GREENHOUSE by Eugene DeVinsens

Crouching very low, I listened for his next step. He was by the entrance to the greenhouse and coming closer. I'd avoided him two hours already and I didn't want to give in, but he had me cornered now, crouching by the cabinet next to the potted plant. I picked up my hand and it was covered with really fresh dirt that must have fallen from the pot of the plant. It smelled earthy even though it had dried on the ground in the corner. He stepped again, I hadn't been listening closely for one moment and I realized that he was standing very close. He must have known where I was.

"Mailbox, you've got to listen,' he said.

"I'm not listening to you anymore," I said from behind the plant.

"I need to talk," he said

"I know you need to talk. I don't need to hear you anymore," I said, almost instinctively raising my hands up to my ears. He sighed loudly and stepped closer and petted the plant. I stood up and stepped out and looked at him, looking like he might burst with what ever it was he'd been saying before I'd left.

"You've got to listen," he said to me wrinkling his eyebrows up sympathetically, unmoving to me.

"I won't listen anymore. I do not believe you," I said. The plants and I understood that something wasn't fair about what was happening.

"Let's go into the greenhouse. We can talk in there."

I brushed dirt off the knees of my pants and walked first into the wet atmosphere of the one room that seemed to keep everyone else out. I touched plant after plant as I walked and Eugene followed.

I liked to sit in the greenhouse because it gave me a sense of being smothered.

I used to hate the feeling of the mist and the dirt and the breathing plants all in one room, but now I loved it. My mother always kept this greenhouse full and alive. I hated it as a child because it seemed so stifling. But now I loved it for that. Because it held me down somehow, out of the clouds I'd been rising towards.

Since we had graduated it had been even better, the feeling of sinking that the greenhouse provided. I ran there for safety, and for safety. It was the most important room in the house now, the greenhouse, and as I stood there looking at Eugene waiting to tell me something I felt the little bits of earth, that's how I imagined it, floating into the air and into my lungs and tingling.

Up until three weeks ago things had been more normal.

Eugene and I had both been the pupils of a strangely esteemed philosophy PROFessor at Kenyon College. Our advisor, PROF, was a crossover classics\philosophy professor who specialized in ancient forgeries.

PROF believed that "the truth is only ever found at the bottom of a pile of shit." That's why he studied only the forged documents, documents not actually written when they said they were, and a whole list of other documents that were in some way fakes or lies.

He was my hero and he was Eugene's hero too. We ate dinners together and went drinking together, and when we could get our hands on it at Kenyon, we smoked herb together. In the last six semesters I spent at Kenyon, both Eugene and I took nine classes from PROF. We translated texts together. The three of us.

Biblical and religious forgeries are labeled forgeries by the strangest and most collegiate and bureaucratic methods imaginable, impossible for anyone to understand, and that's why PROF thought that he'd find something great there. All the good stuff that people knew about was already being worked on by professors at Harvard and Yale, so we just sorted through the fakes and hoped that one day we'd end up with a forgery that turned out to be the real thing.

And then one day we did. About a two months before graduation.

And then PROF died from a heart attack about three weeks before graduation.

It was devastating for both of us. Still, it wasn't like we didn't see it coming. He drank and smoked too much, he consumed herb and college coeds at rates that doomed him, and he was fat and getting old, but still it killed me…And graduation was basically a funeral…I came here to the greenhouse afterwards and let the dampness that so readily associates itself with the truth about life smother me until I started to laugh. He deserved laughing for dying. Especially after we'd just found what we'd all dreamed about, the biblical forgery that was no forgery at all. It was a prayer using the name of God, and it was written by a small cult of Yahweh worshippers that had been verified as existing at the time the document was made. It was because of that document and PROF's untimely death that I was being tortured by Eugene's endless endless talk now.

Eugene made a noise as he walked behind me.

I stopped in the corner and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and the matches that I'd saved from the bar Eugene had taken me, where we first met with the FBI.

The Seattle Space Needle Lounge. I read the matches. I put the butt in my mouth and lit it up. I smirked to myself as I thought of the plants pulling back almost physically, audibly from the smoke.

Eugene stopped in front of me and looked at me.

"Alright talk, but no god stuff. You know the rules. You stick to history and the way things work," I said.

"Yes," he said. I took a long drag from the cigarette in the moment of silence-that-lasted before the rumble of the storm that poured from Eugene's maw. He spoke.

I looked at the ceiling and tried to tune him out. I watched the smoke float up to the grid glass ceiling of the greenhouse and tried so hard to tune out the rushing marmarmar that Eugene spouted, more like vacated, from his body.

It lasted the seven minutes that I smoked, and then all along as I put my cigarette out in the pot of a plant in the mist of the greenhouse and all along as I walked into the house and into the den and into the living room.

I closed my eyes as he talked and his voice brought me visions of deserts. We'd wanted to take a trip after graduation to the west coast for some down time, but once we got there we noticed we'd been followed. Eugene had already started talking by then. And now he'd been talking for weeks, barely sleeping, barely even taking the time to eat.

I wondered if it would just be better to listen to him all the time rather than run until it's built itself up so high that it comes out as an unstoppable deluge. Standing there in the living room I finally accepted that he was going to talk.

And since that was true, I decided to submit and to listen.

"…and then the next Pharaoh, Akenhaten, was the only Pharaoh to knock his head against the regular pantheon of the Egyptian gods. He was a total freak, breaking a line of some 45 or more pharaohs that had come before him, and then being the only aberration for another two thousand years after. He espoused Hebrew understandings of monotheism during actual biblical time, but before the bible itself was even written. If you read Akhenaten's prayer to his single God, the Aten, or sun disc, you can see striking similarities between it and the beginning of the book of Genesis. It's straight up Judaism. Some people will tell you that this is because the god of the Hebrews just contacted the Egyptian Pharaoh. It was during a time when God was supposedly talking to a lot of Jews. So it's not all that far fetched an idea, but the thing is, the freakin thing is, that recently they discovered a tomb built during Akhenaten's reign which was not your average tomb because it was obviously built for a white guy, not an Egyptian, and it had some of the royal signatures proving it to be the tomb of a respected cabinet member. Loosely translated into Arabic and then back into English, the name on the tomb could be Joseph. Like the guy with the amazing technicolored dreamcoat.

See, Akhenaten was not on the royalty railroad originally, being the son of a lesser wife of the Pharaoh's and also having a strange disease that lengthened his features giving him an eerie otherworldly look. But then the son of the greater wife who was also the head of the priesthood and the one in line for the throne died suddenly and unexpectedly. So, all of a sudden Akhenaten was the Pharoah.

They wouldn't have let the Pharoah-to-be hang out with Jews and other undesirables, I'm sure, but Akhenaten was nobody for the first 20 years of his life, and so he was allowed to slum around. He also had time to become interested in reading and the pursuit of knowledge. He must have met Joseph when Joseph was being detained, a prisoner of worth, staying in the palace under house arrest, you know the story. They must have become acquainted, and then gotten to talking and then on to philosophy and religion during late nights in the light of flickering wild candles set stray by the winds of the Nile valley, fertile crescent and there you go. Joseph told Pharaoh how he thought it was and pharaoh seems to have believed him. It's amazing because even though all of that is fascinating…"

I looked at my watch because I could see that sun was rising. It was 5:24. I tuned Eugene out and rose from the couch feeling beaten on by all the truth he had to tell. If you could call it that. He called it that. He told me it was all the truth, that was the thing, that was what made him have to talk, need to talk to me, because he spoke the truth, and he needed to speak it, or he would pop. I brushed my teeth as he talked on about the pharaoh, Akhenaten with the long fingers and alien eyes.

"Did he ever get to see the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat?" I called from the bathroom interrupting his rhythm and drooling toothpaste on my chest and my chin.

"What?"

"The Dreamcoat, the Dreamcoat. Do you think he ever saw the coat? Dude?"

"I don't know. You're mocking me."

"I'm mocking you. You deserve it. Can't you shut up?"

"No. Fuck you. He might have," Eugene said, unable to stray for more than moments.

"I mean if it is true that he went to Egypt and all that and then became an important member of the advisors to the Pharaoh, who's to say that there wasn't a technicolored coat thrown in there too. It's possible. You make fun, but it's a nexus of biblical and historical truth. Joseph was a Jew who was sent to jail in the court of the Pharaoh and who rose to the ranks of advisor, high enough to have a tomb made for him with the seals of the king. It's hardcore."

"Shut up," I shouted from the bathroom, flushing the toilet.

"Did you know that they have found evidence indicating that man may have been present in the form that we know now for four hundred thousand years?"

"Do you know that I really hate you?" I said smiling, walking into the kitchen pouring milk while searching the counters and my mind for the pack of cigarettes I knew were somewhere nearby.

"I think I'm hungry," Eugene said entering the room and then stopping. I listened to the silence of the milk pouring. I felt the pack in the pocket of my pants and pulled it out and lit a cigarette in the kitchen.

"I thought you quit smoking like five years ago," Eugene said.

"I did. It's you."

"I'm really sorry."

"I know man; it's cool. Hey, sit down. And if you shut up for a little while I'll make you some breakfast." I put the milk back in the fridge and pulled out eggs and things and turned on the stove to cook. I put out my cigarette because I needed something more to still the shaking in my chest, the jangling in my head.

"Watch this pan," I said, pointing, "and when the butter starts to bubble pour the eggs in." We were the same age, but I was usually in charge I guess. I walked out of the room and didn't even think about running and hiding in the greenhouse, rather I went to the drawer by my bed and found my herb and my bowl and a yellow banana lighter with a dole sticker stuck to the side.

When I got back Eugene was asleep on the counter. The butter was burning and I watched it for a second before I turned the burner off. I sat at the counter next to my friend and I put down the bowl and the herb and packed a nice one for myself. The sun was shining on us from outside the big kitchen windows of my parents white kitchen. There was something about the nothingness of the white kitchen that helped me to slow down. Evidently it helped Eugene too. He didn't snore but he slept soundly, one arm under his head and sticking up, the other hanging. I raised the bowl to my lips and lit.

"You know smoking that isn't good for you."

"Shut up dude. I was enjoying the quiet."

"I know," he said smiling with his face all mooshed against his arm and the counter.

"You never give me a break."

"I just gave you one. It lasted three minutes."

"Ain't that the truth," I said.

"It is," he said seriously.

I stood up and walked out of the kitchen, towards the greenhouse, and he called after me.

"What happened to breakfast?"

"Fuck you," I called back.

The thickness of the air and the hum of the greenhouse made me comfortable again. Comfortable and uncomfortable. I smoked my bowl. My smile turned from tired but happy to huh-huh. huh-huh uh huh. I breathed in the mud and I daydreamed. I pictured two guys talking under the high sun in a desert wearing turbans watching as their camels chewed and spit. I pictured them silent waving their hands at the sky. One of them invited the other to take shelter in his tent. I pictured them writing away on sheets of stinking paper made fresh from something foreign and old. They both wrote feverishly. In the candlelight below the wind blown tent roof, in my mind, they both had hints of madness in their eyes. I heard them scratching their pens at texts in ancient Arabic. It made me shiver.

After a while my thoughts turned to the PROF, and then Eugene came in spouting knowledge about eggs and bacon and wheat toast with butter, while he was handing me my plate with my two eggs and telling me about cholesterol. I forgot about the Arabs in the sound of his voice, but I remembered about the bug that I'd found in the garden room when I was hiding. On top of the incessant noise, it looked like there was also beginning to be incessant listening. No matter where we went.

"We're gonna have to bail out of here soon. They know we're here and they're going to come after us soon," I said, stopping his talk. Getting him serious for a second.

"Who do you think it is?" he asked stuffing food into his mouth.

"I think it's probably the government. But I think that there is more than one group now. Remember. We saw those two guys at the drive through at Wendy's near Columbus, and then we saw them again when we made it to your parent's house in Chicago. Those guys were definitely Feds, but then we saw those two Indian guys at the 7-11 in Chicago. And on top of that there were those two other guys who tried to take our stuff when we flew into Philadelphia."

"The Spanish guys with the cab?"

"Yeah." A month ago I had been a graduating senior and now I was running from Feds. And Indians and other guys too. I had actually jumped from a moving cab on the way to my parent's house trying to escape a Spanish guy with a gun. He kept yelling at his partner in the passenger seat in Spanish while Eugene was dictating the truth about park design and architecture. I actually pushed Eugene out of the car still talking, and would have had to listen to him continue if the sound of the wheels and the road hadn't drowned him out.

I put my plate in with some plants on a shelf that was wet and rocky. Some ketchup dripped off as I put it down and I just picked up my fork and worked the ketchup into the gravelly mess on the shelf. I kept poking at the wet pebbles and soon I got carried away, and it made me freak out. I threw the fork into the gravel and jerked around until I felt better.

"You just freaked out," Eugene said, talking with his mouth full of egg and pointing at me with his fork, amused.

"Yeah. I freaked out," I said. I paused and looked at Eugene who hadn't said almost anything since he'd come into the greenhouse just before.

"Lets get out of here. I'm bored of this. I'm so sick of this," I said.

"Okay."

I turned and stormed out of the greenhouse breathing so deep, as though coming up from the bottom of the ocean, the air clean and trailing behind me as I continued to storm, to rush into my bedroom and pull out my knapsack, the across-the-shoulder-and-red-with-a-racingstripe-one, and started to throw some stuff into it. I didn't really know what I was doing, I just felt so strange about everything. I'd been dealing with the situation with Eugene for three weeks now, and now all of a sudden I was cracking under the pressure. I dumped the contents of my bag back onto the bed after a few seconds of watching it, just thinking about nothing, and then I stood up and walked back through the living room and the kitchen and then through the garden room which led to the greenhouse. I pushed open the doors and took a deep breath like I was coming up from the bottom of the ocean, and the cool air from outside trailed barely and then retreated with the closing of the doors. Eugene was looking very carefully at the leaf of a short mongrel plant that was barely green it was so dark. He was chewing bread now, half chewing with his mouth half closed, almost a lazy chewing, an alone thinking chewing, and then he looked up at me.

"Did you know that photosynthesis…"

"Don't. No No No No No No No No…" He continued to talk over my no-no-ing about photosynthesis and I walked around and around the little greenhouse continuing to talk, he continuing to speak as though it were a song, either tribal or classical, with themes that fugued, and we moved around, he chewed his bread and talked off hand and I said no to him no no no, and it was almost like being in a play. I stopped. He stopped at the same time and looked up with his brows coming to an expectant point???

"Do you remember the Zoo Story?"

"By Edward Albee."

"We were just in the Zoo Story."

"We are still in the Zoo Story."

"What's going on?" I asked him and he stopped again, prone to almost false looks of surprise or astonishment. He pushed all of the rest of the bread that he'd been chewing out of his mouth with his tongue continuing to look at me astonishedly. This was the stuff.

"I feel better," I said.

"You're a freak, you know that?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Let's go get a pizza."

"Didn't you say that we needed to get out of here?"

"Yeah. Let's go get pizza."

"I thought you meant leave town."

"Fuck that. I want pizza," I said.

"Ok." It was ok.

When we pulled out of my driveway onto Heather Rd., there were not just two, but three big black cars waiting there for us.

The first one was up the hill from the house and started following almost immediately as I pulled out and drove down the street. The next one pulled out about halfway down the block, and actually had to wait because the first guys wouldn't let him out. The third car came out at the bottom of the hill where the road came to a "T", and he put on his blinker, fully aware that the other two were there, and waited for them to pass. We were a parade. Eugene and me in my '92 blue Volvo Station Wagon, and then the three groups of them, my guess, the Feds, the Indian guys, and those Spanish guys from the airport.

I drove slow through the quiet streets of Cheltenham, over the train tracks, past the market, up hills and down them, all the while being followed by the Man, and listening mindlessly to the hum of the car engine, and the talk of my friend Eugene, who was coping much better than I was.

When we got to the counter at Frank's, the same delivery guy who used to come to my house on Sundays was getting into his car, more slowly, and heading out to deliver. I ordered four pizzas: sausage for the Feds, peppers and onions for the Spaniards, and grilled chicken for the two Indian guys, who ever they were. Oh. And Eugene and I got chicken too, with fresh tomatoes.

"I know the sausage is for the Feds, but is the chicken for the Indian guys or the Spanish guys?" the pizza guy at the counter asked pointing out the window at one of the black sedans.

"I was thinking that it was going to be for the Indian guys," I said.

"Well, they're vegetarians, so you might want to change the order. They've been in here everyday this week."

"Alright, what's they're preference?"

"Mushroom, Onion, Pineapple."

"Ok. Give me one of those instead of the chicken."

"Alright, that'll be about fifteen minutes." He said writing down the order in toto, and then walking off into the back to start the pizzas. Before he left the counter he looked up once at me, knowingly, but I wondered as I turned to find Eugene playing a Video game, Dragon's Lair, if it was just the conspiracy getting to me.

"I used to have this video game in my house," Eugene said, working the joystick and the red and green buttons, "It's good until level six, but then it gets kind of crappy. The main designer died during the programming, and at the beginning of level seven things were taken up by another less interesting designer who had been hired under mysterious circumstances directly by the President of the Software Company, only two weeks before the first designer died."

"How do you know that?" I asked him.

"I read it in some magazine when we had the game in my house. The thing that they didn't print was that the President of the Software Company, DocuTech, had spent fourteen years doing classified work for the Central Intelligence Agency. The designer, a kid named Ernesto Tegor, had found access to some of the information on the President, and had been programming all the information in code into the game."

"You're making that up," I said. He beat level one with a hard hit to the game pad which included unseen touches and retouches to certain buttons and the joystick all at once that were too quick, too complex, and too nuanced for me to see.

"I'm not. That's the thing."

"I don't believe it," I said, and he stopped his playing and looked from the game up to me, caught my eyes, turning around, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me dramatically, and told me that I'd have to learn to believe.

"It's all true, dude," he said and returned to the game.

"Pizza's up," called the pizza guy, Jeff, I think his name was.

"Thanks a lot, Jeff," I said.

"It's Joseph," he said, "$21.73, please, Manny," he said sarcastically, taking my money.

"It's Mailbox," I said.

"Yeah. I know. I deliver pizza to your parents all the time."

"Come on Eugene," I said pushing the doors open, four pizzas in my hands and steaming freely almost burning my nose and my forehead. Eugene made no response, just continued to play.

I approached the first car in the line and the window came down and a guy in dark glasses and a suit, short brown hair and a long face turned smoothly but mechanically to me and gave a smile.

"Sausage alright?" I asked, handing it.

"That's perfect," he said taking it from me and handing it across to his partner in the driver's seat. The car was very clean and neat, there was no music on, but it smelled discretely of cigarette smoke.

"You didn't happen to get any Coke, did you?" the agent asked shaking his head disappointedly, as though I should have known better, already knowing the answer. I crouched down so I could look in the window at the driver and he was shaking his head too, as though getting Coke was the first rule of the game we were all playing. I stood up and walked towards the next car and I heard one of them say "amateur." God! that made me angry.

"You know what," I said, walking back up to the Fed's car. "I do not need this. Give me back that pizza." I reached in for the box but they both grabbed hold and held tight not giving an inch. I gave up after a few adolescent pulls, and then walked away fuming.

"Fine. Then keep it. God! You guys make me so angry," I said. I walked up to the second car, a Buick Century, and knocked on the window impatiently. It took a second before anything happened, but then the window came down slowly. I leaned down so I could look at both of them. They both were very quiet. One turned to look at me slowly, as though from a drugless haze, and smiled noncommittally.

"Yeah, Yeah. The guy in there told me you guys were vegetarians. Here's your pizza." I shook my head, still so angry and unable to control, annoyed at how calm they seemed, and then I turned and walked away from them looking at the door in hopes of help from my partner Eugene.

The Spanish guy in the driver's seat was still yelling at his partner in Spanish when I walked up, their windows were all down and there was Spanish heavy metal blaring out of the cheap stereo. I just dropped the box into the silent partner's lap and walked away. Neither of them even seemed to notice.

Eugene was still inside playing the video game, so I got in the car and put our pizza on the passenger side and closed my eyes. One of the things that was making me so angry was that Eugene, the one who had been stricken from ages past with a strange and seemingly incurable disease, for lack of a better word, was putting up with all of this much better than I was. And I was supposed to be the calm one too, the one with everything under control. Eugene was the rash and emotional one. Not me.

I just had to remember that PROF would be so excited about all of this, I told myself. He would have thought it was great sport. I pushed the radio on and Phish came out of the speakers by my feet. I closed my eyes again and pictured him, the PROF, sitting there next to me grinning almost uncontrollably, demanding that we light a joint, and infecting me with his excitement. It would be fun if PROF were here, 'cause he would know who those Spanish and those Indian guys were. He would know where to go, or at least how to stop this thing before something bad went ahead and happened.

The passenger door opened and startled me, and I reached for the pizza instinctively, as though that were the worst thing that could happen to me: I'd get my pizza taken away.

"Hey, dude, let's get out of here. I think I'm hungry," Eugene said handing the pizza to me and sliding into the passenger seat.

"Yes yes. Let's leave," I said. I pulled out of the little parking lot and waited at the exit for the other three to fall-in behind me.

I turned out onto the street behind a pretty dark haired woman in a Ford Explorer and followed her all the way to Heather Rd., where I turned, and she continued on down the other street without me, to somewhere where I'd probably never be.

While we ate our pizza I thought about how I hadn't given napkins to any of those bastards in the cars, and how that probably sucked for them. Ha.

"So, who do you think those guys out there are?" Eugene asked me.

"Well the first guys are Feds, and I think that Spanish guys are working for some Church related group."

"Interesting, Why?"

"Who else would it be? And I heard them talking about it when I gave them their pizza. The yeller said something about the Vatican," I said.

"I didn't know you knew Spanish."

"I don't know much," I said laughing a little.

"What about the Indian guys?"

"Yeah," I said, "I got no idea about the Indian guys."

"What the hell does the church want from me? I haven't been to confession in six years."

"It's the Prayer, don't you think?"

"It's me. Otherwise they'd be out tailing the text."

"But why would they want you? I don't even want you. You're annoying.

"Because I know the truth," he said, matter-of-factly.

"There you go with that again," I said looking down at the table, still unable to accept his calm candor about it.

"Mailbox, look, I know you say that you don't believe me, but you know that it's true, and I know that it's hard for you to deal with, it's hard for me too, it's a changing of worldview, but it's what we've got to do, don't you see? You have got to believe me, Mailbox. I can't stop telling you the truth." Eugene rarely got personal, but he kept getting personal about that that week. I had to accept it. The truth was out there.

"There's no such thing," I said, ending the conversation the same again. I just didn't want to see. "Look, I know that something really crazy happened to you when you translated those things, but I'm just not prepared at this point to accept that it's the truth. There's no way that those papers are a magic truth spell. It's just too stupid to be true," I said, this time really ending it, and throwing my pizza down on to my plate.

"You make it sound so trivial, dude, but it's not some stupid idea, it's my life, I'm a mess, don't you see, I'm out of control and all I can do is hope that there's some way out of this, but for right now, dude, I'm screwed and you can't even take the time to feel sympathetic." He threw his pizza down and got up from the table. I'd really made him mad and I already felt terrible about it. Because I knew he was right. I trivialized the Prayer because it hadn't happened to me and because I didn't believe, I'd never believed, because God always seemed so stifling to me. And because I had wanted some magic and miracle in my life but I hadn't ever gotten any. And now here was some proof of something amazing, and it had happened to my friend, not me, and all I could do was deny it like an asshole. Because I was not strong enough to let myself change. I walked across the dinning room, which was now filled solely by a beautiful pool-table, and then into the living room where my dad's stereo stood as a great tribute to listening everywhere and for all people. Eugene was kneeling down, as all must do, on their knees in prayer to the spirit of listening, and putting a CD into the tray. I wanted to tell him I was having some trouble assimilating all of the madness, and that I was sorry enough, but instead I waited for the music to play.

My dad's collection of CD's rose above the stereo, a plastic library. There were five rows of one hundred albums and fifty or sixty more sitting on all the surface around the record player which sat at the top of the tower. There were six more shelves of CDs in the other corner of the room, that being the classical, jazz, and miscellaneous section; also certain artists that were separated for unknown reasons. Over the stereo were the rock CDs, and they shined synthetically in the natural light of the room. They were like gems to me. Farmhouse began to seep out of the tall laid back speakers that stood in the front of the room, that preached to all the other furniture in the room, bestowed on them, the mouth, the messenger of the players, and the listeners alike, the speakers reclining tall in the room where I'd grown up. Eugene stood and looked at me honestly not ashamed of the outburst I'd brought on.

"Shit, you're right," I said. He nodded and looked at me straight on with his thin eyes, and pointy chin.

My head bobbed to the music as an instinct, it stirred me up.

"It's cool," he said, "it's fine."

Guitar cut into the room and I wanted to stay, but it took me away for a few moments, away from Eugene and away from trouble. I surfed it as though it were the true vibration of life.

I came ashore and Eugene had walked away, back to the kitchen no doubt for more pizza. Amazing, I thought. My mind swam from the listening.

I heard a strange noise. I walked through the hall towards the kitchen and then the noise again. Someone was coming in the back door. I had half heard Eugene go upstairs while I was listening to the music. I was sure it was not him. Images of ninja assassins flew into my head immediately. I ran up the stairs and up again.

I went down the short hall and there was Eugene, in my brother's old bedroom, sitting on the desk talking quickly and almost silently to himself. I walked closer and heard that he was reciting the names of the characters from books he'd read.

"We've got to leave right now. There is a guy in the house, downstairs in the kitchen. Take what you need and let's go."

I ran across the hall to my old room and took the bag, the red bag with the racing stripe and then to the study where my dad kept his keys. His car was much faster than the Volvo. When I came into the hall again Eugene was waiting by the window. I motioned him to go and followed him as fast as I could. I heard footsteps on the stairs as I walked out onto the porch roof. If you hung down by your hands it was not that far to the ground.

We got into my dad's car and I started the engine.

"What was that all about?" Eugene asked.

"I don't know."

Wherever we went they were going to be there. They were waiting on the road for us to pull out. A feeling like real panic, claustrophobia, vibrated in my shoulders. I rested my head on the headrest and revved the engine.

"Where are we gonna go?" Eugene asked pulling his seatbelt over his chest.

"AC," I said. Atlantic City.

"AC," he said nodding his head. That was a good idea. Because in AC, it was still a game. We could still pretend it was a game.

"Did you know that it was a gangster, Bugsy Segal, who founded Las Vegas?"

"I did," I said pulling out of the driveway, waving to the Feds and then putting the Maxima in gear and bolting off down Heather Rd., into Philly, and then out out out to AC.

"Poker was originally invented by gypsies that traveled the roads of Eastern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Originally called "Chneyekvya," or "Dog Plays Monkey Drum," when directly translated into English, it came to its modern namage during the old west, when the Pokers, a loosely related clan of men involved in the cow trade, became renowned for they're abilities at all card games. Poker was also popular in the Far East and Asia since the tenth century. It's actually believed that the Gypsies who invented Poker were descended on one side from Asian Philosophers…"

As the car ate the road Eugene talked on, and I listened and the bad guys trailed in their big black sedans, and the day turned slowly over towards the night.

It was fine on the road, pleasant and silent besides the hum of the road and the tires. Eugene spoke and I didn't mind. I let his words fade into the white noise. I let the sounds lose all structure, the words disintegrate into strings of meaning without form. Eugene spoke as the road moved beneath the car. It was true transportation.

As we pulled into the driveway, overgrown with all kinds of green New Jersey weeds and all these memories, my heart felt softer than it had for months. The house looked the same as it always had. For a few moments life was totally peaceful. Eugene had fallen asleep. Also the Feds and the others had all stopped following us, probably somewhere convening with higher powers, figuring we were not unpredictable. They'd catch up to us later that night. But I didn't mind the break.

I put my keys on the hook by the door and dropped my coat on the floor and gave a start when Eugene came in behind me.

"Hey man," he said. "Did you know that the first casino opened up here in 1976, the same year that you and I were born, and the same year that your grandparents bought this house?"

"Yeah, I did actually."

"Nice," he said and pushed past me towards the bathroom. I looked through the fridge, not for food, but for food gone wrong, or food with some kind of hyper intelligence waiting to pounce on us while we slept. My grandparents were notorious for having really old food in the fridge. To the sound of Eugene's peeing I inspected some individually wrapped cheese slices that looked like they were originally created in the late seventies. I poked some other stuff, but it all seemed docile enough to leave for dead so I shut the fridge and waited for Eugene to come back.

I had come and lived in Margate once in the middle of the winter to write a book. Somehow writing turned out to be the passage (rite) I'd been looking for, and it was a passage to and through the desolate landscape of winter in Margate, New Jersey, whose beaches are the beaches at the end of the world. I would spend hours sitting on the long cold coastal sand just staring into the gray trying to see where the sky and the ocean met. But I never could. There is no horizon at the end of the world. No separation, no clarity, and no trees. No blue sky, no friends and no me. Just the absence of me. That's what I found in Margate in the winter, and it was nice, after a while, to be back.

"Let's go to the casino."

"Alright," I said.

"Awesome."

As we drove down Ventnor Ave Eugene listed for me all of the probabilities of winning at each game. Then he went into a talk about the origins of Craps, which I tuned out. The roads were wide all the way down to AC, designed to carry the big cars of the old people and the buses of the desperate all the way to the slot machines in comfort and without a wait. Ahh.

"…and then King Solid the IV outlawed the game within the boundaries of his small but brutal empire, and the merchants and players were forced to disseminate into the world at large. During the thirty years that Solid IV reigned after the decree anyone caught playing would actually be beaten and sometimes even killed. Known offenders who remained within the empire, whether or not they entertained the game were branded and treated as second class citizens. Most left though, and that's how we got the game…"

"Which game?" I asked.

"Roulette."

Roulette. I pulled over to the far right lane as the road widened even larger and the casinos began to appear in a row to the right. Some of the smaller casinos were old, barely changed in all their salt beaten years. Those were the ones that the depressing went to, the nicotine stained and rotten. The Sands. That's the one I remember as the worst. A world of smoky loss. My grandparents loved to go there.

I slowed down and looked for the turn that I knew was coming up soon. Either one or two more streets and then we'd be there. My favorite casino was the Taj, created by Donald Trump himself, all gold and mirrors, a cheap imitation of a real Las Vegas casino.

"Mailbox?" Eugene stopped my train of thought.

"Yeah, what?" I said, turning off the car and pulling the emergency break with its gratifying ratchet.

"What do you think is gonna happen?" He looked at me in his normal way, half smiling half genuinely uncomfortable. This time it was edged with a little bit of real fear, though. And that hint of real fear shot me inward, all the way down to the bottom of my stomach, to the doorway to the pit where the soul is kept, and I felt some fondness, some kind of real love for the chance I had to sit in that moment, to help Eugene out, to try and protect him, and to have someone like him in my life.

"I don't know," I said.

"What do you think they're going to do to me?" He said, his voice going up in unusual places, opening the door and getting himself out of the car.

"Dude, I don't know." I turned to face him over the car.

"I think that they want answers," Eugene said.

"I want some answers."

"Me too. I want some answers."

"Everybody wants answers, man." 'Answers for everybody', I called out loudly as we walked down the ramp towards the elevators. We chuckled. I threw up my arms and barked like a dog. Eugene looked at me like I was a lunatic and then did the same thing, and we laughed some more. I wanted some answers too though.

For Instance:

1) Who were the Indian guys? and

2) What did the FBI want with Eugene?

3) Did they want him for answers like Eugene thought? or was it more complicated than that?

4) It's just so weird that the pair of us had actually discovered something that was important enough to have the FBI after us. I mean, I was still having issues admitting that I believed it myself, and here was the government trying to get involved.

5) I mean, who the hell would have thought that PROF would get his hands on something as important and world changing as this, and then would die and leave it to Eugene to take the burden.

Thinking about it as we got into the elevator I realized that the thing was that it wasn't just important that Eugene could speak the truth. That was still in question. We were really important because here was some proof of biblical magic. At least magic from the biblical era. And that was some ground breaking shit.

Thought originally to be forgeries of a text that had been rumored to be created by a very very tiny breakoff sect of early Judaism, those documents turned out be the real thing, and even more than proof, they turned out to be magical. It sounded so stupid in my mind, but…Those documents really were written by a pair of ancient Jews, somewhere in a desert in the cradle of life, and the holy land, in a tent by candle light under the influence of unheardof hallucinogens and stimulants and madnesses and raptures, I would bet, of God himself. It blows the mind.

The five seconds on the elevator to the game floor at the Taj Mahal allowed for my mind to speed across barriers and millennia, I saw them writing again, like in the greenhouse and a scent came to me in my nose. My lungs instinctively puffed for air, as though I was in the greenhouse, but there was no smothering feeling, and there was no dampness, only the smell of cigarettes, static, laced with the perfumes and pleasantnesses of the casino.

As Eugene had translated the pages, he had discovered the prayer, a listing of more and more referent words for His Holiness, the Lord, God on High, each praise building in shape and color, moving as towards a pattern, or an end, a word, as though the text were a metamorphosis of the Word itself, and it built until the last page which was simply configurations of the word and the letters and the numbers assigned, twisted and turned, used in conjunction with prayers over fire and wine, and which ended with a name that remains untranslatable.

The elevator stopped.

The implications multiplying in my mind, looking over fixedly at Eugene, having a serious breakdown of perception and understanding, having a crisis, beads of sweat appearing on my forehead, a battle of order being fought by my mind, I realized that I recognized the two guys who had gotten into the elevator with us. I looked right into the longhaired one's eyes. He nodded his recognition. It was the two Spanish guys in new suits. One grabbed my arm tightly while the other one reached for Eugene with both hands. The Vatican was tired of waiting and was here to reclaim the holiness, I guess. I pulled my arm away hard, and the guy looked startled as though he hadn't expected me to give him any trouble. Hell, I hadn't expected to give him any trouble, but I raised up my fist, and for the first time in my life for real I socked a guy right in the head as hard as I could. I watched him tip backwards a little from the blow, blood starting to ooze out of his nose, and then I realized how much my hand hurt, and that the fight wasn't over as I'd imagined it would be, because he lunged for me, very angry. I reacted with surprising speed, and knocked his hand down, while pushing him forward into the button pad. At the same instant the doors slid open, and Eugene bolted out of the elevator managing to slip through the other guys arms. I bolted too, trying to locate Eugene in the gaming crowd as I went.

My heart beat wildly in my head as I ran. I looked back and forward, and then down to the carpet to see my feet to make sure that I still really was running on the ground. The adrenaline blurred my head in a way that I'd never had access to, from hitting a man, hard, but I kind of hated it. After a moment my head started to swim. I kind of toppled sideways into an aisle of people and slot machines, and crouched down accidentally grabbing hold of the lever of the endmost machine for support. I was catching my breath as things started to ring, and my mind raced from node to node, room to room of association trying to place the noise that was so close to my ear in a linking rattle of confusing bells and mirrors.

As it clanged the casino came into focus around me, everything taking some meaningful shape and then turning concrete as the madness in my mind must have worn off. The sound was money ringing down from the slot, half dollars careening into the metal tray. There was a woman screaming beside me, there were people looking from other aisles and machines to see what the ruckus was, and then there was a break in the noise when the money stopped falling.

"You bastard that was my half dollar that you pulled on, this money is all mine, and you better know it. Security, Security this man is trying to take my winnings, I won it fair and square I swear!!!" the woman yelled and called and I just did my best to stand up and assure her that I didn't want the money that it had all been an accident, and I scooted off down the aisle before the security guys could get there. I ran down past the horse race room, and the pai gow poker, I found the black jack tables and then the poker tables, and then along the wall, across the floor and over to Roulette. There was a huge crowd. The entrance to the theatre opened out here, and the crowd was leaving the latest show, gabbing about the magic the magician had made, the legs the show girls had shown, and the songs the singer had sung. I saw Eugene in the crowd, doing his best to avoid. I pushed into the people but they were not very accommodating and I had to retreat to a step behind me that led out to the long hallway that surrounded the gambling area. From up a step I could see Eugene better. I waved, trying to get his attention but he didn't see me. He kept his eyes down, and he moved his way cautiously, skulling almost, treading water in the sea of people. I called his name but he didn't hear me. I called again.

He didn't respond and I was about to go in and get him when I noticed the goon with the bloodied nose moving through the crowd, arm up, headed straight for Eugene. The other guy was there too, on the other side, closer to me, also arm up and in front of him, fighting his way through.

I called out to him one more time, but he still couldn't hear, didn't see me at all. The Spanish guy came up behind him and grabbed him and he yelped in complete surprise. They struggled, but Eugene was thin and bony, not strong, no match for the man with the mustache and the bloodied nose who was taking him by the wrists and trying to lead him out of the crowd. The man was speaking, but I couldn't make out what he said. Eugene pulled away and started to run, but the other guy made it there in time to catch him. The mustached one pulled his hand back and swatted Eugene in the face. The crowd noticed and there were some mass movements of hysteria emanating out in rings from where the three of them, Eugene and his assailants, stood. I saw a flash come from the hand of one of the men. A woman called out and there was even more struggling and insanity. The flash was the flash of a gun, and Eugene was on his knees looking down. Security came rushing from all kinds of directions and the mustached man was getting angry at his accomplice. The one yelled at the other and waved the gun at the ground. Security fought the sea of people, people screamed and squirmed all around, then suddenly the confusion exploded into silence with one sound.

The man with the gun reached up with his left hand and grasped his chest while simultaneously falling to his knees. It was just like in a movie when slow motion commences and sound goes totally silently besides heartbeats and distant almost silent screams. The yelled at accomplice rushed to the aid of the other who lay on the floor arms out, face down, gun still held, trigger finger still in place. Eugene tried to stand, faltered for a second, when someone reached out of the crowd and grabbed him, and he was gone. I lunged forward but was caught by hands that reached out from behind me and encircled my chest. I was pulled backwards, all my weight giving in to the pull, my butt hitting the floor, and then as I was dragged backwards I was pricked and then I was gone.

I dreamed that I was standing in the desert under the shade of an oasis tree, that there was a tent to the left with long blowing edges like wings made of canvas, and camels chewing food that had been set out for them in wooden buckets. I looked to the horizon and it was a sharp contrast, blue to yellow almost orange on the edges, and barely rolling dunes to make a shape like a shifting ocean. I felt the patches of sun coming through the leaves above me warming me selectively, and I thought of the importance of the shade, and I thought of how nice it was a tree was planted here. I felt thankful. There were sounds inside the tent and at first I thought it was two men arguing but the voices increased and soon it sounded like five men arguing. I walked closer to the tent which seemed to have wings almost, asymmetrical wings coming from different planes and edges, all blowing, like an animal with many eyes, and as I approached the door the sound had turned to twenty men arguing, talking about something.

I tried to listen to a single one, but I could not discern one from the others, there was no interaction, no separation, only talking, almost yelling, never yelling, but talking and when I pulled back the door I was in a dark dark room that smelled of musk and sweat and fire burning sandlewood incense. There were thirty men sitting cross legged, lotus style, and talking, all of them chanting in different words the same thing, with the same meaning, and it flickered with the candles and I fell in and knelt by one and the doors blew closed and the light was orange and I looked into the face of the man closest to my bowing body, and it was the face of an Arab, a nomad with a toothbeaten smile. He spoke the words that all the others spoke, in different orders, and I noticed that I chanted, and what I was saying was something I could not understand. It was purity in words, something that took hold and carried me away like a surging river, never stronger, not hot or cold or blue, only clarity, clearity, silvery energy. I stood up and walked to the back of the tent, passing everyone, all the chanters and mumblers and callers, and then I reached for the door flap, noticing the insignia of the sect, an eye and a triangle embossed on the Alpha and Omega, and when I walked through the flaps I emerged from the sweet darkness into a hotel room where the lights were on, and the bed beneath me was too soft. I looked to my right and Eugene lay sleeping in the other bed. I wondered if this were it, and if it were finally all over. Maybe he told them where the documents were and they'd leave us alone to get back to our lives.

Eugene blinked and then opened his eyes wildly.

"I didn't say anything; I swear I didn't tell anybody anything; I don't want to let this happen to me."

"What are you talking about, dude?"

"What?" he said bewildered, just coming-to completely.

"What's going on?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I feel like shit."

"You look like it."

"I thought for a second that I had been having a dream," he said sitting up, sadness in his voice.

"What is going to happen now?" I asked, sitting up too, rubbing my head and eyes and my shoulders.

"They drugged us," Eugene said almost surprised, "I almost got killed."

"Still pouring out the truth, I see."

The door to the hotel room opened, and two men came in. They were dark skinned, wearing dark suits, and as soon as they stepped into the light I recognized them as the Indian guys who had been following us before.

"How are you feeling," one of them asked in a soft and perfect accent.

"What's going to happen now?" I asked.

"Well, I bet you're both hungry." The voice was kind and steady. He wasn't threatening me at all.

"I am hungry. I really don't understand what's going on right now. Who are you guys?" I asked nervously, trying to regulate my voice, still shaken up, and shaking.

"I've got your answers." He walked all the way into the room now and sat down. He faced Eugene, looked almost innocent, and smiled at both of us slowly.

"You read the papers," He said looking at Eugene, patting him on the leg like an uncle. "You translated them." He paused.

We looked at each other.

"When I heard that those papers had surfaced I couldn't believe it. I was in my apartment in Bombay. I had not been to a meeting of my church in many years. The voice on the phone was my teacher, and the leader of my church. His father and grandfather had both been leaders of the church before him, as had my descendants been The Keepers of the Word. When I heard his voice I knew that I had failed them all, for the word had been spoken. I didn't keep it very well. I had thought that it was just a myth, if you want to know the real truth.

I had left the church because it was not urgent, because my duty was an old one, and ornamental, never real because the word had never been found, never discovered, thought to be only a piece of mythos, like the bible itself." He stopped for a second and I took the pause to butt in the question I'd been thinking.

"So you guys wrote the documents?"

"My ancestors did."

"They wrote them back in the day? But I thought they were Jews who wrote it."

'They were Jews, living in the cradle of civilization, but they're mysticism brought them a lot of grief and they continually moved across the countries, across the desserts, because they'd discovered how to harness the true power, the power of the word of God, and it made them different. Set them apart. They were molested and beaten, they were used, and they're powers were used to."

"So you guys still exist, and you're Indian because the sect moved around so much and then eventually ended up in India?"

"What is now Nepal, actually, is where the church stands, in the Himalayas, The Church of the Word. There are twenty other short texts there that were written by the same scribes who wrote the Prayer of the Word, the text that you found."

"But you guys knew that this one existed?" I asked him.

"It was rumored to have existed, but it had never been found, so we thought, in these long long years since those mystical times, that they weren't real, that they were simply stories. But our services, and our dogma revolves around the last text, the Prayer of the Word, which you translated, Eugene." He turned and looked at Eugene. Eugene looked back at him, and then at me, and rested his elbow on his knee and started biting at his nails.

"Two brothers broke away from the congregation of their village because they spoke to God, and he told them secrets that the rabbis and the rich men didn't like. The two brothers were never accepted anyway, they were upstarts, too intense for their own good. They believed the texts and the faith and the creeds, and they believed that they could feel god, and that they could harness his power if they could only find out about the word. They fasted and feasted on plants that made their minds malleable, they consumed nothing for days and weeks, they pushed themselves to states of total submission, and pushed themselves forward with their spirits, the spirits of angels in the bodies of men, and soon God came to them, and God told them about the Word. When they returned to the village after, they were changed men, introspective and silent, eyes like rapid streams. They spent the year writing down what they'd learned, created the twenty-one documents of our bible, and then retreated to the dessert to perfect their craft, to think of God, and to learn to live with the power that they'd found."

"But in my dream I saw more than one," I said.

"The bible says that they spent forty years alone, and emerged looking no older, the same besides their eyes which now looked like oceans. They began to speak about the power of God, and some listened and some didn't. The two traveled the world that was accessible to them, and preached, and they gathered followers of all kinds. Eventually they settled in the mountains of Nepal where they built a church from the rock of a cliff, where they built a great arc to hold the holy documents, and where they created a school that could train others in the word of the Lord, but which succeeded in training none, because none could handle the shear force and power of the men, those two brothers, and their knowledge, which stretched like a black hole, to infinity."

"What about me?" Eugene asked, "Does that mean I'm really hardcore?"

"It will be impossible to know until the future, after you've come with us back to Nepal and allowed us to teach you, to study the texts ourselves and then to show you how to bear down under the wait of God. Your present symptoms are negligible compared to what is to come, what could come.

"Ummmm."

"I am here to protect you. We are here to protect you and the documents, and you have very much that you need protection from. The Spaniards are crazy Papists, and the FBI is never ever to be trifled with."

It was true. I could tell that what he was saying was the truth. It just all made so much sense, and his voice, the way his voice was so calm it made me want to believe that someone had come to protect us.

I stood up and switched beds, sitting down next to Eugene, and he turned his face to me. Did he believe? He did believe. This was the truth. It was all true. But Eugene still seemed so wary. I looked back at the Indian guy, and as if in response to what Eugene and I were thinking, he pulled up his shirt sleeve and showed me the sign. The one from the dream I'd just had, the eye and the triangle, the Alpha and the Omega. I nodded my head. It was settled for me. These guys were the good guys.

"So, I have to go back with you?" Eugene asked, unsure.

"Unless you can find another place to hide from them."

"I don't want to go."

"I understand," the man said. "There is nothing I can do but ask you and if you choose to stay I will do my best to protect you, but it would be best, for all of us if we could leave here right now, return to some sanctuary where we can try and assimilate the truth that you've discovered."

"I don't want to do this," Eugene said and stood up off the bed. It was a gesture of finality.

"You are, in effect, a prophet for us, and not to join us would be an insult to the gesture God made by giving you those texts to translate."

"How do you know what God wants?" Eugene said, almost angry, his voice too loud and quivering. "I don't want to go. And I'm not going, and that's final."

But not as final as what happened next.

There was a loud bang against the door, so startling that the man who'd been standing by the door the whole time fell to the floor on instinct. Next there was another crash, but it was different from the first one, not as loud, accompanied by a ripping sound, and a cracking, the sound of the door giving way, shattering to pieces while I sat there on the bed.

Seven armed guards rushed into the room in single file after dropping the ram they'd used to break it down in the hall. They were all wearing full riot gear, holding heavy looking rifles, and they said nothing as they took their positions around the room. For a moment nothing happened. The guards stood preparing for the next part of the procedure, and my mind raced to keep up. The order came and they all moved at once. One of the guys in black was already restraining the guy who was on the floor. Two others reached and grabbed Eugene, cuffed his hands behind his back and subdued him using the butt of one of the rifles in his back. I was cuffed as well and forced to stand, while they started moving the Indians out. I stood willingly, silent now, everyone was silent, and I let them lead me out the door. There were splinters all over the floor by the doorway, and they looked incredible against the unnerving pattern of the carpet. I could see the strain on every single fraction of the door, the intensity of their breakup etched into each shard. It was as though I could see the explosion in the pieces, still present, in some way still going on. It was beautiful and it almost brought a tear out from somewhere deep inside my face.

The guards led us down a hall, and then down a few flights of stairs to an emergency exit. The two Indians, our protectors from the Sect of the Word, were led off in another direction, and we never saw them, not Eugene or me, ever again in our lives. When we emerged into the parking lot the night was coming close to ending and there was a mist rising from the ground. The sky was glowing blue green, pre-morning light, and it made the black top of the parking lot look shiny. There were other agents outside, in full gear as well, standing stiff with rifles waiting for what ever was to happen next. I looked over and saw that Eugene was saying something, telling someone something, something no doubt that they didn't ever care about knowing. For once I wished I could be listening.

I caught his eye and he smiled a half smile, kind of a broken smile, and continued to speak.

I was nudged and I moved along feeling strange, out of my body, out of my world and into a new one. There was a beating of wings in the distance.

The guards reformed their formation, moved around and made us move to accommodate for the thing that was flying in. It came over the hotel, a helicopter, loud with deep bass pounding, but still unnaturally quiet. It landed in the formation, and the government guards stood tall at attention, and the door to the copter came open and two men in fine suits stepped out.

One was tall and the other one was short. The tall one was fat and had a full head of hair. And the short one, even from across the parking lot, looked like he was important. The guys holding Eugene coaxed him forward, out of the line, and I watched as the two men from the helicopter discussed.

"Who are those guys?" I asked the agent holding my arm. He said nothing, but I knew any way. Those were the bad guys. The FBI.

Eugene struggled a little, but soon he was standing in front of the bad guys, who were still discussing back and forth. The tall fat one said something to Eugene, and Eugene said something back. The tall one said something to his friend and then something back to Eugene. Eugene shook his head, and the tall man barked a command. The silence was staggering, the feeling of removal complete. I was not a part of this.

The agent behind Eugene used his gun to push on the back of Eugene's knee, forcing him to kneel. Eugene turned his head and looked at me, and I locked his eyes, and I tried to show him how scared I was for him. He shook his head again, in answer to a question from the short man, from the important one, still looking at me, and then turned back to look at them. The short one shook his head. The blades of the helicopter beat away.

The sky was creeping towards light behind Eugene whose hair blew downward and around his head as he knelt. There were a few more words between the two officials, and then the short guy reached into his pocket and produced a gun. He didn't say another word, but offhandedly pushed it to Eugene's head and pulled the trigger.

My friend fell quickly, not like in a movie, and I watched his head smack the tarmac of the parking lot with full force. It was the movement of a dead body, not a live one. I could see blood beginning to collect below it on the pavement. I struggled hard for a second, and then stopped pulling on the arms that held me back. Everyone waited for a moment, as though they all recognized the honesty of what had happened.

Then there was movement all around me. The two important men from the FBI returned to their seats on the helicopter, buckled-in and the helicopter reared its head mechanically and flew away. The agents who were left on the ground collected the body roughly from the concrete, I concentrated on the head as it swung down from the neck, the head of my friend, and I felt stopped inside.

Everyone else took what there was in the parking lot, efficient as ants, and reboarded their vans, my cuffs were removed, the last few agents closed the doors and the vans drove away, and I was left alone, cuffs, friend, and something else all gone. I looked at the ground. Even the blood from his head had been taken, taken care of. There was nothing left. They'd taken all of it.

I was left in total silence. I wanted to cry but there was nothing to shed. I closed my eyes and tried to regulate my breathing, catch my breath and gain enough control to move. I turned my head and my body followed. I walked into the building and up the stairs, down the slim hallway and over the shards of the shattered door and into the bedroom where I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes.