DMV, page 23
He had never seen this building before.
That was impossible. It was near the center of the campus and larger than any of the other buildings around it. Yet somehow, inexplicably, it had escaped his notice until now.
How could that be?
Approaching the structure, Jorge saw an open arched doorway and darkness within. Something about that darkness sent a cold shiver through him. The single thought running through his mind was: What am I doing? Beverly is dead. Why am I here?
He continued on, though, following Mr. Line up to the entrance and inside.
The interior was warmer than the chill outdoors, and the air smelled pleasantly sweet. Brighter than it had appeared from outside, softly illuminated by some hidden source of light, the inside of the temple consisted of a single chamber, a cavernous sanctuary on whose stone walls were carved depictions of seemingly every car, bus, truck and van imaginable. There were carvings as well of even older examples of wheeled transportation: buggies, coaches, carts. The pews, if pews they were, consisted of a similar mishmash of vehicular seating: plush bucket seats next to vinyl bench seats next to wooden buggy planks.
They walked forward down the center aisle.
In the front of the sanctuary was a massive altar and, on it, the dark statue of a large-headed man wearing a long robe and standing with his arms outstretched. Nearly fifteen feet tall, its surface moved and undulated in an alarming manner, and it took Jorge a moment to realize that it was not really a statue at all, but a shape formed by insects swarming over each other in a continuous wave that gave solid, specific form to what was in reality a conglomeration of individual organisms. The sweet smell was stronger here. He could feel energy radiating from the figure, and it was a soothing energy, completely at odds with its harrowing appearance. His head was filled with a low pleasant buzzing sound.
For a brief second, the anger and sorrow that had been his since learning of Beverly’s death faded and softened. Then pain and grief returned full force, slamming into him hard, and he was overwhelmed by an anguish so black and so deep that he was unable to move. He remembered the first time he had met Beverly, remembered their first date, remembered when they had decided to move in together, remembered when they had eloped and gotten married. He was filled with a complete and utter hopelessness and he wished with all his heart that he had been the one to die, not Beverly.
The figure on the altar had moved. Now its arms were spread even wider, and it appeared to be looking down at him. “Worship it,” Mr. Line said softly, and Jorge fell to his knees, sobbing, praying to Jesus, to Mary, to the figure before him, to Whatever might be out there, for Beverly to be alive, for time to be reversed and undo her death and bring her back to him.
****
He awoke in a new bedroom, part of a luxurious suite, with a view of trees through the large picture window. He could not remember how he got here or where he had been before this. His mind was fogged with a jumble of dreams, thoughts and memories, and the only thing clear to him was that Beverly was dead.
Jorge sat up sharply, the knowledge focusing his mind. He had a few brief seconds to notice the unfamiliar surroundings, then his gaze landed on two men who were standing near the closed door of the suite, talking in low voices: Mr. Line and another administrator whose name he did not know.
“What—” he began, and Mr. Line strode briskly toward the bed, a salesman’s smile on his face.
“You’re awake!”
The other man opened the door and exited the suite.
Jorge stood. He was wearing expensive pajamas made from some sort of light soft material. On the PJs were prints of automobiles. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
“You’re in your new crib. Isn’t that what you folks from the barrio call it?”
He let that go. “Am I still in the camp?”
“Oh, yes. You’ve just advanced to the next level.”
“There’s only one bed.”
“You no longer require a roommate,” Mr. Line said. “You have worshipped in the Temple. You are part of the family now.”
“Where is…Durrell?”
“He was in a car crash, I’m afraid, and is no longer with us.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
Before Jorge could say another word, before his brain had even settled on a reaction, Mr. Line had walked over to a double-doored closet and opened it. “We’ve taken the liberty of bringing your belongings over and providing you with attire more suitable to your new position.”
He refused to let himself be sidetracked. “I need to get out of here. My wife is dead. I need to see her.”
“There’s nothing to see. She’s dead.”
Anger flashed through him.
The administrator was suddenly holding an electrnic tablet, although where it had come from and how it had gotten into his hands, Jorge could not say. “As a courtesy, the DMV has gone through its extensive records and conducted a little research in regard to your late wife.” He looked at the screen, slowly shaking his head. “She was not a good woman, was she?”
Jorge’s hands clenched involuntarily. “What?”
“It says here that she was quite the slut. Stepping out on you with friends, neighbors, acquaintances, random strangers.”
“That’s not true!”
“Come now.” Mr. Line smiled indulgently. “If you’ve learned anything from your training so far, you must have learned that one thing we do well is keep track of our licensees. What use would we be if we did not?”
“But you can’t—”
“Oh, we know everything.” He looked again at his tablet. “Apparently, she was quite the backdoor woman. Enjoyed indulging in vigorous rear-end action. Not with you, I guess, but it seems that avenue was open to almost everyone else: her boss at work, the guy next door, the mailman… And aside from you, she was not really into Hispanics.” He glanced up. “That is what you prefer to be called, right? Hispanic? Anyway, it says here that she liked white meat best.
“And she was a definite spendthrift, which has had the result of leaving you deep in the hole financially.” He shook his head. “With no life insurance and all of her accumulated debts, you’re really going to need a good DMV job just to stay afloat.”
“Beverly was careful with money!”
“That’s not the information we have.”
“Fuck you!” He pushed past the man and withdrew a shirt and a pair of pants from the closet.
The door to the suite opened and two men walked in. One was the man Mr. Line had been talking to when Jorge first awoke. The other he recognized him as the young security guard with the shaved head who with his partner had interrupted Jorge’s first exploration of the surrounding forest.
Make sure you don’t come back. This area’s restricted.
Ignoring them, Jorge carried his clothes into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door. He changed quickly, looking at himself in the mirror, surprised to find that he was unexpectedly presentable. He’d expected to see wild sleep-mussed hair and a growth of stubble, but he could have just finished grooming himself.
He opened the bathroom door and stepped out. Mr. Line and his friend were talking together by the door again. The bald security guard was standing just outside the bathroom, facing him, a smug expression on his face. Jorge tried to walk around the man, but he moved to the side and put himself in Jorge’s path.
“Get out of my way.”
The man just smirked.
Jorge moved to the left.
The guard moved to the left.
“You are blocking my way.”
“Si, senor.”
It was said in an exaggerated Mexican accent intended to offend him.
And it did.
He lashed out, kicking the man in the balls. The security guard went down, howling and clutching his crotch.
Mr. Line laughed, walking over and clapping Jorge on the back. “That’s the kind of spirit we need here at the DMV. I can see why Misters White and Black recruited you.”
Jorge was going to punch him, fight off his associate if he had to, then storm out of here and find a way to get out of the camp, but he was overcome once again by the same soothing energy that had suffused him in the Temple. In his mind was an image of the sculpted wax hives he had found out in the trees when the security guards had accosted him, the geometric shapes that had reminded him of a city.
“Relax,” said a buzzing voice in his head, a soft language that was neither English nor Spanish but that he still understood. “Relax.”
And he did.
TWENTY FOUR
Todd was already asleep in bed, and Rosita was only in the kitchen because she was getting a glass of water, so when the telephone rang, she jumped a mile. Her eyes went immediately to the clock above the stove.
11:39.
Nothing good ever came from a call this late, and she picked up the phone before the second ring, her mind immediately shuffling through the possibilities: Mama had died, Papa had died…
“Hello?” she said, and held her breath.
“Jorge left me!”
It was Beverly, and Rosita had to admit that that had not been one of her possibilities. She frowned. “What do you mean? You heard from him?”
“His whore called from the bathroom, right after they did it. She was gloating.”
This didn’t sound real. “Maybe it’s not what it seems,” Rosita said slowly.
“I could hear Jorge knocking on the door in the background, wanting to know what she was doing with his phone and who she was talking to.” Beverly stifled a sob. “She said he was leaving me and moving in with her.”
Rosita was silent. She didn’t think her brother would be such an asshole—but it was not out of the realm of possibility.
“I don’t even think he’s doing DMV training anymore. If he ever did. Maybe that was just a scam, an excuse to get away from me.”
“That’s not like Jorge.”
“Isn’t it?”
Rosita honestly couldn’t say.
“I’m sorry I bothered you.” Beverly was crying. “I don’t know why I called…”
“Wait!” Rosita cried, but her sister-in-law had already hung up.
She immediately tried to call back, but after one ring, two rings, three rings, four, it became clear that Beverly was not going to answer the phone.
Rosita hung up and hurried back to the bedroom. She went immediately to Todd’s side of the bed and shook him. “Wake up!”
“Huh? I’m awake.” He sat up, blinking, apparently thinking it was already morning. Then he noted the darkness, looked at the clock, and turned toward her, puzzled. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Beverly. She just called and said Jorge left her, and…we need to go over there.”
“At midnight?”
“She’s distraught, she’s not thinking straight, and I think she might do something.”
“What do you mean ‘do something?’ Like hurt herself?”
Rosita had already turned on the light and was picking up the clothes she had left on a chair. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just think we need to go over there and talk to her. Be with her.” She pulled on her pants. “Or I could go by myself if you don’t want to—”
“I’m coming,” he said tiredly, throwing the covers off. “I’m coming.”
Their street was empty as they pulled out of the driveway. In the neighborhood where Rosita grew up, there would have been a party at one of the houses, people driving up and down the street, or, at the very least, young couples making out on front porches before saying their goodbyes. But here things were quiet. It was one of the reasons they had bought a home in this neighborhood, and looking out the passenger window, Rosita realized how happy she was with the life she had.
Several blocks down, they reached the main thoroughfare, but in this section of the city, even larger streets were nearly empty at this hour. A delivery truck passed them going in the opposite direction, and a motorcycle going well over the speed limit zoomed by, but the few other cars on the road were spaced far apart and moving slowly, as though heading tiredly home.
Rosita glanced out the window to her right as a black Camry pulled even with them and kept pace. The driver looked over at her, grinning. She let out a startled cry when she saw his face, then the Toyota sped away and she was looking at its trunk, and then the empty street.
“What is it?” Todd asked. There was an edge in his voice.
Rosita shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You screamed over nothing?”
She didn’t bother to respond. She couldn’t have seen what she thought she’d seen. It was impossible. But when they stopped at the next red light, the Camry was next to her again, and she looked for a second time into that white grinning face and knew that she’d been right.
It was Will Caskey.
Rosita had seen his dead body after the cops had shot him, had seen him removed from the library on a gurney, zipped up in a plastic bag, after he’d killed two people and wounded three others.
Now he was driving a Toyota through the city at midnight.
The light changed, and the Camry took off. Her heart pounding so loud she could hear the thumping, Rosita turned to Todd. “That was Will Caskey. The guy who shot up the library. In the car next to us.”
“What?” Todd frowned. “Is that a joke? I don’t get it.”
“There’s nothing to get. It’s not a joke. The man driving that car was Will Caskey. I saw him. He looked at me, and he smiled, and I damn near had a heart attack.”
“But he’s dead, right? Didn’t the cops—”
“Yes,” she said, exasperated. “That’s what I’m telling you.” She pointed out the windshield at red taillights turning a corner up ahead. “There’s a dead guy driving that car.”
“You mean a ghost? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either!” She was practically shouting at him. “But, no, it didn’t look like he was a ghost! He looked like a person, just really, really white.”
“Like a ghost.”
“No! Not like a ghost!”
“Maybe it was just someone who looked like him.”
Frustrated, she gave up. “Maybe it was.”
But she’d seen that face. It wasn’t.
It was Will Caskey.
They pulled into Jorge and Beverly’s driveway ten minutes later. Rosita had been frightened by the white face of Will Caskey, but that was nothing compared to the fear she felt looking at her brother’s house. All of the windows were dark, and the only light to be seen was the muted yellow glow of the porch lamp. The place looked—
dead.
“Come on,” she said, getting quickly out of the car. In her mind’s eye, she saw Beverly, wrists slashed, lying on the floor of the bathroom in a spreading pool of blood. In a moment of panic, she realized that she had forgotten to bring Jorge and Beverly’s spare key, which she and Todd kept on a hook in the kitchen, but then the front door opened, and Beverly was standing there, and she was fine.
Rosita experienced a rush of relief. She ran up to her sister-in-law and hugged her tightly. “Are you okay?”
Beverly pulled back, nodded. “You didn’t need to come.”
“Yes, we did.”
Todd had walked up by this time and stood awkwardly next to her.
“I’m thinking maybe you were right,” Beverly said. “Maybe it’s not real.”
Rosita was surprised, but said nothing.
“Because now that I’m looking back, that voice at the door didn’t really sound like Jorge’s. I mean, I thought it was him at the time, but now I’m not so sure. Besides, the number was blocked, and Jorge’s phone number isn’t blocked.” Beverly tried to smile, but the smile slipped. “Who am I kidding? I’m just deluding myself. He could easily block his number. And do I really think some random woman found my number, called me up in the middle of the night, convinced some guy to pretend to be my husband and then admitted to an affair that didn’t even take place? I’d have to be crazy.”
“I believe it,” Todd said.
They both looked at him.
“It’s the DMV. So far, they’ve kidnapped Jorge, given me some weird test, I’ve had to get tutoring from DMV ex-pats, who ended up dying mysteriously in a fire, my license number is from a Nazi concentration camp, and when I complained about it, they sent a thug to my door to tell me I can’t get it changed. You think they wouldn’t stoop to this?”
“But what for?” Beverly said. “What’s the point?”
“To throw you off the trail. To stop you from trying to find out about their camp and where Jorge is.”
She sniffled. “You really think that? You’re not just saying it to…”
“I really think that,” he said, and Rosita could tell that he did.
Suddenly, she did, too. It might be crazy, but it did make a kind of lunatic sense. She thought of the SWAT officer in the library announcing that Will Caskey’s driver’s license identified him as an active shooter, the grotesque DMV cartoon that had appeared on the Reference desk’s computer.
Todd shot her a look, and she knew from his expression exactly what he was hinting about. Rosita nodded in agreement.
“There’s something we haven’t told you,” he said, and Beverly stiffened. “Those people who tutored me, they used to work for the DMV, and they were all...maimed. By the DMV, they claimed. I told them about Jorge’s situation, and asked if they could look into it for me, and they said he was in a camp where he could end up coming back brainwashed. Or injured.” He took a deep breath. “Or not come back at all.”
