The Traitor's Story

by Kevin Wignall

When had doing the right thing stopped being the automatic option and become something that had to be worked at instead?

They wanted Finn to pretend he was corrupt, that he was looking for a payoff, when he’d already had his payoff because, of course, he was corrupt.

“I think everyone’s trying to find this point in time where they fit, where everything’s right, where they fit into the universe. Me and Hailey, that girl”—he gestured toward the waitress—“we’re young, so we keep thinking it’s in the future and we’re running toward it. I guess people who are older, like you or like our parents, you keep thinking you missed it and it’s some place back in your past but you can’t pin it down. You know, we’re all looking for this same point of time and it always seems just out of reach—when we were happy, when things felt right, when we’ll fit into the universe, but maybe it’s out of reach because it’s not a point in time at all, it’s something else, something inside us. Like déjà vu.”

Religion fared badly in so much of the history he wrote about, and yet he was constantly surprised by how much solace he gained from places of worship. It wasn’t redemptive, nothing to do with conscience—more the strange sense of meaningful emptiness he found in these places, a quality that allowed him to disappear effortlessly.

“Life is like comedy—it’s all in the timing.”