“This isn’t like that bullshit in the West Bank,” he said to Aviva. “This shit is real.”
“How was that bullshit?” Noah said. “The IDF could’ve fucked her up.”
“Yeah, but did they? No, they did not.” Axel said. “They didn’t even bother to show up. You guys had no firearms, there was no confrontation. It was all a big nothing.”
“At least we were there,” Aviva said as they continued to make their way along the path.
Axel just snorted.
To the east, a roiling bank of indigo clouds appeared over the hills. The sun vanished and cast the toy soldiers in shadow. In the darkening woods, Axel ran them through a series of drills, dashing, crouching, maneuvering on their stomachs, drawing their weapons, aiming, pretending to fire. When Aviva stumbled and fell, he asked if she was all right. He showed Imani how to take her gun apart and put it back together. But when Noah questioned why they were doing a particular thing, Axel ordered him to shut up. Since what they were engaged in was essentially a form of play, Noah accepted his lesser role but expected Axel to not act like a dick. When their legs got tangled as they ran through a clearing, Axel shoved Noah, who went sprawling and cursed his friend.
“You could get us killed,” Axel said.
“Dude, it’s a game,” Noah replied as he got up and brushed leaves off his clothes. A stray leaf stuck to his head and Imani plucked it off.
Aviva believed she had acquired all the sense memories necessary for her performance after five minutes but did not want to complain and be labeled a lightweight. It felt silly to be running around the woods waving guns as if they were Sandinistas or members of FARC. Only Axel seemed to be taking it seriously.
When they had been training for nearly an hour, Noah asked why Axel had loaded the guns if he didn’t want anyone to shoot.
“Because people need to feel what it’s like to hold power in their hands.”
“I want to shoot,” Aviva said.
Axel said: “So shoot.”
Noah looked at Axel in surprise and asked why he was going to allow Aviva to fire her gun while he (Noah) was not permitted.
“Because Patty sprays her weapon, fool.”
Axel had always dictated the terms of their friendship. He led a wilder life, read more, agonized more. He was on his own in the world while Noah would graduate from college in a little over a month free to pursue his destiny with a manageable level of student debt. Because of this disparity, Noah didn’t mind being patronized by him when they were alone, but it was unacceptable in the presence of Aviva and Imani.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Axel said.
Noah was pointing the pistol at him.
“Just seeing what power feels like.”
“Put the gun down, fool.” Noah kept pointing it at him. He narrowed an eye. Was he aiming? “I said put the motherfucking gun down. Lay it on the ground and step away from it.” Noah did neither. Aviva watched them, unable to believe what she was seeing. These guys had been friends since freshman year. What damage was programmed into their DNA that made the threat of violence the wordless language of their gender?
“Drop the gun, Jewboy,” Imani said. She was leveling her rifle at Noah’s half black, half-Jewish dreadhead.
It started to drizzle.
Aviva stared at them in mute disbelief. She had never heard her friend use that word in conversation. Axel told Imani not to worry; he would handle this. She did not obey.
“Lower your weapon,” Axel told her. He was oddly relaxed.
Imani looked at him as if he had asked her to whistle. “What? Why?”
“Just stand down, girl. I got this.”
The intensity of the rain increased. To Aviva’s relief, Imani tentatively lowered the barrel of the rifle. The situation was getting too weird. Axel addressed Noah: “How do you like the way power feels?”
“I like it, white boy,” Noah said. “Let me see you drop your weapon.”
“Why do you want me to do that?”
Noah said: “Drop the motherfucker.”
When Axel’s pistol landed on the moist forest floor, it barely made a sound. Aviva saw Imani catch Axel’s eye with a look that asked if he wanted her to aim her gun at Noah again, but with a faint shake of his head, he indicated no. Rain angled down their faces.
Noah ordered Axel to step away from the gun. “And Imani, don’t point that fucking thing at me.”
Axel backed away from the gun on the ground. Aviva rushed forward and grabbed it.
Axel asked her: “Are you with him?”
“You’re both acting like idiots,” Aviva said. “Quit fucking around, Noah.”
Ignoring Aviva, Noah said to Axel: “You’re not a revolutionary, dude. You just play. What have you ever done? That story you tell about liberating the pig farm? Couldn’t find it anywhere on the Internet. How do you explain that? An army of liberated pigs wandering the hills of Oregon and no mention anywhere? You’re full of shit.”
Aviva looked from one boy to the other, guns dangling at her side. Axel glanced toward the guns and then looked at Noah. Ten feet separated them. Then, he slowly walked toward the barrel of Noah’s weapon.
“Shoot me,” Axel said. “See what it feels like.”
Noah had been holding the pistol perpendicular to the ground. Now he shifted his arm, and the angle changed to forty-five degrees.
Aviva could see his hand was trembling. Axel was five feet away.
She said: “Put the gun down, Noah.”
He ignored her. Axel took another step. Aviva could not comprehend what she was seeing: Two blood-engorged rams butting heads in some parody of natural selection.
“I’m warning you, man,” Noah said, but when Axel grabbed the gun from his hand, he did not resist. He seemed relieved and smiled stupidly. He said, “I was just playing,” and gave a nervous laugh. But distress seized his features when Axel in one lightning motion pressed the barrel against Noah’s temple.
A current of terror shot through Aviva, paralyzing her.
“Axel, what the fuck,” Imani screamed.
“Never give up your weapon,” Axel hissed. Noah closed his eyes, quaking.
Axel pulled the trigger and—nothing.
For a moment, no one said anything. Axel stepped away.
“You m-m-motherfucker,” Noah stammered. The air had flown from his narrow body.
Aviva shoved Axel hard. “You’re such an asshole!”
Axel did not respond to her admonishment. Instead, he jammed the pistol into his belt and said, “You think I’d give any of you clowns a loaded weapon?” Then he threw his head back and uncorked a whoop of laughter that rose to the treetops where it frightened the starlings roosting in the branches.
It was still raining when they marched out of the woods. Axel kept apologizing. Noah didn’t want to hear it at first, but Axel called him an outlaw and a bad motherfucker, said he could shoot all he wanted, and they could even go to a gun range across the river that afternoon.
The bass and drum of thunder grumbled, and lightning strobe-lit the landscape.
“Follow me,” Noah said and ran across the street toward a white Colonial with green shutters. Aviva and Imani looked at each other and trailed him, Axel in the rear. Noah appeared to have recovered from what happened earlier. Behind the house, a set of concrete steps led to the back door. Noah climbed the steps. The door had nine rectangular windowpanes. Aviva thought he was going to punch one of them out to let them in.
“Noah, don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” There was a key under the doormat. “Do you want to stand out here and get soaked?”
Aviva considered his question. It was breaking and entering.
He inserted the key in the door, turned the knob, and stepped inside.
“This place is the shit,” Imani
said from the dining room.
“Who lives here?” Aviva asked. Having overcome her trepidation, she was looking around the kitchen.
“Some white-collar criminal,” Noah said.
Aviva looked alarmed. “So, he could show up any minute?”
“He’s only here in the summer,” Noah assured her. “I did a little sleuthing. He works mostly in London.”
Rain pelted the windows. Noah found a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and drank. He lit a joint while Axel rummaged through the cabinets. Noah offered Aviva the joint, but she declined. Axel took a hit.
Overhead Aviva could hear the faint sound of Imani’s footsteps. They had stopped sleeping together. Aviva had told her she had been shouldering a lot of conflicting emotions and wanted to handle it alone. Imani had accepted this, said she had never really believed Aviva was gay and asked if Aviva was breaking up with her so she could fuck Axel. At the time Aviva wasn’t sure if that was true, but after what had happened with the guns, she did not want to be Axel’s lover.
Now she watched him searching for the sell-by date on a can of peaches. He had grown wilder from when they first met. She still found him charismatic, but now his behavior evoked the kind of guy who, just to be provocative, might hold a gun to a woman’s head while he was inside her. His fearlessness appealed, but the less assertive Noah was more like someone she could see herself with as an adult. That was the thing: None of them seemed like adults, not Imani, or Noah, or Axel. Aviva didn’t seem like one to herself, and she was about to graduate from college. What she felt more than anything was puzzlement. Upset by the situation with her father, uncertain in her sexuality, and now the passive participant in a crime. It was disorienting to be standing in a house she had broken into. It was wrong, she knew, but the lawlessness excited her.
Axel opened the can of peaches. Imani entered the kitchen waving her phone and asked if any of them had seen the email she had blasted to everyone with a Tate College account. No one had checked his or her in-box that morning. Imani took a hit from the joint Noah offered. Then she read:
“I am writing to you as a student at Tate College and a progressive woman of color—”
Imani savored the text, relishing her performance, emphasizing words like toxic, and depraved, and magnolias. No one looked at Aviva, who tried to hide the shame lacerating her. The reading seemed to go on for a long time.
When Imani finished, Noah said, “That’s brilliant.”
“The writing’s impressive,” was Axel’s comment.
Imani informed them that she had done a great deal of reading on the subject.
“How come you didn’t show it to me before you sent it?” Aviva wanted to know.
Imani said, “I knew you might have a problem with it.”
Aviva thought about defending her father. She had not spoken up on his behalf to anyone since the scandal occurred. What had he done, really, other than say a few words in a challenging situation that had become a Rorschach blot for whoever heard them? But people chose what team they were on, and she knew hers. Or at least she thought she did. These were her people, restless, empathic, champions of the downtrodden. But they didn’t know her father as she did. It was one thing for her to criticize him, but it was entirely different when the world seemed bent on destroying the man. Jay Gladstone may have been an oblivious plutocrat, but he was hardly a personification of racist evil. He supported her endeavors, donated enormous sums to the right causes. Yet the terrible condition of the world was the result of the people that were in charge, and he was one of them.
It was difficult for her to choose whom to betray.
“My father might be a lot of things,” Aviva said, “but he’s not a racist.”
“Why did he say that shit?” Noah asked.
“He was in a wonky situation and blurted out some words,” Aviva said. “It sounds bad but now the whole world is on his ass, and it’s not fair.”
“The man’s a stone racist,” Imani said.
“Whether or not he’s racist,” Noah said, “he supports an economic system that continues to benefit from the exploitation of people of color, so yeah.”
“He is not racist,” Aviva repeated. To Imani: “You were in his house, and you sincerely believe my father is racist?”
“Hey, I get that he can’t help it. He’s a creature of the system.”
“That is such bullshit,” Aviva said. “He’s a human being.”
“You forget that he threw me out.”
“Not because you’re black.”
“Why then?”
“Because you were rude.”
“Well, you can take the girl out of Westchester,” Imani said.
The women faced off. The degree of anger between them was new. Axel had been drinking peach juice from the can. He burped. “Hey, don’t forget you two are on the same side. The empire wants us to destroy each other.”
Aviva and Imani took Axel’s interjection as an excuse to stand down.
“I defended you,” Aviva said.
“Whatever,” Imani said. Then: “Okay, I may have been a little rude.”
Conflict temporarily defused.
Noah was looking at his phone. “There’s a blast from the college president. Your dad’s out. He’s not speaking at commencement. It says he voluntarily withdrew.”
The effects of the abuse her friends heaped on her father compromised the relief Aviva felt at this news. That he had not been sufficiently moved by his own daughter’s request, yet had capitulated as a result of Imani’s efforts was beyond Aviva’s capacity to understand.
“I’m almost sorry the situation got resolved,” Noah said. “It would’ve been fun to protest.”
“Could’ve occupied the president’s office,” Imani said.
“Kidnapped him,” Noah said.
“The college president?” Axel asked.
“Why not?” Noah said. “It’d be an epic prank, like something from the sixties.”
“The American left is dead,” Axel said, beating a favorite drum.
“You can still do it,” Imani said. A deft ironist, her tone was indeterminate.
Noah said, “We can grab him at his house, get him over here, and keep him prisoner for just, like, a day. If we wore balaclavas, he’d never know it was us, and he’d be blindfolded anyway.”
“Okay, that’s stupid,” Imani said, clarifying her position.
“You sound like you’ve thought about this,” Aviva said.
“All we need is duct tape, rope, and a blanket,” Noah said.
Was he serious? Aviva had no idea.
Axel slapped his palm on the counter. “You know who we should kidnap? Aviva’s dad.”
“That’s even more stupid,” Aviva said.
“No, listen,” Axel said. “When the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst they got her father to donate, like, millions of dollars’ worth of food to poor people in the Bay Area. What if we did that?”
“What, like, fake kidnap Aviva?” Noah said.
Aviva nearly shouted: “No one is fake kidnapping me!” They were all looking at her, and she experienced the creeping sensation that these friends, all of whom were from another social world, might suddenly determine she was a class enemy and turn on her. “How high are you guys?”
“Kushed out,” Noah said, laughing.
“You could always fake kidnap me,” Imani said. “For ransom, you might get a corn dog.”
Aviva did not appreciate the stab at humor.
“No, no, no,” Noah said. “We kidnap Aviva’s dad, we hold him here, we make one of those hostage videos and get him to denounce racism.”
Aviva said, “That’s so beyond dumb, I don’t even—”
“Why?” Imani asked.
“Well, first of all,” Aviva said, “it’s a major crime. Let’s start wit
h that. Then he’s supposed to write a check and end world hunger?”
“Dude is a billionaire,” Axel pointed out. On his tongue, it sounded like “child molester.”
“He could do it,” Noah said.
Aviva thought about her father’s multiple homes, the enormity of the wealth he controlled, and she considered the toxicity of their last encounter. But kidnapping? Audacious, definitely, and exceedingly simpleminded.
“You guys should do it,” she said. “I’ll visit you in jail.”
Noah began to giggle from the weed. He shook, doubled over as he envisioned the hilarity of this group of pranksters in jail. They waited for him to finish.
“Please do,” he said with a long sigh as he regained control of his thin body.
“We can’t do it without you,” Axel said to Aviva. When she asked why they needed her help, he said: “Because he’ll never press charges if you’re part of it.”
Aviva thought about her father and how he had mucked up her life by leaving her mother, by being unnecessarily wealthy, and—in her view—wanting her to be something other than what she was. Now, as a result of his increasingly baroque public difficulties, the problem had only intensified. She resented him for never being able to accept his imperfect, oversensitive, yearning daughter. That fate had bound them together was cruel. She was exhausted from being tarred with the Gladstone brush. Could she never escape this imposed identity? Children separated from parents, it was the natural order; and yet was there ever a real escape from the DNA bequeathed in the form of physical characteristics, psychological traits, all of the visible and invisible qualities that bind families? She was dying to break away, but the mystifying love Aviva felt for her father made the situation intractable.
“I’m not kidnapping my father.”
“What about a bomb?” Axel said. They looked at him skeptically. Somehow, this seemed on a different order of magnitude from kidnapping. “You know, like the Weathermen.”
The Hazards of Good Fortune Page 44