Intaglio

By Bek D Corbin
edited by Steve Zink

 

Intaglio: an engraving or incised figure in stone or other hard material depressed below the surface, so that an impression from the design yields an image in relief in an exact opposite.

 

The People at Kale-McKinney Machinery & Manufacturing were going to get their way. Ed knew that. The anti-pollution measures that the Jessup-Kirukazi bill required cut too deeply into their profit margins, and were too inconspicuous to have any PR value. They'd fight it in the courts, and if that didn't work, they'd just pull up stakes and move somewhere that didn't have any such confining restrictions. He called Roger Laumer, the 'troubleshooter' at K-M M&M.

"Raj? Ed Forrestal here. I've looked at the numbers. I'm sorry, Raj, but you're talking through your hat! Pulling up stakes would mean stopping production for at least three months longer than the Jessup-Kirukazi modifications would, even IF you managed to slide right into a completely new berth somewhere else. AND if you completely relocated to East Wango-Wango or wherever, you may make a bundle on lowered labor costs and like that, but given the global economic climate, can you risk it? I mean, how can you justify getting a Federal bailout if 90% of your facilities are abroad? And somehow, I just don't see the President-for-all-Eternity of East Wango-Wango giving you so much as a brass glimbler to keep you going if you go belly up.

"Nope, Raj, I think your Board of Directors at Kale-McKinney are just going to have to bite the bullet on this one."

Roger Laumer had been expecting this. "Gee, that's a bitch, Ed! I guess we'll just have to explain it somehow to the stockholders. In this economy, they should be grateful that we're not going into Chapter 11! Say, Ed - have you heard about that post opening at the Department of Labor?"

Ten minutes later, it was never said, but clearly understood that Ed Forrestal would introduce a carefully worded last minute rider onto the Jessup-Kirukazi bill that would allow Kale-McKinney 'breathing room'. In other words, he would build them a loophole. In return, Kale-McKinney and a few other benefiting manufacturing firms with facilities in the state would use their lobbying muscle to get Ed the job in the Labor Department. Once there, since he owed them his well-paying Federal level job, he would do everything he reasonably could to keep the labor unions firmly shackled.

'Well,' he thought to himself, 'they were going to win anyway'. They always do, one way or another. It's important in Politics to know which fights you can win, and when and how to fight them. Now, they're committed to keeping their facilities in the state. That's a victory for the working people, isn't it? If he'd just got up on his hind legs and fought them tooth and nail, they'd have just ground him into the dirt. Doing it this way, he told himself, he was on the winning side, and able to do some real good on the Federal level. And its not like piddling little Emissions Regulations on the state level would really impact on Global Warming, anyway.

What was next on the agenda? Oh, yes. The nursing home. He dialed the Halcyon Health Maintenance Center, and made the arrangements. Halcyon looked nice enough in the brochures, the people that he'd spoken with seemed responsible, and their prices were reasonable. His mother would be in good hands with them. With his career starting to take off as it was, he just couldn't spare the time to make sure that she was doing well. Besides, she never did get along with his wife Emma. Not that he did, either.

That done, he settled back before doing anything else. He didn't like putting his mother in an old folks' home, but a Man understood that necessity often demanded that we do things that don't seem right at first. Then the phone rang.

As he picked it up, he wondered who it might be. Like most Movers and Shakers, his calls, incoming or outgoing, were almost as carefully scheduled as his visits.

"Edward Gareth Forrestal?"

"Yes, who is this?"

"You can call me Faith."

"Faith? Faith Gunderson?"

"Just Faith. I have information in which you would be very interested."

"Oh? Regarding what?"

"Regarding the deal that you just cut with Kale-McKinney Machinery and Manufacturing to tie a loophole for them in the Jessup-Kirukazi bill."

"That's ridiculous! I've backed the Jessup-Kirukazi bill for months! Why would I go to all that trouble, just to undermine it?"

"So that you'll get re-elected long enough for Kale-McKinney and their cronies to grease you into that Labor Department job. But what are your odds of getting re-elected be, if it got out that you helped Daniel Latthan, the CEO of Central Equity Partners, hide the fact that he'd been double-mortgaging properties and using the funds to play with Tech stocks? Or the fact that you helped to fabricate the scandal that undermined that Renter's Coalition a few years back?"

"Even if ANY of these outrageous claims had any validity, how could you have found out about them?"

"The same way that I know - and can prove - that thirty-one years ago, you got your black girlfriend pregnant and ran out on her. You left her to have and raise your son all by herself. Which cost her any chance that she may have had to complete her education and have a career. By the way, did you know that your son is doing Ten-to-Twenty for Assualt with a Deadly Weapon, Extortion and other Gang Related Activities? I wonder who would be more pissed off after hearing that - the Liberals, who think you're one of their own, for abandoning your girlfriend and son - or your crypto-racist corporate masters, for 'muddying the waters' in the first place?"

"Okay, if you were going to spread any of these slanderous lies, you would have gone straight to the Press or to my opponent, Carruthers. But you're talking to me. What is it you want?"

"I only want to arrange a meeting with you. There are a few things that you need to see. Come to the attraction that just set up at the corner of Rumpole and Bailey in ten minutes."

"Ten minutes? But that's-"

"That's not long enough to arrange an ambush or call the cops with a phonied up story? That's the point! You have Ten minutes, starting right now! If you aren't here when the clock stops, well... Well, we just won't have our meeting. Can you afford that?" With that, the line went dead.

Ed slammed down the phone and hurried out of the office, pausing only to tell his secrertary Gertie that he had a fire to put out and to re-schedule his appointments for the afternoon.

All the way to the corner of Rumpole Street and Bailey Avenue, Ed tried to get someone on his cell phone. When he pulled up to the corner, he saw that it was a vacant lot in which someone had put up a large green circus tent, with a yellow banner floating high above the center pole. Signs facing both streets announced that it was the "Hall of Mystic Mirrors" in large green letters. Smaller letters underneath invited visitors to "Be Amazed - Be Amused; See What Lies Without _and_ Within; $1 Admission."

It was a good place to arrange a secret meeting. 'Faith' had probably paid off whoever was running this to only let whoever said that they were here to meet her in. If someone saw him go in - well, it's a public attraction, isn't it? Ed wasted two minutes parking in front of the tent, trying to get anyone on the phone, without any luck. Looking at his watch, he saw that he was cutting it too close. He got out of the car and casually walked over to the entrance.

An elderly black man with a round, merry face and a salt-and-pepper beard, wearing green slacks, a green and yellow striped vest, a long white shirt with garters on the sleeves and an old fashioned straw boater hat with a green band greeted him. "Good Day, Sir, and Welcome to the Hallowed Hall of Mystic Mirrors! Come in and reflect! See yourself as you are and you aren't! Remember, while a mirror may twist and distort, it cannot LIE! Admission only a dollar."

Ed looked at him and said as casually as he could, "I'm here to meet someone called Faith."

"Yes, indeed you are, Sir! But admission is still a dollar!"

Oh well, if a buck was all this was going to cost him, then he was making out like a bandit. He paid the dollar. The barker smiled broadly. "Remember, Sir - you are responsible for any broken mirrors. After all, it's not OUR fault if you don't like what you see!"

The tent was large, and the mirrors were set up in a maze-like arrangement. The first mirror wasn't anything special, just an ordinary looking glass. Probably there to set a contrast to the others. Ed preened a bit in the ordinary mirror. At fifty-two, he was still a good looking man; fit, trim from hours of exercise religiously observed, his face still firm and regal. He wasn't the young Adonis of his salad days anymore, but but then a man who keeps his looks as he passes middle age is in a much better situation than a woman who does. That, and his lifelong gift of gab saw to it that he didn't have to rely on that frigid trophy wife of his, Emma, for his nookie. His dark hair was going silver, so even if he started to gain weight, he'd just go from being that 'mature gentleman' that so many girls dream of, to being the grandfatherly type. Which wouldn't get him as much nookie, but would probably get him more votes.

"Like what you see?" a velvety contralto voice asked as if from nowhere. "But then, you would."

"Faith?"

"Yes, I'm the one who called you here. Yes, you're still looking good - but then, looking good was never really a problem for you, now was it?"

"Do we know each other?"

"Once, long ago, we knew each other very well. But we haven't been on speaking terms for years."

"So, what is it that you want, exactly?"

"I brought you here, so that you could see what you're doing, without the things that normally cloud your vision." 

"Wonderful. I'm being blackmailed by a Zen master wannabee."

Then he saw her - or at least her reflection in one of the mirrors. She was a rather good looking middle aged woman, with a trim figure, long chestnut brown hair with a splay of gray in the front, a long face with a strong chin, high cheekbones and a straight nose. She was still a handsome woman, but she was obviously past her prime. She wore a well-tailored women's suit with low heeled pumps.

"Well, are we at least going to talk this over face to face? Or are you going to heckle me from behind all these mirrors?"

"Well, Ed, here's the deal - you can find me, if you follow the path of the right mirrors."

"And what if I don't want to play this stupid game? What if I just leave?"

"Go ahead - try."

Ed turned around and tried the door. It wouldn't budge. He hammered at it, but it was far too solid for anything built into a flimsy tent. "Let me out of here!"

The silver bells of Faith's laughter echoed through the tent. "You'll have to find me to get out of this maze. For once in your life, you'll have to see something through to the end."

"What's that crack supposed to mean?"

As if in answer, Ed saw an image in a mirror just down the hall. He walked over and peered into the mirror. Instead of a warped version of himself, Ed saw an undistorted view of a richly appointed room at a country club. He was talking to Dan Lattham, the CEO of Central Equity Partners.Over a game of pool, he saw and heard himself obliquely agree to sidetrack an investigation of his banking practices by 'emphasizing' the investigation of drug money laundering. In exchange, Lattham had passed along some inside information that Ed had used to make a killing on the market - with public funds.

How the hell had they managed to plant a camera in the country club? And where could they have hidden it? The angle was all wrong for the usual 'hidden camera' shots. Hell, the POV kept shifting...

Then Ed's image in the mirror looked up from the pool table and fixed him with a steely glare. "Hey, I may be a shark, but at least I'm not a whore!"

Ed, stung far worse than he would have thought, unthinkingly lashed out and smashed the mirror. The shattered glass didn't cut his hands, but he felt somehow damaged - lessened.

It was an ordinary mirror. There was no LED mechanism behind the silvered pane. No electronics of any sort. It was just glass. Whoever these people were, they weren't pikers.

"Yes, a whore." Faith's voice was closer. Ed looked around. There she was, reflected in another mirror. He could tell that she was somehow closer.

"I am NOT a whore!"

"Oh, you never sold sex for money, that's right. But then, it was never an issue for you. No, a whore is someone who will do or say anything, anything at all, for an advantage. There are drug-addled hookers who won't tell their johns that they love them; but there are also blue-blooded whores who will loudly proclaim their adoration of people and concepts that they despise.."

"How did you phoney up that footage? You really blew it with that computer animated image talking back to me."

"You would think that it was a forgery. People always measure others by their own standards." She gestured to the mirror just to her right.

The mirror showed Ed speaking before several Tenant's Rights groups, assuring them their neighborhood won't be rezoned for condominium conversions. Then it showed Ed buckling under to pressure from a Landlords' Coalition, who threatened to expose some of his own Real Estate maneuvers. As it dejectedly left the meeting room, Ed's image looked at him and said, "Maybe I was a coward, but at least I didn't take advantage of it - I'm not a Shark!"

Again, Ed broke the window with a fist. And again the splinters of glass didn't cut his hand. And again, he felt something inside him die.

"Oh, touchy, touchy!" Faith jeered from behind the safety of several reflections.

"How do you know about these things?"

"Yes, I'll give you this - you were always very careful about your appearance." Faith's smirking reflection gestured to the pane of glass just to the right of her new mirror. There, a young Ed was stumping for his first elected post on the Rental Commission, back in the 80's. "Yes, you always made sure that you said just the right thing, and had just the right expression for your audience." The image changed, and showed him indulging in the very expensive vice of Cocaine. The image flickered, and it showed him pilfering from the Commission's funds to pay for his habit. "You even managed to work up the right words of disappointment in your good friend Pete Newark, when you set him up to take the fall for the pilfering."

The image changed again, with Pete being led off in handcuffs as Ed watched. Again his own image looked him in the face. "Yes, I set Pete up. But he was doing the stuff himself. He would have gotten caught eventually. Hey, maybe I'm a thief, but at least I'm not a coward!"

This image went the way of the first two, shattered to bits. Ed snarled as he felt something wrong in his gut.

In yet another mirror down the hall, Faith murmurred to herself, "Why is it, that the higher you climb, the lower you sink?"

"Who ARE You? What do you WANT?"

"Think about it, Ed. How would I know all of this? How could I show you this?" She gestured again to the mirror next to her.

The mirror took it's time, showing Ed at college. Ed was young and beautiful, and the 'Age of Aquarius' was in full bloom. Ed was playing at being a 'young radical', back in the days before Kent State, when it was safe to play at such games. He flitted from classroom to coffeehouse to demonstration to discotheque to the bed of one beautiful young girl after another. While the classes, coffeehouses, discos and demonstrations changed with regularity, after a while the girl stopped changing. He started returning over and over to the bedroom of Clarice MacArthur, a beautiful black student. Over and over, the mirror showed him sharing the joys of lovemaking with Clarice. The sex is passionate, but it's the aftermath that holds one's attention. Ed lingers long after the lust is spent. There is a tenderness that he rarely shares with his bedmates and sense of true sharing. He finds himself almost daring to say the 'L' word for real.

But then something happens. Clarice tells Ed that she's pregnant. Ed assures her that everything will be all right, even as he quietly makes moves to make himself scarce. But just as Ed's image is about to duck out the door on his way to the other coast, it stops and stares him in the face. "How could you? I LOVED Clarice! And YOU made me run out on her! We just left her there, all by herself!"

"What are you talking about?" Ed screamed back, "YOU'RE the one running!"

"Only because YOU already did it! Now, I'm condemned to keep abandoning my woman and my son, over and over! And you don't care what happened to her! Well, I care! I know what happened to her! She had to give up her education in order to get a job to feed OUR son! She was lucky to get a job making fries at McRonalds! She could have had a real education, a real career, a real LIFE! But, YOU had to wuss out on her!"

"It would have ruined my career! I hadn't even gotten started yet! I would have-"

"You would have had to actually live up to something you said." The image sneered. "You ducking out on her broke her, y'know. She completely lost her respect for herself after that. She bounced around from one asshole loser to the next, looking for that little piece of her soul that you walked off with in your pocket! It didn't do that much good for our SON, either! He had to turn to a street gang for what pride he could scrounge up. He made his bones the hard way, too. Killed one of his best friends, just to show what a hardcase he was." The image from Ed's youth looked at the man that Ed had become. "Look at yourself. You're everything that you claimed to hate about the system. After all your yap about getting the system to work for the people, you're just another stooge. You move Heaven and Earth for a bunch of rich ratsasses, but you don't even do anything for your own SON!"

"SHUT UP! Shutupshutupshutup!" Ed smashed his fists into the pane of glass again and again.

Then he heard Faith's laughter, just down the corridor again. "I notice that you didn't even try to excuse your sins this time, Ed. No 'At least I'm not a thief', or anything, I think this is when we really started to part company."

"'Part company'? What are you talking about? I don't remember ever meeting you. Were you one of Clarice's friends?"

"Friends? Sort of. But we were friends once... Oh, and speaking of friends... Come over here, I definitely think you'll want to see this..."

Ed walked down the corridor of mirrors, until he came to a mirror that held another image. This mirror held an image from a good five years earlier. Ed, Pete Newark and Harry Kandless were up on the roof of the old High School, kicking back, smoking pot and drinking beer. They passed the time B-Sing each other and checking out pretty girls as they went from one class to another. It was one of those 'Life doesn't get much better than this' moments. But then, the scene shifts. The mirror shows Ed buying some Speed from a street dealer, in retail amounts. But Ed can't risk keeping the dope on him, so he stashes it in Harry Kandless' locker. The Principal does a spot check of the lockers and finds the bag of pills in Harry's locker. Harry gets busted, and is sent to Juvie. Harry never comes back. As Harry's image is marched out of the front door by two cops, Ed's image turns around. But before it said anything, Ed smashed the glass almost into dust.

"How can you know this?" Ed shouted. "Who are you?"

"I keep telling you, and you keep willfully ignoring me. But then, you always did only see what you wanted to see."

Ed stalked down the hall of mirrors, his face clenched in rage. "Yeah? Well, right now, all I want to see is you DEAD, Bitch!"

Then he spotted Faith, reflected in yet another mirror. Coquettishly, she pointed to yet another mirror. It showed three boys of about age Eight, their hands stretched out together as if making a promise. Before they can chant the vow to be friends forever and to look out for each other, a promise that Ed knew that he would inevitably break, he kicked the glass in.

Almost doubled over with pain, Ed staggered down the hall. "Where are you, Bitch? Did you run out of bullshit stories to tell?"

"Just one more," Faith said, apparently from the mirror right behind him.

In the mirror beside her, a little boy, about four years of age, wrapped his arms around his mother's leg. In tones of pure little-boy love, he said, "Maybe you take care of me now, Momma, but don't you worry. When I get big, I'll take good care of you."

Faith looked down at Ed with a grimace of disgust. "You never made a promise that you didn't break, did you, Ed? Today, this very day, you sent your own mother into one of those nursing homes. She isn't that old or decrepit. She just needs someone to love her. You never even bothered to check the place out. You just looked at the bottom line, and let the pretty glossy brochure sell you on the place."

"But, she's being well cared for! That's what I pay them for!"

"No, you pay them to keep her out of your way, so that you won't feel guilty. Ed, how do you think they can afford to be so 'affordable', hmmm? You know exactly what that place is like. Hell, it's set up in the armpit of town! Do you honestly think they'll let her take walks in that neighborhood or even go out like a human being? No, you never bothered to think. If you had thought, then you might have felt compelled to do something that wouldn't do anything for your career or your Ego."

Then the mirror of Little Eddie started banging at the glass and screaming, "You hurt Mommy! I hate you! You left Mommy to Die! You-"

Ed shut the brat's caterwauling with a swift kick that broke the mirror. He looked around on unsteady feet. "Okay, Bitch, what's next? Are you gonna say that I betrayed somebody in my cradle?"

"I'm right here, Ed," Faith said from the mirror at the dead end of the corridor.

"Hunh? But you can't..."

"You still just WON'T get the point, will you, Ed? I am Faith. To be specific, I am your faith. I am the faith that you lost, bit by bit, until today. Today, you managed to betray everyone that you loved and everything that you believed in. You betrayed your own mother for the sake of expediency, and you sold out the entire human race, just to be on the good side of a bunch of irresponsible corporate weasels. Now, you have nothing, you are nothing."

"What...are...you?" Ed asked weakly.

"I'm your mirror image, Ed. I'm not you, I'm everything that you aren't. I'm the sum total of every promise that you ever broke, every trust you ever betrayed and every principle that you ever abandoned. I'm the one who keeps her word. I'm the one who's willing to do the right thing, regardless of the cost."

"No, you're nothing. You're just a reflection...light bouncing off a mirror...a trick."

"Oh? I'm the one with real feelings! I'm the one who understands duty, loyalty and honor. I'm the one who feels the pain of every stab in the back that you ever made. You? All you are is image! Slick gloss and choreographed moves, with no substance behind it. No, I'm not the reflection, you are."

"That's impossible. I'm real. I'm not the one that only exists in a pane of glass."

"Oh? You think so? Guess what? Every time you shattered that image you didn't like, you negated that little bit of your reality. You could have owned up to it. But you didn't. You denied it. You destroyed it. You made it not happen. So, now none of those things ever happened. But then, YOU never happened now either, Ed. Bit by bit, piece by piece, you destroyed yourself, Ed. Now, all you are is something that might have happened, but didn't. All that's left of you is Me. Now, I'm the reality and you're the trick of light in a silvered glass."

Ed gave an inarticulated cry of rage and charged at the mirror. But this time, when his fists hit the pane of glass, it didn't break. Instead, he passed into the mirror, like he was diving into a pool of water.

As Ed went into the mirror, Faith stepped out of it. She gave herself a moment to get used to having material substance. Then she turned around and looked at Ed as he struggled to cope with being a two-dimensional pattern of light.

She smiled. "Well, congratulations, Ed. All your sins are absolved. You'll never have to explain away any of those things that I threatened you with on the phone. Because, they never happened. But I still have to help clean up the mess that you made. I'm going to give that bastard Roger Laumer at K-M M&M the bad news that not only is the Jessup-Kirukazi bill going through, but I'm going to see to it that they honor their thirty-year lease with the City. Yes, even though you don't exist anymore, you've left an awful mess. But at least you won't be around to muck things up anymore."

Faith took off one of her shoes, and as Ed screamed, brought the heel down on the pane of mirrored glass.

 

END

 

since 04/11/03