The Professional fin

After I collected what was mine it was late afternoon. My car had been stolen but that was hardly surprising. It was okay by me. I felt like a million bucks when I came out of the alley and started walking down the hill. The obscene shadows were entertaining and the icy wind blowing through my open coat felt refreshing.

I was invigorated. Another Job was already calling. I paced down the streets with purpose, ready to meet my new client. I chuckled a little to think that only a few hours before I had despaired of ever feeling warm again, of ever knowing another hot meal.

The pull of the Job directed me towards the commercial side of town. The streets were busy. Everyone sped hither and yon, hurried to be elsewhere, trying to get away from work. A professional doesn’t go home before the Job is done, though.

An old woman strained her frail body, forcing it to cross the street. The lights were prepared to change and the drivers were anxious to be on their way. They didn’t want to wait for some old lady. But as I watched the scene the revolver told me what Job I needed to do.

People screamed. A lot of them jumped out of their cars. One man tried to run me over, but I was too nimble. I knew what to do. I was a professional. I did my Job.

No sooner had I tucked the revolver away than the call of the next Job started surging through me. The drivers and pedestrians were all frozen in place. The awe they must have felt at seeing a Job done by a professional was evident. I was flattered. Their inability to move afforded me time to listen for the pull of the Job.

The pull never came. The Job had to be close. The noise was almost too much; I almost couldn’t hear it when the revolver whispered the next Job to me. I listened a moment longer to be sure I heard correctly.

I never argued with a client. I was a professional.

I reached into my pocket.

The Professional cont.

I did the Job in the obscure little counter-culture collegetown cavern, took my pay and was back on the street before noon. I still had six minutes left on the parking meter when I pulled away from the curb.

A few blocks away, while I waited for a red light, I felt the call. At this rate I would be able to afford a loft in collegetown again. I flipped on my turn signal and drove up the hill, following the pull of the Job.

In other cities and towns the wealthy often live on the hills, leaving the squalor of the streets below to the degenerates, but this city was unusual. It was one of the reasons I liked living in it.

At the top of the hill all the greed, smugness, arrogance and pettiness that wafted up from the modern bourgeois on the valley floor stagnated in a concentrated haze. A world of hovels, drug dens, destitution and hookers drew sustenance from the filthy fog of disaffection that permeated the place. The more the pompous protested down below, the thicker the miasma grew at the top.

It was my kind of place.

The pull of the Job took me through a maze of streets and alleys. I drove past garbage fires and gang warfare. The closer I got to the Job the more excited I became. I could tell this was going to be one of the best ones in a long time. I was giddy.

I left my car at the opening of a cluttered alley. The smell of stale urine competed with decomposing flesh in my nostrils. Broken glass and discarded needles ground beneath my feet. I picked my way around old boards studded with rusty nails and stepped over a car door riddled with bullet holes. I could hear the sounds of large mammals ahead. The small mammals and insects glared at me, unafraid.

In the orange light of a fire burning in a steel barrel a prostitute was taking care of a customer. They were occupied by the transaction and didn’t hear me. He was a professor I often saw in collegetown, he lived not far from where my loft had been, and he was very obviously high. She was cheap and underfed, but I knew her from around. I admired her when I first got to know her because she only ever worked freelance, like me. It didn’t take long to see she had no pride in her craft, though. Not like me.

It took a scant moment for the voice to come and announce what the Job was. I had been right about it being a big one. It wasn’t often I got two Jobs at once.

The Professional cont.

I followed the pull all the way across town, to the part that was so new it tried to look old. I lived in one of the shiny new buildings back when business was good. I could afford to live anywhere, back then, but I liked this part of town because of all the college students. It was fun to watch them go on about their lives.

Everyone used to know that if you wanted a Job done right you came and saw me. It made my clients more uncomfortable to come to collegetown. They thought they were being watched; I thought they were being silly. If anyone found out, a client could ask me to do a second Job and I wouldn’t charge for it. That was my customer satisfaction policy.

No one ever found out it was me doing all the Jobs, of course. I was a professional, I had years of practice.

The pull took me to what looked like an empty storefront. Plain brown paper covered all the windows but peeks of light shone through the cracks. I wondered what kind of person I would meet here. I doubted any college students could afford my rates.

The door was unlocked, so I let myself in. The interior was bright, its walls plastered with propaganda posters. The room reeked of black coffee and rebellion. A young woman of indeterminate ethnicity was folding up steel chairs, cleaning up after some kind of meeting.

She looked up at me, confused. Her mouth opened to tell me they were closed, to give me some speech about the party line, to say hello. I never heard what she said.

The revolver whispered in my ear. It told me the Job was ready. I reached into my pocket.

I never argued with a client. They told me what Job they wanted done and I told them what the going rate was. I didn’t haggle and I didn’t accept advice or ideas. I did the Job the best way possible, every time. I had more than enough practice. I knew how to work quickly and cleanly. No fuss, no muss. I was a professional.

The Professional cont.

I made my way through the big old house, looking for anyone at all. Maybe my sense of the Job was off, but the place seemed empty. At last I looked in the kitchen.

A man sat there, sipping from one of those tiny espresso cups. The air was a fog of gin fumes. Every breath was intoxicating. The man looked up at me. As soon as our eyes met the revolver told me what the Job was. I reached into my pocket.

The man’s bleary eyes couldn’t focus. His head swayed a little, out of his control. I had no idea what the alcohol in the air would do, but it didn’t really matter. I was a professional.

I did the Job.

I tucked the revolver away gently; a craftsmen looks after his Tools. When it was secure, I took some food from the refrigerator and a glass of gin and went in search of a room that had clean air. There was a library, if I remembered correctly.

The man owned a lot of books, a lot I had never heard of. I read a few pages while I ate. Some of it was interesting, but much of it was boring. The gin was awful, cheap stuff that ran down my throat like broken glass. I left it, virtually untouched, on the desk when I went to look through the house.

The Job paid well for all that it was never commissioned. The man’s overcoat fit me nicely and his car was expensive. I could stay in the house at night and be nice and warm if nothing else came my way. But I could feel that pull again, already, and knew I had to answer the call.

I hit the streets in that fancy new car, wearing my new coat, and felt like a new man. My belly was full and I was toasty warm. I had another Job to do. Two in one day. It was exhilarating.

The Professional cont.

My line of work wasn’t all that unusual but I liked to think that my drive was unique. Most people took jobs because they had no choice. Circumstances forced them into a line of work they would never be able to escape. Other people got a kick out of doing Jobs. The guys who were in it for the thrills never lasted long, though. One way or another they all wind up with an early retirement.

Me, I had never known they were Jobs until someone offered my money. I’d been doing it since I was a kid because I could, because I was good at it. It was just a hobby, like those ships in a bottle, and this guy wanted to pay me for it? Sign me up. People always talked about living the dream, getting paid to do what you love. This was my chance. It sure beat working for a living.

After I did that first Job word got around. Soon I had all kinds of Jobs to do. I did them all with the care of a true craftsman. Before long, I could pick up a sense of when a Job was coming. It was a pulling feeling between my ears, a flood of excitement and desire in my chest. It was what I felt when I slipped that revolver into my pocket.

I left the dumpy little building I slept in the night before and set off down the cold slate sidewalk. The oldest part of town, still with real stone sidewalks and brick streets, it was quiet, perfect for me to listen to the pull of the Job. Little birds hopped in the snow, making funny little footprints. The call was getting stronger.

I wondered who want to hire me this time. It was fun to meet them, these furtive men and women, because they were never what I expected them to be. I never joined an organization; you met more interesting people working freelance. One time a husband and wife each hired me to do what amounted to the same Job for them. I took their money and did what they paid me for. I was a professional.

The Job was up a cobbled walk, in a big white house behind some ancient nut trees. A heavy wooden door stood open, leading into a dim hall. Normally my clients came to me, but I needed the money. I could make a house call.

The Professional

I found the revolver in a plain brown box. It was small and heavy and it fit my hand as though it was specially crafted for me. I checked the cylinder. Six rounds. I wondered who left it here, what a fully loaded pistol was doing in a box.

And then it spoke to me.

Gripped in the palm of the hand it was destined for, it whispered its purpose. I have own a great many Tools over my life, performed a lot of Jobs, but I never had anything like this revolver before. All the other Tools were just things in comparison. They did what I wanted them to do, but it was always just me using them to get the Job done. None of them had ever told me what they wanted, not before the revolver.

I slipped the pretty little thing into my pocket and cast the box aside. I could already feel that sublime little tug in my mind indicating that a Job would be coming soon. Good, I needed the money. I don’t remember when I ran out, but I was hungry, cold, tired.

And I wanted to do a Job.

Earnest Ben fin

Lucy rushed down the hall, bitter tears streaming into the wind of her passage. She ran so fast, got so winded, she couldn't sob.

Ben's body was riddled with punctures. His room was awash in blood. Through tears that would never abate, Lucy saw a folded square of paper on the floor. She grabbed it before any blood could get on it when the staff removed the body.

Lucy, it said, pretty girls shouldn't hurt alone.

Earnest Ben cont.

Ben was afraid. Lucy stood up from her chair and crossed to the door without saying a word. She turned a key in the special lock. Ben knew what happened when They locked that lock. But she was Lucy, she wasn't one of Them. She couldn't be.

Lucy walked back to the bed, knelt beside it. She told Ben that he was right, she had been hiding her artwork. That was about to change. Lucy stepped into the middle of the room and took her clothes off. She was beautiful, Ben told her. Lucy blushed.

All of the ink and all of the metal captivated Ben. When he found his voice, he asked why she had gotten art like this instead of regular paintings. Lucy giggled a little and it made Ben feel something different. She told Ben that she had this art done because it had hurt to do it.

Ben was concerned, then, but Lucy assured him that it didn't hurt anymore. She was glad she had shared with him, she said while getting dressed. She blushed again and said she might share something else with Ben another time. It made Ben's heart beat faster when she said that. He was sorry to see her go.

Long after the door had closed, Ben sat and looked at it. He wondered how sad someone would have to be to hurt themself. He wondered at it all. Somewhere, he could hear the sound of peanut butter being spread.

Earnest Ben cont.

Lucy was of two minds about seeing Ben. She knew the whole thing was her own fault, yet she also knew it was supposed to have been harmless fun. She adored Ben and hated to think she got his hopes up for no reason. She had no real reason to be apprehensive; even if he did guess her "secret," Lucy would be alone in the room with him. No one else would know.

Ben was waiting for her. He stood up from the edge of the bed when she came into the room. He always let her sit in the room's only chair, a gentleman. Lucy smiled. Ben returned the smile, his wide mouth shoving aside assorted freckles, green eyes sparkling. He was very quiet and even mannered for a redhead, Lucy thought.

Lucy sat on the hard chair, began her daily battery of questions. Be could hardly contain himself, but Lucy was determined to do things properly. She tried to keep her smile to herself, to move through the process deliberately, but his excitement was infectious. At last they were done.

Very well, she told Ben he make could make another guess. Ben puffed up with pride and spoke very carefully. Lucy decorated herself with art, art she let no one see. Why did she have art if no one could see it? Art was for showing, Ben said. They had told him all about museums and he had been to art classes where everyone had shared their paintings.

Lucy went white, whiter than usual. She bit her lip. After a moment, she made up her mind.

Earnest Ben cont.

Ben spent the rest of the day waiting for the pills to wear off so he could think about Lucy's secret. He had frightened her, he knew, and it made him anxious. Ben did his best not to let the anxiety or excitement show. If They noticed, They would give him another pill.

In the dark, Ben lay on his cot an listened. He could hear people walking the halls, people talking, people in other rooms flailing about. He could hear his own brain returning to normal. The pills left huge holes in his thoughts, but at night the pills wore off. The sound of his brain regrowing to fill those holes was like the sound of his mother making peanut butter sandwiches.

When things sounded normal, real, again, Ben let his mind go to work. He told it what he had learned about Lucy so far, told it that there was still more to learn. The pieces of his mind were slow to get moving, clunky from their recent regeneration, but they soon got the hang of it.

Ben fell asleep still smiling, confident that morning would bring answers just as surely as it would bring more pills. He squeezed his pillow tight and nestled in.

Earnest Ben cont.

When Ben announced that he knew part of Lucy's secret she was shaken. After a brief moment of uncertainty, he mind settled. There was no way he could actually know; more than likely it was a game he played with himself. As long as he had known most of the staff he had surely guessed things about them.

Still, it might provide valuable insight into his state of mind during those hours when no one observed him. How he thought when he was alone surely figured heavily into what allowed Ben to maintain his serenity. Lucy asked him what he had figured out.

Ben looked at her carefully, his face open and, yes, earnest, clearly weighing his words. Lucy felt her heart swell a little. Part of the secret, Ben told her, was that she did things to make herself look different.

Lucy was flummoxed. Her breath caught. Ben smiled a little. Hardly a secret, she managed to say, lots of women wear makeup and dye their hair, not to mention the rest of the things they do. Clearly she had been right, this was a game he played.

Ben spread his hands, a gesture of peace, and said he knew about makeup and hair dye. What Lucy did was both more subtle and more bold. That frightened her. She took a step back. Ben's features fell.

His expression made Lucy feel terrible. She smiled the best smile she could and told Ben that he was only partly right. If he could divine the full extent of her secret, Lucy would give him a surprise.

Earnest Ben cont.

Ben told her that he was trying to figure out her secrets and Lucy looked shocked. Her face never appeared angry or upset, just surprised. That made Ben feel better about telling her. To be safe, he asked Lucy if he could keep trying to figure it out. She agreed that it could be an interesting exercise.

Late at nights, when the pills all finally wore off, Ben lay on his bed and thought. The pieces of his mind the pills had scattered collected themselves and went to work on their new task. It took only a little effort to focus now, no nearly as much as it would take a few hours from now.

Ben allowed his mind to toy with the pieces of the puzzle he had collected so far. Lucy was young, pretty, unmarried as far as he could tell. She was smart and caring. She didn't think anyone even knew she had a secret, let alone could guess what it was. It had to be thoroughly buried, then, perhaps as deeply as Ben's own secrets.

As sleep stole over him Ben could feel the first flashes of insight sparking.

After breakfast, as the pills ate into his brain and changed its functions, Ben sat in his room and waited for Lucy. He thought he already knew part of the answer and that he was close to the whole solution. He was excited.

Earnest Ben cont.

Lucy wondered if she was doing the right thing, prying into what made Ben tick. She wasn't a doctor, not yet, she might be asking all the wrong kinds of questions. Her concerns kept her awake all night.

The next day, groggy, Lucy went to see Ben again. He apologized for not having thought about his outlook. He seemed so downtrodden Lucy thought her heart would break. The one counter to the notion of human suffering she had ever met and Lucy had ruined him. She spoiled his innocence by suggesting that there was more to life than what he had.

It was Lucy's turn to apologize, then. She was truly and deeply sorry for putting Ben on the spot. He needn't worry about her questions. But Lucy's distress only compounded Ben's. He reminded her that pretty ladies should not be sad.

Touched, Lucy tried to change the subject. She asked Ben what he had been thinking about since yesterday, wondered if her answers lay in his common thoughts.

Secrets, Ben informed her as quietly as he could. He had been thinking about secrets.

Lucy knew trepidation.

She feared for innocent, earnest Ben, feared what kinds of secrets he might be keeping. If the Institute had mistreated this dear young man, Lucy would dismantle it brick by brick, her future as a doctor be damned. Summoning her courage, she asked Ben what kind of secrets he had been thinking about.

The answer could not have been more shocking if it had been delivered by little green men. Hers, Ben said, he was thinking about her secrets.

Earnest Ben cont.

The next time Ben saw Lucy he smiled again. His day was not going especially well, but he smiled. It made Lucy happy when Ben smiled.

They had given him the unpleasant pink pill again and it made his mind feel like a herd of elephants had gotten inside and were spraying his thoughts everywhere, the way they sprayed water on TV. All Ben could do was try to answer Lucy's questions, try to talk with her. He hoped he wasn't disappointing her.

Lucy had secrets. Been was good at noticing people's secrets. He knew that the tall brown-haired doctor was more than just golf friends with the thin old one, despite the fact that the old one was married and they were both men. Ben kept their secret because it made the doctors happy to be such good friends. Other people had secrets that were unhappy but Ben kept those, too. Telling would make people even more unhappy.

Ben knew one of Lucy's secrets. It was plain as day. Right away he knew she loved him. She wanted what was best for him. His mother and father wanted what was best for him, too. They told him so when they sent him here, told him they loved him. Now Lucy loved him as well. It made Ben happy, even with the pink pill.

When Lucy asked how he stayed so happy Ben just shrugged his shoulders. He always kept people's secrets. When she asked how he kept a positive outlook, Ben though about how to answer for a long time before asking Lucy if he could think about it longer.

Lucy agreed and told Ben that she would talk to him tomorrow. Ben kept on smiling and said he looked forward to it. Deep in his heart, in the place he kept his secrets, he wasn't sure if that was true.

Earnest Ben cont.

Lucy left her first meeting with Ben in a confused state. This young man--her records indicated he was twenty-four--was perhaps the most contented person she had ever met. Maybe the most content person in the world. The records said that mentally he was still a child, but Lucy suspected Ben was wiser than anyone knew.

Therein lay some of Lucy's confusion. How could he be so serene about all of this? How could he be so accepting of his fate? He was quite clearly intelligent and he had known a life outside the Institute, yet he behaved as though this was the lot he had chosen and smiled his little Buddha smile.

Innocence, Lucy decided. He could smile like the Buddha because he had no idea what the Buddha had known: life is suffering. He could be content here because all he had to do was take his pills and live his life. He never went to the other wing, had no idea what else happened in the building. He was innocent and that was why the rest of the staff treated him like a child.

Lucy resolved to study Ben more closely. She had some favors stored up; if she cashed them in she could get assigned to this floor and get more opportunities to talk with Ben. If she could learn what kept Ben so happy she might be able to apply it to other patients. It would make her a better doctor some day.

For the rest of the day Lucy went about in something of a delighted mood. She tried to think like Ben might think, to look for goodness and assume the best. In some rooms it was easy. In others it was very hard. But Lucy tried. At the end of the day it made her feel good.

After work, Lucy kept her appointment with her piercing artist. The cold steel hurt intensely as it bit her flesh, slid through her nipple. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. When the jewelery was in place she felt symmetrical again. Lucy paid her piercer, tipped him well and walked out onto darkening streets without telling him that she would not be coming back.

Earnest Ben cont.

Ben was having a good day. There were no unusual visions today and everything that he heard seemed to be something that everyone else heard, too. They gave him fewer pills than usual today. His least favorite, the pink one that tasted like earthworms, had not been given to him. Deep in his heart, where he kept all his secrets, Ben was relieved.

He never told anyone--not even himself--that he disliked the pink pill. Ben would never be so rude. He did admit to himself that taking the pink pill was a less than enjoyable experience. Ben didn't know whether to be ashamed of his relief so he sat and studied his shoes.

A new one came to see Ben. He thought she was new at first, but remembered seeing her in different parts of the building. She was an old one, then, but new to here. Ben tried to classify her properly but could not.

She was shorter than Ben and had fine white skin. Her hair was nearly as black as her thick-framed glasses. Her mouth was pink and her eyes were brown and both of them looked sad. Ben thought that it was awful for a pretty lady to be sad and told her so. She smiled, looked even prettier, but it was a sad smile.

The lady said to call her Lucy, not nurse or ma'am or anything else. Just Lucy. She asked Ben how he was doing, how she felt, how long he had been here and a great many other questions. Ben told Lucy that he was doing quite well, that he must be since he wasn't as sad as her. Then he asked why she asked so many questions that everyone else already asked.

Lucy told Ben that she was just looking out for him, that she had his best interests in mind and that she hoped he didn't mind all the questions. Ben shook his head and smiled like a saint.

Earnest Ben cont.

Lucy was a nurse, though she wanted to be a doctor some day. She told herself she would be different from other doctors, she would set a new standard of care. To prove to herself how different she would be Lucy spent every spare dollar she had making herself look different.

As far as the world could tell, Lucy was a normal nurse. Clean, well kept, carefully dressed with work in mind. Beneath her uniform, where the world could never see, Lucy kept her differences. Carefully depicted scenes and symbols were tattooed on her back and in places unlikely to be seen by the public. A handful of piercings in intimate locations lent their weight to Lucy's resolve.

She told herself that the exquisite pain of the needles was a reminder of her desire to improve the lives of patients and change the world of patient care, but she hardly needed the pain to remind her. Every day when she reported to work, every time she helped to feed or clean or restrain a patient, Lucy was reminded.

No, the pain was her penance. She put herself through the pain and discomfort because there was no way, not yet, that she could ease the pain and discomfort of her patients. And then she met Ben.

Earnest Ben

It was raining cats and dogs, right up until the pills kicked in. With alarming celerity the helpless animals were pulled, shrunk, contorted until they became regular raindrops. Ben was relieved. The thought of the little dogs and cats getting hurt when they hit the ground made him anxious.

Ben was often anxious, but they gave him a pill for that. He also noticed a lot more things than some people did, but there was a pill that made him as oblivious as everyone else. They had a lot of pills for Ben, pills to make him do some things and pills to keep him from doing others. Ben always took his pills.

He was a good boy, everyone told him so. They only gave him the pills to make him better, they told him. If he was so good, Ben wanted to know, why would they want him to be better? What was better than good? They laughed at that, the new ones. The old ones knew that Ben meant what he said. Earnest, one of them called him. Ben had no idea which one was Ernest. If they were seeing people who weren't there, Ben had pills they could borrow.

Not even the new ones laughed then.