But I dared not tell Philipe that.
I let him think we were what he wanted us to be.
After our trip to Automated Interface, Philipe and I were closer. There was no official hierarchy among the terrorists—Philipe was the leader and the rest of us were his followers—but if there had been, I would have been vice president or second in command. I was the one he asked when he wanted a second opinion on something; I was the one whose advice he heeded most often. All of the other terrorists, all of them except Junior, had been with Philipe longer than I had, but it was pretty well accepted that, among equals, I was somewhat more equal. There was no resentment of this, just acceptance, and everything continued along smoothly the way it always had.
During the next few weeks, we went to all of the terrorists’ former places of work.
We vandalized them big-time.
But though we left our cards everywhere we went, we received no credit.
We did get several more news articles for our scrap-book, though. And while we didn’t make the television news, Philipe assured us that we would get there eventually, and I had no doubt that he was right.
I started taking walks. After a busy day, after the other terrorists had left or had dropped me off at my place, I was often still not tired. And I usually did not feel like being cooped up alone in my apartment. So I began taking walks. I had never really walked much before. The frat-rat neighborhood in which my apartment was located was not the best in the world, for one thing, and I would have felt exposed and rather self-conscious walking by myself. But now that I knew that no one noticed me, that no one saw me, I felt safe and comfortable strolling about the streets of Brea.
Walking relaxed me.
One night, I walked all the way to Jane’s parents’ house, on the other side of town. I don’t know what I expected—Jane’s car in the driveway, perhaps; a glimpse of her through an open window—but when I reached the house it was dark, the driveway empty.
I stood across the street for what seemed like hours, thinking about the first time I’d picked up Jane for a date, about the time we’d spent afterward in my car, parked two doors down, out of sight of her parents’ windows. At one point in our relationship, before we’d moved in together, this house had been almost like a second home to me. I’d spent as much time here as I had at my own apartment.
Now it seemed like the house of a stranger.
I stood there, waiting, watching, trying to gather up enough courage to walk up to the front door and knock.
Was she living with her parents again? Or was she staying somewhere else? Even if she was living in another city, another state, her parents would know where she was.
It didn’t look like her parents were home, though.
And if they came home and I asked them about Jane, would they tell me? Would they recognize me? Would they even see me?
I stood there for a while longer. The night was chilly, and my arms began to get cold. I wished I’d brought a jacket.
Finally I decided to leave. Jane’s parents still had not come back, and I did not know when they would. Maybe they’d gone on a vacation. Maybe they’d gone to visit Jane.
I turned away from the house, began walking back the way I’d come. The streets were empty, there was no one outside, but the drapes of the houses I passed were backlit with the blue glow of television. What was it that Karl Marx had said? Religion was the opiate of the masses? Wrong. Television was the opiate of the masses. No religion had ever been able to command as large and loyal an audience as that electronic box. No pope had ever had the pulpit of Johnny Carson.
I realized that I had not watched TV since I’d become a terrorist.
Did that mean that no one was watching TV? Or did that mean I was no longer average?
There were so many things that I did not know and would probably never know. I thought, fleetingly, that perhaps our time would be better spent trying to find out the answers to these questions rather than trying to draw attention to ourselves. But then I thought, no, drawing attention to our cause, letting people know we existed would eventually attract the interest of other, greater minds. People who might be able to change us, rescue us from our plight.
Rescue us.
Was that still how I thought? Despite Philipe’s assertion that we were special, chosen, luckier than everyone else, despite my adamant professions of belief, would I still trade it all instantly to be like everyone else, to fit in with the rest of the world?
Yes.
It was after midnight when I arrived back at my apartment. I’d done a lot of thinking on my way home, run through a lot of scenarios in my head, made a lot of plans. Before I could change my mind, before I could chicken out, I dialed the number of Jane’s parents. The phone rang. Once. Twice. Thrice.
On the thirtieth ring, I hung up.
I took off my clothes and got into bed. For the first time in a long time, I masturbated.
I fell asleep afterward and dreamed of Jane.
The night after we trashed the body shop where Junior had worked—pouring oil and transmission fluid onto the cement floor, smashing windows and equipment, sledge hammering cars—Philipe decided that we should take some time off, enjoy some R & R. We deserved it. John suggested that we go to a movie, and that idea was greeted with unanimous approval.
We met the next day at the theater complex.
There were a total of four movies playing on six screens, and though ordinarily we were in agreement on almost everything, we could not seem to decide what movie to see. Tommy, Junior, Buster, James, and Don wanted to watch a new comedy. The rest of us wanted to check out a horror flick.
My guess was that two movies would tie for first place in the box office rankings this weekend.
Philipe bought a movie ticket, and while the usher at the door tore his stub, the rest of us filed silently past, unnoticed, into the multiplex. The horror movie had started a few minutes ago, the comedy was not scheduled to be shown for another ten minutes, so we split up, going into our respective theaters.
The movie was okay, not great, although Bill seemed to like it quite a bit. I found myself wondering what the results of Entertainment Tonight’s movie track poll would be.
I had a feeling that one out of four people would rate the movie “above average or outstanding.”
After we got out, the four of us hung around outside the theater, waiting. Bill said he was hungry, so we looked at the schedule mounted in the ticket booth to see how long it would be until the comedy got out. When we found out that it would be another twenty minutes we walked slowly down the block to a Baskin-Robbins. Two blond bimbos, giggling and talking in Valleyspeak, moved around us, past us.
“I’d like to feed that girl my ice-cream cone,” Steve said.
“Which girl?” John asked.
“Either. Both.”
We laughed.
Philipe stopped walking. “Rape,” he said, “is power.”
The rest of us stopped walking, looked at each other. We couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.
“Rape is a weapon.”
He was serious. I stared at him in disgust.
“Don’t give me that Holy Joe look. That’s what this is all about. Power. It’s what we, as Ignored, don’t have. It’s what we have to learn to take.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Besides, when’s the last time you had some pussy?”
“Great idea,” I said sarcastically. “That’s how you can get women to notice you. Rape them.”
“We’ve done it before.” Philipe stared at me calmly.
That stopped me. I looked from Philipe to Steve to the rest of them, shocked. I had killed; I had assaulted; I had vandalized. But all of that had seemed perfectly justifiable to me, perfectly legitimate. This, however… This seemed wrong. And the fact that my friends, my brothers, my fellow terrorists had actually raped women made me see them in a different light. For the first time, I felt that I did not know these men. For the first time, I fel
t out of sync with them.
Philipe must have sensed my discomfort. Maybe it showed on my face. He smiled at me gently, put an arm around my shoulder. “We’re terrorists,” he said. “You know that. This is one of the things terrorists do.”
“But we’re Terrorists for the Common Man. How is this going to help the common man? How is this going to advance our cause?”
“It lets these bitches know who we are,” Steve said.
“It gives us power,” Philipe said.
“We don’t need that kind of power.”
“Yes, we do.” Philipe squeezed my shoulder. “I think it’s time for your initiation.”
I pulled away. “No.”
“Yes.”
Philipe glanced around. “How about her?” He pointed down the sidewalk to where an Asian woman was stepping out of a lingerie shop, carrying a small bag. The woman was gorgeous: model-tall, with finely sculpted features, dark almond-shaped eyes offset by luscious red lipstick, long straight black hair that hung almost to her waist. Her thin shiny pants were purple and skintight, and I could clearly see the outline of French-cut panties beneath.
Philipe saw the look on my face. “Take her down, bud.”
“But…”
“If you don’t, we will.”
The others nodded enthusiastically.
“It’s broad daylight.”
“No one will see you.”
He was right, I knew. I would be as ignored raping a woman as I was at everything else. The woman began walking away from us, past the Baskin-Robbins, toward an alley in the center of the block.
But that didn’t make it okay.
“That woman’s going to be raped,” Philipe said. “Either you do it or we do it. The decision’s yours.”
I fell for the argument, believing in my arrogance that being raped by me was somehow preferable to being raped by Philipe or Steve or John. I was a nice person, I rationalized, a good person performing a bad act. It was less horrible to be raped by me than one of the others.
John giggled. “Pork her. And throw her a hump for me.”
I took a deep breath and walked casually down the sidewalk toward the woman. She did not see me until I was upon her, did not react until I had grabbed her arm and pulled her into the alley, my hand held over her mouth. She dropped her bag. Black lace panties and a red silk teddy spilled out.
I felt horrible. I suppose somewhere deep down in the dark, unexplored recesses of my macho heart of hearts I’d thought she might enjoy it just a little bit, that even if the experience was emotionally wrenching, it might still somehow be physically pleasurable. But she was crying and terrified and obviously in anguish, and I knew even as I pressed against her that she would hate it and hate me.
I stopped.
I couldn’t go through with it.
I let the woman go, and she fell onto the asphalt, sobbing, sucking in air with great gasps. I moved away from her, stood, and leaned back against the alley wall. I felt like shit, like the criminal I was. My stomach was churning, and I felt like throwing up. What in the hell was wrong with me? How could I have ever consented to something like this? How could I be so morally weak, so pitifully unable to stand up for my beliefs?
I was not the person I’d thought I was.
In my mind, I saw Jane, yanked into an alley, raped by some stranger.
Did this woman have a boyfriend? A husband? Did she have children? She had parents.
“You had your chance,” Philipe said. He was running into the alley, unbuckling his pants.
I lurched toward him, felt dizzy, felt like throwing up, had to lean against the wall again for support. “No!”
He looked at me. “You knew the rules of the game.”
He grabbed the front of her pants, pulled, and a snap flew off.
The other terrorists were laughing. The woman was whimpering pitifully, struggling on the ground, trying desperately to keep her pants from being pulled down, trying to reclaim some of her stolen dignity, but Philipe dropped to his knees and roughly shoved her legs apart. I heard the sound of material ripping. She was screaming, crying, tears streaming down her reddened face, and she looked for all the world like a frightened little girl. There was terror in her eyes. Pure, abject terror.
“Let her go!” I said.
“No.”
“I’m next!” Steve said.
“Me,” Bill said.
I staggered out of the alley. Behind me, I heard their laughter, heard her screams.
I couldn’t fight them. There was nothing I could do.
I walked down the sidewalk to the left, sat down on the narrow ledge beneath the Baskin-Robbins window. The glass felt cool against my back. I realized that my hands were shaking. I could still hear the woman’s screams, but they were muffled by city sounds, by traffic, by people. The door to the ice cream parlor opened, and Bill walked out, a huge chocolate sugar cone in his hand.
“Done?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
He frowned. “No?”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said, sickened.
“Where is everybody?”
“There.”
“Oh.” He licked his ice cream, then headed toward the alley.
I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate on the noise of the traffic. Was Philipe evil? Were we all evil? I didn’t know. I’d been taught my entire life that evil was banal. It was the Nazis and their institutionalized horror that had given rise to such a theory, and during my life I’d heard ad nauseum that evil was not brilliant and spectacular and grandiose, but small and mundane and ordinary.
We were small and mundane and ordinary.
Were we evil?
Philipe thought we were good, believed we could do anything that we wanted and that it was all right. There was no moral authority to which we had to answer, no system of ethics to which we were obliged to adhere. We were above all that. We decided what was right for us, what was wrong.
I had decided that this was wrong.
Why didn’t we all agree on this? Why were our beliefs different? In almost everything else, we thought, we felt, as one. But at this moment, I felt as estranged from my fellow Ignored as I ever had from normal men and women.
Philipe would say that I was still holding on to the mores and conventions of the society that I had left behind.
Maybe he was right.
They emerged from the alley a few minutes later. I wanted to go back there, check on the woman, make sure she was all right, but I stayed where I was, leaned my head back against the Baskin-Robbins window.
“Their movie’s probably out by now,” Philipe said, adjusting his belt. “We’d better get back to the theater.”
I nodded, stood, and we started walking back down the street the way we’d come. I peeked into the alley as we walked past but saw nothing. She must have run out the other end.
“You’re one of us,” Philipe said. “You were part of it, too.”
“Did I say anything?”
“No, but you’re thinking it.” He looked at me. “I need you with us.”
I did not respond.
“You’ll murder but you won’t rape?”
“That was different. That was personal.”
“It’s all personal! We’re not fighting individuals, we’re fighting an entire system. We have to strike where and when we can.”
“That’s not how I see it,” I told him.
He stopped walking. “You’re against us, then.”
I shook my head. “I’m not against you.”
“Then you’re with us.”
I said nothing.
“You’re with us,” he repeated.
I nodded. Slowly. I was, I supposed. I had no choice. “Yeah,” I said.
He grinned, put an arm around my shoulder. “One for all and all for one,” he said. “Like the Three Musketeers.”
I forced myself to smile, though it felt sickly and anemic on my face. I felt soiled and dirty and unclean and I didn’t li
ke his arm around me, but I said nothing.
I was with them. I was one of them.
Who else did I have?
What else could I be?
We walked down the sidewalk to the theater.
FIVE
We lived in our own world, a netherworld that occupied the same space as the normal one but existed a beat or two behind. It reminded me of an old Outer Limits episode I once saw, where time stood still and everyone in the world remained frozen in place except a man and woman who were somehow unaffected, untrapped, living outside of time, between the seconds.
Only the people we ran into weren’t frozen in time.
They just didn’t notice us.
It was a weird feeling, not being seen by the people with whom I came into contact. I’d been conscious of being Ignored for quite a while, but this feeling was different. It was as if I were really invisible, a ghost. Before, I’d felt a part of the world. I was unnoticed, but I existed. Now, though… Now, it was as though I did not exist, not on the same level as everyone else. It was as if normal life was a movie and I was a viewer: I could see it but not participate in it.
The only time I honestly felt alive was when I was with the other terrorists. We seemed to validate each other’s existence. We were a pocket of reality in an unreal world, and as this feeling of alienation from human society grew within me, I began to spend more and more time with the terrorists, less and less time by myself. It was comforting to have the others around, reassuring to know that I was not alone, and as the days and weeks passed, we began sleeping over more often at each other’s houses and apartments, not splitting up at night but staying together twenty-four hours a day.
It was not just the eleven of us huddling against a cold, hostile world, though. We had fun together. And there were perks, small advantages to being Ignored. We could go to restaurants, order whatever we wanted, eat to our heart’s content, stay as long as we wanted, and we never had to pay. We could go to stores, take what we needed in food and goods. We could go to movies and concerts for free.
The Ignored Page 18
