…red lips…
…Arab Spring crowds: “Lib-er-te! Lib-er-te!”…
…footsteps behind you on Paris cobblestones…
…the mailman clings to his pouch…
…drone’s view of a rushing closer city square…
…plopped on a closet toilet, no pants, some guy saying, “OK, here you go”…
…walk into the alley, a friend waves you forward…
JOLT. Awake. He felt himself…awake. Sunlight through black glass windows.
Blink and you’re flat on your back on a bed in a van. That’s stopped.
Coffee, that wondrous rich aroma.
“OK, man,” said…Doug, his name is Doug. “Straps are off. Sit up, have a cup of the good stuff from inside.”
Inside where? Where am I?
He sipped coffee cut with milk from a paper cup logoed: ‘bucks!
“You gotta go again?” said Brian from the behind the wheel of the parked van. “We took you in the middle of the night, but…Hey, you’re a guy that age and your med’ reports say—score, by the way! The daily use pill with the TV commercial of the man and woman sitting in side by side bathtubs.”
“Let’s get you together before we meet the world,” said Doug.
The Special Ops guys let him cram himself into the closet bathroom.
“Remember,” Doug said through the closed bathroom door: “Your name is Vin.”
After he flushed the van toilet—Such a weird concept! — Doug met him in the cramped aisle between the beds. Passed him a paper cup of pills to help him forget what he wasn’t supposed to remember and act like he believed what other people saw.
A plastic bag labeled “For Our Forgetful Guests!” that had been repurposed from a Los Angeles hotel waited beside the metal sink. The bag held a disposable toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste trademarked with a notorious TV cartoon squirrel.
“We figured,” said Doug, “feel fresh for a fresh start.”
Brian called out from behind the van’s steering wheeclass="underline" “Don’t be impressed, he’s had the whole ride here to think of that one.”
Mouthful of minty toothpaste.
The sink faucet worked—Amazing! He rinsed, spit.
Raised his eyes to the metal plate polished to reflect like a mirror.
Saw a silver-haired, craggy & scarred faced, blue-eyed man staring back at him.
Whispered: “Your name is Vin.”
Thought: “Condor.”
Radio Voice from the van’s dashboard:
“—is it for this edition of Rush Hour Rundown on New Jersey Public Radio, but throughout the day, stories we’ll be following include attempts to bring Occupy Wall Street movements to middle America, life after Gadhafi in war-torn Libya, the last days of that Ohio zookeeper who freed his wild animals and then killed himself, and the billionaire brothers who’ve bought a chunk of America’s politics, plus the latest actor to play Superman talks about his divorce from the, um, generously proportioned socialite hired by reality TV to play someone like herself, and one of our only two surviving Beatles is getting married — again. Finally, remember: today we’re supposed to be terrified. Go forth in fear.”
WHAT?
“Coming up, the third in our six-part series on how climate change—”
Click, off went the radio as Brian turned: “Did you say something?”
Doug held out the black leather jacket to Vin, said: “You ready to go?”
Then slid open the van’s rear compartment side door and with the nostalgia of a paratrooper, hopped out into the rush of cool gray sunshine.
The silver-haired man put on his black leather jacket.
Stepped out into the light.
I’m in a parking lot.
Low gray sky, cool sun glistening on rows of parked cars surrounding a tan cement, crouched dragon building. Waves of sound whooshing past.
Slouching from the dragon building came a trio of zombies.
“No fucking way!” muttered Vin, muttered Condor.
Zombies, but their make-up and costumes were so lame you could tell who they weren’t.
“Happy Halloween,” said Brian as he posted beside Vin.
The zombies climbed into a five-year-old car with New Jersey license plates.
Doug said: “Today, everybody else is in costume.”
His partner shook his head: “Don’t be impressed. He’s had the whole ride to think of that one, too.”
“Go figure,” said Doug. “It’s fucking 2011 and everywhere you look, zombies.”
“If we’ve got zombies,” said Condor, said Vin, “do you got guns?”
Call it a pause in the cool morning air.
Then Doug answered: “We’re fully sanctioned.”
Condor shrugged. “As long as what you’re full of is sanction.”
The Escort Operatives stared at him with eyes that were stone canyons.
“You expecting trouble?” said Brian.
“Always. Never.” Condor shook his head. “My meds are supposed to suffocate expectations.”
“You just need some breakfast,” said Brian. “Stand here a minute, get your land legs under you, get your breath, then we’ll get something to eat.”
“Want to do T’ai chi?” Doug gestured to a white gazebo in the corner of the parking lot. “Get your Form on?”
“That’s not low-profile,” said Vin, said Condor. “Citizens might think I’m weird.”
“Really,” said Brain. “That’s what would make you seem weird?”
“Remember, Vin,” said Doug: “We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are. You know that’s the heart and hard of any Op’, so play it cool. Low key. Absolutely normal.”
“Normal has been a problem.”
“You’re past that now,” said Brian. “Remember?”
“Meanwhile,” said Doug, “welcome to the Nick Logar Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“Monday morning, Halloween, 2011,” said Brian. “Zero-nine-three three.”
Doug frowned. “Who was Nick Logar?”
“Who cares?” said Brian.
Condor surprised them: “Poet. Black & white movies days, tough times, people working hard to just hold on, rich guys on top even after the stock market crash, bad guys savaging the world. Kind of quirky getting a rest stop named after Nick Logar. Rebel politics, road crazy. But nobody likes to talk about that, just his Congressional Medal of Honor and Pulitzer Prize for poetry no one reads, except for that famous one that doesn’t flap the flag like—God, it feels good to just talk!”
“And look at you!” said Doug. “Got a lot to say and up on literature and shit.”
“My first spy job was to know things like that.”
Brian shrugged. “My first was a take-out in Tehran. We’re not talking dinner.”
“Let’s talk breakfast,” said Doug.
“Fuck talking,” said Brian. “Let’s eat.”
The silver-haired man brushed his hands down the front of his black leather jacket, amateurishly revealing worry over not finding a gun hidden under there and thus implying that years of confinement had succeeded in making him not Condor but Vin.
“Chill,” said Brian. “Everything’s normal and OK. Just look.”
Condor didn’t tell his Escort Operative that normal and OK are not the same.
But he did look.
The parked gray van faced a chain link fence that made the north boundary of the rest stop. Beyond the fence, a yellowed marsh filled the median between Northbound and Southbound lanes of the Turnpike. The van sat closer to the Southbound lane, and that route’s exit into the rest stop made a sloping hill behind the white gazebo.