In The Mind's Eye

Human, Like Me

I am hidden within

who you think I am.

              - Leo Connellan

I forget how old I was. I had to be over fifty, because it must have been after my mid-life crisis. I had to be less self-involved, or I never would have noticed him. You get less self-involved after your mid-life crisis. Really. Seamlessly, automatically, you gradually become other-involved. Probably it starts in your family. If you have children, probably with them. Gradually. I don’t have children. But I can imagine that.

He sat across from me in the only seat left in the cafeteria. It was a round table. Conversations crossed in front of us. I was imagining white noise when he sat down. Not that they were loud. The conversations. Just rapid and streaming. They overlapped, so I couldn’t hear any breathing. Nice and easy.

Nothing going on interrupted his dining. He ate continually. All in one motion. Not as though he was counting the bites. He wasn’t the type. I could tell by his clothes. No. Something beyond a conscious effort. And occasionally he stared at an angle onto the tablecloth as though he was examining one of the several stains. But he wasn’t. Not the type one would expect.

He was black. Or African-American, if you prefer. Negro? No, not Negro. Not colored, either. Not currently, anyway. Am I cynical? A closet racist? Does it matter? All that stuff is carted out when someone has a leverage to build. Getting the advantage. That’s what matters. Right? But I digress. (I know that’s trite, but consider that I’m at least over 50.). I’m sure he didn’t think it matters. He seems more focused than that.

The other people left the table. One of them, still talking bumped into his chair. He kept eating, looking down for his next mouthful. He had been eating metronomically. That’s a nice touch. It’s what kept my interest. I don’t see that much. Mostly it’s gulping. A few bites. A swig of beverage. And then gulping.  Everyone's in a hurry. To the grave? Not him. He seemed far too focused on his business, whatever that was, I guess. Eventually he looked up at me.

I smiled. Why do people do that? Absolute strangers look at you, and you smile. Why don’t you frown offensively? I suppose we want to be liked, to be acceptable, to make a positive impression.. But not me. Mine's habitual. From childhood. I'm long past the being-liked phase. But he didn't smile. He deadpanned.

“You like the food here?” I asked.

“I don’t think about the food.” He looked away toward the serving line.

“I usually bring my food. But I forgot to make it last night.” I do stuff like that. When I try to make conversation. I add some vacant explanation. As though anyone would care.

“Oh.” His eyes looked over my shoulder. I turned and saw the woman he was trailing with his eyes. Then he looked at his watch.

“What’s your department here?” I asked. Not a lifer. Too young. They come and go.

“Security.” And he looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. But the smile was twisted. One side didn’t move. And then I noticed the scar along his cheek.

“Making sure everyone has the ID, eh?” I held up my ID. “I got mine!” I laughed.

“Not like that.” He returned to deadpan. He seemed terribly confident. “I don’t look for tags on lanyards.” He keened forward and looked me in the eyes again. “I know what I’m looking for.”

I looked away. Here was this guy. I began feeling guilty. A guy like this could do that. I thought I was getting to know him, you know, he seemed human, like me. But something was definitely different. He was black, of course, but this was something else. Maybe in his mind. Just sitting there in a cafeteria. He didn’t seem to belong there.

“Can you tell about me?” I asked.

“I think I can. My job is to know what I’m about.” He sat straight back in his chair. It felt like he was coming to attention. His eyes squinted a little. Like he was creating his confidence.

I looked around the cafeteria. Time was running out. People were going back to their cubicles. Mid-day was closing. I looked at my watch.

”You look like someone who might have had some military training. Is that right?” I asked and looked at a spot just beneath his chin. I figured as long as he was staying, I’d keep asking.

“Yeah. And the most important training came from my time in Afghanistan.” He twisted his neck and turned his head from side to side. The movement made his suit seem to fit too tight. “Can’t get training like that at home.” He smiled. He must have figured he was in on something I didn’t know about. It entertained him, I guess.

We were almost alone. Some stragglers were getting some drinks to take back to their workstations. Two or three cleaning staff. Me and this guy.

“You have any family?” I asked.

“No,” he said, then quickly leaned forward, frowning. “Hey. You keep asking about me, but you say nothing about yourself.” He looked around. “I bet you have some stories to tell about this place.”

“Me? No. Not much to tell. I just go about my business. Nine to five. That kind of thing.” The look on his face said he didn’t believe me. I don’t know why. There’s nothing extraordinary about me. Same black or navy blue suit, white shirts, three or four ties all more or less the same. If they could, people would walk right through me. I’m comfortable with that.

He seemed to be interested in these few stragglers. Finally, only the cleaning staff remained. “Excuse me, “ he said and walked over to them. After some brief pleasantries, which I couldn’t hear, his face got very serious. And he seemed to be doing all the talking. As he talked, the three people glanced my way, but I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me or at something behind me.

He finished talking and began returning to the table and stopped briefly to get a drink of water. By that time the silencer was already snug in its place. By the time he was about five feet from the table, he looked back, I suppose to see if they had left. They had.

As he turned back toward me, saying “I’m sorry, they—“, I fired twice. One shot went precisely to the left of his chest’s midline, directly into his heart, and the other shot went at a 45 degree angle just above his Adam’s apple, through the center of his brain and out the top of his head. I unscrewed the silencer, returned the Glock to my case and left the way I entered.

I thought some of you might be interested in my thoughts as I did what I did and how I went about doing it.

                                                              The End

(The title of Connellan’s poem is “The Assassin,” p. 129 in his New and Collected Poems, Paragon House, 1989.)