A Stranger Like You (27 page)

“I hear you,” Tom said and hung up.

Hugh turned on the TV. He needed to think. So what he had found the script? It didn’t prove anything.

He sat there staring at the screen. Another show was on about Hedda Chase and the film. Experts on Middle East relations were giving their opinions, and yet they were perplexed that none of the terrorist organizations had claimed responsibility for her disappearance, nor for the death of the girl, Fatima Kassim. Watching the coverage gave Hugh pause. It got him thinking.

He roared out loud with laughter. He roared and roared. The situation couldn’t have been more perfect.

It came to him that he needed to start thinking like a terrorist.

The realization prompted Hugh to become an observer of life. He walked the sidewalks with his head down, his hands clasped behind his back. To imagine that he was partially responsible for all this hoopla thrilled him unspeakably; he felt superior. He had to wonder: What was it like fighting for something that was more important than your own survival? He found the subject compelling. To be willing to risk everything to make a political statement that would affect millions of lives. To sacrifice yourself in that way.

He found it awesome and inspiring.

As a result, he took a keener interest in the world around him. He had to stretch his mind beyond its usual mental boundaries. Watching things closely, analytically—scrutinizing the way people talked to one another in the street, the way they walked, their gestures. He became critical of the culture—the enormous billboards on Sunset Boulevard with their underwear ads—the way women dressed on the streets—the carelessness exhibited by the tourists. In a bar he lingered over a glass of beer, watching CNN on the television, images of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He eavesdropped on a drunken couple who had begun to kiss, their sloppy tongues flashing. On a whim, he picked up a prostitute. He let her blow him in his car, in a supermarket parking lot. He put his head back against the seat, straining as if he were in pain. He shoved her head down. He held her there, hard, and threw the money at her afterward. She ran away from him, crying.
You’d better run,
he thought. He sought out a local mosque and attended a service. He removed his shoes and lingered in the back of the enormous space. It was interesting to him, hearing the chanting of prayer, watching the men fall to their knees all at once.

The public library had a row of computers with Internet access. You had forty minutes at a time. Hugh discovered a profusion of information about terrorism on the Web. Of course their methods were predictable, easy to simulate. What he realized about terrorism was simple; it was useful because it played on the worst fears of ordinary people. Fears that people had and didn’t discuss. Fears that had become as routine as brushing your teeth. The fear of getting on a plane, because nobody really understood why it stayed up in the sky in the first place and there was always the very real possibility that it might crash, planes crashed all the time. The fear of getting into a taxi, that the driver might take you somewhere else and kill you. Every time you pulled out of your driveway there were certain odds that you’d get into an accident. Driving anywhere, on any road, at any time of the day or night could lead to your demise. Anyone you happened to meet, any stranger, could end up being your killer. You could step onto a bus, having left the dishes unwashed in your sink, and never see your apartment again. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Fear was the essential ingredient. And life, survival, became an arbitrary concept, like a squirrel crossing the road. Therefore, it would not be difficult to terrorize Bruno Morelli—the next logical target. It would not even be the slightest bit challenging to make it look like the work of some extremist Muslim organization, the members of which had the same fundamental beliefs as any honorable patriot: a devotion to their country and their God.

Just before midnight, he drove over to Ida Kent’s and knocked on her door. “What do you want?” she asked, without opening it.

“Can’t we talk?”

She seemed to hesitate, but then let him in. The TV droned in the other room, another report about Chase; he caught a glimpse of her publicity photograph, the same one they used every time. Ida stood there waiting to see what he had to say.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” he said. “I wasn’t myself. I was thinking it might have had something to do with hitting my head at Foster’s party. Those painkillers maybe.”

“Is it better?”

“What?”

“Your head.”

“It still hurts.”

“Let me see it.” He sat down in a chair and she stood over him, looking at his head like a mother, gently pushing the hair aside to see the wound, her breasts grazing his chin.

“I’m getting divorced,” he told her.

“Should we celebrate?”

She opened a bottle of wine and they sat at her tiny kitchen table drinking it. She smoked a cigarette, tapping the ashes into a clamshell.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Did I tell you I play the piano?”

“I think you may have mentioned it. Are you any good?”

He nodded, suddenly distressed.

She reached out and took his hand. “My neighbor has one. Do you feel like showing me?”

She took him next door to her neighbor’s apartment. The neighbor was away performing an opera somewhere; Ida was feeding her cat. “There.”

The upright piano was in a small alcove, piled up with books of music. He sat down at the piano and began to play. First he played a nocturne. But really Brahms was the only thing to play at a time like this. He played a section from the Rhapsody in B Minor, something he’d been practicing before he’d left home. He could feel the chords coming up through his fingers, the dark vibration rushing up his wrists. The whole time he could feel Ida’s presence, watching him. Maybe she would understand something new about him, he thought. Maybe she would forgive him for all that he was not. At least he hoped she would. At one point he realized that his hands were wet. He hadn’t even realized he was crying. That was all right, he supposed, a little water wouldn’t hurt the keys.

She let him sleep there. She held him in her arms. “Let me hold you,” she said in a soothing voice, as though he were ill. She held him with great care and tenderness. He didn’t deserve it. Her affection rendered him useless.

In the morning, he left without waking her. He drove out to the beach and lay in the sand, under the shy white sun. It came to him that he had lost everything: his wife, his home, his job, his dignity. On the other hand, he had nothing left to lose. Nothing at all.

“We lived in her car,” Daisy says, her voice groggy, a little drunk. “It broke down a lot.”

The road is dark, no streetlamps, and the moon is low. Nothing out there but sand.

“What kind of car was it?”

“Some piece of crap. All rusted out. We didn’t have much. My mother was an escape artist.”

“What do you mean?”

“She could steal something right off your body, you wouldn’t even know it.”

“That’s a talent.”

“People were nice to us. She didn’t even care. She’d take anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

He doesn’t know what to say to this.

“I used to get my shoes from the church. They had this bin of shoes they’d put out on Sundays. You had to sit there first for the service. You shoulda seen people goin’ through those shoes. Sometimes they fit, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I got blisters.”

“Where’s your mother at now?”

“Don’t know.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“She got a boyfriend. I used to call him Mr. Slick. He used to put this cream on his hair, stunk up the whole car. He was vain as a woman. Anyway, he tried to touch me, you know?” She goes real quiet. Tears roll down her cheeks. Then she clams up, twists away, looks out at the darkness.

He reaches over and puts his hand on her back and her eyes close again. For a moment he watches her sleep, capturing a dream, and he feels content. He’s tired too, but he can’t sleep now. That would be a mistake. They have to keep moving. Just as soon as he can he needs to open that trunk and deal with what’s inside.

One way or another, he’ll figure it out. You’d get this feeling in the war, like you can deal with things. Just about anything. You have to, you have no choice. Either deal with it, or be done. This part now, this part
right now
is just a brief period of time. It’s going to end pretty soon and the leading up part doesn’t matter all that much, just so long as he can be with her. That’s all he wants. There’s an ending in sight and he knows it, he has come to terms with it.

Ten minutes to five and it’s still dark, as if the sky’s been filled in with pencil. A strange time, he thinks, neither day nor night, but somewhere in between. Like the way he feels in his life an awful lot of the time. Like he’s waiting, been waiting a long time. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he was back in Iraq. The same two-lane highway splitting the desert in half. The same dull fear in his belly. Once, he’d seen some Bedouin women dancing in a circle, braiding the open space with their legs and arms, but it had been very hot that day and he thought he may have imagined the dancing and singing, the joy. The heat could play tricks on you. You saw things and wondered if they were real.

He had said some things to Daisy about the war, what it had done to him. Nobody ever wanted to hear his stories, but she just sat there, listening. She was someone you could cry with. She didn’t make any judgments. She had said, “You’re wearing that war like a favorite shirt. Maybe it’s about time you took it off.”

Wise beyond her years, that’s how he would describe her. Plays the harmonica, says her grandpa taught her when she was little, before things went wrong. She’s pretty good at it, too. Even knows some Bob Dylan. She let him try it once, the metal still warm from her lips, only he sounded like a car horn or a sick goose. She just laughed and showed him how. It felt good, blowing into something that made music come out, but it reminded him of something else, too—the day Ross died and he’d tried to give him mouth to mouth.
Take my breath, man, breathe!

But it hadn’t done any good. He could deal out his ghosts like a hand of cards, a losing hand. He tries not to think about it because it doesn’t make them go away. The memories are scary. They make his eyes tear. Sometimes, she’ll look over at him and asks him what’s wrong, and he just says, “Nothing.” Because what’s the point? Sometimes, he gets a feeling. Like God is right there.
What do You want from me now?
he thinks.
Prepare to be deployed to the gates of Hell!
If there’s one thing he knows it’s this: No matter how good a soldier he was over there, no matter how justified, no matter that he was just following orders, he’s still going to hell when he dies. There’s no getting around it. ’Cause killing is against the rules.

“What’s that noise?”

“What noise?”

“That.”

“I don’t hear anything,” he says, lamely.

“Listen.
That.”

He glances over at her. She’s sitting up tall in her seat, listening intently. “I think there’s something in there.”

“What?”

“An animal or something. I
hear
something.”

It’s too late to lie so he says, “I know. I hear it too.”

“What is it?”

He looks over at her and can see her fear.

She says, as if she already knows, as if his answer doesn’t matter, “There’s somebody in there, isn’t there?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

All at once, she moves toward the door and gathers her things. “Stop the car.”

“What?”

“Stop this car right now.”

He pulls over. Before he’s even come to a stop she’s out, holding her bag, walking alongside the empty road with her thumb out. Not that there are any cars at this hour, Sunday at the crack of dawn.

“Daisy! What the hell are you doing?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Daisy!”

“I’m going back to L.A.”

“What?”

“I knew this was a mistake.”

“Honey, wait. I can explain.”

“I trusted you.”

He catches up to her, takes her hand. “Good, you should. You should trust me.”

“What’s in there?”

“I swear I don’t know.” He raises his hand like a pledge.

“It’s your car, isn’t it?”

“Actually, no. No, it’s not.”

“It’s not your car?”

He shakes his head, apologetically. “I stole it.”

“You stole that car?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t think you’d go with me if I told you.”

She mulls this over. “You stole a car with a body in it?”

“I think so.” He looks at her. “Just my luck.”

“What are we gonna do now?”

“Get ’em out. Only the lock’s busted. You don’t got a knife, do you?”

“No.”

“We need a crowbar, then.”

“We better hurry up and find one.”

Back on the road she gets quiet. He can see the child in her face. She doesn’t trust him now. Trust is the whole deal in life, he thinks. Something he learned in the war. Without it you have nothing. Trusting somebody with your life is a big deal.

“Hey,” he says, and she looks at him and smiles and he is grateful for the smile.

This is the desert. The road is empty. Nothing on it. No strip malls, no gas even. They are like the last people on the planet. Just the sand, the distant canyons. The gritty light. Daisy puts her hand on his leg and he feels like the bad thoughts from before have disappeared.

About ten miles from Death Valley, a cop pulls out behind them. Except for a couple of semis screaming past there’s nobody else on the road.