The Unbinding by Walter Kirn Page A

calls.
    “It’s nothing worth calling the cops about,” I said, “but it’s certainly worth some vigilante payback. I won’t hit their houses, though; I’ll hit their vehicles. More personal. More perturbing. More like rape.”
    I hadn’t met Selkirk’s eyes yet, but I did now. They appeared untroubled but oddly filmy, as though he possessed those translucent inner lids that God gives to animals that swim and dive. And that’s what he seemed to have done: He’d submarined.
    “I need my narcotics,” I said. And it was true. There’s no pain worse than foot pain. Nor is there any diversion that can numb it. When the hurt comes from the bottom up, when it’s agony at the root, the self-important top two-thirds of us becomes an irrelevant dead trunk.
    “Too bad about your mess. That’s sick,” said Grant, still needling her beau, I sensed. “Hope it wasn’t superhard to clean. And hope you get the shot you need. Nice meeting you. There’s someone I need to cook a healthy breakfast for.”
    And then, with no farewell to Selkirk, no pat on the arm, no smile, no blown kiss, she set out across the courtyard for the parking lot, abandoning the winding sidewalk for a straighter route through the wet grass. She thought she was being cold and cutting, obviously, but Selkirk seemed fine with it, even a bit amused. He’d already forgotten her, but her attempted snubbing meant she’d missed it—and that she’d always miss it. Which is right where you want a woman you don’t care for but periodically have use for. Until you’re truly done with her, that is, and need the poor fool to believe it.
    This gave me an idea. An idea that, if it worked, I might regard someday as
the
idea. To clear the way for it, however, I’d have to come clean about my last idea.
    “I shouldn’t have joked like that. You had every right. I fucked you. I fucked your dog. You should have used pipe bombs. Hollow points. I’m sorry. My broken toes here? Karma. Kent, forgive me.”
    Selkirk rigid. Selkirk seizing up. Hands in pockets, elbows straight, knees locked. Selkirk convinced that if he warms to me, if he relaxes, I’ll get him with a shiv. Never trust a Robert Robinson. And I might just do it. Better safe than sorry. Selkirk adds nothing to society’s plus side. Anyone with lips can man a phone bank and read out canned advice on using jumper cables and treating spider bites. In the negative column, the traumas he might cause, if he’s allowed to continue, are sure to be unique.
    Still, he’s valuable to us. If we lose Selkirk, we lose Grant, and then the old colonel, who may be our true target, and the whole toothpick castle will fall before it’s built. And just when I’m laying in the central crosspiece.
    “You want the rotten truth? I took your new pet because I’m jealous, Kent. I’m not a drooling aft man, no, but I am most definitely jealous. Meeting you, reading you, dating your old girlfriend (who I’m shit-scared still loves you), I’ve started to wish I could be you. But I can’t. I can’t even get your attention on the street. I don’t have a lot of friends here.”
    Tentatively, in a whisper, calmer now: “I ignored you or something? When? I don’t remember that.”
    “I know you saw me waving. I whistled, too.”
    “Sometimes I get caught up in my thoughts. Was I in the plaza on my lunch break? I’m a basket case on my lunch breaks. I’m still buzzing from the AidSat chatter. It’s like the calls just keep on coming in.”
    “You want the dog back? I can do that. I’m ex-ATF. I can fix things. And I’m sorry.”
    “You were federal once? Really?”
    “Low-middle federal. That’s where everyone gets stuck, though.”
    “I hear it’s not great pay.”
    “It buys the beer. And believe me, you start to need the beer.”
    He nodded. “Burnout. That’s what a lot of our calls come down to. Burnout.”
    “In my case, flameout.”
    “Huh.”
    “Complicated episode.”
    “Describe