by J D Ventura
“You’re feeling better, I can tell,” said Jessica, pulling out an electronic cigarette from her purse. She took a drag and the tip of it glowed blue.
“I am, thanks to you.”
Jessica was exhaling the vapor toward the curtained window to her left when Dylan materialized with their drinks. He placed them on the table with a graceful, wordless choreography and was then efficiently gone.
Jessica raised her glass. “No, thank you. Your friendship means a lot to me, Claire-”
Claire held her drink up to meet Jessica’s toast. “Me too, I-”
“Let me finish,” Jessica said with a smile. “When Nick and I divorced, you were there for me. The last few years have really sucked. Burying myself in work has helped, but talking some of that shit through with you was the best therapy for me. You, well, you understand what I was going through. You, more than anyone I know, knows what it’s like to…lose someone.”
Claire retracted her glass and put it on the table. “Any guess on where the restrooms are?”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you by saying that.”
Claire waved her away with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “It’s fine. Really. I just have to pee. I’ll be right back.”
In the restroom, Claire sat in one of the stalls and succumbed to the emotional aftershock of Jessica’s words. Hot tears hit her bare knees as she picked at the seam of a new roll of toilet paper, anxious to dry her eyes before her makeup began to run. She knew Jessica meant Jenny, but she could just have well been talking about Sam. She thought about something her therapist, Dr. “Call-Me-Miranda” Roth, had said, right after Sam was diagnosed.
“Claire, it is one thing to merely cope with grief and loss, and another thing to survive it.”
“I don’t understand,” Claire had said at the time.
“Grief is like cancer. If treated properly it can go into remission, like cancer. But, also like cancer, grief can come back. Just because you get through it once doesn’t mean it’s through with you. It may come again. You have to be ready to say to it: I know you and I am braver from that. I refuse to merely cope with this. I am going to become better because of this.”
Easier said than done, Claire thought, before flushing a wad of tear-soaked toilet paper. At the sink, she splashed her face with water, took a deep breath and then headed back to the table. Jessica was on her phone and, as soon as she saw Claire, mouthed the words: “I’m sorry.”
“Barry, listen to me, the brief needs to cover a lot of ground in as little time as possible….yes….no….I don’t think that is going to hold water with this judge…Barry, Barry, one second…” Jessica put the call on mute and stood just as Claire sat back down. “Sweetheart, I’m going to take this outside. Don’t want to be rude. Order me whatever. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I swear.”
“No worries,” Claire whispered, shooing her friend away. “Go, go!”
Dylan reappeared. “Another drink?”
“You read my mind,” Claire said.
“Certainly,” he replied and vanished again.
Two more drinks came and went and finally she did exactly what Jessica had asked her to do and ordered for the two of them. By the time Jessica came back to the table, her leg of lamb with Cajun-inspired spicy salsa was stone cold and Claire’s blackened grouper was half gone.
“Jesus,” Claire whisper-shouted. “I thought maybe you went back to your office.”
Jessica wasn’t sitting back down, but instead reaching for her purse on the floor alongside her chair.
“You’re kidding me?” said Claire, loudly enough, and with enough unedited disappointment in her voice, a sixty-something silver-haired woman at the table directly across from them turned and stared.
“This thing is such a cluster, one of the senior partners is heading into the office and leaving his wife dateless at a restaurant, too. I have to go. I promise I will make it up to you. Finish your dinner – and mine if you want. Here is the house key. I already paid for the meal. Don’t wait up for me. I think I’m in for a long-ass night.”
Claire sat silently as Jessica kissed her on the forehead, turned and left.
Claire fell into boozy sulking. She ordered another cocktail from Dylan. All dressed up with nowhere to go! You might as well be in your kitchen at the Village. She fished in her purse for a Xanax, which she shamefully kept in an empty Bayer aspirin bottle. Some sort of haunting Gregorian chant, backed by synthesizers, modestly pulsed from the speakers overhead. She imagined how wonderful it would be if they were on an actual train right now, the locomotive’s steam engine carrying these people into the dark night, across a great flat expanse, into a dark and mysterious inevitability.
Claire’s heart was beating hard. Suddenly she had to get off the train. The walls felt like they were inching inward. She could now see the lines on the silver-haired lady’s face, could smell her husband’s bloody filet mignon, could feel the collective body heat of the other passengers. You’re panicking Claire. Why are you panicking, Claire? Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Just get up and walk out.
She stood slowly and carefully made her way to the exit. At one point, Dylan asked her if she was feeling all right. “Are you sure?” he had pressed.
“Exit,” she managed. “Where’s the exit?”
The cool night air hit her hot face like ocean waves onto a lava flow. The sudden change in temperature and oxygen levels made her nearly faint with relief. On wobbly heels, she stumbled to the street, holding a glass bus stop enclosure for support while willing herself not to puke. It started to rain. She went to the front of the structure and sat down on the metal bench inside. She hadn’t had a panic attack in a while, and this one was a doozy. Long ago she had given up trying to figure out what triggered them. It was as impossible and pointless as trying to make sense of a fever dream.
Claire fished around in her purse for her phone but it wasn’t there. She had left it on the table in the restaurant. Shit! They must think I’m a nut and an alcoholic. I don’t want to go back in there. Dammit, Jessica. If you only knew how fragile I am right now, you would have told your boss to shove it up his ass. I am desperately fighting to hold my shit together.
Claire stood up and pulled at the hem of her dress, inhaled deeply and walked back into Manifest. A different hostess, a twenty-something Asian woman, greeted her.
“Welcome to Manifest? I’m Twee. Do you have a reservation?” she asked, her raspberry-colored hair sprouting into two glittered pigtails.
“Um, no, no. I just ate here and I think I left my cell phone on the table. I-”
“Yes, oh, sorry to interrupt you. If they find anything like that, they bring it to the bar in Boxcar One, which is just down this hall to my right. Claire thanked the woman, who nodded as she answered the ringing phone behind the reservations desk. The dim lighting and the Gregorian chanting and electronica fusion were back and she felt a bead of sweat roll down her spine. An entrance had been cut into the back of the railcar and, as Claire walked through the threshold, she noticed the exterior sliding doors were now closed. On the interior side of the doors were six large high-definition televisions. On the flat screens were images of a swiftly passing countryside, as if the doors of the boxcar were open and they were riding on the train, through a moonlit night illuminating mountain-encircled plains.
Young, impeccably dressed couples filled the little café tables throughout the car, the back wall of which was blown out to allow for more room. The lounge area spilled back into the building itself. The actual bar was the entire nose of a locomotive, its massive round face crowned by a black smokestack behind an ornate, lit gas lantern. The whole impression was as if the front of a locomotive were about to plow into you while you gingerly sipped your cocktail. Claire willed her heart to slow down. Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Hi, I left my cell phone upstairs,” is all you have
to say, Claire. Then just call it a night.
The bar was busy, but not crazy. Claire edged in between two barstools and waited until a college-aged black bartender turned his attention toward her expectant gaze. “Hi, I’m Jay. What can I get you?”
“Oh, um, thanks, no, I, um, I left my phone upstairs. My cell phone. I was just wondering if maybe someone turned it in. Maybe?”
The bartender was nodding his head. “Are you Claire?”
Okay, how does he know that? Sweat was forming on her hairline and eyebrows. She told herself she was just imagining that her tongue was starting to swell.
As if responding to the confused look on her face, Jay clarified, “Your husband said to tell you he has it and he is back at the table where you dined.”
“My husband?” Sam is here? Wait, did Sam and Jessica plan this? Is Sam coming back to D.C. early as a surprise and that whole story about having to go to an undisclosed location was all bullshit? It had sounded like bullshit.
“Yes, ma’am. He went up there like 10 minutes ago.”
Sweet relief slowly rolled over Claire like maple syrup over pancakes. Finally, Sam was here. She could talk about everything that had been happening and, more importantly, she could present the facts calmly and he would offer rationale and reasonable explanations, like the ones Jessica had given the night before. Yes, Sam would agree with Jessica’s assessment of everything and the rest of the evening would be full of them cracking up at the image of her scaling the neighborhood’s wall like some sort of prison escapee. Claire was already chuckling to herself in the freight elevator as it ascended. Her husband was going to have a field day with the stories she had for him. Just raw comedic material there for the taking.
With a new spring in her step, shoulders back, hair fluffed, she caught sight of him through the dimness. He was sitting in the leatherback chair she had sat in. His back was to her. As she passed in front of his chair on the way to her own, she nearly screamed.
The man in the chair wasn’t Sam.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry, there must be some mistake. The bartender told me my husband would be waiting for me at this table. I’m, excuse me, I’m terribly sorry.” She started to walk away from the table.
“Claire, please sit down,” the man said. He was maybe 40 and built like a quarterback. He was dressed in a brown tweed sport coat, gray cotton slacks, a silver dress shirt and cowboy boots. His chest hair, which poked out from the crew neck tee beneath his shirt, was darker than the light brown hair on his head. When he leaned back to stretch, Claire could make out the strap of a leather gun holster beneath his jacket.
Stunned, Claire turned and returned to the table, choosing to remain standing. “Who are you and how do you know my name?” She was sweating again and wondered if the thumping she heard was the techno music overhead or the syncopation of her own heart.
“Just sit down, I can explain,” he said, imploring her with an unfurling of his right hand in the direction of the empty chair.
She remained standing.
“I have your phone. Just give me five minutes and then I’ll give it back to you and we can part ways.”
“I should call the cops, how about that?”
“My name is Martin,” the man said. “I was in the car that followed you and Sam from dinner that night. Outside of Grover. Actually, I was behind another car that was also following you. That couple from the restaurant. It was like a goddamn motorcade.”
Claire slowly moved into the empty seat. She felt faint again and slightly nauseous. “Martin what?”
“It’s just Martin,” he said, sipping on a bottle of Amstel Lite.
“Of course it is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Look, give me my phone and we can call Sam right now. We don’t have to do this Jason Bourne bullshit.”
“You see, that’s a problem.”
“Why’s that?” Claire asked, careful to not let the pitch in her voice climb.
“We have reason to believe the person you keep talking to on the phone either isn’t your husband or is your husband, but under duress, Mrs. Sturgis,” he said calmly, before taking another sip of his beer.
Claire was having trouble concentrating on what he was saying. She felt like she was on a listing ship, and even though she knew it was vertigo -- and maybe even related to her possible pregnancy, which she still wasn’t even convinced was real -- she was still surprised when the candle on the table between them didn’t roll to the floor. She willed herself not to faint, or worse, puke.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I know when I am talking to my own husband. Wait, what are you saying – are you listening to my phone calls?” she said. “Do you have a warrant for that?”
“Yes. Several,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Is Sam in trouble? Why would he be under duress? Why are you trying to scare me like this?”
Dylan, the waiter, stopped at the table and, if he heard the tension in Claire’s voice, he didn’t show it. “Nice to see you again, ma’am. A cocktail? A gimlet was it?”
“Water, please.”
“Claire, I will be as plain as I can be, but you have to realize I can’t tell you a lot, at least not here,” Martin said. “As you have guessed, I work for an intelligence branch of the federal government. Your husband had some encrypted data we think was on his home computer, on a secured server, that is of extreme value to enemies of the United States.”
“You mean, like the Russians?”
“There is a password, Claire. That we will need even if we find the original encrypted data. Did your husband ever mention the existence of such a password?”
Her head was spinning again. The music was warbling and vibrating like the blade of a shaken handsaw. The smells of other people’s food sent a geyser of acid up her esophagus. She didn’t trust this guy. Didn’t even believe his name was Martin.
“He never discussed his work with me,” she said.
“You’re lying, but we can table this point for now. We’ll revisit it under…different circumstances. More pressing to us is the location of the source files. When we searched your house-”
“You searched my house?”
“The files in question were removed from Sam’s home server,” he said. “And not by us. We were too late.”
Dylan returned to the table, ice water in hand. Claire smiled faintly and waited until he walked away.
“He told me he is at an undisclosed NASA facility. Is that not true? You need to tell me where my husband is. And who broke into our house, besides you. And what do they want? What is so important about this data? What the hell are you even talking about?”
Martin laid his palm flat and pushed it toward the floor repeatedly, signaling her to lower her voice.
“We think he’s safe but we aren’t certain of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty he is not at a government facility of any sort, at least not a facility run by our government,” Martin said, scanning the room with a methodology that revealed a certain level of training. “We want to help you find him. But we need you to help us.”
Claire’s mind was racing. She contemplated telling Martin about the guards and the dog and the boys and the conversation she’d overhead between Stephanie and Marc. She considered telling him about why she had hung up on Sam. See where this goes, Claire. Don’t show him all your cards. Not yet. Let him show you some more of his.
“Well, now, based on what you’ve told me, I have no goddamn idea where my husband is,” said Claire, grateful for the emotional clarity anger brought. “So, unless you’re tracking his cell phone, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“We are,” Martin said.
“Are what? Tracking his cell phone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, where the hell is he?”
&n
bsp; “We can’t pinpoint his exact location, but he’s somewhere in your neighborhood, Claire. He’s in the Village.”
Chapter 13
Claire’s head felt like a helium balloon, feather light, floating upward, making its way to the ceiling. She tried to respond to Martin, but it was as if she was watching herself and Martin from above. She giggled a bit at how silly it was she couldn’t speak. The waiter came over and stared at her for what seemed like a long time. He was blurry, a mirage of a train conductor. Am I on a train? Where are we going? She tried to ask Dylan these questions, but nothing came out of her mouth. If she focused very hard, she could hear them talking, the discussion as clear as one heard through a glass jar pressed to a wall.
“Damn, she is out of it,” said Dylan. “Is she going to puke? Did I give her too much?”
“No, she won’t puke,” said Martin. Then, more loudly for others to hear. “My wife has just had too much to drink. Wondering if you could help me with her out to my car?”
Dylan put his arm around Claire’s back, and Martin did the same on the other side. “One, two, three, upsy-daisy, sweetheart,” Martin said, and the two men hoisted her to her feet, as her right heel buckled sideways under her wobbly ankle. “Okay, Claire, I’m going to take you home. One foot in front of the other, dear.”
People were staring at her. Their faces were judgmental, disappointed, sympathetic, curious. Even when they were supposed to have their heads bowed, during the prayer, some snuck glances at her. Word of “the accident” had spread like a virus throughout the small town, as usually happens when nearly all the teenagers attending a local high school witness a classmate fall off a cliff. The accounts of what happened varied slightly, but all of them maintained one consistent truth: Claire’s failure to jump with her sister most likely resulted in Jenny’s death.
As shocking as what happened to her was, there weren’t many people who were surprised the girl who died at the quarry that night was Jenny Roberts. She had a reputation as a hell raiser, after all. Still, dying young brings with it a tremendous amount of absolution and, especially in the eyes of her mother, Jenny had been pardoned from all sin. In life, her mother had frequently described her as a pain in the ass, but in death she was “dear, sweet Jenny-girl.”