photo by Marcia Sloane

(This story appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2012)

I was the only child of elderly parents. They both died the year before I evolved out of puberty, and I was left in the care of a diminutive maiden aunt. She had absolutely no short term memory and even less money. My bedroom was my haven, my black and white television my constant companion. I was an uninspired student, a mediocre athlete, and I think it fair to say that I had no real friends, no one to confide in, no one to discuss my fears and fantasies with.

I cannot remember when I first became aware of the feeling I am about to describe. I know that I felt it when my parents were still alive, and before I could read, which means I may have been as young as four. I suppose it is even possible that I was born feeling this way, but my memory only stretches back to my late twos, when our big dark tabby cat killed a huge rat, and I saw him eating the rodent, staining the kitchen linoleum with bright blood.

And yet, even now, after all these years of living by and for this belief, I hesitate to reveal my secret. I fear it may sound trite and stupid to you. I fear you will think it little more than a poor excuse for a life poorly lived, a delusional, idiotic notion. But I must risk your contempt. It is my duty.

All my life I have been convinced that something spectacularly good was going to happen to me, though not necessarily through any particular effort on my part. That, in a nutshell, is my system of belief.

Perhaps, from this, you will make the guess that I am a lazy person. I must admit that “lacks motivation” has appeared on every report card and job evaluation I have ever received, save for the one from Mrs. Rhodes, my fourth grade teacher, who preferred her males docile. But was it laziness that made me eschew competition for quietude, or was it my philosophy? Did I survive the first fifty-seven years of a sadly uninteresting life because almost anyone can survive fifty-seven years somehow? Or did I remain a moderate optimist, despite the grotesque redundancy of my days and months and years, because I was anticipating with ever fiber of my being an unknowable event that would set me free and allow me to become whatever I was supposed to be?

It is true that over the years I passed up several higher paying jobs because I could simply not convince myself that doing so was worth the effort of relocating or re-educating myself. I never believed I could be one of those people who succeed through hard work and purposeful determination.

I did buy lottery tickets and enter sweepstakes (if they came to me in the mail), hoping, naturally, that I would win, yet knowing all the while that the winning of money was not what awaited me. No, I was certain I was going to be given something.

I never had a vision of what that something would be, but I knew it would be incredibly good, and that once I had it, I would be content. I occasionally fantasized about fabulous gifts arriving from surprising patrons, but even the effort of fantasizing seemed futile. Go along until it happens, I told myself. Don’t look for it. You won’t know it until it falls on you. Those were the guiding slogans of my life, such as it was.

So, I’m walking home from my tedious, not very difficult, fairly low stress job with the telephone company. My rather drab, comfortable, average-sized one-bedroom apartment is within six blocks of the transmission facility wherein I supervise twenty-five operators and spend my copious free time reading historical romances. The day has been a day like any other, long and uneventful, save for the obstreperous old lady who threatened to unleash the forces of evil upon me if I didn’t refund the money she claimed the pay phone ate, which I did, not wanting to take any chances with the cosmic balance, in case there is one.

I am exactly one and half blocks from home and television and reheated pizza and cold beer, when I feel something click. Do you know what I mean by click? Something both inside and outside me falls absolutely and undeniably and perfectly into place—or into various places simultaneously. Click. And I know, as surely as I have ever known anything, that the universe or whatever you wish to call this dimension we inhabit, has suddenly, or finally, lined up, synchronized all its various parts, and is now ready for whatever I’ve been waiting for all my life—a fabulous feeling, like a sudden cool breeze on a blazing hot day. All my senses are heightened. My heart picks up the pace and I feel like dancing.

I arrive home. There are two police cars, lights flashing, parked in front of the Big Tree apartments, named for our two scrawny redwoods. I am greeted by my landlord, Mr. Lester, a small man with a penchant for absurdly big white belts. He is sweating profusely, his toupee slipping.

“Try to remain calm,” he says, touching my hand. “There’s been a robbery.”  He takes his hand away. “You’ve been cleaned out.”

As I make my way through the small crowd of curious onlookers, Mr. Lester calls out to me, “And they got away in your car.”

My telephone is ringing as I enter my otherwise empty apartment. The refrigerator door is open, revealing only a glaring emptiness. I find myself missing the beer more than any of my other possessions.

“Hello,” says a voice, as I pick up the phone. “This is Jenkins. Am I speaking to operator supervisor four six nine eight dash eleven seven nine six dash four one one oh one?”

“That’s me,” I reply, hearing myself as if from a great distance, realizing I must be in shock.

“Well, I’m sorry to have to break this to you so suddenly, but…”

I’ve been terminated. Twenty-nine years. Done. Major cutbacks due to competition engendered by deregulation. No desk to clean out. No security badge to return. That’s all been taken care of. They’ve changed the locks, the codes, the special procedures. Any personal belongings I may have left in the facility will be waiting for me in a brown bag at the receptionist’s desk. Thank you very much. Click. Drone. Beep beep beep.

Mr. Lester enters. “Listen,” he says, frowning at me, adjusting his wig, “I hate to do this to you, but the police feel, and I have to agree, that it’s pretty strange that only you were robbed. It’s as if you were selected for a reason. And I’m not making any assumptions, but the other tenants, as you can imagine, are very concerned, and since your lease has expired anyway, would you mind…”

I walk out into the last few moments of sunlight—jobless and homeless and without possessions. All I have are the clothes I’m wearing and the money in my…

I feel all my pockets. My wallet is gone—my identification, money, everything—gone. I remember being jostled by a slender young man in the liquor store. I had just bought a Lotto ticket.

In my confusion, it occurs to me that I have probably picked the winning numbers. The jackpot currently stands at seventy-five million dollars. But the ticket is in my wallet. My wallet is gone.

I walk down the street to the nearest pay phone. I have a friend, well, more of an acquaintance really, who might allow me to stay at his place until I can get new identification and begin collecting unemployment. I have seven cents in my pocket. I look in the change slot, hoping for a quarter. No such luck.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn. It is a policeman. He is frowning at me. “See some ID, bud?”

I begin to tell him my story. His frown deepens. “Are you saying you don’t have any ID?” he asks. “Because if you don’t…”

On the way to jail, sitting in the back seat of the police car, I try to think of someone to call for help. I can think of no close friends, no casual date, no relative, no one I am certain will help me. I have never done a consciously bad thing to anyone, but neither have I ever been much of a friend to anyone. I decide to not call anyone right away and see what happens. You might say I surrender.

I find that I don’t mind my night in jail. No one tries to hurt me, the food is edible, and the bed has a new mattress, much firmer than the one I had at the place I so recently called home. I sleep like a babe and wake up refreshed. My sense that everything is in place and ready for spectacular change is more tangible than ever. I thrill from head to toe when they unlock my cell and lead me down the hall.

I am brought into a room and told to walk out on a narrow stage with four other men. A glaring white light shining in our eyes makes it impossible to see who or what is in the audience.

“That’s him,” someone says. “Number four.”

I am taken to another building. The guard treats me roughly. He shoves me into a dark cell. I ask to make my phone call now. He ignores me. I shout at him, protesting my innocence. He continues to ignore me. I panic and call him a filthy name. He opens my door and hits my arm with his club. The pain is greater than anything I have ever experienced. I decide not to make a fuss.

A few hours later, I am taken out of the cell and shoved along a narrow hallway to a small, stuffy room. I am left in the company of three unsmiling detectives. One of them asks me if I know why I’m here. I begin to tell my story, expecting to be interrupted, but they listen to me until I can think of nothing more to say. They look at each other, communicating in a strange silent way that reminds me of something out of a horror movie. One of them clears his throat and asks me where I was on such and such a night.

“Home watching television, most likely,” I reply, shrugging. “That’s what I do every night, except…”

“Except what?”

“Volleyball nights at the Y.”

“And what nights of the week would that be?”

“Tuesday and Friday,” I say, suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that without volleyball nights at the Y, I would have no social life whatsoever.

“This was a Wednesday,” says one of the men. “The night we’re interested in was a Wednesday.”

“Well, then…television,” I say, hearing how terribly sad I sound.

“Any witnesses to that?” asks another of the men.

“I live alone.”

The words reverberate in the empty chambers of my heart. I live alone. I am alone. I have always been alone. I have never known how not to be alone. Is this so strange? Am I a human aberration? Or am I more typical than any of us cares to admit? Am I not quite normal? Am I not Everyman, minus a few special acquaintances, a disenchanted wife, an alien child or two?

I open myself to the silent communication of my interrogators. I hear the hum of their desire. I hear gears meshing, teeth gnashing, bile gurgling. They are in no way concerned with my innocence or guilt. They are hungry for my death. I am a solitary rat in a dirty little corner of modern times. They are a gang of alley cats. They only know how to do one thing.

My court appointed attorney, a sweaty little man who resembles my ex-landlord to an annoying degree, tries to convince me to plead insanity.

“To what?” I ask. “They never did tell me what I was charged with.”

“Well…murder,” he says, frowning at my file. “Two people. It says here you practically confessed.”

I go into deep shock. My attorney summons a guard and I am taken to the infirmary where I am given an anti-shock shot. I fall into a deep sleep and dream I am standing on the threshold of the place where something spectacularly good is about to happen to me. I stand on the threshold for the entire dream and wake up sick as a dog, my legs aching, my head about to explode.

Two days later, at our next meeting, my attorney once again begs me to plead insanity. “The evidence,” he explains, “is overwhelming.”

Eye witnesses, massive circumstantial evidence, no alibi, no character references, no job, no home, a desperate situation, a motive.

“What motive?” I ask, coming out of my latest stupor.

“You’re penniless, homeless, bereft. You feel that society is responsible for your misery and so you decided to strike back.”

“No!” I scream. “I was happy for the first time in my life. Everything was finally, once and for all, perfectly arranged for the occurrence of spectacular good. I was in a state of pure bliss.”

“So you did it for the thrill,” he whispers. “I thought so.”

The judge rolls his eyes and the prosecuting attorneys snicker at each other when I announce my intention to defend myself. But I am determined to tell my story. I honestly feel that only I can do justice to the details of my life. I am determined to prove to the jury that I am not only sane and innocent, but that our so-called society is breaking down and they are all in as much danger as I am of losing their lives.

I am given six weeks to prepare my case. I write and rewrite the story of my life. I state and restate the philosophy that has guided me all these uneventful years. I practice in front of my cellmate until he asks to be transferred to another cell. I know that my coming moment in the spotlight is not the spectacular good awaiting me, but I am beginning to think my defense may lead me to that long awaited moment. I realize I am on the verge of modifying my belief system, of taking my actions seriously. The proximity of doom is a powerful agent of change.

I am eloquent. I am impassioned. I remind myself of every great attorney I have ever seen in a movie or on television, only I am even better because I am three dimensional. I move the jurors to tears.

I am sentenced to death.

But still, still, I do not doubt that very soon, a truly great good thing will happen to me.

In my cell on death row, I find it impossible, for the first time in my life, to watch television. But the moment I make the decision to have the set removed from my cell, I become suicidal.

Four months and three days before the date of my execution, I have my first session with a therapist, a Freudian. Two days later, I request a Jungian. Two weeks later, I wake up from a vivid dream and am shocked to find that I am in prison, on death row, awaiting my grossly premature death. I understand myself too well now for this to be a reasonable way to spend this brief flickering we call human existence. I try to harmonize my lifelong beliefs with the coming of my death, but all I get is atonal dribble.

I recall the story of Job and the stories of Kafka. I think of archetypes and heroes and the three times in my life when I turned down the opportunity to have sex with really terrific women. I think of black men lynched for being black, Jews slaughtered for being Jews, wars being waged for corporate gain, and me, a passive white man being murdered for being a passive white man with no alibis and a belief in something other than a vengeful God.

I begin to dream of escaping. But in these dreams escape is always secondary to where I escape to. I invariably find myself in an alpine meadow, hiking uphill toward the summit of a snow-covered peak. I have a child on my back and he or she is whispering in my ear.

Two months to go. I attack a guard in an attempt to actualize my dreams—the first overtly aggressive act of my life. I am severely beaten and thrown into a lightless confinement cell. After three weeks of near total sensory deprivation, I begin to believe that maybe I did murder those two people, whoever they were. I know I did not, I know I have never broken a law, but the brutality and senselessness of my ordeal demands of my wounded psyche that it come up with a reason for this hellish turn of events. Surely, a voice cries within me, torture and death are not prerequisites to the happiness we have postponed for so many years.

Two weeks to go. I am on the verge of accepting that I am insane. I am sticky with the feeling that my twenty-nine years with the phone company was all a vividly boring hallucination. What if my lack of ambition and my absolute belief in impending spectacular goodness is nothing more than a misfiring synapse in an otherwise perverse and murderous brain? What if I am a murderer? What if I only know the very surface of things seen on television?

I ask to go to the library. I am escorted there by two heavily armed guards. The selection is small. I close my eyes, reach out, and touch the spine of a small book. It is an account of the life and trial of Joan of Arc.

The day of my execution arrives. Joan is with me now, not so much in me, but riding lightly on my shoulder. She gives me good courage. I feel, as a matter of fact, quite calm.

And yes, it occurs to me that death may be that spectacular good I have been awaiting, that my moment of release will be the best thing that ever happened to me in my otherwise unnecessary existence. But I still don’t believe I’m going to die. I continue to believe in…well, divine intervention.

The warden arrives to tell me that my request for a pardon from the governor has been denied. For some reason, this doesn’t surprise or upset me.

A priest is admitted to my cell. We are left alone, the door closed. This is unusual, but I don’t question it. I surrender. I give myself, body and soul, to the glorious principles of Universe.

The priest is a terribly skinny man with sunken cheeks. He does not look at all well. He asks me to confess. I tell him I am not a Catholic. He asks me to confess anyway. I tell him everything I just told you, only in much greater detail. I lose all sense of time. The past and present merge.

At the end of my story, the priest smiles faintly and says, “We thought so. Our evidence corroborates everything you’ve just told me.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, the back of my neck tingling.

“I mean that we have known of your innocence all along,” he explains, coughing into a handkerchief.

He shows me the handkerchief. It is stained with blood.

Quickly, he explains that he belongs to a secret organization fighting inhumanity and needless violence around the world. He has been chosen, because he is about to die of an incurable disease, to die in my place. We exchange clothes. He gives me his realistic fake moustache and heavy framed dark glasses. Before I leave the cell, he tells me exactly what to say and when and where to say it. We embrace, and in our embrace I feel the first stirrings of love.

Moments later, I am outside the prison walls, opening the door of a late model car. As I roll along the highway, making sure not to speed, I activate the tape player.

“Welcome. It is our pleasure to save you. You will find your new identification, a valid passport and one million Swiss francs in unmarked bills in the glove compartment, along with a first class airline ticket to Zurich. Don’t worry. All will be well.”

I drive to the airport, park the car, check my suitcase, and make my way to the departure gate. My reservation is confirmed. I am handed a boarding pass. I walk down the sloping hallway to the softly purring jet. I take my spacious window seat in the first class section, and buckle my safety belt, though I have every reason to believe I won’t need it.

How do I feel? I feel fantastic, swollen with life. Everything I see is sharply focused. Every sound is rich with meaning. Every moment is bursting with opportunity. I am free of the doubt that enslaved me. Every moment is now.

            My mother tells people I’m in the insurance business, which is certainly true, though not in the way most people think of insurance. The one time I was arrested and prosecuted for assault, the district attorney called me a two-bit hoodlum. The man spoke from a place of extreme ignorance, for I am neither a hoodlum, nor two-bit. And if you interviewed the people who pay me a little something each month, you’d find them all quite satisfied with my services.

            In the neighborhood where I currently reside, and which prior to my arrival was plagued by robberies, vandalism, drug dealing, graffiti, and litter, there has been a drop to almost zero in all categories of crime. What the cops couldn’t do in thirty years, I did in six months, and I’ve kept the peace here for five years. Established businesses have flourished, new businesses have opened, house prices have skyrocketed, and the area is now considered one of the hippest spots in the entire metropolitan area.

            How did I accomplish this? I became a tax paying resident of the neighborhood and introduced myself to the citizenry by frequent and consistent visibility in the business sector, otherwise known as the village. Through my demeanor and actions, I demonstrated my muscle, in the larger sense of that word, and then I discretely informed business owners of the services I was prepared to provide for a reasonable percentage of their profits. And most importantly, I gained the respect of the citizenry by swiftly dispatching the most troublesome local miscreants.

            I am, in essence, the privatization of law and order. Indeed, I am so effective, new businesses tend to sign up with me before I have to make my sales pitch. The word-of-mouth on me around here is nothing but good. Even the real estate agents give me a cut when they make a sale.

            To what end, you ask, am I working? Surely I’m not merely collecting a few bucks from every player. Surely I’m dealing drugs or infecting the community in some other way. Surely I’m a criminal worthy of your contempt. Yet here are testimonials to the contrary.

            Ben of Ben’s Bagels wrote and posted the following flyer on the front door of his establishment. I did not ask him to do so. This was a spontaneous act of gratitude. “Thank God for Herb. Before he moved here, I had my windows smashed every couple of months, sometimes twice a month. I was robbed at gunpoint three times. People were afraid to come into this part of town. The cops couldn’t do a thing. Now I’m finally making a decent living and the neighborhood is a Mecca. People come from all over to hang out here. It’s a dream come true.”

            Mr. Liu of Good Tea effused to my superiors, “Oh, Herb. The best. We used to keep door lock. Business bad. Now we open all time. Have new garden in back with fountain. People all come. Better make reservations on Saturday and Sunday. Very big crowds come.”

            As I said, I work on a percentage basis. Ben started paying me next to nothing. Now I make a grand a month from him, a grand he’s happy to part with because he clears ten times that now. I, in turn, give half the take to my umbrella organization, and another quarter to my employees. The rest is mine.

            What we have determined, my organization and I, is that the elimination of crime is by far the most profitable use of this sector of the city. We had more trouble with the police about this than with the various so-called criminal elements. Nowadays the police have absolutely nothing to do around here except hassle me. Ironic, no?

            My father, who died a broken man trying to live by the laws of a society that spits on his kind of decency, used to say, “I wouldn’t mind paying high taxes if the money went for anything I could believe in. But it all goes for war and to pad the pockets of the rich.”

            Well, I guarantee you the money people pay me goes to things they not only believe in, but to things essential to their safety and well-being and success. And when business is not so good, I am far more understanding and forgiving than any bank would ever be. I’m here. I see what goes on day to day. The cops don’t live here. The bankers don’t live here. I live here. These are my neighbors. As Jacqueline at New Dawn Books likes to say, “You’re our samurai, Herb. Blessings on you.”

            Which is not to say it’s all a honeymoon. When Rambling Rose Nursery is jammed with people all weekend long and Carl says he can’t pay me because he’s not making any money, I take him for a little walk. I make a little speech. That usually suffices. If not, gates forget to be locked, things disappear, something goes wrong with his truck. Suddenly, he has money for me.

            Or we get some bad boys cruising the area, looking to sell some dope. We usually can handle the situation ourselves, but if we identify a larger force behind the dealers, we refer things to my manager and he makes the appropriate calls on our behalf. That usually does the trick. If not, we might tip the cops to what’s going on. And if they’re not interested, maybe then, and only then does someone have to get hurt. We do not like to use guns. But since every punk and psycho goes heavily armed now, it is sometimes a necessity to reveal our hardware.

            I tell you all this as background to the story of Nathan, who works for me. A good boy, recruited locally, with great potential, Nathan is tall, handsome, a former football player, an avid reader, and a decent amateur guitarist. When I first met Nathan he was dealing pot to high school kids, walking around in crummy clothes, and calling anybody driving a new car a fascist. He smoked more dope than he sold and unquestionably contributed to the highly negative atmosphere permeating our village.

            For my first few months here, however, Nathan was of little concern to me. I had to shut down a large meth lab run by some extremely unfriendly chemists. I had to persuade five well-entrenched meth dealers to leave the area, and I had to establish working relationships with local business owners—all of them highly suspicious of me at the outset. And my most arduous task was getting the frigging cops off my back so I could operate with some impunity.

            Meth almost always involves larger forces than its local manifestation, and this is where my umbrella organization with its extensive resources and highly placed connections comes in handy. Compensatory deals are made when possible, and failing there, expeditionary forces are deployed to remove impediments with as little public fuss as possible.

            The meth lab, for instance, employed sixteen people, seven of whom were unwilling to voluntarily relocate out of the area. These seven individuals are no longer with us. Yet not a whisper of their disappearance reached the police or the press. I was present for the elimination process, and though I am not a fan of violence, I must admit I found the silent efficiency of the strike a thing of terrible beauty.

            The dealers left by command of their superiors. Their fates are largely unknown to me. I say ‘largely’ because I know where one of them is—he works for me. The other four, I assume, have gone to jail, to their maker, or to street corners elsewhere. The two crack houses in the vicinity both mysteriously burned down.

            And so as my attention turned to the punks and petty criminals, Nathan became a larger concern to me. He avoided me at first, but eventually we had a little talk outside the bagel shop. I told him, among other things, that I had no objection to him dealing pot, but I would not allow him to continue selling to minors. Nor would I tolerate his continued public belligerence. It was bad for business. If he wanted to carry out his trade in a quiet, discreet, professional way, pay me the requisite commission, and behave himself in public, he would find me smiling favorably on him. If not, fate might prove cruel.

            He called me a fascist, but I knew he was impressed by me. Nathan appreciates confident people. His parents are wimpy intellectuals who’ll do anything to avoid conflict and nothing to resolve it. Everyone in the neighborhood was aware that I was the force driving the local renaissance, and this fact was deeply intriguing to Nathan. I appeared to be a throwback—I have a penchant for the oversized clothes of the 1930’s—and I speak as I write. I don’t waste time. I’m effective.

            So he tested me. He continued to deal to minors and the engine of his Toyota froze up. He went into Heidi’s Flower Shoppe and called her a fascist, and when he came out, some crazy street person hit him in the nose. Broke it. When he got home, his stash was gone.

            Then, because Nathan was extremely naive, he confronted me on the sidewalk in front of Ben’s Bagels. He is, as I said, tall and muscular and young. I am middle-aged and stout. However, I have black belts in two complimentary schools of karate. I waited for Nathan to make the first move—he shoved me—and then I cracked his rib, making sure not to break one that might injure his heart.

            He disappeared for several weeks. My clients were universally appreciative. Business was picking up. I eliminated several other sources of drugs flowing to the school kids and dealt decisively with the graffiti issue. Indeed, I had almost forgotten about Nathan when he drove by and took a shot at me. I saw him coming, sensed his intention, and ducked into Jerry’s Shoe Repair—the bullet shattering Jerry’s front window.

            In my early days with the organization, I would have immediately hunted Nathan down and killed him. But age has endowed me with a modicum of wisdom. Murder is messy and should always be avoided until every other option has been exhausted. Besides, Nathan embodied precisely what my organization looks for in a recruit: strength, determination, intelligence, and charm. Nathan, for all his shortcomings, was charming.

            With Jerry’s cooperation, I put the cops onto Nathan. The poor kid was about to be sentenced to seven years in the slammer for aggravated assault (he had a previous arrest for dealing dope) when my organization intervened on his behalf. All charges were dropped and he came crawling to me with his tail between his legs.

            Nathan has worked diligently for me for four years now. I consider him my right hand man. He has taken to wearing overlarge clothes from the 1930’s, too, though he likes his suits darker than mine. He drives a vintage 1957 Chevrolet, light blue with a white top. He sells pot to an older crowd, securing his weed from three local growers we have excellent relations with. These growers are, after all, no different from any of the other business folks in the area, except the Feds consider their product illegal.

            My organization likes to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, so as long as Nathan does what I require of him, and he pays me twenty per cent of his profits, he can have any side business he wants so long as it does not conflict with our larger purpose.

            And now we come to the fulcrum of this tale. My operation, as I knew it would, has proven extremely lucrative. Whenever this happens, upper management, as in every bureaucracy, takes special notice. Along with commendations and rewards, including a celebratory junket to Paris (in April no less), an audit was conducted.

            Our kind of audit is not to be confused with an IRS audit. Hardly. My books are already checked on a weekly basis. Even the slightest error can bring a reprimand. No, an audit in our organization means that my district is visited, studied in great detail, and evaluated by a team of savvy upper echelon types. They report to management, and then management consults with me, after which decisions are made about what changes, if any, are to be implemented.

            The maximization of profitability without jeopardizing long-range stability is the foundational rule by which my organization functions and flourishes. And so when it was determined that my village is now sufficiently crime-free and has become a powerful magnet for affluent pleasure seekers, certain adjunct cash producing ventures were to be skillfully introduced into the scheme of things.

            I made the case that it might be too soon to make any large changes. I suggested waiting another year. I was lauded for my caution—the high-ups like that in a district manager—but it was nevertheless decided that a dozen high-class female escorts would be introduced into the social whirl of my purview. They should appear to be self-employed artists and live three to a house, the purchase and renovation of which I will oversee.

            Secondly, a high-end liquor and wine shop will be opened next to Green Leaf Natural Foods, featuring organic wine and booze costing three times what spirits cost in the less ritzy parts of town.

            Thirdly, and always highly problematic for me, is that the percentage I take from my clients shall be increased from eleven to fourteen percent.

            The final change is that I have been assigned a new right hand man, an up-and-coming young guy who needs a year under a seasoned manager before being given his own district. It was further determined that Nathan must either enter the employ of the larger organization and go through the requisite training, or I’ll have to cut him loose.

             When I informed Nathan of this fork in our road, he said he needed time to think. He said he would let me know on Monday, but Monday arrived and I had no word from him. That was four days ago. My new man arrives tomorrow. There is enormous pressure on me to find Nathan and resolve the situation before he reveals—either intentionally or unintentionally—the details of our operation here. That he has not kept his word to me requires that I have what my organization calls a Serious Discussion with him (once I locate him) followed by his having an even more serious discussion with two of my superiors. If, at the end of these discussions he is deemed untrustworthy, he must be eliminated.

            If I don’t find Nathan by tomorrow, I must inform my boss of that fact, and Nathan’s fate—his end—will be sealed. This is the hard side of the business, though one could make the argument it’s no harder than any of the pre-industrial initiation rites a boy underwent to become a man. He had to be tested severely. He had to prove himself brave enough to assume the responsibilities of manhood.

            I have left messages for Nathan with Ben, with Jerry, with Liu, with everyone in the neighborhood. I have searched for him. I have made him the number one priority of my life because I like him, and because I’m concerned about him, and I want the people of my district to know how I feel. I may even have jeopardized my position here by so obviously seeking Nathan—for if he disappears will I not be suspect?

            What makes this all the more poignant for me is that it echoes my own experience when I was Nathan’s age. I was majoring in Anthropology at a good college. I was eager to succeed. My professors said I showed great promise. Then my father died and my mother, who was very ill, along my little brother and sister, were evicted from their house and became instant paupers. I, of course, had to leave school and find work to support them.

            The state, the so-called protector of its citizens, had already destroyed my father, and now it was hell-bent on finishing off my helpless mother and siblings. I took two full-time jobs, but when I still couldn’t make enough for us to live on, I started selling weed and liquor to my former college pals and their friends. Soon my family had enough money to get by. I even started putting money away with the intention of buying back my mother’s house.

            But then I was arrested and sent to prison. I fought for my life. I fought to keep from being raped. I fought and fought, but finally understood that to fight alone was futile. So I allied myself with a man allied with other men, and when I got out, finding no so-called legitimate employment for the likes of me—none—and my mother in terrible straits, I made a call to a friend of my prison allies. And the very next day I was contacted by a recruiter. A month later, I joined the organization. Three years after that, I had to kill somebody or be killed.

            I did not want this to be my life. Oh, I’ve heard the pundits say we have a choice. I’ve heard countless stories of people climbing out of the gutter and succeeding in the so-called legal way. And I say to them, “I know your legal way and it tramples the weak.”

            My organization doesn’t hound widows out of their homes. The state does. My organization doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. The state does.

            Nathan is like so many people in this hypocritical culture. He wants to believe that if he acts a certain way, looks a certain way, speaks a certain way, things will work out for him. Granted, there was a time when for a particular class of people this may have been true. But it is no longer the case.

            Nathan knows this. He knows his choice is to become a timid rabbit who survives by keeping a low-profile and scraping by on the margins, or to become a strong wolf who survives by joining the pack, proving himself in the hunt, and taking by cunning and strength what he needs to survive and thrive.

            He has lived as a rabbit, and now he has tasted the life of the wolf, but only tasted it. I have sat in his house listening to him strum his guitar and sing his plaintive love songs. I have walked on the beach with him and gotten drunk with him and chased women with him. I have watched him grow out of his sullen, self-defeating persona into a young man of promise. But does he have the courage to test himself in the greater world without me?

            In many ways, he’s the son I never had, the son I always wanted. But for all the tender feelings he inspires in me—hope and admiration and love—I know if I am to be a good parent I must release him with no great fanfare, no sentimentality. Truth is the finest gift we can give anyone—the truth about this life, this hard hard life, which is ultimately sad and too short, but full of beauty if we are open to it, if we are not afraid to acknowledge the presence and necessity of death.

            So to finish my story that is an echo of Nathan’s, on the day before I was supposed to do the job—take somebody out—I ran away. I got in my car and drove fast for the border. But something made me stop and walk out into the desert. I took off my clothes and lay down in the sand and waited for the answer to my question, “What should I do?”

            After many hours, after a huge snake crawled over my belly, after the windblown sand scraped my skin raw, after the sun traversed the sky and left me burned, after my mind was empty of fear, empty of thought, the answer came. “Do what is best for the greater community.”

            “The what?” I asked, not sure I’d heard correctly. “The greater what?”

            “Do what is best for the greater community.”

            And that’s what I’ve done. You may say I’m delusional, that I’m merely making excuses for the inexcusable, but I know what I heard, and I know what I do. Every morning before I get out of bed, I ask myself, ‘Is my community better today because of what I did yesterday?’

            So Nathan, listen to me. When I can’t answer, ‘Yes, our community is better today because of what I did yesterday,’ I’ll take myself out.