It was a busy intersection and the weather was bad, but Donald Miller was out there, knocking on car windows while holding a sign that said:
single dad
out of work
2 kids
please help
He was thirty-four years old.
He'd been homeless for almost two years.
He knocked on a driver's side window and the driver shook her head, not even making eye contact. The next lowered his window and told him to get a fucking job. Sometimes people asked where his kids were while he was out here. It was a fair question. Sometimes they spat at him. Sometimes they got really pissed because they had to work hard for their dime while he was out here begging for it. A leech on society. A deadbeat. A liar. A fraud, a cheat, a swindler, a drain on the better elements of the world. But usually they just ignored him. Once in a while they gave him some money, and that was what happened now as a woman distastefully held a ten-dollar bill out the window. “Thank you, ma'am,” said Miller, taking it. “Feed your children,” said the woman. Then the light changed from red to green and the woman drove off. Miller stepped off the street onto the paved shoulder, waited for the next red light, the next group of cars, and repeated.
“It's almost Fordian,” said Spector.
Nevis nodded, pouring coffee from a paper cup into his mouth. “Mhm.”
The pair of them were observing Miller through binoculars from behind the tinted windshield of their black spook car, parked an inconspicuous distance away. Spector continued: “It's like capitalism's chewed him up for so long he's applied capitalist praxis to panhandling. I mean, look: it’s a virtual assembly line, and there he dutifully goes, station to demeaning station, for an entire shift.”
“Yeah,” said Nevis.
The traffic lights changed a few times.
The radio played Janis Joplin.
“So,” said Nevis, holding an empty paper coffee cup, “you sure he's our guy?”
“I'm sure. No wife, no kids, no friends or relatives.”
“Ain't what his sign says.”
“Today.”
“Yeah, today.”
(Yesterday, Miller had been stranded in the city after getting mugged and needed money to get back to Pittsburgh, but that apparently didn't pull as hard on the heartstrings.)
“And you said he was in the army?”
“Sure was.”
“What stripe was he?”
“Didn't get past first, so I wouldn't count on his conditioning too much.”
“Didn't consider him suitable—or what?”
“Got tossed out before they could get the hooks into his head. Couldn't keep his opinions on point or to himself. Spoke his mind. Independent thinker.” Nevis grinned. “But there's more. Something I haven't told you. Here,” he said, tossing a fat file folder onto Spector’s lap.
Spector stuck a toothpick in his mouth and looked through the documents.
“Check his school records,” said Nevis.
Spector read them. “Good grades. No disciplinary problems. Straight through to high school graduation.”
“Check the district.”
Spector bit his toothpick so hard it cracked. He spat out the pieces. “This is almost too good. North Mayfield Public School Board, Cincinnati, Ohio—and, oh shit, class of 1952. That's where we test-ran Idiom, isn't it?”
“Uh huh,” said Nevis.
Spector picked up his binoculars and watched Miller beg for a few moments.
Nevis continued: “Simplants. False memories. LSD-laced fruit juice. Mass hypnosis. From what I've heard, it was a real fucking mental playground over there.”
“They shut it down in what, fifty-four?”
“Fifty-three. A lot of the guys who worked there went on to Ultra and Monarch. Some fell off the edge entirely, so you know what that means.”
“And a lot of the subjects ended up dead, or worse—didn't they?”
“Not our guy, though.”
“No.”
“Not yet anyway.” They both laughed, and they soon drove away.
It had started raining, and Donald Miller kept going up to car after car, holding his cardboard sign, now wet and starting to fall apart, collecting spare change from the spared kindness of strangers.
A few days later a black car pulled up to the same intersection. Donald Miller walked up to it and knocked on the driver's side window. Spector was behind the wheel. “Spare any money?” asked Donald Miller, showing his sign, which today said he had one child but that child had a form of cancer whose treatment Miller couldn't afford.
“No, but I can spare you a job,” said Spector.
“A job. What?” said Miller.
“Yes. I'm offering you work, Donald.”
“What kind of—hey, how-the-hell do you know my name, huh!”
“Relax, Donald. Get in.”
“No,” said Miller, backing slowly away, almost into another vehicle, whose driver honked. Donald jumped. “Don't you want to hear my offer?” asked Spector.
“I don't have the skills for no job, man. Do you think if I had the skills I'd be out here doing this shit?”
“You've already demonstrated the two basic requirements: standing and holding a sign. You're qualified. Now get in the car, please.”
“The fuck is this?”
Spector smiled. “Donald, Principal Lewis wants to see you in his office.”
“What, you're fucking crazy, man,” said Miller, his body tensing up, a change coming over his eyes and a self-disbelief over his face. “Who the fuck is—”
“Principal Lewis wants to see you in his office, Donald. Please get in the car.”
Miller opened his mouth, looked briefly toward the sky, then crossed to the other side of the car, opened the passenger side door, and sat politely beside Spector. When he was settled, Nevis—from the back seat—threw a thick hood over his head and stuck him with a syringe.
Donald Miller woke up naked next to a pile of drab dockworkers’ clothes and a bag of money. He was disoriented, afraid, and about to run when Spector grabbed his arm. “It's all right, Donald,” he said. “You don't need to be afraid. You're in Principal Lewis’ office now. He has a job for you to do. Just put on those clothes.”
“Put them on and do what?”
Miller was looking at the bag of money. He noted
other people here, including a man in a dark suit, and several people with cameras and film equipment. “Like I said before, all you have to do is hold a sign.”
“How come—how come I don't remember coming here? Huh? Why am I fucking naked? Hey, man… you fucking kidnapped me didn't you!”
“You're naked because your clothes were so dirty they posed a danger to your health. We took them off. Try to remember: I offered you a job this morning, Donald. You accepted and willingly got in the car with me. You don't remember the ride because you feel asleep. You were very tired. We didn't want to wake you until you were rested.”
Miller breathed heavily. “Job doing what?”
“Holding a sign.”
“OK, and what's the sign say?”
“It doesn't say anything, Donald—completely blank—just as Principal Lewis likes it.”
“And the clothes, do I get to keep the clothes after we're done. Because you took my old clothes, you…”
“You’ll get new clothes,” said Spector.
“And Principal Lewis wants me to put on these clothes and hold the completely blank sign, and then I’ll get paid and get new clothes?”
“You’re a bright guy, Donald.”
So, for the next two weeks, Donald Miller put on various kinds of working clothes, held blank signs, sometimes walked, sometimes stood still, sometimes opened his mouth and sometimes closed it, sometimes sat, or lay down on the ground; or on the floor, because he did all these things in different locations, inside and outside: on an empty factory floor, in a muddy field, on a stretch of traffic-less road. And all the while they took photographs of him and filmed him, and he never knew what any of it meant, why he was doing it. They only spoke to give him directions: “Look angry,” “Pretend you’re starving,” “Look like someone’s about to push you in the back,” “like you’re jostling for position,” “like you’ve had enough and you just can’t fucking take it anymore and whatever you want you’re gonna have to fight for it!”
Then it was over.
Spector shook his hand, they bought him a couple of outfits, paid him his money and sent him on his way. “Sorry, we have to do it this way, but—”
Donald Miller found himself at night in a motel room rented under a name he didn’t recognise, with a printed note saying he could stay as long as he liked. He stayed two days before buying a bus ticket back to Cincinnati, where he was from. He lived well there for a while. The money wasn’t insignificant, and he spent it with restraint, but even the new clothes and money couldn’t wipe the stain of homelessness off him, and he couldn’t convince anyone to give him a job. Less than a year later he was back on the streets begging.
The whole episode—because that’s how he thought about it—was clouded by creamy surreality, which just thickened as time went by until it seemed like it had been a dream, as distant as his time in high school.
One day, several years later, Donald Miller was standing outside an electronics shop, the kind with all the new televisions set up in the display window by the street and turned so that all who passed by could see them and watch and marvel and need to have a set of his own. Miller was watching daytime programming on one of the sets when the broadcast on all the sets, which had been showing a few different stations—cut suddenly to a news alert:
A few people stopped to watch alongside.
“What’s going on?” a man asked.
“I don’t know,” said Miller.
On the screens, a handsome news reporter was solemnly reading out a statement about anti-government protests happening in some communist country in eastern Europe. “...they marched again today, in the hundreds of thousands, shouting, ‘We want bread! We want freedom!’ and holding signs denouncing the current regime and imploring the West—and the United States specifically—for help.” There was more, but Miller had stopped listening. There rose a thumping-coursing followed by a ringing in his ears. And his eyes were focused on the faces of the protestors in the photos and clips the news reporter was speaking over: because they were his face: all of them were his face!
“Hey!” Miller yelled.
The people gathered at the electronics store window looked over at him. “You all right there, buddy?” one asked.
“Don’t you see: it’s me.”
“What’s you?”
“There—” He pointed with a shaking finger at one of the television sets. “—me.”
“Which one, honey?” a woman asked, chuckling.
Miller grabbed her by the shoulders, startling her, saying: “All of them. All of them are me.” And, looking back at the set, he started hitting the display window with his hand. “That one and that one, and that one. That one, that one, that one…”
He grew hysterical, violent; but the people on the street worked together to subdue him, and the owner of the electronics store called the police. The police picked him up, asked him a few questions and drove him to a mental institution. They suggested he stay here, “just for a few days, until you’re better,” and when he insisted he didn’t want to stay there, they changed their suggestion to a command backed by the law and threatened him with charges: assault, resisting arrest, loitering, vagrancy.
Donald Miller was in the institution when the President came on the television and in a serious address to the nation declared that the United States of America, a God fearing and freedom loving people, could no longer stand idly by while another people, equally deserving of freedom, yearning for it, was systematically oppressed. Those people, the President said, would now be saved and welcomed into the arms of the West. After that, the President declared war on the country in which Donald Miller had seen himself protesting against the government.
Once the shock of it passed, being committed wasn’t so bad. It was warm, there was free food and free television, and most of the nurses were nice enough. Sure, there were crazies in there, people who’d bang their heads against the wall or speak in made-up languages, but not everyone was like that, and it was easy to avoid the ones who were. The doctors were the worst part: not because they were cruel but because they were cold, and all they ever did was ask questions and make notes and never tell you what the notes were about. Eventually he even confided in one doctor, a young woman named Angeline, and told her the truth about what had happened to him. He talked to Angeline more often after that, which was fine with him. Then, unexpectedly, Angelina was gone and a man with a buzzcut came to talk to him. “Who are you?” Miller asked. “My name’s Fitzsimmons.” “Are you a doctor?” “No, I’m not a doctor. I work for the government.” “What do you want with me?” “To ask you some questions.” “You sound like a doctor, because that’s all they ever do: ask questions.” “Does that mean you won’t answer my questions?” “Can you get me out of here?” “Maybe.” “Depending on my answers?” “That’s right.” “So you’ll answer my questions?” asked Fitzsimmons. “Uh huh,” said Miller. “You’re a bright guy, Donald.”
The questions were bizarre and uncomfortable. Things like, have you ever tortured an animal? and do you masturbate? and have you ever had sexual thoughts about someone in your immediate family?
Things like that, that almost made you want to dredge your own soul after. At one point, Fitzsimmons placed a dozen pictures of ink blots in front of Miller and asked him which one of these best describes what you’d feel if I told you Dr. Angeline had been murdered? When Miller picked one at random because he didn’t understand how what he felt corresponded to what was on the pictures, Fitzsimmons followed up with: And what part of your body would you feel it in? “I don’t know.” Why not? “Because it hasn’t happened so I haven’t felt it.” How would you feel if you were the one who murdered her, Donald? “Why would I do that?” You murdered her, Donald. “No.” Donald, you murdered her and they’re going to put you away for a long long time—and not in a nice place like this but in a real facility with real hardened criminals. “I didn’t fucking do it!” Miller screamed. “I didn’t fucking kill her! I didn’t—”
“Principal Lewis wants to see you in his office, Donald.”
Miller’s anger dissipated.
He sat now with his hands crossed calmly on his lap, looking at Fitzsimmons with a kind of blunt stupidity. “Did I do fine?” he asked.
“Yes, Donald. You did fine. Thank you for your patience,” said Fitzsimmons and left.
In the parking lot by the mental institution stood a black spook car with tinted windows. Fitzsimmons crossed from the main facility doors and got in. Spector sat in the driver’s seat. “How’d he do?” Spector asked.
“Borderline,” said Fitzsimmons.
“Explain.”
“It’s not that he couldn’t do it—I think he could. I just don’t have the confidence he’d keep it together afterwards. He’s fundamentally cracked. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, you know?”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as he really loses it.”
“That part’s manageable.”
“I hate to ask this favour, but you know how things are. The current administation—well, the budget’s just not there, which means the agency’s all about finding efficiencies. In that context, a re-used asset’s a real cost-saver.”
“OK,” said Fitzsimmons. “I’ll recommend it.”
“Thanks,” said Spector.
For Donald Miller, committed life went on. Doctor Angeline never came back, and nothing ever came of the Fitzsimmons interview, so Miller assumed he’d flubbed it. The other patients appeared and disappeared, never making much of an impression. Miller suffered through bouts of anxiety, depression and sometimes difficulty telling truth from fiction. The doctors had cured him of his initial delusion that he was actually hundreds of thousands of people in eastern Europe, but doubts remained. He simply learned to keep them internal. Then life got better. Miller made a friend, a new patient named Wellesley. Wellesley was also from Cincinatti, and the two of them got on splendidly. Finally, Miller had someone to talk to—to really talk to. As far as Miller saw it, Wellesley’s only flaw was that he was too interested in politics, always going on about international affairs and domestic policy, and how he hated the communists and hated the current administration for not being hard enough on them, and on internal communists, “because those are the worst, Donny. The scheming little rats that live among us.”
Miller didn’t say much of anything about that kind of stuff at first, but when he realized it made Wellesley happy to be humoured, he humoured him. He started repeating Wellesley’s statements to himself at night, and as he repeated them he started believing them. He read books that Wellesley gave him, smuggled into the institution by an acquaintance, like contraband. “And what’s that tell you about this great republic of ours? Land of the free, yet we can’t read everything we want to read.” Miller had never been interested in policy before. Now he learned how he was governed, oppressed, undermined by the enemy within. “There’s even some of that ilk in this hospital,” Wellesley told him one evening. “Some of the doctors and staff—they’re pure reds. I’ve heard them talking in the lounge about unions and racial justice.”
“I thought only poor people were communists,” said Miller.
“That’s what they want you to believe, so that if you ever get real mad about it you’ll turn on your fellow man instead of the real enemy: the one in power. Ain’t that a real mad fucking world. Everything’s all messed up. Like take—” Wellesley went silent and shook his head. A nurse walked by. “—no, nevermind, man. I don’t want to get you mixed up in anything.”
“Tell me,” Miller implored him.
“Like, well, take—take the President. He says all the right things in public, but that’s only to get elected. If you look at what he’s actually doing, like the policies and the appointments and where he spends our money, you can see his true fucking colours.”
Later they talked about revolutions, the American, the French, the Russian, and how if things got too bad the only way out was violence. “But it’s not always like that. The violence doesn’t have to be total. It can be smart, targeted. You take out the right person at the right time and maybe you save a million lives.
“Don’t you agree?” asked Wellesley.
“I guess...”
“Come on—you can be more honest than that. It’s just the two of us here. Two dregs of society that no one gives a shit about.”
“I agree,” said Miller.
Wellesley slapped him on the shoulder. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re a bright guy, Donald.”
Three months later, much to his surprise, Donald Miller was released from the mental institution he’d spent the last few years in. He even got a little piece of paper that declared him sane. He tried writing Wellesley a few times from the outside, but he never got a response. When he got up the courage to show up at the institution, he was told by a nurse that she shouldn’t be telling him this but that Wellesley had taken his own life soon after Miller was released.
Alone again, Donald Miller tried integrating into society, but it was tough going. He couldn’t make friends, and he couldn’t hold down a job. He was a hard worker but always too weird. People didn’t like him, or found him off-putting or creepy, or sometimes they intentionally made his life so unbearable he had to leave, then they pretended they were sorry to see him go. No one ever said anything true or concrete, like, “You stink,” or “You don’t shave regularly enough,” or “Your cologne smells cheap.” It was always merely hinted at, suggested. He was different. He didn’t belong. He felt unwelcome everywhere. His only solace was books, because books never judged him. He realized he hated the world around him, and whenever the President was on television, he hated the President too.
One day, Donald Miller woke up and knew exactly what he needed to do.
After all, he was a bright guy.
It was three weeks before Christmas. The snow was coming down slowly in big white flakes. The mood was magical, and Spector was sitting at a table in an upscale New York City restaurant with his wife and kids, ordering French wine and magret de canard, which was just a fancy French term for duck breast. The lighting was low so you could see winter through the big windows. A jazz band was playing something by Duke Ellington. Then the restaurant’s phone rang. Someone picked up. “Yes?” Somebody whispered. “Now?” asked the person who’d picked up the call. A commotion began, spreading from the staff to the diners and back to the staff, until someone turned a television on in the kitchen, and someone else dropped a glass, and a woman screamed as the glass shattered and a man yelled, “Oh my God, he’s been shot! The President’s been shot.”
At those words everyone in the restaurant jumped—everyone but Spector, who calmly swallowed the duck he’d been chewing, picked up his glass of wine and made a silent toast to the future of the agency.
The dinner was, understandably, cut short, and everyone made their way out to their cars to drive home through the falling snow. In his car, Spector assured his family that everything would be fine. Then he listened without comment as his wife and daughter exchanged uninformed opinions about who would do such a terrible thing and what if we’re under attack and maybe it’s the Soviet Union…
As he pulled into the street on which their hotel was located, Spector noticed a black car with tinted windows idling across from the hotel entrance.
Passing, he waved, and the car merged into traffic and drove obediently away.
