GoKawiilTrue diligence is following the improbable path. I read the sentence in a detective novel in childhood, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and then the phrase stayed with me forever after.
For a long time I wrote True Diligence in stylized curly letters on the inside page of every notebook, or sometimes on the front cover. I had notebooks for writing down clues, because even at 9 I wanted to work for the Internal Intelligence Service. What child doesn’t secretly wish to be a spy?
We were terrified and fascinated by Service in equal measure. Service was dark cars moving down the block, men and women in forgettable clothing stopping our parents on the street for brief random interrogations. Service was the force that made people disappear—when I was in the first grade, my friend from across the street climbed into the back of a black car with her parents, and their apartment stood empty for a year before other people moved in—but also Service carried a kind of dark glamour, an aura of power that called to us.
We played Ghosts and Agents all the time, my friends and I, but eventually they drifted off into other interests and I still wanted to be a spy, so after high school I applied successfully to the Service Academy in Los Angeles. I was talented and moved through school quickly, and afterward I was posted to Fillmore, a pretty town about 80 kilometers north of LA. My parents came to visit me there in my first year.
“This is lovely, Ibari,” my mother said, when she stepped off the train. The town made a good first impression. The central station was beautiful, one of those Southern California structures with no serious boundary between indoors and out, a tiled platform that turned into a waiting area with benches, then archways opening out to the street.
My parents had been on the train since Ohio, and they looked worn and dazed, blinking in the relentless sunlight. I was only in my mid-twenties at that point, which is to say I hadn’t thought much about the reality of aging parents, and their haziness was a glimpse into a future where I was the adult and they were confused. I didn’t like it.
“Not a cloud in the sky,” my father said.
“Do we need a taxi?” my mother asked. “I wouldn’t mind walking a bit, stretching my legs.”
“My house is close,” I said. “We can easily walk there if you’d like.”
“Downtown residency permit?” my father asked, and whistled softly.
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