Bond. Justin Bond.

When one has spent three years thinking, reading and writing about medieval torture techniques, is there a way to reinsert oneself back into society? Can the thought of the rack and stake ever be entirely banished? Can one join the company of free men and women, enjoy their fresh faces, airkiss their scrubbed cheeks and smile beneath their warm and welcoming gaze, unencumbered by unspoken speculation about their eventual dismemberment? Is there a way, oh lord, is there a way?

Yes, there is a way. Espionage. Secrecy. A mission. Only by feigning involvement in the real world to accomplish an ulterior goal is one able to simulate normalcy and thereby return to civilian life. Call it a stepping-stone, a half-way house, a stairway to sanity.

I got the call last night. Headquarters in Toronto instructed me to procure some valuable matériel unavailable in the socialist hell north of Lake Ontario. I was to get in my car and drive, purchase the items with an unmarked credit card, then, at some later date to be specified, head far, far to the north and somehow sneak the precious cargo of contraband past the vigilance of the Canadian border huskies and their mukluk-shod Mountie masters.

The morning dawned brilliantly sunny, a cold hard day in late winter. Ha, I thought, enjoying the ironies of the cloak-and-dagger. A couple jogged innocently by in the brightness of my rear window, oblivious to the darkness within. I smiled to myself as I turned the key in the ignition, if they only knew…

Business with pleasure, I thought suavely, as I avoided the highway to take a slower, harder-to-tail route. I drove south out of Providence onto Allens Avenue, a.k.a. the Narragansett Bay Corniche, its mixture of tank farms, rusting tugs and mountainous heaps of toxic crud a clever counterpoint to the predictable vista of sea and sky. Then onto bucolic Cranston, a limitless expanse of drugstores and hot dog vendors punctuated by foreclosed clapboard houses and palm-reading shops. When I reached the boarded-up storefront of the place that used to sell week-old grinder rolls and Wonder bread, I knew I had gone too far.

I deftly executed a U-turn and headed to the next stage of my journey: I-95, a ribbon of asphalt stretching from Maine to Florida that is the quasi-mobile home to five million UPS trucks delivering fall-apart goods made in Shenzhen. I merged and soon found myself in familiar company, Massholes passing on the right, Rhode Islanders unfamiliar with the concept of the turn signal, even a few New Jersey plates straining to break the sound barrier, all of the drivers shouting into cellphones and eating something.

I exited at Warwick, Rhode Island, my dread destination Bald Hill Road. Almost immediately it was upon me. Beyond a shivering spinney of leafless trees loomed a sign: Toys R Us.

Yes! There it was… No, wait, it says: Toys R Us Babies R Us. There must be some mistake. I pressed on the accelerator and climbed the bald hill. It had all been too easy, I wasn’t going to be fooled.

Target, Wal-Mart, Chuck E. Cheese, Panera, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Ocean State Job Lots, Dollar Tree, Payless, T.J. Maxx, Christmas Tree Shops, Petsmart, Dick’s, Rick’s, Applebee’s, Wendy’s, Republic Tax Returns, Sears, Marshall’s, Yankee Candle… I squinted in the sunlight as I passed the succession of parking lots, around which were artfully arranged the depositories of the I-95 deliveries, dancing up and down the hillside like a winsomely choreographed dog’s breakfast.

But no Toys R Us.

I pulled into Trader Joe’s to get my bearings. I knew the place, it was reassuring, the place where people who don’t like to touch food go to buy food. Lettuce, avocadoes, tomatoes, all hermetically bagged, a cheese section kept close to absolute zero, meat ditto, two aisles of starch wrapped in Trader Joe’s post-apocalyptic unirradiable pouches, then, of course, seven aisles of chips and salsa, ground zero for the organic couch potato.

I felt at home. But still a bit dizzy. I made my way hesitantly to the feeding station. A woman there offered me a viscous dollop of guacamole atop a chipotle-mole-mesquite-low-sodium-jalapeno-infused-free-range tortilla chip. It slid down my gullet and restored me to the lethal acuity necessary to carry out my mission.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly, after looking over my shoulder. “There’s a Toys R Us Babies R Us up the road, but isn’t there just a Toys R Us around here?”

“Nope,” she said. “That’s it.”

Within minutes I was in the store, Toys R Us Babies R Us, expectant, hair-triggered.

“Ma’am?” I whispered to the bent lumbar behind Customer Service. “Ma’am?”

She straightened up. Her red shirt could have said Greatgrandmothers R Us.

But it didn’t.

The time had come for disclosure. At least partial.

“I’m looking for…” she stared at me expectantly… “for four pairs of Justin Bieber 3-D glasses.”

Her face folded into a smile.

“I’ll see, hon.”

The wait seemed interminable. I checked out the cases of Duracell on sale, tried not to think about the consequences.

She returned, emptyhanded.

“We’re all out.”

A bead of sweat pearled on my ashen brow. This could not be.

“Can you call your other stores?”

She looked at me, greatgrandmotherly annoyed.

“We have other 3-D glasses, you know.”

I paused, trembling. How much should I give away?

Then I thought of that colleague bludgeoned to death with a hockey puck in the middle of the night, that other bright young thing brought down with arsenic poutine…

“It’s… it’s for these Canadian… Canadian… people I know,” I began falteringly, then raced on. They can’t get the Bieber glasses up there, they’re not on sale at Toys R Can, though they should be able to get them, shouldn’t they? It’s insulting, pathetic, horrible. “Justin’s Canadian,” I blurted out, desperately.

“No kiddin’?”

I sized up my demographic.

“And so was Monty Hall.”

“Really!”

She seized the phone.

After forty rings, Swansea, Mass. picked up. They had one pair.

“I need four,” I croaked.

Attleboro, Mass. had a few of them left.

I thanked my World War One widow and raced out to the lot. Seconds later I was on I-95 racing north, weaving between UPS, Fedex and Da Pasquale Removals, passing on the right, eating quahog tacos and causing a sonic boom. Warwick, Cranston, Providen –

The traffic slowed, crawled, stopped. It was the storied curve near Thurbers Avenue, where accidents should happen and do. I looked helplessly off to the right, then to the left. We had just passed the classy brown and white sign reading “Historic Providence.” But here, like the Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio, stood the shed of New England Pest Control, on its roof a gargantuan blue bug, a sort of winged cockroach of mercy, rocking in the wind and blessing the immobilized motorists. I bowed reverently then looked ahead. No movement.

The Jeep Cherokee with Mass plates in front of me had two bumper stickers. One had written on it in large capital letters: YOU JUST GOT PASSED BY A GIRL. The other was black, with a figure in white, a naked, pot-bellied middle-aged man with tousled, thinning hair, pissing against the wind. Below him, a small legend: “Ex-husband.”

I turned on the radio. First, NPR, talking about irrelevant things, like world events. I switched to another AM band. Much better. Obama is a socialist, he verbally said out loud that he doesn’t agree with, y’know, the democracy in this country, he’s against us, he’s a dictator, least that’s what everybody else can’t see…

I let the window slide down. The redeemer bug rocked in a slight breeze. Ex-husband advanced a few yards. The sun shone. Home.

We crept through Providence. Then on to Pawtucket. The first police presence of the day made itself felt, on the entrances to the bridge spanning the Blackstone River. The bridge, like the Interstate, was built in the 1950s, but successive governments had pocketed the money destined to recovering it every other year in anti-oxydizing paint, and now the bridge stood rusting, close to collapse, able only to support car traffic. Any truck that takes it is subject to a $3000 fine; hence the avaricious cops, the poorly marked detours and the promise to rebuild the bridge with toothpicks.

I swept by these inconveniences, readjusted my silk scarf. I switched to FM. A plangent voice spoke of Skinsational Day Spa and laser vaginal rejuvenation.

Onto Massachusetts. The first exit was marked South Attleboro. My car crested a ramp and was deposited in front of a mall. Petsmart, T.J. Maxx, Best Buy…

I returned to Via America, I-95, and cruised another few miles under the pitiless sunshine. If there was a South Attleboro, there had to be a northern sibling, I thought to myself with cosmopolitan panache. Skinsational also offered acne-scar obliteration.

The next exit was disconcerting. Instead of the welcoming embrace of fall-apart warehouses, here there was New England in all its postcard glory, a snow-specked hillock of pilgrim forest framing a nestled Dunkin’ Donuts. I pulled into the lot, admiring the Ye Olde Mobil Mini-Marte across the street.

A woman came out of the shop, cradling a super-Dunk mocha, ready to mount her mini-van, a reassuring, sensible corner-kick mom. I called to her before she speed-dialed.

“Excuse me. Is there a Toys R Us near here?”

“Why yes!” she said, eager to help. “Take 95 south to Boston and get off on the second or third exit. You can’t miss it.”

Her phone rang. I went into the store. You took 95 north to Boston.

“Right out of the lot, then right at the fourth set of lights. Go about a mile and it’s on your right.”

Buzz-cut with the RedSox cap seemed entirely believable. I asked him for an Old Fashioned, and dunked it. I then drove through neighborhoods with signs marked “Thickly Settled.”

The Toys R Us stood apart, on a hill, in a small two-business mall. Dwarfing it in size was a jug-wine superstore, but, as I was on a mission, I did not tarry.

“I’m here for four sets of 3-D glasses. We called from Warwick.”

The Customer Service lady eyed me. “You Steve?”

I glanced around, Bourne-like, then nodded. Gawd, greatgrandmother had been indiscreet.

She reached under the desk and shoved them at me. Four pairs of 3-D Glasses. I looked at them.

“Justin Bieber?” I said fiercely.

“Wha…?”

“You said you had… four… pairs… of Justin Bieber…?”

She looked at me, perhaps glimpsing the collapsing continent before her, the mountain ranges falling foaming into the sea.

“I’ll check.”

I stuttered into my lapel, knowing that no Blackhawk was picking up the signal. A child wailed. I don’t remember the rest…

She returned. Sweet, middle-aged, fresh-faced, New England, flinty.

“We don’t got none.”

My inner scream was soundless.

Just like in the torture chamber.