carousel, ii.
He rings the doorbell once, twice, but there's no answer and no light on when he peers inside. There's something a little disconcerting about the fact that she's not home: are mothers supposed to have lives of their own? Aren't they like teachers, who live under their desks at school?
He gropes around under the flower pot with her geraniums until he hits the spare key. It's always been an overly obvious hiding spot for a key, he used to explain to her, because under the "Welcome" mats are the first place that burglars and axe murderers look for the spare and then they move on to the flower pots and then...
"::God, you really do live and breathe your job, don't you?::" she would roll her eyes. "::Your father used to be just like you.::"
He likes the familiar smell of the house, the scent of lemon wood cleaner and dryer sheets. The living room, where she still has the bright orange furniture that's been there as long as he can remember. It looks like the home of people who have come, lived, and moved the hell on with their lives, old photographs of ghosts who will never be passing on through again. The ancient TV in the corner is covered in a layer of dust and he picks up a silver picture frame absently. He likes this picture, his parents on their wedding day. They probably never had to look back at their nuptial pictures to see if members of multinational terrorist organizations had attended.
His mother and Lauren's parents had got along fine. What had they talked about, anyway? He can't remember. Something that involved laughter. There were no Montagues and Capulets. Her mother had not killed his father.
The place is like a living diorama of a house from the 1970's. Twelve inch vinyls are lined up carefully next to a broken down record player that hasn't worked in years and snapshots of people he can't remember are scattered through out the residence, each one sporting bell bottoms and leisure suits. The rooms are screaming to be made into an "I LOVE THE SEVENTIES!" television special for VH-1.
He drags his feet up the tan carpeting to the next floor, clomping as loud as he can. The silence is unsettling.
---
His father always told him to stop measuring time in minutes. He always said that if you're going to count anything, count sunrises and songs in the shower and dinners at home. That, he declared, is the key to a long and happy life.Ironically, the man died at age thirty-five. An extensive lifetime that sure was.
At least he had his damn sunrises.
---
There was a hearing. An extensive one, one with senators and bright fluorescent lighting and podiums and microphones."This is not a trial, Mr. Vaughn," they kept repeating. "We would just like to clear up a few things about what happened in Palermo."
Agent, he wanted to correct them. Agent Vaughn.
"I need you to promise me something," Dixon muttered to him before the inquiry, pulling him aside in the rotunda. "Promise me you'll keep your temper in check. These people...they were acquaintances of Senator Reed's, friends of his. The fact that both he and his daughter are now dead...they're not exactly going to be in your favor here."
"Be in my favor? How could this be a matter that people have an opinion on? She was a Covenant spy who leaked them government secrets! She betrayed me, she betrayed you, she betrayed this Agency, she betrayed this country—"
"I know, Michael. I know."
Dixon rubbed his eyes wearily, tired of this situation and tired of this job and just tired of it all.
"They're going to ask you about Sydney and Jack."
"I know."
"What were you planning on telling them?"
"The truth. That we haven't seen or heard from either of them in three weeks."
"They're going to know some of the details surrounding the investigation for Sydney."
He said this slowly, deliberately. Yeah, details. You know which details I'm talking about.
"I know."
"Just...just know what you're talking about when you get in there. I don't think I need to tell you that this is not a good situation that you're in the middle of."
---
He usually stays in the guest room when visiting his mom, the one in the basement that's painted a deep shade of coral he helped her pick out years ago. She always says that she'll clear out his old room one day, make more space for guests or books or something like that, but it still remains the same, a perfect reflection of the eighteen year old who used to live there. The hockey posters that adorn the walls are now creased and fading, much like the careers of the legends they used to depict. There's still the framed painting of the red type writer hanging above his bed [how, in any way, could that be considered art?] and still the same pale blue comforter.[First kiss. Fifteen years old. Jenny Simons. On that bed when no one was home.]
God, he hates this house. He has no reason to, none at all, but he hates it all the same.
[First time. Seventeen years old. Anna Woodrich. On that bed when no one was home.]
His old hockey stick sits in the corner and he picks it up, pretending to pass around an imaginary puck. He guides it around the creaking desk, past his dresser, the door will be his goal, bring the stick back to shoot, puck spins, the crowd goes wild, the sportscasters hold their breaths and, 'This is it, Kent, the defining moment of the game, if Vaughn makes this shot, the Kings have just won the Stanley Cup, aaaannndddd..."
Of course he doesn't fucking make it. It's an imaginary puck and an imaginary goal.
How do you win at something when none of it's real?
---
He falls asleep in his old bed. No surprises here. He doesn't think he's slept in weeks.---
In retrospect, he probably should have listened to Dixon. Prepared for the hearing. Come up with a better story.He should have known by then that the truth had long since stopped being a weapon for his defense.
"We would just like to remind you again, Mr. Vaughn, that this is not a trial."
"Yes, you mentioned that before, thank you."
There couldn't have been more than two dozen people there, maybe twenty- five, but their eyes. Their eyes bore straight through him, as if he were suddenly transparent.
Oh, they know what you did, Michael.
You'll always be the man who killed his wife.
They can see right through you.
You'd better start running, kiddo.
It's what his dad once said to him with an amused expression on his face when he found out his son had just broken his mother's favorite vase.
There might be a nice family in Canada who will take you in. But you're better start running, kiddo.
"We were hoping maybe you could relay back to us what happened in Palermo."
The man gave him his name at the beginning, although by the point it was completely lost on him as to what it actually was. Started with a "G."
He could see his own reflection in the man's glasses.
"What would you like to know?"
"How Lauren Reed ended up dead, for starters."
So. There would be no skirting around the issue, no polite questions with little relevance to the issue at hand.
"Lauren Reed was a ranking member of the Covenant," he started slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Sent to infiltrate the CIA and steal confidential intel. She was responsible for the murder of numerous government employees, she...she shot and nearly killed an unarmed technical expert in the rotunda right before attempting to blow it up, she...she..."
He was getting uneasy, desperate, grabbing at any straws he could.
"Agent Bristow went after her when she heard Reed was in Italy," he went on after a deep breath. "But she was...it just didn't..."
"Work out the way she had hoped?" the man asked, a mocking glint in his eyes. His voice had a dry edge to it, a hint of incredulity.
"By the time I got there, Reed had her at gun point."
"So you were, in fact, defending Agent Bristow."
There came that voice again. The tone of a parent speaking to a six-year- old.
"Lauren Reed wasn't exactly a woman who lived by a strict code of ethics," he spat out. "She wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger on Sydney."
mistakemistakemistakemistake
He could see Dixon close his eyes with a sigh, at the other end of the room but body language so bold that Vaughn could pick up on it from the stand.
"Sydney? You would be referring to Agent Bristow?"
"Yes. Agent Bristow."
"You and Agent Bristow had some sort of relationship at one time, did you not?"
Any movement in the room came to an abrupt standstill and...
Oh, this was where they would get him. Twenty-five people conducting the hearing and he knew that they were all just itching to jump up, point their index fingers at him accusatively, you killed Lauren Reed you killed Lauren Reed and for a bad reason too, oh you killed your wife...
Don't fuck this up.
"When they train you as a CIA operative, they teach you how to load a gun in fifteen seconds flat and how to take down four men at a time and how to diffuse a charge of C-4 using nothing but your bare hands. Out at the Farm, they tell you...they tell you that what you're doing will bring you glory, will bring you honor. They make sure that they leave out the actual darkness you see out in the field. They never explain what it feels like to watch someone you know slowly die from something as simple as faulty information or...or to experience betrayal, or to...to...they present you with lists. Page after page of lists, things you under no conditions do. It's all about restrictions and protocol and, quite frankly, the majority of it is pretty much disregarded. But the one rule that tops the list, the one that you on no account ignore, is the one about never leaving your partner behind. I've worked with Sydney Bristow for years. She is my partner. Under no circumstances do I leave her behind."
Murmur murmur murmur from around the room.
You'd better start running, kiddo.
"Let me tell you how we see this, Mr. Vaughn. The only other person who witnessed this...self defense, let's call it, is Agent Bristow, who has been missing for the past three weeks. Those tapes from the bank in Wittenberg. Would you like to talk about them?"
He gave a small shrug.
"They were too grainy to tell anything. It was apparent that Agent Bristow—Sydney—was searching through some files, Agent Bristow—Jack—arrived, there are shots of her leaving alone, and that was it."
"But they sent a team after her, didn't they? About a week ago. The CIA got tired of having her slip out of their fingers? This girl seems to be a regular Houdini. Why don't you tell us what happened with the team they sent over?"
Oh God. He could see Dixon edge forward in his chair.
"The CIA sent two agents, Agent Brown and Agent George, to retrieve her from a hotel in Lisbon when they got a tip that she was there. The retrieval did not go as planned."
"What happened?"
"Vaughn...the team. There was a problem."
"Medics arrived to find that Agent Brown had been thrown from a fifteenth story balcony. Bristow was gone."
"Bristow attacked those sent to go protect her? Interesting."
