“Well. You better find out.”
“I will,” I say. “That’s what I’ll do.”
He holds out the book so I might take it back, and I find my hands are unwilling to do so. I see now what I wanted, I wanted him to tell me the mystery of the novel is above my pay grade, that the appearance of such an artifact on my trail—a novel that is not a novel, a dangerous relic—means the trail is shut off to me. I want Arlo to relieve me of the burden of this case, which seemed so open-and-shut, so simple—the flat fact of the broken roof, the flat fact of the broken roofer, a simple and clean connection—but which now seems full of wrinkles, a welter of anomalies, a patchwork of unseen connections.
I’m sure Arlo can see it too, that I wish I didn’t have to keep going. That I am—for all of my experience, my gruff exterior, my size and strength—a tiny little man. Not at all like Charlie. He would have seized on the book, the roofer, the mystery, and leapt into whatever danger it all represented, leapt in grinning and torn out the truth. Torn out the truth by the roots or died trying.
Arlo, deep and decent, sets the book down on the bench between us. Captures turn up on the rooftops of the Plaza, panoramic, a slow-spinning capture on the top of every building, recording my insufficiency. My shame.
Arlo chews his sandwich and allows his eyes to linger on the pond in the center of the Plaza. Looks anywhere but at me for a moment, and then clears his throat and changes the subject.
“And how is it going,” he asks, “with young Ms. Paige?”
“Oh. Fine.” I catch it, correct it. “More than fine. She’s… she’s extremely gifted.” I shake my head in wonder, feeling a glad rush of relief to be talking about something other than the book. “Her sensitivity is off the charts—sorry, idiom, lazy—but it is. Man, is it. And not just locutions either. She’s catching targets from three floors up. She’s, uh—” I look at him, and he’s not looking at me. He’s leaning back, considering, gazing up toward the clouds. “She’s like Charlie. Which—by the way—is why you gave her to me.”
I am teasing him. Lovingly, yes, but definitely chiding him for having hidden the full truth of his motivations. But he responds thoughtfully, nodding. “Yes. Yes… although it is true, as I told you, that I assigned Ms. Paige to your mentorship because you are in my estimation—and Alvaro agrees, though he may not… anyway. In the collective estimation, you are the most capable member of the service. However—” Now he pauses, dabs at one corner of his lips with his big wad of napkins. “Yes. I thought… given your history. Your familiar connection…” He shrugs. I wait. “She is as good as he was, Laszlo,” he says finally. “Indeed, she…” And then, softly, as if reluctant to blaspheme. “She may indeed be better.”
I shake my big woolly head and start to deny it, but if there is any fair judge of such matters, it’s Arlo.
“I can’t attest to it, of course, because no one can. But yes, indeed. She might be better.” He nods slightly, as if ticking off a list in his mind, considering things he’s seen. And me too: I’m remembering Aysa, sitting next to me in the car after we went through Aster’s basement, politely declining a cigarette, humble about her remarkable catch, unaffected by exposure.
“Do you recall that I used to give these talks?” Arlo says. “These… these lectures at some of the high schools, as part of the… you know. To gently acclimate young people to their new responsibilities to truth telling, as they aged out of the years of exemption. I met her at one such talk. Nine years ago. It was just after… after Charlie was lost to us, actually. I remember it. She was clearly gifted, clearly registering, you know, and just leaping with excitement. It was truly just… radiating off of her. An eagerness. To join the Service. To do her part, she kept saying. Charming phrase. Do her part. Although her enthusiasm, I must say, was…” He sighs. “Sorry. It’s sad, you know. Her enthusiasm was contrary to the will of her parents.”
Arlo sighs, a long exhalation, weary but pleased. The lunchtime crowd is dying down, but a handful of the faithful straggle still along the wall. A middle-aged man in a wheelchair angles up, just a few feet from us, takes out his Day Book, writes down his small truth, and tears it free and folds it small. Reality is ongoing.
“I know, Laszlo, that you do not relish the company. But there is no one else who can offer this young lady what you can. Do you know what that is?”
“No,” I say.
“Ballast.”
And then he just smiles, the wide and watery smile. And I know exactly what he means. I can picture Aysa Paige, dying to get to the crime scene, dying to ask a thousand questions, dying to speculate, leaping ahead. Bounding, heedless, reckless. Where my qualities tend in the other direction. I am the earthbound man, heavy and stolid. Ballast. That’s me.
Charlie was eager too. Not with Aysa’s wide-eyed acolyte eagerness, but with the swaggering keenness of a big-game hunter, the man who catches a scent and cannot and will not stop, never mind the dangers. Fuck the dangers of exposure, the dangers of living in proximity to dissonance, the dangers of speculation. Sometimes Charlie almost—not quite, but almost—refused to believe there even was any danger.
And Arlo knows as well as I do what happened to Charlie.
I stood beside Arlo at the funeral while the bells were ringing, one ring for each year of his life.
Mr. Vasouvian and Mr. Ratesic, the younger Mr. Ratesic, on the outskirts of the thronging crowd, watching Charlie’s coffin be delivered to the earth, committed to the ground for all time, like a sealed box of files being added to the Permanent Record.
Arlo with his hand on my elbow, holding me gently back from whatever drastic action he was afraid I’d take. As if there was any danger of that: of Laszlo Ratesic flying off the handle, gnashing his teeth, enacting violent revenge. That’s never been my style. I just stood there, hands in pockets, head lowered, listening in silence while my brother’s wild courage was eulogized.
I’d never before seen my father in public without his pinhole on. Never in all of my life.
I’m thinking about him, like I’m always thinking about him, and now I’m thinking about Aysa too, young Ms. Aysa Paige of the Speculative Service, with her whole golden life ahead of her.
“And you didn’t think it was better to simply discourage her from entering the Service entirely? You didn’t think that would be the better course for her?”
“Perhaps.” Arlo turns then, at last, and looks me full in the eye. “But not the better course for the Service.”
Modest as he is, Arlo will not apologize for choosing the integrity of the truth, and the safety and welfare of the State, ahead of the safety and welfare of any single individual. And I’m too sour and inward to express what I am already feeling, which is that I am grateful to Arlo for the opportunity to work with Aysa Paige. To take her under wing, lead her into greatness.
I scan the edges of the Plaza, but lunchtime is over, and the food trucks are going or gone. I see the Dirty Dog, a black truck with pink piping, a hot dog truck I’ve been wanting to try for years, but it’s just now driving away, turning down Alameda Street in a cloud of exhaust. In the wake of this disappointment I register another truth about Aysa Paige, the other way I am feeling and have felt since Crane’s apartment, which is a burning envy—I could die of jealousy, I swear to it, that is big true, I could die of jealousy, but because I love the State, I love the work, I will raise her up. Show her the works. Take her along.
“So we are set then?” Arlo says quietly, reading my mind. “I can entrust young Ms. Paige with confidence to your care?”