“Thank you so much,” Sam said, taking the phone. “Hey, can I get one with you, too? Wind the wife up a little? Add it to my story.”
“Not even sure what that all means, but sure.” Stephanie laughed.
Sam put his left arm around her shoulders and held the phone up in his right. The screen flashed once. He checked the result and smiled. “Perfect. She’ll be outraged. Thank you, you’re a trouper. Should I tag you?”
“Oh, I don’t do all that stuff. My daughter does but I’m useless.”
Sam smiled again and slipped the phone into his pocket. “Never mind, then. Probably for the best. Stay in touch, Alex,” he called breezily over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him.
“He seems nice,” Stephanie said when they were alone.
“Sometimes.”
She looked at him. “You look tired.”
Alex grimaced. “Glass houses, my friend.”
She laughed. “I know. I couldn’t really sleep, then early morning. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Why not sleeping?”
“I don’t know. All right, that’s not true, of course I know. Too many plates, spinning plates... Kids, you...”
“I told you, I don’t want to—”
“And you haven’t, you aren’t. You’ve been perfect. But I still have to figure out me, what I think, what I’m feeling. And then there’s Jordan.”
“Right.” Alex nodded.
“I keep having these things, these feelings, it’s stupid. It just feels so...so unresolved. I keep feeling like it would have been easier if I had seen his body.”
“No, it wouldn’t have been. Believe me.”
“Maybe it would feel more real, more final. I feel like it would make me more clear about what I feel for you. I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I get it. One day at a time.” He smiled and held out his hand. “Friends?”
She took it tenderly, rubbing the ridge of his knuckles with her thumb. “Friends.”
35
PLAN
He needed answers. And he needed a better plan. Twenty thousand yen gone already, thirty thou left; at this rate he’d be broke in less than a week. And that was living on a bowl of ramen a day and sleeping in capsule hotels. Jordan didn’t think he would survive on the street. Not here. He didn’t speak the language; he couldn’t even read the signs. Dumpster diving took on a whole new risk factor when you couldn’t tell if the food was spoiled or if it was supposed to smell like that. They were going to find him, that seemed inevitable. Why didn’t he just turn himself in, walk into the JET office and wait? They might kill him but that was far from the worst thing that could happen. He’d made peace with the idea, at least to a point. Protecting Stephanie and the kids, that was the big thing. Were they in more or less danger with him running around loose? For now, less. At least, he hoped so.
He had spent most of the last couple of days deliberately going through every file and email on Terry’s laptop. He copied all of the interesting links and addresses into a little notebook, one of those top-bound flip pads you could tuck into a back pocket. He had decided against getting a Go phone. Too risky; he was sure they’d figure out how to track him. He wouldn’t let the laptop online again, either. He’d take the whole list to an internet café or the library, log on at a public computer and print out whatever he found. He was becoming a necessary Luddite; all this interconnectedness had a downside.
He had learned a little. Apparently there were two ES offices, one in Washington—he assumed that was where he had been originally taken—and one in London. The one in Washington was on Mass. Ave. on Embassy Row, and in London they had a building on Hoxton Square. The Washington office seemed to deal primarily with incoming clients and the often complex negotiations between them and the countries they had squeezed dry and were now compelled to flee. Once successfully relocated, clients dealt almost exclusively with the office in London. It seemed like most of them ended up living there; London was cosmopolitan, diverse and sophisticated, offering ample distractions for wealthy men who preferred to keep a low profile. Jordan assumed that’s where he would have eventually ended up if he’d played along.
Jordan returned repeatedly to the email that had prepped Terry for his arrival. “Gordon Patterson, thirty-nine, male, Caucasian. Corporate-relo. Invol. Family: wife, two kids. High IQ. Special abilities. Referred APrenn, 6–13.” He tried futilely to come up with an alternate explanation for the last detail but there wasn’t one, nothing plausible, anyway. Occam’s razor. When presented with multiple possibilities, go for the simplest one. It had been Alex—Alex had sold him out. If he started there, so many other little things—comments, looks, intangible feelings—began to fit into place. It seemed inconceivable that his friend would betray him but it fit the data. He’d gotten the number from Dr. Rosen, the therapist. Alex’s therapist. As a scientist you learned to trust the method.
Pose a hypothesis, no matter how improbable, then try to tear it down.
But why? Didn’t there have to be a reason? People always had reasons; they were unscientific that way, not like Nature, capital N, where often things just were. Then he remembered Alex with Stephanie at the party again and thought back on the history of the company, how Alex seemed to have ended up with everything. Love and money. Two of the oldest reasons in the world.
Jordan felt sick. He needed air. He was staying at the Rainbow Inn in Kabukicho. It was 1:30 in the morning but he knew the neighborhood would be jumping for hours yet. Kabukicho was Tokyo’s biggest red-light district. When Jordan walked outside, the street was packed with young men in sharkskin suits and wraparound shades trying to herd the late-night postkaraoke salarymen into the string of massage parlors and hostess clubs that lined the block. Young girls in outfits that ranged from provocative to preposterous sashayed through the crowd. As Jordan pressed down the block, a man in improbable Sean John sweats with a wired earpiece yelled after him, “Hey, Captain, hold up, my girls gonna love you long time.” He reached for Jordan’s arm but Jordan hunched deeper into his coat and tacked into the center of the street. He walked two more blocks east, then cut into a narrow alley. The riot of neon and sex gave way to a seedy nobility that seemed transported from an earlier era.
The Golden Gai, a maze of narrow lanes and alleys on the edge of the Kabukicho district, was essentially unchanged since the 1970s. After the Second World War it had been a center of the blossoming sex trade, but in the ’60s the brothels had moved out and the warren had been taken over by radicals and intellectuals who had converted the tiny rooms to nomiya, counter bars.
The alley had dim streetlamps spanning the gap between the long sheds that ran down either side. Each had been subdivided into dozens of bars. The walls were made from an impossible gumbo of building materials—brick, corrugated tin, wood, shoji screens and newspaper—all taped, glued and hammered together into a massive collage. A couple of the newer bars had signs but most had no obvious visible markings. The air was rich with cigarette smoke, cooking smells and the concerted babble of dozens of intimate conversations and heated debates, laughter and scraps of music from every country on earth.
Jordan peered through a grimy pane of glass in a red wooden door in the middle of the block and tapped lightly. The bar woman waved him down the side of the building. He squeezed through the narrow gap as she opened the side door and ushered him in. He peeled off his sneakers and put on the traditional house slippers. The mama-san greeted him warmly and gestured up the steep wooden staircase. Jordan climbed to the cramped upstairs room, which was completely filled by the two occupied chairs around a plain wooden table and another empty chair with a wine case beside it. A young Japanese man dressed all in black with a ribbed turtleneck and a tiny dot of hair on his lower lip was arguing in heavily accented English with a somewhat older, severe-looking woman who sounded Dutch or Swedish and with
whom, notwithstanding her apparently grossly misguided views on contemporary animation, he seemed to be in absolute sartorial agreement.
Jordan took the last chair and nodded to the couple, who looked up for only an instant before returning to their debate. Even though he understood the words Jordan couldn’t make anything of what they were saying; the language just washed over him and got entangled in the scratchy flamenco that floated up from the lower level. A dusty guitar and a faded bullfighting poster decorated the wall behind the art house gladiators and a striped serape hung over the back of Jordan’s chair. The mama-san brought up a plate of just-fried soba and cold sliced omelet with a glass of ice and Jordan’s bottle, a Yamazaki eighteen-year-old single malt.
He’d never have been able to justify squandering money on something like that now, but when he’d first come to Red Bar a week and a half ago, the bottle had seemed a permissible luxury. And now here it was, paid for and waiting patiently for his return. He was a little surprised the proprietress had recognized him, but then again, not many gaijin came here and the place probably couldn’t hold more than ten people, upstairs and down combined.
He swirled the scotch in the glass. The ice was an aesthetic disappointment. The cubes in Japanese whiskey ads and billboards were sublime, perfectly cubical, yet rough-hewn and unique as though each had been hand chiseled from a glacier by a master craftsman. And of course they were absolutely clear while the pedestrian cubes in Jordan’s glass were frosted and opaque. But the scotch was superb, less peaty and smoky than its Scottish counterparts, but mellow and complex with a warmth that radiated from his belly to the tips of his fingers.
Jordan emptied and refilled the glass before devouring the noodles and egg. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He sipped the second glass of whiskey more patiently, sinking into the chair and letting his body relax and take in the warmth of the room. He was suddenly aware of the silence. The couple beside him had stopped speaking and were looking at him expectantly. He looked from one to the other, and the man repeated the question, “Are you American?” Without knowing why, Jordan shrugged and shook his head as if he didn’t understand.
“English?” the man tried.
“Sorry,” Jordan mumbled with what he hoped was a passable generic Eastern European accent and looked away. After a moment the conversation picked up again, now discussing Jordan’s possible provenance and the lack of decent manners in Europe generally.
* * *
It had been during the worst of it. Dr. Rosen had asked Jordan to come alone, in addition to the twice-weekly joint sessions with Stephanie.
“I’ve canceled your prescription, Jordan.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think you’re taking them, and honestly, that concerns me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Am I right?”
Jordan shrugged noncommittally. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
“I mean, without Steph—why just me?”
“Because I think you are on very different paths right now. I thought it might be helpful for you to talk alone.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. Finally he laughed and put his hands on his thighs to stand up. “I don’t have anything.”
“To say?” she asked.
“Yeah, that, too,” he said, standing up.
“Jordan, wait,” she said.
“Why? This is pointless. We both know that. Nothing is going to change. It’s all gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“Come on. Everything. The marriage is over—I know you see it. They’d all be better off without me.”
“Jordan, sit down.” Her voice took on an edge he’d never heard before. He sat.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I know where you are right now things may seem...difficult, maybe even hopeless, but you have to try and get some perspective. It will get better.”
His voice was tight and low. “Yeah, I know that’s what you people are supposed say but it’s not always true. Sometimes people’s lives are just fucked. Elizabeth is dead. She’s not coming back. The company is dying. I’m broke. I can’t even take care of my family anymore. The harder I try to fix one thing, the worse it is for the others. My kids barely know me. Stephanie blames me for all of it, and she’s right. I can see the future, Dr. Rosen, and you can, too. It’s shit. It’s all shit.”
“You know the saying, Jordan. ‘Suicide is a permanent solution to what may turn out to be a temporary problem.’”
He shrugged. “Still, a solution.”
Dr. Rosen tore off a small sheet of paper from the pad on her desk. She wrote something and folded it over. “Yes, but there are others. There are always others.” She slowly twirled the sheet on the smooth desk. “We always have choices.”
She slid the piece of paper across the desk but kept her finger on it as though she were unwilling to let it go. Finally she said, “Jordan, I have a great deal of ambivalence about this, but if you ever feel like you are absolutely committed to the idea of harming yourself and see no other way forward, please call this number first. Mind you, only as a last resort. They can help you but it will be permanent. Be sure. But if you are, remember, there is always another way.”
Jordan was brought back to the present by the gentle touch of the mama-san’s hand on his arm. He looked up. He was alone in the bar. They were closing. He murmured apologies and left a couple of one-hundred-yen coins on the table. The bottle was almost empty. He made it down the steep stairs without injury and passed into the night. The alley was empty except for a cat that was perched on the fence opposite, cleaning itself. Even Kabukicho was relatively still. A trio of girls in matching bob wigs—one platinum, one black and one pink—were sharing a cigarette outside one of the hostess clubs as an old man tried to sweep up around them. Back at the hotel Jordan climbed into his cubicle and pushed the laptop to the wall before curling up and falling soundly asleep.
Sometime later—he had no idea how long—he was awakened by a familiar ding. His eyes flew open. It was the laptop’s new-mail alert. How could there be mail? He had never logged on; he wasn’t that stupid. He grabbed the laptop. In the upper right corner the Wi-Fi icon showed full bars and connected. His mind raced through possibilities. Terry must have stayed here and logged on and now the computer had automatically joined the familiar network. That meant he’d probably been on for hours. He command-tabbed to the mail program. One new mail. No subject. He clicked on it. The screen filled with a photograph of Dr. Stephanie Parrish, smiling broadly. A man had his arm around her and was staring straight into the camera, also smiling. The flash reflected off his horn-rimmed glasses. His gray hair was swept neatly over to one side.
36
PICS
What about pictures? The police must have pictures?
probably. but you don’t want that in your head.
Yeah, but at least Id know. Id FEEL it.
entanglement?
Exactly. :)
I’m going to call the detective. I have his card somewhere.
don’t do that. it was him steph. i saw him. not that you could really tell by then. but the prints, dna, medical records, dental records, they looked at everything it was him. i know it.
But I don’t.
honestly i don’t think the pictures will help.
They might.
can’t tell anything.
I could.
37
TRUST
As Jordan stared at the picture of his wife and Sam, trying to make sense of it, a Skype chat window opened with a sigh. MAS799. You’re awake. Not a question. A statement. The cursor blinked patiently in the reply field.
Jordan twisted around in his capsule. He was startled by a sudden movement, then realized it was his own grossly distorted reflection
in the black TV screen whirling to meet his frightened gaze.
Where are you? he typed.
We are here.
* * *
“Do you trust me?” Alex asked.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Do you trust me?” The girl was lying on the bed in Genometry’s apartment on Marlboro Street. It was the lower floor of a mid-nineteenth-century brownstone with elegant bowed windows in the living room and a small garden off the kitchen in back. The police had done some damage to the floors and closets after Jordan’s disappearance when they had traced the apartment back to him. It hadn’t been repaired but Alex had had the cleaning service in that morning before texting the Bolshy to say it was hers for as long as she wanted it.
“Of course I trust you, Alex,” she said. Her eyes were half-closed and her mascara was smudged. She managed to always look like she’d just woken up, he thought. Literally bedroom eyes.
“You say that,” he said, “but do you mean it?” He took hold of one wrist and roughly pinned it to the bed over her head. She watched him with a bemused smile. She was naked from the waist up; her thick blond hair covered part of one breast and fanned out around her head like a Raphaelite halo. He brought her second wrist to the first and clamped one hand around them both. She was wearing a billowy white peasant skirt and discordant black cowboy boots. He ran his tongue up the side of her rib cage and her armpit, inhaling deeply. She smelled of talc with a hint of sour milk, no stubble even under her arms. When his tongue reached her tricep he bit down hard and continued into the damp crook of her elbow. She let out a breath of air but didn’t cry out. When he looked up her eyes were dancing. She knew this game.
“Do you trust me?” He was still completely dressed. His blue-and-white oxford was untucked over new jeans.
“I trust you.”
He released one wrist and pulled her to the top of the bed. He reached back under the mattress and pulled out a black leather cuff with fleece lining and a metal buckle. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly but she didn’t look away. She opened her hand and watched him secure the strap. She was breathing deeply and slowly. She reached her free hand to his chest but he knocked it aside and walked around to the other side of the bed. She extended her arm as he prized out the other cuff. Her eyes assented as he tightened the strap and tucked the end under the roller buckle.
Exit Strategy Page 13