The Collective(24)

I tear the envelope apart. There’s a flip phone inside—the kind you get prepaid at a convenience store, complete with a car charger, and when I press the button, it shows that I have one text, from an unfamiliar number.


REPLY “YES” TO RECEIVE YOUR ASSIGNMENT.



I reply yes and receive a lengthy text immediately. It consists of seven steps, the last of which is to place the phone and charger in a plastic bag, drive to a public dump in Red Hook, and dispose of it in the non-recycling bin.

I scroll back up to the top of the text and read step one: Believe in each step. Commit to each step. Question nothing. My face flushes. My blood hums.

Check that one off. I’m ready.


THE REST OF the steps are simple but are described in great specificity. For one of them, there’s an actual script.

Twenty minutes ago I finished step two, which was to go to the ATM of my choice and withdraw $140 in cash from my checking account. Easy peasy, as Denise would probably say. But it gets more interesting from here.

Step three involves buying some items at the Walmart at the Hudson Valley Mall, and so I’m in here now—this cavernous blue-tinged store I hardly ever go to since 1) I hate parking at the mall and 2) Walmart makes me nervous. As per the assignment, I’m supposed to use some of the cash I just got to buy a baseball cap (No team names. No bright colors. Nothing identifiable) and two sets of gloves (one wool, neutral color, no pattern; one latex), a pocket notebook, and a pen. I’ve found the cap already—a plain black one that matches my hair. I’ve also grabbed a pair of matching black gloves, a no-brainer, as are the notebook and pen. For the latex gloves, I’m supposed to go to the pharmacy (you’ll find them in First Aid; they come in packs of twenty, but you will take just two pair (one backup in case the first rips) and dispose of the rest of the pack in the garbage can outside the store). And sure enough, there they are, bottom shelf. Latex surgical gloves. Pack of twenty.

I’m heading for the checkout line when I catch sight of two laughing young women in the makeup department, their faces and voices achingly familiar. I duck into the next aisle before they spot me, and stand here amid the ladies’ razors, watching these lovely creatures. “He’ll love you in this color,” says the taller one, whose name, I remember now, is Gia. “Are you kidding me?” says the shorter one. “It makes me look like his mom!”

The shorter one is Fiona, the girl I caught Emily smoking weed with when they were fourteen. She goes to Brown now, a chemistry major. I learned that from the high school’s newsletter—the issue that came out on what would have been Emily’s graduation. Fiona wears a bright red puffy coat and Gia is in yellow—two joyful twenty-year-old women in primary colors—and watching them is to see what could have been, what should have been if there were no such thing as Harris Blanchard.

Gia must feel me watching her because she glances over in my direction, but I turn away in time and all she sees is some woman in baggy clothes, a head of hacked-off black hair. “What do you think of the pink?” Fiona says, her voice as high and plaintive as when she was fourteen. Don’t be mad at Emily, Ms. Gardener. It was my idea, I swear. My eyes fog up. I turn and walk the full length of the aisle and head for the checkout counter, the gloves and hat clasped in my hands, the flip phone straining against my back pocket.

Get out of here fast—that’s the goal. Those words run through my mind as I hand my cash to the bored-looking teenage clerk and collect my change, the laughter of Emily’s friends somewhere far behind me, a world away. Forget those girls, forget the past. Live in the assignment. Move on to the next step.


STEP FOUR IS to take Route 9 to Staples and use their computer equipment to print out a mail label. Drive .4 miles west, the assignment reads. You will see it on the right. Impressive how correct these instructions are. Staples is exactly that far from the Walmart, and I wonder if 0001 made them up, or if she has regional teams running through dress rehearsals to make sure the game’s instructions are as easy to follow as possible.

Once I’m inside, I make the mail label as specified, the address a PO box in Burlington, Vermont, and pay in cash for the use of the computer and printer.

So far, so good, I think, once I’m back in my car. And then I flip open the phone, return to the assignment text, and read step five. It’s the one with the script.


SCOTT BROS. HUNTING and Fishing is located fifty-two miles north of Staples, in a tiny strip mall on the outskirts of Albany. As with the rest of the assignment, the directions here are so perfect, I have no need to plug the address into my GPS.

Once I’m in the parking lot, I take a long look at Scott Bros., which is located between a nail salon and a check-cashing place and seems very out of place in a strip mall—all that camo and killing equipment in a brightly lit space that probably used to be a Dressbarn. In a few minutes, I’m going to walk into Scott Bros. and buy a certain brand of hunting knife. There is no mention in this assignment of how or when or on whom the knife will be used. But what I’m supposed to believe is that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will play a role in the murder of one of the guilty.

I know that’s what 0001 would like us to believe, that this collective is real, that it’s been effectively meting out justice for years, none of its members getting caught, all of them (all of us?) working together to form, as 4566 drunkenly put it, A DEATH MACHINE.