I must have fallen asleep.
As my world came slowly into focus,
I was, for an instant, uncertain about my reality.
I thought I smelled smoke and
believed I was back in that burning house. I thought I heard the
white noise of the hospital and believed I could still feel the pinch
of that handcuff tethering me to the bed. I saw the drop ceiling and
was certain I was in that hotel room thinking about ants. I could
taste salt in my mouth and thought about walking on the beach with a
laser's red dot trained on my chest.
“Where am I?” I thought.
The Melmac coffee mug, green like
private label mint ice cream that you get at the grocery store, hit
the table like a clap of thunder.
Oh....
Right....
Jim Phelps was sitting across the
table from me.
I was still here.
“Took you long enough,” I said.
“I had them make a fresh pot,”
he said.
I drew the cup to me and felt the
warmth steep into my hands. I hadn't realized until that moment how
cold I was.
Pulling the cup to my lips, I took
the time to really study Phelps.
Outwardly, at least, it seemed as
though the Silver Fox had made few concessions to the march of time.
His skin tone was a little less even, his hair was a lot thinner and
the veins in his hands stuck out like tree roots trying to find water
on a rocky cliff. But, the look was still there. Behind the eyes he
still had the look of a man who was used to being many moves ahead.
He looked at me in that superior way
that said he'd already had this conversation and knew what I was
going to say before I said it.
“At least it's hot,” I said.
“You want Starbucks, maybe we can
arrange that after we talk,” he said.
“I don't want to talk about
Barney,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It was a long time ago. What was
it you always used to say? 'The past will get you killed'”
“I said that?” he asked.
“You were always full of pearls,”
I said. “Besides, you guys should know better than me what
happened to him. You most of all.”
“Me?” He seemed surprised.
“He was your favorite.”
“Favorites are bad for business,”
he said as if reading a fortune cookie message.
“He was the only one you kept.
Shit, you promoted him to a principal. And me, I couldn't even get
the respect of those Hartford Rep. fuckers.”
The Rep were the day
players that we would bring in to fill out a scene. If we were doing
a hospital play, or one of those unnamed prisons that we did for a
while, then the Rep guys would come in as the background, the guards,
the doctors, nurses, or other prisoners; whatever we needed.
Rep guys fell into one of
two categories: they were either newbies who didn't quite have what
it took to become operators, or they were barn watchers looking to
top up their pensions before heading off to pasture.
“That's ridiculous,” said Phelps.
“Fuck you, 'ridiculous.' Those
day-playing bastards wouldn't return my calls. I was 'too
well-known' in the community to do a walk-on. A fucking walk-on!”
“The mission changes,” said
Phelps.
“Bullshit. It was always your
call who worked and who didn't and I didn't: that's on you.”
“We all serve at the pleasure of
the Secretary,” another fortune cookie.
“Secretary of what?” I asked.
“Who do you actually work for?”
“What do you mean? He seemed
genuinely thrown by the question.
“Who's the boss?” I continued.
“That's a stupid question,” he
said
“No such thing; you taught us
that.... And you also taught us that things change. So, I want to
know what changed. What is so different that you have to run this
elaborate play on me to find out the answer to a question you should
already know?”
“Nothing has changed,” he lied.
“I don't know where Barney is,”
I lied.
“When was the last time you saw
him?”
“Sheet cake,” I said spitting
out the words.
“Nothing after that?”
“No. We would have been in big
trouble if we'd had any contact. They give you a choice between
severing all ties to active and former operators, or Leavenworth. I
burned my Christmas card list.”
“Not even when the Company went
public?”
This was the question.
THE question.
It's not a thing they can really
teach you. It's something you pick up in the room. You get a seat
at this table and you know when they are asking the big money
question. Sure, they always try to treat it like they couldn't care
less about the answer, but you watch closely, you pay attention, and
you can tell. The eyes, the voice, the body language: there's
always a tell.
“What company?” I asked even
though we both knew I knew the answer.
“His company, Collier
Electronics.”
“His company?” It was an Agency
front, part of his cover. “I didn't know you could take a front
company public.”
“It's a brand new day,” said
Phelps. “Margins are a lot wider than they used to be.”
“I didn't think anybody still used
margins,” I said.
“All means and ends now,” he
said. It struck me as the most honest-sounding thing I had ever
heard him say.
“What do they make?”
“Who?”
“Collier Electronics, what do they
make?”
“Nothing now,” said Phelps.
“They used to make tape recorders, but nobody uses those anymore.”
“So, what do they do?”
“It's nothing but a file folder
now.”
“Bankrupt? Figures. You guys
couldn't turn a profit if they paid you.”
“No. Not bankrupt, suspended,”
said Phelps.
“What does that mean?”
“Barney was the company, so when
he went missing, his business was suspended.”
This was a hell of an interrogation
technique: I was asking all the questions.
“Went public, huh? When was
that?”
“Shortly after you left us.”
“After you fired me,” I
corrected him.
“Whatever.”
“How did it do, I mean until it
was suspended?”
“Cassettes,” he said.
“What?”
“Couldn't license the technology,
so all they had was open-reel and nobody wanted that.”
“Trust the government to run a
business....”
“You said it,” Phelps agreed.
“Got any more of this stomach
acid?” I asked pushing the now-empty mug across the table.
Phelps must have been pleased with
the way things were going.
“I'll see,” he said.
He took a deep breath and pushed
himself away from the table.
I remember hearing stories about old
entertainers who would fall asleep in the wings right before they
would go on stage. People telling these stories would always remark
about how, in that moment, you could see the decades on their faces
of these living legends. At rest, they were just old men and women
who had ridden the rails and covered the miles so they could do their
ten or twenty minutes a night.
And then the crowd goes silent and
then the host does the intro and the crowd explodes into applause and
it's better than any alarm clock. The Legend lives again. They pull
themselves to their feet and they are transformed. They are twenty
years younger. The fire returns to their eyes and the spring to
their step and they bound on stage oblivious to the twinges, aches,
pops and creaks that are the signs of their bodies settling. For the
next ten minutes, the clocks run backwards.
As I watched Phelps pull himself to
his feet, I felt as though I was watching the same process in
reverse.
It seemed as though his ten minutes
were up.
And I noticed something else.
As he slowly turned his head toward
the door, I noticed the light as it caught his neck and, for the
first time, I could see that he was sweating.
Not everywhere.
Just on his neck.
Just below the flap that ran in a
straight line from behind his ear to his shoulder.
