The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

the ladder dropped when his phone rings. He stares at Louis’s name on the screen, wondering how he’d managed to forget about the Homeland agent this entire time.

“I wanted to check in,” Louis says. “I’ve got a department meeting tomorrow morning, and I was hoping you had something for me.”

“Nothing’s adding up,” Avi says. “I don’t think I’m going to be any help.”

There’s a pause. “You sure?”

“It’s that girl,” Avi says. “The girl in the church. She was Emmeline’s age. I can’t have that in my head right now. I can’t get close enough to this to be any help.”

The pause is longer this time. Avi’s lie hangs on the line between them.

“What’s a Resonant, Avi?” Louis asks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Avi’s pulse speeds up, and his palms seep sweat, making the phone slippery in his hand.

“The attachment I sent you had a Trojan horse,” Louis says. “We don’t let information like this out without keeping tabs on it. I’m remote into your computer right now.”

“What the fuck, Louis?”

“It’s the job, Avi,” says Louis. “You’re not a virgin, so stop acting like it. What’s the academy? What the fuck kind of cult is Owen Curry part of? Have you been contacted by members of his group?”

“I haven’t been contacted by anyone,” Avi says.

“Did they threaten you?” Louis asks. “Did they threaten Emmeline and Kay? We can bring you in. We can protect you. You can’t deal with people like this, Avi. You can’t trust them. They don’t think like we do.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We can protect you. You need to let me help you on this.”

“You can’t,” Avi says.

“Do you know where Owen Curry is?”

Avi hangs up the phone and turns it off. The call came from Louis’s office number. It’s a half-hour drive from here to there. Avi wonders how likely it is that Louis will hop in his car and drive out to Rogers Park to arrest him or that he made the call with a team already waiting outside. He listens to the house on Jarvis Avenue. Sometimes he thinks of the house as an extension of himself, like a snail’s shell, something he’s grown to protect his fragile body. He knows the spots under the hallway carpet that have too much give and the stairs that protest when you step on them. He knows how it sounds when the breeze batters it, the creaks it makes as it settles in for the night. He listens for a knock at the door, for the sounds of them breaking it down. After a few paralyzed minutes, he goes up the ladder and prints out everything he has about the Bishop Academy, about Resonants, then deletes the files. He prints the half-finished article and the e-mail exchange with Carol at the Trib and Richardson at The Atlantic. He shuts the computer down.

Tomorrow, he thinks, I’ll buy a laptop and transcribe the article.

I’ll buy myself a gun.

—

Bishop let Avi pick the bar, but there’s a difference between choosing the setting and being allowed to choose the setting. Avi chose the Magician, a crowded hipster cocktail bar in Wicker Park. Everything about this sit-down is dictated by Bishop. Every move he makes broadcasts that Bishop holds the power in their relationship. Journalists have nothing to do until their interview subjects show up, and most savvy interview subjects intuit this. The fact that Avi’s had to wait a week for a one-on-one meeting is testament to the fact that this is Bishop’s world Avi’s wandering around in. The man holds no office more imposing than high school principal, yet Avi thinks of him as a representative of all Resonants, their leader.

Avi’s late, but Bishop’s a half hour later. He steps out of the men’s room and stands at the end of the bar, assessing the place rather than looking for Avi. As with every time Avi’s seen him, he wears a suit coat and jeans, dress shirt open to the second button. He has the taut skin Avi associates with ascetics and long-term prisoners, and it makes it difficult to place his age except as anywhere between fifty and seventy. Kimani must have dropped him off in one of the stalls. Insisting Bishop come “all the way to Chicago” was a power play on Avi’s part that amounted to nothing.

Bishop steps out of his office to wherever he needs to be, Avi thinks. Not all doors connect to the room adjacent. He wonders if the lines are worth writing down. He files them in the part of his memory that stores fragments, where they float detached like half-remembered snippets of melody.

“This is such a relief,” Bishop says as he sits on the stool next to Avi. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to a bar? When you’re away so long, they seem magical. You speak the name of the thing you want, and it appears before you.” He turns to the bartender, who smirked through this speech. “I’d like a gin martini. Something middle shelf. Dry, up, with olives, please.” The bartender sets to making his drink, and Bishop grins like a kid about to get ice cream.

“Isn’t it like that for you all the time?” Avi asks. “Do you have much trouble getting what you want?”

“Have we started?” Bishop asks.

“I was thinking we’d get a booth,” Avi says.

“No, let’s stay here. I’m worn out on cloak-and-dagger meetings. Let’s be overheard.” The bartender delivers Bishop’s drink, then disappears. “And no,” Bishop says. “It isn’t like that for me all the time. It could be, but it isn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Do you go around punching everyone in the face to get what you want?” Bishop asks.

“Of course not.”

“But you could.”

“I could.”

“Exactly the same thing,” says Bishop. “A difference of degree rather than kind.”

“So what is your ability?” Avi asks.

Bishop leans over the bar and sips from his drink. “It’s rude to ask,” he says. “It’s considered rude. We have an etiquette about these things.