Short Fiction: Hypothetical Boeing

Imagine you are outside a hotel at 5:45PM. Say it’s a Thursday in December. The sun has been down for an hour, and the city wrung out the last drops of its light on your way here. The days are still getting shorter, so the control system that runs the streetlamps hesitates, holding back its amber glow for another few minutes. At least the bus-stop screens are on. Full-length ads for things you don’t want, people besides you, light your way down the sidewalk.

Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that you walk through the front door, looking straight ahead, not stopping to rest in the elegant lobby, which, although a bit small, is appointed with sumptuous leather and velvet couches, arranged in conversation groups for transients who wait in silence. You never so much as glance at the concierge desk, mahogany, imposing. One might imagine they’d stop someone they didn’t recognize, but they could be forgiven for thinking you were a guest. Anyway, you walk past them, past the wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors without bothering to check what the day out has done to your outfit, straight to the elevator on the furthest side of the elevator hallway. Past that, too. You’d probably take the stairs, wouldn’t you? Your shoes would echo softly as they slid to the end of each polished concrete step.

Obviously, you’d know which floor to get out on, and how to get to the room through the windowless labyrinth without so much as looking at the arrows on the wall. You probably wouldn’t even notice that the carpet’s fine fibers gleam dully in the unnaturally lit hallways. Privately, at one point, you might have wondered how the room number found its way to you, let alone the associated schedule. And what that said about its occupant. But now you’d probably just imagine what a pain it would be if to figure out on your own.

How long would you stand outside the door? Would you take a breath to still your nerves? Would you knock, and would your pace quicken at the sound of stirring in the room? At the rasp of the deadbolt, of the chain lock each coming undone? Or would you have your own key? It’d surely be within the realm of possibility. But it’d create more problems than it’d solve. So, as you sit there, would you knock again? Would you wonder if it would ever open? If you were wrong, if you’d been misled, if the setup had been violated.

Let’s further imagine that the door does open, eventually. And that you were expecting this. And that it reluctantly swings open to reveal a man inside, bespectacled, dark-skinned, slight build. Indian, you’d guess; probably a safe bet, statistically speaking. You don’t even know his name. His dark-blue shirt is buttoned up to the neck. You might think that’s excessively formal, that American dress is probably his second aesthetic language. His eyes meet yours for a fraction of a second, wide, magnified further by the thick lenses they hide behind. His lips are pressed shut.

The room is probably a little warmer than you’d have liked. The blinds are drawn and the lights are off, save for one that illuminates a laptop on a desk in the far corner. Let’s say you shut the door after you walk in. Would you shake his hand? Would you smile to put him at ease?

You might lead him to the end of the room, near the window. You ask him to have a seat. You sit down across from him and take out a recording device. Probably not a smartphone. You place it on the small table between you and make a point of turning it on. You might explain to the man that you don’t know who he is, that you don’t know his name, and that he is not to ask yours. It’s simpler that way. He nods silently, and you guess that he was probably instructed to expect this. You ask him why he is here. He blinks. It’s an odd way to phrase it, your wording bound awkwardly by your desire to remain ignorant. Would the question make you wonder why you were there?

You ask him to tell you what he saw. He takes a deep breath and begins. He tells you his name, and the company he works for, and his position and title and responsibilities. His speech is accented a little. He starts describing an incident, sometime last month. You stare intently at his forehead. He’s in a position of authority, he’s high up on an important team, and nobody at his level seems concerned. So he goes to his higher-ups, who tell him it’s not a problem. He lays it out for you, and you’re half listening, and it’s probably a little over your head, but even you can agree that it seems like a pretty big deal. They usually inflate the numbers a bit, makes them feel a little more important, their mission a little more dangerous and heroically crucial. It sounds pretty bad, even minus a fudge factor.

You’d ask him if he’s traded any company stock since the incident. He shakes his head, says no, a little too insistently. He might not have expected you to ask. Not that it really matters.

He says he has proof. He reaches into his pocket. His hand is shaking. He pulls out his phone and shows you a few photos. His hand is shaking so much that you take the phone out of his hand to look. The photos line up with what he’s describing. You could take a small camera out of your pocket and take snaps of the screen, swiping through the camera roll.

Imagine that when you’re done, and you hand him back his phone, he looks at you expectantly. What now? He wants to know. He gets up and begins to pace. Should he wait in the hotel? Is he in danger?

Would you find it ironic? You might tell him to stay calm, to stay put; reach into your jacket pocket and take out a pill in a small baggie. You might tell him it’s xanax, that it’ll help take the edge off while he waits for further instructions. He refuses, though, furrowing his brow and shaking his head no. Would it bother you, to not be able to take the easy way?

Something’s changed. If he was nervous before, he’s kicked in high gear now. Slowly, and then all at once, he senses the real contours of the situation. He looks up at you, suddenly wondering why he’s here, doubting his choice to let in a stranger, to tell him something so important and so secret. He asks you who you are. You tell him it’s not important, but he’s insistent. He’s getting louder and you don’t want anyone else hearing. So this is probably when you’d take out the gun.

It’s an ugly little thing, all corners. The silencer is longer than the gun itself. It’s a small miracle it fit in your coat. He looks at it in shock, his eyes palm-sized behind those thick lenses now. The panic is hitting. You’d point it at him and tell him to shut up and sit down.

The self-preservation instinct is remarkable. If he shouts, if there’s any evidence of a fight, if you have to shoot him, everyone’s job gets a lot harder. Your payout gets cut in half too. All the same to him. He’s dead either way. But nobody’s thinking about your life when his own death looks him in the face, one-eyed.

Then you might offer him the pill again. He just sits there, silent, jaw relaxed but eyes wider than ever. You’re not sure but it looks like he’s crying behind those lenses. After a while, he looks up at you. Are you going to kill him? He asks. How would you answer? It’d probably be kindest to just tell the truth, wouldn’t it? Just take the pill, you tell him. It’ll hurt a lot less than getting shot. But what if you miss? What if there’s evidence of a fight? Why is he asking you these things? You’d tell him you wouldn’t miss.

He asks why. They always ask why. Why them? Who ordered this? Was it because he shorted the stock? How did you find that out? He’ll give it all back, everything, he says. He promises you he’ll never speak about this to anyone. He’s pretty worked up, and admittedly it isn’t very fair, but it’s not your decision to make. You tell him to just take the pill, it’ll be easier that way. You’re still holding the gun, but it might not be pointed at him anymore.

He draws in a breath shakily. He’s trembling all over now, which might reminds you of a Chihuaha you saw on your walk over. You made eye contact with it for a moment, and it quivered in fear, or maybe with rage, or maybe because it was cold in spite of its little quilted sweater. He looks you in the eyes and asks if it’ll hurt. You might tell him no, it’s like going to sleep.

You don’t actually know how it feels. Nobody seems to like it all that much. But maybe that’s because they’re stressed; one day, if you ever have to do it, you’ll probably meditate first, relax a little, get that heart rate down, keep your breathing regular.

He finally assents, asks you to give him the pill. He says he’s going to go fill up a glass of water. He wants to have a little control over his final moments, go out on his own terms. You’d probably know better than to let him get up and move around, though. So you would walk to the sink, keeping an eye on him, pick up a mug sitting upside-down by to the coffee pod machine, fill it halfway, then back to the table, placing the mug and the pill in front of him.

He takes a deep breath, puts the pill on his tongue, and washes it down with the mug of water. It doesn’t take long before he’s unconscious. Usually, you’d stay until his pulse stopped, but your window is almost closed. You need to leave before the cameras can pick you up. You’d take a pill bottle out of your pocket and put it on the table; the same thing you gave him at a much lower dose.

As you closed the door behind you, as you retraced your path across the hotel floor, as you walked down the stairs and back through the lobby and out onto the street and stepped into a cab, as you sat in traffic with your mask on, what would you think about? Would you think about him shaking in that chair, asking for your reassurance? Once you drop the recorder in its PO box, would you remember anything of the story he spoke into it? A new product to avoid or another airline not to take, maybe.

Would you think about your driver? Each of you fungible to the other; you faceless, one drop of water in the howling vortex of the city’s professional class, him a formality on your way through the vast network of vacuum tubes you navigate without effort. Would you make conversation? Your meeting is incidental. Its form emulated a million times a day, its friction slowly ground down by repetition and innovation. You and he could each be anyone. How many of you are there, all across the world, at work, heading there, heading home? He might catch your eye in the rear-view mirror. Long day in the office? Yeah.