Nick wandered through the next few days as the model employee and the perfect boyfriend. He spent the evenings by Sarah's side on the couch, cradling her head against his shoulder while they watched television, fighting back the inner urge to drink to forget. Or sleep. On Wednesday, for it could not be Tuesday, the day after, he sent flowers to Sarah at work. Not roses, he feared that might draw suspicion, but a mixed bouquet that he thought might look good set on the corner of her desk near the picture of himself he knew stood there. After a tortuous day where he thought his guilt was displayed in a visible aura about his body, he found the feeling began to subside. By Thursday, thoughts of Sophia were recallable only on demand, and he did not demand them. He stuffed them deeper down when some part of his brain requisitioned one of the moments for closer scrutiny.
Concentrating more on the story had been the crux in breaking through the shame. He had dived into the legal system for past examples of art thefts, counterfeiting and the like. He called museum curators and art professors for their insights into whether they thought such rings were common, and how they screened the fakes from the genuine when purchasing collections or examining new finds discovered in the attic of some long-dead ancestor. He concentrated on the fame that breaking such a story would bring.
Through it all, Friday arrived and Monday seemed a lot farther in the past than it had even the day before. And if anything, he knew that he needed to get more drunk this night than ever before.
"Cap," Nick said when his friend answered in his phone in his office across town.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"Duh. It's Friday. Happy hour at the Grove okay with you?" Nick asked.
Cap was silent for a few seconds. "Yeah. Maybe five-ish, but probably closer to six. Is Sarah showing?"
"Yeah, about five-thirty."
"Is she bringing that chic?"
"I don't know; didn't ask. Do you want me to find out?"
"Nah, it doesn't matter. I'll see when I get there," Cap said.
Nick looked up at the clock. It was three, his shift was done, three hours was too long to dawdle in the office. "Oh, well. I'll see you there, then. Try for five, I'll be there by then."
"Well, yeah, if I can, but I've got to close up an account before I get out of here, so I gotta go now if I'm going to be anywhere close."
Nick hung up and stared around the office. Paul was sitting across from him and staring through the window at the building across the street. He looked catatonic.
"Beer?" Nick asked.
Paul shifted his eyes and looked at Nick.
"Beer?"
"Yeah. You done for the day?"
Paul nodded and looked around the office. "Now?"
"Yeah, what are you waiting for? Something to explode downtown?"
Paul furrowed his brow for a half-second at Nick's remark and stood up. "Let's go."
They walked down the street a half-block and turned into a wood-paneled, brass-railing bar popular during Friday happy hours for its strong drinks and secretarial pool crowd. It was empty, now, as the secretaries were still making late-afternoon personal calls and the lawyers and bankers were still in drone mode deep inside high rise office buildings. They took a seat at the bar and ordered beers. Nick lit a cigarette.
"I thought you were going to quit those last New Year's," Paul said, swiveling on his stool.
"I was. I decided then to wait until I turned thirty. It seemed like a better day," Nick said.
Their conversation went nowhere from there, degenerating quickly into discussions of office politics, co-workers and recent unsavory occurrences discovered during the course of their beats that never made it into the papers, the most notable being the county commissioner supposedly caught in flagrante delicto with the Children and Youth Services director by the county's chief clerk. It was a story more repulsive than intriguing, given that the chief clerk would not go on the record and that the two involved were both obese.
After an hour, Nick excused himself and drove to the Grove, parking his car against the curb directly in front of the bar. Nick walked through the near empty bar and slid onto a stool, pulled down his tie and looked down the length of the lacquered, wooden bar for Rob. Rob turned around from the cash register, hooked a thumb at the bottles behind him and raised his eyes when Nick shook his head no and pointed to the taps. Rob pulled a beer glass from under the bar and pointed to each tap until Nick nodded, drew a beer, and set it before him.
Nick took a sip and stared at his reflection in the mirror when the tightness squeezed his lower right hip. He frowned and rubbed it, arching his back to stretch out the area but not dissipating the feeling. He had forgotten about the tightness until that moment and it annoyed him to find it still lurking in his body. He ignored it after a moment and returned to contemplating his beer.
"Is anyone sitting here?" asked a deep, gravelly voice to his right. Nick turned his head and stared into a pair of pale blue eyes framed by a thick, stained, scraggly white beard of man in his fifties. He was dressed in a dark coat and pants and a white oxford shirt, unbuttoned to mid-chest and showing a yellowing white tank top beneath. Nick shook his head.
The man sat down on the stool and faced Nick. "I've seen you here before, no?"
Nick remembered the man, vaguely, as a background face from the crowd, a regular to whom he had never spoken, never nodded toward, never acknowledged.
"Yeah. I live just around the corner. You're here a lot."
The man smiled and stuck a cheroot into his mouth. "Well, I'm here as often as you, on the surface of it."
Nick smiled and handed him a lighter.
"Thank you."
"No problem."
"Do you want one?" the man asked, motioning to Nick with his cheroot.
"No, thanks. I've got cigarettes."
The man nodded and proffered his right hand. "I'm Mordechai."
Nick shook the man's hand. It was rough, cracked and dry. "Nick. Nice to meet you."
"Do you ever do lemon drop shots?" Mordechai asked.
Nick shrugged. "Yes. Not normally, though. Why?"
Mordechai looked past Nick. "Robert, two lemon drop shots, please. For me and Nick."
Rob nodded and busied himself behind the bar.
"Hey, you don't have to buy me anything."
"No problem, I'm not going anywhere tonight. You?"
Nick paused for a moment and shook his head.
Rob set the drinks down a second later, and both he and Mordechai licked the crook of their palms, sprinkled sugar on the moist spot, and slipped the lemon between thumb and forefinger. Mordechai picked up his shot glass and motioned to Nick.
"To discovery," Mordechai said. Nick nodded, dumped the liquor into his mouth, licked the sugar and bit down on the lemon.
"I noticed you rubbing your side: Are you hurt?"
"No, just tension, I guess."
Mordechai nodded, moved his cheroot from one corner of his mouth to the other and puffed out several cotton balls. Nick looked over his shoulder at the rest of the bar; it was still too early for anyone else to begin filtering in for the happy hour buffet of deep-fried, batter-dipped vegetables and greasy pizza.
"You know, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation here the other day," Mordechai said, taking the small cigar from his mouth and rolling it between his fingertips.
"What conversation?" Nick asked, trying to remember when he had last been in the bar.
"Last week. You were talking with a friend of yours about bad dreams you were having, sleeping problems, that sort of thing."
"Oh, yeah," Nick said as he tried to remember the conversation.
"I think you said something about a monster appearing in your dreams since you were a kid. Am I right?" Mordechai asked.
Nick looked at him. "Why?"
"I'm just wondering, that's all."
"Yeah, that's right" Nick said, taking a sip of beer.
"Do you want another lemon drop shot?"
"No, thanks. I'd better not get d
runk before my friends show up," Nick said.
"I think you also said something about a lump on your hip, a lump that you just became aware of, right?"
Nick stared into the man's pale eyes and then at the shaggy, smoke-stained beard that formed a corona around his face. Where had this man been last week, Nick wondered.
"Yeah. It's nothing, though."
"But now it's starting to hurt? Or maybe tingle? Yes?" Mordechai said, lifting his glass and tilting a large mouthful of beer into his mouth.
"I think you need another shot," he said, motioning past Nick for Rob to bring two more. "I'm going to tell you something that you're going to find a little odd. The drink will help."
Nick stared at him and then swiveled on his stool to watch as Rob poured two more shots. He gave Rob a questioning look and rolled his eyes back toward Mordechai, and Rob smiled and rolled his eyes in response, indicating harmlessness. Nick turned back toward Mordechai and figured if the old man was buying, he was willing to drink and listen. He'd listened to strange people as part of the daily grind to dredge news stories up from the muck of ordinariness, and someone buying drinks was a bonus. Rob set the shots down and Mordechai began preparing the crook of his palm, indicating that Nick do the same. A moment later and Nick was tasting citrus and sugar.
"Do you believe that humans are the only sentient being on the planet?" Mordechai asked.
"Sentient or intelligent?" Nick asked.
"Sentient. Dolphins and whales and apes are intelligent, to some degree or another, but sentient they're not," Mordechai said.
"Well, I'm sure some people think differently."
"Just about dolphins and whales and sign-language gorillas," Mordechai said. "Doesn't prove anything, though. They're still not sentient."
"Well, then, I'll say yes, humans are the only sentient beings on the planet."
"Why?"
"Well, if there was another sentient species on the planet, I think they'd have figured out how to deal with us so we didn't eat them or ruin their habitat," Nick said, taking a last drag on his cigarette and stubbing it out. He motioned to Rob for another draft. "I also imagine they would have developed some sort of organized civilization, one we humans would have been long-since aware of."
Mordechai nodded thoughtfully and tugged at his beard while puffing on his cheroot. "What if there was another sentient being and it had figured out how to communicate with us so we didn't destroy it or ruin its habitat?"
"What if?" Nick asked back.
"Well, where would it live, do you think?"
Nick picked up his new beer and tipped the foamy head toward his mouth, earning a moustache he wiped away. "Somewhere we aren't, I suppose. Antarctica, perhaps, and remote areas like the Himalayas, I suppose. Perhaps deep under the sea."
"Still, we'd have probably found them by now, right?" Mordechai asked.
"Maybe we have: Bigfoot might not be a myth," Nick said.
Mordechai pulled his cheroot from his mouth and pointed the wet end at Nick's chest. "What if it could live in you?"
"Me?"
"You." Mordechai stuck the cheroot back into his mouth and puffed deeply.
"You mean humans in general, I suppose, don't you?"
"Both. In you, in me, in human beings."
Nick shook his head. "What could possibly live inside a person? Tape worms? Viruses? Bacteria? We know about all that stuff. None of them are sentient."
"Do you know what a symbiont is?" Mordechai asked and took another long drink from his glass.
"A symbiont?" Nick asked, pausing. "You mean a parasite?"
"In a sense, yes, but even though they are parasites, they have beneficial qualities for the host. A normal parasite just lives off a host until the host dies, and then finds a new host. A symbiont lives in harmony with the host, doing whatever it can to ensure both live," Mordechai said.
"I don't know that I've ever heard of something like that, and I know I've never heard of one living off a human being," Nick replied.
Mordechai shrugged. "Of course not. If you were a sentient symbiont, would you want to be discovered by a species like us? An intelligent, sentient symbiont would know that we would institute mandatory screening so that we could find them and excise them."
"So how would they exist, especially now that we know everything about the human body and how it works?" Nick asked as he looked around the room for Cap or Sarah.
"You'd have to assume they are smart enough to disguise themselves within the body so that they wouldn't be detected--"
"As what? The appendix?" Nick said, cutting Mordechai off.
Mordechai smiled and puffed on his cheroot. "As an innocuous lump of fat misplaced on the side of the body, in your case."
Nick jerked on his stool in surprise and screwed up his face for a half-second. "I think a doctor could tell the difference between a lump of fat and a living creature."
"Certainly, but what if the doctor had one in him and the symbiont recognized the one in you and caused the doctor to say your lump was nothing important?" Mordechai asked.
"Now you're talking mind control. How is this a symbiotic relationship? It sounds like one of those secretive half-baked conspiracy theories," Nick said. He looked away from Mordechai, hoping now that either Sarah or Cap would arrive ahead of schedule.
"Not mind control, exactly, and definitely not the government. But what if symbionts exerted influence on your thoughts as a powerful subcurrent that's always flowing just below the level of your awareness. It monitors everything you're doing to ensure its survival and the survival of its species. One of the things it must do, always, is keep your body above suspicion, especially in the age of modern technology. So it keeps its host healthier than most people, it safeguards against diseases and infections that would cause someone to examine a body too closely," Mordechai said, stubbing out his cheroot and draining his beer. He motioned to Rob for another.
"In the process of being a part of your subconscious, it -- intentionally or not -- mingles its mental presence with yours, altering who you are in whatever ways the consciousness of the symbiont gravitates toward. These elements leech into your personality, your habits, the things you enjoy, whatever," Mordechai said, stopping his explanation as Rob set his new beer down.
"What?" Nick asked.
"Let me put it this way: the symbiont keeps you healthier than the average person, much healthier. It has to to survive. It knows what it's up against because it monitors your consciousness and knows the things you know. It adapts your body in positive ways to ensure that it is not discovered," Mordechai said.
"Listen, nothing could hide in your body, alter your consciousness, and not get discovered. Especially if you can tell when it's doing whatever you just said you can tell it's doing. If you can tell, you can get it stopped," Nick said, stubbing out his cigarette and taking another drink of beer.
"If only it were that easy. But what doctor could you tell this to and trust? If you tell a rational, non-symbiont physician you have one of these, he sends you to a psychiatrist. If you go to a doctor who is a symbiont, he tells you that you are being silly and sends you home," Mordechai said.
“What about car crashes or murder victims? They go through surgeries and autopsies,” Nick said.
“Yes, they do, but such procedures would always be done by a symbiont, or a relative of the victim would request otherwise, you see?” Mordechai said.
Nick rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Yeah, right, whatever. Listen, my girlfriend just walked in," Nick said as he saw Sarah walk through the front door and scan the darkened bar. "It was nice talking to you."
Mordechai leaned in close and grabbed his forearm. "Listen, trust no one. Don't tell anybody about this, there is more you need to know and not very much time to tell you."
Nick stared at the man's hand curled around his arm and then looked up into his eyes. Mordechai let go and Nick walked slowly across from the bar and embraced Sarah from behind. She turned as he dropped hi
s arms to his side and sniffed the air coming from his mouth.
"How long have you been here?" she asked.
Nick looked down at his watch. "Just over an hour, I guess. Why?"
"An hour? What've you been doing?"
"Talking with some whacko."
Sarah looked over his shoulder. "Who?"
"The guy with the white beard and black jacket sitting at the bar."
Sarah turned and looked back at him. "Who?"
Nick looked over his shoulder. Mordechai was gone. "He must have gone to the bathroom or something. Some older guy, about fifty or so, thick white beard, bad-fitting suit. Smokes little cigars."
Sarah smiled and looked back at Nick. "Yeah, right. Just the kind of person you'd be talking to in a bar."
"Hey, you weren't here; I had to talk to somebody."
Sarah nodded and narrowed her eyes. "What was his name?"
"Mordechai."
She smiled. "Mordechai?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah. I'd have believed you, maybe, if you'd have said John," Sarah said as she put her purse on a table and sat down.
Nick turned and looked back at the bar. Mordechai, his beer and the empty shot glasses were all gone. He looked back down at Sarah and then back to the bar.
"I'll get us some drinks.".
FIFTEEN