Thief of Words

by John Jaffe

CHAPTER 57

  It was 11:15 when Jack finally made the phone call he’d been trying to make all morning. It was 11:l6 when that call ended.

  It hadn’t been a satisfying conversation.

  Fred had refused to put him through to Annie. There had been heated emotionality on Jack’s side, ruthless efficiency on Fred’s, ending in an abrupt click.

  It was 11:17 when Jack made the second call.

  “Fred,pleasedon’thangup,Iknowyousaidshedoesn’twanttotalkto me,butjustgivemethreeminutes—THREEMINUTES—isthat toomuchtoask?” Jack spoke as quickly as he could make his tongue move, resulting in one long, blurry sentence. To his relief, there was no click on the other end.

  Then he slowed down. “Just hear me out. Okay? Let me tell you what happened. It’s not what Annie thinks. Three minutes? Okay? Just enough to tell you the whole story. Then if you think it’s bullshit, you can hang up. But if you don’t—and I know you won’t—you have to talk to Annie for me. You’ve got to get her to listen to what I have to say.”

  There was still silence on the other end of the line. A blessed silence, in Jack’s mind. It meant that Fred was, at least, considering his plea.

  “Okay,” said Fred, finally, “three minutes. No promises, though.”

  Jack rushed through Friday night’s events like a guy qualifying for a NASCAR race. When he finished, Fred responded with a skeptical “Hmmph.” In desperation Jack played his one and only ace.

  “Look, Fred,” he said, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but I can prove it. Those guys I was drinking with, I’ll have one of them call you. My boss, Steve Proctor, he was there. He’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Hmmph,” Fred snorted again, skepticism intact. “Why should I believe him? You could have coached him.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Oh?” said Fred, in the voice of a schoolteacher listening to a missed homework excuse.

  “If you won’t believe him, I’ll give you a list of every person I was in the bar with that night. There were at least seven. I’ll give you their phone numbers right now, before I have a chance to ‘coach’ them.”

  This time Fred’s “hmmph” was higher-pitched and contained a note of surprise—but, to Jack’s ear, an entire symphonic score of hope. He plowed ahead before the note could change.

  “You’ve got to believe me, Fred. If I were really the lothario-schmuck-asshole everybody thinks I am, would I be this desperate? Would I be on my knees begging?”

  There was a ten-second hour before Fred responded.

  “All right, Mr. DePaul. I’ll consider it. But don’t call back again and don’t come here. Let’s take a week or so for things to settle down.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Annie whammed Sigourney Weaver with a left jab, followed fast by a right uppercut. Just as she snap-kicked the tall brunette into oblivion, she heard the buoyant voice of MaryJo, the fitness instructor at Dupont Sport and Health.

  “Wow,” MaryJo chirped, lowering the black boxing mitt she’d been holding in front of Annie’s gloved fists. “You’ve really improved your punch. What’s going on? You angling for a part in Jackie Chan’s next movie?”

  “Something like that,” Annie said, prancing in place to the beat of “Mambo Number 5.”

  “Well, keep it up,” MaryJo said, moving over to the next salsa boxer in the line. “And did everyone see Annie’s last kick?” she said into her headset microphone. “That’s just how I want you all to do it.”

  The face of Sigourney Weaver disappeared with MaryJo’s mitt. Now as Annie jabbed, punched, and kicked, she watched the mirrored wall in front of her as a line of women assaulted the air with varying degrees of ferocity. The Monday night salsa boxers came in all shapes and sizes. There were chubbies and skinnies and some in between. There was Deneen, the process server, who looked like she belonged in a Playboy spread (“Women of the Justice System”); there was a pregnant woman from Russia (Ivana?

  Svetlana?) who always looked angry; there was Lala the lawyer, a short Hispanic woman with the sinewy arms of a rock climber. And there was Annie the literary agent, a slenderish redhead, with a strong desire to maim tonight.

  Annie watched herself along with her sisters in salsa. Okay, so she didn’t have the smooth hip-glide thing going that MaryJo and Lala had, or Deneen’s exuberant breasts, or Svetlana/Ivana’s alabaster skin. In fact, there were plenty of things she didn’t have. But at age forty-four and three-quarters, Annie decided it was time to stop categorizing herself by her have-nots. She’d spent an awful few days thinking about Kathleen Faulkner and all the things she had that Annie didn’t: long legs, good thighs, a strong jaw, an important job, Jack. It didn’t matter that she’d never seen the woman. Laura had told her she looked like Sigourney Weaver and Annie’s imagination filled in the rest.

  It’d taken Laura’s blunt words to shake her out of it. “You’re such a dope,” she’d said last night over burritos at Wrapworks. Laura had come down to D.C. to take Annie out to dinner—and to apologize for fixing her up with Jack. She’d even sworn never to mention good asses again.

  “You remember the Sigourney Weaver part, but forget the turbo-bitch part,” Laura said. “Faulkner doesn’t have a friend in the newsroom, Annie. They call her Captina Queeg, for Christsakes. Plus, she’s got piano-stool legs, so you can erase that from your mind. Believe me, she’s not half the person you are. Would you like me to list the ways?”

  “Yes,” Annie had said.

  As the beat slowed down for ab work, Annie thought about Laura’s list. Funny, smart, kind, determined, small waist, great hair, willing to pee outdoors, and beautiful. She knew the last one was just a best friend’s bias (and major guilt for fixing her up with such a schmuck), but she’d let the others stand, dammit. She was measuring herself by her haves now.

  Her abs began to burn and she was about to give up. But the same resolve that kicked in Saturday morning, after an hour of moldering in bed torturing herself with Kathleen’s words, kicked in now. She went into ab overdrive, clinching so hard with each rep that she felt like coiled steel. She was ready for another twenty crunches, when MaryJo popped to her feet and started swinging her fists again. “Okay, boxers,” she yelled, her amplified voice bouncing off the mirrored walls, “let’s give it all you got. You’re Mike Tyson and someone just smashed your new Mercedes. One, two—jab, punch, kick. Three-four—imagine a crumpled door— kick, punch, jab…”

  Annie started attacking. A new face came to her with each swing. Kathleen; Jack; that Star-News reporter with the dirty tie; Andrew Binder; her old city editor, Mark Snowridge; her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wenzel, who failed her in fingernail check; her former boss, Greg Leeland, who had issues with strong women; and finally herself—for overreacting, as usual.

  Jack was free to sleep with whomever he wanted. They’d known each other less than a month. They hadn’t even hinted at the L word. They’d had great sex and great e-mails, but that didn’t mean he owed her exclusivity. In fact, he didn’t owe her anything. It wasn’t his fault that she’d taken it all to heart. She hadn’t understood till Saturday morning, when she was burning holes in the ceiling with her stare, just how needy she’d been when Jack DePaul entered her life.

  “I was so ready for romance he could’ve recited me the god-damned alphabet and I’d have been planning our wedding,” Annie had told Laura the previous night. “And that fantasy he spun—that he could rewrite my past—well, shit, I never had a chance. He might as well have hooked me on crack cocaine.”

  What Annie didn’t tell Laura was this: she’d thought she’d finally found the one. Jack DePaul, with his crooked teeth and banty cock chest. She’d thought she was his muse; he was certainly hers. For the first time in twenty years, she couldn’t wait to get in front of a keyboard again to see where her fingers took her. She’d loved the mysterious way words tumbled out of her mind and onto the screen. It was alchemy. But she’d stopped writing after the Commercial-Appeal.

  No, she didn’t t
ell Laura any of these things. She was too embarrassed.

  “What’re you going to do if he keeps calling?” Laura had asked. “He’ll stop. He’s got Ms. Piano-Stool Legs back and that’s clearly what he wanted. He was probably just using me to make her jealous—and it obviously worked. Who knows, who cares? I’ve told Fred not to even tell me if he calls, not that he’s going to. I have no desire to talk to him. What would I say? ‘How many more snake slayers are there, Jack?’

  “It’s over. And this way, I don’t have to deal with him about the Commercial-Appeal thing. Anyhow, this rewriting-my-past stuff— it was great while it lasted, but it’s time to put that to bed. In fact, it’s time to put my past to bed, period. I’ve got a present to think about.”

  “Jab. Punch. Kick! Go girls. Yeah!” yelled MaryJo, exhorting them to new levels of pummelment. Annie followed ferociously, her T-shirt soaked through with sweat. MaryJo whipped her head Annie’s way and said, “Don’t mess with Annie. She’s on fire tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’ve killed all my enemies,” Annie said with an uppercut to the air.

  “That’s why we’re here,” MaryJo shouted into her headset. “That and this,” she said, slapping her taut butt. “Okay, last set. Let her rip. Let’s go.”

  By the final jab, Annie wasn’t sure she could remain vertical. Her legs were wobbly, her arms shaking. She joined the other salsa ladies in a whoop of relief and joy when MaryJo finally clapped her hands together and said, “Good job. Time to eat.”

  Before heading to the showers and sauna, Annie assessed the woman before her in the mirror. Did she look like someone whose Mr. Right had just turned into Mr. Schmuck? No. She looked tough and sweaty. Maybe a bit battered, but not beaten.

  In a way, Jack DePaul could take some credit for her resilience. She’d loved falling in love and Jack had made it so easy. He was good, no question about it.

  But that dream was shattered, and, surprisingly, she didn’t feel like retreating to her pile of books. She felt like trying again. Jack had made her hungry. Given her an appetite for more.

  “Hey, Annie,” it was Lala, a towel around her neck. “You going straight home?”

  “No, I’m not. Want to go for a smoothie? Maybe there’re some cute guys at Jamba Juice. And if we’re lucky, they like girls.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Just about the time Annie was uppercutting her way to self-actualization, Jack was slumped in front of the Mac, still on the ropes, still reeling from the day’s body blows.

  He’d spent the afternoon ignoring the curious looks and the buzzing newsroom. He chose, instead, to wallow in editing details and self-pity. “But it’s not my fault” was his mantra as he sat at his desk hunched like a hedgehog under attack. A little after five, Arts editor Mike Gray suggested kindly that, maybe, Jack should leave early.

  “I’m not going to ask what’s going on,” he said, “but I think you and your little black cloud need to get out of here. Go to the gym; go get drunk; go. Do you want me to meet you at Sisson’s later? We can order boutique beers and watch the Lakers.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Jack said. “I think I’ll just go home. There’s some stuff I need to do.”

  Stuff. Like trying to get to Annie. Phoning was out of the question, intermediaries were out, too—Laura would sooner help Pol Pot than Jack DePaul—and a direct assault didn’t seem wise. He briefly considered driving to D.C., but he was afraid she’d slam the door in his face or, worse, call the cops.

  E-mail was his refuge. It had gotten him into this mess, maybe it would get him out. But what could he say? Just telling his side of the story wasn’t going to be enough. He could hardly believe the events himself, and he’d lived through them. How could he explain Kathleen Faulkner in fewer pages than War and Peace?

  He knew that, somehow, he had to woo Annie all over again. But what words, what message, could soften a heart that must by now be as impervious to him as titanium? And the most important word of all wasn’t available. If “love” suddenly appeared, it would only make him look like a desperate con man hitting below the belt.

  Jack sat in front of the screen absently eating popcorn. How can I make her believe?

  To ahollerman@aol.com

  From jdepaul@aol.com

  Subject: The truth

  Annie,

  You’ve got to read this e-mail. You’ve got to give us a chance.

  Nothing that happened Friday night in New York is what it seems. It was like a bad student film mixing slapstick and soap opera. It involved a jealous, lying former lover, an unlocked hotel room, a laptop left on, and incredible naivete on the part of the hapless protagonist—me.

  I need to tell you the whole stupid saga in person. You’ll see in my face that I’m telling the truth. But until you let me back into your life, these words will have to do: I’m not seeing anybody else, I’m not having an affair with anybody else, I have never betrayed you or your trust in any way. The only woman I want in my life is you.

  The only woman I want in my life is you.

  I never realized how true those words were until now. Jack and Annie, Annie and Jack. It’s too good, it’s too right. We can’t let it be destroyed by an evil spirit from my past.

  The past seems to be haunting us both. I don’t care about the Annie of the past. The Annie of New Jersey or North Carolina. All I care about is the now and future Annie. From now on, let’s create tomorrows, not yesterdays. That way, we can make them come true.

  I want to make a lot of things come true. The list can be as long as our lives together. A trip in October. Close your eyes, you can image every scene….

  We fly to Santa Fe and rent a car. We drive north to Colorado and west to Utah. From the Abajos, where the leaves of the aspens are as gold as Spanish doubloons, we turn south. Somewhere on Cedar Mesa we pull off onto an old fire road and drive through junipers and pinyon pines to the edge of a canyon. We stop, put on our backpacks, and climb down switchbacks toward the canyon floor about 400 feet below.

  The sun is high; the rocks warm to the touch. The air smells dry and sharp. It’s clear, though a few mares’ tails brush the western horizon. The trail ends in a tricky stretch of slickrock so we slide on our butts the last 30 or 40 feet to a big juniper tree and climb down it to the canyon bottom.

  It’s easy hiking there on hard-packed sand. You take the lead and I follow your voice like a trail. By late afternoon we’re far below the mesa top. On either side of us, the walls rise nearly straight up so, while the rims still burn orange and bright sienna, dusk arrives early to the trail.

  A side canyon comes in from the right. Up against the sandstone monoliths that guard the confluence are the remains of an ancient pueblo. With its stony crenellations and empty windows, it looks like a tiny castle. Above the remains, a faded white disc is painted on the sheer sandstone cliff. Inside the disc are two circles the color of the rock beneath. The ghostly remains of a painted face.

  We climb up a talus slope to the ruin and explore its seven tiny rooms—how small the builders must have been. On a flat spot that commands a view of both canyons we sit and watch the fading day and say something like this:

  Jack: “They sat here, too.”

  Annie: “Who?”

  Jack: “The Anasazi. Eight hundred years ago. If Matthew were here, he could tell us all about them.”

  Annie: “I wonder what they would think of us.”

  Jack: “They would look at your hair, fall down on their knees, and worship you as a goddess.”

  Annie: “Or eat me for dinner.”

  We camp below the ruin. The temperature plummets at night, so we build a small fire near our tent and huddle by it, wrapped up in our sleeping bag. We sit so close to the flames my hiking boots start to smolder.

  A pot of water boils all evening and from time to time we snake our hands out from the folds of the bag just long enough to make another cup of instant cocoa.

  I recite you poems by Pablo and we play the explorer game. You say that if you h
ad discovered Australia, you would have named it Koalaland. I vow that, if you give me the last swallow of cocoa, I’ll name it Annieland.

  Mummied together in the bag, we watch the stars cataract between the canyon rims. We crawl into the tent before 10 o’clock and let the fire burn itself out. Somewhere an owl hoots.

  In the middle of the night I awake out of a dream with your insistent hand on my shoulder.

  “Jack,” you whisper, “there’s someone up there.” “Huh?”

  “Up at the ruin. There’s someone up there.”

  “What?” I whisper back, still half asleep.

  “I was about to get up to pee—all that cocoa—when I heard some rocks falling. I looked out and saw somebody climbing to the ruin.”

  I pull tent flaps aside. The moon, now high over the rim, is a fingernail paring away from full. “Jesus. It’s so bright out. Where is he? Can you still see him?”

  “Look to where we were sitting at sunset. See—that black shape. That’s him.”

  “Who is it? Who would hike around here in the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe it’s…”

  And then we hear someone singing. A man’s voice, deliberate and repetitive. Each syllable strikes the cold air like fingers against a drum, but they beat out no words that we can understand, just melancholy rhythms. We listen, arms around each other, afraid to move, afraid to break the spell.

  The big moon climbs; the song goes on. And when it finally stops, maybe a half hour later, pieces of it seem to linger in the shadows. We look outside the flap. Above the ruin, the ghostly painted face glows in the reflected light—a little brother moon—but the dark shape of the singer is gone.

  In the innocent brightness of the next morning, it’s hard to believe in the moon, let alone chanting in the night. When I wake up, you’re already outside. I stick my head out of the tent and see two fires to warm me. One is heating our pot of water; the other, lit by sunrise, is your hair. You’ve tied it up with a cotton band, about an inch and a half wide, woven in bright threads of green, turquoise, and red.