Rem couldn’t see what Fatboy would get out of it.
‘When people left they owed him. Fatboy was building a future. People who owed him favours. People who could help him out one day. It wasn’t about money, never was.’
Rem thanked Samuels again, and Samuels asked if Rem knew Fatboy’s name. ‘William. At home he went by Billy.’
Rem returned to Fatboy’s room, settled on the mat, and found himself sweating before he’d opened the notebook. Knowing someone’s name took away their mystery. He wondered who Billy was, back home with his family and his mother. Another timid boy. One among others, undistinguished. Plain William, borrowed from uncles and grandfathers.
He slept through much of the afternoon and woke to find email from Cathy on his celclass="underline" Call me. It’s about Matt.
* * *
For all but his last night Cathy slept separately and avoided talking with him, until, in a final capitulation she slipped, silently, under the covers beside him.
* * *
He’d taken a flight from the Netherlands via Austin the year before they married, spent time at immigration being questioned about his visa, about how many trips he’d made by officials for the Department of Homeland Security who didn’t quite understand that Schiphol Airport served the whole of the Netherlands. Rem insisted that his family came from a small village swallowed by Bergen op Zoom where people strived to live undistinguished lives, hold moderate values, the kind of people who knew their neighbours, rarely visited the city, and feared God with a powerful superstition, and he wondered, while he insisted on this distinction, why he had to attach himself to a place he hadn’t lived in for over twenty years, to people he’d worked hard to leave. He didn’t understand Halsteren when he was a child, and he held no attachment to it as an adult. His family simply lived there, and year by year, there were less of them. Nevertheless, Halsteren remained in his passport as his place of birth. For immigration these distinctions meant nothing. As a big man with a casual lope, they took him as a type. They detained Rem for four hours in an eight-by-nine space defined by six rolling screens he could have pushed aside. They left him alone, in this temporary space, not even a room, and he expected the man to return, passport in hand, to escort him to departure. He wasn’t sure how it would work, but he couldn’t see himself reaching Chicago. He missed his connecting flight and had to sleep in the terminal with the threat that these men could return, pick him out and pack him off, just as they pleased. The whole experience was so unpleasant it resolved him to marriage, although neither of them wanted to marry. The visas gave limited security. He understood that he might have chosen Chicago as his home, but Chicago had not chosen him.
On his return to Austin the same dread set upon him. He couldn’t imagine the next step and half-hoped for a call from Cathy telling him to come home, this was ridiculous, just come right back.
At the carousel a different certainty struck him. He watched bags tumble down the baggage claim and realized he’d gone too far.
* * *
On the first night Cathy went early to bed, took a mug of hot water with her, her glasses, a book, a thriller she’d bought for this specific night, switched the TV on, quiet and low, as if this was normal, or better: as if this was something long anticipated, a treat she was determined to enjoy. She settled naturally on her side of the bed, rested her glasses and the book on her stomach and wondered what she should do next. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted, and looked about the room and wondered how it had come to be furnished in this way, not through any one decision, but through a gradual accumulation: a dresser from her mother, the built-in wardrobe Rem had salvaged and fronted with mirror. The TV, large, flat-screen, paid on credit they hadn’t yet settled. She watched her reflection. The light from the TV picked out the rounded shapes of her feet, her knees, her stomach and breasts, all softened by the quilt, her face shone a little greasy, and she was alarmed at how surprised she looked, as if it wasn’t Rem that was missing, but part of her body.
He wouldn’t call, she guessed, so she sent an SMS, typed a hug and a kiss at the end of the message, and thought this hypocritical but necessary, then turned to her side so she wouldn’t have to watch herself. He’d come back, she didn’t doubt, he didn’t like Austin in any case. He’d be back in two days, four, tops.
She decided to sound perky. Practical. She’d call, if he didn’t answer she’d leave a message.
When the home phone rang she looked at it in surprise.
‘Hello? Rem?’
‘My cell’s flat. I’m calling from the dormitory, plugged-in. They’ve given us rooms. You know those movies where the parents take their daughter to college? It looks nothing like that. What are you doing?’
‘I’m in bed.’
‘I woke you?’
‘No. It’s early. I thought I might read.’
‘The people I’m with…’
‘I was going to ask.’
‘… are from the Philippines. No one speaks English too well. We haven’t been fed. They brought us from the airport, told us we couldn’t leave. They’ll pick us up at seven tomorrow. I’m not sure what they’re going to do with us. There’s one row of showers, two toilets — don’t ask — and a snack machine. There’s a rumour that we don’t get paid until we’re actually in Iraq.’
She thought to tell him not to do this, to walk out, face whatever trouble came their way because of it, but to come right back. They could pay the company back for the flight, somehow make everything right with Geezler, move on and forget this. She didn’t know how, but they would figure this out.
‘What are you reading?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t started.’
‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Cathy kept the phone to her ear long after Rem had hung up. The only decision she wanted to make was whether she would take Western or Lake Shore Drive to work the next morning.
She read the last chapter of her book because she didn’t want to start something that would end badly.
* * *
Immediately after speaking with Cathy, Rem called Geezler, to let him know about the arrival, the chaos of the place, and sound off a little about the squalid lodgings.
Mid-ring he changed his mind. Intuition told him that this wouldn’t be the worst of it. Geezler didn’t need to hear every detail. He should concentrate on what mattered, essentials, not make reports day by day, but digest the experience first.
His phone rang before he could pocket it. Geezler on an unlisted number.
‘You wanted to speak?’
‘I thought better of it.’ In truth Rem had lost the mood.
Geezler said he’d take anything Rem had to offer. ‘The whole point is to hear your take. You understand? That’s why you’re going. I want your perspective.’
Rem started again on his day. ‘I’m in a room with nine men from Fiji and the Philippines, who think they’re heading to Dubai. Their contracts say Balad. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t have their passports. This can’t be legal.’
Once again Geezler listened and was ready with questions, and on occasion, an explanation.
‘These people are in transit. Technically, they aren’t in the country. We’ve had trouble before. If they have their passports they disappear.’
Rem wouldn’t drop the subject. ‘Benigno. Beni. He’s thirty-seven, he looks like he’s fifty. He has a fourteen-page contract busy with small print. Only four out of nine in my room can read English, and everyone is going to Iraq and they don’t know it. How can they not know?’