘Here’s what I think happened,’ the large man repeats. ‘Laurence is pretty fragile. He’ll get better, sure, but he’s had one hell of a shitty year. He’s having trouble coping with the stress of this all, and it’s getting too much for him. Am I right?’

  ‘It’s been hard on him, of course, but he’s overcome the adversity—’

  ‘Don’t play that card with me, son. I said already, no bullshit. All that crap flies with the newspapers and the TV assholes, but not with me. He’s falling apart, right?’

  ‘He’s tired,’ Amit says. ‘He’s fine, I swear to God that he’s fine. But he needed a break. He needed to be with his family for a week or two.’ The investor doesn’t say anything. He’s got a smile that begs Amit to keep talking, even though inside he knows he should shut up. ‘I told him to take time off, to get his head together. It’s a long trail now, between this and then if he gets the nomination; then there’s the path to the White House, and then, you know, four years of whatever, then four more years, because this is a long haul. It’s a marathon not a sprint, that’s what we’re always saying.’ He breathes and checks himself. ‘He’ll be fine, though.’

  ‘And now I believe you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Amit says. ‘It’s also true that he wanted to meet you and that he wanted to talk his plans through with you himself. He didn’t want this to be a closed door.’

  ‘And it isn’t. It’s open, still. But he needs to come out here sometime soon, fit as a fiddle. Shake some hands and kiss some babies. Talk about abortion with some people here, let them understand he isn’t trying to support the birth of the antichrist.’ He plays with the signet ring on his wedding finger; unlike all of the others, it’s loose, ready to be taken off. ‘He needs to be here and only here for a good while, you get what I’m saying?’ He starts tapping the table again, his fingers making little tick-tick noises on the wood.

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ Amit tells him. ‘And he will be.’

  ‘Then I suspect that we’re done here for today.’ The investor stands up and shakes Amit’s hand, his grip intense; the meeting is done. ‘I’ll see you real soon, when you come back with Laurence. You call my girl and have her set it up for as soon as he’s able. Don’t leave it too long, though. I’ve been getting pestered by Homme for quite some time now, and I’m going to have to pick a side I think could actually win this time.’

  He leaves Amit alone in the boardroom. There’s a window behind the desk that looks out onto the floodlit football stadium that the man owns. These are the best seats, Amit thinks: it’s like looking down from the camera’s view, even though there’s nothing down there to see. He takes out his phone and checks for missed calls, but there’s nothing. Forty-eight hours, they said. That means they’ll have to call by tomorrow morning at the latest. He texts Laurence, telling him that the meeting went well, that he’ll be in touch in the morning with news from ClearVista.

  He looks out at the grass. It’s patchy, used and trodden up.
Even from as high as he is he can see where the turf needs attending under the glare of the lights.

  It’s the middle of the night when Deanna finally goes back to sleep. She asks Laurence to come upstairs with her, tells him that he needs his sleep, but he refuses. He says that he isn’t tired. She gets into their bed by herself and she lies on her back and doesn’t sleep. Instead, she thinks about when he first entered politics: a well-liked, well-respected lawyer, courted by the party to throw his hat into the ring as a State Senator. They met with one of the previous nominees, who, in the 1980s, had been predicted as a future president. He never was, of course, and he existed only as a footnote, a moment in history where white men with money suggested something that never actually paid off. Laurence and Deanna met with the once-nominee at a party in the early days: him and his wife, both now well into their retirement. They sat in a quiet room with a plate of canapés that they had commandeered from a wandering waiter, and they spoke about their families, their hopes for the future. The once-nominee asked Laurence what he hoped to achieve over the span of his career.

  ‘Not the role, but the goal,’ the older man said. Laurence told them – the Presidency – and they nodded, and they smiled. ‘It won’t happen,’ the older man told him. ‘Won’t happen, you have to remember that, or you’ll go crazy trying. But the very best of luck to you.’ They all drank to it as if they were sharing a joke. Now, Deanna wonders.

  She listens to the house, the bedroom door left open. She can hear Laurence downstairs, back at the laptop; the occasional tapping of his fingers on the keyboard. She thinks that it almost sounds like rain if she closes her eyes and imagines water running down windows and gutters and roof tiles.

  Alyx shakes her, and Deanna wakes up and sees her face. It takes her second to remember that it’s not Sean. She sees him there for that second, as she does when she’s dreaming. They look so similar now. Alyx climbs into bed with her mother and they hold each other, and Deanna runs her hand over her daughter’s head. The feel of the short hair, almost stubble in places, longer in others – this is all too familiar. Deana kisses her head, right on the top. She thinks about when they were babies; that you aren’t meant to put pressure on that part. How soft it is, and how you can see it rise and fall with as their blood pulses around their bodies, if you look carefully.

  ‘Stay here,’ Deanna says after a while, ‘I’m going to get some coffee.’ She slides out of bed and Alyx cuddles down into the mattress. Her father is in bed next to her. He didn’t wake Deanna when he came upstairs, but he hasn’t been next to her for long, she reckons. She decides to let them both sleep again.

  She turns the coffee machine on and opens the French windows, so that she can feel the coldness of the outside world on her skin, through the T-shirt that she slept in. Her phone beeps. It’s a text from Amit.

  How is he? I haven’t heard from him.

  I don’t know, Deanna replies. He’s very upset. I feel so useless.

  Don’t. So little you can do. Support him.

  That’s not what I signed up for.

  But it’s what you’ve got to do.

  He won’t tell me what was in the report or the video. He won’t talk about them.

  Amit’s reply takes longer to come. He is writing it, Deanna can see that much, but he doesn’t send it for over a minute. When it finally does, it’s short. He will, it says. When this is fixed. Give him time. Deanna waits to see if there’s another text, but nothing comes.

  Amit paces the room, clutching his phone in his hand. He keeps thinking that it has started ringing: some residual vibration running through it and into his hand. It hasn’t, and it doesn’t. He orders breakfast – the reception in his hotel room is good, and he doesn’t want to lose that, to risk stepping into the elevator and somehow missing that tiny window where ClearVista would try to make contact with him – and he eats his croissants while he stares at the handset. He checks the time he first called them and begins a countdown. The contract with them – he’s checked – assures a callback within seventy-two hours. He dares them to break that rule.

  His phone finally rings just after eleven. Ten minutes shy of the deadline. It’s not a number that he recognizes – it doesn’t say ClearVista on the handset’s screen – and it’s a chain of numbers that doesn’t look like a phone number to him. There’s no discernable area code; a phone number that comes from nowhere, just like the video. He answers, and the automated voice asks him to wait while his call is connected. There’s no hold music this time, and no sign that anything is happening for a minute or so. He checks his cellphone to see that the call is still connected. Then the line clicks and there’s suddenly ambient noise: the hubbub of an office, of a call center.

  ‘Hello?’ he asks.

  ‘You’re through to ClearVista,’ the woman’s voice says, ‘and speaking to Amy. How can I help you today?’

  ‘Hi Amy,’ Amit says. ‘I called the other day because we had some results through from our survey.’

  ‘Account three-five-seven-oh-six-one-nine?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Can you confirm the pass for me?’ He recites the code again. ‘I can see your account right here. I’ve got the account up on my screen. What seems to be the issue?’

  ‘The results that came through. They don’t seem as if they can be accurate, not for the survey that we submitted.’

  ‘We make every effort to ensure accuracy, but of course some data can fall through the cracks. Did you read the section in the contracts about fallibility?’ There’s something off, he thinks. The voice sounds too clean, too crisp. Most people would assume that means composure, but he knows different. When he left ClearVista – when he quit – they were talking about whether they could use the algorithm to predict the reasons that people would call them, to head off customer service enquiries before they because an issue. Listening to her now, and her pretense that she is real, Amit thinks that they might have been successful. But the background noise; it’s all designed to add comfort to the listener. The earlier voice is meant to sound fake: this one is intended to deceive. He plays along. There’s still, he thinks, a good chance he’s wrong. Maybe he’s just paranoid.

  ‘I’ve gone through the contracts over and over,’ Amit says, ‘but this seems like more than that. It seems like the results were wrong. I’ve seen other results and they seem different.’

  ‘Okay, sir. Well, ClearVista updates its results based on current market trends and Internet results, so often the results can seem inaccurate until you’ve taken into account all of our sources.’

  ‘Can you open the file? Just have a look at what—’

  ‘Sir,’ Amy interrupts, ‘we’re not allowed to look at any clients’ files. That information is strictly personal.’

  ‘Right, but I’m giving you permission,’ Amit says.

  ‘I just can’t do it,’ Amy says. ‘It’s a hard and fast rule for all employees here.’

  ‘Are you even real?’ Amit asks. There’s a pause, where she doesn’t reply. He doesn’t suppose she can. If she lies to him, that’s an issue in itself; some bullshit Asimovian law of robotics or something. There were always people in the office, in the early days, going on about that; saying that if you automate something, if it starts to nudge into AI territory, there are other considerations. Now, though, he doesn’t have time for this. ‘Look, I’ve got a problem with this, and you’re telling me that there can’t be a problem, but you can’t look at the file to check?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Watch the video. Watch the video. There’s a video that makes no sense.’

  ‘The video is distorted?’

  Amit sighs. ‘Yes. Fine. It’s distorted.’

  ‘Would you like us to make a new video for you? I can action that immediately.’ There’s the sound of typing in the background. ‘Is there anything else we can do for you today?’

  ‘Can I speak to somebody who has read the report? A supervisor or something?’

&n
bsp; ‘I’m afraid nobody at ClearVista has access to the reports. Confidentiality dictates that we don’t.’

  ‘Can I get somebody to read it? So that I can talk to them then?’

  ‘Confidentiality dictates—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Amit says, interrupting her. ‘Fine. Whatever. Can you run the whole report again?’

  ‘Based on the results of the initial test? Of course. We’ll send that through before close of day.’

  ‘And the video.’

  ‘And the video, of course. Thank you for using ClearVista.’ The line goes dead and Amit is left in the hotel room. He doesn’t know what he wants from this place. He goes online and books a flight home, and he gets a cab straight to the airport and he waits there even though his flight isn’t for hours yet; and he walks around and through the identical magazine and perfume shops that seem to repeat themselves over and over through every terminal at every airport, and browses vending machines which sell headphones that cost more than he would ever spend on them.

  Deanna cuts the rest of Alyx’s hair back to nearly zero, the straggling threads and parts that Lane did a bad job on; and she uses the scissors first, then Lane’s clippers. Deanna tells her daughter to stay quiet, because she’s been protesting. She’s decided that she likes it: the ramshackle nature of it, the straggly threads of hair that her school would go insane over; and, Deanna thinks, the fact that it reminds her of her brother, even if she doesn’t realize it. Deanna tries to make the best of this, working her daughter’s hair to as neat a state as she can manage. Alyx sits on a chair in the kitchen, newspaper surrounding her on the floor, and Deanna cuts it all down to the same level using Lane’s clippers: a grade two, all over. When they’re done, Deanna puts talc on her head, because she doesn’t want Alyx to get any sort of rash. She smells like she did when she was a baby.

  Laurence spends the day doing nothing around the house, walking from room to room, following the rest of his family and being where they are as much as possible. He doesn’t speak: more, he watches them, wanting to just stay close. The only times he interjects are when either of his daughters volunteer that they want to do something. Lane, he fights with, and she storms out, refusing to be grounded because of what she did; and refusing to kowtow to Laurence’s rules. With Alyx, he controls it more, not telling Deanna why, but instructing Alyx that she shouldn’t spend long in the garden by herself, not with reporters (or whoever) likely to break in; and when she asks if she can go to her friend’s house at the weekend, he tells her that she can’t.