IX - American Rabble

The water cascaded down Rabble's chiseled front. His abdomen was like a system of well-defined canals and tributaries, distributing water downwards towards his most secretive areas (out of respect for the more discerning reader, I will not describe them to you, but will say without reservations that they were indeed impressive). The hot water steamed as it struck his naked back. Rabble sighed and wiped his eyes with a strong, masculine finger.

The spa attendant yelled to him over the noise of falling water. "There's boxer shorts and some towels over by the sink."

"Thanks, babe."

She giggled as she left the room. Rabble rubbed some soap into his cavernous armpit and smiled. He still had it. It was relaxing to be in that shower, alone and safe. Rabble tried to remember the last time he felt that way. Comfort was rare in his life, even in the glory days before his homelessness, when he was always either in the field, hunting down terrorists or at home, preparing for his next mission -- never in a state one could describe as "comfort". There was always a reason to watch his back, to sleep with one eye open. Now that he had lost everything, that he had almost resigned himself to a life of destitution and misery -- and yes even Rabble, even a man this strong, who had survived a nuclear blast at its epicenter, could be beaten down by the rigors of poverty -- now that Rabble had lost everything he had nothing left to lose.

He stepped out of the shower and walked over towards a full-length mirror and wiped the steam off with his bare hand, revealing his face. It was as if with one swipe of his hand he was reborn, changed from a ghostly, nondescript figure into the hard specimen of man he now saw in the mirror. The dirt was gone, leaving only skin -- pure, white skin. And with the dirt went all the misery and desperation. He was whole now, a full-blown, blue-eyed killing machine once again. Only his hair, that ungodly mop of dirty blond hair, reminded him of his time on the streets. Once the hair was gone, he could pretend that nothing happened.

The attendant skipped into the room and quickly held her hand to her mouth, part-embarrassed and part aroused. "Oh! I'm sorry!" she said, admiring the musculature of Rabble's back. Rabble turned around to face her, parts and all.

"Nothing to be ashamed of, hon. I'll be out in a second."

Her eyes widened in awe. Rabble smiled. Was it still that easy? She skipped out of the room awkwardly, like it was eighth grade all over again. Rabble took a towel and dried off his protruding bicep. He flexed his arm in the mirror. He was certain he had lost some muscle due to starvation, but by the looks of things it was less than he had imagined. Nothing three thousand pushups a day couldn't fix. Or was it four thousand? John had forgotten his old routines.

He slipped his legs through the boxer shorts, hopped up and down a few times and then bounced out of the bathroom, ready to confront the world. Ready to confront the bastards who had left him for dead, but ready also, to enjoy the things he didn't have time to enjoy before, like the sweet, chemical smell of a holistic spa.

Dougie and K-Rock looked at him, amazed. It was like some sort of Hollywood makeup trick. This was not the man they had just spent two hours in a Hummer with, was it? "Now who's gonna take care of this mop?" Rabble pulled at his hair with mock disgust. He winked at K-Rock, making him feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Well look at you! Quite the stud indeed. I can't want to get my... hands on you." The lispy voice came from behind Rabble. He turned around to see its source, a svelte, diminutive man with a thin mustache and greased, spiky hair. "We are gonna get rid of that dust bunny you've got on your head and replace it with some nice, spiky man locks."

"Isn't there a woman I can have do this haircut?"

"Honey, I'm the closest thing to a woman you're gonna get 'round here." He laughed.

"Alright, fruitcake. But if I catch you popping a boner while you're touching my hair I'll cut it off, fry it in a pan and feed it to you like they do in Germany. Understood?"

"Listen, buddy. I like cutting hair, but I don't like it that much. Besides" he added, "you're not my type."

And with that Rabble sat down in the chair.

I - Number 45

Memories. The President of the United States had many of them. Seven White House easter egg hunts, seven G8 summits, six state of the union speeches, five hurried broom closet handjobs on the ninth floor of the capitol building -- all these memories flashed before the President's eyes as the red phone blinked on his desk.

Blink blink. Blink blink. Blink blink.

He wished it was a fantasy. Some sort of Batman and Robin game with giant light signals in the sky, spandex costumes and a sports car with a pointy spoiler. But was he Batman or Commissioner Gordon? Was some kind of -- joker -- turning his world on its head, making this phone blink on a lark, as if to say "I can put fear into your mind, delve deep into the cruddy place where you've buried your fears and dig them up, bare-handed, for all to see"?

The President knew this was no prank.

He called in Dougie, his top adviser, who bumbled into the oval office carrying a portable Walk Man in one hand and half a salami hoagie in the other.

"What's up, chief?" That's what they all called him. Chief. As in Commander-in. As in the man with the feathered headdress. The wise man. The leader.

The President didn't respond. He looked Dougie in the eye and then, without speaking, both men knew what had to be done.

Half a salami hoagie dropped to the floor.

II - It Was America

It was America: a country, and an ideal. It was trees, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, canyons, deserts, forests, beaches. It was land -- vast, expansive land, and the majestic eagles soared above it all, waiting for a chance to swoop down and snatch some of their own.

It was the hamburger, the milkshake, the Charleston and the Lindy Hop. Route 66, Highway 9, the New Jersey Turnpike, and the great Alaska Highway. It was rock n' roll even before Elvis. It was the Harley Davidson, the Smith & Wesson, the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, and the Chesterfield cigarette. It was boys and girls standing on opposite sides of the gymnasium at a junior high dance, suppressing their basest urges for the greater good.

That's what America was back then, in the Second Antebellum Period. Of course, people didn't know to call it that at the time. To them, the country was always entangled in one minor war or another -- mild military excursions into various foreign territories to extract terrorists and other nogoodniks. Tiny wars, fought on principle and principle alone.

And then it happened. Fort Lauderdale, destroyed. In New Jersey, South Orange and West Orange obliterated, leaving only East Orange behind. A five-mile stretch of Omaha, Nebraska declared unfit for human habitation for one-hundred seventy years. One-hundred seventy. The oldest woman on earth was only one-hundred twenty-nine years old.

Now it was different. America was now the land of concrete, a massive expanse of rocky gristle, stirred up and poured neatly into square-shaped molds known as towns, villages and cities. It was the world's third-largest country, and its largest parking lot. The plants that were lucky enough to dig their roots down into the concrete, to push themselves up between its cracks - these were the most American plants. Purple mountains? Amber waves? Sure, they were still there if you were willing to ignore the rest of it. But destruction brought a desire for safety, for calmness and oneness, for convenience.

The new America was built, a society of concrete, asphalt, clay, and tar. Real Americans loved the smell of tar.

III - America On Sale

"It's a wonderful day at Stuckey's!"

Neil Asbury, manager of the Dover, Delaware Stuckey's General Store greeted his customers.

"It's a wonderful day at Stuckey's!" and in a way, this was not an exaggeration. There it was, in all its royal blue glory, a store one and a half miles wide and two miles long, surrounded by a parking lot four miles in circumference, like a football stadium. You could get anything here, find anything. Laptops, hosiery, caulk, deli meats, diet aids, roofing supplies, mouthwash, paint thinner, and enough toilet paper to clean it all up after you were done with it. "Stock Up and Save!", the signs said, and the customers knew that what they might be saving, in addition to money, was their lives.

Neil swept some dust out from under a coke machine that hadn't popped out a soda in years, and remembered how it was before.

Back in the day, a group of protesters would show up every other week with picket signs and a giant inflatable rat, claiming that Stuckey's exploited its minimum wage workers. The leader of the group, Hal Holsbury, stood about five foot one, and would squat inside a shopping cart, screaming "Release the slaves!" into a megaphone as volunteers wheeled him around. But no one cared to protest anymore. Not in Dover, and not even, Neil heard, in Berkeley, California.

The truth was, and always was, that Stuckey's employed the otherwise unemployable, and in America, this number was growing exponentially. Stuckey's was the nation's number one employer -- private or public. Without it, the economy, the country -- perhaps even the world, as Stuckey's products were manufactured around the globe -- might collapse. Even Hal Holsbury, once the Dover Stuckey's' diminutive nemesis, now worked there four days a week stocking shelves, thanking God for each paycheck, thanking God for his employee discount.

They were a rag tag bunch, the Dover Stuckey's crew. There was Myrna, the short-handed checkout girl, who blew two fingers off her right hand in a July 4th firecracker accident at the age of eight, and then, exactly one year later, lost the other two fingers and thumb while holding an identical firecracker. "I learned my lesson," she would say, "and then I learned it all over again".

There was Tanya, the fifteen year-old basket collector who always seemed to be either pregnant, or just recovering from an abortion, who had amassed an impressive collection of gold-plated hoop earrings that stated, in various cursive fonts, "Tanya".

There was Elliot Abramovic, the seven-foot, six-inch deli man, who spent part of three seasons as the backup center for the NBA's Shanghai Knights, and spoke exclusively in sports metaphors. "Meunster cheese", he would say, "is a real sleeper candidate this year."

Aiko Takashihara, a spritely young Japanese woman who was part of an international Stuckey's employee exchange, had been sent to Dover after an assault conviction. She liked to hang out by the sports equipment and play with the paintball guns. She spoke only three words of English: "We close ten."

In exchange for Aiko, Dover had sent to Japan Manny, the dog rapist, who was the store's "lighting technician" - a job title he invented after hours spent trying to figure out how to make it seem like he did more than just change light bulbs. The current lighting technician was Norris Blanchard, a retired marine who would mumble to anyone who would listen about "the good old days" of the 1920s -- thirty years before he was born.

There were hundreds of them like this, hundreds of misfits whose lives were saved by the big box store they called home for thirty-five hours a week. A community of rejects, distinguished by their bright blue Stuckey's vests.

Perhaps the epitome of them all was Billy, the delivery coordinator, a young, blond-haired homosexual with a penchant for lascivious behavior. Or at least that was his reputation. Billy was a tall man in his mid-20s. He had been working at Stuckey's since the age of nine, delivering fliers on his bicycle before school. Over fifteen years later, he had been promoted to coordinator. Another few years and he might be a supervisor, which meant five vacation days per year instead of four. And business cards. He wondered what would it be like to have his own business cards.

Billy's work day went like this: he folded boxes, he lifted boxes, he packed boxes, he unpacked boxes. He filled out forms, photocopied the forms and then taped them to the boxes. Every day. Thirty-five hours per week. Billy hated his job, but thanks to all the heavy lifting, his physique was impeccable. He was thin, but sturdy, with well-defined muscles that were all the rage on the homosexual scene. He had been told by many to move to New York and try his hand at modeling, but most of these offers came with strings attached -- sexual strings. He was a beautiful man, and he knew it. Even the women of the Dover Stuckey's desired him, and debated the likelihood of a possible sexual conversion.

It was in the Dover Stuckey's mens room that Billy would have an encounter that would change his life forever. It began as a routine incident, a distress call over the store-wide speaker system: "Hobo in the northwest bathroom!" That was Billy's territory. He put down a large cardboard box full of old, eleven-blade razors, activated his tazer and headed towards the bathroom. Following corporate procedure to the letter, he entered the bathroom with his back toward the door, turned clockwise slowly and then, facing the hobo, recited by rote: "By loitering, you are in violation of Delaware State Code one-ninteen, section twelve, part-B. Stuckey's kindly asks you to please remove yourself from the bathroom within the next two minutes. As a reward for your compliance, we offer you a coupon good for a free fountain soda with any medium sized meal deal purchase in our food court." Billy extended his hand which held the free soda coupon.

Normally this did the trick. In fact, some of the more clever hobos would lurk in the bathrooms explicitly seeking out the coupon. They would alternate bathrooms to avoid suspicion, but Billy and the other Stuckey's employees knew what was going on, and let it happen anyway. Who were they to deny those less fortunate -- those who couldn't even get a job at Stuckey's -- a good deal on soda?

This hobo was different. He didn't accept the coupon, or even acknowledge its existence. Instead he just stared at Billy with a look of helpless desperation, like a dog at the pound hoping to avoid being gassed. It was pathetic and revolting, but Billy couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the man, such was his nature. The man was a mess, covered in black plastic bags and various old grey t-shirts, one of which read: "Denver Broncos, 1986 AFC Champions". A thick coat of dirt was caked on to every surface of his body, and he smelled like rotten bananas. Billy stared into the man's eyes, not knowing what to do. The man spoke:

"I'll do anything for fifty dollars, man. I'll jerk you off."

Fifty dollars? This man was offering to bring him to manual climax for the price of a turkey sandwich? It was sad, really, but somewhat intriguing. Billy felt himself getting aroused. That said, he didn't want any part of his body anywhere near this disgusting hobo's. He thought for a minute, then spoke. "How about this? I will give you fifty dollars and this soda coupon, you will leave the restroom, and then I will manually stimulate myself on my own time?" Billy took out a fifty dollar-bill, tossed it towards the hobo and left the bathroom.

Pleased with himself, Billy sauntered down aisle 187b whistling an old Beatles tune he had copied from his father's computer: "Mean Mr. Mustard". It was there he passed Hal Holsbury, standing on an inverted milk crate, unloading thin, aluminum oxygen tanks onto a shelf.

Hal glared at Billy. "Why are you whistling?" Hal asked in his usual obnoxious tone.
"What do you mean?" Did Hal know what had just transpired in the bathroom? Should he tell him?
"It's November ninth. Have some respect." And with that Hal placed the last oxygen tank on the shelf, rolled his eyes, sighed and strutted away.

November ninth? November ninth? What had happened on November ninth? It was hard to keep track of which days were somber days, and which were not.

Billy shrugged off Hal's comment and walked back towards the loading docks. He tried to work as normal, but one thought occupied his mind: Who was that cruddy stranger in the mens room? Would Billy ever see him again?

IV - The Solution

The President of the United States shook his head. It had been twelve hours since the red phone rang and they were no closer to finding a solution, and twelve hours closer to mass destruction. Assembled in front of him were his five most trusted advisers, his five best friends from college, "The Five Musketeers": Dougie, Moose, Whit, K-Rock and Brownie, or as they were known professionally, the Secretary of State, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of Defense. They stood in a semicircle, in size order, as was the President's preference.

"It's the Russians. Those damn Russians. The Russians and the Ukbeks" Dougie said.

"It's the Russians, the Uzbeks, the Chinese, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the North Malaysians... even the fucking Laotians. All of APAC. And without warning" said Whit.

"Don't forget the Vietnamese" Brownie chimed in.

"Fuck the Vietnamese. Fuck Sri Lanka and fuck Cambodia" Whit retorted.

"You and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is mousetits in all of this. We all know that the root of this is in Moscow, in St. Petersburg. That man you propped up, that festering sore of a man, that Kuleshov" Dougie responded.

"Fuck you, you peg-legged faggot."

"I lost this leg in the war. The Nine Day War. Where were you? At your daddy's house on Martha's Vineyard, tending to the horses?"

"You're one to speak. Your family is the richest asshole family of them all. And you're a damn faggot."

"Cool it, fellas" said The President. He had had enough. The tension in the room was palpable. He inhaled, took a sip of his Diet Pepsicoke and let out a sigh. Was this how it was for all the presidents before him? Was this what it was like for Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs? For Romney on that dreadful day, November Ninth?

"What I don't understand is, why didn't we have a handle on any of this? How can a dozen, fifteen, twenty countries do this without so much as a peep on the intelligence wires? I call my man at NSA, he's dumbshitted. CIA, FBI -- nothing. Ambassadors, operatives, embassy stooges -- no one knows anything. No one knows anything until it's too late, until the damn Batphone is ringing. And you know what I did? I called my cousin. My second cousin, the importer-exporter over in Hong Kong. I tell him what we're hearing, and he says 'You know, now that you mention it, there's been a lot of tanker ships coming in and out of Victoria Harbor the last couple weeks'. I had to humiliate myself, go out on national television and tell the taxpayers that we can't go through with the tax cuts, the tax cuts I promised, that I ran on... I took a blood oath for those tax cuts, and there I am, humiliated out there on the podium. Meanwhile we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars -- trillions of dollars -- so that the intelligence agencies can mull around playing Pong."

"Pong, sir?" K-Rock was confused.

"It was a game. One of the first video games. Like ping pong, but there were only two lines for paddles and a dot for a ball."

"Kind of like Blasto-tennis?"

"Yes, exactly." The President leaned back in his chair. "So what are we looking at if this all goes through?"

Brownie slapped a report down on the President's desk. "Sattelites show missiles. Nuclear missiles. Large quantities of plutonium -- enough for seventeen dirty bombs. And botulism. An assload of botulism. A fleet of helicopters to drop it all on innocent civilians."

K-Rock chimed in. "Passenger airplanes used as weapons, sir. Loaded up with dynamite in the cargo holds, to be flown into our airspace as commercial jets and then smashed into nuclear power plants. Three different models of jets, all controlled by a central computer in Guangzhou."

"The goat city" The President said. "Anything else?"

"Paratroopers," said Whit. "Over four thousand paratroopers trained in martial arts, coming over by barge, disguised as rolls of fiberglass insulation, and worse," he sighed, "they're going to drop them off at the top of Mount McKinley. If they get to the bottom of that mountain, the entire Alaskan peninsula belongs to the Russians. They'll send battalions down through Canada and take the Pacific Northwest in a heartbeat."

"If there's even a Pacific Northwest to speak of," interjected Moose. "I have on good word that there's already a five-thousand megawatt nuclear bomb planted somewhere in the subway system in Seattle. The bomb will be set off by a collision with the five-thirty A.M. Northgate-bound train this Friday morning. Even worse -- if the train is impeded electronically, the bomb is set to blow. Someone would have to go in and slow the train down manually -- literally stop it dead with his bare hands."

"And as if that weren't enough," said Dougie, "all of the codes necessary to decode APAC's plans are stored on eleven different computers, in eleven different languages. And the master code is only known to Irina Kuleshov, the Russian President's wife. Her allegiance to him is unwavering. The only way to get the master code out of her would be..." Dougie started to laugh, "would be... well... to seduce her. And you all know... you all know how cold she is. That might be the most impossible task of all."

The President paused for a moment to gather this all in. "So basically we need someone who is impervious to radiation, can deactivate a nuclear bomb, defeat thousands of armed soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, fly three different types of planes and a helicopter, climb one of the tallest mountains in the world, seduce the most sexually repressed women to ever walk the earth, halt a subway car with his bare hands and hack into the computer networks of eleven separate governments, all in the next thirty-six hours." The President cracked his knuckles. "Who on Earth could possibly do all of that? Who?"

"Well there is... was..."

They looked at each other knowingly.

"It's not possible. It's not."

"He's dead. Long dead. Burnt to a crisp in that explosion in Glasnovorst."

"It was Belgrade, and yes. Burnt to a crisp. Blacker than your wife, right Moose?"

"Cocksucker."

"I heard he was working for the Russians. In the Ukraine, someplace. It sounds like 'carkey'. Carkeyev?"

"Kharkiv?"

"Yes, that's it"

"Not plausible."

"I agree. Impossible. He was as loyal an American as there ever was."

K-Rock stuffed his hands into his pockets. "He's been reported dead before. We've been wrong before"

"Yes, but this time there was evidence. DNA evidence. RNA evidence. I personally examined the body. It was him, no doubt, burnt to a crisp. But there it was, that damned tattoo, same as always" said Moose.

"His first wife hated it."

"We all hated it."

They stood there, defeated. If only he were alive. If only. But that was but a pipe dream. He was gone now, actually gone. Moose had inspected the body.

They stood there for a while, silent, remembering the man who had saved them who had saved their hides, no, the entire country's hide, more times than they could remember. The President spoke: "Let's say he is out there. How would we find him?"

"That's the thing. We wouldn't even know where to begin."

"He could be anywhere on the planet, in any country. He might not even look like himself. Hell, he could be black for all we know."

"Hispanic."

"An Eskimo... Inuit, sorry."

"Yes," the President said, "but if you had to pick one place, one place on Earth where he'd most likely be...."

"Well, he does have his vices, like any man" Dougie said.

"Did have his vices" corrected Whit.

"And there was one thing we all know he could never resist..."

V - American Voices

Billy was late for work. He knew that no one would notice, that he could waltz right into the shipping department at any time of day without anyone caring a bit. This was Stuckey's. Laziness and malfeasance were expected, if not encouraged. What were you doing there anyway, if you had aspirations of something grander?

They all did, though. Life had dealt them a crappy hand, sure -- unplanned children, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, elderly relatives with even more elderly debts -- but at least they had this -- this job, this paycheck. There was also a sense amongst the Stuckey's crew that this was secretly where they belonged, that this was their social station, preordained at birth. It was a belief passed down from generation to generation, which made it hard to separate nature from nurture. Why was it so difficult to act on their desires, to pack it all up and get the hell out of Dover? Those happy people in the magazines -- isn't that what they did? Weren't there stories of everyday folks with humble beginnings like them who, through sheer determination, pulled themselves up to the top of the social ladder?

It was money. Money was the secret. There was never enough money, barely enough to pay the bills. Others were worse off, they were told. They were told to be happy with what they had because at any moment it could disappear. It was best to dream. Dream, purchase lotto tickets, bet on the Jets to win the Superbowl, but action... action was for the destitute, the homeless, the dying, and the well-off. It was the one thing the rich had in common with the extremely poor: the ability to do whatever the hell they wanted.

Billy dreamed of moving to Las Vegas, that Mecca of gay culture, where he would throw naked pool parties out on his oversized, desert patio. He would buy an all-glass house and furnish it with real wood furniture. He had seen an ad for a prefab model in a luxury magazine, a bi-level, temperature-controlled translucent trapezoid with neodymium lighting. The ad read: "Go ahead. Throw stones."

Billy was stuck in this daydream, folding boxes, when Radish Esposito, the store's telephone repairman, approached him with enthusiasm. Looking at Radish it was hard to discern exactly what he was doing at Stuckey's. He was a good looking guy, over six feet tall, with a full head of hair. He walked perfectly upright, had 20/20 vision, had a good grasp of the English language and seemed rather personable. He was a smiler, too -- it was a kind, inviting smile, which displayed his perfectly straight white teeth. Radish was even reasonably intelligent, able to juggle multiple tasks at once, witty in his own way, generally compassionate but stern when it was necessary. Radish's defect was not immediately apparent, but became clearer the more one spent time in his company. He was a motormouth. He went on and on and on and on about the most inane things, his sentences laden with extra articles, conjunctions and prepositions. No one knew it for a fact, but had they bothered to take a conclusive survey it would have been quite easily established that Radish was indeed the most irritating person in all of Dover, Delaware.

"Hey Billy. How ya doin'? Doin' good? Havin' a..a..good day to uh... a good one... havin' a good one?" And before Billy could answer: "Say uh, I was going to go walk down to get some, some of the red stuff. That stuff. That Tunisian Tea. I love it. Love it. The... the uh... can't get enough of it. Addicted. I think they put... I think they put crack... some sort of drugs in there. Not really. That's a joke. Anyway, if you want to go. You know. I'm gonna walk down over there. I'm gonna start walkin' to the ... the... gonna start uh... soon. Just start over there. If you want to come with."

Tunisian tea. The simple suggestion made Billy want nothing more. But Radish. God damn Radish. Was Tunisian tea worth the trouble of listening to him blab on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on....

"Sure" Billy said, regretting it the instant the word came out of his mouth. He was committed now. He put down his box, grabbed his wallet and headed out the door, Radish in tow.

Dover was blessed with what was widely considered the finest Tunisian tea outside of Africa: Hamed's. Bureaucrats would drive an hour and a half from Washington D.C. just to get a large cup of the stuff, so superior was Hamed's product to that of the thousands of franchised Tunisian Tea joints that had popped up around the country. Luckily for the employees of the Dover Stuckey's, Hamed's was located on the eastern side of the parking lot, a mere two miles away -- walking distance if you had a lot of time on your hands, which they did.

So they started walking, and Radish started talking. About the oil crisis, the ethanol crisis, his favorite brand of shampoo, his favorite kind of ice cream, his new power drill, the toilet paper in the mens bathrooms, the differences between American English and Australian English, the best way to cook a steak, professional fencing, sewing machines, string theory, his tomato garden, the different types of clouds -- on and on and on and on -- and all Billy ever had the chance to say was: "Interesting." It was a simple lie that satisfied Radish immensely. It was all easy enough to ignore, until Radish broke the monotony by doing the unthinkable: by asking Billy a question.

"So you're a gay, huh?"

Not that conversation. Not now. It was bad enough that Billy had to listen to Radish's eccentric ramblings for almost half an hour, but now, to have that conversation, with Radish, on an otherwise perfectly good afternoon? Ugh.

"Billy? You are a... a homosexual, right? I mean I heard... I mean... the... the... with the... you know..."

"I guess I am, yeah."

"Oh." Radish thought. He had the most intense look on his face, as if he was trying to scratch out a thought from the deepest, most unreachable part of his brain, but failing. Then he found it: "So what's it like to live in sin?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know. I was speaking to my pastor on it...about it. He said there are these demons. It's not a genetic thing, like they said in the uh... one of the... you know, those science journals. It's really a test. A test from Satan. He said that all gays hear voices. Nagging voices, like irritating relatives. Do you hear voices?"

"No. I just..."

"Interesting. Very interesting. Never heard a voice before?"

"I think that might be, you know, a metaphor."

"Not a metaphor. Definitely not... not a metaphor. He said he heard actual voices, like someone was talking to him. Just like I'm talking to you. He was tested, my pastor. But he passed the test. Thankfully." He paused, then: "Speaking of tests, did you ever take the SAT?"

Just then, they reached the line outside Hamed's. It was short given the time of day, but still almost fifty people deep. In front of them, two suits from Washington conversed.

"Ugh, look at these guys," Radish said. "Who do they think they are?"

"What do you mean?" Billy asked.

"You know. Just... just... in the... but... just who do they think they are?"

What Radish didn't know was that the two men in front of him would have thought they had every right to feel superior to he and Billy. They were Dougie, the Secretary of State, and K-Rock, the Secretary of the Treasury. They had driven over two and a half hours from Dougie's place in Alexandria, Virginia to be there.

"This is the place. He could never get enough of it." Dougie said.

"He would come all the way out here just to get Tunisian tea? Look at this place. Look at this whole area. It's disgusting. Where are the trees?" wondered K-Rock.

"You've been spending too much time up in the Cape. This is what the rest of the country is like these days. One giant mini mall."

"Execrable. Really, truly execrable. Why are we even here? For nostalgia's sake?"

"One sip of that tea and you'll understand everything" Dougie said.

A cry came from further up the line. "Mr. Secretary!" One of the servers had recognized Dougie from his occasional appearances on the television news. "Mr. Secretary, please, right this way. No need to wait in line" he said.

"No special treatment please, my good man. I'll wait in line like the others" Dougie said, which seemed to please the server, and everyone else in line as well. Even Radish was satisfied that this man in front of him, this suited man whom he still had not identified as the Secretary of State, refused the special treatment that Radish assumed he would expect simply because he wore a blazer.

"You're a real rap star" K-Rock said, elbowing Dougie in the stomach.

"Yeah, well... I like to think I worked hard for that little bit of recognition" Dougie said, adjusting his lapel. He paused. "You know, it's nice to be on a little trip like this, just the two of us... really get a chance to know each other. Even if we don't find him, I'm glad we drove out here. If it really does come down... you know... the whole APAC thing, at least..." he started to choke up "at least we'll know where was a time when we could do something like this. Just go and get some Tunisian tea. It's nice, is all."

"Agreed" K-Rock responded. "Agreed."

It was a rare moment of sincerity for the two men, which made them both slightly uncomfortable. And it didn't last long.

VI - American Demons

It was a noise, a madcap wailing, accompanied by a jangling sound, like an old, rusted tambourine. It was singing -- raspy, atonal singing.

This little light o' miiiiiine
I'm gon' let it shiiiiine
This little light o'miiiiine
I'm gon' let it shiiiiine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shiiiiiiiiiiiine, Tunisian tea...ha!

A homeless man had made his way toward the line. He was a stinking mess of rags, hair, and dirt. A few stray coins jingled around in his paper cup -- the percussion section. He began again:

This little light o' miiiiiine (Tunisian tea)
I'm gon' let it shiiiiine (on Tunisian tea)
This little light o'miiiiine (Tunisian tea)
I'm gon' let it shiiiiine (on Tunisian tea)
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shiiiiiiiiiiiine

Billy watched him do his tap dance. There was something familiar about it all. About the man's movements, his face. Then he remembered -- the bathroom the other day, that disgusting offer. Could it be? Could it be the same bum, back for more? Was it odd that, in some strange way Billy was hoping that it was?

"Disgusting" K-Rock said. "Absolutely disgusting."

The bum surveyed the line, looking for his mark, that pathetic son of a bitch who might slip him some bills just to make him go away. He zeroed in on Radish. "Hey man. Help a brother get some Tunisian tea, man."

"I don't have any money to give you" Radish replied, irritated. "I've only got enough for one."

"Well I've only got enough for none, homo." He spat on the ground.

"Excuse me, that is not appropriate language. Not at all. Not acceptable. My friend right here happens to be a homosexual" Radish said, as everyone in line turned around to look at Billy. So that's what one looked like.

"Oh is that right?" The homeless man looked at Billy and smirked.

"He suffers from demons. Voices. He's got enough trouble already. Leave him alone" said Radish.

"Voices, eh?" The bum wobbled over to Billy. "What kinda voices 'you hear?"

"None. No voices" Billy said.

"Don't go lyin' now."

"It's not a lie. My friend is just confused. He's very gullible. People tell him things."

"That's true, I am" Radish chimed in.

Billy looked at the bum and felt a sudden sense of confidence. He was sure it was the same man he saw a few days ago in the bathroom, who made that disgusting offer. Billy felt as if he had power over him. He knew something... that secret. It was like a concealed weapon he could reveal at any time, instantly swinging the encounter in his favor. Emboldened, Billy stepped up his tone. "You don't remember me?"

"Remember you? Remember you from what, boy?"

"Stuckey's. About two miles over yonder." The bum looked him over. He didn't remember. It was clear to Billy now that what had transpired that day, what had shocked him to his core, was routine for the bum. "You don't remember? You don't remember what you said? What you said you'd do? Is that what you do every day you... you sicko?"

"Do what every day?"

"Do you really want me to say it? You really don't remember me? The coupon?"

Now the bum remembered. The coupon. The fucking coupon. Enraged, he rushed Billy, grabbed and shook him. "That coupon! That coupon was bullshit! I had to buy a whole meal just to get a free soda. But the damn meal already comes with a free soda. Why do I need two fountain sodas? I gotta carry around a whole fountain soda all day? That shit's flatter than an eight year-old girl."

"Let me go!" Billy screamed, struggling. But muscular as he was, he was still a small specimen of a man, easily overpowered by the hulking bum, whose coal-black hands left fingerprints all over Billy's collar and royal blue vest. "Put me down now! I have no money, nothing against you, please!"

"You and your bullshit coupons!" The bum pulled out a knife and held it to Billy's throat. "You're gonna buy me a Tunisian tea. A free Tunisian tea. Consider this" he said, pressing the knife against Billy's Adam's apple "my god damn coupon."

Billy struggled. The people in line, not knowing what to do, looked to Dougie. They were looking for him to do something, anything. He was powerful, in charge -- wasn't he? Dougie felt this obligation, but resisted action as long as he reasonably could. Now there was a knife at a boy's throat.

Dougie cleared his throat. "Unhand that boy!" he screamed, keeping his distance.

The bum turned to look at Dougie. "Says who?"

"Says the Secretary of State of the United States of America. Put down the knife, you are under arrest" Dougie said, in a stoic, authoritative voice.

The bum, eyes still fixated on Dougie, released Billy and dropped the knife. He was mesmerized, holding Dougie's gaze as if his face were a Magic Eye painting.

The people in line clapped.

"Dougie?" the bum said, transfixed.

Dougie felt a strange sensation in his spine. How did he know this man? What about that face seemed familiar? He couldn't quite place his finger on it. Then he saw it. The tattoo. It couldn't be. Impossible. Could it? Was it?

"Rabble?!""

VII - Take a Penny, Leave a Penny

The jet black Hummer sped off down Highway 8, careening through traffic.

"How much dough are we talking about here?"

"Well, certainly your old rate... plus a certain percentage." Dougie couldn't believe it. Rabble -- alive. Rabble -- dirty, stinking and penniless, begging for loose change in front of his favorite Tunisian tea joint, but alive, breathing, and now, in typical Rabble fashion, negotiating.

Rabble took a drag of his cigarette. "My old rate plus nine hundred percent."

"Nine hundred percent!" K-Rock screamed, without having any idea how much this meant in actual dollars. Nine hundred was a lot of percent, he knew that.

"You'll have to forgive Mr. Rockefeller. He's finance, he's not used to this sort of thing."

"Rockefeller, eh?" Rabble looked him over. "What's a fella with a name like that doing in government?"

"My father. My father was a senator. My grandfather was the governor of New York. He ran for President." K-Rock laughed. "It's quite a long legacy, actually -- my family -- I mean..."

"No sense of humor either." Rabble stamped out his cigarette on his armrest, melting a small circle of vinyl.

The driver lowered the partition window and motioned to Dougie. "I'm gonna go down two-fourteen. Should be quieter."

"Do what you have to do." Dougie said, as the window slid back up. He turned to Rabble. "We'll get you cleaned up as soon as we get back to D.C."

"Yes, cleaned up and dressed" K-Rock said. "What are your sizes? I'll phone them in to my assistant."

Rabble looked at Dougie. "Can we do something about this guy? Because I'm a pubic hair away from punching him in the face."

"Now listen... listen to me. I'm just trying to help you. Get you dressed. Do you want to go on looking like that?"

"How do you think I ended up like this? You think I chose this?"

"I think anyone who... who allows themselves..."

Rabble grabbed K-Rock by the collar and pulled him close. "I'll perform a tracheotomy on you with my pinkie. You'll be talking like a god damn robot." He took his pinkie and traced a small circle below K-Rock's Adam's apple. "You have no idea what it's like. No idea!"

"What's your damn problem? Dougie, tell him to let go of me!"

"My problem?" Rabble shoved K-Rock back into his seat. "What's my damn problem?"

Rabble thought about all he had been through. All he had done for this country -- his country. He remembered Cambodia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Belgrade, returning home to Arlington in an Apache helicopter and then, upon landing, feeling discarded, like a wrinkled business card in the back of some bureaucrat's overstuffed wallet. His passport, his bank account, his social security number -- all gone, invalidated. What was his problem? Was this guy pulling his leg?

He sat there, silent.

"Well?" said K-Rock, still red in the face. "Anything else to say?"

Rabble understood better than anyone the power of silence. He was the Harold Pinter of the intelligence set, with a poker face as unreadable as a Joyce Carol Oates novel. He could control each muscle of his face individually -- every blink, every furrow of his brow, every quiver of his lip was calculated. It was as if he could command each cell, each molecule; direct the flow of oxygen towards the tissues that needed it most. Now he was sitting there, expressionless, eyes wide open, silent. That was another thing about Rabble. His eyes were as dry as pumice. He never blinked unless it was absolutely necessary.

K-Rock looked at the stoic Rabble and giggled. "Well alright then."

They rode like this, in silence, for forty-five minutes. Then, just when K-Rock had begun to relax, to forget the tension and entrance himself with the green blur of trees that passed by his window, Rabble cleared his throat.

"You motherfuckers dropped me like a penny from the observation deck of the Empire State Building."

"What do you mean, John?" Dougie said.

"You know what I mean."

"I don't, I'm sorry."

"Yes, please do explain." said K-Rock.

"Kevin, please just try to be quiet. Please." Dougie knew that if K-Rock's attitude persisted, Rabble might literally kill him. He'd seen him do it for less.

"It's just that..."

"Kevin..." Dougie said. K-Rock knew from the tone of his voice that it was serious. He swiped his finger across his mouth, zipping his lips, then tossed an imaginary key over his shoulder. Only mouths had zippers with locks.

"Listen, John, it's as mysterious to me how you ended up like this as it is to you. We thought you were dead. Moose... Abraham Moskowitz... do you remember him? He's Secretary of the Interior now. They flew him out to Montenegro, showed him your body. He saw the... the tattoo. Your tattoo. The whole body was burnt to a crisp. They ran DNA tests...

"Bullshit." Rabble took a drag of his cigarette; barely more than the filter was left.

"I'm not bullshitting you. There was an investigation. A fifty page report. Every now and then we would hear rumors -- you were like Elvis. You were in Mississippi, hiding out on a farm. You were in Vegas, operating a whorehouse. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that you were in outer space, collaborating with damn aliens. There was evidence, John. DNA evidence."

Rabble looked at Dougie. Here was a man he always trusted, the one man who he knew always kept his word. Had they gotten to him too? Was he a liar now, just like all the others? But how was it possible? Whose body was that in Belgrade? And the tattoo... no one else had that tattoo, he was certain.

Something smelled fishy. He was going to have to figure out exactly what kind of fish it was.

VIII - The American Road

Dougie phoned the president. "We found him" he said, gleefully.

"Found who?" said the President, clueless.

"Rabble."

The President fell silent. "Well... how the hell is he?"

"Angry, chief. Angry as hell. Same as always" Dougie said with a smile.

"Bring him to me, as soon as you can. Blow up whatever's in your way if you have to."

"Yes, sir." Dougie snapped his phone shut. He motioned to the driver. "When we get to U Street, make a right. We're gonna make a couple stops. First one is four-nineteen Delaware Street."

"Where are you taking me?" Rabble asked.

"To see the President. But first, you need a haircut. No marine should ever have to look like that."

Rabble laughed. "Semper fi. Except when you're down in the gutter."

"It's awful John, simply awful. Had I known. Had any of us known..." Dougie was still having trouble believing it. Rabble was his friend, but also his hero. In the world of intelligence, Rabble was like Babe Ruth, a mythical figure who had accomplished feats previously thought impossible. It was not uncommon, perhaps even routine, for CIA and FBI agents to ask him for his autograph on the rare occasion he made an appearance in Washington to testify, report, or shoot the shit.

How was this hero, this giant among men, left to die out in the streets? Dougie knew it was no accident. Someone -- someone powerful -- wanted Rabble to suffer. And what about that body they found? The DNA test? Whose body was it in Belgrade if not Rabble's? "It scares me, John. If they can do that to you... then, well..." his thoughts trailed off as he contemplated the horror, "...they could do it to anyone."

Rabble exhaled. "I trust you, Doug. My brain says not to, but I can feel in my gut you're telling the truth." He patted his stomach.

"We're gonna get to the bottom of this. Don't worry." Dougie wiped his brow.

"Yes, we'll figure it all out. It'll all be okay" K-Rock added. Rabble had become, to his credit, adept at ignoring him.

The Hummer came to a stop. Rabble opened the rear passenger door, stepped out and looked at the sign on the giant glass storefront. "A spa? I need a shower not an eyebrow wax."

"You need everything" Dougie said. "And they're thorough here. They shampoo your pubes."

Rabble smiled. He liked the sound of that.