The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 08

A woman in an ill-fitting platinum-blonde wig ushered them forward, up a rickety set of steps and into the rusting capsule. The small gate slammed shut.

"Ride as long as you want," she said. "Holler when you want off."

"I bet this beast hasn't passed inspection in years," Miguel muttered as they lurched backwards. The initial jerk suggested it might be a quick ride, but then the motion doubled back on itself and settled in a humming crawl. It was going to be a long way around.

"Makes it more exciting, don't you think?"

"If you say so."

A broad grin spread across the kid's face as he gripped the lumpy white painted rail. "To think, a hour ago this seemed like the worst idea I'd ever heard. I guess I'm the fool."

"I guess you are."

They ascended slowly into the night like spirits. Miguel peered between the massive spokes and discovered a few other capsules holding people, but none were near them. The hum of the drive mechanism grew steadily fainter as they continued upward.

"The water is completely black," observed the kid.

"So is the sky."

Neither said much of anything for the next few minutes. Speaking strictly for himself, Miguel felt very much in awe of the experience. Out from within the giant old contraption must have seeped something magical...some invisible stardust of glittering decades past, which permeated the night air, instilling in him a sense of peaceful wonder that surely also intoxicated the earliest passengers, all those years ago.

They still hadn't reached the top, but they were very close. He moved his hand to cover Gabe's on the rail. Just as they came over the crest and witnessed the heart-stopping vastness of ocean and sky, space and time, the ride stopped.

"I was hoping this would happen," the kid said under his breath.

"Me too."

Together they looked out. No part of city was visible. It lay behind them. In front of them: an expanse so large that it harbored every imaginable future for both of them. All possible paths forward illuminated within the emptiness--one had only to think them up and they became real.

"Do you ever try and picture the future?"

The kid looked over. "Of course I do."

"What does it look like to you?"

"I don't..." he hesitated. "I'm not sure. I guess I need some kind of timeframe. How far into the future do you mean?"

"Let's say five years."

Gabe thought for a moment. "I told you I will be with you forever. You believe me, don't you? So I'm sure we'll be living together somewhere. I would be nice to have a place with more space. I picture my favorite books on shelves in every room."

"What will you do for work?"

A pause. "What do you mean?"

"I'm just asking."

"Well...assuming Eddie gets everything under control with Otero, I'd like to think it won't be much different from now." He looked curiously over at Miguel. "Isn't that what you're picturing?"

"I don't believe you."

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"I think you wish you could do something else."

The kid crossed his arms. "I'm glad you trust me to be truthful with you."

"I'm not saying you're not being truthful. I just think maybe you're not letting yourself explore any other outcome."

Gabe didn't respond right away. Finally, he closed his eyes, gripped the rail. "Why don't you tell me what you're getting at, instead of trying to lead me to it?"

"Do you really believe Eddie will get things under control?"

"No."

Miguel faltered. He hadn't expected such a definite answer. "Then why--"

"I don't think I'm able to imagine anything else, Miguel. This is all I know. It's all my father wanted for me. And I was too busy avoiding reality to dream up a different life for myself."

"But you can."

"I know that. I can feel myself starting to learn how."

"See? That's amazing."

Gabe looked up at him. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"This thing with Eddie and Otero--I think it's all going to fall apart. I'm not sure how, but I can feel it starting to happen already."

"Really?"

Miguel gripped the rail and shivered slightly, even though it wasn't cold. "The other night in the warehouse, I thought I might die."

"You did?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you told Eddie the guy was just acting strange."

"That's true," said Miguel. "Still, the whole time he was there, I couldn't shake the feeling that it might all be over in the next moment."

Gabe faced forward again. "I knew you seemed different after that night."

"You couldn't tell."

"I could," he insisted. "Eddie has been up in our business all week long, and you haven't complained about it once. Explain that."

The kid had him.

"He's going above and beyond to protect us right now," Gabe continued. "That would normally irritate the hell out of you. The difference is, now you feel like there's something we need to be protected from. And I feel it too."

"What is it, though? A random dude in the warehouse who was acting strange? It's true--that's all he was."

Gabe leaned forward and rested his chin on the bar. "It's bigger than just that one guy. I think it's whatever made death feel so near to you that night."

Miguel had nothing to say.

Gabe peered over his side of the capsule. "Do you think they're between shifts down there? Maybe we're stuck here forever."

"I wouldn't mind."

Now it was Gabe's turn to place his hand on Miguel's. "If you'll stay with me, then I don't care what happens."

"I'll stay with you. I promise I will."

The kid was clearly contented to hear the words. He let his hands fall from the rail to his lap. He leaned dreamily against the side of the capsule. Eventually, he turned to Miguel. "Holy shit. One way or another...we're going to have to get ourselves out of this thing."

Miguel said nothing. He knew Gabe wasn't talking about the Ferris wheel.

It lurched back into motion and they began their descent.

;-;

It came as no surprise to Miguel when Eddie called him up the next day and announced they would follow the same plan for at least another week. "Also," he added, his tone shapeshifting to something Miguel hardly recognized, "Lydia and I would like to make good on our offer to have you both over. We'll arrange for her mother to take the kids. How's this Saturday evening?"

"Saturday's fine," Miguel stammered, struggling to keep up. "Should we bring anything?"

"Just yourselves. Come at eight, after dinner. We'll have drinks."

"Okay."

They both stumbled their way through the rest of the phone call, and then Miguel hung up. He came to rest beside Gabe on the couch.

"What is it?"

"Drinks at Eddie's house Saturday night."

"Seriously?"

Miguel stared vacantly ahead. "Can't be just drinks right?"

"Will the kids be there?"

"No, just Lydia."

"Huh. I wonder if anything's up."

"Hey, I'm just just glad we got the call, since you had the phone line tied up all morning."

"It was worth it," he said.

"You know that thing has a history function."

"A what?"

"It's like of log of every website you went to."

"So? I have nothing to hide."

"Everything you searched, too."

Gabe shrugged.

"What about law school?"

He froze. "That was just mild curiosity."

"Was it?"

Gabe burrowed into the cushions of the couch. "What are you doing looking into my private business, anyway?" He didn't seem upset.

"You're embarrassed."

"Why would I be embarrassed? There's nothing embarrassing about imagining a new path for myself, for the first time in my life."

Miguel smiled and threw his arms around the kid, who failed to wrest himself from the embrace.

;-;

Saturday, August 21st, 1999

At seven o'clock on Saturday evening they transferred to an eastbound Orange Line train and rode it out to Coronet-195th station. From there, they walked fifteen minutes to Eddie and Lydia's house. The street was like a continuous stucco sculpture. Odd, contrived shapes suggesting columns and archways poked from cream-colored boxes and triangle peaks. They would have missed their destination entirely were it not for a house number and the infamous black Lincoln Navigator brooding on the driveway.

Eddie met them at the door and ushered them in. It was Miguel's second visit to Eddie's home, though he remembered basically nothing of the first. Lydia lived here, too, a fact he might as well have just now realized. Miguel found himself wondering strange things as he removed his shoes, such as what her life was like in this vast quiet space. He looked to the decor for answers. Two large watercolor paintings occupied walls in the adjacent front room. An old upright piano stood beside the doorway to the kitchen.

Then Lydia herself filled that doorway, standing with a hand against the frame in a simple green dress. She said, "Drinks are in here. Please come sit down."

They followed Eddie through the kitchen and into a rather large dining area at the far end, by a bay window with a view of the backyard. Gabe and Miguel sat together on one side of the table. There was a Japanese whisky Eddie wanted them all to try and they agreed. Eddie and Lydia poured drinks in the kitchen and soon joined them at the table. Miguel was seated directly across from Lydia and he made eye contact with her as their glasses clinked together.

Eddie said, "Cheers," and they all took a drink.

The whisky tasted at first like the smell of a burning tire, the backside of freshly-peeled tree bark, and then something Miguel could not discern. "It's good," he lied, staring into the glass.

Eddie nodded. "Isn't it?"

As the heat in his throat faded, Miguel was startled by the realization that they might have been invited over for no particular reason at all. But in the next second, Eddie shifted his weight in a particular way.

"We wanted to check in with both of you," he began. "It seems like a good idea to make a couple things clear." He seemed very hesitant, glancing sharply left to his wife, who looked at back at him with a reassurance in her eyes that proved to Miguel she was anything but cold.

"Lydia and I have discussed the two of you lately, and we realized that you share something about your backgrounds. I hope neither one of you takes offense to this, but I think it's worth acknowledging that your parents were--each of them, in one way or another--absent from your lives."

"Hah," Miguel said. He clapped a hand over his own mouth, a gesture that must have looked comical to the rest of them, but was completely involuntary.

"I take it you agree, then."

"Yes, Eddie, I'd say it's a fair assessment that my parents have been absent."

Eddie turned to the kid. "Gabe, what about you? Of course I'm talking about before."

The kid nodded silently. "Yes, Eddie. It's true."

"I know we aren't that much older than you,"--to Miguel, it felt like they were--"and I know that you're both adults. But I guess our hope would be that if you're ever missing a person like that in your life, you would feel comfortable considering that one or both of us could fill the role. Do you understand?"

Miguel nodded. So did Gabe.

Suddenly, it was Lydia speaking in her cool drink of a voice: "It's our promise to you that we will try. Whatever you might need from us, we will try our best to provide it. Please consider our home a place where you can stay, and feel welcome, should you ever need it. Treat it like your own."

"Exactly," said Eddie. "Whatever the future holds, this is a safe place for you both to come and go. You can talk to Lydia and me about anything in the world. You can be whoever you want to be with us."

Miguel did not miss the significance of that last remark. He looked between their faces and felt such a strong surge of emotion (never mind what kind) that he was momentarily uncertain whether he could keep it under wraps. "That means a lot to me."

"Me too," said Gabe quietly.

To Miguel's shock, Lydia reached out with both hands, leaning far across the table, taking hold Miguel's left hand, Gabe's right. "We will be there for you, no matter what." She didn't let go right away. Her skin was very soft.

"There is another thing I'd like to go over with you tonight," Eddie said after Lydia settled back in her chair.

Of course, thought Miguel, there was always a part two.

"This has to do with work, so I--" he stopped, turned to her. "Are you staying?"

There was a moment where Lydia seemed uncertain what exactly her answer might be, or should be. But then she pursed her lips and said resolutely, "I am." She crossed her arms and tipped back slightly in her chair. "Of course I am."

"Okay then," Eddie said.

He left the table and was gone for less than a minute. Lydia maintained her pose during this interlude, staring at her empty glass. When he returned from the other room, he was holding a small container (a biscuit tin upon closer inspection). He took off the lid and set it aside. Then he laid four photos across the oak dinner table directly in front of Miguel, as if he were revealing cards. They were actually photos of photos. Embedded within each conventional exposure lay the hastily cropped white frame of a Polaroid.

Eddie retook his seat. "Have a look at those faces."

Miguel leaned in. The details within the pictures were not hard to discern. Each was a portrait of a young man; all were older than Miguel, but none by more than ten years. All were white. Each had short hair ranging from light brown to blond and, strikingly, the same sunken eyes and pronounced cheek bones. All were very thin.

The second-from-left photo presented the man Miguel had encountered the other night in the warehouse. He pointed silently to it.

"That's him?"

Miguel nodded.

"You're sure?"

"What else do you want me to say?"

Eddie paused, then said slowly: "These were in Otero's desk. Top drawer."

Miguel and the kid stayed silent.

It was clear as Eddie spoke that he chose his words with great care. "He keeps items in there that I've needed before. Just your basic office supplies, mostly. Oh, and there's a bottle at the back to take the edge off. Kind of an unspoken thing--I'm sure he's noticed a little missing from time to time."

"Eddie," said Gabe. "What were you looking for?"

Eddie stared hard at the kid. "What do you mean?"

"Did you think you might find something?"

Miguel saw then, for the first time, a pronounced shift in authority. Gabe demanded an answer and Eddie was obligated to produce one. In that moment, he held unquestionable command over the room. It seemed impossible for the kid to have poised himself in such a way--except that also in that moment, Gabe's face morphed so completely into a young version of Marco that Miguel shivered as one does in the presence of a ghost.

Eddie clicked his tongue. "Yes. I was looking for something. I don't know what, exactly. And no--I didn't think I would find anything. Otero is more careful than this. If he hadn't intended for me to see them, the Polaroids would not have been in that drawer."

"So he wanted you to see them," said Gabe.

"Fuck, I guess so. But for what reason?" Eddie looked exasperated. "That's what I keep asking myself. What good does it do for me to know he hired a strange man to terrorize you--more to the point, what good does it do Otero?"

I took Miguel a few seconds to realize the question Eddie asked was not rhetorical. "Sounds like he's fucking with us."

"This is what I've been trying to explain to you both. Otero plays a different game these days. Nothing is the same as it used to be."

"What else is going on?" asked Gabe.

Eddie sighed, steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. "Remember those two women out at Headwaters?"

Miguel felt himself nodding. The conclusion began forming in his mind before the words were spoken.

"Well, Otero found out what was going on out there and his solution was to..." Eddie cocked his head left--eastward. "They're lying out past milepost four hundred, three feet underground."

No one said anything then. Miguel couldn't conjure words. Lydia had turned to an impermeable stone. The kid's face instantly sank, but Miguel then witnessed the setting of his jaw, a glimmer of resolve bubbling underneath. As upsetting as the truth might be, it was always better to have it said.

"Each of you knows this as well as I do," Eddie went on, "but I think it's worth saying out loud, right now, while we're all here together: Back in the days when Marco was around, that's not how any of this would have gone down."

There was a long pause while the thought settled within each of them.

"Eddie," said Gabe, "are you going to confront him?"

"Not right now."

"Why not?"

"Feels like a bad move."

Miguel crossed his arms. "Like there's ever going to be a good time."

"Of course there won't be a good time. But there will be a better time than now."

"When? Jesus, I just don't see how you can stand having someone fuck with you like this."

Eddie propped his elbows on the dinner table. He balled one hand inside the other and rested his chin on them. "When I can feel sure the two of you will be safe from the fallout. Then I will take action."

Gabe looked solemnly downward. "It isn't possible for us to be completely safe, Eddie."

"Maybe not. But we can at least get to a better place."

Miguel scoffed. "What place are we in now?"

"A place where Otero will certainly alter the face of this operation, far away from anything it once was. He will engage in bad-faith exchanges with rival entities to try grow his influence. He will act in complete disregard for the safety of either of you."

Miguel felt an overwhelming wave of defeat. There were a million more questions to ask, or there was none. He sensed his withdrawal from the room descending before him like a thick curtain.

Judging by the way the kid hung his head over the back of the chair and stared up at the distant ceiling, black hair falling away from his face, he might have felt the same way. But then he asked one last question: "If his actions are as inevitable as you say, why bother telling us all this?"

Eddie didn't move. Head still cradled by his hands, he said, "I didn't want it to come as shock to both of you when I terminate your employment."

Miguel's mind exploded in a supernova, and yet he miraculously contained himself. He sat up straight, his movements restrained.

Incredibly, the kid didn't seem to react at all, just kept staring up at the ceiling.

As for Lydia: It was clear through her placid stare that she had already known what Eddie was going to say. Perhaps there wasn't anything he ever kept from her.

No one spoke for a very long time.

Miguel later imagined that from Eddie's perspective, it must have been a shock that none of them had anything to say. But of course silence was, in that moment, an alternate form of agreement--one every bit as emphatic as shouting from the top of a mountain. If the path forward in Eddie's mind had still been obscured by the fog of doubt, their peculiar reaction must have lifted it so that he could advance, tired but emboldened, toward that paradise which surely lay beyond the next hill, where everything would finally be right.

;-;

Wednesday, August 25th, 1999

The Acura looked heavy pulling up to the curb. It was nighttime, and there was a strange luminosity to sky that Miguel wanted to attribute to the moon, though there was none. There was no wind or even a breeze: rare weather so near to the water. Eddie waved through the half-open passenger window and Gabe sat behind the wheel, which was most often the case on the way to the warehouse. Miguel tugged the rear passenger door handle with his right hand and it popped open. He slumped into the car and pulled the door closed, felt his body squish into the tan leather. Music played more softly than usual, though the bass beneath a Biggie track could be felt thumping through the seat.