I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Four

Wyatt Douglass had never really experienced life with a pet, at least of the dog or cat variety. He’d taken care of a series of goldfish that passed, over a period of months, between a small, clear, glass bowl which sat upon a shelf in his room, to a much larger porcelain bowl in a small, white and blue-tiled room down the upstairs hallway of his childhood home. He could easily recall friends who traipsed around on Sunday afternoons, a panting K-9 steadily in tow. Then there were peers at school who walked with squared shoulders and egos floating like loosely anchored hot-air balloons above their heads overshadowing potentially interesting personalities. Behind them would always be a wake of other members of Wyatt’s generation, the starry eyed youth whose gazes were unexplainably fixated on the popular human lumps trolling up and down the hallways. Wyatt imagined those numbed, drooling masses to be like pets. He couldn’t remember being one of those panting fools salivating for any opportunity to please the “cool kid” at the head of the rabble.

Wyatt could never recall truly experiencing that feeling of being followed and admired by someone or something that unabashedly displayed its self worth as somehow being lower. He could not wrap his mind around how they seemed to believe they didn’t deserve to be at the front of the line. He had observed that their scattered internal workings appeared to indefinitely prescribe them to be lead, blindly if necessary. Suddenly, however, Wyatt Douglass found himself strangely elevated to the position of “cool kid” and his shadow enveloping the talkative Gordon Parks.

The din of the restaurant Gordon had followed Wyatt into from their hotel a block up the road barely muted the words jumping off the younger man’s tongue. Wyatt had hoped to spend the rest of the evening alone. He had tried to sneak out of his hotel room. Gordon Parks was staying in a room one door down but was already standing attentively outside Wyatt’s door when he stepped out.

“So what do you think?”

Wyatt blinked, the silence at their table suddenly louder than the chatter reverberating off the walls under the mellow music flowing between the waves of words and phrases all around him. He had heard Gordon’s voice, knew he had been discussing something relative to the two of them. But, his lack of any real care for what the younger man had to say had caused Wyatt to ignore Gordon’s words completely.

“I think,” Wyatt said with a mild stretch of his back, “...that it’s time to call it a night.”

“So soon? Well, I guess it has been a long day,” said Gordon Parks. Wyatt couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or announcing it to himself. Gordon stood up a second behind Wyatt. He was reaching for his wallet when he asked, “Do you want me to pay?”

Wyatt put his hand out to stop him, shaking his head at Gordon before turning away from the table.

“I’m just going to use the restroom,” Gordon said. It sounded more like he was asking for Wyatt’s permission. Wyatt shrugged his shoulders and waved him away.

At the front of the restaurant, the mustard yellow of street lights outside reached through the dirt and rain-stained windows, throwing off-color bands unevenly across the flat, sky-blue walls. The hostess smiled pleasantly at Wyatt as he approached her counter. He placed the meal ticket on the laminated wood surface between them. Her hair was a rich brunette color. Her face was narrow and tan. Her brown eyes were soft, unable to hid her weariness. Foodservice, like government work, Wyatt figured, would do that to a person.

“Did you enjoy your meal?” Her voice was warm. She sounded sincerely concerned, his satisfaction either about to be the high or low point of her evening.

Wyatt nodded, barely glancing at her as she spoke. “Yes. It was very nice.” He didn’t say it coldly or impatiently. He sounded tired.

He kept his eyes moving as she busied herself at the cash register, only to find himself staring past the girl with long, flat hair in front of him. There was a plaque on the wall. Wyatt couldn’t take his eyes off of it. It sent his brain into a spin. He had seen it before, or one exactly like it. Except, here there was one small difference. The engraved plate near its base was still intact, displaying the trophy’s purpose and year of award. The copy he had seen on a bedroom wall in the Parrish farm house hours before was absent of that very feature.

“Sir,” the cashier said, his change in her hand.

He looked down at her for a moment then back up at the wall behind her. There were several of the plaques, each branded with a different year. There were framed pictures surrounding the mounted awards. In each one were the proud and smiling faces of each year’s winners. There were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and whole families beaming with a wholesome pride into a camera flash. Wyatt’s gaze focused onto one family in particular.

The cashier noticed the look on Wyatt’s tired face. She turned slightly to follow his gaze. He heard her inhale sharply yet still softly. He was looking directly at her, waiting for her brown eyes-now wider and more alert above her defined cheek bones-when she turned back to face him.

“You know who she is,” Wyatt asked, his words direct. He could tell by the look in her eyes there was no need to delay the point he was after. He waited for her to answer. He watched her try to form the words of a reply. He didn’t wait very long. “Where is she?”

Again, the cashier started to speak then stopped abruptly. Her eyes shifted, her attention caught by someone else quickly approaching. “Ready to go?” The voice of Gordon Parks seemed to boom over Wyatt’s left shoulder. His jovial trek to Wyatt’s side came to a quick halt when Wyatt looked sharply at him. Gordon watched the twenty-nine year-old for a moment, then noticed the cashier for the first time. Her appearance was striking in a small town sort of way. To Gordon, who looked her torso up and down without any subtlety, the girl would have been worth spending the night with. But there was the intent way Wyatt was peering at him, and the other man’s near proximity to the counter.

Gordon’s eyebrows arched knowingly. “Oh,” he said and began to smile. “I see, Agent Douglass. Good call, man. Good call. I’ll uhh...let you finish making your plans and meet you outside.”

It took Wyatt a moment to understand what the young fool was trying to say. He glanced sidelong at the cashier. Suddenly, it dawned on him. “Umm...right.”

Gordon Parks nodded, his smile beaming and sickening to Wyatt who waited until his counterpart was out the front door before turning back to the woman behind the counter. “I need to speak with her. Please, it’s important.”

“I...I don’t know where she is. Maybe...maybe she’s dead.” Her voice was shaking, ruining her attempt to sound confident.

Wyatt shook his head, pulling a business card out of a pocket in his wallet. Using a pen sitting on the laminated countertop, he quickly jotted his hotel information on the empty back of the card. “Please, give this to her,” he said, ignoring her last remark. “It’s only a matter of time before the others figure this place out, too. I can’t make her, or you, trust me. That’s okay. Just give that card to her. Tell her I only want to know what really happened out there.”

The cashier barely nodded, staring at the card on the countertop in front of her. She didn’t watch him leave. She stared at the card and the thin, black ink drying on its surface, uncertain of what to do next.

* * * * * * *
A chorus of telephones rang incessantly somewhere down the long, arched hallway to Mark’s left. He sat nervously in a small, stale-smelling lobby on the third floor of a run down office building in the heart of downtown D.C.. Mark glanced quickly toward the distant end of the noisy, but empty, corridor. He spotted shadows stretched across the thresholds of glass offices, each moving swiftly across the dirt-stained linoleum. His eyes followed the long, web-like cracks in the thin, grime encrusted tiles back to the lip of the carpet a few feet away. The short, dusty threads covered almost the entire floor of the waiting area and almost muted the uneven tapping of his foot against the small, stiff fibers under his chair.

“Mr. Levine?”

Mark looked up sharply when the squeaky, nasal voice of one of the seven receptionists on the other side of a tall, cherry-stained plywood partition called his name. He craned his neck to see her peering over the flat surface of the chest-high wall. “Ye-”

“You forgot to fill out a section of the form you were given downstairs,” she said, rolling over his response as if had said nothing at all.

Mark approached the square space carved out of the thin, wooden barrier. His tired eyes glanced quickly down the half empty form. “Umm, no...I didn’t.”

The receptionist leered at the man in front of her. She was mentally preparing herself to deal with yet another simpleton who lacked the ability, it would appear, to follow even the most simple of instructions. “Well, Mr. Levine, how can we know what union to try to place you in if you don’t state your preference.” It wasn’t a question, more like a warning to make a decision.

“But I don’t have a preference. I don’t want to join a union.”

Mark watched the woman with murky, hazel eyes unnaturally enlarged by the thick lenses of her circular-framed glasses. The black plastic clung to the bridge of her thin, pale nose. Her black hair was pulled tightly back into a short, knotted bun. The softly humming fluorescent lights made the greased-down ebony strands shimmer as she shifted in her chair. Her annoyance was growing and her wiry face did not hide this.

“Then why are you here,” she asked. “Why are you wasting everyone’s time?”

Mark blinked. He turned his head, first to the left and then to the right, taking in the full scene of the empty lobby behind him.

“Us! Back here, Mr. Levine,” the receptionist gestured to the women behind her. A few looked up in their direction, but only for a moment before returning to whatever it was they were sleepily busying themselves with. “We all have work to do, too.”

“As do I,” Mark said bitterly. He hadn’t raised his voice yet. He wanted to. His nerves were still shaky. He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “But it’s hard to do that when your business has been smashed up by union thugs.”

The receptionist sat up straighter in her chair. “That is a very strong accusation, Mr. Levine.”

“And one I can back up,” Mark said with a sneer, leaning closer into the narrow opening. “Come down to my bakery. My partner and I will be happy to point out the evidence.”

A quiver in her flat, painted lips betrayed the snarl the receptionist was trying to hide. “It’s too outrageous to believe. Are you here to file a grievance, then?”

“No, I’m admiring the curtains and the furniture arrangement,” Mark snapped sarcastically. The volume of his voice was edging toward yelling. “Of course I’m here to file a grievance.”

The receptionist stared wordlessly at Mark across the smooth, stained partition. He was an alien from another world to her, visible through the small, square space of open air. He suddenly seemed more tolerable to her now that she felt a sense of superiority over the lost little lamb fully return. She leaned back confidently in her chair. The aged springs under the seat, desperate for repair, wretched noisily. She crossed her arms, never breaking eye contact with him.

At last, with a cold smile, the receptionist said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Levine. There’s nothing I can do here. You’re on the wrong floor.”

“What?”

“Exactly as I said. The offices here are for applying and processing only, not the filing of grievances or petitions.” Her words were punctual and matter-of-fact without losing the razor-sharp condescension she had obviously intended on sending across the partition.

“First of all, it’s LeVine...not Levine. Annunciate the syllables in my name!” Mark stood back, composing himself for the briefest of moments. He didn’t dare take too deep a breath. He hardly wanted to breathe in the stale dust permeating the air. “And secondly, I was told yesterday that the heads of each chapter for each union had offices here! And, this was the place to go! This building and this floor!”

The receptionist blinked once. She leaned forward just slightly, as if just enough to straighten a muscle cramping in her back. “Who, Mr. Le...Vine? Who told you that?”

The name of the store had been Handy Crafts. It was a mom and pop store, or at least it had been once. It sat quietly at the far end of the dilapidated shopping center. It had been there when Mark and Zach signed the lease on the space that would become their bakery. They went in once, just before the grand opening of Heart and Soul. Mom and Pop were a week away from retiring. The keys of their small trinket and repair store were being handed to their nephew in exchange for those of a comfortable condo in Florida.

The first time Mark even stood at the door of the old store since that first meeting years before was the afternoon of the bakery’s ransacking. He wasn’t sure what to expect. There were two visions in Mark’s mind. One, that it would look almost identical to his memory of that first visit; or two, it would be in shambles, forgotten by time and the nephew left to run it. Mark stared at the faded lettering remaining on the smudged glass door.

Beyond the warped threshold, Mark beheld a stuffy, dingy gallery of junk cluttered shelves and fraying rugs on the floor. The yellowing plaster, once white, reeked of mold and tobacco and resembled the type of dry, doughy maps of the United States he and his friends once made in grade school. Mark had been hoping for his former vision, but was less than surprised to discover the latter. He felt sick at the sight of the two men running the place. A pair of slobs like Mark had never seen before. They were archetypes of so many things gone wrong and stereotypes for the kind of people that had walked the insufferable sense of gloom, hand in hand, into the rest of society. Bits of food clung to the sandpaper stubble coating the bloated cheeks of one standing behind a smoke-tinged glass counter. Dull eyes peered at Mark from the thinner, balding patron at the back of the store. Mark couldn’t shake the feeling he was the only one amongst them that hadn’t sold his soul.

“Do much business,” he had asked, trying to sound casual.

The two human sloths smiled at each other. If this was middle America, what were Mark and Zach? “Not really,” the skinny one at the back of the store answered.

“But business got to stay open. Wouldn’t be right just to close this place down,” added the chubbier man. Greasy curls of chest hair poked above a loose, egg-white shirt.

“What happened to the owner...the original owner?”

“Sold it to the union,” said the chubby one.

“For the good of the Nation,” said the second one.

The chubby man behind the counter let his smile widen. “A fine patriot. Felt the union could run the store best. Help keep everything fair and just. The way it all should be.”

Mark let his gaze shift between the two figures. He suddenly felt as if he were standing at the steps of an entrance into hell. Before him were the gatekeepers, flag bearers of a banner Mark could not recognize. “I want to talk about the unions,” he said after a long, hesitant moment.