BY JACOB AARON REINGOLD
Copyright is held by the author.
ONE LOOK at their passports and Walt was in Moscow, feet pattering through midnight snow. He trotted along the riverbank, brisk air cooling the sweat around his pea coat, leaving him invigorated. He came to the boathouse, surrounded by a sagging chain-link fence, a hammer-and-sickle mural peeling off the cinderblocks. This was it: the headquarters of the international organ-harvesting syndicate. He had been tracking them since Sarajevo. Walt visualized jiu-jitsu takedowns like Jason Bourne.
“Hello?” the man in front of him said. “Last week you send us to wrong place, and now we wait already forty-five minutes. We need housing assistance check.”
Grey, Portland drizzle tapped on the roof of the refugee resettlement office where Walt worked. Outside, a man in a red beanie smashed bottles. Lately Walt’s daydreaming had gotten worse. But Walt was bored of the office and bored of Oregon. Fantasies helped him get through the day. He faced the stout, Russian refugee looming over his desk.
“Your check’s not ready,” Walt said. “Come back next week.”
“But you give us last month’s late, too,” the man said, “without check, no rent!”
The Russian wore a tracksuit and a gold chain. Next to him stood a pruney woman with a babushka scarf and a flat, empty-looking purse. The man cracked his knuckles. The veins in his hands bulged like he wanted to rip off Walt’s head.
Walt’s pulse raced — maybe something exciting would happen at work, after all. A family of persecuted Old Believers like the paperwork said, or Russian mafia in disguise? Walt reached for the cup of pens on the counter as an excuse to stand.
The man craned his neck up. He hadn’t realized Walt the receptionist was six-foot-three. He mumbled something to the woman.
“OK,” he told Walt, “we come back.”
Walt returned to collating. Every so often, he glanced at the world map pinned to the wall. He had a degree in international studies and wanted to be out there. He wasn’t particularly interested in refugees; this was just a job to tide him over until he found something cooler. But it had been two years now since he graduated, and he was still stuck in his hometown as a secretary. He had assembled one file when someone else broke his concentration.
The sob came from the counsellor’s office. That old wooden door was always popping open; you had to ram it with your shoulder. Walt vaguely remembered a Syrian woman coming in that morning, and he had seen enough news from there to sympathize. He put in his earbuds and tried to ignore it. But the woman was wailing. Walt walked over and peeked into the counsellor’s room.
“I’m just gonna shut this . . .” he said. The Syrian woman — mascara rivulets streaking her cheeks — glared. Walt retreated slowly. He needed several tries to fully close the door.
He organized one more file but got bored again and started surreptitiously watching a new spy show on his phone. It was a season finale, with a sword fight on a yacht. Walt wished he could smoke weed at work — even like half a joint. When it was finally break time, Walt headed to the lounge. He found two case managers, Yusuf and Vicente, having donuts.
Walt took a donut and told them about the angry Russian.
“He’s been rude since he got here,” Vicente said, “you know how some of them are.” He shivered, rustling the sleeves of his guayabera. “Besides, if there’s a problem, you can kick his ass.” He feinted a couple jabs at Walt’s shoulder.
Walt smiled. Jiu-jitsu was the one bright spot in his life. He had started classes right after graduating, imagining someday he might need it for his career. He had already earned his purple belt. If he was in shape, he thought as he eyed the donut box, he would have his black belt by now. He took another anyway. Yusuf closed the box.
“You ever hear back about that spy stuff?” Yusuf asked.
Walt wished he hadn’t told his coworkers about applying for intelligence jobs. He had only let it spill when he was tipsy at the holiday party, when they had asked him why he wasn’t a case manager yet.
“No word yet,” Walt said, opening the box for a maple bar. “You know the government.”
At his desk, Walt went to the federal jobs website. He had a new message in his inbox and his knee bounced against the desk. This could be it, he thought.
“Thank you for applying, unfortunately…”
Walt smacked his keyboard. He had already been rejected from the CIA, the NSA, the FBI. And now, the Office of Naval Intelligence. His last resort. He spent the next half hour looking through the window. Rain poured fast and heavy, and the man in the red beanie threw rocks at passing busses. Walt only pretended to work when his boss came out of her office.
He finally recovered enough to collate again when a skinny man in a camo jacket came in. He handed Walt his papers from Iran.
In Tehran, Walt landed on his feet in the villa’s inner courtyard. He crept beside the long, trickling fountain as dawn glowed violet around the mountains. Things had changed since Moscow. Walt worked for a new agency now that was less picky. It turned out the Russians were just pawns ? the real syndicate boss was a Persian oil magnate. Walt ran his hands along the manicured shrubs, smelling the citrus and jasmine.
“Hello?!” the man at the counter said, “is my ID card ready or not?”
The Syrian woman had finished her counselling and approached the desk, now, too. She asked for a bus pass.
Real life was a drag, Walt decided. He left those two in the palace garden, and quiet as a fox slipped through the sliding door and tiptoed across the hand-woven rug. He raced through the hall past the gangster’s Persian miniatures and framed calligraphy . . .
“Hey!” someone shouted, and Walt thought it was the gang leader, when the Syrian woman smacked her palm on the table.
“Do you have bus passes or not? You already sent me to the wrong place for my dental appointment. Now you’re screwing up this guy’s ID.”
Her eyes burned into Walt.
He rifled through a drawer. “Let me see if I can find —”
“Don’t bother,” the woman yelled, “you’re a fat, incompetent loser. You’re worse than the bureaucrats in Aleppo!”
She knocked over the cup of pens on the counter and stormed off. From behind the file cabinets, Vicente snickered.
***
Walt parked at the far end of the strip mall and walked to the dojo in a haze. He usually waited until after to smoke, but it had been a rough day, and he had a joint in the car. He changed into his gi and hit the mat for warm-ups.
A wiry kid named Tyler lizard-crawled past him.
“Ready to get your ass kicked?” Tyler asked. Walt pretended to focus on the drills.
The instructor partnered them up for triangles, and Tyler started choking Walt with his thighs.
“You ever hear back from those spy jobs?” Tyler asked as he pulled Walt into his crotch. Walt’s face turned crimson.
During a water break, Walt went outside for some air. He looked up toward the moon but couldn’t see anything through the clouds. He had to get the hell out of Oregon.
Screw it, he thought, I’ll just go with my backup plan of being a fighter pilot. He looked up the phone number of the Air Force recruiter and called it.
“Have you ever smoked, inhaled, or inserted marijuana?” the recruiter answered. Walt sighed, hung up, and went back indoors.
In the locker room, Walt stood in front of the mirror and lifted his gi. He pinched his belly fat. It had grown steadily since college, but he never really noticed until now. Was that why not many guys ? and no women ? wanted to grapple with him in class? He sniffed himself to check for weed smell.
They drilled takedowns, then sparred. Tyler was feisty. For a while, he kept Walt on defence, and almost caught him in kimura. But Walt had two hundred pounds on him and had been doing this a lot longer. Walt stuck him in an arm bar and squeezed.
But Tyler didn’t submit right away, and Walt’s mind drifted back to Tehran. He surprised the gangster in his bed, but at the last second, the guy pulled a dagger. Walt grabbed his arm and they crashed onto the floor.
“Is that all you got?” Tyler asked, still not tapping out.
Walt upped the pressure slowly. He was pissed but cautious, too ? from the weed. Tyler managed to wait it out until the instructor called time.
“Nice try big guy,” Tyler said as he wriggled away. He grinned smugly.
Walt, sweaty and exhausted, rolled off his partner. He felt something under his leg on the mat, like a lost button. Then he heard it crunch.
Tyler grabbed his hand and shrieked. Everybody stopped, and the instructor flew over, pony-tail billowing behind him. Tyler’s pinkie turned purple and swelled to twice its normal size. It was broken, bad.
“You did this on purpose, you oaf!” Tyler screamed.
Walt’s gaze flitted between the other students. He had been extra careful; he would never do something like that intentionally.
But maybe he did? Maybe he had been too lost in fantasyland. Either way, he fractured another student’s finger. His whole body went hot, and as everyone crowded around Tyler, Walt slumped into the corner. The instructor bandaged Tyler up and Walt offered to take him to urgent care. But Tyler wouldn’t even look at him, and another student volunteered. By the time the incident passed, class was over. The instructor stood in front of the group with his hands in a diamond like a monk.
“Martial arts, like life, can be deadly,” the instructor said, “Remember, in a real-world, street scenario, the best defence is to run.”
Walt drove home extra carefully. He chucked his gi on his apartment floor, microwaved a frozen burrito, and packed a big bowl of Purple Kush.
While he waited for the burrito to cool, he put on a movie and watched Liam Neeson mow down thugs in Istanbul. His whole life, he had loved action, from Bond to Reacher to Batman. It was what made him want to travel the world and fight bad guys. But the government wouldn’t let him. And now, every punch made him think of Tyler. Real violence hadn’t been what he expected.
Bullets sprayed through markets and fruit stalls, and the scenes reminded him of news clips about Syria. He thought of the Syrian woman’s tears. How terrible it must have been, he thought.
The action slowed and there was a love scene, and now something else bugged Walt. Men in action movies were always single and angry. He looked around his one-bedroom at the posters of bikini-models, the beer stains, and the bed he slept in alone. He hadn’t had a problem getting girls in college, but that was a while ago. Walt pushed away the burritos and the bong, switched to a nature documentary, and fell asleep.
***
The next morning, Walt collated for a full hour. But a Zimbabwean man arrived in the office, and his mind wandered again.
In Harare, Walt chased after the wounded oil magnate ? who had hopped a flight from Tehran. Walt dodged old tires and corrugated metal sticking off the shanties like rose thorns. He was gaining on him.
When Walt caught up to him, though, he saw the gangster had a broken pinkie. He looked around at the faces in the slum, and a happy couple stared back at him. Walt sighed and the daydream evaporated.
“I can help you with that,” Walt said, taking the refugee’s papers. He spent the next hour filling out forms for him. After that, Walt started on his backlog, working straight through break. He called the Russians to collect their check, and the Syrian woman ? Rana, he learned from her file ? to pick up paperwork.
The Russian wore the same tracksuit as before and avoided eye contact. He shoved the check into the old woman’s purse. It still looked thin, so Walt gave them fifty dollars from the petty cash. He could make it up later, he figured. The Russians grunted and left.
A few minutes later, Rana came in, and just seeing Walt narrowed her thick eyebrows. Before she could say anything, though, Walt slapped a stack of papers and a month’s worth of bus passes onto the counter.
“I rescheduled your dental appointment to a closer clinic, tomorrow. And here’s your community college application. I left a few things I didn’t know blank, but it’s mostly done.”
She looked everything over, and her forehead creases dissolved.
“Sorry for knocking over your pens yesterday,” she said. The shadow of a smile crept onto her face.
Before, Walt had seen her as some crazy lady. But now he noticed she was only a couple years older than him. She had some extra pounds, but he did, too. And her eyes were the same colour emerald as the woods.
“No, I’m sorry,” Walt said.
Now Walt was in Multnomah Falls, strolling between the firs, Rana’s hand in his. A happy couple celebrating their anniversary. They lingered on the bridge in front of the thundering waterfall. He realized that maybe to her, Oregon was an exciting, far-off place, like the ones he saw in the movies. He wiped a raindrop off her cheek.
Walt thought of the loveless action shows he watched, and his lonely apartment.
“Maybe I can make it up to you,” he said, before even realizing what he was doing, “by taking you out sometime.”
She was already halfway to the door, but she stopped.
“Are you kidding me? Even here,” she said, shaking her head.
Walt’s face burned. He wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth.
“Disgusting,” she yelled, then slammed the door.
When she had gone, Yusuf and Vicente leaned over the file cabinets.
“Not cool, man,” Yusuf said, “she’s just been through hell.”
“I respect the game,” Vicente said, tapping a folder against his palm, “but we can’t hit on clients ? it’s in our contract. You could get fired.”
They all looked toward their boss’s door, which was open. If she hadn’t heard the interaction, someone — maybe even Rana — would tell her. Yusuf and Vicente drifted silently back to their offices, and Walt slid down in his chair like mud.
He took an early lunch and went outside. He paced by the dumpster, pulling his hair and reflecting on all the stupid things he had ever said and done. He would be fired, he knew, and for good reason.
He sat on a soggy bench overlooking the highway and took out his phone to start job hunting. Once, it had thrilled him to look at CIA or NSA postings. But they had rejected him, so he couldn’t fantasize about that. And he didn’t really want to, anymore. He wouldn’t try the military, either — because of weed, sure — but also because of the violence. He was starting to think the work he was doing was important. He could be happy behind a desk, he realized, as long as he could make rent, not hurt anyone, and maybe someday find a date. He searched for other social worker positions and as he scrolled, he even started to smile.
That’s when he heard the scream. At first, Walt couldn’t tell what was happening. Across the parking lot, he saw the Russian help his babushka to their car. But someone else was with them. The man with the red beanie. They were yelling, then the man snatched the old woman’s purse. The thief bolted — straight toward Walt.
Walt’s heart thudded like the semi-trucks on the highway. The concrete bench seat dug into his glutes. He thought of what his instructor said, about avoiding street fights. All over again, he felt the crunch of Tyler’s bone.
The robber closed in; Walt could hear coins jangling in the bag. They couldn’t afford to lose anything. Had he trained so hard only to back down? Walt stood.
The thief reached out his arm to knock Walt away, but it didn’t work. Walt exhaled. In one move, Walt took the man by the sleeve and swept his legs out from under him.
He tumbled, letting go of the bag to catch himself. But he missed the curb and scraped his face, and the purse flew onto the pavement spilling out the cash, coins, and Russian hard candy.
Walt’s heart pounded harder now — he didn’t know if this guy had a weapon and he should run for his life, or if he was hurt so bad Walt would go to jail. Walt leaned cautiously over him.
“You OK?” Walt asked.
The man let out a half-roar, half-groan, and rolled over. He had a gash on his cheek and another on his palm, with pebbly bits of concrete stuck in them. He staggered to his feet.
“I should sue!” the man yelled as he retreated zigzag across the busy street.
Walt bent over and scooped the contents back into the purse.
“You save us,” the Russian man said, shaking Walt’s hand furiously. “Thank you, thank you.”
The babushka pulled Walt toward her.
“You’re a good boy,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
Walt sat back down on the bench. He let his mind drift back to Harare again, just to cuff the criminal and bring him in for questioning.
That’s when he saw Rana emerge from the bus stop and walk toward him. He hadn’t noticed her before, but she had seen everything.
“That was cool of you,” Rana said, smiling at him, and Walt snapped out of Harare.
For the first time in a while, he didn’t have anywhere else to be.
***
Jacob Aaron Reingold has taught English in Oman, served in the U.S. Navy, and worked in refugee resettlement, carpentry, and food service. He currently lives in Spain.
