Chapter Five

Larry McIntire was undressing in the men’s locker room of the Congressional fitness center around 2 p.m. Tuesday, December 04, 2007, having worked out over the past hour – one of four conditioning routines he managed each week whenever he was in the capital, and this day devoted to his chest and shoulders – standing near two other male employees on the staff of one of the most conservative members of Congress and who also had just finished their weight-lifting workouts - spotting each other and Larry and all three men managing to bench-press over three hundred pounds - and who were beginning to undress while talking with Larry about the December weather.

“Chilly today and snow tomorrow,” Chad - a graduate of an Illinois university, age 26 and married for the past two years to a divorcee age 27 who had brought two girls to the new marriage - said as he and Roscoe - a staffer age 33 who had known Larry for over five years now - pulled down their athletic supporters and stood naked looking at Larry as he took off his athletic shoes and then his gym shorts and the dark purple briefs he had been wearing.

Roscoe put his clothes into a large aqua-colored vinyl tote bag on the bench by his locker. “And snow tomorrow,” he said.

“Plenty of snow at last,” Larry said, now standing naked as he and Chad began walking slowly toward the shower and hot tub area in the men’s only section of the fitness center. “And after all that beautiful weather over Thanksgiving.”

“Quite a workout for you again, McIntire,” said Roscoe, who was just one inch shorter than Larry and who weighed in at 240 lbs. “of solid muscle” as he told the other men.

“Been doing this since high school,” Larry said. “Turning thirty won’t slow you or me down.”

“That’s the way,” Roscoe said smiling as he looked over Larry’s almost completely shaved bodybuilder’s physique.

Larry noticed the attention and appeared to appreciate it.

As they were almost around the corner from their lockers, Chad motioned gently with his left index finger as if he had forgotten something and asked Larry about nutritional supplements; they stood still chatting a moment, the men’s area at that moment almost empty of others in that the fitness center usually cleared out after a busy lunchtime crowd.

Just then, Roscoe pulled a new 1900 MHz dual-mode cell phone (weighing 114 grams, 111mm by 50 mm and 18.8 mm in thickness with active matrix 2.4" QVGA color display with wide viewing angle: 320 x 240 pixels, up to 16 million colors, active toolbar interface in camera and gallery, ambient light detector, dedicated key for mobile TV and a dedicated key for camera, up to 20 megabytes of internal dynamic memory, as well as hot swap slot for easy micro memory card insertion and removal and supporting up to 2GB microSD cards) quietly from his tote bag and pointed it at his two naked colleagues, Larry’s back to the candid photography and Chad noticing but not letting on at all that his own six foot tall hairy muscular physique was being filmed with Larry’s nude body at the center of the digital display. Roscoe held a bath towel in one hand which he promptly let drop concealing the cell phone as Larry glanced behind himself a moment, not noticing what Roscoe had underway. Their brief conversation over, Larry, Chad, and Roscoe then walked calmly to the shower area to get clean, that to be followed by five minutes soaking in a hot tub.

In the shower area, Chad and Roscoe glanced knowingly at each other and looked up at an air-conditioning vent as Larry got into a shower and shampooed, a small video transmitter having been planted inside the grill of the venting and this apparently not noticed by Larry, who again was being filmed.

The three men returned to their lockers to dress and return to work, wishing each other a good day, with Chad and Roscoe finishing last and after Larry’s departure from the men’s area looking at the photographic images stored on Roscoe’s cell phone, images of Larry’s naked body from behind, and in full video view in the shower stall – with Chad saying, “Got him.”

“That guy sure has a long dick,” Roscoe said. “He gets so hot around naked men and couldn’t control that hard-on in the hot tub.”

“Every guy in the capitol knows he doesn’t even try to control his dick: at meetings and especially in the shower area,” Chad said. “He told me he’s always oozing something down there, is glad to be so healthy, he can’t and doesn’t even try to keep it down.”

“The video is already posted at the same gay website where we posted the photos of his friend,” Roscoe said. “Better get that TV transmitter out of the vent fast. Here’s the screwdriver.”

“But when McIntire sees these on the Internet, he’ll know it was you who took the photos from behind, and with me looking on, he’ll know we were both in on it,” Chad said.

“Tough for him.”

“But the locker room area has a sign posted, No cell phones allowed inside,” Chad said. “He could file a lawsuit. He’s a good lawyer you know.”

“That could take him years,” Roscoe said, standing up after finishing putting on his black dress shoes and ready to return to the Congressional offices in his business attire. “Look, you agreed after we were told the sort of future Larry and his partner’s family envision for the world that the time has come to stop them, even if it means stretching the limits.”

“But we could lose our jobs if he files a complaint about those photos. Couldn’t you have chosen a less popular gay web site?”

“That’s nothing compared to what they’ll try to do to his lover on men’s only day at his spa later this week,” Roscoe said.

“Men’s only water polo, no swimsuits,” Chad said, gulping.

“Sounds like fun, if Louis is fool enough to get in the pool with them. Hey, when a bunch of naked men are getting worked up in a game, anything can happen.”

“To think America has been nurturing a viper in its bosom, from what they told us at the conference,” Chad said.

“There’s no other way to describe it,” Roscoe said. “Larry’s gay partner is into all kinds of subversive illegal antics with his often-gay, always fringe-group anti-war comminglers of anti-American rhetoric and pro-terrorist sympathies. If he and his Iraqi-American father and that crazed anti-Bush bastard half-brother al-Fatat get a chance, they’ll turn America into a world pariah not even the British will admit to knowing.”

“And so Louis is liable to get gang-raped before he has a chance to surface for air if he jumps in that pool of water polo enthusiasts,” Chad said smiling.

“That’s just part of what they’ve got planned,” Roscoe said. “Two of the men at the conference, the ones sitting in the back row looking rock-solid American as you can get, are former FBI agents who now work for an international private security firm who swear they’re going to see to it that a married gay couple have no future in American politics, and certainly not when that Iraqi branch of the tribe have such influence they could incite an insurrection if they give the word.”

“That would mean more American dead.”

“Yes, it would,” Roscoe said. “Remember what we were told, and by a guy who’s actually read part of the Koran. Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from inside out, and Larry’s father-in-law, if you will, is a well-known Muslim scholar whose loyalties are with those Shiia militia back in Iraq, not with God Bless America. So, don’t worry about the guys at the pool. From what I overheard, our ex-FBI have something far more imaginative planned for Larry’s mate. See you back in the office.”

As Larry, dressed in navy blue pin-striped wool slacks, cream long-sleeved dress shirt, tie, black socks and brown shoes, walked back to his senior staffing duties, Louis was in his 2007 seven-passenger SUV with 300 hp, 3.7 liter V-6 engine, all-wheel drive, voice recognition controls, navigation system, and even rearview camera – “so we can photograph the Feds if they’re stalking us and email the images to the Washington Post,” Louis had said on thanking Omar for the gift, the pre-owned vehicle having only 9,700 miles and having been owned by a professor from the University of Maryland who had known and corresponded with Omar for many years and who had by chance been at the Iraqi mission in Arlington when Omar and Melinda were there, Omar having noticed the “for sale” sign on the SUV and paying for it by wire transfer, the title and warranty papers all signed over to Louis by the end of November, “…so you’ll be safe on those dangerous Washington freeways on those dark winter nights ahead,” Omar had said.

It was Omar calling from Ann Arbor. “Just three more weeks and your father will be a married man for the first time,” Omar said.

“Larry and I can hardly wait to meet Melinda’s family. Austin sounds like a great place to get away from the cold in late December too.”

“It will be a first for her family, marriage to a Muslim man, and she a convert to my faith, and we’re still concerned her father will stay away, but her mother has said she is so proud and happy that Melinda is getting remarried, and her son and daughter are always nice to be with. So how’s your afternoon?”

“I’m heading into the capital right now for an afternoon seminar, my regular Tuesday/Thursday seminar in sociolinguistics,” Louis said.

Just then, a white cargo van with the name of a Washington area sewer company on it swerved into the lane just behind Louis’s SUV, causing him to hit the accelerator to avoid being hit from behind.

“Whew!” Louis said. “These crazy drivers. I was almost hit by some jerk. Now he’s changing lanes again. Good riddance.”

“Be careful.”

“I will,” Louis said.

“And here’s the main reason I called. Could you look at the peaceforiraq.net site? Their latest posting says that Maria Sigmar, Mark and Calvin, and five others were arrested this afternoon for refusing to leave the Boston offices of a congressman who campaigned against the war last year, but who is voting for all the funding measures, and it asks for our prayers and letters on their behalf.”

“I’ll check it,” Louis said. “I hope they’ll be all right.”

“So do I,” Omar said. They talked another minute or so about Louis and Larry’s flight plans to Austin. “Take care, son,” Omar said.

“You too, father,” Louis said. “See ya.”

At his university office, a well-lit second floor room with wide plate glass windows and extensive furnishings – most of which Louis and Larry had bought and brought “to make it comfortable” – and that Louis shared with two other doctoral candidates in languages and with whom he got along, “just fine,” he had fifteen minutes before the seminar down the hall began, so first checked the peaceforiraq.net site, and then a site devoted to avant-garde anti-war poetry that he had found the previous weekend and whose contributors included Patrick Conway of Tulsa and to Louis’s surprise even a poem by his mother Catherine O’Toole O’Connor, who had last spoken with Louis the preceding Friday and who was looking forward to seeing him and Larry Christmas Eve Day through the 26^th before they were to fly to Austin for Omar’s wedding Saturday the 29^th.

The first poem was entitled: SOME DEEPER CAUSE

By Patrick Conway.

War who was born and died, who married –

Blended, familiar in history as male lead

Who rarely troubles the plot,

He – warfare – is seldom even aware of it –

Those who have died.

War was what men of many names –

The Greeks through the epics,

The appellation is merely the wailing,

The dead chanting the sad refrain –

At the vanishing away of the innocent

Into the awful depths of air force,

Cluster bombs. The deeper Iraq descends,

The ranker and denser grows the populace,

Spreads a green veil, spreads a black veil,

The famous rivers ran red to the sea,

A sinuous band of fertility

May be decried

Looming low

She may have closely resembled

The people who shaved their heads

Seven days by the gate

As a sacrifice to the custom

For the good of the country,

Nor break the father’s heart

To have reigned is sad

A love intrigue, to be not merely –

There seems reason to believe,

At all events, if as…

Desolate, in striking water

Dressed to resemble, or into

The red sun of the desert reflected

He rendered another from their lairs

The gulf which severs the grave harmonies

Bitter wailing, corpses,

Springs – but at different places –

Displayed on two, who could not bring

Themselves to sacrifice

Perhaps, to lay much,

And in particular

The use may have given rise to the fable.

Faint rationalistic color,

To press an argument so fragile,

The Middle East plunged in mimic grief,

Just as it was burnt, who was no other,

Which was celebrated of the weeping women,

Customs of many hunting, which they kill

Not the natural decay.

Thus interpreted the death, tribes

And it is recommended,

Eat nothing which has been ground to the wind.

Reapers, who lamented –

To appease the souls,

So they might be thought slaughtered victims,

A dreamy voluptuous cult of death – American –

Them into an eternal sleep, hovering vaguely

Tears.

Now the ghosts of those –

Victims, to some extent –

Stamps it to pieces –

Yet it may be true

Reviving spirit –

Which sealed his who sleeps

With the very concrete notion –

That of death in general

Mimicking the effect, or imitative magic,

They hope to ensure.

Take it, was the object of throwing –

Shoot up; and the throwing,

The custom of drenching, who undoubtedly

In a great circle round, sham, Karma tree,

Youth of both sexes –

Blades sprout and unfold in a peculiar way –

Where, prostrating themselves, the Karma tree,

Who wear it in their turbans,

Shoots to the men, by the women to the men,

Point clearly to the desire, the use – Presidency.

Louis then read the poem submitted by his mother, entitled: THE MODEL OF WAR

That still older Syrian,

Her changes from a morning to an evening star

Who drew omens from her,

In the language, the lament

Of childish ignorance the leaves have opened.

And bled to death on the spot, the local story,

To the one he was killed by,

A great seat of the worship

With little images, dashed and severed,

Broken instruments, impressed by the fantastic,

They differed hardly, if at all,

Their revulsion of natural human feeling,

The frenzies of a fanatical,

As a center, this barbarous system

Drawing down lightning from the sky over Iraq.

Mock thunder, charm in modern times,

Whose members styled themselves

As covered,

Though it cannot be positively proved,

Modern writers have a faded image

Planted in the ground,

The fires banished sickness.

Who are said to be flying from,

Even yet the fires,

In effigy, bleaching ground,

Pelted with burning,

In troops, brandishing the embers

Some people insert charred sticks

Into the air, and shouting.

` It is found. They gather it.

They date the beginnings,

Very rarely to be met with.

Hence the time for gathering.

The ritual observed –

It was not suffered to touch the earth,

Prescribed in a similar case,

Like many nations, the similar beliefs,

Go out to search.

The model which is supposed to heal all.

The falling sickness, a necessary consequence,

Came to his untimely end.

An untimely end for so many in Iraq, Louis thought and went to the classroom, just a few minutes late.

After returning to his office around 5 p.m., he noticed a message on his cell phone. It was from Catherine.

“Please call me Louis,” was all it said.

He clicked her number and waited. She answered with, “Louis?”

“Hi mom.”

“Louis, I’m so glad you called right away.”

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“It’s something I told your brother and sister earlier today,” she said. Catherine and Daniel O’Connor had had two children after she gave birth to Louis four months after they had been married at a Catholic Church in Brooklyn. The first, a boy – Daniel Robert O’Connor – born in 1982, had shown dyslexia at an early age and was currently employed with a major financial institution in Manhattan in the foreign exchange department; he went by “Dan” among the family to differentiate him from his father, who was known as Danny to his friends. The girl, Diane Sarah, born in 1984, was married to an employee of the New York attorney general’s staff and living in the Albany area.

“What?” Louis said.

“I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.”

Louis’s expression fell and he sensed his world about to come apart. “How serious is it?” he asked.

“It’s breast cancer. The doctor thinks they’ve found it in time to save my life. They’re not sure if the chemotherapy will save me from a mastectomy. My doctor said there’s a chance, but only a slim one. He said it’s a risk if I postpone the operation even until next week.”

“What sort of risk?”

“That it could become terminal.”

“Then why risk it?” Louis asked.

“That’s what Dan and your father are asking. I’ve prayed.”

“I’m praying right now,” Louis said.

“I’ve asked God what to do and I think positively, as you know.”

“I liked your poem, ‘The Model of War’.”

“Not too positive a poem, but it’s a very sad war and you know I share your view of it, and that of your real father.”

“He said over Thanksgiving he would like to see you again some day.”

“I know; I know. It’s been over twenty-seven years since Omar and I last spoke in person. We’ll speak again some day.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Louis asked.

“Keep me in your prayers.”

“I will. I want you to call me when you learn the prognosis; I think I’ll come up to New York next week if they decide to operate.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I will tell you what is happening.”

After another minute talking about Christmas, they hung up.

Oh, God, why? Louis thought. Mom’s not even fifty yet. But at least it’s sounds like it’s not terminal.

A father who opposes the war, a mother who works for Iraqi refugees, and a husband whose boss speaks publicly like the war is still a liberation. Why does Larry have to work for him?

Snow tomorrow. I think I’ll pray.

He sat with his eyes closed at his desk, aware that no one can see me here, but God

He put his books – on topics such as the philosophy of grammar, logical syntax, and the social interpretation of language - and laptop in his burgundy leather briefcase, put on his long wool cashmere dark gray overcoat, turned out the lights, locked the door, and went out to his SUV in the parking lot. It was already dark outside. The drive home took him longer than usual during the busy rush hour.

When he arrived back at their Virginia residence, there were automatic exterior lights already on outside: floodlights on the garage over the driveway as well as brass lighting fixtures at the front entrance, solar-powered footlights along the walk to the back yard, more brass lighting fixtures over the back entrance, and energy-saving interior lights (using standard compact fluorescent light bulbs) in several rooms that came on automatically at dusk.

Louis used the automatic garage door opener, drove into the double garage which he had swept clean the previous weekend, got his things out of his SUV, and walked into the kitchen.

He called out to the cats. “I’m home.” He walked into the living room. Madeline was half-sitting on the window-sill, abstractedly listening to the wind outside. He went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator freezer and took out the last piece of chocolate cake – wrapped in plastic - from the Thanksgiving dessert that had been planted with an electronic listening device by the NSA.

Louis and Larry had puzzled over why the NSA had gone to such lengths to eavesdrop on their domestic conversations and had discussed the matter - quietly – with Omar and Melinda, and with Larry’s parents. They had asked Habib and Noor not to tell anyone “until we sift through all this…” as Larry had said.

Rather than contact the police – “who always manage to put things in the wrong light….” as Louis had said, Larry had carefully placed the device – cushioned with cotton pads - in a small lead box that he had, and that in turn into another small stainless steel box less than two by four inches and one inch deep, and had stored it since the Friday after Thanksgiving in his safety deposit box at his bank branch in Alexandria.

After nibbling on the cake, which still tasted fresh, Louis then went to the living room, opened the solid carved center arch mahogany entry door and the custom storm door and went to get the mail from the box just outside the front entrance attached to the exterior wood veneer over a white cast iron garden chair for two on which he noticed a brown parcel that had been delivered by the postal carrier, who usually arrived between three p.m. and five p.m.

As he would later say, “…some impulse held me back from reaching down to pick it up….” although the parcel had his name clearly written in black ink on a standard 3” x 5” mailing label, with a return address: “Crossover Institute of Foreign Studies,” and a post office box in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He reached into the gold-finished oversized letter box and pulled out the contents: a few holiday greetings and invitations in smaller envelopes, bills, flyers, lavishly-colored junk mail, and two national magazines devoted to lifestyles and food.

He stepped back inside, locked the storm door, left the 36” ornate entry door open, and stared at the parcel on the white chair.

I’ve never heard of a “Crossover Institute of Foreign Studies,” he thought.

He walked calmly into the library and went online. His search for the name of the sender turned up nothing.

He went to get their other cat – Augustus – and put him and Madeline in the fourth bedroom which they used as a den and where they had cat cushions, kitty litter boxes, and trays on the carpet with food and water. It took a couple tries to get both cats to stay in the den before he could close the door to the hallway saying, “Stay there.”

He called Larry on his cell phone, who answered saying he would be thirty minutes yet as he was just leaving the parking lot, “…had one last phone call from a major supporter of the Congressman from the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and we went over everything from Giuliani’s chances of getting the nomination to why a toothpaste manufacturer is moving to Chicago.”

“Larry,” Louis said, “there’s a suspicious package on the front porch. I didn’t bring it in. There’s something wrong there.”

“Ooh!” Larry said. “Describe it.”

“A brown cardboard shipping parcel about eight by twelve by six inches with a postal service printed cancellation sticker, one of those pre-printed with the amount of postage, my name and address, but some fictitious organization in Ann Arbor for the return address: Crossover Institute of Foreign Studies.”

“There’s no such place, right?”

“Right,” Louis said. “I just checked on the Internet. Nothing in the yellow pages, nothing.”

“I think you should call the police.”

“I will right now.”

“And you’d better stay inside, or at least stay away from that box until they arrive,” Larry said. “Take care.”

“I will. And you take care. Oh, and Larry, my mother has cancer.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She called this afternoon,” Louis said. “I was so pre-occupied thinking of her, praying, and now this, it’s like night and day, total reversal.”

“Your blood pressure must be sky high. Be careful. Whatever develops, play it safe. Maybe you should put the cats in the carriers and drive down the block until the police come, if there is actually a bomb in that box.”

“I thought of that, but I’m staying in the back of the house and the cats are in the den.”

“So they’re safe and you’re safe far away from the front entrance. I’ll get home as soon as I can without having an accident.”

“Drive carefully.”

“I will,” Larry said. “I love you.”

“I love you so much I cannot tell you.”

Louis called the main number for the city police department and said, “There’s a suspicious package that was delivered to our house while we were gone today.”

“Why do you think there is something the matter?” the female dispatcher asked. “Something suspicious?”

Louis described the parcel. “I think it could be a booby-trapped bomb.”

“Why do you think that?” the dispatcher asked. “Do you have reason to believe someone would try to hurt you?”

“No.”

After a few more questions, the dispatcher said, “I can send an officer in a patrol car to speak with you first, if you wish.”

“All right,” Louis said. “But they need to stay away from the front door. I’ll come out the garage when they get here.”

“It could be fifteen minutes.”

“Could you ask them to hurry?”

“They’ll do the best they can.”

“Thank you.”

Fifteen minutes, he thought. And now one of them coming here asking questions. Oh well.

It was ten minutes from the time of the call before he saw a patrol car with one tall white male officer age thirty-five pull up on the street in front of their house.

Louis put on his thick black with tan trim ski-parka and woolen cap and insulated brown gloves, opened the garage door, and went out into the cold dark night.

“Where is it?” the patrolman asked.

“At the front entryway,” Louis said. “Under the mail box.”

“Could you show me?”

Louis led the way, standing back about fifteen feet as he pointed out the parcel. The officer had a large flashlight and walked slowly to the white chair and stood peering down at it. He took out a digital camera and took a few shots, the flash illuminating the entryway briefly. He then walked back with Louis to the garage area and began asking questions. Louis wanted to get out of the cold but was reluctant to invite the patrolman inside, so stood moving his legs and arms as best he could to stay warm while the officer asked his name, age, the address, Louis’s weight, height, color of hair, color of his eyes, where he worked, how long he had lived there, and more.

After about five minutes of questioning, asking when Louis had first noticed the package, if anything suspicious had been going on in the neighborhood, the patrolman – Officer Stevens – got out his two-way hand radio and called dispatch. “Suspicious package on a front entry chair. Yes….. I think you should send the bomb squad.”

Oh no, Louis thought. What will the neighbors think?

Stevens said he would go back to his patrol car and Louis could go back inside.

“Thank you,” Louis said.

“Thank you,” Stevens said.

Back inside, Louis called Larry again who said he would be there within ten minutes. “The bomb squad?” Larry said. “Then he thinks it could be serious.”

“This is unreal,” Louis said.

“Try to stay calm, Louis,” Larry said. “You’ll be all right now. They’ll get that thing, whatever it is, out of there soon.”

It was about ten minutes later when both Larry in his SUV - which he parked on the street in front of the neighbors to the left whose own entry lights were on as were those of most of the houses on the block now, several men and women and a few children standing on their front porticos or watching curiously from inside their living room plate glass windows - and a police van with two men in armored vests and helmets arrived almost simultaneously.

Louis went outside and called to Stevens that,
“My partner Larry is in the SUV. Will you let him pass?”

Stevens nodded and went over to Larry as he got out onto the street, asked him a few questions, and told him to go inside.

Larry and Louis hugged, standing inside the garage next to Louis’s new SUV, and watched as the two members of the bomb squad got out of the van and walked slowly toward their front door pushing a heavy sealed 2’ x 2’ x 2’ metal container on a platform with wheels up to the white chair. They stood studying the parcel carefully for several minutes, also taking photographs, then one of them wearing heavy steel-enforced gloves used a pair of huge forceps to take hold of the parcel and slowly placed it inside the metal bin, calling out, “It must weigh ten pounds at least.”

Larry’s’ eyebrows raised. “Ten pounds in such a small box.”

Louis took a deep breath, thankful the parcel was being removed from the premises, and thinking, oh no, we’re going to have detectives and the media all over the neighborhood the rest of the week. There went our privacy. People will say it was because we’re gay. Why me, God?

The police van was gone within a matter of seconds, driving slowly down the street with lights flashing, then siren sounding.

Stevens came over and asked Larry the same questions he had asked Louis, after five or so minutes finishing up with, “They’ll let you know what is in that box. If it’s a mistake, they’ll return it to you.”

“You mean if it’s junk mail or unsolicited merchandise?” Louis said.

“Yes,” Steven said, smiling.

“Somehow I don’t think it was a false alarm,” Larry said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Stevens said. “That’s why I called them, so as to play it safe.”

“Thank you,” Larry said.

Louis also thanked Stevens, who said they would be contacted by a detective the next day if anything suspicious were found in the box.

Larry quickly went out to his SUV to move it into their driveway, his neighbor – a partner with a long-established local accounting firm who had a son at Harvard and another at Stanford – came out asking what had happened.

“Suspicious parcel came in the mail,” Larry said. “Louis was wondering if, owing to my job with the Congress, since I sit in on intelligence briefings, if it could be dangerous. It had a fake return address and no one had told us they were shipping anything.”

“That’s awful,” his neighbor, dressed in leather jacket, still in his business dress slacks and shoes, his bald head exposed to the cold air, said. “I had just gotten home when the patrolman drove up and thought it could have been vandalism of some sort. Two car windshields were smashed, cars that were parked on the street overnight, up in the next block just yesterday, from what Colleen told me. What’s the matter with people who do such things?”

“It’s sad,” Larry said. “It’s sad indeed.”

“Glad you and Louis are all right then,” the neighbor said and went back into his house.

“Thank you,” Larry called back as he got into his SUV, which he parked in the driveway. He hurried back into the house with Louis, who had been waiting in the garage trying to stay warm.

“First,” Larry said, after going to the bathroom, standing in his socks, pants, and dress shirt, with Louis – still in his slacks and sweater – in the kitchen. Larry began hugging and kissing Louis such that he pushed Louis halfway back onto the kitchen counter. The drawn curtains affording them needed privacy. “Those are brave men to risk going out to help a couple of strangers like that, risking getting blown up by a mail bomb.”

“Very brave,” Louis said, holding Larry tightly.

They talked a while, sipping some fruit drinks and for Larry some hot cocoa, whether to go to bed right away or have some dinner.

“Dinner,” Louis said. “This has got me so worked up I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Larry said.

They first let the cats out of the den and fed them some canned cat food set out on trays in the utility room atop the dryer.

About fifteen minutes later, while Larry and Louis were preparing their dinner, which was to include broiled steaks, the phone rang. The caller ID read the city police department. It was a detective. “That parcel has been x-rayed and what they see has all the earmarks of an intricate explosive device that would have blown up the moment it were opened,” he said.

“Oh my God,” Larry said.

The detective said he would need to come by their home or offices within the next two days, and made appointments to meet both Larry and Louis the next evening at their residence around 5 p.m.

After being told what the detective had said, Louis said, “That’s what I felt when I first looked down at that parcel, that I was staring death in the face. I don’t know if it was hearing about mom, but my mind was on that wavelength. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking death right in the eye when I saw that box.”

“You’re always careful, I know,” Larry said. “But who would do such a thing? Why? This is an enigma we’ve got to solve.”

“It’s like Mohammed’s play,” Louis said. “And exactly like what you said. The perfect mood. It rises to perfection and collapses the moment it is perceived. I had been praying, and was glad to be home, the cat was so happy on the window-sill, and I was looking forward to being with you tonight, and then, it’s as if all that was an illusion and that parcel bomb brought me back to reality.”

“No, Louis,” Larry said, looking rather hurt. “Those other things are the real things, the love, and being with you tonight. We’re doing it all night tonight. I have a couple days vacation left in addition to being gone Christmas week, and no appointments tomorrow I can’t put off, so I’m staying home to be with you.”

“I have an afternoon seminar tomorrow I need to attend,” Louis said.

“When?”

“In the afternoon around three.”

“Good. You’ll have plenty of time to get ready by then.”

“Do we have to look behind us from now on?” Louis said.

“No. As to the worthless cowards who tried to kill us today, no, we’re not going to live in fear because of this. Someone was trying to kill us. They hope we’ll be afraid from now on.”

“No way,” Louis said. “I’m not afraid now. I was angry, but not so afraid.”

“We’re going to make it.”

“I want to find out who did it and see them put behind bars,” Louis said. “Who would have done this? Could it be related to my father and his anti-occupation work in Iraq?”

“Whoever did this, they have no one to blame but themselves. But yes, why? The motives? I don’t know why Omar’s selfless work in Iraq would threaten anyone, but then there’s the NSA bug. It could all be related. I don’t know. We’ll have to sort it all out later, tomorrow. “Someone is burning their ships behind them. Someone, some faction, starting out to make another camp for themselves in this world of heightened security and near-panic every time someone Arab parks at an airport.

“Now we learn that firefighters are being asked to keep an eye out for building blueprints and bomb-making manuals whenever they have access to a house. America is reeking of the Bush-paranoia.

“Americans have been asked to give up too many of their privacy rights since 9/11.”

“That’s got to stop,” Louis said, setting out some china on the breakfast alcove table.

“We’re not going to have telephone repairmen and postal carriers reporting on everyone on their route,” Larry said. “I’ve got some pleasant news.”

“What?”

“The Congressman today told me he thinks enough is enough.”

“How so? What happened?” Louis asked.

“I told him about the bug.”

“Oooh. What did he say?”

“He said his son Terrance was questioned over the weekend in San Diego for taking photos of the coastline with some friends. They were on vacation and a policeman came by, and an FBI agent was called in who asked him questions for an hour before letting him go.”

“All because they were just photographing the coast? Near the naval bases?”

“The naval bases weren’t even within sight. The Congressman said he plans to propose legislation that will outlaw the extreme measures such as firefighters betraying everyone they get near.”

“That would be incredible,” Louis said. “He’s been listening to you.”

“He has.”

“And I’m worried also about the people trying to make out that my father’s religion is a religion of hate. It’s not.”

“I know it’s not, Louis. Muslims have had the reputation of being peace-loving for many years. We’ve got so many extremists in this country now with axes to grind, millstones around their necks put there by the Feds, efforts to deport Arabs and anyone who can be branded as different. I see more and more that Bush is making America a throw-back democracy and I don’t care if I lose my high level secret clearance, I’m going to oppose it from now on.”

Copyright 2008 by David Lawrence Cade

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