Chapter 4 #3
“Do you have a favorite eye?” Reggie asked the guy from Uzbekistan, which made me wonder if I had a favorite eye, which made me shut one eye and then the other, to compare their vision.
They were pretty equal, and as I began picturing myself with a rakish, pirate-like eyepatch over one or the other, I pulled myself together, because Reggie had calmly positioned the implacably whirring drill bit two inches from the attempted bomber’s right eye, which Reggie was treating as the default favorite.
“I’ll start on the right,” said Reggie, as I thought about adding, “Which will seriously interfere with your flirting.”
“Stop!” the guy yelled. “You are not allowed to torture!”
“You’re right,” said Reggie, keeping the drill in place. “But seeing as how you almost just slaughtered an especially beloved First Lady, I’ll make an exception. But we won’t call it torture. I’ll just tell the United Nations I was installing a shelf. In your head.”
Reggie moved the drill an inch closer.
“I am not being paid!” the guy screeched. “I am being threatened!”
“By who?” asked Reggie, still pointing the drill, and pumping the speed.
“I don’t know! I have a wife and child in Hoboken! These men, they came to my house and said they would kill everyone if I didn’t cooperate. They showed me a photo of the Estonian secretary, who looked just like me, if I grew a mustache. I had no choice!”
Reggie and I were thinking the same thing: facial hair is always a choice.
Brock poked his head into the room, and we both dismissively mouthed the word “Hoboken?”
“Why should I believe you?” Reggie asked the guy.
“I will give you my address! And I can show you an encrypted text, with my instructions. But please, I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to save my family!”
I suspected he was telling the truth, the way I do in acting classes when someone’s drawing on what the textbooks call a “sense memory” of an actual parental scolding or a teenage drunk driving arrest. I can intuit when an actor’s being honest, or when they’re being a sitcom star.
As Reggie lowered the drill, he said, “The address? I’m waiting. ”
Soon we were back on the plane, with Reggie telling me, “The guy’s a stooge.
He had security clearance, but he doesn’t know where it came from.
The only people he’d met in person were wearing balaclavas.
The family story and the Hoboken address check out, but there was probably cash as well.
He didn’t plant the explosives, and he doesn’t know who did, but it must be someone very high up, whose presence in the White House wouldn’t be questioned. ”
“But who would want to kill Reata?”
“You name it. She’s got a much higher popularity rating than her husband or anyone else in government, and there are rumors that she might run for office.
But beyond that, she’s a symbol of racial progress and every lefty cause out there.
For everyone who loves her, there’s an online army posting slurs and hate. ”
This was true but I didn’t want to admit it.
My admiration for Reata was boundless, and I’d longed to believe that her charm and her essential goodness transcended political boundaries, and that she was a unifying force, although no such person or movement exists, beyond The Rock, Beyoncé, and Tom Hanks in any movie where he’s gruffly ornery but a sweetheart underneath, and even these celebrity saints have their detractors.
I’m an ardent leftist, even a radical, but there comes a point where political conflagrations, even among friends I agree with, become so rancorous, and the national divisions so depressing, that I pivot my mind elsewhere, either to books or plays I love, or selfless people I admire, doctors and nurses or some guy on Mangle with awesome shoulders and a dog, especially a golden retriever or a slobbering rescue, but never anything small and yappy, although Brock and I once dissected if hating Chihuahuas is homophobic.
(“People always claim they need a small dog because they live in a studio apartment,” Brock said, “but I ask them, so do you just fuck elves?”)
Reggie told me his contacts at the CIA were going through the Uzbek guy’s phone, which was a burner but still might contain clues.
There wasn’t a geographical element to the would-be bomber’s motives; he’d been chosen from a massive database because of his resemblance to the Estonian secretary who’d been murdered, and his susceptibility to blackmail.
“But whoever these people are, they came very close, so stay ready.”
Back at my apartment, I collapsed on the bed amid unsorted laundry and empty boxes of breakfast cereal (only amateurs own bowls and spoons).
That first Tuxedo Society dinner felt as if it had taken place a century ago.
My phone buzzed; it was my mom, whose calls I’m obliged to take according to ancient Jewish law.
I’m subject to a range of superstitions, both theatrical (“Break a leg,” no whistling in the theater, rubbing the crotch of my Ken doll before an opening night, etc.) and pure OCD (knocking on wood, the occasional bout of unneccessary handwashing, and a COVID-related wrapping of my hand in the sleeve of my sweatshirt before touching a subway pole).
But the source of my deepest fears, and to be fair, my most abundant joys, is modern liberal Judaism, which dictates these covenants: you can have a Christmas tree but you should be ashamed of yourself; you can support a Palestinian state but always remember that without Jews musical theater is mostly English bombast; and if you let your mom’s calls go to voicemail, someone wildly untalented will get a job you were destined for, plus whenever you smell something oniony it will be coming from you.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, forgetting I shouldn’t say “hey” because my mom will most often respond, “I’m not a teenager and neither are you.”
“Where have you been?”
My mom always asks this accusatorily, because she believes I keep dark secrets from her.
These mysteries, in her festering brain, can include a fatal illness, a boyfriend who hits me, cockroaches on my apartment kitchen countertop (which happens if I leave food out), having unprotected sex with a man who’ll never love me, and subsisting on Hostess Snoballs and Ruffles potato chips (in this last case, her paranoia is entirely warranted).
“I’ve been… working,” I said, quasi-truthfully.
“At the candle store?”
“Yes.”
“You are so lying.”
I’m not sure why, but the one person I can’t credibly deceive is my mom. As an actor, fakery is my business, but there’s a scary closeness between my mom and me. I’m not sure why detectives bother with lie detector tests when they can just bring in the perps’ moms with their arms folded.
“I’m not lying. I’m just exploring other opportunities, but I don’t want to jinx them.”
“Acting work?”
“Yes.”
“I want to believe you. Are you eating garbage?”
“Right out of the dumpster. And it’s free!”
“You are so funny. Daddy and I are worried about you. We love you so much and we don’t want you to give up hope.”
This was a lovingly supportive but also passive-aggressive thing for my mom to say.
It struck a chord: Was the Tuxedo Society a detour from my acting career, or a variation?
During that interrogation, why had I been both petrified and engrossed?
What if I’d had to watch Reggie actually torture someone, or hand him the box cutter?
On the other hand, that guy from Uzbekistan via Hoboken had intended to murder Reata Pershing, and had held a chunk of broken crystal to my throat.
Did I still imagine this was playacting, even with the bloodshed I’d witnessed?
And at what point would I come clean to my mom (although the words “clean” and “my mom” are redundant)?
“I’m not giving up,” I swore. “But if I told you I’d joined a secret organization dedicated to our country’s freedom, would you be upset?”
“I’d say stop being so dramatic. Borrowing someone’s Hulu password doesn’t mean you’ve joined a secret organization. And you’re not a joiner.”
She was right. I’d been a drama club stalwart, but that had been the extent of my collaborations.
I’d lasted a week in Cub Scouts. (Whittling?
Tying knots without a consensual bondage aspect?) In truth, all I’d ever yearned to do was act, because of a bedrock curiosity about other people’s lives. My own had been limited and coddled.
“Mom, everything’s good. I’ll come out there in a few weeks to see you guys. Is everything okay?”
“Of course. And don’t forget to RSVP for Jenn’s wedding. I’m not your social secretary.”
Jenn’s my cousin and I’d been dawdling with my response to her wedding evite out of glaring insecurity: I’d be trapped in a ballroom with hordes of relatives asking me about my prospects.
Maybe I’d casually remark, “Oh, you know, I’ve been doing this and that.
Would you like an exploding power bar? Or is the brisket getting the job done? ”
“Don’t forget,” my mom cautioned. “You’re still a part of this family.”
Why didn’t she just call me Fredo or Paulie Walnuts?
“And we just want you to be happy.”
After hanging up, I asked myself: Was I happy?
My career had stalled, the candle shop was deadening, and come to think of it, was there any sort of Tuxedo Society per diem?
Did the group offer health insurance, something that, given the constant physical danger, would be a necessary consideration?
Does Jason Bourne have a copay? I’d ask Brock, who, I had to admit, was enviably capable at his Tuxedo Society tasks.
Was he like me, one of so many people straining to figure out their lives, only he’d happened upon the most unlikely yet fulfilling identity?
These questions were intimidating and soul-swallowing, like whenever I try to envision the true scale of the universe, or even our galaxy, and the sheer absurdity of my pinprick participation.
Was keeping my head down the most prudent solution?
Who was I before the Tuxedo Society, and what was I becoming?
When confronting such immense philosophical quandaries, I turn to the most readily available comfort: Mangle.
As I scrolled through the endless images of scowling men, their Photoshopped abdominals and their butch use of words like “hot,” “hard,” and “ready,” I swiped right on a guy who wasn’t just out of my league, but maybe my species, someone I never would’ve approached even a day earlier.
But I was weirdly emboldened and what-the-hell, so I swiped on “Harper,” a “CrossFit jock/biker/redneck fantasy” who promised he’d “fuck you within an inch of your life with my ten go-all-night inches.” I’d always presumed that guys like this were catfishing accounts from other hemispheres, with stolen photos of unshaved inmates, but Harper-who-was-probably-really-named-Kevin-or-Ron swiped back and, after some basic banter, sent an address.
I typed back, “so sorry, dental emergency, try again later,” because despite my Tuxedo Society exploits I was still me, a nervous, emotionally chaotic wimp who worked at a candle shop.
A “dental emergency”? Why couldn’t I have said “fell off the oil rig” or “am currently in custody”?
But I’d made an unaccustomed move. I jerked off to Harper’s photo with a slight new confidence: at least in my solitary imagination, and at the White House, I was getting more forthright.