Begin Reading #5
Back in Ivan’s private changing room, Evan sits on the teak bench, puts his socks and boots back on, and rolls down his wet cuffs.
The hatch to the deprivation tank is secured once more.
Ivan is floating inside in perfect darkness, flex-cuffs binding his ankles and broken wrists.
Evan imagines he is making all kinds of noise in there.
The poster across, a match for the one in the last changing room, reminds him: LIFE ALWAYS OFFERS YOU A SECOND CHANCE. IT’S CALLED TOMORROW. The golden sunrise holds all sorts of cheap promise.
Evan’s RoamZone chimes with an alert.
A text from the burner, presumably from Rusty: Blake is losing his shit. Says he’s gonna make a run for it but needs his phone back.
Evan texts back: Coming.
Next he dials the front desk.
“Hiya, Inner Tides, it’s Destiny. Wanna come float with us?”
Evan roughens up his voice a bit. “Destiny, it’s Ivan in tank five. I’d like to extend my session.”
“No prob. Sometimes we need more time on our journeys. Take however long you want and we’ll settle up when you’re out.”
He hangs up.
Before he calls the prosecutor’s office, he puts on a proper voice filter.
When the assistant answers, he asks to be put through to District Attorney Hall regarding an urgent matter.
His downstairs neighbor, Mia Hall, is one of the most competent people he knows.
Though she is aware of his extracurricular activities, she does not condone them.
If his missions were ever made overt to her, she would have to arrest him, so a certain amount of don’t ask, don’t tell is required for them to keep the lanes clear.
Further complicating matters is the electricity of their attraction to each other, which has often ended them up at variance or in bed.
“Mia Hall.”
Evan’s new voice says, “You’ll find a loan-shark enforcer and wet-work specialist in tank five of the Inner Tide float-therapy spa on Pico.”
A long pause. He can imagine the wheels turning in her powerful mind. “Dead?”
“Incapacitated. His cell phone will be waiting for you in the changing room, password all zeroes.”
“Who’s he work for?”
“That’s our next phone call.”
Another long pause.
If they try to trace the RoamZone, they’ll find themselves lost within a dozen VPN tunnels on various continents.
“And when I ask who you are,” Mia muses, “you’re going to say you can’t tell me.”
“Correct.”
“Middle name ‘Danger’?”
An inside joke, her version of a wink.
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Grinning, he hangs up.
His clothes still drying, Evan parks at the curb, the Ford pickup shuddering to a rest. On the seat beside him rests a Peking Palace takeout tinfoil swan from which wafts the delicious scent of hoisin sauce.
Rusty’s street is grim and gray, the sidewalk cracked from root damage, skeletal trees forking up from dead lawns.
A half block away the 10 Freeway thunders by, accommodating Los Angeles’s never-ending rush hour.
Blake’s Camaro is backed into the driveway of the run-down bungalow that Rusty is subletting.
The car is missing a hubcap and one of the windshield wipers, and the rear left tire needs air.
Beside the porch of the house next door, a jumble of sun-faded toys collect dead leaves: a once-red-and-yellow stroller-car combo; a Big Wheel toppled in vanquished repose; an empty sandbox propped on end, skeined with spiderwebs.
It looks like an art installation: Suburban Hibernation.
The fluffs of smoke lifting from the chimney look cartoon-animated.
The front windows are opaque with reflected clouds.
As is his habit, Evan wonders at the family who live inside.
Are they eating lunch? Doing household chores?
What do normal families do when no one is watching them?
He pictures a father teaching his son to ride the Big Wheel.
Hands on the boy’s shoulders, pushing the plastic backrest, shouts of encouragement.
As he stares at that collection of outgrown toys aging in the shadow of a front porch, a feeling of cowardice rustles through him to roost in his chest. He has never risked anything more than blood and bone, limb and life.
Unlike Rusty and Blake, who wait inside, a mess of estrangement and resentment. Evan wonders how they can tolerate the weight of their history and the pain of the present. And if there’s any path forward for them once the threat is removed.
When he gets out and starts for the door, Rusty emerges to meet him on the porch. “Once he gets his phone,” he says, pinching his eyes as if against a headache, “he’s gonna bolt.”
Inside, sure enough, Blake is down on one knee in the sparse living room, lacing his shoes. “I gotta get out of here,” he says, breathing hard. He looks exhausted, face drawn from fear. “I need my phone. My whole life is in there.”
“I’ve dealt with men like this before,” Evan says. “They’ll find you. The minute you turn the phone on. Especially once they find out what I did to Ivan.”
Blake stops. A vein pulses in his neck. “You got Ivan? Then I’m clear, yeah?”
“Ivan has a boss. I’m handling him next.”
The bungalow, a sublease of a sublease, exemplifies the tragedy of the commons.
Cottage-cheese ceiling, two of three light bulbs dead in the not-so-flush mount, mud-brown carpet crusted with paint streaks at the borders.
In place of cushions, a futon mattress slumps inside a proper couch frame, a taco slipping its shell.
“Let Evan take care of this,” Rusty says. “It’s our best shot at getting you clear.”
“You telling me not to run from my problems,” Blake says. “That’s rich.”
“You’re panicking, Blake,” Evan says. “You haven’t slept. Your heart rate’s spiked, you’re at about forty-five breaths a minute, cortisol through the roof. This isn’t when you make life-or-death decisions.”
“Please, son,” Rusty says.
Blake wheels on him. “Why do you even care what happens to me?”
“How can you ask that?”
“How can I ask that? Are you fucking serious, Dad?”
Rusty looks stunned, his mouth slightly agape. He fumbles in his pocket, comes up with two pills, palms them into his mouth. “Tylenol,” he says, in response to Blake’s glare. “It’s just Tylenol.”
“I’ll give you your phone when I get back,” Evan tells Blake. “Stay put. I need to—”
“What did you even think of me?” Blake blurts to his father. The words rushing out seem to catch him by surprise.
Evan inches toward the door. “I don’t have time for—”
“What did you think of me? For real? I mean, I assume I wasn’t likable. Why would I be? Did you…” Blake’s voice catches a wobble. “Did you even like me?”
Evan’s mouth is dry, tastes of dust. Motes spin in the jaundiced light through the blinds, but aside from that everything seems suspended in time, frozen in amber.
Rusty’s face breaks.
He doesn’t cry.
It is much, much worse than that.
It looks as if he might dissolve under the weight of remorse, of sudden understanding. His features shudder. He clutches for breath, finds it in short gasps that make barely any noise.
Whatever Blake was anticipating, it was not this. He looks horrified.
The two men are peeled open, staring at each other, raw as an open wound.
Rusty tries to speak, fails, tries again. “You were amazing, Blake. You were … the best thing. I can’t believe you don’t—Of course. No, of course you don’t.” He wets his lips. “I used to … love watching you build stuff. Blocks and Legos, go-carts in the garage.”
Blake is scowling but the scowl doesn’t match what is happening behind his eyes. “I never knew you noticed.”
“I noticed. I noticed everything.”
“I had no idea you were even watching me. All I wanted was for you to do stuff with me. To come, dunno, show me how to make something, fix something, like your work.” Blake’s hand flares briefly, slaps against his hip. “Anything. But you never wanted to.”
“I did want to. I was just tangled up in my own mess. And I’d do anything to—”
Blake holds up his hand. His eyes are squeezed shut, his head tilted, as if he’s trying to drown out some deafening noise. “I’m sorry. It’s too late now. It’s too late.”
He turns and lurches haphazardly for the door to the backyard. It bangs opens and shuts behind him.
Rusty stands poleaxed in the middle of the living room, his face blotched, hands trembling. And now he cries and it is ugly, a broken man in his forties dry-heaving sobs, unaware that Evan is still there in the room.
Evan is grateful for that.
It makes it easier for him to slip out.
As Evan drives to Century City, he finds himself calling Joey. At first he isn’t sure why. And then he is.
“Hrmm?” Her voice, smeared with distraction.
In the background he can hear the keys clattering. She is at her workstation, tucked into her countless monitors.
“You at your desk?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want you to…” The blackness in the cage of his ribs flutters, words leaving him.
“What? You’re cutting out.”
“I want you to…”
Again, they’re just fucking gone.
“X? You okay?”
“… look up my … Look up Jacob Baridon.”
The typing has silenced. Joey knows the name, knows its non-place in Evan’s story.
“You sure? I mean, I’m logged in right now. All the databases, all the deep-mining. I have access to … everything.”
“I know.”
“Instantly.”
“Joey. I know.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Where he is.”
“Why?”
An echo of Blake’s words: Did you even like me? Evan pictures the horror on Rusty’s face as the epiphany dawned on him. And what he was able to summon in the face of his past inadequacies: You were … the best thing.