Lone Star (44 page)

How could what Blake said be true? That this unfathomable stranger with crazy eyes, a boy with a wild voice, a teenager
just like them, could have colluded with a toughened con artist to steal their passports and money and then split the treasure? Lowering her voice, her agitation and suspicion waging a war inside her embattled heart, Chloe pressed on. “Were you and Emil in on it together? Did you tell us to leave our stuff behind, knowing he was going to take everything?”

“No, that's not what happened. Tell Blake to go write his books and leave me out of it. I'm a real person, not an invented character in his head. That's not what happened.”

“I didn't say it was Blake.”

“You didn't have to.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened, Chloe,” Johnny said, “is that I do owe Emil some long-standing dough.”

“What for?”

“Just stuff he and I were working on awhile back. It's not relevant. Clearly he was afraid he wasn't going to get paid. So he took matters into his own hands. But I'll take care of it.”

“How?”

“I just will, that's how. I need to get to Warsaw ASAP, and then I'll take care of it.”

“You know your tour friends want to call the police as soon as we get there.”

“No.” Johnny shook his head emphatically. He slipped out of his seat and went across to sit next to Chloe. He took her by the arms, turned her to him. In another life, it would be the gesture of a man about to lean in and kiss a woman, a woman for whom he felt raw desire, and who felt a raw desire for him. But this wasn't another life. And in this life, his eyes blazing, lips parted, skin flushed, Johnny didn't kiss Chloe. He squeezed her and said, “Please. Please go and convince them not to call the cops. Tell them to give me a night and a day to get your stuff back. If you go to the consulate or get the police involved, I won't be able to do a thing, I won't be able to help you, do you understand?”

She didn't understand.

“I'll have to disappear. Emil is most certainly off the grid by now. The cops won't find him. He's got fake IDs, fake passports. He'll be gone by tomorrow morning if he thinks the police are looking for him.”

“But we need our passports and money back, Johnny!” she exclaimed, as if by shouting she could make
him
understand.

“The cops might pick him up, but they'll never find the goods. And if the cops pick me up, there goes my whole future, my army commission, my Ranger training. I just need a day. If I don't get your passports back by tomorrow, you can go to the police and the consulate.”

“Passports and money.”

“Passports and money,” Johnny echoed, less certainly. He got up. “Let's go. We'll be in Warsaw soon. Let's go talk to them.”

She walked in front of him, wobbling down the narrow train corridor. Behind her she heard him say, “What about you and me, Chloe Divine?”

One disaster at a time, she wanted to say to him.

“Is there a you and me?” he asked.

She didn't answer him. They were at their compartment.

The boy with the silver tongue persuaded the mob to give him a day before the lynching. Then he stepped outside between the train cars to smoke his last cigarette.

“Why is he so sure he can get it back?” Blake asked Chloe.

“He doesn't seem that sure,” Chloe said.

“Why doesn't he want the police involved?”

“How should I know? He didn't say.”

“You didn't ask? You were gone long enough. I figured you must have asked him some things.”

Chloe resisted the temptation to give Blake a dirty look. “It took me awhile to find him.”

“It's all so sketchy,” Blake said. “So suspicious, so not right.”

“So write about it,” said Hannah. “You wanted to come to Europe to find your story. Here it is. Write it down.”

“Oh, I would, Hannah,” Blake said, “but unfortunately all my journals, including my story notebooks, got stolen by a real thief—so I can't.”

Johnny didn't stay with them. There was no room for him. There was barely any room for two beds, although this was supposedly a family-sized room. But even if there had been room, as they got off the train and onto the platform, Blake said—to no one in particular, but Chloe knew it was meant for her, “I hope he doesn't think for a second he can spend the night with us.” Chloe wanted to protest, but couldn't find the words. Did she think Johnny might be able to? Just a few short days ago, a lifetime ago, in Carnikava, he was able to. So many things weren't possible anymore. Could Johnny sleep on the floor while she and Mason lay down in the bed that a night earlier she and Johnny had hallowed (or was it dishonored?) with their syrupy exertions? Or was it lying down with Mason that would dishonor Johnny? Chloe didn't know anything. She wanted him to stay despite all reason.

Fortunately and achingly, Johnny preempted trouble. He said he wasn't staying, he just needed to go back to the room to get his duffel.

“That's peculiar,” Blake said. “Why didn't you take your duffel with you? You never go anywhere without it.”

“I left it in the hotel,” Johnny said, his tone non-confrontational. “It's too heavy for me to cart around.” He paused, confrontationally? “Besides, why would I take it? You didn't take your suitcases.”

“We took our backpacks.”

“I took my backpack.”

“You told us to leave ours on the bus.”

“Mine had maps of Treblinka, and I was your tour guide. It had my train schedule, which I never go anywhere without. That came in handy, didn't it?”

“You know what would've come in handy?” said Blake. “Not getting robbed.”

Johnny left, promising he would return tomorrow morning with their passports. She couldn't wave to him, or run to him, or beg him not to go.

If paying for the room at Castle Inn was difficult to reconcile before Treblinka, imagine how it felt now when almost all their money was gone. Chloe had secreted away a small amount in a pocket of her suitcase, but she had been afraid to keep all her cash at a hotel. Nothing seemed safe. Now look where all that caution got her. She didn't want to think about it, what would happen if Johnny didn't return with Moody's money. When Hannah asked how much money she had squirreled away, Chloe didn't want to say. She was afraid everyone, including her, would burst into tears. After Johnny left, Hannah insisted that they count the meager dollars they had hidden. Together they counted and recounted. Four hundred dollars left. Two thousand dollars was missing in total from their communal coffers. “We have to call Moody,” Hannah said. “We have to call her immediately and tell her we were robbed.”

“How is that any of her business?” said Chloe. “What is she going to do?” The boys had dispersed into chairs. They were staying out of it.

“Give us more money.”

Chloe laughed.

“Well, what are we going to do, Chloe? Four hundred is not enough for Barcelona! I told you we should've gotten a credit card.”

“What bank would give us one? I'm barely eighteen, and we have no regular jobs and make no money.” Chloe was hostile and fed up. “And even if we did manage to get one from some sucker bank that gives credit to jobless students, it would've been
stolen along with everything else. What part of ‘robbed' don't you understand?”

“Ah, you're right,” Hannah said, waving her off, shoulders slumping. She sounded defeated. “Maybe we should just go home.”

“The trouble is, Hannah,” said Blake, no longer staying out of it, “that we can't do anything, go anywhere, even home, without our passports. If he doesn't get them back, we're screwed. We are completely dependent on a guy who caused all our current trouble to begin with. The consulate can issue new documents, but that takes five days, a week maybe. Where would we stay? And on what?”

“It's not his fault,” Chloe said. Mason, Blake, and Hannah remained silent.

It was nine at night. Famished and exhausted, they splurged a few zloty at Pizza Hut around the corner, where not twelve hours earlier they had been standing waiting for the longest day to begin. They ate ravenously, without talking. Afterward no one wanted to walk around on the lit-up nighttime cobblestones. And Chloe had already walked them, a night ago. She couldn't lift her eyes at anyone. How could her night with him have been only a day away from this moment? It was both too vivid and too far away.

They went back to the hotel, Hannah complaining about why Chloe and Mason would get the biggest bed when she and Blake were taller and larger. How inappropriately quickly Chloe agreed to relinquish the big bed! Though Blake wasn't nearly as pleased as Hannah to climb into the spacious sheets. Chloe and Mason crawled into the glorified twin and everyone was asleep in seconds.

In the middle of the night Chloe woke up because she was thirsty, and when she looked over to the other bed, she was almost sure Blake was lying on his back with his eyes open to the ceiling. She wanted to whisper to him, but couldn't find the words to whisper. He was upset with her, and she couldn't defend
anything. She climbed back into bed next to Mason and lay quietly, burning with fever, with life and death, reconstructing one by one the kisses that had fallen upon her body, recalling the clearing piled with bodies, begging for troubled sleep, which was so much more preferable than troubled wake.

T
HE NEXT MORNING THEY HAD TO DECIDE: EITHER STAY IN
the room one more night or check out by eleven. Johnny was nowhere to advise.

“Let's check out,” Blake said. “We can't afford it. And we'll never see him again. We should ask at the front desk where the American consulate is.”

“Stop. Let's go get some coffee and wait. He said he'd be back.”

“He said a lot of things.”

The first words of the morning were already heated. How were they going to spend the rest of today? Mason agreed with Hannah: Chloe should call her grandmother and ask for replacement money.

“What
is
that, Mase?” Chloe wanted to know. She was touchy, unpleasant. “There's no such thing as replacement money. There's just money. And why would she give us more? She's not a money tree. She already gave us two thousand dollars, and paid for our airfares and our Eurails. She's done.”

“So what do you propose we do?”

“Let's wait for him.”

Hannah refused to eat, and didn't want them to bring her anything back. She stayed in the room, locked in the bathroom, while the three of them went out. Warsaw was hot, sunny, beautiful, huge. Enormous Castle Square, long straight
boulevards leading away from it, the River Vistula twice the width of the Daugava. No one cared how nice the city was. They got coffee and sweet buns with jam, then returned to stand by the front door of the hotel.

What if Blake was right? What if Johnny didn't come back? Chloe didn't believe this was how everything would end. Johnny vanished, the trip ruined.

To pass the merciless time, she and Blake bickered about what to do with their luggage. Chloe said there was nothing to do. They would check out, put it into hotel storage and wait. When Blake asked how long she intended to wait, she said as long as it took for him to come back.

“While we wait, do I have to remind you that we don't have four hundred dollars to pay Castle Inn for two nights' lodging? Makes you regret not staying in the hostel, doesn't it?”

Chloe regretted nothing. But with gritted teeth, she resented much.

Johnny appeared at the hotel half an hour after checkout. They were still in the lobby. Chloe was so happy to see him, she nearly sobbed. See, she wanted to say to Blake. You were wrong about him. He did come back. See? She didn't dare look in Blake's direction.

“I have your passports,” Johnny said. He looked as if he hadn't slept all night.

“Do you have our money?” Hannah asked in reply. “That's really what we're interested in.”

“I don't have all your money,” he said, giving them back the passports and the boys' wallets. There was not a dollar left in them but the Eurail cards were there, and their driver's licenses. The girls' Eurails were gone. Another blight. “I have enough for the room, if you haven't already paid.”

“What about our backpacks?” asked Blake. His journals were irreplaceable.

“Yes, Johnny, my brother is right,” Mason said. “We really need the backpacks.” He looked keenly disappointed. Chloe
couldn't figure out what was in Mason's backpack that was irreplaceable.

“I'm sorry, dudes,” Johnny said. “Chris and I found Emil's bus parked at the airport, broke in, ransacked it. There was nothing in it. He'd already cleaned it out.”

“What about our money?” Hannah repeated.

“Here's four hundred dollars. I haven't been able to get the rest yet,” Johnny said. “Hannah, don't worry. I'll play all day. How much did you lose, total?”

“You make it sound as if we lost it gambling, Johnny,” Blake said. “As if it's our fault. The only thing we gambled on was you. And we lost there, didn't we?”

“So you admit we were robbed?” That was Hannah, assailing him.

Johnny tilted his head sideways in grudging acknowledgment of the plain truth. Chloe stood back, behind her friends. She needed a buffer of anger between Johnny and her sick happiness at seeing him again.

“Did you see Emil?” Blake asked. “Did you confront him?”

“I
really
need my backpack back, dude,” Mason said quietly. “Is there anything you can do about that?”

Johnny shook his head. “Sorry, man. Really. I had to transgress some serious Polish laws to look for them, and then to get your passports back. Asshole was fast. He'd already sold them. Lucky for us, Chris knew the guy he sold them to. We had to burgle him to get you back the most important things. So you can travel again. Denise and Yvette were upset about their Nikons, too. Their husbands had to explain the priorities to them.”

“So you got us into a situation where we were robbed, where everything we had was taken from us,” Blake said. “And now you're chiding us for not being grateful to you for returning the bare minimum? That's rich, man. That is fucking rich.”

“Passports are not the bare minimum,” said Johnny. “And you didn't have everything taken from you. You can buy new journals.”

“Can't replace what was in the old ones, can I?”

“I don't know, dude. I'm not a writer. But I promise you, I have a plan. I will sing all day on every corner in Warsaw. One way or another, Emil will seek me out. And even if he doesn't, I'll get you your money.”

“I had two hundred dollars!” cried Hannah. “It took me two months to earn that. I
need
that money.” She put her face into her hands. “Please.”

“I know you do, Hannah,” Johnny said. “I'll get it. Trust me one more time, please.”

Chloe watched him. She didn't know what to say that wouldn't give her away. That she didn't care about the money? That she barely even cared about the passports? If she couldn't go back home, maybe she could stay in the primordial present with him, in the space of Alps and juniper berries, of honey and salt mines, of loamy earth. Maybe if she didn't have her passport, he wouldn't leave. Because a soldier, even a future one, didn't leave his girl behind. Wasn't that right?

Reluctantly she took her passport from him. With regret she held it in her hands.

“Do yourselves a favor,” Johnny said. “Buy yourselves some cheap backpacks and never part with them.”

“Advice we could've used fucking yesterday,” Blake said.

Johnny didn't lean into an argument. “It would probably be safer for you to cut loose and head down to Krakow.”

“Why? What, do you mean it's not safe?”

What do you mean head to Krakow? thought Chloe. You mean with you, right? Head to Krakow with you?

“How can we go to Krakow?” Hannah cried. “We have no money.”

“Patience, and you will. Don't worry, my friends,” Johnny said, with a brief profound glance at Chloe. “I'll sing for your supper tonight.”

“You mean sing for your life,” Blake muttered, turning away. “And we're not your friends.”

They meandered around the Old Town, walked down ancient stone steps to the River Vistula, paced through Market Square, looking at paintings, antique photographs, clay sculptures of fat funny Polish men. They bought nothing except new backpacks, the cheapest they could find. Otherwise no dresses, no ties, no souvenirs, no ice cream. When they got hungry, they got two sandwiches and two Cokes and shared them. Slowly they walked to the church that held Chopin's heart in its crypt. Not a replica, and not a metaphor, but his actual heart. He had died in Paris but asked for his heart to be brought back to his beloved Poland. And it was. They sat for a long time in that cold, starkly beautiful gray cathedral. Afterward they schlepped to the vast flat plaza of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

They found Johnny there, in a corner under the trees, just him and his acoustic. He was singing Polish war songs, judging by the tearful reaction of some of the veterans in full military dress, who had gathered to hear him. When he saw Chloe, he played the Artur Gold waltz he had sung for her in the Treblinka woods. Chloe wanted to give him all the money she didn't have anymore. She needn't have worried. The teary veterans had turned out their pockets. A few songs later he called them over. He handed them the equivalent of four hundred dollars. “Took me all afternoon to make this,” he said. But it was already five in the evening. They were still twelve hundred short. Chloe gave two hundred of it to Hannah to stop her from fretting.

“What about the rest of it? For Barcelona?”

“He's doing what he can,” Chloe said. “We can turn on him after he stops working.”

They had pizza again, because it was cheap, and then sought Johnny out in the crowded Old Town streets, which were still sunny although it was evening. They could hear him from
blocks away. This time he was amped up; he held in his hands an electric guitar, and his friend Chris was on makeshift drums behind him, a floor tom and a snare.

Two hours later, Johnny was still shredding the electric, still singing. He had found a great corner in Market Square, and while the happy people sat and drank in the cafés that lined the cobblestones, he played them slower music to chill by, to drink by, to love by.

Chloe, Mason, Hannah, and Blake stood like posts after they found him, leaning against a blue wall. After a break in the set, he called them over and stuffed a few bills into Chloe's hand.

“Here,” Johnny said. “Get yourself some food, a beverage, grab a seat, chill, take a load off.” He had given them hundreds of zloty. Two hundred more dollars. Things didn't seem quite as hopeless. They bought three plates of sausage and potatoes, three beers, sat, ate, and listened to him sing.

He knew everything, played everything. His repertoire included Sam Cooke and the Bee Gees, Deep Purple and Metallica, Fleetwood Mac and the Yardbirds. He sang Van Morrison, Pink Floyd, he sang “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” He sang Bowie's and Nirvana's “The Man Who Sold the World,” Smashing Pumpkins and Eddie Vedder, and “Jolene,” “Jolene,” “Jolene,” “Jolene.” He killed Johnny Cash covering Trent Reznor's “Hurt” and followed it up with “The House of the Rising Sun,” so vocally astonishing that the crowd instantly demanded an encore of it, and got it.

Dusk was falling when Hannah stood up and said, “Chloe, can you come with me to the store over there? I want to see if I can find something for my mother. No, Blake, no, Mase, you two stay. We'll be right back. We'll browse. I hardly want to spend a penny of my money. But I have to buy something for my mother.” When they were barely ten feet away, she said to Chloe, “I don't really want to buy anything. I just want to talk to you. Let's stand
in front of the dress racks, like we're shopping.” Chloe was glad. Though she didn't really want to talk. All she wanted was to listen to Johnny sing “Eighteen Till I Die.”

“Chloe, listen to me.”

Chloe pretended to. “What's going on?” She was gazing at Johnny. What in the world was like him? He didn't rob them. Emil did. He wasn't responsible for someone else's actions. He wasn't even a thief. He hadn't stolen her heart. She had given it to him.

“My period is over a month late,” said Hannah.

Chloe turned and faced her friend. She paled. She became white like Hannah.

“No.”

“Very unfuckingfortunately, yes.”

“Hannah . . .”

The tall girl put her face into her shaking hands. She said nothing as she dry heaved. Chloe said nothing. After a few minutes Chloe embraced her, but had to let go quickly, because Hannah buckled as if about to crumple, and Blake, watching them, rose from the café table. Waving him off, Chloe straightened Hannah out.

“Could it just be late? Maybe . . .”

“No. It's real. Face it. I didn't want to. I don't want to now. But I'm going to have to. And so do you.”

“You haven't taken a test, have you? I'm telling you, it can't be! You told me yourself, Blake and you are very careful . . .” Chloe stopped speaking.

“It's not going to help me if you remain in denial, Chloe,” Hannah said. “Wake up, will you? Have you not noticed I'm puking every minute of every day? Have you really been that deaf and blind? God! What's going on with you?”

Chloe didn't think Hannah was in any state to hear what was going on with her. She muttered a muted apology. She didn't know what to say, what to ask. The things that swirled in her brain were incompatible with one another: shock, deep
worry, raw compassion, pity, and a slight small sadness flitting around, banging its head against the ceiling like the last ladybug of autumn. Oh no, the ladybug cried as it threw itself against the sheetrock in a suicide attempt, will Blake have to marry Hannah now? And who was Chloe most sorry for in that scenario? The ladybug crashed. It hoped to die before it had to answer that question.

“All right,” Chloe said. “It's all right. Hannah, listen to me. We'll work it out. It'll be okay.”

“No, it isn't. It's going to be the opposite of okay.”