“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just never did.” Looking up, she could see people passing through hallways and pausing on balconies on the upper floors. She thought of the Escher print that had hung in the kitchen of her parents’ house. Faceless men purposefully navigating stairways that defied gravity and Euclid.
They crossed the hall into what a small placard indicated was the Gothic Room. “Isabella.” Alex pointed to a life-size portrait of a woman in the corner of the room. She wore a simple black velvet dress and her hair was pulled back in a bun. No jewelry except a plain pearl choker with a ruby at the throat and a silver chain belt around her waist. Her skin was like marble, pale and luminescent. Her eyes looked straight ahead.
“Sargent—she was a fan.”
“Beautiful. She looks so...sure.”
“Apparently she had a motto, as I guess one did back then.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “‘Win as though you were used to it and lose as if you enjoy it.’” He smiled. “Pretty good, huh?”
Stephanie turned to look at him. “Someone’s got a little crush, I think.”
“Oh, absolutely.” He held Stephanie’s eyes until she looked away.
“And how exactly did you two meet?”
“Well, there was this girl, also named Isabella as it happened, and apparently all Isabellas get in for free, part of the bequest.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “Really,” he insisted.
They did a circuit of the Gothic Room. Stephanie paused to admire a Giotto painting and a wood carving of the Trinity but she was struck most by the room itself. The pale light was warmed by the stained glass of the rose window and scattered by dark tile and burnished hardwood so it glowed muted and reverent.
He followed her eyes. “Dutch light,” he said.
“Mmm.” She nodded.
“She had several Rembrandts but they were stolen. You must have heard of it. It was quite a thing at the time. Early ’90s, I think.”
Stephanie cocked her head. “That does sound familiar... Cops, maybe?”
“Sort of. They posed as cops and fooled the security guards. Took a bunch of Rembrandt and Degas paintings. Never caught, never recovered.”
“That’s crazy,” Stephanie said quietly. They stood in silence.
Alex tipped his head to the portrait of Isabella. “You remind me of her, you know.” He was standing close. “She was incredibly alive, so much energy.”
“Ha. That’s me, all right,” Stephanie said with a bitter smile.
He took her arm. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
He led her back down to the ground floor and halfway around the courtyard to a room called the Spanish Cloister. One wall was dominated by a Sargent painting called El Jaleo. In it a flamenco dancer, right hand gathering her voluminous skirts, left delicately extended, dances across the room as a dour group of black-jacketed musicians play against the back wall. She’s in profile, fairly crackling with vitality and sensuality. Alex swept his hand over the scene. “What do you see?” he said.
“I see her. I see Isabella, her spirit.”
“She bought this painting just after losing her son. He was two.”
“Jesus,” Stephanie said. Her belly clenched.
“Her only child,” Alex went on. “She never had another.”
Stephanie studied the painting, all somber blacks and whites save a stroke each of red and orange, scarves on two seated women at the far right, almost off the canvas. Like the first tulips of spring.
Neither spoke and Stephanie was uncomfortably aware of his hand still resting lightly on her arm.
She stepped away and turned to face him with a mock pout. “You never answered my quite sincere Christmas invitation.”
Alex laughed. “Appalling manners. I’m sure there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
* * *
The lights came on suddenly. Too early, too bright. Jordan struggled to clear his head. He’d been dreaming. The door was open and a man was coming toward him. Not Dennis. Jordan sat up, pulling the thin blanket up to his chin protectively. He blinked to focus as his eyes adjusted. The man was slighter, older. He had gray hair, glasses with dark frames and JC Penney clothes—khaki slacks, some kind of wrinkle-resistant synthetic, light blue button-down tucked in, brown belt and a cream windbreaker. And his shoes, not quite sneakers, sensible, functional; they made only the slightest dull sound of compression as he crossed the room. Everything about him was ordinary, neither so very much any one thing or another. He was almost invisible, the kind of person your eye would track past on a city street without retaining any impression. He was carrying a folding metal chair. He opened it at the foot of Jordan’s bed and sat down.
“Hello, Dr. Parrish,” the man said. His voice, too, was neutral, steady. It conveyed benevolence without judgment like an old family doctor or a very expensive lawyer. “Call me Sam.”
9
JESUS, TAKE THE WHEEL
As Jordan struggled to clear his head Sam watched him with a bemused smile, as if remembering a droll aside from an intimate gathering the night before.
Finally he said, “What do you want, Dr. Parrish?”
Jordan stared, uncomprehending, blanket pulled tight. He was cold.
“How do you see your future? What do you imagine will happen? What do you hope will happen?”
Jordan stuttered, “I—I w-wa...” His mouth felt dry, tongue swollen and uncooperative. He swallowed, willing saliva. “I want to go home.”
“Ah, home,” Sam said, nodding. “Such a romantic idea, home. But so hard to pin down? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that this—” he swept his arm around the room “—is your home now?”
“I just want to go home.”
Sam nodded again as if ticking an item off a list. He crossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair. “Let’s refine that idea, Jordan. When we say home we don’t mean a place, do we? We mean family, and this is the crux of the problem. You have no family and, ergo, no home.”
Jordan’s face went ashen and he struggled to speak, head twisting from side to side. “What did you do?” he croaked.
“Don’t worry, your wife and children are fine, better, really. It’s you, Jordan. You are dead. Dead and buried, mourned after a fashion, but absolutely and permanently gone from their world.” He leaned back and spread his hands on his lap as if he were laying out a winning straight. “Let me tell you a story.
“There was a man. He struggled, struggled with his wife and children, struggled with his job. He was unhappy. Everything he touched turned rotten. But then he met a girl—let’s call her Hailey. She was young, quite young. But she admired the man, his intelligence, his suffering. They fell in love. The man would meet her at an apartment he kept.”
Jordan’s brow furrowed. “No...”
Sam put a finger up. “Wait. Things went on this way for some time. Then there was an accident. The man and the girl were driving. Police supposed they were coming back from a romantic getaway. The car was discovered in a lake. The bodies, though badly disfigured, were eventually identified—fingerprints, dental records, that sort of thing.”
“How?” Jordan blinked furiously.
“Records can be changed,” Sam mused almost to himself. “At any rate, the case was closed and the man was buried, small private ceremony, somewhat sparsely attended, I’m sorry to say. But then something rather remarkable happened. Remember I told you everything the man touched turned rotten? Well, what do you suppose happened once the man was gone?”
Jordan shook his head.
“No guesses? Well, it turns out our friend was quite well insured and the family’s financial situation, which had been, I must tell you, rather bleak, took a striking turn for the better. And his company, which had been foundering, had a few successes and began to rebound rather vigorously. The man’s wife p
aid off both the mortgages on their house and I’m told is now considering moving to a bigger one. An uncharacteristically happy ending, wouldn’t you say?
“Our man turned out to be a far more capable provider in death than he had ever been in life.” Sam sat back and regarded Jordan coolly.
“It’s a lie.”
Sam looked surprised. “Yes, I suppose it is, but a kinder, gentler one, wouldn’t you say? Imagine the story without the fiction, without sweet Hailey. How would the plucky little family ever pull together and move on? And if they thought the paterfamilias was a suicide, how would that play out? No insurance. No money. Think of the guilt, the decades of therapy. What kind of man would wish that on his heirs? Only a petty and selfish one. I don’t think you’re that sort of man, Jordan. Am I wrong?”
“Let me go,” Jordan said in a small voice, barely audible.
“Go? Where would you go? Home? So what? So you could ruin their lives all over again? And what about us? Your miraculous reincarnation would raise many awkward questions. We have responsibilities. I can assure you, our other clients have no ache for home. Most would be sent back to face firing squads or worse. No—” he shook his head “—there is no back. There’s only forward.”
Almost a whisper, “I would never tell.”
Sam sighed. “What changed, Doctor?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you called us. What changed between that call and when Dennis picked you up just a few hours later? Or between then and now?”
“I—I don’t know,” Jordan stammered. “I mean, nothing, but everything. I can’t really describe it. Everything just seemed different.” His mouth had gone dry again.
“Let me give you my theory, Dr. Parrish,” Sam said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. “What changed was the call itself. You were desperate. You asked for help. In programs to treat addiction you often hear the phrase, ‘Let go. Let God.’ You’ve heard that before, haven’t you? You hear the same thing from people who have suddenly found religion, born-agains or evangelicals. They all tell the same story. They were at rock bottom, their lives were all messed up, maybe drugs or alcoholism, maybe financial crisis or the loss of a loved one, whatever, you know the story. Then there’s a moment, an epiphany, literally like Saul on the road to Damascus, a moment where they ask for help, a moment where they acknowledge their inability to solve their problems alone, a moment where they put their fates in someone else’s hands.”
He was warming to his subject, his hands active like small birds. “Do you remember that song ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel,’ Dr. Parrish? I always loved that song. Remember? She’s a young mom, maybe unwed, too, I forget, but she’s driving her car on the ice and it starts to skid out of control and she just throws her hands up and says, ‘Jesus, take the wheel.’ It gives me goose bumps.” Sam’s eyes glistened behind his glasses. “That was you, Jordan. When you made that call, when you acknowledged you could not carry your burden alone, that admission freed you. You no longer felt hopeless because suddenly there was hope. You no longer felt helpless because you knew help was out there. You were no longer alone.”
In the other room Dennis watched the performance on the monitor with a smirk. He had to admit it. Sam was good. The man should have been a preacher.
“You can’t think of this as an ending,” Sam was saying. “This is a new beginning for you, Jordan. Think about it. Things will get better. We’re going to move you out of here. In a while you’re going to be somewhere far away, new town, new life, new you. You’ll have money in the bank, nice place, no bills—it’s every guy’s secret dream.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Imagine it. No one’s going to know you from Adam. You’re whoever you say you are. All the baggage you’ve carried with you from childhood, the little humiliations, the fights you ran away from, the touchdown passes you dropped, the girls you were too chicken to ask out, none of it happened. Tabula rasa. Blank slate. It takes a while to adjust but you will. Maybe there will be other women. You’re a good-looking guy, maybe they’ll be young. Tell me you’ve never had the fantasy. You’d be the first.” He sat back and waited.
Jordan struggled to keep the panic out of his voice. “I’m sure that for most of the people you deal with this is the best option they have but it’s not the same with me.”
“And how is it with you, Dr. Parrish?” Sam asked pleasantly. His eyes had lost their glistening intensity. It seemed as if he’d lost interest in the conversation but continued to listen out of politeness.
“I have a life, a family. I can’t leave them. I can’t just disappear. I’m not running away from anyone or anything. You need to understand. This has been an awful misunderstanding. A moment of weakness. Just let me go. I’ll go home and it will be like this all never happened.”
Jordan spoke almost in a whisper. “I would never tell.”
Sam stood and sat beside Jordan on the bed. He took his glasses off and turned them over in his hands as he continued, his face a foot from Jordan’s. “I need you to understand and to accept that this is the way it will be, Doctor. In my business the absolute security of my clients and their secrets is everything. There are times when a man has second thoughts. I understand that. But this is not the kind of decision you can take back. Do you understand? You can’t unjump out of the airplane, you can’t unpull the trigger. If you ever make any attempt whatsoever to contact anyone you know, you will be killed. And so will they. And so will your family. I will be forced to assume that they know about us and that is unacceptable. Do you understand, Dr. Parrish? This is important.” Jordan nodded numbly. “Good. I know it may seem a bitter pill right now, but trust me, it is for the best. The world that led you here is unchanged. Your problems weren’t going anywhere. Now your family will be very well provided for. You’ve done the right thing, Jordan.” Sam replaced his glasses. “We’ll talk again,” he said as he pushed to his feet, glancing pointedly at the camera above the door.
“I wouldn’t,” Jordan was trying to yell, but it seemed so hard to make his voice any louder.
The door opened just as Sam reached it.
“I’d never tell.” A hoarse croak, voice echoing flatly, no air.
Sam slipped out between Dennis and the other man coming in. Jordan recognized him as the skinny passenger from the van the night he was taken.
Dennis carried a tray of food and his mouth was set in a hard line. Jordan struggled to disentangle himself from the blanket and stand. Dennis reached him just as he got to his feet. Jordan took the head butt just above the bridge of his nose. His vision exploded in a flash of yellow light. He heard the tray clatter against the floor and a dish shatter, pieces skidding across the floor. He fell back. He blinked against the trickle of blood running into his eye. Dennis’s forearm caught him in the throat and snapped his head back hard against the wall.
“Do not fuck with me.” His voice was close. Jordan thrashed his head, trying to see.
Something hit him hard in the side, knocking the wind out of him. He gasped for air as he was hit again. The pressure on his windpipe got worse. And then things seemed to tumble away. He heard a snuffling, bubbling sound. Blood in his nose. Darkness. And suddenly the pressure was gone. He fell onto one side on the bed. He saw the skinny man picking up pieces of broken crockery. The image flopped sideways as if the man were crabbing along the wall.
“Leave it, Manny.” Dennis pulled his partner by the shoulder and they crossed the wall together to the door on the ceiling. It closed with a bang and the lights went out.
10
SWEET DREAMS
Alex didn’t want to go. It would be awkward—it always was. But he couldn’t get out of it now. His father would hold it against him for years, not that he had any real desire to see Alex, either. It was just how it worked. He picked the suit for its structured sense of impenetrability. Armor.
* * *
Dr
eaming. Stephanie. Hair roped in thick sun-streaked tendrils. Before Haden had been born.
So young. Her skin soft and slick in the warm seawater, legs wrapped around his waist, arms about his neck. Then the sun growing brighter and brighter, a supernova of fizzy green. The lights. Buzzing. For a moment Jordan hung on the edge between the dream and reality but then Stephanie sank away and he was awake and alone, shivering on the narrow steel bed. It occurred to him that he was almost always middream when the lights came. They were stealing even that.
He turned his head to face the camera and raised his middle finger as he deliberately mouthed the translation. For a while nothing happened. And then the lights snapped off. Jordan held his breath, listening and waiting. Nothing. Silence and darkness. Absolute.
* * *
Most of the monitors in the observation room showed only grainy gray with sparkles of analog distortion, but on one a thermal image of Jordan’s head rolled from left to right in vibrant oranges and yellows. The eyes were closed but the lids rippled as the pupils beneath darted back and forth. REM sleep.
“Why not just kill him?”
“You know why. Golden goose.”
“Don’t you mean ‘robin’?”
“Ha, ha. We’ll see.”
* * *
It was their bedroom, brown walls, before the repaint. Stephanie was screaming, clutching her belly, swollen with their child. (Elizabeth. Her name was Elizabeth.) She stared past him, unrecognizing, animal in her pain. He carried her to the Subaru, Sophie and Haden, eyes wide with fright and the strangeness, clutching at his pants, threatening to trip him, pull them all down.
The hospital. Stephanie panting, raw and ragged. Iodine target for the epidural, brown like dried blood. Doctors huddled in hallways, something about the cord. Danger to the mother. Pitocin-induced birth that wasn’t any birth at all. (Her name was Elizabeth.)
Jordan’s face was wet in the dark and he knew he was awake and not alone. He heard movement. Close. Then Dennis’s voice in his ear, hissing.
Exit Strategy Page 4