NOVEMBER 2017
The surviving letters of SVO’s motto—ALL GOOD STORIES SERVE A PURPOSE—assert themselves amid haphazard slashes of red paint, telling us something new.
A G OD A R OSE
The office is different since the break-in, in those small and crucial ways that leave you fumbling and unsettled. The doors were replaced, their familiar creaking announcements of all comings and goings, silenced. Surfaces bare where breakables once were; every so often one of us kicks around a stray piece of glass that got missed in the cleanup. A mismatch of plates and glasses now in the kitchen cupboards that I suspect Paul volunteered from home. I keep reaching for his favorite coffee mug, then remembering.
The plants didn’t make it.
Paul’s office was completely trashed, his computer turned to pieces. His hard drive was ultimately recoverable but even if it hadn’t been, it’s all on the Cloud. And then there’s the incongruities: everyone else’s stuff was untouched. It was all the evidence Paul needed to rule out the Halloween-high of some asshole college kids.
This was personal.
I stand in front of his door and knock.
“Come on in,” he calls.
He’s wearing his glasses today, frowning at his new computer. He only wears his glasses when his eyes are too tired for his contacts and that only usually happens when somebody’s fucking something up. Today, at least, I’m reasonably confident it’s not me.
“What’s up?”
He gestures to the chair across from his desk. I don’t sit down.
“What if I had a story?” I ask.
“What?”
“If I had—I don’t know, if I had this amazing, huge, exclusive story that even you couldn’t deny. Just play along: what then? What would you tell me? Would you run it?”
“The odds of that are—”
“It happened to you. That’s how you broke out.”
“Breaking in and breaking out are two different things,” he says. “It’s hard enough to do one, let alone the other, and rarer still to do both at once. That was a lot of luck and timing and I wasn’t seeking it out as a shortcut.” I raise my eyes to the ceiling and he relents. “If you had a ‘big’ story, yes, of course we’d try to figure out how SVO could facilitate its release.”
“What does that mean—does that mean you’d let me write it?”
“If that was the best of the available options, yes.”
He would never think it was, though. I’d have to prove it. I glance at the river outside. Every day is some kind of gray, the weather constantly on that tipping point between unpleasant and awful. The Unity Project hasn’t made contact since I went to the Garrett Farm and each day that’s passed since somehow feels more and less urgent for it. But I’ve looked Lev Warren directly in the eyes and told him I was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. I have to make good on that and the only person who could help me wants to stand in my way.
“What?” Paul asks at my silence.
“Do you think I showed up at your lectures because I wanted to be your assistant?” I cross my arms. “And what about me made you say, ‘I want that to be my assistant?’”
We stare at each other for a long minute.
“That?” Paul asks. “Denham, why do you think I hired you?”
I run my fingers across my lips and look past him, at the window, but I don’t really see anything there. I’ve been asking myself the same question since he told me I had no hope of moving up and every time I get close to the answer that feels the most plausible, I have to shut that part of my brain off. “I don’t know.”
“You sure about that?”
“I mean, come on, Paul. I was like, this little kid compared to everyone else at your lectures and if it wasn’t that you thought I could … that you thought I could—” Write. I can’t even say it. “Then it has to be because I have this—because I look fucking tragic, that’s all.”
He stares openly at my scar, but I’ve more or less put it on the table, so I can only blame myself for how bad it feels.
“It was a car accident, you said? Took out your whole family?”
It’s only come up once before, briefly, awkwardly, when I started here, after one of Lauren’s intrusive lines of questioning. I was snappish about it because I didn’t know That’s Just the Way Lauren Is. I remember the fleeting silence that followed, not being able to meet a single pair of eyes until an hour or so later, when it felt far enough away.
No one ever brought it up again.
“Yeah.”
“That’s really—rough.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, Denham, as much as I handed you a job, I didn’t hand it to you because I felt sorry for you. Lauren was pulling double duty forever, and it wasn’t fair to her, and I’d been interviewing for an assistant for over a month—”
“So you were desperate,” I finish.
“That’s not it either. Would you let me talk?” he asks, laughing a little. “You know, that was the main reason I pegged you for the job. You wouldn’t let me talk in my lecture. Every time I said something, you had your hand in the air. Because I usually coast on these things. People come, they don’t engage. You kept me on my toes. I thought if she’s game, she’ll keep me on my toes. And I was right.”
I swallow hard. I know Paul thinks he’s giving me a compliment, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with what he’s saying, but it’s hard to hear myself recast in a role I never envisioned for myself. And I feel stupid for not realizing it was all I was being offered all along. I change the subject because I can’t bring myself to thank him for making me feel so worthless.
“You gonna get that wall repainted?”
“Lauren wants me to keep it. Says it looks like blackout poetry.” He pauses. “I hate it. But I’ll let her enjoy it until the New Year. Maybe. Probably not.”
I leave him to his work and go back to mine.
The phone rings as soon as I sit down.
“SVO. Paul Tindale’s office.”
This time, the silence on the other end feels more like a puzzle piece fitting into place. I turn away from Lauren and bring my mouth closer to the receiver, lowering my voice.
“Casey?” I pause, listening to the breathing on the other end of the line. “Look, if this is someone from The Project—”
They hang up.
It’s the first time they’ve hung up on me.
I put the phone back in the cradle and get back to work, opening the feedback inbox, sifting through the usual bullshit. One email from Facebook catches my eyes.
Arthur Lewis wants you to join the group THE TRUTH ABOUT THE UNITY PROJECT.
“Oh, shit,” I say softly.
Lauren glances at me. “What’s up?”
“Uh—nothing. Thought I deleted something I shouldn’t have.”
It seems to satisfy her. I click the link and wait for the tab to load.
The page’s banner image knocks the wind out of me. It’s one of the pictures from the series Arthur showed me on his phone … Bea is in this one. She stands close to Jeremy, gazing at something to her left. I enlarge the image and study it in the way I couldn’t sitting across from Arthur in the bar without giving something of myself away.
When I was a kid, there was no one more beautiful to me than Bea. She reminded me of the princesses in Disney movies; the light always catching her just right, bringing out the sparkle in her warm brown eyes, reflecting off her shiny, wavy brown hair, which always settled around her head so perfectly, never a strand out of place. Mom always said Bea had a lovely spirit—her Busy-Bea, so impulsive and free—and her loveliness made it almost impossible to see past that veneer of prettiness to her flaws. But she did have them. I was eleven when I got little-sister jealous enough to start cataloging. Her mouth was a little too small for her face, her eyes set a little too close together, her right eyelid a little larger than the other, so sometimes, if you looked at her at the exact right moment, you could see two different expressions playing out on her face.
There’s a world of difference between nineteen and twenty-five, is what I’m seeing. The Bea I keep in my mind is forever frozen in the body, in the state, I saw her last. The wear of the hospital on her, the wear of looking after me on her. It’s gone in this photo. She’s settled into her features. She’s completely at ease. It makes my stomach ache to think how much farther she is from me than I’ve ever been from her. I scroll past it, to the group’s solitary post from Arthur, a caps-ridden, grief-stricken plea for help.
I AM SEEKING ANSWERS REGARDING THE DEATH OF MY SON, JEREMY LEWIS,,,, JEREMY WAS 23 YEARS OLD AND HAD HIS WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HIM UNTIL HE JOINED THE UNITY PROJECT. JEREMY DIED CUT OFF FROM HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS WITH NO MONEY, NO PROPERTY, AND NO HOPE AND I BELIEVE LEV WARREN’S CULT (YES IT IS A CULT!!!!) IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE. IF ANYONE HAS ANY INFORMATION OR STORIES OF THEIR OWN ABOUT THE UNITY PROJECT PLEASE SHARE THEM HERE,,,,, I NEED SOMEONE TO HELP ME EXPOSE THE TRUTH AND TELL THIS STORY!! LEV WARREN IS A MURDERER!!!! HE MURDERED MY SON!!!!! VICE, NBC, CNN LOOK INTO THIS CAN YOU HELP ME
His profile picture is the photo of Jeremy he keeps in his wallet. He’s tagged The Project, tagged the media. He’s commented on his own post; a single word: jeremy, as though he’d started typing something and hit enter before he was finished and walked away from the screen, leaving it for the rest of us to complete. It’s almost sadder than I can bear.
I scroll back up to the photo again, to save it. They’re so close, Bea and Jeremy. They look like good friends. I think of the other photos I glimpsed on Arthur’s phone, her whispering in his ear and wonder, for the first time, what else she might have been saying to him beyond my name. When I think of Bea, I think of a girl held hostage by both her grief and the people who took advantage of it. But where is the line between what circumstances have turned you into and who you choose to be?
A couple hours later, I refresh Arthur’s page to check for new activity. It’s gone.
It’s freezing rain by the time I leave work. I’m walking back to my apartment, shoulders hunched to my ears, when my phone rings. I step aside while people hurry past, digging into my pocket. I check the display. CASEY BYERS. I let the phone ring just a little too long, then bring it to my ear, hovering under the awning of Roth’s Baked Goods, the rich scent of bread cutting into the cold, dirty air.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lo. It’s Casey.”
“Where’d you get this number?”
“You’re not that hard to find. I’m calling on Lev’s behalf,” she says. “He’s decided there are certain things that need to be discussed if we’re ever going to move forward in understanding.”
I stare out at the road and watch as an SUV hits the brakes and skids just a little before stopping at the light. “I don’t want to talk to Lev. I want to talk to Bea.”
“You need to understand that what’s about to be offered to you has never been offered to anyone before and if you refuse, then … I suppose we’ll each proceed in the manner we think best.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No more than you’ve threatened us.”
“I thought The Project let their work speak for itself.” I lean against the building, watching as a couple moves past, a girl’s arm laced through another girl’s arm, two pairs of eyes only on each other. I wonder what that’s like.
“We do. And you are more than welcome to take it on.”
I clear my throat. “What exactly is this offer?”
“Come to Chapman House. Talk with Lev. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“And Bea?”
“Bea has other obligations.”
I shake my head, as though she could see me.
“That’s not good enough—”
“Look, can I tell you something, Lo?” she interrupts. “And it’s nothing I’ve been told to say, but it’s something I think you need to hear.”
I close my eyes. “Go nuts.”
“You’re approaching this from a place of … of finishing something. I think it’s going to make a world of difference for you if you approach this as its start. I really, truly believe you’ll get so much more out of it if you do that.”
“It’s just strange how you wanted nothing to do with me when I was too young and too powerless to fight back,” I say, opening my eyes. “Now I’ve got you and suddenly The Unity Project has room for me? Last we talked, you were calling me angry and insolent, Casey.”
“That’s because you are,” she returns calmly. “But you were never powerless. You just weren’t ready for the truth. So will you meet with him to hear it or not?”
“… When?”
“He can make the time midweek.”
“Chapman’s pretty far out,” I say. It’s downstate, Dutchess County. I’d have to hit Poughkeepsie just to get to it. “There’s got to be something halfway.”
“That part’s not negotiable,” she says. “I’ll pick you up at the train station. We’ll make sure you get home safely. Now, will you meet with him or not?”