He no longer cared about getting a tan; the skin of his back had faded to a soft, vulnerable color that seemed silkier, somehow, than a sunstroked bronze. The golden cast of his youth, days spent shirtless in the street, playing cops and robbers with broomhandles, was long gone now. Even his hands felt soft to him. The calluses from handling his gun felt stuck-on, like something about to peel off and fall away, leaving his flesh soft as a woman's. He was fading. He hated himself.
Most of his life was a set of rituals based on the emotionless twitching of the clock. He could count the hours clearly now, each chime of his dark day ending with a soft "ping" in his head.
Nine steps between the couch and the television he kept more by reason of vanity than actual need. One step—and both arms outstretched, fingers barely releasing from the edge, like an unsure swimmer—between the kitchen countertops, from sink to stove. Never mind that he did little cooking these days. It was microwave all the way. He considered getting a housekeeper; considered it all of ten minutes, anyway. Shouldn't have even wasted ten minutes on such a thought. He was self-sufficient, dammit.
He was consistently his own best listener, and he remembered there was a time when he rarely swore, but he did now. Yes, ever since the first in a very prolonged series of bad days. He spent an entire morning making up new strings of bad words. Then he poured himself a glass of scotch, spilled it on the counter, and had occasion to really get some use out of his new words. He ran his elbow into the wall searching for the paper towels. Sometimes it felt like space yawned around him, and in a heartbeat it closed tight as an iron maiden, reaching out to trip and bite him.
He spent a whole month being dizzy. The couch became his only steadfast companion. When the size of the room was just too random for him to handle, he curled on it like an Irish setter and waited for space to settle down.
Sands had told them to drop him off at his front door and locked it behind himself with a hand that trembled very slightly. The hum of the company car got into his head like a wasp and he was glad to shut it out. He could imagine where the couch was, the edge of the kitchen wall, the teak coffee table and the bookshelf, but he couldn't make himself believe it. Dimensions were lost. Some sadistic painter had flattened his townhouse with ugly Fauvist brushstrokes and he stood with both hands behind him, palms flat against his front door, pulse showing in his throat as he told himself to calm down, dammit, CALM DOWN, this is your HOUSE, you live here—and not being able to understand his own voice.
The boys had arrived with their steady voices and cool hands on his arms, leading him to the car with the power of professional training rather than physical force. He had taken the same classes. His hand crawled along the roof of the car and he took particular pride in not banging his head against it as he got in. Their voices were deep, distant. The rushing in his ears, like being underwater, was very distracting. It drowned the burning in his legs. He had a sneaking suspicion the wounds there were worse than he'd thought at first. His arm simply ached, like an abscessed tooth. He could deal with that. It throbbed up his neck and was trying to evolve into a migraine, but he could deal. In fact, he was feeling pretty all right until he whacked his elbow with the car door as he slammed it shut. Sands had the overwhelming and sudden urge to just slam his face into the window. Someone slid coolly into the seat beside him.
"Seatbelt," he said atonally.
Sands sat, stoic, listening to the ocean in the bottom of his skull.
"Suit yourself," the agent said, buckling himself in.
He tried not to, but he fell asleep in the car. The air conditioning smelled canned, like air on a plane. It was cooler than outside, though, and that's what mattered. Sleep did not overtake him so much as brain him with a cinderblock and drag him into its kingdom.
He slept on the plane and someone fucked around with his bullet wounds until he yelled. Soothing bullshit fell against his ears. More effective was the local anesthetic they finally thought to apply to his flesh. He struggled for a while because he was mightily tired of being blind, on his back and at the mercy of unseen assailants with crawling fingers and prickly instruments.
"Really, if you hold still this would be much—"
"You know, this isn't a very comforting situation all around, okay? So you fucking hurry up or just deal with it."
"I understand you've been through a great deal, Agent, but this would all go faster if you—"
"Then how about you fucking get it finished instead of squeezing my arm between sea urchins or whatever the fuck you think you're doing over there?"
"Arthur, can you give me a hand over here?"
"Yes, please, Arthur, give him a hand! His own seem to be rather incompetent!"
Again with the needle, and he soon floated in a tingly-numb splendor. He had plenty left to say, but his tongue was feeling lazy. Hold that thought, he told himself.
"Sir? Sir, are you awake?" Her voice was delicate, non-regional. He came to gummy awareness. Darkness.
"Stewardess?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Are you particularly attractive?"
She paused only a moment. It was part of the job description, wasn't it? She'd hoped that a government officer, at least, would be—
Just leave it, she told herself. They're all the same. You should have figured that out by now.
"Can I get you a drink, sir?"
"I'm trying to decide whether it would be worth it to play one last round of grab-ass."
"That's doubtful, sir. How does white wine sound?"
It's taxis and telephones from here on out. He ran the tips of his fingers over the glossy surface of his coffee-table sized copy of u American Motorcycles Past and Present /u and restrained an urge to throw it through the now equally useless (though exponentially more expensive) flatscreen television. It was a gift, he remembered, though he couldn't actually remember who had given it to him.
He did, however, have some fun throwing his work-issue laptop off his balcony and listening to it crunch in the parking lot. He had even more fun whining to Simmons that his laptop fell down and he needed a new one.
He knew sign language, but who learns Braille if they don't need to?
"Guinness. Yes, that's fine."
"You want to see a menu?"
"Yeah. I sure do. But not tonight. What color shirt am I wearing?"
A confused pause. Does he mean something by that? "I—it's kind of blue."
"What i kind /i of blue? Dark blue or greyish?"
"Dark?" Is this a trick question?
"Good. That's fine." He sips his Guinness. When he gets home he'll poke holes in the tag. The red shirts have no tags at all. He cuts them flush.
Sands sits in front of the tv, listening to the news. That and the music channels pull no punches. They don't even pretend to be visually interesting, so he tolerates them. He can identify the assholes on the reality shows by their voices now. In his mind he can see the little ribbons under their confessing faces: "Karen. Stockbroker, 24." "Timothy. Roadkill scraper, 29." "Greg. Pig whisperer, 36."
He shuffles a deck of cards to give his hands something to do. After a few hours he lays out a game of solitaire. He stares at it with his hands. They rest like butterflies on the cards, lightly tapping, tickling down the edges of the cards, moving nothing. He leaves it for a week before packing it back into the deck.
He doesn't remember what order his CDs and old vinyls are in, so he has to listen to each one and then put them in alphabetical order, with little paper tags taped to his favorites, so he can find Neil Diamond even if he loses count between ABBA and ZZ Top.
When did he buy all this Jefferson Airplane? He doesn't even like this shit any more.
Santana goes off the same balcony as his laptop. He wouldn't shed a tear if he never heard a Latin beat again, ha ha.
He doesn't miss his tears, and he cheers himself with the thought that he'll never have to fish an eyelash out of his cornea again. That's cause for a celebration. Out comes the scotch.
The first day he dared go barefoot wreaked more havoc on his blood pressure than his first real gunfight. He learned his lesson in that first week after jamming his toes under more doors than he felt he really deserved.
"Are you sure you can live without me?" he asked pointedly, repressing the anger that made him feel a little dizzy. His voice sounded cool, careless. Good.
"It's not really a question of that," Simmons replied, and Sands wished desperately he could read his face.
"Oh? And what's it a question of? How little it'll take to get me out of your hair?" He was aware he sounded like a child, but he didn't care. Shit, after all he'd done--!
"If there's something there you aren't happy with, please, Sands, let us know. We don't want anything less than for you to be well-situated."
"Shit."
"Is there some particular item you're taking offense with?"
"Yeah, actually. Let me check this. Oh yes... right here... the part where I lose my JOB."
"Can you hear yourself? Didn't you listen to this at all? My God, Sands, it's nothing like that. This isn't a buy-off. It's—"
"—A forced retirement package—"
"Forced? For Pete's sake." Simmons sat down across from him, his arms making a thud on the table, his voice moving close. "Nobody's making you do anything. Nobody ever does. We've let you run free-range for years, Sands. We let you take that particular assignment in whatever direction you wanted, and you came back the reaper of your very own actions. I'm offering you a chance to live like you deserve. You can wallow in your self-pity and pride or you can accept this and do something."
"You're cutting me off."
"Goddammit, are you listening to me? You can work anywhere you want to! You can go to Dry Hump, Manitoba if that yanks your crank. You pick the spot. You know how we're hurting for warm bodies, and you're still one of those, no matter what martyr you're trying to make yourself. God save us, you're still capable. This is just a little cushion for if something falls through. I don't want to see you take a beating."
"I've already had that, thanks."
"Yeah, I noticed. Come on, Sands. Be reasonable here. Look at this objectively for a minute."
He is silent for a minute, appearing to think. "I've got to admit that's a pretty handsome offer, Simmons."
"It is."
"Unfortunately for you, handsome doesn't swing a lot of weight with me any more. I just don't appreciate it like I used to." He stands up, moving back from the table.
"Oh goddammit, Sands—"
"Ciao, John."