The President's Shadow

by Brad Meltzer

  “I’d be just as happy in the back of a Toyota.”

  “That’s cute. You’re cute, Beecher. But you really think you’d get this in the back of a Toyota?” she teases, hitting me with a dark, sly grin that I’ll be thinking about for hours. This day has felt like one of the longest and shortest of my life. But I finally know what I want for my birthday.

  Over our heads, next to the lights and the call button, there’s another button: a red Do Not Disturb one. When we first got on board, I didn’t know what it was for. I do now.

  Kllk.

  A rose-colored light tells me it’s on. We crash into a nearby recliner. Mina starts unbuttoning my shirt, kissing her way down my neck, toward my chest.

  There really is something about this girl. And right now, something I want more of.

  78

  Sanford, Florida

  Nine hours later, Marshall woke up. It was morning and his armpit was throbbing. Clementine was still sitting there, her face swollen, the sleeping cat in her lap, watching over both of them. She hadn’t moved from her spot on the edge of his fold-down bed. For a while, he just lay there in the sleeping car, lost in the train’s churning rhythm.

  “Why’d you save me?” Clementine finally asked, sounding indisputably thankful.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “At the herbal shop. When Ezra hit me with the car. You could’ve turned the ignition and taken off. Instead you came back and saved me.”

  “You deserve to be saved,” Marshall said, though he wouldn’t face her.

  She paused at that, unable to contain her grin.

  “Don’t make this more than it is,” Marshall pleaded.

  “I’m just saying…”

  “You’re making it more than it is.”

  “I’m just saying, people don’t usually do stuff like that for me. Not without wanting something.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “I know you don’t,” she said, reaching for Marshall’s hand.

  Marshall pulled it away, though it didn’t take the joy from Clementine’s scabbed face. Her hands were scraped. Her left eye was red from a broken blood vessel. “By the way, what was Ezra whispering to you?” she added.

  Marshall replayed Ezra’s offer to join the Knights. To become one of them. “Nothing. Kooky rambling.” The train continued to churn. “Where are we anyway?”

  “I think Orlando. We’ll be in Miami in a few hours.”

  Nodding, Marshall opened and closed his fists. He’d been sleeping too long. His scars had tightened and his skin was stiff. It was the worst at his elbows, knees and knuckles. If he flexed them too fast, it felt like he was tearing open his scars.

  “Does it hurt when you do that?” Clementine asked.

  “No,” Marshall said far too fast. Clementine knew it was a lie, but she didn’t call him on it. She looked down at his hand. He again pulled away.

  “Y’know you do the same thing in your sleep,” Clementine said. “I’d try to hold your hand, and each time, you’d tug it free.” When Marshall didn’t respond, she said, “It’s really not a healthy way to live.”

  “I didn’t realize we were suddenly sharing life advice.”

  “All I’m saying, Marsh, is that—”

  “Marshall.”

  “Can you just listen? Whatever demons you carry in your life, they become more powerful over time.”

  Flat on his back, Marshall stared up at the fluorescent lights, still flexing his fists and stretching his skin.

  “Y’know, in France, scars aren’t even considered ugly,” Clementine added. “They’re thought of as beautiful—as signs of experience and grand adventures. It’s only in America that we try to cover them up and get embarrassed by them. For the French, they’re proof of a life well lived.”

  “I’ve been to France. They stared at me just as hard as people here.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re—”

  “Clementine, I appreciate the group therapy, but let me explain something. Once a year, I go back to the local burn center for checkups and whatever new grafts I need. Last time I was there, I saw this family huddling and crying in the hallway. Their son was set on fire as he was getting off a city bus. A local gang doused him with gasoline and set him ablaze. The poor kid’s body was charred. His ears and whole face melted away. We’re talking 90 percent of his body with third- and fourth-degree burns. That means it extends into his muscles and bones,” Marshall explained. “So when the father of the family noticed my face, he pulled me aside, pointed to his son, and asked, ‘How do you come through all that and survive?’ I looked him straight in the eye and told him, ‘He won’t.’”

  The train continued to churn. “You didn’t have to tell him that,” Clementine said.

  “So you think lying and giving him false hope is a better option? Not every story gets a happy ending—and not every burn on your face is a sign of good living.”

  Locking eyes with him, Clementine reached into her mouth and—tuukk—used her thumb to unhinge something from the roof of her palate. From between her lips, she pulled out the metal bridge that held a row of fake teeth. It was still dripping with saliva as she tossed it onto Marshall’s chest. “We all have our scars,” she lisped, flashing a nervous jack o’lantern grin and revealing three pointy, filed-down teeth that hung like stalactites from her gums.

  Marshall cocked his head. He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t stop.

  Clementine didn’t move, no matter how much she wanted to.

  “That thing you said about France, with the scars…” Marshall eventually asked. “That really true?”

  “Dunno.” She snapped her bridge back in place. “A therapist told it to me years ago. I choose to believe it,” she explained as she scootched forward and reached out—again—for Marshall’s hand.

  His fist was clenched, but this time, he didn’t pull away. “What about your boyfriend Beecher?”

  “He’s never been my boyfriend. Not even in fifth grade. Besides, do you think Beecher knows what it’s like to live like this?” she asked, pointing to his face, then her own.

  Marshall stared straight at her, his fist still tight as ever.

  As gently as possible, Clementine lifted his hand. His candle-wax skin was bumpy and felt stiff to the touch. Leaning down, she planted a soft kiss on Marshall’s middle knuckle. He still didn’t pull away.

  Along the back of his hand, she eyed a fleshy white knob of skin, a spot where the burns ran deep. She put her lips on the lump and kissed him again.

  She was close to him now, so close she was in his scent. He smelled like an old hardware store. On the back of her neck, she felt that familiar humming that’d been gone for so long. She wanted to be closer. Lifting her chin, she leaned toward his lips and…

  “Clementine, don’t—”

  It happened so fast, she was still moving.

  Marshall shoved the air to push her back. “I mean it. I’m not doing this.”

  “I-I wasn’t— I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought. And if it makes you feel better, I had the same thought. But I’m not doing it.”

  For a moment, Clementine just sat there. With each churn of the train, she felt the subtle shift from embarrassment, to anger, to pity. “Let me ask you something, Marshall: Is this how you punish yourself, or are you just terrified to be happy?”

  Marshall turned toward the wall. He didn’t say another word until the train reached Miami.

  79

  The pilot lets us sleep until almost 8 a.m. The problem is, this is Key West.

  “They look closed,” Mina says, cradling her winter coat like a football and already sweating in the Florida sun. As she plows through the parking lot, her ponytail’s back in place, and she’s not slowing down. Neither am I.

  Our destination is directly across the street from the Key West airport: a small white modular office that looks more like a snazzed-up mobile home, complete with a canopy
awning, a beat-up porch…and a Closed sign in the window.

  Of course it’s closed. Nothing in the Keys opens before nine. Or ten thirty, according to the sign.

  “We should’ve waited in our jet,” she says.

  I shoot her a look. “I liked the jet too.”

  She grins at that, a blooming, generous grin that completely undoes me.

  “Good morning, good morning,” a man’s voice calls out nearly an hour later as we wait on the bench outside the office. On our left, an absurdly tanned middle-aged guy wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt comes rolling on his rusted bicycle through the parking lot. His scraggly gray hair blows behind him, and he’s missing his canine tooth on the left side. “What gloriousness can I bring you today?” he asks.

  He goes sidesaddle on the bike, standing on one pedal as he coasts toward the freestanding sign out front: Key West Seaplane Escapes.

  Devil’s Island is surrounded by water. There’s no runway. The only path in or out is a four-hour boat ride…or the one seaplane company with clearance to fly.

  “Please tell me you work here,” Mina says.

  “I certainly don’t clean the place,” he says with a pirate’s laugh, pulling a keychain from his pocket. As he opens the front door, a welcome chime plays the song “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys. “Where can we take you to today?”

  “Devil’s Island,” I say.

  He nods, unsurprised. “They call it the Dry Tortugas now. Better for business,” he explains as he leads us inside and steps behind a white chest-high counter. On every wall are posters with aerial views of Key West and nearby islands. “Problem is, the island—Fort Jefferson—the Park Service closed it since the last hurricane. Structural damage to the bricks—and with budget cuts, this isn’t exactly a priority for federal spending. No planes—or tourists—in or out.”

  “We saw. Online,” I say, sliding my backpack off my shoulder. Mac gave me three things for the trip. Here’s the second. Unzipping the pack, I pull out two stacks of unmarked cash and drop them on the counter. “I have a reservation.”

  80

  Clementine drove them the rest of the way. They arrived in Miami early. From the Amtrak station, Key West was only a few hours.

  She had taken this trip before, a decade ago, when she was in her early twenties, during those hard years in Atlanta. At three in the morning, a bad boyfriend with an even worse band drunkenly declared that they should drive straight to the Keys—that if they made good enough time, they’d be there to watch the next day’s sunset.

  Clementine had driven then too, windows rolled down, air blowing through her hair, and a blasting Sonic Youth album that preached all the life lessons that seem so unarguable when you’re twenty-two. Back then, Clementine and her boyfriend held hands—held them hard—all the way down the two-lane stretch of U.S. 1. At each bridge—and there were dozens of them—they held them even harder, rolling over the crystal blue water that winked at them as they passed.

  Today, with the skinny white cat still in her lap and Marshall in the passenger seat, she knew better than to reach for Marshall’s hand. From the moment they got in the car, he’d barely said a word. At first, she thought it was leftover awkwardness from the train ride. But the way he was nursing his arm, and his mouth was sagging open… He wasn’t sweating—he didn’t have any beard holes or sweat glands on the sides of his face; they were all burned away—but his coloring was all wrong.

  “I’m fine,” he said, before she could ask.

  In her lap, the white cat jerked suddenly, his tail wrapping around Clementine’s free wrist. Her old cat used to do tail hugs too, whenever he was anxious or fussy.

  “Can you open your window some more?” Marshall added.

  “Mouse won’t like it.”

  “Mouse?”

  “The cat. I gave it a name. It likes cheese,” she explained. “Plus, if I open the window, my wig’ll blow off.”

  He went quiet at that, turning away, but blinking too many times. He was definitely in pain.

  “Marshall, we need to get you to a—”

  “I don’t need a doctor. The wound is fine. It’s clean. Ezra put something on the bullet.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “On the musket ball. Back during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers used to coat their musket balls with poison, then cover them in wax to seal it. So even on a grazing shot, it’d still do damage. Ezra’s rebuilding the Knights. He’s using old Knight tricks.”

  “Then we should definitely get you to a—”

  “I’m fine,” Marshall warned, his voice rising. “If it was bad, I wouldn’t be able to stand. Whatever was on that musket ball, it just needs to work its way out of my system.”

  Clementine wanted to argue, but in the back corner of her mouth, her tongue felt the rough edges of yet another loose tooth, one of her last original ones. She’d been bleeding for a while now, since before they left the train. For the past few miles, the salty metallic taste of her own blood had been coming faster than ever. She knew what it meant.

  Gripping the steering wheel and feeling the cat’s tail wind tighter around her wrist, Clementine eyed the ugly little bridge ahead of her: a gray and uninspired slab of concrete framed by telephone poles whose wires formed parallel smiles that ran along both sides and stretched the length of the bridge. Usually, she liked bridges. She’d kissed Beecher on a bridge once. So today, she tried to focus on the beauty of the bridge, to focus on the winking waves on either side of her, even to focus on the fact that she’d soon be seeing her father.

  But as the wheels of the car daduuunk-duunnk-duunnked across the bridge’s concrete seams, it was clear that, even in the morning sun, the waves were no longer winking. They probably never had winked, even a decade ago. Indeed, as Clementine’s car cleared the bridge and rolled past the bright blue, yellow, and orange sign that read Welcome to Key West—Paradise USA, the only thing she could really focus on was the gnawing, unarguable feeling that her return to Key West would be a one-way trip.

  Unbelievably, she realized, she was actually okay with it. Since the moment she was diagnosed, her deepest fear had been of suffering alone. This was the least alone she had felt in a long time.

  “Make a left up here,” Marshall said, pointing to a small sign just past the sandal outlet store in front of them. “The seaplane place should be dead ahead.”

  81

  So just the two of you?” our Hawaiian-shirted friend asks.

  “Just us,” I say, staring out the front window of the seaplane company, checking the empty parking lot and the private runway in the distance. I put down even more money so he wouldn’t issue actual tickets. The other half is payable when he flies us home. Anything to keep our names from searchable systems.

  “Relax. No one’s coming,” Mina whispers. She puts a hand on my shoulder. It doesn’t help.

  “How long did you say until the pilot gets here?” I ask.

  “About twenty minutes ago,” Hawaiian Shirt teases. Mina and I both turn around. He flashes his gap-toothed grin. “Whattya think this is, Pan Am? It’s Key West; have a drink. Jamie McDonnell IV—gate agent, flight attendant…and pilot—at your service.”

  I swear to God, he’s unbuttoned another button on his shirt.

  “By the by,” Pilot Jamie adds, “you’re going to an island, so there’s no drinking water out there. If you want, head into our shed out back and grab one of the coolers and some waters. Only a dollar apiece.”

  I shoot him a look.

  “Fine. Soda and water are free,” he says, tossing me the key. “I gotta charge for alcohol, though. It’s expensive.”

  As Jamie finishes whatever he’s doing at the computer, Mina and I head around back, to a prefab vinyl shed that looks like a mini red barn.

  “You think he’ll keep quiet?” I ask.

  “You gave him three thousand dollars. The man’s not wearing shoes,” Mina points out. “He’s not saying anything.”

  T
aking a final look around, I undo the padlock and tug open the shed door.

  “Smells like raccoon turds,” Mina says as I nod. Inside, there are two refrigerators on my left and a few mini-coolers on our right. “I’ll grab the water; you grab the coolers,” she adds.

  Following her inside, I take yet another look over my shoulder. If I’m right, I know what’s waiting for me on that island, and it’s not just a file. The last thing I need is having it take a shot at her.

  “Mina, I’ve been thinking…”

  “I knew this was coming. This is where you tell me you’re worried about my safety.”

  “That’s not what I was gonna say.”

  “Okay, then what were you going to say?”

  I stand there, watching her scoop armfuls of bottled water out of the refrigerator. “I want to spend even more time with you, Mina. I want to sit down, and have a nice meal, and take the time to see what an amazing woman you are. You know it’s not safe on that island. If I bring you with me—”

  “Let me be ultra clear: The only way you’re keeping me off that island is if you lock me in this shed.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  I don’t answer. She dumps the bottles of water in a faded blue cooler.

  “So what stopped you?” she asks. “There’s a padlock on the shed. Why not lock me in?”

  “Because if I did, I’d be a dick.”

  “And why else?”

  “Pardon?”

  “This is your father we’re talking about. How he died. Everything you’ve chased for. If it brought you answers and you had to be a dick, you’d be a dick. So. Did we have fun joyriding last night? Yes. Is that the reason? No. Time to be honest with yourself. Why am I still here?”

  I stare up at her. “For the same reason you got on the plane,” I tell her.

  Grabbing the cooler under one arm and her hand in the other, I pull her into a run back to the main office.

  “You won’t regret this,” she promises as the shed door slams behind us with a burst.