He slapped her hard across the face.
She was too stunned to react. By the time she realized what had happened, Philipe had again stepped back to where the rest of us were standing. The woman looked at us, through us, past us, searching for the person who had hit her. There was fear on her face, and her right cheek was bright red where it had been slapped.
She and her friend quickly moved away, toward a security guard standing near the bleachers.
Philipe grinned at me. I heard Bill and Junior giggling behind me.
“What should we do?” James asked.
“Follow my lead,” Philipe said. He moved forward, into the crowd, in the direction of the folding chairs. He stopped next to a young Turk in a power tie who was discussing stock options with a friend.
Philipe reached out, grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, and yanked. Hard.
The man screamed in pain and whirled around, fists clenched.
Steve punched him in the gut.
The man fell to his knees, gasping for air and clutching his stomach. His friend looked at us with frightened eyes and began backing away.
Bill and John advanced on him.
I felt strange. Following the rush of our city hall escapade, I’d wanted to do something else along those lines, I’d wanted to see some type of action, but this sort of random violence made me feel extremely uncomfortable. It shouldn’t have—I’d already killed a man, I’d already vandalized a public building, I didn’t like these yuppies here to begin with—but I still felt as though we were in the wrong. If there had been more provocation, if there was some way I could justify our actions, I might feel better about it, but as it was, I felt sorry for the woman Philipe had slapped, for the man he had attacked. I’d been the victim too often myself not to sympathize with other victims.
The first man was starting to get up, and Philipe pushed him back down onto the cement. He turned to me. “Go with Bill and John. Get his friend.”
I stood there.
“Get him!”
Bill and John had tackled the other man. Someone else had come to his rescue. This was turning into an honest-to-God brawl.
“Get in there!” Philipe ordered.
I didn’t want to “get in there”. I didn’t want to—
An Armani-suited jerk bumped into me. He was heading toward the fight, ready to get into it. He obviously hadn’t seen me and had run into me accidentally, but he didn’t even bother to apologize. “Get the fuck out of my way,” he said instead, pushing a fisted hand toward my face.
That did it.
The crowd suddenly had a face to me. The man in the Armani suit instantly came to symbolize everything that was wrong with these people, everything that I hated about them. They were no longer innocent victims of Philipe’s random attacks. They were deserving recipients of justice.
These were the people who had kept us down, kept us Ignored, and after all this time, we were finally striking back.
I punched Armani hard in the back.
He stumbled, grunted, whirled around, but Don was already on him, hitting him in the stomach. Armani doubled up, but took it, and was about to retaliate when Buster, behind him, kicked the back of his left knee.
He went down.
“Retreat!” Philipe announced suddenly. “Move back!”
I didn’t know why he said that, what he had planned or decided, but like the others, I instantly, instinctively obeyed. All ten of us gathered around Philipe. He grinned hugely. “Look,” he said.
My gaze followed the nod of his head. The fight was still going on, although between whom I did not know. Two security guards had rushed over and were trying to break it up.
No one had noticed our absence.
I got the point.
Philipe caught my eye, grinned, nodded when he saw that I understood. “We’ll spread out, start up conflicts throughout the crowd. Bill and John, you go to the other side of Nieman Marcus. James, Steve, Pete, start something near Silverwood’s. Buster and Junior, you do something by the far bleachers. Tommy and Don? You two attack near the sign-up table for the drawing. Bob and I will take this area.”
The plan worked perfectly. We would pick one man and then set upon him, pummeling him. Others would join in, expanding the fight, and we would bow out.
Soon there were several pockets of turmoil in the crowd, a free-for-all melee with us unseen at the center of the storm.
The band had stopped playing by this time, and an announcement was made from the stage that unless order was restored immediately the concert would be canceled.
The fighting continued, with an ever-increasing number of security guards emerging from some reserve area in an attempt to bring the crowd under control.
Philipe surveyed the scene, nodded with satisfaction, dropped a handful of cards on the ground, placed some on the bottom bleacher seats. “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s go. We’re outta here.”
The next day we made the front page of the Register.
GANG VIOLENCE ERUPTS AT FREE CONCERT, the headline read.
Junior laughed. “Gang violence?”
There was no mention of our exploits in the Times.
“The concert was sponsored by the Register,” John said. “That’s why.”
“First lesson,” Philipe said. “Avoid partisan media events.”
We all laughed.
“We should start a scrapbook,” James suggested. “Cut out all the articles about us.”
Philipe nodded. “Good idea. You’re in charge of that.” He turned toward me. “And since you have the best VCR here, you’re in charge of taping local news broadcasts, in case we ever make it onto TV.”
“Okay,” I said.
He continued looking at me. “By the way, you know what today is, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“It’s your one-month anniversary.”
He was right. How could I have forgotten? Exactly one month ago today, I had killed Stewart. The morning’s lighthearted mood disappeared instantly for me. My hands grew sweaty, the muscles in my neck tense as I thought of that scene in the bathroom stall. In my mind, I again smelled the blood, felt the knife push thickly through muscle, deflect off bone.
At this time of day, one month ago, I had been sitting at my desk in my clown suit. Waiting.
The clown suit was still on the floor of my bedroom closet.
“Let’s go back there,” Philipe said. “See what’s happened since then.”
I was horrified. “No!”
“Why not? You can’t tell me you’re not even curious.”
“Yeah,” Don said. “Let’s go. It’ll be great.”
“What did he do a month ago?” Junior asked.
“He killed his boss,” Buster explained.
The old man’s eyes widened. “Killed his boss?”
“We all did,” Buster told him. “I thought you knew that.”
“No. I didn’t.” He was silent for a moment. “I did, too,” he admitted. “I killed my boss, too. But I was afraid to tell you.”
Philipe continued to look at me. “I think we should go back to your company,” he said. “I think we should go back to Automated Interface, Incorporated.”
Even hearing that name sent a strange shiver through me. “Why?” I asked. My hands were trembling. I tried not to let it show. “What good would it do?”
“Catharsis. I think you need to go. I don’t think you’ll get over it until you confront it.”
“Is this because of last night? Because I didn’t want to just start beating on people for no reason?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. You can’t have pussies in a terrorist organization.”
I thought of a thousand retorts to that, a thousand things I could say, a thousand things I should say, but for some reason I backed off. I looked away from him, looked down at my shoes, shook my head. “I don’t want to go.”
“We’re going,” he said flatly. “Whether you want to or not. I’ll drive.”
>
James, on the couch, glanced up from the newspaper article. “Are we all going?”
“No, just Bob and me.”
I wanted to object, wanted to refuse, but I found myself nodding. “Okay,” I said.
Philipe talked on the drive over. This was the first time we’d been alone, with none of the others anywhere around, since he’d first approached me on the street after Stewart’s murder, and he seemed anxious to explain to me the importance of what he termed “our work.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” He shook his head. “I never know about you,” he said. “John, Don, Bill, and the rest, I always know where they stand, I always know what they’re thinking. But you’re a mystery to me. Maybe that’s why it’s so important for me to make sure you understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“I understand.”
“But you don’t approve.”
“Yes, I do. It’s just… I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“Sometimes… sometimes some things seem wrong to me.”
“You still have your old values, you still have your old system of beliefs. You’ll get over that eventually.”
“Maybe.”
He looked sideways at me. “You don’t want to?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re with us? You’re one of us?”
“Always,” I said. “What else do I have?”
He nodded. “What else do any of us have?”
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
It felt strange to be driving back to Automated Interface again, and my palms were sweaty as we pulled into the parking lot. I wiped them on my jeans. “I don’t think we should do this.”
“You think they’re going to see you and immediately put two and two together and arrest you for killing your supervisor? These people don’t even remember you. They probably couldn’t describe you if their lives depended on it.”
“Some of them could,” I said.
“Don’t count on it.”
The parking spaces were all filled, so Philipe pulled into a handicapped visitor’s spot near the entrance. He switched off the ignition. “We’re here.”
“I don’t—”
“If you don’t face it, you won’t get past it. You can’t let the memory of what happened here ruin your whole life. You did the right thing.”
“I know I did.”
“Then why do you feel guilty?”
“I don’t. I just… I’m afraid.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He opened his door, got out of the car. Reluctantly, I did the same. “It’s places like this that have made us what we are,” Philipe said. “These are the places we need to strike against.”
“I was always Ignored,” I pointed out. “My job didn’t make me Ignored.”
“But it made you worse,” he said.
I could not really argue. I did not know if I believed him, but I could not refute him.
“You had to waste that fucker. You couldn’t have done anything else. That’s why you are who you are. That’s why you’re here with me now. That’s why you’re a terrorist. It’s part of the plan.”
I smiled. “A Dan Fogelberg reference?”
“If it applies, use it.” He grinned. “Let’s go in.”
We walked up the sidewalk, through the entrance, into the lobby. The guard was at his post. As always, he ignored me. I was about to walk past him to the elevator when I suddenly stopped. I turned toward Philipe. “I hate that guy,” I said.
“Then do something about it.”
“I will.” I walked up to the guard’s desk. He still didn’t see me.
I leaned forward, knocked the cap off his head. “Asshole,” I said.
Now he saw me.
He leaped out of his chair, reached over the desk to grab my arm. “Who do you think you are, you—”
I backed up, moved next to Philipe, and suddenly the guard looked confused.
He could no longer see me!
“It’s good to be back,” Philipe said. “Isn’t it?”
I nodded. It did feel good. And I was glad Philipe had forced me to return. We continued on toward the elevator. I hazarded a glance back at the guard. He seemed not only confused but frightened.
“We can do anything,” Philipe said. He looked at me meaningfully. “Anything.”
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside. I pressed the button for the fourth floor. Flush with my success, primed by encouragement from Philipe, I considered killing Banks. I’d been invisible to him for quite some time before I left, but when he had been able to see me, he hadn’t liked me. He’d been Stewart’s ally. He’d even made fun of my haircut once.
I could give him a haircut.
I could scalp the fucker.
Then I thought of Stewart and the horrible way he’d died, the way he’d tried to kick me and hit me as I stabbed him, the way the blood gushed out of his body onto me, and I knew I would not be able to kill again.
The elation fled as quickly as it had come. Why was I here? What could I possibly hope to accomplish at Automated Interface? Philipe had said in the car that he wanted us to monkey-wrench, but I was not in a position to cause any serious damage. I didn’t know enough to do any real harm.
We got out on the fourth floor. I walked over to the programming section. The lights were off in Stewart’s old office. Obviously he had not been replaced. Otherwise, everything was as I’d left it. I took Philipe past Stacy’s desk, and Pam’s and Emery’s. None of the programmers even looked up at us.
It felt oppressive to me here, the atmosphere thick and heavy, the air way too warm, and I told Philipe that I wanted to leave, but he said that first he wanted to see where I’d killed Stewart.
I took him into the bathroom.
It was weird being back again. The body was gone, of course, and the blood was cleaned up, but the place still seemed tainted to me, dirty. With trembling hands, I opened the door to the first stall. Philipe made me go over the whole thing, in detail, and he nodded, touching the metal wall into which I’d slammed Stewart, crouching down to examine the toilet where I’d fallen.
When I finished, he said, “Don’t feel bad; you did everything you were supposed to.”
I didn’t buy that, but I nodded.
He pushed me gently out of the stall. “Excuse me,” he said.
“What?”
“I have to take a piss.”
He closed the door to the stall. I heard the sound of a zipper going down, heard piss hitting the toilet water.
That did it.
Coming here, seeing everything, going over it all again—none of that had done anything to erase the unease I felt. But hearing Philipe taking a leak in the same stall where I’d killed Stewart, that put those feelings to rest. In some bizarre way, it made me realize that the past was over, the future was here, and the future was good.
The future was us.
I was grinning when Philipe flushed the toilet and came out.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I told him.
“Let’s check out your office.”
I led him down the hall. Like Stewart’s office, mine was empty. A replacement for me had not been found yet. Hell, maybe they hadn’t even noticed that I was gone. The papers on top of my desk were untouched, exactly the way I’d left them a month ago.
He looked around the small cubicle. “God, this is depressing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Didn’t you hate working here?”
I nodded.
He looked at me, tossed me a book of matches. “Do something about it.”
I understood what he wanted me to do, and the thought made my blood pump faster. Yes, I thought. This was right.
He backed out of the office, into the hallway.
This is something I had to do on my own.
I stood there for a moment, then lit a match
, touched it to the edge of a memo, the edge of a procedural manual. The flames spread slowly, from one paper to another across the top of the desk. I thought of my cards, my business cards, and I quickly opened the drawer where I’d put them and took them out. The entire top of the desk was burning now, and I turned over the box and dumped the cards on the fire. They caught and curled and blackened and were gone.
My old life was over.
Really over.
I could not go home again.
I moved back into the hallway, nodded to Philipe, and the two of us walked slowly and calmly down the hallway, dropping terrorist cards, as around us fire alarms sounded and sprinklers went off.
FOUR
Again I wondered what I was. What we were. Did we possess different genes or chromosomes than everyone else? Was there a scientific explanation for all of this? Were we descendants of aliens or a separate race of being? It seemed silly to think that we were not human, particularly since we were so prototypically, so stereo-typically, average in every way, but there was obviously something that set us apart from those around us. Could it be that individually, coincidentally, we had so conformed to the norms of society, our backgrounds and environments had so shaped us, that we had collectively turned out this way and were now ignored by a culture trained to look for the unusual and overlook the obvious? Or were we truly of a kind—did we send out some sort of subliminal psychic signal that was picked up by those around us and caused us to be ignored?
I had no answers, only questions.
I was not sure that the others thought about this as much as I did. They didn’t seem to. Philipe probably did. He was deeper than the rest of us, brighter, more ambitious, more serious, more philosophical. The others, in a way, were almost like children, and it seemed to me that as long as they had Philipe to be their parent and do their thinking and planning for them, they were happy. Philipe kept insisting that because we were Ignored, because we fell through the cracks, we did not have to conform to other people’s perceptions or standards or ideas of what we should be. We were free to be ourselves; we were free to be individuals. But the other terrorists were not individuals. Instead of defining themselves in terms of their jobs, they now defined themselves as terrorists. They’d simply switched one group identity for another.
The Ignored Page 17
