Exposures

You awake in your warm bed and turn to look at the window. It's early or it's overcast, and you don't know it's the latter rather than the former until you look at your bedside clock. It's time to get up and get going, so you climb out of bed. The noisy cat wants food.

You put on some toast and open up the newspaper. You read about a housefire that happened in a neighbourhood you used to live in, and in fact you remember the house; you'd been there on some occasions years ago. (There are photographs showing the house: before the fire; after the fire.) The address given in the article is wrong; the address isn't even on the proper side of the street. You figure the paper's mistake must be upsetting some people, but not you. Newspapers!

"Good morning," someone says, and you look up, and it's Jane. It's funny that you hadn't even heard her come into the room, but here she is, right before you. "Morning," you say. "Were you out late?"

"Somewhat," says Jane. "I got into something I shouldn't have. I had plenty of fun. It almost felt like infidelity."

Seven or eight times in the last year, the two of you, once along with Rick, had gotten into some intimacies. You recall it for a moment, then turn you mind away. Newspaper and overcast and morning and toast was no time to be thinking naughty thoughts.

Jane got out a bowl and some raisin bran, just like any other morning.

You tell her: "A house I went to a couple parties in burned down last night."

"Really! Did you know anyone there in the fire?"

"I don't know; it was all six or so years ago."

"Maybe you're curious about it."

"Yes, I think maybe I'll get some more information later. Honestly, I can't remember who lived there. A friend of a friend. I think I'd know her name if I heard it."

You get dressed into some proper work clothes, proper for the job. And then you're out the door and onto the streetcar, wondering about the house that burned down and if you remembered properly the side of the street it was on. You also read a little Joseph Conrad: Nostromo. And then you're at your office building and in the door and at your desk and you're trying to look busy because you can't afford to be fired from your job. The business, as you know, is an import and export business, and there's plenty to keep track of in the world of tariffs, which is what your job is about. You've been there for seven weeks, and you think you've figured out who is the brains behind the operation, which is, as you know full well, merely a front for one of the biggest heroin businesses in the whole world.

The morning passes, and you've worked full speed through it all. The faraway ships sail in and out of ports across the high seas, and you know where they all are with a couple taps of your keyboard, and thus the paperwork is all ready and waiting at the next docks.

You're playing a game of imitation there at work. You watch the mannerisms of your co-workers, and you do what they are doing in order to fit in, in manyfold ways. You're not only imitating their styles, but by imitating their styles you're also imitating their backgrounds. And where did you get that idea? Why, you got it from your covert training. The Doctor told you: "People don't see likenesses; they only see aberrations. No-one will know what you're actually doing there if they can't even see you." And when you see it's lunchtime, you know you have to find someone to go to the lunchroom with. Gazing around your department, you see Stan, with whom you've had lunch before, long enough ago to not let it look like you were considering any intimacy with him, and you assemble in your mind the kind of simple chitchat one can have with vague acquaintances. He notices you looking, gets the idea, and comes over to you.

"Are you busy for lunch?" he asks.

"No, not at all, lead the way."

The two of you go into the lunchroom, to the cheap table in the corner, away from the windows, and unpack what you've brought to eat.

He says: "There was a fire in my neighbourhood last night."

You recall you've told him nothing about living on his side of town, and you wonder if you can let him know. You figure it can be said, since there'd be little danger to it, and also because since you don't know how much he knows about the heroin smuggling, a slightly closer intimacy could make him more open to you. It wouldn't hurt.

You say: "I read about that this morning. I used to live in that area; I've been to that house."

He replies: "You've been in that very house? Well, isn't that interesting."

You laugh a little. "It's funny, but the paper gave the wrong address. They gave an address on the west side of the street."

Stan thinks this over, making something of a map in his head. "The house is on the west side of the street."

"No, I remember it well, it's on the east side."

"I think you got your map upside down. It's on the west side. I know the house. I was out in front of it last night. Maybe you're thinking of another house."

You doubt this, but anyway. How could anything like that get decided about in a lunchroom four or five miles away from the street in question? "We can settle this some other time."

Stan shrugs and bites into his sandwich. "Fine by me, but I'm right."

You imitate how he eats his sandwich before making small talk about a popular television show. You are not lying about it either; you and Jane watched it. However, Stan hasn't seen too many episodes, so the conversation makes no advance.

Back to work you go, to your little pod, where you adjust a good many invoices re. the weights of the cargoes. You glance across the seams surrounding the rectangles of your partition's walls, wondering just how many company listening devices are buried there within. There's nothing you can do about it except to let them believe you don't know they are electronically listening for keywords. So sometimes on the telephone you whisper sweet nothings to Jane, or you hum some old songs by Mary Wells or the Rolling Stones, or you seem to be listening to the voices exclusively in your head: On any handwritten manifest, it's easy to change a three into an eight or a one into a four. I've been neglecting my parents for quite some time, and I should go out to see them. I don't know how much longer I can last in this terrible place; I'm despairing at how I'm wasting my youth!

Late in the day, a piece of paper, a notice, falls into your spruce in-box. Late-in-the-day notices are never good news: you've been around long enough to know that. Then you notice it's been mis-directed, that it was destined for someone else's spruce inbox: namely, the spruce inbox of your Prime Suspect, your Ringleader, your Big Kahuna. There's a leak in the organization. I smell a rat. We have to bring heavy power to the meeting tonight. The address is ■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■.

You remember how your membership in the shadowy organization began, way back when you were just eight years old. You wrote away for a secret decoder ring and, six to eight weeks later, a man calling himself the Doctor found you, in a narrow lane out of sight of anyone. He asked you about the ring, and swore you to the strictest secrecy. He told you: "You will be a great spy if you start now. You are a prodigy, you are special. We'll use a post office box to communicate. My front is a used bookstore downtown, and I will hire you to work for me. I've already met your parents, and oh the places you'll go to!"

Over the years, though, you found there was nothing special about it. Your educations continued, as if nothing had happened. In one, it was all mathematics and languages, while in the other, it was all assassination and simulation. And today you are planted in a criminal organization, and everyone there knows you only as you, the one in that department, at that computer, and talking about promotions on a regular basis. And now, finally, something of a chance discovery (for chance discoveries come along as long as you wait for them) puts you on the trail. But: where is this meeting to be held?

Measuring out the redacted spaces, you conclude that the number part of the address has three digits, the name of the street has five letters, and the type of the street also has five letters. You look around the office; you recall seeing something of a street atlas thereabouts. Most people have left for the day, so it's easy for you to discover it near Stan's desk, on a dusty bookshelf. Back at your desk, you leaf through the index, looking for patterns and probabilities.

In a half hour you have discovered the address hidden beneath the redaction. You feel pretty proud of yourself until in a moment of humility you realize it was all because of your extensive training in deduction and induction. Don't get cocky, as the fellow says.

Your Prime Suspect, of course, has been nowhere to be seen: he had left early for the day. You know how to get to the address--in fact, you used to live around there, on the other side of town--and though you don't expect to even get close to the place without being noticed, you make your plan.

Three hours later, after it's gotten dark, you're on that particular street. You see the house, and you're wondering if you've ever noticed it before. Perhaps there is a little twitch in your memory about it; maybe you know it better than you think you should, and maybe you are wondering if you know it a little too well. In any case, you stop to adjust your shoelaces outside, and peep to the brightness within. Two people are in there, and one is still while the other is pacing. Are you waiting for your Prime Suspect? You are the only person who knows he will not be arriving.

You walk away, mulling things over. Where to proceed from here? You know you'll have to wait until morning, in the office, where you'll be able to see what interactions Prime Suspect has over the telephone or over the Internet, whereupon you'll have to play it by ear and choose how to proceed. You wonder if you should contact the Doctor tonight to give him an update; you decide not to.

You pass a burned-out house. Yes, you recall that it's the house you'd been to years before, if you ever did. And, yes, it is on the wrong side of the street. There's a chance you are the one who is confused, and not the house, and not the street. It looks terribly familiar, even in its ruined state. Maybe you'll never think about it again; maybe this building will leave your life forever.

It's ten o'clock, and you figure you might as well go home. What do you suppose your mates are up to? You can't imagine. Maybe there's a videotape movie on and maybe they're watching it. Maybe they're not even there. But you're going there anyway, you're going to be home in about a half hour. By that time, things will have changed. Perhaps the movie will be over; maybe they will both be home. Anyway, you think maybe when you get there you'll see if one, or the other, or both, are in need of some mutual comfort.

 

You awake in your warm bed and turn to look at the window. It looks like it's going to be another nice day. You pull on some clothes, and you're hungry. Down to the kitchen you go, to make some toast, and to eat it too. The newspaper is already on the table; one of your housemates must already be up. You munch your toast, and open the paper.

And there on page five, you see it. The house you'd surveilled last night had burned down, some time between the time you left it and the time the paper went to press. Yes, there were pictures, before and after shots, and it was definitely the same house. The paper said the fire marshal suspected arson, since another house had burned down in the same vicinity the night before. (A neighbour reported they had seen someone 'suspicious' tie up a shoelace right outside the house.)

Marcus comes into the kitchen. He yawns loudly, and you try to remember whatever happened the night before, but you can't. He opens the fridge and gets out milk and turns and says: "Why don't you read today's paper instead?"

You close it to look at the date: and yes, he's right, it's yesterday's paper. You don't understand how it could have happened. Something changed, but was it you? or was it the world? In either case, the article in the newspaper was correct, even if it had been published.... No, there was no explaining it.

You have been trained well, so you know you can't show surprise about anything to anyone at all ever, at least not before you're finished with a rôle. So you laugh and slap your hand to your face and say: "Man, I am daft!" You shove the newspaper aside and since you've finished your toast it seems proper for you to simply go up to your room and get dressed. As you leave the house, you pick up the new newspaper and toss it up into the hallway. You can scrounge a newspaper at work if you have to; maybe there was a fire at that address after all. You don't know yet, now do you?

At your desk you get right into looking like you're working, which, in the modern office, means looking like you're working, so it's a pretty easy gig, to look like one looking as if work is being done. You casually dial up the Internet and, making it look like you're checking the shipping news, you read some online local news, looking for housefires. You wonder if the Prime Suspect is onto you, and you wonder if the mis-sent memo of the previous day wasn't mis-sent after all. It could have been intended for you to read. Maybe it (which you put into the proper spruce box on your way out the night before) hadn't meant anything at all, maybe there wasn't any meeting, maybe the P.S. lured you out to that house to see if you were investigating. It's a billion dollar heroin operation, after all, and you don't get up billion dollar heroin operations without being extremely cautious at all times. You think you realize that all on your own.

The articles about the housefire or housefires are ambiguous and timidly written. You are now dealing with eight possible housefires, depending on 1) what day it happened, 2) on which side of the street the house was on, and 3) if you were somehow involved in the setting of the torch. And as you're thinking about all this, along comes your P.M.

With a packet of some nine pages she is rushing up to you. She's obviously not going to strike you, yet still you flinch because she is a dynamo of a woman ready to have her voice heard. She doesn't thrust the sheets into your face; rather, she lets them limp at his side. She says: "I really want to understand these invoices. You're paying out and paying in, and I can see all that, and all the numbers add up, and I can see all that too, but--" and here she frowns rather sexily to say: "Can I ask you some questions over lunch?"

You reply: "Oh, ma'am, certainly, that would be fine with me. When should I come by, or ... when...."

"I should come to you," she says, and turns and goes away.

Forty-five minutes later, you're sitting in a real restaurant, one that even has tablecloths. You wonder if you should have gotten into the heroin smuggling business too. Boy, they sure know how to live! P.M. doesn't even bother to look at the menu; rather, some French falls from her mouth into the waiter's ear and from your mouth comes: "I'll have the same."

She asks you the simple questions practically everyone can answer, so you tell her where you were born, and about your parents, and about your brother and your sister. You return similar questions, then, while you're eating, she gets down to it.

"It's about that pal of yours, Stanley."

"Stanley? Oh, Stan. Yes, we're friends."

"Are you terrifically good friends?"

"No, only here, only at work."

She points her fork. "I've been watching him. I get the impression he's up to something."

"He seems totally harmless to me."

"Why do you think I was thinking something negative?"

"No reason. It was just a guess."

"Because I don't know where he stands on things. He may be employed elsewhere. I overheard him talking on the telephone, and it did sound like he was talking to a boss."

"You think he's, uh, actually with a rival firm?"

"I've learned that some secret information has bled to a rival. Someone's leaking."

The meal has somehow passed, and P.S. is paying with a Diner's Club card. She says: "Do you think you could keep your eyes open, and report to me? Entirely privately, just between you and me."

"I doubt there's anything to tell, but I'll see."

P.S. screws up her eyes for a minute. Does she suspect you're 'in on it'? She says: "Please, do it for me. It will be worth your while."

For the rest of the afternoon, you glance in Stanley's direction every fifteen minutes. You don't know if it's possible: can he truly be a spy for another company? If he is a spy, you wonder, could he be taking notes about you? You keep to your desk. It doesn't seem the place to find out, there at work, but let's say you went off to his home later, after work, perhaps there you could ask him and get the truth out of him. You happen to have a directory handy, and you find his address, and you notice that, yes, it's in the general area in which you had used to live and in which a house burned down last night, or the night before, or, crazily enough, on both nights. In any case, that business seems over and done with, and it's time to move on. Stanley is the question, and you're doing it for P.S., Pauline Smythe.

After work, you go off to have a meal, wanting to wait a couple hours before going to Stanley's house. You take the long journey through your old neighbourhood, remembering the places you'd been into, the shops and the restaurants and so on, until it gets dark and the shops start to close. It seems to you that you've hit the right time to go to his house, so to his house you go.

You're outside his house, looking up onto its porch and at a window. (There's no-one on the street, so you feel fine being so open about it.) Could it really be possible that Stanley is the leaker? Someone is the leaker, so why couldn't it be Stanley? You had word from Pauline that he was suspected, and though he was your 'friend', really, how much do you know about him? Do you think he's alone in there, or could he have a wife, a girlfriend, a son, a daughter, a dog? You don't remember if he ever told you anything about it. So you're looking in the window, and it's not a fully illuminated window: it's the light of a darkened room with a lit room or two adjacent to it. There's no flickering: the light is very flat.

Then the light alters, seemingly because someone is standing in a doorway. After a moment, you see a person. You're too far away to tell anything about the person. It could be Stanley, or it could be someone else entirely.

You smile now, because you're no longer sure what you were trying to discover. What did you expect to learn by a nocturnal visit to this house? Were you thinking of knocking at the door? If Stanley is the leaker, surely he would be suspicious. Ah well.

You decide to simply go home. You wonder if anyone will be around. Maybe one of your roomies will be up to some frolic. You have a heroin sampler in your pocket: maybe some fun can come out of that.

 

You awake in your warm bed and turn to look at the window. Birds are singing, you notice, and you wonder why you're only now hearing them. They didn't start up their racket just to suit you, now did they? You can't be bothered to think deeply about it all; rather, you get out of bed and put on the clothes (that could use a wash) you wear to go downstairs for tea and toast. You try to recall what happened last night, and it's all so foggy. Maybe you did it last night, with both of them. What happens at night is for the night, so you're not expecting any answers from your housemates.

Down in the kitchen, they're both there, they've shared out the newspaper between them with nothing left over for you. They look up and nod at you to say: "Good morning." You reply: "Yes, good morning."

Janey opens up her section to show you a printed image of the ruins caused by a house fire. She says: "It's like they're a nightly occurrence these days."

The house in the picture: can it be?: who knows, but you have the feeling you know the house, and that you were recently in it or outside it. Now you remember: last night, you were outside Stanley's house. The text names the street, and yes it's the right street, perhaps in the same area, but there's no way for you to know for sure, at least not there in the kitchen.

Doug looks at you and asks: "Didn't you used to live over there in that neighbourhood?"

"Yes, I did."

He shrugs. "It all looks quite suspicious, don't you think?"

"Does it say anywhere in the article there's been a run of house-arsonings over there recently?"

Janey scans the article. "No, can't say that it does."

Doug continues: "Yes, mighty suspicious, that."

You seem to have lost your appetite. You say: "Oh, how did it get so late? Gee, I really have to get to work."

"Blue Tuesday," says Janey.

"Isn't it Happy Tuesday?"

"Only ever other week. They alternate."

You go upstairs, get some proper Tuesday clothes on, and leave the house without bidding Janey and Doug good-bye.

You should have read that house-fire article, you realize. You don't know if there were any injuries or fatalities. Perhaps Stanley.... You try not to think about it, but you can't not think about it. You remember the couch in his basement, and what the two of you did down there. Could that sacred relic be gone? Water-damaged, you suppose, if there'd been a fire for real. Sometimes you think about how the past goes away, slowly, or suddenly, and how it's mostly impossible to keep track of everything that has happened, or in what order. In any case, the Stanley Affair had come to its conclusion, and it was just a slow-burning ... fire ... that only got fed by stairwell smooching these days. (Even then, it took weeks of flirting to bring it about.)

At work, there in the accounts department, you look up some Shipping News, transfer information from one box to another, and generally keep track of where all the shipments are. Stanley does not arrive at his usual time, nor fifteen minutes later, nor two hours later. You don't know how to make a proper inquiry, so you bide your time through the morning. You take the chance of sending him a message via the Internet, and for the longest time there's no response, until finally you receive one. There had been a fire in the house next to his, and his house had gotten some damage on the exterior walls. It's all a mess, he tells you, because the insurance is such-and-such and the police want to know this-and-that, so he is taking the day off. However, you want to see him, almost desperately, and you ask if the two of you can meet somewhere. He agrees, but he can't say when that can take place. If there is time, he'll contact you and set something up. He offers no promises.

A new woman in your office, Anna by name, with no last name you know of, such is the modern office, all on a first-name basis, no formalities, it's not the fifties, comes over to you at a little before noon. Anna says, right in your face: "Can we get together for lunch? I'm trying to get to know the place, and I need some help."

You reply: "Okay, let's do that. Let's go down to the food court."

The food court is located under the building that's across the street. You suppose it could be described as a part of the building, but no-one else does, so that's that. Together, you buy tacos from King Taco.

Sitting down behind your orange plastic trays, you tenderly unwrap your tacos. You decide to play boy. "So, what's your story? How'd you wind up where you are?"

Anna's almost unwrapped. "I escaped my small town about six years ago, came to the city, took a couple business courses, and so, here I am, working at an import and export company. In the 'logistics' department."

You continue. "Logistics, what is that?"

She's got a big paper cup of Coca-Cola that she bought at King Taco and she slurps up a half-mouthful. "I think it's we're trying to know the probabilities of all variables, in order to know how things might turn out, shipping-wise." She turns her attention to the overhead lighting, but just with her eyes. "I'm good with probabilities."

You continue. "Yeah? I'm terrible at them. How'd you get so good?"

"Parents," she responds immediately. "I grew up in a kind of a cult."

You did not expect to hear this. "Really, a cult?"

"Not quite really," says Anna, who is opening up to you. "'Probabalistic Diurnal Nocturnals' they called themselves. The idea is you sense your soul from day to day, but the continuity is only a probability."

You're staring at her. Is she making all this up? You're well-versed on cults, but you've never heard of something like this before. You continue asking her questions and getting deeper into it, and you discover much to your surprise that it all makes a kind of sense. You ask her: "Why day-by-day? Why not hour-by-hour for these probabilities?"

She replies: "Well, there's something to what you're asking. My parents and the rest of their gang say the day-by-day-ness of their theories is a simplification for argument purposes."

As you're walking back to the office, you think there's something exquisite about this Anna, and you consider pursuing her. Should you? Shouldn't you?

But then you get to your desk, and start working on some invoices, and she completely leaves your mind and you turn your mind to Stanley. You wonder if you should go visit him. You were outside his place last night. Weren't you? Or was it the evening before? You're pretty sure it was last night, and you also hope you were at the right house rather than at a house on the other side of the street.

Every day is a new day, and overnight there's a shedding of mental material. Don't you recall some theory about dreams, and that they're a way of getting rid of excess ideation or something like that? You remember Anna suddenly, and you think maybe you can use that as a way to talk to her the next day.

The day wears on, and it's once again time to leave. You know you're going to go over to Stan's house, but you wonder if you should have something to eat first, at perhaps a restaurant in your old neighbourhood. Then you realize that you're not sneaking over there. You're not some kind of a spy, after all. You're as innocent as a dream, and you are in a position to offer something good to someone, even if you're not sure what. After all, you weren't the arsonist. If anything, you're anti-arson.

You return to the house you were at yesterday and perhaps the day before. The house beside Stanley's is really and truly burned down. Such a pity. Everyone got out in time, you knew, and in fine shape, but they have lost things in time forever. There's no going back to yesterday.

You knock on Stanley's door, and Stanley answers, which simplifies things. You've never been there before, you think, and you don't know who else could be living in the house. You say: "Hi, thought I'd drop by, see how you're doing."

He quickly says: "How did you know where I live?"

You can't remember, so you say: "I'm not quite sure; you must have mentioned it, and for some reason I remembered it. Oh yeah, it's because I used to live around here, you remember that?"

Stanley laughs at you, but you don't know why. He says: "Listen, come on in, sit down, let's get this business settled."

He brings you into the front room of the house. It doesn't look familiar to you, but that doesn't mean you've never been there. You set yourself down in an armchair and he sits down on his couch. He says, in response to something that must have been said earlier: "I can't get into it, I'm sorry. I've got plans for the future, and drug-smuggling simply isn't in any of the plans."

Now you recall. You say: "So you're not going to help me rig the shipping lines? I told you we'd make a fortune, and there's no way they can catch us if we're in on it together, you working your angle and me working mine."

He still won't agree. "Sorry, there's nothing to say about it, and I suggest you stop thinking about it too. Maybe you could put it in one of those stories of yours, but, in the real world, it would be a disaster."

You say: "It's only good enough for a story?"

"Yes, only good enough for a story. Don't even think of trying it. I could so easily rat you out."

You point to the wall. "But the house next door: Can't you see they already know all about it?"

"It was a kitchen fire. Some wiring problem hidden behind the stove. They had nothing to do with it."

You're sure there's been a cover-up somewhere, because faulty wiring doesn't just happen: it gets caused by someone, somewhere. You're not going to get anywhere further with Stanley. He's not interested in your plans--though tomorrow he may be interested in your plans. It's impossible to say. Tomorrow will be a moderately different day.

You go outside, and you notice it's a pleasant evening. It's still early, it's dusk. You go over to the next street and you go into the house you live in, you share, with two other people. You don't know what to expect, but they are both in the living room, watching television news. They both wave to you. "Hi." "Hi." "Hi-hi." You sit down on the couch and look at the television for a while, but you get nothing from it. This happened today, and that happened today. You can't figure out how anyone could keep track of everything happening, and yet, there they were, people pretending to be keeping track of everything that was happening. It's not that they are making it up as they go along, no, because there is a future yet to come, you're certain of that, and tomorrow will be different from today.

Time has passed, and now it's rather late. You wonder if Stanley will be more interested in your scheme tomorrow. Really, you think it's impossible to tell. You get in your bed, and think about tomorrow. Sure, plenty of things could take place tomorrow, and you try to count them, the possibilities. And, as you're counting, you fall into the arms of Hypnos.