Tectonics
Steven Fromm
The funny thing was, Crowley had been a geology nut when he was a kid. Nine, ten. Somewhere in there. Not the development of crusts and rocks, the gritty substance and scabs of earth, but earthquakes. The sexy stuff. Tectonics. The gargantuan release of pure energy from shifting faults. Normal faults, thrust faults, the deadly blind thrusts. Destruction so instantaneous, so complete it was as if a sadistic deity had gleefully peeled the skin of gravity from a frantically buzzing earth.
But what mesmerized Crowley most at the time was the fact that there are about one million quakes each year, and humans only feel about 50,000 of them. The rest are subtle, creeping affairs, dread advancing in patient, inexhaustible inches.
So it didn’t surprise him when seismic waves flashed across the surface of his consciousness when Melbourne gave them the heads up. At the time, he was engaged in the Boggs Question with Freeman.
They’d been batting around the Boggs Question for years with no discernible progress. There hadn’t been any discernible progress because the Boggs Question kept evolving. It was designed to remain suspended in stalemate, which was fine with Crowley.
At first, they focused on whether Boggs had enough gas left in his tank to get 3,000 hits. Crowley said yes. Freeman voted nay. Of course, Boggs made it, when he went to Tampa Bay. And No. 3,000 was a home run, a fact Crowley pointed out to Freeman with obsessive glee for weeks. Boggs retired soon after. For a time the Boggs Question centered on whether he’d make it into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Freeman was against. Rabidly against. After Boggs made it into the Hall on the first ballot, Freeman deftly navigated around that inconvenience by changing the argument: Should Boggs be in the Hall?
“The little fucker kept a mistress, and he’s a nasty-little-shit-of-a-junk-yard-dog,” Freeman declared.
The mistress thing was old news. But Crowley hadn’t heard the junk yard dog thing. He was grateful for the new adjectives.
“Junk yard?”
“Indeed. USDA Prime Choice Junk Yard. Verbally abused my cousin once. Third cousin on my mother’s side. Asked him for an autograph at some restaurant. He tells my cousin to step off. Step off, he says, of all fuckin’ things.”
“You never told me about your cousin,” Crowley noted skeptically.
“That’s because I can’t remember if he’s my cousin or my nephew,” Freeman said. “All I can remember is he’s an asshole.”
“Boggs or your cousin?”
“Both,” Freeman said. “But two assholes do not nullify the issue at hand.”
“What do nullified assholes have to do with the Hall? It’s like pulling against Kaline or Carew or Aaron or even Rose.”
“Wonderful argument,” Freeman huffed. “Rose. Rose and Wade. Put them in the Hall of Infamy. It’s located in the handicapped stall in Cooperstown.”
They started hooting, sitting at desks dominated by iMacs—Crowley’s green, Freeman’s blue—and collapsing stacks of paper strategically arranged to make them look overwhelmed. There was silence for a moment. They poked at the odd keys on their keyboards. And then Freeman, out of the side of his mouth: “The little shit. He’s obsessive-compulsive.”
Crowley pushed away his keyboard and leaned back in his chair with the drama of exaggerated incredulity.
“How the fuck is that?”
“He ate lemon chicken for dinner every single night of the season.”
Crowley looked at Freeman. This was another new one.
“No shit?”
“No shit. Take it to the bank. Deposit it. Watch it draw interest.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“S.I.”
“Then it cannot be disputed.”
“To do so would be heresy,” Freeman said, crossing himself.
“You Catholic?”
“No way. Baptist. Born and bred. I think.”
“Then why’d you cross?”
“Belt and suspenders man. Who knows who’s right?”
They started hooting again, soft and uneven. Crowley was glad for the banter. It had dried up during Freeman’s bad stretch. Freeman didn’t say much, but Crowley could tell it was as bad as bad stretches get. One Friday four months ago he came home to strangely silent rooms and empty clothes hangers and found a note under the grinning Garfield magnet stuck to the refrigerator. It had one word on it. “Goodbye.” Freeman had showed it to him. She was gone, along with their four-year-old girl. The lawyers started shortly thereafter, murmuring their Latinate at one another as Freeman watched from the periphery.
“It’s not that I didn’t see it coming,” he told Crowley. “It’s just that I didn’t see it coming.”
The silences started after that. Red-rimmed eyes and absences that stretched to three and four days. Freeman’s hands shook, his shirts were wrinkled, he dropped some weight. Crowley was at a loss. He was stuck in the limbo of knowing Freeman in a close at-work sense, but not much beyond that. All the domestic stuff was what Freeman disappeared into after work or lunch or a few Sam Adams at Rico’s Tavern. He came close to venturing a query about her use of the ‘e’ at the end of goodbye. It would have made a good riff in normal times, but these were clearly not normal times. During the lull, Crowley started paying attention to his work, which he found truly disturbing. And then it was over. That quickly. The dialogue started up again, like the deliverance of a spring thaw. The Boggs Question was firmly back at the top of the agenda. Crowley didn’t know why. He just went with it.
Crowley was about to mount a Darrow-like Boggs defense when Melbourne stalked out of his office toward Freeman’s desk. Neither man broke out of his patented desk slouch. He dumped a folder in Freeman’s in-basket. Freeman gave him a long stare. He’d been doing that lately. Long and unblinking.
“Melbourne, my dear man, are you a belt and suspenders man?” Crowley finally asked. Melbourne was a good dresser. He was wearing one of those fashionably baggy white dress shirts, with a broad silk maroon tie and pressed charcoal gray pants. He was also a moron. Or at least Freeman and Crowley thought he was. On good days, Crowley tolerated him. Freeman didn’t.
“Suspenders?” Melbourne asked. “They went out in the ’80s.”
“Jesus,” Freeman said.
“A literal man,” Crowley said.
“Beware the literal man,” Freeman intoned.
Melbourne was accustomed to their exchanges, like indecipherable chatter between two macaws deep within a rain forest. But he was their boss in a titular sense, so he stood his ground, hands buried in the deep pockets of his creased pants. Crowley and Freeman started poking their keyboards, their way of dismissing Melbourne. He was so harmless that the entertainment value of torturing him had dwindled from little to nothing. Or almost nothing. He nodded at the folder in the basket.
“Aren’t you going to look at that?” Melbourne asked Freeman.
Freeman looked up from his screen at the folder.
“It’s blue,” Freeman said.
“Thought it was a funny shade of green,” Crowley said.
“You’re fuckin’ color blind,” Freeman retorted.
“Isn’t Boggs color blind?” Crowley asked in a sweet tone.
“It’s the layout for the next IP newsletter,” Melbourne interjected. “Make sure you look at it before the editorial meeting.”
“Editorial,” Crowley said. He started giggling. Freeman joined in. Melbourne remained in front of them, hands rooted. He usually knew when to leave. Crowley stretched and yawned. Freeman kept poking at his keyboard. He was probably spelling out obscenities attached to the word “Melbourne.”
“So,” Freeman asked, “have we ever asked you if you’re a Boggs man?”
“About 80 times,” Melbourne said.
“Eighty?” Crowley asked. “Shit. I was hoping to break 100 this week.”
“Well, what was your answer?” Freeman asked.
“Neither of you remember?”
“No,” they both answered at the same time, as if rehearsed, and started giggling again. Melbourne cracked a smile. It was almost natural. Crowley and Freeman fell quiet. Crowley sighed. Freeman tapped his right foot. It was like a nervous tick. He’d been doing that lately.
“I think there’s going to be a meeting,” Melbourne said.
“Yeah,” Freeman said. “An ‘editorial’ meeting.” He said “editorial” in a slightly higher tone, giving it air quotes.
“No,” Melbourne said. “That’s tomorrow. This one may be today.”
“Wow,” Freeman said. “A Monday meeting.”
“Better not be before fuckin’ lunch,” Crowley said. “All those growling stomachs and morning coffee breath.”
“I’d rather have a pre-lunch meeting than a Friday afternoon meeting,” Freeman offered.
“I’d have to agree with you,” Crowley said.
“So noted,” Freeman said.
“Agreed,” Crowley said.
“Ratified,” Freeman countered.
“Today, I think,” Melbourne said, finally turning back toward his office. “Within hours.”
“And tuck in that billowing shirt, Mel,” Freeman called after him.
“Billowing bastards,” Crowley commented.
“I mean, really,” Freeman said. “What’s it with this billowing shit?”
They went on like that for awhile, about billowing and such, but got bored with it and started working with some desultory tapping on their keyboards. It wasn’t out of any sense of responsibility, but more of a handy distraction to the news of a Monday meeting. When Melbourne mentioned it, they reacted with the corporate poker faces they’d developed over the years, camouflage for any signs of vulnerability or worse yet, legitimate concern. You don’t react with surprise or satisfaction or alarm or sadness. You give that disciplined, blank-page look that could mean you’re hearing about the death of a loved one or a year-end bonus with stock options. Freeman had the best poker face of the bunch. Even during the marriage thing, Freeman didn’t let much slip. As for Crowley, all he knew was that he sensed the brute menace of those shifting tectonic plates.
The company was started four years ago by a guy named Harold Pintar. While he didn’t possess the peculiar genius of the playwright, he had sound entrepreneurial sense, and read the information technology signals well enough to recognize the potential of a newsletter publishing house filling the right niches at the right time. When Crowley signed on, about six months in, Pintar Publishing was concentrating on corporate business and law. The staff was small, but sharp. Crowley, who had come from a mediocre medium-sized daily, remembered that first swell of pride when a story he broke got credit in the Times and the Journal. The early days were filled with impromptu parties at various employee homes, quick group dinners after work and sad, sentimental cake-and-champagne parties for the few departing staff. Freeman joined up just before that brief, hazy golden age expired.
Then it got bought by a conglomerate. Old Harold cashed it in for $19 million, moved to Manhattan, purchased a fashionably rough-hewn, three-bedroom apartment off Mott Street and took up sculpting. The conglomerate was Kingston/Banner Inc., a hulking patchwork of vintage 1980s mergers that bred the Kingston/Banner Mutual Fund, the Kingston Banner Real Estate Group, the Kingston/Banner Savings Bank and, of course, Kingston/Banner Communications.
Crowley and Freeman were grateful for the new material.
“You get your Kingston/Banner condoms today?” Freeman would ask.
“Indeed. Now that I own stock in Kingston/Banner Latex, Inc.,” Crowley answered.
“Damn, those Kingston/Banner Corn Flakes tasted good this morning,” Freeman observed.
“I can only hope you ate them with Kingston/Banner Brand non-fat milk — ”
“ — from Kingston/Banner brand dairy cows — ”
They would have gone on for a lot longer, but the Kingston/Banner flunkies showed up about three weeks after the sale had been announced. These were the corporate Centurions who enforced the will of the empire. They wanted to keep the waters calm and say exactly what everyone wanted to hear, regardless of the truth. Crowley couldn’t recall their names. All he remembered was that they showed up in classic Wall Street suits, precision slick-backed haircuts and out-of-season tans.
“Tans? In February?” Freeman whispered to Crowley as they took their seats in the back of the conference room before Fiddle and Faddle gave their presentation.
“Boca Raton or Jill’s Tanning,” Crowley murmured from the side of his mouth.
“That’s immaterial,” Freeman said. “Who can trust a guy with a February tan?”
“But when’s the cut-off date?”
“Cut-off date?”
“For when a tan is a real tan, and thus credible?”
Freeman never got to answer the question. The two suits began their prattle about preserving quality, adhering to mission, maintaining staff levels and encouraging morale.
Freeman’s arm shot up. Fiddle gave him a nod.
“High morale or low morale?”
Fiddle cocked his head. “Say again?”
“Are you going to encourage high morale or low morale?”
There was a scattering of snickers, one guffaw (Crowley’s) and the tight, coiled motion of several people shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Fiddle and Faddle lurched on. Despite the tans and razor-creased suits, they seemed to have an essentially calming effect.
And then someone asked if they were going to take Pintar Publishing public. Faddle said Pintar would be grouped with a new division containing a number of “newly acquired publishing properties” that would be incorporated. There was a pause. Someone repeated the question. Fiddle cleared his throat and said going public was a “distinct possibility.” All the air went out of the room. That meant cost-cutting and attrition. That meant a thudding disconnect between purpose and motivation. That meant a sudden, gushing hemorrhage between business and editorial, with editorial going down in the early rounds. Crowley took a few seconds to observe the gathered staffers. They looked like tense, wide-eyed gazelles hearing the rustles deep in the high grass. Not blinking. Not breathing. Little chests thump-a-thump-thumping. A tight cluster of nerve ends and jitters.
“Fiddle and Faddle and all their prattle,” Freeman muttered.
The meeting broke up. Freeman and Crowley moseyed back to their desks.
“Whatcha think?” Freeman asked Crowley.
“We’re dead meat,” he replied.
“ — cut from Kingston/Banner cattle,” Freeman said.
“ — roasted on a bed of Kingston/Banner charcoal — “
“ — incinerated by a Kingston/Banner mortuary — “
“ — sealed in a Kingston/Banner urn — “
The tectonic plates kept up their incremental magic. Like the Old Bolsheviks in semi-focused, pre-Stalin photos, the original bosses dropped from sight one by one, each clutching a convenient alibi: early retirement; a corporate flack job; readjusted mid-life priorities. Some of the originals were replaced by new bosses, faces and names that Crowley found difficult to remember. Most didn’t even work at Pintar full-time, but seemed to drop in from other, more vital corporate positions elsewhere in Kingston/Banner.
Just when things at the newly re-christened “Pintar Division” seemed to stabilize, something went wrong in Russia. Or Thailand. Or Japan. Or Mexico. Crowley heard only bits and pieces, like shrapnel propelled from the hot point of some explosion just beyond the horizon. Something about the Kingston/Banner Mutual Fund. Bad investments. Violent re-valuations. Markets swinging on pendulums. Then the dot coms became dot bombs, and that was the end of incremental measures.
The division was pared from 52 to 47. And then to 34. And then to 28. And then 22. Now Melbourne came in with his billowing shirt and more bad tidings. Crowley and Freeman got the word just before lunch in their emails: a general meeting was called for 1:30 p.m. in the conference room.
“Shit,” Freeman said. “That means we’ll have to rush back from lunch.”
“Let’s not look a gift horse, etc.” Crowley said. “At least it’s not before lunch.”
Everyone sauntered into the conference room at the appointed hour. Melbourne was first in, sitting in the front row, slightly to the right of center. Freeman and Crowley went to their accustomed spots: back row, all the way to the left near the exit.
It was a fairly efficient mercy killing. Two mid-level Kingston/Banner execs, trailed by a communications flunky, laid it down: Pintar was through. It would cease functioning immediately. Everyone received a manila folder containing two months wages and the necessary forms for unemployment and COBRA options. When they got back to their desks—which they had the rest of the working day to clean out—they found two security guards stationed at the exits.
“What the fuck are they for?” Freeman asked, deliberately loud enough for them to hear.
“They must be the trauma counselors,” Crowley said.
“Sure,” Freeman said. “Trauma counselors always carry night sticks and mace.”
Freeman made a show of trying to hoist his iMac off his desk.
“Hey. A little help,” he called, nodding toward the biggest of them, a bald black linebacker type with three gold studs in each lobe, standing with arms crossed at the exit like an ominous Mr. Clean. The guy didn’t move. Crowley started hooting. Freeman released his iMac and sat down at his desk with a grunt. They both noticed that medium-sized packing boxes had been placed at the foot of each desk.
“How thoughtful,” Freeman said.
“How efficient,” Crowley noted.
With the exception of Freeman and Crowley, there was little sound. Voices, when they could be heard at all, were hushed and brief. Little by little, people started cleaning out their desks.
Crowley, for his part, didn’t feel much of anything. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t resignation. He’d known for a time that something was coming. He didn’t fight or fear it. Either would have been pathetic. He had chosen instead to immerse himself in the supine decadence of a failing company: a luxurious drift absent demand, pressure, genuine challenge. And, up until the end, the paychecks kept coming like clockwork.
Freeman didn’t bother sifting through the refuse on his desk. He dumped as much as he could into a trash can, and stopped.
“Done!” he declared with a satisfied air.
Crowley was neater than Freeman, but he had no appetite for the intricacies of packing. He carefully untaped his pictures of Joan Jett, Aimee Mann and Ani DeFranco and put them inside the manila folder with his unemployment material.
“All clear,” he said. He looked down at the phone, then whispered to Freeman: “Let’s call a 900 number.”
“Yeah,” Freeman snickered, “and then let’s leave the phone off the hook.”
“A nice little departing gift from nice little departing employees.”
“Unless we call the Kingston/Banner Sex Line,” Freeman countered. They started hooting. Freeman picked up the phone, then grimaced. “Fuckin’ line is dead,” he said, slamming it down.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Who planned this, Joseph Stalin?”
“Good ole Uncle Joe.”
“The rat bastard.”
“Yeah, but at least he got 3,000 hits,” Freeman said. More hooting. Maybe for the last time. They stood where they were for a few moments, looking around them. People were still packing. Clipped, brittle movements. There was more talk now as the shock loosened its initial grasp. People were saying their farewells, exchanging email addresses, launching some anemic insults at Kingston/Banner. Crowley realized he didn’t know many of them well. Almost all the original crew that he had felt close to were gone.
“Should we be saying anything?” he asked.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Um. Goodby?”
“I’ve always hated goodbyes,” Freeman observed. “You say, ‘goodby,’ and the other person says, ‘goodby.’ And then you have to decide whether or not to have the SPC. I hate them even more.”
“SPC?”
“Significant Parting Conversations.”
“Gawd.”
“Gawd indeed. Talk of future plans, what the place meant to us, the good old days. A vicious dissection of the villains.”
“Sounds like work.”
“And we can’t work,” Freeman said. “We’re unemployed.”
With that, both men peeled their jackets from the backs of their chairs, put them on, and started walking toward the door and the black Mr. Clean. They passed Melbourne’s office. The door was open. Melbourne sat at his desk, packing box at his feet, staring into the blank screen of his dead iMac.
“The decent thing to do is leave him alone,” Freeman said.
“Indeed. Death with dignity.”
“But I’m not decent, nor do I care for dignity,” Freeman said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and boomed into Melbourne’s office, “Mellie, good man. Declare yourself.” And then Freeman dropped his hands from his mouth, tilted his head and asked in a soft voice, “Yea or nay: Are you a Boggs man?”
Melbourne just looked at them for a moment. He couldn’t seem to focus. Then he turned back to his dead iMac. Crowley and Freeman went on their way. They passed Mr. Clean. He didn’t move an inch, so they squeezed by on each side.
“Thank God,” Crowley said once they passed the sentry and through the double glass doors of the main entrance.
“Thank God what?” Freeman asked,
“No body cavity search.”
“Hopefully, you haven’t spoken too soon.”
But there was nothing further. Crowley found himself surprised by the ease of the end. You just walked out. Out the door to your car and that was it. Put one foot in front of the other, and in two minutes you find yourself in the next stage of your life. Just like that.
Crowley and Freeman stood on the curb of the parking lot, squinting in the sun, unaccustomed to being at that particular spot at that particular time of day, the first stumble and rush of being spewed from the rhythmic bonds of daily toil, from the reassuring, numbing cycle of commute, arrival, coffee-stall, work, lunch, post-lunch stall, work, commute.
“At the risk of starting an SPC, what the hell are you going to do?” Freeman asked.
“You mean immediately, or generally?”
“Generally.”
“I plan a slow, gradual degeneration into sloth,” Crowley said. “At least until my unemployment runs out. You?”
Freeman looked at him for just a second, full in the face, then looked away. Crowley expected some kind of joke, at least something to match his crack about sloth. There was another few seconds of silence, then Freeman smiled.
"As it happens, I do have plans," he finally said. His voice sounded different. It was a few octaves lower.
Before Crowley could say anything, Freeman walked over to a trash can near the entrance and threw in his unemployment package. Crowley blinked.
"Um. You may need that," he said as Freeman walked back up to him. Freeman didn't stop until his face was within three inches of Crowley's.
"I won't need it," he said. He smiled. "Do you want to see the next chapter?"
"The next chapter?"
"As in the future. My future. The perfect future."
"The future is ours," Crowley said, playing along. "The future is within our grasp."
"Come see the future," Freeman said. "Follow me."
Freeman started walking out to the parking lot. Crowley followed, trying to anticipate when Freeman would turn around and retrieve his unemployment package, indulging in a few semi-obscene phrases dispatching men with out-of-season tans. But Freeman was walking toward his car.
"The future is in your car?" Crowley asked, a few steps behind.
"Actually, it's in the trunk of my car," Freeman said without turning his head.
"You've kept the future in the trunk of an Impala?"
"I can think of no better place to put the future," Freeman said. "I can think of no better place to put my future."
Crowley followed reluctantly. He wanted to get on with what he imagined would be the prime cut of their unemployment: a stop at Rico's for several cold drafts. These were the precious hours in which the shock of sudden unemployment would temporarily anesthetize them from their future. Daytime television. Mass resume mailings. Pathetic face-to-face interviews where they would awkwardly attempt to divine vague expectations. That was all ahead of them. Right now they had severance and six months worth of unemployment checks. Now was the time to seek respite in the fleeting shelter of commiseration. It was the one thing they could enjoy. At least for that day.
When Freeman reached his car, he dug into his jacket pocket, produced his keys in a shiny jangle and popped the trunk. Crowley saw an olive green blanket with a black "U.S." printed on it.
"You joining up?" Crowley asked.
Freeman didn't answer. He bent down and pulled the blanket partially back. Crowley saw the stock of a rifle. In the first few moments he knew the deal. He saw it in sharply detailed movements and colors. There was a click somewhere in his head. The colors dimmed. They were temporarily diverted to another channel.
"Hunting?" Crowley asked. His voice sounded like Freeman's a few minutes before, but precisely in reverse. Up a few octaves. "Fuck hunting. We'd have to get up before dawn. Good Christ. My stomach heaves when I'm up too early. I can't eat." He looked at Freeman. Freeman was looking down at the butt of the rifle. "Do I have a vote here?" Crowley continued. "One man, one vote. I nominate bowling. Night bowling. It's indoors. You can piss in a urinal, not against a tree. And there's an endless source of beer."
Freeman reached into the trunk and grabbed the gun. It wasn't a rifle. It was a shotgun. He held it delicately at just below chest level, with one hand under the barrel and the other over the trigger guard. It gleamed in the sun. Crowley knew next to nothing about guns, but he could tell this one was brand new.
"I never thought too much about guns," Freeman said, gazing down at his hands. "But do you know what made me a gun enthusiast?"
Crowley didn't answer. He couldn't take his eyes off the polished blue-black barrel. There wasn't a scratch on it.
"Buying one," Freeman said. "It was simple as that. You buy one, and you have to marvel. I mean, just marvel. The engineering. The look. The feel. It's not made. It's not manufactured. It's crafted."
Freeman looked up at Crowley. Crowley felt as if he was obliged to say something, so he echoed, "Crafted."
"Yes," Freeman said, smiling. There was thin line of perspiration along his upper lip. "Crafted. Meet the Winchester Supreme Field pump. Walnut stock. Three-inch chrome plated chambers. Dual tapered locking lugs. A 6mm rib and a switch-mounted barrel selector." He looked up at Crowley.
"Barrel selector," Crowley said.
"The balance is superb," Freeman continued. "You throw this baby to your shoulder, and it's beautiful. Front-weighted. It's as natural as breathing."
Crowley looked around the parking lot. A few people were drifting toward their cars, lugging boxes of desk refuse with them. None walked directly by. No one saw Freeman cradling his crafted shotgun. It was if he had cast a spell. He was invisible.
"But the thing is, guns are more than just guns," Freeman said. "Did you know that? Do you know what they really are?" He looked at Crowley for a second, but then quickly back down at his gun. "I'll tell you what they are. They're metaphors." He looked back up at Crowley.
"Metaphors," Crowley said.
"Metaphors," Freeman said. "I think that's the right word. You see, this Winchester Supreme Field pump is the brute. The linebacker. The cudgel. The mace. It can punch a hole in time. I guess that's a metaphor-type statement, but hang with me here. Hang with me. It can puncture the flow of time, even for just awhile. It can alter the flow of events." He looked up at Crowley with a tight little smile. He looked almost embarrassed. "Ok, ok," he replied to Crowley's silence. "It's not a permanent effect. I understand. But just for a little while, it can do those things. Alter the flow."
"Alter," Crowley said, “the flow.”
Freeman put the shotgun partially back into the trunk, with the stock still sticking out at an upward angle. He reached under the blanket again and came up with an automatic pistol. It had the same mint-condition, shiny look as the shotgun.
"Of course, a different firearm is a different metaphor," Freeman said. He held the pistol with two hands at chest level, like the shotgun in miniature, with a finger under the barrel and the other hand on the grip, the index finger caressing the trigger guard. "Do you know what this is?"
Crowley looked at it, then at him. "A pistol," he said. His voice wasn't a few octaves higher any longer. It was flat.
"Of course it's a pistol," Freeman said. "But it's more than a pistol. This is a Glock 21. A .45 automatic with the classic right octagonal barrel rifling. Barrel length of 117 mm, a weight of 340 grams—that's about 12 ounces for we Americans—with a full, 10-round magazine."
"Magazine," Crowley said.
"We have to be consistent, of course, at least in this," Freeman said. "In a world convoluted with distortion and agenda, we must stay consistent in the small things. We have to stick with the metaphors."
"Metaphors," Crowley said.
"Metaphors," Freeman said. "Where the shotgun is the linebacker, the Glock is a ballerina. Where the shotgun is the sander, the Glock is the engraver. Where the shotgun is a crunching rhythm guitar, the Glock is a precise lead guitar. Precise. Cleaner than cleanest.”
"Cleanest," Crowley said.
"Cleanest," Freeman said again. He looked at Crowley. His face was shining with sweat. "How did I do?"
"Do?"
"With the metaphors," Freeman said. "Was I consistent? Did I make any sense? Or am I just babbling. Babbling as everything flows on, flows right on by me."
Crowley looked at him, then at somewhere just over Freeman’s right shoulder, then back at his face.
"Consistent," he finally said. "You're ok."
Freeman kept staring at him full in the face, cradling the Glock, stroking the underside of the barrel with his index and middle fingers. Crowley didn't move, didn't take his eyes off of Freeman's. He didn't know why. He just knew he had to, that this was expected of him. It was the only thing expected of him precisely at that moment.
And then Freeman nodded, as if crisply affirming a statement that no one heard.
"Ok," he said. "I'm ok."
Freeman shoved the Glock into the waistband of his pants. Crowley's eyes went from the pistol to the inside of Freeman's right leg. A streak of dark yellow had creeped down Freeman's beige khakis, all the way to the pant cuffs. It widened as he watched. It was this, not the guns, that triggered a swelling in the general region of Crowely's bowels, the body's message to the brain of an irreversible event, the slow leach of dread. As Freeman bent over to pick up the shotgun Crowley felt himself rising out of himself, going slightly above and to his left. He watched from his ethereal perch as he reached out toward Freeman's shoulder as he was rising from the trunk. Crowley knew immediately that his action was pure theater, but at the same time a necessary gesture. He watched as Freeman rose up in a fluid motion with the shotgun in his hands and whacked Crowley across the left side of his head with the barrel. Crowley seemed pulled by a vacuum back into his body as he spun and fell to the ground, his head bouncing on the asphalt.
His eyelids fluttered as if in spasm, then opened. When he focused, Crowley saw Freeman moving toward the double glass doors of the office entrance, the shotgun held at chest level. And then Freeman stopped, as if someone was calling him from behind. He stood there, frozen, head cocked as if waiting to hear something. Crowley heaved himself up, first on all fours, then to his knees and then drunkenly to his feet. He put his hand to the side of his face. His palm came away coated dark red. At the very same instant he tasted the blood, that salty mineral taste, and the flow hit his left eye, snapping it shut in a sudden sting. Crowley spat and wiped his hand on his pants. He wanted to call out Freeman's name, but at the same time he didn't want Freeman turning around for any reason.
Freeman started walking toward the double glass doors again, now at full stride. Crowley trotted dizzily after him until he was five feet behind. He heard Freeman humming. It took him a few seconds to place it. The "Hi-Ho" song. "Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go." Without stopping he snapped the underside of the shotgun and Crowley saw an orange cartridge jump out of the chamber and hang in the air while twirling end over end before falling. It bounced once on the asphalt and through Crowley's legs as he followed. Freeman was about 10 feet away from the doors when Mr. Clean, standing inside, noticed him approaching. He yanked a radio from his belt and started yelling into it. Crowley could hear the muffled lurch of his voice through the glass. His eyes, widened to an almost cartoon roundness, never left Freeman, who stopped, drew the shotgun up to his shoulder and fired. The roar slapped into Crowley's ears and then instantly vanished, replaced by a brief, airtight silence that melted into a high-pitched ringing. The taste of gunpowder peppered his tongue. The plate glass of the door was still intact, but there was a fist-sized hole in the left door and an intricate web of vein-like cracks through both of them. Mr. Clean was nowhere to be seen. Freeman re-pumped the shotgun. An orange shell, this time empty and smoking, did its little ballet in the air and fell. Freeman aimed and fired again. Crowley heard the roar, but this time it seemed distant and in slow-motion. The plate glass was gone.
Freeman stepped in through the doors. Crowley's inner-ear ringing fell just enough for him to hear the crunch of the glass under Freeman’s feet. He was muttering something about game and field loads and shot size. He snapped the shotgun again and turned left, down the hall of management offices that led to the little newsroom where they had once sat side by side. Crowley kept following about 10 feet behind. The security guards had vanished. Everyone in the building had scattered. As Freeman reached the first office door, he swung the shotgun into the doorway and fired. He didn't even look into the office. It was an act of efficiency. He kept walking, firing and pumping. Crowley trotted behind, hands clamped over ears. He heard someone screaming "Freeman…Freeman...Freeman" and realized that it was him, his voice reaching a pitch fueled by bubbling adrenaline. Freeman reached the last office before the newsroom, Melbourne's office. He finally stopped and looked in. There was screaming on top of Crowley's screaming and Freeman fired into it and then there was a sudden silence, as if their soundtrack had been digitally muted. There was a heavy burning smell and a thin veil of smoke blossomed up toward the ceiling. Freeman started sneezing.
"Freeman," Crowley said. He didn't scream it. He just said his name.
Freeman turned around, sweaty and smiling broadly. Crowley knew that Freeman wasn't Freeman anymore. Freeman raised the shotgun and aimed it at Crowley. He hooted that familiar hoot and then his lips made a perfect little circle and he whispered: "Boom."
