White Rabbit Chapter 40

40.

Present Day, Denmark…

Delores stirred on a recovery bed remembering the backseat. Her mother was sitting with her looking at a pamphlet for traveling Europe. When Delores woke, her mother assured herself, they would take one of their mother-daughter excursions, this one even grander than New York, or Chicago, this one across Europe. And maybe in Paris at a café sipping some espresso she would tell Delores what had happened. It was dreadfully complicated. If one good thing came of all of this, Jan Herding-Marlowe thought sitting there in the odd silence of a hospital room, she was no longer jealous of Delores. She could at last admit that she had been jealous of her but now she was ready to make amends for her jealousy. She looked at her daughter the way someone fraught with compassion looks at a dead deer alongside the highway. Flowers adorned the otherwise empty windowless room. White orchids. The same kinds of flower arrangements they sell for funerals. In her dreams, Delores was still reliving her fifteenth year in Boston…

Last Year…

Things went so fast. Delores and Alex spent afternoons in Dunkin’ Donuts. Delores knew everyone who worked there by their first name. She started playing soccer for St. Anne’s and Alex watched her practices and games enthusiastically. Coincidentally, her school's mascot name was the Wolves. At more than one game Alex turned himself into the wolf and trotted around proudly involved. No one thought anything of it. When someone asked someone else said it was probably someone’s Siberian Husky. They made love in the locker room, behind the bleachers, in parks, anywhere and everywhere they could. As risky as it was for her to be caught being screwed by an invisible man they were never afraid. Every day for two months it was like this and the more they had of each other the more insatiable they became. Once in the backyard at Delores’ house by a full moon no less. Delores was on her hands and knees. Alex stayed with a friend and they started making plans of moving to France together once he could get access to his frozen accounts. Delores at last felt like the woman who jumped from the Eiffel Tower without ever having to jump. Then, two months removed from his return, as they sat in Dunkin’ Donuts a newspaper greeted them at their favorite table. In an article buried toward the back it said “Bronson Fillmore AP ‘Werewolf’ Reporter Missing.”

“I have to go, Delores,” Alex said reluctantly.

Delores was laughing at something or other in the section of newspaper she was reading. “Go where?” she asked distracted.

“Back to West Virginia. He’s a good kid.”

“Are you crazy?!” Delores tried to make it appear she wasn’t talking to anyone but now it was obvious to everyone that she was talking to herself. Peter, the tall awkward young man who worked there had noticed a month ago that she was talking to herself. It really turned him on.

“They took Bronson.”

“The reporter?” Delores took the paper and read the article Alex had read.

“Yes. And I’m guessing they have Chuck and Pete, too.”

“Alex…"

“I don’t like goodbyes,” he said quietly.

“Then don’t say them.”

“I have to try to get them…and the others. Someone has to do something.”

“What can you do? You, you, can’t beat them. They’re the feds!” She pretended to be singing along with music in her earbuds. There was no music.

“I have to do something.”

“Let me come with you.”

“I can’t.”

“I want to. I want to help!”

“I will be back…”

“Famous last words. I’m sure everyone who never comes back says that. And I go home for summer vacation in June…less than a month!”

“I don’t like goodbyes, Delores…”

She was quiet and looked down at the table. Lips kissed her forehead.

Bells jingled. Whitney appeared. She had torn herself away from Bruce. “Hey, pretty lady,” she said coming in. She didn’t stop for coffee. “Why so glum. You’ve been so happy lately!” She sat where Alex was sitting. Delores couldn’t tell if he was there or gone. “Seat’s warm,” Whitney smiled.

“It’s been perfect.”

“What’s been?”

“Life was perfect for a moment.”

“And now…”

“Not so much.” Delores looked out into the street. Boston is so much prettier in the winter. Less congested, cleaner, and most of the goons disappear. The rest of their conversation was about summer break. Whitney wanted Delores to ask her parents if she could go to Martha’s Vineyard with her and her father for the summer. She promised her sailing and hot boys—not that hot boys matter though, she lied, since she is with Bruce.

“I don’t know how I’ll survive three months without him!” she complained dramatically. Delores didn’t know how Whitney could have become so irritating. There was no way that she was about to spend three months of her life hearing all about Bruce and dealing with Whitney’s turmoil of lusting over hot boys while being so in love with Bruce, wondering what he was doing all the while. It was all so petty. Everything was so petty. Wars, the government, sports, Hollywood, TV, life, society. Delores watched people on their cell phones playing games, texting, as they walked past historic Boston landmarks not knowing or caring where they were. They have all become so ADD, so superficial, so self-absorbed. She threw her phone in the harbor like patriots disguised as Indians once threw tea. The real tea party not the bunch of bitter middle-aged men and women bitching about having to pay taxes to a government they elect fighting wars in the Middle East for oil. The bloated government they pretend to hate, the W, the Pentagon now with the power to throw American citizens in prison indefinitely without trial under the guise that they are terrorists. Terrorism is the greatest thing to ever happen to the fear mongering politicians.

“You’ll be alright…” Delores said aloofly.

That evening Alex was on a Greyhound Bus for Arlington, Virginia. He went to an apartment and knocked. “Hello, Katie. What happened to Bronson?”

“Bronson is away on assignment,” she said sweetly. “He isn’t missing. Who are you? And how do you know…”

“You don’t remember me?”

Katie smiled awkwardly, “I am sorry. I, um, I don’t believe we’ve ever met. I would know. I have a photographic memory,” she replied.

“Oh,” Alex sighed. They virus was worse than what he imagined. Now he knew he had no allies. They left no chance. At least she was alive.

“I’m sorry. You are…”

“A friend,” Alex replied morosely. Then he quickly walked away.  

“Well, may I tell him who...?” She called down the hall. Alex didn’t reply. He disappeared quickly knowing there was something nefarious to it. She would have remembered him. You don’t forget a first kiss, your first love, or the first time you see someone turn into a wolf. From there Alex went to Piedmont in back of a pickup truck. In Piedmont he slept for a few nights in the camper at Dale’s Scrap and Heap while he developed a plan to bust Bronson loose. He sat in the camper and made friends with Butch, the Rottweiler, wondering what he could possibly do. He realized all he had to do was prove that Bronson was there then the world would know that there was more to the werewolf story than the government led on...why else would they kidnap a reporter for what they called “an inaccurate fairy tale and a grossly negligent distortion of truth in an effort to challenge the moral right in the war on terror...” Such flowing poetry from intellectual speechmakers who will never be known. Footnotes. Nobodies. Who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”?

              Ted Sorensen, of course.

              He had seen Katie, but Alex could only guess about the other two. His guess was accurate. Chuck St. Clair was not in prison and neither was Pete the hippy. Both of them, along with Katie, had been guinea pigs in the government’s latest innovative development, Project Mind Eraser. They could take anyone they wanted and erase everything from their heads or, better still, certain minute details, things, delicate things. It beats the stickiness of killing people, blowing up an airplane for one passenger. The first subject of Project Mind Eraser was the pregnant rape victim of Claude Van Wert who, it turned out, had perfectly normal babies, triplets, in Des Moines, Iowa under a new identity. They convinced her she was in a coma and all of her family had died in a minivan accident. Her family in Allentown was led to believe she was kidnapped and probably mutilated by angry werewolves, or angry ravenous blacks, or a white middle-aged serial killer that lives in his mother’s basement. Project Mind Eraser was also used for employees at KUSMDC. After their minds were erased they had no family to miss, nothing to be concerned with other than their jobs at the detention center and the free perks they were getting for being federal employees...which Bettie they wanted this Friday night.

Inside KUSMDC…

            “Where is he, Fillmore?” a rough CIA agent named Howell pressed into Bronson. Waterboarding in five minutes…

            “Piss off!” Bronson replied defiantly. He wanted to say fuck but his mother raised him better. The CIA agents were making progress. He started out by saying “I don’t know anything” and he progressed to “piss off” in less than eighteen minutes. They knew he knew. The threat of waterboarding didn’t frighten him. Electric shock didn’t do anything for him either. Chinese water torture? Tickle treatment? Pink Belly? Give someone a cause and their will becomes titanium. They were in a small room with flickering fluorescent lights. That was supposed to do something. The strange ear piercing music that played in the background at varying decibels was supposed to do something, too. They didn’t know that all Bronson knew was what they already knew...Alex went to Boston to see Delores. They just found out that he is an invisible from Pete, shortly before they erased his mind. Good for Alex that he left when he did. Now it made sense to the two bricks why it appeared Delores talked to herself. He was the only known invisible in the world which made them want him more. That technology, Project Phantom, had been nowhere near successful.

            “Butch, it’s time for the return of the Jedi.” Armed with nothing other than a digital camera and earplugs, Alex set out on invisible foot for the detention center. Detention center is a kinder term for prison, meaning where people are kept before a hearing or trial, however long that may be.