American Subversive (19 page)

Keith raised the blinds with a flourish, but the fire escape still obscured much of the light. Sorry about the view, he said.

Any other exits?

There's a basement door that leads to a back alley. The building's full of illegals coming and going at all hours, so it's usually just wedged open. But we've never had any trouble down here, so use the front entrance unless there's an emergency. It'll be much less conspicuous.

We
. Keith had said there would be a set of architectural plans for 660 Madison Avenue waiting for us, and sure enough, there they were—rolled up in a corner of the hallway closet. I could only imagine how
they'd gotten there—the amazing precision of the whole thing—and for a moment it made me think we couldn't fail. We spread the sheets across the floor and got to work. Someone who wasn't an architect had scrawled comments here and there—along with arrows, question marks, exclamation points—and Keith went through them all carefully. I took notes, and by the late afternoon we'd finalized our plan. It was straightforward: I'd go up to Barneys at lunchtime the next day. A Saturday in summer: there'd be plenty of people around, so blending in wouldn't be a problem. There looked to be several ways into the office building from the adjoining department store, which meant we could conceivably avoid using the ground-floor lobby. I needed to examine these shared corridors firsthand, determine accessibility, memorize details—locks and lighting, stairwells and elevators, security cameras and personnel. And all without raising suspicions. I'd have to look the part.

Around five thirty, I left Keith to his calculations and set out for the vintage stores on Ludlow and Orchard. Shop after shop of pretty girls, all teeth and tans. They made me nervous. No, they couldn't help me. No, I wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just another skin to hide behind.

I bought a modest, knee-length skirt, a sleeveless top, and low heels I could walk—or run—in. I paid in cash. Dusk descended as I started back, a golden New York twilight, the kind you noticed and slowed to admire. The bars had opened their doors to the street, and out poured the voices of early drinkers, the latest jukebox favorites, and a river of summer laughter, easy and free-flowing. It was the sound of a city I'd always imagined but never quite found.

The laughter, I mean, and all that fitting in.

I picked up sandwiches, cigarettes, and a six-pack of beer at a bodega near the apartment, then walked a square-block perimeter before entering the building. Keith was talking on his cell phone when I came in, his voice stern, almost angry. When he saw me, he stopped in midsentence. In the moment before he snapped the phone shut, I heard a man's faint shouting through the earpiece.

What was that about? I asked.

Nothing. Let's see what you bought.

I paused a moment, then took the skirt and top out and held them up.

Feel free to try them on, he said, grinning.

It's okay, they fit.

We worked a few more hours, going through contingencies until we'd passed the point of effectiveness. Keith got up and opened two of the beers. We clinked bottles and exhaled for the first time all day. Soon, we started talking, carefully at first, then more freely. Scraps of things—childhood stories, trips we'd taken, people we'd known. Maybe they were real names, maybe not, it didn't matter. I lit a cigarette and he sat down beside me to share it. He looked content. A man in his element, inasmuch as Keith could be “in” anything. It had grown dark outside, and the lightbulb above us pulsed like a movie prop. We sat with our backs against the far bed, listening to the trains on the bridge.

Keith told me where he'd grown up: Jacksonville, Mobile, Virginia Beach.

A military brat, I said, and he nodded.

Parents split up, I said, and he nodded again.

You buy into that world or you get out, he said. My mom got out in Virginia. I hung in until San Diego. I was sixteen.

Young still.

I guess, Keith replied.

Did he know about my family's background? Beyond Bobby, I mean? It wasn't so different: three generations of war, of duty and slowly mounting despair. You give so much, and then you give everything. The moment was becoming charged, discomfiting, and to fill the silence I began to talk again, about surprises, about growing up and discovering how much of life takes its form in opposites. Patriotism. Courage. Love. You think they mean one thing when in fact they mean something else entirely. But I didn't get far because it happened then: Keith put his hand on mine. And I froze.

It felt as light as a promise, and as crushing as the moment it's broken.

What was he doing?

Physically, not much. Just sitting there as if it hadn't happened, wasn't
happening,
at that moment. I became aware of my breathing, the seconds moving past. Yet the world was still with me. And all that talk, about our project, our mission, our Action, being so much
more important than the individuals involved. The mighty sum of its lesser parts. The lectures about emotions, desires, beliefs—how these were to be shunted aside or abolished altogether for the greater good. Just like our pasts, our histories, our lives up to now. What I felt was not anger or disappointment but something less definitive, a kind of far-off regret. Why was I there? Why had I been chosen? Was it this? Would it always be this? Fear crept into me. I was scared to move. His fingers were stroking mine, softly, almost imperceptibly. He put his arm around my shoulder, his hand dangling near my breast; the other found my leg, my bare thigh, the inside of it, under my denim skirt. He wasn't gripping me hard, but I felt his fingers on my skin, and with it the horrid rush of the familiar, men I'd been with, in one city or another, and the ensuing lies and disappointments, months of anxious sighing, hoping even as I sank away, the bottom deeper every time, and the end always the same.

But this was supposed to be different. A passion born of something nobler than desire. The three of us had reached an understanding on that first day in the car and agreed to let it take us where it would, a place beyond the physical. . . . Keith was looking at me. He began to pull me toward him. I could see it in his eyes: this was no joke or drunken aside. It was betrayal.

No,
I said.

I pulled roughly away and stood up without a word. Keith didn't try to stop me. He just watched as I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. I sat on the edge of the tub and rubbed my face. A deep weariness came over me—a traveler's exhaustion, a soldier's exhaustion. That I could be so wrong, so utterly na
ϊ
ve. I'd chosen, finally, after years, to believe in someone. I thought I'd found a place where my value was more than skin deep, and now . . . and now . . .

How long was I in there? Twenty minutes? Thirty? At some point I got up and tied my hair back. I washed my face in the small sink, then walked back into the main room. Keith had turned the light out, but I could still see his trim form stretched across the cot nearest the door. He was pretending to be asleep. I tiptoed past him to the other bed. The eyes, the charisma, the overwhelming sense of danger that announced him, surrounded him, defined him. Had a woman ever said no before?

The city outside was as quiet as I'd ever heard it. Everything just waiting.

I slept in my clothes that night, as Keith had trained me to do.

When I woke in the morning, he was gone, along with his overnight bag and the plans. The
plans
. The only evidence of his having been there at all were the empty beer bottles, the rolled-up sleeping bag, and the unfortunate memories that now came flooding back. I hurried to the window and looked through the fire escape to the street below.

There was no car. Or there was a car, parked where we'd parked, but it wasn't ours. I scanned the street again, then the buildings opposite, looking for anything unusual, human movement or the lack of it, but it was still early. The storefronts were shuttered, the street mostly empty. And so, several months into my new life, I performed my first reckless act. I found the cigarettes—he hadn't taken those—opened the window, and climbed out onto the fire escape. I was exposing myself to anyone who might be watching, but I suddenly didn't care. I sat there, as I'd once sat as a child, legs pulled in against me, shirt over my knees. It's how I used to try to disappear.

Call it a tribute to my training that my first thought was about the Action—what time I should leave for Barneys. Before the anger. Before the realization that I'd been abandoned in a safe house with no car and no money and absolutely no idea how to proceed. Was I safe? Had I ever been safe? It had been a long time since I'd felt this helpless, this dependent on another person—a man who believed in the unconditional, a man with a theory of a perfect world. There was no such thing.

The city came to me and I breathed it in. Garbage, soap, and the scents of the Orient. I couldn't go back to Maggie Valley. I was no longer the daughter my parents knew. Or thought they knew. It was too late, and too dangerous. The Indigo Action would go down or something else would, and I'd be named as an accomplice, or worse. We'd always talked about breaking clean from the past, but it was impossible to vanish completely. There were people in North Carolina, activists I'd run with in the months after Bobby died, who knew I was with Keith. Someone would talk. I stubbed my cigarette out on
the black iron railing. I had to move, but where? I thought about the night before. Such grand ambitions ruined by the smallest of gestures. Human urges and pride. Just then, the sun broke free of the buildings across the street and I realized . . .
I can still walk away
. If I can get to the Port Authority, I can hop a bus to—

There he was! In the car at the corner. Blinker on, about to turn onto Market Street. He looked up through the windshield and saw me. I didn't move. I couldn't think. I watched him drive slowly past the building and park up the street. Keith didn't look up again. He got out, locked the car, and, with a shopping bag in one arm and his overnight bag in the other, started walking toward the building. I should have been relieved. Instead, I felt a kind of dull dread. My stomach churned as he opened the door four flights below me. I climbed back inside and closed the window.

Keith was grinning when he walked in.

You're up, he said.

Casually, he unloaded bagels and two cups of coffee, as if all our days started like this, years of mornings in this very apartment, the two of us smoking and eating and wiping crumbs from each other's mouths.

I probably don't need to tell you, he continued, it's not a great idea to sit out—

Where were you?

He stopped moving. Running errands, he said calmly.

Well fucking let me know next time
.

You were still asleep. And anyway, I was gone less than an hour. Keith dropped the subject and started spreading cream cheese on a bagel. As if nothing had happened. As if last night hadn't happened. I knew he'd never apologize.

After that, we fell back into form. What other choice was there? I could yell or ignore him, but what would that accomplish? He'd been getting his revenge. Or maybe he really did have things to do. But why take the car? Why take the plans? We ate, then spread the plans out and went over everything once more. I tried to clear my head.

When we were done, he looked at me sternly, like a teacher, like a parent. Are you ready? he asked.

Yes, I said.

Because we only get one shot at this.

I showered and changed and Keith drove me uptown. We made small talk, then stopped talking altogether. Did I seem nervous? When I got out, a few blocks south of Barneys, I strode casually up Madison in my flattering top and fashionable skirt like a thousand other well-heeled women on that warm summer day. I peered idly through store windows, my eyes sizing up the mannequins, my mind completely on the task before me. I glanced over at 660 Madison as I walked up the east side of the avenue. It was a strange structure, tiered and asymmetrical. On the plans it had been listed by its original name, the Getty Building, and when Keith saw that, his eyes had grown wide.

Perfect, he said. They built it with oil money.

There is nothing to be gained by going into detail here, so I'll keep it brief. I crossed Madison at Sixty-first Street and entered Barneys without making eye contact with the doorman. I ambled over to the bank of elevators on my left, staying close to people, groups, crowds. When the doors slid open, I stood in the back corner with my head down as eager shoppers piled in after me. I got off on a high floor and went to work, memorizing layouts and the position of things—saleswomen, racks, and registers. I observed patterns, the flow of foot traffic, the floor manager's habits, the guards' routes. I even saw someone shoplift: that's how focused I was. Yet to see me, as I wandered contentedly from one department to the next, you'd have thought I was only interested in the clothes, one more gust in the whirlwind of avarice and consumerism. And then you'd have lost track of me altogether, as I slipped unnoticed past a row of dressing rooms and through a plain white door that led even higher.

AIDAN