Her Lies And His Secrets In Dallas
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Dallas, Texas. The first thing I do is to walk around and look at the outside of the building where it all happened, in an effort not to overthink things and go mad on the sidewalk like they said I would, which will happen if you don’t do that kind of thing right away, especially after a long trip from home.
It’s a little too early for people to be out and about and there isn’t much traffic. There are lots of tall buildings but none of them are quite as high and thin as the one my friends were killed in last night. It looks more like something that would have been built by some futuristic city-state than by a modern corporation.
They say the top floor has an observation deck that goes straight up for twenty stories – maybe that’s why they did it there; so no one could see what was happening from below. But they didn’t use guns and there weren’t any explosions and they made a mess of my friends’ faces when they shot them, even though there wasn’t anybody else around except me.
So I guess this is how you know your own mind can be trusted: that if you want to do something really stupid then it won’t work. Or at least you’ll feel stupid afterward. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now because nobody can get into the building without going through a metal detector and they wouldn’t let me in any way.
You need special authorization to enter the building or something, which is funny since they already had me here. They knew who I was before I got off the airplane and I never asked for any help either. Maybe that’s what makes them think they can keep their secrets.
It’s still light but I head back down to my rental car and drive downtown. I don’t want to be stuck here with nothing better to do than stare out the window, and besides, I need somewhere safe to be alone until it gets dark and I can get out of town.
If someone comes after me then maybe they won’t see the black SUV with “FBI” painted across its front plate parked on the street in front of a restaurant. A lot of people will come after me now, not just some weirdo with a grudge against my family and my school.
And there might be reporters, but that’s okay; I’m used to talking to them. This time they’re interviewing me, and it feels good because I’ve never felt like anything I ever did matter. At least not enough. Until now. Now I feel something important for the first time.
But you only get one chance. And you can lose it all tomorrow. I wonder if the guys who died with my friends last night will have any regrets if I go ahead and tell everyone the truth about what happened in Chicago. I’d love to hear it myself. But you can’t change the past. Or the future. Not even by telling them. I hope it’s enough.
I park in an underground garage next to an empty elevator shaft and take the stairs down to a big lobby where they have a security desk and a bank of elevators. The doors slide open at my touch. I get on the third one down and wait for it to go up.
It takes five floors until I reach the ground floor again, and it’s only there that I realize I left my backpack in the car. I try to remember if I left anything else behind, but the elevator seems to be moving awfully fast for this part of town. Then suddenly we’re out on a wide boulevard between two skyscrapers.
I don’t recognize any of the buildings – everything looks old and worn down. The cars are all older than mine too; most of them look like they should be parked in a museum rather than driven anywhere near me. But Dallas is a big place. And a lot bigger than Austin.
This time I take a cab and pay the driver a couple of bucks for an hour’s service. There’s an airport close by so he’s probably heading that way and won’t care if I sit in the back and listen to his radio station.
He has a pretty deep voice and he’s talking about how great America is and how we have more freedoms and opportunities than anyone else in the world. He says he’s a veteran, a former marine, which I guess means he fought in some other country before returning to America, where they treat him very well.
He’s a real patriot and he thinks America is the greatest place ever to live. That makes me smile because it reminds me of Dad’s speeches. But he’s not a politician so maybe he doesn’t count.
My stomach growls and he puts on an ad for Mcdonald’s instead. I don’t order anything, although I wish I did; I haven’t eaten since breakfast. It’s almost six o’clock now. When I get back home tonight I’ll eat properly, even if it kills me.
Then I’ll get to work trying to figure out how to find out who killed those men in Chicago. Because somebody knows. And whoever it is must know what I did in Texas because they’ve been watching me all along.
***
The house has gone quiet, as far as I can hear anyway, which isn’t very loud at all in this part of the city. Most people have turned off their radios, televisions, and phones, and shut their blinds. Even the birds seem quieter as if they’re not happy about being here anymore. But there was a lot of traffic noise outside, and now there’s none. Maybe it was only one of them that was shot.
It’s still light outside, so I wander down the hall to the bathroom where I strip off my clothes and wash thoroughly. After drying myself I dress quickly in some clean sweatpants and a T-shirt from the laundry pile that I forgot to bring upstairs.
Then I pull on my boots and head downstairs to get my backpack out of the car and put it on the dining room table. It’s going to be cold out tonight. I’ll need my jacket.
I walk out into the kitchen and see the door open to the backyard, but nobody’s there, and the yard is deserted except for a few stray dogs sniffing around. All the windows are dark now and it smells like rain coming in.
They say this weather system will be bringing snow later, so it’s going to be pretty miserable for everyone in a while. And there are no lights at all in the rest of the house; my parents went away when I came back home. They’ll be back soon, though.
My mother’s on a business trip with her boss, which means she won’t miss me until after I’m gone. She won’t even know I’m gone if I don’t tell her. Which is fine because I don’t want her worrying about me. Not when I have something much better to worry about: figuring out who killed those men in Chicago.
“Where are you?” I whisper out loud, as quietly as I can in case someone is listening. I can hear the faintest echo of the sound bouncing back, which means there’s a chance someone might hear it in another room – or a basement or attic.
I can also feel a vibration in the air; there must be wind blowing outside somewhere, maybe across a river or up against a cliff. I don’t know why anyone would want to hide out under such circumstances. “Come out and face me.”
I take one last look around to make sure that no one else is around and then walk through the front door. The porch is lit with a floodlight attached to the roof so I pause just inside. Someone’s sitting in the dark, leaning forward slightly in the chair with their arms folded in front of the man, who looks vaguely familiar, but not exactly.
He’s staring straight ahead without blinking. “Hey,” I say softly. “You know me, don’t you? Or maybe you didn’t recognize me. But I saw you, remember? We were both there, weren’t we? In Chicago.”
There’s no response, only silence from the shadowy figure in the dark. I’m afraid to move closer so I keep standing there, wondering how to get to him without stepping on anything. It’s cold, too; the night is growing colder by the minute and soon I’ll be shivering.
The man doesn’t speak again or turn his head around towards me, so I finally step forward. I don’t know how long he’s been waiting for me, but it could have been hours. A couple of years, even. There’s nothing for me to do except sit down beside him, which I do.
We wait in the darkness together. After a time I realize that he’s dead; his eyes are open, but his lips are still closed, and there’s blood all around. His head rests against mine and his mouth is open a little, revealing that same smile that I’ve seen before.
I try to wipe the blood off, but I can’t really succeed. So I just lie there on top of him and stare up at the sky, where stars are starting to show themselves.
I wonder how long he had been waiting here for me. Was he looking for me? Was he expecting me to come along? Or did he just happen to find me and drag me here after seeing the news reports of the shooting in Chicago? I suppose he could be trying to kill me now that he’s found me, but what does he think I can do against him? What’s he after?
“What are you doing here?” I ask aloud. “How did you get past everyone else who was watching me?”
There’s a rustle in the bushes nearby, and a small shape jumps out and starts sniffing around my feet. I jump to my feet; I hadn’t realized they were there. It’s a rabbit, but it’s not like any kind I’ve ever seen before. Maybe it’s some kind of animal from one of the other planets, or maybe it’s one of those animals you see on Earth but never see on Mars.
Whatever it is, it has sharp little teeth and bright eyes. I grab my knife off my belt, but the moment I raise it to throw it at him, he darts out of sight behind some trees and I can’t track him down. I stand there with my knife in hand for a long time, thinking about the gun in my hands – the one that I used to shoot myself in the arm – and whether I should have brought it.
I decide against it; the thing is bulky and awkward and it’s hard enough keeping the damn thing pointed in the right direction when I fire it. It would be much worse in the middle of a fight – or so I figure. If I’d thought about it more I might have realized that it wasn’t a good idea to leave it lying around on the ground, but I guess I didn’t because now I’ve got to go look for it.
As I turn, something makes a noise and I turn back into the bushes to see what’s there. There’s nothing in the light coming through the trees and so I reach out with my foot and kick at the leaves, sending them flying away to reveal another body: this one is human. And I realize that they’re not bodies at all. They’re people! All three of them, crouched in the bushes.
“Jesus!” says one. “We thought we lost you,” says the third. “I mean… Christ, we thought we saw someone out here…”
One of them steps forward. She looks like she knows something; her hair is short, cropped just above her shoulders, and she wears an outfit that looks like a mix between jeans and leather pants. Something about the way she stands suggests that she might be older than most of the others, but the truth is that she looks young to me.
She’s wearing a jacket made of leather straps over her shoulders, and she looks like a real badass, ready to go kick the crap out of anyone. Except she sees me staring at her and smiles a little, and I realize that she must be pretty damn old.
The rest of them are young and fit-looking, but she’s not as thin and worn out as they are. Her age shows more in her face and her voice: she seems a little frailer, less powerful. But she’s not feeble, either. She has strength in her legs and her arms.
She walks over to me and sits down on the ground beside me. I put my knife away and take a seat next to her. As she sits down, my gaze travels to her hands, and she notices and laughs a little. “You want me to sign your cast, huh?”
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” I ask.
“I figured since you were in trouble, I could help,” she replies, grinning.
“Yeah, but how did you get past the people who were watching me?”
She gives a shrug and then points to two spots on her clothes where there’s some kind of symbol stitched into it. “Those marks protect us from people’s powers.”
“But—” I point at the place she showed me and try to use my mind to open up a path to whatever it is I need to know about the symbols. A moment passes and I don’t feel anything, so I shake my head and say, “I can’t read these.”
“That’s the whole point of the markers,” the woman says. “You have to find them yourself.”
I frown and look back to the markings on her coat, wondering if this woman is really as smart as she acts. It doesn’t seem possible. “Where do I get these marks?” I ask.
The woman gets up suddenly, brushes herself off, and takes a step toward me. “Don’t ask,” she says. “Just come with me. We’ll talk about it later.”
And then, as abruptly and casually as she came along, she’s gone again. I’m left sitting alone on the ground with no clue what I should be doing, or even how I can get out of this damn forest. What should I do? Who should I trust? Why was I being watched by the people I had already been told not to talk to?
***
My name’s Alex and I live in New York City. That’s where I grew up – in Manhattan, on Long Island, which is about twenty miles out of Brooklyn. My family lives in a nice part of town, overlooking the Hudson River.
Our house is close to Central Park and we have a view of some of the best sights in the city. I’ve only lived there for seven years now, and my life hasn’t really changed much from when I used to live elsewhere.
I went to school and I got good grades. I wasn’t a great athlete like other kids, but I was a decent enough student. When I was younger, I played sports with my friends and rode skateboards around our neighborhood. Now, though, I spend my time studying, writing songs, and playing music. My guitar is a Gibson, an electric one that cost me a lot of money. But I still play it every day because it makes me happy. In fact, it’s all I care about.
It’s not a normal hobby, I know. You hear about people who are obsessed with football, baseball, or basketball, and they go out and practice their game all the time, trying to improve. Or maybe there are musicians who play their instruments endlessly, hoping to one day become famous or a painter who paints their canvases every waking hour. I didn’t do any of that.
I guess it’s obvious that my parents weren’t happy with the way I spent my spare time. They wanted me to do better, and make sure I graduated college. At least my mom tried to be supportive. She listened to my ideas, even if she couldn’t tell if they were worth a damn.
It was my dad who always told me to focus more on school. He said I needed to study more, work harder, and learn faster. But he never understood me the way my mother did – he seemed too concerned about what other people thought of him when he had such great opportunities.
He’s a musician himself, and he has a band called The Dead End Kings. He’s got some pretty big fans in Europe, and even though they’re not huge in America yet, everyone thinks someday we’ll blow up. And my dad seems like he cares about making it big. He’s just not very good at it.
My father is one of those guys you see walking around with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a drink in either hand. Sometimes when we’re out at a club, I see him looking out across the crowd with his sunglasses on, scanning the room for girls; he looks like a rich businessman with money to burn. And sometimes he’s actually a wealthy man. But he’s also a liar.
My father is not the type of guy who will let the world know when he loses his job – instead, he’ll pretend everything is okay until the end, or he’ll make something up and then try to bluff people into thinking it’s true.
For instance, last year he worked as a lawyer and managed to keep getting paid while we ran short on bills. But when my mother lost her teaching job, it became clear that the law business wasn’t going to take us anywhere anymore.
My father pretended he had connections with powerful people and made plans for how to deal with bankruptcy. His plan was to lie low until the creditors gave up. But then he decided to quit working altogether – he’d found a new gig. It involved drugs and guns and it looked like an exciting way to make more money than ever before.
Of course, that didn’t work either: after two months of living like a drug dealer, my father lost all his money. Then he came home, begging to borrow money from my mom – and she refused him. He didn’t seem to understand why.
I guess he felt like he’d done nothing wrong by trying to make a few extra bucks, except that someone else was stealing them. After all, his clients were the ones who stole from him, not the other way around.
“What about me?” he asked. “Where do I fall in all of this?”
And now my father is back at the beginning, and I think he understands how things must be. He tries to be helpful again, but he doesn’t want to help out financially. He just wants to get high, watch TV and talk about politics and history, all the subjects he knows well. He says they’re important and so am I.
He doesn’t seem to grasp that being educated isn’t enough to make money. I can read books all I want, but I’m no one unless I find a way to get paid.
So now we have nothing, just like all the others who fell behind. There are no jobs available in our city. We’re stuck here like my parents said we would be.
The only difference between us is that my mother doesn’t really give a shit – she thinks we’ll figure it out somehow. Maybe she’s right. I don’t think we will, though.
***
One night when we were sitting on our couch watching television, my father asks me what I’d been doing lately. “Nothing much,” I say.
“I’m talking about music, Jack.” He puts down his whiskey glass and sits closer to me. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to force anything. I just think you need to do more of what makes you feel alive.”
I’m not sure what he means by “what makes me feel alive,” but it sounds like he’s saying I should play the guitar more often. Of course, he’s right – I’m terrible at it. And when you’re playing a song on the radio and people sing along, you’re supposed to look cool doing it, like Mick Jagger.
But if I played a real blues tune, I’d look pathetic because I’d sound bad. So I don’t know what else to tell Dad. I don’t want to disappoint him again.
Instead, I say: “You remember how you told me not to write songs about my problems? Like when I wrote ‘The Blues’? You said the most interesting stories are when you don’t care about your subject.”
“Yes, and that’s exactly why I think you have potential as a musician – because you don’t care about the music business, the music industry or any of that nonsense. You’re not caught up in the whole system, and that’s what people want to hear these days.”
This is a nice change of pace, I think, although I’m still not sure I agree with him. “But I think people are drawn to songs like The Blues, even if it does make me look dumb.”
“Well, I’m saying that if you could make that song better, it’d go viral on the Internet – the whole world would be singing it at once and you’d be famous. If you could write a hit, it’d be worth millions of dollars in royalties, and maybe you wouldn’t mind having that kind of success.
You don’t have to worry, I won’t force anything on you. But if you really want to follow your dreams, you’ll need to make some changes.”
After my father leaves the room, I turn off the television, take the guitar out of its case and strum it. I try to imagine what I could do differently with that riff. It wasn’t that good to begin with; I just thought it sounded pretty because it sounded familiar.
Now I wonder how I could make it sound more original. What chords might work for it? How many different ways can I rearrange those notes before they stop sounding like something I’ve heard somewhere else?
It’s late so there aren’t too many people around to see me messing around with my guitar. But if there was anyone looking in, I know they’d think it’s just another sad kid playing a depressing song on his guitar in his bedroom. They’d think I was wasting my time.
Or maybe they’d think I didn’t have it in me to be great. That’s why I never show anyone my songs; they’d laugh at them. When I play the guitar, it’s like a secret language, like I’m speaking to someone who understands me. No one has ever understood me – except when I played The Blues and they sang along.
My dad seems convinced that I could be successful, and I don’t know how he came to that conclusion, because I’m sure the only reason he listened to my music is that I forced him. But I’m curious enough to give it a shot.
If I can find a way to improve my songs, then maybe they’ll become more popular – and then I’ll be able to afford some better guitars and a place where people can come listen to me play. My father is right when he says there isn’t much money in the blues, but I’m going to make a fortune off this if it kills me.
The End