Paranoia (16 page)

I stored these facts away. I was beginning to get a picture of Alana Jennings. And I was beginning to come up with a plan.

26

Saturday afternoon, dressed in tennis whites (which I’d bought that morning—normally I play tennis in ragged cutoffs and a T-shirt) and wearing a ridiculously expensive Italian diver’s watch I’d recently splurged on, I arrived at a very hoity-toity, very exclusive place called the Tennis and Racquet Club. Alana Jennings was a member, and according to the dossier she played here most Saturdays. I confirmed her court time by calling the day before, saying I was supposed to play her tomorrow and forgot the time, couldn’t reach her, when was that again? Easy. She had a four-thirty doubles game.

Half an hour before her scheduled game I had a meeting with the club’s membership director to get a quick tour of the place. That took a little doing, because it was a private club; you couldn’t just walk in off the street. I had Arnold Meacham ask Wyatt to arrange to have some rich guy, a club member—a friend of a friend of a friend, a couple of degrees removed from Wyatt—contact the club about sponsoring me. The guy was on the membership committee, and his name obviously pulled some weight at the club, because the membership director, Josh, seemed thrilled to take me around. He even gave me a guest pass for the day so I could check out the courts (clay, indoor and out), maybe pick up a game.

The place was a sprawling Shingle Style mansion that looked like one of those Newport “cottages.” It sat in the middle of an emerald-green sea of perfectly manicured lawn. I finally shook Josh at the café by pretending to wave at someone I knew. He offered to arrange a game for me, but I told him I was cool, I knew people here, I’d be fine.

A couple of minutes later I saw her. You couldn’t miss this babe. She was wearing a Fred Perry shirt and she had (for some reason the surveillance photos didn’t really show this) bodacious ta-tas. Her blue eyes were dazzling. She came into the cafe with another woman around her age, and both of them ordered Pellegrinos. I found a table close to hers, but not too close, and behind her, out of her line of sight. The point was to observe, watch, listen, and most of all not be seen. If she noticed me, I’d have a major problem next time I tried to loiter nearby. It’s not like I’m Brad Pitt, but I’m not exactly butt-ugly either; women do tend to notice me. I’d have to be careful.

I couldn’t tell if the woman Alana Jennings was with was a neighbor or a college friend or what, but they clearly weren’t talking business. It was a fair guess that they didn’t work together on the AURORA team. This was unfortunate—I wasn’t going to overhear anything juicy.

But then her cell phone rang. “This is Alana,” she said. She had a velvety-smooth, private-school voice, cultured without being too affected.

“You did?” she said. “Well, it sounds like you’ve solved it.”

My ears pricked up.

“Keith, you’ve just slashed the time to fab in half, that’s
incredible
.”

She was definitely talking business. I moved a little closer toward her so I could hear more clearly. There was a lot of laughter and the clinking of dishes and the
thop thop
of tennis balls, which was making it hard to hear much of what she was saying. Someone squeezed by my table, a big guy with a huge gut that jostled my Coke glass. He was laughing loudly, obliterating Alana’s conversation.
Move
, asshole.

He waddled by, and I heard another snatch of her conversation. She was now talking in a hushed voice, and only random bits floated my way. I heard her say: “. . . Well, that’s the sixty-four-
billion
-dollar question, isn’t it? I wish I knew.” Then, a little louder: “Thanks for letting me know—great stuff.” A little beep tone, and she ended the call. “Work,” she said apologetically to the other woman. “Sorry. I wish I could keep this thing off, but these days I’m supposed to be on call ’round the clock. There’s Drew!” A tall, studly guy came up to her—early thirties, bronzed, the broad and flat body of a rower—and gave her a kiss on the cheek. I noticed he didn’t kiss the other woman.

“Hey, babe,” he said.

Great, I thought. So Wyatt’s goons didn’t pick up on the fact that she was seeing someone after all.

“Hey, Drew,” she said. “Where’s George?”

“He didn’t call you?” Drew said. “That space shot. He forgot he’s got his daughter for the weekend.”

“So we don’t have a fourth?” the other woman said.

“We can pick someone up,” said Drew. “I can’t believe he didn’t call you. What a wuss.”

A lightbulb went on over my head. Jettisoning suddenly my carefully worked-out plan of anonymous observation, I made a bold split-second decision. I stood up and said, “Excuse me.”

They looked over at me.

“You guys need a fourth?” I said.

I introduced myself by my real name, told them I was checking the place out, didn’t mention Trion. They seemed relieved I was there. I think they assumed from my Yonex titanium pro racquet that I was really good, though I assured them I was just okay, that I hadn’t played in a long time. Basically true.

We had one of the outdoor courts. It was sunny and warm and a little windy. The teams were Alana and Drew versus me and the other woman, whose name was Jody. Jody and Alana were about evenly matched, but Alana was by far the more graceful player. She wasn’t particularly aggressive, but she had a nice backhand slice, she always returned serves, always got the ball, no wasted movements. Her serve was simple and accurate: she almost always got it in. Her game was as natural as breathing.

Unfortunately, I’d underestimated Pretty Boy. He was a serious player. I started out shaky, pretty rusty, and I double-faulted my first serve, to Jody’s visible annoyance. Soon, though, my game came back. Meanwhile, Drew was playing like he was at Wimbledon. The more my game returned, the more aggressive he got, until it was ridiculous. He started poaching at the net, crossing over the court to get shots that were meant for Alana, really hogging the ball. You could see her grimace at him. I began to sense some kind of history between the two of them—some serious tension here.

There was this whole other thing going here—the battle of the Alpha Males. Drew started serving right at me, hitting them really hard, sometimes too long. Though his serves were viciously fast, he didn’t have much control, and so he and Alana started losing. Also, I got onto him after a while, anticipating that he was going to poach, disguising my shots, hitting the ball behind him. Pretty Boy had pressed that same old competition button in me. I wanted to put him in his place. Me want other caveman’s woman. Pretty soon I was working up a sweat. I realized I was working way too hard at it, being too aggressive for this mostly social game; it didn’t look right. So I dialed back and played a more patient point, keeping the ball in play, letting Drew make his mistakes.

Drew came up to the net and shook my hand at the end. Then he patted me on the back. “You’re a good fundamental player,” he said in this fake-chummy way.

“You too,” I said.

He shrugged. “I had to cover a lot of court.”

Alana heard that, and her blue eyes flashed with annoyance. She turned to me. “Do you have time for a drink?”

It was just Alana and me, on the “porch,” as they called it—this mammoth wooden deck overlooking the courts. Jody had excused herself, sensing through some kind of female windtalking that Alana didn’t want a group, saying that she had to get going. Then Drew saw what was happening, and he excused himself too, though not as graciously.

The waitress came around, and Alana told me to go first, she hadn’t decided what she wanted. I asked for a Tanqueray Malacca G & T. She gave me a startled glance, just a split second, before she regained her composure.

“I’ll second that,” Alana said.

“Let me go check and see if we have that,” the waitress, a horsy blond high-school student, said. A few minutes later she came back with the drinks.

We talked for a while, about the club, the members (“snotty,” she said), the courts (“best ones around by
far
”), but she was too sophisticated to do the whole boring what-do-
you
-do? thing. She didn’t mention Trion, so neither did I. I began to dread that part of the conversation, wasn’t sure how I’d smooth over the bizarre coincidence that we both worked at Trion, and hey,
you
used to have
my
very exact job! I couldn’t believe I’d volunteered to join their game, vaulted myself right into her orbit instead of keeping a low profile. It was a good thing we’d never seen each other at work. I wondered whether the AURORA people used a separate entrance. Still, the gin went to my head pretty quickly, and it was this beautiful sunny day, and the conversation really flowed.

“I’m sorry about Drew being so out of control,” she said.

“He’s good.”

“He can be an asshole. You were a threat. Must be a male thing. Combat with racquets.”

I smiled. “It’s like that Ani DiFranco line, you know? ‘’Cause every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.’”

Her eyes lit up. “Exactly! Are you into Ani?”

I shrugged. “‘Science chases money, and money chases its tail—’”

“‘And the best minds of my generation can’t make bail,’” she finished. “Not many men are into Ani.”

“I’m a sensitive guy, I guess,” I deadpanned.

“I
guess
. We should go out some time,” she said.

Was I hearing right? Had she just asked
me
out?

“Good idea,” I said. “So, do you like Thai food?”

27

I got to my dad’s apartment so exhilarated from my mini-date with Alana Jennings that I felt like I was wearing a suit of armor. Nothing he did or said could get to me now.

As I climbed the splintery wooden-deck front steps I could hear them arguing—my dad’s high-pitched, nasal squawk, sounding more and more like a bird, and Antwoine’s rumbling reply, deep and resonant. I found them in the first-floor bathroom, which was filled with steam billowing out of a vaporizer. Dad was lying facedown on a bench, a bunch of pillows under his head and chest propping him up. Antwoine, his pale-blue scrubs soaking wet, was thumping on Dad’s naked back with his huge hands. He looked up when I opened the door.

“Yo, Adam.”

“This son of a bitch is trying to kill me,” Dad screeched.

“This is how you loosen the phlegm in the lungs,” Antwoine said. “That shit get all gunked up in there ’cause of all the damaged cilias.” He went back to it, making a hollow thump. Dad’s back was sickly pale, paper-white, droopy and saggy. It seemed to have no muscle tone. I remembered what my father’s back used to look like, when I was a kid: ropy, sinewy, almost frightening. This was old-man skin, and I wished I hadn’t seen it.

“The bastard lied to me,” Dad said, his voice muffled by the pillows. “He told me I was just going to breathe in steam. He didn’t say he was going to crack my goddamned
ribs
. Jesus Christ, I’m on
steroids
, my bones are fragile, you goddamned nigger!”

“Hey, Dad,” I yelled, “enough!”

“I’m not your
prison bitch
, nigger!” he said.

Antwoine showed no reaction. He kept clapping on Dad’s back, steadily, rhythmically.

“Dad,” I said, “this man is a whole lot bigger and stronger than you. I don’t think it’s a good idea to alienate him.”

Antwoine looked up at me with sleepy, amused eyes. “Hey, man, I had to deal with Aryan Nation every day I was jammed up. Believe me, a mouthy old cripple’s no big deal.”

I winced.

“You
god
damned son of a
bitch!
” Dad shrieked. I noticed he didn’t use the N-word.

Later Dad was parked in front of the TV, hooked up to the bubbler, the tube in his nose.

“This arrangement is not working out,” he said, scowling at the TV. “Have you seen the kind of rabbit-food shit he tries to give me?”

“It’s called fruits and vegetables,” Antwoine said. He was sitting in the chair a few feet away. “I know what he likes—I can see what’s in the pantry. Dinty Moore beef stew in the big can, Vienna sausages, and liverwurst. Well, not as long as I’m here. You need the healthy stuff, Frank, build up your immunity. You catch a cold, you end up with pneumonia, in the hospital, and then what am I going to do? You’re not going to need me when you’re in the hospital.”

“Christ.”

“Plus no more Cokes, that shit is over. You need fluids, thin your mucus, nothing with the caffeine in it. You need potassium, you need calcium ’cause of the steroids.” He was jabbing his index finger into his palm like he was a trainer for the world heavyweight champion.

“Make whatever rabbit-food crap you want, I won’t eat it,” Dad said.

“Then you’re just killing yourself. Takes you ten times more energy to breathe than a normal guy, so you need to eat, build up your strength, your muscle mass, all that. You expire on my watch, I’m not taking the rap.”

“Like you really give a shit,” Dad said.

“You think I’m here to help you die?”

“Looks that way to me.”

“If I wanted to kill you, why would I do it the slow way?” Antwoine said. “Unless you think this is fun for me. Like maybe I
enjoy
this shit.”

“This is a blast, isn’t it?” I said.

“Hey, wouldja check out the watch on that man?” Antwoine suddenly said. I’d forgotten to take off the Panerai. Maybe subconsciously I thought it wouldn’t even register with him or my dad. “Let me see that.” He came up to me, inspected it, marveling. “Man, that’s gotta be a five-thousand-dollar watch.” He was pretty close. I was embarrassed—it was more than he made in two months. “That one of those Italian diving watches?”

“Yep,” I said hastily.

“Oh, you gotta be shittin’ me,” Dad said, his voice like a rusty hinge. “I don’t fucking
believe
this.” Now he was staring at my watch too. “You spent five thousand dollars on a goddamned
watch?
What a loser! Do you have any idea how I used to bust my hump for five thousand bucks when I was putting you through school? You spent that on a fucking
watch?
”