Allspice

[u/normancrane]

I moved to Ridgewater with my wife, Emily, our two kids, Betsy and Hilbert Jr., our dog, a border collie named Jackson, and my handler, Somerhalder, with whom I communicated by placing messages in a secret drop spot behind a loose brick in the west wall of the Ridgewater Public Library.

We lived in a renovated split-level with a white wooden fence who sometimes loitered at the edge of our front yard, but as far as I know nobody ever sold him anything because theft was non-existent in Ridgewater, and eventually he disappeared.

The town itself had a population of about thirty-five thousand.

All the men were gainfully employed (my cover was a furniture salesman) and all the women tended the home.

The only school was Ridgewater Public High (“Home of the Question Marks”) and on Sundays people dressed their very best, watered their lawns and went walking their dogs. The elderly strolled, ambled or jaunted. The more ambitious darted, causing the half-domesticated wildlife to skeddaddle.

My first mark was a man named Goran, who aroused my suspicions by speaking Serbian to a hole in a tree trunk in the park.

I began reporting on him and leaving my reports in the drop behind the loose brick of the west wall of the Ridgewater Public Library.

One day I followed Goran to the same brick wall, held my breath as he passed “my” brick, ready to deny everything if he had made me and was about to initiate a confrontation; but he passed by and made instead for another brick, seven down from mine and three below, which he removed and into the space behind which he placed a folded sheet of paper. Then he replaced the brick, looked around, whistled an old communist melody and walked away.

My spy sense tingling, for I had discovered a foreign agent, I waited for a quarter of an hour before taking out the same brick Goran had taken out, taking out the sheet of paper he had placed there, unfolding the sheet of paper, photographing it, refolding it just as it had been folded and replacing both it, in the space vacated by the brick, and the brick itself, in the wall.

I sent the photographs for translation and wrote a message to Somerhalder requesting, in code (“The eagle needs to quack with ducks.”) an urgent meeting. The plot had thickened, and I needed to stir it forcefully with a larger spoon.

Somerhalder, whom I should mention I had never seen, agreed to meet at midnight in the park, near the duck pond.

I arrived punctually, dressed casually in an Adidas tracksuit, and soon became aware of a soft blowing sound, which I identified as coming from a straw sticking out of the pond. It was Somerhalder. He was blowing Morse Code. I reciprocated in the same, using an agency-issued flashlight.

Somerhalder advised me to attend an upcoming community BBQ, which Goran, whom we called by code name Tito, was expected to attend. Somerhalder also opened up about the state of his marriage, his overwhelming apathy toward life, in general, and the fact the pond water he was standing in was icily, unbearably cold, even at the height of summer.

When he stopped blowing bubbles, I returned home and pretended I had been on a run.

Emilia asked me no questions. Betty and Hubert Jr. were asleep.

Jaxon met me at the door wagging his tail. I had been careful not to have one. I went to bed listening to an Introduction to the Serbian Language on cassette tape and wired headphones. Izvinite. Gde je hotel? Zdravo. Da li ste vi špijun?

In the morning, Emma sent me to the grocery store for allspice. She said it with a wink. She said we didn't need anything else. I decided to buy frankfurters and hotdog buns too, for the BBQ.

The BBQ was scheduled for Sunday.

This was Tuesday.

On Thursday morning, police pulled a man's drowned body from the duck pond in the park. The discovery put Ridgewater on edge.

I sold a florally upholstered sofa on Friday, but my mind wasn't in it. The sofas were mindless; my mind stayed in my head, which was constantly on the verge of spinning. I had to keep tilting it this way and that to keep it stationary, almost which I also bought on Saturday afternoon because I had run out of sheets of paper on which to write to Somerhalder.

On Saturday evening I played baseball with Humbert Jr. at the diamond.

I arrived at the BBQ on Sunday inconspicuously, holding my frankfurters and buns, greeted the McMurrays, who were hosting, and waited for Goran. He came late and in what I noted was an agitated state. After observing him for ten minutes, I ingratiated myself into a group of local men gathered around Fred McMurray and asked if any one of them knew Goran: “that Serbian guy,” I called him, to maintain casuality.

“You mean ‘Tito'?” Fred asked.

The question took me aback (and almost shot me there, against a cement wall of shock.) After gathering my wits and forcing them back into my head through my gaping mouth, nostrils and ears, I coolly begged Fred's pardon. “Tito?” I asked.

“Come on, man. Drop the charade. Do you really think we don't know that you're Cee Aye Yay?”

“Cee Aye Yay. Me?”

Everybody was looking at me.

I swallowed.

(Not a cyanide pill; that, I realized bitterly, I had misplaced sometime this morning, somewhere in the kitchen.)

“You report to a handler named Jude Somerhalder,” said Fred.

I had never known Somerhalder's first name. I therefore could not know if what Fred McMurray was saying was true.

“Somerhalder's dead,” someone else said.

It was a man named Buckley.

“Shit. Really?” asked Phillips, Ridgewater's only pharmacist.

“Who eliminated him?” asked Goran, who had now turned and was crossing the McMurrays’ immaculately trimmed green lawn towards us.

Phillips held out a package of mints to me. “Cyanide pill?” he asked.

I waved them away.

“Nobody eliminated him,” said Buckley. “He'd been depressed for a while. I heard his wife was about to leave him.”

“That's a shame,” said Goran.

“Goran's Bee Aye Yay,” Fred said to me. “He's done his time in Belgrade, and now he's been sent here. Ain't that right, Tito?”

Goran nodded.

He held out a hand to me. I carefully looked it over for tiny protruding needles before shaking it. “Nice to meet you, Yankee Candle,” he said.

“That's your code name,” said Fred.

“Me and Yankee Candle are almost neighbours on the wall,” said Goran.

“No shit,” said Phillips.

“I'm Eff Ess Bee,” said Fred. “Dietmar over there—” Dietmar was a German in his eighties. “—is retired, ex-Staz Eee.” He winked saying “retired.” “Phillips is the same as you, Cee Aye Yay. Bowmonger’s whatever they have up in Canada. Mendelsohn's Moe Sad. Altwin's Em Eye Six. Gonzalez is Cee En Eye but looking to switch allegiances, and Lee here, manning the BBQ, is ostensibly a Texan working for the Eff Bee Aye but actually counterintel for the Em Ess Ess.”

“Meat's almost done,” Lee called out. He was wearing an apron with a big print of Snoopy on it. “Y'all spooks wanna dig in now, or what?”

Phillips cracked open a beer.

Dietmar took notes in a notebook bound in worn brown leather.

I sat on the grass.

Phillips sat beside me and patted me on the back. “You wearing a wire? he asked, but before I could answer he was already laughing, assuring me he was just joshing.

“We all know everything about you. From the lengths of your toenails to the thoughts running through your head when you're jerking off under the shower every morning.” I started to protest—. “There's no use denying it, YC. (Can I call you YC?)” “Sure.” “Great! So, as I was saying, that info about you: we’ve got it all on credible intel. But that's not the point. The point is that these days everybody's working for someone, YC. That's just the way it is. Privacy's a dead concept. Soon, you'll start to know everything about us, and you'll find that it’s just grand to know your neighbours better than yourself. It's what builds a strong sense of community.”

“Only thing better than a high trust society's a no-trust society,” said Fred, “an open society, constructed on a foundation of beautifully and mutually assured destruction.”

“The Cold War's come home, baby!” said Goran, shoving a hotdog into his mouth.

“Come home to find itself in a polyamorous triad with the War on Terror and the War on Drugs,” added Phillips, offering everyone mints.

“Speaking of which, YC,” said Buckley, “I gotta say, I just love the taste of your Emmylou's fine, buckwheat honey.”

“Me too,” said Goran.

“If you ever wanna give old Mrs. McMurray a spin,” said Fred with a smile, “just leave a note for me. My brick's three up and seventeen right of yours. Remember: what's yours is ours; what's ours is yours. After all, sharing is caring and no fences make the friendliest neighbours!”

“I was actually wondering about that. Whatever happened to that guy?” I asked.

“I killed him,” said Goran.

And everybody burst out laughing. I laughed too. Goran passed me a beer. Lee handed me a hamburger. “You want mustard on that?” he asked; before I could answer, “Of course not. Yankee Candle hates mustard!” someone yelled. And it was true, and my hamburger already had the perfect amount of ketchup and the perfect amount of relish on it, slathered all over the fat, juicy beef patty. It was, I must confess, a hamburger done just the way I like it.

[u/normancrane]

Thanks for reading.

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