Woke Up Lonely (43 page)

The room was filling up with people from the outside, but still no Kay. Jonathan made the rounds, extended his largesse without caveat, greeted everyone with the same smile and warmth and appeared to mean it equally. The discrepancy between the pledges and the members was overt and telling of the same story fifty times over. The pledges gathered in a circle: Jin, who oversaw cleanup at a Korean spa in D.C.; Mark, in town for his youngest daughter’s wedding; Ruby, with newborn strapped to her chest, the child knocked out—but just wait.

Olgo, when asked to speak of his life, took a pass and blushed and felt a hand take his—it was Myla—and another take his right, Mark with the daughter-bride. Once around the circle, then twice. The more you told, the more the group applauded your candor, Jin winning kudos for confessing to a hand job or two at the spa—she needed the extra cash but also the gratitude; no one ever looked on her with that kind of gratitude at home—and Ruby for sharing the isolation of motherhood, the late nights and death-row thinking.

There were canapés on the table—goat cheese, wasabi crackers—more tea, and when the circle broke for dinner and Kay still had not appeared, with or without Jerry, Olgo returned to the couch and stared at the wall.

The pledges who’d spoken were thronged, he was alone, and it seemed like the Chinese lanterns had recast their glow from where he sat to where the confessants were. A member walked by; Olgo caught her sleeve and said, “So how does this work?”

She smiled. Sat opposite him on a canvas ottoman. Leaned forward with her hands clasped between her legs. “You share and belong and find what you need.”

He winced and quivered at the lip. “But does it help?” he said.

“You tell me.”

He took a deep breath, so deep that maybe it solicited his wife from the dark, because all of a sudden, there she was. Across the room. Seeing him but making no move in his direction.

“We are all kinds,” the woman said. And Olgo smiled, but grimly.
We.
One of his favorite words. Who knew that it could turn on him, that something as steadfast as
we
—even the letters were bonded tight—could cede its joys to context.

Kay’s hair was in a ponytail. Her sweater was pastel green. Behind her stood Jerry, who just shook his head and held the side of his face like he’d been slapped.

“I feel broken,” Olgo said. “Totally confused. Like I don’t understand anything.”

And he took the long view. As a professional, he’d been reared in the ways of empathy and the seminal texts that gave it name. He knew all about having to activate something in yourself so that you could apprehend the thing or person before you. But he also knew about the urge to apprehend nothing, at least nothing coherent, and to be redeemed from the anguish of trying. What did he really know of other people? How had he spent his life divining intent and motive and need without having the vaguest idea of what went on in anyone’s life but his own? And not even his own, for which failing he now had ample evidence? He took the long view and floated right up and out of his body. This woman had offered him help. His wife was on her way.

Bruce Bollinger, the director must not force the audience to cry because the hero cries.

A documentarian will follow his subject into hell and not come back. Not if the action is award winning. Bruce could hardly believe his luck. Kidnapping was bad, but six whores and a cult leader? This cult leader’s double-crossing dad? The most engaging threat to the Union in more than a century grown from the rigmarole of people convened in mansions across America? How many filmmakers would kill for inside access to a story like that? This was God doing for Bruce what he could not do for himself.

Problem was, with every hour he was trotted around the Helix House, presumably to star in the ransom video, the place seemed to empty. People were vanishing. His options were vanishing! It was like scrambling for the last few seats in musical chairs. At first he’d wanted the dad, Wainscott, because, my God, the man had raised a cult leader,
lived
with this cult leader, and then betrayed him, though raising and living with the cult leader would have been story enough. Thurlow Dan was no Hitler, but didn’t you wonder about Hitler’s parents? Stalin’s? Charles Manson’s mom tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer, but there was only so much you could get on record. So, Wayne was the plan. The Early Years.

Problem was, Wayne had a seizure. What the hell. A phony seizure to get him out of the compound but also out of Bruce’s reach. A second choice was the hooker, because those spikes pronged from her cheeks were just balls-out weird. And since he’d seen their simulacra on a girl at Crystal’s place, he figured here was a trend worth noting. So, free of his hood and left in the charge of guards not remotely interested in guarding him, Bruce was able to wander off and hunt his story down. Hunt and fail and return to the cell, if you could call it a cell, only to find the bars had straggled and everyone was gone.

No small wonder. He too heard the helicopters. The sirens and bullhorn. He was aware HRT intended to storm the place, and he’d seen enough on Waco to know what this meant for him if he did not get out. But he also knew he would not get another chance this good. Who’d want to buy video footage of his wife’s hinky bladder? Decisions, decisions. To stay in the house was suicide, and so, what, the documentarian is suicidal? That was what he was saying? He was rapacious and hypersensitive and bearing out the artist’s paradigm whenever he screwed someone over in the pursuit of his work, but suicidal? Bruce decided to make one more tour of the house, and if he came up short, he’d march right out the front door. Look, he’d settle for a guard. View from the bottom rung up. He’d settle for that! Please bring me a guard.

Down one hall and another, through the kitchen, back to the pantry, living room, office, another office, five more offices, and about to give up, when, apropos of a voice outside counting down—oh my God, they were counting down—his stomach sent up word it was time to find a bathroom. He began to run, opening doors, and nearly whacked in the head a guy crouched on the floor, sobbing. Bruce said in a commanding voice he didn’t know he had, “Stay here,” and got to the bathroom just in time.

For all that, it was slow going. The guy in the hall—his last best subject!—could leave. He rocked back and forth. Finally he ran out of the bathroom feeling vaguely nauseated for his efforts and looked at the spot where the man had been. Goddamn it. Only, the man had not actually left but retreated to a corner where he now sat upright, crying into his arms, which were folded across his legs, bent at the knee.

Bruce had worked with subjects in the field for years. He was not shy or awkward around strangers, even in the weirdest of circumstances. But this guy? He seemed unstoppable in the effluence of his grief, so that Bruce did not know what to say and was even a little afraid to say anything.

He tapped him on the shoulder. Nudged him in the leg. Said, “We need to get out of here, okay?”

Norman covered his ears. “Go away. Leave me alone. I want to die.”

Bruce took a step back. “Okay, buddy. Let’s get you out of here and then you can die. Sound good?” He wanted to stand him up so he could glean something of the man’s role. A guard? The janitor? Bruce reached for his elbow.

Norman shook him off and looked up. His face was all bloat and jowl. “I was
crying,
” he said.

“I can see that. But we’re on a bit of a deadline. Know what I’m saying? You can cry after.”

There was literature on the subject of how to deprogram a cult member, and much lore about a desperado named Black Lightning who went around kidnapping cultists for the purpose of deprogramming them, and about how this Black Lightning collapsed moral boundaries and made nominal the difference between free and captive thought, all of which material might have served Bruce well if he’d read any of it and not just printed a bibliography, which he barely skimmed, anyway.

Norman put on his glasses. “What’s the point?” he said. “They’re going to put me away for the rest of my life.”

The fireworks in Bruce’s heart were so boisterous, he could not believe this guy was not running for cover. The rest of his life! He must be important.

“I wasn’t suggesting we waltz out the front door,” Bruce said, all casual, not wanting to betray the lusty and viselike grip he was prepared to exert on this man if he didn’t play along.

Norman seemed to perk up a little. “There’s the tunnels,” he said.

Good, good. The tunnels. They’d be found, of course, but not before Bruce was able to eke from their time together a little trust and the golden promise of exclusive rights and access.

“After you,” Bruce said. And then, “I’m Bruce, by the way. And if you’re wondering why I don’t just walk out of here without you, it’s because—” Though here he stopped. Norman was not listening, and this was fine. At least he’d gotten his name. Norman Sugg, chief of staff for Thurlow Dan, VP, second in command—jackpot.

They went to the basement, and as Norman was keying in a pass code, he said, “I guess I could live down here indefinitely. That wouldn’t be so bad.” He leaned his forehead into the metal of the door, which was more slab than door, and started to cry again, only without the purposed and cleansing intensity of before.

Bruce was beginning to see something of his wife in this man and was determined not to make the same mistakes. And so: whatever instinct tells you to say, say the opposite.

“Why don’t we just take a break here for a second. It might help if you talked about it.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I’ve been through enough.”

“I’m not making fun of you. What do you mean?”

Norman finished with the pass code—it was an incredibly long sequence; who could remember a sequence that long?—and waited for the door to open with obvious impatience because, where five seconds ago he was ready to languish and die, now he was energized with disdain for Bruce Bollinger.

“Here,” Norman said, and he gave Bruce a hard hat with a light and reflector strips. “I need for you to stay safe.”

Bruce nodded. Their dynamic seemed to redefine itself at a clip. It was hard to keep up. Maybe Norman thought he’d win points for good governance of the kidnapped? Bruce was running out of time. He imagined SWAT fanned out in the tunnels and waiting for them at every turn. He imagined Norman giving him the slip. He certainly seemed to know the tunnels well, never stopping at the forks or Ts. If only Bruce were half as confident. There were so many inroads into a man’s trust. Be innocent, friendly, unafraid, curious. Ask about his family. His history with the Helix. Keep it local: So, what are your dinner plans? Ask questions that imply faith in the subject’s good heart. He was still debating the right way in when they heard footsteps, or at least the suck-squish of feet in the mulch that passed for flooring in this place.

Bruce spun around to rake his light across the walls, looking for where to hide. Norman was unbothered. Bruce nipped his sleeve and tried to pull him from the center of the gangway. The suck-squish got closer, and with it the sound of two men who were, whatever they were, not SWAT. Bruce let out a whistle that died in fear because there were actually worse people to encounter in a tunnel than SWAT. The men were discussing oil revenue stymied by the Iraq war and laughing at this nonsense. They’d never been so rich.

Oh, right, naturally: The tunnels were witness to oil magnates in bathrobes and flip-flops.

Bruce could hear them chuckling well past seeing their lights retire. “Do I even want to know?” he said.

“You’ll catch on,” Norman said. And with that, they reached a door. A door back to the world where everyone wanted what Bruce had.

“No, wait,” he said, and he slapped Norman’s hand away from the intercom button and, for good measure, put himself in the way of the button, which had assumed for him the ruinous potential of the Red Button.

“Oh good,” Norman said, “I deserve this,” and he upturned his face and closed his eyes, waiting, it seemed, to be struck. So there it was. Strike a man and you own that man.

“Maybe I can level with you,” Bruce said. “Maybe that’s the best way to go here.”

Norman narrowed his eyes and pushed Bruce out of the way with a single have-at-him. This man was incredible. Good-bye sheep, hello wolf. The door swung open just long enough for Bruce to pick himself off the floor and dive in. He nearly lost a foot in the jamb as it shut behind him with what sounded like the wheeze of an air lock. If he had been suddenly launched into space, he would not have been surprised. Already he felt the atmosphere of his grip on the world becoming less dense. He could hear Norman’s feet slapping the tile floor, which suggested they’d moved from the public arteries to something financed.

“Wait up,” he yelled, and he plunged down the hallway. At the other end were two doors, they looked like barn doors, and through the slits of their mismatch flared a light that was, even in slits, radiant. Seen from the back, Norman looked like a boxer headed into the ring. Bruce caught up with him, the doors parted, and only then did he realize he’d been subject to white noise that had grown into a din that was now the symphony of a casino packed with joy.

Oh God, he loved a casino. He’d sworn off the casinos and replaced their void with drink, but the swap had always felt short term. Unwise, too. Drink was less costly but also less lucrative, which was why, incidentally, the bank loan for
Trial by Liar
had failed him and why if he’d just done the prudent thing and continued to bet his way to freedom, etc.

He took a deep breath. An underground casino. Amazing. These days, to get to a decent casino you had to travel far, and often onto the Indian reservations, which were dry counties and annoying for it. Who wanted to poker through the night with Sprite and maraschino cherries?

The place-name was spelled out in vanity bulbs underscored with red tube lights. The Resistance Casino and Sports Lounge. By the entrance was a cherub statuette that doubled as a scanner, or so it appeared as Norman swiped a card across the cherub’s face, once for himself and once for Bruce. They stepped inside and immediately Bruce teetered on the edge of hope. Really? Hope? Yes. On his left: the world’s greatest subject for a documentary; on his right: the money to finance it just in case no one else agreed. He was excited but also relieved. As though he’d just loosened his belt after a large dinner. It had been six months since he’d dropped money in this way. And his paychecks from Interior went straight to the bank, though no amount of savings would get him and Rita out of the hole. Between them, they had eight thousand dollars and the house. And the car. Though the car was leased and the house was double-mortgaged. So they had eight thousand dollars. His credit card spending limit was a quarter of that. He couldn’t even get an advance. He felt in his pocket for his Visa.