Prophet, p.20
Prophet, page 20
“It’s not a little one.”
“No,” Rao agrees. “Which means that I’m well within my rights to bring up the whole . . . well, you know.”
“Ruining your life,” Adam prompts, flatly.
“Ruining my life, yes.”
Rao watches Adam gather himself up, far more slowly than usual, in order to present his mask of cold indifference. There sits Adam as he’s always been before: a forgotten cigarette burn in the tapestry of the universe. Nothing tangible for Rao to hold onto, nothing ever true or false. A spinning wheel.
The only proof he has that Adam might still be hearing that white noise in his head, might still be a mess, is how his fingers tremble as he wraps them around his left wrist.
It’s not just the straight thing, Rao realises with a start sudden as laughter. He’s misunderstood everything about Adam the whole time.
“Ok. Let’s talk about it,” he says evenly. Such a professional.
*
Desk work after time in the field makes Adam’s skin crawl. Low ceilings, fluorescent light, gray DC skies outside. He’s good at it. But it always feels like a shackle. And it’s thoughts like these that had been getting Adam through the day, snorting under his breath and thinking how Rao would call him a drama queen. An incredibly boring drama queen, but we work with what we’re given. Because Rao was on his mind. It would have been easy to get pathetic about that, blame it on all the time he had to let his mind wander while he wasn’t in the field, but the truth was that recently he’d been asked to provide a more detailed file report of their operations in Central Asia. He had dug up all his memories, stripped them clean of sentiment and camaraderie, packaged them up for another set of eyes, and passed them on.
So it made sense that he was thinking of Rao. Expected, after reliving all the moments that don’t make it into reports. The jokes and quiet evenings. Stories shared. Market stalls. Dust and cologne and cigarette smoke. The way Rao always complained about the scratchy blankets, lumpy pillows, moldy couches with too-hard armrests.
He wasn’t surprised when he got the call.
“A follow-up on your report.” A male voice, a crackly line. Adam wondered exactly where this one was posted.
“You should have all the details you need,” Adam sighed, acting like he had something better to do. What did he have lined up? Meetings. A 5:00 p.m. sit-in with a service chief, a four-star general, a politician with a thousand-dollar-a-day coke habit, and a diplomat fucking his au pair.
“We need to know about Sunil Rao.”
Adam sat up. “What do you need?”
“We’re working with him at the moment and we’re finding his behavior . . .” A pause during which Adam smiled grimly at nothing. “Challenging.”
“He’s being an asshole.”
“Yeah, he really is.”
Adam nodded. “Fights?”
“Nearly every night. Grounding doesn’t stick. He slipped out of cuffs. He drinks, gets his ass kicked, causes havoc,” the agent continued. He was off script already, but that’s the whole point of knowing the right words to say. “I’d get rid of him but . . .”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Adam got it, and so did the strung out agent. Rao’s something else, even when being a pain in the ass.
“You’re giving him what he wants,” Adam said. “Something to kick against. You cuffed him?”
“Desperation.”
“Obviously.”
“I need solutions, Colonel Rubenstein, not a dressing down.”
It was hard not to laugh. “I don’t have any special instructions for you.”
“You’re the only person who’s managed to work with him without punching him.”
Adam grinned. “I’ve punched him.”
“It didn’t make it into the report.”
“No, it didn’t,” Adam allowed, wondering how many people had included all the times Rao had goaded them into retaliation in their reports. He’d say he was immune, the way Rao told him he was, but that wasn’t true. He wasn’t immune like that. “I suppose I’ve already given you the best advice I can give you.”
“Don’t cuff him.”
“Don’t treat him like a prisoner,” Adam corrected. “He’s an asset. Treat him like he is. Whatever the situation—”
“Classified.”
“Of course. But whatever the situation is, you need him. The fights are his way of letting off steam,” he explained. It wasn’t hard to talk about Rao. Never has been. What’s always hard is getting people to understand. “Give him another outlet. Let him drink. Let him smoke. Let him go further than that if you need to. Encourage it. His tolerance is higher than you think, and he’ll always bounce back, so long as it’s done in moderation.”
“You’re encouraging recreational drug use.”
Adam paused. Was he? Yes. But it’s Rao. “If there are substances floating around, he’ll find them anyway. It’s in your best interest to be aware and in control of the situation if you want to work with him without the headaches, agent.”
“Littlewood.”
“Excuse me?”
“Agent Littlewood.”
Poor bastard. No wonder he’s having trouble with Rao. “I hope this has been useful to you, Agent Littlewood.”
“Extremely.”
The call clicked to an end and Adam sat for a moment, rapping his fingers on the desk, remembering the time he punched Rao, too early in their friendship to know he was doing exactly what Rao wanted him to do. Before he realized Rao was an asset.
The asset.
He got up from his desk, convinced for the first time in a long time that he’d actually done some good.
CHAPTER 38
Rao sits in silence after Adam recounts the phone call. Then, pursing his lips, he asks him if he wants to order in more pizza.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nor am I,” Rao agrees. “They were shit anyway.”
“You ate five slices.”
Rao smiles bleakly at that.
“Why didn’t you just tell me that they were cunts?” he asks seriously. “The way you said it before sounded like you just told them to hold me down and stick me with a needle to control me.”
“That’s basically what I did,” Adam says. “If I had more intel on the situation, I would have been more careful.” He’s shaking his head. He doesn’t believe what he’s saying.
“This really doesn’t suit you.”
“What?”
“Guilt,” Rao sniffs. He hates it. “I’ve never seen it on you before and it’s not your colour, love.”
Adam shoots him one of his not-frown smiles. “Like it’s a hat I’m trying on.”
“Yeah. Take it the fuck off.”
“It’s not that easy, Rao.”
“It should be.”
Adam stares at him blankly.
“I’m the injured party, and I’m expressly forgiving you,” Rao says. “Which should knock that shitty guilt hat clean off.”
Adam hums tunelessly. “And if you’re wearing a shitty guilt hat of your own?”
Fuck. Trust Adam to be a total pain in the arse even in recovery from impossible experimental substances. “Leave my hat alone,” he says.
Adam nods, slow and silent. He’s thinking. They’re having a big talk now, after all. All their guts on the table. All of Adam’s guts on the table, anyway. Rao blinks, suddenly comprehending the power imbalance. Aware of it and hating it.
“You don’t have anything to feel guilty about,” Adam says eventually.
“That’s bollocks. The shrinks kept telling me that when I got back. They didn’t understand that everything in those rooms in Kabul was a weapon, Adam. Everything. And I was in the room,” he insists. “I’m guilty as fuck.”
“Yeah, all that is true.” Adam speaks slowly. Eyes back down to his own hands.
Rao follows Adam’s gaze. Remembers those hands holding a gun to the kneecap of a man in Tashkent a lifetime ago. The man who’d ended up telling them both, his voice tight with fear, that things in Afghanistan aren’t like they are in the movies.
But they are, Rao thinks. They really are. Just the movie happens to be Goodfellas, not Saving Private Ryan.
Adam raises his eyes. “But . . . I don’t think you have anything to feel guilty about as far as I’m concerned.”
“It isn’t that easy.” Rao shivers, though he feels warmer. Doesn’t hate it right this second. Hell of a ride. “This is my fault.”
“What is?”
“This. You. Right now, you and now.”
“You didn’t make me do anything.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up, Rao. You didn’t make me do anything.”
A propositional statement that can’t be read. But Rao knows it’s a lie. Because he was pushing Adam in the facility, pushing as hard as he could. He wanted—
He doesn’t know what he wanted. He knows exactly what he wanted. But what he got was something else, and he got it at Adam’s expense. Rao looks down at his own hand. Turns it, regards the creases on his palm. Remembers the beads of Prophet climbing out of Adam’s skin and slipping into his own. The unnatural heaviness behind his eyes that doesn’t feel right, feels so right. Shivers. Lights behind his vision when he blinks. What he got was something else, and there’s no going back. But it’s Adam. Adam who’s in recovery. Adam, who’s looking at Rao closely now, leaning forward to get his attention, as if he didn’t already have it, as though Rao weren’t the most alert and aware he’s ever been in his life. Everything’s firing at once. He’s feeling like he did when he was a kid, when he wanted to be able to do everything in one day and getting tired was a waste of time. Feels like he did when he tried coke the first time. Just that first time. Like he’d figured out how to do everything at once. It was a fleeting intuition and confusing after an hour, but insistent. He feels insistent. All of him feels insistent.
“What is it, Adam?”
“You look like you have more questions.”
Rao suppresses a laugh. “Well, given the brand-new information laid at my feet about your formative years, not to mention a whole retelling of your narrative, I do indeed have quite a few more questions.”
Adam blinks at him. Sits back. Seems disappointed.
“You want to ask me about my love life?”
“Now that I have something to give a fuck about, yes.”
“You didn’t give a fuck when you thought I was straight?”
“Neither of us want me to answer that, Adam.”
One of Adam’s eyes is twitching spasmodically. He’s haggard as fuck. Exhausted. Rao should let him sleep. But he can’t let this go. Not yet.
Adam laughs, low and tired. “I really hate you, Rao,” he says.
“You said that before.”
He’d whispered it before. Rao’d pulled it out of him before. Humiliated it out of him.
“Yeah, I did.” Adam’s eyes are closed again. Back against the headboard.
Two steps forward, Sunil. “Did you mean it?”
Adam opens his eyes to meet Rao’s. That heavy feeling comes back, resting just behind Rao’s ocular nerve like a migraine without pain. Pressure.
He shakes his head. “No,” he mouths, voiceless.
He’s spilled single malt on the table. It’s right there, a splash of it the size of his little fingernail. If he leaves it there it’ll eat through the varnish and scar the wood. If he leaves it longer it’ll evaporate, rise into the air, alcohol molecules bumping around under the low ceiling, suspended in cigarette smoke. Rao leans down to examine the spill more closely, is reaching for it with a finger when it disappears. Which is not, he realises after a confused second or two, his doing. The bar’s gone dark. Another power cut. Cheers and jeers from the surrounding tables. He waits to see if this time the hotel generator will cut in.
It does. He exhales. Lights another cigarette. His hand is shaking. That’s the whisky. But if it weren’t the whisky, it’d be not enough whisky. If he were sober right now, he’d have to listen to the room. International agency pricks bragging about how many war zones they’ve been in. Journalists swapping photographers and vehicles. Brittle expats being weird about everything. Everyone everyone else’s best friend. Everyone loathing each other. Everyone mendacious. A rotating cast of lies and liars. Faces he knows, faces that come and go and return and go again. Faces staring into phones, arranging cars. Faces that most often greet him, as he walks in, with suspicion, with irritation, or the fixed smile that means fuck off. The usual. When did this get to be usual? he thinks. When wasn’t it like this? He lifts his hand to his forehead to rub at the frown that’s a pressure between his eyes. It doesn’t go away. Drags his fingers lower to massage his cheekbone. It hurts, a bit. His skin’s doing that thing where it feels like it’s not his. Then he remembers that tomorrow will happen, and that’s a sickening turn, like skidding on ice, the wheel going light in his hands.
Ash falls everywhere when he stubs out his cigarette. He stares at it on his fingers. How long has he been here? Good question. He looks up to the line of clocks showing different time zones on the wall above the bar and is surprised because none of them are there. Someone’ll have nicked them, yeah. Because things go missing around here all the time. Clocks, minds, wallets, wills to live. He turns his wrist to find his watch. Stares at it for a while. The bastard face refuses to resolve, so he recites numbers. Discovers, to his surprise, that it’s not even midnight, though it feels like four in the morning.
Then blankness falls on him, heavy and damp and far too stifling, and it goes on a while, until eventually a question hauls and heaves its way out of it.
What do you want, Sunil?
Well.
He wants to pass out.
There’s a problem with that. Experience has taught him that the hotel staff aren’t big fans of unconscious patrons on the floor. They don’t like fights, either. He’s not their favourite guest. So. Where was—yes. Somewhere upstairs is his room, and he supposes he’s going to have to get himself there first. The mechanics of doing so are vague.
Adam, he thinks. Or says out loud. One or the other, anyway. Because he has a sudden sense of Adam’s physical presence. It’s odd, he decides after a while, how Adam never smells bad. Maybe it’s the way the American government stamps them out. Maybe they put something in the mix like Twinkie preservatives. Because sometimes Adam smells hot and clean, like laundry, and sometimes more like vermouth and knives. Sharpest when he’s angry, sometimes when he’s tired. Iris root too. Hint of motor oil, but maybe it’s not motor oil. Maybe it’s C4.
He’s thinking of Adam again.
That’ll be because he’s fucked, yeah? Times like these, sometimes he’s blacked out and opened his eyes in the morning in a real bed with bottles of water within arm’s reach, and that’s all Adam. Rubenstein makes things easier. But it’s not that. Fuck, Rao realises slowly. I think I miss him. Is that mad? He can hear Adam’s tired sigh. Yes, Rao, he says. That’s completely fucking insane.
Very carefully, Rao turns in his seat, looks about. No. Adam’s not here. That’s very strange. He should be. Wasn’t he here, just now? The air in the room is darker now. Maybe the generator’s dying. No, it’s just cigarette smoke. Darker than usual, almost black. He glances over to the blank space on the wall where the clocks should be. The wall’s not right. It’s not painted vermillion. It’s wood panelling rouged with a patch of sun. And when he looks back down at the room it’s empty and he’s completely alone. There’s never been anyone here. And the truth of what this is falls on him. It’s death, he knows it is, opening inside him like a mouth, and he opens his own to scream—
He wakes into it. Sweating, constricted, tangled in sheets, one arm trapped behind his back. But the relief of it being a dream is torn away in an instant when he realises the scream he can hear isn’t coming from his mouth. It’s coming from somewhere else. Still a dream, he thinks, desperately, and his throat closes up because he knows it’s not true. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. Couldn’t scream now if he wanted to. Because it’s Adam. This is Adam’s scream. Adam is screaming.
*
“Adam?”
What wakes him isn’t the tearing in his throat, the sound of his own shouts dying in his chest. It’s Rao shaking him. Rao saying his name. Adam blinks up at his face.
The room’s too hot. He’s shivering. So is Rao.
“Are you alright, love?” Stupid question. Adam screws his eyes shut. He must take too long to answer because he hears a tap running. Then Rao’s feet on the carpet. “Obviously you’re not alright. But I mean—are you alright?” he clarifies, badly.
Adam cracks an eye to look at him. He’s holding out a glass of water. He looks shaken. Worried. Rao almost never lets it show like this. Panicked and wide-eyed as he puts the glass on the bedside table.
“I’m fine,” Adam lies.
Rao sits beside him on the bed. “Is that one of those ‘I’m fines’ where you’re not fine at all?”
Once, not being able to read truth in Adam’s words would have freaked Rao out. Lately, he’s getting better at figuring him out on his own. Adam gives up on his lie.
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
So much. He could do so much to help. He could leave, but Adam doesn’t think that would actually help. Wanting him to is instinct, some deep wound in Adam’s gut crying out for quiet and safety. Rao’s never embodied safety, not to anyone, including himself. But if he left, Adam would feel worse. And if he stays, then Adam will feel . . .
Doesn’t matter.
“I don’t know,” he answers. Noncommittal. Another lie.
“Scoot over, then.”
Adam acquiesces, giving Rao enough space to get properly into the bed. He stretches out, makes himself comfortable. Turns to face Adam. Streetlights outside. Everything is blue and orange. Rao can’t have any idea what his face looks like in the half darkness. Rao’s staying, and that seems better than him leaving, but Adam’s skin aches like a bruise.
