She wasn’t even the one screaming. She was still on her feet and her fingers kept plucking at the torn edges of her clothing as if that was the only thing wrong. Except that some of what had been torn was skin. Other people were telling her to lie down, lie down, but the girl’s face was noncommittal, absorbed in the fussy task of trying to keep blood from soaking into her shirt. As if one cue, sirens began to sound.
Jack turned and herded Chloe away, toward the fire escape. “Go on down. Go with Reg and Fran.” Chloe had a hand pressed to her mouth, as if she was about to lose her stomach. “Can you make it?”
Chloe nodded. She looked seasick. “Hurry up, get moving.” He gave her a shove. The sirens had closed in on the street below and one of the girls was screaming down that they needed help, help. Jack watched Chloe take a shaky first step onto the fire escape as Reg reached up to steady her.
The injured girl was making a noise by now, a sound that would have been a scream if she’d had breath for it. It took the cops some little time to get themselves up to the roof, it took the paramedics longer, and until they arrived there wasn’t much that could be done for her. Jack and anyone else who chose to look at her had to get used to the sight of the red mess in her side. The cops’ flashlights exposed her left breast, tattooed now with both ink and blood. She found enough air to scream then, and her eyes rolled back whitely in her head, and while it was to turn out that she didn’t die, at that moment it seemed very possible that she might.
Brezak was saying Shit shit shit. He’d tried to talk to the injured girl, soothe her, but she was beyond talking. He stood a little distance away, furiously smoking a cigarette. One of the other girls was crying. Jack didn’t see Ivory. Some of the kids had run off before the cops came, and he guessed she was one of them. He couldn’t get himself to move. He was still trying to work his mind around it all, understand just how bad things would get. Somebody had collected as many of the fireworks scraps and wrappers and unexploded pieces as they could when they hightailed it out of there. The cops took sour note of what was left.
“Whose party is this?” No answer. Brezak muttered something under his breath. “What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“You the one with the fireworks?”
“Maybe you could get a goddamn ambulance here, huh?”
It seemed unsurprising that Brezak was angry. There were only so many emotions you might allow yourself if you were him.
“Maybe we could throw your stupid ass in jail and watch you spread some of that attitude around. Where did you get the fireworks?”
“Some guy brought them.”
“And where did he get them?”
“Place in Indiana.”
“Which guy?”
“I don’t know him, he took off.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” the cop told him. The ambulance was here, the paramedics were climbing up and hustling people out of their way and the girl screamed harder as soon as they touched her.
There was a consultation about how to get her down from the roof. The roof was going to make it a real piece of work, said one of the paramedics, chatting professionally with the cops. In the end they secured her to a backboard and lowered her head to toe, toe to head, all the way down, and by now they’d given her some kind of shot so that the sound she made was fainter, like a broken bagpipe.
Jack stopped the last of the paramedics, who was about to step onto the fire escape. “Is she going to be all right?”
“What the hell do you want me to say?”
Jack let him go. Everyone probably asked the same stupid question.
The ambulance left. The cops took down names. It didn’t look like anyone was going to jail on the spot. Brezak and some of the rest of them were in a hurry to get to the hospital. Jack knew that Chloe would be waiting for him, probably Reg and Fran too, and there was still more of this night he would have to get through. Rain blew in from the northwest, the last of the day’s squalls, and turned the rooftop into a soggy territory of trash and diluting blood. Tomorrow’s paper might give the event an inch or so of newsprint as a cautionary tale, a stupid, predictable accident engineered by people who had not believed that such accidents really happened. No one had suggested it was anything else.
Eight
Chloe wanted to be at the airport early. She always had to get to airports early, it was one of the things that Jack was resigned to. Her flight was at nine A.M., and they were on the road before seven. Chloe regarded the traffic on the Kennedy with grim intensity, as if everyone else was going to get there before she did. Jack said, “You know, the one thing about planes, they never take off early.”
“Funny.”
“I bet the others won’t show up for an hour.” Five of them were going on the same flight: Chloe, Spence, three of the trainees who Jack knew only by name.
“I don’t mind waiting. I can get coffee.”
It was true that she never minded waiting, and he was not to read anything into it.
O’Hare was one of those structures that came close to obliterating the natural world. The weather was always concrete, the weather was always traffic, exhaust, glass, and steel. The sky might be blue, as it was today, the sun bright and the breeze fresh, but once you entered the maze of access ramps, the only weather that really counted was On Time, Delayed, and Canceled. Jack threaded his way around to the United terminal, angled in to the curb among the cabs and heaps of disgorged luggage and surly security types making sure everyone kept moving. If you wanted to say a proper good-bye, you had to dawdle as you opened doors, stack and restack suitcases. Chloe was distracted, checking for her ticket and ID. It wasn’t even seven-thirty. Jack waited for her to stop fussing.
“How about I call you when I get in.”
“Sure. Whenever you get a chance.”
“There’s a reception tonight. An orientation. Then I guess we’re all going out to dinner, so use the cell phone if you need to find me.”
“Shouldn’t have to.”
“I wish you could come. I know you wanted to.”
Smiling her best, blue-eyed smile. She was able to relax a little, now that she was finally here. She was able to be nice to him, now that she was almost rid of him.
“Maybe some other time. Enjoy the hell out of everything.” Jack carried her suitcase to the curb, slid out the tote wheels and handle. “Knock ’em dead, kiddo.”
They kissed, in the self-conscious, public way you kissed at airports, then Jack said, “Break clean,” and Chloe stepped away from him, through the glass doors and into the terminal, looking back once to wave.
Jack waved too. He got into the car, edged out in traffic, threaded his way around the ramps and into the short-term parking lot. He found a space, locked the car after him, and walked back to the United terminal. Three days before he had booked a United flight to Detroit, then canceled it. The computer printout and his ID got him through security. He was carrying a backpack, which contained a new Discman and several of Chloe’s favorite CDs. He did not intend for Chloe to see him, but if she did, he would say this was a present he had forgotten to give her.
He took the walkway through the United tunnel with its blinking light show and computer-generated chimes, wondered as always if they meant the place to be spooky or relaxing, a weird, outer-space send-off before you entrusted yourself to air travel. Oh folly, folly: what he was doing crossed some kind of line, he was aware of that, but he was not inclined to think about it now.
For a time he had tried to come up with a way he could follow Chloe to New York, then gave it up. He had thought about things like hidden microphones, video cameras, tracking devices, all the gizmos ever invented to snare a cheating heart, but that was laughable, he had no idea how to procure or manage such things. He’d found himself considering wigs and false mustaches for sneaking around airports. That should have been enough to shame him but it wasn’t. Then he remembered some minor Clint Eastwood movie where Clint was miscast as a master of disguise. T
he disguises consisted mostly of Clint wearing a variety of hats. If he was found out, Jack decided, it would be that much worse to be wearing a wig or a silly hat.
At the top of the escalator he took a quick look left and right. The gate for Chloe’s flight was midway down the concourse. He set off on a slow, careful path toward it, looking into all the cocktail lounges and newstands and Starbucks. Even this early, the place swarmed with travelers. The worst thing about O’Hare was not that it was miserably crowded, rude, noisy, or inefficent—it was that and more—but how it made you hate all of humanity. You could be pretty sure they were hating you right back.
Chloe wasn’t in any of the places he checked. As he approached her gate, he ducked into a bank of pay phones and pretended to dial. It was still early for the New York flight. The ticket agent hadn’t yet opened up, and only a few people, none of them Chloe, sat waiting. He walked past the gate, into the end-of-concourse hinterland of snack carts and not much else, except for several gates jammed together in a roundhouse. A troop of young Asian men, each carrying a navy blue JAL flight bag, milled in front of a departing flight to Los Angeles. A janitor in no particular hurry pushed a cleaning cart. Outside on the tarmac, planes lumbered in and out of line. It might have been an elaborately arranged stage setting designed to convince him that the rest of the world was normal.
Jack reached the end of the concourse, scanned the seats, and doubled back. Across the aisle he saw Chloe and Spence sitting at a table in a snack bar.
He stopped dead and found a wall to shield him. They must have just now sat down. They had paper cups of coffee and they were busy stirring and blowing and taking cautious sips. Spence had purchased a sweet roll. Jack could see them clearly enough but not hear them. He watched Spence break off a piece of the roll, lift it to Chloe’s mouth. Two fingers supported her chin while Chloe’s lips parted. She swallowed the bit of roll, then leaned forward to lick the rest of the sugar from his fingertip.
He would fucking kill them both.
Although he was hidden from them, and although he was the one spying them out, he felt horribly visible. Anyone walking past would see murder shooting out of him in gaudy, radioactive flames. He was biting down hard on nothing, he made a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. Spence and Chloe were seated by a window. The splendid morning sun backlit Chloe’s hair. She was wearing a black pants suit and a white blouse. Her colors, black and white. She’d always been vain about having the dramatic looks you needed to carry that off. When she had dressed this morning, she was dressing for Spence.
Good old Spence. Now he was covering Chloe’s hand with his big executive paw and listening seriously as she explained how truly rotten it made her feel to be screwing around on her clueless dope of a husband. Spence nodded. He was a sensitive guy. He understood her deeply conflicted and nuanced feelings. They did her credit. He was calculating the hours until he’d be able to get into her pants.
If he were Clint Eastwood he would walk over, cool and tough, pull a gun, throw a punch.
Jack didn’t move. He couldn’t keep from watching them. He needed to hate them both for a while, breathe it in. He probably hated Spence less than he wanted to. After all, what man wouldn’t want to fuck Chloe. He knew exactly how that tooth bit. How old was Spence anyway, sneaking up on fifty? Jowls. Going to fat. He looked in the mirror and saw himself too successfully disguised, as a middle-aged man packed into a suit. A guy who probably read, in secret, ads for weight-loss products and hair restorers. His dick gone as lazy as a trout in winter, rising only occasionally to take the missus’s familiar bait. Doctors talking somberly of triglycerides and prostate and heart attack, heart attack, heart attack. Oh vicious irony, tragic fate, that a man could achieve the very pinnacle of worldly success, yet find himself looking down this dreary narrowing tunnel, bereft of youth, joy, vigor, passion, etc. Jack corrected himself. He did hate the whoreson prick.
Was it better or worse that his wife was fucking a fat old man? Better than some muscle-bound walking penis? Was this all just some slimy career move? He couldn’t figure it any other way. Jack didn’t doubt that there’d been some of the pressuring Chloe had talked about, mixed in with courtship. Promises, coaxing, negotiations. He wondered when, officially, technically, their affair had begun. Probably back when Chloe had stopped talking about it, when she said she’d settled it.
So now he knew otherwise, or thought he did, raging fool, skulking behind a rack of luggage carts.
How long had he been standing there? Once more he felt visible and self-conscious, but now there was shame in it. He guessed he’d been there long enough for Chloe and Spence to finish their coffee. They were getting up from their chairs. Nothing extraordinary in their manner now, they were simply people with a plane to catch, and Jack might have believed he’d imagined everything except for the look on Spence’s face. Chloe was bending down to retrieve her carry-on. Spence stood over her. Chloe didn’t see him but Jack did. Spence looked happy. Not just cheerful or content or at ease. Happy, even grateful. Love, hope, the rebirth of everything that made life worth living. Got the knot in his middle-aged pecker untied. Oh yes.
Chloe and Spence made their way to the gate and Jack trailed after them. Up in some control room, security guards were watching TV monitors, hoping to spot hot babes. Jack paused in front of the arrival and departures boards and tried not to look like a terrorist. Chloe headed for the ladies’ room. Spence took her carry-on over to the gate. Jack saw no sign of anyone else from the bank, no one there who Spence seemed to know. He had to assume that part was a lie also, and that the two of them were traveling alone. He bet they had first-class tickets. Fringe benefit to whoring yourself.
When Spence’s back was turned, Jack walked quickly past him to the phones on the other side of the gate. From his hiding place he watched Chloe emerge from the ladies’ room. She passed within a few yards of him. He heard her heels clicking and imagined, rather than felt, the current of cool, displaced air in her wake. She took the seat next to Spence and the two of them settled in to wait. Spence had a newspaper and they traded sections. Jack picked up the phone and dialed Chloe’s cell number.
He observed the phone’s ringing register on them, and Chloe reaching into her bag for it. Then her amplified, staticky voice in his ear. “Hello?”
“Hey there, beautiful.”
“Jack? You’re home already?”
He watched the show. The two of them mouthing questions. Christ. What does he want.
“Yeah, there was like, no traffic. So, you all squared away? You get your coffee?”
“What’s going on?” Shifting the phone to her other ear. Forehead puckering, expression of impatience. Spence rattled his newspaper, detaching himself. You had to expect these little episodes of unseemliness. Husbands making pests of themselves.
“Nothing. Just wanted to call and tell you how much I’m going to miss you.”
“That’s nice. Me too.”
“I don’t want to bug you while you’re in New York, I know you’ll be busy and all, so I figured I’d better call now. Boy, a week seems like a really long time.”
Jack was pleased to see that Chloe had lowered her head in some attempt at privacy. She said, “I know. But it’ll go fast.”
“When I say I’m going to miss you, you know what I mean, right? The old hubba hubba.”
“Don’t be obnoxious.”
“Marital consortium. Hot cha cha.”
“Are you drunk or something?”
Eloquent raised eyebrow from Spence.
“No, but listen, I’ve been thinking, maybe we’ve been taking things for granted in that department. Too much of a settled routine.”
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
“A little experimentation. Couldn’t hurt. Hey, here’s an idea. Phone sex.”
“No.”
“Come on. Just for fun. Get crazy.”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“Fine, but then I’ll j
ust keep calling back. If a man can’t talk dirty to his own wife—”
“I’m in an airport.” Chloe stood up, paced. With her free hand she waved to Spence, waved him off. No big deal.
“So don’t say anything. Just listen. Where’s your sense of adventure? A mad caprice. I ever tell you that you have a great ass?”
Chloe sighed. They were announcing some flight and Jack heard it in both ears. He said, “Come on. Work with me here. I can get hard just thinking about your ass.”
“Thank you.”
“I’d like to spread your legs and tickle your pussy till it’s wet. How’m I doing so far? Having any effect?”
Spence was motioning to Chloe, he wanted to ask her something. She walked over to him and covered the phone while she spoke. “What’s that?” Jack asked.
“I wasn’t talking to you, it was one of the guys.”
“The guys are all there? Everybody rarin to go?”
“Are you finished yet?” She sat down next to Spence, opened her briefcase.
“Darlin, I’m just warming up. Stay in the moment here with me. I’ve got you butt naked and I’m playing with you, you know, finger-banging, and then I decide I want your nipples hard—”
“Jack, I’ll have to talk to you later.” Another off-mike conversation with Spence, who seemed to require something in Chloe’s briefcase.
“Why, you’re doing something really important now?” Spence leaned across Chloe to retrieve the needed paper. He took the opportunity to squeeze her thigh. The rogue.
“Now’s not the time, okay?”
“But I’m just starting to hump you. The way you like it. You know, kind of teasing, so you have to ask—”
The phone clicked off. Jack watched Chloe put it away. Spence asked her something and she said, clearly, Nothing. Spence said—he couldn’t guess what Spence might say. Something about the sad necessity of deceiving the injured parties? Or hubba hubba? Chloe smiled briefly and shook her head.
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