Man of Wax (21 page)

“Shit,” he said, rising to his feet.
 

“What is it?”
 

“Remember how I told you these people work a certain way? According to the Kid, we’re royally fucked.” He said forcefully, “Bronson, David, wake up,” and hurried past me to the TV.
 

Both men stopped snoring and opened their eyes and asked what was wrong. By then Carver had the TV on and was scanning through the channels until he came to the channel the Kid had apparently told him to see, what appeared to be a newsbreak. On the screen the newscaster, a deeply tanned man, reported that just an hour ago a Chicago police officer was gunned down while on duty at Navy Pier. One witness even provided police with a picture taken with the use of his cell phone. On the screen a blurry picture of the perpetrator in question popped up—and the moment it flashed on my heart dropped.
 

“Oh my God,” I whispered. Both David and Bronson sat up in bed, cursing under their breath.
 

Carver was shaking his head. “This is just great. Now every police officer in Chicago is going to be looking for you.” He went back to his chair, sank down into it, and just continued shaking his head. “Someone must really be pulling strings to keep you in the game.”
 

I managed to look away from the TV and said to Carver, “What do we do now?”
 

“That,” he said, staring back at me, “is a very good question.”

38

A little while later Bronson and David went out and brought back Chinese food. We all ate in silence. Neither man hardly looked at me, and I wondered just what kind of game they’d been put through, and how far they’d listened to Simon before walking away. They were just ordinary people, seemingly picked at random because they wouldn’t have gone missing, and Carver intervened and helped them understand there was no outlet. He had them trained in firearms, in hand-to-hand combat, and constantly moved them around the country, supported on the extra money the Kid earned legitimately.

When we were done eating, Carver checked in with his other team and found they were still searching for transportation. It wasn’t easy, especially in a major city, Carver said, trying to secure a quick vehicle without stealing it. Then he asked Bronson to set up the laptop.
 

Bronson pulled a MacBook out of his bag, powered it up, and inserted a wireless card. He typed in some commands, said, “I’m downloading them now,” and turned the laptop around so the screen faced us.
 

Carver motioned me toward the laptop. “I asked the Kid to email everything he’d saved so far regarding the Man of Wax. It should be ready soon.”
 

The download only took a few minutes, but it seemed to take an hour. The little Chinese food I’d had—pork fried rice and an egg roll—hadn’t settled well in my stomach and I felt like I might vomit at any moment.
 

“Finally,” Carver said when the download was finished, “here we go.”
 

I had to squint to see anything. The majority of the screen was black, except for the small box inside. And in that box was a bare motel room. The position of the camera was in one of the corners, looking down at someone lying on a bed. That someone was me.
 

Carver said, “It starts with you just sleeping for about an hour.” He clicked the trackpad and the screen cut to me slowly sitting up, reaching for the ringing phone. “Once you put the glasses on the option comes to see that view too.” He glanced at me. “Was that really blood on the bathroom door?”
 

“I ... I don’t know anymore.” I squinted down and watched myself as I tentatively answered the phone. I could almost hear Kevin’s exasperated voice telling me this was my nine o’clock wake-up call.
 

Carver clicked the trackpad again and at once the screen changed, this time from my perspective—which felt completely vertiginous because it was just like déjà vu. At the moment I was strolling across the Paradise Motel’s parking lot, glancing at the three vehicles parked there. Soon I would be entering the office where Kevin would be waiting to explain to me that this was California, that yes I had checked in last night, did I wish to see my credit card receipt?
 

I stared at the screen, completely entranced. “How ... how did they get me there in the first place? I still don’t understand that part.”
 

“Most likely broke into your house in the middle of the night and used chloroform to knock you and your family out. Our theory is that they then give you a sedative to make sure you won’t wake up. Like I told you, these people somehow have an unlimited supply of resources. They can pretty much do whatever they want. Don’t you remember what was just on the news?”
 

Sunday, the very last day I was together with my family, felt like forever ago. Sitting at home, watching football. Debating with Jen whether she should cook or just order a pizza. Casey drawing one of her pictures and bringing it to me, so proud of her work, and me smiling at her and telling her, “That’s a hat,” and her giggling, saying “
Da
-dee.” Except the worst part was, I realized standing in that motel room in Chicago, with Carver hunched over the laptop and Bronson and David standing behind me watching, I couldn’t even remember what it was she’d drawn.
 

I said, “I don’t want to watch anymore.” On the screen I’d parted ways with Kevin and went back to my room, was now approaching the bathroom door. “Just turn it off.”
 

Carver clicked the trackpad once more. For a moment the screen was still there, and I was approaching the bathroom door, telling myself this was just some kind of dream and there was nothing on the other side. Then it went blank and it was the present again, yet somehow nothing had changed.

39

I woke in the middle of the night to a cold sweat. The room was silent except for David’s and Bronson’s snoring. They’d let me take one of the beds, Bronson taking the other bed, David asleep in the chair. Carver had said he would sleep on the floor, but when I squinted around the dark room I couldn’t see him. Then I noticed that the door was open just a bit and got slowly out of bed.
 

We were on the second floor of the motel, and Carver was standing outside against the paint-flaked railing, looking down at the parking lot as he smoked. He heard me and turned slightly, saw it was me, turned back. Took his pack of Winston’s out of his pocket and offered me one.
 

Neither of us spoke for the longest time. The only noise was the sporadic traffic on the street, the sound of the wind as it rustled the trees by the motel. A few scraps of trash and leaves skittered across the parking lot. The sky was filled with stars. A distant plane was making its approach to O’Hare. It was a sad realization: my life was fucked and still things ran as scheduled.
 

Finally Carver said, “Couldn’t sleep?”
 

I finished the cigarette, flicked it over the edge and shook my head. “I had a nightmare.”
 

Carver said nothing, didn’t even nod. He just gripped the railing and leaned forward, stared down at the ground a floor below us.
 

I don’t know why, but I told Carver about my dream. He’d asked why I was listed as the Man of Wax and maybe I figured this was the best way to explain it. But even though I told myself that, I knew it was a lie. I was simply doing the same thing I did every time I had the nightmare. I told Jen because just as I helped her out of her nightmares, she helped me out of mine. She held me and told me it was all right, that there was nothing I could have done about it, and I believed her. Of course I didn’t expect Carver to comfort me in the same way, but I’d just had the nightmare again, the same nightmare twice in a week’s time.
 

Carver listened without a word. He lit another cigarette, offered me a second. I shook my head, though I did want it.
 

“You think it’s your fault, don’t you.”
 

I said, “No,” shaking my head. Paused and said, “Yes.” Then said, “I don’t know.”
 

“I think you do know. It’s what made you drop out of school, right?”
 

I hesitated, glancing at Carver from the corner of my eye. “Actually, I was failing school. I mean, my grades weren’t that bad, but I knew if I continued I’d never become a lawyer, no matter how hard I tried.”
 

“Why did you want to become a lawyer in the first place?”
 

“To be honest,” I said, “I have no idea. It’s just ... all my life I’d been poor. Every month growing up I saw how my parents agonized over paying the bills on time. More than once our electricity had been turned off. Around Christmas both my parents got part-time jobs at the mall, and even that money went to help pay the bills. And I ... I didn’t want that for my life. I didn’t want to be a failure like my parents.”
 

I took a deep breath.
 

“But you know something? It wasn’t until I met my wife that I understood my parents weren’t failures. That while you can fail in work, in school, life is something that doesn’t take money. Neither does love. And my parents ... they loved each other. It sounds trite, but even if they were the poorest people in the world, as long as they had each other they would have been okay. They would have been happy. And I didn’t understand that until I met Jen. Until we had Casey. That with them I finally had purpose.”
 

I shook my head.
 

“But that night, with that girl ... that’s when I really felt like a failure. That’s when I felt like none of it mattered. Like I’d failed life. I wanted to do something. I tried shouting and couldn’t, but even that would have been enough. Even if I didn’t actually try to help her, at least I could have said something. That ... that might have made a difference.”
 

“It wouldn’t have,” Carver said, tilting his head slightly to look at me, “and you know it.”
 

I thought about it for a second. “Maybe. But I ... I just keep telling myself things would be different had I done something. Maybe I would have stayed in college, become a lawyer like I wanted. Or ... I don’t know. But I wanted to do something, I wanted to help. Even in my nightmare I want to help. I keep telling myself if I move, if I take just one step forward, everything will change. Everything will ... it will be better.”
 

I didn’t want to get into the fact that, had I never dropped out of college, I probably never would have taken Clive up on his offer and gone out to Chicago, and I never would have met Jen—all factors leading up to the fact that Casey never would have been born. And while this crossed my mind many times before—my mind’s way of finding good in my not acting when I had the chance, to letting that poor girl be beaten into a coma—I had begun to believe it wouldn’t have mattered. Like Jen said, she was my other half, I was hers, and eventually we would have found each other. What good was it having another half out there in the world and never getting the chance to bump into them, to never becoming complete? The world wasn’t that unfair. It couldn’t be.
 

Carver had smoked his Winston down to the filter and now flicked it over the edge. He gripped the railing, leaned forward, leaned back.
 

He said, “If I’ve learned one thing over the past three years, it’s this: the world was evil at the beginning, and it’ll be evil at the end. It’s up to us to make sure we don’t get sucked into all that evilness in the meantime.”
 

I looked at him. The light was bad and because I had to squint I could hardly see his face. “What do you mean?”
 

He looked at me, stared for a long moment, and shook his head.
 

“If you haven’t figured that out by now, Ben, then maybe I can’t help you after all.”
 

He went inside, shutting the door quietly behind him. I waited for another couple minutes. The wind picked up, blowing more scraps of trash and leaves across the parking lot. Finally I glanced up at the sky, stared at the stars.
 

I whispered, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?”
 

I listened as closely as I could, but the stars were silent.

40

In the morning the Kid called. Carver listened carefully for about a minute, nodded once, said thank you, and disconnected. Then he said to me, “Sit down.”
 

“What is it?”
 

“Sit down.”
 

I sat down on the edge of the bed.
 

Carver stepped forward, crouched down so we were at eye level, and said, “Simon broadcasted a message across the Internet not too long ago, a message that only someone like the Kid could find. It basically said that there’s still a chance to save your family if you’re willing to go back into the game.”
 

I stared back at him, shaking my head slowly. “But you ... you said they were already dead.”
 

“And I still believe they’re dead. My advice is to ignore the message completely. But it’s your life, so the decision is up to you.”
 

I glanced up at Bronson and David, both who were staring back at me.
 

I said, “But what if they are still alive?”
 

Carver shook his head. “Then they’re still alive. But they won’t be for long. Neither will you.”
 

I looked away, swallowed, took a breath. “If I ... if I wanted to continue, how?”
 

“The message said to just turn on your phone. And that if you no longer had your phone, to—”