by Fiona Maazel
At last, a legitimate reason to go to Cincinnati. Get dressed, get dressed! She had an emergency bag, of course. Jeans, sneakers, and BDU, which covered most of the bases in a pinch except when you wanted to look presentable, and God forbid a fractal pattern in olive should complement her skin tone. At least, she wanted to look better than her contact on the inside. She had never seen Vicki, but she certainly knew what this Vicki sounded like; she sounded like a donkeywhoreface in whore heels and thong. The microphone up her molars was highly sensitive. GSM technology, an itty-bitty mic plus logic board concealed in the same square of plastic a dentist uses for X-rays. Actually, it was smaller. She could keep it flush against her cheek, so that when it called Esme’s phone—the apparatus was programmed to activate in the presence of what it thought were voices—it was often at a moment of climax, when this braying donkeywhoreface finished her work on Thurlow. Esme was supposed to compete with that? She could have, in her day.
She would need pants—a dress was absurd—maybe leather, but nothing standout. If she drove, she could be there in nine hours. She could jump on a plane, but there were only so many ways out of an airport, and she wanted to keep her options open. It was possible that too much info would leak before she got there, in which case she would be more white whale than white horse come time to figure out who could resolve this mess. If every U.S. marshal was after her, it was easier to get lost on the ground. Of course, there was always military transport, but then, those trips tended to make her sick. Commercial airliners got the quiet corridors, but for military flight, it was the vomit air from takeoff till landing. Her last trip in a C-17 was her and eight men in ghillie suits, which were, in terms of odor, bear shit in the mouth of summer, fungal feet, afterbirth. So, okay, no C-17, just Esme and the Hummer and fifty plates for fifty states.
Jim paced the room. He said, “Why hasn’t the whore checked in, either?”
Esme did not know. Perhaps it was because Vicki was a whore with a whorehead for brains, though she kept this explanation to herself.
They were in their hotel; they had been here before.
Esme stared out the window. She could see, well in the distance, the Capitol Columns—their hats, anyway—which stood out among the gibbets of winter trees in the Arboretum.
Make a plan, revise a plan—this was a gauge of fluency under fire. Reassess for best outcome under amended conditions. She knew the drill, but Jim did not. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said. Palms braced on the window, head dribbling against the glass. She let the sequence loop, then said, “Look, just let me get to the house. I will talk him down, and everything will be fine. Don’t you realize what’s happened here? You’ve got a federal case dumped in your lap. Open and shut.” She said this with brio, and for a second she saw Jim thrill to the prospect: Thurlow Dan, in jail, for life.
He flumped in an armchair upholstered in red-and-white gingham and kicked out his legs. He had on a suit, twilight blue, and a red silk tie.
“Don’t you see?” she said, and got on her knees, between his legs. “I just did you a big favor. We couldn’t prove North Korea. We haven’t turned up anything on weaponry or funding for it. So probably I just saved your job.”
Gears turning. “You must be kidding. You planned for this? You are insane. One, my father-in-law. Two, even if we do nail Dan for kidnapping, how are we supposed to explain having sent in these four morons to begin with? I don’t think sacrificial lamb is going to make us any new friends.”
“Just let me get to Cincinnati,” she said. “Once they’re free, no one will give a shit who they are or what they were doing there. Who even knows about ARDOR? Just call in some favors.”
He flapped his legs, clamped them round her ribs. He said, “No one’s heard from that asshole yet, just his fat-fuck number two.”
“Thurlow hasn’t asked for anything?”
“Nope. Maybe he’s done us all a favor and shot his brains out.”
Esme looked at the carpet. There was a limit to what equanimity she could impose on her features in the presence of talk like this.
He palmed her face like bookends. They were eye to eye. “This was all your doing,” he said. “You got no encouragement from me. I came to you for counsel, given your history, but I never sanctioned this operation. You understand? If you do right on this, I know you’ve got a kid who’s going to need some help down the road. I got a daughter, too, remember? I know how it is.” His legs vised tight so that breath became a priority for her. But the message came through: if she betrayed him, the harm would go to Ida.
She ran her hands up his quads and at his groin. It didn’t take a second; he unzipped and folded his arms behind his head.
“I understand,” she said. “But I can talk Thurlow out. And you’ll be a hero.”
There was no action there, so she had to work hard. He said, “You won’t even get close. Lockdown. Half the ops are probably in his bathtub already.” But then his body perked up, and with it his mood. He laughed and said, “Jim Bach, national hero,” which enlisted the perk for darker pleasures. He flanked her neck with his thumbs and dug in.
She had travel Kleenex in her hand already; the job was clean and then it was done. She expected to be in Cincinnati by the end of the day.
But Jim had other ideas. He picked up a glass cigar rest from the table and brought it down on her head. When it was clear she was still breathing, he dragged her to the bathroom and locked her in.
IV. In which fathers do what they think is best. Betrayal, betrayal. In which: My darling little girl.
IV. In which fathers do what they think is best. Betrayal, betrayal. In which: My darling little girl.
05:50:21:03: MY DARLING LITTLE GIRL. My beloved Ida. This tape might be the last you see of your dad. I’m sorry about some of the other stuff on here. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older. I’m sorry, too, if I can’t finish the rest in time. But that’s okay. I have some time now.
I want you to know that I started to chase your mother the second she fled my apartment and that I’ve never really stopped. I called every hotel in the area. I spoke to the people who had moved into her parents’ house. Any clue where they went? No. Any forwarding address? No. In ’94, the Internet was hardly the resource it is today, but still, I made use of what I could. I put ads in local papers across the country. The response was overwhelming, and at first, I tracked down every lead. Bus, train, hitch, hobo. I went to every state in the continental U.S. and probably through at least half its small towns.
Eventually I got word she was living in New Paltz, in New York State. At the time, I was in Miami, but decided I could be in New Paltz in two days if I hitched nonstop. I remember the ride into town. A college kid picked me up, then asked me to drive while he toked on air freshener. Butane high.
There wasn’t a working stereo in the car, so this kid listened to his CD player. Sometimes, he’d slap the dash with his hands or sing along. But mostly he stared out the passenger window. I had driven long stretches of road before. I was accustomed to the populace of cars. The freeways. The solitude expressed by so many people en route together. But that day’s ride seemed especially grim. I was going to find Esme, and yet I was grim. Probably this should have set off alarm bells, but who has that kind of foresight in the moment? I felt alone, even more alone than usual, so that I began to tremble all over, with tremors you could actually see ten feet away. A paroxysm of loss for missing Esme but also, maybe, because of the loss we’re born into.
“I’m going to New Paltz to meet my girlfriend,” I said. I said it once, then louder, and finally I punched the kid in the leg. “She’s incredible.” Because, really, this shudder from within was too much. Sometimes hurt just likes a stage.
The kid took off his headphones just long enough to say, “That’s cool.”
“She was my first, you know. You always keep them close.”
“Look, I’m not much for talk,” he said, and he turned up the volume on his CD player.
We
made it into town. A town cloned from other college towns. Head shops, bookstore, deli. The kid said this was as far as he went. He gave me his number, and after I wandered around New Paltz for an hour, as if I’d run into Esme just for being there, I called him up.
There was a line outside his dorm room. Students with liquor and chips; one with a dog on a leash. I tried to get by. I tripped over a glass bong the length of my arm, but no one was letting me past.
The kid, whose name was Reese, poked his head out the door. He reached for me and clapped me on the back. “You get in free, my friend.”
“Why’s that?”
“I made some calls.”
I’d been to a lot of campuses by now, and Reese had probably heard about some poorly attended events in which I insisted that a repeal of solitude was not only sufficient but ample grounds for a movement with only one requirement to join: a desire to join.
For half an hour, I wallflowered while a couple made out next to me. After that, a girl with a pink Mohawk took their place.
“Nice spot,” she said. “One thing about me, I like to watch people. A place like this, you can really watch. All this space.” She outstretched her arms.
“These your friends?”
“No”—and she sank to the floor.
“Come on,” I said. “It can’t be that bad,” though I suspected it was. And I was right. She touched her belly. “Freshman with a bun in the oven. It is that bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
She returned to her feet. “Second wind, baby. Want to dance?”
I said no. I could not keep time. Even my heart beat erratically.
“Is it that you don’t want to dance with me?” she said. Her eyes had tears.
“Oh, God, no. It’s not that at all.”
“You think I didn’t want to be pretty? This isn’t by choice,” she said, pointing to her face. “How do you think I got knocked up, anyway? A girl like me, you get passed around.”
It was nearly eleven. I dropped my beer. Three hours of sleep in two days. The dog lapped up the suds before they were lost to the carpet. I decided to make for the bathroom, where I planned to fold up in the tub.
“You know, I haven’t told anyone about the bun,” she said. “Weird that I just told you, right?”
I nodded and smiled because this was the Helix, right here. She asked if I wanted to have sex. I said no, but that I’d be happy to stimulate her clitoris if she thought it would do her any good. She said this was not the most enticing proposal, but sure, why not.
She took my arm. Only, when we got to the bathroom, I really did collapse in the tub. I was just so tired. She said there was a Korean doctor in town who was an OB but also a healer of some kind and maybe, from the look of things, what I needed was some healing. She had been to see him about the baby and in the waiting room she’d met another pregnant woman who told her about the healing. In fact, the other pregnant woman had recently come to town precisely to see this Korean doctor, who was, she swore, the best.
I almost passed out, though not from fatigue. What did the woman look like? She was lovely. How pregnant? Six months. A blanched star of skin on her earlobe? Could be, yeah.
I raced down the hall and turned on the lights. I was looking for Reese; I needed his car. A boy getting oral sex on the couch said, “Ignore it! Keep going!” Reese said, “Sure, man, but when you get back, we want to hear about the Helix.”
The OB’s name was Choi Soon Yul. I found his office in the phone book and sifted through a dumpster out back until I found an electric bill with what I took to be his home address. Two hours later, I was banging on Yul’s screen door, smelling very much like the garbage I’d just been through. Porch lights went on, a dog went nuts, and I was sure someone would call the police, which would at least have given me a place to sleep. It was nearing 3 a.m. Instead, Yul came to the porch in slippers. Yes, yes, please would I come in and stop making that racket.
He was oddly self-possessed. He made us tea. I drank two cups and asked about Esme. He made a pretense of doctor-patient confidentiality but gave it up when it became clear I was not to be deterred and could, in fact, spend the rest of the night wailing on his doorstep. Finally he said yes, he had a patient who fit the description, but so what? Her file was in his office. I said we had to get it. He asked if I was threatening him. I was not. Only, was she okay, the patient? Was the baby okay? At last he seemed taken aback. And I was confused. Should I have been asking something else?
We agreed to visit his office the next day. In the meantime, he gave me a blanket.
I slept late into the afternoon and awoke to a flashlight pointed at my face and someone squirting me with water from a spray bottle. The room was dark; the shades were pulled. I felt massively hungover. I shaded my eyes and headed to the bathroom. My urine was a russet color I had never seen in nature. I was still feeling parched and groggy, so I went back to sleep on the couch. Next I knew, there was a voice saying, “Lift up your shirt,” and a hand feeling for the softest part of my stomach and something sharp breaking the skin.
“B-twelve plus,” she said, and again came the flashlight.
I swatted at the barrel until she turned it off. My Esme, six months pregnant, with hair parted down the middle and trussed in short pigtails. The look was not at all in keeping with the woman I knew, nor was her floral maternity blouse or canvas satchel. But it did not matter. She could have been in a chicken suit—my feelings were unchanged. I wanted to solder my body to hers, but it would not do to have Yul watching. He had served his purpose; now go away.
“B what?” I said.
“Twelve. Twelve plus. Will help with the grogginess. Yul said you drank two cups. One would have been enough.”
I rubbed at my eyes and tried to think. But—what?
Esme sat next to me. “You’ll be feeling better in a second,” she said, and she touched my forehead with the back of her hand. I was starting to already. She took my pulse.
I’d had many feelings in the anticipation of this moment, though none was on hand to help me recruit Esme back into my life. I had intended to plead and, that failing, to use the adamance of my passion to win a chance. But my head was still gruel.
You will ask why I loved her, and the answer is, I do not know. Once we’re past the qualities we all rejoice in our lovers—she is kind, she is funny, she is smart—there comes the X factor. Norman says that when you cite X factor, you are unburdening yourself of the onus to think. Imagine we chalked up all of our feelings to the X factor. Why do I kill? I dunno, it’s just got that special something. Norman has a point, but it does not attend to the experience of meeting a person who makes you want to live forever.
Esme said, “In any other universe, a man coming for Yul at three a.m. is the RDEI. Only it’s not the RDEI; it’s Thurlow Dan come to find true love. Jesus.”
“What’s the RDEI?”
She slipped her fingers under her glasses and began to press and rub at her eyes. “You’re going to cost me my job,” she said. “Which is almost ironic, since you pretty much got me this assignment to begin with.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, only that she was not saying what I most dreaded to hear. Go home, Thurlow. Leave me alone, Thurlow. I never want to see you again, Thurlow.
She leaned back into the couch and touched her stomach. “I’m going to be a tennis ball at a party tonight.” She lifted her blouse, and there was the outline of a tennis ball in white paint. “A costume party at the high school gym. I’ll probably be the only person without a date. Bare-balled and pregnant.” She laughed grimly.
I did not ask whatever happened to not wanting the baby. I asked, instead, if she’d been feeling okay. She shook her head. There had been some bleeding early on, all-day nausea that sneered at the misnomer morning sickness, and a test for CF that boded poorly. I watched her relate these difficulties and was just beginning to marvel at the stoicism with which she’d met each one when the unexpected happened. She wept.
The effect was to make of the B12, in contrast, a shot of tar. I vaulted to her side and took her hand. She wiped at the tears with the hem of her shirt and said, “Listen to me very carefully. Yul is a North Korean defector. You don’t know what I do for a living, but it’s enough to say he’s helping us. And so is this pregnancy. It keeps our cover. But, Thurlow”—and here she started to cry anew—“I’m scared. I’m going to have a baby. I’ve never held a newborn. I never even had a pet.”
“You had lizards.”
“They died.”
We stayed like that for a while, her crying into my chest and me acclimating to the opportunities grown between us with every tear. When we’d both taken our thoughts as far as we could alone, we aired them out. She said I should leave; I said we should marry. She said, “Have you heard anything I’ve been saying?” I said, “Yes. Perfectly.” We set a date for two weeks later.
I’m aware that for Esme, there was a degree of convenience to these nuptials. But that did not have to preclude feelings she might have had for me, or could grow to have in time. I saw the look on her face when she realized I was there to stay. There was incredulity and some pity—I would, after all, do anything for her—but also relief and gratitude. She would not be going through this alone.
In the weeks that followed, I heard more about Yul. He and his wife had escaped from North Korea through China. Crossed the Tumen River from Musan in the northeast territory using a flotation device for children. Traveled four thousand miles through the mountains down the coast, shirking border patrols, opium smugglers, and slave traders, any of whom would have sold his wife as a prostitute and returned him to North Korea, where he’d have been executed or jailed in a concentration camp, some of which are thirty miles long. Bigger than Auschwitz. Possibly more brutal in the day-to-day. They traveled at night, mostly by foot, passing into Vietnam and Laos, over the Mekong and into Thailand.
The Chois were not forthcoming with their experience; I got it all from Esme, in whose pillow talk were breaches of security that could have won Pulitzers for every journalist in America. Yul, though a trained OB, had worked as a propaganda writer when it became clear this was the only way to support his family. To live in Pyongyang and get rations that rivaled in bounty what the government allotted its prize citizens, among them four American soldiers who had crossed the DMZ in the early sixties and lived in Pyongyang ever since.