had never been part of anything before in my life, and it felt good to know that there were others just like me.
I was absurdly glad to see them, and I grinned hugely, unable to help myself, as I invited them in. All eight men crowded into my mismatched living room.
“Wow,” James said admiringly. “This place is great.”
I looked around my apartment, seeing it through his eyes, and for the first time since I’d redecorated I thought that, yeah, it was pretty great.
I finished dressing and combing my hair, and we went to McDonald’s and grabbed some Egg McMuffins for breakfast. We took three cars. I rode with James and Philipe in Philipe’s Dart.
It was as though we’d known each other forever. I was not treated as an outsider or a newcomer, and I did not feel like an outsider or a newcomer. I’d been instantly assimilated into the group, and I was comfortable and at home with my newfound friends.
No, not my friends.
My brothers.
Court did not begin until nine, but we arrived earlier, at eight-thirty, and Philipe withdrew a large canvas bag from the Dart’s trunk. We asked what it was, but he smiled and would say nothing, and we followed him into the building and up the stairs to a traffic courtroom, sitting down in the theater like section in the back that was reserved for defendants and members of the public.
“What are we going to do?” James asked.
“You’ll see,” Philipe told him.
The court started to fill up with other traffic violators and their families. A clerk came out and read off a list of names. A bailiff entered the courtroom, and then the judge, introduced by the bailiff as the Honorable Judge Selway. The first case was called, and a policeman and a dreadlocked black man who identified himself as a taxi driver began discussing the circumstances of an illegal turn.
There was a pause in the discussion.
“Judge Selway is a putz!” Philipe yelled.
The judge and the rest of the court staff scanned the seats. There was a crowd of people in the court, but they were all scattered, and in our section there were only us and a Hispanic couple.
“Your daughter fucks cotto salamis!” Philipe yelled. He nudged me, grinned. “Go on,” he urged. “Say something.”
“They’ll arrest us for contempt!” I whispered.
“They don’t see us. They forget we’re here the second after they look at us.” He nudged me again. “Go on. Go ahead.”
I took a deep breath. “Get a dick!” I called out.
The judge pounded his gavel. “That’s enough!” he announced. He said something to the bailiff, who walked up to the railing in front of us.
“Pussy!” Buster said loudly.
“Cocksucking fuckwad!” Tommy called.
The judge banged his gavel again. The bailiff looked at us, through us, past us. The Hispanic couple looked around as if searching for the source of this disturbance.
“Your mother takes it up the ass!” I cried. I turned, grinned at Philipe. It felt good to shout like this.
“Pussy!” Buster yelled again.
“Eat shit!” I screamed. There was anger in my voice, as there was in the voices of the others. I hadn’t realized I was angry at anything, but I was, I discovered. I was very angry. I was exceedingly angry. I was angry at fate, angry at the world, angry at everything that had made me this way, and years of rage and frustration came out in my cries.
“I pissed in your sister’s mouth and she begged for more!” I yelled.
“You’re a fat-assed, pantywaisted, tater-twanging, wuss-boy!” James called.
Philipe opened his canvas bag.
Removed several cartons of eggs.
I laughed, excited.
“Do it quickly,” he said, passing the cartons down the row.
We began throwing. An egg hit the bailiff’s hat, knocking it off. Another, immediately after, broke against his bald head. The judge ducked under a hail of eggs that splattered against his desk and the wall behind him. I let one fly, aiming for him, and hit him squarely in the chest, the yellow yolk brightly obvious against the black robes. Declaring a recess, the judge hurried out of the court into his chambers.
We were out of eggs almost immediately, and Philipe grabbed his bag and stood. “Okay, guys. Let’s go.”
“But we’re just getting started,” Steve complained.
“We’re not invisible,” Philipe said. “We’re Ignored. If we stay here any longer, they’ll catch us. Let’s cut out now.” He walked out of the courtroom and the rest of us followed.
“Pussy!” Buster yelled before leaving.
I heard the bailiff yell something, and then the door closed behind us.
We were high on adrenaline, our spirits soaring, and we fairly floated down the hall, laughing and talking together excitedly in a close-knit bunch, going over what had just happened, repeating our favorite lines, calling out things we should have said but hadn’t been able to think of at the time.
“It worked,” Philipe said wonderingly. He turned toward me. “Imagine if we interrupted a major trial, something all of the media was covering. Think of the exposure we could get. We’d make the newscasts for sure.”
“So what’s next?” Steve asked as we pushed open the glass doors and walked out through the front entrance of the building.
Philipe grinned, put his arm around Steve’s shoulders, around James’. “Don’t worry, boys. We’ll think of something. We’ll think of something.”
Two
My brothers.
We got along instantly, and although there were definitely some terrorists whose company I preferred, I basically liked them all. To be honest, I was so ecstatic to find people of my own ilk, others who were Ignored, that I probably would have been happy even if I’d hated Philipe and his followers.
But I didn’t.
I liked them.
I liked them a lot.
I got the feeling that, despite all of Philipe’s talk, they had not been very organized before now. But something seemed to come together with my arrival, something seemed to coalesce. I brought nothing special to the group, no ideas or ambitions, but it was as if I was some sort of catalyst, and what had been just a loosely knit gathering of men joined by the circumstances of their existence suddenly started to become a cohesive unit.
Philipe spent most of his time that first week with me, finding out the details of my background, trying to indoctrinate me and make sure I saw things from his perspective. It seemed important to him that I buy into his concept of Terrorism for the Common Man, and although I already did, and told him so repeatedly, he still felt the need to go over it with me, explain it to me, as though he was a missionary and I was an unbeliever he had been assigned to recruit.
I worried at first that Stewart’s murder would somehow be traced to me, that the police would put two and two together and notice that I hadn’t shown up for work since he had been killed. When Philipe came for me on Saturday morning and knocked on my door, I half thought that it was the police, come to question me. But Philipe explained that none of the other terrorists had been caught or even questioned, and that it was highly likely that my coworkers had forgotten all about me and had not even mentioned me to the police.
I saw no mention of Stewart’s murder in either the
