Steal the Stars

by Mac Rogers

  “I mean … actually, yeah, that does sound shitty.”

  “Really shitty.”

  “But the worst’ll just be us not getting to bitch about it over lunch.” She beamed at me.

  Fuck. There it was again. That wave of (what?) affection, of gratitude, of—

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  She sat down next to me.

  “Dak … you need this. I mean you’re gonna do it right, right?”

  “It’s gonna be Jack for breakfast and banging stupid dudes for lunch and dinner.”

  She slugged me in the arm. Hard. “Exactly!” I took a moment to rub the pain away.

  “But, you know, it’s more than just the week. If you knock this out of the park, which I know you will—”

  She saw where I was going with that thought. “No, no, no, you shut the fuck up with that—”

  “—Harrison will notice. You’ll be next on the list for security chief with like an asterisk and a heart and a smiley face by your name.”

  “Except for the part where you’re never, ever leaving.” She threatened to punch me again. I threw up my hands and smiled—a smile that said, I’m humoring you, but she dropped her fist, all the same. Okay, this step was accomplished.

  “You feel good?” I asked, slapping her knee.

  “I feel good. Real good. Only one condition.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Come back with stories.”

  Oh, I will, I thought. Just not ones I’d ever tell you.

  * * *

  NEXT STOP was Harrison’s office. It was tucked away above Hangar Eleven—some peripheral organ located laterally from the digestive tract, forgettable but vital all the same. It was a notably sterile office, but unlike Lloyd’s office, which felt neat and tidy more due to neglect, this felt purposeful. There were no medals on display (though we all knew he’d received more than his fair share), there were no pictures of his family (the kids he had, the wife he no longer had). Of course there were no windows. There were only two things adorning the room. One was the medium-sized print of a painting—I think it was a Hopper—of a small catboat staffed with four or five people, none of whom you could really get a great look at. It seemed like a serene, generic little scene, but the darkening of the waters in the distance, the way the clouds were gathering, the swell beneath the boat … The more you looked at it the more you realized some shit was on its way.

  The other framed item was a newspaper clipping, gone sepia with age. It was a small, vertical article, only two paragraphs long. The entire thing was neatly redacted line by line with a black marker, except for the headline (“LOCAL BOY CATCHES BIG ONE”) and one quote near the bottom: “He’s going to be all right!”

  “And it really has to start tomorrow?” Harrison was asking me. He was sitting behind his neatly compartmentalized desk while I stood before him.

  The timing had worked just as I was hoping. Harrison was so damn grateful I kept the Harp issue out of his life one more time he couldn’t bring himself to be as grumpy as he wanted to be. He was annoyed, but he also knew he was talking to a four-time Harp survivor just in the last two weeks.

  “If it’s possible, Director,” I said, doing my best to not stand at full attention. “It’s become clear to me that I’m overextended. Frankly, I’m concerned I’ll reach a point of endangering ongoing operations without rest.”

  He leaned back, regarding me. He rubbed the area just above his chin with a thumb and forefinger. “It certainly has been … quite a while since you asked for time.”

  “I can’t even remember.” I shrugged, trying on a polite chuckle.

  “And this whole Harp fiasco on top of it…,” he was muttering, not even for my benefit. Hell, he might have finally been articulating for the first time just how truly fucked things had been lately. His eyes snapped back to me, though. “I assume your recommendation is for Patty to—”

  “If I had anything less than full confidence in Patty, I wouldn’t be asking now.”

  “She would be overseeing a crucial transitional period. One with no margin for error.”

  “I agree completely. And she’ll step up.” I would have sworn it in court.

  He unfolded his hands and began drumming his fingers lightly on his desktop. “Well … if anyone’s earned the right to make an assessment like that it’s you.”

  I kept myself rooted, silent, awaiting judgment.

  “One week, lost time,” he nodded, pronouncing. “You’re back here a week from today.”

  I couldn’t help it—my spine stiffened, my chest raised, my arms went straight to my sides. Full attention. “Thank you, Director.”

  He waved me off. Then, almost as an afterthought: “It’s funny.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re the only one here even close to me in age, or … maybe temperament? I don’t know what word I’m looking for…” He sighed, suddenly seeming unbearably worn down. “Do you have plans?”

  “Nothing I hope to remember,” I said, and made my way to the door.

  If I ever hoped to make it past Lauren’s security checkpoint again, that was.

  * * *

  ONE LAST stop on Dak’s (Temporary) Farewell Tour. The worst one. I knew where he was posted and I headed straight for it.

  All around me on the Hangar Eleven floor, the flow seemed jagged and unfamiliar. The victorious Harp Team was moving their toys into place. Farther out, the vanquished Moss and Object E Teams were sitting at their relocated workstations and waiting for new orders. The pulse of the place was still pounding, the river of scientific murmurs was still flowing, but there was no denying it all just felt … different.

  But Grant, of course, was exactly on his mark, probably to within the millimeter. As constant as the tides and as incurable as cancer.

  “You’re on dinner after Guardshift, right?” I growled at him, walking up close, offering no salutation.

  “Why?”

  “Meet me by the cots.” And I walked away.

  * * *

  TO THINK this was where I once fantasized about fucking your brains out while we put the world on hold. Now it was where I was about to fingerbang the driest pussy in the Western Hemisphere.

  At least when he came to meet me he had the decency to look scared.

  “I will remind you,” he began, before I could say a word, “that I have copies of the video ready to go out if anything should happen to me.” His voice was trying so hard not to tremble.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “One to Harrison. One to Central. One addressed directly to Trip Haydon.”

  “I’m sure they’ll put that right on his desk.”

  “Have you reached a decision?”

  “I’m going away for a week. Leave. Lost time.”

  He started to grow red. “That doesn’t change your deadline. You owe me an answer by—”

  I barreled over him. “I’ve left Patty in charge of reconfiguring security for the new Harp mandate. When I come back in a week, I’m going to ‘realize’ that Patty’s done an unsatisfactory job. In light of this, I’ll be going to Harrison and recommending that she be removed from the deputy position. He’ll accept my recommendation, and ask me for a short list of replacements. When I give it to him, it’ll be one name long.”

  You and I never got to make good on our urge to screw illicitly somewhere in the Hangar. The feeling I had now, a visceral need coupled with dread at the thought of someone walking in and catching us, was like that impulse’s evil twin.

  Grant was nodding, his face stony. A genuine smile on that face would seem, well, alien.

  “Excellent,” he proclaimed. “That … that will work.”

  I got up close, wishing I had that glass from my kitchen in my hands again. “Now listen to me, Grant. Are you listening?”

  “What?” He matched my tone, challengingly.

  “This only works if you play it cool. For the next week, you hit all your marks, you leave Patty and Matt alone, and do everythin
g normal. You fuck that up and you can still ruin me, but I promise you, it would be the easiest thing in the world to take you down with me. You wanna be chief in two years? Hold your fucking water.”

  I started to walk away. His voice stopped me.

  “That’s what I’ve always done, Dak.” He spat my name out like a stone. “Only now I’m finally being rewarded for it. Have a nice vacation.”

  I got out of there, like I was running from a bad dream.

  * * *

  NOW THAT I’d secured leave time, I needed to travel. The people I’d need to talk to in order to make this slowly baking plan a reality were conveniently all in one place—Washington, D.C.—but my going there wouldn’t make sense. I wasn’t expecting Sierra to follow me, not exactly, but they would likely keep a vaguely interested eye on my transactions. What reasons could I possibly have to cross the entire country for a relaxing vacation when the West Coast of America stretched languidly at my feet? Also, who goes to fucking Washington, D.C., to unwind? So where could I go that would get me as close to my actual destination as I could get, with an obvious enough narrative to keep the hounds from sniffing too hard?

  About a decade ago I had been stationed for a year in South Carolina. People went to Myrtle Beach all the time. Maybe a sentimental old soldier would too—rent a beach house, drink at some favorite bars, probably see some old boyfriends. And if she happened to rent a car while she was out there, what of that?

  * * *

  SO HERE I am, flying the friendliest skies Earth has to offer. No walnuts for earthlings.

  I settled in as the flight crew went through its tiny Busby Berkeley routine of life vests and face masks and tried to get some rest. Once we landed, I’d still have a load of traveling ahead of me, so I could certainly use it.

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture all I had to accomplish. The plan was half-formed at best. A collection of ingredients for no exact recipe. I had notions; I was running on instinct, down a dark hallway with a small flashlight. I’d just need to focus on each step as I discovered it. I trusted the process.

  First I’d do a little recon. Then I’d need to visit my old friend, Lisa: she of the haunted house. Would she be excited to see me? Would I ruin her life again? I’d find out soon enough.

  Most of all, I thought of you. Wishing you were there next to me, holding my hand.

  I never quite fell completely asleep. And in my half-immersed state I imagined I was covered in a pulsing, rolling tide of some bluish-green rash. It expanded and contracted almost with every breath. It gave me comfort, knowing it was there under my clothes, my little secret.

  * * *

  ONCE I landed in South Carolina, the hot sun hanging languidly in the late afternoon sky, I went through the requisite steps of renting a car for the week, of paying for a cottage a stone’s throw from the water (it was August; I actually had to call several places before I could find an available rental—I’d started sweating a bit until finally I was able to pay way too much for a bungalow courtesy of Lena’s Low Tide Leases), and then one last step: I pulled a shit ton of cash out of an ATM so I wouldn’t have to use a card at all from this point on.

  I got into my rented gray hatchback, turned up the radio (the Cars’ “You Might Think” blared—what were the fucking odds?) and I reached D.C. about seven hours later.

  * * *

  THROUGH MY night-vision scope I was able to see Sierra’s Arlington headquarters, a half-hour drive from the Pentagon. I knew two things from Harrison shooting his mouth off over the years: Trip Haydon always works late, and his car’s the only one allowed to drive right up to the front doors to pick him up. Lo and behold, there he was: talking to both his phone and that poor bastard Needledick at the same time. Oh, to be a sniper.

  It was 8:13 p.m. eastern time.

  By 8:28, Haydon’s car let him out at a hotel I’d be able to stay in for one night if I mortgaged my entire life’s assets away. Curious—he lived in Arlington, with his wife and his three children, another ten minutes away.

  By 8:30 I was inside, watching him join a young woman in a booth. He sat with his back to the room so I was able to stay a little longer to just observe. The girl looked maybe old enough to have graduated college, if she’d studied extra hard and if I’d squinted.

  By 8:39, they’d finished talking and were heading for the elevators together. I almost made my move then … but, no. Not ready yet. Wait until the plan comes together more surely.

  By 8:45 p.m., I was back in my car, ready to drive the twenty minutes to Georgetown … and to Lisa.

  * * *

  LIKE EVERYTHING else these days it seemed, visiting Lisa was a risk—on a number of levels. But the primary level was that this was Saturday night and this was Lisa Fang. She was probably out at a Thing. Lisa was born and bred for Things. She needed them, and they needed her. When I was with her years ago, she went out almost every single evening, so there was a very, very good chance I would be spending the first night of my “vacation” in my car, waiting for her to come home until … God, dawn was like the median choice. It was a risk I was willing to take, though. Without her help, nothing could go forward.

  I walked up the red brick steps of her building and rang her apartment.

  “Yes?” Almost right away. Holy shit, she was home.

  “Dak for Dakota,” I said into the intercom.

  A momentary eternity later, she buzzed me into the building.

  I took a breath. How was she going to receive me? How was this going to go down? Was I walking into a trap?

  I pushed the door and walked inside.

  * * *

  “OH MY God. Oh my God. Oh. My. God.”

  She was standing in her apartment doorway, wearing a blue silk robe over black pants, hair clipped up with indifference, practically peeing with joy as she watched me walk down the hall toward her. I wasn’t sure if I should hug her, shake her hand, honk her boobs. I settled for shrugging and saying, “Maybe I should come on in and we’ll get this door closed, huh?”

  “Yes—yes. Please.”

  She ushered me in and closed the door behind me. And there we were. Dakota and Lisa, together again.

  “Did you know,” she was saying, shaking her head and looking me up and down, “about once a year—actually maybe more, maybe once every nine months, ten months—I think, ‘Will I ever see Dakota again?’”

  I smiled for the first time in what felt like years. Fuck that, I even blushed.

  “I’m surprised you’re not at a Thing.”

  “I had my pick of four Things tonight. Even thought of trying to make all of them.”

  “No shit?” I laughed. “And yet—?”

  “It felt like a night for being alone.”

  I really clocked the robe, the un-made-up face, the hair.

  “Shit. Lisa. My bad, if you don’t want—”

  She grabbed me by the arm, gently. There were not a lot of people on this planet my reflexes allowed to do that, gently or otherwise. “No, no, no. This is actually so much better. Dakota. Fucking. Prentiss,” she rhapsodized.

  We stared at each other, awkward and overwhelmed, for a few moments. Then she said the thing that tends to be said during reunions like these: “Do you still drink?”

  “It’s been known to happen.” I grinned, and she spun on her heels and began to pad toward the kitchen. I followed.

  “In that case, what would you say”—she reached her kitchen, gorgeous and intimidating in that way only a large kitchen full of spotless new appliances can be—“to some good tequila mixed with really gross margarita mix?”

  “I would say, ‘Get that inside me, stranger.’”

  It wasn’t too swampy that night so we decided to sit on the back balcony, overlooking her building’s garden. Unsaid, by both of us: our old spot.

  I let myself smile a little more because it was a damned nice night for some nostalgic balcony riding. And also with relief, because Lisa’s apartment was haunted, so I would take my pleasa
ntries where I could get them.

  * * *

  I WASN’T expecting my plan to move forward much tomorrow, so I let myself indulge—in a lot of margaritas and in a little truth.

  “Jeeeeeesus,” Lisa gasped, delighted and appalled, “for real?”

  “Honestly, I haven’t fucked this much since … okay, when was I in Dubai?”

  “How in the hell would I know when you were in Dubai? It was probably quadruple-classified.” She chuckled, licking salt off the rim of her glass. I was lost in a small squall of nostalgia.

  “I think that was ten years ago … maybe more … fuck.”

  “We’re so old,” she shrugged, half kidding.

  “Anyway, it’s like … it’s like if you don’t have meat for a while and then you have a little and suddenly you’ve gone crazy.”

  “Only now it’s man-meat.”

  “MAN-MEAT.” I roared. We clinked glasses.

  “Oh—sorry, it is still men, right? Look at me, assuming.”

  “Still men,” I said. “Still women?”

  “Still women.” She sipped at her margarita. “Well—one man at one point, which was … fine? He was like a movie you see when you’re bored and just want to enjoy some air-conditioning for a little while. You know a lotta work went into it, but it was all pretty forgettable.”

  “Fair’s fair, then.” I lifted my glass again. “WOMAN-MEAT.”

  Clink.

  “I’m so glad we’re still assholes.” I sighed, contented. A moment of anxiety shivered through me: This is so nice, are you really going to upend everything? I took another, deeper sip of my margarita.

  Lisa’s smile curled her upper lip—she was having her own private reaction too. In fact, it told me all I needed to know about her current relationship with woman-meat. Something had ended recently, and not well. Something that kept her from attending Things and even encouraged her to welcome people from her past, people so filled with painful memories it hung upon them like a stench, into her home for margaritas.

  “I’m gonna guess … I’m not the only asshole in your life right now,” I hazarded.