DIARY OF A MAN IN BLACK

3 JULY 1947

Motor court, Alamogordo. Room 6. Ice machine with a cough.

Heat by 0800. The suit is a mistake. I wear it anyway. Men in shirtsleeves talk. Men in black get listened to.

Orders on paper that will not be filed. I do not work here. I work wherever the clerk is told I don't.

Lucky Strike before the eggs. First one of the day always tastes like the last town.

They want a rancher quiet. Not gone. Quiet is cheaper and photographs worse.

I am thirty-four. The Army thinks I am a civilian consultant. The consultant thinks I am still Army. Both are useful lies. I keep them in separate pockets.

— ash in the sink. maid will think I am a salesman.

5 JULY 1947

Ranch road east of Tularosa. Then a kitchen that still had coffee on the stove.

He saw a light. He will say disc if you let him. I do not let him.

We sat. I let the silence do the first five minutes. Silence is a tool. So is the wire recorder in the Ford, running through the open window. He never asked about the machine. People don't, if you talk like a neighbor.

"Weather balloon," I said, like I was tired of my own job. He laughed. Then he stopped laughing. That is the hinge. You put the official word in their mouth and wait for them to chew it.

His wife in the doorway. Arms folded. "He hasn't slept." I told her sleep was coming. I used the long vowels. Slow cadence. The same rhythm they taught us for the nervous ones in the Pacific. Linguistics is just hypnosis that went to college.

She nodded before she agreed. That is the whole trick.

I left him a card with a number that rings a closet in Albuquerque. If he calls, someone else picks up and is very kind.

— two more cigarettes on the porch. moths at the bulb. I am the moth. I am also the bulb. this is not a good joke and I made it anyway.

8 JULY 1947

Diner on 54. Carrizozo. Pie that had given up.

Deputy wanted to talk. Young. Proud of his notes. I let him show them. People will surrender a notebook if you admire the handwriting.

Three witnesses. One light. Two stories already. By next week there will be four stories and a drawing. My job is to pick the drawing that looks like hardware they already own.

I asked him what his mother called a bright thing in the sky when he was small. He said angel. I said good. Angels do not require a press conference. Angels do not require a serial number.

He wanted to write "unknown aircraft." I bought the coffee. I said "misidentification" like it was a kindness. He wrote it. The machine in the car had the whole thing on wire. I will burn the wire. I will keep the habit.

They think I am hiding a miracle. I am hiding a runway and a budget line. The miracle is cheaper to believe. That is the part that keeps me up. Not the work. The efficiency of it.

Thirty-four and already tired of being good at this.

Tonight: back to Room 6. Another smoke. The ice machine still clearing its throat. Tomorrow they will send me north of here. Different kitchen. Same speech.

— if anyone finds this book I am a fiction. that is also official.

14 JANUARY 1948

Rooming house near Dupont Circle. Rain that could not decide. A man I will call H. drinking my whiskey.

H. was in Tacoma last June. I was in the desert. We have never stood in the same kitchen. Tonight the hallway is small enough.

He talks like a man who has already told the story to a bottle. I let him. I do not take notes. Notes are how you get a name.

A harbor. A boat. Slag that was supposed to be a secret and then was a newspaper. A private pilot named Arnold they flew in because the magazines already loved him. Nine things over a mountain in Washington State. That part is Arnold's. H. was not on the mountain. H. was on the island job.

"The harbor was dirtier," H. said. "Not the water. The men."

He said two officers put something on a bomber and pointed it east. He said the bomber did not finish the trip. He said that as if it were weather.

He said a man in a dark suit visited the fisherman before the Army did. H. did not say the man was him. He did not say it wasn't.

I asked if the sky was the point. H. laughed once, no humor in it. "The sky is the curtain. You were in New Mexico. You know the play."

I did not tell him about Tularosa. He did not ask. Professional courtesy among ghosts.

We finished the bottle. He has a cough he pretends is the rain. I have a job in this city I have not been briefed on yet. That is how you know it will be a person and not a light.

— H. left his matches. I will not return them. souvenirs are a vice.

3 MARCH 1948

Northwest Washington. A house with too many windows. I am the poorly dressed man on the sidewalk.

They want the Secretary watched. Not the way you watch a man with a gun. The way you watch a man who has seen too many budgets and started talking in hallways.

James Forrestal. The name is in the papers. The job is not. I am thirty-five and I look like a man who delivers things. That is the costume this month. The suit stays in the closet. Too clean for this block.

Bystanders notice us. They are supposed to. "Foreign-looking" is the phrase in the briefing. I am from a town that does not consider itself foreign. The briefing does not care. If he sees strangers, he will invent a nationality. Invention is cheaper than a leak.

I stand under a sycamore and smoke. He comes to the glass. He looks at me as if I am a sentence he has already read. I look at my shoes. Shoes are innocent.

— three cigarettes. the Secretary has not come out. the sycamore has.

11 MARCH 1948

The same house. I am the postal inquiry.

A clipboard. A fake route. A question about a package that does not exist. The maid almost let me in. Almost is the whole art. You do not need the living room. You need him to know someone tried the door.

He is not sleeping. I can see it from the walk. Men who do not sleep start collecting patterns. My job is to be one of the patterns. A dark coat. A loiter. A knock that is wrong. He will tell a doctor about men. The doctor will write nerves. Nerves do not require a hearing.

I am good at this and I would like to be worse. That is not in the manual.

A neighbor asked if I was lost. I said I had the wrong block. I used the long vowels. She forgot me while I was still on the porch. Linguistics. The machine stays in the car for the ones who need a hum under the words. He would notice a machine. He notices everything now. That is the tragedy. Attention is not the same as proof.

I do not know what he knows. I know what they are afraid he will say. Air. Rockets. Money that went into holes in the ground. If the public wants saucers, the public can have saucers. Saucers do not have serial numbers on the appropriations line.

— I will not come back this week. absence is also a visit.

22 MAY 1949

A room in Bethesda I was told not to enter. I did not enter.

The radio did the work. Sixteen floors is a number that does not need my handwriting.

I stood on the sidewalk and smoked until the pack was honest. H. would have called it weather. I will not call it anything in this book.

They will say breakdown. They will say accident. They will not say a man on a sidewalk in a cheap coat. That man is a fiction. I am still writing him.

Thirty-six. The cough is mine now.

— no more Washington if I can help it. I cannot help it.

12 FEBRUARY 1953

Willowbrook, California. A storm drain with a mouth like a policy.

Forty years old next winter. The suit is back. California likes a black car. I gave them one.

Two contractors. No names in this book. I told them to lose the sedan. I did not say invent a legend. They heard both.

They drove it straight into the opening as if the tunnel had sent an invitation. Locals saw it. Locals always see it. That is the point and also the mess.

Police found the tracks. Fresh. They followed them underground. Seven miles, a man told me later, like he was proud of the number. Then the trail quit. Trails quit when you have another grate and a second set of keys.

There is no saucer in a storm drain. There is a service road that does not want a map. There is a building that does not want a name. The car is a story that keeps the flashlights pointed at concrete.

I stood on the street in the rain and listened to a woman tell her husband it was a phantom. I did not correct her. Phantom is a good word. It photographs like nothing.

The machine in the trunk hummed through the wet. I did not need it. Rain does the cadence for you.

— mud on the cuffs. I will say it is from a golf course. I do not golf.

18 FEBRUARY 1953

A hotel lobby, Los Angeles. Then a Pontiac. Then the Mojave, which does not care who you were in the lobby.

George Adamski. He publishes. That is the problem and the tool. Men who publish will follow a stare into a car if the stare is interested in them.

There are two of us. I will not name the other. He does the eyes. I do the silence. We practiced in a parking lot in Van Nuys like idiots. It works. It always works. That is not a compliment.

Well-dressed. That was the order. California contactees want a better class of ghost. I buttoned the coat. I put the Lucky Strikes in the left pocket so my hand would have somewhere to go that was not a throat.

He was in the lobby with a smile he had prepared for a different evening. We stood close enough. I used the slow cadence. Not a speech. A temperature. He stood up before he had agreed to stand up. Compelled is the word he will use later. I will not argue with a man's vocabulary. I will just have been the weather in it.

Black Pontiac. No talk. Talk breaks the spell and also leaves a record. He watched the city end. I watched the speedometer because someone had to be a person in the car.

Desert. Cold in the way deserts are at night, which is a lecture. He wanted a brother from Venus. We gave him a silhouette and a silence long enough to grow a religion in. I am not proud of the efficiency.

On the drive back he tried to thank us. I let the other one nod. I smoked out the window and thought about H. in Tacoma and a fisherman who also got a dark suit for a visit. Same play. Different ocean.

Adamski will write it down. That is useful. A written saucer is a saucer you do not have to fly.

— sand in the cuffs now. the golf course story is getting tired.

SEPTEMBER 1953

Bridgeport, Connecticut. An attic that smelled like paper and raincoats.

Albert K. Bender. He runs a little club for the sky. He wrote a letter. The letter was read before it was received. That is not telepathy. That is a clerk with a kettle and no curiosity. We let Bender think it was the other thing. Mystery is a courtesy we extend to men we are about to ruin.

Three of us on the stairs. Black suits because the folklore has started to dress itself and it is easier to wear the folklore than to fight it. I am the one who speaks last. Last is the voice they remember.

He had the look of a man who wanted to be chosen and was. We knew the letter. We said so without showing it. He filled in the rest. People will invent telepathy if you stand still in their attic with their mail in your head.

We told him to shut the group. We told him about imprisonment as if it were a weather report. I used the long vowels. The other two matched my pace. A chorus is a machine you do not have to plug in.

He will be sick after. Not because we poisoned the tea. Because we told him he would be, and the body is a patriot of suggestion. I have seen it in better rooms than this.

He asked if we were from the government. I did not answer. Answering is a gift. Silence is a department.

On the street I lit a cigarette and hated the taste of how cheap it was. A man in an attic wanted the sky to be a fellowship. We made it a threat. The footprints under the threat are still just budgets and runways. I am forty and I am still the curtain.

— Bridgeport coffee is a crime. I drank it anyway. the other two did not speak in the car. good.

LATE 1953 / EARLY 1954

Desert Center, California. A house that had already survived a book.

Adamski again. Once you put a man in a Pontiac you own a piece of his porch. I would have preferred a new name. The office prefers a sequel. Sequels are cheaper than recruiting.

Three of us. The aggressive one is not me. I will not stop him in front of the subject. That is a different kind of leak.

Documents on a table. Notes. Drawings. The kind of paper that becomes evidence if you let it live. The aggressive one confiscated. That is the word. I would have asked and then taken. Asking leaves a softer bruise. He does not believe in bruises that cannot be seen from a committee.

Adamski called it federal. He is not wrong in the way that matters to him. He is wrong in the way that would hold up. We have no badges. That is the point of the dip. If a lawyer writes to the Bureau and the Agency, both can say they do not employ a man in a black coat on a porch in Desert Center. Both will be telling a kind of truth.

I stood in the doorway and did the stare because that is my half of the act. He looked at me as if we had been in a lobby together. We had. I did not wink. Winking is in no manual I was never issued.

In the car I told the aggressive one that authors remember the taking. He told me authors are the job. I smoked and watched the desert be the desert. Same lecture as February. I am getting tired of geology.

The book will sell. The papers in the trunk will not. That is a kind of peace. It is not the kind I wanted when I was thirty-four in Alamogordo with an ice machine for company.

If H. is still alive he is still calling it a curtain. I am still the man who hangs it. I am still not happy about the work. Happiness was never the appropriation.

— last cigarette of the year or the first of the next. the notebook is getting heavy. that is not a metaphor. it is in the lining of the coat.