The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  “Orfeo Doloroso? Dey’s enforcer?” Jimmy Self was stunned, incredulous. “That’s who you played chess with?” He began to laugh. “Moses smell the roses, you’re some piece of work.” He gestured. “Okay, go on.”

  When Orfeo asks her name, she tells him it’s Helene Messer. He doesn’t check; he never checks. Why should he? She’s far too young to be anything but who she says she is. Besides, she exactly fits the part. He knows street people when he sees them, and she’s definitely one of ’em.

  When Orfeo introduces her to Dey she’s secretly overjoyed. She suspects instantly that he’s the man her mother is with. From the great philosophical minds in the library, she has learned a great many things, including patience. She pushes papers for as long as she deems it necessary. Once done, she starts systematizing his books. From there, it’s child’s play for her to infiltrate Dey’s IT firewall. Inside, she finds a list of the illicit payments and their sources. From the library computer she rejuvenated and rejiggered, she plants a virus time bomb inside Dey’s software, timed to go off at a certain hour the following Thursday, when everyone works late.

  So of course, when the bomb goes off, the virus running rampant through Dey’s system, she’s standing by to defuse it. Not that she couldn’t have done it had it been a legitimate attack from outside. Thus has she simultaneously put herself in Dey’s good graces and gained his respect.

  For the next three months she labors to keep his files safe and secure from even the most sophisticated outside intrusion. Once done, she starts systematizing his books. And that’s when she finds the payments—for an apartment in one of those impossible-to-buy-into brownstones overlooking Gramercy Park, for a woman’s diamond-and-white-gold Cartier watch, Hermès scarves, Chanel handbags, Christian Louboutin shoes—and tens of thousands of dollars going to Bergdorf Goodman for dresses, skirts, silk blouses, satin underwear, cashmere sweaters, designer coats, and leather jackets. The list unspools, on and on, confirming her suspicions.

  She thinks of her father’s love for her mother, broken, destroyed by her mother’s selfishness, her greed, her ravenous desire for more, always more. But what had her mother wanted, really? Laurel doesn’t know; she’s never known. She never will.

  “Wait a frigging minute,” Jimmy Self said. “That was your momma shacking up with Dey?”

  “You knew about her? I thought Dey kept her a secret.”

  “You forget what I am? I don’t take on clients I haven’t scoped out in detail.”

  Now. Now she could do it. That same lump formed in her throat again, forcing her to squeeze out her words. “Do you know . . . do you know what happened to my mother?”

  “She’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking.” Jimmy Self looked at her for a moment. “She’s with another guy. Another big shot, flashy dresser, fast-talker. She’s modernized, though. He’s younger than her. A Wall Street wheeler-dealer this time.”

  “She must be one great lay, my mother,” she said with such vehemence that Jimmy Self’s eyebrows shot up. She could see him chewing over what a shit relationship she must have had with her mother.

  “You said it. I didn’t.”

  “Huh. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”

  “Well . . .” He gave a little laugh, and in a minute she found herself laughing too. In that moment, she felt their connection tighten.

  They sat quietly for a moment then, reveling in the odd, unexpected pleasure of each other’s company. After a time, Jimmy said, “So, Laurel Springfield, is it? Fuck me.” He shook his head. “You fooled us all—me, Dey, Orfeo. I’ll be goddamned.”

  Laurel grinned at him.

  “Huh, fancy that.”

  Was it her imagination, or was he looking at her differently all of a sudden?

  “So, all right. Back to your story. Why didn’t you follow Dey after he left the office?”

  “Because I wasn’t a detective like you, Jimmy.”

  “Then. This is now. Like you asked, I’m gonna give you a crash course in how to be a good gumshoe. I have a feeling you’re gonna need it.”

  She nodded her appreciation but kept going, had to keep going. The floodgates opened: “Also, I had Orfeo to think of. The last thing I needed was to arouse his suspicions.”

  “Okay, so now you knew your mother was shacking up with Dey, and you knew where she was. Did you go see her?”

  She goes to a movie the day after she finds the information about her mom in Dey’s files. No Country for Old Men. The Coen brothers can take her mind off anything, transport her to their universe in the space of two scenes. Javier Bardem’s haircut makes her laugh out loud, but she is the only one in the movie theater laughing. Woody Harrelson makes her laugh too. But it’s the captive bolt gun that transfixes her through the entire film and Chigurh giving his victims a chance at life or death with the flip of a coin. All chances in life are determined by the flip of a metaphorical coin, she thinks. She loves the film, but the moment she steps outside the theater, the spell ends. She is back in her life with another choice to make. She takes a quarter out of her pocket, flips it so that it lands on the back of her hand. Heads.

  The theater is on West Twenty-Third Street. It takes her thirteen minutes to reach Gramercy Park, a part of old New York where once gentrification actually meant something. She skirts the park itself, peering in through the black-painted wrought iron palisade at the beautiful plantings.

  The apartment is on the north side. She walks up the steps, pulls open the outer door, finds herself in a small vestibule. Ahead of her is the locked inner door, to her left a brass plate affixed to the wall on which eight names are printed. Beside each name is a black plastic button, and above these a small grill into which you answer when the person you wish to see speaks to you after you push the appropriate button.

  She looks down the list. The unseen hairs on her forearms stir and lift. On the fourth floor: Marie Flowers. Marie is her mother’s middle name, Flowers her maiden name. The choice: To push the button, hear her mother’s voice, perhaps be allowed into her life again. Or to turn and leave and never look back. But the choice has already been made for her: heads, yes; tails, no. That is the deal she made with herself. A prickling breaks out on the center of her forehead, as if she’s facing Chigurh, as if the working end of his captive bolt pistol is pressed into the flesh above her eyes. Life or death.

  Tears shimmer in her eyes; her hand reaches out to the brass plaque, her palm cupped over her mother’s name, throwing it into darkness. Somewhere on the fourth floor her mother sits or walks or, arched across her bed in rucked Carine Gilson lingerie, fornicates in her frantic efforts to pull herself into life, to understand who she is and why she is here. Then, without another thought or tear shed, Laurel takes her hand away, and the imagined scene winks out, vanishes, fades to black. She turns, opens the front door, and skips down the steps, her gaze on the sparkle of sunlight on the treetops inside Gramercy Park.

  “And it’s at that precise moment,” Laurel said, “that I realized what those two words meant for me. Life or death. To press the button, to hear my mother’s voice, to tell her I had tracked her down, that was, for me, death. She had left without so much as a kiss goodbye. She had given birth to me, but after that, what? She had abandoned me for what? For a luxury apartment, for designer clothes out the yin-yang—for money, in other words. What the fuck. I mean, Jimmy, what the fuck, you know?”

  They were both silent until he said, “Well, you did the right thing. You chose life. You destroyed Dey’s life.”

  “I destroyed the false life he had given my mother.”

  He frowned. “But what about Orfeo?”

  “Afterward, when I’d set everything in motion, when I had transferred Dey’s money to my own accounts, when I was at the airport just before my flight was about to board, I called him.” Laurel looked away for a moment, then back at him. “I said to him, ‘I want my life back, Orfeo.’

  “‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

 
“‘My name isn’t Helene Messer; it’s Laurel Springfield. That wandering eye of yours glistening in the streetlight,’ I told him. ‘I saw you take my mother away,’ and I severed the connection.”

  THIRTY

  If there was anyone at Richard’s graveside ceremony besides the minister and Rosie Menkins, the nurse who had taken care of Maggie Mathis at the end, Laurel didn’t see them. The two of them stood by the open grave, Richard’s coffin cradled in the mechanism that would lower it into the ground, the minister at the head, Rosie at the side. As she walked quietly up, Laurel wondered if there would be anyone at all to see Jimmy Self buried. She didn’t think so.

  The air was somnolent, reluctant to stir. A white sun made its ghostly presence felt through the fog. Far off, the sounds of traffic reverberated like a plucked string, through the trees that dotted the cemetery. Here and there, bunches of flowers lay at the foot of headstones, remembrances of times past but not forgotten.

  How much of her past did Laurel want to forget? So much. Memory could be an enemy as well as a friend.

  The minister, in the midst of a prayer for the dead, did not raise his eyes from his open scriptures as she neared the grave site, but Rosie Menkins did. For an instant, her gray eyes opened wide, surprised to see another mourner here at Richard Mathis’s final resting place, beside his wife. She tried not to look at Maggie’s fresh grave.

  “You sanctify the homes of the living and make holy the places of the dead,” the minister read aloud. “You alone open the gates of righteousness and lead us to the dwellings of the saints.”

  “Blessed is the Lord our God,” Rosie whispered, and with that the priest closed his book, the machine began to lower Richard into his grave, and Laurel’s eyes welled up with tears. She was scarcely aware of it until Rosie turned to her and said, “Are you all right, hon?”

  “What? No, yes.” Felt a tear tickle her cheek as it ran down, swiped it away. “I guess not.”

  A certain hawkish look left Rosie’s face, replaced by an expression of sympathy. “Thank God you’re not a reporter.”

  “Oh, no,” Laurel said, her mind making a lightning assessment. Her reporter identity was totally the wrong thing here. “I’m—well, I was—one of Professor Mathis’s PhD students at Michigan.”

  “And you made the trip from Ann Arbor.”

  It wasn’t difficult for her to blush shamelessly. “The professor was my mentor. He was going to take me on his next field trip. I don’t know how this could happen.” She started to cry again. “I mean, why do bad things happen to good people?”

  “That’s a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve all my life.”

  The priest, his work here done, had left without looking at either of them, stepping carefully, his feet raised like a horse in high grass. The men working the machine rolled it to one side, started to shovel in the newly turned earth. It was dark and damp. It looked like clots of old blood.

  “With the passing years,” Rosie continued, “I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that nothing can be done. We’re all helpless; we’re all in God’s hands.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Laurel said.

  “What?”

  “About God.”

  “Of course I do.” Her brows drew together. “Don’t you?”

  Laurel shivered. She was playing a role, and she wasn’t, as if she were straddling a border. “I believed in a life out on field digs, unearthing the mysterious past. Now I don’t know what I believe.”

  “What’s your name, hon?”

  She almost said Angela Chase, which momentarily frightened her. “Jennifer DeAngeles.”

  “I’m Rosalind Menkins, but everyone calls me Rosie. I’m a trauma nurse at the hospital just down the road.”

  The two women shook hands hesitantly, awkwardly.

  “You really cared about him,” Rosie said.

  “I did.”

  Rosie looked around. “Well. It’s getting chilly out here. Why don’t we find a warm place to have a drink and a talk?”

  At that moment, Laurel was startled by the pinging of Richard’s mobile phone. Excusing herself, she stepped away several paces, stared at the lit-up screen. A text had come in. A tremor of intent rippled through her. Touched the icon with her fingertip, and this was what came up:

  Sept 30: daddy help.

  Assalamu alaikum, Bella. I salute u 4 ur courage & ur constancy. My name is Akima. I am part of Salim’s family. Part of ur family. Here with us in the States u will find genuine camaraderie & sisterhood. A far cry from false & shallow “friendships” u have turned away from. They r part of the subtle corruption of the west. It is so clear that the western model 4 family has failed. It has failed u. But, praise b 2 Allah, all that is at an end. We r ur family now. We will never leave u. We will always take care of u.

  As u have discussed w Salim—as u urself have wisely realized—the western model 4 women is a false promise promulgated by Iblis (the devil). Women who go to work take on corrupted ideas & shoddy-minded beliefs instead of religion. The model preferred by infidels in the west failed the minute that women were “liberated” from their place in the house.

  The model of the culture of Iblis includes following fashions, having yr body pierced, yr face painted w expensive products, sure signs of the disbelievers of the west. This crass materialism of fashion trends, of more & more ways to spend money, is presented by Iblis in clothes shops & beauty salons, night clubs & concerts where young people congregate to pollute themselves w alcohol & drugs. This is clearly a path away from purity, from religious knowledge, from the teachings of Allah. Allah is good. Allah is great. This we know. This we celebrate 5 times every day of our lives. U will see & rejoice w us when u arrive here & r embraced by me, ur new sister.

  Alice’s Teacup was just a few blocks past the florists and headstone carvers that lined both sides of the street adjacent to the cemetery. Unlike Nestors, which had been bustling with activity, Alice’s Teacup was nearly deserted: only a pair of lonely old women sitting together over their cups, not speaking, their eyes misted over.

  Rosie led her to a table near the far end, but excusing herself, Laurel went off to the ladies’ room, where, in a vacant stall, she texted Bella back.

  Where are you? I’m here. I’ll come get you.

  No answer.

  Bella—she deleted that, started again: Rabbit, please please answer. So curious, like crying out to herself. I will find you wherever you are. I promise.

  No answer.

  Bella!

  Laurel was weeping openly now. Bella, why won’t you answer? But at least she knew the girl was alive. Wiping her eyes, she flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and returned to the table where Rosie sat patiently. The mobile phone was close. She was waiting.

  The café was festooned with Alice in Wonderland memorabilia—cells from the Disney film and illustrations from various book editions with, not surprisingly, the emphasis on the Mad Hatter’s tea party. The Dormouse always made Laurel laugh, especially on those occasions when he woke up, still half-asleep and bewildered, and came out with the most unintentionally philosophical ideas: “‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’”

  “You’re smiling,” Rosie said as she ordered them tea and cakes in the English manner from a waitress in a frilly apron and cap. “That’s a good thing.”

  “I love Alice in Wonderland.”

  Rosie laughed, her pillowy cheeks reddened now with the steamy heat. “Who doesn’t?”

  She waited for their tea and cakes to be served, poured a spot of milk in hers, stirred it with a tiny silver spoon. “I come here sometimes when things get too much on the floor. At the hospital, I mean. I need someplace to unwind, shrug off the responsibility for just a minute—know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Laurel said, truthfully. She sipped her tea. She’d put a thin wheel of lemon into it.
Now it floated like a life preserver in a brown sea. She eyed a raisin scone, undecided as to whether she wanted it. “I have the same issue sometimes.”

  Rosie nodded. “Academic life can be tough. I’m not too old to remember.” She sliced a small cake in two, neatly as a surgeon. “All those tests, one after another. The tension just seems to pile up.”

  Laurel rubbed her temple with her fingertips. “I just didn’t think . . .”

  “Well, death, hon.” Rosie patted her hand. “No one’s prepared for that.”

  It was the sliver of an opening Laurel had been hoping for. “But you must find it easier, being around it so much at the hospital.”

  “Easier? No.” Rosie shook her head, took a crumb of cake between thumb and forefinger. “But after a while you find a way to deal with it.” Her gray eyes regarded Laurel’s across the table. “You disconnect from the terrible things happening around you. I mean, you’re there, doing all the things you need to do, and curiously, your mind is supersharp, but at the same time, a part of you—the really important part, the part that makes you you—has withdrawn to a kind of island where nothing can touch you, nothing can hurt you, where you’re alone.”

  “Yes.” Laurel felt a rush of feeling toward this woman she had just met but whom she knew so well. “I’ve been on that island.”

  Rosie blinked heavily, as if coming out of a semitrance. “Have you? Fancy that. And you so young, with your whole life ahead of you.”

  How could it be, Laurel asked herself, that she felt as if she had lived her whole life already and yet had not even begun it.

  Rosie leaned across the table. “Hon, you look exhausted. Why don’t you get some rest before you head back to Ann Arbor?”

  “Where?” Laurel’s heart lurched. “Oh, yes.” She raised her cup to take another sip, set it down when it was halfway to her mouth. “But, you know, Rosie, I can’t help but think of Bella.”