Haven's Day

From the time they performed what they believed to be the most tame and yielding job in recent memory, no more than five days had come and gone; and it was interval of time wherein the unforeseen aftermath they left behind set about proving its eminence. Outside the plane window variegated clouds drifted in myriad, yet they were devoid of power to generate any new thoughts within him. As he looked out, an idea of distance became apparent, signaling his drifting from a proper destiny, a route which he and they all, took deliberately. They were now at the end, and Andrei Adbraith remembered his knowledge of the possibility, but the feeling had never entombed him like it did two days ago, when Sergei passed away at the hands of police, on cusp of being saved from the opposition, representing the hostility of the person from whom the stole. He never thought of New York as he did now, the grave of a dear friend and the land of portends, for the strange vision and Sergei’s death had recurred to him continually in spare moments. A four-sided, glowing gemstone, whose light had gone out on a singular side, spun sitting sun-like amid an angelic assembly who looked upon it, and upon Andrei, as he sprinted to the side of his friend and knelt beside him as he lay dying. He remembered yelling for Sergei to say the Our Father, even if not audibly. But Sergei’s body, except for his soul’s windows, had given out, and the red pool started as the gunfire hemmed in. He remembered taking Sergei’s green duffle bag and sprinting out of the alley and out of sight. He found time to change from his navy coveralls to dull pedestrian clothes before getting onto his scheduled plane without being compromised. And after landing, like an ordinary civilian he walked through the Miami International Airport, carrying two duffle bags, walking quickly. He tucked a newspaper under his arm from a magazine vendor to add to his image. He found a taxi outside quickly and got in.

“Where-to-boss?” said the driver, as Andrei closed the car door, feeling his Blackberry vibrate on his leg.

“Grant me a second,” he said, with a solid Russian accent. Then he answered the phone: “Kirk? Hello? Kirk?”

“…Can you hear me? Are you at the airport?”

“I am leaving—where are you?”

“We got a warehouse. Make sure you get dropped off three blocks away and cut off your phone as soon as you get out the car. Here’s the address…”

Andrei told the driver where to go and they went off into the night. Close to the end of the next hour, Kirk Sky told Willard Denis to open the warehouse door after hearing four knocks on it. Andrei entered the small, empty and dim warehouse considering it a revelation and they exchanged solemn and earnest salutations; and he saw a rectangular, portable table, encompassed by four chairs. Duffle bags lay open on the grey tabletop. Andrei took Sergei’s duffle bag and emptied out its contents on the table. Four notebooks, four blue and two black, and one yellow, a book of quotes, pens, tape, a box of bullets, and two knifes. Andrei rested both hands on the table, saying nothing, only thinking. After a sobering discussion about any plans for their escape, ensued and they agreed up on the notion of heading to Tampa. Following this, they deviated to passing the time. Willard sat in a backward chair, reading one of Sergei’s yellow notebooks for a time. After a while, he took a deep breath and closed it. He took his glasses from his face then brought up a certain point openly: “I hadn’t known this, but he wanted to start another project a week from today here at home. He had his eye on some clubs…yachts and cars…but…it only makes sense that York is it…”

“Is it?” repeated Kirk, standing at the table going through some notebooks with a pencil sideways in his mouth, working with a graphing calculator.

“As in final,” confirmed Willard.

A little ways from the table, Andrei paced to and fro, absorbing the book of quotes, until he overheard the last word and let his attention defer to a reflexive answer. “A final job—I don’t believe a final job exists—not for us,” he said, walking back towards the table with the book. He took up the newspaper under his arm and sat down with it, opening back up to the book of proposed wisdom. A silence prevailed despite the turning of pages and the pushing of buttons. As Andrei scanned the literature, a sudden moment arrived lightning-like where the words upon the pages uttered nothing louder than that of a pressing intuition. His eyes roamed the pages carefully, following the words of Malcolm X, then, to those of Martin Luther; he turned back some pages and his eyes fell upon words from the Christ. He then meditated on the words as the intuition hung like light over him. He sat meditating in a synthesis of the words, their messages, and for the first time, a mirror-like quality resulted from them. What he said before the silence seemed mechanical, devoid of life. Uttered only because it was uttered before. He sat for a few moments impressed and reflecting. Eventually, he slowly closed the book and began reading the newspaper, with the power of the words still over him. Kirk started noisily dropping and sweeping hardware back into the bags: “Should we stay here for a week and not tie up any loose ends out there?” he asked openly.

“I’m not sure about a week,” answered Willard, “that might be too long. But I’m tempted to go out, trust me.” Will shook his head in thought: “If you do go out to tie up any ends, and that’s if, follow protocol as cleanly as ever. Its not you who ties things up.”

“Course.”

Willard laid eyes on Andrei. “Hear me, Adbraith? Aye, where’d you get the paper?”

“Airport,” responded Andrei plainly, with the newspaper hiding his face. “I got one of those hunches.”

“Sure. Anything move you yet?”

“Nothing important. I just want to get a feel for the city climate,” said Andrei, his eyes working the pages.

“Well hell, have fun,” said Willard getting up, turning his chair aright. “I know we need wheels, so I’m headed out to find some,” said Willard, walking away. As he did so, Andrei eyed a small article about a new mentoring program inaugurated at a local high school he recognized the name of. The black and white picture under the bold lettering was a collective photograph of young people. Appearing as they did, their youth stirred him, even in his inner man about his own past and wisdom of the words from history. Of a sudden, he saw the face of a student whom he recognized. Andrei looked to the list of names under the picture for his name, and he found it, remembering the student even as a boy: Mayheart, Jerome. He recalled not seeing Jerome or his mother in what seemed like forever, and the program, called the Protégé, was to have an open seminar soon. A contrast hit him. He saw the opportunity these youths had before them to live a proper life and how he, a man at the end, had chosen to be rebel. The power of the words permeated his being, and he imagined a way to quickly, indiscreetly withdraw the twenty thousand left in his bank account. Therefore, he imagined an alias.

He suffered a great heaviness among and by the people in the lobby on the day of the open seminar, and though his attire might have signaled to a stranger a certain native easiness. He decided to wear a sky-blue floral shirt with white flowers, cargo pants, and sandals. Upon entering the high-school auditorium carrying one of Sergei’s black notebooks and a program pamphlet in the same hand, Andrei sat down in the far back-right, almost within the least luminated region of the auditorium, with the bright spotlight supplying attention to the professor-like figure speaking on stage reflecting from the lenses of his sunglasses. He surveyed, and found Jerome after a minute’s search, sitting figuratively in the light of hope about five rows in front to the right of the stage in his green basketball attire. Andrei hope he would have to come his way before exiting the building, but nevertheless he took to deciphering what the man on stage was saying. Twenty minutes went by and out of the depths of thought he opened his eyes to the sound students and parents walk past him on his right, up the aisle. He watched the tall and wiry Jerome Mayheart in approach. Jerome stopped in the aisle for hearing his name called in front of him. He looked ahead, then his eyes landed, and his face morphed with surprise, revealing his gem-like grin at an old friend: “Wait, Mr. Dre!? What’s up!” Andrei stood waving him over.

“Long time no see, Jerome. Hey, take a seat.”

“You don’t got work or something?” Jerome said playfully, moving in the row unshouldering his bag. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t work today,” responded Andrei, picking up the pamphlet and book from the seat and sitting down with Jerome. “But I wanted to find out about this Protégé Program.”

“I’m mean it’s cool, you know,” replied Jerome, glaring at the stage. “It feels weird being a participant though. I’m not a genius or gifted or nothin like that…”

Andrei glared at the stage as well. Then he spoke with the power of the words mingling with his own, “…It’s alright. You must believe in the things that are for you, and for your future only. There are things meant for you to do that aren’t for everybody else. Think of this as an investment experience.”

“Yes sir.”

“…It’s fine if you are not the smartest person in this program. ‘The last shall be first’ as they say, if you remain humble, and confident too. People who ‘know it all’ get in trouble, trust me…Pick a number between one and three-hundred.”

“Why three-hundred?” laughed Jerome.

“Shoot.”

“Uh, two-hundred seventy-nine.”

Andrei beamed as he looked at him.

“What—did I pick right?”

“If you did or if you did not, this notebook is yours now.” Andrei handed him the onyx notebook. “It’s my gift to you. There are some wise sayings recorded in it and a monetary gift I want you open when you get home…but that’s it, um—I can drop you off at the rec if you want.”

“Why, not.”

“Why, not.”

Two days later, the three commenced their way to Tampa in a grey 2005 Chevy Equinox. Early on the Tamiami trail, Kirk, strangely talkative, was gunning comments and questions at Willard and Andrei nonstop it seemed. Andrei, feeling the ill-effects of a rote of insomnia during their stay at the warehouse, was glad to be half-asleep leaning his head against the front passenger window, watching the endless road.

“Grant Haven. That isn’t a bad alias at all. Has a—a saintly ring to it,” said Kirk, from the backseat, “used it at the school?”

“To get in,” said Andrei quietly. “I used it…”

He could fight no longer. He fell asleep despite the flurry of verbal noise. Thus, being ushered into a dream or something else, he could not tell. With his own awareness he saw no more earthly sky. Sudden stars appeared eye-like and radiant in the cerulean canopy expanding over the road and the earth. He knew another gravity and felt his inner man being suspended in ascension. Faintly, as though distant, he heard a gunshot. He woke up to the distance between himself and the entire open heaven closing in.