“I wasn’t. . . Never mind.”
Not wishing to evoke another tantrum, I did not pursue the matter. After testing the security of the restraints, I said goodbye to Zoë and left the hideout from the first floor.
The drive was uneventful, as I had hoped. The radio had nothing about the kidnapping, despite my enduring its repetitive blather for the entire trip. I was fortunate enough to locate a spot in the short-term parking lot, the advantage being the coin-operated meters as opposed to a human being who filled the same role in the larger lot. The rates were near-extortionate, but a full hour was permitted, so there was no risk of an identifying ticket from one of the uniformed drones eagerly circling awaiting just such an opportunity.
The young woman at the airport concession counter rang up my innocuous purchases: People magazine, a lurid-covered paperback book, a deck of playing cards, and, of course, USA Today. I made certain that, upon inquiry, she would not recall a man matching my “description” as having purchased only the newspaper. She pulled a receipt from the cash register and handed it to me along with my change, never making eye contact. I placed them in my carry-on bag, a round-trip ticket to a nearby city in my inside breast pocket against the unlikely chance of being asked to produce a reason for my presence.
The airport did, indeed, feature a bakery. I purchased three loaves of French bread, then made my way out of the terminal toward where a group of people had gathered to smoke. I had a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, opened with several missing, in preparation. It was not at all uncommon for ticketed passengers to wait outside until the last moment in order to ingest as much nicotine as possible in the fresh air (the contradiction apparently lost upon them) to fortify them for the coming deprivation. However, once certain I was not being shadowed, I simply proceeded across the various walkways until I reached my car. I left the airport as undetected as I had entered.
As an act of self-discipline, I did not examine the newspaper until I re-entered the basement. The child looked up when I entered, her artwork spread in front of her, classical music of some kind playing on the radio.
“Hi!” she said brightly.
“Hello, Zoë.”
“Did you get—?”
“Of course,” I assured her, pulling out the deck of cards and the French bread.
“No, I meant. . . did you get the paper?”
“Yes.”
“And did they—?”
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “Let’s see.”
Apparently, the child took that statement as an invitation (although it was not so intended, I could not fault her for taking the words literally) and perched herself on the arm of the chair I was occupying as I searched for the appropriate section.
The response was there. Precisely as instructed. I pointed it out to Zoë.
“Does that mean they’ll buy me back?” she asked.
“It would appear so,” I replied. “But it may be a ploy of some kind.”
“What’s a ploy?”
“A ruse. A. . . trick.”
“Oh. How will you know?”
“There are stages to these operations. As we progress, the truth will emerge.”
“But you are going to ask them for money, right?”
“Certainly. That is the whole purpose.”
“Do you have a lot of money?”
“I. . . don’t know, child. I suppose that would depend on what ‘a lot’ means to you.”
“Do you have a million dollars?”
“Yes,” I told her truthfully. “I have considerably more than that, in fact.”
“Oh.”
She was silent after that, getting up and going back to her drawing. After some time passed, I realized that I had been puzzling over her reaction to my last statement. A logic gap was apparent, but the sequence eluded me.
“Zoë,” I asked, “weren’t you surprised?”
“At what?”
“When I told you I had so much money.”
“No.”
“Well, then, weren’t you surprised that I would do something like this for money when I already had so much?”
“No. My father has a lot of money too. Millions and millions. And he always wants more.”
“Ah. But, you understand, child, I don’t do this for the money. Do you know why I do it?”
“Because you’re a connoisseur, right?”
I was stunned. There was not a trace of sarcasm in the child’s statement. Yet how could she. . .? I quickly recovered, and asked her: “Why do you say that, Zoë?”
“Well, because of what you said. Before. Remember? You said you could be a connoisseur of. . . something, right? And also *do* it too. Like my drawing.”
“I remember.”
“Well, what you do, it’s like. . . acting, right? And other people do it, but they don’t all do it the same.”
“How do you mean, other people do it?”
“Kidnapping. It happens all the time. On TV, you see it. My father talks about it sometimes.”
“About you being kidnapped?”
“No, about other kids. What he saw on TV.”
“I see. And you think I do this because it’s my. . . art? Like what you do?”
“Sure.”
“But your drawing, it’s designed for. . . display, isn’t it? You want other people to see what you did?”
“Sometimes.”
“All right, sometimes. But nobody will ever see what I do.”
“Yes they *will*. They just won’t know it was you. Like a painting on a wall.”
“But artists sign their paintings.”
“I don’t sign mine.”
“Ever?”
“Never. I never sign mine. They tried to make me. In school. But I wouldn’t do it.”
“Still, they would know it was you.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they displayed different drawings that the whole class did, wouldn’t everybody know which one was yours?”
“Yes. But only in the class. If you put my drawings up in another place, nobody would know it was me.”
“But they could still admire them, couldn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Then—”
“That’s like you,” she interrupted. “You don’t sign your. . . stuff either. Or you’d go to jail. You can’t sign it. But people see it. And you know it was you.”