Begin Reading #2
Evan flicks the license at Cyrus’s face, bouncing it off his broken nose so he recoils in pain. “Call 911.”
“Can’t afford an ambulance and all that shit.”
“Cedars is four minutes away. Take a bus.”
More crunching glass from behind them. “My friend, look, I haff the Dash vodka from Texas! Very rare. Made from grape.”
“Raisin,” Evan says.
“Good price for you.”
Evan rises. “How much?”
“Thirty dollar! Supergreat price!”
Cyrus tilts over again and lies on his side, moaning.
“What now?” Rusty says. “What are we gonna do now?”
Evan pulls out the cash, hands it to the clerk, takes the bottle of Dash, and starts back toward his truck. “Follow me.”
Fathers and sons. Sons and fathers.
What lessons Evan has to draw upon come from the former CIA station agent who pulled him out of the Pride House Group Home at the age of twelve to oversee his development in the Orphan Program.
Jack Johns wasn’t merely Evan’s handler.
He was a father figure, the first person to orient Evan toward meaning.
As he drives toward Beverly Hills, checking the rearview to make sure he doesn’t lose Rusty’s truck behind him, he’s struck by a vivid recollection of Jack doing his best, as always, to calibrate Evan and aim him upward.
It is August and so Evan and Jack are up early to check the hives for yellowjacket scouts.
The proper attacks won’t come until midmorning, so the scouts will return after—joy of joys—Evan’s two-hour session of psyops resilience training at the hands of a stern active-duty NCO with a steel-gray bob and a wrinkle-etched lipless mouth.
Jack doesn’t use psychologists because the training veers strongly against acceptable ethical practices.
Last week the NCO duct-taped headphones around his blindfolded skull and blared German thrash metal into his brain while keeping his bound bare feet sunk into ice water, all the while demanding that he dampen his nonverbal tells.
It is a lot for a twelve-year-old.
In this moment of sunup, Evan enjoys his freedom, breathing lavender and rosemary as he and Jack move between the raised garden beds they tend these months with exactitude bordering on compulsiveness.
A buzzing bullet zips across Evan’s shoulder, lasering in on the first in the row of hives. “Jack! There!”
It’s the first one they have sighted this season, a sign that it’s time to hang yellowjacket traps at distance and add robber screens to the hive entrances.
The yellowjacket alights on the landing board. An ominous visitor to the sleeping hive.
“Should I kill it?”
Jack is suddenly at Evan’s side. “No, son. Let’s see how they do.”
“Who?”
“The guard bees.”
“What makes a guard bee?”
“Stronger sting muscles. Mandibular muscles, too. Better sense of smell, vision, quicker reaction times.” An almost-smile. “More aggressive, too.”
The yellowjacket stands for a moment on the makeshift porch, wings and antennae quivering as if it is dancing in place. Then it crawls halfway into the entrance slot.
The hive awakens.
A row of guard bees emerge, shoving the yellowjacket back out onto the slender run of landing board, where they regroup, the wasp holding ground, the bees gathering around it.
“Watch now,” Jack says gently. “See how they raise their abdomens when they block? They’re releasing alarm pheromones, too.”
The yellowjacket pounces, grabbing the nearest guard bee at the narrow point between head and thorax. Its mandibles clamp and the bee’s head rolls free of the body. That is the cue.
The guard bees swarm.
The yellowjacket squirms and stings but in seconds it is lost from view, buried inside a living ball. The bees hum, pulsing like a heart.
Evan watches, breathless. “What are they doing?”
“Vibrating to generate heat.”
“Why?”
“To cook the yellowjacket.”
“No way.”
“It’ll get up to 117 degrees inside that ball,” Jack breathes, leaning so close to observe that stray bees brush his cheeks. “Look at those beauties. They’re built for this, guard bees. To sustain rapid wing-muscle contractions for this long? And vibrate their thoraxes? It’s incredible.”
The ball thrums and buzzes. The yellowjacket surges briefly to the surface, one large compound eye strobing into view before vanishing once more beneath the bristling coat. Evan could swear he noted abject terror in that eye but knows it was likely a trick of sentiment.
“They’re the first line of defense, guard bees. Right at the entrance. Behind them? Forager bees. Then the honey processors. Then comb builders. Then nurse bees. And way inside and safe? The queen and her eggs.”
Jack straightens up to leave. But it is impossible for Evan to look away from what is happening on the landing board. And he realizes how deeply he is dreading the instructor with her stern manner, tight mouth, and cold efficiencies.
“Come on,” Jack says. “You got R2I in twenty.”
Resistance to interrogation.
Evan groans. “R2I sucks.”
“‘That which you flee pursues you’—”
“—‘that which you embrace transforms you.’ I know, I know. But Jack, I get it already. What the hell are you transforming me into? A robot?”
“Not a robot.”
“What then?”
More guard bees spill through the slender hive entrance, throwing themselves into the shuddering blob. It rolls along the landing board, threatening to tumble off. A few buzz around Evan’s head, causing him to step back. But Jack stays right in there, hands on knees, face close.
When Evan eases forward again, Jack says, “In the Middle Ages, they put monsters on churches.”
Evan senses this might be a continuation of their previous conversation but is not sure. Jack is like that, moving in mysterious ways.
“Know what they called them?” Jack asks.
“Gargoyles?”
“That’s right. They’re hybrids. Each one is made up of two different things. Body of a lion, wings of a dragon. Know what they’re for?”
“Scare folks away?”
“Bad people,” Jack says, clarifying. “Evil spirits.”
The hum of the bees has a steadying effect now. Evan feels it as a vibration on his skin.
“Know where they put ’em?” Jack asks.
“On the roof.”
“High up on the edges. That’s where a gargoyle’s gotta be. At the threshold. A liminal space neither inside nor out.”
“Okay,” Evan says, not following where this is leading.
“That’s what a black operation is. That’s what the Orphan Program is.
What I am. What you will become. You will be judged and shunned by those safe inside in the sanctuary even while you fight tooth and nail to protect them from what they do not understand.
They’re too weakened by luxury and safety to comprehend what is out there.
And so you, you will mediate the space between what is sanctioned and what is not.
And to do that, part of you must belong to what is not.
That is the sacrifice you must make. You must be half-darkness while not serving darkness. ”
At last the bees begin to disperse, the balling attack over. Layer by layer, they peel away from the core, drifting lazily into the air or squirming back into the hive.
“Then what makes me different from them?” Evan asks. “Bad people? Evil spirits?”
The bees keep dispersing from the ball like a magic trick, solid matter atomizing before his eyes. The silence stretches so long that Evan is unsure if Jack will respond.
“What makes you different is what you keep your back to,” he finally says. “What you’re protecting.”
The landing board is suddenly, abruptly empty. All that remains is the shriveled husk of the yellowjacket, cooked from inside. Straightening up, Jack places a hand on Evan’s shoulder and guides him back toward the waiting hood and waterboarding table.
In the heart of Beverly Hills, there is a sparsely frequented old-fashioned corner diner. Evan sits at a booth with Rusty, who has his hands cupped around a mug of coffee.
Evan has texted Ivan’s phone number to Joey. In addition to being a mouthful, advanced forward link trilateration can take some time, so Evan has opted to sit with Rusty while he waits for Joey to track down Ivan’s location.
“I need to talk to your son.”
“I told you, Blake won’t talk to me. There’s a lot of anger. And a lot of resentment.”
“Over what?”
Rusty’s eyes are sagging with exhaustion. A threadwork of broken blood vessels cover his nose. “Over my being a shitty father.”
“His life is on the line. Call him. Get him here.”
“Doubt he’ll pick up. I haven’t talked to him in five years.”
“How’d you find out he was in trouble?”
“His mother called me. She’s at a loss. Obviously if she called me.”
“Why’s he owe money?”
“Took a street loan to pay for a business venture.”
“What kind of ‘business venture’?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. High-protein bars, I guess. Some get-rich scheme. Guess he put it all into some manufacturer out of India. You can guess how that went.”
“Call him.”
Rusty leans back in his seat. Outside, a woman strolls by, walking a white toy poodle on a bejeweled leash.
Chatter from the neighboring booth reaches them, a guy in a five-thousand-dollar suit saying, “We know the deal ain’t gonna buy him a beach house in Malibu but he’s also not gonna do it for lunch against dinner. ”
Rusty takes out his phone, holds it in both hands on the table. Stares at it. Mustering courage.
Evan waits.
He is good at waiting.
Rusty pulls in a deep breath, gives a shaky exhalation. He dials. Waits.
Draws in a breath. “Blake. It’s your father.”
A tape delay of surprise. And then, even from across the table, Evan can hear the tinny response: “That what you call yourself?”
Rusty’s eyes pinch shut as he takes the blow. “Your mother reached out to me—”
“I told her not to call you.”
“You’re out of time, Blake. They’re gonna start breaking bones. Or worse. I might be able to help.”
“That’d be a first.”
“You got better options?”
The silence stretches out for a long time, broken only by the thrum of the espresso machine. “How you think you can help me? You’re an addict with no money.”
“Been sober over two years.”
“Pretend I believe you this time. You got two hundred fifteen kay?”
“No.”
“So what do you propose? Moral support?”