Jeff

about maintaining friendships and being social, but the hard truth is I’m just as capable of doing that without any kind of distraction. More importantly, Kendra had definitely had a romantic relationship with Jeff. I had prodded enough and gotten enough push back from her to be sure of that fact.

I thought I would have heard from Jeff after the incident at the city council chambers. I had the thought briefly but then it got away from me. I did try to call Jeff at some point after that, though it’d been almost a year since he had left to visit family for the holidays, or so I’d been told. When I tried to call, his phone was disconnected. I asked Kendra about it, and she actually told me he’d gone back to work for the government. We had come to the understanding by that point that I shouldn’t press her on it. I had to let go of my jealousy, even though Jeff looked like he was a big guy.

After his release, Josiah showed up asking about Jeff.

-Did you move? You know how many times I’ve come knocking? Josiah asked when I opened the door for them. I hadn’t talked to Josiah since before the incident, but they walked in like nothing had happened. I wasn’t sure what to do.

-I’ve been staying out, I said evasively. Do you want something to drink?

-Out? You don’t have any friends left, Josiah said matter-of-factly. I’ll take a cold one.

I had some really old beers left in the fridge and offered him one. Josiah sat down on the couch and just looked at me. What was there to say? There was only one question worth asking.

-Why’d you come by?

-We never toasted Blynken.

My mouth got dry. I missed the memorial, of course. It wouldn’t have made sense for me to go there. I’d wanted to, but had also been caught up with Kendra. I think I was pining for her while she was in South America when the memorial finally happened.

-Did you bring something to toast him? I asked innocently enough.

-You got me, they laughed in an unaffected tone. Who are you working for now?

-What? Nobody. I hadn’t had a visible means of income in some time, it was a strange question from someone who knew me as long as Josiah did to ask.

-I heard an interesting story from a friend of yours.

-You said I didn’t have any.

-Jeff.

-Man I haven’t seen him in, it’s got to be a year at least. I thought he might have left the country, I said. I had passing suspicions. Where the hell did you see him?

-I didn’t say I saw him.

-I don’t, I don’t have the energy for riddles, I said, exasperated by them and by what we weren’t talking about and by them bringing up Jeff.

-I said I heard a story from him.

-Then tell it.

Josiah started. They hadn’t even heard the story from Jeff. They heard it from Wynken and Nod, who heard it from Jeff. The two had been in touch with Josiah from prison. They’d been sending Wynken and Nod money for the commissary. According to Josiah, Wynken and Nod had gotten a visit from Jeff in prison after being transferred to a facility in the Midwest. Wynken and Nod didn’t know Jeff even by sight. They said he’d introduced himself as part of a special justice department truth commission and had questions about the incident.

He asked a lot of questions, according to Wynken and Nod, according to Josiah, about me. Josiah said he pressed the two of them on how long I had been active in their organization before dropping out. Josiah said they told Jeff I’d never really been a part of it. He wanted to know whether I was involved in the planning stages and whether they felt I should have been prosecuted along with them. Josiah said Wynken and Nod told them they didn’t say it to Jeff, but the way he was asking questions, it seemed to the two of them like he had expected them to have complained. Was there someone in the prosecutor’s office with their thumb on the scale for U?

Jeff also asked them about Blynken, according to Josiah. This point was more contentious. When he drank, Blynken used to mention suicidal ideation sometimes. We all heard it, and all always ignored it. I’d thought about it after it happened, but I guess they were still ignoring it. All three of them, I gathered, had decided Blynken couldn’t have possibly killed himself. Jeff had asked about whether Blynken had ever talked about self-harm, and Wynken and Nod told Joisah they thought he was trying to lead them on to say yes, and that that was part of a cover up.

I listened, but I didn’t ask Josiah any questions. It wouldn’t have made sense for someone to kill Blynken, not the feds. Their whole thing was trying to calm everyone down. No one cared about Blynken that much. Kendra had made a joke, when we had first learned Blynken was going to go into federal custody as part of the plea deals, that the feds were taking him away so the local authorities couldn’t get their hands on him. The whole thing was embarrassing to a lot of them.

That’s not how Wynken and Nod spun it, I assume with Josiah’s help. That might have been believable. Instead they blamed the feds, concocting some delusion about the national election coming and how they were being silenced to repress the silent radical majority. I stopped listening and started to think. The note. It didn’t add up. Josiah said Wynken and Nod hadn’t even heard about it, and Jeff’s questions didn’t make them think there was one. Somebody wanted to get that to Kendra, to rattle her.

-So what’s the point, I asked Josiah finally, to this whole story?

-Did you sell us out?

-How? I didn’t even testify against any of you. You, man, you shot me!

-Blynken shot you.

-You all might as well have pulled the trigger. All they got was five years, and you’re free already, and I sold you out? Here I said something I regretted immediately. I’m the reason you all got off so light.

-Blynken didn’t, Josiah said. Fortunately Josiah didn’t ask me what I meant. It wouldn’t end up mattering. Apparently Jeff had asked some questions about Kendra and what I had ever said about her to Wynken and Nod, and it convinced the two of them that something was going on between me and Kendra.

Would it make that much of a difference if they knew about it now?

-She barely knew my name when you shot me over her, I responded. Why would that matter anyway?

-You’re a sell out, Josiah said, standing up. A traitor.

-I’m a man.

Josiah glared at me and walked out. I thought about Wynken and Nod and why Jeff had showed up at their prison and what he was doing working for an administration he used to make fun of. He did say a paycheck mattered most, so maybe it was worth the money. But I didn’t understand what the justice department would have wanted with him. I thought about Blynken, too.

Kendra had already told me by then that Jeff had gone to work for Washington. I decided not to bring Josiah’s visit up to her. She never liked any of them, obviously, and I knew the whole subject was a soft one for her.

The next time I saw Jeff was at a cutaway of the broadcast of the inauguration of the former president after he managed to win again. Everything had changed when the incumbent president dropped out, but Kendra insisted she’d been right all along and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

She got an invitation to that inauguration. It was embroidered with gold, but it didn’t come with a plus one.