Jonathan CARROL

Fish in a Barrel

KROPIK WAS EATING A liverwurst sandwich when the kid came in. No more than seventeen, the boy had the obnoxious look of some one too smart for his own good. A wiseguy but no wise guy. He marched right through the open door and stopped in the middle of the nondescript office. Two windows, two large filing cabinets, two brown wastebaskets, two dented and scratched green/brown metal desks. On the wall was a photograph of the most recent President of the United States.

The boy looked slowly around, as if trying to decide whether or not to buy the place.

Kropik dabbed delicately at his small round mouth with a white pa. per napkin and folded it carefully into quarters before dropping it into a wastebasket next to his desk. Plus the kid had red hair. If there was one thing Kropik didn't like, it was red hair.

"I found you!"

"You certainly did."

"I cannot fucking believe it! This place is a rumor, a myth. But here I am, I'm actually here!"

Kropik disliked that kind of language but refrained from protesting. Red hair and a dirty mouth. What a distressing combination. Embarrassed, he looked at his half-eaten sandwich. Liverwurst and Bermuda onion. Creating a good liverwurst sandwich was a modest feat but a satisfying one nevertheless. The secret was in knowing the correct brand of German mustard to use and the exact width of the onion slice

"So. I made it. Now what?"

"How did you find us?"

The boy crossed his arms and smiled "I have my ways." One could almost smell his smugness wafting across the room.

"We are in the phone book. You only have to look us up. We're also on the Internet under governmental offices. It's just that few people bother."

That took the wind out of the boy's sails. And how would one define the precise color of that awful hair? More orange than red, it was the color of a carrot left in the refrigerator too long. Exactly! Dead carrot red.

"There wasn't even a name on the door or anything."

"People find us if they want to. We're a government agency. It just takes a little looking."

"I found you."

Always the diplomat, Kropik smiled warmly. "You certainly did."

Suddenly the boy seemed at a loss for words. People who came to this room were often speechless. Or exhausted. Angry. Hysterical. Rarely calm. In fact few calm people entered this place besides Kropik and Aoyagi. But both of them were employees so they didn't count.

"I don't remember my mother. She died when I was really young."

Kropik stood up and shuffled over to a filing cabinet across the room. He wore a pair of tartan wool bedroom slippers from L.L. Bean which looked enough like street shoes to pass for street shoes, or so he thought. In truth he looked like an old man shlumping around in a pair of shabby bedroom slippers. But then again, he was an old man and didn't pretend otherwise. Unlike his office-mate Aoyagi with his "Grecian Formula" hair dye and gold doodad charm hanging from the effeminate gold chain around his neck. Aoyagi was still trying to be a swinger, but even a word like that in Kropik's active vocabulary defined what decade he came from.

"Don't you want to know my name?"

"We already know."

In surprise, the boy's mouth twitched open and then quickly closed. He knew where he was but still couldn't hide his shock that the old geezer knew who he was without having to ask. "I just thought – '

Already fingering through files in the cabinet, Kropik held up a hand to stop him. "Details aren't necessary. It's all known." His favorite sentence. Forty years on the job but still he never tired of saying those three words. Enjoyed seeing the look on people's faces after he said them because the reactions varied so greatly. Some swallowed like characters in a cartoon. You could see their Adam's apple swell to the size of a PingPong ball and move slowly up and down. All that was needed was a balloon over their head with the word "GULP!" written in it to complete the picture. Or they looked away, acutely embarrassed to realize there were no secrets in this office. Everything was known. Remember that time in the bathroom when you thought you were alone? Or that inspired (albeit illegal) trick you pulled with your mother's will? The dubious tax return, the secret bank account, the XXX Internet addresses in Amsterdam you dialed up at midnight when you thought no one was watching? Forget it someone was watching. Your worst dream just came true. And how! Those were the people who looked away. The Realizers. In a blaze of ugly trumpeting light they realized that finding this office might help in one way, but was also going to flatten them in another.

Bombs away! It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Also Kropik knew something they didn't– having entered this office, they had to take what was there. Had to, like it or not. Some people tried to pull back or literally run away but there were measures to deal with that. The less said the better.

Finding the boy's file (robin's egg blue), he pulled it with a flourish out of the cabinet and returned to his desk. He sat down and centered the file in the middle. The boy craned forward to see, his curiosity making' the muscles in his neck bulge. The old man gestured for him to sit in the chair facing his own. The boy didn't move.

"Come, sit down. I have everything you want right here."

Carrothead lowered himself into the chair as if sure the moment he touched down he would get a lightning bolt up his ass. All the puff-chested bravado of before had disappeared. Now he was only a skinny teenager with a worried look and a dry mouth.

The moment Kropik enjoyed most had arrived. Putting both hands down flat on the desk he conjured his best professional expression. "Every one of your lost memories is contained in this file. They are listed chronologically and begin the moment you were born." He paused to let that one sink in. From decades of experience he knew the best thing to do was not make eye contact. Having heard this piece of information, people's eyes invariably didn't know what to do with it. As if having suddenly been handed something burning hot, like molten lava, the terrible heat stopped their brains.

"You mean, like, I'll remember what it was like to be born?"

Kropik nodded. "That's right."

The boy looked at the file and his brow creased. "And every other memory I ever lost is in there? How come the file is so thin?"

"Do you work with a computer?"

"Computers suck." A dismissive sneer.

Kropik let that one pass. "Do you know what a Zip file is?" The boy looked to see if he was joking. Kropik spread his hands apart as if to show the size of a large fish he had caught. "On computers, you work with files. You create information and put it into separate files. Sometimes there's too much data for one, so you must condense it." He brought his hands slowly together till they touched. "There's a program that creates what are called Zip files. They allow you to crunch together a great deal of information and fit it all into one file. When you're ready, you unzip it and have everything you need." He touched the blue folder on the desk. "This is your Zip file. Your brain will serve to unzip what's here, if I can put it that way."

After a long silence, the boy murmured in a thin, timid voice, "I just want to remember my mother. I keep trying to remember her voice but I can't."

"This will help."

Everything in the room stopped. The two people, the noise, dust motes. Even the strong morning light waited to see what would happen next. The irony being there was no question what happened next– the kid had to open the file and face his facts. Face his music. Face the face he'd never seen before because he had been living behind it until this very minute.