by Fiona Maazel
“Thanks,” he said, but thought: A little to the left. Just a little!
“So, anyway, I was thinking,” she said. “About the baby? What if we named him after someone I kind of admire?”
She was breathing on his shoulder, and the heat collected in his armpits. Her finger traced a halo around his belly button. “Someone he can be proud of his whole life.”
Bruce tried not to move—his fists were tight—and yet there it was, his pelvis thrusting for her, gently and without commitment, but thrusting all the same while he watched in horror and waited for the tirade that was, instead, his wife vouchsafing her thighs, lathered in cream. He fit himself between them and smiled like an ape.
“Are you listening?” she said.
He was, he was! He was even going to climax with this name on her lips, their boy’s name, Bruce Jr., because all his life, secretly, he’d wanted to have his own father’s name—Henry—and felt this keenly and always in the presence of his younger brother, the doctor brother, the most renowned hematologist in the country brother, Dr. Henry Bollinger II. And Rita knew this—in the courtship phase of releasing secrets you’d never told anyone else, he had told her—and now, suddenly, his beloved wife was making good on what she knew. Bruce Jr.! His baby boy. And this despite everything he had done. She was a marvel, he was a cad, and from this incoherence grew the tension that stormed out of his body and all over her legs, the sheets, and the duvet.
He was panting so loud, he didn’t hear her at first. “The Helix,” she said. “They’re amazing. And the guy who started it?” She reached for a tissue and plucked the semen off her quad. “He’s a genius. So that’s what I want. They say he’s nicknamed Lo. I think it’s cute. So it’s settled, okay?”
“What?” Bruce said, though he was laughing. “Are you kidding?” And he laughed harder. “The Helix?”
“Stop laughing!” she said.
“What? I can’t hear you.” He was laughing so hard, the piss romped through his pipes and the brandy lees down his colon, so that unless he got to the bathroom now, the rain of his ejaculate would be but prelude to something much worse. And so he got up not having said yea or nay, so that Rita began to holler after him: “Thurlow! I want to name the baby after THURLOW DAN!” at which point, Esme, who had fallen asleep on the job, woke up with a start, certain she’d been wandering the world in dream and calling his name. Thurlow, where are you? Thurlow, I miss you. Wait for me, I’m trying.
Team ARDOR: Ready, willing, able.
A municipal building two miles from the Capitol. A conference room with window, wall, and two-way mirror. Around a table, four Department of the Interior employees who’d been summoned from their place of work and given roast beef sandwiches with extra mayo. Standing up: some guy who seemed distantly familiar to Ned and Bruce, but not enough to distract from the oddity and thrill of what he was offering, which was, in the main: hope.
Ned stared out the window, looked up at the sky. In 1986, the USSR seeded the clouds above Chernobyl so that they would deposit their radioactive load on the peasants of Belarus instead of on the cognoscenti of Moscow. And it worked. The Soviets had engineered the weather to kill people. The Chinese, too, were obsessed with the weather. With rainmaking to forfend drought. But in all cases, for good or evil, these people were frosting the sky and changing the world. It was science at its most heretical. Do it right, and you could conjure a storm that was godlike in its rage, steeped in the punitive grammar of the Bible. Do it right, and you could show the heavens who was boss. And this mattered to Ned, since his fear of powerlessness had always aspirated whatever went sloshing about his heart, so that he couldn’t date the same woman more than a few weeks, couldn’t acquire any real friends, couldn’t lock down a single feeling and make it last. But not for long. Cloud seeding and weather modification. It was why he’d been hired, or so he’d been told, and though studying cloud cover in Cincinnati seemed like a dubious application of his talent, it was still a chance to prove he could impose his will on the big things. Find his sister and be happy. Cincinnati, tallyho.
The guy in charge handed out envelopes. He said, “In each you’ll find a key to one of four lockers at the Greyhound bus station. In those lockers, you’ll find coveralls, badges, and clipboards. Anne-Janet, in your locker you will also find keys to the van, which will be parked on Court Street. Now, are you okay to drive the van, or do you want someone else to do it?”
Anne-Janet was startled. She’d been staring at Ned’s shoes under the table. Brown lace-up gum shoes that were popular among the preppies at her school circa 1993. Did that mean he’d been a preppy and was hanging on to the glory days via his shoes? Or did he just shop secondhand?
One of the fluorescents overhead began to strobe. The effect was to slow time in the room and to repulse its occupants even further into themselves.
“I can drive,” Olgo said, and he nearly stood up. Would have stood up, if not for his reflection in the mirror, which showed a man without purpose. Yes, he was working the Indian land claims, but no, he really wasn’t. So maybe he’d started moping around the house. Maybe, for feeling so aimless, he’d stopped managing his looks, such as they were. For instance, his shirt, muddied with raspberry ganache from his birthday cake. But was that any reason to leave your husband? Not that Kay had left. She was just out to graze. Kay Panjabi was grazing. “I can drive us from here, if you want. Right now. Anyone object to leaving right now?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the man. “But your enthusiasm is noted.”
Bruce lifted his arm in the way kids do when they want to look like they’ve volunteered but don’t want to be called on. Today was payday. If he did as told and allotted his income responsibly, he’d have enough money left to buy his wife and unborn a six-pack of Jell-O pudding snacks for dinner.
“You have a question, Bruce?”
“Yes. Can I keep whatever footage I shoot at the Helix House? Can I get the rights and use it for whatever I want?”
The man touched the hearing device lodged in his ear and said, “After it’s been cleared.”
“I’m ready to leave now,” Olgo said. “Drive right to that man’s door and blow the place up if I have to.”
“What?” Ned said. “When are we going?”
“Whenever you’re going,” Anne-Janet said.
Esme stood. She’d been watching them through the two-way, but she’d seen enough. She patched in to Martin and told him to wrap it up.
She slung her purse over her shoulder but stopped at the door to answer her phone, and then not to answer, because it was Jim Bach. He’d want to know about her progress. He’d ask to meet the team. She let it go to voicemail, and when she listened two minutes later, it was as she suspected.
He said: Esme, the stakes have never been so high. Imperialist pretensions abroad are kid stuff in comparison. Are you sure you know what this means? She stopped listening there. Of course she was sure. And here was why: Some people hear voices and the voices are bad. They say: You’re going to die alone. And: You suck. Sometimes, when these voices come to you via satellite because it is your job to listen, it is your career as a sleuthing mercenary, sometimes they say the last thing you want to hear: Thurlow Dan accepting money from North Korea. Thurlow Dan giving presents to a hooker. Thurlow Dan weeping into his pillow at five in the afternoon, knowing that if his muscles have failed to rouse him from bed, it is because they are instruments of depressing notice that he does not want to live. She had heard it all, and so when Jim asked, for the millionth time, if she understood what was at stake, the answer was easy: Yes, I understand, I understand better than you. Though if he asked for more, she wouldn’t tell him. She could barely tell herself. Time heals all wounds? Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha.
III. In which a cult leader makes a tape. In which an ex-wife gets her chance. Like honeybees to the hive, Hostage Rescue to the Helix House.
III. In which a cult leader makes a tape. In which an ex-wife gets her chance. Like ho
neybees to the hive, Hostage Rescue to the Helix House.
THURLOW GOT THOUSANDS OF EMAILS A DAY, which Dean reduced to the few that seemed pressing or of interest. Among today’s crop was one was from a girl petitioning him to visit her weekly meeting, it being the most popular in her district—hundreds aggregating to lament the darkness of 2000; the squandered surplus; WMDs; etc. He wrote: Dear Crystal, I’m glad your meeting has attracted so many people, except I encourage you to reacquaint yourself with the Helix charter and core principles because they don’t have too much to do with what you’re talking about. But then instead of sending it, he just shook his head. To another follower, who’d promised his mom the Helix would make him a better son, though he wasn’t sure it had, Thurlow wrote: The only promise that’s been despoiled is the one I made you. But then he deleted that, too. Turned off his computer and looked at the video camera aimed his way. There was one in every room of the house, programmed to record in his presence and to send this footage to his PC for compiling. He had modeled the system on Nixon’s White House, only he never forgot it was on. Often, he’d look into the cameras and talk to himself. His work proceeded from the unhappiness of a deserted man—who else did he have to talk to? Plenty of people, it turned out. As of today, the whole world. Now that he was about to obliterate the trust so many had put in him, it was better to address them all in one go. He cleared his throat. And began.
00:58:12:12: Greetings from my home in Cincinnati. You all know my name, and by the time you see this tape, you will also know what I’ve done. So I want to use this as an opportunity to explain. But first, a few caveats, chiefly that I am not a crazy. The press will be calling me a crazy, but I’m not. Sun Myung Moon is crazy. Victor Paul Wierwille. Jim Jones and Chuck Dederich. But I am not them. What I am is heartbroken. Which will, yes, lead some men to do crazy things.
I think, too, that the press will want to sensationalize what’s going on here, but I prefer the facts and a list of my doings: The seeding and growth of a therapeutic movement whose recruits are legion. A snatching from the Frenchies of philosophy the whys of bereavement and isolation. A crusade for the idea that if companionship makes you feel twice as lonely as you were before, it’s because you’re not doing it right. Disclosing, sharing. Principles! They’re in the charter book, no need to labor them here.
Other behaviors that might warrant the crazy moniker if taken out of context: a blossomed rapport with North Korea; an intent taken up by some of my people to declare sovereign multiple counties nationwide; and, yesterday, the detaining of four federal employees, for which I bear full load.
And so this video, to be distributed in the event this doesn’t work out as planned. Because there are other facts you can’t know unless I tell you directly. For instance: Two weeks ago, I saw my wife and daughter for the first time in nearly ten years. After, I spoke to my wife for about ten minutes, during which conversation she promised or at least strongly implied she would be in touch. But she has not. Not in person, not at all. And I have not been able to locate her or my daughter since. Another problem? I cannot carry on this way without them. And so: I consider these desperate times. Why wouldn’t they call for desperate measures?
The four people imprisoned in my den—I found them snooping across my lawn. In coveralls and work boots. They’d come in a repair truck, which idled by the curb. It bore the Cinergy logo and tag, The Power of Change, which claimed for the gas and electric company more esteem than it was due. I took down the license plate and had my head of security check it out. Then I waited. I sat on a couch, which felt like plywood.
I hate being here. This place is a clink. Three stories, fifteen rooms, stone facade, lintels. A Renaissance Revival in a corner of Ohio. See those windows? My head of security—his name is Dean—says they’re bulletproof, UV resistant, and self-tinting. I think my Murphy bed is some kind of escape vehicle. And at night, when I’m scrubbing my teeth with the electric toothbrush he gave me last month, I think it checks my vitals.
This part of Cincinnati was his choice, too. A couple miles north of the four-block nexus called downtown, with its stadiums and street-name blandishments, Rosa Parks Street and Freeman Avenue. Since 1990, people have been fleeing this town in droves. Mine was the first new place to go up in years, which meant that every contractor in town wanted in. And yesterday, when we needed extra rebar—because what is a kidnapping without a cell?—the material was here ASAP. Not that rebar is the incarcerating metal of choice—the stuff bends, after all—but the point is verisimilitude.
Dean called back to say Cinergy didn’t have any trucks with the plate number I gave him—no surprise there. And yet a little surprising. What sort of infiltration party was this?
I watched the four technicians clod through the snow. Their coveralls were insulated and bulky, so that one guy looked like he walked on the moon, another like he had a pillow between his legs. They’d come under the pretense of wanting to dislodge a manhole cover. Who had the crowbar?
The third tech was Indian and held his clipboard upside down. The girl had trouble with her tool belt. One of the guys stared up at the sky like maybe my house had launched itself there. The tech with pillow pants had a video camera. He held it to his eye with his index finger on the zoom. I looked at his face; he looked almost happy.
Next they hopped the fence and were closing in as though they meant to ring the bell. I thought about going out there myself. Instead, I buzzed for Norman, COO of the Helix, who seemed to have anticipated the call and was here in three seconds. In a double-breasted blazer and chinos. A button-down that fought with the insurgency of his waist. A tie and kerchief.
“I saw them,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
I could feel my Adam’s apple ascend but not come down. “Taking pictures,” I said. “We can’t have that.”
“It’s not a problem. And there’s nothing to see anyway. Just forget them. They’ll leave eventually.”
“And then what?”
Norman shrugged. He has a way of looking depressed no matter the context, as though his face were stuck in range of a vacuum hose hitched to his neck and always on. He is barely five-five, and alone with his color on this side of town. I’ve been told Cincinnati is the sixth-most segregated city in America, and to the extent that Norman is the only black man I’ve seen in months, I can only imagine what the first five are like.
“We go on with our work,” he said. “There’s an event with Pack 3, Colorado, in two days. You’re expected.”
“Our work,” I said, and I moved away from the window. How much was I really caring about our work? I tried to picture my daughter. She’d been so well bundled on the street, I could barely see her face. God knows what she must think of me. If she even knows I am alive, it’s possible she despises me in ways she feels without words but will put words to soon enough. She is almost ten, which is when your kid feelings petrify and cornerstone the prison that becomes your psychic life from then on.
I asked Norman if any of my people in D.C. had checked in. They had not. He wanted to know why, but I didn’t tell him. There are just some things you cannot share. Even with your oldest friend. Poor Norman. He’s been my wingman ever since we were kids. He has flirted with Centers for Change and Reevaluation Counseling, est and the Way, and lived in New York with Fred Newman’s crew on the Upper West Side. By the time he came to the Helix he was already steeped in a version of Manichaean paranoia: from his toil could develop an end to grief but in his sloth would be the demise of man. Talk about pressure.
He asked if we could just get on with the day. He said we had a lot to do.
And I knew he was right. I should forget about the techs, the snoops, the surveillance, and get on with my life. What I’m trying to say is: It’s not like I didn’t understand what this situation would do to Norman and the Helix. I even scanned his face and tried to find in its expression qualities that wouldn’t get trashed when this thing was over. I went: Hope, trust, loyalty, faith, and ticked off each
one. But that didn’t stop me. Because what kind of life am I having without my family?
I said: “Norman, this is what I want. I want you to bring those four people in. They are trespassing. We can’t have it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I want you to bring them in and keep them here until further notice.” And with that I turned my back on him, knowing that in some way, it’d be out of my hands from then on.
“But we don’t even know who they are. And we certainly don’t need that kind of attention. Florida just cleared five thousand. I’m going down there next week to make the Pack official.”
“Great. All the more reason to protect ourselves. Now just do what I say.”
His mouth opened, but he knew the discussion was over. He backed out of the room. His face seemed to drag across the floor.
On his way out, I told him to get them hoods. I didn’t want to see their faces, didn’t want to know their names.
Which brings me to the present. I now have four hostages I will gladly exchange for my wife and child. I will make a ransom tape and make my demands clear. But I don’t know if it will work, and if it doesn’t, then I would like to ask for something else, which is this: the chance to humanize this story so that among those for whom the expiry of my life will come as good news, there are two who might someday know of the sorrow wrought in my heart for them.
Thurlow put on his gym pants and a long-sleeved polyester crew and made for the sauna. Five pounds in five minutes, sweat therapy. He was what the professionals call TOFI: thin outside, fat inside. A skinny fat person, no muscle tone at all. His body fat percentage was 25, which he knew thanks to a medical resident, a dietician, who came once a fortnight to tell him how close he was to heart failure. She looked grim every time.
He opened the sauna door and found his crew waiting, as always, for the morning meeting. In attendance were Norman, Grant, Dean, in a sweat born of the excitement to which they were newly wed. That and the heat, 168 and rising. Norman wet the coals. The walls were Nordic spruce with burls that dilated in the grain if you stared at them too long. Thurlow sat on the top bench. His tennis socks were wet and printed the wood like flippers.