Pandemonium

In the hospital he’d always been hunched over the phone by the nurses’ station: a little white guy, bald with a fringe of sandy hair, pudgy except for skinny legs. Every phone call he received was critical, every discussion freighted with meaning. To Bertram, casual conversation was a contradiction in terms. But Bertram wasn’t in the hospital in Fort Morgan; he was in a van in Chicago.

“It’s imperative that you and I talk,” Bertram said. “In person.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. I can call you in a couple weeks, but right now I need you to—”

“You don’t understand, this is important,” Bertram said. “I told my commander about your, uh, situation. This someone—I can’t say his name over the phone—very much wants to meet you. He has a solution, a kind of procedure that would allow you to be free of your, your . . .”

“Situation.”

“Exactly! I can hear in your voice that we understand each other.”

Understand each other? All I could think was, Bertram has a commander. Commander of the Human League.

“This is bigger than just you,” Bertram continued. “With your help, we can change the world.”

Jesus, Lew was right. Bertram, and all his fellow Human Leaguers, thought I was the Anti-Slan Firewall.

In the background of the call I heard a male voice say something I couldn’t pick up, and then Bertram said, “Del, if you would just tell us where you are, we could meet you.”

“Bertram, if this is about the—”

“Don’t say their name!” he said, panicked. “For goodness’ sake, you have no idea of the range of their scans. In 2004—”

“Bertram.”

“—a soldier in Srinagar—”

“Bertram, I need you to focus.”

“Focus?” he said, wounded. He exhaled loudly into the phone. I could picture him bent over his knees, the cell phone mashed into his face. “I am more focused than I have ever been in my life.”

I stepped away from the phone, shaking my head, and the receiver cord brought me up short. I turned around as Mother Mariette O’Connell walked through the front door.

She was dressed in a silver nylon jacket, padded and stitched in a diamond pattern, zipped up to her neck. She glanced in our direction and then went left, toward the front desk.

She stopped.

“Here’s the deal,” I said to Bertram, speaking quickly. “Don’t call my mother. Don’t call my brother or sister-in-law. And do not, under any circumstances, go near their houses. The next time they see you, they’re going to call the cops. Do you understand?”

O’Connell turned, frowning. Her eyes narrowed. Bertram breathed into the phone. “Del, I’m just trying to—”

I thunked the big receiver onto the metal hook—an old-fashioned pleasure that cell phones couldn’t match—and then O’Connell was marching toward me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she said. Lew didn’t budge from the table. The coward.

“It’s imperative that you and I talk,” I said. A moment later I was sitting on the ground.

“Ouch,” Lew said.

“Can somebubby gib me a nabkin?”

Louise came out of the kitchen holding the coffee pot, and froze. O’Connell turned away, shaking out her hand. My teeth must have broken the skin of her knuckles.

Lew pulled a tuft of napkins from the chrome dispenser, dropped them on my lap. I dabbed gingerly at my lower lip. I was in no hurry to get up.

“What did you do to her?” Louise demanded.

O’Connell spun back toward us. “And who are you?” she asked Lew.

He held up his hands. “I’m the driver.”

“Then you know your way back,” she said. Without turning away from Lew she looked at me, raised her arm, and pointed: a wrath-ofGod, get-thee-to-a-nunnery point. I didn’t know anyone outside of the