“Is this what you wanted me to see?”
Steel fingers pried open Jordan’s balled fist, found the middle finger and bent it back hard. Pain, excruciating. Jordan screamed as the gracile bone snapped. His stomach lurched and he vomited in the dark. As he fainted he heard Dennis swearing.
He came to with a gasp of pain as the jagged edges of bone ground together. The finger was roughly set and taped to its neighbor.
Dennis’s voice hot in his ear. “Sweet dreams, Doc.”
11
CHRISTMAS EVE
The Prenns’ house was straight out of Bedford Falls central casting. Standard white colonial with black shutters, and in rural Concord, when they said colonial they meant it. It had been originally built in 1673 for the Reverend Thomas H. Puckett, according to the prominently affixed historical landmark plaque, though Alex was certain it had been expanded a bit in the intervening centuries. The snow was a couple of days old but deep enough still that the bushes lining the walk were reduced to little humps in the general whiteness. The path had been cleared with professional efficiency and there was a large, immaculately groomed wreath with a bright red bow on the front door and candles flickering in every window.
His stepmother, Shanisse (“Like Chez Panisse,” she always said when she met people), opened the door. “Alex!” She dragged out the first syllable. “You made it.” She motioned him inside. “I’m so glad. Were the roads just horrible?” She doesn’t age, he thought. Mrs. Prenn 2.0 wore a floor-length black satin dress with a high slit that proffered a decidedly unmotherly view. She flung her arms around his neck and her voice was warm in his ear. “Merry Christmas, darling. I really am glad.” Alex closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her. Just the same—the hair, the perfume, whatever it was, undertones of almond and cocoa butter. Eau-de-stripper. That epiphany had come later, in his midtwenties. No one had ever said it but it certainly seemed plausible.
Shanisse had been twenty-two to Alex’s seventeen when she’d married his father. Fortunately, Alex had stayed in the shitty two-bedroom in Brookline with his mother, and had only had to grapple with the oedipal monsters every other weekend.
“Everyone, Alex is here!”
“Hey, Alex.” A half note rest, then, “Merry Christmas.” This in virtually perfect singsong unison from his two half siblings, Serena and Moses. They looked almost identical; both had the good fortune to favor their mother except in the eyes, which were the same pale blue as Alex’s own. After this perfunctory greeting they returned their attention to Moses’s phone. As he followed Shanisse into the living room Alex did the calculation in his head. Serena would have to be a junior at Vassar now and that would make Moses what? A freshman? God knew where, the same probably.
“Merry Christmas. Bet you’re happy to be home for a while.”
“Yeah,” without looking up, heads together, laughing.
“Alex! Merry, merry. What can I get you?” said Martin Prenn as he handed his wife a flute of champagne. He wore a cream-colored linen shirt unbuttoned to the crest of his round belly. With his longish white hair and deep off-season tan he looked like a European tourist at a Caribbean singles resort. In his other hand he balanced a cloudy martini with two olives.
“You, too, Dad,” Alex said, awkwardly half embracing his father, careful not to jostle the glass. “Actually, a dirty martin sounds pretty good.”
Shanisse’s throaty laugh was accompanied by a theatrical wink. “Doesn’t it?” Alex felt his face go warm.
“Sure, I’ll make another batch,” Alex’s father said, taking a generous swallow and fishing out an olive as he headed back toward the kitchen. Alex saw he was barefoot. The soles of his feet were tan. “Gin, right?”
“If it ain’t gin, it ain’t a martini,” Alex recited.
“It’s just cold vodka,” his father finished from the hall.
* * *
Sam walked briskly around Jordan, snapping his face from every angle and chatting amiably. “You know, the thing with facial recognition is, on the one hand, it’s infinitely better than we are at flipping through millions of images to find a match, but at the same time it completely lacks our ability to deal with small changes in fundamental topography.” He studied Jordan’s swollen nose with a professional thoughtfulness, head cocked to one side.
“So, let’s say a person’s eyes were too wide or closer together, or their chin were slightly fuller, or the cheekbones... Well, you and I would still think, Man, that guy looks familiar, but not software. On the other hand, hair, wigs, makeup, none of that stuff fazes it much anymore.” He flipped through the pictures he’d taken and seemed satisfied. “You don’t have to do much but some of it does need to be structural.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Jordan asked in a small voice.
“Do you know what day it is, Jordan?”
Jordan shook his head.
“It’s Christmas, Ebenezer. Christmas Eve actually. A night of great hope, wouldn’t you say?” Sam smiled. “Why do you suppose I am so interested in your face, in its trackability? No guesses? You’re going to be leaving us soon. Very soon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your new life awaits, Jordan. New man, new life, new world, eh?” Jordan started to say something but Sam waved him off. “It was always going to be this way, and the time seems right. New year, new you.”
* * *
“What about you, Mom?” Haden said.
“No, I’ll wait. I only have a couple of things, anyway.” She saw the expression and before he could say anything she went on. “Besides, it’s not really about grown-ups.”
“Come on. Please? It’ll be more fun.” He pushed a small, perfectly wrapped box into her hands.
“Okay, okay.” She laughed. “You win. But you guys first. One each.”
Sophie picked through the pile of presents around the tree in a distracted way, occasionally opening the card on a box to see who it was for before tossing it back on the pile. There were too many, Stephanie thought. She hadn’t remembered buying so much. And there were almost as many more again in the closet waiting for the children to go to sleep. Sophie hadn’t believed for years but she wasn’t sure about Haden; he’d never said. She hoped he still did. Take innocence wherever you find it. So many, though. Was it compensating? Or just having money for a change?
It was so quiet. The street was empty and the snow muffled the sound of the occasional cars down the hill. Stephanie got up and turned on the radio. The Messiah spilled out into the dark corners and made the house feel a little less empty, a little more like Christmas.
* * *
Alex was drunk. Not sloppy or slurry drunk, just two martinis and a bottle of wine at dinner, everything-bright-and-fuzzy-at-the-edges drunk. Shanisse was hanging up a pair of enormous red stockings with Serena’s and Moses’s names embroidered in gold thread.
“You really won’t stay? I’m sure I could find a stocking for you somewhere.” The image came instantly and unbidden, her fingers undoing the clasp and slowly peeling off a sheer black stocking. Was it really in her tone or just a product of his own dormant issues?
“No, I can’t. It’s getting late. I should get going.”
“I hear work’s going well,” his father said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good right now,” Alex said, getting up a little unsteadily.
“About time. Good for you.” Martin nodded to himself as if that settled something.
“Oh, you can’t go yet,” Shanisse protested, pulling him back toward the sofa. “We never see you anymore. I need stories. Are you happy? Are you terribly in love?” She wouldn’t let go of his hand. She’d taken her shoes off and tucked one foot underneath like a schoolgirl. “Martin, make him stay.”
Alex pulled away. “Really, I can’t.”
* * *
It was a perfectly clear night,
diamond-strewn black velvet sky, breath billowing cold. Alex started the car and turned on the seat warmer. He texted the Russian. where r u? The heater struggled to get a toehold on the chill.
Stupid party
come over
Can’t. Sorry :(
where is it? i’ll come
Private, downtown
i got you a present
Can’t. Tomorrow
now
She didn’t answer. He cradled the phone, waiting. Message delivered.
Okay.
And an address on Milk Street.
* * *
Stephanie couldn’t sleep. Her brain wouldn’t shut down. She didn’t know how to do this. Any of it. It wasn’t as if Jordan had ever participated much, but his just being there, occupying space, had made the geometry work; it had defined her role. She had known what to say, what to do.
Now everything felt wrong.
Sophie had opened a tiny cat charm for the bracelet she’d been adding to since she was six.
It was too young; Stephanie sensed her disappointment. Then Haden had opened what was supposed to be a small gift but it hadn’t been the one she’d thought and, of course, the Xbox controller gave away tomorrow’s big surprise—0 for 2. And then it had been her turn. A gift-boxed perfume from the mall. Opium. She had laughed. She hadn’t meant to, she’d just been surprised; it was so improbable. She’d recovered but there were bruised feelings—more harm done. Trifecta.
Looking back, of course, it made sense, a first stab at grown-up gift giving. She could imagine them together at Macy’s trying to figure out what to buy Mom now that handmade gifts from school seemed childish. Or was there a deeper message? Get it together, get on with it, get out there, get a life?
* * *
i’m here
Alex got out of the car, rubbing his shoulders vigorously against the cold. He could hear the dull thump of the party from somewhere above. It was a desolate part of downtown, all offices, deserted except for the one soiree. Must be one of the big hedge funds, Alex thought, if they were bringing in the most expensive call girls in Boston for the Christmas party.
A light came on in the lobby of the Dunham East Building and a bulky figure, backlit by the open elevator, tottered toward the door. She was wrapped in a full-length fur coat, white and gray—wolf, maybe, if such a thing were legal. Her hair spilled out in pale wisps between the collar of the coat and the bottom of the matching hat, an ushanka right out of Doctor Zhivago, pulled so low only the tip of her nose and a glimpse of her eyes were visible.
She took his arm. “You look like a bear.” He laughed.
She shook her face clear of the coat’s collar so he could see the pout. “Not nice.”
“A very beautiful bear.” She tried to pull her arm away but he held on. “Come on, walk with me. Not a bear, an exotic Slavic goddess, a Tolstoyan vision from the steppes.”
They turned down Oliver and walked past the Langham. Except for a lone doorman out front clapping his hands together and stomping his feet to keep warm, all was quiet.
“How is your party?”
“Stupid. Horrible people, all drunk and stupid.”
“You have to go back?”
She shrugged. “I think so. Big client. Vanessa would be pissed.”
She held his arm a little tighter. They turned left on Franklin. The wind from the river funneled up the narrow street and whipped at Alex’s ears and cheeks. He gasped. The girl wriggled her face lower into her collar.
“So delicate,” she said, pulling him toward a little alley between the brick side wall of Shea’s Pub and an office building with two-story black windows surrounded by marble ledges. She stepped up into one of the windows and pulled Alex after her.
“Better?” He could see the fine powder of snow blowing down Franklin but the recessed window was a perfect windbreak. She pushed him back against the glass and opened her coat to envelop them both.
“I’ll keep you warm, bednyaga, poor baby.” She lifted her face and he felt her body press against him. He brushed the hair away with his glove, revealing pale, laughing eyes.
“Tell me about this present,” she said. “No, wait, let me guess. Is it something you know I will like?” Her eyebrows arched up innocently as she wriggled her arms out of the sleeves. He shivered as her hands began to roam over his body.
“It must be here somewhere.” She searched his pockets.
“Ah, what’s this?” Her fingers traced his zipper. “I should unwrap it now?”
Over her shoulder he saw movement down the alley. He heard a clattering, shuffling sound and a homeless man wearing a filthy red parka over a couple of other coats and a blue wool cap came pushing an old shopping cart with a giant trash bag full of empty bottles through the snow.
Alex exhaled as her hand tugged his zipper. “If it doesn’t fit, I can return it?”
She leaned in and stretched up on her toes and then he was inside her. It didn’t seem possible with the coats and muddled layers of clothing, like landing a jet on a tiny strip of runway halfway around the world. Every part of his body felt different from every other. His face was still numb from the cold wind but his neck was flushed. His feet felt heavy with a dull ache in the big toes. His back was tight and cold from the glass, and his thighs burned.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “How did you know?” She arched herself against him. The homeless man had stopped and was watching them. It was hard to tell what he knew or what he thought. His beard was wild and matted with frozen spit or snot. His eyes were dark and animal, assessing. He was almost certainly crazy, one of the deinstitutionalized thousands.
The girl buried her head in Alex’s chest and her fingers clutched at the back of his shirt. Her eyelids fluttered and she made a small sound. Alex and the homeless man held each other’s eyes until it was over, then the man shrugged and continued up the alley toward Franklin, one wheel spinning in lazy circles in the snow.
The girl’s voice was far away. “Santa...”
12
HOME
Jordan sat at a small round table at the Taza Café in the Hamburg airport, absently stirring an espresso. He wore an opaque pair of aviators and had a small bandage taped over the bridge of his nose. The nose appeared slightly swollen still and there was fading yellow bruising. He wore a cheap brown wool suit, identifiably Eastern European in a Soviet Ostalgie sort of way. In his lap he held a ticket stub and a passport in the name of Dieter Boll whose pages he absently riffled. He had flown the Lisbon–Hamburg leg after an overnight Dulles to Lisbon via Heathrow and was pretty glazed.
“Guten tag, Herr Boll. May I?” the stranger said in heavily accented English as he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. “We will change here, all right?”
As he spoke he slid an envelope into Jordan’s hand and took the passport and ticket, tucking them into his folded copy of Die Zeit. He pushed back his chair and stood with a curt nod, saying, “Have a pleasant flight, Mr. Kramaric.”
Leaving a couple of euros on the table, Jordan walked to the restroom. He locked himself in a stall and opened the envelope. Inside was a round-trip coach ticket to Hong Kong along with a well-worn Croatian passport and a credit card. The credit card and passport were in the name of Antonin Kramaric. He crumpled the envelope and threw it in the trash. He washed his hands and dabbed at his face with a wet paper towel. His nose still hurt like hell and his eyes burned. He gingerly took off the shades and studied his face in the mirror. Where the nose had been broken there was now a pronounced Roman dip. Also his eyes were now a little wider and larger and subtly sloped down at the outside, giving him a vaguely morose Slavic look. The skin was still puffy and red at the corners where the lids had been cut and sutured. Taken with the short, short hair and the scruffy facial growth, the cumulative change was substantial. If a former colleague had passed him i
n the airport, Jordan doubted he would have looked twice.
* * *
“What’s Parrish’s status?” Sam asked, brushing the rain from his jacket with a glove before folding it neatly over the back of a chair.
“So far so dull,” Dennis said without looking up from the screen. “Manny put him on the Lisbon flight. All the handoffs have been clean.” He selected several files, double-checked against a list, then hit Delete. He exhaled and sat back in his chair. “I still think it’s an excess of caution.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Sam said.
“No one’s looking.”
“No, I suppose not. But even so, well, it would be irresponsible to lead anyone to our doorstep. Better part of valor, right?”
“Sure.” The chair creaked in protest as Dennis pushed back. “Server’s clean. He was never here.”
“Thank you. As you say, excessive. But I appreciate it. Going soft.”
Dennis smiled. “Well, if it all plays out...”
“Big if.”
“Sure. But if... Tuscany, maybe. Little palazzo with a garden to putter around in, maybe a vineyard.”
Sam laughed drily. “Your lips to God’s ear.”
* * *
The woman in 19C had the longest fingernails Jordan had ever seen. She was playing a game on the touchscreen monitor at her seat. It looked like a Japanese mash-up of sudoku and Scrabble. There was a row of kanji characters in a little box at the top of the screen and the woman would select them one at a time with the curved bright purple nail of her left index finger and drag them sharply across to make words on the line below. Each time a word was complete, she’d tap a blue box with her right pinky nail and the letters would fly back to the top with a cheerful puff of animated smoke. She seemed to be doing very well. Jordan was in 20D, one row behind and across the aisle. The man in the seat next to him was sharply thin and smelled terrible. He kept falling asleep, then jerking awake every time his head lolled forward. The elderly woman in the window seat was visibly outraged and had pressed herself against the bulkhead. There was a tourist group filling the front third of the plane and a young boy directly behind Jordan’s seat who took a break from kicking it just often enough to make the resumption doubly irritating.
Exit Strategy Page 5