A Girl Named Digit

by Annabel Monaghan

  John smiled. “Farrah, I’ve got the whole FBI behind me. I’ll be okay.”

  He had a point there. New strategy, a threat: “You’d better hope nothing happens to me. Protecting me was your first field assignment. What if I start screaming from the balcony and get found?”

  “You wouldn’t do that.” Again, a good point.

  I lowered myself to guilt: “And you’d really leave me here with just anyone? My parents trusted me with you, not Bruno from Sector Six.” A little pause, I was getting somewhere.

  He was quiet, his hands clasped in front of him as if praying for an answer. The answer came and he shook his head. “Anyone can keep you safe in here, Farrah. I have to go to New York. I’ll come back with whatever that evidence is and get you out of here. Two days, tops.”

  I’m a little ashamed to admit what happened next, but I was out of ideas. I’d played to his sympathies, I’d played to his overly developed sense of duty, and I had one card left. It was a cheap shot, a sucker punch if you will. I knew very little about John (besides the exact outline of his jaw and the way it framed his mouth like rigid parentheses around a soft word that is too delicious to be spoken aloud—I’d noticed that). But I knew that he was not exactly comfortable swimming in even the shallow end of human emotions. So I started to cry.

  My success in this area was unprecedented. I wondered, as he put his arm around me and reached for another clean hankie, if this mastery of the tear duct could take me to the White House. Or the altar. Must remember to use my powers for good, not evil. “Shhh,” he was saying to me. “It’s okay. Please stop. Shhh.” He got up and, sadly, took his arm with him. He was pacing with his hands folded and under his chin, nodding to himself as he walked. I whimpered a little so as not to release him from my control.

  “Seriously, Farrah. Please. Stop. I’m going to call Steven. Just let me think.” Job done, I stopped. John had him on the phone immediately. “Listen, I think I need to take Farrah with me. I know. It is. But there is evidence in that bag, and the operative who left it there thought that her partner would not be able to decode it. I can go alone and bring it back to our guys or to Farrah, but it would be faster if she came with me. We could have it decoded tomorrow. I really think we . . . really? Yes, I agree. Okay. In the morning. Okay, bye.”

  He smiled at me. “Happy? Steven thinks you need to go with me too. He’ll let your parents know, and we fly out in the morning.” He sat down on his air mattress.

  “Thanks. I swear I’m going to help.” I wiped the last of my tears away and hoped it hadn’t made me look all blotchy.

  “No more crying?”

  “No more making me cry?”

  “Promise.”

  I NY

  I slept for about two hours before John woke me up. “Coffee’s here, and security is coming for us in twenty minutes.” “Then let me sleep for eighteen minutes. It’s not like I’m not already fully dressed.” I turned over and pulled the sleeping bag over my head. John left me alone.

  When the security guy got there, I was dead asleep again. His voice woke me up to the realization that we were actually getting out of there. I sprung up, brushed my teeth, grabbed my bag, and got in the elevator in a matter of two minutes. After retracing our steps through three elevators, we were back in Steven’s office, where nothing seemed to have changed. Including our clothes.

  “You two are going to have to see what you can find in New York and report directly to me. Don’t deal with any local authority, call me.” Uh, control freak?

  Helen walked in and escorted us into the hallway. “If you are going to get to New York under everyone’s radar, you’re going to have to change your clothes. And, well, maybe, shower?”

  “Thank God.” I followed her to what amounted to the FBI’s version of a high school locker room. Helen left me a brand-new bar of soap, a tiny bottle of shampoo, and a bag of clothes to change into.

  The shower was a little bit of a disappointment, as the water never creeped above warm and automatically shut off every two minutes. But the soap and shampoo were nice. I dried off and looked in the mystery costume bag. Not bad. My disguise was as a businesswoman, with John as my colleague. I wore a black wool-blend suit, more blend than wool but nice. It was tailored to snip in at all the right places to ensure a promotion. The heels were higher than I would have picked, but I was going with it. How far could I possibly have to walk in New York City?

  Fully dressed, I snuck into a bathroom stall and turned on my phone.

  Olive Grossman Text (2):

  1. At beach for sunset with Danny, he’s still says you’re totally kidnapped but laughs like it’s funny. I’m not buying it. Just reply with one word to tell me I’m right.

  2. P.S. I never knew Danny was so funny!

  It took all of my mental strength not to write back and demand to know why she’s watching the sunset with my little brother. I turned off my phone and tucked it in my suit jacket pocket. It only had 20 percent battery power left.

  John was waiting for me in his office, shaved and decked out in a second expensive suit (definitely not FBI issue), flipping through mail and stuff that had accumulated over the past few days. He looked up when I came in. “Wow. You’re supposed to be my business partner? How’s anyone at the office supposed to concentrate?”

  Sweet. “Yeah it was easier for me to focus when you stunk too.” Bold, right? I think my GCS success was going to my head. And I have to admit his light little flirtations were doing me a world of good, even if he meant them in a grandfatherly isn’t-she-purdy sort of way.

  My carry-on luggage was waiting for me, a discreet black gym bag with my jeans, favorite T-shirt, socks, and boots shoved in a stinky mess. Who says the government’s inefficient? A black sedan with tinted windows dropped us at the JetBlue terminal, and we were in the air by eleven a.m.

  We were seated in the last row of the coach cabin. Our seats didn’t recline, but they were very convenient to the bathrooms. Gee, thanks. I fell into a fitful sleep almost as soon as the plane took off. When I woke up, John was on hour three of the National Geographic Channel. Shamelessly nerdy.

  “Hungry?” John was watching me wake up and orient myself.

  “Sure.” He pulled out a couple of roast beef sandwiches from his carry-on and pulled my tray table down.

  We ate in a comfortable silence for a while before he busted out with, “Do you have a boyfriend at home?”

  I nearly spit out my last bite of roast beef. “What? No! I mean . . . no. Why are you asking that?”

  “I was just thinking about it while I was watching you sleep. Your parents know where you are, and your friends seem a little too dumb to care. But I was wondering if there was some guy who is in love with you and wondering if you’re okay. It just seems kind of cruel if there is.”

  This all seemed highly personal. “No boyfriend. I’ve never had a boyfriend. Or anything.” I wondered if he fully understood how anything really meant anything, with the exception of the ill-fated pesto kiss. “I’ve never really been able to relate to a guy in that way, and you can imagine they’d probably think I was a little off if they got to know me.”

  He laughed. “A little off? Try way off the deep end.” I gave him a punch in the arm, and he pretended it hurt. It was the best way I could think of to change the subject. Besides this:

  “So do you have a girlfriend who’s wondering where you are?”

  “That’s probably exactly why I don’t have a girlfriend. I can never really tell anyone what I’m doing. I’ve gotten so good at keeping secrets that apparently I’m emotionally closed off. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Repeatedly.”

  “Wow. I can totally see that. You’ve got some serious robot tendencies. I’ve just spent 168 hours with you straight, I’ve spilled all my deepest, darkest secrets, and I don’t even know where you grew up. Weird.”

  “Those were your deepest, darkest secrets?” He was laughing at me again.

  “Yeah, like my SAT scores? Th
ose are in a sealed file at my school.”

  “Oh, okay.” Then he said something that sounded like “Kzhet jed swarky; shebedokrt shee,” and laughed. “It’s Ukrainian: ‘My hut is on the edge of the village; I know nothing.’ Like ‘I’m not in the inner circle; your secret is safe with me.’ Don’t worry, I’ve got nothing that compares to perfect scores, but I’ve got my own stuff. I’m just used to keeping myself to myself. Why are we talking about this?”

  “You brought it up. You were wondering about my heartbroken boyfriend and ended up ’fessing up to some serious intimacy issues.”

  He gave me a raised eyebrow. I had to defend myself. “I watch Oprah, I know.”

  We circled for thirty minutes before we could land at JFK. Apparently with all the added security and Terminal 8 being out of commission, the airport was a mess.

  The elderly couple across the aisle from us was quickly losing patience. “Ridiculous. We’ll never make our connection. This is the last time I make this trip.” They tossed complaints back and forth between each other until they cycled on to repeats. “Ridiculous.” They lobbed a few at John. “Can you believe this? We were supposed to land at seven. By the time they find us a gate, it’ll be eight thirty.”

  “Yes, sir. I imagine the whole airport has slowed down.” John seemed very young to me, politely addressing this old guy.

  The wife leaned over her husband to address me. “I tell you, this is a total disaster. It will be months before this airport is functioning right.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I meant it.

  The wife laughed. “I can’t imagine how it’s your fault, dear, but thank you.” They both fell silent, content that at least they’d gotten an apology.

  At JFK we raced through Terminal 5, past armed military men, and hopped into a cab to Grand Central. “Aren’t we going to check in to our hotel first?”

  John smiled at me like I was cute. And seven. “They haven’t let me know where we’ll be spending the night yet. We’ll get our work done first.”

  “You mean staying.”

  “What?”

  “You meant to say, ‘They haven’t let us know where we are staying,’ like to imply a hotel, with a minibar and a big bathtub and unlimited hot water. Right? The phrase ‘spending the night’ suggests, well, what we’ve been doing the past six nights. I smell an air mattress when I hear that.”

  “I meant spending the night. But we’ll see what they say after we get the bag.”

  The city was just like I’d imagined it from TV and the movies. But bigger, taller, and louder. The traffic was slow, so we got out of our cab at Park Avenue and Fiftieth Street and walked seven blocks to Grand Central Station. I got half a block before I decided that women who could walk in heels must be professionally trained athletes. I teetered along beside John, stopping to fix my heel more than a few times. But no one saw me, no one noticed. You could really do anything in New York City.

  We entered Grand Central Station through Vanderbilt Avenue and took the escalator to the Main Concourse. Riding down that escalator, next to John, I drank in the magic of what was around me. The ceiling was gold-leafed with a depiction of the constellations on it. The layout of the night sky was backwards, but perfectly backwards. If everything in New York was going to be that beautiful, I didn’t care if it was all upside down.

  John was looking at me. “You okay?”

  “I love it.”

  “Me too. Let’s go.” Dream sequence over, back to work. Everything went so easily, that I started to wonder why it was so hard to get a job at the FBI. We asked at the Information booth where we could find the Lost and Found. We went there and looked through thirty-two bags until we found the one and only diaper bag. John threw it over his shoulder, and we walked out. Like shooting fish in a barrel, right? Wrong.

  What Would Scooby-Doo?

  I was giddy with success and the realization that I had a future as a terror-fighting, high heel–wearing, code-breaking badass. John was noticeably less relaxed. He took my arm as we left Grand Central Station, scanning the Main Concourse like he was watching a tennis match. He led me up the main escalators and out onto Forty-third Street and Vanderbilt.

  “John, they’re not after us.” I was teetering as he rushed me along. “They are probably still watching my house or the FBI parking lot. If they knew where their precious bag was, they would have grabbed it before we did or killed us already. Relax.”

  A cab jumped out of the taxi line and pulled right up alongside of us. I guessed it paid to be well-dressed in the big city. We got into the cab and the driver muttered, “Where to?” “Please take us uptown to the Excelsior Hotel, Eighty-first and Central Park West.”

  We drove in silence across town, toward the West Side Highway. All the windows were down, and the cool spring air blew the sound of the horns and screeching brakes to make a symphony for my ears. We passed through Times Square, and I stuck my head out of the window to catch every light, every shimmer. It was like being in a big box made of Lite-Brites, but moving and magical. We passed four Broadway theaters with lines of well-dressed and not-so-well-dressed people clamoring to get in. I looked over to John, sure I would catch him watching my wonder with amusement. I was ready to defend my naiveté, but instead saw his profile with jaw clenched and brows furrowed in concentration. Did this guy have a problem giving his regards to Broadway?

  I snuck a peek into the diaper bag. Inside I expected bombing tools, and what those were going to look like I had no idea. Instead I found a stack of maybe forty-five pages of computer paper, with columns of numbers.

  “Anything?” John asked, still staring straight ahead.

  I shook my head. “No, but it’s a little more my speed than the romance babble.”

  We got onto the West Side Highway and headed uptown, the Hudson River and the lights of New Jersey in the distance. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was having the time of my life, and he was such a dud. “Okay, are you going to relax now? We did it. It sounds like you’re springing for a hotel and we’re heading back to L.A. tomorrow. Right?”

  “Shhh.” Jeez. I couldn’t figure out why he was so tense. Maybe he had big plans for our night at the hotel together? I mean, we had just spent seven solid days together, no breaks. We’d developed such an easy banter and an equally easy silence. We’d slept ten inches from each other every night and had worked two inches from each other every day. Why would he be nervous? Had I been playing too hard to get?

  “I’m going to need you to change your shoes.”

  “Why? I like these. I mean, for sitting. I feel kind of . . .”

  “Right now.” He grabbed my gym bag, pulled out my cowboy boots, and pulled my heels off. This was a little sudden. The guy’s had seven days to kiss me, and now he goes for my feet? In a cab? I pulled on my socks and boots obediently.

  “Okay, you’re kind of freaking me out.”

  He leaned in so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. In a flash I realized that my instincts had been right about these boots. I had worn them every day for four years, enduring my mother’s pleas that I try a pair of wedges. I’d had them resoled six times, because on some level I’d known that these boots had special powers. I vowed right then and there to never take them off, to never let my foot grow another half size. He was about to kiss me, and I owed it all to my boots.

  He spoke in a whisper in my ear: “I’m holding up three fingers, and when I count back to one, we are going to jump out of the cab onto the grass to our right. Do you understand?”

  I heard: I adore you, you’re beautiful, and now I am going to kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before. So when he threw open the taxi door and pulled me out onto the shoulder of the West Side Highway, and I felt myself crash into what passes for grass in New York City, let’s just say I was a bit surprised.

  John grabbed my hand and started running. Our taxi driver swerved to a stop, abandoned his car in the middle of the highway, and ran in our direction, screaming into his
cell phone. This was all starting to make sense to me. Kiss? No. Death? Maybe.

  We were ahead of him by about a block as we ran east across Riverside Drive. We were both fairly fast, except that we were carrying our gym bags and the now-all-important diaper bag. We ran down a long block of apartment buildings on Eighty-fourth Street, barely catching the attention of the doormen standing guard. I longed to run into one of those buildings to safety but knew that John wouldn’t want to endanger the residents. We were running to get killed in solitude.

  We crossed Columbus Avenue against the light and were nearly flattened by a downtown bus. The taxi driver was gaining on us, mainly because he was not schlepping luggage and was sporting slightly more sensible shoes. As we got closer to Central Park West, the streets were getting quieter and the taxi driver was getting closer. We would have been better off staying on the busier two-way streets where we could have ducked into restaurants or subway stations, but John was leading me, and I knew that wasn’t how he wanted this to end. As it was, we were running down a fancier part of Eighty-fourth Street, quiet and tree-lined, toward Central Park. Which would be deserted.

  The street was so quiet that I could hear the taxi driver’s phone ring behind us. He must have looked down to answer it, because he missed John pushing me between two parked vans and flattening me face-down in the street.

  I looked up in time to see the driver’s feet run by in hot pursuit. Very Scooby-Doo, right? All I needed now was a sarcophagus to hide in and a really big sandwich. Silently, John pulled me up again and dragged me through an alley to Eighty-third Street. “We have about thirty seconds to get in another cab and get the hell out of here before he backtracks. Move!” We ran like mad into a crowd on Amsterdam Avenue. A taxi was waiting for a lady with two little kids who was struggling to fold up her stroller, keep the kids off the street, and send a text. We slipped into the other side of the taxi, John threw a fifty into the front seat, and we sped off before she could hit Send.