Woke Up Lonely A Novel

Bruce Bollinger, the director must not force the audience to cry because the hero cries.

A documentarian will follow his subject into hell and not come back. Not if the action is award winning. Bruce could hardly believe his luck. Kidnapping was bad, but six whores and a cult leader? This cult leader’s double-crossing dad? The most engaging threat to the Union in more than a century grown from the rigmarole of people convened in mansions across America? How many filmmakers would kill for inside access to a story like that? This was God doing for Bruce what he could not do for himself.

Problem was, with every hour he was trotted around the Helix House, presumably to star in the ransom video, the place seemed to empty. People were vanishing. His options were vanishing! It was like scrambling for the last few seats in musical chairs. At first he’d wanted the dad, Wainscott, because, my God, the man had raised a cult leader, lived with this cult leader, and then betrayed him, though raising and living with the cult leader would have been story enough. Thurlow Dan was no Hitler, but didn’t you wonder about Hitler’s parents? Stalin’s? Charles Manson’s mom tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer, but there was only so much you could get on record. So, Wayne was the plan. The Early Years.

Problem was, Wayne had a seizure. What the hell. A phony seizure to get him out of the compound but also out of Bruce’s reach. A second choice was the hooker, because those spikes pronged from her cheeks were just balls-out weird. And since he’d seen their simulacra on a girl at Crystal’s place, he figured here was a trend worth noting. So, free of his hood and left in the charge of guards not remotely interested in guarding him, Bruce was able to wander off and hunt his story down. Hunt and fail and return to the cell, if you could call it a cell, only to find the bars had straggled and everyone was gone.

No small wonder. He too heard the helicopters. The sirens and bullhorn. He was aware HRT intended to storm the place, and he’d seen enough on Waco to know what this meant for him if he did not get out. But he also knew he would not get another chance this good. Who’d want to buy video footage of his wife’s hinky bladder? Decisions, decisions. To stay in the house was suicide, and so, what, the documentarian is suicidal? That was what he was saying? He was rapacious and hypersensitive and bearing out the artist’s paradigm whenever he screwed someone over in the pursuit of his work, but suicidal? Bruce decided to make one more tour of the house, and if he came up short, he’d march right out the front door. Look, he’d settle for a guard. View from the bottom rung up. He’d settle for that! Please bring me a guard.

Down one hall and another, through the kitchen, back to the pantry, living room, office, another office, five more offices, and about to give up, when, apropos of a voice outside counting down—oh my God, they were counting down—his stomach sent up word it was time to find a bathroom. He began to run, opening doors, and nearly whacked in the head a guy crouched on the floor, sobbing. Bruce said in a commanding voice he didn’t know he had, “Stay here,” and got to the bathroom just in time.

For all that, it was slow going. The guy in the hall—his last best subject!—could leave. He rocked back and forth. Finally he ran out of the bathroom feeling vaguely nauseated for his efforts and looked at the spot where the man had been. Goddamn it. Only, the man had not actually left but retreated to a corner where he now sat upright, crying into his arms, which were folded across his legs, bent at the knee.

Bruce had worked with subjects in the field for years. He was not shy or awkward around strangers, even in the weirdest of circumstances. But this guy? He seemed unstoppable in the effluence of his grief, so that Bruce did not know what to say and was even a little afraid to say anything.

He tapped him on the shoulder. Nudged him in the leg. Said, “We need to get out of here, okay?”

Norman covered his ears. “Go away. Leave me alone. I want to die.”

Bruce took a step back. “Okay, buddy. Let’s get you out of here and then you can die. Sound good?” He wanted to stand him up so he could glean something of the man’s role. A guard? The janitor? Bruce reached for his elbow.

Norman shook him off and looked up. His face was all bloat and jowl. “I was crying,” he said.

“I can see that. But we’re on a bit of a deadline. Know what I’m saying? You can cry after.”

There was literature on the subject of how to deprogram a cult member, and much lore about a desperado named Black Lightning who went around kidnapping cultists for the purpose of deprogramming them, and about how this Black Lightning collapsed moral boundaries and made nominal the difference between free and captive thought, all of which material might have served Bruce well if he’d read any of it and not just printed a bibliography, which he barely skimmed, anyway.

Norman put on his glasses. “What’s the point?” he said. “They’re going to put me away for the rest of my life.”

The fireworks in Bruce’s heart were so boisterous, he could not believe this guy was not running for cover. The rest of his life! He must be important.

“I wasn’t suggesting we waltz out the front door,” Bruce said, all casual, not wanting to betray the lusty and viselike grip he was prepared to exert on this man if he didn’t play along.

Norman seemed to perk up a little. “There’s the tunnels,” he said.

Good, good. The tunnels. They’d be found, of course, but not before Bruce was able to eke from their time together a little trust and the golden promise of exclusive rights and access.

“After you,” Bruce said. And then, “I’m Bruce, by the way. And if you’re wondering why I don’t just walk out of here without you, it’s because—” Though here he stopped. Norman was not listening, and this was fine. At least he’d gotten his name. Norman Sugg, chief of staff for Thurlow Dan, VP, second in command—jackpot.

They went to the basement, and as Norman was keying in a pass code, he said, “I guess I could live down here indefinitely. That wouldn’t be so bad.” He leaned his forehead into the metal of the door, which was more slab than door, and started to cry again, only without the purposed and cleansing intensity of before.

Bruce was beginning to see something of his wife in this man and was determined not to make the same mistakes. And so: whatever instinct tells you to say, say the opposite.

“Why don’t we just take a break here for a second. It might help if you talked about it.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I’ve been through enough.”

“I’m not making fun of you. What do you mean?”

Norman finished with the pass code—it was an incredibly long sequence; who could remember a sequence that long?—and waited for the door to open with obvious impatience because, where five seconds ago he was ready to languish and die, now he was energized with disdain for Bruce Bollinger.

“Here,” Norman said, and he gave Bruce a hard hat with a light and reflector strips. “I need for you to stay safe.”

Bruce nodded. Their dynamic seemed to redefine itself at a clip. It was hard to keep up. Maybe Norman thought he’d win points for good governance of the kidnapped? Bruce was running out of time. He imagined SWAT fanned out in the tunnels and waiting for them at every turn. He imagined Norman giving him the slip. He certainly seemed to know the tunnels well, never stopping at the forks or Ts. If only Bruce were half as confident. There were so many inroads into a man’s trust. Be innocent, friendly, unafraid, curious. Ask about his family. His history with the Helix. Keep it local: So, what are your dinner plans? Ask questions that imply faith in the subject’s good heart. He was still debating the right way in when they heard footsteps, or at least the suck-squish of feet in the mulch that passed for flooring in this place.

Bruce spun around to rake his light across the walls, looking for where to hide. Norman was unbothered. Bruce nipped his sleeve and tried to pull him from the center of the gangway. The suck-squish got closer, and with it the sound of two men who were, whatever they were, not SWAT. Bruce let out a whistle that died in fear because there were actually worse people to encounter in a tunnel than SWAT. The men were discussing oil revenue stymied by the Iraq war and laughing at this nonsense. They’d never been so rich.

Oh, right, naturally: The tunnels were witness to oil magnates in bathrobes and flip-flops.

Bruce could hear them chuckling well past seeing their lights retire. “Do I even want to know?” he said.

“You’ll catch on,” Norman said. And with that, they reached a door. A door back to the world where everyone wanted what Bruce had.

“No, wait,” he said, and he slapped Norman’s hand away from the intercom button and, for good measure, put himself in the way of the button, which had assumed for him the ruinous potential of the Red Button.

“Oh good,” Norman said, “I deserve this,” and he upturned his face and closed his eyes, waiting, it seemed, to be struck. So there it was. Strike a man and you own that man.

“Maybe I can level with you,” Bruce said. “Maybe that’s the best way to go here.”

Norman narrowed his eyes and pushed Bruce out of the way with a single have-at-him. This man was incredible. Good-bye sheep, hello wolf. The door swung open just long enough for Bruce to pick himself off the floor and dive in. He nearly lost a foot in the jamb as it shut behind him with what sounded like the wheeze of an air lock. If he had been suddenly launched into space, he would not have been surprised. Already he felt the atmosphere of his grip on the world becoming less dense. He could hear Norman’s feet slapping the tile floor, which suggested they’d moved from the public arteries to something financed.

“Wait up,” he yelled, and he plunged down the hallway. At the other end were two doors, they looked like barn doors, and through the slits of their mismatch flared a light that was, even in slits, radiant. Seen from the back, Norman looked like a boxer headed into the ring. Bruce caught up with him, the doors parted, and only then did he realize he’d been subject to white noise that had grown into a din that was now the symphony of a casino packed with joy.

Oh God, he loved a casino. He’d sworn off the casinos and replaced their void with drink, but the swap had always felt short term. Unwise, too. Drink was less costly but also less lucrative, which was why, incidentally, the bank loan for Trial by Liar had failed him and why if he’d just done the prudent thing and continued to bet his way to freedom, etc.

He took a deep breath. An underground casino. Amazing. These days, to get to a decent casino you had to travel far, and often onto the Indian reservations, which were dry counties and annoying for it. Who wanted to poker through the night with Sprite and maraschino cherries?

The place-name was spelled out in vanity bulbs underscored with red tube lights. The Resistance Casino and Sports Lounge. By the entrance was a cherub statuette that doubled as a scanner, or so it appeared as Norman swiped a card across the cherub’s face, once for himself and once for Bruce. They stepped inside and immediately Bruce teetered on the edge of hope. Really? Hope? Yes. On his left: the world’s greatest subject for a documentary; on his right: the money to finance it just in case no one else agreed. He was excited but also relieved. As though he’d just loosened his belt after a large dinner. It had been six months since he’d dropped money in this way. And his paychecks from Interior went straight to the bank, though no amount of savings would get him and Rita out of the hole. Between them, they had eight thousand dollars and the house. And the car. Though the car was leased and the house was double-mortgaged. So they had eight thousand dollars. His credit card spending limit was a quarter of that. He couldn’t even get an advance. He felt in his pocket for his Visa.

The books he’d read on addiction said that a need passes whether you give in to it or not. So you might as well hang tough. Because it would pass. And pass again. And again and again, and what book talked about that? He’d always want to be doing something great. Why was that an illness? The advice was retarded. In fact, trying to impose a rubric of thought on something as unwieldy as need simply made him feel all the more needy.

The gaming floor was arranged by square and corridor, so that each room bled into the next. It was huge. It was so huge, an area had been cordoned off for throwback, so that if you missed the good old days, here was a slot machine for you. The levers grimed in sweat. The jangle of coins in the hopper.

“I’ve only been here once or twice before,” Norman said, “but in case you missed it, everything I believe in just collapsed upstairs, so what the hell, right? You get your betting card at that booth across the floor.”

Bruce did not even hesitate; he flew at the booth and returned in seconds. So much was alive in this place for him. The black pile carpet snarled with orange and cyan, magenta and wheat. The colors dizzied by chandeliers and fluent across the walls, which were marble and bright. He’d put $500 on the card and took his place on a swivel stool at a bank of dollar slots. The touch-screen instructions told him what to do, not that he needed their guidance. He hit the Spin button. Lost $100, made $1.25. “Whoo!” he said. “Just getting started.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

Norman looked bored. He watched the others up and down the aisle. He sighed.

“You realize you’re not helping,” Bruce said. Four hundred dollars was three hundred. Wham.

“No one even recognizes me,” Norman said. “I don’t know any of these people.”

“Casinos aren’t for friends,” Bruce said, and, by way of adduction, a man next to him caught his wrist in a tube attached to the respirator hitched to his wheelchair.

“This was a bad idea,” Norman said.

Bruce waved him off.

“You’re already out three hundred? You go down fast.”

“Hey, you can be positive or you can take that doomsday shit elsewhere.”

“Okay.”

Bruce took a long breath. Muttered, “Don’t go far,” but never turned around to see which way Norman went. Two people were waiting for his chair. He could feel their eyes on the screen, watching his credit dwindle. He was hemorrhaging by the minute, and then by the second, unable to hit the button faster than he was losing money for it. So maybe Norman was more talisman than not. He pressed the button again, lost again, and heard as though for the first time the quiet at his back. Norman? He spun around. Ah, Christ, Norman was gone.

He popped off his chair, which actually felt like a popping, a freeing, because he’d nearly lost his mind for a second. Priorities, Bruce. Jesus. He scanned the room. Cruised the aisles. What the hell? The casino was not pied, it was just white, so how was this roly-poly black man able to blend in? He began to run. A woman in marching-band jacket and matching skirt was stopped at the end of a row, manning a cart of drinks. He bought two cups of whatever she was serving—Ahhhhhhhhhhhh—smacking his lips, exactly the Scotch and soda he’d been praying for. He asked if she’d seen a black man. She said, “Once or twice.”

He made for the bathroom. There were no pay phones anywhere, nor the usual spotting of people on their cell phones, either. He was not ready to call his wife, but it would have been nice to know he could when the time was right. Because the longer he waited, the harder it would be to pretend the delay was anything but vindictive. Rita wanted to name their kid after Thurlow Dan? Yeah? Maybe while she was waiting by the phone for Bruce to call, she could explain his absence to her swollen belly thus: Your namesake stole your dad. He’d call her the second he locked down Norman and secured enough money to back the film.

In the bathroom, the toilet seat was veiled in a cellophane doily that moved on its own. At the sink, the faucets were automated. The paper towel dispenser reacted to the motion of his hands. This was no place to be when probably the one thing that could stop your headlong plunge into financial destitution was the voice, the reason, the care of another human being, or even just a reminder that such humans existed and were worth being good for, which was precisely the kind of reminder dispatched by the robotic amenities on duty in the Resistance bathroom.

How could he have let Norman go? No, no, how could he have sent him away? Was nothing sacred next to gambling? Next to his work? Would he sell his wife for a buck, especially if the buyers trafficked in slave labor and prostitutes and had never told their story on camera before? The vampirism of art was pathetic—he knew it was pathetic—and yet there he was, teeth bared.

He was being methodical now, touring the rows of slot machines from left to right and stopping at ATMs as he went. Stopping and taking out the max from each. Shredding the receipts and leaving a paper trail. Pausing at a slot—just one—lose $100, make $1.25. Norman? He thought he saw the black hand of fate larking about the poker tables, and he headed that way.

An irony that frequents gamblers who are and are not addicted to gambling? They are and are not very good. Bruce took a seat at a table. High stakes, no dealer, just a friendly game among five. Four guys and, who knew, the queen of England; she was at least eighty and wore a Day-Glo pink suit and, pinned to her lapel, a diamond brooch shaped like the Commonwealth. She, more than the others, looked on him like fish food. The others were sizing up his affect for clues to his talent, while she plumbed his heart and knew he was doomed. Everybody in? Yes.

He hardly paid attention. He was in free fall, which was the madness he liked best. It was like adulterous sex when you knew your wife was due back any second; like sharing needles with someone you knew had AIDS; like driving through the desert with a tank on empty. It was not about risk but ruin, not about chance but certainty, and though you didn’t want your wife to find out, or yourself to end up with AIDS (there were easier ways to devastate or die), you’d still suffer this fate just for the thrill of its prelude.

Bruce tossed his chips as if feeding the birds and finally offered up his tower and watched as this tower was assimilated into a cityscape across the table.

He maxed out his credit card and bet his wedding ring. The queen of England said there was a special phone for guys like him and gestured at a console Bruce had not seen before. It looked like one of those car-rental kiosks in the airport. Call 123 for Visa, 456 for AmEx.

“Representative,” he said. He pressed one, then two. Three for stolen cards. “Representative.” Because if he got one on the phone, he’d say: My card was stolen, and I need a new one right now.

He watched the game wind down and started to press all the buttons at once. Goddamn it. “REPRESENTATIVE.”

He returned to the table. Everyone in play seemed to have at his disposal many chips, silos of chips, so that it was just insulting to see his wedding ring back up for grabs. The man who’d won it had a braided ponytail, which he stroked lewdly every time he anted up, and more so when saying, “It didn’t fit, not even my pinky.”

My God. His wedding ring was going to pass from one a*shole to the next. It wasn’t even real gold. The man with the ponytail clamped Bruce’s wrist midair. “The ring’s in play. Leave it alone.”

“I’ll buy it off you.”

Laughter.

Bruce reached for it again. This time, a hand clamped his neck from behind. Security. He tried to wriggle free, but the clamp was tight and siphoning off air he probably needed to live if this kept up. It didn’t. The hand shrank from him like a bat from light, and when he spun around, the guard was gone; here was Norman.

“What the hell?” Bruce said.

“How about thanks?”

“Thanks. But what the hell?”

“The Helix has friends.”

“The Helix is over.”

“Correct. But news travels slower down here than you’d think.”

“I’m sorry about before. This is not a good place for me. I have a—a history. Can we go somewhere and talk for a second? I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Norman said, and he sank his hands into his pockets.

“I don’t think you understand. You have to talk to me. You’re my only way out at this point. Don’t you see the wreckage of my life piling up all over this casino?”

Norman shrugged. “When Thurlow and I were kids, one Halloween we were the Hamburger Helper hand. We spent months sewing pillow cases and making the hand big enough for two, but then when it was time to trick-or-treat, we realized we forgot to make eyeholes for us both. Only he could see. Even then I thought it was a metaphor.”

Bruce heard a siren go off two banks down—someone had won a jackpot. He tried to focus. He said, “I just don’t get it, really. My wife got all excited about the Helix, but I couldn’t understand what she was excited about. When I pressed, she’d just get angry and say I was badgering her, and God forbid I said maybe it was the hormones—she’s pregnant—well, that made it even worse.”

“You told your pregnant wife she’s hormonal?”

Bruce laughed. “I know, I know.” And something in him dislodged, because when was the last time he was met with compassion on any topic, especially the thousand missteps he’d made with his wife? When was the last he indulged the camaraderie of a guy who, just for being a guy, a straight guy anyway, understood what traumas inhered in the pleasing of your wife? He said, “It’s rough out there, lemme tell you. My son’s due in a little less than four months.”

“You got a name for him?” Norman said.

“No”—and he shrank into himself and vowed not to say another word.

“The thing about the Helix,” Norman said, “people used to say Christianity was a cult, too. Anything that’s a threat to convention is a cult, which is the saddest part of all, because when did this horrible loneliness get to be the norm, so that whatever tries to break it down is threatening? None of us expected Thurlow was going to kidnap anyone.”

“Fair enough,” Bruce said, swearing not to talk, not another word, “except for the part where you’re urging people to civil war or whatever and still thinking the man is Mother Teresa? Isn’t half your manifesto about leaving the Union and governing yourselves? What’s that got to do with bringing people together? In fact, now that we’re talking about it, the stupid f*cking Helix is ruining my marriage. It’s not the money or even that I’m irresponsible or that my priorities are screwed; it’s the f*cking Helix. Tearing my union apart. So, yeah, big success over there. Huge. Congrats.”

Norman’s face went dead, and what light had crawled into his eyes went dead, too. He said, “There’s someplace I have to go. You are on your own.”

Was Bruce the worst documentarian ever? He was. “No, please, wait. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I was kidnapped? Look, I’m sorry. Let me go with you. We can talk some more.”

“Thanks, but no. I paid my dues cocounseling. I was thirteen and doing RC in New York. Thirteen! I discharged. I’ve cried and yawned and laughed my guts out. I’ve been looking for a place to fit in all my life, and all my life has brought me to is this. Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“How about I come with you without talking?”

“It’s a free country,” Norman said, and he walked away.

They left the casino. By now Bruce had gotten the idea there was a second life here below Cincinnati. Clubs and bars. Spas and brothels. Whatever could not be conducted aboveground was encouraged below. They walked the tunnels as before, and this time when they passed three guys toting gunnysacks, and one stumbled, so that a hundred official Major League baseballs rolled out and crowded their feet, Bruce said nothing, just bent down to help. It did occur to him to filch a ball and whistleblow—See? They’re juiced! Right here in Ohio!—but only for the second it took the bearers to read his mind and threaten his life. At least, such was conveyed in the hairy eyeball coming off each one.

Finally, they came to another door. Bruce looked for the card scanner—he was going to be helpful from now on—but there was none. They broached the front desk, where a woman flipped through a binder of names, looking for Norman’s. She wore a headset, which freed her hands to fly about her face as she yelled into the mouthpiece because the system had been down for hours, and it was Neanderthal having to thumb through a binder looking for guest names and IDs. “Think it’s good business when one of the Supreme Court justices stands here while I’m trying to figure out which one he is, and he’s like, Name rhymes with urea—which isn’t helping me any—but what am I supposed to do, let him in? He could be, what’s those two, Woodward and Bernstein, so look, my point is, when’s the system going to be fixed? Ugh, hold on”—and she found Norman on the list and asked for his ID, and when that cleared she let in Bruce, too, because Norman was high Helix, enough said.

She buzzed them through frosted glass doors.

Bruce did not ask where they were headed—No talking—and then they were there, in a theater that sat three hundred inside soundproofed, padded walls. The energy of the room was condensed in two guys who were beating the crap out of each other in a wire-framed cage. The fighters looked like soccer dads nabbed from home in the middle of Sunday sports. Like Fight Club for fatsos. One wore a football jersey and cargo shorts. The other was in a green henley and chinos. The audience was three-sixtied around the action; the bleachers were wood, the ceiling a rig of spotlights and flood; and because the space was not much bigger than the concentric arrangement of show and crowd, steam appeared to rise off everyone without prejudice.

Bruce said, “What the—”

Norman skirted the ring and had words with a referee, who wrote something down on a clipboard. The ref made room for them in the front row. Their neighbors were cased in garbage bags, which made sense to Bruce only when the sweat rained down on him two seconds later.

“I don’t believe this,” he said. “What is this?”

Norman flagged down a vendor and bought a hot dog. “It’s amazing, right? You ever see Ultimate Fighter on TV?”

“Yeah, but those are real fighters. Athletes. These guys are—I don’t know what they are.”

“Sure you do. They’re just normal guys.”

“That one’s got an inhaler.”

Norman made short work of his dog. “Once you get a feel for it,” he said, “what does any of that matter? This serves a purpose. I signed up.”

Blood and cracklings oozed from one of the guy’s kneecaps. Bruce visored his face as flings of skin came at him.

“Signed up to do what?” he yelled. As the sound of the crowd was in ebb and flow, Norman’s words were more or less audible. He looked at the audience. On many legs were thousand-dollar jeans perfectly aged and smelted at the knees. Designer T-shirts and jewelry soldered to taste. These people were rich—that much was clear. He needed a camera; he asked Norman’s advice.

“Oh, you’re just not very smart,” Norman said. “God knows why the feds sent you.”

Since Bruce had no idea, either, this did not mean much. He pressed. Norman said, “You think you’d be getting out of here alive with a camera? You think being held at the Helix House was scary?”

“Yeah, but it can’t be long before the feds come down here looking for me. Or us. I’m a little surprised they haven’t shown up yet.”

Norman laughed and wiped spit from his cheekbone. “They aren’t coming here. If they come down here, they’d have to explain here. And how good’s that going to make them look?”

“Oh,” Bruce said, feeling shoots of panic rise up from the mulch his brain had become over the last few months. Norman was right. Probably when deals were brokered between overtly hostile nations, it happened here. Diplomats fondling twelve-year-old girls? Down the hall. No one was coming for Bruce. No one at all.

When the fight was over, an MC stepped into the cage, followed by ring girls who upheld news of the docket. Next up: the walk-ins.

Bruce began to get a bad feeling. He said, “Maybe it’s time to go, huh?”

“Sure,” Norman said. “You go on without me. I’m up.” He gave Bruce his wallet and keys and in so doing seemed to forsake more than the miscellany of his pockets. He mounted the three stairs to the ring and the gate swung open. On the other side was his opponent, who wore a black catsuit, a cape, and Oreo face paint that might have seemed doggerel if only. His hands were pork loins. He could probably clock Norman from the other side of the pen, such was the length of his reach. He weighed three hundred pounds at least.

Norman did not even hesitate, just looked up at the ceiling, maybe at God, and stepped in. The gate shut behind him. Click went the lock.

From his pocket the referee pulled a laminated card that was encomium for all things barbaric and unfair. In gist: Poke each other’s eyes out, anything goes. Agreed? If so, let’s get it on.

The Orca—because that was what he was called—backpedaled around Norman, who seemed to have committed to a spot in the middle of the ring. He didn’t follow the Orca with his eyes or even flinch when the thing came up behind him to speak his intent just in case Norman thought this was going to end well.

The crowd began to jeer. “Put ’em up, black boy!”

Norman, who’d been lock-eyed with the floor, upturned his cow face and smiled. The Orca knocked him down with one hand, and the crack of his head against the floor—and the floor was vinyl foam, which discouraged this sound 99 percent of the time—roused from the audience a gasp that turned to laughter when Norman smiled anew, got up, and returned to the spot of his choosing. The Orca’s face paint was dusted in glitter, and his catsuit was made of rubber, and though the costume had none of the pathos that halos your average clown, it still should have beat out for pity Norman’s carriage in the moment. But no. Norman was, in the outpouring of his body and the soul inside, effigy for the Bozo punching bag Bruce once whaled on as a kid. Weighted at the bottom, always coming back for more. People celebrate resilience, and mostly Bruce did, too. How else to scrape himself off the floor every day he woke up unsuccessful and broke? But still, every now and then, looking at himself in the mirror, he’d catch sight of Bozo and his stupid optimism and think: Just for today, don’t bounce back.

The Orca, who’d probably grown up bullying kids at school, was undeterred by the ease with which Norman went down. Only it was not so entertaining, and the audience was getting mad. The Orca tried to spice things up, reverted to choreographies that had made his career in the WWF. Except it was hard when only one of you knew the moves and the other just wanted to die.

Bruce started to yell. “Get up, Norman! Fight back!” He came off his bench and pressed his face to the grille, and the chain link grooved his skin, but so what? He rattled the cage and, unbelievably, started to cry. He knew about this kind of thing, okay? As a kid, he’d been classed among the weak and advised by teachers schooled in permutations of self-disgust to give himself a break. As an adult, he dismissed this advice and hated himself thoroughly. Norman, fight back! But no, he was in a heap and not getting up.

Bruce plunged his arm through a diamond hole in the cage and groped for Norman’s hand; he just wanted to hold his hand. Was everyone template for someone else’s feelings? Norman had to bounce back because, who knew? one more bounce and the Orca might go out with a heart attack, because life couldn’t beat you down every second of every day; there had to be some successes here and there. Get up, Norman! He strained to reach into the ring, and finally he managed to tap Norman on the arm.

The Orca went wild. “Tag team!” The grin on his face was so big, his gold fang implants caught the light from the overheads.

“Tag team!” went the crowd, and like that Bruce was borne up on the needs of three hundred. He tried to resist but was pushed through the cage door so fast, it locked shut before he could reestablish contact with the workings of his inner ear and stand upright. The Orca, meantime, had straddled the top rail and was brandishing his arm as though he held a lasso. Bruce scrambled for Norman, who was attempting to pull himself up by the cage wire and fishing words from the blood welled in his mouth, words like, “Get out of here,” and “I don’t want your help.”

The Orca came off the rail. Bruce looked into his eyes and was horrified to see in them the weary acquittal of a guy who just can’t afford to retire. He must have been at least sixty.

Bruce backed up into a post and then, like a rodeo clown himself, tried to draw off the Orca from Norman, who was still scaling the fence with the intent to escape—or so Bruce told himself.

He put up his hands, palms out, and when this failed to stall the Orca, and when the Orca was, essentially, on top of him, he counted it down. One: Even if there were a phone anywhere in this nightmare, he couldn’t call his wife, not anymore. In fact, he couldn’t even go home. Not without a wedding ring. Not having exhausted their savings. Two: He’d had the greater share of moral authority between them for a whole day, and he’d blown it, and for what he’d done in the casino, he would never get it back and would probably have to yield the raising of their son to her, because he couldn’t think of a single quality that suited him to the privilege. Three: He drew back his fist and let it rip.

Probably, though, he should have looked. His bones glanced off the Orca’s elbow. Only Bruce was hurt. He stuffed his hand under his armpit, then sucked on his knuckles and winced like it was sour candy.

The Orca was scandalized. The crowd was festive. Go get him, Orca!

Bruce lay down, recalling advice he’d once gotten from a trail guide in the Adirondacks—Just play dead—which he and Rita had done in their tent as a bear pawed through their cooler, and which he did for the rest of that night because she was ovulating and he was terrified. Why hadn’t he been more supportive? Tried harder? Maybe if he hadn’t been so afraid, she’d have gotten pregnant sooner and not needed IVF or bed rest. Maybe, in the clarity imposed by news of a child on deck, he’d have honed his talents or gone to therapy. Why he’d been clutched with self-loathing every day of the forty-two years it had taken to get him spread-eagled on the cage floor, he did not know, except that self-loathing was the problem, self-loathing was the devil. He saw Norman get up and lurch his way, wanting, it seemed, to supplant him on the mat. And then he saw the Orca balanced on the top rail as sweat poured down his cheeks and streaked his face paint, and, as the Orca vaulted off the rail and scissored his thighs in the classic wrestling finisher, the guillotine leg drop, intending to land one on Bruce’s neck, he saw all of this and thought: When I wake up, my life will start over.

Bruce woke up. He vomited down his chest. If his pancreas came tumbling out his mouth in the next heave, he wouldn’t mind; he’d never felt worse in his life. The most profound hangover he’d ever had—twenty-two grasshoppers plus a fifth of tequila the night Rita said she was pregnant—was Disney compared with the variety of afflictions at work in his body. The guillotine leg drop strikes again. He’d been head-traumaed, which did not even come with the benefit of amnesia. His thoughts perseverated. Where was Norman? Was he okay? He tried to sit up. Rolled back his eyelids just enough to case the room. Empty but for the bed he was on. A woman at the door in a nurse’s uniform. She peered at a chart and whispered, “You’re going to be fine. Let me help you change out of that mess.” Where was Norman? Was he okay? He slurred out the words as best he could—Christ, he was slurring. She said, “I’ll be back to check on you in a little bit,” and left the room. There were flowers in a corner. He eased himself off the bed to read the card. Who’d send him flowers with a card? It said, I’m sorry. Best wishes, Fred Spitalowitz, a.k.a. the Orca. It was hard to make out in the dark, but the O appeared to double as a smiley face, which brought to mind the Orca’s real face coming right at him, so that he threw up all over again. It seemed to Bruce he threw up more than anyone he knew. He crawled back to bed and had nightmares.

Someone was tapping his shoulder. Norman? It was not Norman. Not the nurse, either. He thought for a second it was Rita, but only because whenever he saw a beautiful woman, it put him in mind of Rita.

The woman, satisfied that Bruce was awake, took a seat opposite his cot, which seemed to have turned into a queen. He was sure there’d been no chair there before and now, suddenly, a La-Z-Boy? Also, the bedding seemed to have improved. She offered him a box of tissues, which had also materialized out of nowhere. Maybe he should ask for a Porsche, because, quite obviously, he was dead, and here was the genie to prove it.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Who are you?” He sat up and swung his feet off the mattress, only they didn’t reach the floor, which was so infantilizing, he drew the blanket to his chest and scurried for the headboard. In brighter news: the pain behind his ears had subsided, and he even felt interested in food. How long had he been knocked out?

“If you’re hungry, I can have something prepared for you in no time.”

A mind reader. Wonderful.

“Anything in particular? The doctor says you are cleared to eat whatever you want.”

He patted himself down. Was there surgery? What had the Orca done to him?

“No surgery,” the woman said. “Just a concussion. And I know how you feel. I just had one myself.”

Bruce looked at her warily. She really was reading his mind. She picked up a phone and said, “Roast beef on rye. Muenster, bacon, avocado, honey mustard.”

“What’s going on?” Bruce said. “Only my wife knows I like that sandwich.”

“Maybe I’m your wife.”

“That’s not funny.” Unless—wait, did he have amnesia? He looked at his body. Mole on his knee he’d had removed twice—once for vanity, once for prudence—to no avail. Rubble heels, because he would not put cream on them at night, and the one time Rita had persuaded him to sleep in socks filled with Lubriderm, he’d had a wet dream that embarrassed them both. Pale swath of skin on his ring finger because he was the world’s biggest loser. Nope, he remembered everything.

The woman smiled. “I’m just saying I can be anyone. We’ve met before.”

Bruce did not have enough ex-girlfriends from which to pool the one crazy whose likeness he’d blotted out. A colleague? Maybe one of the homeless from Trial by Liar? He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I just want to go home. I miss my wife. Probably she’s going to leave me, but I still want to see her before it happens.”

Someone came in with a trolley bearing a giant sandwich under a stainless steel dome. A can of Dr Pepper, a basket of hard pretzels, and possibly the greatest and most counterintuitive pleasure on earth, carrot cake. He wanted to ask more—Where am I?—but the food was Svengali in its hold on him. He felt ligatures of beef fat wedge between his teeth and rejoiced.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Fred got a little overzealous with my instructions.”

He shook his head. He preferred not to dignify the man with a name. He was the Orca. Now and forever, the Orca.

“I don’t understand. Are you saying you run that show? Is that it?” He’d finished his sandwich and pretzels and was scraping the frosting from the carrot cake to save it for last. If this woman had come to silence him, fine. Unless she wanted to buy his silence, which was even better. “I was with a guy in there, a short black guy—any idea what happened to him?”

She crossed her legs. And only now did Bruce notice she wore some kind of military uniform.

“Norman, yes. He’s fine. I got him on a plane to someplace nice. I’ve always liked him. He’s had a rough life, but he’ll be all right now.”

Bruce had the first coherent thought he’d had in a while. The feds. Good grief, he was a moron. Someplace nice. Like Guantánamo. Why the feds and the Mob were always talking in this arcane patois everyone understood anyway was beyond him. Still, the feds had hired the Orca? To do what?

“Apprehend you,” she said. “But the feds didn’t hire him, just me. I’ve got people all over the Sub. But no one was supposed to hurt you.”

“Can you stop with the mind reading?”

“Maybe if your thoughts weren’t so primitive, I wouldn’t keep guessing right.”

“So now you’re going to insult me? You’ll have to do better than that. My wife calls me a caveman ten times a day.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I almost forgot,” and she retrieved from her pocket Bruce’s wedding ring.

He snatched it and shoved it back on his finger and felt greedy and fearful and gnomish.

“Are we on better terms now?” she said. “I did you a favor; now you do me a favor?”

He made for the door. It wasn’t locked, but on the other side was a guard with his arms folded across his chest. He made for the curtains, and though he expected they were trick curtains behind which was a concrete slab, he was still shocked to see the concrete slab.

He didn’t know what to say, and anyway, she’d say it for him: We’re just a few miles from the Helix House. Outskirts of town. But no one’s going to find us.

He was exhausted. He pressed his forehead to the slab.

“What do you want?” he said, and then aired every question he had: “Is it that you need me to go along with some story for the press? Whatever you tell me to say is fine. It’s not like I have any answers of my own. Why send me and the others to the Helix House to begin with? The four of us? Why send a psychotic to play hero and break my neck? Why give me the most amazing and tragic documentary story ever and then take it away?” He closed his eyes and pictured Norman’s face in the instant he’d lost the Orca’s punishing rage to Bruce—the disappointment and resignation writ into his every pore—and said, “Just leave me alone.”

She joined him by the curtains. “I can fix at least one of these things. That’s why you’re here.”

He laughed. “Unless you want to dump eight thousand dollars in my bank account in the next three seconds, I doubt there’s much you can do for me.”

“How’s a hundred thousand?” she said.

“Funny.”

She snorted and produced a bank statement, his bank statement, dated today, or at least one day after he last knew what day it was.

“Now do I have your attention?”

Martin drove him all the way back to Rockville. It took nine hours with stops for gas. Bruce lived just off the highway, half an hour from D.C., in a Cape Cod that looked regal, as far as he was concerned, he was so happy to be home. It was the middle of the night. They circled the house three times to make sure no reporters were there.

Martin killed the engine. “I’ll wait out here,” he said.

“I don’t know. I have to talk to my wife. I’m not doing this unless she’s okay with it, and I’m not going to rush her just because you’re waiting.” He said these words and swelled with pride. His priorities were like the stars—aligned in patterns no one could see from Earth, and all the more beautiful for it.

“I’ll wait here,” Martin said.

Bruce ran into the house and made straight for the bedroom. He was ready to grovel. He’d get on his knees and take Rita’s hand and grind her knuckles into his eye sockets like a pestle to nut, if that’s what she wanted. Had she been alone this whole time? He was supposed to have been gone only for two days and had not made plans for anyone to come help Rita beyond that. She’d have called a friend, right? If something felt wrong with the baby and it was 4 a.m., she’d have called a friend? He opened the door and yelled her name, but when he got to their bedroom, Rita still didn’t seem to realize he was back. She was sitting up in bed, above the blankets. She wore sweat shorts and a sweatshirt. Her legs were parted, she slouched, but the moon of her belly was rising.

“Rita?” he said. His voice was gentle. He stood in the doorway and watched. Either this was his wife so furious she could not talk, or his wife kicked into a whole new register of feeling that was too refined for the language she had to express it.

“You missed the reporters,” she said. “They’ve been here every day, only what’s to see? I haven’t left this bed.”

She had yet to look at him—she did not appear to be looking anywhere—and he could tell from the musk coming off the sheets that she was in earnest. She had not moved since the second he’d been announced missing. No longer kidnapped, just missing.

“Baby, are you okay?” He did as planned and knelt by the bed.

“I answered the phone once, thinking maybe it was you, but it was just the press.”

“I know, I’m sorry. But there was no way—” He paused, because even in pain, when her feelers were down, she always knew when he was lying. “I made the wrong choice,” he said. “But would it mean anything to you if I promised things were going to be different? Starting tomorrow, I will look for work. Anything I can get.”

Rita took his hands and slipped them under her sweatshirt. Her belly was warm and frosted in cocoa butter. “He kicked a lot while you were gone. Missed his dad, I guess.”

He sank deeper onto his knees. It was true there were people out there worse than him, but that hardly mattered now.

“Go,” she said. “I want you to go.”

But he could not get up. He willed himself to get up—he owed his wife no argument—but he couldn’t. It was what he deserved, to be cast out and abandoned and, in the bearing of this punishment, to be reminded of its cause. Only he could not bear it.

Rita touched his cheek. “I got another call, too,” she said. And she told him all about it. A call from the woman on TV. The woman named Esme. Asking for Rita’s permission, because there was a family outing she needed on film and only one person she wanted to film it, the documentarian who swears to see love where others cannot.

“Go,” Rita said. “We’ll still be here when you’re done.”

His body believed it before the rest of him. He stood up tall. And felt reconciled to the goodness in himself that had been, at last, ready to prevail. He kissed his wife and unborn. Made for the front door with no need to look back. In his mind’s eye, a documentarian sees love where it is abundant.