At the beginning of that tenth grade year, Lota’s English teacher had pasted above the blackboard the words “Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all” in cut-out bubble letters. All year, Lota had stared at those words and thought of Violet getting plump at home, and then of Auntie G, and she couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t quite trust those words. And yet she didn’t want to get pregnant, like Violet; the idea horrified her. She liked babies well enough—Violet’s little boy was sweet—but beyond bouncing them on her knee for a minute or two, until they cried, she didn’t really know what to do with them. Besides, except for that one time with Verbal (which had been awkward and clumsy and had happened more by accident than anything else), she’d never even properly kissed a boy.
So, she didn’t want to get pregnant, and she wanted even less to simply throw up her hands like her mother, drink herself into a stupor every night like her father, or take drugs like Miles. And even if she had wanted to simply follow orders, joining the navy was—for a girl—quite simply out of the question.
So much for not trying. Until she’d met Kurtz, it seemed her only options were to leave the island and be quietly despised, or to grow yellow and old, like Auntie G, wondering why she never had.
Lota trained her eyes ahead. Her feet—or were they Kurtz’s or Baby Jane’s?—pounded ahead of her, like a heavy pulse on the stairs. A left turn; the length of half a corridor.
Kurtz stopped. They were standing in front of a large metal door. Lota studied the negative imprint of a three-digit number just above eye level, which had long since been rubbed out. Kurtz jiggled at the door’s handle. Quite naturally, it was locked—but only with an ordinary deadbolt. Kurtz reached into one of the deep pockets of her cargo pants and, a moment later, had sprung the lock with a bump key; the door swung open.
The room was several degrees cooler than the rest of the building. The walls—lined with identical blue and brown packing boxes—seemed to narrow at the top, to actually close in. Each box was labelled: a series of letters (indecipherable) and a date, written in either blue or black permanent marker on each side. Lota turned in slow circles, her gaze trained on the boxes and travelling from floor to ceiling. The dates, she noticed, followed a definite pattern, with the more recent dates on top and the earlier ones stacked below.
Kurtz reached for a box at around shoulder height, labelled in blue: 11/16/1997. It was evidently heavy and she inched it out slowly, her fingers slipping off the cardboard rim. When she’d managed to coax it out so that about a third of the box’s length was extended from the shelf, Baby Jane stepped in and the two of them began to lower the box to the floor. Even so, it tumbled awkwardly, hitting the floor at an angle and splitting a side.
Lota stared at its spilled contents.
Sea maps, Kurtz had said. Extraordinary renditions.
Lota took a step back. She looked up at the boxes that still lined the walls, at all the signs and dates that spun both backward and forward in an endless spiral. The feeling of being caught inside of, and slowly strangled by a history she did not want to understand began to overtake her.
History could be dangerous, Kurtz had said. It could trick you into believing in it—accepting it as inevitable.
Baby Jane kicked at the box, so that more papers spilled out, littering the floor. Reprovingly, Kurtz shook her head.
Auntie G, Lota recalled, had also been wary of history. When, five or six years ago, they’d erected a monument down by the wharf in memory of the nuclear disaster and the forced deportation of 1965, Auntie G had been incensed. “Remembering,” she’d said, “is the first stage of forgetting.” Then she’d written the words on a sign and carried it in front of the National Assembly for nearly a week.
“We’ll start here,” Kurtz said, indicating the files that had settled loosely at their feet, in scattered piles, “and work our way up.”
A lump had grown in Lota’s throat, at the thought of Auntie G. She’d been so intent, she realized, on not ending up like her auntie—on not uselessly beating her head against a system that she couldn’t change—that she hadn’t noticed how much she’d already come to resemble her. Here she was (the lump stuck; Lota blinked back a swell of hot tears), surrounded by history—its falsely divided, repetitive structure almost literally pressing in on her from every side.
A box labelled 07/07/1998 slid out easily this time when Kurtz pulled, because the adjacent box had already been removed.
Baby Jane gave a quick thumbs-up sign. Lota shut her eyes tight and swallowed, hard. A third box dropped to the floor with a dull sound, like a body being slammed against a wall.
TEN
It did not take much in the end. A twist of the wrist. Alien—leaning slightly forward in his chair—his hand placed, almost casually, on his gun.
Something gave way. She told him everything.
No, she thought, after the kid was gone. One was not, after all, in control over the course and direction of one’s life. There was a limited pleasure in the discovery, however, and very soon after Rachel was left with nothing but a cold hard feeling in her gut: the sudden knowledge that she was going to die.
Several whole minutes ticked by before she realized that there must have been at least a dozen other ways of handling things. She might not have had to say anything at all, she reflected—or at least not so soon.
So the kid had pointed a gun at her. But how likely was it, really, that he would have fired?
If she’d only been able to think, Rachel thought, gritting her teeth. Even for a moment…
But she hadn’t been able to think.
Well, and so what. The kid—and whoever it was he was working for—had control of the entire building. If they knew what they were looking for, it was a wonder they hadn’t stumbled upon it already. In point of fact, Rachel hadn’t said anything that the kid didn’t already know.
Besides (Rachel clenched her fists and released them in an effort to relax), despite what Phil and the kid might think, she personally knew nothing about any of this—it was all quite beyond her. Over her head.
She’d had her suspicions, of course; knew, like anyone, that “it happened”—and also (quite naturally) where, in her particular department, the “sensitive” documents were kept. But, no—despite what Phil had said and the kid had implied—she hadn’t known; certainly none of the specifics. How could she? It wasn’t her department; it never had been. It certainly wasn’t now.
So, what the hell had Phil been thinking, pointing the kid to her? It didn’t make sense!
But then—Rachel’s stomach twisted—of course it didn’t.
She felt suddenly, terribly cold. How stupid could she be? Phil had probably never said a word. Rachel had just practically handed the kid a billion dollars’ worth of information and who knew what else, and Phil had never even said a goddamned word!
Rachel took a deep, shaky breath and tried to exhale slowly. Okay, she thought. Okay—still…It didn’t matter. Would the kid even recognize the maps if he finally found them? Rachel remembered being shown one by Phil a while back: a tangle of lines with little swirls of colour. They’d looked to her like inkblots, or Rorschach tests. And as far as the other thing went…it wasn’t exactly illegal. That certainly didn’t make it right, of course—but it made it a reality. Despite what the kid believed, you couldn’t wish away reality—couldn’t change the course of history simply by objecting to it!
And who was to say, in the end, Rachel reflected a little further, what was “right”? She’d learned that lesson early on in the diplomatic service: insisting that something was categorically “right” or categorically “wrong” could get you into some terribly awkward conversations. It was better to simply acknowledge that things were “complicated.” That there was something of value, as well as some definite shortcomings, to every side.
Rachel wiped awkwardly at her face. Well, there was no use crying about it, she told herself sharply. It was just simply true! It wasn’t ju
st a matter of diplomacy. For better or for worse, Rachel had found that the sort of cagey, noncommittal language demanded by her job was not just a shrewd “way of speaking”; it really was the only way to approach any subject matter that was truly complex.
Rachel strained to look at her watch. Neither the short nor the long hand had appeared yet, but in any case, it couldn’t be much longer now…
It made her almost laugh to think of the kid stumbling on the maps and taking them for Rorschach tests—or combing uselessly through her personal emails (among the information she’d given the kid was her list of passcodes). She never thought she’d feel especially grateful for the fact that the sort of work she did—even at this level—was almost entirely superficial. But it was some relief for her to be able to consider, now, how nearly impossible it would be for anyone to detect among her endless correspondence even a shred of actual information—let alone anything recriminating.
Then again…who knew? Who knew who the kid was—or who he was connected to? The whole thing had so far struck Rachel as amateurish—a farce—but her only experience with hostile takeovers and political coups had been limited to the movies. Was it possible that the kid was some sort of mercenary? That he had ties to Russia? The Middle East?
The thought unsettled her. No matter how hard she tried to push it out of her mind, it returned. The idea was wild—but it did explain a few things. It explained why, for example, she was still tied to her desk, dammit; why she was still sitting on the floor with her pants wet; why she’d just spent a brief but uncomfortable minute staring down the barrel of a gun.
But how plausible was it that a regular island kid had found his way into foreign intelligence, or transnational crime?
Rachel’s mind raced. She attempted to recall the exact content of her recent email exchanges. That was the thing with intelligence, though, she reminded herself (drawing mostly from what she’d learned from TV). It wasn’t necessarily about what you knew or had to hide. It was about the things you were blind to, the things you didn’t know, or didn’t know you knew.
Rachel thought of the kid’s menacingly blank stare. Then again, in this case, she reasoned, it clearly wasn’t a matter of intelligence.
Anyway—she stopped herself—it didn’t matter. The thing was done. As she’d always told Ray, when his imagination got the better of him: “You’ve done everything you can reasonably do, haven’t you? All we can do now is hope for the best.”
Hope for the best!
Only now did it occur to her how ridiculous, how almost perfectly meaningless the phrase was. Only very slightly better, when you thought about it, than some of the absurd-sounding platitudes Ray’s Baptist parents were fond of using. Whenever Ray had slipped up and used one himself, Rachel had amused herself by inquiring politely when she should expect him to start speaking in tongues.
She leaned toward the desk in an effort to relieve some of the pressure on her wrists and her knees. She’d simply taken it for granted, she realized, with a confused sense of resentment and shame—taken it, to a certain extent, yes, on faith—that her own vague reassurances were fundamentally more sincere and more rational than miracle deliverance and visions of hell. Now she wasn’t so sure…
She began to rock a little—a rhythmic pattern that soothed her. Yes, she’d taken it for granted! Had believed, for no other reason than that she’d wanted to believe, that the future was bound to arrive bigger and brighter than either their present or their past. She’d believed—yes! Rachel thought (lurching forward a bit, then struggling to restore her balance) that the future, like the pre-crash housing market, would be boundless and unconditional; that (just as she’d written in the essay that had gained her entry, and a decent scholarship, to the Foreign Service Institute) the world was, and would continue to be, “of their own making,” and that the sheer energy of her own desire could not fail to make it “a better place.”
When she shifted her weight again she realized that she’d begun to lose feeling in her left leg. She flexed her foot, tried to shake it a little. The leg ached, then tingled painfully.
At best she’d been naive, she thought—at worst, dishonest. But all her life, she’d been frankly encouraged (Rachel flexed her foot again and swore softly) to expound upon empty, practically meaningless topics and themes; to use meaningless words. The smiley faces that had always graced her high school English papers reared their absurd heads suddenly—seemed to mock her. Yes, there was no other way to put it: she’d been dishonest. She’d not only grown accustomed to meaninglessness; she’d actually come to rely on it.
Even when she’d protested, there was something empty about the gesture, insincere. Something far more honest, in the end, about Ray’s placid acceptance, about the way he never quite “saw the point.” She’d crinkle her forehead at him across dinner tables or event halls every time her bullshit detector sounded the alarm, and he’d merely grin back—or shrug. She’d complain about evasion and abstraction, insisting that they address only what she liked to call “actual problems,” and he’d answer with a brief, distracted nod.
It had been like that from the beginning—even back as far as their first date. Rachel remembered it clearly: how she’d been obliged to do most of the talking, how polite Ray had been—how anxious to please. She’d bragged a lot, she recalled. About how she’d made it through her entire undergraduate career practically without attending a single class. Instead she’d signed up for every practicum and internship opportunity she could; she’d volunteered at a rehab clinic, delivered needles out of the back of a van. All in all, it had been a far more meaningful experience, she’d told Ray proudly, than writing an essay on drug abuse statistics and trends. “The War on Drugs,” she’d continued (the topic of Ray’s own senior thesis), “and everything that went with it” was just lip service—didn’t he know that? A conspiracy—a sham.
It was an aggressively casual place they’d chosen that night—like so many of the restaurants that had begun to spring up in the newly fashionable parts of town. It was the kind of place you took someone when you didn’t want to seem as though you were trying too hard.
“They think if they just call it something it’ll be that thing,” Rachel had said. “But you can’t declare war on something that doesn’t even exist. I mean, you can’t pretend it’s not all part of something much bigger—that the entire system doesn’t have to change!”
They were both drinking red wine out of Mason jars and, after only a glass and a half, Rachel could feel that her face had flushed and she was aware that, at best, Ray was only half listening. Then Ray had reached abruptly across the table and placed his hand on Rachel’s cheek. She stopped speaking and stiffened, but Ray did not pull back. He was looking at her intently—almost too intently. His eyes seemed to go right through her. He brushed his thumb against her lower lip. Rachel slapped him; he reeled back.
“Why did you do that?”
Ray said nothing. His hand was still semi-extended, hovering emptily over his plate.
“Men always think they can do that,” Rachel said, her throat tightening a little and feeling, for some inexplicable reason, like she wanted to cry. It took a few moments before she could trust herself to look up. When she did, she could tell that Ray was genuinely perplexed, that he regretted his action, tremendously—but didn’t know why.
“Do…what?” he asked finally.
“I was talking!”
Ray blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry.”
Rachel felt herself relax. She took a sip of wine, then set the jar down carefully on the table, examining the way the wine collected along the spiralled rim. “Not everything a woman says,” she warned him (she could feel his eyes on her still—really looking at her—but she did not yet look up), “is for the purposes of getting into bed.”
But later on, of course, they did end up in bed. Just as—in that moment—he and she both knew they would.
A muffled sound from a nearby office startled Rach
el. A shout, or a sob, perhaps—almost certainly human. She tried to guess what direction it had come from, but she’d become strangely disoriented and had trouble placing it.
Should she respond in some way? Slam against the desk, or stomp on the floor? Shout?
She pictured the ambassador. She pictured Bradley, next door. Downstairs there was Monique, the administrative assistant—a gregarious, extremely flirtatious woman in her late fifties who always seemed to be gasping for air. Had they also had their hands bound? Had a gun waved in their faces? And if so (Rachel shifted her weight uncomfortably), had they also crumbled—under only the slightest of pressures? Had they…wet themselves? Cried? Handed over their passwords?
To be fair—Rachel reminded herself—having a gun waved in one’s face was not exactly the “slightest of pressures.” And in her case, handing over “everything” was, practically speaking, very nearly the same as handing over nothing at all.
But then she thought of the ambassador again, and of the new intern, Fiona—a viciously thin woman with almost translucent skin. It was really impossible to know how ordinary people would act given extraordinary circumstances. She wasn’t proud, necessarily, of the way she’d behaved, but she really couldn’t blame herself either. All things considered, she decided, she’d done fairly well in remaining as optimistic as she had—in keeping things in perspective, in remembering that, despite appearances, the power remained almost wholly on her side. Still, it irked her how quickly all of that had dissolved the moment the kid had threatened her, touched his gun.
There was the sound again; Rachel strained to listen. She could hear almost nothing, however, over the insistent throbbing of her own pulse.
She tried to breathe. In. In. Out. In. In. Tried to look at the situation from a different perspective—from some distant point in the future, or the past. Tried to see the way that what was happening to her was connected to everything else in her life…Yes, she would get through this, she told herself. Years, months, or even weeks later, she would look back on this moment and it would be almost as if it had happened to somebody else.
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