“I think seven bucks.”
“See? It worked, faster ’n they thought.”
“So next you’re gonna tell me you hoard gold? You got three months of canned goods stored in your basement for when the revolution comes?”
He smiled. “Gold’s for gangsta rappers. And no on the canned goods, but only because I refuse to follow the Homeland Security advice, the duct tape and all that. Although, honestly, it’s probably a good idea, but not for the reasons they’re thinking.”
It was amazing how it all flooded back. Not just the memories of their brief time together, but the whole collegiate energy, the anger at the rotten world, the desire to remake it. Even the smallest decision—going vegetarian (for one year) to save a few hundred animals or boycotting clothing chains that used sweatshops—seemed to carry enormous moral weight. Years later, she still considered herself a politically engaged citizen, but full-grown adults who even mentioned sweatshops tended to sound like teenagers chanting slogans at a rock concert, and people who didn’t eat meat were a bitch to plan around at dinner parties. Bringing up the plight of the oppressed sounded ridiculous when buying five-hundred-thousand-dollar row houses in what had recently been dilapidated neighborhoods.
And here T.J. was, someone who’d made all the opposite choices she had: living off the grid, still dressing like a grungy college student, and crashing at a group house in Columbia Heights (only a few blocks from the very neighborhood she and her family had fled for the safety of the suburbs), while she in her Prada slingbacks and boutique jeans sipped her fifteen-dollar Belgian beer. Modern living made you choose between your morality and your desire to fit in, to not be a freak. But what if the freaks were right?
She just wanted something to believe, or believe in. It seemed such a modest goal, yet was anything but. What do I really believe? That the government unjustly started these wars for the oil that enables my lifestyle, that they sent my brother to die and covered up various profit-minded plots? Or that our country is a benign force for good, and Marshall died a hero trying to bring peace to an area whose years of wars had sent out long trails of destruction that led to deaths here on September 11 and that will inevitably lead to even more unless we take the fight to them? Which was the naive view, and which the pragmatic one? She felt like some displaced fairy-tale heroine in search of the one shoe that would fit perfectly and solve all her troubles, or at least make it easier to walk on this constantly shifting terrain.
“So other than those columns, are you doing any writing?” he asked. “I seem to remember you were going to be a famous novelist.”
“Nah, that’s just my superhero thing. My Clark Kent is being a lawyer.”
“Knowing a lawyer is always good when you’re arrested as much as I am.”
“Seriously?”
“What, you thought that was a pickup line?” He laughed. “We were picketing one of Hellwater’s training camps in South Carolina, filming a documentary. Cut through some razor wire, got shot at.” He pulled his right foot onto the lower rung of his bar stool and rolled up his pants leg. It was dark in the bar but she could make out something gruesome above his ankle. “German shepherd did that.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Jail doctor stitched it for me, many hours later. The worst part is they stole our film and cameras, but we’re thinking of maybe doing a re-creation instead, like a political version of Cops.”
“You do walk the walk, don’t you?”
“I was limping the limp for a couple weeks.”
By her second drink, the music on the house stereo had become indefinably better, the beats echoing those of Tasha’s heart. Which only made her wonder: How much fun was she allowed to have anymore? She was tired of wondering that. Everyone else seemed so damn insulated from what was happening. She was raw.
Then T.J. asked after her parents, and Tasha lied, said they were doing fine, thanks.
“That brother of yours still getting into trouble?”
There could have been no starker reminder of how much had changed in the nine years since she’d seen T.J. When they were freshmen, she now remembered, Marshall was a high-school junior at risk of flunking out. He was hanging with the wrong crowd, enraging his parents and big sister with each decreasingly minor scrape with the law. And now: “He’s dead.”
T.J. looked like he thought he’d misheard her, the music was so loud, or maybe he thought he was being fucked with. But then his smile vanished.
“Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. What happened?”
“Preemptive war happened.”
No matter how people reacted to the news, she always hated the reactions.
“He was in the army?”
She nodded.
“Jesus, Tash, I’m so sorry.”
She sipped her drink so she wouldn’t have to think up a response to “I’m so sorry.”
“Your parents really okay?”
“What do you think?”
He didn’t say anything, belatedly realizing the minefield he’d walked into, afraid to take another step. She regretted sounding so harsh.
“My dad hated the idea of Marshall enlisting, tried to talk him out of it. He didn’t realize he was only pushing Marshall toward the recruitment office. Once he’d enlisted and we all showed up for the ceremony, we had to accept it. Honestly, it was good for Marshall. I mean…” What did she mean? How could it be good for someone if it ultimately kills him? Just because it turned his life around, kept him out of trouble, helped him grow up? Can final moments negate everything that happened beforehand? Or is the life preceding the death all that matters? “He grew up a lot. I was proud of him. I am proud of him.”
T.J. took the hand that she’d left lying atop the table. She wished he hadn’t.
“Anyway,” she said, a word she’d been employing often, a way to end conversations, or re-steer them, or just throw up a roadblock: thou shalt not pass this marker. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring this all up. I was having a pretty good time.”
“Me too.”
She squeezed his hand and then took hers back.
“So,” he said, hesitantly restarting, “you came to the meeting tonight because of what happened to your brother?”
“I came because I’m trying to figure things out. Life used to make just enough sense for me to get by. But now, just like that, it doesn’t.” She shook her head. “You and I probably have a lot of different opinions, but… I envy your certainty. You’re certain that things are crooked and that we’re all pawns and that we need to act now before it’s too late. I don’t know that I want you to be right, but I do wish I had that kind of certainty. About anything.”
“I don’t have everything figured out, Tasha.”
“Well, you fake it very well.”
“I remember once you called me a very skilled actor. At the time I was so full of myself I took it as a compliment.”
She smiled. Then suddenly she felt like she was going to cry. She made herself cough, to cover it up.
“I’m just a skeptical bastard,” he said, looking at the few remaining people in the bar, and the empty street beyond them. “I don’t trust people. I’m always looking for the angle. When I see people who seem certain, like fundamentalists who insist that Jesus or Allah will find a way and that we’re all a part of a plan—fundamentalists in Baghdad or Tulsa, it’s all the same thing—I think they’re crazy. I’m too skeptical of them.” He shrugged, looking back at her. “But maybe I need to be more skeptical of people like me too.”
“I was trying to compliment you.”
“Look, if you do want to help out in the anti-recruitment thing, or anything else, let me know; I’m involved in a lot of different projects. Or if there’s anything I can do to help you, really, let me know.”
She thanked him. That appeared to be their cue to leave, but she found herself taking another sip of the drink she hadn’t planned on finishing.
“Here’s something you can do: answer a question. Let’s sa
y, totally hypothetically speaking, that you had a job that allowed you to come across very privileged information. Stuff that wouldn’t interest most people. And also you’ve taken a vow never to disclose anything relating to your clients. But one day you read something about one of your clients, something very damning. Something that makes them look very bad—hell, something that is very bad. Secrets. You know that if you took it to the press, it would be a major story. That it would get bad people in trouble. But doing that could cost you your job, and maybe worse.”
“Secrets that compromise whom? And what kind of secrets? Financial disclosures, marital infidelity, the ingredients of someone’s special sauce, murder?”
“Kind of the first thing and maybe kind of the last thing.”
“Murder.”
“Not really. But decisions that put lives at stake.”
“Put as in past or put as in present? What tense we talking here?”
Hell, that was an excellent question. She hadn’t thought of that. She had been so focused on what happened to Marshall, so irate at these middle managers who’d made decisions that put troops’ lives—including her brother’s life—at risk, that she hadn’t even considered the fact that such business dealings were likely ongoing. Which meant that blowing the whistle wouldn’t just expose past wrongdoing but also prevent future wrongdoing. It would save lives.
“I guess both.”
He held out his two palms as if he were the impartial scales of justice. “So you got other people’s lives here, and you’ve got your own job here.” He wobbled the hands up and down for a second. “I think you can guess how I’d judge that one. But it’s not my job we’re talking about.”
She finished her drink. God, she must be drunk to even mention this, however elliptically, to anyone, let alone someone she really didn’t know anymore. Yet what he’d said had helped.
He motioned to her empty glass and asked if she wanted another round.
“Love to, but some of us have to work tomorrow.”
“I work. I just don’t have to think much at my job, other than trying to predict when a car is going to switch lanes without signaling.”
Outside, she wondered if T.J. would make a move for a good-night smooch, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed when he didn’t. (God, when had she become so uncertain about everything? But now there was one thing she was less uncertain about.) They traded phone numbers, shared a quick good-bye hug along with vague plans to reconnect, then she hailed a cab. During the ride home, she plotted her next move. Suddenly, she had a long night ahead of her.
She walked straight upstairs to her second bedroom, opened the file cabinets, and reached for the buried folder she’d randomly labeled ADDTL. INSURANCE. Inside were the files—the offending GTK e-mails, which she’d secretly copied and ferried out of the building the Monday after she’d stumbled upon them. Copies of those files had remained in her apartment for days, tempting her with their illicit knowledge. The e-mails that, as Jill had noted, were not relevant to their case. The e-mails that merely revealed their client’s decision to put extra profit over its contractual—and could she add patriotic?—obligation to outfit U.S. troops as quickly and fully as possible. Dated six months earlier, when Marshall had been alive. The two issues were not related, Jill had argued, and maybe she was right. Except Marshall had been alive once and things had made a certain sort of sense, and now neither was true.
And maybe, Jill, everything is related.
Still buzzing but hopefully not drunk (sober enough to drive, but perhaps not sober enough to make potentially life-altering decisions), she drove a few blocks to the sketchy copy place on Pennsylvania. Risking suspicion by wearing leather gloves the whole time (not that the dudes at the desk paid any attention to her other than giving her the up-down when she first walked in), Tasha made new copies and bought a package of envelopes. There was a reporter for the New York Times whose work she admired. He would find this information interesting.
She heard the law school professors in her head reminding her that this was a clear violation of attorney-client privilege. If caught, she would be fired, and likely disbarred. She tried to imagine disbarment, with all the loans she still needed to pay back for all those law school professors’ advice. But this was more important than that.
And, really, she was smart enough to get away with it.
Outside the sketchy copy place was a blue mailbox, sitting there patiently like it had been waiting all its life for this little contribution to justice and democracy. Tasha opened the lid and slid the envelope into its depths.
Z.
After my ill-advised trip to the playground, I still have some time to kill (what a wonderful and terrible phrase! And, for me, so literal) before the next Event, so I drive through the leafy neighborhoods of Capitol Hill. Black men stand on corners, white women push strollers, Latinos paint the row houses or fix their roofs. Amazing how specified the races are to their tasks.
I pull over at the corner of 15th and E Street SE. A few buildings down, on the left, is the house belonging to Tasha Wilson. The street is quiet and residential, just removed enough from the main thoroughfares to be free of pedestrians at this pre–rush hour. I focus my eyes on the second-floor window of her row house, and my internal microphone locks on the spot. At first I hear only silence, which I should have expected, given that it’s late afternoon and she’s probably at work. But then I hear her muttering to herself. She talks in a sigh, all exhalation, like she’s angry at herself for talking, some reflexive inner madness. She’s coaching herself, I realize, reciting what she’s going to say when making an important call.
I activate my embedded router to tap her phone. I hear the dial tone, the flat music of her touch-tone keys, then the buzzing pulse. A young woman answers the line.
“Hello, may I speak to Aurelio Gomez?” Tasha asks.
“I ask who’s calling?”
“My name is Tasha Wilson, and my brother, Marshall, led Private Gomez’s unit until a few months ago. I was hoping to talk to him about Marshall’s experience if I could.”
A pause. Someone exhales, though I can’t tell who. “He doesn’t need to be talking about that right now.”
“Ma’am, please, I’d just—”
“He needs to be left alone for a while, all right? He doesn’t need to be bothered by—”
“My brother died over there. I just want to talk to the people who knew him last.”
Another pause. “I’m very sorry about your brother.”
“Thank you.”
“Aurelio’s not here. And, honestly, I don’t know that he wants to be talking about that sort of thing, at least not right now. But I’ll give him the message. Good enough?”
“Yes, thank you.” Tasha gives the woman her name, e-mail address, and two phone numbers. “Please tell him he can get in touch with me anytime.”
“What did you say your brother’s name was?”
“Lieutenant Marshall Wilson. He was killed June eleventh.”
The sound of handwriting. “I’m sorry for your loss. I thank God every day that my man’s back for good.”
“Is he doing all right?”
“Day at a time, you know? But he’s gonna be okay.”
They chat for another moment, then hang up. Listening in on the microphone, I hear Tasha writing something, I hear her take deep breaths, mutter to herself, place another call. Again it is answered by a woman, this one older; again Tasha asks for a man; again she is asked why and she delivers her speech.
“Ricky’s at Walter Reed, miss. He’s going to be there for a while.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?”
“He’s going to be fine.” Interesting how they respond to present-tense questions with future-tense answers.
“Was he, um, you wouldn’t know if June eleventh was the day he was injured?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
Tasha explains the date’
s relevance. I can tell that, for her, every day of her life will be measured by its distance from last June 11.
You are haunted by your past, Tasha. It casts its pall over everything you do. I wish you could see my time, the world I’m from, the advances we’ve made. I wish I could stop you from wasting more of your life, chasing after a past that cannot be restored. I wish I could see your face right now, wish my technology was that advanced, but all I can do is stare at that brick wall and listen to your voice and try to imagine the rest.
“You’re welcome to call Ricky, and he’ll try to help you if he can. He’s a great kid. But I hope you’re really doing the best thing here.”
“… I’m not sure I follow.”
“I lost a brother once too. In Vietnam. So I know what you’re going through. And I still miss him, every day. But nothing I did could bring him back.”
“I understand that.” Tasha doesn’t so much speak those words as bite at them.
“I’m very sorry, miss. I wish these things never happened. I wish God didn’t test us with so much evil in the world, but He does. I do hope you find a way to come to some peace.”
Tasha’s voice sounds different when she says thank you, and then they hang up. This time there’s a much longer pause before she’s able to make another call.
A few houses down, a man in khaki military regalia opens the front door and comes out. He’s holding a briefcase in one hand and in the other a metal rod, at the end of which is a small circular mirror. He walks down the sidewalk and stops at a silver SUV. He crouches down beside it, telescopes the rod out a few feet, and slides it under the car. Checks it, moves it back a few feet, checks it again. He does the same thing on the other side. He stands up, dusts off his knees, and only then does he get in the SUV and drive away. People are so frightened here.
Tasha dials Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a local call that’s routed from one corner to the other of the fractured diamond that is D.C. She’s transferred between operators and nurses before an impatient young man answers.
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