After that, the phone rang a couple of times a year-it was usually an operator ostensibly running a line check and not interested in speaking more than a few words. I knew what this really was, a routine check to make sure I hadn’t disappeared. As further insurance, in case I fooled with the phone or learned to throw my voice really well, they put the guard shack on the road at the foot of the mountain. It was a waste of everybody’s time-the phone and the guards-but time was what they thought they had plenty of, and someone in the Ministry had decided they had nothing better to spend it on than me. When the road was open, food came once a month in the old truck. Twice a year, on the big holidays, a Ministry driver brought two bottles of liquor.

“Happy day, Inspector,” he’d say, stretching his legs and looking in all four directions at the view.

“I’m not an inspector anymore.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a delivery boy, but I drove all the way up here to give you those bottles, so sometimes we have to be what we aren’t, I guess.”

4

“First of all.” I pushed the folder to one side. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not an inspector. I resigned, handed in all documentation, badges, identification, keys, and privileges attached thereto.” I checked to see if the mean stare across the table was still running; it was. “Second, maybe you can read in a dark room like this, but I can’t, not anymore. It’s the eyes.”

“Perhaps you’d rather be somewhere the lights are on twenty-four hours a day.” The staring man spoke up. He was younger than the other two, seemed comfortable in a dark room at a long table. I changed my mind. Probably not military, but I couldn’t figure out where he fit. He looked too intelligent to be SSD. When they stared, their jaws went slack. “It’s very tiring, I hear, having lights all the time,” he said. His voice had a lulling cadence. “Then again, with constant lighting, you could read whenever you wanted.”