The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  Orfeo and Laurel played as if they were twin suns, their strumming and picking on fire, flawless, glittering with the Spanish proclivity for conjoining bravado and wistful melancholy. Afterward, during cake, cookies, and coffee, Orfeo, beaming like a kid, worked the room, introducing Laurel to his friends and neighbors, all seemingly dazzled by the performance, congratulating them both. One of them was a handsome, saturnine man, dressed in a bespoke silk suit that showed off his broad shoulders and narrow waist.

  “So, Orfeo,” he said with a leathery smile, “this is Helene Messer, the girl you’ve told me so much about.” He held out his hand, and for the first time but surely not the last, Laurel shook hands with Byron Dey.

  “Wretched things had worn out their welcome, anyway,” Jimmy Self said, staring mournfully down at his ruined shoes. “I was beginning to feel the pavement through the soles.” He dumped them in the toilet trash bin, then in his stockinged feet led Laurel through to the next car. She felt as if they were trailing her stink with them. When they found two seats together, he handed her what was left of his Coke. “Get the taste out of your mouth.”

  She took the bottle, swallowed gratefully, set it down at her feet.

  “Now what?” Tried to calm her wavering voice. “Dey’s dead. What d’you want from me? Money?”

  “Byron wanted the money you stole from him,” Jimmy Self said. “He hired me to find you and get his money back.”

  “Well, it’s gone.”

  “In that case, I’m supposed to take it outta your hide.”

  She stared at him. “And yet you worked for him.”

  His meaty shoulders lifted, fell. “Hey, a guy’s gotta make a living.”

  She gave a derisive laugh.

  “Joke. I hated Byron Dey.”

  “You were happy to take his money.”

  Jimmy Self nodded. “That I was. No question.”

  She slid him a sideways glance. “You don’t seem the better off for it, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I don’t.” Jimmy Self laughed. “I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.”

  Laurel waited a beat, reluctant to ask the question that needed to be asked. “So now that you’ve found me . . .” Her voice trailed off. The end of that sentence resided in the unknown future.

  Jimmy Self grunted, put his steepled fingers to his temple. “You smell oil smoke?”

  “What? No. Why?”

  He winced. “Just clarifying my situation.”

  “What situation?”

  He took a deep breath, let it go. He seemed suddenly pale. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead before he swiped them away with a forearm. “You ever hear of a bucket list,” he said in a voice made watery.

  She frowned. “Sure. Things to do before you die.”

  “My bucket list is short. Only one item on it. Finding you.” His voice seemed to steady. “You were my last important assignment, more or less. The only person I couldn’t find.” He put his head back. “Now that I’ve found you, I can set fire to that list.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Outside the grimy windows, the night raced by, black and affectless. They could have been traveling anywhere to get somewhere else. The terrain remained the same.

  “I’m dying,” Jimmy Self said. “Inoperable brain tumor. That’s the long and the short of it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

  He turned to her, smiled wanly. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since a woman called me Jimmy in that tone of voice.”

  Without thinking, Laurel covered his hand with hers.

  He looked down. “Or done that without the intent of pulling my arm out of its socket.”

  When she lifted her hand away, he said, “No, don’t. If it’s all the same to you.” Her hand settled over his again. “Helene.”

  Her eyes met his.

  “I have no intention of hurting you.” His mouth lifted at one corner. “Of course. Why would you believe me.” He indicated with his chin. “If it makes you feel better, take my .38 while we talk.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I don’t like guns.”

  She thought of Orfeo. “I’ve taught you how to play guitar,” he had said. “Why should I teach you how to use a gun? You have a gun, you’re five times more likely to get shot.”

  Jimmy Self grimaced. “Smart girl.” He fell silent as a woman in a business suit and lacquered nails passed down the aisle, glanced briefly at his stockinged feet, shrugged, and moved on. “Where’s the conductor? Anybody know? Where are they when you need them?” she called plaintively. “There’s an awful smell in the car I just passed through.”

  “Which brings me to the subject of this discussion,” Jimmy Self continued when she was gone. “Why the hell have you risked everything to return?”

  Laurel thought of Gael asking her the same question.

  “Richard is dead,” Gael had said. “Leave it be.”

  “I came back to find Bella, his missing daughter,” she had told him.

  “Richard Mathis, right?” Before she could contradict him, he raced on, needing to tell her. “I did some preliminary digging. From about 2005 on, Mathis’s history is what’s called twinned.”

  “Twinned? What does this mean, twinned?”

  “Hey, I’m only a lowly foot soldier—less than that now—but I called in some longstanding favors from people you’d rather not know about. They couldn’t say for certain, but it seems as if your Richard was leading a double life.”

  She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. “You mean he had another family?”

  Jimmy Self shook his head. “Not in the sense you mean. He was recruited.”

  “Recruited?” Laurel was beginning to feel like a parrot. “By whom?”

  “Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. It seems he was in Sinai during 9/11. Something happened there—a friend of his was murdered by an Arab jihadi planted in his group. Anyway, shortly thereafter he met with a bunch of Muslim extremists.”

  “That’s imposs—” Recalling how Richard had saved them on the boat, she stopped midsentence. What had actually happened between Richard and the terrorist leader? Had the group really been after drugs? Had he lied to her? All at once, she felt dizzy with unexpected possibilities. Or were they unexpected? Hadn’t she suspected he was lying to her that day?

  Jimmy Self cocked his head. “You were saying?”

  Laurel took a deep breath, let it out. “I’m not going to Dearborn to find out what happened to Richard.”

  “That’s good. You don’t want to stick your nose into whatever happened. ’Cause dollars to donuts his death wasn’t an accident.”

  “I’m content to leave it be.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

  “People like us will never find out the truth, Jimmy. And if by some miracle I did, then what?”

  “You’d know.”

  “I have my own secrets. I don’t want to know anyone else’s.”

  “You look like the kind of girl to . . . I don’t know. You just seem reckless. You came back here when you didn’t have to. And here you are on the way to the place where Richard Mathis died.”

  “Where he lived,” she corrected.

  His brows knit together as he shook his head. “I don’t understand the difference.”

  “Bella.”

  “Who’s Bella?”

  “Richard’s daughter. She’s been missing for almost three days now. So far I’ve read nothing about anyone doing squat to find her. It seems the local cops are too busy helping the feds round up Islamics to interrogate.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, but outside of New York the local cops are often, you know, kinda sketchy.” Jimmy Self’s head swiveled so sharply his neck vertebrae clicked like LEGOs snapping into place. “Do you smell fresh oranges?” Without waiting for a reply, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Jimmy, I think we ought to get you
to a doctor as soon as we get to Dearborn.”

  “Why? I’m fine. Never felt better.” He shook his head. “What’s this kid Bella to you? You ever met her?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? Because she’s Mathis’s kid, huh.”

  “That’s part of it, I guess. But also I was her once, and now she is me. Her father’s dead, and her mother—”

  “Her mother committed suicide.”

  “I read that too. All the more reason I want to find Bella.”

  Jimmy Self gave her a critical look. “You want to, or you need to?”

  “So far as Bella is concerned, it doesn’t matter.”

  “But for you,” Jimmy Self said, “I think it matters very much.” He gestured with his open hand. “You know best what’s important to you. What I know is you’re still traveling under an alias. I want to be clear, that could cause you trouble, maybe a lot of trouble, so be careful. Understand me?”

  “I do.” She said this as a bride answered a priest. She knew she was doubling down on her commitment to Richard and Bella no matter the peril. She felt inside her the combination of excitement and anxiety that came from plunging into the unknown. “In the time we have left before we reach Dearborn, I want you to teach me the basics—how to ferret out clues, how to winkle information out of people. How to be a gumshoe.”

  Jimmy Self began to unwind inside. “Funny how things work out.” After so long in the trenches of the lost, it was a distinct relief. “Gumshoe.” He laughed. “Well, it ain’t rocket science, especially for someone as clever as you.”

  His first lesson had begun.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The train pulled into the station more or less on time. Beyond, in the gathering dawn: Dearborn. Laurel stepped off the train, realized she was alone, and turned back. Jimmy Self was standing in the open doorway, staring at a point over her head.

  “Jimmy?” She had to repeat his name three times, then take his hand. It was cold as ice. “Jimmy, come on. We need to get you a pair of shoes.”

  He followed her onto the platform. There was grayness everywhere he looked.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” Laurel said.

  “Sure you are. You have promises to keep and miles to go before you sleep.”

  She made an impatient gesture, shaking off his words. “Jimmy, I’m going to phone for an ambulance.”

  He shook his head. “No ambulance, Laurel. No doctors. Please.” His face brightened. “I could use a coffee, though. Something good—really good, you know. I can’t stomach any more shit coffee.”

  Laurel led him to a bench, and he sank down into it. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  He nodded.

  By this time, the passengers had dispersed; car doors slammed; engines coughed to life. Two of the three waiting taxis picked up fares.

  “Deadborn,” he said, almost to himself.

  Laurel turned back, frowning. “What?”

  “That’s what the kids call it here: Deadborn.”

  “Jimmy.” Her frown deepened. “You won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Worry not.” He smiled at her. “All my stupid days are behind me.”

  “Okay.” She held out a hand.

  “What?”

  “Give me your gun.”

  He gave her a jaundiced look. “You’re joking, right?”

  “I couldn’t be more serious. Come on.”

  He grunted. “My gun stays with me. Always has, always will.”

  “Hand it over, Jimmy.”

  “Are you crazy? You don’t have a carry license.”

  “No gun, no coffee.”

  “Christ.” He removed the .38 from its holster, its snub nose ugly, sinister, light slipping off it as if being repelled. He rolled the chambers, handed her the bullets. “This is all you get.”

  She stared down at the bullets, then glanced back at him. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be here. Waiting.”

  She hurried down the platform, into the station building itself, a modern brick-and-glass affair that these days passed for lovely but was just municipal. The kind of place that helped obliterate what was once the romance of train travel. Just past six thirty in the evening and the newsstand was doing no business. An old woman guarding a pair of string bags gave her a hard stare, as if she owned the place. A soldier on leave leaned against a wall, reading something on his cell phone. Behind him, the wall was covered with Amtrak posters of Tahoe, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The atmosphere was so ersatz she felt she had arrived in LEGOLAND. The agent pointed her to the vending machine against the far wall. Something good—really good. That for sure did not include coffee from a vending machine. Damn it, she thought.

  She was about to ask the agent where to find the nearest Starbucks when she heard the explosion. It could have been a car backfiring, but she knew better. Jimmy Self had chambered one slug before emptying the rest. Had she even thought to count the bullets? She didn’t even know how many that handgun took.

  Yanking open the station door, she tore down the platform to where Jimmy Self slumped on the bench, his long wait at a quick and bloody end.

  THE BORDER

  TWENTY-SIX

  Dr. Lionel Pinkus

  PATIENT: Margaret Mathis

  TRANSCRIPT: 3–3:37 PM, August 15, 20—

  EXCERPT BEGINS.

  LP: Margaret, have you given any thought as to why you tried to kill yourself.

  MM: What? But I didn’t! I . . .

  LP: Yes? You what?

  [silence]

  MM: I took the pills you prescribed for me.

  LP: I see.

  MM: [defensive] What does that mean?

  LP: What do you think it means?

  MM: This is all your fault.

  LP: My fault.

  MM: Yes.

  LP: Can you explain that to me?

  MM: Sure. You gave me the drugs.

  LP: I also prescribed specific doses for each.

  MM: That day I guess I needed a little help.

  LP: It seems to me that you need to consider the possibility that you tried to kill yourself.

  MM: What? No! It was just . . . another day.

  LP: It clearly wasn’t just another day. Your subconscious made that quite clear.

  MM: I didn’t try to kill myself.

  [silence]

  MM: I mean, did I?

  LP: What aren’t you telling me?

  MM: Nothing.

  LP: You can do better than that, Margaret.

  MM: [becoming agitated again] Stop climbing inside my head.

  LP: Is that what you think I’m doing?

  MM: You’re telling me what to do.

  LP: You seem to want to tell me something.

  MM: You see!

  LP: I’m simply taking my cues from you.

  MM: What cues? There aren’t any cues.

  LP: Tell me about your husband.

  MM: There’s nothing to say.

  LP: How is his relationship with Bella?

  MM: I’ve no idea.

  LP: You have no idea?

  MM: Why are you repeating what I just said?

  LP: Don’t you care what his relationship with your daughter is?

  MM: Why should I?

  [3–5 seconds of silence]

  MM: [patient uncrosses, recrosses legs; shifts from one buttock to another] I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want to talk about a dream I had.

  LP: What do you want to tell me?

  MM: I want to tell you about my dream.

  LP: I know this is difficult for you.

  MM: You don’t know shit.

  [another silence, longer this time. Patient looks out the window]

  MM: [continues to stare out the window, disassociating?] How do you think it feels to have given birth to a murderer?

  [silence. Patient wipes sweat off upper lip]

  MM: [patient’s gaze swings back] I don’t think I can go on.

  [silence,
longest one so far]

  MM: [abruptly belligerent. Emerging from dissociative state?] Aren’t you going to say something?

  LP: What do you imagine me saying?

  MM: Something encouraging. For Christ’s sake!

  LP: I think you should go on. Continue voicing your feelings.

  MM: Really. Is that what you think?

  [silence. Patient, disassociating again, looks out window]

  MM: [voice has a different tenor, floaty] I didn’t want kids. I never . . . I told him over and over again.

  [silence, palpably tense]

  LP: Can you say more about that?

  MM: What is there to say? He wouldn’t listen. He insisted.

  LP: How did he insist?

  MM: We fought. Then he said he’d leave me. That ended the argument.

  LP: So you got pregnant.

  MM: Not just pregnant.

  LP: Margaret, either you’re pregnant, or you’re not.

  MM: Twins! And I didn’t even want one. [patient bites lower lip] Oh, God! Oh, shit!

  LP: Margaret, it’s okay to say it. Nothing bad is going to happen.

  MM: [tight, resigned] Something bad already happened. My daughter killed her twin.

  LP: In utero. These things happen. They’re tragic, but—

  MM: [crying and shouting] Jesus God, why didn’t they both die inside me?! We all would have been better off! So much grief! So much! You asked why I tried to kill myself.

  LP: So you can see this in yourself, this self-destructiveness.

  MM: Because of this! This! I can’t live with what I feel for her, for my daughter, that thing. Murderer. I’m so, so better off dead.

  LP: Have faith, Margaret. This is progress. Now that you know, you can begin to—

  MM: [dully] There’s nothing to do.

  [a longer silence]

  LP: How long have you felt this way?

  MM: Too long.

  LP: What are you going through, Margaret? It’s important you give voice to it.