Ingrams & Assoc 4: Beneath the Surface Ch. 02

The next few days were strange. I mean, she'd said we were going to 'do therapy', but most of it was just us wandering around San Diego and exploring. She knew the city a bit -- we wandered the beach at Encinitas, we did the USS Midway in the city. Well, I did, for about an hour. After the third time smashing my head into a low doorway, I begged off and went to the coffee shop, in the fantail of the ship, looking out over the city and watching another aircraft carrier docked over the other side of the bay -- watching all the people swarm all over it, boats arriving and leaving. All very relaxing. Megan kept exploring the ship; there was a lot to explore, and it just all made me very glad I never went into the navy. They'd have had to take ten inches off of my legs for me to be able to navigate the ship at all without constant head smashing.

The night before, I'd had another nightmare. I was quite literally, drowning in shit in one of the sewer tunnels, desperately trying to get a mask on before the fetid water overtook me. And they were there, reaching for me. I was trying to get further under the water to get away from them, but was drowning as I did it. I woke, soaked in sweat, heart pounding. I got up and walked around the house to settle down, before heading back to bed and to the sleep of the dead, thankfully.

When we sat for a margarita in San Diego old town, at the El Fandango restaurant, I sensed some more 'therapy' coming out. It was subtle. And frankly, being with Megan was nice. I was still wearing baseball caps with the brim over my face, and big sunglasses, but she acted as though she didn't see it. We were just 'hanging out'. Of course, it might well have been an act; probably was. All part of the therapy, I'm sure. Make Thomas more comfortable with the world by acting as through the world doesn't care about his visual presentation. But still, I liked it. Even though we were on the run, it didn't feel like it. In just a few days, I had spent more time in the open air than I had in years.

We were sitting in the restaurant, and Megan was trying the frozen strawberry margarita -- she had proclaimed earlier that Frozen Strawberry Margarita's were 'her thing'. She tried them everywhere she went, looking for the very best. She made some comment about writing a travel book about it, 'when she was done with the current job'. And then we started talking about good and evil.

"So Thomas, do you know the difference between morals and ethics?" she opened, slurping the crushed ice up the straw. She always did that, making a big production out of it. It was adorable.

I smiled at her as I played with the glass my traditional margarita was in and then thought for a second.

"Isn't one of them about personal stuff or something?" I was desperately trying to remember the ethics class I'd taken online when getting my degree. It had been terribly boring and I remember sitting watching episodes of Californification in a small window on the screen at the same time and hating David Duchovny because he was everything I was not.

"Right!" she said, sounding a little surprised. "That's right. Ethics are the rules that are associated with fairness, that all of a culture is expected to adopt. Sometimes they are expressed in laws -- 'Thou shalt not kill', for example -- and sometimes they are just part of the cultural fabric. Like 'Thou shalt not covet they neighbors ass.' It's a shared set of expectations that allow society to function without so much friction."

She paused and took another slurp of her drink, then made a face.

"Brain freeze!"

"Try pushing your tongue up on your palate," I offered.

She looked at me dubiously and then obviously tried it. And her face suddenly morphed into a very cute smile. The kind that you give someone when they surprise you in a pleasant way. Hers was awesome.

"Oh. My. God! It worked. I've never heard of that before. Wow!" she gushed.

I just looked away, a little embarrassed, not knowing how to respond.

"How very cool! You learn something new every day! Right, back to ethics. So ethics are a shared set of expecations we all subscribe to. They are designed to make society function and to try and repress behavior that promotes friction and contention."

She took another slurp on her drink and then gestured to mine. "You gonna try yours?"

I forced a smile and tried the Margarita. I wasn't about to admit to her that I'd never had one before. In fact, apart from some wine at a wedding I'd been to when I was a teenager, and some beer I'd had at one of the two -- count 'em, two! -- frat parties I'd been to when I was physically on campus, I was a complete novice when it came to alcohol. I'd only been invited to those two parties because the basketball guys I was training with at the time thought I was going to be a big part of the team. Needless to say that never came to pass.

There was a lot I wasn't going to admit to Megan, that's for sure.

I was pleasantly surprised that the drink was pretty good. Sweet and bitter at the same time. I wasn't thrilled at the salty rim, but the rest was nice. I could get used to this.

I nodded enthusiastically, and she smiled back, another genuinely happy smile, and continued, "Right, so morals are like ethics, only personal. To you. Sometimes they are informed by ethics -- by shared standards -- but a lot of the time they apply to things that are very personal. So, for example, the law, driven by an ethical imperative, says you shouldn't speed. But practically, there is only a speed limit if there's a cop around to enforce it, right? So the decision to actually abide by a speed limit on an empty road is a personal thing. While the law says you should -- and will punish you if you get caught breaking it -- the reality is that it's really up to you in most cases. Your choice to adhere to a speed limit is personal morals, driven by cultural ethics. Then there are other things that are more personal and not driven by ethics. Paying people on time, for example. There's no cultural imperative behind wanting to pay people who do work for you on time. In fact, from some directions, people say that not paying people on time is beneficial to you -- it makes them beholden to you and you get to keep the money in your account longer and make more interest from it. But the decision to pay people on time is purely personal morality -- there's no overwhelming legal or ethical reason to want to do it; it's entirely up to you. You dig?"

Megan has a way of switching from lecturer to valley girl all in one sentence, and it's quite a thing to witness. It made me smile.

"I...'dig'," I replied, taking another sip of the Margarita.

"OK then," she replied, seriously, and looking at me intently.

"So, in your case. You killed people. Now, while that's obviously an ethical issue -- there are laws against it -- but even the law understands that there are situations where it cannot be helped. When your life is threatened, when your space is invaded, when you simply have no choice, then it's understood. In this case, this is absolutely the situation. The law here isn't going to come after you since there is no evidence you planned this -- although we both know you did. From an ethical or societal - point of view, what you did was permissible. Not desirable -- killing people, however lawful, never is. But the thing is, I think you've already dealt with the ethical aspects of this event. You aren't cut up about it, or overly concerned about cops arresting you. You are at peace from an ethical standpoint.

"But you haven't dealt with the personal morality point of view. These guys are still dead, and will never be anything else, and you caused that. Well, they technically did, but you put them in a position where it was likely to happen. You bear that burden, no matter how justified you are in doing what you did. Ethics and laws are satisfied, but unless I miss my guess, your personal morality is not. And while you aren't acting like it's bothering you, I think -- and this is a my personal thought -- that it's a landmine inside you, waiting to go off.

"Think of it as a boil, that's waiting to erupt. It's under your clothes, so no one -- including you -- see's it, but every now and then, something rubs at it and you feel it, and one day, it is going to erupt. What I want to do is help lance that boil a bit. I can't make it go away -- no one can, including you. This will always have happened and you'll always have done it, but I can help make it tolerable. If you want me to, that is."

I considered her statements. They were made seriously and I felt I should consider them the same way.

The first question I had was, "Why?"

She smiled -- again -- and said, "Well, we talked about that. I owe you. I'm good at this kind of thing. It's what I've always wanted to do in life, but I almost never get to do it head on. Plus, you need it, and..." she honest to god BLUSHED. I'd read about it but never seen anyone do it in person. She just went crimson. I don't think you can do that on demand. "I...like you. I really think you are a decent guy."

I chuckled a bit at that. "A decent guy? How could you possibly know that? Just because I haven't leapt on you yet doesn't make me out to be a saint you know."

She leaned back and played with her straw a bit, appraisingly me a bit more coolly.

"You think I don't know you? Like I told you, you seriously think that I would come on an extended jaunt with a guy I don't know, who has just killed three people? How stupid do you think I am, Thomas?"

I didn't have a response for that. I hadn't thought about it, really. I'd never spent this amount of consecutive time in the company of a woman before, and hadn't thought about what she was thinking about it. It just hadn't occurred to me.

She looked at me a bit more, took another sip of her drink and said, in a very level tone, "Your name is Thomas David Avaline. You are thirty-two years old, and have had your present position for six years, but have worked for the sewer authority for ten, since you finished college. You were born in Lawrence General Hospital, in Essex County, Massachusetts, to Thomas David Avaline the first, and his wife Lisa, ex hippies and veterans of the sixties free love moment in San Francisco. They were killed in a car accident in the late eighties, when you were four. The accident report reads that an overtired truck driver crossed the median line, and crushed the side of your parent's car. Both were killed on impact, and you were in a car seat and survived, but the impact broke and arm, several ribs and severely damaged your face.

"You spent six months in hospital, while your face was repaired. But because you were so young and techniques weren't as advanced as they are now, and because you had no insurance, they left the job unfinished. Since you had no other siblings or relatives to take you in, you ended up in foster homes. You never stayed anywhere more than a year -- the reports on you considered you a troubled child, and one that shut down when situations escalated, as they are wont to do with a bunch of foster children thrown together like that.

"You eventually went to the University of Massachusetts, studying, water technology with a minor in chemistry. You dropped out after two semesters, and then continued your degree using ITT online programs, graduating three years later.

"You can play the violin; you consider yourself socially inept, and we can only find one instance of you ever leaving Massachusetts, and that was to go to Las Vegas, in 2008. You pay your taxes on time, contribute some of your paycheck to the boys club of America, and have almost thirty thousand dollars in savings. You are afraid of people, you think your face and size are toxic and you have absolutely no fashion sense. I think that about covers it?"

I sat there, stunned. She'd just laid out my life in a nutshell, and worse, it hadn't taken very long.

There was a long silence as I just sat there, trying to comprehend everything she'd said. I didn't know where to begin. What did I think about the implications of her statements? Did I care that she had this information at all? There was also something else she'd said earlier that was nagging at me.

It came to me. "What do you mean, 'I never get to do this head on?" What does that mean? Who, exactly, do you work for? I mean, I've gone along with this -- and now, thinking about it, I have no idea why -- and I don't even know who you work for?"

I folded my arms. She smirked at me.

"Do you know why you fold your arms? It's to put a barrier between us. A personal one, not a distance one. It's a body language indicator, informing me that you are closing off, and it's up to me to open you up again."

She wasn't answering the question, and so I said nothing.

"Yeah, I know. Avoiding the question. Ok, so. Some truth. I work for an agency. It's not actually an official government one. Kind of like Pinkertons. They are detectives, but they don't work officially for the government, but sometimes get asked to help out. Think of us like that. We... help people. I can't go into too much detail though. But Thomas..."

She leaned forward and held out her hands to me. It was in my court as to whether to take the or not. I opted to do it. It meant I had to uncross my arms, and that wasn't lost on me. She could tell from my facial expression that it wasn't, and smiled at me with a little twinkle in it.

"...I will not lie to you. I may not always tell you the entire truth, but I will tell you when I'm not. There are things it's not good or healthy for you to know, for your own good. And yes, I'll make that judgment. That's my job. But I won't lie by omission, and I will tell you when I can't tell you something. So to save you some questions, no I can't tell you what led to April and I coming to you that night, nor can I tell you the details of what is going on now. Suffice to say we are in danger if we stay in Boston, and I am 100% serious about the fact that all I want to do is help. The group I work for will remain nameless for now, but it may not stay that way. It depends on how things develop. But we are the good guys here. I just hope you trust me enough on that.

"I have a profile on you that my group put together before we left for California. It's a bit rushed, but then most of your life is pretty much an open book anyway, to be honest. We got the jist of it, and spending the last few days with you has only confirmed my initial judgment. You are a good guy Thomas. You have issues with society and you've let your height and facial impairment stop you, and we need to do something about that.

"Now, ask your questions. I'm sure you are bursting with them."

I had several.

"You say you "help" people. How? I mean, what do you do?

"I get close to people. Make them comfortable. Sometimes help use that comfort to steer them in a direction they should go, or away from a direction they shouldn't", Megan responded.

There was something about the way she said that. Then I had an epiphany. "Do you fuck them? Is that the kind of agent you are?"

Megan chuckled mirthlessly and let go of my hands. She looked away for a moment, staring at the other people in the bar, the back at me.

"Sometimes," she said, quietly. "If it is really necessary. I never do it to get information out of people. I do it because it's the right thing to do for the moment. I'm not a whore Thomas."

I bunched up my lips and nodded, slowly.

"Ok, well, you are being honest. That's something. So if you fucked me, is that part of your therapy?"

Her eyes narrowed and suddenly her body language started shouting, just as mine had.

"Well, I can see you've already decided who and what I am. No, Thomas, for what it's worth, I wouldn't sleep with you for therapy. It wouldn't do any good at all after this conversation anyway. I'm not on a mission now. If I slept with you, it would be because I wanted to, not because I thought I had to. But we don't have to worry about that, because you've already made an internal decision, haven't you?" she challenged me directly.

I looked away. I was actually ashamed of myself. She was opening up to me, being honest, and I was being a dick about it. On the other hand, she had just basically told me she slept for people for 'the mission', whatever that meant, and I was having trouble with that.

Then, I stopped to think why. Why did I care? What difference did it make to me anyway?

I looked back and said, "I'm sorry. Yeah, I was judging you and I have no right to. I'm really sorry. You are...not the norm, though, you have to admit that. Remember our discussion about ethics and morals? Well, what you do might not be considered ethical or moral by a lot of people, right?"

She laughed. "No, not the norm, I'll give you that. And it may or may not be ethical. But I am really sure, I have to be, that it's moral. Thomas, how many women have you loved?"

The sudden question threw me and I looked away. I didn't want her to see my eyes.

It didn't do any good though. "I thought so. How many women have you had sex with?"

That was a question too far, and I got up to stumble off to the bathroom, so she wouldn't see the watering in my eyes.

I stood in the bathroom and tried to pee and nothing came out. It was time to get control of myself. I kept asking myself "Why do I care? What difference does it make what she thinks?"

Eventually I made my way back to the table. There were two new drinks there.

I sat down and said, honestly, "Sorry. Your question threw me."

She smiled, sympathetically, and said, "It's ok. It's a bastard of a question. I think I already know the answer. Let me guess, you went to Las Vegas because..."

I didn't reply and she finished her own sentence after a pause, and said, "...because that's where all the whores are, right?"

I let out a sigh I didn't know I was holding.

"Oh my. OOOOk. Work is cut out here," she murmured. She took a sip of the new drink and then flicked her eyes at me.

"Thomas, do you think I'm cute?"

I was taken a back. "Um..sure?" I stammered out.

"Would you do me?"

I didn't know how to respond to that. Too eager and I'd sound as desperate as I actually was, and too laid back and...what?

"I think that's a loaded question?" was my best evasive answer.

She actually laughed at that. "Good answer. But we both know the answer is yes, right? I'm good at what I do, and the fact is, I'm not unpleasant on the eyes. Would it surprise you to know that you, Thomas, could have a woman like me? If you really wanted?"

Now I knew she was bullshitting. 'Guiding', my ass. "Yeah, right" was my answer.

"Seriously. You have disadvantages, but most of them are self-inflicted. Your face wound, your height, your social pariah-ship -- none of those should stop you. They only do because you let them. Your face can be fixed. You can't do anything about the height, but plenty of women would not be turned off by that. You sit in your hovel because it's easier than trying. You are, and I take no pleasure in saying, this, but I said I'd tell you the truth -- a social coward. You've had setbacks and you've curled up in a ball. You've got other issues internally -- you killed people -- and now here we are. But the reality is that you've got a lot to offer. You are kind. You are smart. You can be funny, even inadvertently. You have a killer smile, because it goes all the way through you. You are your own person. There are many good qualities there. I just need to get you to see them.

"But back to the original topic. We need to address that little time bomb inside you."

She considered for a moment.

"The car accident. It changed your life, right? Yeah. Totally. Do you know the name of the guy who piled into your parents car?"