“That’s fair,” Reggie said.
“Don’t break the rules. Break any of those rules and you’ll be lucky if I just kick you out on the street.”
“Understood. I’m not here to play games. I just want to thank you guys for your help.”
“Don’t thank me,” Michael said. “I had nothing to do with this. Thank her.” Michael pointed at me. Reggie looked back at me again. I held his stare a little longer this time. When I broke it off, Reggie turned back to Michael.
“Thanks anyway,” Reggie said to Michael.
Before leaving, Michael came up to me. Reggie had wandered into the other room. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked me in a whisper.
“Yes,” I said without hesitating.
“You’re okay being alone with him?”
“I’m not afraid,” I assured him.
“Maybe you should be,” Michael answered.
“Why don’t you trust him?”
Michael looked into the other room. I could see Reggie sitting on the couch. “Because he’s willing to let other people risk their lives for him. I don’t understand what type of person would do that.”
I felt my skin go flush. “Maybe he’s just”—I searched my brain for the right word—“desperate,” I finished. I reached out to hug Michael before he left. It was awkward. I clutched him and he stood limply, barely touching my back.
Twenty-three
“What’s his deal?” Reggie asked after Michael left. What he meant was, Why is that guy such an asshole?
“This whole thing makes him nervous,” I answered.
“Are you and him an item?”
“No,” I answered. “He’s just a friend of a friend,” I said, wondering at that moment if that’s all Michael was. Reggie nodded again.
Reggie was sitting on the sofa, which I’d pushed up against the wall opposite the bed. I sat down on the floor across the room from him. “Can I ask you why you’re running from the War?” I’d been waiting for Michael to leave so I could ask the question. I wanted to know what made Reggie different from all the others who didn’t run. I knew why your father ran. He ran to try to protect you. Your father had his doubts about the War, but without you, he never would have run. I know that. I stared at Reggie. What made him so different? Why was he running when Michael refused to?
He got off the couch and sat down on the floor so that we were sitting across from each other but at the same level. “Have you ever heard of tithing?” Reggie asked me.
“Like with a religion?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I understood his question. He gave me a quizzical look. “Like in the Bible. It says that you’re supposed to give a certain amount of everything you have to the Church.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“So what were you talking about?”
“We’ve got tithing too. Dorothy and her people told me about it. There are all these people who are part of the War that never fight. They have regular jobs. All those people, they’re supposed to give twenty-five percent of everything they make to the War. Instead of blood, they pay for the War with cash.” For some reason, I’d never thought about where all the money came from to fund the War or what people might do to control that type of money. I started thinking about the office that Michael had visited above Grand Central Station and how much money that must cost.
“How many people are there like that?” I asked. “How many people live normal lives and donate money?”
Reggie shrugged. “I haven’t got a clue,” he said. “Somebody’s got to know, though. Somebody’s collecting all that money.”
“Is that why you ran?” I asked, confused.
Reggie shook his head. “No. I didn’t know anything about tithing until Dorothy and her people told me about it. I’m just trying to figure things out.”
“So why did you run?” I asked again.
“They wanted me to kill a woman.”
Your father had killed women. Michael had too. “Had you killed men before?” I asked.
Reggie nodded slowly, solemnly. “Two,” he said. “They told me that the first one helped plan my father’s murder, so that didn’t even feel like killing. I almost enjoyed it. Then there was the second man. Then they asked me to kill a woman.”
“So you ran?” I thought the story was over.
Reggie was leaning against the wall. His feet were on the floor and his knees were up in the air in front of him. His wrists rested on his knees and his hands dangled loosely in front of them. The window was open. We could hear the traffic from outside. A breeze blew in through the window. “No,” Reggie said. “I told them that I couldn’t do it. Apparently, they thought I just needed more training, so they took me to the woman’s house and they made me watch them kill her.”
“And then you ran?”
He nodded. “She had two kids. They killed her because she was some type of engineer working on some sort of retinal identification technology.”
“So, you ran because you think it’s wrong to kill women?” I wanted to understand.
“No. I ran because I knew I couldn’t hack the job.”
I shook my head at him. He wasn’t a coward. A coward wouldn’t be brave enough to run. A coward would have killed that woman. “So do you still believe in the War?” I asked Reggie.
“The guys in the Underground are trying to convince me not to. They told me about tithing, about other things, but it’s hard,” he answered.
“Why is it so hard?” I asked, exasperated. I felt like I was talking to your father.
Reggie shrugged without saying anything. A car horn blared outside. Reggie flinched and shot a look toward the open window.
“You answered my questions,” I said to Reggie after the silence went on for a few minutes. “Is there anything you want to know about me?” I expected him to want to know something.
“No,” he said to my disbelief. I didn’t know how much Dorothy had told Reggie about me, but I expected him to have at least some questions. “I already know all about you. We all do.” The room went quiet. Even the noise from outside seemed to stop.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the younger people in the War. We all know your story.” I sat for a moment, letting what Reggie said sink in. He must have read the expression on my face. “I’ve heard that they even teach about you as part of the initiation sessions now.”
“What?” I wasn’t ready for this.
“They talk about you and Joe and your son. They tell the class how Joe died—how he was killed by his best friend. They teach about how your son was given to the other side. It’s supposed to scare the kids straight. You’re a legend.” My throat got dry as Reggie spoke. My tongue swelled in my mouth. I squirmed. Reggie licked his lips nervously. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Nearly unable to speak, I asked Reggie if he could get me a glass of water. He went into the kitchen and filled a glass up with tap water. I drank it, hoping it would help get my body and brain functioning again.
Reggie sat back down on the floor again. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s good to know. I need to know these things.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Reggie said, “a lot of people think that what they did to you and Joe was wrong. They don’t say it out loud, but they think it. I think what they did is horrible.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That means something, I guess.” I could talk now, but my head was still swimming. I think I was in shock. “Do they ever talk about where they took my son?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, just that he’s one of Them now.”
I wanted to stand up, but my legs were too heavy. I felt used—first violated and now used. It isn’t enough that they killed your father. It isn’t enough that they took you from me so that they can tu
rn you into a murderer. Now they’re telling children about us and trying to make us look like the bad guys.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table. Reggie is sleeping in the other room. I think it’s been a while since he’s slept in a bed. I can hear him breathing into his pillow as I write this. I’m glad that I decided to help him—to try to help him. Hopefully, Michael will come around too. Some things in this world are worth fighting for, Christopher. Always remember that. No matter how bleak things seem, there are always things worth fighting for. Once you’ve decided to fight, you can’t hold back.
Twenty-four
Michael showed up that first evening with a case of beer and enough Chinese food to feed a family. He didn’t call first. He simply came. It was good that he brought so much food, because Reggie ate almost half of it. God knows what type of meals Reggie’d been eating on the streets.
It was dark outside. I could see the black sky surrounding us through the window. When Michael showed up, it felt eerily like the grown-up had finally arrived. He had a now familiar manila envelope under his right arm—the details of the next job. He didn’t say anything about it to me.
Michael sat on the kitchen counter. Reggie and I sat across from each other at the table. All three of us ate. Reggie was an expert with chopsticks. I asked where he learned. “The Happy Wonton in Prospect Heights,” he said. “Mom always said it was healthier than McDonald’s.” Michael ate his food out of the box with a fork. We didn’t talk much. We each had a few beers.
“Do you know about tithing?” I asked Michael after I’d finished eating. The two of them were still stuffing themselves.
Michael took his time chewing and swallowing the food in his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you know about tithing?” I didn’t think it was a trick question.
“Yeah,” he answered. He took a swig of his beer. “What about it?”
“How come nobody told me about it?”
Michael glared at me. He looked at me like he didn’t even know me. “How did you think this thing worked?” he answered. “Somebody’s got to pay for my hotel room and your apartment and the car we rented to get up here. None of this shit is free.”
“It just seems like a lot of money,” I said. Michael seemed on the verge of exploding. I tried to figure out how to proceed without stepping on a land mine. “Have you ever killed someone who was tithing?” I asked, inching closer to my real question.
Michael looked down at me over a forkful of fried rice. I thought for a second that he was going to stand up and leave. He didn’t. “You think the War is all about the money,” he said to me instead, figuring out where I was headed before I’d figured out how to get there.
“You don’t think that’s possible?” I asked. Doesn’t he want to know the truth?
“Anything is possible. Some things are just really unfucking likely.” He stood up from the counter and walked over to the refrigerator to get another beer. “You really want this to be simple, don’t you?”
“Sometimes the simple answers are the right answers.”
Michael turned back to me. His eyes were dark and bottomless, mirroring the sky outside the window behind him. Reggie sat at the table with his head down, trying to stay out of trouble. “Why can’t you let it go, Maria,” Michael said. It was an order, not a question.
“If you really want me to let it go,” I said to Michael, “I’ll let it go.”
“That’s what I really want.”
Reggie spoke, trying to make peace, trying to change the subject. “So, how many people have you killed?” Reggie asked Michael.
“I don’t keep track,” Michael said, still glaring at me while shrugging off the question.
Reggie didn’t let it die. “Come on,” Reggie replied. “Everyone keeps track. Everyone says they don’t keep track, but everyone keeps track.” I watched Michael, hoping he wouldn’t blow up. Something was wrong. I worried that Reggie was letting the beer talk for him.
“Why do you want to know?” Michael asked. I began to get claustrophobic. The apartment suddenly felt very small. The walls felt like they were inching closer together. “Are you going to judge me based on my number? Would it be better if I had a high number or a low number?” Michael didn’t try to hide the condescension in his voice. He thought that, by running, Reggie’d lost his right to ask this question.
“I was just interested,” Reggie said, taken aback by Michael’s rebuke.
“I really don’t keep track,” Michael repeated, his eyes as hard as steel. Even I started to believe him.
“Why not?” Reggie asked. I looked back and forth between the two men. I wondered what these two men would be like if the War didn’t exist. What would they do? Would they be good people? Would they be happy? Would they at least be happier? Then I thought about people from my former life. What would those people be like if they were part of the War? Would they be killers too? Would they be less happy? Happier? I thought about my father. What would he have done if he were a part of the War? I picked up a can of beer and drank half of it in one pull. I wanted to stop thinking.
“I don’t keep track because I’ve got a big enough dick that I don’t have to,” Michael said. His voice was flat and emotionless. He stared at Reggie as he spoke. Reggie held Michael’s gaze. Neither was going to be the first to look away. None of it mattered. Even if Michael didn’t keep track, he still had a number. It existed, and there was nothing he could do to make that number go down. As long as he was helping me, that number was only going to go up. Did I have a number? Were the people that Michael killed to help me part of my number too? I finished the beer in my hand.
I wanted to break the tension. I didn’t know what I could say to Michael anymore that wouldn’t anger him. Instead, I asked Reggie where Dorothy was sending him next.
“I don’t know,” Reggie answered. “They won’t tell me. They say it’s safer for me and the people helping me if I don’t know.” His voice was shaky. “I won’t know where I’m going next until I’m there.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Reggie said. “All I know is that I don’t get to go home again.”
“I know the feeling,” I told him. I thought of my house, the house I grew up in. It was merely a dream now, slowly fading from my memory. I kept my eyes open, not wanting to look at whatever I would see if I closed them.
“Trust the old man in the room,” Michael chimed in, his voice bereft of anger for the first time all night, “going home is overrated.” He just sounded sad now. “It’s never the same place that you remember anyway.”
* * *
That evening he told me that he was going to Philadelphia. “What? Why?” I stammered in response.
“We only have two weeks to do the next job. I need to go down and do some reconnaissance.”
“When will you be back?”
“When I know enough to come back.”
“I should be coming with you,” I told him.
He shot me a cold look. “Apparently, you’ve got things to do here. I’ll leave you and your new friend alone.” Was he jealous? Was that why he was acting so strangely?
“How can I get in touch with you if I need you?”
“You can’t get in touch with me, so don’t need to.”
I didn’t know what else to say. “Be careful,” I muttered. Michael nodded in response and walked out the door.
Twenty-five
Reggie and I didn’t leave the apartment the day after Michael left. “I wish you had a TV or something,” Reggie said as he sat on the couch and stared out the window. It was still sweltering. I wondered when the heat was going to break.
“It would be nice to have something to pass the time,” I agreed.
“Do you play cards?” Reggie asked.
I never really played cards growing up, but I was
as eager as Reggie to kill the time. “I don’t know a lot of games,” I answered, “but if you have a deck, I’ll play.” Reggie walked over to his backpack. Everything he owned was in that backpack. He carried less around with him than I did. He reached deep into the backpack and pulled out a deck of red playing cards.
“So, what do you know how to play?” he asked. I shrugged. I knew how to play chess. I knew how to play backgammon. When it came to cards, I didn’t even know enough to know what I knew. “Hearts?” Reggie asked. I shook my head. “Rummy 500?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I could feel what Reggie was going through, the angst. I knew what it was like to want to think about something else. I wanted to be able to give that to him.
Reggie mentioned another two or three games. I shook my head each time. “War?” he asked.
“Seriously?” I answered, but I knew how to play War. I remembered playing it when I was a child. Reggie dealt out half the deck to me and half the deck to himself. Then he counted to three and, when he said the word three, we both flipped over the top card in our hands. Reggie flipped over a jack. I flipped over a queen and swept both cards into my pile. He counted to three again. This time, I flipped over a three and Reggie flipped over an ace. He took the cards. On about the fifth or sixth flip, we turned over matching cards.
“War,” Reggie said with relish. So we laid additional cards facedown on the table, additional casualties to a war whose outcome they had no say in. I lost the first war. Reggie took all five of my cards, including a king. We played game after game until it started to get dark outside. Both of us lost our fair share.