Layla ran to a small urban park and disappeared within. Barry made his way through the old sombrero- and baseball-cap-clad men and the rows of tired seniors gathered around a lonely fountain. Mariachi music played, and loud voices were singing an insipid song he intuited was a political message. Layla rounded the Franciscan hulk of an enormous cathedral fronting the park. Barry kept up but soon found himself on an empty side street, breathing heavily, his shoulders heaving in the Chihuahuan Desert heat. He was surrounded by mauled-looking cars and crumbling buildings. The developing world, as Seema called it. But unlike in Thailand or India or Baltimore or the countless other poor places he had visited, Barry was scared.
“Layla!” he shouted. “Layla, come on already!”
Some of the pitiful houses had small unkempt gardens beyond their wrought-iron gates. Barry did not know the names of the desert plants, could not admire their fortitude. Why didn’t Layla’s gardener follow him? Why didn’t the others? They had left him alone in the mission of fetching his girlfriend, past and present, from the bowels of a city where people had their nails pulled out one by one while their families gathered the cuota across the border. This was a street of death. He could feel it. If only the Polícia Municipal could come roaring around the block in their pickups. If only he could offer them money in return for his life.
Barry rounded a corner to see the poverty of the previous block replicated. A yellow maquila bus full of young women passed by. It looked like a used American school bus. Women who worked at the maquiladora factories were kidnapped and murdered during the 1990s. He had heard this from a girl in Layla’s class. Is this what he had come for? Not to trace Hemingway’s steps, but to walk his last?
“Hey,” he shouted after the bus. “Stop! Arrêtez!” The bus roared ahead, spewing black fume from a clattering exhaust pipe.
No. It wasn’t true. Barry did not want to die. He wanted to go home. But to which home? There was a truly scary-looking ginecológica cirugía, all of its windows barred with rusted metal. Women did not fare well in these parts. A shot rang out and Barry crouched down to his knees in front of the gynecologist’s office. Maybe it was a car backfiring. A big car. Maybe the maquila bus. “Someone!” Barry shouted. “Someone please! Hello? Aidez-moi!” The crumbling façades absorbed his voice. Not one window opened. If this place wasn’t death, maybe it was a different kind of eternity: an eternity frozen in fear.
The world spun around Barry, and his ankles wobbled beneath him. “Look at your watch,” he commanded himself. “Look at it.” He was wearing the Universal Tri-Compax today. He brought his face up close to the slowly gliding second hand. He followed the hand around the subdial. Time was still passing. The watch spoke the same language as Barry. It told him that the world was still moving relentlessly on its melancholy axis.
The Tri-Compax was the watch meant for Shiva. It had a gorgeous creamy dial that had survived from the late 1940s, unbelievable leaf-shaped hands, and thick, golden lapidated lugs. And the moon on the moon phase had patinated to a coarse cheddar yellow, like this archetypal idea of the moon that children seem to be born with. Barry had never seen a watch, or anything else, age so gracefully, as if rejecting the very idea of mortality. He had shown the watch to Shiva, and Shiva had looked at the moon phase and then looked outside with his restless circled eyes. It had been daytime, but his son knew that the object on his watch represented the object he saw out his window at night. The watch was proof that Shiva had complex thoughts. He had taken it to a watchmaker at the PX on Fort Bliss. It might cost him a thousand dollars or more to repair, which he did not have right now, but the Tri-Compax had to survive.
Which also meant Barry had to survive. He stood up to the unseen menace of the street. His whole body was now shaking as if from hunger. He did not know which direction was the right one. Maybe they were all wrong. He walked down the block. Then another block. Then another.
He rounded some corner and found himself looking at a Pollo Feliz, which smelled heavenly of grease. According to a festive sign, two pollos cost 159 pesos todos los días. A cartoon chicken was giving Barry the thumbs-up. It was open. There were people inside, and they looked no different from the people on the other side of the border. A family. Three kids, just like in Barry’s fantasies. Behind the chicken he spotted the familiar crests of the Franklin Mountains. So there was home. There was America. There was Jonah and his maps. There was Lake Success. It was so close. A woman was sitting on an old chair next to a bunch of shit she was selling off the sidewalk, a frilly black blouse like the kind you could find at the Casa Blanca store on the last block of El Paso, here hanging off a mannequin missing half a leg. There were many scary baby dolls that looked like they were reaching out to be burped and some kind of American packaged thing called Flavor Boost. There was a baby crib and women’s shoes, but not in pairs.
“Donde the bridge?” Barry asked her. “Où se trouve le pont? Donde America?” The woman waved him in the direction of his nation. A few blocks later he had come back upon the cathedral, its surrounding benches decorated with drawings of Pope Francis, a dove at his side. Next came the Avenida Benito Juárez with its dental clinics and dick pills. The group was waiting for him outside the pub, and there, too, was Layla, who briefly nodded his way.
“What the fuck was that?” he screamed at her. “We could have been killed!”
“Yeah, it’s really dangerous in Mexico,” Layla said.
“Your gardener told us to stay off the streets. Do you know where I’ve been?”
“Where were you?”
But he couldn’t quite describe it. It had just been an empty street. “I could have been killed,” he shouted. She laughed, loudly and openly. Her friends quickly formed two groups and took them apart, Gina and the dean whispering to Layla, Judah and the Jewish studies people trying to calm Barry down.
“This is not right,” he said to Judah. He was hyperventilating. “What’s wrong with her? Why did she run away like that? It’s like she wanted me to get hurt.”
“She’s under a lot of pressure. The election. The online stuff.”
“And I’m not under pressure? My business is failing. My kid—” Once again, he stopped himself. Once again, he had to restrain himself from the truth. “I taught her boy how to make friends,” he said. “I did that for her.”
Barry couldn’t wait to get out of Mexico. The Puente Internacional Paso del Norte was filled with darkened cars and, Barry imagined, patient passengers trying to see their relatives or get to an evening class at UTEP. The bridge was covered by a vast metal cage as if it were a prison. The Rio Grande was all but invisible below, a shallow grave of a river. Ahead, the El Paso skyline was bathed in moonlight, the Wells Fargo tower taking on gold against the darkened waves of the Franklins.
When Barry’s turn came, he smiled moderately and handed over the false passport to the border agent. What if the passport didn’t work? Joey Goldblatt said it was the best forgery in the world. They had gone to a basement in Brighton Beach, had been photographed meticulously by some Slav who kept addressing him as “Meeester Guy.” The whole idea of a getaway passport was supposed to be funny, a lark, although Joey had already been through three ankle monitors and now talked often of his off-the-grid retreat in Belize. “Welcome home, Mr. Conte,” the immigration agent said.
As they walked into America, Layla grabbed his arm. “Why did he call you ‘Mr. Conte’? What the hell was that?”
“Keep your voice down. I have a few legal names. It’s business.”
She looked at him with her impenetrable eyes. Barry felt like he was back in college. Every single one of their hundred or so fights began with that look. “Got it,” she said.
“No, really. It’s complicated.”
“I said I got it.”
They took a cab home. When he passed El Rincon he wanted to stop by and bask in its familiarity, maybe get a cup of vile c
offee, but they drove on.
Jonah was asleep, and Layla passed the Mexican lady without a word, even though she wanted to know how they had enjoyed her country. Why had he taken that passport with him? Why? It was for an emergency, in case he had to get out of the country, shack up in Belize with Joey Goldblatt and the rest of the “ankle monitor gang.” He was not going to prison.
She was on the bed, her thumb scrolling down on her phone. Good, he thought. Let her disappear into Nazi Twitter Land. But she put the phone down and looked at him. “Barry,” she said.
“The whole passport thing was a lark,” he said.
“It’s not about that.”
“Let’s go to sleep, okay? Pick this up tomorrow. It’s been a tough day.”
“Do you know what a burden it is to be the object of someone’s fantasy?”
“What?”
“How hard it is every day to be that person. You wake up, you think, Oh, here’s this man who says he loves me, but he doesn’t really. He’s just stitching together a version of me in his head. Coloring in the details. Adding nuance and plot. Every morning the same thought: Who am I supposed to be today? His lost college sweetheart? His partner in foreign adventure? His personal assistant professor? The mother to his future adopted children?”
“My friend Joey got me the passport. He’s a libertarian. We were just testing the system.”
“You want to hear something really weird?” Her voice was quiet. He knew that was not a good sign. He wanted to hear her sarcastic tone. He wanted her to dismember him with her intelligence. “Remember that story you wrote about me at Princeton? The Vermont shepherdess?”
“Am I going to be persecuted by seven pages of fiction my entire fucking life?”
“No. Lately I’ve been thinking maybe it wasn’t such a bad story. Maybe you had it right all along. Maybe that’s exactly who I am. Maybe I am the shepherdess. Maybe I get to be by myself, doing my thing. Maybe I get to be away from you.”
Barry started to speak, but the words died in his mouth. “I know,” she said. “You’ve got a lot to run away from. Your business dealings, your ex-wife. Your boy.” She sighed. “Oh, that poor boy. Whatever he must have done to break your heart, I can’t even imagine. But how can a child break a man’s heart?”
“It’s—”
“Complicated. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe you’re just a coward. And this isn’t the time for cowards. Not right now.”
“You can insult me all you want,” Barry said. “But I love you. I love Jonah.”
She propped herself up on her pillow and looked at him with a tired, dim-eyed sadness. “I do believe you love Jonah,” she said. “Oh, God, how it kills me to pry you two apart.”
“You don’t have to pry anyone apart. I’m sorry, but this is bullshit! You’re not a shepherdess. You’re a good teacher. A good woman. A good mother.”
“I’m not sure about any of those things.”
“Well, let me make you sure. Let me prove it to you. Let me prove it to Jonah, for fuck’s sake!”
“I’m sorry, Barry. I can’t. However hard you try, it just won’t work. That boy is mine.”
She turned away and curled up into herself. He watched her shoulders shake and heard the muffled sound of her crying. “Layla,” he said. He sat down and put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. “Please,” he whispered. “Please, don’t do this. I’m so close this time. I’m so close.”
He felt like he was back on that side street in Juárez. He didn’t know where to go. He looked at the laptop on his bedside table, picked it up, and headed to the bathroom.
He sat down on the toilet and opened up his e-mail for the first time in months. There were eight hundred messages. He scanned them quickly. Zero of them were from Seema, but one was from Armen Kassabian addressed to all their investors. He clicked on it. “As you are all too aware…,” it began. “Losses of this magnitude…” “Outflows…” “Volatility…” “Unwinding our book…” “Change in management…” He scrolled through the e-mail subject headings.
SINGAPORE CENTRAL PROVIDENT FUND FULL REDEMPTION
BRUNEI INVESTMENT AGENCY REDEMPTION
MARYLAND STATE RETIREMENT AND PENSION SYSTEM FULL REDEMPTION
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL SUPERANNUATION SCHEME REDEMPTION
LOUISIANA SHERIFFS PENSION AND RELIEF FUND FULL REDEMPTION
KANSAS CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS RETIREMENT SYSTEMS REDEMPTION
STICHTING PENSIOENFONDS ZORG EN WELZJIN REDEMPTION
FUND FOR MUTUAL ASSISTANCE OF THE EMPLOYEES OF IONIKI BANK AND OTHER BANKS REDEMPTION
QATAR INVESTMENT AUTHORITY FULL REDEMPTION
Well, so much for This Side of Capital. Everyone from Brunei to Baton Rouge wanted out. Another was an e-mail from his general counsel. Barry was being sued by his chief of staff for sexual harassment. The process server couldn’t locate him. “Good for Sandy,” Barry whispered. The final set of e-mails was also from his general counsel. “Subpoena of All Phone and Electronic Records,” one said.
He put the laptop down on the cold tile floor. He threw water on his face. Here’s what Layla hadn’t told him. That she knew he was a fraud.
She knew he was a fraud, and she wasn’t the only one. It was Javon and Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and Jeff Park and Brooklyn and everyone else he had met on the road. And now the government was formally after him. The only person who respected him in this world was the little mapmaker down the hall.
Where could he go? What was left?
He got a flashlight out of the utility closet and the boy’s plastic toy shovel. He walked over to the pool, knelt down on one knee, and dug up the crack rock.
* * *
—
THERE WAS a bus leaving for Phoenix the moment he got to the station. He bolted up the stairs and placed his rollerboard on the empty seat beside him. He was back. This is where he belonged. He had to see the country through to its end. He had to see his dead father one last time. He had to make it to San Diego, to the roar of the Pacific. And after California, what then? He looked at the dying Tri-Compax on his wrist. Maybe after the Pacific rang in his ears, his mission would finally be over.
The sun rose wearily over the United States and Mexico. The passengers groaned from their breakfasts, but Barry was still hungry. A baby wailed behind him. “Yo, bro, eat the Cheetos,” a man was saying. “You already dirty enough. I gotta clean you!”
Texas ran out and they entered the Land of Enchantment. The mud and industry disappeared to be replaced by the more symmetrical rows of pecan groves and the row of mountains beyond. “Next month will be four years since your mom and I have been living together,” the guy behind him said to his child. “Hold on, Holmes, hold on,” the man said. “Let me wrap that up.” Barry had never had to change a diaper, but now he wished he had. “Yeah, I smell it, that’s primo rank,” the father said in a loving tone. “Hey, don’t look at me while you do it! You a dirty, dirty, dirty boy.”
Freight trains formed ant trails between mountain peaks, rusted Union Pacific engines, and crisp blue Hanjin containers from Korea. Barry had seen something like this before, on the cover of a science-fiction magazine in his youth. Stocky growths that could have been junior cacti began to appear against the mountainscape. They stopped at a McDonald’s in New Mexico, and Barry bought a Hatch-green-chile double burger, which he paid for with Layla’s ATM card.
The bus was rolling again. Now they were just outside of Lordsburg, New Mexico, and the wallet in Barry’s pocket was cutting into his flank. He took it out and put it into his rollerboard.
The mountains were covered in green velvet. And behind the mountains were more mountains, some burnt ocher, some mottled brown. And in front of the mountains, rocks formed decaying castles and the skylines of third-tier cities. Arizona welcomed them as t
he “Grand Canyon State.” The beauty around the Greyhound continued undiminished. It dawned on Barry that our country was so much more than the people who inhabited it. The mountains would wait patiently no matter who or what.
Barry drifted into a luscious, heavenly, continental sleep. Sometimes his eyes would pop open and he would see endless fake-hacienda suburbs. He thought the bus driver may have announced their arrival in Tucson, because for a while the bus was still. He could almost hear himself snoring. He was having a dream about Brooklyn, the weight of her perfect lips, the touch of her silky palm around him. They were on a NetJets to Anguilla, en route to the Four Seasons, where he had once taken Seema. Wow, Brooklyn was saying, so this is what it’s like to fly. His hand was on her be-denimed knee, and he was promising to take her everywhere around the world.
The bus was moving again. He tried to get back to the Anguilla dream with Brooklyn, the erection still straining his jeans. This is what they call an infinity pool, he was telling her. But now, half awake, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. Her image faded. She was just this black stranger he had loved once. He felt uncomfortable about his thoughts. What if he had really tried to get to know Brooklyn instead of finger-fucking her a few hours after they had met? What if he had confessed his crimes, real and hypothetical, to Layla from the get-go? Was he a coward like she had said? What was happening to him? Was he dreaming or not? Something was missing.
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