Face Blind

by Len Melvin

  “It’s just a feeling.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It may sound a little dumb.”

  “I doubt it.” She tapped him on the knee. “Tell me, Simon.”

  Simon stared out the window, his eyes far away. Christina started to say something but hesitated, sensing he needed time. “Today,” Simon turned to her, “on the campus where the rally is going to be held, I found some wireless video cameras. They were really small. I had never seen anything like them before. They were really cutting edge.”

  “And?”

  “No one knew who put them there. Campus and local police had no idea what they even were.”

  “Maybe someone just wanting to get good video of the President.”

  “Maybe. But they were placed at odd angles, some not even facing where the President will be speaking.”

  “There could be an easy explanation. It could be anything.”

  “Could be,” Simon said. “Anyway, they came from somewhere and none of us knew from where. And that’s unsettling. When it’s the President’s life at stake, you can’t afford not to know things.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And then I met these guys who claimed to be from the Press but it didn’t make sense.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t explain it. It was the way they acted. Something was just off.”

  “They had Press Credentials?”

  “Yeah, we checked. Everything was in order.”

  “Sounds like you’re just skittish. That doesn’t sound like much.”

  “There was something else.”

  “What?”

  Simon hesitated, breathed out as if exasperated and ran a hand through his hair. “There were five of them. Four of them were very odd. Very nondescript. They’re at a table at a coffee shop with a diagram and pointing at the area where the rally is going to be held.”

  “So?”

  “They all looked alike. And none of them were eating or drinking anything.”

  “That really doesn’t sound suspicious, you know.” Christina moved forward and put a hand on Simon’s knee. “I think you’re just really tired and on edge.”

  “The other one was different.”

  “How?”

  “Normal, but kind of a leader type. All of the others looked at him to answer.”

  “I still don’t see why this bothers you.”

  “What bothers me is that I’ve seen him before.”

  “Who?”

  “The one that was different.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s what I’ve been sitting here in the dark trying to remember.”

  “I’ve never seen you unable to remember anyone before.”

  “That’s what bothers me. I know I’ve seen his face before and I can’t remember where.”

  “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  “Christina, half of the leadership of the country is going to be on that stage on Saturday, I’m finding video cameras no one can identify and coming upon strange people with a diagram of the site and I know that I’ve seen one of them before and can’t remember where or when.”

  Simon emptied the glass, rattled the ice, took another sip and sucked on the remaining ice in the glass. “So, yeah. I’m worried.”

  Christina studied Simon’s face. It was brown from the sun so that the pale, pouchy, half-moons below each eye stood out in contrast. His voice was thin and frayed. “When’s the last time you slept?”

  “Last night.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. Not long.”

  “You want to go to bed?”

  “In a minute. I want to see if I can remember where I know this guy from.”

  “Simon…”

  Simon interrupted, his voice rising. “I know, I know. I’m working too hard.”

  Christina put a finger to her lips. “You’re going to wake people up.” She reached for his hand. “Simon,” she said in a soft voice with an emphasis on each word, “you are working too hard and it’s starting to affect you.” Christina slid down from the window sill and tugged him toward the bed. “Let’s go to bed.”

  “In a minute. I promise. I just want to think about this guy a little more. It could be important.”

  “Let me see that.” She reached for Simon’s glass. She went to the minibar and returned a minute later a with a weak drink. She walked back to where Simon sat and handed him the glass. “Maybe one more will help you remember.”

  “Maybe. Thanks.”

  Christina crossed the room and leaned against the wall next to the window. She watched him as he took a sip from the drink and then another. She turned toward the open window, her arms crossed and gazed outside in silence. She turned back and stared at him as he sat immobile, his eyes far away in thought. “You remember when we met?”

  Her voice was abrupt, piercing the quiet in the room and Simon’s head jerked around in surprise as if he had been summoned from a deep dream. “What?”

  “You had this big black eye because you’d been in a fight.”

  Simon brought his glass to his mouth and held it there, poised in front of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Why?”

  “And you remember that the detective asked you why would you get in a fight between some English guys and some Germans?”

  “I remember.”

  “And you just shrugged and said, almost matter of fact like, that sometimes you have to pick a side. You remember that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s time you picked a side. Maybe that’s what’s been bothering you lately. You’re on the sidelines.”

  Simon set the glass on the table. “I am on a side. You remember, I have a job?”

  “Exactly. It’s a job. You haven’t picked a side. There’s a lot going on in the country and you’re really on the sidelines.” Simon refused to meet her gaze. “I was thinking a lot on the plane ride down here.”

  “Uh oh,” Simon chuckled. A shadow crossed diagonally over Christina, casting a portion of her face in darkness. She moved to the side so that her face became fully exposed. She was staring at him, the bottle of water in both hands, moving it in a slow motion, back and forth between her palms. Simon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “About what?”

  “What’s that condition you were telling me about once that you were the opposite of?”

  Simon’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “That condition where people can’t recognize other people’s faces?”

  “Prosopagnosia. Why?”

  “Isn’t it sometimes to the extent that someone can’t even recognize faces of their own family?”

  “In extreme cases. Yeah.”

  “What’s the common name for it? I forgot.”

  “Face blindness. Why?”

  “Are there other types of face blindness?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if someone can’t recognize something that’s right in front of them, something that everyone else can see, but they can’t, wouldn’t that be a kind of face blindness?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If someone is so horrible and cruel and criminal and vindictive and you can’t see it even when you were around them all the time and would defend them no matter what, isn’t that in itself, a form of being face blind?”

  Simon stared at Christina and didn’t speak. He raised the glass to his mouth and took a swallow, his eyes never leaving her. He turned after a long moment and walked in an unsteady gait across the room. He stood, his back to Christina, his head down. He paused, tossed the rest of the drink back, then dropped his hand to his side. The glass slipped out of his hand and rolled in an uneven wobble along the wooden floor, its movement the only sound in the room. Simon bent over, put his hands on his knees and rocked back and forth. He knelt and eased himself to the floor. He crawled to the corner of the room, and sat, and faced Christina. He put his head in his hands an
d his body began to heave.

  Christina ran across the room, dropped to the floor and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. He laid his head into the crook of her neck while she patted him on the back, each touch a calm reassurance. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Christina stood and put both hands under his elbows and helped to lift him. She guided him to the bed, pulled his shoes off, then kicked hers toward a dark area of the room and they both, still clothed, laid down. She put her arm around him until his breathing became steady, kissed him on the nape of his neck and then held him until sleep came.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday

  Gaby watched the building of the stage in dismay and alarm. She stood on tiptoe, to the side of the slatted opening and could hardly see the center of the podium where she imagined the President would be. At that angle she wasn’t even sure she could point the gun at the correct spot. It was a good twenty yards to the right of where she had been told it would be.

  Fuck. She leaned back against the wall as rivulets of perspiration tracked down her skin. She looked through the slats again. She was scared that if she actually tried to point her rifle at the stage in a simulation, the movement might attract attention. Federal agents were all over the grounds. She reached for the water bottle and grimaced as cramps went through her lower body. Moving to the side of the window she measured with her eye whether it would be possible to maneuver the rifle at the correct angle to reach the center of the stage. She exhaled in frustration as her finger moved along the indenture of the imaginary trigger.

  ◆◆◆

  Christina opened her eyes, wondering for an instant where she was and why she was clothed. She sat up. Across the room, a freshly showered Simon sat watching her intently, a cup of coffee next to him, his laptop open beside it. “I’m going to quit,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to quit.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” Christina said. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I need coffee before we talk about this.”

  Simon pushed himself up from his chair, stepped over to the coffee maker and poured a cup. He brought it to Christina. “I’ve had it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just been thinking about it.”

  “Can you just do that?”

  “Yep. I’m going to tell them that after the rally tomorrow, I’m out.”

  “Good.” Christina sipped from the cup.

  “Lots of things have been building.”

  “Like how?”

  Simon crossed the room and picked his coffee cup from the table. He turned, put one leg over the corner of the couch, sat on it and faced Christina. He took a sip of coffee, started to say something and then stopped as if searching for the right words. “There’s a friend of mine who is a lawyer. One day, he just up and quit even though he was making a ton of money,” Simon began picking up speed as he went. “‘How could you quit,’ I asked him, ‘when you're making so much money?’ He told me that somewhere along the way he had quit caring. ‘But you’re making so much money.’ ‘I won’t be for long if I don’t care,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons I’ve made a lot of money is because I cared. If I’ve quit caring it won’t be long before I’ll be in trouble along with my clients who will have paid a lot of money to someone who doesn’t care. It will end badly. I know it. I’ve seen it happen.’”

  “I thought a lot about what you said last night. I realized I cared about doing the job the right way but I didn’t care for the person I was doing it for. And that’s really the point of the job. I thought about it a long time. I mean, he’s been there ten years, which is too long. I’ve been there three years and that’s maybe too long. I knew he wasn’t a good guy but I think I just rationalized that it wasn’t up to me to do something about it. My job was to keep my nose down and just do my job. And you know, everything happens so gradually. You let one thing go by and it just gets easier to let the next thing go and before you know, you’re in a place that didn’t seem that hard to get to. And then you get the feeling that there’s really nothing you can do.” Simon put his hand to his brow as he cast his eyes on the floor. He shook his head slowly, inhaled deeply, and looked back up at Christina.

  “This morning, I’m sitting here thinking and I realized that if he were killed tomorrow, I wouldn’t care. I would only be concerned about whether I had done my job. And that’s about the worst attitude a Secret Service agent can have. So after tomorrow, I’m going to find something I care about and do that.” He held up his coffee cup in a toast. “Maybe pick a side. I guess it’s about time.”

  Christina set her coffee on the stand next to the bed, then stood and moved over to join him. She sat on one of his knees and put her arm around his shoulder. A smile creased her lips. “Then you be really careful tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  “No, really careful.”

  “I will.” He frowned. “Why?”

  “It’s the other reason I came down here this weekend.”

  “What?”

  “Because,” she kissed Simon and then pulled back, “we are going to have a little Simon or a little Christina soon.” Simon sat in the chair, a hand on the coffee cup, not moving. “I’ve never seen you speechless before.”

  “You mean…? What?”

  “Simon, we are going to have a child.” A broad smile stretched across Christina’s face. She ran a hand through Simon’s hair. “You’re going to be a father.”

  Simon blinked and then a tear came from one eye and then another. He threw his arms around Christina and for the third time in his adult life, he began to cry.

  Beaux paced in front of the window in Malouf’s room. She had already showered and dressed and was hoping he would wake soon. Though the restaurant didn’t open until four, she had a lot of things to do, and she doubted her mom would be around. She went mentally over the list as she walked back and forth. On Fridays, there was payroll, the supply drones that would be there soon with food and alcohol for what would most likely be a busy weekend and there was the feeding and home schooling of the twins.

  Malouf moaned and turned over in bed and began a light snore. Beaux stopped pacing for a moment, hoping he would wake and then raised her eyes upward as the snoring intensified. She thought of waking him and then decided against it. This most likely would be a busy day for him and he might need the sleep.

  She thought of going to Uncle Simon’s room. She had seen the door Christina had gone in but decided against it. That might be awkward. She hadn’t seen him in over five years and then to bust up into his room when he’s with his girlfriend he hasn’t seen in a while might be weird. Plus, he was probably busy, too.

  She went to the coffee maker. Maybe the smell of brewing coffee would wake him. She dumped coffee in the filter, filled the container with water and poured it into the back of the coffee pot. She placed the container under the spout and hit the ‘on’ button.

  From the corner of her eye she saw a golf bag leaning against the wall. That’s odd, she thought. There hadn’t been a golf bag in the room before. She went over to it, puzzled and began pulling things out of it. There were some golf clubs and golf balls but also a baseball bat and gloves. She picked a baseball cap from the bag, plopped it on her head and then removed it, shaking her hair back into place.

  She replaced the items she’d taken out of the bag, then stepped over to a small table that sat in the corner of the room. She sat in the chair and picked up some files that were on the desk. Flipping through them, she hesitated several times and then began reading from the pages he had apparently printed out.

  “What the fuck?” she said so low that her lips barely moved.

  “Going through my stuff?”

  Beaux glanced up, then set the files back on the table and smiled. “It’s what I do. You want some coffee?”

  Malouf rolled over on his side, a
pillow under his head. “Sure.” He grinned at her as if she had been caught. “How long have you been up?” He sat up, the smile leaving his face. “What time is it?”

  “Almost nine. You were really sleeping.”

  “Shit!” He threw the covers to the side. “Damn.”

  Beaux held up both hands. “Just relax for a moment. I’ve got things to do also but I want to talk first.”

  “About what? ”Malouf checked his cell phone and then placed it on the table next to the bed. “What’s this?” Malouf asked, his attention focused on a plate next to the phone.

  “Breakfast. Take the cover off.” Beaux poured coffee into a cup and took it to him. She handed it to him, planted a wet kiss on his forehead and returned to her seat.

  “Oh, wow.” Malouf removed the cover and held the plate in front of him. He dipped a finger into a thick, golden brown substance and tasted it. “Is that honey? Where did you get that?”

  “Real honey from some local bees we haven’t killed yet. And some whole wheat toast. I brought it from the restaurant last night. I thought you might like it.”

  “I’ve never had honey. And oranges and almonds. This is like a feast.” Malouf slipped a slice of orange in his mouth. “That’s good.”

  “It’s fresh. From a local farmer’s market.”

  “There are still markets like that?”

  “Yeah,” Beaux shrugged. “They have to have armed guards but they still have them.”

  Beaux propped her feet in the chair and rested her chin on one knee. She sipped from her cup of coffee and watched Malouf, sitting bare-chested, propped up against the backboard of the bed, the covers to his waist. “What’s your plan today?”

  Malouf dipped two almonds into the honey as if it were an experiment. He placed them in his mouth and chewed them delicately, then, took a piece of the toast and dabbed it into the honey. “Just making final preparations. Today and tomorrow are big days.”

  “What about me?”

  Malouf stopped chewing, his mouth still full of toast. “What do you mean?”