by F P Adriani
Chuck was typically a man of only a few words at a time, and they were typically blunt, gets-to-the-point words. So I mentally readied myself for how to talk to him to get what I needed from him.
His booming voice finally came on the line. “Chuck Huston here.” There was a pause, while he must have looked on a telephone-call ID or something. “Is this Pia there?”
“Yeah.”
“If it’s me you want, shoot. If you’re looking for Arlene, she isn’t here. She’s at her campaign office, and I don’t know when she’ll be back.” While I knew Hu, his wife, was running for political office, I hadn’t spoken to her since right after the Astrals; she’d been in jail most of the time since.
That no one in her circle would get jail-time had been one of Hu’s conditions for giving herself up and was also why I’d been able to maintain contact with Chuck: he was the first person she’d demanded immunity for. And he had since reinvented himself as a land surveyor….
I cleared my throat now and said to him, “It’s fine if you’ll speak to me…how is she doing actually?”
“She’s all right. But someone beat her up, busted her arm a few weeks before she got out.”
“Shit…. I thought I heard the news mention that one night. But, well, what did you expect would happen?”
“I expected just that. So did she. But just because you expect something doesn’t mean it feels good. At least she didn’t lose her arm,” he said, and I could tell by his hardening voice that he was thinking of the arm he’d lost. “She’s campaigning with a brace around it still.”
“Is she really all right?”
“Yeah. She’ll heal.”
I couldn’t believe I was about to say this, but…. “I hope she does.”
“Do you?”
I flushed now. There was a chilly pause between us, chilly from his end.
“I need to ask you something,” I finally said. “Did she ever mention to anyone that I was involved in the Astrals trek? In her letter to me from back then, she promised me she wouldn’t tell anyone—”
“Then she didn’t,” he said fast. “She’d keep her promise.”
“I just thought maybe she accidentally let something slip—”
“No,” he said in an emphatic voice, and I could tell he was mad that I’d asked about that.
“Someone wants to kill me,” I blurted out now.
There was another pause.
“Who,” he said finally, a statement, not a question.
I bit my bottom lip; my mind worked fast. “I’m not accusing you or her.”
There was no reply.
“I mean it,” I added in my own version of an emphatic voice.
“All right,” he said.
“It’s only that I just came from Ronin’s trial, and I’m confused about certain things. You know the video Arlene sent me?”
“Yeah.”
“In his trial, he’s claiming he acted alone.”
“Not surprising: a lighter sentence then.”
“Yeah, but I want to know if he wasn’t working alone…and if Arlene didn’t tell me for some reason. Like she left that out of the recording.”
There was an abrupt sigh. “Okay, I get it now: you didn’t call to accuse us of trying to kill you. You called to accuse us of abetting a killer.”
“For chrissake,” I began.
But then Chuck said, “I hear aggressive breathing coming over the line, your other half’s breathing.”
“Fuck you,” said Tan then.
“Good to talk with you again, Tan. Thanks for saving my life.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have bothered,” Tan growled.
“Enough—both of you!” I shouted. “Chuck, I just want some information. That’s it!”
“Well, here’s your information: what you saw is what we saw. If he wanted to confess more that day about the Festival, he would have. He had enough incentive to—believe me. He wouldn’t budge though. Personally, I have a feeling he was more afraid of another crowd that’s scarier than the UPG one. At least the UPG’s got to obey some laws.”
I saw his point, and I’d basically made similar ones about Ronin’s pleading out. But, the whole thing still bothered me. My work, my whole goddamn life, had more loose ends than the hair on my head.
When I hadn’t spoken again for a long moment, Chuck asked, “So is that it then?”
“I guess so…yeah.”
“I’ll tell Arlene you called,” he said, and then he hung up.
“This is fucking bullshit,” I heard Tan say at the other end, over the buzzing of Chuck’s disconnected line.
“What’s bullshit?” I asked.
Tan walked in the room now. “I don’t know. I just get this strong bullshit smell whenever they’re around.”
I put my receiver back on its black base. “I get that smell from life, period.”
He plopped down into one of the chairs beside my desk. Then he looked at me. “You want to get it on?”
“What?!?” My face instantly heated up, but I only laughed at his non sequitur come-on.
“Well, what else have you got to do now? I need something to take the bad taste out of my mouth from the court—and other things.” His head turned away from me.
“Maybe a little later. Really. I’ve got to do some paperwork right now. And Nell asked me to collect some of her stuff from her room and bring it by. I won’t—I’ll give it to Roberto and have him drop it off. It’s safer for her.”
“Pia, this just stinks. My mom wanted to visit in a few weeks—but now what!”
Normally, his mom and his step-dad would come stay with us for several days every other month. But I definitely wouldn’t agree to that this time. “We’ll have to tell her no.”
“You tell her no.” He pouted at me. “She likes you better than she likes me.”
“Oh, bullshit,” I said, because his statement was bullshit. But, a part of my mind still warmed at hearing it. For too long a time I had needlessly worried about meeting his mom when she wound up liking me a lot. And that was much more than I’d expected, which was that she’d tell Tan to boot me out of his life as fast as possible because I was TROUBLE—yeah, in ALL CAPS.
*
Fifteen minutes later, in the middle of doing my paperwork, I got a call about a new job opportunity, an opportunity I would have loved to jump on right then. But I had to tell the potential client I probably wouldn’t be able to start for a few weeks at least. Thankfully, she agreed to that because she wasn’t ready to hire my services just yet.
When I got off the phone with her, I realized I needed to check on whether some guards had shown up for another job I’d middle-personed for, which had started today. I’d been so distracted by so much bad shit that I’d almost forgotten to do this follow-up, and that slipshodness annoyed me. At moments like this, I found not only life so aggravating, but my inability to do everything the way I in-my-head felt it should have been done—I found that inability so aggravating too, sometimes even more aggravating than the things outside me that I couldn’t control. With myself, I had no excuses: I could control me. Or at least I should have been able to control me….
While I did that follow-up phone work and read over some papers, Tan went into the kitchen to put together peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for both of us.
Then we sat and ate them over my desk. Then, afterward, we pulled the curtains shut and Tan bent me over that same desk.
“Office sex—hell yeah!” he said right before we had office sex, not for the first time, including in this particular office.
But, this time it felt bizarre; my mind was too cluttered and distracted. I was flustered over the day, and Tan’s red neck and face in the mirror on the window table behind my desk—his too-red skin made me think he was flustered too.
He was inside me pumping away, my flattish tits pressed even flatter against my desktop, when I suddenly stilled.
He noticed and stilled too. “What?”
M
y voice was soft at him in the mirror. “Are you upset? You look upset.”
“Well, I guess I’m a little upset….” He flushed even more, and then he bent forward and pressed his face into my back, his crying face into my back.
“I’m sorry, Tan,” I said, feeling my heart give way into a pile of Tan-makes-me-weak mush.
I reached behind me till my hand could slip under his gray shirt and awkwardly pat his warm skin. “It’s all right.”
“Is it?” He seemed too overcome to lift his head. It hung down over me, the dark glossy messiness of his hair obscuring his face in the mirror.
My voice was even softer now. “You want to stop?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I began pulling forward away from him, but he only clung onto me more. “No, no….”
We started moving our hips again, and it took him longer than usual to come, but he eventually did, and then he was panting against my back instead of crying. Or maybe he was doing both. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled then.
“Don’t be. That was nice.”
“My blubbering?”
“Yeah, blubbering and all. Sex is sex. We just had sad sex.”
“I hope we don’t have that often,” he said as his head rose from my back.
*
We each, in turn, washed up in the full-bathroom down the hall, and when I walked back into the office’s main room, the phone rang again.
Several months ago I’d had the line rigged to keep a running charted account of all the phone numbers and locations coming in; that way I could see a sales pattern, like when and where the office calls came from based on other jobs, or on any advertising I’d done, which I did occasionally do. But the light on the readout had died a few days ago, and I’d stupidly forgotten to fix it.
At my desk now, sighing, I picked up the ringing black phone and heard Hu’s voice—or maybe I heard an evolved version of her voice; it no longer sounded so cold. It sounded disinterested as she said, “Hello, Pia. Chuck told me you called.”
“Hello,” I said back, and I kind of didn’t know what the hell else to say. It didn’t help that Tan was shooting me a weird look. I mouthed, HU, at him, and his eyes rolled once—fast—up at the ceiling. When they met mine on their downswing, I pointed to the right and mouthed, YOU WANT TO GET ON THE OTHER LINE AGAIN?
But he threw up his hands, crossing them over each other repeatedly and shaking his head; then he plopped into one of the chairs nearby.
Hu didn’t say anything further, till I spoke again: “I heard about you getting hurt—”
“I’m fine,” she said fast then.
“So you’ve been campaigning.”
“Yes, running for Mayor of Settingham. Do I have your vote?”
I couldn’t help laughing. Tan shot me a bizarre look, and then I couldn’t help laughing again. He sighed loudly and grabbed one of the glossy magazines I kept around for clients to read.
Now I asked Hu, “So, how did it go—I mean…what went on for you inside?”
“You can read all about it in my memoirs.”
“You’re writing some?”
“Yeah, right,” she said in a sarcastic voice I’d never heard from her before. I wondered if prison had made her cynical. Prison tended to do that to people.
But, now she said in an even voice, “Chuck told me you’re having trouble.”
“Yeah. I wanted to know if you have any insights…” I began, but she cut me off fast.
“I can’t help you, Pia.”
“But I didn’t ask you for help.”
“Look,” she said in the same blunt way Chuck usually spoke. And now I wondered if marriage had already begun merging their behaviors, and their personalities. “I’ll always appreciate your coming back for me and Chuck in the cave. But there’s nothing I can do about whatever your situation is.”
“Well, thanks. Thanks a lot,” I said, my voice snide with hurt, my face red with sudden embarrassment.
Tan’s sharp eyes fell on me. “Give me the phone.”
NOOO, I mouthed.
“But she’s upsetting you.”
NOOO.
“Look,” Hu said again, “I’m still recovering from my prison experience, frankly. I’m just not made of Diamond steel. And I’m no longer in regular touch with…the underground. I’m not exactly well-loved by everyone on Diamond. And I’m running for office, which means I’ve got to keep my nose clean.”
Now this was a switch: she used to be trouble to be around for a person; now I was trouble to be around. I felt kind of insulted.
“Well, I’m not sure I believe you,” I said, because I wasn’t sure. With all-things-Hu, you had to read between the lines. Still, going on her voice’s inflection, she clearly didn’t want to help me. “But thanks for nothing,” I said finally.
There was a long pause and I thought maybe she’d hung up. But then…. “What makes you think someone’s after you?”
“A threatening letter.”
Tan’s eyes shot to mine again.
“Well,” Hu said, “if you have it on you, you might as well read it to me….”
I did. At least I told her the two sentences from memory. They weren’t exactly difficult to memorize.
“Well,” Hu said then, “that’s not very creative.”
“I’ll be sure to relay your literary criticisms when their hands are around my throat.”
“No need to be snide. Where did you get the letter? At your office?”
“In the mail, yeah. At my post-office box, a supposedly secure post-office box.”
“Nothing’s totally secure,” she said, which I already knew. And which kind of made my whole damn business a business of bullshit….
Hu spoke again: “Where was it sent from?”
“Er, hang on a second. Let me get it.”
I dropped the phone onto my desk and grabbed my case.
“Why are you doing this?” Tan asked me.
Bent over my open case now, I just gave him a look from beneath my lowered brow.
I grabbed the phone again, and Hu said right away, “Tell Tan I said hello.”
“I will,” I lied. “Here’s the address written on the envelope, for what that’s worth….” I read the address to her.
And then she said, “Hmm…maybe there’s something—did you say Spoonville? Is that correct?”
My pulse picked up speed and my hand gripped the phone harder. “Yes.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, there actually is a Spoonville here on Diamond—on this side maybe? It sounds like that’s something you should check.”
There was another long pause. I watched Tan walk away and toward the half-bathroom beside the kitchen. Then I broke the silence over the phone line. “Do you think I’m being paranoid?”
“Are you kidding?” Hu said in an ironic voice.
I flushed, almost felt embarrassed again, but then I realized she was the first person lately who actually made me feel like I wasn’t a paranoid person. How bizarre: she seemed to understand the way I felt. Or maybe I was imagining things again….
“On Diamond especially, there’s no such thing as paranoid,” Hu finally said. “So, is there anything else?”
“No.”
“All right then. Take care.”
“You too,” I said, and then I hung up.
*
Before the court case earlier, I had vowed to not let the letter-shit destroy yet another day for me. I told myself then to avoid thinking about it.
But that wound up being impossible. Once I’d brought it up to Chuck, and then Hu had brought it up to me, my strong need-to-know-of-any-threat habit kicked in, and I didn’t want to forget about the fucking threat that day and was glad I hadn’t.
“I’ve got to address this shit,” I said out loud in my office.
“What?” asked Tan as he walked out of the half-bath. “What happened on the phone?”
I turned on my small black desktop computer. “Hu seems to think that ad
dress on the envelope might exist.”
“So? You really think someone would put on a real address?” His face shifted; something seemed to come to him fast now. “Wait—what if it is real? If you’re thinking of going there, it could be a trap.”
“I’m not going anywhere yet, except maybe back to the post office…shit. I’ve gotta pee again. I just put in an e-net search for Spoonville and that specific address. Keep an eye on it while I piss.”
I jumped up from my desk and went down the hall to the full-bathroom. As I peed, I thought of Tan and I locked together only an hour before, and I wondered where our humping motions from then had all gone. My life seemed to move so fast sometimes, and I could never seem to slow it down. But then, did I really want a slower life?
Back in the main room once again, I found Tan seated behind my desk; the computer hadn’t returned any exact matches, just a small list of similar names. “Why’s it going so slow?” he said, banging a hand on the computer’s flat monitor, as if that would make the system go faster. (It wouldn’t.)
“It’s the protection I have on there,” I said. “I’m hiding that I’m searching….” I thought of Hu’s statement about security not being a hundred percent. But this searching was as close to a hundred percent as I could get….
I began rummaging around in Nell’s desk for some blank envelopes. I pulled out one and addressed it to an old client, stuck a blank piece of paper inside, sealed the envelope, then rubbed the outside with a dry, special cloth.
I carefully removed the threat-letter and inner envelope from the plastic baggie and slipped them back into my case in an empty side slot. Then I put the plastic baggie containing only the threat’s outside envelope and the fake client envelope into my purse.
Tan was watching me. “What are you doing now?”
“I’ve got to go back to the post office.” I glanced over at the clock on the opposite wall. “An hour and a half left for both of them.”
“Both of them?”
*
