The Instructions (149 page)

Wherever you’re from.

REPORTERS: (UPROAR OF QUESTIONS)

O’MALLEY: What’s wrong with you guys, huh? You’re the ones showing emails on the television before you show ’em to the police.

Thing is, you should have this part cracked already, but you’re 1415

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numbskulls and douchebags. And just to be clear: I don’t speak for the mayor here, when I suggest that you’re numbskulls, and I don’t speak for the city when I call you douchebags, but I am nonetheless in earnest, you lot of pantywaist hacks. Why don’t you khaki-clad yokels take a walk to any el station in the city and have a look at a map on the wall before you try to question the authority of the Chicago PD? Course I’m not really asking you take a walk on those spindly legs. And I’m not even suggesting you use one of your handy PDAs there to Google an el map because if you’re too numbskull to think of that yourself it’s cause you don’t know how to use those things to begin with is what I’m saying. Or maybe you’re so good at using ’em you forgot about maps because you’re all GPS now. I don’t know what your problem is, actually.

I’m just sayin, here. No more hostility from youse. I’m two days from retirement, I got racquetball with Richie Daley at 1:00, and I will not abide it. This hostility being what I mean by “it.” So look: That email’s addressed to kids from two schools. You got the Solomon Whoever and the Northside Whatsit. They’re going north to the suburbs, these kids, right? They’re going north to the suburbs from Rogers Park, right? What do you think? They have to get on the Red Line, and then they gotta get on the Brown Line. And oh, take a look at the attachment that came attached to that email you showed on TV before you showed it to the police.

Oh dearie me! In the email there, it says: Take the Red Line to Howard. Transfer to the Brown Line. Now. That latter transfer?

That was almost two hours ago when they did it, and the trains have had some slowdowns, sure, but they ain’t
that
slow. All of which is to say those kids are not in Chicago anymore. Those kids 1416

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are in the suburbs and have been for a while. You’re bothering the wrong cops, fellas, and in my closing statement, on this, what is certain to be my last press conference before retirement, I, with rapidly blossoming flowers of joy in my old Irish heart, would, on behalf of myself, like to say, just one last time, to you, my spindly-legged semi-literate douchebag pantywaist hackish yokel reporter friends: No. Further. Fucken. Comment.

STEVENS: Well, a little comic relief in the midst of tragic events never hurt anyone, I suppose. Here with me in the NBC studios is our Middle East consultant, Allie Momad. Allie, in your opinion, is the terrorist Gurion Maccabee, as has been alleged, a Zionist?

MOMAD: Well, Rick, the long answer is: Who can say for sure?

He’s a ten-year-old boy, certainly a boy who’s been through Jewish schools, certainly an exceptionally violent boy, certainly a boy who invokes the Jewish God in emails that appear to be some kind of coded call-to-arms, certainly someone demanding to speak to Philip Roth, certainly the type of violent Jewish person that both the Eastern and the Western world have been certain would arise soon enough given the Jewish occupation of Palestine, the Israeli apartheid, the war crimes committed daily by the State of Israel, and the rhetoric used by Israeli and American Jewish progagandists to defend the apartheid and the war crimes and the hideous nature of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinean lands and people, not just men and women, Rick, but children, too. Children.

STEVENS: And the short answer, Allie?

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MOMAD: Probably a Zionist.

STEVENS: Thank you, Allie. That was Allie Momad, our Middle East Consultant. Now we go to some new exclusive footage NBC

has just acquired from another of the five cameras that were in the Aptakisic Junior High School gym at the time of the terrorist attack.

I’m told we’re about to see the gym teacher, Ronald Desormie, just as—there. Oh my. Oh my, that’s vivid. Can we rewind that and slow—thank you, Mark. Yes, it looks, from the way he’s holding his neck, and from the angle at which the projectile seems to have pierced him, as though the fatal shot could not have possibly been fired by Gurion Maccabee, who you can see laying on his stomach on the floor before the unfortunate gym teacher. It looks like the shot was fired from on-high. Can we roll that again?

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“Unless you’re thinking maybe I shouldn’t go back into the gym with this… hand like this?”

Yeah, I said.

“Come on, man,” said Benji. “Admit what you’re doing.”

What am I doing?

“You’re keeping me away from that dentist Berman and all of his buddies. I make them all nervous, so you’re keeping me away.”

You both—

“Like the Cage,” he said.

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That’s—

“I’m being dramatic. That was dramatic. Overdramatical.

Still, I’m right. And look: I understand. I mean, Berman’s got more people behind him than I do. It would’ve been harder to get him out of there. Plus he’s not injured. There’d be no reason to keep him somewhere else. He’d have lost face if you removed him, there could have been a fight, or—”

I’m sorry, I said. I just thought that after—

“I’m not asking for an apology, Gurion. You made the move you had to make, and I’ve taken the drugs—I’m being cooperative. This is what I want to tell you, though. Jelly is in there. In the gym. With that snake. She’s in there with that snake, and so are all our other friends, and you need to watch out because you’re acting snakey yourself—for good reason maybe, sure—but you’re acting snakey yourself, and all those snakes can see right through you. Some of them at least. Snakes understand snakiness.”

I don’t think Berman’s a snake, I said. Maybe he was, but he’s not anymore, none of them are, and everything’s gonna be fine, alright? This’ll be over soon. The scholars—

“I don’t need reassurance.
False
reassurance.
You
need to hear me.”

Okay, I said. Fine. So what is it I’m missing? What’s the big secret? What did Berman do to you, you hate him so much?

Before today, I mean.

“I can’t believe you’re still— Look. Berman didn’t do shit to me. He’s just a snake. He’s always been a snake. Same way 1419

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Desormie’s always been—same way Desormie
had
always been a scumbomb. He was born that way. Born a snake. All those ex-Shovers. And everyone knows this. June knows it. Vincie knows it. Brooklyn knows it.
You
know it. I know you know it.

So let’s not pretend. It’s just you and me here, two best friends, and you’ve snaked me a little, but I’m forgiving you for snaking me, okay? So believe me, okay? Stop making that face. You need to believe me. I’m not trying to fuck with you. I’m forgiving you because you waited to bring me here til no one was around to see where you put me. I appreciate that. That you’re trying to protect me. So I forgive you for snaking me, so now it’s time you stop snaking me—I’m trying to help you out.

Those guys are snakes. Especially Berman. And my girlfriend’s in there with them, all of our friends are—did I say this part already? I did. These drugs are quick. BryGuy must have himself some serious…
tol
erance. But what I’m saying is you don’t have to convince me to stay here. I came here willingly, I took the drugs—I’m on your side is what I’m trying to say. So just be straight with me. Be honest with your friend. Admit you know they’re snakes and we can talk about some strategy for when you go back in there.”

I’m being completely honest with you, I said.

“Gurion! Bullshit! You took their phones cause you knew they were snakes.”

I took their phones cause I knew they were afraid. I didn’t want them to freak out while I was gone and call the—

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“You thinned their numbers,” Nakamook said. “You could’ve sent someone to get a fucken wheely chair—this very fucken wheely chair into which my ass is melting—and sat Brodsky on it and wheeled him to the Cage. You and June could’ve done it.

You didn’t, though, right? Instead you got five, then ten of them to carry him because you wanted to thin their numbers because you knew they were snakes, and you wanted to give the Side a fighting chance in case the snakes attacked.”

I thinned their numbers because I thought their numbers were making the Side nervous, Benji. Nervous is contagious, and—

What you’re saying’s not true. I didn’t think anyone would attack anyone, and I don’t think that now. I just thought that the Side was worried about what would happen if they were attacked, so—

“You thought that because
you
were worried about it yourself!

Stop lying to me! I don’t see why you’re lying. There’s no one to protect here.”

If I was really worried about the Side getting attacked, I said, I’d’ve thinned the
ex-Shovers’
numbers, not the other Israelites’.

“Wow,” Benji said. “Wow!”

Wow what? I said.

“Wow.”

Wow
what
?

“Wow I believe you.”

Good, I said. I told you I wasn’t—

“No,” he said. “No it’s not good. Wake the… Wake the fuck up, man.”

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Good elbow on the desk, Benji had propped his chin on his fist at about the same time as he’d said his first wow. He smiled now, and his chin slipped down, so his cheek was on the heel of his hand. The smile went away in the course of the slip, but had come back harder once the cheek was situated.

“Tchhhhhhhhhhh,” he said, and got his face off his hand. He shook his head, as if to clear it out, but it didn’t seem to work—

his face was all slack. “Fucken,” he said. Or maybe, “Fuck it.” The end of the utterance got snapped by a yawn he fought to suppress.

When the yawning passed, he thumb-flicked the pointer of his broken hand, let out a muffled throatmoan, flicked again, and seemed, by that second pained jolt, to be driven back into his body.

Benji, I said. I’m sorry I acted shady about bringing you here.

I should have told you what I was doing, but I didn’t think… I don’t know.

Again he’d set his chin on his good fist and again it slipped, and again he flicked his wounds, made pained noises, and returned to his body, though his eyes this time weren’t as popping. He tried to stand up, and then he stopped trying.

“Okay say that again,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”

I was saying how I know it was hard for you not to retaliate against Berman to begin with, I said, but especially after he insulted Main Man’s singing, and whatever else happened between you guys while I was out front with the firemen—I should have told you what I was doing, taking you here, but I didn’t think you’d be willing to back down any further.

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“I don’t— What? What else would I retaliate for?” he said.

What do you mean? I said.

“What do
you
mean?” he said.

And I saw what he meant—or hadn’t meant: He didn’t know Berman was the one who’d brought him down at the end of the battle. I bit my lip hard, exercised a fantasy of retroactivation.

“‘To begin with,’” he said. “You said ‘to begin with.’ What’d I have to retaliate to begin with for? I mean… I mean what—

what’d Berman do before you went out front?”

I said, You should lay down, Benji. Seriously. You’re barely awake.

“You’re fucken doing it again—but you’re doing it… worse.

That fuck—” Benji’d made a move as if to flick himself again, but this time I grabbed the offending hand and held it down flat on the table. “Berman shot me, didn’t he? Let go, now. On purpose. Let go of me. He shot me’s what you’re saying, on purpose. I thought that was friendly, like accidental crossfire. He shot me, that fuck
on purpose
shot me. And then it was
him
who jumped on me.”

He didn’t know you were with us, I said. He thought you weren’t supposed to be there. You need to lay down.

“No no. No. You said—I heard you. On the megaphone—let go of my hand—you said we’re brothers. Everyone with Damage on his head is brothers. What’s on my head? On my head is Damage. Let go of my hand. You’re the one who wrote it there.

I did the same to you. It didn’t wash off. It didn’t sweat off. It 1423

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didn’t come off.” He struggled to get his hand free of mine, but he didn’t seem to know how to—he kept wiggling his shoulder.

“I see it right now,” he said. “Right in front of me, there on your head. Yours didn’t come off, so mine didn’t come off. You said we were brothers.”

He must not have heard me.

“Bull. Shit,” said Benji. “I am
so
fucked up right now, that lucky fucker. I sound like fucken Vincie I’m so fucked up. And he’s in there with Jelly. I want to see Jelly.”

I’ll tell Jelly to come in here.

“Yeah, you do that, you fucken do that, you tell her you fuck, you fucken liar, Gurion. You’re a fucken liar. Trying to make me feel paranoid… wrong… fucken…”

I said, You can’t be angry at me like this. I said, I’m the one who got him off of you.

“I could’ve done that myself. I would’ve done that myself.

You think fucken
Berman
… Another ten seconds… Another ten seconds, I’d’ve killed that kid. You did
him
the favor. You saved
his
ass. Not mine. Even
now
you fuck with me.” Now Benji was crying. I’d never seen it, only heard of it once—the day before as I laid on my back in the field beneath yud-clouds, ashamed in front of June. I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew he was doing it. There wasn’t any sniffling and there wasn’t any gasping.