Eleven Twenty-Three (10 page)

My phone rang at 11:23 the next night. It was
another wasted weekend and we were all stoned stupid in Hajime’s
living room, watching a scene in
Grandma’s Boy
where an old
woman pretends to be a ghost. Our eyes were half-closed. Hajime was
packing another bowl and laughing at the movie. Tara was sitting
next to me with her head slumped over my shoulder while
text-messaging friends she would never meet in person. Mitsuko was
sorting prescription pills on the coffee table and smoking a
cigarette. She had precognitive worry in her eyes when my cell
phone vibrated with a call from an unknown name and an unknown
number.

“It’s a little late for a sales call, isn’t
it?” I asked upon answering.

“Mr. Prescott—”

It was a girl’s voice, scratchy and
whispering. Whoever it was had been crying. I sat up and motioned
for Hajime to hit the Mute button on the remote.

“Who is this? I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is this one of my students? How did you get
this number?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Prescott.”

“Wait, wait a minute. Is
this…
Olivia?”

She hung up.

I arrived twenty minutes early to work on
Monday. I had been awakened at five in the morning from a nightmare
involving failure, alligators, and a little girl who whispered in
digital snippets and the groans of the Beast, and I could not go
back to sleep. Instead, I lay in the darkness of my apartment for
some time and finally resolved myself to being tired all day and
going to school early enough to shake the thoughts of failure and
alligators and dreadful little girls who spoke in technological
blasphemy.

Immediately upon stepping into the main
office as I usually did, I knew that I was finished. The secretary
did not tell me good morning. The one student in the main office, a
greasy kid named Eric who enjoyed drawing pictures of islands with
wild things on them, filed out of the unimaginative room without
even a word. Principal O’Neill was standing in the doorway of his
own office, and I caught a glimpse of Ms. Chinaski and her
immaculate legs looming in the chair behind him.

Without even a word, I oozed into O’Neill’s
room and he closed the door behind me.

While it was happening—during that moment
when Olivia Glatz managed to, in one instant, completely rewrite
everything I thought I understood about good and evil, right and
wrong, the many languages one learns to speak with their eyes, and
the disappointment one feels when they realize that life truly is a
mean-spirited and pointless board game without the colorful board
or fun learning experience—I thought about my dream. About the
little girl who communicated in the terror of an all-too-soon
future.

Olivia was that little girl. She got me fired
on impulse alone just to see if she could do it. Worse, she
knew
she was going to do it that Friday when she spoke to
me. In fact, the very next person she went to after me that
afternoon was her own mother. The story was that she was
devastated, racked with guilt, sobbing and apologizing and telling
her family and then the administration how horrible she felt for
having to get me into so much trouble.

My two principals said that it was well known
that I was making advances on her after class. Mr. Kowalski said he
witnessed this behavior with his own eyes just that Friday. At one
point the room went silent and they both shook their heads and
clenched their mouths shut tightly as they attempted to imagine
what I had done to this impressionable sixteen-year-old girl.
O’Neill jiggled his two chins and called me unprofessional, a real
shame, as he was describing the gentle pokes and prods I gave her
when she left my class, the invitations for secret dates, the
offers of alcohol and private tutoring to this beautiful young
lady. Ms. Chinaski remarked on how much of a future I had in the
field of teaching, and asked how I could possibly try this kind of
thing when I already had such a promising relationship with
what’s-her-name, who was so pretty at the pre-Homecoming dance we
showed up at.

“But I didn’t do
any
of those things,”
I barely pleaded. “There is absolutely no evidence of any of this.
Olivia Glatz is a
liar
—”

“Layne, even if you didn’t do
all
of
those things, Olivia insists you did, and we have to take these
kinds of things
very
seriously,” Mr. O’Neill said.

“By taking it seriously do you mean martyr an
innocent teacher?” I asked.

“Your behavior—even if some of the
allegations
were
unfounded—warrants your expulsion,
Layne.”

They told me I was lucky no charges would be
pressed.

My things would be boxed and I could come by
after school one day to retrieve them, so long as someone
accompanied me to my own classroom and there were no students left
on campus.

At some point, I buried my head in my hands.
I saw darkness and multi-colored stars when I closed my eyes, and
wished with all my might that I could somehow cross over into the
closed-eye dimension I was glimpsing.

Chinaski asked me questions on my lesson
plans for the sub.

O’Neill told me he was grief-stricken to get
this news Friday evening.

They both said that they were sorry, but
didn’t shake my hand as I left.

I heard from another teacher just before I
departed for China, one who said they believed me about what
happened but really didn’t and I knew it based on the nervous way
they glanced around as we spoke on the street, that Olivia was a
senior now and in fierce competition for salutatorian status. Some
mornings her jacket smelled strongly of marijuana, and other times
she left school for “doctor’s appointments” that no one dared
question. There were rumors for a while that she was pregnant, but
then that died down and everything was quiet at the school again. I
was told that the new history guy was okay, he just didn’t get the
kids interested in the subject the way I did. Olivia was not
enrolled in a history course for the fall semester.

The teacher spoke quietly when she told me
these things, as if speaking of Olivia like she was a ghost, and I
was the human monster she had returned to haunt.

09:11:01 PM

It was an inside job, I keep thinking to
myself every time I look at the clock while driving back. Then, a
tepid stab at an epiphany I’ve already had before: that there are
no inherently bad people, only a terrible society in which bad
people are bred. This isn’t my fault.

When I return to Tara’s house shortly after
nine, the rain has cleared up and the moon glows radiantly in the
night sky. Hajime’s Vibe is parked in the driveway, and I spot him
standing on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and chatting on
his cell phone. Tara is not back yet, and I don’t have a key, so we
will be standing outside until she decides to come home. Hajime
quickly closes up his conversation with, “San Jay Bronze? Yeah, I
got it. No, tomorrow is taken care of.” He puts his cell away as I
park and head up the sidewalk toward him.

“This is unexpected,” I say, and we give each
other an unnecessary hug and I use his lit cigarette to light one
of my own. “I thought Tara and I were meeting you at your place in
an hour or so. Who died?”

“Your father, last I heard,” he says
cautiously, uncertain whether his joke crossed the line or not, and
yet he still said it. He always does. “I was just out and about and
wanted to spend a minute alone with you before we got caught in the
tumult of yet another Friday night party. Jasmine is bringing
psilocybin-laced chocolates and her Ouija board, so it may get
weird. Is Tara still at her rents’ place?”

“Yes, she is, and frankly, she can stay
there.”

“Trouble with the lady?” Hajime asks, leaning
over on the porch balustrade and taking in the December night. “Do
I need to counsel you two?”

“She’s just being a bitch. I suppose I
should’ve expected it once we got home. She hasn’t exactly fallen
in love with the Far East the way I have.”

“You know, if you two would have gone to
Japan like I suggested, this wouldn’t have happened. You dragged
the poor girl into the developing dragon’s mouth, Layne.”

“You Japanese kids are all the same: you’re
very good at faulting your neighbor to the west, but always forget
to fault yourselves. Does the Rape of Nanjing mean anything to you?
Or Unit 731? Or the fact that your government builds shrines to
commemorate war criminals?”

“Not particularly,” Hajime says. “We didn’t
learn about those things in
our
history book, Layne.”

“Well, I’m sure my students could give you a
quick tutorial once they were finished beating you senseless for
your nation’s unrepentant crimes against humanity.”

“China is to Japan what every country in the
world
is to the Americans,” he says dismissively. “Tell your
students to acquire clean sky, running water, and some central air
conditioning in their
hutong
and get back to me.”

“Ruthless,” I say, shaking my head in
amusement. “Absolutely ruthless. You’re always going on about
causes, Hajime. How about getting your motherland to apologize for
the way they treated the Manchurians during the war? How’s
that
for a cause?”

“I can’t fight
everything
, Layne.
Maybe a culture or two could benefit from the ancient art of
‘getting over it’ and focus on the present for once.”

“Tara and about a million Burmese would’ve
had a
field day
with what you just said, but since I’m not
Tara and I’m not being systematically slaughtered by my own
government, we’ll move on. What faux-revolutionary acts
have
you been engaged in this evening?”

“Before I came here? Just another blasé
Friday, man. I finished putting in the new surveillance system over
at Oceania Enterprises this afternoon. Then I went home to finish
this painting that still sucks no matter what I do to it. After
that, I went and watched Jaime’s band open at The Pearl downtown.
No biggie.”

“What are they called again?” I ask. “Wasn’t
it something stupid?”

“Volatile Empty, I believe is their name.
Azalea was playing there later. I’ve heard they were good. They
have this whole zombie stage show…thing.”

“I don’t know them.”

“Oh, well…never mind then.”

“Hajime,” I begin, “have you been sick at all
lately?”

“Yeah, off and on. Why?”

“Were you coughing and getting red-eyed and
throwing up? My mom was talking about it tonight.”

“I was, actually. From what I can tell, it’s
been going around. My father was really sick a few weeks ago after
he came to town on business. Then Mitsuko and Mark. It was
bad.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, and leans far over the
banister to look up at the night sky. “And you know what the worst
part is?”

“What is that?” I ask.

“I know what’s been causing it.”

I immediately erupt into laughter and inhale
thoughtfully on my cigarette.

“What the hell is so funny?” Hajime asks,
offended. “I really
do
know what’s causing it, you bastard.
I figured it out when my father was ill immediately after his visit
here.”

“I’m just glad that some things never change,
Hajime. I’m glad that I can go away for indefinite periods of time,
come home, and still have the comfort of knowing you will always be
paranoid, my mom will always be a shut-in, and that Lilly’s End
will always be a mess. That’s all. So, pray tell, Mr. Miriyama,
what has been causing the innocent townsfolk to get sick lately? Is
it the fluoride in the water again? Secret experimentation with LSD
and mind control? Kidnapped psychic children in Montauk? What grand
conspiracy is there behind this one?”

Hajime peers into the night sky, grimaces,
and lazily points up at nothing.

“It’s that,” he says.

“It’s what?” I ask, trying to spot what it is
he’s gesturing at. “The sky?”

“The
chemtrails
, Layne. It’s the
chemtrails. They’ve always been there in the sky intermittently,
but around October, I started seeing them all the time. They were
in grid patterns, in fact. This was going on everyday. And then,
around the beginning of November, everyone in town started getting
sick every morning and every night, as if there was something being
dumped into the air.”

“You’re high,” I laugh. “
Chemtrails
,
Hajime? Really?”

“I am in fact high,” he admits. “However,
that’s inconsequential unless we’re discussing how disappointed my
father would be with my current Americanized lifestyle. The point
is that our government—
your
government, Mr. Prescott, that
same government who allowed you to be martyred like you were at
Kennedy and the same government that assassinates presidents and
then names schools after them—dumps tons of god-knows-what on our
town every day for a month, and then everyone gets sick. My dad,
who’s never been in bed past nine in the morning his entire
life
, is laid up for days because of some bug he catches in
the six hours he spends in Lilly’s End with Mitsuko and me. The
townsfolk are coughing. People are calling out of work. The
medicine aisles in Publix have been ransacked. Everyone’s wandering
around in a doped up fever dream. If you think about it, the
chemtrail theory’s really not that far-fetched.”

I know what Hajime is talking about; I always
do. I’ve heard it before, many times, usually over a table littered
with half-smoked joints and empty Blue Moon bottles. This is one of
a hundred conspiracy theories that my best friend has ascribed to
over the years.

Since the autumn of 1997, there have been
hundreds of reports of mysterious airplanes flying at very high
altitudes over bustling cities and sleepy townships alike
throughout North America, Korea, Japan, and Europe. These planes
emit thick plumes of smoke as they fly overhead, often in X-shaped
or grid patterns. The trails left behind are, apparently, unlike
the normal contrail left in the wake of more mundane flights. In
these cases, the smoke is incredibly concentrated, taking several
hours to dissipate and often spreading in the wind like
far-reaching cirrus clouds. As opposed to typical flights’ trails
of exhaust, these “chemical trails” are far more sinister in
nature.