Project X

Not Truth Serum

Two things happened when I woke up the next morning. The first was that my stomach was growling loud enough to wake the dead twice over, and the second was that I stubbed my toe on a large, mouse-brown suitcase at the foot of my bed that hadn't been there the night before.

Once I'd stopped clutching my foot and cursing a lurid blue streak, I hobbled back over and unzipped it. It was filled to the brim with my possessions. My first thought was simple - Isbell - and then there was a tidal wave of helpless, embarrassed frustration, so strong that it blew my regular morning nicotine craving right out of the water. My fingernails scraped and rasped against the material of my clothes as I pawed through it all, wishing it was Isbell's neck I was wringing instead of mismatched socks, and I could see him, I could see exactly what he'd gotten up to in my home, my imagination filling in the gaps with vindictive glee.

He had sauntered around my apartment like he owned it, just as he'd done at my office. I could see him running his finger disdainfully over the dust on my bookshelf, and cocking an eyebrow at the unwashed dishes in the sink and the scorch marks all over the counters. I saw his eyes sweeping over my bedsheets, and I found myself trying to recall if they were stained or not, and when I'd last changed them. I saw him rootling through my my wardrobe and drawers, fingering my shirts, socks, underwear, my goddamn underwear, and picking out what I would wear for the next God knows how long. It was a power move, elegant and cut-throat, disguised as helpfulness, a knife wrapped in silk. Every day, he'd look at me and know that the clothes on my back were chosen by his own fair hand.

I pressed my palms against my eyelids, inhaling and exhaling steadily.

I wondered if he'd looked in the cupboard under the sink and seen the single bottle of nearly-empty tequila, a weekly vice I allowed myself, measured out strictly every Saturday evening. One and a half fluid ounces with two ice cubes and maybe a cigar if I was feeling indulgent, savoured in the sagging armchair by the window with some pulpy crime novel in my lap, oil lamp on the table burning in that unnatural shade of dusky, warm orange, cigar-smoke floating like a diaphanous grey curtain between the rest of the world and those precious Saturday evenings.

I imagined Isbell plonking himself down on that armchair, swinging his legs onto the table and knocking the oil lamp on the floor with a booted foot, glancing disinterestedly in the direction of the sound of shattering glass as he lit one of my cigars.

Helpless, embarrassed frustration. He was very good at teasing out that particular combination of emotions.

Eventually, I started to sift properly through the contents of the suitcase, resigned to the fact that my home had been violated and no amount of pacing around imagining Isbell in various creative positions involving the picana would change that. Everything in the bag could be sorted into two categories - clothes and books. Underwear, pants, shirts, and then notebooks, textbooks, a couple of ring-binders filled with case studies and research papers. I found my passport at the bottom, under a pair of worn grey slacks Gammy had bought me. A disappointingly unremarkable, impersonal collection of items, all too easily transferred from home to workplace, all too easily uprooted and replanted. I thought of my houseplants, worrying briefly about who would water them before remembering that I could barely remember to water the damn things myself half the time.

Cross-legged on the floor, crumpled clothes spilling out of the half-empty suitcase in front of me, a dog-eared hardback copy of Psychology for Life Adjustment balancing precariously on my knee. Hair wild and unbrushed, stomach still yowling to be fed, trying to come up with something substantial that tethered my existence to my home, coming up with nothing. That was my first morning at the CIA facility.

******

Too soon, we were heading towards room B-19, all but hurtling through those blank slate-grey corridors, Isbell effortlessly several paces ahead of us. Even at a stroll, that man managed to move faster than just about anyone else I could think of, certainly faster than me. Three pairs of shoes beat an irregular tattoo against the hardwood floors, and I cursed myself for the heavy breakfast I'd eaten earlier, the gummy mixture of toast, eggs, bacon and coffee juddering and groaning with each step I took. Swallowing, I bit my lower lip grimly, clutched the tape recording machine tighter to my chest, and clenched my abdominals, resolving to keep my stomach contents firmly in place if it killed me. Blowing my groceries before I even officially did anything that qualified as work was not an option, not if I wanted to keep my balls attached to my scrotum instead of in Isbell's pocket.