Lewis Wolfe
A MONSTER ESCAPES
JANE ELRING – PART 1
(October 22, 2019)
Caleb found himself in an office that was larger than the entirety of his downtown apartment. Its emptiness was striking, as if it somehow belonged to somebody with no identity. A person without a past, without a preference. As if color and decoration had no meaning.
The office was white, so very white, from the walls to the floor to the ceiling. The vastness of this white sea was interrupted only by the black desk centered in the room, as dark as Caleb’s own skin.
He sat there now on an awkward plastic chair as he watched the young girl that had let him in earlier. She couldn’t be a day older than fourteen, Caleb thought as he waited for words that would never come. (‘Let me get my father….’)
The girl sat down in the office chair behind the desk and gave him an eager smile. “I’m glad you could make it on such short notice!” she said.
Caleb nodded as he studied her appearance one more time. He couldn’t be wrong, right? Those big dark eyes. The fine structure of her face. Thin lips and a fragile nose. In all, a delicate face crowned by mid-length blonde hair. This was a child.
“I’m not what you expected.” The girl leaned forward and threw him another one of her effortless smiles.
Caleb shook his head. “I’m sorry. My guy mentioned somebody was hiring a bodyguard.”
“Indeed, I am.”
“How old are you? Sixteen?”
Again those delicate lips curled, this time playfully. Then the girl reached into her drawer and pulled out a leather wallet. Carefully her fingers reached inside and withdrew her ID. With yet another smile she placed it on the desk and shoved it toward her guest.
Caleb took the ID and studied it for a moment. He had seen many ID cards, a lot of them fake, as a bouncer at The Punchline. This ID looked real.
“You’re twenty-three years old?” he asked.
She nodded. “I know I look very young for my age, but I assure you the ID is valid. And I can pay.”
Caleb returned the ID to her and watched as she put it back in the wallet, then the wallet back into the drawer. The drawer closed gently by movements that were almost eerily careful. What could this young girl—young woman—possibly need a bodyguard for?
“Why don’t I tell you a bit about what I do.” She leaned back in her chair as she gave him an appraising look. “Then you can decide for yourself whether or not you’d like to get involved.”
Caleb simply nodded.
“My name is Jane. Jane Elring. I work for the government as somewhat of a detective and general problem-solver. I am specifically asked to consult on cases that make no progress through conventional means. Things that are often….” She paused. “Things that are often very strange. Mysterious, one might say.”
Caleb asked, “If you’re government, why would you need a private bodyguard? Plenty of good men in the field.”
Plenty of bad men too, Caleb knew from experience, though he declined to mentioned it.
“I am not technically government. I am employed by the government.” Jane thought a moment before she continued. “My relationship with the people that consult with me is complicated.”
Caleb didn’t quite know what to make of it. He believed what the young woman told him, though little it was, and knew all too well the risk a private citizen took when dealing with the deeper, sometimes darker, elements within the government.
“So about you….” Jane’s previous serious expression had made room for another one of her trademark smiles. “What would qualify you as a good bodyguard?”
“My experiences are in military. I joined when I was eighteen, stayed until I was thirty-two.”
“What field?”
“I was a marine for years. Did some classified stuff after that.”
Some classified stuff. Caleb heard himself say the words, as if they could ever hint at the truth of his world back then.
Jane asked, “Black operations?”
“There is no legal way for me to answer that question truthfully.”
This time Jane’s smile made room for a wide grin. “And yet you just provided a perfectly adequate answer!”
“A lot of the stuff I did is still classified. I really can’t go into detail there.”
“No need. And after the ‘classified stuff’?”
Caleb knew the question would come, yet it still presented him with a darkness of emotions that was at times hard to swallow.
After the classified stuff? A crippling descent into what was a semblance of a meaningful life, if that. Alcohol, a lot of it, had made life bearable, but when his doctor had informed him of his declining health, not even that crutch remained available to him.
“I worked as a bouncer the last two years,” he said eventually.
Caleb knew his interviewer wasn’t blind. She could see the beer belly, the fledgling man boobs, and the wattle of fat beneath his chin. Her eyes on him made him suddenly very self-aware. He felt so horribly out of shape.
Jane didn’t mention his physique. Instead she asked, “From ‘classified stuff’ to bouncer seems very abrupt. What happened?”
Again a question that attempted to probe where Caleb would rather not allow access. “You know. Just a change of pace. Got tired of all the chaos and the fighting.”
“Being a bouncer is a peaceful line of work?”
“It is when you’re good at it.”
Jane nodded, not pursuing the line of inquiry further. Instead she asked, “Any family? A wife? Kids?”
Caleb’s last family member died of stomach cancer half a year after he quit the army. He didn’t like to remember the countless hours he’d spent praying for his mother’s health and safety. Praying to the cruel god that simply spat in his face and took his mother anyway. Took her in a way that was painful and humiliating. Bestowed upon her a fate that she hadn’t deserved.
But he wouldn’t tell his interviewer that. She didn’t need to know. She wasn’t entitled to the pain he felt, the sadness and the frustration at watching a monster ravage his mother’s insides.
“No family,” he said and realized once more that he was utterly and completely alone.
Jane leaned forward, her dark gaze fixed intently on her guest. “You are a man of quite some secrets. That’s fine. I have secrets too. I understand that they’re valuable. That they’re… necessary… in lives that are complicated.”
The phone buzzing in her pocket interrupted her.
Caleb listened as she answered the phone.
“Jane Elring.”
She paused to listen.
“Is it happening?”
Another pause.
“When do you want me there?… Yes, I’ll be there.” She listened for another moment. “You want to know how many? Wait….”
Jane removed the phone from her ear and covered the speaker with her small hand. “Mr. Caleb Epps, will you be my bodyguard?”
Would he be her bodyguard? Could he afford not to be? Was there anything left in his life that held any meaning? Could he go back? Be the man he once knew he wanted to be, but had only ever approximated?
Caleb had no way forward and no way back. The roads to his left and right were blocked off. There was only here, now, in the company of this mysterious young woman. With her deep, dark look that was friendly and inquiring.
If he took the contract Caleb knew he would see it through until the very end. He was, he believed, still that man at least.
As these thoughts raced through his mind he heard himself say, “Yes. Yes, I’ll be your bodyguard.”
Jane put the phone back against her ear and said, “Two. There will be two of us.”