The Five O'Clock Diner
The five o'clock diner has elevated bar island tables instead of one continuous bar. I am sitting at one of them, facing the window, on a thick steel bar stool. Across the main road is a side street. A couple of houses down that side street is a boxy blue Victorian. I sit and stare at the blue house.
Mimi, the waitress, is a young girl with soft platinum curls surrounding her gentle face like a halo. I always tip her well and I think I am one of her favorite customers. I look at the faint reflection of the rest of the diner in the full-wall display window in front of me.
Rolland is a middle-aged man with a weathered face and white-blond hair. He sits at one of the round tables at the diner with five or so young people who live in his blue Victorian house. Some of them I recognize. The girl with the chin-length purple hair is Phoebe, Phoeb to her housemates. The tall, skinny young man with the dark black hair is Chester but everyone calls him Sasha. He has a cold look in his black eyes.
I sit facing away from them. Rolland, who everyone calls the Boss, but who I will later come to know affectionately as Rolls, gestures generously with his hands as he talks and everyone at the table listens intently. Mimi comes over and she says, "Alex, you're looking sharp." I'm wearing carefully shined and buffed black leather shoes and an expensive gray Italian suit. She asks me if I'm going for a job interview. This is the first time that the confidentiality agreement Rolland made me sign has been tested, and already I feel the need to tell her everything. I will be terrible at this job.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the faint reflection in the window of Rolland and his crew getting up and leaving the five o'clock diner. My hand shakes as I lift the small white cup of black coffee to my lips. A minute passes before I dare to look back at the empty round table where they were sitting. There on the table by Rolland's seat is a thick bundle of bills, a tip for Mimi. My ego sinks as I realize I am not the great tipper I thought I was. I wonder what Mimi must think of me.
This is exactly the type of thing that made me want to join Rolland's agency in the first place. All my life I have been living in poverty, living a lie. Orphaned at a young age, I conned and swindled my way through small town Americana. Alex isn't even my real name. That's why when I first discussed this opening with Rolland and he urged me to pick an alias--no one in this business goes by their real name--I insisted that staying with Alex would be fine. It's not my real name, anyway. I've changed names too many times to remember what my real name was.
I watch the clock carefully, and when it hits the hour, I get up, and leave the five o'clock diner to go into the boxy blue Victorian house.
Rolls is the fatherly figure of the operation. He tells us all to come to him if we have any problems, which really means that we have to tell him if someone is trying to kill us. Rolls doesn't like surprises. I come to know him as a kind, caring man and I think of him as a close friend; he sees me as a son. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that if I ever cross him, he will kill me without even blinking.
The other, young people in the house are the agents. There are approximately eight or nine of us at any given time and between us we take out several hits a week. Rolls doesn't actually execute the work orders. As the Boss, his job is to fight the enemies of the agency, and there are plenty of enemies. He stays abreast of the complex politics of the different agencies in the area, and watches quietly to figure out who is out to kill whom.
Once I enter this world, I discover that everybody is an agent, though nobody admits it. Everybody has an objective. An objective is someone they're looking to waste. The house is always full of visitors, it's what Rolls calls 'diplomacy'. Most of them are probably out to kill him or someone of a different agency. Rolls doesn't discuss the politics with us. As an agent he is seasoned, has finesse, flies through the air in immaculately pressed expensive suits with meticulously shined and polished weaponry. I am clumsy and awkward by comparison, fumbling with my weapons, hesitating and sweating.
One day Rolls brings three of us to the five o'clock diner for a special meeting. He wants to introduce us to another agent, a good friend of his. Her name is Mags. We sit at his favorite table, he talks at great length with his hands without ever arousing suspicion from the other diner patrons. We all listen, riveted. We finish our food and he orders black coffee for all of us.
Mags comes in. She is short, with thick plump lips, and dyed yellow curls arranged neatly around her head like a bonnet. She wears eye makeup which doesn't hide her fine wrinkles. She smiles. There are two tall men in suits standing on either side of her, and they make her look even shorter. Rolls introduces her, and he tells us that she's very talented and very good at what she does. Mags smiles, neither confirming nor denying this. I later learn that Mags is amazing as an agent, she is better than Rolls and Rolls is good.
I work for Rolls for about two years before the dark lady approaches me. She has long black hair in thick tangles. I go to her tall, towering house. Her agency is different from Rolls'. The house is tall and narrow, richly embellished and dimly lit. There are guards everywhere. The dark lady is wearing a blue velvet robe. She looks older but the dim light hides her wrinkles.
She offers me food, and as we are eating she makes it clear that it is my objective to kill Rolls. Armed guards at every corner are ensuring my compliance. I nod in agreement. The details are ironed out but no deadline is given. Do you understand, Alex? She says. I nod again, I hear myself say, yes.
In my suit pocket are a handful of poison pills. On my way out I pass her dressing table where her afternoon medications are sitting out in the open, for hypertension, for whatever other stress-induced diseases agency bosses always have. I swap out her afternoon pills and put down the poison pills when the guards aren't looking. I leave her house feeling proud of myself, thinking I have finished off the dark lady. I am still new to this field and I have no knack for it.
The dark lady is more experienced. As soon as I leave, she throws out the afternoon pills on the dressing table, just as a precaution. Then she goes over to the safe in her closet where she has a several months' supply of pills I didn't even know about. She throws those out too, just in case. Then she sends her cronies out to get more.
The next day is contemplative for me. I spend a lot of time alone. Finally I have an idea. With a few cryptic phone calls, I set up a meeting at the diner with Mags. I hang high hopes on her, seeing her as something of a superhero. I believe that if I explain that the dark lady is after Rolland, she will take out her agency for me. But the diner meeting proves frustrating and unproductive. Smiling untellingy as always, Mags holds her cards close and betrays nothing. I leave the diner changed.
I don't mention this to anyone, but I am now a double agent. It's ironic because in this world, where everyone has another objective and everyone is lying so suavely about who they are, I am the screw-up. I am probably the worst agent Rolls has, and yet of all of these people I am the double agent. My blue eyes have a blank expression and I learn to lie, to omit information. I learn to have lunch with the boss and laugh light-heartedly with him as he calls me Alexi in a fatherly tone, and I let on nothing.
Months go by. One afternoon we're sitting downstairs with some guests in the blue house. A young woman with a narrow face and a long nose, and hairspray-spiderweb-ed dull blond hair is picking at the vegetables and dip out on the table. She admits nonchalantly to me and to Sasha, that her objective is to take out Rolls. Sasha and I look at each other. She is heavily armed, and there's nothing either of us can do.
I find myself begging her not to do it. She laughs. I tell her, please. Rolls is one of my best friends, I love the man. She just keeps laughing. I start to get angry. Stop laughing, I say, this isn't a joke. "It's just a hit, it's nothing personal, Alex," she says jovially, "why are you taking it so personally?" She keeps laughing, and suddenly I'm hitting her. Sasha hangs back for a second and then joins in, and we're both hitting her. But she's wearing full body armor, we are helpless. I realize I have to warn Rolls.
I run upstairs and find him on the second floor in the breakfast room. I tell him I have to talk to him, and he says, say what you have to say. I look at the other agents in the room and I whisper uncomfortably, can we go talk in your office? Rolls is annoyed because he thinks that whatever I have to say, I should be able to say it in front of the other agents, but eventually he agrees and we go upstairs to his room. I realize he may kill me when I tell him.
Rolls's room is on the third floor of the house. It's small and Spartan. He wants to notice if anyone plants anything, so he keeps it uncluttered. We call it his office because as far as any of us knows, Rolls never sleeps. Before the door is even shut I have started to tell him. "Rolls, something happened, but I did the right thing," I blurt out quickly.
The expression on his face changes from irritation to deep paranoia. He says, Alex, what is it, what did you do, what happened? I tell him about the dark lady and the double objective. "But Rolls," I continue quickly, "I poisoned her, it's okay, she's gone now, I took care of it." Rolls pushes me gently aside in the doorway, and he looks in the hallway, checking every corner methodically. He examines the spaces, he takes his time, then he sticks his head back in the room and start to look. He locates two tiny plastic cylinders mounted on the wall, how did no one notice these, they must have been here for months.
"Open the door," he yells, "Alex open the door all the way NOW, all the way, the gas you know..." He tampers with one of the cylinders and suddenly I see a purple cloud of gas emerge and float out into the room. I throw the door open violently and after a split second of ungraceful hesitation, I run down the stairs one and a half flights on the power of adrenaline. At that point I start to feel woozy and I realize I will have to lie down after the second flight of stairs.
I shakily make my way down the last four steps. It feels like it takes a year. I worry that I'll fall, loudly. I want to be discreet--I don't want the people downstairs to find out what happened. I lie down on the floor against the bottom step to take a nap from the gas and I begin to think deliriously. Chloroform, I think to myself, questioningly. Chloral hydrate, I think next.
Deliriously, I am scheming. I will just nap here for a few minutes and then I will wake up and come upstairs to find Rolls sleeping and I will carry him someplace safe. Everything will be fine. This thought is cut off when I begin to lose consciousness, finding it harder and harder to maintain. Everything has gone wrong. Rolls was my friend.
I dream. I realize that in this world everyone is an agent, everyone is lying. I am so bad at this game and I've gotten myself into a bind. I'm a double agent and I can't handle it. I long for Mimi, who is the only honest person in my life. Other visitors have come and gone, and when I was just starting out at this I was more naive, I believed them that they weren't in the business but I know better now, everyone is in the business. Everyone is an agent.
I go back to the five o'clock diner. I look down and to my surprise I'm wearing the shiny black leather shoes and the expensive gray suit that has since been ripped and blood-stained. It's brand new.
I sit down at the island bar table facing the window and I see in the full-wall glass display window, Rolls and his crew sitting at the round table, reflected faintly. He's gesturing as he talks, they hang on his every word. I realize somehow I've come back to that first day when I signed myself into the business, wanting to be rich, wanting a way out of poverty, and out of what seemed at the time like a dead end life of living a lie.
I now know that THIS is living a lie. Mimi comes to the table and she says, looking sharp Alex, do you have a job interview or something. Something like that, I tell her, and I shake as my hand brings the white cup of coffee to my lips to drink. It glides against my day old stubble. She refills it.
Rolls and his crew leave, I look at the clock. When the minute hand comes to the hour I also leave and go to the boxy blue Victorian again. To miss an appointment with someone like Rolland is suicide. But this time I'll turn him down, I will walk away from the business. It's the only way.
Mimi, the waitress, is a young girl with soft platinum curls surrounding her gentle face like a halo. I always tip her well and I think I am one of her favorite customers. I look at the faint reflection of the rest of the diner in the full-wall display window in front of me.
Rolland is a middle-aged man with a weathered face and white-blond hair. He sits at one of the round tables at the diner with five or so young people who live in his blue Victorian house. Some of them I recognize. The girl with the chin-length purple hair is Phoebe, Phoeb to her housemates. The tall, skinny young man with the dark black hair is Chester but everyone calls him Sasha. He has a cold look in his black eyes.
I sit facing away from them. Rolland, who everyone calls the Boss, but who I will later come to know affectionately as Rolls, gestures generously with his hands as he talks and everyone at the table listens intently. Mimi comes over and she says, "Alex, you're looking sharp." I'm wearing carefully shined and buffed black leather shoes and an expensive gray Italian suit. She asks me if I'm going for a job interview. This is the first time that the confidentiality agreement Rolland made me sign has been tested, and already I feel the need to tell her everything. I will be terrible at this job.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the faint reflection in the window of Rolland and his crew getting up and leaving the five o'clock diner. My hand shakes as I lift the small white cup of black coffee to my lips. A minute passes before I dare to look back at the empty round table where they were sitting. There on the table by Rolland's seat is a thick bundle of bills, a tip for Mimi. My ego sinks as I realize I am not the great tipper I thought I was. I wonder what Mimi must think of me.
This is exactly the type of thing that made me want to join Rolland's agency in the first place. All my life I have been living in poverty, living a lie. Orphaned at a young age, I conned and swindled my way through small town Americana. Alex isn't even my real name. That's why when I first discussed this opening with Rolland and he urged me to pick an alias--no one in this business goes by their real name--I insisted that staying with Alex would be fine. It's not my real name, anyway. I've changed names too many times to remember what my real name was.
I watch the clock carefully, and when it hits the hour, I get up, and leave the five o'clock diner to go into the boxy blue Victorian house.
Rolls is the fatherly figure of the operation. He tells us all to come to him if we have any problems, which really means that we have to tell him if someone is trying to kill us. Rolls doesn't like surprises. I come to know him as a kind, caring man and I think of him as a close friend; he sees me as a son. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that if I ever cross him, he will kill me without even blinking.
The other, young people in the house are the agents. There are approximately eight or nine of us at any given time and between us we take out several hits a week. Rolls doesn't actually execute the work orders. As the Boss, his job is to fight the enemies of the agency, and there are plenty of enemies. He stays abreast of the complex politics of the different agencies in the area, and watches quietly to figure out who is out to kill whom.
Once I enter this world, I discover that everybody is an agent, though nobody admits it. Everybody has an objective. An objective is someone they're looking to waste. The house is always full of visitors, it's what Rolls calls 'diplomacy'. Most of them are probably out to kill him or someone of a different agency. Rolls doesn't discuss the politics with us. As an agent he is seasoned, has finesse, flies through the air in immaculately pressed expensive suits with meticulously shined and polished weaponry. I am clumsy and awkward by comparison, fumbling with my weapons, hesitating and sweating.
One day Rolls brings three of us to the five o'clock diner for a special meeting. He wants to introduce us to another agent, a good friend of his. Her name is Mags. We sit at his favorite table, he talks at great length with his hands without ever arousing suspicion from the other diner patrons. We all listen, riveted. We finish our food and he orders black coffee for all of us.
Mags comes in. She is short, with thick plump lips, and dyed yellow curls arranged neatly around her head like a bonnet. She wears eye makeup which doesn't hide her fine wrinkles. She smiles. There are two tall men in suits standing on either side of her, and they make her look even shorter. Rolls introduces her, and he tells us that she's very talented and very good at what she does. Mags smiles, neither confirming nor denying this. I later learn that Mags is amazing as an agent, she is better than Rolls and Rolls is good.
I work for Rolls for about two years before the dark lady approaches me. She has long black hair in thick tangles. I go to her tall, towering house. Her agency is different from Rolls'. The house is tall and narrow, richly embellished and dimly lit. There are guards everywhere. The dark lady is wearing a blue velvet robe. She looks older but the dim light hides her wrinkles.
She offers me food, and as we are eating she makes it clear that it is my objective to kill Rolls. Armed guards at every corner are ensuring my compliance. I nod in agreement. The details are ironed out but no deadline is given. Do you understand, Alex? She says. I nod again, I hear myself say, yes.
In my suit pocket are a handful of poison pills. On my way out I pass her dressing table where her afternoon medications are sitting out in the open, for hypertension, for whatever other stress-induced diseases agency bosses always have. I swap out her afternoon pills and put down the poison pills when the guards aren't looking. I leave her house feeling proud of myself, thinking I have finished off the dark lady. I am still new to this field and I have no knack for it.
The dark lady is more experienced. As soon as I leave, she throws out the afternoon pills on the dressing table, just as a precaution. Then she goes over to the safe in her closet where she has a several months' supply of pills I didn't even know about. She throws those out too, just in case. Then she sends her cronies out to get more.
The next day is contemplative for me. I spend a lot of time alone. Finally I have an idea. With a few cryptic phone calls, I set up a meeting at the diner with Mags. I hang high hopes on her, seeing her as something of a superhero. I believe that if I explain that the dark lady is after Rolland, she will take out her agency for me. But the diner meeting proves frustrating and unproductive. Smiling untellingy as always, Mags holds her cards close and betrays nothing. I leave the diner changed.
I don't mention this to anyone, but I am now a double agent. It's ironic because in this world, where everyone has another objective and everyone is lying so suavely about who they are, I am the screw-up. I am probably the worst agent Rolls has, and yet of all of these people I am the double agent. My blue eyes have a blank expression and I learn to lie, to omit information. I learn to have lunch with the boss and laugh light-heartedly with him as he calls me Alexi in a fatherly tone, and I let on nothing.
Months go by. One afternoon we're sitting downstairs with some guests in the blue house. A young woman with a narrow face and a long nose, and hairspray-spiderweb-ed dull blond hair is picking at the vegetables and dip out on the table. She admits nonchalantly to me and to Sasha, that her objective is to take out Rolls. Sasha and I look at each other. She is heavily armed, and there's nothing either of us can do.
I find myself begging her not to do it. She laughs. I tell her, please. Rolls is one of my best friends, I love the man. She just keeps laughing. I start to get angry. Stop laughing, I say, this isn't a joke. "It's just a hit, it's nothing personal, Alex," she says jovially, "why are you taking it so personally?" She keeps laughing, and suddenly I'm hitting her. Sasha hangs back for a second and then joins in, and we're both hitting her. But she's wearing full body armor, we are helpless. I realize I have to warn Rolls.
I run upstairs and find him on the second floor in the breakfast room. I tell him I have to talk to him, and he says, say what you have to say. I look at the other agents in the room and I whisper uncomfortably, can we go talk in your office? Rolls is annoyed because he thinks that whatever I have to say, I should be able to say it in front of the other agents, but eventually he agrees and we go upstairs to his room. I realize he may kill me when I tell him.
Rolls's room is on the third floor of the house. It's small and Spartan. He wants to notice if anyone plants anything, so he keeps it uncluttered. We call it his office because as far as any of us knows, Rolls never sleeps. Before the door is even shut I have started to tell him. "Rolls, something happened, but I did the right thing," I blurt out quickly.
The expression on his face changes from irritation to deep paranoia. He says, Alex, what is it, what did you do, what happened? I tell him about the dark lady and the double objective. "But Rolls," I continue quickly, "I poisoned her, it's okay, she's gone now, I took care of it." Rolls pushes me gently aside in the doorway, and he looks in the hallway, checking every corner methodically. He examines the spaces, he takes his time, then he sticks his head back in the room and start to look. He locates two tiny plastic cylinders mounted on the wall, how did no one notice these, they must have been here for months.
"Open the door," he yells, "Alex open the door all the way NOW, all the way, the gas you know..." He tampers with one of the cylinders and suddenly I see a purple cloud of gas emerge and float out into the room. I throw the door open violently and after a split second of ungraceful hesitation, I run down the stairs one and a half flights on the power of adrenaline. At that point I start to feel woozy and I realize I will have to lie down after the second flight of stairs.
I shakily make my way down the last four steps. It feels like it takes a year. I worry that I'll fall, loudly. I want to be discreet--I don't want the people downstairs to find out what happened. I lie down on the floor against the bottom step to take a nap from the gas and I begin to think deliriously. Chloroform, I think to myself, questioningly. Chloral hydrate, I think next.
Deliriously, I am scheming. I will just nap here for a few minutes and then I will wake up and come upstairs to find Rolls sleeping and I will carry him someplace safe. Everything will be fine. This thought is cut off when I begin to lose consciousness, finding it harder and harder to maintain. Everything has gone wrong. Rolls was my friend.
I dream. I realize that in this world everyone is an agent, everyone is lying. I am so bad at this game and I've gotten myself into a bind. I'm a double agent and I can't handle it. I long for Mimi, who is the only honest person in my life. Other visitors have come and gone, and when I was just starting out at this I was more naive, I believed them that they weren't in the business but I know better now, everyone is in the business. Everyone is an agent.
I go back to the five o'clock diner. I look down and to my surprise I'm wearing the shiny black leather shoes and the expensive gray suit that has since been ripped and blood-stained. It's brand new.
I sit down at the island bar table facing the window and I see in the full-wall glass display window, Rolls and his crew sitting at the round table, reflected faintly. He's gesturing as he talks, they hang on his every word. I realize somehow I've come back to that first day when I signed myself into the business, wanting to be rich, wanting a way out of poverty, and out of what seemed at the time like a dead end life of living a lie.
I now know that THIS is living a lie. Mimi comes to the table and she says, looking sharp Alex, do you have a job interview or something. Something like that, I tell her, and I shake as my hand brings the white cup of coffee to my lips to drink. It glides against my day old stubble. She refills it.
Rolls and his crew leave, I look at the clock. When the minute hand comes to the hour I also leave and go to the boxy blue Victorian again. To miss an appointment with someone like Rolland is suicide. But this time I'll turn him down, I will walk away from the business. It's the only way.