Children of Paranoia (7 page)

“No,” I answered, trying to buy myself enough time to get my shit together. “Maybe once or twice.” I could feel myself speaking quickly, unnaturally. “I don't really remember.” I looked over at Catherine, trying to read her response. I was looking for confusion. A normal person would have been confused by my reaction. Instead, she was simply sitting on her stool, that tight little smile still on her lips. I wanted her to stop smiling. Time to pull your shit together, I said to myself. I tried to convince myself to forget everything that I'd been taught about paranoia being your best friend. My best friends were playing ring jockey at the other end of the room. I just wanted to look at this woman and forget everything else. I let my eyes scan Catherine's well-toned body again. She was leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed on me, sipping her drink through a straw.

“So, you want to try your hand at this ring game?” I offered, knowing that I had to stand up before I fell off my barstool. Before Catherine had time to answer the question, I got up and began walking toward the back of the bar, toward my loud and obnoxious friends. I held out some obscure hope that she would follow me, that we'd play this silly game and I would take her home and that I would eventually wake up in the morning with her toned, naked body next to mine. Somewhere deep in my gut, I knew that wasn't going to happen.

When I made it about halfway between the bar and my friends I stopped and looked back. Catherine was gone. She'd simply disappeared. She had been there thirty seconds ago and now there was no sign of her. My stomach dropped. I tried to wave the feeling in my stomach off as regret but I was lying to myself and I knew it. It wasn't regret. That feeling in my gut was telling me that something was wrong. Too bad I didn't listen.

“All right, Joe,” Jared said as I stepped toward my two old friends. “Let's see what you can do.” He patted me on the back.

“I think the string's too short,” Michael shouted. “Hey, barkeep, what's the deal with this string?” The bartender didn't answer. He just shook his head and looked away. I stepped forward and placed my feet behind the line of tape on the floor.

“Who was the beauty at the bar?” Michael asked. I took the ring in my right hand and stepped back with my left foot, as if I were about to throw a dart. “And where'd she go?” Michael laughed, suspecting that I'd simply blown it with her. He didn't know the half of it. I closed one eye and tried to align the small ring in my hand with the hook attached to the post. The room was spinning, half because of the alcohol and half because I still couldn't get my heart to slow down.

“Just some girl,” I replied. I let go of the ring, pushing it slightly off to the side. It swung in a slow arc to my left, swinging back toward the hook as it neared the post. The golden ring flared in the light from the bar as it began to swing back toward us. Then, with a small clink, the ring looped itself around the hook. Michael let out an incomprehensible howl. The string went slack. The ring hung there on the hook screwed into the post. Bull's-eye.

 

 

I got up early the next morning. I weathered my headache and decided to watch the sunrise. When I was a kid, I used to get up to watch at least one sunrise each summer. I always liked watching the world wake up. The deck on the beach house was built for it. You could sit there in the morning and watch the sky lighten, hear the seagulls come to life, feel the sun on your skin when it lifted over the horizon, and still be no more than twenty feet from your bed. My plan was to head back to bed once the show was over. I still had some sleeping to do.

By morning, Catherine and the little panic attack that I'd had were nothing but faint memories. I convinced myself that I just needed more time to unwind. Watch the sunrise. Climb back in bed. Sleep until noon. I figured that was all the cure that I needed.

The sky was still a dark purple when I stepped out onto the deck. The wind was blowing off the ocean. It was cold. It may not be darkest right before dawn, but that's definitely when it's the coldest. I went back inside and pulled some sheets off my bed so that I could wrap them around me as I sat and stared at the horizon. Then I started my vigil, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the deck of that old rental, waiting for the sun to come up.

The sky barely got any brighter before I had company on the porch. “Just like old times,” a voice spoke from behind me. I looked back and could see Jared standing behind the screen door. “I thought you might come out here,” Jared said.

I shrugged. “What's the good of having a beachfront house if you're not going to get up for the sunrise?”

“Want some company?” Jared asked.

“Just like old times,” I replied, and nodded for him to come out.

“So what is it with you and sunrises, Pony Boy?” Jared asked as he sat down in the chair next to me. I laughed. I couldn't even remember how many sunrises Jared had watched with me. He always seemed to be doing it begrudgingly, but he always did it.

“Just something about them,” I replied. If I'd had a better answer, I would have used it.

“Someday we'll get Michael to join us for one of these,” Jared said.

“Yeah, right. I'd never hear the end of that one.” We both laughed. I don't think Michael had ever gotten up that early, not when he wasn't on a job, anyway. Jared and I sat in silence for a few minutes, both watching the water like we expected something to surprise us. The thing with sunrises, though, was that there were no surprises, no matter what else was going on in your life. The sky grew lighter, from a dark purple to a deep red. I could hear the seagulls begin calling out over our heads. I never wondered where they went at night. I was used to things simply disappearing and reappearing.

Eventually, Jared broke the silence. “So, how have you been? It's been a while, you know?”

I knew. “Yeah, it's hard to find time,” I answered.

“You ain't kidding.” Jared shook his head. “For real, though, are you okay? You don't seem yourself.” There was genuine concern in Jared's voice.

“Just tired,” I lied. I didn't know why I was lying. I had so few people to confide in to begin with. Lying was just so easy. “I needed a little break, that's all.”

“You're getting old before your time,” Jared mocked.

“Maybe.” I looked over at Jared to see if his face had the same weariness as mine. It did, but he wore his differently. He didn't look beat down like I did. Jared was a machine. “Doesn't all this killing and running, running and killing, ever get to you? Doesn't it just make you tired?”‘

“I've got moments,” Jared said. He was lying to me too. It didn't make him tired. He was trying to make me feel better. It worked. He put his foot up on the deck's railing and leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes it all seems so surreal, you know?” Jared crossed his arms over his chest to fight the chill in the air. “When we were fourteen, did you ever think that we'd be here one day?”

“The Jersey Shore? We were here when we were fourteen,” I joked.

Jared didn't even pause to acknowledge my joke. He kept on with his speech. “No, I mean, here, at this place in our lives. Doing what we do.”

“No.” I shook my head. I was sure of this answer. “I can honestly say that when we were fourteen, I couldn't have imagined that we'd grow up to do what we do. Even if I had, I'm not sure if I would have been too excited by it.” I looked out over the beach. The early-morning beachcombers were walking down along the water. A few people had come out with long fishing poles and were casting them into the tide.

“You're lying to yourself, Joe. I know it and you know it. You would have been fucking thrilled. I know I would have been thrilled. When we were fourteen, playing basketball in your driveway, I was sure we'd end up in meaningless, dead-end jobs just like all the other losers from high school. That was if we made out at all, seeing how people in our families were dying around us and no one was willing to tell us why. Don't forget why we became friends in the first place, Joe.”

“I remember,” I said. It was superstition that led us to each other—not ours, the other kids'. They were convinced that we were bad luck. They wouldn't even talk to us because they thought we had some sort of death jinx.

“My mother, my brother, my uncle, your uncle, your grandparents, your father, your sister. I was pretty sure that everyone I cared about would be dead by the time I was twenty.” Jared stood up. “You want a beer? I'm going to get myself a beer.” It didn't matter that it was around five in the morning. The beer sounded right. I nodded. Jared went into the kitchen and came back out with two bottles in his hands. He unscrewed the cap from one and handed it to me. Then he unscrewed the cap from the other and took a long swig. I wanted to hear the rest of his speech. I wanted to be convinced. “Instead, look at us now. Our lives have meaning, Joe. Do you know what most people in this world would do to have a little meaning in their lives?” He took a long swig from his beer.

“You know those classes I teach,” I said. Jared nodded. I'd told him about them before. Not every soldier taught the classes. They only picked a few of us. Neither Jared nor Michael had ever taught one. “When those kids ask why we fight, we finesse the answer. We tell them what we know works. They don't ask for more than that.”

“That's because they don't need a reason, Joe. They've got all the reason they need burning up inside of them. When you've got passion, you don't need reason. It's only when you get old, like us, that you start asking questions. The older you get, the more your passion drains out of you and the more you look for a reason behind everything.” Jared took a swig of his beer. “You ever ask one of these old guys that you've stayed with when you were on a job what the War's about?” I shook my head. I'd never thought to ask. I'd heard my share of stories, though. Everybody had. Jared laughed. “They'll go on, man.” He shook his head. “They'll tell you stories that'll burn your ear off.”

“Do you believe them? The stories they tell?”

Jared thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he answered. “I figure you don't get to be that old without knowing something.”

“So we're the saviors of the world?” I said, half asking, half just letting it float out into the air. “We're the only ones who can stop them?”

“I don't see anyone else trying. Look, Joe, I don't claim to know all the details but I know that the killing and the death are necessary. You know it too.” Did I? “Once we win, the world will be better off. We've got a responsibility.” Jared believed every word he said. I believed just enough.

“I don't know,” I replied, “maybe I'm just running out of hate.” I took a swig of beer.

“It's not hate, Joe. Your head is all fucked up.” He tapped the lip of his beer against my forehead. “It's just the way it is. Hate is what I felt when I heard that one of those motherfuckers killed my little brother three weeks after his eighteenth birthday. That was hate. Hate was what you felt when you found out that your dad didn't die in a car accident. I remember. I was there. I ran out of hate a long time ago. Hate's got no discipline.” If there's one thing Jared had, it was discipline.

“So what is it now?” I asked. “What keeps you going?” I thought that maybe whatever it was that kept Jared going would work for me too.

Jared gave it a quick thought before answering. “I don't know. Knowledge. Purpose. Knowing that I have a cause. Someday we're going to win this War and my grandkids are going to be able to grow up without being afraid and it will be because of you and me.”

“So, we kill them because they're evil, just like we were taught when we were kids? That's what you're getting at?”

“Fuck, man. Do you doubt it?” Jared asked me the question and then he stared at me. If he could have found the doubt inside of me, he would have pulled it out and strangled it to death.

“I don't know,” I replied. “You really believe that they're evil?”

Jared looked out over the waves breaking on the beach. “Well, it's either them or us.”

I was sick of hearing that, Maria. I was sick of hearing that it was either them or us. I was sick of hearing that it was kill or be killed. Even then, even before I met you, that didn't make sense to me anymore. That's not what Jared was saying, though. What Jared was saying, I had to believe. “So that's it? That's your purpose? Them or us? First to kill is the last to survive? I can't find any meaning in that.”

“That's not what I said, Joe,” Jared replied. His eyes were tight. “Don't twist my words. You asked me if I still believed that they're evil. Yes. Yes, I do. I have no doubt and I have no doubt because there's just too much death for everyone to escape judgment. So it's either them or us, Joe. I'm not saying that it's kill or be killed. I'm saying that either they're evil or we are, because there ain't no way that everyone here is innocent. And I know for damn sure that I'm not evil, Joe. And I know that you're not evil either.” He pointed his beer toward me. “I know you. I've known you since before you knew about this War. I'm certain that they're evil because I know that you're not.” I had to believe it, Maria. I didn't have any choice. He had to be right. If he was wrong, I was lost. “There's not going to be peace until we win this.”

“Or they do,” I added.

“Or they do,” Jared repeated, nodding. Then we sat in silence again for a long time. We sat and watched the sky go from red to pink. We sat and watched the sunlight begin to reflect off the low-hanging clouds before we could see even a sliver of sun. We sat and watched as the beach started growing crowded with people there just to watch the sun come up, like it did every other day. Then we watched as the sun first peeked over the horizon and slowly rose up into the sky. It always amazed me how fast the sun seemed to move when it just crested the horizon. Jared and I sat together and watched the world change. I looked over at him and knew that he'd only pretended to be doing this for me. He liked watching the new day be born as much as I did. When it was over, when it had officially gone from dawn to morning, Jared stood up. “I'm going back to bed, and I suggest you do the same,” he said. “Otherwise Michael's going to drive us crazy tonight.”