“Seriously, True, I get it.” I reached up and tapped my headset. “So can I order breakfast on this thing?”
It was actually a couple more hours before I got to eat. After I went back and woke Annie, she took forever in the bathroom—I guess when you live in a box, you can’t get enough of indoor plumbing—and nearly as long choosing an ensemble from the collection of rags in her backpack. I was good, though: I only got a little impatient. Finally we made it out the door and went to Silverman’s Deli, where I pigged out on bagels and lox.
From there, we fell into a routine: we went for a post-breakfast walk; Annie muttered; I listened. Then, back to the hotel, where I had dream class while Annie—the waking Annie—took another shower. Then, all-night sentry duty. Then, more Silverman’s. Rinse and repeat, for seven days straight. By the time we were done, I knew everything a Bad Monkeys operative is supposed to know.
On the morning of the eighth day, Annie told me I’d completed the initial phase of my training. “Go home and relax,” she said. “We meet back here in seventy-two hours.”
“What about Arlo?”
“If we’re very lucky, he’ll have been taken care of by then. If not…you’ll want to be sharp.”
I went home, crashed, and slept for a day. I woke up starving, but the thought of more smoked salmon made me queasy, so I gave the deli a rest and went to this pub I knew instead. I was working on my second plate of cheese fries when Phil showed up.
“Those must be really good,” he said. “You look happy.”
“It’s not the fries. I got a new job.”
“Is it the one you’ve been looking for?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I think it might be. If I don’t fuck it up.”
Did you tell him what the job was?
No. I could have, I mean, Phil’s probably the only person I know who’d have believed me, but…no. I just called it a “public service” job, stayed vague on the details, and Phil, he knew enough not to push. He smiled like he was proud of me, though—like he would have been proud of me, if I’d told him everything.
I did tell him about Annie. I called her my supervisor and had her living in a homeless shelter instead of a cemetery, but other than that I stuck pretty close to the truth. “She’s growing on me. At first I didn’t want to be around her, but now that I know the crazy thing is mostly an act—well, not an act, exactly, more like a coping strategy—I’m starting to like her…The God thing still bugs me, though.”
“Why?”
“Besides the fact that it’s just stupid? I can’t see giving the time of day to a God who let your kid drown.”
“Well,” said Phil, “it wasn’t God’s responsibility to watch the kid. It was hers.”
“What, and God’s too busy to pick up the slack the one time she takes her eyes off him?”
“Was it just the one time?”
“Shut up. Annie’s not like that. She wasn’t a bad mother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know her, OK? She’s a little weird, but she’s not a bad person. This organization we work for, they’ve got standards. They wouldn’t keep her on if she was bad.”
“Maybe she’s not a bad person now. But before…?”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure she used to be a real terror. Hey, here’s a theory, maybe God killed her kid as a character-building exercise: ‘Go on, Billy, jump in the bay, it’ll help Mommy get her priorities straight…’ How’s that sound?”
“I don’t know. Could be.”
“Could be? Are you fucking serious?”
“Or maybe it’s the job. You say you’re doing important work. But would this woman even be a part of that, if her son hadn’t—”
“Jesus, Phil, are you trying to piss me off?”