“Well, you didn’t read them close enough. Mull flew with both platoons to the desert, but he didn’t stay for the mission. Why not?”
Larry opens his mouth to speak. He raises his glass, drinks, instead.
“He’s got different work to do,” he finally says.
“Mm-hmm. You see Swoon there?”
“Yeah, I see him, Duane.”
“Yeah. You know why he’s content just being Swoon in Detroit?”
Larry thinks about it. Sometimes Duane gets like this. Cryptic. Usually it leads to something profound. But right now Larry doesn’t want profound. He wants easy. He wants Duane to say they’re going to make a lot of money doing a good thing.
“It’s because he’s scared,” Duane finally says.
“Sure. But what does that have to do with—”
Duane grabs Larry by the wrist.
“Mull is scared of that sound. Scared him whiter than the white he is.”
Duane slowly releases Larry’s wrist and settles back onto the stool.
“Naw,” Larry says without confidence. What he thinks is, So am I.
“Uh-huh,” Duane says. He sips from his drink, allows an ice cube into his mouth, crushes it. “Here’s an officer in the United States Army, brave enough to step into the lives of four strangers with a pocketful of sound, but he’s too chicken to sit out there and listen to it himself.”
“It’s the army, Duane You know how it works.”
“This is different. I saw it in his eyes in the studio. When the tape started rolling. Saw him looking at those wheels like they were delivering the worst of his nightmares. He knows that tape inside out, every beat of it. Slipped on those earplugs just before the sound started. He’s scared, Larry. Scared of something more than a new weapon.”
Larry laughs. “Now you’re just talking crazy.”
But Duane doesn’t smile. Smoke rises around his eyes and for a ghastly second he looks mummified to Larry. Like he’s never gonna move again.
“There are things worse than a new weapon,” Duane says, finishing his drink.
“Like what?”
“Like the kind of person that would build it.”
“THE FIRST PLATOON was deployed a year ago. Almost to the day. I wonder what I was doing that day.”
“You might’ve been in this exact same bedroom.”
Philip smiles. Not without concern. He’s lying down beside a girl named Marla. He’s dressed. She’s not. They don’t love each other, but Christ they have fun. Philip met Marla on the Path.
“But get this,” Philip says, sitting up so that he’s resting on his elbow. “The second platoon was deployed six days after the first returned. So that would make it … about … about ten months now since the second platoon returned.”
“So?”
“So why the long wait? That’s what’s got me worried.”
“They were looking for guys like you,” Marla says. Her red hair half hides her face. The bedsheet only mostly covers her.
“Maybe,” Philip says. “And another thing.” Now he sits up, cross-legged on the mattress. “Why hasn’t the sound gotten any more intense?”
“How do you know it hasn’t?”
“The report has wave files. There’s absolutely no difference between the first time it sounded and the last.”
“So?”
“So that means that … if we’re talking about a weapon or something being built … it was already built by the time they first heard it.”
Marla nods her head.
“So don’t go.”
Philip’s face scrunches up in a way that makes him look ten years younger.
“Don’t go? No, no. That’s not what I mean. Look, I don’t expect the army to tell us … everything. They never do. It’s the army.”
“Okay,” Marla says. Her smeared dark eyeliner gives her face a Day of the Dead feel in the waning sunlight. “Then go.”
Philip agrees. Mostly.
“Yeah. Go. Go. But don’t go … naïve.” He gets up out of bed. “The reason for the wait is …” He looks up to the ceiling, thinking. “Is because they decided to forget about it. But then … then … the sound kept showing up. So they decided to go looking for it again. Maybe that’s what happened.”
Marla smiles.
“Either way. Two weeks in the desert. A lot of money and you’re a hero all over again.”
She’s only half kidding, but the look that crosses his face worries her. He doesn’t smile. He only nods, and Marla understands that she’s accidentally spoken the exact reason and motivation for Philip wanting to go.
“And the reason the sound hasn’t changed …”
Philip stops speaking halfway through the sentence and looks out Marla’s apartment window. Below is Detroit, its streets bustling with teenagers in cars, homeless men and women folded against building foundations, stray dogs and men in suits who avoid them.
“Just be careful,” Marla says. She gets up, too, but doesn’t bother getting dressed. She leaves the bedroom.
“I gotta split,” Philip calls to her. He looks through the glass, not quite realizing that he’s hoping to see Larry, Duane, and Ross down there in the streets. Is he hoping to see them confident, their bags packed?
Philip feels a solitary slash of fear course from his neck to his legs. Then it settles somewhere inside him, but does not leave.
Marla reenters the bedroom with a glass of water. When she hands it to Philip he sees he’s still wearing the watch he took from the manager of the Sparklers.
He thinks he should find the guy, return it.
Can’t go to Africa. Gotta return a watch.
A silly thought, of course; further proof that Philip is scared.
“Don’t get killed,” Marla says.
“I won’t.”
“Oh yeah?”
“That’s not my story. Not how my story is gonna end.”
“That’s just about the most naïve thing I’ve ever heard you say. You think anybody thinks their story is gonna end the way it does?”
Philip drinks the water.
“Don’t get killed,” she repeats.
“And don’t get dressed,” he tells her.
Marla smiles.
“I figured you’re gonna be gone two weeks without a woman. May as well give you a two-week memory on your way out.” She touches the piano key hanging at his chest. F.
Philip only half laughs. He looks so serious to her. Too much so.
“Hey,” Marla says, folding her arms under her breasts. “What’s wrong with you?”
“This is a big deal,” he says. And even now there’s a different look in his eyes. Something childish.
“I know,” she says. “I’ve just never seen you this way before.”
“It’s