I was in a classroom, sitting at a pupil’s desk, third row center. Up at the blackboard, a younger, saner-looking Annie was sketching out an organizational chart. The boxes in the chart formed a rough pyramid; the one at the very top was marked T.A.S.E. Directly below this, connected to it by a double line, was a box labeled COST-BENEFITS. More lines radiated downwards from there, linking to other divisions and subdivisions, some of which I already knew about (Catering, Random Acts of Kindness), but most of which I didn’t (Scary Clowns?). I was kind of disappointed to see that despite having a direct link to Cost-Benefits, Bad Monkeys was at the bottom of the pyramid.
While Annie finished up the chart, I looked around for a distraction. There were no other students, so note-passing was out, and the classroom windows didn’t offer a view, just this white glow, like the school was floating in a cloud. Then I lifted up my desktop and found a textbook inside, something called Secrets of the Invisible College. It sounded interesting.
It wasn’t. The pages were full of that dense, tiny type that you know is going to be boring even before you try to read it. I started flipping through the book to see if there were any pictures (there weren’t), and somebody kicked the back of my chair.
Phil had materialized in the seat behind me. Not the grown-up Phil, who I liked; the ten-year-old Phil, who’d bugged the shit out of me back before I was sent away. “Knock it off,” I warned him. I turned back to the textbook, and Phil kicked my chair again.
“Knock it off!” I whirled around, brandishing the book with both hands. But Phil was gone.
A sharp rapping came from the front of the classroom. “Jane,” Annie said. “We need you in the present day.”
“Yes ma’am,” I heard myself say.
“The subjects to be covered in today’s lesson include the organization’s command structure, the proper handling of the NC gun, and the use of the Daily Jumble as a covert communication channel. Please turn to page one thousand, four hundred and sixty-five…”
Long dream. The worst part of it was, unlike a real classroom, I couldn’t just drift off, because I already had.
When I finally woke up, it was nighttime. Annie was over by the window, looking out; she heard me fumbling for the bedside lamp and said, “Leave it off.”
I joined her at the window. Across the street from the hotel was a model-railroad store; there were apartments above it, and in one unit on the second floor, I could see a thirtysomething guy walking around in his underwear. “That’s him?”
“That’s him.” Annie gave a nudge to a shoebox on the windowsill. “This came for you.”
My NC gun. I took it out, hefted it, and did a couple quick integrity checks that I’d learned about in dream class. Once I’d verified it was in working order, Annie said: “Now let’s review…Suppose I asked you to shoot him from here. Could you?”
On the MI setting, the NC gun’s effective range is about fifty feet; on the CI setting, around half that. “I could probably nail him with a heart attack,” I said. “But I’d need to open this window, and get him to open one of his.”
“Why not just shoot him through the glass?”
“Doesn’t work. The gun can penetrate ordinary clothing, but anything more substantial will either absorb the shot or bounce it in a random direction. Reflective surfaces are bad.”
“And another important implication of that is…?”
“Unless I’m so close that I can’t miss, I never want to shoot at anybody standing in front of a reflective surface, either.”
“Good,” Annie said. “You were listening.”
“Yeah, so now I’ve got a question: are you asking me to shoot him? Because I could just go over there and ring his buzzer.”
“Not tonight.” She handed me a wireless headset. “This will put you in touch with the rest of the surveillance team. If it looks like he’s going to leave the apartment, let them know. Otherwise, just keep an eye on him.” She went over to the bed. “Wake me at dawn, or sooner if something happens. And Jane—”
“Yeah, I know. Pay attention.”
Annie didn’t go to sleep right away. I heard her praying, and then, for a while, she talked to William. Maybe a half hour after she finally got quiet, the lights went out at Arlo’s place. After that it was just me in the dark, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.
I was tired. I know that probably sounds strange seeing as I’d slept the whole day away, but the thing about dream school is, it’s not restful. Also I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and my feet hurt from the walking. I decided to sit down for a while, only there weren’t any chairs in the room, so I ended up on the floor with my back to the wall beneath the windowsill. At first I was good about poking my head up every few minutes to check on Arlo’s apartment, but pretty soon I was nodding.
I started awake in gray dawn light. A fog had come in off the bay while I’d slept; through the haze, I could see that Arlo’s windows were still dark, but whether that meant he was still in bed or had already gone out was anybody’s guess.
What did you do?
Said “Oh, shit!” a few dozen times. Then, for variety, I tried calling myself a stupid bitch. I had some other choice phrases lined up, but before I could get to them, someone came out the front door of Arlo’s building. In the fog, all I could make out was a figure, but this person, whoever he or she was, was carrying some kind of case.
I tried calling it in to the surveillance team, but all I got for an answer was static. The figure with the case went into an alley beside the model-railroad store. I gave the headset one more try, then grabbed my gun and ran downstairs.
By the time I got to the alley, the figure was nowhere to be seen. The headset went on hissing static. I was going to look for a pay phone, but then something else caught my eye, something that seemed out of place in the dinginess of the alley: a china doll with a bright yellow bonnet. It was jammed into a dumpster, with its arm jutting out over the lip like it wanted to shake hands.
Without thinking, I started to reach for it, only realizing at the last second how stupid that was. I backed up, grabbed a rock, wound up to throw it, realized that that was pretty dumb too, and then just stood there indecisively.
“What are you doing?”
True had come up behind me, silent in the fog. I nearly brained him.
“What are you doing?” he repeated.
I looked at the rock in my hand like, How did that get there? and tossed it aside as casually as I could. “I thought I saw Arlo come this way. I tried to call it in, but the headset’s broken or something.”
“It’s not broken. The surveillance team got tired of your snoring and turned off the receiver.”
Oops. “Why didn’t they just wake me up?”
“They tried. The volume only goes up so high.”
“Oh…Well look, I’m sorry about that, but Arlo—”
“Dexter is still in bed.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think?”
“You bugged his apartment?”
“Of course.”
“Well if you’ve got him covered, what do you need me watching him for?”
“Are you sure this is a line of questioning you want to pursue?”
“When you put it that way, no.”
“Good. Now get back upstairs, and try not to fall asleep until you’re told to.”
He started to turn away.
“True.”
I thought I heard him sigh. “Yes?”
“Annie,” I said. “What’s her deal?”
“You’ve already worked out most of it, I’m sure. She had a young son, and a house on the bay. One day, she let her attention wander.”
“The kid drowned.”
“Yes.”
“And now she’s insane.”
“Not clinically,” True said. “She was a grammar school teacher, but she’d studied to be a psychologist. In the aftermath of her son’s death, she used her knowledge of mental illness to construct a refuge for herself.”