Men in Black
She poured herself a cup of coffee and was considering whether she wanted to go to the trouble of warming up the bacon and eggs when the doorbell rang.
Tess glanced up at the clock. Five past eight.
That was not midmorning. Clutching her mug of coffee with one hand and pulling her bathrobe tightly around her with the other, she walked down the hall and opened the front door.
As she opened the door, Tess caught a fleeting look of surprise on the face of the larger man, but then both men smiled cordially, which only made them appear more threatening.
Harry’s ogre story had taught Tess to pay attention to details and not make assumptions.
In this case she did not assume that just because the men acted friendly they posed no threat; nor did she assume that just because they seemed so obviously dangerous Tess might not turn the encounter to her advantage.
As for details, she committed to memory the precise design of the small silver pin each man wore on the lapel of his black suit.
It consisted of two interlocking uppercase letters in a sans serif typeface: C and P.
Circling these was the thin line of an ellipse with a small red orb on the left side—like a diagram of an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom or a planet orbiting a star.
“Good morning, ma’am,” said the wisp.
“There’s no need to call me ma’am.”
“Well, good morning then, Miss…” The hulk let the sentence hang unfinished.
“Tess,” said Tess reflexively, checking herself before she said her last name. Idiot, she thought. Two seconds into the conversation and they’re already winning. She took a slug of coffee, hoping it would wake her up enough to prevent another blunder.
“Would you like to tell us your last name?” said the wisp.
“I would not,” said Tess, further unnerved by the fact that she couldn’t see the man’s eyes.
“As I said then, good morning, ma’am,” said the wisp.
The wisp glanced at the hulk for an instant, and Tess could see that her visitors had no plan.
They had been surprised that she came to the door.
That meant they thought the house was empty and weren’t expecting to have this conversation.
And if they thought the house was empty, that meant they had watched Vivian leave.
“We are trying to get in touch with a Vivian Rosemary Harbottle,” said the hulk before adding pointedly, “ma’am.”
“A Vivian Rosemary Harbottle? You mean there’s more than one?”
“Probably,” said the hulk, without any indication that he found Tess’s question either confrontational or sarcastic.
“The one we’re looking for lives at this address,” said the wisp.
“I’m the only person at this address,” said Tess. She considered that this statement was, in the most literal sense, true.
“Are you saying that Ms. Harbottle is not in at the moment?” said the wisp.
“I’m saying,” said Tess firmly, “that I’m the only one at this address.”
The hulk reached up and pulled his glasses just far enough down so that he could bore into Tess with his deep brown eyes. “Would it be all right if we came in and looked around?” he said.
“It would not,” said Tess. “Unless you’d care to give me some identification and a warrant.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the wisp. “We’ll be going now.”
“Good day, ma’am,” said the hulk, sliding his sunglasses back up. He turned and walked across the porch and down the steps to the flagstone path that led to the street, but the wisp stood motionless, still looking at Tess. The hulk stopped and turned back toward them.
“Aren’t you going to join your friend?” said Tess.
She had, often enough, struggled to know what to say.
To a roommate about her compulsive behaviors, to a therapist about Harry, to Vivian about her stories.
Tess recognized the look of someone unsure of how to proceed.
The wisp seemed caught between his companion and Tess—as if he wanted to tell her something but couldn’t with the hulk listening.
“Tell Vivian Harbottle we look forward to chatting with her,” said the wisp, finally turning to follow the hulk.
Tess watched as the two men walked down the street, silhouetted against the morning sun.
The wisp made no attempt to catch up with the hulk and the hulk didn’t slow his pace to allow the wisp to draw even.
At the end of the block, the hulk turned left onto Hudson Street and disappeared behind the Romanos’ garage. A moment later, the wisp followed.
If danger comes, you will recognize it, Harry had said.
Find Vivian and get to the island. Simple enough instructions, but she had no idea where Vivian’s class was this morning.
Besides, Vivian would be home in about an hour.
That gave Tess time to get dressed and ready to go.
She could pack a bag for Vivian, too, and maybe pull together a box of groceries.
There would be nothing to eat on the island.
She wondered if Vivian had sleeping bags in the back of a closet somewhere.
By the time she closed the door, she had a plan in place and a mental list but as soon as she stepped back into her room and saw her laptop sitting on her old desk the list seemed to evaporate as quickly as it had materialized.
Who the hell were the men in black? As much as she knew that she should rush to prepare for Vivian’s return and the journey to the island, Tess couldn’t resist trying to find out something about them.
She’d give herself fifteen minutes to dig—that would still leave time to pack.
She slipped into her desk chair, shut her eyes, and slowed her breathing.
She could often summon forth the stars when she did this, especially Arcturus, Harry’s star that he said would always guide her.
Now, though, in place of Arcturus or Gemini or Orion she saw an electron orbiting the letters C and P.
The pin that the men in black suits wore.
She opened her laptop and began to search.
CP was mostly commonly used as an abbreviation for cerebral palsy, she discovered.
Those men were certainly not raising money or awareness for cerebral palsy or any other illness.
She also dismissed the idea that they had anything to do with Canadian Pacific Railway, Comboios de Portugal (another railway system), or the C.P.
sportswear company. After searching for CP, she thought perhaps she had read the interlacing letters backward and tried PC.
In addition to the obvious politically correct and personal computer she found the stock symbol for Pirelli, the Italian tire company; the Latin phrase post cibum, meaning after meals; and prostate cancer—all obvious dead ends.
She tried every kind of search she could think of—even sketching out the pin, photographing her drawing, and running a Google image search. Nothing.
The clock at the top of her screen read eight thirty. Better get packing, she thought, not knowing it was already too late.