“You’ve heard of the Southern Reach?”
He had, mostly through a couple of colleagues who had worked there at one time. Vague allusions, keeping to the cover story about environmental catastrophe. Rumors of a chain of command that was eccentric at best. Rumors of significant variation, of there being more to the story. But, then, there always was. He didn’t know, on hearing his mother say those words, whether he was excited or not.
“And why me?”
The smile that prefaced her response was tinged with a bit of sadness or regret or something else that made Control look away. When she’d been on assignment, before she’d left for good, she’d had a short period when she’d been good at writing long, handwritten letters to him—almost as good as he had been at not finding the time or need to read them. But now he almost wished she was writing to him about the Southern Reach in a letter, not telling him about it in person.
“Because they’re downsizing this department, although you might not know that, and you’ll be on the chopping block. And this is the right fit for you.”
That lurch in the pit of his stomach. Another change. Another city. Never any chance to catch his balance. The truth was that after Control had joined up, he had rarely felt like a flash of light. He had often felt heavy, and realized his mother probably felt heavy, too. That she had been feigning a kind of aloofness and lightness, hiding from him the weight of information, of history and context. All of the things that wore you down, even as that was balanced by the electric feeling of being on the side of a border where you knew things no one else knew.
“Is it the only option?” Of course it was, since she hadn’t mentioned any other options. Of course it was, since she hadn’t traveled all this way just to say hello. He knew that he was the black sheep, that his lack of advancement reflected poorly on her. Had no idea what internecine battles she fought at the higher levels of clandestine departments so far removed from his security clearance that they might as well exist in the clouds, among the angels.
“It might not be fair, John, I know that. But this might be your last chance,” she said, and now she wasn’t smiling. Not smiling at all. “At least, it’s the last chance I can get for you.” For a permanent posting, an end to his nomadic lifestyle, or in general? For keeping a foothold in the agency?
He didn’t dare ask—the cold roiling fear she’d put into him was too deep. He hadn’t known he needed a last chance. The fear ran so deep that it pushed most other questions out of his head. He hadn’t had a moment then to wonder if, perhaps, she wasn’t just there to do her son a favor. That perhaps she needed him to say yes.
The teasing hook, to balance his fear, delivered lightheartedly and at the perfect moment: “Don’t you want to know more than I know? You will if you take this position.”
And nothing he could do about his response. It was true. He did.
She hugged him when he said yes to the Southern Reach, which surprised him. “The closer you are, the safer you are,” she whispered in his ear. Closer to what?
She smelled vaguely of an expensive perfume, the scent a bit like the plum trees in the backyard of the house they’d all shared up north. The little orchard he’d forgotten about until just this moment. The swing set. The neighbor’s malamute that always halfheartedly chased him up the sidewalk.
By the time the questions arose within him, it was too late. She had put on the overcoat and was gone as if she’d never been there.
Certainly there was no record of her ever signing in or signing out.
Dusk, the start of the nightly reprieve from the heat, had settled over Hedley by the time he pulled into the driveway. The place he’d rented sat about a mile up a gentle slope of the hills that eventually ended below at the banks of the river. A small, 1,300-square-foot cedar house painted light blue, with the white shutters on the windows slightly heat-warped. It had two bathrooms, a master bedroom, a living room, a galley kitchen, and an office, with a screened-in patio in back. The interior decoration was all in a cloying yet comfortable “heirloom chic.” In front, a garden of herbs and petunias that transitioned to a short stretch of lawn next to the driveway.
As he walked up the steps to the front door, El Chorizo jumped out from the bushes to the side and got underfoot. El Chorizo was a huge black-and-white cat, a draft horse of a cat, named by his father. The family had had a pig named El Gato growing up, so this was his father’s way of making a joke. Control had taken him as a pet about three years ago, when the cancer had gotten bad enough that El Chorizo had become a burden. He’d always been an indoor-outdoor cat, and Control had decided to let him be that in his new surroundings, too. Apparently it had been the right decision; El Chorizo, or “Chorry” as Control called him, looked alert and confident, even if his long hair was already tangled and dirty.
Together they went inside, and Control put out some wet food in the kitchen, petted him for a few minutes, then listened to his messages, the landline just for “civilians.” There was only one message: from Mary Phillips, his girlfriend until they’d broken up about six months ago, checking in to make sure the move had gone okay. She had threatened to come visit, although he hadn’t told her his precise location and had just gotten used to sleeping alone again. “No hard feelings,” and he couldn’t even really remember if he had broken up with her or she with him. There rarely were hard feelings—which felt odd to him and wrong. Shouldn’t there be? There had been almost as many girlfriends as postings; they usually didn’t survive the moves, or his circumspection, or his odd hours, or maybe he just hadn’t found the right person. He couldn’t be sure, tried as the cycle kept repeating to wring as much intensity and intimacy out of the early months, having a sense of how it would end. “You’re a strange kind of player,” the one-night stand before Mary had said to him as he was going down on her, but he wasn’t really a player. He didn’t know what he was.
Instead of returning the call, he slipped into the living room and sat on the couch. Chorry promptly curled up next to him, and he absentmindedly rubbed the cat’s head. A wren or some such rooted around outside the window. There came, too, the call of a mockingbird and a welcome chitter of bats, which weren’t as common anymore.
It was so close to everything he knew from his teenage years that he decided to let that be a comfort, along with the house, which helped him believe that this job was going to last. But “always have an exit strategy” was something his mother had repeated ad nauseam from his first day of training, so he had the standard packet hidden in a false bottom to a suitcase. He’d brought more than just his standard sidearm, one of the guns stored with the passports and money.
Control had already unpacked, the idea of leaving his things in storage painful. On the mantel over a brick fireplace that was mostly for show, he had placed a chessboard with the little brightly colored wooden figurines that had been his father’s last redoubt. His father had sold them in local crafts shops and worked in a community center after his career had stalled. Occasionally during the last decade of his father’s life, an art collector would buy one of the huge art installations rusting under tarps in the backyard, but that was more like receiving a ghost, a time traveler, than anything like a revival of interest. The chessboard, frozen in time, reflected the progress of their last game together.
He pulled himself off the couch, went into the bedroom, and changed into his shorts and T-shirt and running shoes. Chorry looked up at him as if he wanted to come along.
“I know, I know. I just got home. But I’ll be back.”
He slipped out the front door, deciding to leave Chorry inside, put on his headphones, turned on some of the classical music he loved, and lit out along the street and its dim streetlamps. By now full dusk had arrived and there was just a haze of dark blue remaining over the river below and the lights of homes and businesses, while above the reflected glow of the city pushed the first stars farther into the heavens. The heat had dropped away, but the insistent low