Free The Unbinding by Walter Kirn Page B

the next round will belong to me, in fact, and that the letters begging favors will stream toward my box then.
    The power resides with you now, Portal Person, but it hasn’t stopped moving. It’s only passing through you. That’s not a threat. It’s the physics of what is. I know you’re a student of esoteric science, so I’m sure you get my drift.
    Expecting nothing but hoping much,
Kent Selkirk

18.
    [Via courier]
    Agent’s Memo: Returning from my vacation by the sea, my skeleton aligned, my organs cleansed, and all my buildups flushed, I decided to press on with this assignment in the manner that you, my supervisors, perennially warn against and thereby subtly recommend. First convict and then investigate. And by investigating, instigate. If the new science has it right and (as I understood it from a seminar) to observe is to disturb , it should also be true that to follow is to push.
    But would pushing do the trick? My experience tracking Grant and Selkirk had shown me that pressuring certain people only causes them to skid in circles, like shopping carts with broken front wheels. To bring them to justice (or, rather, to determine what justice might consist of in their case) would call for a slyer maneuver. I had to tempt them to push back. Otherwise, they might move but never advance. They might envision but never execute.
    I think it’s working. I’m turning them toward evil.
    Last Sunday night, alone in my apartment after breaking things off with my new crush over her contact with her ex-boyfriend—whom, I’d learned from her cell phone records, she’d kept calling even after I’d ordered her to stop—I looked up from a tray of Lean Cuisine lasagna to see a dark figure pass my curtained front window. I assumed that my brat had returned. They always do. (And I always let them, if only for an evening.) As I went to the door to check the peephole, though, my gut said trouble. I stepped back. A moment later I heard breaking glass and saw the curtain billow inward. I was en route to my bedroom and my sidearm when another pane shattered, the curtain flapped again, and a cheaply framed poster of Marilyn hanging on the opposite wall suddenly slipped cockeyed on its nail. The bright violet stain on her stomach told the story, but I wiped it with a finger to make sure.
    Fluorescent water-based ammunition.
    Paint.
    Fired by multiple gunmen. Or that’s what I concluded after inspecting the window and the curtain and finding gaudy splotches of pink and green. In the shadowy courtyard, reconstructing trajectories, I called out for Selkirk and his comrades to behave like males and show themselves. When no one came forward, I went to call in a work order to the maintenance staff. That’s when I saw the words on my front door, written in orange children’s sidewalk chalk.
    THE WRATH OF TWIST !
    He’d guessed, though it had taken a few days. He’d guessed that I’d sent the law to grab the dog that he’d confessed to abducting in his MyStory journal. I’d expected this. I’d also hoped it would start a fight.
    In bed that night, out hard, I dreamed that my late wife, Jillian, had given birth to twins and hadn’t, as in reality, died from a drug interaction while carrying twins. The dream was blissful, but I tried to make it heavenly by practicing the “directed wishing” trick that I’d learned from a psychic at the spa. By issuing firm commands to my subconscious, I sought to turn the imaginary babies into imaginary young adults with solid educations and stable careers. It worked, but not as smoothly as I’d hoped. Perhaps because I’d refused to learn the gender of my late wife’s four-month never-borns, my invented descendants lacked definition. Dumpy, ambiguous physiques. Dull midrange voices. Collar-length blah hair. And, for clothing, identical gray jumpsuits. Worse, the twins seemed to be married to each other—miserably married. They bickered. They nitpicked. They sulked. They never kissed.
    And the