by Glen Kenner
-Splitsies.
Fuck.
Sarah takes the peanut butter crackers and feeds them one at a time to the dog.
-We have to give him a new name.
Glen Ray says Lefty.
-Trite.
I say Canis.
-Pretentious.
No one says anything. Glen Ray shoves a handful of Combos into his mouth.
Sarah and I start to speak at the same time, stop, then say together, King.
-Perfect!
If this were a Lifetime movie, King would bark. Instead he growls at me and then eats another peanut butter cracker.
Glen Ray pulls out cold bottles of Mountain Dews for all of us. The big one liter bottles.
-You guys are cool. I figure you drink the Dew.
We stuff ourselves for five minutes and then I ask Glen Ray how did everything go?
-Man, I didn’t think you were ever going to ask. I’m about ready to explode from holding it in.
I look over at Sarah. He was about ready to explode, I mouth. She kicks me under the table and tells me to be nice.
-So, check this out!
Glen Ray sort of settles his body into his chair. This looks like it’s going to take a while.
-You said something about donuts this morning, remember? But there weren’t any donuts. So before looking for an electronics store, I popped into a convenience store just three or four blocks north. Right? And I grabbed some chocolate donuts and a Dew, you know, a little pick me up, and I’m standing in line when I see this kid come in and get the attention of the clerk. Then the kid goes back out the front door and the clerk tells everyone he’ll be right back. Well, that looked all shades of shady, so I popped out the front and saw the kid go around the corner and down the alley. I walked up on him and the clerk doing a deal. And, and… I mean, I wasn’t thinking, I said to them, busted assholes! Gimme the cash! Isn’t that insane!
Sarah and I both nod our heads. Insane. I reach for a Hostess apple pie. When did they start putting these in boxes? Glen Ray keeps going.
-So the kid runs, right? But the clerk is like, fuck you fatty. And I’m not even fat. But I see him pocket the dinero, right? I step toward him and he just hits me. Right in the head. And I assume I’m going to fall down. But I don’t. I feel it, right, but it didn’t really hurt. So I swing around and nail him in the side of his head and he falls right over. Bam! Mama said knock you out.
He shoves more Combos into his mouth.
-I pulled the money out of his pocket and took off.
Sarah looks at him like she looked at me when I started telling her about Firsts.
-You robbed a drug dealer?
-Hells yeah! I totally did!
-How much did you get?
-Well, that’s the thing. Only forty bucks.
I clear my throat.
-Not bad. I guess that bought all of this food. Alright, how-
Glen Ray pulls a wad of cash from his front pocket.
-Three thousand five hundred dollars.
Sarah and I both stare at him.
-Yeah. I know, right? I was all like, yeah, Dr DJ G Ray Ray in the mfing house!
Sarah says to him Ray Ray?
-Glen Ray’s full name is Glen Ray Ray.
-Hey, how did you know that?
Some chewed up Combos fly out of his mouth.
I shrug my shoulders and take a big bite of my apple pie.
-Anyway, I’m thinking this is like nothing, right? Forty dollars.
He pushes back his chair and stands up and puts a handful of Combos in his mouth.
-So I walk north a few blocks, but I don’t know the city. The worst neighborhoods, I mean, other than John’s. And that’s too far to walk. So I get on the first bus heading north and get off when the neighborhood looked like the kind of place I’d get stabbed. I was next to a park. Fairground Park? Anyway, I see these kids standing on a street corner. I’ve binged on The Wire, right? Shorties on the street corner. And I look over across the street and just like on The Wire, there’s a car with two older kids inside. I forget what they’re called. But anyway, I walk up toward the shorties and I knock into one. He’s maybe twelve. And I say, watch it pussy. And he starts calling me these white boy names, so I run around the corner and into an alley and those kids come after me. And then the two older kids from the car. I push the shorties down. And then the older kids come at me. They’re maybe sixteen. Skinny but tall. And they hit me but I just pull back…
He makes a fist and pulls back to show us.
-...and crack! Right upside this kid’s head. And he’s down. Then I do the same - crack! - to the other kid and he’s down. The shorties all run. I go through the older kids’ pockets. Almost four hundred dollars!
-You were in College Hill. That’s a rougher neighborhood than Jeffvanderlou. Nobody shot you? Or even pulled a gun?
-Hold on.
He gets a huge grin on his face.
-Hold on. So four hundred dollars, right? So I cut over a few streets and then head up a few more and there’s the same set up. Three shorties on the corner this time and one older kid on the steps of a house across the street. I do the exact same thing. The exact same thing. Bump, watch it pussy, run. The shorties come at me. I knock them down. The older kid comes at me. He pulls a gun and shoots! But he misses! He hit a shortey in the leg! I kinda feel bad about that. But hey, the kid chose to play the game. So I grab the gun and hit him and he goes down. Mother load! Seven hundred and twenty dollars.
-So you do it a few more times? You just move from one neighbor to the next knocking off drug dealers?
-F’ing right I do. Six more times!
-And you never got shot?
-Nope. I got stabbed.
He instinctively puts his hand to his belly.
-But I didn’t even see any more guns.
Sarah reaches for the bottom of his shirt.
-Let’s see your stab wound.
-No. It’s ok. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.
I get up and stand so that he’s between me and Sarah. He’s conscience of his weight. And I guess he would be with all of the times I’ve made fun of him.
-Let me see. We’ve already shared a bed in just our BVDs.
He lifts his shirt six inches and there’s the wound. No blood at all, the edges are clean and neat, loose but already healing. I poke it and he doesn’t flinch.
-You should be eating some meat. Not this junk.
-I did. I got some jerky from a convenience store.
-You cleaned the wound?
-Yeah. In the convenience store bathroom. Just wiped away the blood. Does it look ok?
-Looks fucking awesome. You’re a mother fucking bad ass, Glen Ray! Thirty-five hundred dollars and you didn’t kill anyone?
-I know right? Maybe I did something good, you know. For the neighborhood. Anyway, I got more than thirty-five hundred. I got the phones and the headsets and a tablet and all of this food and the bus fare and never touched the thousand you gave me. Thirty-five hundo is what I have left. I gave seven dollars and my loose change to a homeless guy on Washington.
-Goddamn, Dr…
-Dr DJ-
-Dr DJ G Ray Ray! You did good!
And just like that, Glen Ray feels good about himself.
Glen Ray plugs in the three phones and tablet to charge them and I put all of the money together and count it. Glen Ray’s thirty-five hundred plus the thousand I gave him plus the nineteen hundred I have left in my pocket. Sixty-four hundred dollars and some change. We owe Alex twenty-eight hundred so I count out the amount and then add a thousand to it, then another two hundred to make it an even four grand, leaving us almost twenty-five hundred. I sort Alex’s money all high bills to low, making sure Hamilton and all of the presidents are face up. The twenties are the biggest bills in the stack. I find an envelope and put the cash inside and write Thanks on the outside and seal it up and set it against the coffee maker. Just in case we don’t come back.
I look a
t the clock on the microwave. Almost three. Suddenly I’m tired. I tell Sarah and Glen Ray that we’ll leave tonight at eight. Until then, I’m going to think a few things over. Glen Ray asks where’re going at eight.
-I’ll tell you at eight.
I head back into the guest room and lie down on my back. I need to sort through the plan for tonight. How far do I go to make an innocent IT guy cooperate? Sarah’s life is on the line. And I guess mine is too. Kingsley’s not going to let me live in peace after the other night. And he made it clear, I’m now against him. So, I guess I have to go as far as I have to go. We can get new credit cards in new names and even move, but we can’t keep from being heard and seen by technology invented specifically to find us. Not forever.
And then I drift off to sleep and dream of the dark place and also chanting and the symbol being drawn in the air in front of me by an unseen hand, drawn over and over and then just floating in the air before being scratched away and disappearing and then gunfire and Glen Ray on his back on the wet cave floor, wads of cash in this clenched hands, a Second hunched over him, stabbing him in the belly over and over with her claws. I yell out and the Second turns her face to me and smiles. It’s Sarah. She tells me I’m next.
21 - Awww Yeah
I wake up just after seven-thirty and take a quick cold shower and put my same clothes back on. Sarah and Glen Ray are on the couch looking at the new tablet he bought. King is lying across both of their laps. He seems to like Glen Ray just fine. Damn.
-I’m showing Sarah First Club.
-You know you can’t join that, right Sarah? At least not until all of this is sorted out.
-I know. But Glen Ray gave me his login info. I can browse every once in while. See what’s going on. Learn.
-Sounds good.
-Did you know you’re kind of a legend with these guys, John? I mean, seriously. There’s a whole forum dedicated to stories about you. And there’s another that’s just fan-fiction. It’s crazy. By the way, did you ever hook up with Cleopatra?
-Who?
-You know who Cleopatra is! There’s both a story on here that says you did and a very convincing piece of very erotic fan-fiction that claims the same thing.
Glen Ray looks up from his tablet with wide eyes.
-It was hot. I had to stop reading.
I look from Sarah to him and back to Sarah.
-Huh. Listen, how about we talk about tonight?
I look in the fridge and find another Mountain Dew.
-Last one. Anyone want to share?
Glen Ray shakes his head without looking up but Sarah asks for a swig. I open the cap and hand it to her for a drink and she takes a long swig and hands it back. I sit down in an oversized recliner and take a long drink.
-Ok, first things first. Glen Ray, can you message Mr High Class and ask for two things? One, let’s ask him to try to convince influential Firsts in First Club to share their opinion that Sarah is not the prophecy. She’s not dangerous, no one needs to worry, and so on. Two, ask him what he knows about who came after me and Sarah last night, who or what is Irvine, and if anyone else is coming at us.
I explain how I overheard the woman in the Explorer tell her team that Irvine was in St Louis. Who is Irvine, I ask, or what is Irvine? Irvine, California? I have no clue.
Glen Ray says he doesn’t know an Irvine, but he’s on it and he starts typing.
Next I spell out the plan for tonight.
-Before I got out of Kingsley’s limo the other night, he pointed out a building that is running all of the tracking software.
Blank stares.
-Can you start from the beginning with the tracking?
Didn’t I already explain this to her? Fucking jetlag.
-I feel like I only know bits and pieces.
Glen Ray looks totally lost.
-I feel like I don’t know anything.
Shit. I’m not used to working with others. I have to keep them in the loop while trying to keep them from being killed. Not sure it’s worth it. Though Sarah seems to be learning how to take care of herself pretty damn fast.
-Ok. Sorry about that. Real quick so pay attention. This company down by the river that Kingsley bought makes these tiny little microphones that pick up the frequency put out by Firsts. And they’re really powerful, apparently. They put these microphones together with high-definition cameras. The whole thing is run on software that once it detects a First through the microphone, using triangulation, kinda tags a First on the video and captures what that First looks like, so anytime a First gets within range of one of their cameras, the software knows. And it can put a red glow on the First on the video so that anyone watching will know exactly who the First is, even in a crowd from far away. They want to put these microphones and cameras everywhere. On the streets, in government offices, businesses, airports, and on and on. Or maybe they’ll just piggyback on existing cameras. I don’t know. But Kingsley is working with people in Washington DC to supply all the tech for the day that the world finds out about us. Basically, the thinking goes, Firsts will agree to let the government monitor us twenty-four seven in exchange for being free to be public with who we are. Kingsley calls the whole thing Aka Kage. Project Aka Kage.
Glen Ray shrugs his shoulders as he looks from Sarah to me.
-Doesn’t sound so bad to me.
-Yeah?
-Yeah. Being a First publicly would be like being a celebrity. We’d be famous.
-Alright. But what happened the other night at the hotel with me and Sarah? That doesn’t sound so bad? Once we’re being tracked, we can be hunted down. I’ve been on that end of the equation. It’s no fun. Plus, Kingsley is obsessed with finding the female First from the prophecy. If he thinks it’s Sarah, which I’m sure he does and obviously so do others, he has the technology to track her down. Today Sarah’s a threat. Tomorrow it’s me. Maybe someday it’s you. Maybe it’s already you. You said you’re being followed, right? See what I mean?
-Ok, ok. Crap. So what’s the plan? I’ve sent a message to Mr High Class to try to sway opinion about Sarah and I asked about who’s coming after her. But what else?
-That’s where we’re heading now.
I stand up and stretch and finish off the Dew.
-We’re headed to Kingsley’s company that runs everything. Project Aka Kage. We’re gonna fucking shut that mother down.
No one says a word. Not the reaction I was expecting.
-By the way, Glen Ray. Did you know that you can’t just waltz into a back alley and buy a fully automatic firearm from an idiot redneck?
-You can in the movies.
-Thank you.
I look at Sarah as she shakes her head.
-Whatever.
We gather up the burner phones and headsets. Sarah puts King in the guest bathroom and leaves a note for Alex. On the way downstairs, I call Samir. He says he can pick us up in less than ten minutes. Then I call Maurice.
-Hey, it’s me. No names, ok?
-Ok…
-Your hardcore gym that you’re always bragging about. Is it 24 hours?
-It is for me.
-Perfect.
-I own it.
-Shit, don’t say that on the phone.
-Don’t worry brother. It’s not in my name. Like everything I have, it’s owned by multiple LLCs that run through I don’t know how many countries.
-Really?
-You told me back in the day, never own nothing.
-I said that?
-Yup.
-I used a double negative?
-Man, my daddy pulled me out of school one day in the third grade to keep my black ass from being strung up in a tree. You gonna lecture me on proper grammar?
-Ah, you fucker. Listen, can you meet me and a couple of friends at your hardcore gym at midnight? Just for some basic shit. Bench press, deadlift, curls, whatever. And maybe some quick pointers for street fighting.
-Yeah, I can do that. You and your posse, huh? Your new best friends?
<
br /> -You heard I got a posse?
-That’s the word on the street.
-First Club?
-Well, look who’s ancient ass joined the twenty-first century!
-Alright. I’ll explain tonight. Oh, and just you. Not your prettier half.
-Fuck you, grandpa.
-Midnight. See you brother.
I hang up just as Maurice is muttering motherfucker. He knows I love it when he does his Samuel L.
Alright my posse, I say to Sarah and Glen Ray as the elevator doors open and we step out in the lobby, let’s go get jiggy wit it.
Glen Ray says awww yeah and Sarah asks me if I even know what that means.
-No fucking clue. But it feels right.
22 - Don’t Kill The Cleaning Lady
Samir drops us off three blocks from Kingsley’s company. The streets down here in the industrial area aren’t maintained like a mile south. The concrete is cracked and in some places tilts in crazy patterns. Some of the potholes are three feet across and six inches deep. The street lights are farther apart with some lights flickering or dark. It’s perfect. We walk north the three blocks and pause at the intersection across from the building. Alokin Denshi Digi-Tech. I meant to tell Kingsley that this is the dumbest name for a business I’ve ever seen. I make a mental note to tell him next time I see him. That fucker.
Sarah nods her head toward an older sedan parked on the street next to the building. She walks over and slows down as she walks by and then turns around and walks back, reaching over and letting her hand slide alongside the hood.
-Boxes of 55 gallon trash bags in the back seat with a few squirt bottles. AARP and Family Circle magazines on the front seat. Hood’s warm. Cleaning lady’s car.
-Nice work, Nancy Drew!
-I’m more of a Veronica Mars.
I shrug. She lost me on that one.
-Everybody got their phones on mute?
Sarah and Glen Ray nod and the three of us put on our headsets. Sarah looks like a sexy spy on a mission to save the world. Glen Ray not so much.
-Let’s find the employee parking lot.
