Lost Cargo (3 page)

The baby conversation again under the banter. He’d put his studies aside when his parents died and promised himself he would get his law degree before life swept him away again.

“I’ve never seen that necklace,” he said, trying to turn her mood.

Annie smiled. “It belonged to my mother. She brought it with her from China when she came here as a girl. The characters say ‘forget me not.’”

Rain was falling by the time they left Sully’s. The wind gusted through the leaves and rattled the signs in the parking lot. They had just stepped off the curb when she grabbed his sleeve.

“What’s that?” Annie said.

A mangled mass of gray feathers and curled up red claws lay under the streetlight. The head was missing and a thin stream of blood ran over the wet sidewalk. Monroe looked up. Flocks of pigeons roosted above the stores and in the trees near the Metro. This one must have been a straggler.

“A pigeon,” he said with disgust. “A cat must have gotten it.”

Annie took his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“U
FO
s aren’t real,” Burke said with derision. He handled the print as if it had lice and put it down on the cafe table. In his thirties with eyebrows that rose in mock surprise and an immaculate suit and tie, he had the soft look of a man who lived in his office.

Travis took his black coffee and settled in a chair, feeling like a lowlife in jeans and sneakers. Behind them a crowd moved through Union Station’s glittery food court.

“Looks real to me,” Travis said. “When you worked for the Associated Press—”

“I covered politics, not
UFO
s.”

“Just tell me, with your professional experience, do you think somebody could’ve staged these photos?”

“Sure they did,” Burke said. “They put a toy against some bushes to make it look like it landed from outer space.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not a toy, and those aren’t bushes. That’s obvious. They’re trees. Look at that. It’s unbelievable. How can you say that’s a toy?”

Burke laughed. “Okay, it’s probably not a toy. You know what it is? A movie set. Some ridiculous low-budget movie that somebody shot in Rock Creek Park, and after they filmed it, they lost their camera.”

“They don’t make movies with digital cameras. They use movie equipment and computers.”

“Hey,” a voice said.

Travis looked up at The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. Most Beautiful wore jeans, a white sweater and black jacket, and had twisted her long honey blonde hair into a loose braid. Small silver half-moon earrings shone on her perfect ears. Everything else about her looked perfect, too. Then he realized she wasn’t talking to him. She was looking at Burke.

“Got your ticket?” she asked him.

Burke nodded affectionately. The blonde sat down at the small table, put a small shopping bag on the floor, turned her blue gaze on Travis, and introduced herself.

Her name was Lexie. She asked Burke about a trip to the Adirondacks he was taking that weekend. Looking at her, Travis felt all hands, elbows and bulky coat, too big for the tiny table. Burke was her brother, which was a surprise. He had to be at least ten years older and in a bad light could even pass for her father. She’d transferred to American University and moved in with him. Travis asked her what she was studying. History, she told him.

“I go to AU, too,” he said. “Literature. I might teach.”

She gave a polite nod. “Oh. So what’s up with you two? What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” Travis said. He reached for the print, but her brother snatched it away and put it back on the table.

“No, show her,” Burke said. “It’s invasion time.”

“I never said that,” Travis told him.

Her eyes widened. “A
UFO
. Where did you get this?”

“I found a camera with these photos.”

“What do you mean, you found a camera?”

“In Rock Creek Park.”

“So somebody took this,” she said. “It’s not made up.”

“Oh, come on,” her brother said. “Of course it’s made up.”

“Did you see
Seeing is Believing
?” she asked Travis.

“No, what’s that?”

“The documentary. They interviewed all these people who saw
UFO
s, a truck driver and police officers and pilots. Some of them saw black triangles, too. I own it. I’ve watched it a hundred times.”

Her brother stared at her as if she’d lost every brain cell in her head.

“Hey, maybe I can borrow that from you sometime,” Travis began, and then felt his guts twist. “It’s her. I can’t believe it.”

The giant from the photos moved into the crowd that poured out of the Metro at the end of the hall. Her unmistakable figure pushed through the crush of tourists, commuters, homeless people, and shoppers, but the mob was ignoring her. They were all intent on the escalator. The giant wore the same gray floor-length cape that she’d worn in the photo, a heavy garment with deep folds that hid her feet. She reached the escalator and wedged her bulk on the rising steps. More people exiting the Metro pushed on after her and began to glide up, too. In a moment she would be gone.

Travis leaped up, scattering napkins all over the floor. “The woman in the photo!”

Lexie stared at him. “What woman?”

“Somebody photographed her in the woods after the
UFO
—”

“Where is she?” Lexie asked, jumping up, too.

But he didn’t have time to answer her. He grabbed the print, elbowed through the crowd, ignoring the dirty looks, and made it to the escalator.

By the time he arrived at Union Station’s wide open upper level, the strange woman had disappeared. Cold air rushed in with the revolving doors. Did she go outside? He ran to the windows. People were coming and going in and out of cabs. A couple dragged their children toward the station. Porters crossed the sidewalk. Not there. In dismay he turned around. Travelers burdened with luggage bustled across the marble floor, crisscrossing through crowds of sightseers and shoppers, and suddenly he spotted her. He slouched over a table in front of a bookstore and hid his face behind a stack of books.

Lexie hurried across the floor with her brother trailing behind her.

“Where’s the woman?” she asked, flushed with excitement.

“Over there, the giant.” Travis pointed to the Amtrak corridor where the strange woman stood with her back turned to them. Her pale hair brushed the rolls of fat on her neck.

“She’s going to catch a train, for God’s sake,” Burke said. “Better hope she doesn’t take Amtrak to Alaska. Stalking her across the United States could get expensive.”

Lexie rolled her eyes. “Did you ask her about the pictures?” she asked Travis.

“No, no, no,” he said. “I didn’t ask her anything.”

“What if she saw the crash?”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s let do it then. Let’s ask her.”

They crossed the floor together. The giant seemed to be getting her bearings. Was she lost, a confused traveler? The station was full of people trying to find someone, or an
ATM
, or a place to get a cup of coffee. She was even bigger than she’d appeared in the photo.

“Excuse me,” Travis said, but she didn’t seem to hear him over the noise in the corridor. He tapped her shoulder and pulled his hand back, disturbed.

Her gray coat looked like wool but felt like coarse animal hide.

The giant turned around. Pale hair, pale skin, an albino. Their eyes met. She stared at him with the primitive calculation of a crocodile that had been sunning itself in the wild until a fool poked it with a stick. She was three times his size, a boulder of flesh. He took in her massive neck and squat head and his mind went blank. The photos. He couldn’t find the words to ask her anything. They shouldn’t be standing so close. Something was horribly wrong with her.

The voices of people pulling their luggage through the corridor sounded muffled and faraway, as if they were talking underwater. When a group of business travelers crowded against them, the giant moved away.

“She’s awful,” Lexie said.

Travis shoved his hands in his jacket, mad at himself for freezing up. “I’ve got to see where she goes,” he said, and took off with the others at his heels.

The giant descended the escalator again. Once she reached the downstairs hall, her eyes lingered on a clerk straightening magazines in the newsstand window, but then she moved on to the Metro, shoved the glass doors back with crablike hands, and entered the swarm of people rushing up from the trains.

Travis raced to the farecard machines. They were going to lose her.

Lexie tore through her purse. “I’m out of change.”

“Take this,” her disgusted brother said, coming up with the fare. “This is outrageous. I’m going home. We can’t follow some woman we don’t even know all over Washington.”

The giant moved through the crowd. When the mob pushed forward, she was somehow on the other side of the gates, heading down another escalator. Nobody was paying attention to her. Travis sprinted down the escalator as the lights along the platform flashed. A Red Line train glided into the station, the doors slid open, and the giant disappeared inside.

They managed to squeeze in behind her, just beating the warning chime.

Lexie’s disgruntled brother found a seat in the back of the car. Travis slipped in beside her. They were so close to each other that he caught the fragrant scent of her skin and hair and felt her shoulder brush against him when the train moved out. Then she met his eyes and lowered her gaze to the window.

The train shrieked over the rails. White lights flashed by in the darkness. The reflection of the giant’s unreadable face floated in the black window glass.

They pulled into Metro Center where several subway lines converged, but the giant didn’t stir. The city raced by: Chinatown, the art galleries, downtown, the zoo. When they reached Cleveland Park, their own neighborhood, she moved her mountain of a body into the aisle and got off the train.

Travis hurried ahead of the others and shadowed her all the way down the platform with his stomach in knots. She still didn’t seem to realize they were following her. When the escalator ran out on Connecticut Avenue, she passed a row of newspaper boxes and apartment guides and crossed Ordway Street.

The traffic signal changed. Cars began to move. Travis looked over his shoulder. Lexie and Burke had reached the street and were arguing with each other. She waved and started toward him while her brother threw up his hands.

At the same time, the giant stepped out of sight behind a row of parked cars. Travis slipped through the traffic and caught sight of her again. When the lights changed again, the giant plodded by the restaurant on the corner and stared at the tables as though she was looking for something.

He was screwed if she went in a restaurant. He didn’t have enough money for a roll of Life Savers.

Then she disappeared inside the market. Five minutes went by. Travis lingered under the awning of a Vietnamese restaurant and kept looking up the sidewalk. Lexie and Burke caught up with him. She bit her lips while Burke frowned and checked his watch. Travis had expected Burke to catch a cab, but the man was still hanging around his sister.

Out of patience, Travis went back to the market. The empty-handed giant was coming up an aisle. She slipped a bag off a cart at the crowded checkout and headed to the door.

Travis turned away, pretending not to see.

The giant squeezed outside. After she moved on, Burke snapped, “This is too much. You’re stalking some poor fat woman while she does her grocery shopping.”

“She just stole those groceries,” Travis said.

Burke stared at him. “What did you say?”

“She stole somebody’s groceries. Gave herself a five-finger discount.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Burke said. “That’s really great.”

The giant crossed Ordway Street, back toward the Metro. She didn’t go down in the subway, though. Instead, she settled herself at a small metal table at the edge of the deserted shopping center parking lot. Pigeons rustled under the nearby trees. One shopper passed by on his way to Pizzeria Uno. In the summer people sat at the tables to eat ice cream, but it was a chilly fall afternoon and the giant was the only one there.

“How long is she going to sit there?” Lexie whispered.

The giant reached into the plastic bag heaped at her feet, pulled out a turkey, and began to tear it apart with her hands. Her tremendous jaws opened. Then she devoured her meal: raw, bloody pink meat, bones, gristle, pop-up meat thermometer, metal clamps holding the drumsticks together, and the plastic wrap complete with the label and cooking instructions.

“Look what she’s doing,” Travis gasped.

Lexie gripped his sleeve. “Oh, my God.”

Burke took one step closer to his sister, mouth open, clutching his silk tie as though his fine clothes possessed the power to protect him.

The signal on the avenue turned red. Traffic crawled to a stop. Nobody in the cars paid any attention to the giant at the small metal table. Then she stood up, gave the group on the corner a cold stare, and walked in the other direction.

“What is she?” Lexie whispered.

The giant passed the grocery store. She walked by the topiary trees in front of the restaurant next door, past the Exxon on the corner, and stopped at the light at Connecticut Avenue and Porter Street. When the traffic broke, she crossed the street. Except for her size, she looked like an ordinary woman heading home from the store.

Frozen in fascination, they watched her pass the luxurious building on the corner and the brick condominium next door. When she came to the stone building third from the corner, she walked by the ornamental yew hedge, a hedge so wide and thick dinner could have been served on it, and entered the lobby.

The gaslights winked behind her broad back as the brass door swung shut, but they had a first-rate view through the windows. The concierge didn’t look up from the phone.

“That’s her building,” Travis said.

The giant’s stony face revealed no clues to the grotesque feeding they had just witnessed, as though in spite of her size she was well practiced at blending into the urban wallpaper. She moved across the lobby and disappeared into the building.