The Alligator Bogaloo
Jim followed the security guard down a passage, his hand-held camera still recording. The footage would be jerky, but he had an idea that his documentary was going to feature a lot of disorienting collages, quick cutting between, say, a baby waddling through a maelstrom of soap bubbles and the bland interior of a corporate building.
This passage perfectly encapsulated the aesthetic he was after. The walls were constructed of painted cinder blocks. The glassy floor reflected the fluorescent light fixtures and, more dimly, the ceiling tiles, which were the cheap kind that absorb reverberation and hide the pipes that route pressurized water to the fire sprinklers. At the end of the hallway was a glass door. Above it hung an exit sign.
Jim let the camera drop. “Wait a second,” he said. “That’s an exit. I thought I was going to get to talk to Mr. Harris.”
“Nope,” said the guard. “I’m showing you out, and if you loiter outside I’m calling the cops.”
#
The footage tore apart and focused again on a pair of red Vans. Jim’s hollow voice could be heard saying, “Wait a second.”
“It would have been better if you had got a shot of the guard telling you to leave,” Tabby said. She sat next to Jim in front of his laptop. “You could have blurred out his face or whatever.”
“Yeah, I dropped the ball on that one,” Jim said, rewinding the video and pausing it on a shot of the passage. “But I got some good stuff of me talking in front of the Harris Group sign.”
“Tell me again what the Harris Group is again. I wasn’t listening when you told me.”
“That’s why we have a healthy relationship. We never listen to each other.”
“That’s right, baby. Everything I got to say to you I say in bed.”
“If only that were true.”
“Shut up.” Tabby softly punched his arm.
Jim stared at the image of the passage on the laptop’s screen. He hadn’t stopped thinking about the passage since the security guard ushered him through the glass door. Why did he remember jazz? Not smooth elevator music, but bebop. Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. Something like that. The video didn’t pick up any music, just echoey voices, but in his memory was the sound of a sax, a piano and some swinging drums. It bothered him.
“Um, the Harris Group is uh mysterious foundation. Nobody knows what it does.”
Tabby frowned. “Somebody must know.”
“Yeah, I got an interview next week with a guy who says he worked there. He’s been DMing me on Twitter, and he sounds like a real kook.”
“This is pretty heavy for a college film class, isn’t it?”
“Nah, I’m not taking it that seriously. I’m gonna do a kind of Adam Curtis spoof.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, you know, Soviet montage with Burial playing in the background, and a voiceover of me saying things like, ‘But what if we should have been worried all along?’ There is a whole subreddit dedicated to the conspiracy theory that the Harris Group is trying to build a portal to hell. I’m going to, quote unquote, get to the bottom of it.”
“Here’s what I want to know. Why would anyone want to build a portal to hell? Why not to the Bahamas?”
“Right?”
Jim felt Tabby’s hand find his leg under the desk. He wanted to continue to stare at the passage, but it was getting late, and he felt obliged to take Tabby to bed. He had been through two semi-serious relationships since high school, but he had never been with a woman who was actually in love with him. He once noticed that Tabby’s pupils were dilated when they met in the street and suspected he was the cause. Tabby’s devotion flattered his ego, but he was constantly reminding himself not to abuse the power he had over her like his ex-girlfriend Gwen had done to him. He wanted Tabby to feel that their relationship was fair. Gwen had never played fair, and that hurt him in a way that made it hard for him to give himself completely to Tabby. She wanted a passionate romance, but all he had to offer was equity, and that meant sometimes having sex when he would rather be doing something else.
He leaned over and kissed her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“Sure, but how do I know you aren’t working for the Harris Group?”
Tabby flinched away from him. “Don’t say that.”
Jim tried to laugh it off. “I’m sorry, baby. Bad joke.”
He touched her hand, but she pulled it away.
#
In the movies, espionage had the same semiotic function as vampirism. At least, that was what one of Jim’s professors had said. The spy drained the lifeblood from a virgin nation state the same way the vampire drained actual virgins.
True or not, the idea was intriguing and completely unlike skulking around in real life, which was stupid and frustrating. Marvin, Jim’s interviewee, had refused to meet him at a Starbucks. Instead, he sent him to track down a pay phone. Once found, Jim was to plunk in his quarters and call a pager number. Jim only knew about pagers from watching movies from the 1990s. Like pay phones, they belonged to the lore of a world that no longer existed.
Jim discovered the location of the last existing pay phone in San Narciso on the internet, but when he got there the phone had been ripped out. All that remained were some frayed wires.
“Fuck,” Jim said.
Jim took out his cell and dialed the pager number. He typed in his number and hung up. A few minutes later, Marvin called him back.
“Are we talking on a pay phone?” Marvin asked.
“No, this is my cell.”
“So you’re intent on getting us both killed.”
“The pay phone was ripped out. What was I supposed to do?”
“Pick me up in front of the Panera on Elk and Coyle. I’m wearing a yellow t-shirt.”
Marvin hung up.
#
On his way to the Panera, Jim laughed because the scenario of him asking Marvin if he wouldn’t mind waiting for him to grab a sandwich played out in his head. Damn it, he was hungry! He hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
It crossed his mind that he should scrap this project. It wasn’t ethical to film the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. His deadline was creeping up on him, but he would have time to finish that video essay on sexual infidelity that he had started after Gwen broke up with him.
On the other hand, if failed to show, that would probably freak Marvin out even more. He had an obligation to hear what the guy had to say. He didn’t have to film him.
#
Marvin put on his seat belt and leaned over to glance in the rear view mirror.
“Drive,” he said.
Jim let the car idle forward. “Where to?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just keep driving.”
Jim headed north and turned left on Fair Oaks Blvd. Fair Oaks was a meandering two-lane road that took them deep into the suburbs. He glanced at Marvin several times to get a look at his interviewee. Marvin was a small, dark-skinned man — Filipino, Jim thought — with a gray, Abraham Lincoln beard in need of a trim. He seemed to be on the verge of tears or maybe afflicted by some gnawing pain. His left hand kept configuring shapes. Was he doing sign language? Maybe he had a deaf spouse or child or parent, and he was talking to them in his mind. His eyes had a faraway look.
“Thanks for taking the time to talk with me,” Jim said.
Marvin grunted and leaned over to look into the rear view mirror.
“Are you worried someone is following us?” Jim asked.
“Do you see anything in my eyes? Like little black specks?”
Jim took his eyes off the road. Marvin widened his eyes. Jim glanced back at the road and then took another look into the bloodshot eyes.
“No, I don’t see any specks.”
“Damn,” Marvin said, his voice disconsolate. Jim had to press his lips together to keep himself from smiling. It was not polite to mock the mentally ill.
“Take me back to my car,” Marvin said.
“Is something wrong?”
“Just take me back, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Heart thumping, Jim merged into the left lane and found a turnaround. He drove back to Panera in silence.
Marvin got out of the car and leaned down to look at Jim.
“He likes jazz,” he said. His gaze was so full of disciplinary ire that Jim felt like a child in the principal’s office. “Tell him you want to listen to Alligator Bogaloo, and he’ll see you. Tell him I want my specks back.”
Marvin stood up and slammed the door.
#
Jim lay with Tabby in bed.
“How did your interview go?” she asked.
Jim would have liked to dismiss Marvin as insane, but he hadn’t figured out how to do that yet.
Jim didn’t like jazz. In the 8th grade, his friend Sam had shown him how to pirate music off the internet, and he’d downloaded a couple gigs of jazz because it was there and why not? He hadn’t liked any of it and still didn’t. It was either too busy or too old-fashioned. A few times he had dug the hot stuff for a little while, but one chorus followed another, sax to horn to piano, and he had gotten bored. Jazz was boring.
“I gotta go back to the Harris building tomorrow,” he said. “Can you come with me?”
“I’d have to call off work.”
“Do it. I need you to come with me.”
“Why?”
Jim gazed into Tabby’s eyes. Little black specks swam around in the whites like microorganisms under a microscope.
“I love you,” he whispered.
The words seemed to almost hurt her, but she recovered and told him that she loved him, too.
#
The same security guard as before sat at the desk in the lobby.
“I want to listen to Alligator Bogaloo,” Jim said.
The guard’s scowl turned fearful. He got up from his chair and waved at them to follow.
Jim looked over at Tabby. Her brows showed that she was trying to figure out what was happening. Jim didn’t know himself, so he couldn’t help her. They followed the guard into the same corridor that he had taken Jim down before.
“I want to talk to Mr. Harris,” Jim said. He took his camera out of the bag hanging from his shoulder. He turned it on. He was not leaving until he got some answers or the police showed up to escort him out of the building. And it was all going on film. He was now Adam Curtis, not just a wiseass college student who sought to make fun of Adam Curtis. He needed to know why the world had gone insane.
“Yeah, he’s coming,” the guard said. “Wait here.”
Then something happened that shouldn’t have happened. The guard reached into his blazer and took a pistol out of a shoulder holster. He put the barrel of the gun to his temple and then deafening ear pain and Tabby screaming at the bottom of the sea and blood and gunsmoke misting the air and the fire sprinklers hissing.
A man in a suit came through the exit door, smiling a big toothy smile. In his hand was something black with eyes.
“Jim,” he said. “Who’s this? Your girlfriend? Very good. The more the merrier.”
The man pulled the thing in his hand over his head. It was a gas mask.
The gas escaping from the fire sprinklers hit Jim then. His knees got wobbly. At least, Tabby had stopped screaming. She had collapsed on the glassy floor.
Should he join her?
#
The music roused him from his stupor. Her jerked, but his hands were zipped tied to the mental folding chair was sitting on. Tabby was in a chair next to him, still passed out. Her wrists were also secured.
As best Jim could tell, they were inside a warehouse with a very high ceiling. There were a couple of industrial lamps set up, but the tiny ambit of light they shed was like a camp fire amid the vastness of the night. Mr. Harris — Jim decided the man had to be him — danced to the jazz, jutting his pelvis in time to the organ stabs.
Jim could not quite fathom what the music was supposed to signify. On one hand, it sounded like the corny music you would hear on an old-school game show. Its twelve bar blue form was played openly and proudly. On the other hand, its jazz soloing went into more sophisticated directions.
“Not too often I meet another Lou Donaldson fan,” Mr. Harris said. He danced closer to Jim. There was a scalpel in his hand. He seemed to register Jim’s terror. “Don’t worry I’m just going to cut out your eyes.”
Tabby began to scream.
“Why?” Jim shouted over her.
“I can’t tell you that,” Mr. Harris said. “It’s a big secret. The biggest secret in the whole wide world.”
Tabby sobbed Jim’s name, but he wouldn’t look over at her. He had done this to her. She hadn’t needed to come with him. It was as if he had known what was in store, and he had brought her along out of some sadistic need for her to suffer, too. Not “as if.” He had done exactly that. This was what his sense of equity amounted to. He had deluded himself. He was just another Gwen.
“Hey,” said Mr. Harris. “You want me to call one of my guys? He can film this with your camera. So you kids can watch it later at your leisure. Oh wait a minute. You can’t do that. You won’t have any eyes.”
Mr. Harris cackled and began to dance again. The Alligator Bogaloo grew much louder and a squadron of klaxons joined in, first drowning out Tabby’s screams and then Jim’s.
