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

“I do,” Avi says. “Turn the sound on, please.”

“I know you,” says the suit.

“You don’t,” Avi says, looking down.

“Leave him be, Gerald,” says the bartender.

“I saw him on TV. He’s an expert. I want to talk to an expert about this shit.”

“I’m finishing my drink,” Avi says. He downs the rest of his whiskey and leaves a twenty on the bar. He fumbles for his cane, knocking it over.

“Let me help you out,” says Gerald, bending down to pick up the cane. He holds it out to Avi, then pulls it back when Avi reaches for it.

“You know what? Let me show you to the door,” he says. He takes Avi by the arm and drags him across the bar. Everyone watches, and no one says anything. Gerald gives him a shove on the sidewalk, hands him the cane, and turns to go back inside. The best way to handle this is to keep quiet and limp away, Avi thinks. But there’s so much anger he carries around with him every day. Here is a moment when it’s justified. Here is a worthy and appropriate target. What else is anger for if not to use?

“I know what you’re afraid of,” Avi says. Gerald steps toward him again. “You’re afraid of being replaced. You’re afraid of not being special.”

“Fuck off,” says Gerald.

“You should be afraid,” Avi says. “You’re not special. You. Me. We’re dead ends. We’re not special like them. We’re—”

He’s about to say Damps when Gerald’s fist crunches into his right eye. He feels something burst, a sharp stab wrapped in a dull thud as he goes down, landing in the crust of a snowbank. His cane clatters on the sidewalk. Gerald picks it up, holds it in the air over his head. Avi wants it to fall. He wants to be hit again and again until he crumbles into pieces on the sidewalk. Gerald pauses, and Avi knows it won’t happen. He swings, striking Avi hard in the fleshy part of his left side: below the ribs, above the pelvis. Bruises, no breaks. Gerald spits at him but misses. It plunks on the sidewalk. He turns and goes back into the bar.

“Hey, mister,” says one of the kids smoking out front. “You okay?” He’s been standing there the whole time, making no effort to stop this.

“I’m fine,” Avi says. He picks up his cane and leverages himself back up to his feet.

“You want me to call the police?” the kid asks.

“Are they going to unpunch me?” Avi’s vision swims. It returns blurry and lopsided. He closes his right eye, and everything is clear. He closes his left, and the world is a smear of color and light.

—

One tree trunk arm wraps around Avi’s waist, keeping him from making another run at the elevator, holding him a few inches off the ground. With a finger the size of a beer can, Shen presses the intercom button. After a few seconds, Sarah’s voice comes through, crackly with static.

“What is it, Shen?”

“Sorry to wake you. We’ve got a problem in the lobby.”

“I’ll be right down,” Sarah says. The intercom clicks off.

“Why’d you have to call her?” asks Avi.

“Ms. Davenport’s acting headmaster,” he says. “Headmistress. You’re her problem.”

The elevator dings, and the doors slide open. Sarah is in sweats, her hair up in a topknot. Cortex runs out ahead of her and attempts to nuzzle one of Avi’s dangling legs, but Shen lifts Avi away and the dog retreats. Shen gives Avi a squeeze to remind him who’s in control of the situation, then sets him down.

“I need to see her,” Avi says, straightening his clothes.

“What happened?” Sarah asks.

“I got beat up,” Avi says. “I was standing up for you people, and I got the shit kicked out of me. Now I want to see my daughter.”

“We don’t need you to defend us, Avi,” says Sarah.

“You did,” he says. “You asked me to.”

“We never asked you to.”

“Let me see Emmeline,” he says. “Let me upstairs to see her.”

“You don’t want her to see you like this, Avi,” Sarah says. “Go home.”

“I don’t have a home,” he shouts. “You people took that. You took my wife, and now you’re taking my daughter. What does that leave me with? What do I get for all this? For everything I did?”

Sarah puts her hand on his cheek, below the bruise on his eye. He feels her push into his mind. Her presence makes him aware of his mind as a space, a geography. It’s hot and confused, the pain from his eye spreading out, filling his thoughts. Her mind expands into his, projecting cool, calm. Like turning the burner down on a gas stove: the flame in Avi’s mind contracts but doesn’t disappear.

“Go home, Avi,” she says. Hearing the words, the idea takes seed in his mind, an imperative.

Go home.

—

There’s something about the bomb Avi never told Kay. Louis knows because he was there. He doesn’t understand it the way Avi does and probably blames himself. But it wasn’t his fault. It was Avi’s.

Mosul was quiet when Avi landed the embed with Echo Company. No one thought the fighting was over, but it had moved elsewhere. The day after he arrived, a routine patrol in one of the eastern neighborhoods was taken out. The whole sector fell, and forces started expanding west, block by block, to the center of the city.

Louis told Avi it was a minor flare-up. He kept shunting Avi off on side projects. A week of inspecting every well in Tel Skuf, thirty klicks north of the city, or overseeing a training camp for Turkoman soldiers in Erbil, which had been secure for two years. Avi was used to being embedded with companies that had low combat priority, but he wasn’t some rookie stringer at his first dance. Everyone in Echo knew they were being called up the next morning. Over cards and beers, they performed the mix of swagger and reverent fear Avi had seen a dozen