Professional Courtesy

I don't like thinking about Barney, because every time I do, I can remember how he looked at me.

I know where Barney is, what I can't figure out is why they were asking about him.

If they knew about Barney, that had to mean that they knew about me.

If I acknowledged that they knew about me, then this would become a totally different ballgame.

The question to focus on was who were these guys?

I needed information and wasn't sure how to get it.

“Who are you guys?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” asked the Voice.

“You're not doctors....”

“What do you mean?" the Voice repeated.

“Why are you asking me questions about my dog?” Nobody knew the dog's name except me. Time for them to play a little defense.

“You were asking about your dog when they brought you in,” said the Voice.

No I wasn't. I mean, I could have been, but I wasn't.

“No, I wasn't,” I said.

“You were barely conscious,” said the Voice. “You have no idea what you were saying.”

“Well, what did I say,” I said.

“You asked about your dog,” the Voice said.

“Exactly.... What did I say exactly.”

I heard another rustling of papers from somewhere in the dark.

“'Where's Barney?' it's on the intake forms. You kept asking 'Where's Barney?'”

Bullshit.

“Bullshit,” I said.

I shouldn't have said that. They didn't need to know that I had just decided to call the dog Barney in that minute. Now they knew how awake I was, how ready for the game.

“Why do you say that?” the Voice asked with almost believable curiosity. “Why do you say it's 'bullshit'?”

“Dog doesn't have a name,” I said.

“But you just said....”

“That's right,” I said. “I just said....”

“I see...,” the Voice.

“Shall we get down to cases?” I asked.

“I suppose we should,” said the Voice.

Someone who looked like a nurse, or someone we had played against years ago in some part of somewhere, stepped into the lit portion of the room and reached for the I.V. bag that was hanging over my head like a clear thought balloon.

“What's this? What's going on?” I asked.

“We're taking a little break,” said the Voice. “A little pause, before we talk again. We want to make sure you have a chance to rest up.”

“No, wait,” I said as the nurse reached into his pocket and came out with a syringe. “No more drugs. You think I got any kind of answers, then let's have a conversation in the open: no tricks. I'm too old for any more of this shit.”

I was aware that the nurse was looking over his shoulder and into the darkness for some sort of direction. I don't know why I did it, but I just happened to be looking at the moment when his head was at full rotation and that's when I saw it.

It wasn't big, but it definitely was there: the flap.

I can remember Rollin always talking about “the flap.” He was afraid it would show on a hot day and he was afraid he would never be able to find it when he had to make a quick change.

It felt as though the bed I was chained to was falling into the floor.

“What's going--? Who are you people?”

The nurse snapped his head all the way around to look at me.

I guess he must have seen something in my eyes, because his right hand immediately shot up to his neck and tried to wipe away the flap.

“I saw it,” I said. “I saw the flap....”

“Flap?” The Voice took time to ask that with the perfect amount of clinical detachment.

“I saw it.” I tried to be equally detached.

“What are you talking about?” said the Voice.

“What's with the skin job?”

'Skin job' was the companion phrase to 'face lift.' We didn't have a good way of talking about the full-face masquerade masks that Rollin and Paris were so good at. Over the years, we had tried a number of things, but they all sounded like childhood dress-up, or some sort of phrase you would read on a police blotter, or in a novel that would never have been good enough to be released in hardcover.

They weren't going to bluff their way out of this. I'd seen it too many times. Rollin would study the walk and talk of some somebody or other and then Phelps would send me in to take that person down and bring them back to the safe so that Rollin could do a face lift. I knew what a skin job looked like and they were running one on me.

I looked at the nurse and said “Who are you, really?”

The nurse again looked to his left and again I saw the flap.

I could feel the strength of certainty returning.

“Look,” I said, “I may not be the operator I was, but I'm not stupid.”

“Nobody thinks you're stupid,” said the Voice.

“Then why the games? You got a question you think I got the answer to, just ask me.”

Professional courtesy: that's all I wanted, a little professional courtesy.

“Okay,” said the Voice. “Where's Barney?”

Fuck.