A Card from a Different Deck

Outside.

I was outside the wire for the first time in God knows how long.

No idea where I was, no idea how long I had been gone, only a travel brochure's worth of an idea of where we were going.

It was like the old days.

We would be on our way home from a job and suddenly get re-routed, put on to a new thing before the old thing had been written up and filed away.

Nothing good ever came out of those jobs.

Everybody said we were at our best when we could take the time to craft our play, to not only breed the rabbit, but also to make the hat out of which it would be pulled.

We could do short turnarounds. We did a lot of them. But they were never our best work.

To properly play a mark takes the kind of time that Make-Believe-Eldon was putting in. He was clearly on a first-name basis with all the pieces on the board. I, on the other hand, stuck out like a card from a different deck brought in to make up the full fifty-two.

The Mark waved at me from near the end of one of the parking lot rows.

I slid into the back seat and away we went.

I watched out of the car's back window as the Palace got smaller and smaller and then disappeared entirely. Glad to be away from that place and pissed off that I was now expected to contrive a reason that would bring us back here before the end of the day.

In a series of slow dissolves, the high-rise buildings around the Palace became the low-rise buildings of low-rent and retail before they became the high-rent suburbs and farmland.

In addition to the road noise, there was the soft murmur of public radio. My hearing is not what it used to be, but from what I could make out, the presenters were talking about birdhouses.

The sun seemed to twinkle as it passed through the barren trees. The greens and rusts were soothing to the eye. It was easy to get lost in your memories.

Occasionally, there were outbreaks of conversation from the front seat. About every five minutes the Mark would try to connect with her pretend partner. She would ask about events from his past, from their lives together, from their uncertain future. They were not intended to be threatening; they were gentle reminders of the life that she thought was leaving him behind.

“Do you remember when...?”

“Where were we when we saw...?”

“Is that a Turkey Vulture?”

He would struggle to get out his binoculars before giving up and saying “Oh, I don't know.” And his voice would trail off and silence would return.

They tried engaging me in conversation, but the car was just big enough and the white noise smoothie of road sounds and radio was just loud enough to make talking difficult.

Once, I leaned forward to thank them for including me in their trip and the Man Known as Eldon flinched as though I had startled him. The Mark warned me about making sudden movements and that was the end of our social time.

That was fine with me because it left more time to study the brochure that I had swiped from the Palace.

I watched the farms flicker by like the images on an old zoetrope.

It was an odd mix of new, pre-fab barns set up close to the road and decaying timber frame structures set well back from the road like old grey sway-backed mares that had been put out to pasture.

I must have dozed off because I remember at one point looking down and discovering that my brochure had slipped from my lap.

I leaned over to pick it up and that's when I saw it.

It was one of those large-format road atlases that used to be so popular before everybody's phones got so clever.

There was a post-it note stuck to the cover and my name was on it.

“Do you mind if I look at your atlas? I want to see if I can get my bearings if I'm going to play tour guide.”

“Atlas?” the Mark asked. “Oh, that must have come with the car. It's a rental. Feel free.”

“Thanks,” I said.

As I pulled the book from the seat pocket, I could tell that this copy had some supplements that were added after publication.

I opened to the bulge in the center and quickly slid the cellphone into my pocket.

I peeled the note from the cover and saw that there was also what looked like a phone number.

An atlas code? I hadn't seen one of those since....

I quickly thumbed through the pages to confirm that someone was trying to tell me something.

The phone number was written with all eleven digits, including the long-distance prefix—a charming throwback to a pre-wireless time: my time.

Three groupings: that told me I was looking for a set of three words.

I turned to the first dog-eared page.

There was a grid printed over the map with letters along the top margin and numbers down both sides.

On this first map, one of the letters and three of the numbers were circled.

S.

1,4,5.

On the next marked page, I found A, E, V. There were no circled numbers, but there was another sticky note. It had a simple arrow drawn on it pointing to the town of “Murray Hill.”

The next page had no letters, but it had five marked numbers: 2,3,6,8 and 9.

The next page brought me the letters E, H and T.

Two more pages and I had A, K, M and R.

The phone number on the sticky was the key. Three words and a phone number.

I had a phone, a three word message and a phone number.

And a whole new set of questions.

I was out, then I was in.

They want my help, but they won't tell me for what.

I was being held, then I'm released.

I'm supposed to bring the Mark back to the Palace at the end of the day and now I get a message telling me to “Save the Mark.”

Why?

What for?

Was any of this going to get me back to my life? My dog?

“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked the Mark.

I made like I couldn't hear her and didn't answer.