Now in the here and now Danhoff appeared to her. The ersatz parents and their kitchen were gone. Danhoff put his hands together. He spoke in his slight accent. You are so funny, he said, in his slight accent. In a pinch, the studiously atypical girl makes a beeline straight for the emotional main chance: Me. Our failed marriage. The undespoiled purity of the past (fingers up to form quotation marks), ah. Do me a favor, Sweet Pea. If you want out of your marriage to Mr. Justin, don’t turn me into some kind of saintly benchmark (fingers up). Don’t make our failure tragic rather than just dishonest and impatient. You were dishonest and also you were impatient. A saint (fingers up) you could have lived with. If I’d been a saint (fingers up), I wouldn’t finally have put my foot down about your routine abuse of my trust and my good nature, not to mention the patience I possessed that you did not. You didn’t think that was saintly (fingers up). You merely hated it. You hated that I ran out of patience, you hated that I did not possess unlimited quantities of trust, he said, in his slight accent. You liked the stable older man who could pay his bills and didn’t drink himself to sleep on the couch every night, but hated the wet blanket (fingers up) who wanted to know where you were and who wanted to know when you were coming home and who became annoyed with you for not telling him. I couldn’t live with it. You couldn’t live with me not being able to live with it. I tried. But listen: I didn’t let you go (fingers up) because I wanted you to be free (fingers up). I did it because once you had gone, and I had been alone again in my house for a few weeks, I realized how calm it was, how surprisingly easy things had become. How few questions each new day posed. It was calm and it was easy, around my house. The days were no longer puzzles to be solved, he said, in his slight accent. You want to know why I didn’t come up to you at the delicatessen that time? Because I had someplace I needed to be and I very sensibly thought, God, I could go over there and say hello and make her feel better about herself—grown-up, maturely beyond the marriage, all that baloney—but fuck it: I’m running late, and I’m not losing my place in line to make reassuring chitchat (fingers up) with her and her yuppie, I am not going to perform the hyperadult, hypermodern pas de deux of still good friends (fingers up); she’ll just have to sit there pretending she hasn’t seen me and sweating it out until I’ve finished here with my delicatessen business. You need to understand that while a saint (fingers up) would have welcomed, even sought out, your friendship, I wanted nothing of the kind. I had no desire to be your friend (fingers up) after you had left. The very idea of being your friend (fingers up), and the exhausting playacting it would involve, nauseated me, as it still nauseates me. I confess that I can’t comprehend why you would place any value on the friendship (fingers up) of someone whom you have deceived and betrayed. And so I chose to allow you to sweat it out while I tended to my business, at the delicatessen, to tend to my own ordinary physical hunger rather than indulge your insatiable emotional hunger not merely to be liked but to publicly appear to be someone who is liked, he said, in his slight accent. I’m gratified, I have to admit, that in that regard you’ve never quite stopped sweating it out. And I am amused that, among virtual strangers, you are famous (fingers up) for being liked while among the people whom one might assume are important to you, you make not the least attempt to be likable. But as I say, do me a favor and, if you feel guilty, don’t feel guilty because you’ve made me out to be this wonderful person who was the regrettable collateral damage (fingers up) in your great quest to discover yourself (fingers up). You didn’t think I was wonderful (fingers up) at all, and you didn’t discover a damn thing about yourself. You spent three years pushing me into a corner, telling me I had to stop this or change that. I had to change absolutely everything, and you had to change absolutely nothing. Those were your terms, and I accepted them for as long as I could, and when I said enough already you packed up your things and left. Feel guilty because you went into marriage in an incompetent way and bailed out of it in a contemptible way. And now you believe you’re coming up against Mr. Justin’s limitations just as you did with mine. They’re your own limitations, Sweet Pea, he said, in his slight accent. I think everybody seems clingy to you, sooner or later. That screwed-up childhood of yours bred some distinctive traits, including zero sense of accountability and a kind of obsessive secrecy. And that is just that. Not my problem. Now: I don’t know how you’re going to handle things with Mr. Justin, but do me a favor and leave me out of it. Oh, and you wanted impartial. Right here, I am as impartial as they come. In real life, who knows. In real life, I may still be completely shattered (fingers up) by your exit, perhaps I shall never recover (up), perhaps life has bright moments that turn darkly back on themselves when they ultimately remind me of my time with you (up, stabbing repeatedly at the air)—you’ll never know. But here, I am the purest strain of conscience, a virtual Jiminy Cricket (fingers up), he said, in his slight accent, before vanishing and leaving her on her own. The snow fell in the parking lot and, presumably, on the bay.
“YOU GOT THERE. In one piece.”
“Of course I did. What I was worried was would they close the airport.”
“Was the flight just terrible?”
“No dramas. No movie. No food. The pilot sounded extra-blasé when he announced the weather in Cherry City. The stewardess sounded extra-hysterical when she talked about making connections.”
“They do all the real work.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The pilot did land the thing in the middle of this total, what? Slurpee.”
“True. So.”
“Sorry I didn’t call first thing.”
“I was going to say. But I didn’t. See?”
“See what?”
“Well, that I’m not always, you know.”
“You have your moments of lucidity. Anyway. I called as soon as I settled in. The drive from the airport was the hardest part. The roads suck.”
“I was going to ask.”
“Just local guys putting plows on the front of their pickups, I guess.”
“They haven’t even started here, yet.”
“Is it coming down?”
“It’s pretty serious. There?”
“Like a snow globe.”
“Awww.”
“Anyway. I’m really tired. I think I’m going to turn in, if that’s OK with you.”
“Kat.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. The things that I said. I was just upset.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“I just want to make sure we’re OK.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.”
14
THE TV news said record snowfalls. It said power outages affecting hundreds of thousands in the United States and Canada. Shelters established in high school gymnasiums and National Guard armories. Air travel suspended everywhere. Police and sheriff’s deputies going door-to-door to check on the elderly and disabled. School closures, of course; for some it was just a snow day with snowmen and snow forts and snowball fights, while for others it was a harrowing encounter with nature’s fury. Then Kat watched footage of weather-related car crashes for a while, crude amateur videos that seemed to be coming in to the station so rapidly that it was airing them unedited, perhaps unseen. After a while the newscasters stopped commenting on the videos. TV silently regarded the footage it had appropriated from ordinary viewers. It was the purest spectacle. Kat watched a snowplow smash into the side of an SUV. She watched a car rear-end a pickup truck stopped at a railroad crossing. She watched a large older sedan jump the curb and crash into a gray municipal-looking building. She watched a city bus glide slowly, pinwheeling, down a hilly street before crashing into a lamppost. She watched a garbage truck skid into a hatchback and push it down a hill before crushing it against a wall. She watched a minivan drift across two lanes of traffic on an overpass and clip the back of a pickup. She watched a Jeep rear-end a parked panel truck and push it into the middle of an intersection, where two sedans crashed into it. She watched one sta
tion wagon crash head on into another while a passing car lost control, spun into the opposing lane, and smashed into an oncoming car. She watched a police cruiser skid out of control while attempting to park behind a car pulled over to the shoulder, smashing into it and then rolling into a ditch concealed by the snow. She watched an articulated bus jackknife repeatedly as it came out of a curve leading into the mouth of an underpass, violently whiplashing its rear end against the walls on either side. She watched a car, filmed from above, spinning, spinning, spinning along the length of the street, clipping cars parked on either side and the occasional car moving along the road, the camera panning to take in the long skid, which carried the car through the intersection to where it bounced against a lamppost at the corner, caromed into the side street, and then slid, helpless and backwards, down the street and out of view.
She hadn’t driven in snow like this in years. The main roads had been manhandled by the plows pretty well, demon boys like those she remembered sitting smoking in the cabs of their pickups, in baseball caps and down vests, recklessly barrel-assing along the asphalt furrows they’d dug, plows raised or lowered depending on how much noise they felt like making, but a lot of the side streets were blocked by white knolls of snow, the stuff that had been cleared from the adjacent roads and new snow that had covered it, and on those streets that were passable the car drifted and slid, only barely under her control. A few lengths ahead of her, she spotted an enormous 4x4 SUV spin out as it took a right turn, skidding sideways and broadsiding a car parked on the opposite side of the street. The sound of impact was dull, hushed in the snow, making it seem less violent than the televised accidents she’d been watching, although the sight of it cured her of any residual temptation she felt to take chances. She crept along, hearing the snow crunch under the tires and scrape along the undercarriage as she went. Snow still fell; it rose by inches on the scantest of surfaces, impossibly extrapolating the contours of the objects it adhered to.
The librarian had cheerfully said that the library was open “for business” when she’d called, but Kat was still somewhat surprised to find the lot cleared and full of cars. Two kids were having a snowball fight in a far corner where the plows had pushed the snow. She got out of the car and glanced at her phone. Ten fifty. Becky should be up by now. She dialed and got the kid again.
“Is this Brandon?”
“Who’s this?”
“Your mom’s friend. Kat. I called the other day.”
“Oh yeah. What.”
“Can I talk to your mother, please?”
“I guess. She might be not home.”
“Can you check?”
“I guess.” He put the phone down. Kat could hear the tone of the room, the sound of a television program. Then nothing. She looked at the screen: the call had dropped. The signal read as very weak. She walked, picked up a bar, dialed again.
“I was going to say, she better. Calls me out of bed and then hangs up? She better call back, damn. How you doing, honey? What’s up?”
“Becky. I’m going to see Salteau. If I can get a picture of him, can you tell me if it’s Saltino or not?”
“Wait, see him where? He’s in Chicago?”
“I’m here. In Michigan. Cherry City.”
“Cherry City? Are you shitting me? He wouldn’t show his face in Manitou County.”
“Yeah, you’d think, ennit? But he’s here, if it is him.”
“You think maybe it isn’t?”
“No. No, I’m guessing it probably is. Hello?” She strode out toward the middle of the lot, checked the screen, made a sharp turn, checked. “Hello?” She was about to redial when the phone rang. “Becky, this is a really terrible—”
“Kat.” It was Nables. “Before you term ate this con ation, ple sider the inciples I am attemp uphold in unicating with you. Communi ting, I might add, with forebea , ience, suppor or you goals if no cessarily the means by which you tain m, yet wi anding of the nee you pro y casionally feel to perate outs gular channels. I—”
“You’re breaking up,” Kat said.
“ at’s that, Kat? hat did ou s y?”
She hung up on him. “Makes you sound blacker, somehow,” she muttered. She spun around and her legs shot out from under her. She landed hard on her side and remained there for a moment, carefully awaiting additional pain. A man stood over her. Her first thought was that she hoped he hadn’t overheard her intemperate remark, but he merely offered his hand. She said, “I’m all right,” and got slowly to her feet. She rubbed her elbow. “My butt got the worst of it.”
“Are you sure?”
She took him in for a second, nodding. He had the same big dumb yokel look as lots of the people you encountered in the boonies, but his clothes were expensive, and so new that she wondered that the price tags weren’t still dangling from them. He was holding out her phone.
“Thanks,” she said, taking it. “How do you manage to get a signal in this place? I’ve been trying all morning, it seems like.”
“You dang city slickers,” he said. “They got one of them there telephone booths at the general store.”
She shook her head. “No offense. You just get used to reception one hundred percent of the time, and then—bloop! It’s gone.”
His earnest, round, American face broke into a smile. Then he started talking: “Relax. What do I look like, the chamber of commerce? Don’t worry, I don’t have any interest in the esteemed reputation of our local cell service. If you ask me—which you’re not, of course, but here we are—I think this country needs one guaranteed dead zone per county. Preserve the uncellular space! That’s the bumper sticker I’m going to have printed up as soon as I succeed in my nationwide grassroots movement to have bumpers brought back instead of those plastic things they have now. If this is indeed Unabomber, Michigan, then tell me where I sign up for my forty acres and a mule. Digital zero. Streets named after trees and presidents and pioneers, and good old-fashioned directions like north, south, center, up, down. Welcome and Get Lost! You saw it on the billboard on your way in, right?”
He shrugged, turned, and trudged toward the library entrance. She followed, waiting a moment to allow him to get well ahead of her.
She spotted him inside, sitting in a baby chair among a bunch of little kids. She took care to position herself on the other side of the room, although the guy looked harmless enough. If he hadn’t said a word to her she might have thought—spotting him here, sitting hunched forward on the ludicrously low chair with his knees together and his hands thrust into the tight gap between his thighs—that he was retarded, but his awesomely weird monologue proved him to be more exotic than that. She gazed at him with wary interest. Leave it to her to attract the town nut. Something about her made strangers wander up and raise the lid on whatever was bubbling inside their skulls.
Kat forgot about him when Salteau arrived. She took out her phone and discreetly took several pictures of him. Despite Becky’s colorful description, and the photo she’d seen that seemed to bear it out, he was dressed in a Carhartt jacket and a baseball cap, not in any special way that connoted I N D I A N, although the buckles, braids, beadwork, and embroidery generally had been regarded with distaste, even suspicion, by the working men and women she’d grown up around. He certainly made no attempt to “sound” Indian, either in accent or in phraseology, except for a throwaway joke about the weather being a result of the wrath of the Great Spirit over Cherry City High’s basketball team losing to Gaylord the previous afternoon. He could be an Indian. He could be an Italian, or a Jew, or an Arab, or an Armenian, for all she knew. She shrugged, put away the phone, and took out her notebook. His true identity may have been the story’s hook, but it wasn’t the point. The point, she reminded herself, was the money, the theft, the crime. People hid for all sorts of reasons that nobody cared about. People hid and nobody came looking. People walked right out of their high school nicknames and goofy hairstyles and into jobs of rickety dignity at IT firms and real estate offices in
Toledo and Pittsburgh, where nobody would ever think of searching for either star or stoner. They joined the marines and got good posture. They gained weight and lost their hair scanning groceries at Kroger’s. They earned doctorates in classics and comp lit and, really: if it were even possible to locate him, what would you say to the guy whose most salient trait had been his habit of carrying a skateboard from class to class once it turned out that he could read dead languages? Why would you want or need this new definition of someone locked in amber? Not the point. This was different. Saltino was a fugitive, of a kind, operating under an alias. The point was the past not worn away into unrecognizability but amputated. He began to speak.
The Fugitives Page 12