Evan's shoulders sagged. He slumped in his chair. He lifted his drink and put himself on the outside of it in one gulp.
"Evan?"
"That fucker. That motherfucker."
She went on. "He said you'd brought over hand grenades and guns to his place that you'd smuggled out of Iraq. And planted incriminating pictures on his computer."
Evan's body molded itself back into his hard chair. He spoke slowly, with great caution lest his thick tongue betray him. "This guy who got killed, Khalil. He was Iraqi. Think about it. Think about Ron's real job over here…"
"What do you mean? Ron's a recruiter mostly. He's…"
"No, listen. He's a mercenary mostly. Those were his weapons, his grenades, his pictures."
Tara sat back and crossed her arms. "You mean you do know about this? How could you know about this? Or about Ron?"
He just looked at her, opened his mouth, closed it again.
She came forward now. "Are you telling me he wasn't lying about you breaking into his house? Did you do that, Evan? Tell me you didn't do that."
"No, I…" Evan shook his head, hard, trying to clear away the fog of alcohol. "I mean, okay, I went in."
"You broke into Ron's house? And did what?"
"Nothing. I didn't do anything. No," he said, "that's not true. I got on his computer and got pictures of this guy's house before it burned down."
"Why did you do that?"
"'Cause Ron's a murderer, Tara. He killed this guy and this was the evidence…"
"So what did you do with it?"
"Mailed it to somebody."
"The FBI, you mean?" She hit the table with her palm. "Did you send your diskette to the FBI, Evan? Because Ron had the FBI over at his house today, and he told them you'd planted all that stuff there. And now you tell me you were actually inside, so they'll find your hair or fingerprints or something, don't you see that? He's trying to have you framed for this." She ran both of her hands through her hair, over her scalp, down to her neck. "God, God, God, how can this be happening? They may be at your apartment right now, wanting to talk to you, do you realize that? And then what are you going to do? What are you going to tell them?"
He stared blankly at her for a long minute, then brought his hand up and chewed at the knuckle of his index finger. "Enough of this shit." His words starting to slur.
"Evan." She gripped at his hands. "He's already got the FBI in on it, don't you understand? It's already happening."
"Can't be. I've got to stop him."
"No. Don't you do anything. Get a lawyer or talk to one of your bosses. Maybe they can deliver a message, get something through to Ron. But you stay out of it personally. Ron's dangerous, Evan. And he's out to get you. You've got to be smart. Get sober and get a plan."
Evan slammed a heavy hand on the table. "What do you mean, get sober? Is that what everything's about, whether I'm sober or not? I'm sober right now, enough for fucking Ron Nolan."
"Evan," she pleaded, "you're not. Listen to yourself. You don't swear when you're sober. You don't slur when you're sober." She stood up, reached out and touched his arm. "Look, why don't you come home now with me. I could drive us."
"And then what?" Evan's thick voice trembled with rage. "And then the FBI finds me there? Or at work tomorrow? What do I do then?"
"Come home with me. We can talk about it and work something out." She let her arm fall along his sleeve and took his hand. "Come on. Really."
"No!" He pulled his hand from hers, turned away. His shoulders rose and fell and then he turned back to her. "I am not fucking dealing with him anymore! This has got to end. It can't go on."
"You're right, but it can't end tonight, Evan."
"Yes, it damn well can."
Tara kept her voice low, conciliatory, restrained. "Evan, come on. There's no way you can do anything the way you are now, so don't be crazy. You're just really mad-"
"Way more than that, Tara. I'm going to kill the son of a bitch."
"Shh, shh, shh." She moved up and put her fingers to his lips. "Don't talk like that. That's just crazy drink talk. Let's just the two of us get out of here and-"
"Hey!" Taking her hand down, roughly, away from his mouth. "Listen to me!" Low and deadly earnest. "It's got to stop! It can't go on! It's not about fucking drinking. Are you hearing me? It's about honor. Who I am. What he's done to us! Don't you see that?"
"Yes, I do see that. You're right. You're completely right. But this isn't the time to fix all that." She moved in close and stood straight before him, arms at her side. "Please, Evan. I'm going to ask you one more time. Please come home with me. Whatever it is, we'll work it out together. I promise."
But the glaze in his eyes was all that answered her. Standing, weaving slightly, he gripped the back of his chair. "Enough's enough," he said.
She looked him in the face one last time. "I'm begging you," she said. "Please."
If he heard her at all, he didn't show it. He stared blankly ahead at her, shaking his head, shaking his head. Then he started walking toward the door.
"Evan, please," she called after him. "Wait."
He stopped, and for a second she thought that she'd convinced him. He turned back to her. "Leave me alone," he said. "I know what I've got to do and I'm gonna do it."
And then he turned and again started walking unsteadily toward the door.
PART THREE. 2005
18
Tara had never felt so grateful for her job.
It was getting to the end of the year, and her kids were handing in their big reports and concluding their projects on the ancient world in preparation for the school's open house on Friday night, when all the work would be displayed in the classrooms. In Tara's room, they had rearranged all the desks to make room for the papier mâché pyramids, the dioramas of the growing cycle along the Nile, the plumbing schemes for the residences of the pharaohs. Hieroglyphics, the early domestic cat, the library at Alexandria, Moses and the Exodus.
So all day and much of the nights of Thursday and Friday, Tara was busy organizing and tending to last-minute crises among her students and, often, their families. She had no time to contact Evan to find out what, if anything, had happened after he'd stormed out on her on Wednesday night. And, truth to tell, she wasn't too inclined to call him anyway. She thought she would let him take a few days to sober up and get over his embarrassment about how he'd acted. Then, after he'd called her and apologized, they'd see where they were. But in the meanwhile, she had her job and her kids. She thought that a couple of days' respite from the emotional turmoil and upheaval surrounding Ron and Evan might do everybody involved a world of good.
Saturday, she slept in until nearly ten o'clock, then went down to the pool and swam a hundred laps. Coming back upstairs to her apartment, she showered and threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, made a salad for lunch, and after that dozed off watching a tennis match on TV. When she woke up, she graded the last of the written reports for another hour or so. At a little after four, she was just finishing up the last one when her doorbell rang. Checking the peephole, she saw Eileen Scholler, her face blotched from crying.
Limping, scabbed, and bruised in his orange jail jumpsuit, Evan entered his side of the visiting room chained to twenty other men. Watching the line enter, Tara stood among a loose knot of mostly women in a kind of bullpen waiting area on their side of the Plexiglas screen that separated the visitors from the inmates. A row of facing pairs of talking stations bisected the room from one end to the other.