This is the sweater with the oil stain on it, Viola thinks. I always forget that about this sweater. I guess I keep hoping that it will come out in the wash, but it never does. It’s not noticeable, though, she thinks. Or I don’t think it is. Only a little darker than the rest of the sweater, but it’s a dark sweater to begin with. It’s weird how I don’t ever really notice my body or my clothes when I’m by myself. Like I can have dirt and crap all over my skirt and not notice until somebody else comes into the room. And then I can’t not notice. Viola sits with her hands under her legs, thinking about the oil stain on her sweater, telling herself that it’s not noticeable.
The FBI agent asks how her day was. “It was fine,” she says. “A little boring. I caught a kid stealing some books in the Children’s Section but then he got away before me or Jeanette could catch him.”
“What did he look like?”
“The kid? He looked like a kid.”
“It could be important, what he looked like. Did he have little things on his head?”
“Little things?”
“Like horns.”
“Why would he be wearing horns?”
“It was just a question.”
Sometimes Viola likes to think that because of the NSL nobody else can actually see the FBI agent when she’s with him. She imagines the drivers of cars they pass reacting in horror at seeing her riding in a car that drives itself. She imagines the other drivers so surprised that they crash into railings and trees and other cars behind the FBI agent’s car. Viola sits beside the FBI agent picturing constant car crashes in their wake.
They stop at a storage facility on the far west side. The FBI agent pulls a cloth tote bag from the backseat and steps out of the car. “Stick close to me,” he tells her. She wants to mock him: stick close to me, serious, eyes slitted, but she doesn’t.
Smoke rises from the storage facility. There are little bonfires all over the place. For a moment Viola imagines that the storage facility has been carpet-bombed, pictures planes flying low. Then she notices people tending the fires. The people tending the fires are staring at Viola and the FBI agent. “Don’t say anything,” the FBI agent says, putting on a pair of sunglasses. “Just walk. Act like you own the place. Keep in mind that they’re more scared of you than you are of them.” Viola wonders if the FBI agent is going to flash his gun at anybody.
They walk into a storage unit near the periphery. A man looks up from a battery-powered, hand-held television set and smiles as they enter. “Good evening, Agent. Business or pleasure?”
“Don’t be cute,” says the FBI agent.
The man pushes away the carpet that had been under his feet, and then pulls open the trapdoor that had been under the carpet. Viola follows the FBI agent down a metal staircase. The room beneath is filled with bins of VHS tapes, each of them, so far as Viola can tell, labeled in the same manner as the tapes she found in the FBI agent’s suitcase. Men, some dressed in suits like the FBI agent’s, others in uniform, scour the bins, shuffling through the videos, examining each of the labels. This is the black market, Viola thinks. The guy who let us down here, he was probably a member of the mafia or some other criminal organization. I suppose they exist everywhere. They serve a useful function in society. All of the other men in here, they’re part of the official power structure, but they still need the mafia in order to pass these videos back and forth. Viola thinks about stealing one of the FBI agent’s videos when she goes back to the motel room in Danville, sometime when his back is turned, just out of curiosity. But does she really want to see a video of the girl some two-star general’s fucking? It’s not really her thing, she decides. Though she doesn’t have a problem with it, in the abstract. She thinks about the two-star general watching a video of her. She wonders if anyone in here has already seen a video of her. She tries to catch their eyes. Nothing.
After a little while Viola follows the FBI agent back upstairs and out the trapdoor.
“Tell me if you see anyone you recognize,” the FBI agent says, on the way back to the car.
“Why would I recognize anyone?”
“It was just a question.” They get back into the car and Viola gives the FBI agent a long look. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, and they drive off.
~ ~ ~
Viola and the FBI agent have dinner at a sushi restaurant on the near west side. The FBI agent is saying goodbye to a friend of his, a white-haired but healthy older gentleman who is retiring from his post as judge. He had presided for more than a decade over one of the most prestigious of the secret courts.
“Many people believe that today’s secret courts, the ones that deal with Terror, are the only secret courts there have ever been,” he says. “But there are other courts, much older, much more secret, that deal with, for example, matters of the heart.”
“Like what?” Viola asks.
“Well I can’t go into any detail, really,” the judge says.
They order a round of plum wine. It’s stronger than Viola was expecting. They order another. Music is playing in the background, a cover of “Volare” using traditional Japanese instruments. The judge recognizes the band. He’s been interested in their work for some time, and he talks about it, a little.
“I don’t really like music anymore,” Viola says. “All of the music I used to like has too many feelings attached to it.” She looks down at her nigiri and worries that that was a stupid thing to say. She worries that the white-haired judge will think she’s a sad sack. After a moment she says, to clarify, “Not necessarily bad feelings.” The judge nods at this, and Viola suddenly gets the idea that he’s very understanding about how people can be overwhelmed, listening to music they used to like. Perhaps he’s just very understanding in general. Viola looks at his hands. He has very sensitive, wise-looking hands. The FBI agent’s hands look sensitive, but they don’t look wise. They look something like a little boy’s hands. The judge’s hands are broader, more masculine, with red knuckles and wiry silver hairs. They make her think of the protagonist’s friend in Crime and Punishment, who was big but very understanding of others; she can’t remember his name, just now.
“What do you plan to do once you retire?” Viola says.
“I am retiring to study the secret body of case law,” the judge says. “The secret courts operate on a hierarchy of secrecy,” he explains. “For most of my career, I thought that I was presiding over the most secret court. Each court believes that, that it’s the most secret. Which is absurd, of course. There’s always a more secret court. I know that now.”
“Always?” Viola asks.
“Theoretically.” Viola wonders how he could know this, if he was on a secret court himself. Is there some absolute position from which each of the secret courts might be viewed, and to which each of the secret courts would be relative? Viola asks the judge about his family.
“They’re doing very well, thank you.”
“Are you looking forward to spending more time with them?”
The FBI agent and the judge talk about certain aspects of the secret body of case law. “A particularly interesting case is when a court at one level of secrecy learns of the existence of a court at a higher level of secrecy,” the judge says. “Such cases function, mathematically, you might say, to create a series of imaginary or ‘shadow’ courts. Say for instance that court d learns of the existence of court c, which until that point had been operating at a higher level of secrecy. The court that had been court d, then, is no longer court d, rather now it is some other court, operating at a higher level of secrecy than court c. Call it court b. So court b now knows about court c, and court c still knows about court d. But what does court c know if it knows court d? It knows about a court which no longer exists — a court which is like court b in every respect except for one (and that one is precisely the most crucial): court b is a level of secrecy above court c, court d is not. Court d is therefore a shadow court, cast by court b. Each of them operates at its own level of secrecy within the hierarchy, and though their actions, to an outside observer — say, court a—appear the same in all respects, the meanings of those actions are radically different.”