Fifty Mice Part 15

"Yeah." She searches his face for the reason, and he should say, Because Ive been there, Helen. I dont know why you stopped talking, but Ive been in that place, where everything goes dead, where you want to just curl up and disappear, and I know what happens when you stay there too long. Instead he just shrugs and shakes his head, struck dumb, like her.

She collapses against him. He has never felt so low.

"I wont tell anyone," he promises.

Ginger is out on the porch waiting when Jay and Helen come up the hill to their bungalow, hand in hand. Her tears are dried, but Helens cheeks are flushed and her eyes rimmed red, and he feels a tiny, worried tightening of Helens grip as they tromp up the stairs and Ginger, smiling, squats down to take Helens backpack and feels her forehead and speculates that there must be pollen in the air and then asks her daughter, as she always does, about her day.

Helens eyes stay on Jay, level, waiting for the double cross, despite what hes told her. Shes said nothing since the golf course. But Jay gently disentangles his fingers and goes inside, keeping his promise.

Suddenly this is the most important thing to him, keeping his promise to this little girl he still barely knows.

Later, blades of street light through the curtains cut ribbons across Jay when he rolls onto his back, startled, eyes open and staring up at Helen, who stands over him; stands very still, just looking down at him, holding her pillow and her blankie crushed against her chest until theres a flutter of light in the dining room, and Ginger appears, silhouette in the archway, rumpled in a sweats.h.i.+rt, long legs bare.

"Shes scared," Ginger says, sleepy. "She wants to sleep in here."

Jays fuzzed brain takes a moment to register this: "Oh." He frowns. "Okay. Lemme just-" He tries to push himself upright, but hes all mummified by the sandwich of sheet and blanket. "She can have the sofa, and Ill sleep on the floor."

"No," Ginger says, talking over him, "with you. She wants to sleep in here, on the sofa. With you." She emphasizes the words precisely, letting her question fall between inflection and tone.

This does not, to Jay, seem like a good idea, given Gingers not-so-guarded curiosity about why Helen might be asking this, out of the blue, not to mention that it would be impractical, given the narrow beam of the sofa. "What?" He looks at Helen, realizes that the little girl is dead serious, oblivious to Gingers fears; Jay understands that its important, and part of some unspoken bond hes formed, he and Helen, and not to be easily dismissed or trifled with.

Its a test, and Ginger and Helen are looking for equal and opposite correct answers.

"Oh." Jay blinks. "Um"-uncomfortable, wis.h.i.+ng Ginger would help him out here, knowing she wont-"I dont . . . think thats . . ." He looks up at Ginger and squints. ". . . gonna work-comfortability-wise, I mean, look, hey, I know: why dont I sleep in your room, on the floor or something?" He starts to gather his bedclothing. "And that way you can sleep in your own bed . . . but Ill be . . . right there. With you." He glances pointedly at Ginger, adding, "On the floor."

It takes a few minutes for Jay to get relocated and arranged in a corner of their bedroom: cold, mostly uncomfortable despite the stuffed animals Helen has generously donated from her small collection-its a hardwood floor. He s.h.i.+fts and tries to find a neutral position for his hips and legs, and feels the unforgiving flatness, staring out into the soft darkness where Helen has fallen asleep again and where Ginger sits, cross-legged, staring down at him with her dark, unreadable eyes.

Jay s.h.i.+fts again, trying to find a better position that hes pretty sure does not exist.

Waiting for Ginger to look away.

But hoping she doesnt.

Ginger, on the bed, is waiting for him to settle, she has a message for him; when his eyes finally meet hers again she raises her hands slowly, like a magician, rotates them, to show both ivory-pale forearms. Her lips form words Jay cant hear but understands: Im cured.

Jay nods.

His moms honey has worked its miracle.

And something in the way she stares at him is different: eyes unlocked and searching, as if she thinks maybe she can figure him out if she just looks long enough.

Jay pretends to close his eyes and sleep. Ginger smiles faintly before she lies back on the bed, rolling to her side, tucking her arm over Helen and settling in to the catholic stillness of the Catalina night.

Jay, though, remains awake. Unable to sleep. It doesnt bother him.

Maybe hes slept long enough.

15 .

"THEN SHE SAID she sensed a million orange-and-blue tears lapping up the sides of my body." Its Jays voice, thin, a recording: "You know: fire. Which she likened to a half-formed s.e.xual feeling."

Laughter, static and nothing, and then Vaughns voice, made distant by the telecommunications matrix of modern phones.

"Ooooh, baby. This is what you get for walking into a place with a neon hand in the window."

But Jay is not laughing. "Shut up, Vaughn, this is serious. I mean, I felt this kind of . . . shame, you know? because, I really . . . I was hypnotized by it. By believing it."

The plastic cogs of a vintage Nakamichi ca.s.sette deck pinwheel as, listening, Jay considers the bulky, 80s-vintage entertainment center of cherrywood and gla.s.s in the bookshelf of office 204 and speculates: a consequence of underfunding or is Magonis just going for the high hipster irony?

"This storefront psychic say whether you, like, die in this fire?" Vaughn is asking.

"Well, you cant . . ." Jays voice sounds stressed, drifts and phase s.h.i.+fts between sources. "I dont know if it was literal. Or maybe the timing wasnt . . . specific. I dont remember."

"But has any of it come true?"

"No. Not yet."

Jay turns away from the console and regards Magonis with incredulity. "You recorded my phone conversations."

Magonis leans forward in his chair, fussing with his electric cigarette.

"Dont you need, like, a warrant?"

"We had what we needed," Magonis says elliptically. "The NSA is our friend."

"Except for Los Angeles," Jays voice on the tape continues, and repeats: "Except for L.A."

Jay remembers the conversation: hurrying toward the Hollywood/Vine Red Line escalator in the W Hotel, sidestepping the Swedish tourists in skirts and T-s.h.i.+rts and jorts and f.a.n.n.y packs and unis.e.x sandals, phone-cams held high like penitents icons, Jay with a Bluetooth wireless in those days, his voice compressed and city noises filtered. "And you think shed be answering the standard questions, you know? Work stuff. Success, failure. Whom I gonna marry, will I get a raise?" His laugh is forced. "No. She gives me a bag of what look like peyote b.u.t.tons and a years supply of Mexican Darvon. Enough to melt snow, I mean . . ." Theres an awkward pause, and Jay remembers he dug for his Metro Rail fare TAP card. "So much for predictions."

"The h.e.l.l were you doing at a fortune teller, anyway, I guess is my question," Vaughn says.

The sound of Hollywood Boulevard slipstreams away, sucked into white noise as this Jay-on-tape walked into the W: Jay-on-Catalina conjures a mental slide show of the cirque of junkies and prost.i.tutes and businessmen and tourists he left behind under what was likely to be a gauzy, too-hot sun.

"Stacy," Jays voice answers.

"Oh. That explains it."

"I know, right?"

"But um, just to be clear-does this lady tell you how its gonna turn out? Kids? Cancer? House in Calabasas?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, did she . . . know about, you know: girl, flower shop?"

Emphatic: "G.o.d, no."

"Not so clairvoyant, then. When it comes right down to it."

Then nothing, tape spinning, spinning.

Jays head is down, hes standing beside the bookshelf, waiting for more, watching motes of light-s.p.a.ckled dust coil up from the carpet, and speculating on why this phone call would be of any interest to the Feds.

"Its kind of like that movie, The Conversation," Jay decides.

"Not really."

"I watched it in the shop the other day."

"That was directional microphones, and all the cross-fading and noise reduction and filtering comes later. Technology from, basically, the Stone Age." Magonis sucks on his cigarette, but nothing happens, and he scowls. "No. Were slightly more sophisticated than that now," he says. "But less artful. The blend is real-time, the feed is sourced. Were in the satellite, the network, were in the exchange, and were in the cell site, and were in the chip in your phone."

"I have this friend," Vaughn blurts, on the recording, his words splintering slightly with digital drift. "AlwayAlways-psypsychic-parties. RaRaRabid. But-loves the future."

Jays voice: "Wherever that is."

Cell reception falters and fails as Jay goes down the escalator to the underground platform, where thousands of film reels are stuck decoratively to the ceiling of the station, black and white wall tiles stutter through shadows, and the source-surveillance of Jay and Vaughns phone connection is suddenly riven and corrupted by a vast sea of unmoored voices: "-interesting. You cant-"

"G.o.d-"

Shriek of static, then theres Vaughn again, crystal clear: "Jay? Can you hear me?"

A stray voice, female: "When he knows I crave things-"

"-lost lines of childhood sing in your head," Jays voice cuts in. Then lots of static.

"Jay?"

Jay has been watching Magonis put a new nicotine cartridge in his ridiculous cigarette, and now he says, "Theres a point to this?"

Magonis holds up his free hand: "Shhhhhh."

A stray voice, sobbing: "Ive been so lucky."

Then Jays voice, dry as if through a tin can and a string: "-things youre supposed to do, or be, or apologize for, or whatever-"

Dead air.

"Jay?-I lost you." Vaughn.

The distinctive low rumble of the Red Line train entering the station. A fragment of AM Spanish-language radio. The hiss of doors opening. Jay imagines himself stepping onto the train, eyes tracing over two city college students, slumped in their seats with their earbuds, eyes like black sparks.

"-forgiveness. Redemption-"

Jay asks Magonis to turn off the tape. "Its just me and Vaughn shooting s.h.i.+t."

On the tape, Vaughn, waxing: "I know, its something you dont . . ." His voice trails off, then picks up a new thought: "and even if you actually live here, I mean: angels? What the f.u.c.k?"

"They exist," Jays voice insists. The biiiiing of the departure warning. In the flutter of the cars fluorescent light, he imagines himself grabbing the overhead bar to brace for the trains moan of acceleration.

Vaughn: "What do you mean, exist?"

Jay: "What?"

Dial tone. Disconnect.

It seems incredible to Jay that he even got reception all the way through the station and into the train. Underground. There are stretches of Olympic in Beverly Hills where calls drop like in a third world country. Maybe theres a whole cell-tower thing in the W Hotel atrium, hidden behind the hanging ferns.

The tape deck stops, reverses, rewinds, all by itself. Magonis drifts, deep in thought.

The clock on the wall reads five minutes to three. This session is nearly over. Jay asks, finally, impatient, "Um. So now what? You gonna go hunt down the psychic and talk to her?"

Magonis looks up at him oddly, his gaze bidirectional. "We already did." He rolls the phony cigarette between his fingers and gestures with it, like some character in a Nol Coward play. "Masie Del Rio. Little storefront on La Brea and Waring?"

He gets up, moves to the desk. "Ms. Del Rio told us if youve survived this long, youre going to live forever"-opens his desk drawer-"which is ironic"-and takes out a Chicklet-size flash drive nestled in a plastic foam protective case. "Exhibit B." He holds it up high between his thumb and forefinger for Jay to see. "Ten gigabytes. Plenty of memory. Which might, for example, hold an encrypted comprehensive highly sensitive list of names that existed on one and only one other highly secure mainframe storage device in the temperature-controlled vault of a Virginia private contractor that not coincidentally was hacked and purged and corrupted so that this flash drive of names is a unique repository. Names of people who, were the list to find its way into the wrong hands, well, these people named might very well be compromised, if you get my meaning. Because. Of what they know. Or who they are. Or what they represent. You see the significance?"

"Confidential witnesses and informants?"

"Just for arguments sake."

Jay shrugs. "Well. Youve got that copy. You know who they are, you can move them."

"This? No. Lets say this one is blank. But the real one looks exactly like it."

"Is it?"

"Is it what?"

"Blank."

Magonis shuffles around the desk, hands the flash drive to Jay, and sits down on the arm of his chair, knees creaking. "Seen it before? Familiar?"

"No."

"Take your time."

"Has anyone on the list been-?"

"We cant both be asking questions."