Dear diary,
But now I tire of committing evil with the Espionage Agency, so I write a very sweet letter of resignation and return to doing good. All the innocent dictators who I toppled during my time working for the CIA, I go find them again and help them to their feet. Those whistle-blowers who I shoved out of the windows of tall buildings, I catapult them back up into their hotel rooms; then I solve the problem of finding a replacement suite for the people who have rented each room since the previous (and now newly returned) occupant met his demise. “Sorry about the inconvenience,” I say with a bow.
I’m walking down the boulevard looking dapper, wearing suspenders. Now this youth approaches me: he gives off a very smart vibe; I’m guessing that he graduated from Harvard with a degree in Dispute Resolution. “You killed my father!” he shakes my shoulders, “You killed my father!” “Calm down,” I pass the palm of my hand gently over the lad’s face and he falls instantly into a deep hypnotic trance; “that’s better — now take me to your father.”
We head down a spiral stairway into the depths of Hell, and I call the old man up. “Time to go back to your old job as a pickler,” I say. Then I make the proper arrangements with his former place of employment. The only thing that I leave undone is his pension fund, because that’s not salvageable. “No retirement for pops: he’ll have to work till the day that he dies,” I say; “but the good news is that he genuinely loves his profession.”
“That’s fine,” sez the lad who is this fellow’s son, still half-hypnotized and watching his father thru semi-closed eyelids begin pickling again; “Papa would not allow himself to retire anyway. He’s a man of the people.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I scowl; “Are you saying that your father is a Communist?” I unsheathe my dagger and begin to don my cloak, in preparation for one last unfinished act of evil on behalf of my nation’s government.
“No,” murmurs the lad, partly sleeping, “I mean he’s a real people-person; as in an extrovert: my dad is personable — he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he had to stop pickling: he’d go nuts trying to find a hobby to fill all his time.”
“Ah, I see,” sheathing my dagger, I shake my head so that my hood falls back and reveals my gorgeous mane of fiery locks.
§
[Now returning to my List of Wrongs Righted, from my time at the Agency...]
Then all the airplanes that I sabotaged get repaired and reinstated within the heavens. To all their passengers, now pleased and smiling, I offer free copies of my latest literary collection, claiming that they’re airport novels.
People whose houses I burnt down, I now build back better: this time with tougher, stronger wood, from trees raised with care over centuries by well-trained monks who I legally bought from a place in New Mexico. I saved these monks from a dire act of self-flagellation. “Now that we see the videotape, we realize that, had we been allowed to follow thru with our grand plan, it would have been terminal. How can we repay you for your—”
“Lumber,” I say, muting the monk with my hand on his mouth. “Give me your all your kiln-dried lumber.” — And they do so, gladly.
Then all the pets that I poisoned on behalf of U.S. Homeland Security, I find equivalents and go present them to their still-bereaved owners. “Ma’am, I believe you lost your fish in a government boating accident. My name is Agent Bryan Ray (or, rather, ex-Agent); I’m here to present you with this snake.” Then I hand over the creature, the way that you would transfer a 25-foot-long garden hose from the tender grip of one salesman into the cradling arms of his buyer, except that I charge not a cent on this occasion. “Careful,” I say; “that’s not just a hempen rope painted with scary stripes of color — that thing’s really poisonous. Don’t let him kiss you more than a few times a day, preferably just before dusk.”
I screech away from this woman’s porch on my motorcycle, holding one hand high overhead in lieu of a friendly wave. Looking into my rearview mirror and paying zero attention to the road, I notice that the elderly lady is waving back and weeping with gratitude. Then I almost hit a man in a grey suit who is jaywalking pompously. I screech to a halt and say:
“Are you reading the Wall Street Journal? Or is that the Washington Post or the New York Times?”
“Yes,” sez the man; “I cannot lie. This article is really absorbing, and I got lost in its world and forgot that I was pacing across a busy intersection. Pardon the inconvenience.”
“Your sins are forgiven, my son,” I wave my hand before his visage, tracing the pattern of an eroteme. “Now, may I ask: What’s the article about?”
“Oh, it seems that we Americans must go to war immediately with certain very bad countries — this matter cannot wait: we must begin the mayhem NOW. No words, only bombs.”
“Hmm,” I say, taking the paper that he hands to me and beginning to skim the article. Once I finish, I say: “Well, I’m convinced. I feel faith and have trust in all the stuff that I’m being told here: those countries are definitely immoral actors, and the U.S.A. is clearly the only Good Guy on this Green Globe. Thus, you and I are in accord: we should bomb the aforesaid countries into the Stone Age. Preferably with nukes. And I fervently hope that we will ONLY slaughter civilians, since killing enemy combatants feels rather wasteful: for we might be able to convert those foreign countries’ soldiers into our mercenaries, which we could employ to accomplish our nation’s interests. That would be gr-r-reat!”
I return the newspaper to its rightful owner. Now, apparently noticing the way that I rolled my ‘R’s when caressing that very last word, this gray-suited executive perks up and sez: “Hey, are you that same cat who played the lead role in the Tyger Bryan novel?”
I smile: “If you mean to ask me if I’m the sex symbol of the century, then the answer is YES.” And now my eyes widen as I suddenly recognize the true identity of this man whom I almost ran over: “Hey, are you the fellow whose motorcycle I stole, back in the days when I worked for the CIA?”
The man’s countenance falls, as he answers: “No, I’m Executive Stevens, from the prose poem Cruisin for a Bruisin with the Giant Squid. Do you seriously not recall? You and I used to golf together. Often I would transmogrify into a cephalopod. But you never stole my motorbike.”
I shut off my engine and lift my leg to dismount the vehicle. “Here, it’s yours,” I toss the bike’s keys to Executive Stevens; “I’ll walk, from here.” I hand him my driving gloves and my helmet. “I’m trying to make amends for all the awful things that I did during my time as a clandestine operative for the government. It’s my opinion that the only way one can improve the world is to go around patting folks on the head who, aforetime, one had slapped. Now, whether or not it’s true, I believe that I stole your motorcycle in the past. If that episode does not exist in the traditional texts that were written by me and which our culture deems sacred, then I’ll either fabricate the account in one of my future scriptures, or I’ll leave our confrontation unexplained. Either way, the bike’s yours now. Have a blast.”
The executive is dumbstruck by my character’s resoluteness. Staring after me in awe as I pace slowly into the sunset, he remarks to himself: “Now there goes one real mensch who deserves more credit than our backward system could ever give him, because he keeps no account with our backward system.”
Stevens rolls up his newspaper and inserts it into a clear plastic tube, which he secures within the gas tank after unscrewing the cap. Then he places the helmet on his head, so his next line of dialogue is delivered in an augmented, electronic tone; for the helmet that I bequeathed him has a microphone inside connected to an exterior speaker that changes one’s voice to sound menacingly robotic:
“I shall visit the Financial Sector forthwith and start a Fan Club in honor of our tickertape’s author Bryan Ray.”
The final shot is Executive Stevens speeding down the road on his new Harley-Davidson motorbike.
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