The One Percenters (13 page)

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Gone behind me were the button-down, the hat, and the sunglasses. Maybe I left more evidence at the scene, but personally, it felt like salvation. It was like a cleansing process, a baptism into a new faith. I had not been baptized. It felt fresh and affirming. I was at last announcing my presence in the world
to
the world. It was time to accept responsibility for all of my actions and to act upon my beliefs. I was ready to meet my fate head-on. Thank God for the small boy who taught me everything. I’m sure you know him, if you think about it hard enough, you leper head.

But then again, what do you know?

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I told you that I learned two lessons from the event.

This is true.

The shooting, or rather my lack of marksmanship, had created a messy scene. I felt like I was dishonoring nature by using such an amateur method of creation.

By creation, I mean that I was creating opportunity for fresh, new life in the natural world by eliminating parasites from its premises. It’s much like thinning the forest canopy or setting controlled fires on the savanna to allow for new growth.

The blood also shocked me. It all felt a little too real. It’s hard to deny your human feelings. After I found a place deep in the woods, where I was sure of my privacy, I vomited repeatedly. I hadn’t planned on this, and was disappointed in my own lack of discipline. I decided then and there that a new means of completing my mission would have to be sought. The thing is, I always came back to the gun in the end. Efficiency is a priority when it’s you against the world.

Secondly, I realized I had made a terrific error in my choice of the old woman. She was long past the hot flashes of menopause. That well had run dry twenty years ago. She probably didn’t possess even half of her original teeth. She no longer could contribute to the gene pool and was an ineffective inhabitant. My effort had accomplished nothing except to provide work for the medical examiner.

I realized then I would need to make better decisions in the future. It was my obligation to do so.

I should look for the foul, the diseased, the decrepit-minded, sure, but they must also have the ability to pass these nasty genes to future generations. After all, nature herself would have taken the old lady from us before too long; it didn’t need my help in that.

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During the next year, I took out five bad seeds—two women and three men. They were high-strung for glory and self-fulfillment, the pettiest of ideals. This is the world of the
us,
not of the
me.
I hadn’t had the best life, but I still made the decision to put my place in the world before my own selfish desires. My wishes are temporary and changing. The needs of the world at large are profound and righteous. If I, a weak and modest man, could prioritize correctly, why couldn’t they? Their jobs, their class status and all sorts of other demographics varied immensely. I was not discriminating.

Each job was easier than the last. I rethought my method, though I eventually changed nothing in this regard. Like I said, I always came back to the gun.

What changed was my attitude, my resolve. I achieved an inner peace that no high-tech electronic gizmo could provide me, and I swear I never felt an ounce of guilt or regret after the woman at the mall. Twelve months later, though, I was left wondering about the next step.

I felt I wasn’t doing enough.

By this time, I was far away from that mall. My work started to catch up to me, and I was forced to take on a disguise. What irony. We make the righteous hide out, while the demons among us are free to spread their psychological larceny. The bad people—an out and out minority, remember—are allowed to continue in their heathen style because the rest of us are too afraid to speak out. We fear what it will mean to us if we go against the grain.

Each of us shakes our head in private when we dwell upon the acts of the criminal mind, but in public, we wax stoic and act out for the cause of indifference. In the end, we are all grown up high-schoolers who want to look cool in front of our spouses, our parents, our children. We look to the corrupt and the greedy as we did to our first cigarette, as something new and exciting
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and elicit, as something to wake the beast within us that was put to sleep so long ago by the forces of monotony and dispassion.

I’m not sure what would have happened if my life continued on that track. I probably would have no real lasting impact on the world. On Judgment Day, I probably would have been meek, knowing I had been afforded all the weapons and yet had failed in my one reason for being. All I would have to cling to was the fact that I had found true love. Jill would have stolen my thunder yet again. Then I met Darien Kuff.

My friend.

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She, too, was modest in look. I began to wonder if it might be a part of the deal. No need to give the gorgeous any more power. I first encountered Darien in a dive bar in Atsboro. I suppose it was no coincidence that we were both there. Places of solitude and refuge were becoming harder to locate. Here, among the dirt and the dinge, I was assured that few of my fellow drinkers had shining records. They, too, were probably avoiding attention. D.K., as I like to refer to her from time to time, approached me as I drank a martini. I had adopted these gin drinks like a new son. They did well for me and cleared out the cobwebs of my past. It was 10:30 pm.

She approached me when my drink was empty and mentioned that she was ready for a refill. I took the hint and signaled to the bartender for another round. He nodded and began mixing our elixirs.

Conversation started with pet peeves. The misuse of the word “literally” was one of hers. She also didn’t like pencil tapping, too much makeup, and people who wear corduroy. I’m not sure if she was serious about that last item; it might have been her attempt at humor. She was cool, but not especially funny. I mentioned pretense, people who leash their cats, and those selfish people who take their sweet time at the green arrow, knowing
they’ll
make it through the intersection for sure.
It was light talk (ha-ha), to be sure, but I didn’t mind.

I studied the look of my new companion. She was about 5’7”, as I had seen when she approached me, but she appeared much shorter when seated due to a tendency to slouch. Her hair was a strange gray-brown, and she appeared to be about five years older than I was. She was curvy, but I was sure her curves had been better placed in her twenties. Everything seemed out of place and slanted. It was nice to sit with a woman who didn’t intimidate me with her looks.

She wore faded jeans and a green top, and
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smoked ceaselessly, as was revealed by the premature deep grooves in the skin on her face. There was one redeeming quality to her outward appearance. She had a sprite-like, impish smile, with one corner of her mouth upturned and quite a few teeth exposed. The best word I can think of to describe it is devilish, although even that doesn’t do it justice.

I asked her what she did for a living, and she explained that she was a painter. I found this a bit surprising, for I didn’t figure there to be too many female painters out there, although it is a changing world. I’ve been told that I have a streak of misogyny in me, and I suppose at times I do condescend, but really I just think that men and women have a place in the world. Women in the kitchen, and men. .nah, I’m just kidding. I won’t even go there. Too many angry bitches out there.

Upon seeing the puzzled look upon my face, she explained that she was not a house painter, but an artist.

I had to smile wryly at the fact that she indeed did not paint houses. Somehow, I felt validated, although I suppose that’s sad.

Darien traveled to various small towns and created old-fashioned quaint paintings of barns, farmland, and the like. She didn’t work for anyone specifically. Rather, she freelanced her work out and sold by word of mouth and advertising. Beyond this, the details of her explanation become fuzzy. I must admit I was not fascinated by the conversation. She must have noticed this, because she trailed off mid-sentence at one point. She stopped, took a sip from her drink, and checked her watch. She looked up again and studied my face, looking for something. I could almost see the wheels spinning inside her head, and I wondered if she would ever speak again. For a moment, I thought she was going to reprimand me for being a poor listener, and I felt a little sweat on my temple. I am not good with confrontation, especially when it occurs in public.

Finally she spoke.

“So how does it feel to be in your position?” The question intrigued me, because I hadn’t even mentioned my endeavors in advertising. “Advertising
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has been good to me, and it allows the creative juices to. .” “That’s not what I meant.”

She took another sip from her vodka tonic, a much larger sip than the last. Then she lit up a cigarette.

She removed another from the pack, which sat nearly crumpled upon the bar in front of us. She used the first cigarette to light the second, and then motioned for me to take it from her. I obliged.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“What I mean is, how does it feel to be one of us?” The sweat on my temple reappeared, and I inhaled deeply of the smoke in my left hand. The bar was dark, and the cherry glowed brightly.
Cigarette cherries are like the glow from underneath the copy machine’s cover—eerie and alien.

“One of. .” I trailed off, believing I must be mistaken in her intent.

“Oh, come now, Ed. One of the chosen.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Does it feel good to do your job?

Does it feel righteous to kill and to preserve? Each one is better than the last, isn’t it?” I was panicking, wondering if perhaps I was talking to a police officer. Was she trying to entrap me? How much did she know? She seemed to sense my anxiety.

“It’s O.K., Ed. I’m one of us too. I know about Cristen and. . the others. I know all about you. I might even know you better than
you
know you.”

“But how. .how do you know?”

“You develop a sense when you’ve been in the business as long as I have. I suppose whoever’s steering the ship allows us one refuge—each other. Soon, you too will be able to pick up on it.”

“But how do you know so much about me?”

“Oh, I know more about you than just the people you’ve killed.” She said this a bit too loudly for my tastes. I put a finger to my lips and shushed her.

“It’s O.K., Ed. I could scream it to the rafters if I so desired. People might listen, but they can’t hear.

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They are too self-absorbed. They are only half lives.” She paused. “Oh, you have so much to learn. Even if they did hear, you’d be in no danger. There would be no proof.”“Of course there would. There are the weap—

the implements, and there’s DNA and. .”

“No, there isn’t. Do you really think it’s all that simple? Do you really think of yourself as a simple spoke in a wheel? Do you still think of yourself as a man? Because you lost all that a long time ago—the day you sent Cristen up the river, in fact.” I smirked at the near literalness of her statement.

“What else do you know?”

Her drink was empty, and this time she signaled for a refill. Then she looked at me, and I took the hint yet again. I reached for a ten dollar bill in my pocket.

Clearly, bribery exists in all worlds at all levels.

“I know about Jill and that awful man. In a way, you should be thanking him though.”

“Excuse me?” I felt as though I had just been punched.

“If he hadn’t done what he did, you’d still be a hot commodity as a husband, and eventually a father. You would have made a terrific mainstreamer.” I later learned that this is the technical term for what I had referred to up to that point as 98-percenters.

“The gift would have been saved for someone less qualified for the other realm—our realm. You would never have lost your mortality or gained a greater sense of the world. You have a new perspective now, Edward. You’re seeing the band from backstage. You’re playing with fire, and you can’t get burned. It’s a terrific responsibility, but also a very special blessing.”

“Why us?”

The bartender—a burly man wearing a flannel shirt—set Darien’s drink in front of her. The glass was sweating.

“You’ve always felt a bit out of place, haven’t you?” “Sure. Always.”

“There’s a reason for that. You have insight.

You can see and feel things about the world that other
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people could never imagine, or, more accurately, could never be bothered with. You have a sense about other people that is exceedingly rare. Do you think it was merely your good fortune that the only two women you ever approached happened to be such uniquely loving individuals? Are you really that naive?” I readjusted my ass in my seat, suddenly feeling better about myself. I hoped that it was justified.

“Nature logs people like you—like us. It marks you from birth and follows you. From the small group of people who are prepared for the task—perhaps 5%

of the population—nature chooses those who wind up in the best position for such authority. When Jill died, well, it was only natural for you to be promoted.”

“You speak of the natural world as if it’s alive and planning. How does it know? How does all this occur?”

“I don’t have all of the answers, Ed. If I did, I’d be in charge, and not sitting here talking with some shlub at a dive bar.”