Woke Up Lonely (20 page)

They sparred, Esme won, Crystal showed up in sweatpants and shirt. Sympathy clothes for Rita. She was chewing a straw; no drink.

“Your kid’s pissed off,” Crystal said. “I just saw her rip her skirt to shit.”

“Skort.”

“So you want to talk to her or something?”

“Actually, that’s why I called you in here. And she has a name by the way. It’s Ida.”

“Oh boy,” Crystal said, the straw flying into the larkspur and she settling into a chair. “Let me guess.”

“Please,” Esme said. “Something urgent has come up. It’ll just be a couple hours at the rink.”

“Have I mentioned she shredded her clothes?”

“How about I pay you?”

“Urgent like your nail broke, or like your colorist had to reschedule? Ugh, fine. For three hundred dollars, I will skate to Tibet and back.”

“Sold. But try to be nice. You’re her sister, you know.”

“Oh, please. That didn’t even work when I was fourteen.”

“Just be nice, okay?”

“Whatever”—and she extended her palm, knowing Esme had a roll of cash in her bathrobe pocket. Esme was, to her, a woman of leisure whose conduct sustained a notion that rich women were weird, rich women had money on them, rich women spent their days in such boredom, no one thought to ask and so no one ever knew.

Laptop open. So many windows, so many views, but Esme knew where the action was at. Ida, in her bathroom, spread-legged, with the contents of her Spa Science kit arrayed on the tile. Scented oils, a couple of pipettes, sea salt, test tubes, glycerin bar. The walls were tickered with strips of fabric that had been the skorts. Just now, she had oats in the coffee grinder and a yogurt-honey blend she’d mix and apply to her face with a tongue depressor. Esme liked that she was interested in science, or girl stuff that masqueraded as science, because it meant something of Esme’s father was alive in her, not to mention something of Esme, though she tried not to think about that part.

Crystal’s head popped into the bathroom, and when it seemed she was not getting thrown out, she made for the lip of the tub, which was more sill than lip, and more seat than sill, this being a water closet of excess, 15×20×10, if ceiling height mattered, which it did, come time to feel yourself dwarfed by the expression of money your parents had lavished on you.

Esme muted the volume on her computer because what she imagined they were saying was probably worse than how it went, and this was the punishment she deserved. Funny Bruce had mentioned
Sunset Boulevard;
it’s what came to mind now, Norma Desmond saying, “We didn’t need dialogue; we had faces.” It’s what Thurlow used to say on days they spent staring at their newborn. Ida on that play mat with the arches overhead, groping for toys, gumming the fur, and them on either side, on their stomachs, watching the world dilate in her eyes. Esme did not get to see this reaction much anymore, though she couldn’t know if it was because novelty no longer solicited at her child’s door or because, when it did, she just wasn’t there.

Ida retrieved rose petals from a dish of oil, and the only way Esme knew Crystal had broken the news Mom wasn’t skating was from a pause in Ida’s chemistry, just time enough for the love in her heart to freeze over.

Crystal appeared to laugh, and because this was not in the script, Esme upped the volume and heard her say, “I know, totally, and in those gross slippers, too. Just be glad you get to go with me instead,” and Ida saying, “I dunno, I kinda like those slippers,” so that Esme closed her computer, brought a hand across her mouth, and tasted the bile that had come up her throat because, despite all, her child continued to reenlist in the collapse of her hopes. Her child still loved, still loved her mom. And this, it turned out, was worse than being unloved, because with love comes expectation.

Practice: Ida, honey, there are things you should know. Your grandparents are dead? The people who raised you, who are the only real family you’ve ever known, died in a car accident? I probably won’t make any of your important events at school this year and might even miss your end-of-term play? Also, of some relevance, your father is wanted by the FBI for trucking in ideas that are anathema to the right wing’s divide-and-conquer brand of governance? Not to mention for consorting with enemy nations? Esme’s heart slammed against her rib cage, and it was like the bones would snap and jut from her chest, because these thoughts were not apropos of nothing. They were apropos of Jim, who was on the phone, yelling the news: “Fucking shit, Esme. Thurlow took them hostage.”

Breathe. Think. Relax. Permit dread of what you have done to paralyze you for ten minutes; then let this paralysis sell indulgences like the Pope. Do not rue your choices. No one could have predicted they’d amount to this. You are an eavesdropper, not a fortune-teller; you can make sense only of what people say, and when did Thurlow say he was going to do this? And how self-destructive can a person be? She felt so defeated. All that effort to protect him in North Korea. The risks she’d taken. And for what? He was in worse trouble now than before.

She held the phone tight. She said, “How long and what are his demands?”

“I don’t know. But I want you where I can see you. Be at the hotel in ten. Fucking shit, Esme. Be here
in ten.
”

A siege in Cincinnati. This would not end well. No major standoff since Fort Sumter could offer reassuring precedent. And Sumter hadn’t gone that well, either. The kids who had died at Beslan? The fatal vapor that blew through the draw at Nord-Ost? At best, the siege gone wrong provided empirical data. The stuff people were too stupid to figure out in a controlled environment. From Waco and Ruby Ridge: rubber bullets can kill; tear gas is flammable; when your rules of engagement permit deadly force, regardless of who’s in danger, people are going to die. Good lessons, but ones unlikely to preempt every fiasco brinked on a sniper’s mood or the Special Agent in Charge’s bow to pressure to get this thing resolved yesterday. In the crosshairs of a reticle, for a guy who had slept five hours in the last forty, and these in a bivouac tent pummeled by the snows of Cincinnati—for this sniper, whose thermal underwear was frozen with the drench of his labors, Thurlow Dan was a stag trophy and his ticket home.

At last, a legitimate reason to go to Cincinnati. Get dressed, get dressed! She had an emergency bag, of course. Jeans, sneakers, and BDU, which covered most of the bases in a pinch except when you wanted to look presentable, and God forbid a fractal pattern in olive should complement her skin tone. At least, she wanted to look better than her contact on the inside. She had never seen Vicki, but she certainly knew what this Vicki sounded like; she sounded like a donkeywhoreface in whore heels and thong. The microphone up her molars was highly sensitive. GSM technology, an itty-bitty mic plus logic board concealed in the same square of plastic a dentist uses for X-rays. Actually, it was smaller. She could keep it flush against her cheek, so that when it called Esme’s phone—the apparatus was programmed to activate in the presence of what it thought were voices—it was often at a moment of climax, when this braying donkeywhoreface finished her work on Thurlow. Esme was supposed to compete with that? She could have, in her day.

She would need pants—a dress was absurd—maybe leather, but nothing standout. If she drove, she could be there in nine hours. She could jump on a plane, but there were only so many ways out of an airport, and she wanted to keep her options open. It was possible that too much info would leak before she got there, in which case she would be more white whale than white horse come time to figure out who could resolve this mess. If every U.S. marshal was after her, it was easier to get lost on the ground. Of course, there was always military transport, but then, those trips tended to make her sick. Commercial airliners got the quiet corridors, but for military flight, it was the vomit air from takeoff till landing. Her last trip in a C-17 was her and eight men in ghillie suits, which were, in terms of odor, bear shit in the mouth of summer, fungal feet, afterbirth. So, okay, no C-17, just Esme and the Hummer and fifty plates for fifty states.

Jim paced the room. He said, “Why hasn’t the whore checked in, either?”

Esme did not know. Perhaps it was because Vicki was a whore with a whorehead for brains, though she kept this explanation to herself.

They were in their hotel; they had been here before.

Esme stared out the window. She could see, well in the distance, the Capitol Columns—their hats, anyway—which stood out among the gibbets of winter trees in the Arboretum.

Make a plan, revise a plan—this was a gauge of fluency under fire. Reassess for best outcome under amended conditions. She knew the drill, but Jim did not. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said. Palms braced on the window, head dribbling against the glass. She let the sequence loop, then said, “Look, just let me get to the house. I will talk him down, and everything will be fine. Don’t you realize what’s happened here? You’ve got a federal case dumped in your lap. Open and shut.” She said this with brio, and for a second she saw Jim thrill to the prospect: Thurlow Dan, in jail, for life.

He flumped in an armchair upholstered in red-and-white gingham and kicked out his legs. He had on a suit, twilight blue, and a red silk tie.

“Don’t you see?” she said, and got on her knees, between his legs. “I just did you a big favor. We couldn’t
prove
North Korea. We haven’t turned up anything on weaponry or funding for it. So probably I just saved your job.”

Gears turning. “You must be kidding. You
planned
for this? You are insane. One, my father-in-law. Two, even if we do nail Dan for kidnapping, how are we supposed to explain having sent in these four morons to begin with? I don’t think
sacrificial lamb
is going to make us any new friends.”

“Just let me get to Cincinnati,” she said. “Once they’re free, no one will give a shit who they are or what they were doing there. Who even knows about ARDOR? Just call in some favors.”

He flapped his legs, clamped them round her ribs. He said, “No one’s heard from that asshole yet, just his fat-fuck number two.”

“Thurlow hasn’t
asked
for anything?”

“Nope. Maybe he’s done us all a favor and shot his brains out.”

Esme looked at the carpet. There was a limit to what equanimity she could impose on her features in the presence of talk like this.

He palmed her face like bookends. They were eye to eye. “This was all your doing,” he said. “You got no encouragement from me. I came to you for counsel, given your history, but I never sanctioned this operation. You understand? If you do right on this, I know you’ve got a kid who’s going to need some help down the road. I got a daughter, too, remember? I know how it is.” His legs vised tight so that breath became a priority for her. But the message came through: if she betrayed him, the harm would go to Ida.

She ran her hands up his quads and at his groin. It didn’t take a second; he unzipped and folded his arms behind his head.

“I understand,” she said. “But I can talk Thurlow out. And you’ll be a hero.”

There was no action there, so she had to work hard. He said, “You won’t even get close. Lockdown. Half the ops are probably in his bathtub already.” But then his body perked up, and with it his mood. He laughed and said, “Jim Bach, national hero,” which enlisted the perk for darker pleasures. He flanked her neck with his thumbs and dug in.

She had travel Kleenex in her hand already; the job was clean and then it was done. She expected to be in Cincinnati by the end of the day.

But Jim had other ideas. He picked up a glass cigar rest from the table and brought it down on her head. When it was clear she was still breathing, he dragged her to the bathroom and locked her in.

IV. In which fathers do what they think is best. Betrayal, betrayal. In which: My darling little girl.

IV. In which fathers do what they think is best. Betrayal, betrayal. In which: My darling little girl.

05:50:21:03: MY
DARLING
LITTLE
GIRL. My beloved Ida. This tape might be the last you see of your dad. I’m sorry about some of the other stuff on here. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older. I’m sorry, too, if I can’t finish the rest in time. But that’s okay. I have some time now.

I want you to know that I started to chase your mother the second she fled my apartment and that I’ve never really stopped. I called every hotel in the area. I spoke to the people who had moved into her parents’ house. Any clue where they went? No. Any forwarding address? No. In ’94, the Internet was hardly the resource it is today, but still, I made use of what I could. I put ads in local papers across the country. The response was overwhelming, and at first, I tracked down every lead. Bus, train, hitch, hobo. I went to every state in the continental U.S. and probably through at least half its small towns.

Eventually I got word she was living in New Paltz, in New York State. At the time, I was in Miami, but decided I could be in New Paltz in two days if I hitched nonstop. I remember the ride into town. A college kid picked me up, then asked me to drive while he toked on air freshener. Butane high.

There wasn’t a working stereo in the car, so this kid listened to his CD player. Sometimes, he’d slap the dash with his hands or sing along. But mostly he stared out the passenger window. I had driven long stretches of road before. I was accustomed to the populace of cars. The freeways. The solitude expressed by so many people en route together. But that day’s ride seemed especially grim. I was going to find Esme, and yet I was grim. Probably this should have set off alarm bells, but who has that kind of foresight in the moment? I felt alone, even more alone than usual, so that I began to tremble all over, with tremors you could actually see ten feet away. A paroxysm of loss for missing Esme but also, maybe, because of the loss we’re born into.

“I’m going to New Paltz to meet my girlfriend,” I said. I said it once, then louder, and finally I punched the kid in the leg. “She’s incredible.” Because, really, this shudder from within was too much. Sometimes hurt just likes a stage.