Woke Up Lonely (24 page)

We drove through the city and out toward the coast. I knew Kim Jong-il had a beach residence and assumed this was our destination. By night’s ebb, however, we were still driving. The guards never took their eyes off us, but the man in the leisure suit was charming. He tippled without pause, refilling my glass and his. We made small talk. I was fettered in my speech, assuming the car was bugged. A lovely city, Pyongyang. Most hospitable. Yes, yes, but how did I like the movie? I said it was testament to the creative genius embodied in the general’s seminal tome on the subject of filmmaking. I said, and here was the biggest risk I’d ever taken in my life, “In particular, the Americans were great, a wonderful coup for Korean cinema.”

He nodded and smiled and asked Isolde what she thought, and since I’d told her that the Americans might be living in the Mangyongdae District, on the west side of town, I expected her to wile a tour of the area and a visit with at least one of the Americans for an autograph.

“What do
I
think?” she said. “I think that movie was crap.”

From then on, I was sidelined. They talked about Elizabeth Taylor, Peckinpah, and the displacement film
Westworld,
set in a recreational frontier town of cyborgs. Isolde railed against cartoon movies and bristled when asked whether she agreed that
Friday the 13th
was the best horror movie ever. That honor she reserved for
Evil Dead II.

The liquor was cognac, and I was starting to feel ill from thought of my caloric intake for the day, well in excess of what my diet allowed. I looked out the window and was certain we’d passed this bridge before. I despaired of this drive ever coming to an end.

I sat back. I was exhausted. The man in the leisure suit asked me about my family, and when I told him about my wife and child—how much I missed them—he finished the last of his drink and appeared to shut down. Stopped talking. Leaned back and stared at his hands with an expression so leached of feeling, it was as though you could source the country’s bleakness to his face. Perhaps he was a paid look-alike, but no matter. I liked him and began to pity the fallout of having to live as we did, at the top of our field, commanding the people and forging ahead. I expected Kim Jong-il’s personal life was no less dismantling than mine. He had four wives, seven offspring; I wondered how many of his wives couldn’t stand him, either. I had the urge to pat him on the knee and say I understood. But the moment passed. And next I knew, we were back at our hotel. It was a Monday morning, 7 a.m., and the city, for its millions, was dead.

That afternoon, I met a low-level official who took notes on the Helix—our numbers and stats—and that was that. Homeward bound. Home to this, which is soon to be a eulogy. Can you hear what’s happening outside? It’s the madding crowd, come to hang the king.

There were choppers overhead. News crews just beyond a perimeter that berthed the house at fifty feet, and guys in bucket trucks who had already started to deforest the grounds. There was tension about when to aggress against the Helix House, and tension between SWAT, which would have welcomed the elevated vantage of a tree-house bower, and the National Guard, which wanted to tank through Cincinnati without stop.

Thurlow trolled the halls. Light from the clerestory windows had vanished behind clouds that had rolled in fast. Even the weather seemed to have been conscripted into the narrative of doom being written outside. People in Cincinnati always liked to talk about the tornado outbreak of ’74 and its follow-up in ’99. In ’99, eight of the city’s civil defense sirens malfunctioned or lost power, which betrayed the stupidity of relying a bad-weather siren on electricity when electricity tends to fall victim to bad weather. Most civil defense sirens made use of a minor third to sennet bad news. The sound was not the clamor of police or medical transport but a howl that seemed to exercise the grief of things unsaid; cf. the sob that issued from the Thunderbolt apparatus of downtown Cincinnati when a tornado was afoot. Thurlow had modeled the house alarm on it so that if the house were breached, the news would anguish for miles. But for now, all being inside, he was safe.

He checked his watch, seven o’clock, which meant he was expected online for his weekly appearance. Showing up today was probably not a good idea, though it might be fortifying to gauge the mood of his people. Maybe no one actually cared what was happening at the Helix House, in which case he could cut himself some slack.

On the back end of the website were chat rooms, among them one for the members wanting sex. Critics said that organizations like the Helix encouraged bacchanalia, and that as leader Thurlow must be an incorrigible roué, but it wasn’t true. Or not entirely true. He’d made these rooms accessible by video because the I Seek You protocol rewarded disclosure at a clip, and faces could help. Or so he’d thought until the Play Room took hold. In there, what strides the video option had made toward facilitating intimacy were Pyrrhic.

Just last night he’d seen a man fellate himself with a Winnie the Pooh hand puppet, though what had Thurlow rapt was the affection and solicitude the man’s free hand lavished on the bear, as if the only way to thank ourselves for love received was through displacement. This show, one among thousands. People registering disbelief and gratitude for what was being offered them. A longing for more. Please don’t sign off until I am done. Don’t leave, please. It was a peacocking of misery that reasserted the virtue of what Thurlow was trying to do with the Helix, and so depressing as to keep him riveted for hours.

Now he fixed on a live stream of Sophie18, who was a man in thong and thigh-highs, watching Lena04, who wore the same. They were doing for each other what could not be done otherwise. And so, for a second, Thurlow loved this chat room because it was a mercy killing of at least some of the self-hate grown in his heart for what he was soon to do to the people who supported him most.

Before he signed off, he scanned a thumbnail list of users and noticed someone new. A guy not looking for pleasure; he just wanted to talk. He asked if his camera was working. He didn’t understand all this technology, but his wife had given it to him so that he might get out and make friends, he being incarcerated in his house and the Internet being the next best thing to bingo at the lodge. He was pecking at the keyboard with his index fingers. Thurlow wrote back immediately. He wrote:

Dad, can you find some other chat room to be in? There’s about ten million to choose from.

Dad, can you find some other chat room to be in? There’s about ten million to choose from.

But Wayne wanted to talk about how his life was being dismantled from the inside out. How his marriage was on the skids. The torpor and routine. Mutual disinterest in all things relating to the home, money, or politics. Thurlow wrote back.

But u don’t care about these things, Deborah or not.

Dont be smart ass.

But codependency and trust and comfort are important. Marriage is a sum of parts, some good, some bad, but maybe the sum is still good.

Wayne smirked.

Dad, sometimes u gotta take risks to get what u want.

??? Son wha ts the mater w/ y ou?

But u don’t care about these things, Deborah or not.

Dont be smart ass.

But codependency and trust and comfort are important. Marriage is a sum of parts, some good, some bad, but maybe the sum is still good.

Wayne smirked.

Dad, sometimes u gotta take risks to get what u want.

??? Son wha ts the mater w/ y ou?

This was not the first time they’d had a conversation that veered in this direction, though its precedents were few.

“Dad, stop typing—you are driving me nuts. We can talk, you know. There’s a microphone.”

Wayne got up close to the screen and pressed his ear to the camera, which felt like the lewdest thing Thurlow had seen in this room to date.

“Dad, stop it, just sit in your chair.” Only the volume was on high, and, since Thurlow was not whispering, Wayne recoiled from the speaker with shock and began to chowter, “Stupid machine. Who ever heard of this talking machine?” So Thurlow said, “Dad, I can
hear
you,” and again with the shock, and because Thurlow was so strung out he couldn’t remember who he was to whom anymore, he said, “Dad, don’t make me demote you, too.”

Finally Wayne sat back, which gave view to what Thurlow expected to be his room but was not his room at all.

“Dad, what are you doing in the commissary? You know you’re not supposed to be there. What have I not given you such that today, of all days, you were moved to leave your place of dwelling and venture into mine?”

“I was looking for the marriage counselor. I heard you called one in. And why are you talking like some poofcake?”

“I have not called in a counselor. Where’d you hear that? And what made you think he’d be in the commissary?”

“Last I heard, it was called a pantry. Son, are you all right? These four people here have been telling me some things”—and he glanced the camera at the hostages, who were supposed to have been returned to the den gagged, hooded, cuffed. Wayne, who was suddenly adept with the zoom function on the camera, had zeroed in on Anne-Janet’s nose, which was narrow up top but fanned at the base like maybe she’d spent her formative years face pressed to the window, waiting.

Thurlow said, “Dad, I don’t want to see those people.”

Wayne said, “You know, this one’s a professional arbiter, which is almost like a marriage counselor, right?” He framed in close on Olgo.

“Dad, what? You’ve been talking about your marriage? To
them?
What else have you been saying?”

“Not too many options for chat around here.”

“Dad.” But he stopped there. He could not expect to rationalize with this man. This man was his father; he was intractable. “Dad, you need to stop talking to those people. They are full of lies. Just stay put until I get someone over there.”

Wayne shrugged. “Where exactly would I go?”

“I’ll call for Dean, and he’ll escort you back to your quarters. There’s pink jellies in the kitchen, by the way. Edible foil. FYI.” He offered these as an olive branch because he didn’t like to be stern with his dad. He did like to take precautions, though, and he made a note to disable Wayne’s door opener and short the emergency override. Also: No more computer. And guards at his bed.

At last he got Dean on the phone. Dean, frantic, saying, Where the hell was he? Thurlow was so vexed Dean had left the hostages with his dad, he could barely contain himself. Only, Dean insisted Thurlow had called him not half an hour ago, demanding he meet him in the basement. Aha, so that mole Vicki had them played. Never mind. Just hurry up and get to Wayne. And reassemble the film crew. To hell with it—they had to make the ransom tape right now.

“Okay, Dad? You hear that? Dean’s on his way, so just sit tight”—which was when he noticed Wayne’s face derange and lock. Oh, crap. “Dad,” he said. “Not now!” But of course Wayne had no choice. He lowed, he bellowed, his limbs clenched. And though Thurlow had seen this happen many times, it never got any less awful, and today it seemed worse. Perhaps because where the footage should have lagged for being streamed online, it seemed to mayhem twice as bad. The tonic phase of the seizure lasted for thirty seconds, which gave Thurlow no time to get there before the clonic phase, which was more dangerous, insofar as Wayne could fall and hit his head, which he did. Some epileptics flail and twitch, but for Wayne the movement was more like the string of an instrument, a cello bass, that had been plucked too hard. Luckily, he had pitched to his side, which meant he wouldn’t inhale his own spit. Thurlow waited for Wayne’s body to slow down and then made a run for it.

He had never sprinted across the house, so he was surprised how quickly he got there. Less surprising was that he was winded and likely to convulse himself if he did not sit down. The hostages were appalled, but what was he supposed to do? Wayne was on his side, unconscious. Thurlow propped his head on his leg and waited. The hem of his jeans had crawled up one calf. A vein thick and soft like pasta showed under his skin. Wayne’s head weighed a ton. Thurlow had his back to the hostages, but he knew what they were thinking. He said, “It looks worse than it is, I swear.”

Then he spoke to his dad, “Wake up, boss,” which was the appellation Wayne preferred but never got. When he began to come round, Thurlow tried to diffuse wake-up panic with the facts: “You had a seizure, but you’re fine.” Only he wasn’t having it. He said he’d broken his skull and needed to go to the hospital. Normally, it was hours before fluency with the language returned, and sometimes, for how long it took, Thurlow wondered if maybe Wayne didn’t have a tumor lodged in his brain. But today, he was all rebound. “I could probably get a doctor to come,” Thurlow said, but Wayne said no, it could not wait, his head was broken. The man tended to exaggerate—over the years he’d claimed six heart attacks and three strokes—but it wouldn’t do to ignore him. Ignore him, and he’d just have another seizure from the upset. To be fair, he
was
slurring his words. And one of his pupils appeared larger than the other.

Thurlow said, “It’s possible you are just experiencing a postseizure headache.”

Wayne said, “Do I look like the sort of man who can’t tell the difference between a headache and hematoma? Call an ambulance—I need to get out of here.” He winced in pain and then seemed to pass out from it.

Dean arrived, breathless. He took in the scene and said, “Where’s two through six?”

“How should I know?” Thurlow shook his head with disgust. So Dean had left guards on duty. But where were they now?

“He all right?” Dean said.

Thurlow nodded.

“Wayne’s a tough old bastard.”

“He wants to go to the hospital. Says he broke his skull.”

Dean gripped his lower lip between thumb and index finger. A thinking man’s pose. He had a set of formulas that helped him determine risk-to-benefit ratios so that when he spoke, it was never knee-jerk.

“Not good,” he said. “Downright stupid. Chances of hematoma: slim.”