TOBY SEARCHES FOR SOMETHING TO say. A half hour has passed in the garage. Maybe an hour. Hard to tell. Toby and Lane drink in silence. “You hungry, son?”
Lane prefers not to be called “son” but realizes he hasn’t consumed anything but Rainiers since breakfast. Toby pulls an old Motorola MicroTAC Digital Personal Communicator from his jacket, flips it open, turns it on and calls Lane’s mom inside the house. They talk for a moment, and then he hits the power button. “Gotta make sure the government can’t track ya,” Toby enlightens Lane.
Through the window, Lane watches his mom walk out the back door of the house with a watering can. She glances over her shoulder at the Saturn and slips through the side door of the garage. Inside the watering can she has microwaved Jeno’s Pizza Rolls and La Choy chow mein in yellowed, flaking Tupperware that predates Lane.
They eat in silence, the red water in the pizza rolls scalding Lane’s tongue and blistering the roof of his mouth.
When he’s done, Lane and his mom dig through the boxes of his old belongings stacked in the back of the garage. His mom is somewhere on the spectrum between sentimental and a hoarder, and he finds everything from his grandfather’s wooden fishing rods to short stories Lane wrote about Reganloaf the Bard, his top Dungeons & Dragons character back in elementary school.
Both Lane and his mom notice the Ewok Village, but neither says anything. His mom scraped to buy that plastic junk from Fred Meyer for that Christmas a few days after Perry died. “There it is.” She pushes the nest of miniature tree houses to the side and brings down a cardboard box of Lane’s Scout gear. He unpacks a dented aluminum canteen with a bit of water sloshing around the bottom that smells of paper clips and athlete’s foot. Next is a dull survival knife with strike-anywhere matches inside the cracked compass-capped handle. And then he finds what he’s looking for: a handheld plastic telescope, the kind you buy in the gift shop of an amusement park or children’s museum. He wipes clear the dust-caked lens on the bottom of his shirt and approaches the window, hoping that the Saturn is empty.
Instead, he looks right at a pair of binoculars. Full-sized binoculars with gold-mirrored lenses. They’re aimed at the front of his house, not back at him, but he ducks below the window anyway.
“Can I use your phone? To call into work?” Lane asks Toby from the floor. “I can’t go in tomorrow.”
“I ain’t got too many minutes left . . .” He turns on the Personal Communicator and passes it to Lane.
“I need to be alone for a few.” When Toby doesn’t pick up on it, Lane points to the door. “I feel weird talking and people listening, you know?”
“Don’t hold it right up against your ear,” Toby points out. “Tumors . . .” He and Lane’s mom gather their belongings.
“I’m gonna come right back with some stuff to put on that cut, Lane,” his mom says as they head back to the house.
Lane paces the length of the garage, skipping to avoid bearing weight on his right leg, as he dials.
The call goes right to voice mail.
“Mia, it’s me. You said—no, you promised—you’d wait. Please don’t do this. I’m going to be there, in New York, in a week . . . or so. At the most. I promise. Let’s talk about this in person. Me and you. Without your dad. Please, Mia.” He battles to keep from stuttering. “I love you.”
FOURTEEN
LANE CALLS INEZ’S HOME PHONE number. The one that’s listed on her old pay stub. He can’t give her a solid explanation as to how he got the number. Something about talking to people at work. She points out that nobody at Fred Meyer has that number. He mentions that then it must have been from someone at Mars Hill who suggested that they meet. Maybe Pastor Mark. Yeah, Pastor Mark. Before she can challenge him, he’s already well down the road of his rehearsed story about how he cut his leg in the deli and won’t be in for a while or, who knows, not at all before he returns to New York.
He’d like to hang out again before he leaves town. He wants to get to know her better. Maybe she can even come visit in New York at some point. He has lots of airline miles. This seems to turn the tide.
Lane suggests they meet up tomorrow evening at the Lake City public library. The one where he did all of his homework in high school and much of college. They’ll start at the library and head out from there.
He selects the library because it is the most refined (and free) place that he can limp his way to though the network of alleys and not get spotted by the process server. He can guarantee that none of his old friends or any Fred Meyer employees will be there, as they’re all repulsed by books and learning.
And he needs to go there anyway. He hasn’t seen his email since he returned to Seattle, and he knows that the library has a couple of computers. There have to be messages in his Hotmail account from Mia. He is surprised he didn’t think of it earlier.
He asks Nina for three hundred dollars in petty cash to cover the overhead for the evening out—etcetera. Operating costs, if you will. Nina drives down the alley with her headlights off and slips him two twenties out the driver’s-side window.
“I’m not a math guy.” He pulls his hand back across the blackberries and through a hole in the chain link. “But you forgot a zero.”
“Her idea of a nice date is if the guy kicks in for the drugs. Or agrees to use a condom. Plus, I don’t want you doing anything impulsive: like jumping on the next red-eye to New York.”
“But, I’m, I’d never—” He wonders if the hospital still pays for marrow donations.
“Update me tomorrow night.” She rolls up her window before he can respond.
LANE THANKS GOD THAT HIS mom got her act together and washed his clothes. He admires himself in the mirror, tucking and untucking his black button-down into dark jeans with the faint veins of bleach marbling. He steps into his now-scuffed black leather slip-ons, pulls on his jacket and adds a touch of the D&G cologne that Mia bought him. Then he sneaks out the back door and hobbles out through the garage.
A sense of hope heats his cheeks, his forehead, his gums. Of course: Mia’s been emailing him this whole time and he hasn’t thought to check. Maybe she hasn’t been able to speak on the phone because her dad is there watching and listening. Controlling everything. Maybe the emails can explain this insanity. That her dad is pulling all of the strings. That he is holding her as an emotional and financial hostage until Lane can ride in and liberate her.
He walks through alleys, avoiding the mud and pooled rainwater that crowds out the middle while trying not to slip on twenty-foot-long stretches of moss along the sunless edges. He notes the variety of homemade compost silos. Old trucks and mobile homes up on blocks. Chicken coops. Recycling bins. Bulkheads made of creosote-soaked railroad ties that keep people’s backyards from washing into the alley.
He imagines sitting across the table from Mia at Union Square Café. Three thousand dollars—or three thousand minus the cost of a one-way business-class flight to JFK—in his pocket. Actually, he and Mia would sit next to each other in a booth. Hip to hip. Thigh to thigh. His hand on her knee. The Lamb Chops Scotta Dita half eaten on his plate. He isn’t worried about the other half; Mia taught him to eat until he is lightly satisfied, nothing more.
Then, of course, he’d pay the lunch bill. “No, no, I’ve got it,” he’d insist. “You sure you don’t want an espresso while we’re at it? Biscotti?” If she was watching, he’d add in a twenty-five-percent gratuity. They’d walk across Union Square and up Irving Place toward their apartment, his arm around Mia, the white headphones with one in each of their ears for all passersby to appreciate.
THE MOMENT HE STEPS INTO the side door of the library, he’s hit with the smell of old paper, binding glue and body odor. The buzz of the tube lighting. The horrible drop-down ceiling panels. The Formica dividing walls. His throat starts to get tight. He’d always found the place a bit depressing but, as a teenager, it was a fair tradeoff against the parade of his mom’s wastoid boyfriends.
He flips up his jacket collar a
nd pulls his chin down to his chest while standing in line at the front desk. Lane pens his first name on the clipboard and waits for his allotted fifteen minutes of computer time while a rancid homeless, or at least homeless-looking, guy (you can never tell in Seattle, he could be a Microsoft founder) downloads porn images on the desktop.
Dude is looking at soft-lit ’70s stuff: big perms, big muffs. Lane guesses it’s the porn of the dude’s youth. Is porn like music? Do most people never move beyond their high school glory days? Moreover, is it the taxpayer’s duty to continue to provide this guy with access to free masturbation material? Lane wonders what Hobbes—or whoever the appropriate role-of-the-state political philosopher is—would think, but he concludes that Hobbes would be too blown away by electricity and even more so by internet porn.
When Lane’s turn comes up, he begins by wiping down the mouse with his jacket sleeve. He gets online, prepares himself for what her emails might contain and then waits some more as his Hotmail loads.
When it appears on the screen, the email contains: nothing. Nothing from Mia, anyway. He checks again. Is it possible that her father recalled her emails from his account? How omnipotent has he become?
Lane tries to log into her Hotmail account. He uses passwords that worked in the past. His name. The date they met. The beach on Martha’s Vineyard where she summered as a kid. The name of her deceased cat. The name of her deceased cat backward. The name of her deceased mother. The name of her deceased mother backward. Nothing.
How can this be? Rather than focusing on it, he searches “nina radcliffe realtor seattle” on Google. He finds a Seattle Magazine article announcing Nina as the year’s top urban-lifestyle agent with a headline about Silicon Valley hot meets Seattle cool. Other links declare her a new member of the Chamber of Commerce. A $25,000+ Supporter of the Intiman Theatre Festival. A ninth-place finisher, after a local weatherman and an obscure former Seahawk, in a golf tournament to raise money for children with a disease Lane had never heard of.
Lane opens the site of her eponymous real estate company. As the page loads, it triggers upbeat piano and acoustic guitar music. The kind of thirty-second stock instrumental track that’s named “Never Give Up” or “The Best Is Yet to Come.” The music builds to a crescendo that brings to mind Nina, alone in a field of clipped green grass, a Steadicam spinning around her, the Seattle skyline below: her dominion.
The site reveals more headshots than property images. She looks younger. Blonder. Sunnier than in person. The houses on offer are all new constructions. Townhomes. Condos. None of the charming, problematic Seattle Tudors and Craftsman homes that are so much a part of the city’s traditional character with their collapsing pipes, asbestos insulation and poorly positioned windows that don’t open.
He clicks on the ABOUT tab and is hit with that same smiling photo of Nina, Tracey and Jordan that Lane found in her purse. The caption names them as her wife and son. There is another photo of her talking on a headset phone with a Stanford pennant on the wall behind her. There’s an overindulgent multipage bio that he skims. Stuff about LA and Bay Area business triumphs. An aside about moving to Seattle to spend more quality time with her wife and now their young son. Standard Pacific Northwest red meat about enjoying the mountains and kayaking. How she’s wildly successful but, otherwise, just like the rest of us. She’s also—in her own words—a regarded coach and mentor who challenges both herself and other agents. She turns talent into performance and believes that relationships are more important than sales.
Lane googles himself. Nothing. Nothing except a pay option to search criminal records for Lane Bueche. He doesn’t know how Mia and her father could do this to him: let him fall this far.
He considers googling Bray but thinks better of it. It would be poor form to commit suicide right here in the public library before his date with Inez. Instead, he sets about opening a Hotmail account under the name Sara Christensen. A girl he dated for a couple of months during his junior year. Mia would recognize the name from tales Lane told in the first weeks of their relationship, when it was still fair game to compare romantic backstories.
As soon as the account is functional, Lane writes to Mia as Sara, saying she is crazy for letting such a good man almost slip through her fingers. He writes that Sara has never gotten over Lane and wishes every day that she could have such a man in her life again. That she hears he is back in Seattle for a few weeks and that tons of women are vying for his attention. Sara signs off saying that she is sorry to bother Mia, that she knows it isn’t her business, but she doesn’t want Mia to make the same mistake she did.
As Lane contemplates a PS to explain how Sara could have gotten her hands on Mia’s email address, the same homeless man from before pushes up against Lane, his single large dreadlock and multilayered sweatpants stabbing Lane’s nostrils with spikes of ammonia.
“My turn,” the guy says. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Hold on. Gimme a second.”
“Says fifteen. You had fifteen.” He motions to the sign. “Why doesn’t nobody care about rules no more?” He starts to pull on the back of Lane’s chair.
Lane stands up to confront him. “I said hold on, man.”
“Don’t you got no respect for a vet?”
“Listen, dude, I was in New York when—”
The homeless guy darts, moving rather fast for an aging alcoholic, and tries to claim the swivel roller chair with his ass. As he sits down, Lane kicks the base of the chair, and it shoots back toward the wall.
On his way down, the guy manages to grab the keyboard, pulling the whole computer off the desk along with it. The monitor lands atop him on the floor with a meaty thud. The screen goes black. The man rolls onto his side, moaning. “Help. Assault. Help.”
Lane’s throat gets tighter and tighter. Everyone is staring at him. He tries to justify that it’s little more than librarians with patchy facial hair, gnomish teenagers and a coterie of homeless and mentally ill people using the place as their heated rain shelter.
“Assault. I’m gonna sue.” The moaning gets louder, as if Lane were twisting his heel into the man’s kidney. He turns and hobbles as fast as he can out the door, and wants to keep going all the way to the airport and get on that business-class seat to JFK and return to normal.
HE HIDES BETWEEN THE OUTSIDE brick wall and the bushes on the far side of the library. As soon as he sees Inez arriving, he’ll head up to the front door so they get there at the same time. He’s keeping it together. Keeping it strategic. Minimum exposure.
“Somebody call 911.” Inez surprises Lane from behind with a stiff index finger to the ribs. “Nerd rapist in the rhododendron.”
“Shhh—” He almost stutters again and regroups. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Like you’re creeping in the bushes at the public library?” She wears a black dress remarkable only in that it is not sufficient for the December cold, her legs are bare down to her cheap heels and she’s overdone the black eyeliner. He notices details that eluded him while at Fred Meyer: her strong chin, her nose that’s almost squared off, contrasted by the soft curls of her hair.
“That’s not even a rhododendron. And I told you about rape jokes, it’s not—” He sees the homeless guy come out of the library. Lane spins to face Inez and crouches to the ground. He pulls up his pant leg to show her the homemade bandage of a piece of old white T-shirt and masking tape. “Tommy’s lucky there weren’t any witnesses or I’d sue the shit outta Fred Meyer. Totally unsafe work environment.”
She doesn’t look impressed. “What’s up with the library for a date?” she asks.
“Who says we’re on a date?” He leads her by hand to the alley, avoiding his friend in the doorway. “It was . . . it seemed convenient. What? You antibooks or something?”
They make their way through the backstreets and tangle of old one-story wood buildings to dart across Lake City Way and into the next alley.
“I read.”
“Books?”
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“Graphic novels.”
“I don’t even know what that is. What about real books?”
“The Bible.”
“The Bible?”
“You ever read The Celestine Prophecy? That book changed my life.”
“Isn’t that about an Aramaic manuscript left by Mayans in Peru?”
She nods, unsure.
“You shouldn’t need a gringo to tell you that the Mayans were in Central America. Peru was Incas. On top of that, Aramaic was . . .” Lane catches himself and turns his focus down the length of the alley where he admires how decrepit and sad everything is. He’s supposed to be brokering a deal with Inez, not evaluating the compatibility of their cultural tastes. He needs to keep on task. Alcohol will help all of this. He pushes open the back door to the Rimrock. Holds it for her like a gentleman.
“I can’t go in there.” She put her hands on her hips.
“Too fancy?” He nods through the door to his friend with the eye patch and wheelchair at the bar.
“Man, you know how to turn up the romance. Got another plan?”
FIFTEEN
“THE GREATER GOOD?” SHE LAUGHS, revealing dimples and a slight gap between her front teeth. “I don’t even know that that means. I mean, I understand the words, but . . . as what you do? For work?”
“You know. The greater good is like using your knowledge, your expertise to make the world a better place. To help out humanity. To give back.” They enter the teriyaki place a few doors down the alley. Not the library. Not a dive bar. Middle ground.
“You know what’s the greatest good? Making cash.” She’s confused by the menu but, with his coaching, settles on chicken teriyaki. Once the food arrives in polystyrene clamshell containers, Inez puzzles over the chopsticks. She tries to spear her chicken with the point.
“Anyway . . . must be nice to have choices,” Inez says. “I’ve been putting one foot in front of the other since I was like fifteen.”
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