Oath and Error, Entry III: The Road Trip

A month has passed.

My partner and I have been on several missions since then, all of which have remained within the boundary of Escort service. I had been dreading another job resembling that of the one concerning the long-dead Giles Gunther and his insatiable thirst for power and knowledge. It seemed that our captain had taken more care with regards to the types of jobs he handed to his employees. Or it might have been that no other dangerous job had landed on his desk. Not yet.

Orion and I had not forgotten all that had transpired in The Amazon, but we pretended as if we could, as if we had. Over time we repressed the memories with ease. That we had been given relatively easy jobs afterwards had given us more than ample time to recover from our show of weakness, as well as to rebuild our armor of wit and humor, as it was these things that helped many of us to survive the aftertaste of whatever had the potential to destroy our lives.

We kept our atmosphere light; we never spoke about that job again. But it had stained us; there were times when we would each catch the other watching in quiet thought, during the quiet times when we were left to our own musings. Much as we tried to lie to ourselves we could not properly draw an impassable boundary for our own thoughts and memories. We would see that fearful cloud shadow our faces. Yet whatever we thought was never spoken.

We did not speak of such things not only because we did not believe there was wisdom in doing this, but we were, in many ways, unable to do so. Each agent who had ever stalked the grounds of any Gifted agency started their introduction into the profession as a Student Two, and it was here that they were broken down so they could, like unshaped clay, be reconstructed by the agency into the killing machines they needed to be. It was during this reconstruction that certain parts of their emotions were infused with parts of iron. As a consequence, their hearts were not as easily accessible as before. Agents were still emotional beings, capable of anger, laughter and sadness. But there were times when we could not express it as easily as others; and there were times when we were crippled by the conflict within us that resulted from a need to reveal our feelings versus the reluctance to do so.

That armor of iron was a part of us; it had been forced into our blood.

There were, however, truly genuine moments of humor that were the lighter shades of our profession. Our targets were not without emotions themselves, and had their own personalities, inclusive of their own ways to react to varying situations. Some of these ways were not always expected, and Orion and I were at times caught off guard by them, enough to look at our targets in wonder.

It was also the humorous side of things that caused us to pay more visits to our captain than others, when we did not like to pay him any kind of visit. Reports were sometimes made to our captain by Humans who wanted to exercise their right to make complaints against the behavior or comportment of their escorts. Each Escort unit within our department had at least one complaint made against them for some reason or other. We were no exception.

One complaint that had arisen over time regarded Orion’s sexual appeal in the eyes of the women he protected. The complaint, however, had not been made by any of our targets, but by our captain, as he had been made aware of it. We, in turn, had been asked to enter his office.

Orion was a very handsome man, this could not be denied when one considered his physical attributes and his attractiveness, and his attraction lay not only in his ways of seduction whenever he deliberately chose to seduce someone, but in the normal things he did without thought: how, within the confines of a conversation he could be very silent when a woman wanted to be listened to, yet he would gaze at her so she believed her words had never been more captivating; how he had the ability to look at whatever was the object of his concentration with eyes that might as well have carried invisible fingers with them. Women, both Human and Gifted, were drawn to these things. But to his defense he was, at certain times, the very epitome of professionalism, and only went a margin above our prescribed cordiality to ease the terror that struck some of our targets during their worst times. It was, I suppose, not his fault that they pursued him, though I would never openly admit this, not even while we were being berated by our cold captain.

There were times when one could afford to muffle Captain White’s words with daydreams, as we knew at certain points the things he would say, the threats he would make, some of which would be delivered. It was on the matter of my partner’s sexual appeal that I deliberately drifted off; I felt affronted that I was being blamed, though it was common knowledge that if agents were praised as a unit, they were also blamed as a unit.

Orion had dared to speak a word of protest that he had done nothing wrong, that he had retained his professional aloofness where protecting the young Russian heiress was concerned. I remembered her well, the pale-eyed woman who had spent the earlier hours treating us to cold words and almost scornful interactions whenever we were forced to communicate. But we had saved her life more than once before bringing her to the instructed destination, and these acts of bravery had won her heart. Or so she would have had us believe. She could not have been more than sixteen, the age that rendered her sick with the wine of young love. She had wanted my partner as soon as we had introduced ourselves, but had decided to pretend as if she did not, as if her aloofness would make her more interesting to an older man.

Her immaturity was revealed upon her choice to break down in tears when, standing on a low mountain on the southern coast of Crete, we were to end our relationship and watch her leave. She had spoken with a voice so wracked with tearful sadness against the backdrop of restless winds that the Red Tape agent who was supposed to receive her codes suspected that she was being forced to lie that she was safe when she was not. It was all a misunderstanding. What ensued after that involved us being asked to explain ourselves, and Intelligence agents were sent to find all three of us in order to understand what was going on.

By the time the debacle ended and all was straightened out, my partner had been furious with everyone for putting his professionalism into question. His fury could only be equaled by the girl’s sorrow; though the wind beneath the dying sky had erased the words that passed between them as she was being taken away by her servants, an audible sentence had escaped into my ear.

“‘You came into my life when I least expected it, and now you will leave with my heart.’”

I must have been showing a ghost of a smile as I stood in the captain’s office, as he addressed me long enough for me to instantly wipe it off my face.

Humor was oftentimes a present undercurrent within our department. At times it was forced, at other times natural, owing to the comic personalities of the agents. It was on a Wednesday a few weeks ago when Briggs graced the morning with an exaggerated stroll down the white and grey tiled aisle of our department. He had wanted his colleagues to have the full view of his new snakeskin boots. They had been given to him, we later learned, on his birthday by his new girlfriend, a young kindergarten teacher. She believed it would enhance his sex appeal.

There were those of us who looked at them and smiled for his benefit, and in the eyes of others he wore them well. But the men, who were, as far as many of us were concerned, a sect separate and apart from the rest of the department, took things to an extreme: throughout the entire day Briggs was subject to catcalls and whistles, only it was the men who were making such noises in jest. They imitated the high pitch of our voices and batted their eyelashes, making sure he heard and saw them. They were making fun of both his boots and him. Briggs, of course, enjoyed it all. The next day he wore a cowboy hat, though making sure the captain never saw it. For the men it was a day of jesting all over again.

The men of Escort truly belonged to some other faction that we, the women, did not understand, and shared a brotherhood that could come about only by the seriousness of their profession and the respect they bestowed upon each other because of this.

Many of them were good friends, though at times they took care not to be too attached to each other, as not for a moment was it lost on them that agents did not have the normal lifespan of an honest Human who worked an honest job. Their friendship continued, nevertheless, off Taurean premises: they went out for beers, took trips to car exhibitions and races, among other things. The women would remark time after time that they were in a club unknown to us, what with the ironclad camaraderie that they all had.

It was inevitable, then, that one of them would want to form a club.

“It wouldn’t really be like a real club. It would be a group of us then. But just men, because it’s like there aren’t any clubs or groups in America that women can’t leave to us. They’ve got to be in everything.”

This had come from Marcus Philips, the colleague who had birthed the idea. He had come round to our desk to broach the idea to Orion, the one who, as far as many of the men were concerned, had the power to declare any venture they undertook as sensible or tragic. Philips had not particularly wanted me to be involved in the conversation, but I refused to be intimidated into leaving my desk to roam elsewhere. His distraction was welcome; however, as it had been a slow morning and we were in no mood to update back-logged reports, but to procrastinate.

It had been passed along the ever-thriving workplace grapevine that Philips and his girlfriend of five years had gone their separate ways for reasons that we could only speculate. We suspected there was still some amount of bitterness in him, as his narrow face seemed forlorn at times and angry at others, and had he taken to gazing at nothing if nothing held his interest. I suppose his idea of a club had come about because he was suddenly without an anchor now that his girlfriend had gone. Many knew it was sometimes a depressing experience, being alone when one did not want to be.

But his words lent to him an air of retaliation not only against his former lover, but against the entire female demographic. He wanted to belong to a group in which there were no women.

“What would we do?” Orion asked. He leaned backward in his chair to show Philips he was giving him his full attention. But Orion, like myself, was only looking for a way to sensibly procrastinate.

Encouraged, he continued. “We’d do anything: exchange DVD’s, talk about video games that just came out, get drunk, get stuffed, make bets on any conceivable thing, go to the gym together, watch sports together...It’s anything us men want to do without the influence of women.” Philips glanced in my direction.

“Why are you throwing words at me?” I asked Philips. “I don’t want to join your club.”

“And even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.” He fixed me in a superior stare.

“But I don’t want to.”

“Yes. And even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to join your club.”

He folded his arms, gazed off in Orion’s direction and sighed as if he had just been harassed. “Women.”
Orion nodded, not wanting to upset Philips in his delicate stage.

“What are the rules,” he asked conspiratorially. “Are there rules?”

“First rule of The Man Club is: You Don’t Talk About The Man Club.”

“Isn’t that an altered line from Fight Club? The one with Brad Pitt?”

“I watched it last night. Still gets my blood boiling.”

I removed a stick of lip balm from my bag. My mind was wandering.

“The Man Club is anything we want it to be. We can even get around to making T-Shirts, rings, whatever.”

“The Man Club, though? It sounds strange.”

“We can work on the name if you like. We’re just starting out, after all.”

Contrary to my initial belief, Philips seemed to truly desire the activation of the club. It was not likely that the thought would go away after his heart had healed from the bitterness of the breakup. And I saw in his eyes the need for Orion to sanction it, because if he did then the others would give interest to it.

And Orion was in need of something that would add savor to what promised to be a monotonous day. So he spoke the magic words.

“I’ll think about it.”

Philips left our desk with a lightness in his step, gone to find another male to whom he could pitch his idea. His confidence could not be mistaken; he had received Night’s seal of approval, shadowy though it was.

“Why are you encouraging him?” I said afterward.

“I want to see if it’ll fly...The Man Club.”

I had thought that The Man Club would never fly. I was wrong: The Man Club soared like an eagle. As far as most of us knew, it became a legitimate club within a week, as many men had been curious as to how long such an unprecedented venture would last. Surely, it would go against one of the agency’s many rules, though no one was ever certain which one. The women took to searching Taurus’ rulebook each morning for at least one that would be broken by the new club, and we were soon accused of trying to orchestrate its downfall. Perhaps we were guilty, but we had been insulted by their group, as if they had needed to be free from us. Or such was our excuse. The truth was our curiosity had overwhelmed us.

It soon became apparent that the men liked to belong to a secret society within a secret society of spies, perhaps because of the mantle of elitism that was instantly cast about their shoulders. It had required that the women constantly coagulate at the desk of anyone who knew a current Man Club event for us to know a thimbleful of what the members carried on with.

And what we learned usually gave rise to jealousy: they watched live sports games and reruns to cheer on their favorite teams and discuss the strategies of victory. They played video games for hours at a time as if they were still children, and the victors of these games would sometimes utilize their bragging rights the next evening by subjecting their victims to dares of humiliation. GQ, Maxim, Esquire and Men’s Health were their Bibles, and cards depicting pictures of nude women were their currency of choice. They made T-Shirts and caps that each had a nickname that was given to them by their Man Club peers. They exchanged movies often and loved action movies best.

The Man Club flew on wings of steel, and under the leadership of Philips, it would soar to new heights.

Even Tristan Scott was a member of The Man Club.

“The weekend guys want to go on a trip to Vegas,” he told me one night in Bangkok, Thailand.

I had nodded then, only half-listening. He had chosen to speak when he believed I was relaxed, but my mind was elsewhere, as much had happened that night. More attention was being given to all that had been done before.

I remembered how, after I had chosen to spend my Friday evening indoors in front of the t.v., Tristan had called. I had been pleased to hear his voice, as I had not wanted to be alone, but had stubbornly restrained myself from calling him to keep my company; I did not want him to devalue me for being clingy. I had expected us to have a conversation, whatever the topic I would not care, and neither would he; he was the one who often listened while I spoke about whatever struck my mind, and I usually loved the attention.

It was always amusing to hear him ask for my permission to take me out, I admired his respect, how he was able to bestow a sense of importance upon me. I had consented readily, despite his refusal to tell me where we would go. But I had dressed and prepared myself, my blood warm from the suspense. I did not care then if we would go to a restaurant or take a simple walk down the street, or sit in the grass somewhere to gaze at brightening stars.

And when he had arrived, he appeared on the doorstep dressed in jeans and a sweater, smiling pleasantly as if he knew a secret. I had invited him inside, and he entered, then locked the door. A pause of expectation followed, and it was when my amusement evolved to a deeper level of curiosity that he took us away on a breath of air.

He had taken us to Bangkok in Thailand. We would, he said, embark upon a tour of the Grand Palace, the home of the Emerald Buddha.

Among other tourists we had walked, who were natives and foreigners alike. He had not spoken for some time, and neither had I, perhaps because there had been nothing to say. We listened to the people, and heard distinct threads of the locals’ language, how sharp and flavored it sounded to the ears of those who could not understand it. I had stuck my hands in my pockets and looked at the stars which were half concealed behind moving blue clouds. The night had already descended there, but it was still young. The air was cool, the perfect balance between warm and cold. A few cars drove past, their tires made soft whispers on the asphalt. It was never lost on me how the atmosphere of each country was different, how it could not help but pass into one’s body and work its subtle changes.

Only after we had the entrance to the palace within our sights did Tristan choose to make me aware of the fact that the Grand Palace was closed. It certainly explained how strange it had seemed that no one was entering or leaving the premises. The road was clear, and what little we could see of the palace seemed subdued. He must have read my mind, because he told me to let him worry about the guards. We would not be caught.

We entered past the closed main gate, the Wiseedtschairi Gate, more commonly known as the Gate of Wonderful Victory. Our feet touched the wide road for only a second before we were gone in passing smoke from the presence of uniformed guards who watched the entrance. They had not heard a sound.

We appeared in the Museum of Royal Regalia and Coins, and were swathed in darkness. The silence was interrupted by the reluctant sound of my heels on the smooth floor, and I looked round until a beam of light from Tristan’s flashlight revealed the far-off walls. We were on the first floor, so said the pamphlet that he had retrieved from his jeans pocket. It was thick, and resembled a novelette. He spoke in a low voice as we moved round the furniture carved from wood and interior items that were put on display, naming them all. These were both old and valuable objects that had remained through the ravages of time, beyond the deaths of the ones who had ruled in their earlier, glorious years. Though items on display, they were the strings that linked the present to the past. One could not help but revere them.

Our next destination was the complex called Mahamontien, or High Residence, which comprised three buildings. It was the hall of the front building that we toured. Called Amarindra Vinichai, or Divine Decision, it was there that King Bhumibol had been crowned and where King Rama I had received homage on the wide throne. It was grand, that throne, even in that lack of proper lighting, and for some time we looked at it in thought. All that we had seen was taking us back in time, because we did not feel as if we were in the present, but ghosts that stalked the grounds of a great palace after the people had closed their doors.

But another throne, the kind that befitted European kings, also stood in front of it. It was there that King Bhumibol preferred to sit, but the other one, I believed, was more suited to a Thai king, and I said as much. Tristan’s opinion was neutral; the king was only moving along with the times, as we all were, much as many of us liked to believe we remained in the rich culture of the past. And what was culture but the atmosphere of the present.

He led me round a number of columns to the right of the building, told me that where we now stood was where royal proclamations were read to the people. I looked up at the posts on either side of us colored red and gold. It had been to these that the royal elephants were tethered in the past. Were they still there they would have been moving lazily on their trunk-like legs; they would gave looked on all that was beneath them through black eyes.

We appeared in front of the Dusit Maha Prasat, to the west of the Chakri Palace where the kings and queens had lived in the east and west wings respectively. It was a beautiful building, built by King Rama I in 1789. The overlapping roofs were black within the night’s shadow. Tristan said they were red and green, and that the gables of each were painted gold. By the aid of my power we hovered above these so the colors could be clearly seen. At the point where the roofs met were four birds, the Garudas, which it was said were steeds of the Hindu god Vishnu.

To the inner hall we went, to the place that had once been King Rama’s Audience Chamber, the place where he had welcomed his guests. We looked at the old furniture and touched some of them with care, admiring their ornaments. Our light had isolated the hole in the south wall where the king had sat and used as his throne, and rose higher to the beams within the ceilings and walls which I was told had been transported there from the north during King Rama’s time.

Past the Amphorn Ohimok Prasat we walked, the wooden pavilion where the king would change his robes before entering the Audience Chamber. Tristan had wanted us to walk in places where the guards were absent, not wanting to deprive me of the experience. I was grateful for it, and leaned on his arm until he allowed himself to hold my hand.

We entered the Wat Phra Kaeo past the gate that was guarded by two demon statues, which, according to the pamphlet, were gifts from Chinese merchants. We looked at the murals that covered the wall of the epic Ramakien before turning left to observe a somewhat tall object, the Phra Si Ratana, that was covered in tiles of gold and set upon a circular base. It was said that either a bone or a hair of Buddha himself was kept within it. I wondered how true this was, if any of the local Ghosts had ever tried to see what was inside.

Afterward we went to the Holy of Holies, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. We walked in the dark, through a side portal, and in the silence I could feel my heart beating. We did not, however, enter the open space on foot, but flitted there and floated before the canopy upon which the plinth stood. It was upon this plinth that the 30 inch emerald statue sat. We were silent, almost to the point of holding our breaths, not only in caution against the guards who might have entered while we were still there, but because of what we were now seeing.

It gazed forward, the statue, wearing a robe around its body. It wore a perpetual smile of kindness, the smile of the enlightened, and the more I looked the more it seemed that it was only by choice that the statue did not tilt its head at us, that it did not speak, as if the one the Buddhists worshipped truly possessed the emerald vessel.

Tristan called me to look at the murals which had been restored over time, some of which told the life of Buddha, as well as at the pictures and words that had been written on the shutters of windows and on the doors. But I looked at them only for short periods of time before returning to the statue to gaze into its eyes.

Our tour ended by the pavilions in which the king used to prepare himself before conducting ceremonies within the temple. We sat in one of them. It was here that Tristan stole a kiss, one that I returned just as meaningfully. He removed a small, velvet box, and handed it to me. Inside was an emerald pendant that rested inside on the tiny white pillow, a circle with a flower in its center. So I would not forget that night, he had said. And I had kissed him again.

Afterwards we had left to sit upon the wide roof of Tenface Bangkok, a boutique hotel in the city’s district of Pathumwan. The lights of the buildings around us and the cars that were tiny points travelling in lines and curves that were roads down below, as well as the combined lights that reflected on the surfaces of other places were an attractive feature. We had entered Bangkok without truly being a part of it, and I laughed when he had left my side only to return with Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and a newly purchased sweater that I drew over my head.

Being on the roofs of tall buildings always gave to me the heady illusion of being more powerful than all who were below, as I was closer to the celestial heavens than they. It was a feeling that I loved. It seemed he loved this too.

As he spoke the last word of his sentence I was back to the present, not wanting him to think I had not heard. His arm was wrapped around me, and my head rested on his chest.

“Vegas,” I murmured.

“Yes.”

I paused. “It’s far away...in Nevada.”

“You don’t want me to go?” His voice vibrated through his chest.

“Is that what you want to hear?”

“It is.”

“Then I do not want you to go, Tristan Scott. I want you to stay here with me and forsake The Man Club.” I chuckled. “But it is your choice; if you back out of the trip they will want to know the reason.”

“You would be my reason.”

“A woman? The arch-nemesis of The Man Club? You would be punished.”

He laughed, squeezed me closer. “I’d deal with it. I’d choose you if I had to.”

I loved these words, though I never told him I did. I felt very possessive of him suddenly, not wanting to hand him over to his colleagues for even a second; they could not have him next weekend, or ever. But I was afraid of what I was feeling, because risen memories that I did not wish to remember fought against it. Memories of someone else.

I sighed, determined to think of Tristan alone, to appreciate his kindness, the extraordinary night we had had together.

“You can go with them next weekend if you like,” I said, “but this weekend can be our own.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“It is a request. Stay with me tonight.”