“Holy shit,” Billy said, looking at his phone.
“I know,” I said. “It’s past nine.”
My dad sipped the rest of his beer and plunked it on the table. “Off to bed.” He grinned at Billy. They were each four beers deep. The drinks seemed to bond them.
Billy’s phone rang then. “Wow,” he said, still looking at the phone.
Then he added, “Holy shit,” again, then looked up at my mom. “Sorry about the swearing.”
“I’ve heard such language, Billy.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Billy responded by quickly standing. “Hello? This is Billy McGowan.” He raised his eyebrows at me. It’s him, he mouthed, and I knew it wasn’t just a congressman. I felt happy that even Billy McGowan could be awed at the thought of royalty.
“Yes, yes,” he said after listening for a minute.
He pointed toward the hallway and I nodded. When he walked that way, I got a flash of Gavin taking a phone to that hall to talk privately, and of the hell that transpired thereafter.
I shook the thought away.
Billy launched into what sounded like brief small talk before I could no longer hear him.
Ten minutes later he came down the hall and into the kitchen again. “They know Superdog.”
As if on cue, Baxter leaped into my lap.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I told them I was calling about two reporters who’d been detained or arrested in Libya, and as part of the background I told them Sebastian was part owner of this dog that’s been in some videos. Then he told me that one of the smaller kids in the family was a huge fan of Superdog.”
“C’mon,” I said, scratching Baxter’s head.
“I’m serious. He offered to use it to bring it up to the family and see what they know about the situation with Libya.”
His phone rang again.
“Yes,” he said, answering. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, that would be great. Thank you.”
He turned to us. “They are going to reach out and see what they can find.”
“Perfect,” my mom said.
“Wait a sec,” I said. “This is exciting, but I don’t want to cause any trouble.” I stood. “Let me call Beverly.”
* * *
“Okay, hold on,” Beverly said when I called her and told her the basics. “Run this by me again.”
I wondered what she looked like, this faceless Beverly.
Once again, I told her that Billy knew the Jordanians and had contacted them, and they knew Superdog, and they offered to assist if needed.
“We need to slow down here,” she said.
“I don’t know how we can slow down. We’re not even moving.”
“We are. And there’s no reason to have an ex-wife talking to some rock musician...” she said this derisively “...who then calls a Middle Eastern prince and discusses a dog video.”
Now that she said it, it did sound ridiculous. But if Baxter’s fame could be used for anything, it should be to bring Sebastian back. And Billy was more than willing to use his own fame.
“I know I’m not married to Sebastian anymore,” I said, “but I want to help. His mom, Barb, is having a hard time dealing, and his brother lives in Europe. I want to be the point person here. And you saw the video...” I left unsaid, Sebastian would want me to know. “And you know about the Superdog video. You know how much attention we got from that. Hell, I got a whole business from that, which I’ve totally been ignoring because of this situation.”
I had texted Toni earlier and told her to put a banner on the I’d Rather Sleep with the Dog website that said, Due to high demand, we are operating at a slower than usual pace. Please be patient and check back with us if needed.
According to Toni, people had checked in by email, but most assumed that the delays were due to Baxter’s recovery and were completely understanding. In fact, sales had increased.
“What if I can get a phone call?” Beverly said on the phone now.
“A phone call,” I repeated. “From whom? To whom?”
“What if I can get them to call us, and let you talk to Sebastian?”
“If you could do that, why wouldn’t you have offered that sooner?” I failed to hide my annoyance.
“We are making gains,” she said. “And we are able to do that now. This pace is somewhat standard in such a situation.”
“What situation is that?” Again, annoyance. “You keep talking about gains and plans and intel and gathering, but I don’t know that it’s gotten us anywhere! I don’t understand why it’s so amorphous, why there aren’t more details, more information, and I can only conclude that you can’t share it with me for some reason.”
I paused to let her protest. She didn’t.
“So,” I said, “I think our families need to make efforts on our end. We already emailed our legislators.”
“You what?”
I told her about contacting senators and congresspersons in Illinois, New York and California.
“Okay,” she said, voice businesslike and a little louder. “Please do not do that anymore. Please stop.”
“Why?”
A sigh. “Jessica, give me until tomorrow,” she said.
“Give you until tomorrow for what?”
“I’ll call you then,” she said. “Give me until then before you do anything else.”
* * *
“Do you want them to call your cell?” Beverly said.
The previous night, I’d said good-night to my parents and Billy, and I’d gone to bed with Baxter. I was still in bed when Beverly called. In that time Beverly had gotten something done. Maybe I’d been too harsh to judge her.
“You’re going to have Sebastian call me?” I said finally. “Or the people who are keeping him are going to call me?”
“Both. They will call you and let you talk to Sebastian.”
“Wow. Great.” It helped, apparently, to take matters into your own hands, and especially when you had Superdog on board. I was still handling the situation. Again, I saw that I’d been wrong when I told Sebastian I couldn’t handle his job and the consequences. “I’d like them to call on my cell phone.”
“I’m not sure if it will be tonight, their time, or tomorrow,” Beverly said.
I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, and I was about to say I didn’t know if I wanted to wait until tomorrow, but Beverly spoke more quickly.
“Jess, we’re going to have to explain something to you before you talk to him.”
Why did that sound ominous? I sat up in bed, causing Baxter to yawn and stretch.
“Who is ‘we’?” I said, shrugging on a light robe. Not the first time I’d asked that question.
“I’m about to explain that,” Beverly said.
“So, you’re going to tell me something via the State Department or some other organization?” Why couldn’t I just shut up? I stood and paced around my bed, having a random recollection of buying that bed with Sebastian at a place on Diversey Avenue. “Beverly, I don’t want to be ungrateful, but this situation is just getting more confusing.”
“I know. That’s why I got authorization to tell you.”
“Tell me...” I stopped, sensing the tide changing. Baxter, who had been trailing me, sat and looked up at me, expectant.
“Jess, Sebastian is part of a government organization, in addition to being a reporter. Or he has been, off and on.”
“What do you mean?” I tried to gather what she’d said. “Sebastian works undercover or something?”
“Sometimes. As I mentioned, he is a journalist, always has been. But sometimes, as part of his duties as a journalist, he also collects intel for us.”
“‘Us,’ as in...”
Finally, she spoke. “The CIA.”
48
My bedroom felt as if it were fuzzing in front of me.
I had been bowled into silence. I felt for the wall and leaned back. I had no idea how long I’d been there, holding the phone, trying to process Beverly’s words.
Baxter came closer to me and cocked his face up to mine.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked. “How long has he been working with you?”
My mind was assimilating. If I had to guess right then, I would have said that she would probably say, “A few years.” (Such as during the few years Sebastian and I had been apart.)
“Since before you met him.”
I slid to the floor. Baxter climbed on my lap.
Before you met him.
“He quit when you got engaged,” she said. It was clear she knew exactly when our engagement had happened, when everything had happened in our lives.
“Okay...” I said, because although I wasn’t fully understanding, I didn’t want her to stop talking.
“But he agreed to come back sometime after you moved to Chicago.”
For the first year Sebastian and I were in Chicago, he had spent time at home and in the office of the local paper where he’d taken a job. But after about a year, his travel had picked up, as had his assignments for his old paper in New York.
“Now it seems like Sebastian is making an effort to...uh...to get out again,” Beverly said. “That’s why he’s in this situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“He admitted to a source—in a very up-front way, so that word of his admission would travel—that he had obtained some dangerous information. That’s why he was arrested.”
Again, I kept thinking how Sebastian had a life going on without me, just like Billy McGowan had. But instead of disappointing me or hurting me, that knowledge was consoling because it explained Sebastian and his behavior at the time. I hadn’t caused it. A lack of love had not caused it.
“You think Sebastian purposefully admitted to having some information, knowing you would find out?” I asked.
“Correct. And we think he did that so that he could get out of the CIA.”
I thought about one night when Sebastian had been on a story for three weeks, when I’d gone through his home computer, looking for evidence of where he might be.
That night I sat down at Sebastian’s desk in our office, something I rarely did, consumed by a need to know something, anything. I pulled out his checkbook, then remembered he didn’t write checks. He paid everything online. I looked around the room. Sebastian and I had initially envisioned working together in here, swinging around to face each other to run something by one another.
I’d realized eventually that I was the one who’d envisioned us working that way. Sebastian had merely gone along with my vision. Because soon he was often at the paper, using the newsroom, accessing their archives. I didn’t blame him. Being in the newsroom put him in the action.
However, Sebastian had been preparing for his trip a fair amount by using the home computer. Surely it would hold some answers. I’d felt, for some reason, that if I knew where he was, that knowledge might calm me.
The computer had asked for a pass code.
I’d typed in his childhood address. Incorrect login! the computer had said.
I’d tried his mom’s maiden name, his first pet, adding the numbers for his grandfather’s birthday, which he had told me he often tacked on to passwords. Incorrect login! the computer had said again.
I’d tried other things, other permutations. Incorrect login! Incorrect login!
I’d begun to despise the invention of the exclamation mark.
Finally, a last shot, I’d put in my name with his grandfather’s birthday. Nothing.
I had sat back then. It wasn’t so strange that I couldn’t decipher his passwords, but I’d had an inkling then that Sebastian wasn’t everything he said he was. He had other parts of him.
I was right, I saw now. I just hadn’t realized the extent of those parts.
“How would confessing to information help him get out of the CIA?” I said to Beverly now.
“The source he confessed to is low-level. So the government isn’t sure they believe the source. Sebastian would know that there would be a question about him. He knew he would likely get picked up. But he would also know that the government in Libya doesn’t want to piss off our government. So that’s why we’ve had some cooperation.”
“That’s why you got the photo and video?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why they’re going to let him call me?”
“Yes.”
“Will they be on the line or whatever? Will they be listening?”
“Yeah.” I heard the sound of a keyboard. “Hold on.” Some more silence. “Okay, I just got word, they won’t just be listening. They’ll be watching, too. This is going to be a video call.” She mentioned the software that I could get as an app on my phone.
“I already have it,” I told her.
“Good.” She paused.
I got a flicker of anticipation. “Is there anything I should say? Or not say?” Please don’t let me screw up when Sebastian’s life is at stake.
But I could almost hear my ex-husband’s reply. You can handle it.
“Yes,” Beverly said. “Just please do not reference the conversation we had tonight. In any way.”
“Got it,” I said.
49
Sebastian’s face—his sweet, sweet face—appeared on my screen.
The phone had bleated an alert for an incoming video call. When I tapped on the icon, it seemed interminable before I actually saw a picture.
And then Sebastian.
“Hi, honey,” he said.
I gulped. Felt as if I wanted to cry. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
I searched his face for fear, for any other emotion, since he likely felt he couldn’t tell me, didn’t want to admit apprehension. But he was too hard to read emotionally. He didn’t look much different except that he looked thin and like he was growing a slight beard.
“How’s Baxter?” he asked.
I picked Baxter up with my free hand, scooping him around his chest and raising him to my face.
“Dogger!” Sebastian said, but he said it weakly.
We talked about Baxter and how he was doing after his accident. I told him about how he was no longer off balance when he went to catch a ball.
“He’s fine now,” I said. “Absolutely fine.”
“Great.”
We discussed our dog like we had any other time since our divorce, and for a moment I forgot the situation we were in. But then Sebastian looked over his shoulder. I couldn’t see what was behind him, except something white, like someone had put up a white sheet.
He turned back to face the screen. “God, I want so badly to be there.”
I put Baxter down. Standing from the chair in my bedroom, I moved to the window. I opened it and held the phone out, showing Sebastian the view from our bedroom.
“Oh, God,” I heard Sebastian say again. “God, Jess...”
I turned the phone back to my face. I wasn’t sure how much time we had. I didn’t want to leave anything unsaid. “Sebastian, I know this isn’t really important now, but maybe...well, maybe it is. Maybe it will be important going forward.”
He nodded.
“What I have to tell you is that I was married before. I was married when I was young.”
He nodded again.
“You know the McGowan Brothers band,” I said. “I was married to the youngest. Billy McGowan. And I was arrested during that t
ime. For drugs.”
There. It was out.
Sebastian remained quiet for a while, seemingly searching for words.
“I’m sorry to drop this on you now,” I said. “It’s silly, I guess. It doesn’t matter.”
“You were married,” he said, finally speaking. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
I said nothing for a moment. It seemed misguided now that I hadn’t told him about it. It seemed misguided that I hadn’t been up-front and honest with Sebastian about everything. Maybe he would have confided in me about the double life he led professionally. Who knows, maybe such honesty would have saved our marriage. Or maybe Gavin had been right and the information would cause Sebastian to turn away for good.
“I guess I didn’t tell you,” I finally said, “because my marriage ended with me being arrested. I was embarrassed, mortified.”
“Jess, don’t say that.” His expression softened. It seemed as if he were looking directly into my eyes. For a minute, I felt him. Right there.
“I knew,” he said.
I blinked, returning my eyes and mind to the fact that I was in my bedroom with our dog, while Sebastian was in custody in another country. “You knew...”
“I knew about your marriage and I knew about the drug stuff.”
“Oh.” It struck me then. “Oh, you knew because you’re...”
He threw a glance over his shoulder, nodded, gave me a pointed stare through the phone with a look that said, Don’t say anything else.
“I love you, Jess,” Sebastian said.
I felt a catch in my throat.
“Always have,” he said.
I gulped, then opened my mouth to respond, but it didn’t matter. Because the screen went black. Sebastian was gone again.
50
The next two days were the longest I have ever spent in my life. Even longer than those two days I spent in custody after I was arrested. I was lucky to not have gotten jail time. Now I almost wished I had. Maybe I would be better at waiting.
Mostly I sat with a book in my hands but not reading. I did it for Baxter, so he could sit at my feet and take a nap. Because whenever I was nervous, he became skittish. I wanted him to feel okay.
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