The Divide

by Nicholas Evans

  Little by little, the horror of that night in Denver began, if not to fade, at least to settle into what Rolf called its context. What had happened was an accident, he kept telling her, and she mustn’t buy into the way the media distorted these things. He said—and Abbie believed him—that he felt bad about McGuigan’s son dying. Knowing his parents were away, the boy had apparently brought his girlfriend home. He must have looked out, seen Abbie, and come out with the shotgun, walking straight past Rolf. Luckily, when the house went up, the girlfriend had gotten out. The boy getting killed was a sad and serious fuckup, Rolf said, but on the front line these things sometimes happened. And it was important to remember what his father had done to Ty’s parents, how he’d ruined their lives and the lives of countless others. It was J. T. McGuigan, more than anyone, who bore the responsibility for his son’s death, not they.

  Rolf said all this before they had seen the news about the cops arresting Ty. That was the moment when Abbie had cracked and almost turned herself in. She had even put on her coat and was about to head off down the street to find a phone, but Rolf had stopped her and held on to her while she hollered and screamed and tried to hit him. How could those idiot cops think Ty had anything to do with it? Rolf said it was probably just a trick by the feds to get her to come forward. And it turned out he was right because a few days later Ty was released. Luckily, he had several witnesses to prove he’d been in Sheridan on the night the McGuigan boy died. Though, according to the newspapers, the bastard feds still hadn’t ruled out some kind of conspiracy charge.

  She begged and begged to be allowed to call her mom, but Rolf wouldn’t let her. Soon, he said, but not yet. It wasn’t safe. He did, however, allow her to write a letter, which he carefully vetted in case she gave something away. All she really said in it was that she was okay, that what had happened was an accident, and that she was sorry for all she was putting them through. Rolf said they couldn’t mail it from LA. He sent it to someone he knew in Miami who in turn was supposed to mail it on to New York. Whether it ever got there, Abbie didn’t know.

  The cat across the street was still cleaning himself. What little interest he had shown in Abbie’s coaxing had vanished. The bus was coming now. She stood up as it slowed and when it stopped beside her and the doors hissed open, she climbed aboard. There were maybe half a dozen other passengers. It was only as she was walking toward the back that she noticed that two of them were cops.

  One was a man, the other a woman, and they were sitting side by side chatting. By the look of it, both were off duty and on their way home. The man was watching Abbie’s approach with what was probably only the most casual kind of interest but it was enough to make her heart start thumping. Rolf had told her the worst thing you could do was to appear nervous or furtive. She looked the guy straight in the eye and smiled and he smiled back then looked away.

  Abbie settled two rows from the rear and sat watching the backs of their heads. They were still talking, though about what she couldn’t hear. Then the guy laughed and Abbie figured she was in the clear.

  She looked out the window through her own reflection which, even after all these months, could still startle her. The dark brown hair cut short and stiffened with gel, the eyebrows dyed to match, the little rectangular black-rimmed spectacles with their plain glass lenses, the silver stud on the side of her left nostril. She didn’t know why the sight of a cop still sent her into such a panic, for she could hardly recognize herself. You wouldn’t guess she was even a distant cousin of the happy, blond princess whose high-school graduation picture had been plastered all over the newspapers and shown night after night on the TV before they’d gotten tired of the story and, thank God, moved on.

  All Rolf had done was grow a beard and trim his hair. And he hadn’t really even needed to do that. Once the idiots had figured out that Abbie Cooper’s ecoterrorist accomplice wasn’t Ty after all, they had issued an artist’s impression of Rolf so wildly inaccurate, it was a joke. The only thing that vexed him was their estimate of his age, which was “mid- to late thirties.”

  Within a week of reaching LA, he had fixed up new identities for them. He was now Peter Bauer and Abbie was Rebecca Jane Anderson. She had the driver’s license, Social Security number, and credit cards to prove it. Though soon she was going to have to start over and learn to be somebody else because Rolf wasn’t happy with the quality of the forgery of their licenses and was working on getting some better, more expensive ones. They were going to cost a thousand dollars each, which was why Abbie was having to wait tables at Billy Z’s.

  Rolf was still cagey about telling her too much about how he came by such documents. It was always “a friend” somewhere. But in the three months they had spent in LA and the two and a half here, listening and watching and eventually being given things to do on her own, she had learned a lot.

  She knew, for example, that the best way to get a new identity was to check out newspaper obituary columns. She had seen this in a movie once and thought they must have made it up, but it was true. All you had to do was find someone of a similar age then apply by mail for an officially certified copy of his or her birth certificate. It was amazing, but when people died, it could take the authorities months, years even, to find out.

  And getting a credit card was child’s play. People were always receiving mailings asking them if they wanted a new card and nine times out of ten they just threw them in the garbage. All you had to do was rummage around in Dumpsters to find one, fill in the form, notify a change of address, and bingo, they sent you the card. Of course, you didn’t want to hold on to it for too long, in case you got busted, so you had to spend hard and fast then ditch it and get yourself another. Rolf said using them to get cash from ATMs was risky because the machines were all fitted with cameras. So instead they just bought stuff and sold it. It didn’t even matter what you bought because Rolf always knew how to shift it, but they stuck mostly to electronic stuff, computers and cameras and phones, nothing too big or bulky.

  It surprised her, when she thought about it, even shocked her a little, that she had taken so readily to what Rolf called living on the outside. If she was honest with herself, it excited her. Sometimes, in moments of fanciful exhilaration, she liked to think of them as a kind of ecowarrior version of Bonnie and Clyde—though she knew better than to share such romantic nonsense with Rolf.

  And it wasn’t as if anybody really got hurt—at least, with the credit-card scam. Rolf said people’s liability for fraudulent use of their card was limited to fifty dollars. So it was the credit companies, the fat-cat corporations, who took the hit, not their customers. And, as he said, since the greedy bastards were themselves ripping everybody off the whole time anyway, why should anyone feel sorry for them?

  They had moved to San Francisco in January and after living for a while in a horrible squat in Mission, had now at last moved to Oakland and had a place of their own. It wasn’t much, just a one-bedroom apartment in a godforsaken neighborhood, but Abbie had cleaned it and painted it and made it livable, just like she had in Missoula. Rolf laughed at her, saying he despaired of her bourgeois values. But she told him she didn’t care what he thought (which wasn’t true) and anyhow why was it bourgeois not to want to live in squalor with fleas and lice crawling all over you? With a little more money, she could have made the place look great.

  They were happier now. Now that the trauma had subsided and it was just the two of them again. She loved taking care of him and cooking for him and finding him little gifts. Every Friday, without fail, she would buy fresh flowers and put them in a jug on the kitchen table. And though he told her it was a waste of money and pretended he didn’t care about such trivial things, she knew he secretly did. The times she liked best were the weekends when they would drive out of the city and hike for miles in the hills or the forest or along the coast. They would talk and laugh and make love. She had told him many times that she loved him, though he hadn’t yet said it to her. It simply wasn’t in his na
ture to say such things. But she was sure he did. On a cold and windswept beach, two weeks ago, he had drawn the outline of a heart in the sand and written within it their linked initials.

  To help pay for their new documentation, Rolf too had now gotten himself a job. He was working in a bar down on Fisherman’s Wharf and though the pay wasn’t any better than Abbie’s, he was actually earning fifty times that amount. She hadn’t known anything about it until the other morning when she found this funny little device lying on the bedroom floor. It was black and looked like a pager or some fancy little cell phone. When she asked him what it was, he just smiled and for a long time wouldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t let him have it and he chased her all around the apartment until she threatened to flush it down the toilet unless he told her.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s a skimmer. Now give it to me.” He came toward her but she held up a hand and with the other lowered the thing toward the water until he stopped.

  “And what’s a skimmer?”

  He sighed and pointed out the little slit in the side. If you swiped a credit card through it, he said, it downloaded all the information on the card’s magnetic strip. If you knew where to go, you could sell the information for fifty dollars per card. Rolf, needless to say, knew where to go. He said he could get one for her to use at Billy Z’s, but Abbie said she wouldn’t do it. It was too brutal and brazen, too personal, she said. To rip people off like that, when you’d just been serving them and smiling and trying to earn a decent tip, seemed wrong. Rolf shook his head and laughed.

  The bus had reached Oakland now and Abbie’s neighborhood was the next stop. Everybody except the cops had gotten off. And, for the first time, the woman turned and looked back at her and Abbie had a stab of paranoia. Maybe they knew about her. Even if they didn’t, she shouldn’t let them know where she lived. Maybe she should stay on the bus until they got off then catch another one back. But, shit, it was late and she was so tired. She told herself not to be so stupid.

  As the bus began to slow, she got up and walked to the front. But in her nervousness she forgot about the traffic lights at the foot of the hill. They were on red and the bus stopped and she reached the doors much too early so she had to stand there, right in front of the cops. They were staring at her and she was trying to look as if she either didn’t know or didn’t care. She turned up the collar of her coat.

  Then one of the cops spoke, and although she didn’t hear what he said, she knew he had to be talking to her. She looked at him.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, don’t worry. Spring’ll soon be here.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Hope so.”

  The bus was moving again now. Abbie smiled and looked away, hoping that was the end of the conversation.

  “Working late?”

  She nodded, trying to look tired, just cheerfully resigned.

  “Yeah. That’s right. You too, huh?”

  “Yeah. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I get to patrol the golf course.”

  “Great.”

  The bus was stopping now, though it seemed to take an eternity for the doors to open. But at last, with a loud hiss, they did.

  “Good night,” she said as she stepped off.

  “Good night.”

  The living-room lights were off when she got home, just the shimmer of the TV coming from the doorway to the bedroom. She called his name as she double-locked the door but there was no answer. She walked through to the bedroom and saw him lying on the mattress they’d salvaged from a Dumpster. He was working on his new laptop but shut the lid as soon as she came in.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Rolf?”

  “Sorry. You still call me Abbie.”

  “I know that when it matters I won’t get it wrong.”

  She took off her coat and knelt beside him on the bed.

  “What makes you think I will?”

  “You’re new to all this. You have to practice these things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She kissed him on the forehead and then more fully on the lips, but there wasn’t a flicker of response.

  “Somebody’s gotten into bed the wrong way,” she said. “What have I done?”

  For a moment, he didn’t reply, just stared at the TV that stood on a crate behind the door. The sound had been turned off. President Bush was strolling on a ranch somewhere, dressed like a cowboy, an absurdly small black dog trotting along beside him.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

  “Why? I mean, what’s wrong with this place?”

  “I mean the city, for God’s sake.”

  “Leave San Francisco?”

  “Have you been drinking? Why are you so goddamn slow?”

  “Jesus. What’s the matter with you?”

  He turned away and got off the bed and went into the bathroom.

  “Rolf—I mean . . . Please, tell me what’s happened.”

  “Somebody’s been talking. I don’t know who. Maybe you.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I heard today. The feds here have been asking questions. Anyway, whatever, we have to leave. Tomorrow.”

  “And go where?”

  “I don’t know. Chicago. Maybe Miami.”

  “Did the new IDs come through?”

  “That fucked up too. And we have no money. You’re going to have to get some from those rich parents of yours.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Josh had more or less gotten used to the idea that it was all over between him and Katie Bradstock. He’d seen her only once since she went off to Ann Arbor. They still sent each other e-mails but his were always a lot steamier than hers. Maybe that was the problem. Some of the sexy stuff he wrote, about intimate things they had done with each other or might yet do, which Josh thought might really turn her on (it sure turned him on writing it), she didn’t even bother to acknowledge. He was, like, I remember the shadows of your nipples in the moonlight. And she would reply, On Monday we played basketball and then all went to Wendy’s. She probably had a new boyfriend at college. That had to be it.

  Then he figured that, since Abbie went on the run, maybe Katie was embarrassed, thinking everything they said was being monitored by some pervy little FBI creep. And maybe it was. Come to think of it, hell, he was embarrassed too. Anyhow, Katie Bradstock and her moonlit nipples were five hundred miles away in Ann Arbor and he was in Syosset and he had to face it: It wasn’t going to work. As Freddie had been telling him for months now, long-distance relationships sucked.

  Which was why it came as such a surprise when he got her letter saying she had to meet him. It was obviously something important and secret too because she sent it to him at school and said not to tell his mom and dad anything about it. Getting a letter at school was kind of embarrassing because nobody got letters at school and everyone was, like, Hey, Josh, so who’s the love letter from? The only person he told was Freddie, who stroked his chin and asked how long ago it was since he and Katie had seen each other.

  “I don’t know, like a couple of months or something. Why?”

  “Like, eight or nine weeks, that kind of deal?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Why?”

  “And you had sex?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He tried to sound nonchalant and manly. In fact, it had been fairly disastrous. “Why?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Jesus Christ! Josh spent the next three days in an agonized haze. That had to be it. Why else would she be so secretive? He would have called her on her cell phone straightaway but she had expressly forbidden it. Instead she gave him a number he didn’t recognize and told him to call it at one o’clock precisely that coming Thursday. He should do this from a pay phone, she instructed, and make sure nobody was watching or listening. Jesus Christ!

  When Thursday came and he called the number from one of the booths outside the school cafeteria, she picked up immediately. There was a roar of traffi
c, so he figured she was probably at a pay phone too.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “I’ve got to see you. I can get a ride to New York this weekend. Saturday afternoon. Bloomingdale’s. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Katie, what the hell’s all this about?”

  “I can’t tell you now. The cosmetics floor, okay? I’ll be by the Clarins counter. Two o’clock. Have you got that?”

  “The what counter?”

  She impatiently spelled it out. He swallowed.

  “Katie?”

  “What?”

  “Are you, like, pregnant?”

  “What? No, for God’s sake. Of course not. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you on Saturday. And Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure nobody’s following you, okay?”

  Only then did it occur to him what it might be about. Man, he was so dumb.

  “Is this about Abb—”

  “For God’s sake, Josh, shut up. I’ve got to go.”

  And she did. And now here he was, lurking in Bloomingdale’s. He’d gotten here an hour early and had already walked every corner of the store, glancing over his shoulder, looking in mirrors, going up and down the elevators and escalators, scanning the faces for anyone who might be looking at him or studiously ignoring him. It was a miracle the store detectives hadn’t grabbed him.

  Until now, he hadn’t taken all this surveillance stuff too seriously. He could just about believe they read e-mails and that the phones at home were bugged, maybe even his cell phone too. And for a few weeks after Abbie went missing, on the way to and from school, he’d kept an eye out for anyone watching from a parked car or a van with darkened windows, like it always was in the movies. But he soon concluded that if they were spying on him, they must be pretty damn good at it, because he never saw a thing. And they must be pretty damn bored too. Jesus, even he found his life boring. How much worse must it be for the poor suckers who had to watch him live it?