Boil Order

When Jake Fransen woke on Saturday morning, he was in a strange place, in a strange bed: the pillows felt different from his own pillows; the spring-coiled mattress was cheap and hard-used; the sun beams struck his eyes at an unusually sharp angle. Reality slowly reconstituted itself in his mind. The previous night, he and some acquaintances from work had attended a concert at the Allstate Arena. Somebody had managed to secure the company limo, which drove them all from the city out to Rosemont. At the show they met a guy who said he knew about a party where the band was supposed to be going afterwards. It was a motel or maybe a cheap apartment complex. Jake never did see anyone from the band; he spent most of his time with a girl he met by the swimming pool in the courtyard. She had a rose tattooed on her back.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He looked at the girl lying beside him, and it was the same girl: he recognized the rose tattoo.

Somebody knocked at the door, and shouted, "Fransen! You in there? Limo's here. We gotta get going."

The girl rolled over, and sleepily said, "You don't have to go now, do you baby?"

"Looks like it. Sorry, but that's my ride." He hoped she wouldn't ask for his phone number.

She ran her index finger down his arm, and said, "Jake the Snake, Jake the Snake, Jake the big, bad Snake. I had fun with you. I bet all the girls tell you that, though."

He kissed her. "I had fun with you too."

"Well, maybe we'll see each other again sometime."

He feared this last comment was prologue to the inevitable request for a phone number, but it wasn't: she just rolled over and went back to sleep. He quickly dressed, and joined his friends outside. They were all staring into their phones, checking Globex for news on the overnight trading. Nobody really spoke—Jake had a bad hangover, and was glad for the quiet.

Two days later, at lunch, Jake was chatting with a young woman he had only just met, when she suddenly accused him of mansplaining the morning's beatdown in March soybean contracts.

He began earnestly to apologize, but she said:

"That's the problem with this whole profession—all you white males telling everybody else what to do with their money, and making a mess of the markets in the process. Three percent margin, for example: that should be illegal. It's reckless. If you can't back your trades with capital, then you shouldn't even be making them."

Again he apologized and agreed with her; he tried to demonstrate empathy and compassion. He said financial markets needed more regulation: "I supported Dodd-Frank; I'm a huge AOC fan. I give money to her campaign."

She rolled her eyes. "I bet the women you date really eat that shit up. You probably think all intelligent women are ugly, and all ugly women are intelligent."

He didn't know how to respond; he wondered if she was right. In his desire to please women, he often found himself taking risks in conversation, recklessly bandying about information or comments or jokes that he thought might please or delight, but these conversational sallies lacked any personal conviction: they were what he believed might be agreeable or pleasing. Sometimes, often even, he succeeded, in which case he thought little more of whatever he had said. He understood that his statements were attributed in some way to him, and yet the actual effect, he found, was that women merely absorbed a general impression of him as an agreeable or insightful person. If he flattered a woman, rarely did she remember that he liked something specific about her; she seemed instead to form a general impression of his good taste or good sense, his ability to appreciate quality: that's how her ego would process the comment. But yes, he received credit for agreeably reflecting back to her what she already wanted to believe about herself or the world or her ideas about the world. When the comment missed its mark, however, well then he was forced to take responsibility for it, responsibility for a comment or opinion that, in most cases, he never really believed to begin with. Obviously, in such cases, he couldn't retract, without also exposing his initial deception, and his fundamental emptiness. In these cases he found that he was hurt in the way anyone is hurt who believes his good intentions have gone unrecognized, the hurt and shock of somebody raised on certificates of participation, who believes he should be credited for trying, for making an effort, and is consequently shocked and hurt at being punished instead.

She said, "Did I hurt your feelings? You spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself? Why don't you spend a little more time feeling sorry for those who aren't so fortunate?"

He had never seen her before that day, and probably would never see her again. Usually, his relations with women were easy, which made ambushes like this one all the more frustrating, upsetting even. It was like accidentally grabbing a snag of hooks while carelessly groping around a box of fish tackle. These onslaughts were always superficial—the women rarely knew him well—and yet they were still, somehow, intensely personal, consuming him almost completely. He turned every such encounter into an exhaustive comment on his value as a human. Women like this, they despised him, even the ones who wanted to sleep with him, the ones who would begin by pursuing him at nightclubs and on dating sites—they wanted to sleep with him, and some even wanted to date him. Once, when he was very drunk, he had asked a date, "Do you ever feel guilty over something you didn't even do?" And she had responded, "God, don't be so self-indulgent. Everybody does. It's your white male privilege to assume that everything is about you, and that women all care about your feelings," and he couldn't really disagree with her. Through such experiences he came to understand his very insecurity as a form of disguised male aggression, and therefore his insecurity also needed to be investigated and explicated, laid out for examination and correction. He kept trying to get it right, but maybe he just kept getting it wrong. Maybe he really was as bad as that.

According to the official version, he was actually a rapist. In college, a girl had accused him of raping her, though he did not believe that he had. He was formally sanctioned by the university and suspended for one year. His parents sent him away for the year, to Europe, because they did not want people in their town to know he had been suspended, or why he had been suspended. So he spent the whole year traveling, drinking, and screwing. It was a sex spree, really. He would get drunk and laugh to himself over his punishment. He couldn't control it. He needed sex, and he seemed to meet a lot of women who needed it too. But every morning he woke up feeling guilty and fearful, fearful that somebody would say that he had raped her. Nothing happened, though. When the suspension ended, he returned to school and the university put him on probation, but the sex spree continued. He couldn't help it; he needed a lot of sex. Maybe it was an addiction. But also, the girls were all over him. He dated girls whom other guys in his fraternity had already dated, which he imagined reduced his risk exposure. He successfully graduated without another incident.

His lunch break over, he returned to work. On the way to his desk, he stopped at the bathroom to wash his hands. One of his colleagues, standing at the sink and drying his hands on bleached, 2-ply, ultra-premium Georgia-Pacific paper towels, ribbingly asked, "What's the matter Fransen? You look like somebody just told you your mother died."

Jake said, "Oh, I don't know. Just this girl I met at lunch, just ripping into me when I was just trying to be nice."

"One of those ball busters, eh? Let me guess: you broke some article in the sacred, unwritten code of political correctness."

"I guess, something like that. Apparently I was 'mansplaining' to her."

"That's some fucked-up bullshit and you know it. You're like the nicest guy I ever met. You know, this women's lib—, remind me again, what exactly were they liberating themselves from? Because it seems to me that women today are more closely guarded than a fucking convent. Jesus Christ, they're the most delicate, inviolable beings on the planet: you can't touch them wrong, can't look at them wrong, can't step into their personal space, can't hurt their feelings, can't expose them to uncensored ideas. Fuck that shit, man."

Jake didn't really agree, but also had no energy to disagree. He said, "Well, what can you do, right?"

Jake was an office assistant at the Doheny commodities brokerage, a somewhat forbidding workplace that seemed like nothing so much as a closed system of secrets and deceptions, which in their complex elaborations assumed the aspect of reality. And while he worked and lived inside this closed system of secrets, other secrets lived inside him: he was a secret to himself. Complexity gave secrets the aspect of reality; the substance of his self conferred upon secrets the aspect of life. Not just the aspect, but the very thing: life itself. But reality and life were hidden, just as threats were everywhere present and palpable but maddeningly invisible. Only an investigation could produce the hidden thing, and through the process establish a zone of control. The problem was that every investigation could produce nothing more than the object of its own inquiry. Procedure was self-justifying, and there was no escaping its relentless machinery.

Back at his desk, Jake found a message summoning him to a meeting with one of the brokerage partners, Aaron Archy. He had never actually met Mr. Archy, and wondered what the meeting would be about.

Doheny occupied an entire skyscraper floor, 35 stories above La Salle Street, with glass walls and twenty foot ceilings. High up there in the sky, with all those glass walls, the office was bright and sunny, but the sunshine was like light distilled to its most refined essence, purified even of its warmth. It looked, it felt, it even smelled cool and clean, clean to the point of sterility.

Mr. Archy's secretary said, "You can go in now, Mr. Fransen."

When Jake entered, Mr. Archy remained seated at his desk. The long walk from the door to Mr. Archy's desk made Jake feel nervous. He wondered if the whole room had been arranged to make guests uneasy. He had the impression, however, that Mr. Archy also was uneasy, perhaps uncomfortable interacting with subordinates. There was certainly no warm welcome, and Mr. Archy skipped the usual pleasantries and introductions, simply glancing up from his desk, and saying, "Jake Fransen. I have a job for you. I'm having trouble reaching one of my employees. I want you to visit his mother, in Winnetka, and ask if she knows where he is."

It seemed an odd request, and Jake needed a moment to grasp that it was real. Why couldn't, for example, somebody just call her on the telephone? Trying to be a problem solver, a critical thinker, as his professors in college had told him he should be, Jake asked, "Do you think, sir, I should just call her on the telephone?"

Immediately Mr. Archy's tone changed. Jake had heard that when Mr. Archy was angry, he became cool, distant, sarcastic. Mr. Archy said, "I really hadn't thought of that, Jake. The telephone you say?"

A lot of people don't realize that you can actually measure distances in units of sarcasm.

Jake, whose complexion was fair, blushed with embarrassment. "Of course, sir. I'm sorry sir."

Ignoring the apology, Mr. Archy said, "The man's name is Valentino Moretti. His mother is Octavia Moretti." Then he added, almost as an afterthought, "Mrs."

Jake was acquainted with Valentino Moretti because he came into the brokerage at least once a month. Jake never realized that Valentino worked for the brokerage, though. He had assumed Valentino was a client. Valentino had always been friendly to Jake. He was a hand-on-shoulder, fist-bumps kind of guy, the kind of guy who gives everyone nicknames—his nickname for Jake was "Killer", as in lady-killer, Jake assumed: "Hey there he is, the Killer!" Valentino was constantly flirting with the young women in the office. One of them, whom Jake had briefly dated, was obsessed with Valentino. She would talk about Valentino almost incessantly, even after sex. She once said, "You and Valentino are a lot alike," an assertion Jake found difficult to believe, especially since she would then go into raptures over Valentino's taste in clothing: Lanvin, Prada, Paul Smith, Fendi, Givenchy...everything Jake would never be able afford. "Did you notice his new Louis Vuitton briefcase?" Jake could never sexually bring her to the same state of ecstasy as she could bring herself by merely talking about Valentino. Another time she asked if she could go out sometime with Jake and Valentino, and Jake didn't understand what she meant, and she said, "Well you and Valentino are friends, aren't you?" When Jake asked her why she thought so, she said, "I don't know, I guess I just had the impression you two were friends, from the way he talks about you, it seemed like you knew each other pretty well." Jake then realized her main reason for dating him was that she mistakenly believed she could get closer to Valentino through him.

So Jake knew a little bit about Valentino Moretti, mostly having to do with his expensive clothing. Of course, all Mr. Archy's associates wore expensive clothing, as did Mr. Archy himself, although Mr. Archy tended to prefer more conservative suiting: gray flannel, navy blue worsteds, always single breasted jackets, usually unconstructed shoulders, flat front and uncuffed trousers. Valentino, on the other hand, looked like the kind of person you'd see in a fashion magazine. In both cases, though, the men used clothing to make you feel their power; their clothing expressed that power, like a slap in the face, because the wealthy have power, but they also have insecurities, like the insecurity of a rattlesnake: it will warn you, and then it will strike you, and you will be made to feel that it has power, even when threatened.

Mr. Archy handed Jake an envelope, "Mrs. Moretti is a client. Her monthly statement. Tell her you're hand delivering it from me because it's late, and that I'm sorry it's late."

The monthly statement wasn't actually late, though.

"After you give her the statement," he continued, "Mention that I haven't been able to get in touch with Valentino, and that I'm wondering if everything is okay with him. If you have to be blunt, you have my permission. Use your judgment, which I'm hoping is sound. I want to know where he is, but I don't want to anger her if it can be avoided."

"Okay Mr. Archy."

"Do not call me; do not try to contact me by phone at all. After you're done, return to the office and we'll speak then. If it's late, go home and we can speak tomorrow."

"Yes sir."

He handed Jake a slip of paper: "Her address. Obviously you will be reimbursed for any expenses."

"Thank you sir."

Mr. Archy paused, seemed to hesitate, before saying, "Let me ask you something, and this question is workplace inappropriate, but refusing to answer this question will not in any way hurt your career with Doheny, nor will agreeing to answer it help your career. Conversely, refusing to answer will not help your career, and answering it will not hurt your career."

Jake said, "Okay," even tough he didn't really even understand what Mr. Archy had just said. He wondered if Mr. Archy could be on drugs.

Mr. Archy continued, "You were in a fraternity. I know that because you put it on your résumé. I didn't even realize people still did that—put fraternity memberships on résumés. Fraternities seem so disreputable nowadays. I would never put my fraternity on my résumé. But you did, and it's good that you did, actually, because as it happens, I was in the same fraternity and I liked that when I saw it on your résumé. It's the reason you were hired. In any case, you were in a fraternity. When you were in your fraternity, or maybe even earlier, in high school, did you ever sleep with the same girl that a friend of yours slept with?"

"I don't think I understand sir. You mean did I have a threesome or something?" The question made Jake feel uncomfortable, not because it was inappropriate—Mr. Archy had already acknowledged as much—but because it somehow felt as though Mr. Archy was hinting that he possessed secret knowledge of Jake's past. It felt real specific, and out of the blue.

"No, no, nothing like that. I mean did you go on a date with a girl, make it with her, and then maybe a friend ended up going on a date with the same girl? Or vice versa: you went on a date with a girl one of your friends had already dated? College can be a small world."

"Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, that happened a few times."

"And did you and your friend ever talk about the girl afterward?"

"Well, yes, I guess we did. Nothing disrespectful."

"Did you talk about what she was like in bed?"

"Well, yes, I guess maybe. I mean, you know, maybe we had some beers, and got to shooting the breeze."

"Sure I understand. As I said I was in a fraternity once myself."

Jake nodded, unsure where Mr. Archy was going with this line of questioning.

"And when you were talking to your friend, after you both slept with the same girl, did you find that you felt closer to your friend because of it?"

"I don't know about that. I mean, I suppose it could have been a kind of bonding, though I don't think I ever saw it that way."

"Did you have both the experience of sleeping with the girl first, and of sleeping with her last?"

"Yes, I suppose that I did."

"And did you notice the difference?"

"What difference, sir?"

"Each position confers a certain amount of power. For example, the first one to sleep with the girl has a sort of primal claim to her; it confers primacy. The second one, well, I think they used to have the awful term 'sloppy seconds'. You had her first, and then your friend took a turn."

Jake felt very uncomfortable. "No, I don't think it was anything like that—"

"But the second one has an advantage of his own, because maybe the girl talked to the second about what the first was like sexually, and maybe it wasn't all that flattering."

"I see what you're getting at, but I really don't think it was that way at all, at least not with my friends."

Mr. Archy nodded. "Just because you weren't aware of it being so doesn't mean that it wasn't so. Wouldn't you agree?"

Jake had no idea what Mr. Archy was talking about. He said, "I guess so, sir."

"Well would you agree that just because you aren't conscious of a phenomenon, it doesn't mean the phenomenon is not happening? Things exist, phenomena happen, with our without your knowledge. Is that a statement you could agree with?"

"Yes, of course."

Mr. Archy sighed, as if resigning himself to a frustrating reality: "I guess we're just from different generations, Jake. Your generation takes for granted so much that my generation made possible for you. Take cotton-Spandex blends and microfiber twills in ready-to-wear. When I was growing up, the fabrics were known, the technology available, but marketable applications had not yet been developed. I mean, do you ever stop to think about how fortunate you are to have that?" When Jake did not respond, Mr. Archy said, "Okay, off you go Jake. I look forward to hearing your report."

Jake left the office, left the building, and left Chicago for Winnetka.

On the commuter train to Winnetka, Jake googled Mr. Archy's name, just on a lark, to see if he could learn anything. The most interesting hit was from a deeply nested sub-Reddit thread. Although Mr. Archy was named only once in the thread, he was subsequently referenced in multiple responses:
TRONC: "this guy can make you a fortune out of your spare change, if you're lucky enough to become a client".
Dropsy: "the rov i got with him was actually a statistical impossibility, so i left".
Paul_Drake: "i met him once and he's either on drugs or he's some kind of savant".
Car0line: "this guy is filled with zinc".
Maryoftheprairie: "you mean like how jfk was filled with cortisone".
Fangore2: "more like how jfk was filled with scandal and lies".
Tzahn: "interestingly he has an apartment at the Ambassador East".

Mrs. Moretti lived in a large house on Hoyt Lane. A young woman answered the door. She was stylish, with an attractive figure, but a homely face. She gave the impression of efficiency, competence, and confidence, which Jake felt in the way she looked at him, as though she were critically appraising him, collecting information, making judgments. Maybe it was only aloofness, which Jake constantly mistook for intelligence and competence and judgment. He guessed she must be somewhat older than he, but probably not much older. You could never tell with unattractive girls. She was probably Mrs. Moretti's daughter, thus her reserve, for she would naturally regard him as an inferior.

"Hello. My name is Jake Fransen, from Doheny brokerage. Aaron Archy sent me with information for Mrs. Moretti, about an account she has with us."

"Please wait here," and she gestured towards a chair in the hall.

About twenty minutes later, another woman, who appeared to be leaving, entered the hallway. She had long, grey hair, and wore a loose-fitting, ankle-length rayon dress that was a melange of colors, mostly purple and pink and black. She wore big hoop earrings and a charm bracelet. When she she saw Jake, she stopped and stared at him, almost as if she were concentrating on him, as though she recognized him and was trying to remember how.

Then, somewhat accusingly, she said, "You."

Jake, not knowing how to respond, said, "I'm sorry?"

"I know you from somewhere."

"Oh, no, I don't think so, ma'am."

Then she said, "Nobody asked you. And you are only half here. The other half is blocked. There is something insubstantial about the half I see. I can see through it, but not into it. You are like gossamer. You have good intentions, but they are insubstantial, and they do not prevent you from causing trouble. You have a disruptive aura. You are excitable, but not in the usual way. I do not like your presence here. There's an anger about you, a volatile anger," and then her cell phone rang, and she answered the call, "Flip, darling, I'm on my way. No, we had an issue but it's all cleared up now," and she continued speaking on her phone as she walked out the front door.

The young woman finally reappeared, and said, "Come with me."

As they walked down a terra-cotta tiled hallway, Jake asked, "Are you Mrs. Moretti's daughter?"

"No sir. I'm the housekeeper. I hope I did not say anything to mislead you."

"No, not at all. I'm sorry." He wasn't used to being in homes that had servants. Also she did not wear a maid's uniform, but then he reflected that perhaps servants don't wear uniforms anymore. He also thought that her clothing must not have been as expensive as he first thought. At the same time, his impression of her intelligence and blunt competence was reinforced by this revelation, since he now knew she did not come by those qualities through inherited wealth; she must have created it through force of will.

She led Jake into a living room with white, immaculately clean, thick-pile carpeting. A wall of French windows opened onto a terraced swimming pool, and beyond the swimming pool was the lake. Mrs. Moretti sat in a wingback chair. The housekeeper introduced Jake, and then left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

Mrs. Moretti looked Jake up and down. She appeared to be pleased with whatever it was she saw, but at the same time her lip curled into a sneer. She did not invite him to sit. She said, "Why are you here?"

"Mr. Archy sent me."

"Why?"

Jake handed her the envelope. "Mr. Archy apologizes that this month's statement is late."

"Is it?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

She didn't even glance at the envelope, but dropped it onto the end table beside her chair.

Jake panicked a little, wondering how he was supposed to finesse this woman, and he wondered why Mr. Archy had chosen him for this task. All the terrible self-doubt began clawing at him. He didn't think he had ever demonstrated any remarkable aptitude for tact. Had Mr. Archy chosen him because he could be fired if she became angry?

"Mr. Archy also asked me to say that he hopes everything is okay with Valentino."

She was silent for at least thirty seconds, as if gathering and then subduing her anger. "Why would he say something like that?"

"It seems Mr. Archy hasn't been able to get ahold of him for some time."

"Why would he need to. Who are you?"

Even though the housekeeper had already provided the answer to this question, he repeated, "My name is Jake Fransen. I am an office assistant at Doheny."

She said, "You are handsome for an office assistant."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"It was not a compliment."

"I apologize for misunderstanding."

"Good looking men usually are more successful than office assistant. How long are you with the company?"

"Five years ma'am."

"And how many promotions?"

Systematically they go about investigating you, breaking you down, he thought. "No promotions."

"Your first job?"

"Yes."

"College?"

"Yes."

As if recapitulating his life as a failure, she said, "Five years as office assistant, no promotion, and Aaron has you delivering messages to old ladies: for a handsome college graduate, something must be wrong, don't you think?"

Her cruelty, her ability to seek out his weaknesses, staggered him. She was deflecting. The wealthy hate being interrogated by their social inferiors. And yet he had the feeling that she could not simply dismiss him, that she didn't have any real choice in the matter.

Timidly, trying gently to steer the interview back to the reason for his visit, he asked, "What should I tell Mr. Archy about your son?"

She sighed and said, "I do not understand why Aaron would not come himself, or even just call. He sends an office boy." Again she sighed, as if the burden of the whole world rested upon her shoulders. "Valentino probably ran off with a girlfriend. Why does Aaron insist on prying into a personal matter? And why must he send an errand boy to do so?"

"Mr. Archy does not mean to pry, but since Valentino works for Doheny—"

Her eyes opened wide, as if he had just delivered the most shocking news. "Valentino does not work for Doheny. He does not work for Aaron or anybody else. He does not have to work for a living."

Jake wondered if he should contradict her, then realized he lacked the courage to do so even if he should.

She said, "Aaron is old family friend. That is the extent of my son's relationship with him."

"So you think your son might have run off with a girlfriend. Do you know this girl?"

"No."

"Was he dating anyone recently?"

"I wouldn't know. His personal life is precisely that: personal. Not mine, not yours, not Aaron's."

"Is this something he has done before, run off with a girlfriend?"

"I do not know."

"When did you last hear from him?"

"Two weeks ago. About."

"Does your son have any close friends I might speak to?"

"I do not share his personal information to a stranger, and besides Aaron already knows the answer to that." Then she added, "You know what, please tell Aaron from me that he can ask Lenny's father, since those two seem to think—," and then abruptly she stopped herself.

"They seem to think what, ma'am?"

"Never mind. Just never mind. I have told you what I know; please leave, now."

The housekeeper escorted him back to the front door. She said nothing as they walked. He found it difficult to remain silent that long. For him it was almost an obligation to be friendly, or at least attempt it, and he was forever confounding friendliness with blunt bantering chattiness, which was to say nervousness, over-eagerness to please. The housekeeper, in contrast, was silent with resolve and self control, but also with complete comfort, it seemed. He lacked any frame of reference for this quietude; he could not even distinguish it from servility, as if she had long ago acceded completely to her servitude, and to Jake this seemed degrading. And yet who was he to judge? Hadn't Mrs. Moretti scowled him all out of countenance? Hadn't she compelled him to accept that he would not receive the answers he had been sent to obtain? Hadn't she bullied him into failure?

Still, he wanted to say something to the housekeeper, to show that he did not regard her as an inferior. In a way, they occupied similar positions within this strange hierarchy that was beginning to make itself visible to him. He wanted to express his sense of solidarity with her, and as usual what he said just sounded awkward: "What a great house, huh?"

"The family is pleased with it."

At the front door he thanked her and she wished him a good afternoon.

He checked his phone for the time, and the soonest he could be back in the office was 6:00. He took an Uber back to the Metra station. While he waited, he began to fret over the fact that he had failed to get the information Mr. Archy had charged him with finding. Why had he been so easily cowed by the old woman? He thought about what she had said—no promotion in five years—and how she had drawn his attention to the lowliness of his position within the brokerage. No promotion in five years. College degree, office assistant. No promotion in five years. He realized he would need to show more initiative, more ingenuity, in work and in life. He became anxious to confirm that Mr. Archy would be satisfied with the information he had managed to obtain, so that he could return to the Moretti house if he needed. He resolved to get that information, using any means necessary, if Mr. Archy was unsatisfied. Jake called the brokerage and asked to speak with Mr. Archy. The receptionist put him on hold, and he remained on hold for a while but then of course Mr. Archy would be a busy man, possibly even in a meeting. Eventually his phone call was taken not by Mr. Archy or even Mr. Archy's secretary, but by his own direct supervisor, the office manager, who furiously upbraided him, "Jake, why aren't you at work? It's late to be calling in sick."

"No, sir, I'm not calling in sick, I was—"

"We can talk when you return tomorrow," and he ended the call.

Suddenly Jake remembered that Mr. Archy had emphatically forbidden Jake from calling the office after his meeting with Mrs. Moretti.

The Metra train arrived. There were few passengers, and many empty seats, but as soon as Jake sat down another man quickly took the seat beside him. The man was in his thirties at least. He had a shaved head, and wore a white shirt with burgundy necktie and khaki pants. Jake remembered seeing him in the station, at the bar, with three other men drinking and laughing.

The man began speaking, and Jake realized that the man was addressing him: "You're being played, you know. But you don't know; that's the problem for you; that's where they got you. Don't look at me. Keep looking straight ahead. Doheny is a money laundering front, for moving dirty money into and out of foreign accounts. The person you were sent to find—I bet nobody told you he stole five million dollars from Doheny? Now you know. If you don't work with us, you could be an accessory to—." The man abruptly stopped speaking and stared at the floor, before standing up and moving to another car.

For the rest of the evening Jake contemplated this strange encounter, wondering what, if anything, he should do. Was Doheny being investigated for fraud? Was Jake himself being followed? Evidently so. And yet why then had there been no follow-through? No instructions or offers? Perhaps it was somebody trying to scare him off, to scare him off a job or a lead. Maybe Valentino was a far bigger deal than Jake realized. The possibilities this raised, combined with his initial failure, made him hungry to learn more about Valentino.

The next day, as he left his apartment building, he saw saw that the street gutters were filled with rivers of water, first just small streams, and then huge flows. Fire hydrants were opened and gushing water into the streets. People everywhere were staring gravely at their phones, so Jake checked his own and saw that a boil order had been issued. Then he saw another post announcing that boil orders had been issued across the entire state, and in neighboring states as well. Walking the final few blocks to his work, he sensed a general state of panic. The CVS and and the Walgreens were both crowded with people buying all the bottled water.

He entered the CVS and stood before the refrigerator cases, where the bottled water would have been, and he stared into the brightly lit emptiness: the glass, the shelves, the light from above and the darkened stocking room behind. He overheard people talking about all the waste, on account of the drought.

At the office, he waited nervously to learn how angry Mr. Archy would be. About ten o'clock, he got the call from Mr. Archy's secretary, that Mr. Archy wished to see him.

As he entered Mr. Archy's office, Mr. Archy stood, and quite abruptly asked, "What did you find out?"

Still not used to Mr. Archy's strong preference for directness, Jake started in with his usual halting manner, "Well, sir, first I want to apologize for—"

"What did you find out?"

"Well, I, she wasn't really too—"

"Please get straight to the point."

Jake felt clipped. He knew that rudeness always bothered him more than it should, that he was the type of person to take things too personally, and that he was overly eager to please. He was eager to please not out of genuine solicitude, but because he wanted people to like him, though in his mind he ascribed it to the former.

He hesitated over what exactly to say. Before he could speak, Mr. Archy said, "I guess people are right about you: good looking, but not too bright. If you want to succeed in this organization, then you will need to understand the concept of obedience. Think of yourself as a lever or a switch; think of your mind as written in binary: do, or do not do. For example: when I say 'do not call the office', that means you do not call the office. It means I do not expect my secretary to receive a breezy telephone call from you while you sit at a Metra station in Winnetka. Now, what did you learn?"

"I'm sorry sir." Through considerable force of will he kept his apology brief, because he was slowly learning that Mr. Archy was not a man to respect groveling, no matter how much he claimed to value obedience. "She said she doesn't know where her son is. She said he probably ran off with a girlfriend. She said she last heard from him about two weeks ago."

Clearly disappointed and annoyed, Mr. Archy said, "That's it?"

"Well, she said Mr. Moretti doesn't even work for Doheny and—"

"He does; he does. She probably just doesn't know about it. He works on a contract basis, as a member of our Social Justice Strategic Planning Task Force, and our Workplace Diversity and Inclusion Task Force."

Jake hesitated to say more, not because he wanted to conceal information from Mr. Archy, but because the remainder of Mrs. Moretti's message was hostile—"why don't you tell Aaron from me that he can ask Lenny's father"—and also because he had begun to build in his mind a vague picture of the situation, and he wanted to wait until he could collect additional information before presenting a more complete account.

Mr. Archy asked, "Was her housekeeper there when you spoke?"

"How do you mean? I mean, she was there, in the house—"

"I mean was she in the room."

"Oh, no, she wasn't in the room."

Mr. Archy seemed to be troubled by something.

Aaron said, "If you want, I could follow up with some of his associates."

Dismissively, Mr. Archy said, "I already have somebody else in mind for that. Thank you Jake that will be all. You may return to your desk now."

Jake sat at his desk reflecting on the humiliating interview with Mr. Archy. He began dimly to perceive the contours of something: was it the problem, or the solution to the problem, or something else entirely? Mr. Archy doubted his intelligence; everybody did; Jake himself doubted it, and yet he was not entirely sure if the situation even indicated intelligence. Find Valentino: could intelligence alone accomplish that? He wondered how a person with intelligence would even proceed. If Mr. Archy wished for someone with intelligence, then why had he chosen Jake? Was there perhaps another quality that one might possess, one even better suited to the task at hand? What if Jake did indeed lack intelligence, but possessed this other quality? He didn't have a word for it, this other quality, something other than intelligence, something more liquid and even unpredictable, maybe even volatile: volatile as his moodiness, unstable as his self esteem, impulsive as his fear, compulsive as his sex-drive. He didn't have a word for it, and he didn't even completely understand it, but could sense it stirring within himself. This quality was something counter-logical like volition cut with acquiescence. It was like sexual cathexis, like a drive that was useless to resist, and which when not resisted enabled him to tap hidden reserves of energy, concentration, and power. This quality made him feel as though, by relinquinshing self-control, he could achieve greater control over his surroundings.

Mrs. Moretti had referred to "Lenny's father." This, it seemed to him, was the essential piece of information, out of what little information he had managed to obtain. This, and not the bit about the girlfriend, which he doubted even she believed herself. Perhaps because it was the only real concrete piece of information, the only hook on which to hang an inquiry, even if it was only a first name, the first name of a son of a person of interest. Hook, catch. He must discover the identity of Lenny's father, and to do that he would have to discover the identity of Lenny. Obviously he could not ask Mr. Archy, or Mrs. Moretti either. There was no one in the office he could ask. He sensed hostile forces arrayed against him, but only two were visible: Mr. Archy and Mrs. Moretti.

He wondered if Lenny, or Lenny's father might be a client of the brokerage. Possibly the name would appear somewhere in the occasional correspondence file. The occasional correspondence file contained letters and templates for cards that the brokerage sent to its customers at Christmas, on birthdays, and so forth. The file included no real confidential information, but often a client's children might be named. It contained connections between people, and more importantly it could be queried for a name, and all he really needed now was a last name. So he searched the correspondence file for "Lenny" and "Leonard" and even "Leonardo", but retrieved nothing that seemed likely. He checked Valentino's Facebook account, with almost 3,000 friends, but none named Lenny, and none named anything he knew Lenny to be short for.

He sunk back into himself. Everything always seemed unreasonably difficult. Doheny was a cold place to work; among the traders the competitiveness was fierce, but they at least enjoyed a certain camaraderie. As an office assistant, he was excluded from that. If it weren't for the girls who flirted with him, his ego would have buckled under the pressure long ago.

He checked his phone and realized he would have to miss the gym, then he noticed his supervisor standing in front of his desk. "Jake, I notice you have quite a bit of vacation time accrued. I think it would be a good idea if you used some."

"Am I in trouble sir?"

"Not necessarily. I just think it would be good if you got away for a week or so. Enough said?"

Self loathing uncurled itself inside his head, alongside an impulse to which he suddenly acceded, an impulse like a hatchet that split the shell encasing his little world, like a jailbreak like a chance to be free: freedom through even more control, somehow he must assert his control over something, over this situation, this problem; he wanted to feel that he wasn't just being knocked this-way-and-that by events, by people. Find Valentino. Figure out Valentino. And in doing so he hoped to understand what was happening to him and thus control it, control the situation by comprehending it and containing it. Investigate it: produce the object of the investigation: produce Valentino, and in doing so he would please Mr. Archy, and make Mr. Archy pleased with him.

At the gym that evening, Jake watched the cable news, as usual, while running on the treadmill. They were talking about the boil orders across the Midwest. He kept hearing the same kinds of statements over and over: Obviously we don't know what we don't know, but could this be a terrorist attack? We don't know yet, John. No municipality has yet issued any statement on the cause. The facts are still unfolding, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that this would be the kind of attack they have been preparing for...I should repeat, though, that we don't know what we don't yet know. If this is a terrorist attack, what motive do you think we're looking at here, Sandra? I don't think motive really matters at this point; we're mostly concerned about the safety of the drinking water supply. It could have been an accident and that still wouldn't make the drinking water supply any safer. The drinking water supply has been compromised in several states now. We might just be looking at a violation of protocols. But a violation of protocols happening simultaneously across contiguous municipalities in multiple states? Yes, that would certainly be quite a coincidence.

All the reporters and newscasters and commentators seemed to be lusting over the idea of a terrorist attack.

The next day, Jake rented an SUV and drove to Winnetka, staking out the corner of Elm and Sheridan—the Moretti home was on the north end of Hoyt Lane, and he guessed the housekeeper would pass the intersection on her way to work. He sat in the back of the SUV with a pair of binoculars, trying to spot drivers, but mostly the cars were moving too fast. Fortunately, a stop sign on Elm meant that people leaving Hoyt Lane would have to stop, giving him more time to identify passengers.

Here, too, the street gutters running with water, and he overheard people talking about the boil order. Twice the police bothered him, and both times he said he was working on a civil engineering project for a college course, tracking suburban traffic patterns.

"Sorry, sir," they said, "But with the boil order on, we're keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity at all."

"I understand officers. Also, if I see anything, I'll be sure to report it."

On the third day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he spotted the housekeeper in a Toyota Camry. The two preceding days he had also seen the Camry, arriving before eight and leaving at four, but he had not previously been able to recognize its driver. On the fourth day, he returned in the afternoon, and once again at four o'clock the Camry appeared, but this time he was prepared to give chase.

The housekeeper turned left onto Sheridan and he tailed her for almost half an hour. She finally parked at a Starbucks, and went inside.

He waited five minutes, and then entered the Starbucks. He saw her sitting alone at a table by the window, reading a magazine. He ordered a latte, then pretended to be looking for a table.

Approaching her table, he said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but have we met before?"

He saw that she recognized him, but she said, "No, I don't think so."

"Yes, I'm sure we have. Wait, I know—you're Mrs. Moretti's housekeeper. I was there recently, delivering information from her brokerage."

She nodded. "Oh yes, I remember." There was something flat about the way she spoke, probably her attempt to discourage any additional familiarity.

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

She looked around the cafe, as if to ascertain whether any other tables were available, and although there were at least two, she shrugged and said, "If you like."

He felt a little awkward, being so forward, but it would probably be his only opportunity—a second chance encounter would surely make her suspicious. He said, "My name is Jake, by the way."

Again she nodded, "I'm Heather." Each time she answered one of his questions, she would immediately begin reading her magazine again. Usually a girl like her would begin flirting with him almost immediately.

He asked, "What are you doing way out here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh," he said, "I'm sorry, I know, I realize it's none of my business. I was just surprised. I mean, don't you live in Winnetka?"

She laughed. "On my salary? Are you joking?"

"Oh, gosh, sorry, that was stupid of me."

And yet he finally seemed to have piqued her interest, because a little challengingly, she asked, "Well, for that matter, what are you doing out here?"

"I'm just running another errand for Mr. Archy."

"What are you, some kind of courier for Doheny?"

"I'm an office assistant."

Again she nodded. "I see." After a pause, she asked, "Do you like being an office assistant?"

"It's okay. I majored in ag economics so I guess what I'd really like to do is trading. How come you didn't go to college?"

"I did. What makes you think I didn't?"

"Oh. Sorry. I don't know. I guess some stupid idea about housekeepers." He blushed, then, trying to move the conversation past his blunder, he asked, "So where did you go?"

"Northwestern."

"Oh," he said again. He felt that maybe he should apologize again. She didn't really seem offended, though. It was her confidence again, he sensed. He said, "But I didn't know you'd have to go to college to be a housekeeper."

"And I didn't know one had to attend college to be an office assistant."

"Right. Fair enough. Sorry about that." There was something slightly rebarbative in her manner, and a rigidity, or at least inflexibility. He attributed it to her looks: he thought that unattractive girls tended to shape their personalities to accommodate their expectations.

She said, "It's fine."

"What did you major in?"

"Spanish. Mrs. Moretti has several servants who only speak Spanish, so one of my jobs is to manage them."

"Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I didn't realize that house was big enough to need so many servants."

"It's not her only home. She also has homes at Lake Geneva and Miami Beach."

"And you run all three?"

"More or less. I move around with her, but I have to make sure everything is ready when she decides to move. Right now we're having quite a time dealing with the boil order."

"Oh, yeah, I can imagine. You know, when we first met, I thought you were Mrs. Moretti's daughter."

"Yes, I remember you saying that. You make a lot of assumptions."

"Okay, okay, guilty, I admit. But you don't dress like any housekeeper I ever met before."

She asked, "And how many housekeepers have you met?"

"Well," he said, flustered, "Your clothing is very expensive, though."

She laughed, "You think so? It actually isn't expensive."

She was difficult to converse with. Something about her that always had to be a little contrary, as though she saw it as a sign of her superior intelligence, as though she could always see another side to every question and everybody else just accepted things at the face value.

Then she said, "I shouldn't give you such a hard time. I do actually spend a lot of time on my wardrobe. It's one of my hobbies," and she held up the magazine she was reading, which was a fashion magazine. "But I don't buy designers. I just copy them."

"That's cool. That you're into fashion, I mean."

"It's kind of a sick obsession," she said.

"Why is that sick? I don't think it is."

"You can't have failed to notice that I'm not an attractive woman."

"I think you are."

She stared at him skeptically. "Well thank you, even if you are just being polite."

"No, I really do."

"Fashion is a very interesting and, in many ways perverse, industry. It's an industry with intellectual pretensions. The way these fashion journalists write about the designers as though the clothing is serious art. But as an industry first and foremost, fashion itself lives on novelty, and fashion magazines bestow a certain intellectual legitimacy on that novelty. But you have to keep this separation in mind always: there is fashion, and there is the discourse about fashion. Fashion itself, its claims to aesthetic purity, to being radically emptied of discursive content, these claims are shown to be false by fashion's constant recourse to subversive modes and attitudes, because subversion always presupposes beliefs that are basically moral insofar as they are beliefs about what should be, and what should not be. At the very least, fashion is an applied form of aesthetics, since the clothing is designed to be worn on real bodies, however idealized those bodies might be. It tries to deny its status as applied aesthetics in part through the models it uses: their bodies are not just idealized, but one might even say hyper-idealized. That's why so many people complain about the prevalence of androgyny in modeling. Or else the houses will use models, or style them, in ways that resist idealization. But make no mistake: each body is groomed to be perfect for its purpose, and the aesthetics are once again therefore applied. The model's body is subjected to the same rigorous regime of novelty as the fashion itself: beautiful, but not enduring. Thus the emphasis on youth which is the most palpable form of evanescence. Palpable because we all experience it, most of us feel that loss deeply. The models are mostly nameless, and in a way even faceless. They're meant to be basically interchangeable, because you want people looking at the fashion, not the person. With a few exceptions—the big supermodels—you aren't meant to recognize the models, or know their names or personalities. The shelf life of a typical model is far too short to make that practicable, and the demand for constant novelty makes it undesirable even if it were possible. So I look at all these beautiful people, and their beauty is so momentary, so fleeting: they won't be wearing these designers ten years from now. You know? It's like a flower that only blooms a week; it's breathtaking, really. And the models that become celebrities in their own right—it takes a lot to make that work, and often it backfires dreadfully. Take Anna Nicole Smith, for example: you really think Guess Jeans is pleased to have its brand hitched to her star? Celebrity models are a gamble; they can turn hideous. I wonder if that's something you ever contemplate?"

"The beauty of models?"

"No, I meant your own beauty. Surely you realize how gifted you are with strikingly good looks—does it ever bother you to know that your physical beauty will fade?"

"I don't know," he said, "I don't think I really ever thought about it."

"But you must work out. I mean it's rare that a guy your age can keep his fine looks without working at it."

"Yes," he said, "I do work out. I see what you mean. I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess you're right. I mean, I actually enjoy working out, but yes I also do it to keep fit, and I guess part of that is hoping to continue looking good."

As they spoke, he tried to catch her eye, to see if there was any indication that she might be attracted to him. She did look him directly in the eye, but he couldn't tell whether eye contact was part of the way she expressed her confidence, or whether she was responding to him sexually. And he needed to know because it had become the key to his plan: he assumed an unattractive girl like her would surely respond to a guy as handsome as he. Just to keep the conversation going, he asked, "Do you like this weather?"

"It's okay." What else would she say?

"It's hot," he said. He had read somewhere that you should try to use words like that, as a way of telegraphing sexual interest.

She nodded. She seemed unmoved. She had very little range when it came to flirtation. He thought about the lecture she had just given him on aesthetics, and about how brilliant she must be, and then marveled at how somebody so intelligent could be so inept at something so seemingly basic as flirtation. Flirtation is frothy. It must be whipped up, but you can't allow the effort to show: it must float along the surface of things, like foam on a river, and she could never remain for very long on the surface of any discussion.

He wondered how direct he should be. How much directness could he get away with? The time before she would excuse herself was surely fast approaching. He said, "Listen, I guess I will just be blunt: I'm attracted to you. I don't think it can be a coincidence that we just met like this. I liked you when I saw you last week. Would you want to get dinner or something?"

Much to his surprise, she agreed.

Two hours later he had her in bed, and with all his concentration and all his energy he focused on pleasing her, on showing her what he was capable of doing for her, to her, with her, what she could have with him. She seemed to be enjoying it, but her responses lacked heat, lacked physicality; her orgasm felt constrained, curtailed, as though she were holding back. He decided against even hinting at sexual intercourse. She responded more warmly to his kisses and embraces. He felt he should have expected this. He wanted to have sex, but he understood that this encounter must be about what she wanted. What he wanted—not sex this time, but information—would come later, if it was to come at all.

The next morning they kissed and cuddled. He had trouble concealing his dislike of cuddling. She put her hands through his hair, and said, "I wonder if I will see you again."

"What do you mean? Why wouldn't you?"

"Well, I doubt you really got what you wanted last night. I've actually had boyfriends accuse me of being frigid."

He didn't know what she meant by 'frigid.' He said, "Say, I have a question for you."

She laughed. "Trying to change the subject?"

"Maybe."

She shrugged. "It's okay with me."

"When I met with Mrs. Moretti, she mentioned a guy named 'Lenny' she said is also a client of our firm, but she didn't give his last name and I have no idea who she means."

She pulled her head back a little, as if to get a better look at his face, as if he had aroused her suspicion and she had suddenly been put on guard. She said "Okay," but spoke it as though it were a question.

"Well, she actually said 'Lenny's father' was the client of the firm. Who was she talking about?"

"Why don't you just ask her?"

He sighed. "The interview did not go very well. I doubt she'd even see me again."

"Then ask your boss."

"If I do that, then he will say the same thing you just did, and he will know that the interview did not go well."

"So it's really the father's name you need."

"Yeah, sorry." He pretended to yawn. "Still a little sleepy. I have some information I need to add to his file. You're right, I should just ask my boss, but it's just not so great for me, that's all."

"I'm not supposed to talk about my employer's business, you know? It's kind of a breach of confidence."

"Oh," he said with disappointment.

"But I have to admit I like you, and I understand your predicament. She isn't an easy woman to get on with. So I'll tell you, but you have to promise never to say where you got the name."

"Oh, absolutely, I swear."

"She was probably talking about Andrew Pecorelli"

Trying to pretend as though this information was not such a huge revelation, he said, "Oh, right, of course. God do I feel stupid."

She again looked at him suspiciously.

To change the conversation once again, he asked, "Can I see you again?"

"If you want."

"Well, what would you want?"

She said, "I would like that. How about tomorrow night?"

"Perfect. I'll pick you up here?"

As he left her apartment, he noticed a framed photograph, hanging in the entryway, of a black man with a large, partially erect penis hanging from the open fly of his dress pants. The man held a gun, which he seemed to be pointing at somebody outside the frame.

Jake went to a Starbucks. Sitting with his coffee, he returned to Valentino's Facebook page. This time he typed the first few letters of Pecorelli's last name, and immediately one person came up: Leona Pecorelli. He had mistakenly believed that Lenny was a man, but this must be Lennie, the person Mrs. Moretti was referring to. He wondered why Heather hadn't corrected him—surely she knew that Lennie was not a man, as Jake had stated. He visited Lenoa Pecorelli's Facebook page. She was very hot, almost unbelievably so. He sent her a message: "Hi. I was talking with Valentino Moretti the other day, and he told me you might be able to help me with a problem I'm trying to solve."

He was surprised when she responded immediately: "Sure why not. I'll be at the pedrosa stables tomorrow 10-2 just ask for me."

The Pedrosa Stables were in Glenview.

Leona Pecorelli was young and very beautiful. She wore a knee length skirt. She did not look as though she had been riding.

"Hi," she said in a very clipped, somewhat off-putting voice.

"Hello," he said.

"So you want to know about Valentino?"

"Well he said—"

"Come on," she interrupted. "You must think I'm pretty dumb or something. I remember what you wrote in your message, but I also know Valentino never told you any such thing, so I can only assume you must be working an angle, and the obvious angle is that you want information about Valentino."

"Okay. Well, what if I did?"

"Then what is it that you want to know? Don't waste my time."

"How long have you known him?"

"You needed to meet me to ask that question? I've known him all my life. His family and my family go way back."

"Did you know that he is missing?"

"I heard something like that."

"You don't sound very concerned."

"It's his life, isn't it?"

"There's this guy, Aaron Archy, who thinks you would have useful information about Valentino?"

"You know Aaron?"

"Yes. I work for him."

"And he said that, huh?" She rolled her eyes. "He would think so"

"Do you know Mr. Archy well?"

"He's also an old family friend. I guess everyone is either an old family friend or else an enemy."

He nodded. He contemplated a world where everybody could fit into one of those two categories. Would such a world be a very small one, the preserve of a sheltered elite, or a world of people with fearful power, such that everyone with whom they deal must perforce be one or the other, and "old family friend" only another way of saying mobbed up?

She said, "Everybody thought Valentino would marry me, even though he is quite a bit older. No one thinks that anymore, but after being thrown at each other for years and years, we did, I guess, get to know each other."

"Why didn't you marry after all?"

"The usual reasons, whatever those are. I was raised to be an adornment. I remember hearing my godmother use that word. She was talking to my tutor, and she said, 'Lennie is to be an adornment, not a philosopher.' You're probably surprised I even know that word. It means, like, jewelry and stuff like that. So yeah, I was raised to be an adornment, and if not to Valentino then to some other wealthy man. I ended up being a little bitch. Just like my mother. That's what my father says, anyway."

"So Valentino was not attracted to you?"

"He probably was, but I ran off with a stable hand. Very handsome, and strong. But also very poor, which was probably most of the attraction. I really did love him, in my way, and we married. In the end, though, I found that I couldn't live without money, just as everyone had said, and after we ran off he had even less money than before, because he couldn't get work—my godparents fired him and spread vicious lies about how he abused his position to seduce a young girl. I don't really even know what happened to him. We're still Facebook friends, but he doesn't post very often."

"You left your husband and came back here?"

"Yes. My godparents arranged to have the marriage annulled, but of course now I'm used goods and nobody wants me. Anyway, I expect Valentino is just doing something like the same thing. Like, rebelling against his mother or something like that. He probably ran off with some cheap slut."

She stared at Jake as though he should say something, but he was surprised she would share so much personal information, and was trying to decide how he could get her to continue talking. He contemplated sharing personal information of his own, almost as a swap, but it had not been his experience that girls like Leona really respond favorably to that kind of sharing. He expected she would like her men to be silent, hard, and devoted. Like horses.

"You probably think I talk too much. All girls want to talk about themselves, and no men ever want to listen. After I came back, after my marriage failed, Valentino suddenly became a good listener, but it turned out he only wanted to sleep with me. After he had had me a few times, he became much less interested. We're still friends, though."

"You and Valentino had an affair?"

"If you want to call it that. He used me for my body. I used him to boost my self esteem. Both of us found the satisfactions to be short lived. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No."

"Are you gay?"

"No."

"Why don't you have a girlfriend, then? You're very good looking. You must be a player."

He felt a sudden access of confidence in his ability to handle her. She was a girl who wanted handling, and slightly rough handling at that. She would want to be put in her place so that she would be in a position from which to be petulant, from which to push back a little, the way an athlete will seek a firm wall for his exercises. So ignoring her comment, he said, "Mrs. Moretti mentioned something about your father. What did she mean by that?"

"Oh god, that old bitch. How should I know? What was it in reference to?"

"I was asking her if she knew where Valentino is."

"I don't really know. She hates my father but adores me. But she only likes me in that way creepy old women like porcelain dolls. If I ever get old and ugly she'll stop adoring me."

"Why does she hate your father?"

"They all do, really, because he reminds them all that their money is dirty money. They dislike Aaron too, but they're more afraid of Aaron."

"Shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, they're the clients."

"He makes all their money for them, and he makes it the dirty way, by playing rough with dangerous people. They know he can just as easily play rough with them, at any time, if he has to."

"You keep saying 'they.' Who are they?"

"All these people—the Morettis, the Pedrosas. Do you want a list?"

He chuckled. "Maybe."

"Well you're not gonna get one."

"But why did she say to ask your father about Valentino?"

"You really think these people tell me anything? I'm just a pretty girl to them. Look, it's probably because Mrs. Moretti blames my father for getting Valentino mixed up in Aaron's business. Which is a joke. Valentino was practically begging to onboard."

"When did you last see Valentino?"

"Two weeks ago. It was a weekday. A Tuesday, I think. We went to Willow Park. He wanted to go there, but he didn't want to go alone."

"Why didn't he want to go alone?"

"He didn't say. Anyway, it's not like I had anything else to do. He took a briefcase with him, and brought it into the park. The strange thing is that, once we were there, he wanted to go into the Japanese garden, and suddenly he wanted to be alone, and insisted on going into the Japanese garden alone. So he went into the Japanese garden. The garden is surrounded by a tall privet hedge, and there's a wooden gate built into the hedge at either end of the garden: one is the entrance, and one is the exit. I saw him go in, and shortly after he went in, a woman appeared, alone, and she also entered the garden. The way she walked, you would almost think she was following him or something. She was very purposeful and deliberate. I don't know, maybe I was just jealous. But I waited outside the garden, like he told me to. I waited about half an hour, and then he reappeared, from behind me. He must have circled around the park after he left the Japanese garden. You can't see the exit from where I was standing. He no longer had the briefcase."

"Did you ask him what he did with it?"

"No. That's not really something I would do."

"What did the woman look like?"

"I'm not very good at describing people. She had dark hair. I guess she was pretty, physically, but she had no style. She looked kind of trashy, if you want to know the truth. Like white trash."

"And you think she and Valentino had arranged to meet in the Japanese garden?"

"I don't know. It sounds a little far fetched, but I guess it's possible. Her name was Rachel."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I heard her answer her phone, and she said, 'This is Rachel'." Leona seemed bored by this story, and then she abruptly asked Jake, "Do you have a philosophy of life?"

"No, I don't think I do. Do you?"

"My philosophy is that you should never lose your access to money. It's why I stay here."

"What do you mean by 'here'?"

She first just repeated the word, "Here," only more emphatically, as though the meaning should be self-evident. Then she said, "The Midwest, Illinois, the northern suburbs."

"You mean because that's where your family is?"

She laughed. "My family is not rich. But they know rich people. You know rich people too, but I'm guessing you don't know how to get their money."

He was silent.

She continued, "Haven't you ever wondered why so many extremely rich people would want to live someplace as horrible as an ugly city on an ugly lake in an ugly region with horrible weather?"

"No, I guess I haven't."

"Even I'm smart enough to realize that you can hide your money, or its source, more easily from here. No ostentation. No attention. No glamour. Nothing that makes life fun. Isn't that weird: if you get yourself enough money, you can't afford to spend it the way you want? So you live here if you love money for its own sake. And of course those of us with no money of our own are forced to love money for its own sake." She sighed, and then she asked me, "Do you have any sorrows?"

"I don't know. No more than most people, I guess."

"I have a lot of sorrows, though you probably think I'm just a spoiled brat. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No."

She stepped closer to him, almost touching his leg with her body. "Really? What a shame."

"A shame?" For some reason, that word struck him in the way she probably did not intend it.

"Oh, well, your fine body. To let such a thing run to waste. You look tense. Your job must be stressful."

"It can be."

She pushed in a little closer. Her hip was touching his cock. She said, "Why don't I get you out of those pants?"

"Oh." He was suddenly pretty awkward. He had an uncertain feeling about her, that she could cause him trouble. "I don't think that would be such a good idea."

"I'd at least like to take them down to your thighs and put you in my mouth."

He jerked quickly away from her, and abruptly said, "I really don't think that's a good idea." It didn't take a lot of willpower. He could have enjoyed what she was offering; He could have enjoyed it plenty. But he questioned whether she could really be trusted. She seemed like the kind of girl who would seduce you and then say she had been taken advantage of. And seeing as she knew Mr. Archy, apparently quite well, he did not want to find myself in a situation where his word had to stand against hers.

She was offended, or pretended to be anyway. She said, "What are you gay?"

"No."

"Still, there's something wrong with you. I had something to tell you too."

"If that's how you want it," and he grabbed her arm, pulling her close to him, kissing her hard on the lips.

"Come with me," she said. She led him to an office in the barn, drew the blinds and locked the door. He fucked her on the desk; and while he fucked her she asked in a begging, be-my-baby sex-tone, "Am I your little bit on the side, am I?" And his answer was first to fuck her harder, and then to say, "You're my little bitch on the side," and he was surprised to hear himself speak such words, which he immediately realized he had learned from watching porno videos, but she cried out in pleasure and her pleasure coupled with the words made him feel more sexually excited, and he said, "Yeah? You like that big cock?" He knocked a lamp to the floor and the light bulb shattered. She was almost the opposite of Heather; he felt her devouring his body and wanting nothing else from him. Kisses she only seemed to like if they were hard, aggressive. For her it was the physicality of the sex that mattered, as it was for him. He pulled his cock out of her cunt, and said, "Get on the floor, on your knees" and she did as she was told, and he said, "Now suck it," and she did, and he said, "That's right bitch, suck that big cock; take that cock," and the pleasure of the words almost as much as the sensation of his cock sliding in and out of her gorgeous mouth brought him to such a state of excitement that he ejaculated, and was surprised by how much cum he had, and she took his cock out of her mouth and he finished ejaculating on her face. He realized he had never had an orgasm the previous night with Heather, and that he had been carrying a lot of unexpended sexual energy. He was panting. Leona looked up at him, with his cum on her face, and when she spoke he saw his cum on her lips and on her tongue, and she said, "Lick it," and at first he thought she meant her pussy, but then she said, "Lick it off me; lick yourself off me." The thought of licking his own cum off her face made him feel revolted, but she said, "If you want the information, lick it. Off my lips." He lowered himself to the floor, and steeling himself to the task, he began, timidly at first, licking his cum off her lips, and the taste of it almost made him sick, the saltiness, combined with its putrid warmth, and then she grabbed him by the back of the head and began kissing him, pushing her tongue deep into his mouth, and more and more of his own cum went from her mouth into his, but he reciprocated, and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

Afterwards, she quickly dressed herself. He looked at the lamp on the floor, and she dismissively said, "Leave it. The staff will take care of it." They went back outside, and she said, "You are a very passionate lover."

"Oh, well—." Reorient, refocus.

"You are a much better lover than Valentino, not to mention you have a much larger cock, a deliciously large cock. But I bet you've been told that before."

Her compliment made him feel good, in that way when one feels comfortable in the world, and with one's place in it, when one feels collected and together and in control, and he realized it was the reawakening of sexual desire within himself, that hearing her talk about him in this way was sexually arousing. Sexual desire was like a tornado in his mind, smashing every obstacle, every doubt, every hesitation. Sexual arousal was the only thing that made him feel certain, confident. Confidence felt like control, and although sexual desire destroyed his control, it also made him feel singularly in control: some sundering of body and mind was temporarily repaired by sexual desire.

She said, "When Valentino fucked me, it felt like he was doing a chore, but not you. You are like—, you're like those skateboarders who put everything into their skating, and risk everything to do it: their elbows and arms and legs and knees and shins and their skulls, their whole bodies—, risking everything for the sheer, pure joy in it. And it all looks fresh every time. It all looks improvised and thrilling. With Valentino, it was like he had step one, step two, and step three, and then he was done."

Jake was surprised to hear her describe Valentino in this way. He wondered if she was being truthful. He would have imagined Valentino to be a very passionate lover. He then recalled what Mr. Archy had asked to him, about whether a woman ever favorably compared him to an earlier lover, and it shook him a little, but again he felt a sudden access of pride in himself, and the good feeling became more about feeling in control, and he felt life surging through him and it made him powerful and suddenly it was very easy to say to her, "You are so beautiful."

She asked, "Do you really believe that?"

"Yes of course."

Then, changing the conversation, as if fulfilling her end of a bargain, she said, "Once Valentino was at his mother's house, and he lent me his phone because I didn't have mine, and I was bored. On his phone I found a message to a girl named Rachel. Surely the same Rachel from the Japanese garden. The email was very mocking towards an unnamed guy, about how pathetic this guy was, and how Valentino had been looking through this person's Google account, and had found a sort of diary in his Google Docs. Valentino had copied several paragraphs from this diary, and emailed them to himself. Valentino could be very cruel. In the message to Rachel he mocked this person. I think Rachel must have known him too. He said he was keeping these in case he ever needed more dirt on this guy, and also as a reminder of how pathetic this person was. The paragraphs were pathetic, it's true, but I felt sorry for whoever wrote them. There was something about them—I don't really know the word. I guess it was the writer's clear pain, his anguish. I don't know, it touched something in me, so I forwarded the message to myself. I don't really know why. What would I ever do with it? Maybe I just wanted to have it in case I ever needed to show Valentino was an asshole he really is. Anyway, I can send it to you if you think it might be helpful."

"Yes, absolutely. I mean, you never know, right? Thank you."

She then said, "But the main thing: Valentino has a place in Aurora, at some motel there. The Motel Maserati. That's where he does most of his partying. I have no idea why. He seems to avoid the city. I don't think many people know about it. He mentioned it to me one night when he was drunk. Anyway, that's the piece of information I have for you. Hope it was worth the lay." She walked away and he did not follow her.

He drove to a Starbucks so that he could read the email she had sent him him. The first paragraph was incomplete:

"gained me certain privileges, privileges I would have been denied had I been a girl, never mind a girl with a crush on him. For example, how many afternoons did we go to his house after school, and I would sit with him in his bedroom as he changed into his training shorts and shirt and shoes—sh and sh and sh—and you never saw anyone so physically fine as Aaron in those days. He'd kick off his school sneakers which bolted an arc across the room, and then he'd pull off his blue jeans and throw them onto the floor as well, and he'd walk around his room in his beautifully clean, white underwear, looking for his shorts, or maybe he'd jump onto the bed—onto the bed with me, though of course he wouldn't have seen it that way—he'd jump onto the bed and start flipping through a sports magazine, which would quickly lose his interest, and he'd drop it back onto the bed. It wasn't just the shape of his body, its perfection, but also his casualness, the kind only possible in the truly fit, that effortless confidence of movement, with which he'd hop off the bed, back onto his feet. Good posture is always impressive, especially when it appears both effortless and strongly assertive. He'd walk around his bedroom like that, quite unselfconscious about wearing nothing but his clean white underwear. Even in his underwear, he blazed forth an audacious, stunning confidence: beautiful, audacious confidence. His underwear always looked brand new, and it always had some brand name on the waste-band, which gave him a certain 'kept and pampered' quality or something, like this was somebody whose mother probably lovingly bought and laundered all his clothing, and kept him in only the best of everything. He wore all this fine clothing as though it meant nothing to him, as though, as far as he was concerned, it would have been all the same if his underwear had come from Walmart.

"He'd grab a wad of Big League Chew from the foil pouch in his dresser, or maybe drop to his knees to search for his trainers beneath the bed.

"The bed, the bed, always the bed! As teenagers, the bedroom was the center of our personal life, and the bed was the center of the bedroom. And this here was not just any bed, but Aaron's bed, which made it precious to me. My whole being floated in the heavenly scent on the sheets and the pillowcases of fabric softener and of him, which was the scent of soap, never cologne which would have somehow cheapened him for me. The rumpling of the bedspread at the foot of the mattress, the magazines the t-shirts the schoolbooks, all signs of him, of his presence and his activity in that place where, night after night, his body lay alone, in that most personal of places. And into that place I was granted special access because no one would ever suspect, not even Aaron himself, that I desired him as desperately as any high school girl could. I was restrained in my actions by my double fears of being revealed and being cast out. Not just rejected, but banished altogether. I would never gamble this small piece of friendship—for I had no doubt that, however I felt about Aaron, he regarded me, at that time at least, as just an ordinary friend, and I was happy to satisfy myself with that, and to luxuriate in the scent of fabric softener and soap on his bedsheets and his clothing.

"His mother would bring us Cokes, and then respectfully close the door behind her. It wasn't just this physical proximity to him and to the space of his most personal life—it wasn't just physical proximity which my maleness—the very thing that cut him off from me forever—granted me special access. It was also his thoughts and feelings. He would share information with me that he would never share with a girl. How far Kim had let him go; what girl had slept with the most guys in our class. But it was the stories of his own sexual life that thrilled me the most, for I could then imagine in vivid detail every moment, every hazarded caress, every kiss, and of course the moment of ultimate pleasure. He showed me the porno videos he liked to watch on the Internet, and I enjoyed them because I enjoyed imagining his own enjoyment and pleasure. Pleasure, Christ what a dirty word.

"And for all these privileges I worked hard. I constantly had to deflect attention from my embarrassing ignorance of sports, that lingua franca of teenage males. Aaron would say something like, 'Kershaw, man can that guy pitch,' and I was obviously supposed to respond with some favorite moment of the season, or else counter with somebody better. And he was so innocent of what it must be like not to care for sports that, when he sensed my hesitation to respond, he graciously assumed I was preparing a counter argument, and gamely tried to goad me on, 'He's got the Cy Young wrapped, dude.'

"That kind of verbal scrapping was typical. In the ritual of male-male friendship, it replaced the kind of physical scrapping that I recalled from my younger years, and even that formed part of our friendship: not so much the wrestling I recalled from my younger days, but still a little punch of the shoulder, a half nelson, a little shoving.

"But my failure to give him this thing he needed, this knowledge of my favorite teams and my favorite players—this failure was something I have long since regretted, because it was something he needed and wanted from me. For him it was part of what it meant to be a friend, it was a sign of closeness to know your best friend's favorite teams and favorite players. I know that, no matter how good natured he was, he sensed it, and he regretted its absence.

"Only once, when he was raw about something that had nothing to do with me, did he mock me for it. I never really understood why. We were at McDonald's, and he was reading the sports page, and he was surly about something, mostly ignoring me even though I had met him there at his own invitation, and when he wasn't ignoring me he was, I felt, deliberately baiting me with questions about the sports news. Question followed by silence followed by question followed by silence, until finally he broke and he said, 'Why can't you follow sports, like other guys?'

"A lot of what Aaron thought at the beginning, when he was still in high school, he later found to be untrue. His feelings were the only thing that turned out to be true. The facts in the matter, there ended up being at least two sets of those, each one unreeling a different chain of events. But how could he express it? This athlete, this jock, groping after some means of expressing deeply felt experiences, always thrown back upon cliche and incoherence, and yet I found it endearing.

"One summer night Aaron and I were at his parents' cabin on Lake Arispie, south of town, and he had gotten me drunk. It was my first time drunk, and I was getting sentimental. I remember saying, 'One of these days everybody'll be gone, and you'll come back to a town half empty, and half full of strangers, and it'll be their town now, and that'll be that.'

"I remember Aaron said, 'Maybe you will, but I somehow doubt I'll ever get out of this town.' I didn't know at the time that he had already begun seeing Rachel again, even as he and Kim began making plans for their"

Whatever this was, it ended as it began, with missing lines. Jake thought the Aaron in the diary surely could not be Aaron Archy—the Aaron described here was clearly much younger than Aaron Archy. The scenes described here were memories from the past, but the reference to Clayton Kershaw suggested that it would be a very recent past.

Jake raced home to prepare for his date with Heather.

That night, when he picked Heather up for dinner, she said, "I didn't know if you would actually come."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I don't know. I guess I had this nagging feeling that you were just using me for that information about Andrew Pecorelli."

"Oh, no way." He didn't feel guilty about lying to her because he didn't think it really mattered. Maybe it had been his intention, to obtain that information from her. Maybe even all the way through to the end of his first encounter with her. What did it matter, anyway? He had shown for the second date. It frustrated him that people dwelt so much on motives and intentions. Couldn't actions be considered apart from motives, which, after all, were invisible to everyone but the actor, and in many cases invisible even to the actor himself? Hadn't Mr. Archy said as much when he said that something can be happening—, that somebody can experience something without realizing it? So why this constant picking over people's motivations? And didn't she get something from him, and didn't he let her get what she got, without quizzing her why?

Her comment did, however, make him wonder why he had never considered the possibility of canceling the date. She was correct, actually, that he no longer needed her. But he liked her. He liked her competence, her intelligence. He liked her style, the way she dressed and looked and moved, the way she held herself. He was physically attracted to her too, but that signified nothing, as he could be attracted to most women. He could even imagine marrying her, but he also understood that he could never be faithful, at least not physically, and this inability to be faithful had nothing to do with her appearance either: he didn't think he could ever be physically faithful to any woman for long. Emotionally, though—he could imagine himself being emotionally faithful to Heather.

She said, "I mean, come on, a guy as good looking as you would ordinarily not be interested in a woman like me."

"I don't know. I guess that's your opinion."

"Well, I'm delighted to be proven wrong."

But of course she wasn't wrong, not really, and it was then that he saw the threshold of proof shimmer, like a mirage, before disappearing completely: one could seem to have proven anything with words, but words were also what people use for telling lies.

While they waited for their dinner, he said, "I noticed that picture in your hallway."

She smiled, almost as though he had said something amusing.

He thought maybe she didn't know what picture he was talking about, so he added, "That picture of the guy, the guy with the gun."

"Yes, I know what picture you mean. I'm surprised that his gun was the thing about him that most impressed itself on you."

"Well, yeah, I just didn't—"

"You didn't," she said, "Want to say the word 'penis'?"

He felt there was something a little challenging in her tone of voice, and also a little condescending.

"Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, what, do you love saying that word on a first date?"

"Hey, you brought up the photograph, and I like to use the correct words, whenever possible."

"So, you like that picture?"

"I don't usually hang photographs on my wall if I don't like them."

"Okay, right, but, I mean, what do you like about it?" He was surprised she would like such a picture, because she had seemed a little prudish to him.

"You might say that the reactions to it, reactions like yours, are part of what I like about it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's partially about subverting bourgeois conventionality. I remember when I first saw it, at a show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, I fell in love with it. Mapplethorpe presents a firearm and a beautiful, black penis, and most people will be more offended by the beautiful penis than by the gun. So it's a beautiful photograph of a beautiful man, and it's also transgressive."

"What do you mean by 'transgressive'?"

"Something, usually an act, but art can function like an action, that breaks convention, morality, even law. In art, its purpose is to challenge our conventionally held beliefs. For example, challenging our beliefs about beauty, and blackness, and the racialized body. Mapplethorpe compels us to interrogate our own assumptions about criminality and sexuality, about the criminalized black body and criminalized sexuality, the sexualized body and the desexualized body."

"Wow, yeah, that's very interesting. But isn't criminalized sexuality—I mean, there's a reason it's criminalized, right? So isn't that usually a bad thing? I mean I know not always. Obviously I support LGBTQ rights and all that, but some sex acts should still be criminal, shouldn't they? Not all sex should be considered good?"

"It's neither good nor bad: it's a social construct."

Intrigued now, he asked, "But what about rape?" Was it possible, he wondered, that rape was a social construct and nothing more?

"Whites have been using the discourse of rape to criminalize black male sexuality for centuries. Of course rape is a bad thing, but the trope of black men raping white women is an old form of racial oppression. Do you have any idea how many false allegations of rape have been made by white women against black men? The photograph, by the way, is titled 'Jacks Walls number 863'. In case you were interested."

He was silent for a moment. He felt a desire to be close with her. She was somebody who could understand human weakness, and who could forgive it or even comprehend it from some greater perspective, a perspective from which mistakes were not fatal, and could still be reconciled with life. Even more, though, she was somebody who by her own words did not believe that everyone accused of rape was guilty of it. He felt that with her one could have been accused of wrongdoing and still be okay, still be worth loving. He hesitated before saying, "You know, there's something you don't know about me."

She waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, she smiled, a very warm and generous and comprehending smile, and said, "Yeah? Just one thing?"

Her question had a lightness of touch, an adorable quality that created space, that removed pressure, and he panicked because it made him like her so much more and he no longer wished to share this thing about himself for fear it would cause her to dislike him, and he had been so serious and introspective just a moment before that her little joke had the effect almost of breaking him from a trance. To buy himself a moment to think, he said, "What?"

"You said there's something I don't know about you." She laughed. "And I was just teasing you."

"I don't understand."

"I was just giving you a hard time. You said there's something I don't know about you, and I was joking about the idea that there would be only a single thing I didn't know about you. You know, because we just met, so there are probably many things I don't know about you. Not just one."

He was still confused, though he understood her joke. His confusion now was over how he could retreat from the situation he had walked himself into. He no longer wished to share with her this secret, but now she pressed him:

"So what is it?"

He pretended not to understand: "What is what?"

"What you were going to tell me, about yourself."

"Oh, it was nothing. I don't even remember."

"Come on! Don't be like that. I shouldn't have teased you. I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. I really want to know what it is."

"It really wasn't anything."

He was surprised when she said, "Okay," and let the question drop. Most women, he felt, would have continued pressing him, relentlessly, nagging and nagging until he either revealed the secret, or else invented something suitably intimate to satisfy the curiosity, which, to his own regret, he himself had piqued.

She said, "So, then, tell me something about yourself that you think would surprise me?"

"Hmmm. That's a good one. Well, I like playing basketball—"

"No, sorry," she interjected, "Not at all unexpected. Sorry. Try again."

"Man, you're tough!"

"Come on," she said, "Try a little harder. Don't forget I just let you off the hook a few moments ago," and she winked at him.

"Okay, okay. Let's see. In college, I traveled a lot, all over the world—"

"How much is 'a lot'?"

"Pretty much every vacation: summer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break."

"How did you afford it? I mean, I assume this wasn't some massive study abroad tour."

"No, my parents didn't want me home, so every break they paid me to travel, anywhere I wanted, just so I didn't come home."

"Gosh, that's really sad. Why didn't they want you to come home?"

"Well, I guess a lot of kids have problems with their parents. I'm probably luckier than most."

"Luky how?"

"Lucky that they were willing to pay me not to come home; lucky that I didn't have to deal with all the garbage."

She nodded.

Then, without expecting to, he began talking more about himself, about his feelings: "At the same time, I've never, I don't—, I never really feel like I'm in control."

"What you mean?"

"It's like, things just happen to me, like I have no control. I want to feel like I have some control over my life, instead of just blowing from one thing to the next, like I'm just being knocked around this way and that and it's not always in a bad way, either. I mean, I understand that I benefit from white male privilege, but it still—, I mean it still means something else is in control; it's my privilege. I wonder if that makes any sense."

"I think so."

"You, on the other hand, you always seem to be in complete control. Even in your work. I mean, you run three houses. I'm an office assistant. I'm like, like a part of a machine, a part in a machine. I'm needed by the company to make things happen, but I myself make nothing happen. Anyway, enough about me. I don't usually even talk that much about myself. What about you? What's something that would surprise me about you?"

"Oh, that's easy," and she laughed. "In fact, where do I begin? But no, only one thing: you only get one thing. I have to keep a little mystery."

"You are very mysterious to me."

She laughed, "There's an equivocation if I ever heard one!"

"A what?"

"I'm just giving you a hard time. Okay, anyway, something that would surprise you about me. I suppose in some ways this isn't all that surprising, since I'm a housekeeper—believe me, growing up, I never thought I'd be uttering those words on a first date. Anyway, one thing I really love is seeing bachelor apartments, especially when they haven't been made up. You know, like when you pick up a girl at a bar, and you weren't expecting to, and when you bring her back to your apartment and you have to scramble to clear all the magazines and dirty laundry from your bed. I love that. And I love trying to spot as many details as possible—everything and anything. Are the sheets designer sheets? Are the sheets patterned? You know, like plaid sheets always make me think the guy's mother probably bought them for him. Is there a desk, a computer? What kind of computer? Headphones—are they high end or just junk you'd buy at Walmart? Books? Underwear brands? I'm a horrible snoop. When I go to a guy's apartment, and especially his bedroom, I'm taking an inventory. Does that surprise you?."

"Uh, yeah. And makes me a little nervous too!" But her words also uncannily echoed the diary paragraphs he had finished reading earlier that afternoon, in her obsession with a man's bedroom, though for the author of the journal pages the obsession was specific to a single person, this mysterious Aaron, while Heather's interest was more general.

She laughed. "I know—I just ruined my chance to see yours, or if I do, you will have it all nice and tidy, but that's the thing I thought might surprise you. Not that I've been in a lot of guy's bedrooms, but you know."

It made him think of his own bedroom, and he wondered what Heather would think. Most girls said something about how his sheets smelled like bleach.

"I wonder what it is about people's things—, about other people's things, I mean. Why are some people so interested in them. I feel like, when I go to somebody's home, it has to be something pretty striking—like that photograph on your wall—for me to notice."

"Well, it's all we have, isn't it? These things, as you say. The things are, I guess they could be called the facts. Everything else is just beliefs about those facts. Think about how much of what you think you know about the world—, how much of that is not really knowledge, but just belief."

"I don't think I understand."

"Knowledge can be based on direct observation of events and phenomena, and that's often considered the most reliable basis for knowledge, but of course that's only if we accept those, prima facie, as knowledge. But most of what we think we know is mediated. For example, a lot of facts become knowledge through mediation: I can actually count pebbles and derive the fact that two plus two equals four, but I have not measured the circumference of the globe and yet I accept the figure—almost twenty-five thousand miles, I think—I accept that figure as factual knowledge, but it's also mediated knowledge. And even the knowledge based on direct observation of events and phenomena: that knowledge can only take us so far before we must slip into belief. If I were to see your bedroom, and see that you have plaid sheets: the only thing I really know is that on the night of my visit, there were plaid sheets on your bed. I can make inferences from that knowledge, but even a fairly safe inference, like that you own a set of plaid sheets—, even that is ultimately only a belief. I don't know that you own those sheets. You could have borrowed them. And that's a safe inference. Most of the time we're living and thinking in a realm much farther removed from these fairly safe inferences. Maybe instead I infer that you are a preppy, and I then allow a whole series of subsequent inferences to unspool from that one. I'm not on very firm ground, am I? I mean, those sheets might have been on sale, or your mother might have given them to you. But just think how much of our time we spend out there in that realm of, well I guess you could call it high-risk speculation."

"Wow, well that's really interesting. I never thought about it before." And he was silent for a few moments, trying to process what she had said.

As if to lighten the conversation, she asked, "So where are you from?"

"Oh, a farm, near a very small town nobody ever heard of."

"In Illinois?"

"Yeah, about two hours from here. A few counties west. Basically between here and the Mississippi."

She nodded. "And you went to U of I?"

"Barely. My GPA and ACTs were not good. I only got in by applying to the ag school. Guess that's how come I ended up working for a commodities brokerage. I majored in ag economics." Then, changing the subject, he said, "You know, a lot of women like you would have said something attacking me by now."

"What do you mean by 'women like me'?"

"I don't know, intellectual types, I guess."

"Oh, you mean because you are a white male who doesn't really seem to get feminism?"

"Yeah, probably that. Although it might surprise you to know that I consider myself a feminist."

She smiled. "Well, maybe we can save that discussion for later."

Throughout the entire conversation he kept liking her more and more. He said, "You know, I think you and me—, I think we could have a thing together."

"A 'thing'?"

"Yeah, you know, I think we could have something."

"Yeah?" Again she laughed and again he had that feeling, like his soul was glowing.

At the end of the date he dropped her off at her apartment. They kissed for a few minutes in his car, but she did not invite him in.

The next day he drove to the Motel Maserati, just outside Aurora on the old Lincoln Highway. It was a three story, mid-century motel with exterior corridors, built around a central patio and swimming pool. The patio was furnished with umbrellas, deck chairs, bar, and three cabanas.

The motel's sign claimed "no vacancies", but the parking lot was empty.

The desk clerk sat behind bullet-proof plexiglass, with a built-in aluminum speak-thru. As soon as Jake entered the small lobby, the desk clerk said, "Sorry sir, we don't got any vacancies."

"I'm actually here to see somebody who's staying here, but I forgot his room number."

"Oh yeah? Who would that be?"

"Valentino Moretti. He told me to meet him here."

Suddenly solicitous, the desk clerk asked, "You one of his Hollywood friends?"

Surprised by this question, which only seemed to have one good answer, Jake said, "Yeah."

"You an actor?"

"No, movie producer."

"You look like an actor, but I suppose everyone in Hollywood looks like a star. I seen any of your movies?"

"Probably. Did you see Avatar?

"That one of yours?"

"Yeah," Jake said. Then, before the desk clerk could ask anymore questions to which he might not have convincing answers, Jake said, "Hey, I don't mean to be short, but could you tell me where Valentino's room is?"

The desk clerk became more reserved. "Why don't you just call him and ask?"

"I tried but he's not answering his phone."

"Exactly! Now you understand my predicament. And he owes me money. Oh, I don't mean to be hard on him—he always pays eventually. I know liquidity can be a problem in your business. But I got bills to pay too."

"Of course."

Then, apologetically, the desk clerk said, "I shouldn't've said anything. That's his private business. Don't tell anyone I told you that."

"Of course not."

"Look, I'll let you into his room since he's expecting you. You just fly in?"

"That's right."

"I woulda sent the van for you. Where's your luggage?"

"I got a rental car."

"You're staying here aren't you? All his friends usually do."

"No, I probably will. I just wanted to talk business with Valentino before—"

"Before the partying starts, eh?"

"Yeah."

"I'll take you up. He's room three-twenty."

320 was a dark room, the drapes drawn. Jake switched on a floor lamp. The room was stylishly appointed, with a sectional sofa, coffee table, and full wet bar. Men's fashion magazines covered a glass coffee table: Arena Homme, ID, L'Uomo Vogue.

Strangely, though, the room had no bed.

Jake needed more time to think, to figure out a next move. He unlocked a window that faced the exterior corridor, and opened it just wide enough so that he would be able to pry his fingers underneath and crawl back inside.

At the motel office he asked the desk clerk for a room on the third floor.

"Sorry, but Mr. Moretti prefers to have all his guests at pool level if possible, and since you're the first one here—"

"That's cool."

The clerk asked, "Is there gonna be a big party tonight?"

"I don't know how big."

The desk clerk gave Jake a key, and said, "One oh three."

"You need a credit card or anything?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Moretti always pays for his important guests."

"Okay. Thanks again."

As Jake walked to his room, his phone rang, and he saw that it was Heather, which gave him a quick burst of happiness. "Hey!"

She, however, did not sound at all happy to be speaking with him: "I should have known you were using me—!"

"What are you talking—?"

"Please don't make it worse." He could hear in her voice that she was angry, but also upset, or disappointed.

Again he asked, "What in the hell are you talking about?"

"Your friend Lennie came to see Mrs. Moretti today."

He panicked, and the panic was so pure that it had nothing to do with Heather or the fact that he had betrayed her, but he panicked in fear over what Lennie might have said. He looked around himself, by instinct, as if he could spot danger approaching. He knew that if Lennie told Mrs. Moretti about the Motel Maserati, then Mrs. Moretti would probably tell Mr. Archy, and Mr. Archy would immediately send somebody to the motel to find him. "What did she want?"

Heather said, "She who?"

"Lennie, dammit!" He instantly regretted losing his patience.

"You aren't even smart enough to disguise your knowledge that Lennie is a woman. Last time we spoke, you thought Lennie was a man."

"I—, look, Heather, I'm sorry but—"

"But what?"

"I did lie to you, and I'm sorry, but give me a chance to explain."

She scoffed, "I'd love nothing more than to hear you try to explain your way out of this. I'm such an idiot to have trusted you."

"But you don't understand, I could be in real danger. You could be in real danger. You have to tell me, do you know what she said to Mrs. Moretti?"

"Why should I should tell you? Give me a good reason. Even just one."

"I think these are really dangerous people. You've got to trust me. If you know, please."

She was silent a moment, before saying, "I'll tell you in person. Where are you?"

"Maybe we should meet somewhere," he said.

"No. I want to know where you are. Try the truth out for a change, Jake. It's a lot easier than you might think."

"Yes, but I think I could be in danger here. I think you would be in danger."

She laughed mockingly, "You should stop getting your excuses from action movies."

"Fine. I'm texting you my location. I'm in room one oh three. How quickly can you be here?"

She arrived about an hour later. When he heard the knock at his door, he checked the eyehole, half expecting some thug, but he saw Heather standing there and he opened the door. "Come in, hurry before anyone sees you."

She entered the room and looked around, as if seeking clues to the purpose behind his duplicity. "What are you doing here? What is this place?"

"I'll explain, but please, just tell me, do you know why Lennie visited Mrs. Moretti?"

She kissed him. He felt as though he was being marked, but he liked it, and it seemed like a favorable sign too.

"I'm begging you," he said, "Please, I have to know: did she say anything about this place?"

"No."

"Did she say anything about telling me anything?"

"No."

"How can you be sure?"

"There's a bug in that room. I don't know who installed it. Probably one of her children. Probably they installed it and forgot about it. I found it once when I was cleaning a closet in what used to be Valentino's room. I almost never use it, but when Leona arrived at the house today, I was suspicious. It's not that she never visits, because she does, but the timing just felt suspicious. After what I had told you."

With some dread, he asked, "So you heard everything?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"She said you contacted her, and that you visited her at the Pedrosa Stables. She said you were asking about Valentino."

"Anything else?"

"No. She obviously just wanted to taunt Mrs. Moretti. You look relieved. What really happened."

"She's the one who told me about this place. She told me that Valentino uses this place as a kind of hideout, and that he also holds big parties here."

Heather looked him in the eye, and asked, "Did you sleep with her?"

Her directness surprised him. "No, I didn't sleep with her."

She kept looking him in the eye.

He decided to be honest. He knew he couldn't start anything with her based on so foundational a lie: "But I had sex with her."

She shook her head.

"I had to. It was all I had. You don't understand. It's all I have, and it paid off too. She told me about this place."

"Why do you want to go prying into Valentino's business so badly anyway?"

He had no answer for that question. "I want to show you something." He led her to room 320, opened the window, and climbed in, motioning for her to follow, closing the window behind them.

He could see by the expression on her face that she was surprised, curious, but also that she was taking in a lot of information. He felt he could almost see her mind working, drawing conclusion, making connections, raising questions.

"The desk clerk says this is Valentino's room. When I arrived, he asked me, 'Are you one of Mr. Moretti's Hollywood friends?' He said that Valentino has big parties here."

She kept surveying and then re-surveying the room. "Well this obviously is not his room, or at least not his only room. There's no bed for starters." She examined the thermostat for about two minutes, then she turned to the drapes, and felt them. She said, as if to herself, "Saranspun flameproof drapes." She walked from the drapes to the communicating door, and said "Look at how the furniture is arranged with respect to the communicating door."

"I was sort of wondering about the door too. I just had a feeling about it. But I don't understand what you mean about the furniture."

"It's obvious that this door is regularly used. The furniture is arranged almost as if that's a hallway. You can feel the flow, the foot traffic being guided away from this room and into the adjoining. If the door were never meant to be used, the furniture would be arranged against it, as if to deny its existence. Nobody features a door that can't be used." She put her ear against the door, then tried the doorknob, but it was locked. She opened her purse and began digging through it, until she found a nail file and a bobby pin, which she inserted into the lock.

Surprised that she would even know how, he asked, "Are you picking that lock?"

"I'm trying to anyway. If this door isn't actually used, though, it will be locked from the otherside as well."

"How do you know how to pick locks?"

"A housekeeper has to know all sorts of things. You have no idea how many times I've had to pick locks to rooms when someone has lost the keys."

In less than a minute the lock clicked and the she opened the door, and immediately it became clear that Valentino's room was actually a suite, formed from at least three adjoining rooms. The second room was partitioned, so that it formed a hallway to the third room, which was furnished much like the first room, except that in this room they found cocaine dust on the coffee table, used syringes in the trash, pill bottles, meth pipes, a bong, and a heap of marijuana roaches in an ashtray. Pill bottles on the bar and lots of dirty lowball glasses almost everywhere.

The exterior doors to these two rooms were bolted shut.

Heather went back to the the second room, the hallway. A door in the makeshift wall was also locked, and again she picked this lock. It opened onto a sort of office, with laptop computers, cell phones, tablet computers, and about a dozen notebooks. One notebook was filled with logins and passwords to hundreds of email accounts. Another contained logins and passwords to social media accounts. Another had logins and passwords to bank accounts and credit card accounts. Another was more logins and passwords, account numbers, cell phone numbers, password recovery answers, names, social security numbers, and IP addresses.

Jake found five Glocks and two cases of bullets in a closet.

The computers were password protected, but the cell phones, strangely, were unlocked. All the phones were loaded with dozens of social media apps. Heather said, "Strange, these phones all have Grindr loaded onto them."

"What is Grindr?"

"It's like Tinder, only for gay men. Huh. I didn't realize Valentino is gay." She continued examining the phones. "The strange thing is that each phone is linked to a different Grindr account." She spent an hour inspecting the phones and their apps. Jake sat and watched her. Something about her apparent powers of concentration fascinated him, attracted him. She kept shifting from phone to phone, comparing and sorting the devices. He saw that she was making a mental inventory of messages and activity on each of the apps.

By the end of the hour, she held a single phone. "This is interesting. There's only one contact on these apps who addresses the recipient as Valentino, though I would bet anything that Valentino is operating all the accounts. In fact, the Grindr profile on this phone," and she held it up, "Is for an alias named Jeremy, but somehow this one correspondent knows Valentino's real name, and—hold on here!—just five days ago wrote, 'Valentino, where the fuck are you?' The sender's name is Mitch, and Mitch is currently 75 miles away, and he's online right now."

"What should we do?"

"It's up to you. We could walk away. We could spend more time looking through these mounds of information. Or we could try to meet this person named Mitch."

He hesitated before saying, "Let's do it."

"Contact Mitch?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, here goes. 'Mitch it's me. Sorry to be AWOL'—that sounds like Valentino, to me."

Five minutes later a response appeared, "Christ, Valentino, where the hell have you been? Rachel told me about what happened in the garden. When can we meet. You must be in Aurora."

Heather said to Jake, "So he must know about this place." Then she messaged, "'Yeah, back in Aurora'."

"I could be there in an hour or so."

"Shit," she said.

"What?"

"He wants to come here?"

"How does he know where we are? Tell him not to come. Quickly!"

She typed into the app, "'Mitch, don't come now. It's not safe'." But they received no response.

Jake asked, "What do you think? Should we leave before he gets here?"

"I don't know. Probably. It would be interesting to ask him a few questions, though." So they decided to stay and meet him. At that point it still seemed as though the situation could, possibly, resolve itself with little or no trouble. Maybe Mitch would know something that could help them find Valentino, and then they would one day look back on this as a little adventure. She said, "We aren't even certain that he knows about the motel. I mean he only mentioned Aurora. But he probably does know."

While waiting for Mitch to arrive, Jake and Heather returned to the third room, and saw that its connecting door opened onto a fourth room, a bedroom. As they entered the bedroom, Jake had an intense feeling of revulsion, something in the smell of the room combined with its state of disarray, he couldn't identify what exactly appalled him. The room was cool and damp and airless, like the other rooms. But there was a smell about this room, of lurid sex, of lubricants and latex and sweat and bodies and cologne. Of unwashed sheets, of men. He never before had so strong a sense of knowing, without knowing, what had happened in a place. And there was no scent of women.

A video camera on a tripod faced the bed. A firewire cable connected the camera to a laptop computer on a desk, which also faced the bed. Heather sat down at the desk and opened the computer. The computer woke from its sleep onto a web browser, a video chat site, Chat Stranger. The web browser divided horizontally into two windows. The bottom window displayed the room before them; the top window cycled through other rooms, all over the world, live streamed. Inside each room was a man, the site kept scrolling from room to room, person to person. It was almost like moving through a human menagerie: men masturbating; men watching televisions that were somewhere off screen; men staring blankly into their computers; men lying on their beds with erections visible beneath their underwear; men reading books. Some men's faces were disguised, others not. Men of all ages, from all over the world: United States, England, France, Germany, Turkey, Pakistan, Algeria, India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Finland, Canada, Russia, Ukraine. Men from everywhere, and every time zone. Some attractive, some repulsive.

Suddenly, Jake appeared in the bottom half of the screen, and Heather looked up and saw that he was mugging for the camera. Laughing, he asked, "Am I on television? Hi mom!"

As soon as Jake entered the chatroom, the top window stopped cycling. A man, apparently, was interested, and typed a message, "Hey stud."

Heather closed the laptop, and stood, again. She began moving through the room, inventorying it aloud, "Ashtrays; KY Jelly; Sheik condoms; amyl nitrite poppers; men's white, Calvin Klein cotton underwear; Sevoflurane ether; Stella Artois beer bottles; soiled Texfoam mattress; polypropylene rope; textured Avicron tumble-weave bedspread with chenille border; blood stained Martex towels. Cans of gefilte fish in jellied broth."

Jake asked, "How do you know all this stuff, everything so precisely what it is?"

"Just like picking the lock, I guess: being a housekeeper, you learn all sorts of things."

"What in God's name is this place?" The room seemed to be filled with germs, seemed actively infected. He became aware that the disgust he felt had a moral dimension, and this bothered him; his disgust felt almost threatening, predatory—no, not like a predator, but like an emotional parasite that could locate a well concealed source of guilt, and join itself to that guilt, attaching itself to the guilt, each feeding off the other until both became stronger in the union: guilt and disgust. Something about the room, it was more than just a malodorous atmosphere: its state of disarray and the things that had obviously gone on here, it felt out of control, like a prison riot, like sexual chaos. He fled the room.

About two hours later, they heard somebody knocking at the door to the first room. Jake checked the peephole and recognized Mitch from his Grindr profile picture. When Jake opened the door, Mitch did not seem at all surprised to see a stranger in the room. He had a cocky, breezy manner. "I'm here to see Valentino."

Jake asked, "Was he expecting you?"

A little dismissively, he answered, "Just tell him it's Mitch."

Before Jake could even invite him, Mitch walked right into the room and sat on the sofa, as though he were a frequent guest. This guy Mitch did not strike Jake as somebody who would be interested in sharing secrets, which of course was what Jake and Heather had been hoping. Probably he was just another grifter. Jake's sense of being in danger returned; he worried that, if Mitch were allowed to get the upper hand, then he and Heather could actually be in danger. Jake stepped behind the sofa; he loosened his necktie; he asked, "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Johnny Walker. The Blue Label, thanks."

"Ice?"

"Neat. Not too sure about the ice. Is there a boil order up here too?"

Jake removed his necktie, then poured the whiskey into a lowball glass, and quietly set the glass on the bar. He held the necktie between his hands and approached the sofa from behind. As fast as he could strike, and he was athletic and fast, he threw the tie around Mitch's neck and began to strangle him with it:

"What," Jake asked, struggling with Mitch, "Are you and Valentino up to here?"

Heather entered the room; she was carrying a bag and pointing a Glock at Mitch.

Mitch squirmed and kicked and gasped for breath. "I didn't steal the money; I didn't have anything to do with that; it was all Valentino. I don't know anything about it!"

Heather joined Jake behind the sofa, and placed the Glock onto the bar, next to Mitch's drink. From the bag she removed the bottle of ether, a hand towel, and some rope, all of which she must have taken from the bedroom. She soaked the hand towel in ether, and then covered Mitch's nose and mouth with it until he lost consciousness. "Loosen the tie," she said to Jake, "And grab his arms." She tossed him the rope and said, "Tie his hands and legs."

Jake tied Mitch's arms behind his back using a binding knot he had learned in the Boy Scouts. He then tied Mitch's legs as well.

While testing the knots, Heather said, "That was fast, and impressive."

Her compliment pleased him, and he said, "Boy Scouts. Eagle Scout. Guess I'm actually prepared for something."

As if changing the subject, she said, "Okay, we need to talk."

"Isn't that what we're doing?"

"In the other room."

He followed her to the bedroom.

She asked, "So what the hell are we doing?"

"I don't know what you mean. I mean, that seems pretty obvious to me."

"Is it? Would you mind explaining it to me, then? You could begin by telling me how you imagine this ending."

Her question annoyed him, not just because he didn't have an answer, and not just because he hadn't previously considered the question, but because he didn't even necessarily understand why the question needed answering, or for that matter why it needed to be asked. He understood, or was beginning to understand, that she was a practical person, and he had already seen evidence of how useful that could be. He probably wouldn't even have gotten this far without her. But it seemed that practicality could also only get one so far. Didn't her question itself illustrate the fundamental flaw in a practical approach: it could only ever take you to an end point, but could never take you beyond it; a practical approach could only take you where you already knew you wanted to go. What if you didn't know where that was, if you didn't know the endgame? But he couldn't explain these things to her. He said, "Do we have to know how it ends?"

"We should at least know why we're doing what we're doing; and yes, I think ideally it would be good to know what we hope to achieve."

"Are they even the same thing?"

She was becoming a little irritated, "Are what the same thing?"

"The why we're doing, and the what we hope to achieve."

"Let's just say it would be good if they at least aligned somehow."

"And what if I don't have an answer to either?"

"Then I think we should get out of this while we still can."

"Funny you didn't think that an hour ago, when we had the chance to get away before this guy showed up."

"I made a mistake. I didn't realize what was going to happen. I didn't realize you were going to use force with him."

"Me! Christ, you're the one who comes out of the back with a gun and a bottle of ether—"

"I was trying to contain the situation as best I could. The situation that you created."

Jake shook his head. "You really have a convenient memory. You were the one who decided we should stay and meet him—"

"Yes," she interrupted, "Meet him. Not strangle him with a tie. If I hadn't come into the room, he would have reversed the struggle against you, no doubt in my mind. But now it's time to cut our losses and get out of here."

Gesturing toward the room where Mitch lay unconscious, he asked, "And what about him?"

"We untie him and leave him there, while he's still unconscious."

As if taking a principled stand, Jake said, "Well I'm staying. I've got my gun now. I'll use it if I have to. I don't care—what do I have to go back to? You can't seriously think I have a job to return to."

"I don't know what these people are up to, Jake, but they're obviously very dangerous This isn't a movie. These people will kill us. We will end up dead, probably in the most painful way possible."

He recalled the four men from the Metra train, the man with the shaved head who had said "You're being played," and that Doheny was a money laundering front. Jake wondered what ever happened to those men, and if they might possibly be coming for him even now. He looked out the window, at the terraced patio, the hot sun on the concrete and the cool blue water in the swimming pool. He thought of the boil order and of the man behind the bullet proof glass at the front desk.

Jake said, "I'm not stopping you from leaving if you want to go."

"Why didn't you stop me from coming?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you let me come here and get involved to begin with?"

"Well in the first place, I told you it was dangerous. And I did tell you not to come here, but you insisted. And in the second place, well, I didn't want you to think I had used you. When you found out about Leona. I wasn't just using you. Or maybe I did, but I sincerely like you."

"And how will you get him to talk?"

"What choice does he have. Given the situation."

"That's what I mean. You have no plan. 'What choice does he have' is not a plan. You haven't even thought this through. You think you can wave that gun in his face and he's just magically going to spill everything? No way. He's probably a hardened criminal, probably a con artist. You think he hasn't already thought through every possible angle on situations like this? I bet he's got us both sized up. I bet he knows that neither of us would have the guts actually to shoot him, and even if we did we can't: he's no use dead. You know how the experts get uncooperative prisoners to talk?"

Jake shook his head.

"Slow, methodical torture. Are you really up for that? You think you have that in you?"

The simplicity of her question, requiring little subtlety of thought, had the effect of a switch, like a switch that illuminated ten Klieg lights trained onto his soul, ten Klieg lights that allowed him to see deep down inside himself, as if he were a Visible Man toy and he could see straight through his skin, except that what he saw there were not organs, but visible potential, and that yes indeed he was capable of torturing somebody, that he was capable of almost anything so long as he maintained his access to this wellspring of potential, a quality both powerful and unbelievably simple, so simple that it could only be expressed by the word "yes", which was in fact how he did express his answer to Heather's question: "Yes." This yes was, however, a yes that he feared she could not, or would not, understand: it was a yes to life, to its great hidden depths that labored like an enormous engine to move things, to keep things moving, and therein lay the insight vouchsafed by these Kliegs: that life was not feeling or breathing, but movement, and not mere motility, but a very special kind of movement that most closely resembled the plot of a movie, a story, and it was to this life, this movement, that he realized he must always cooperate, must always answer yes, and to which he was answering yes when he answered Heather's question with his simple yes.

She just stared at him with incredulity. She was smarter than he was, but her intelligence exhausted her mental capacity, so that she possessed no reserve of force or will to call upon. She could not really throw herself in with his plan because he had no real plan. His plan was not something that could be comprehended intellectually, but only acted upon. Action, he saw, was the key.

She said, "I think I better leave."

"I guess you better."

She turned away, moved toward the door, and then looked back at him again: "Let me ask you something. I understand that you were just using me. Or I should say, I understand that you used me for information. That's fine. If I'm being honest with myself, well, it's not as though I have never used anybody before. But you said, you claimed, that you also liked me. Was that true?"

"Yes."

"Can you name one thing you liked about me?"

He hesitated, "I—, well, you're—"

"Please," she interrupted, "Don't say you think I'm smart."

It was exactly what he had been about to say, and even that was only because he could think of nothing else. He did believe she was smart, and he did like that quality about her, but as an answer to her question, there was no conviction in it, because even he comprehended that her intelligence was not the thing he liked about her. His mind did not work analytically, or it was insufficiently analytical to help him find a satisfactory answer. He said, "You're very hard on me."

"Why? How?"

"Because not everybody can slice and dice their feelings into parts. Not everybody knows why they feel the way they feel. It's a feeling, okay? And anyway, we haven't even known each other very long, and you've already, like, got us into couple's therapy or something."

She shook her head.

"And besides," he added, "If somebody intelligent is attracted to a handsome guy who isn't very smart, nobody thinks anything of it. But if a good looking guy says he likes a smart girl, he's accused of working an angle. If that's how you want to play this, if that makes you feel better, then fine."

She left; Jake heard the door close, and he returned to the room where Mitch still lay unconscious on the floor. At first he felt relieved to have her gone. Only later, and slowly, did he begin to regret that he couldn't make her stay, did he begin to realize that he liked her, really really liked her more than he thought he was even capable of liking somebody.

For a time Jake sat on the couch and watched Mitch. He wondered how long it would take before Mitch regained consciousness. He went back to the third room, and lay down on the sofa. Nothing could compel him to reenter the fourth room, the bedroom, but he could not stop himself from wondering about all the filthy things that had probably happened there.

Jake's phone pinged: a Facebook message from Lennie. It was a photograph of a woman. "This is the girl I saw go into the japanese garden after valentino. Found her on his insta page," and she included a link to the Instagram page: Rachel Piper. There were dozens of photographs of her partying with Valentino but also with minor celebrities that Aaron recognized from movies, from television, from the Internet. Many of the photographs had obviously been taken there at the motel, down by the pool and at least one in the very room where Jake was sitting. She had 1.8K followers.

His phone pinged again, and it was a link to a PornHub video of Mitch having sex with Rachel. Mitch's porn name, on PornHub at least, was Max Blaster. The name linked to twenty additional videos, mostly of Mitch with other men. He watched the video of Rachel and Mitch twice.

The next day, when Jake returned to the first room, Mitch was awake. Mitch sleepily looked up at Jake, as though he were viewing the world through a gauzy curtain. He said, "Jesus Christ. What'd you go and do that for? Is this about the money?"

"It's not about the money."

Mitch asked, "Where's Valentino?"

"I was hoping you would be able to tell me."

"I don't understand. Are you one of his models?"

"No."

"But you could be, you know," Mitch said. "You're good enough."

Jake said, "What?"

"You're good enough," he slurringly repeated. "Good looking enough."

"What kind of modeling are you talking about?"

"You just have to go on chat rooms and meet people. It's really easy. He's always looking for fresh faces. Or, if you want to make more money, he also makes porno vids."

Jake asked, "Is Valentino your boyfriend?"

"Christ, no. I'm not gay."

"But you have sex with men on camera?"

"For money, sure, why not?"

"And you met Valentino on Grindr."

"That was just small-time con stuff, one of my rackets, picking up men on the down low, and then blackmailing them. Valentino was doing the same, and that's how we met."

"Okay, but then why didn't you just go your separate ways after you realized your mistake?"

"Because Valentino saw what I was doing, and he said I could be making even more money, and he taught me how."

"And how's that?"

"He's got all these friends like me, and he has us cruise the gay chatrooms. These are guys from all over the world. We'd just flip through the chatrooms until we find a desperate pathetic old loser whose sex cravings overpower him. If you make them think you really like them, there's almost nothing they won't do. And then we'd con the scores into giving us some personal information. You just need to get a little, a wedge; you promise to call them or text them: there's a list of peer to peer services we're supposed to shift them to. Valentino has some guy in South Africa, Cape Town I think, who exploits vulnerabilities in these networks to steal these people's identities, drain their bank accounts, run up their credit cards. The money goes into offshore bank accounts, and then Valentino has some way of legally moving the money into the U.S. accounts, and he'd then immediately cash out those accounts. I don't know how he did it—he was just using us models as ropers."

"I don't understand how you're able to blackmail these men. I mean, nobody really thinks there's anything wrong with being gay anymore. What are they afraid of?"

Mitch, still lying there on the floor all tied up, rolled over onto his side. "Valentino has this friend, Flip, a real intellectual Flip with a real dopey name. Anyway, Flip, he's always saying, 'Gay marriage is just a red herring'."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Mitch laughed. "Fuck if I know, really, but it has to do with the sex hunger. Believe me, there are still a lot of men who don't want to be gay. I'm pretty sure Flip himself is secretly a cock sucker."

"You mentioned stolen money: what happened to that money?"

"I don't know. He stole it from some company he was working for. It's got nothing to do with me. He was going to give it to a girl."

"What girl?"

"Just some girl; I don't know who she is."

Jake kicked him in the face, and blood sprayed from his nose onto the white wall. Then Jake asked him again, this time more emphatically, "What girl?"

"Her name is Rachel."

Jake showed him the photograph of Rachel on his phone, the photograph that Lennie had sent him. "Is this Rachel?"

"No. I never met her."

"You know this girl; don't lie to me."

"Alright, alright: she's my sister. That's Rachel. She might not actually be my sister, though. I mean, our mother told us we were, but my mother was a slut, just like Rachel, and probably we're half siblings at best and maybe not even that."

Incredulous, recalling the video of Mitch having sex with her, Jake said, "Your sister? Okay, then is this is the girl who ran off with the money?"

"Yes, I think so."

Then Jake asked, "Do you often have sex with your sister?"

"What the fuck are you talking about man?"

Jake showed him the PornHub video.

Mitch said, "We got a lot of money for that. A lot of guys really get off on that."

"Christ, man, do you realize how fucked up that is?"

Mitch sneered, "If you think that's fucked up, then you don't even know the half. And anyway, what did you do to end up here?"

"I didn't do anything. I'm trying to find Valentino." Then, recalling the back room, Jake asked him, "What went on in that bedroom back there?"

"What do you want to have gone on?"

"That room," Jake said, "It smells like sex crimes."

"Oh yeah? I don't think I'd know what sex crimes smell like. How is it you do?" After Jake did not answer, Mitch continued, "So you're interested in sex crimes, huh? You think a brother fucking his sister is a sex crime—?"

"No, I think it's perverted, and I think rape is a sex crime."

"And what is rape? You think rape went on back there?"

Jake said, "Did you and Valentino and your friends have sex with girls who either were unable to give consent, or who actually refused to give consent?"

Mitch laughed. "That's how it is for you, is it? That easy? So you never raped nobody? Nah, I don't believe that. I think you raped."

Jake kicked him again, this time in the gut. "Fuck you."

Mr. Fransen, you say you and Ms. Wiley engaged in consensual sex? Yes. Did you have Ms. Wiley's consent to kiss her? Yes. So Ms. Wiley verbally gave you permission to kiss her? Well, no, not verbal—. So Ms. Wiley did not give you verbal consent to kiss her, then? No, I guess not by your definition. You say Ms. Wiley removed her blouse, by herself. Yes, that is correct. But you removed her bra? Yes. Did she give her consent? Not verbally, no. And you say she partially removed her own underwear—what do you mean by that? She pulled her underwear down to he knees, and she placed my hand between her legs. Did she give you consent to put your hands between her legs? No, but she put it there! Please calm down Mr. Fransen. Now, Ms. Wiley has stated that although it's true she pulled her underwear down to her knees, it was you who removed it the rest of the way from her body. Is that true? Yes. And did she give you her consent to do that? No. Did Ms. Wiley give you her consent to penetrate her with your penis? Not verbally, no. So she did not give you her consent. Did you know that Ms. Wiley was drunk during this encounter, and therefore, according to University statutes, unable to grant her consent to any sexual activity whatsoever? No. It is the position of the Title IX Coordinator that, on the night of November twelfth, you raped Ms. Wiley.

Mitch smirked. "Well, I don't even care about rape. Nobody who parties here comes with any illusions about sex and consent. Why are you so interested in sex crimes? All kinds of perverts out there, slick. What kind are you? We find them and we break them; we break their bank accounts. But in order to find them, we have to lure them. That is what we do here. And we also party. We party hard. People who can't party hard should not come here. But the ones who can, man they come from all over the country, and they party hard. You want to find Valentino, start by looking under the letter C, and I'm not talking about cunt either."

At that same moment, there was a knock at the door. Jake checked the peephole, and it was a man with two teenagers, a boy and a girl. Jake chain bolted the door, and opened it a few inches. The man said, "Hey, it's Donny. Valentino should be expecting me—I sent him a text. Tell him I'm here; it's Donny. With the two new models."

"Valentino says to go away," and Jake shut the door.

Immediately, he received a text message from Lennie: "if you're still at the motel get out. they think valentino has stolen money stashed there."

Jake understood now what Heather had warned him against, that there would be trouble and no turning back from it; he understood now that he was in trouble. Not potential, but trouble. Why did Trouble have this way of finding him? Or did it? Wasn't it true that he consistently sought it out, through his own stupidity, his own impulsiveness?

Inside his mind, Jake felt a sudden and massive drop in pressure; it made him dizzy; toxic emotions began bleeding out into consciousness, mixing with thoughts and memories, attaching themselves to thoughts and memories from which they had long ago been cleansed, pain and suffering that had been forced down now came rushing out, so liquid like, so blood like, oozing and spilling; his knees buckled and he fell to the floor and he sobbed. But why should he sob, unless out of remorse, and it wasn't?

Jake stood, and lifted Mitch off the floor, setting him on the sofa. "Mitch, Mitchell: look at me. Tell me what is going on."

Mitch did look at him, and said, "I don't know what you are talking about."

He grabbed Mitch by the front of his shirt: "Look man, where's Valentino? They're looking for the money he stole. Where are you from? Almost a hundred miles away from here, but where? We have to leave this place. They're going to come here looking for their money. Where are you from? How did you meet Valentino?"

"Okay, okay! From a small town far away. Nobody ever heard of it. Tiskilwa."

"Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, you have fucking got to be kidding me. Are you fucking with me?"

"Why would I? You know Tiskilwa or something?"

Jake was from a town a few miles north of there, but had not been back since the summer before he was suspended.

FAR AWAY NOW, AND ONE MONTH LATER: four counties out, clear west almost as far as the leading edge of the Bloomington Moraine, outside a wooden shed next to a grain elevator, between the grain elevator and highway 29, Mitch and Jake were waiting in Jake's car. The town, population 150, was called Putnam.

On the drive there, they had crossed the Illinois River, and Jake, who had not seen the river for years, remembered how surprisingly serene it was, how it seemed to stretch motionlessly across the landscape like a chain of lakes. He never saw a body of water in motion look so still, and then he remembered how still everything out there was, and everything remained very still even when they arrived at the grain elevator beside the highway.

They were supposed to be meeting a friend of Mitch's in this place. Mitch claimed the person would be able to help them find Valentino and Rachel.

Across the street an abandoned restaurant, Cindy's Country Corner Cafe, looked as though it had been closed for at least three decades. Weeds carved the parking lot into large, irregularly shaped slabs of concrete. The place had obviously once been a gasoline station—the service bay was still being used as somebody's garage, and the lamp standard, with its projecting winged lights, still stood atop an uncanopied pumping island. The gasoline pumps were long gone. Jake felt as though all the humans were long gone too. Usually, in a small town, the newest building would be its gas station, especially if the town were fortunate enough to have a Huck's or a Casey's or a Thornton's. A town like Putnam didn't even have that.

On the other side of the grain elevator, a freight train charged through and then was gone, and everything was silent again. Every five or ten minutes a car or truck would speed past.

Everything about this town seemed gravely to Jake, like gravel ground down to dust and mixed with a little sand.

Jake said, "What time's he supposed to meet us here?"

"Any minute now, dude. Just chill."

"This guy, Travis—I still don't understand why you think he can help us find Valentino or Rachel."

Mitch snapped at him, "You know what your problem is man? You want to know things you aren't supposed to know, to see things you aren't supposed to see, to experience things you aren't supposed to experience. And it's going to get you killed though you still don't believe it."

"Yeah, whatever."

An '82 Honda Accord pulled off the highway, and rolled across the gravel to a stop right behind Jake's car. Mitch said, "Here he is."

The guy, Travis, left the Accord and got into the backseat of Jake's car.

Right away Travis said, "Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing, Mitch? And where have you been? Nobody's heard from you or Rachel in over a month."

Ignorning Travis's questions, Mitch said, "Travis, this is Jake Fransen. Jake, this is Travis Clayton. Jake wants to find Rachel and Valentino."

"What makes you think I could help you with that? She's your sister; you know her better than I do. I hardly knew her at all."

"I thought Aaron might know how to find her."

"Even if Aaron knew, he's not going to help you. You're just about the last person he'd help—you know that."

"Obviously, but you on the other hand—, he'd be willing to help you. You know he would."

Travis glanced at Jake, and then said, "Let me talk to this guy alone."

Mitch asked, "Why?"

Travis: "You got a lot of nerve, asking why. Let me talk to him alone."

"Fine."

Addressing Jake, Travis said, "Follow me," and he led Jake to the shed beside the grain elevator. He unlocked the door and they went inside, which was an office with a counter and desks and computers and filing cabinets. Just an office, where they would conduct the business of a grain elevator.

Travis said, "I didn't want to say this in front of Mitch, because he doesn't know, but you're The Killer, right?"

Jake almost laughed. "The what?"

"You're, like, Valentino's assassin. He told me about you."

"What the hell are you talking about, man? I didn't assassinate Valentino. What makes you think he's even dead?"

"No, no, I mean you're his hit man; you work for Valentino. He talked about you a lot. He called you The Killer."

Jake shook his head in disbelief. "Whatever Valentino might have told you, it was obviously a lie. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Are you from Chicago?"

"No, from a town just north of here—Elmville."

That was the town where Jake had grown up, but he did not remember this guy Travis, who was older than Jake.

Travis said, "You know, there are Fransens in Elmville. Any relation?"

"No."

"But how can you be sure?"

Jake shrugged his shoulders in feigned irritation.

Travis: "Just a coincidence, I guess."

"Yeah, well, in my experience, everything having to do with Valentino ends up being a weird coincidence, but the weirdest for me is how he became involved with you guys out here. I mean, how do you even know Valentino?"

"We met Valentino through Mitch."

"'We'? Who's we?"

"Aaron and me."

"And who's Aaron?" Each time Jake heard Mitch or Travis mention "Aaron", it bothered him, even though he was certain they could not be referring to Aaron Archy.

"A friend of mine. Aaron Cord."

Jake definitely recognized the name Aaron Cord. He remembered the guy being a high school football star, back when Jake was still in elementary school. "Okay, so you and your friend Aaron met Valentino through Mitch. Then how do you know Mitch?"

"Aaron introduced me to Mitch. In fact, it was the same day I first met Rachel. Aaron took me out to Bureau Junction, a nearby town, to meet her, because she was his girlfriend, his secret girlfriend. And Mitch was there with her. They were hanging out in a baseball diamond dugout drinking beer. Aaron apparently already knew Mitch, though he had never mentioned him before. Mitch looked like a movie star. I mean, he still does, but a few years ago even more so: he was kind of sulky, but tough. He's probably too short, though. I quickly learned that he was totally depraved, which got me into trouble almost right away. Aaron and Rachel went back to Aaron's car to makeout, and Mitch came on to me, and he gave me a blowjob—"

"Hold up a second: You're gay? Mitch is gay?"

Travis: "Yeah, why? Did he tell you he isn't?"

"Well he said he'd only do it for money."

"I'm not surprised he'd say that. I'm not judging either. Honestly, until about two minutes ago, I would have denied it too—I did deny it, in fact. I wouldn't even have admitted to doing it for money. But money is like words, I guess: technically fungible. However he thinks of it, he and I had a long affair. I was physically attracted to him, but mostly I desired him because I thought it would bring me closer to Aaron. At that time, Mitch wasn't working with Valentino. They hadn't even met yet. Back then Mitch's thing was knocking over gas stations. So anyway, Mitch turns up. He claimed to be Rachel's brother, and for all I know he is though I highly doubt it, unless Rachel is the type to sleep with her own brother, but again I didn't know about that either until much later. I just knew Aaron loved Rachel, and then Aaron brings me along and there's Mitch with her, and being with Mitch felt like a way to bond with Aaron. The first time I was with Mitch, sexually, I felt very close to Aaron. It made me feel part of his world. Mitch, he was...interesting. His bedroom walls were all white and everything else too except a black-framed photograph, with thick, clay-colored matting, of James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Giant. After I learned what a whore he was, I would still make it with him, but I would lay there and look at him and the cold, white walls, and all I could think about was HIV. It hovers over all gay romance, like a death angel. If St. Paul had never regained his sight, would he still have believed? How strong could his faith really be if it took a miracle to convert him? Even I would have that much faith. And Peter, who three times in a single night denied Christ, became the cornerstone of Christ's church. Deny deny deny what you love most of all—"

"What are you talking about, man? Are you okay?"

Travis said, "Sorry, I've been a little manic, lately. Or maybe it's you. You make me feel like telling you things. Is that creepy? I've been associating with creeps like Mitch and Valentino for so long that honestly I don't even really know what is creepy and what isn't anymore. Add to that the mind fuck of constantly being ashamed of yourself—eventually it just exhausts you, you know? Especially when it's shame over something you can't even tell people about, which is bizarre because most people want whatever they're ashamed of to be kept secret."

Jake wondered if that was true, about shame; he wondered what he was ashamed of and he thought of the girl he had supposedly raped in college. He was ashamed of that; his parents had certainly been ashamed of it.

Travis continued, "Once Mitch said to me, 'That thing you're most ashamed of is also the thing that you want more than anything else in this world. Otherwise I don't think you'd actually be ashamed of it.' I remember Mitch saying that to me, as a taunt and as a reproach. He said it to Aaron too, because he knew that Aaron truly loved Rachel, but that Aaron was also ashamed of the affair because of Kim—Aaron's wife. Aaron was cheating on his wife with Rachel. But to me, when Mitch said it, he then said, 'If you ever tell anybody about us, about me, I will kill you,' and he was deadly serious. Like I said, he did not want anybody to know he was gay. The weird part is that I don't really even think he was ashamed of it—he just didn't want it to be know. In any case, he had nothing to fear from me on that count, because I didn't want anyone to know that I was gay, either. But now, as of this minute almost, I'm not really even afraid anymore, not of him and not of my own secrets. What's the point? They just completely exhaust you, finally." Travis laughed. "The secrets, they piled up around you, and you became used to adding yet another secret, a new secret to cover an older one, and yet a third just to draw attention away from the second in the event that exposure of at least one became unavoidable. It's an old trick: redirection, misdirection, indirection. The whole damn thing, my world, was like a pyramid scheme, except that you were not free to recruit new agents, nor were you free not to recruit: you simply were not free: you did as you were told and if you didn't like what you had been told, you found that it didn't really matter anyway. You found that, by that point, you had no choice. But the people who told you, they also supplied you with enough emollients to make it all tolerable, and often enough much better than tolerable.

"But my main target was always Aaron. That's kind of the strange part: long before I ever realized I was crooked, I had already been conning Aaron for years, but I just didn't think of it that way. God, I'm so pathetic: my one goal in life, which I pursued with a single-mindedness that I have to admit was impressive—my one goal in life was to get close to Aaron, and to keep that closeness. I was, for example, his confidante, his confessor, in his ongoing infidelity. He married Kim, just as I had advised, but he continued his affair with Rachel, because he loved her madly. See how sick that was of me: I benefited from his infedility, because he had to tell somebody, and I became that person. The affair made him nervous, as did his other secrets, because always, at any moment, his whole world might possibly be about to end. He never reached despair, though, and I could see that it was unlikely he ever would, and I guess that was part of his character: he could get nervous very quickly, and then he would suddenly fill with self-doubt, but he never seemed quite ready to throw in the towel. It wasn't that there was a lot of what you'd call fight in him. Rather he was always cresting on a wave of reckless of hope, not exactly optimism, just as he was brave but not courageous—hope, which on him looked something like bravery, or at least in his case must have required something like bravery to sustain, but it also wasn't courage or faith or even confidence, just a willingness to throw his lot in with fate and see the whole thing through. As long as there remained a chance that things could still go his way, he stayed in the fight.

"Like I said, Mitch was obsessed with guilt and shame. I remember once he asked Aaron, mockingly, as a reminder of his original blackmail: 'That thing you're most ashamed of—have you given it enough thought yet today?' And then he'd laugh. I think he was talking about that first time Aaron had cheated on Kim with Rachel, but with those three there was always more going on than was never fully revealed to me.

"As for me, I was surprised by how easily I phased into my life of crime. You always think there's going to be this moment of crisis, a decision point, where you cross over from law abiding citizen to criminal, but that's not how it works at all. The mind's capacity for shading and sliding and self-deception, it turns out, is almost limitless.

"For over ten years Aaron, Rachel, Mitch, and I were a happy-ish enough foursome. I went to college, but dropped out my first semester because I hated being away from Aaron and Mitch.

"And then Mitch met Valentino, and everything changed, though at first I did not recognize the danger. In fact, Valentino seemed exciting, and he got us started on some interesting scams. But quickly it became apparent that both Rachel and Mitch wanted more to do with Valentino than with Aaron and me.

"I asked Mitch how he met Valentino. He said they met on Grindr: 'Man, it's such a gutter, a gutter flowing with iniquity and debauchery and duplicity; I got swept away in it all; it's easy, with your own half profiles and half truths. Now, I'm pretty good looking, I think you'd agree, so I have the luxury of viewing it all from a somewhat favored point of view. But I'm not that young, at least not by gay standards. Oh, the arrogance on Grindr, the arrogance of the attractive young men, it's, well it's breathtaking is what it is. They have their reward, their gift, and if it seems to them as though that reward will last forever, well, that's because it might, because a lot of them could be dead before it's gone. And anyway why shouldn't they enjoy it? Like I said, they have their reward, and this is it. So why should they have to entertain offers, unwanted but not uninvited, from every disgusting older guy, and every pathetic ugly younger guy? They are arrogant and rude, but it serves the needs of efficiency. There's a cruel efficiency about Grindr, sifting and sorting people, much like what happens in a gay bar, differently optimized but with largely similar results. I remember one guy, he had written on his profile, "If it's a choice between a dick pic and an emoji bedazzled sob story about cuddling, then I guess I'll take the dick pic".' Mitch kept a list of his favorites. Here, I have it on my phone. We used to laugh at them:

• 'Profiles linked to private Instagram accounts are a real turn on.'
• 'Don't be that guy who wants a relationship but really doesn't.'
• 'I just want a cute tall guy who isnt a total asshole why is this so hard (18, 6'0, 130, white, slim, twink)'
• 'Face and beach pics are the best way to grab my attention (21, 6'3, 195, white, muscular, jock)'
• 'Garden variety engineering student. Probably won't have sex with you, and definitely won't send you nudes (20, 5'10, 140, slim, 9", cut)'
• 'Send a face pic to receive one / masc and discreet. / ask for my snap or insta (19, 5'6, white, muscular, jock) blessed be the fruit. // let's smoke and fuck (6'0, 135, white, slim)'
• 'Accepting candidates (6'1, 155, white)'
• 'Full time doctorate student, part time human. / Taps are not an effective way to get my attention. No pic no response, it's pretty straight forward (24, 6'2, 145, toned)'
• 'Have a face picture please, and good credit. (25, 5'11, 145, white, toned, jock)'
• 'No vanity muscle gays...be into real fitness and athleticism, not useless pecs (6'4, 190, white, toned, clean-cut, jock)'
• 'I didn't come here to make friends. I came here to win.(24, 6'1, 185, white)'
• 'Normal guy. Professional, athletic , masc, sane, real. I will proably ask you to prove you are too. dont waste my time (5'10, 195, white, muscular, jock) jocks, masc and frat dues to the front'.
• 'Have you heard the phrase "take out the trash"? That's about me.'
• 'Follow my Insta so I know it's real'
• 'Not into older (30+). no random nudes. no discreet people. please respect my preferences.'
• 'Looking for friends or whatever feels right really.'
• 'I'm just trying my best, honestly'.
• 'Looking for something wholesome'.

Mitch loved that last one. He baited that poor guy and then destroyed him. Mitch could be really cruel. Anyway, he said Valentino had been in the area on business when they first hooked up. I bet he told you something different, didn't he?"

Jake nodded. "Sort of, but sort of similar too, actually."

Travis again laughed. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know which one. For somebody so hot and so tough, Mitch is actually kind of pathetic. Aaron was nothing like Mitch. Aaron is almost the complete opposite of Mitch. Physically, Aaron is far tougher than Mitch, but there's a softness about him, and even back in school when I had seen him bullying kids, I never thought he was capable of even understanding it as bullying. He was almost the exact opposite of me too, in my hardened heart and with my arch cynicism. Aaron is the person I wished I could be.

"Now, after Valentino entered our lives, things began to change very quickly. Mitch and Rachel didn't need us anymore. They were moving on to bigger cons, working with Valentino. But there was some other guy in charge, some guy in Chicago, who apparently was causing a lot of problems for Valentino, and Mitch and Rachel were always riding Valentino about it. There were all kinds of things that Mitch and Rachel wanted to do, but Valentino said we couldn't until he had figured out what to do about Aaron—that was the guy in Chicago. I don't know if that was his real name. I really actually doubt it. I always figured he picked that name just to annoy Aaron, our Aaron that is, Aaron Cord. Anyway, Mitch and Rachel were always bugging Valentino about this guy Aaron, 'What are we going to do about Aaron?' And, 'When are you gonna take care of Aaron?'

"Valentino would always give the same answer, that there was a person who was supposed to handle Aaron. He only ever called this person The Killer, and he said that The Killer was going to take care of Aaron. So then Rachel and Mitch were constantly bugging him about The Killer, 'Who's The Killer? When's he going to act?'

"Valentino liked to keep somethings—a lot of things, actually—to himself. He loved secrets. And he loved using secrets to make people jealous, by selectively doling them out. He didn't want Mitch and Rachel to know the identity of The Killer. But once, Valentino was very high, and he and I were together. We were together sexually a few times. Valentino's sexual appetite, it was insatiable. He always wanted Aaron too—Aaron Cord—but Aaron, there was no way Aaron was ever going to go for something like that. In fact it was really Aaron that Valentino wanted. He had a strong prejeudice for masculine types. Anyway, Valentino was very high, and we had just had sex. He said to me, 'Mitch can be a real pain in the ass sometime. I want to show you something that Mitch would give anything to know,' Valentino got out his cell phone, and showed me a photograph of a guy, and he said, 'That's The Killer.'

"The Killer didn't look anything like I expected. He didn't look at all dangerous, for starters. I said something along those lines, and Valentino became very, uhhh, very cryptic I guess. He said: 'This man is The Killer, and he will be very dangerous, plenty dangerous enough to do what I need him to do. I just have to make him dangerous, to activate him, so to speak'."

Travis paused for a moment, practically the first pause in this whole long story. Then he said, "For a long time I wondered if you really existed. I thought maybe you were just something he had invented to make us believe he had everything on his end under control. But now you show up here, and you're the person whose picture Valentino showed me, the picture of The Killer."

Jake said, "Well, like I said before, I'm not The Killer." Jake stood there thinking, and then asked, "Do you have an email address?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, I want to show you something, and it's on my phone, but I'm not handing you my phone."

"Yeah, well my address is still the same as it was in high school, so it's kind of stupid, but I'm radical Trav—all one word—at gmail dot com."

"Okay, I'm sending you this right now. It's from Valentino, something he sent to Rachel. The person discussed in it, it must be your friend Aaron. I don't know the author, though, and I'm wondering if it could be you."

Travis briefly skimmed the email, and then looked up at Jake.

Jake asked, Did you write this?"

"I guess there's no point in denying it. But how did you come to have it? I mean, had Valentino told you about me? What could it possibly even have meant to you?"

"No, Valentino didn't tell me about you. Somebody you don't know found it on Valentino's phone, and sent herself a copy."

Travis said, without conviction, "I forgot I ever even wrote that diary. Valentino must have found it on my computer, one of the nights he stayed over. He'd often ask if he could use my computer while his phone was charging. At some point he probably thought he could blackmail me with it."

Jake asked, "But how could he blackmail you with this? I mean, I guess it's a little embarrassing, like any other teenage confession. But it's just an ordinary crush. I don't see what there is here to blackmail you with."

"I know it must seem really stupid. I never told Aaron about this, what you call 'crush'. I never told him I was gay. I never told anyone, technically. I mean, I slept with Mitch and I slept with Valentino, so obviously they knew, but I never said I was gay, and Aaron never guessed that I was carrying on with Mitch and Valentino. Aaron thought we were just buddies. So I guess, technically, I'm still in the closet. I'm so ashamed. It's not that I mind being gay, but I feel more embarrassed, humiliated, really, over having posed so many years as straight; I feel cowardly, diminished, like a stupid little joke. If I come out now, everyone would say, 'I always suspected,' or 'I always knew'. And of course, Aaron isn't gay at all, but if I come out, people will talk about us, and it will be embarrassing for Aaron. But the worst part of all, for me, what makes it actually painful, is that I wish more than anything else in the world that such a rumor could actually be true, that Aaron and I could be lovers. And now if he finds out I'm gay, after I've posed as straight for all these years, he will justifiably want nothing more to do with me, would even blame me for the deception I had practiced upon him, and for the shame it would bring upon him. But because he's a nice guy, what will anger him the most is the fact that I never trusted him enough to be honest. And if he reads those paragraphs, it will be even worse, because he will see how I used this deception, this deception of heterosexuality, to get close to him, in all the ways I describe in those paragraphs, and many more. Ways that will seem repulsive to him if he were to realize what I was thinking during all those encounters."

Jake said, "You don't seem especially angry that Valentino stole this from you. I mean, he violated your trust."

"You read the paragraphs: what right do I have to be angry with anybody for violating my trust, after what I did to Aaron?"

"I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"Everything described in that diary entry, for example: all those times I shared with him in his bedroom, watching him undress, lying on his bed with him. Didn't I violate his trust? Didn't I violate him?"

"But he invited you—, he knew you were there. It's not as though you were watching him in secret."

Travis said, "But that's exactly what it's like; that's exactly what it was: I was watching him in secret, lusting over him in secret. If he had known what I was thinking, he would never have let me share those moments with him. You know that's true."

"Sure, of course it's true, but still, you didn't touch him or take advantage of him."

"It was voyeurismrism, straight-up. I was lusting after him. For me they were erotic experiences, erotic encounters that he would never have consented to. Whether or not I actually touched him—it seems like splitting hairs to me. I certainly would have touched him if I thought I could get away with it. So I guess it's about his right to privacy, and, I mean, isn't what you're doing—, haven't you been violating Valentino's privacy, by prying into his affairs? Just as he pried into my affairs by stealing those paragraphs from my computer? What business is it of yours, what happened to him, or what he was up to? You aren't the police; you aren't a private investigator; you have no standing. You didn't even know he called you The Killer. Just as Aaron never knew I was in love with him."

Jake had no answer to Travis's question. He felt that whatever was right or wrong about it, the investigation had reached a dead end, and how ironic that the dead end should be hit about fifteen minutes from his own hometown, which he hadn't even visited in almost ten years. His parents probably still lived there. For some reason his mind suddenly filled with the memory of dressing for his high school graduation. His first suit was on a hanger hooked from his bedroom door. He showered; he brushed and flossed his teeth; he cleaned his face with Sea Breeze. He had brand new underwear, brand new socks, and a brand new t-shirt to go with his brand new shoes and his brand new Oxford and his brand new suit and his brand new necktie. He remembered the necktie most vividly of all, because he did not know how to tie it. His father would have to do this for him, and when his father did tie the necktie, the experience overwhelmed Jake emotionally, which he had not at all expected. The experience overwhelmed him, because as his father tied the necktie, he stood closer to Jake than Jake could ever remember him standing before, nor could Jake remember ever feeling his father's hands touching his neck, as he did now. His father first raised the shirt collar about the neck band before wrapping the tie around the band. Jake remembered smelling his father's cologne: he had no previous memory of his father being this close to him, physically or emotionally. Their foreheads almost touched as his father folded the shirt collar back down, sharpened the collar crease, and buttoned the points; then one final tug at the tie before tightening the knot and taking a step back to look at Jake, his son, and Jake remembered hoping his father felt proud of what he saw, and Jake felt bonded to his father in the performance of this final, impossibly mysterious ceremony of manhood which Jake had not yet himself learned to do for himself. One of his final happy memories of the place. Thinking back on it now, Jake realized that, in all likelihood, when his father stepped back he was examining the knot for perfection, and not taking in his son at all. If his father had been proud of anything at that moment, it was probably a half-Windsor.

Travis said, "I want to tell you something. But you should know the reason I'm telling you is that it will make me feel close to you. I wonder if you can understand what it's like to be so starved for physical and emotional intimacy with somebody that you learn to content yourself with these scraps, these substitute encounters. What I want to tell you is something I think you want to know. Also, you already have something on me—the paragraphs from that diary. If you wanted to blackmail me, you already could, I guess. I would be less bothered by people learning what I'm about to tell you than I am about those diary paragraphs, and yet even that I'm increasingly not sure if I care about that. It's exhausting to live in this state of constant fear. It's exhausting to carry secrets this long."

Jake felt uncomfortable with what Travis was saying. There was something creepy about it, something queer and unnatural. But his desire for more information was greater than his discomfort.

Travis continued, "I'm betraying Aaron by telling you this. I guess. It depends on what you consider to be a betrayal, and on what you do with this information." He paused, and seemed to be reconsidering whether he wanted to proceed. "I killed Valentino. Before Rachel disappeared, she sent me a message telling me that Valentino had stolen those diary entries from my computer, and that he was going to show them to Aaron."

"Why would he do that?"

"To be a jerk. Looking back, I can guess that Rachel's reason for telling me this was so that I would do exactly what I did do, which was to kill Valentino. He must have given her the money he had stolen, and she wanted it all for herself. She's a con artist, and has been since I first met her. Have you ever noticed how con artists can be so insightful, can so quickly find a person's weak points? And she found mine. The idea of Aaron ever reading those paragraphs—, what I had written about, my feelings for him, and how I experienced my time with him, there was no way I was going to let that happen. It was too humiliating. Thanks to Rachel, then, I got the drop on Valentino, and I asked him to meet me, and I shot him. Aaron helped me to get rid of the body, as well as Valentino's car. So now you know what happened to Valentino."

"You mean your friend Aaron knows you killed Valentino?"

"Sure. He probaby disliked Valentino more than me. Valentino stole Rachel away from him."

Jake and Travis left the shed, Travis locking the door behind them. Travis drove away. As Jake approached his own car, he saw that Mitch was talking on the phone. When Jake opened the car door, Mitch glanced up and then ended the call. Jake asked, "Who was that?"

"Good news. It was Rachel. She's in Aurora, at the motel."

"Seriously? That seems really strange. Really sudden. So what did she say? I mean, where has she been? Does she know what happened to Valentino? Does she still have the money?"

"She said she would tell us when we she sees us."

"Where?"

"At the motel. She's waiting for us there."

Jake hesitated. "You think it's a good idea to go back there?" They had stayed far away from the Motel Maserati since they fled the place a month ago.

Impatiently, Mitch said, "Look man, it doesn't matter to me. Do you want to know what happened with Rachel or not? Do you want to know what happened to the money?"

"I just think we should consider—, I mean it could be a trap." But the idea of recovering Aaron Archy's money—, even after all this, Jake still wanted for Mr. Archy to like him.

Mitch said, "Yeah, it could be a trap. Like I said, I could really care less. You're the one who's been dragging me around half the state trying to find out what happened to Valentino. Just make up your mind."

"Okay, fine, you're right: let's go."

When they arrived at the motel, Jake noticed that the motel office was empty, the doors chained and padlocked. A sign said, "Closed due to boil order". The swimming pool, however, was still filled with water, glistening like liquid cyan glass in the bright sunlight, but probably it was contaminated with E. coli or something.

They stood outside. Mitch said, "I need to tell her we're here," and he spent a few minutes sending messages on his phone. The clouds kept veiling and unveiling the sun, and when teh sun was unveiled Jake felt very warm, but when fifteen or thirty seconds later the clouds again covered the sun and he felt cool.

They knocked at room 320, and a woman answered the door. As Jake entered the room, somebody, probably Mitch, struck him from behind, and he blacked out.

When he woke, his first sensation was of nausea. And his throat felt scorched, like strep. He was lying on the floor somewhere. Ah, yes, the Motel Maserati, the Motel Maserati again, in the outer room of Valentino's suite there. He lay on the floor for a while, and then stood. The place had been tossed. He entered the second room, he saw that all the computers and phones and notebooks—all of it was gone. Looking around the place, Jake had a strange feeling he recalled from college, when he would moving apartments in the summer: after he and his roommates had cleared everything from the previous apartment, he'd stand in that completely empty apartment, which had been his home for a full year. All the experiences he had lived while living there, from move-in day until this moment of abandonment, became simultaneously present and absent, and what he felt was therefore like a negation, like standing still in a traversable wormhole. Now all his things were gone, and his friends' things were gone, and empirically the place looked exactly as it had on the day they moved in. And yet the place had felt entirely different then, because he and his friends had been about to take possession of the place, to fill it with their things and their experiences. Things like shirts and shorts and pants, underwear and socks and shoes and hats and sports jerseys, gym bags and school bags and flip-flops, computers and books and pencils and pens and folders and notebooks and USB drives, bedsheets and bath towels, soap and toothpaste and toothbrushes, pots and pans and ramen noodles and potato chips, posters and video games, beer and liquor, soap and shampoo and hair pomade and cologne and condoms, fall coats and winter coats and rain coats, basketballs and footballs and baseballs and volleyballs and soccer balls, cell phones and head phones and sun glasses, laundry detergent and Pine Sol and Windex and mops and brooms and paper towels—every kind of thing needed by a college kid for schoolwork and homework and sports and partying. Because after the things had all been put in their places, everything momentarily clean and tidy—after that, the experiences began: falling asleep and waking up, rolling over and falling back asleep, waking up again, getting into the shower, shampooing with American Crew shampoo, washing his body with Dial bar soap and a washcloth, using up all the hot water and pissing off his roommates, washing his face with Clear Skin face scrub, shaving with a safety razor and Gillette sensitive skin shaving gel, flossing and brushing and rinsing his teeth, putting on a clean t-shirt and clean underwear and clean socks, rushing off to class, texting his friends during lecture, returning from class, stripping to his underwear for a quick nap, repeating it all until evening, showering again, dressing to go out, pre-party drinking with his buddies while listening to Jimmy Buffett, walking to a bar and hooking up with a girl, hitting an after-party, bringing the girl home, making out a little and talking her into something heavier, saying goodbye in the early morning, gobbling down Tylenols to kill a bad headache. During the whole schoolyear he lived in that place and it felt like home. It did not feel temporary, even though he knew it to be so. Even right into the last week, everything seemed as though it would just continue on, even the roommate hostilities, because there was always at least one roommate you didn't like by the end of the year, and even that roommate seemed as though he would be a part of your life forever...And these experiences never stopped until the moment a year later, move-out day, when all the things had at last been removed and although the apartment looked the same as it had looked on move-in day, it also looked completely different, because in this space they had begun and completed all that school year's many experiences, so that, when everbody was finally gone, it felt surprising and dislocating, and all through college, except for the year during which he was expelled, he had the same feeling every spring when the apartment was finally empty, and in a few days some new people would move in, and for them it would be the same as it had been for Jake a year ago, and all this would continue year after year and nobody would ever really be able to imagine other people's experiences happening in that same space, that same furnished apartment with its used sofa sets and used bed mattresses. This was what he felt now, standing in Valentino's tossed and looted suite at the Motel Maserati, now that he knew Valentino was dead and never coming back, and that the money and computers and everything else of any value had been taken, and nobody would ever be coming back for any of it until somebody came to repossess or condemn the property. Jake could feel nothing there but emptiness.

He heard somebody in the fourth room, the bedroom, which he had previously refused to reenter because it had seemed so drenched in filthy sexuality, completely uninhibited sexuality of the worst imaginable depravity. He remembered feeling as though he would catch an STD just from breathing the air. He heard a girl say, "Flip, is that you?"

He stepped into doorway. He recognized the girl. She was the girl with the rose tattoo, the girl he had hooked up with at the party after the concert in Rosemont.

She said, "Oh, it's you! Jake the Snake. I knew we would meet again. I saw our movie, on the Internet, and I knew we'd meet again and maybe make another. Jake the Snake with his big python. I knew we would meet again."

Jake entered the room, and he knew that everything would start all over again, only this time he would manage to please Aaron Archy and Heather too. First he would please this girl here in the bed, with the rose tattoo, but then he would fix everything he had messed up the first time around and this time he wouldn't lose Heather either.