American Subversive

by David Goodwillie

  “What about cameras?” I asked. “Can’t they trace the van if we park too close?”

  “It’s got dead plates,” Paige and Simon said at exactly the same time. They both grinned, which made me feel better.

  We found a space the second time around. It wasn’t perfect—a delivery truck parked in front of us blocked out the driver-side sight lines—but the person in the passenger seat would still have an unobstructed view of the building. Simon backed us in.

  “What if Lindsay’s in disguise?” he asked. “Changed her hair again or something.”

  “I’ll still recognize her,” Paige said.

  Unbuckling his seat belt, Simon reached into the compartment between the two front seats and held up a pair of compact binoculars. “Here, these should help.” With that, he slipped into the back and checked the mirror, though he hardly had to. In his ball cap, untucked shirt, and faded jeans, he was the very embodiment of a sleep-deprived overnight producer. The three of us leaned in close and went over everything one last time. Then we moved on to the equipment. Paige climbed up front and focused the binoculars on the building while Simon tested the two-way radios. Satisfied, he put one into his pocket and placed the other on the console between the two front seats. Then he wrote down the address of the farm in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

  “Just in case,” he said, handing me the piece of paper.

  When the sidewalk was clear, Simon hopped out. We watched him walk briskly toward the smokers’ door, where four studio-tech types—three men and a woman—stood in a loose circle, puffing away. None of them looked up as he went past and disappeared inside.

  Paige stayed in the shotgun seat, so I climbed behind the wheel. Several minutes went by before I realized I was still clutching the address, crumpled and damp from my sweating hand. I smoothed it out and laid it on the dash. Paige glanced at it, then went back to watching the door through the binoculars. I, in turn, watched her, or a vaguely pornographic version of her. For her transformation was unnervingly entire, right down to the jangling plastic bracelets (where had she found those?) and hair clips. She was sitting that way again, one leg brought up against her chest, only now her legs were bare, her skirt running up her thigh. That I could think like that just then. But it was the last familiar feeling left, the only carryover from that life to this one. Paige was immediate, and all else was finished or to come. Cars flashed past. Lights changed. The city stuck on endless repeat. I’d broken that cycle. A kid who believed in the importance of nonbelief, the essentialness of inaction. I closed my eyes and was soon engulfed in one of those vague circle-of-life ideas, this one about the far side, where pure selfishness joined its direct opposite, arms locked in mutual disregard for the system at the center. But, no, I was only trying to explain all this away. And you can’t explain love.

  A red light flashed on the walkie-talkie lying between us. I nudged Paige. She picked it up and pressed the TALK button. “Go ahead,” she said softly.

  “I’m in an empty storage room on the ground floor,” Simon whispered. The reception was static-free. His voice was electric. “It’s all lights and rigging. Should be safe for now. Any sign?”

  “Not yet,” Paige said. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay.”

  She put the radio down and resumed her watch, relating what she saw, the smokers coming and going, never more than three or four at a time. Soon, she fell silent. On the sidewalk beside me, well-dressed couples passed with increasing regularity. Dinners were ending, theaters emptying. The city I’d known.

  Keith suddenly seemed like a myth.

  I heard Paige say my name, and for a moment it didn’t register. But when I turned to her, she was staring at me. “I just . . . I just wanted to let you know,” she started, “that I’m really sorry about Julian. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you trust. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world.”

  “I guess he was caught in a tough position,” I said. But the words had barely escaped before I wished I could take them back. Cressida I could have predicted, but Touché’s betrayal had been so stunning and complete that I had, until that moment, refused to accept it as fact. Instead, I’d decided Drudge must have got it wrong, that my “acquaintance” wasn’t ratting me out, but trying somehow to warn me, to save me. But, no, Touché was only saving himself. He’d traveled with me as far as distraction and mild adventure would allow, then run back home to hide. All these years I’d reveled in his soothing self-assurance and celebrated the vague mysteries of his life, as if not knowing him, never questioning him, would make us closer. Which is how I’d ended up with a best friend I barely knew. Why had this never bothered me before? Perhaps because it was hardly unique. My world was full of such friendships; it was the basis of the modern urban bargain—that we could flutter in and out of each other’s lives like moths, as long, of course, as we kept to the light, the inconsequential, the marginalia. As long, in other words, as we never truly came to know anyone.

  I shook off the thought. Beside me, Paige was beginning to fidget. When the walkie-talkie lit up again, she grabbed it impatiently. “Go ahead.”

  “Anything?” Simon’s voice was measured but insistent.

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe they’ve come and gone.”

  “Or they’re not coming at all,” Paige said. “It’s almost midnight.” She held the radio up, awaiting a response, but none came. “Simon?” she whispered tentatively.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” he said after a moment. “Just had to check the studio, make sure I was alone. I’m going up to the sixth floor to look around. It’ll be fine. There won’t be anyone up there.”

  “Well, be careful.” Paige put the radio down. She smiled a bit sadly. “Jesus, I sound like my mother.”

  “No one ever asks how you’re holding up,” I said.

  “Not too much, no.” She peered through the binoculars again. “Bobby used to.”

  “Well, I’m asking.”

  Paige brought the lenses to her lap and gazed out the passenger window. Her eyes were wet, but I didn’t see the tears until she wiped them away from her upper lip, smudging the layers of gloss she’d applied. “Shit,” she said, pulling down the mirrored visor. She dug the lipstick out of her pocket and handed me the binoculars. “Will you watch the building a second?”

  I leaned over the center divider, so as to see around the delivery truck. Two new smokers were standing outside the exit door—a man holding a pizza and a woman talking to him. I saw the woman rub her bare arms. The temperature was dropping. The lenses were so powerful that if the man had opened the pizza box, I could have named the toppings. But I couldn’t concentrate. Paige was only a few inches away. I could smell the gloss, hear her pursing her lips. I didn’t want to move, lest the moment pass. Did she sense it, too? The anxious tug. The sensation of flight. And now her breath, steady and assured. I could feel it on my cheek.

  “Aidan,” she whispered, her voice a harmony line, searching for accompaniment.

  I lowered the lenses, my prop, and turned to her in what seemed like slow motion. What came next? Her hand, light on my arm, I’m sure, though what I remember were her lips, delicate and freshly painted, grazing mine. I kissed her back, her lower lip soft and red as a bull’s-eye, lingering between my teeth, below my tongue, our tongues, the moment suspended, a twisted take on that great American tableau: two kids in a parked car, fumbling around in the dark . . .

  “Not now,” she sighed, pulling away.

  “What? Sorry.”

  “The radio, I mean.” The red light was on. Paige picked it up, pressed the button. “Go ahead.”

  Simon’s breathing came through the small speaker. “We’re late,” he hissed.

  “What?”

  “The device. It’s already here, in the closet.”

  “Is it armed?” Paige asked, her voice suddenly cool again, methodical.

  “Looks like it
. Hold on.” Paige held the walkie-talkie away from her, as if it were suddenly a threat, until Simon’s voice returned with a low crackle. “Yeah, it’s good to go. Keith didn’t color-code the wiring, but I think I can still defuse it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, it’s been a while, but—”

  “Leave it then,” Paige said. “Leave it and come back down. We’ll call the cops.”

  “No, no, I can do this. But it’s too dark in here. I need to move it into the office across the hall.”

  “Simon . . .”

  “It’s okay, no one’s around. Just give me a minute.” The radio went dead.

  “They’ve already been there?” I asked, half-stunned, as I tried to add it all up.

  Paige nodded. “Keith must have known someone would try to stop him—Simon or me or the Feds. I guess Lindsay snuck inside and planted it while we were still downtown. We must have just missed her. Here, start the car. When Simon’s finished, I’ll tell him to come down and meet us on the corner of—”

  The light came first, a brilliant, blinding flash, all white and burning yellow, followed by the sound, like a deep sonic boom, dull for how close it was. The ground shook, then there was silence—always silence in these things—a second or two that burrowed into me forever. It was shattered by falling glass, then everything was falling, like before, hurtling down from a great height as if the city itself were coming apart. And, of course, it was, everything was—

  “Go, go, just drive.”

  I stepped on the gas and hit the truck in front of us, I remember that much, then Paige was half out the window, looking plaintively up at the gaping hole, the missing chunk of tower, but the smoke was already too thick, and somewhere the sirens were starting, the sirens and the screams, from the building, from the street, and it was all I could do to dodge the detritus, the random debris, and steer us away from the falling world.

  PAIGE

  FOR A LONG TIME I WAS IN COLUMBUS, OHIO, LIVING ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF a narrow Weinland Park duplex five blocks from OSU. The neighborhood lay like swamp water in the tall shadows of the campus, stagnant and blighted by a profusion of drugs and a lack of anything else. By day, people loitered on stoops or went fitfully about their business—what business they had—no heads raised, no questions asked. By night, booming hip-hop provided a sound track to the drunken howls of students and the panicked cries of victims, to the sirens and occasional gunshots ringing out from what little Section 8 housing the city hadn’t yet razed. My block was a fault line between worlds—ivory towers and rotting porches, progress and its opposite, and of course, all the transience and shiftlessness made it the perfect place to hide out, to remain invisible.

  I was living as Isabel Clarke and everything was in order—my papers, my backstory, even my appearance (blond now: why not?). My handler was a kid whose parents had spent time in prison for their revolutionary sins. That he was young (twenty-five?), male, and in obvious awe of recent events was initially worrying, but he was sweet and sincere. And he appeared trustworthy. Anyway, I could hardly send him back. I took my chances and settled down to work.

  What I started writing—three months ago now—was an explanation for my actions. What it threatened to become was something else entirely. Because I had become someone else. And I don’t mean Isabel Clarke. I mean that I had changed, evolved, on the inside, and fleshing out the events of my recent life began to help me understand exactly how. Everything had happened so quickly—a single year bookended by death—and I needed time. Aidan, I believed, and still believe, was writing his own story, and that made a seemingly futile exercise—for who will read these words unless something goes horribly wrong or wonderfully right?—potently worthwhile. There we were, two kids from disparate backgrounds, sifting through the rubble of our culture for hints on how to live, how to survive, what to give in to, and what to fight for. Because the American playbook had been thrown out. This, anyway, is what I envisioned, an examination of the self, a journey with, if not a happy ending, then at least a kind of moral conclusion. Something to point to. Unfortunately, as must be obvious by now, I never got that far. Such were my circumstances: I couldn’t even write about a life interrupted without getting interrupted writing.

  So what happened? I’d been feeling safe enough to start venturing out to the bookstores and coffee shops on nearby High Street, places thick with oblivious students, their strange collective force enshrouding me. One afternoon, on my way home, I spotted my handler walking with another guy, a postgrad type, half a block ahead of me. That’s fine, I thought; the kid has a life. Still, I followed them as they turned left on Chittenden, then right onto my street. They walked two blocks south and stopped within sight of my apartment. That’s when my handler pointed. It was subtle but unmistakable: he pointed right at my bedroom window. And his friend? He nodded slowly, as if this solved some kind of mystery. What was going on? Only one explanation made sense: I was about to be handed off to someone new.

  The next morning, I walked to the Internet café I’d begun frequenting and found an open computer near the back. I was working there because the secondhand laptop I’d been given had died and my handler had yet to bring me a new one. It was a risk, I knew, but I couldn’t just sit home doing nothing. Anyway, I’d come to enjoy the machinations of the writing life—coffee, smoking breaks, time . . . the idea of measurable progress, if only on-screen. I wrote in Word, saving each day’s work onto a removable flash drive and deleting any evidence on the computer itself. It wasn’t a perfect system, as there’d still be traces of what I’d written on the hard drive. But unless someone knew where—and how—to look, he or she wouldn’t find anything.

  The café was a little way off the main drag, so it was never too crowded. Even better, the computers in the rear offered not just privacy, but an unobstructed view through the front window. And that’s where I was gazing as I pondered a critical part of the narrative—my confrontation with Aidan on Weehawken Street—when I suddenly saw him again, my handler’s friend. He was standing on the sidewalk directly outside the shop, studying the awning, then peering down at a notepad, as if confirming an address. He looked like a typical student, in Abercrombie and loose jeans, but something wasn’t right. He looked too typical, too forced—like a Mormon dressing hip for Halloween. Did he walk inside? I don’t know: I was already out the back door. Two sightings in two days were quite enough for me.

  I should say something about the Movement, which is no longer a movement at all (if it ever was one). It has no unified goal. It’s not moving toward anything, really. Yet, it is real, and effective, and has already saved my life several times. Who are they? They are the end of an ideal. I’m talking about a few hundred people—activists and yuppies, boomers and students, black and white. They are extremely tuned-in and pleasantly tuned-out. They are not whom you’d expect.

  What they have in common is each other. If they once charged barricades, they now work covertly, tending to the more daring among us, those willing to act. They feed us and clothe us and move us around. They solve impossible problems. When the bomb exploded that night at N3, something clicked, something deep and instinctive. I knew where we had to go, and that we’d be taken care of when we got there. We were in shock, of course—not the ringing shock of close-quarters detonation (we were far enough away to avoid that), but the deeper, more searing shock of sudden, life-altering loss. Simon was gone. Parts of three floors had been decimated, and Aidan drove through the burning debris as if he’d once driven through war zones for a living. Neither one of us turned to look at what remained. Instead, we pressed on, plan in place, down the West Side Highway, not speaking, not yet. I checked my makeup in the mirror as Aidan dipped back into the city to drop me off at the Ninth Street PATH Station (the Christopher Street stop was too close to his old apartment). When he pulled up to the curb, he kept looking straight ahead. I opened the door and got out, the city that far south still blissfully ignorant of the carnage uptown.

/>   Journal Square in half an hour, I said.

  Journal Square, Aidan repeated.

  Hey. I leaned back in through the open door. We’ll be okay.

  Aidan turned to me then, and I saw in his eyes that he wasn’t scared. He’d be there on the other side of the river.

  The Movement took care of us. In Bernardsville and then Trenton. A colonial mansion on Philadelphia’s Main Line, and an apartment near the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. We traveled at night, like desert Bedouins, like fleeing slaves. Many were old friends of Simon’s, men and women who’d once stood by his side while attempting the impossible, and they fought their ingrained reluctance to ask questions with a very human need to understand what had happened to their former comrade. They wanted some kind of closure. Aidan and I accommodated them as best we could. In the press, we were—and still are—the only suspects, but these people knew the real story. For they knew about Keith. They’d been his believers and benefactors. Now, though, they called him a traitor, an egotist, even a nihilist, and he was all of these things. But in the end he was a genius, too, and this was also grudgingly acknowledged. Facts were facts: despite the contents of the N3 bomb, Simon had been the only casualty. He’d been the only person in the vicinity of the explosion, and had he not disrupted the natural course of events, Keith’s plan would have worked to perfection. Would have worked . . . and has worked. Just look at N3 now, as post-attack sympathy has turned, in the wake of the network’s heavy-handed reaction, to a broad-based condemnation of the company—their bias, their tone, their agenda—and the broader industry as a whole. Just like Indigo.

  But at what price? Simon is dead. A man as good as any I’ve known. And what has he left behind? The heartbreak of a woman outside Woodstock. The aspirations of a Movement outside time. And Aidan.

  He’s left Aidan.

  As far as I knew, this was the first great loss of his life, and I watched him carefully in the long days that followed—days of chaos and constant anxiety. It was overwhelming for him. Julian and then Simon. Deceit and then death. We were all to blame. And we were all innocent. The world held no absolutes—I’d learned that the hard way—and those who believed otherwise were fooling themselves. Yes, a man was dead, only one man, and still the loss was horrific. My brother had been one man, too. One death can mean so much.