Doug pressed End. He hadn’t moved his gaze from the courthouse façade. He had been in the building only once, with the general counsel for a hearing in a shareholder suit. Washington had spared no expense for the judges. From the marble floors to the courtrooms rimmed in arabesques of pink-and-blue pastel, you could be forgiven for expecting exhibitions of modern art rather than juries and sentencings.
To check the markets, he switched on the television in the corner, searching for the business channel. But before he reached it, he came upon those images that were constant now on cable news: the satellite photos of the Iraqi desert, still after still of warehouses and outbuildings surrounded by nothing but sand. Like all of them, this report was being narrated by some retired member of the brass paid to opine on the nature of the weapons hidden beneath all those roofs and tarps. Soon the screen cut to B roll of aircraft carriers and naval destroyers, as the old soldier described the slow but steady buildup of hardware in the theater. The segment ended with a shot of a tanker moving low in the water, as the news anchor, in a voice that somehow managed to blend excitement and resignation, reminded the audience of America’s vital interests in the region.
Lately, Doug couldn’t sleep for watching this stuff. And he knew Vrieger would be watching it too. Watching the endless repetition of facts and speculation and probable lies, the consumption of which at least partially numbed the helplessness of seeing it unfold at such distance and so inexorably. The two of them had spoken the previous week and Vrieger had told him that he was all set, headed to Virginia soon for training, the invasion apparently scheduled for March but plenty of contractors needed already for logistics and security, hundreds of them flowing into Kuwait each week.
In the small hours of the morning, Doug would lie awake staring at the maps with the fancy graphics of arrows sliding toward Baghdad from north, south, and west, as the commentators prattled on: neo-cons smugly suffering lesser minds, while their opponents expressed incredulity at the ignorance of the American people for supporting the idea of such a war; and then there were Doug’s favorites, the young, pro-war liberals, so fresh-faced and eager to prove they weren’t weak or queer. But whoever the commentators were, the reports seemed always to return to the endless stock footage of tanks kicking dust and missiles blasting hot off the decks of cruisers. Which carried Doug back, over and over, to standing on the deck of the Vincennes, that furnace wind blowing off the fouled waters of the Gulf, clogging the ship’s every pore with sand, and to the cursing of the Iranian thugs in the speedboats spit over the radio waves, and to watching the coordinates of the jetliner’s altitude rise across his monitor.
In the hours before dawn, when he finally managed to turn off the news, a mild delirium often took sway, a semiconscious but still-un-resting state, in which unremembered moments floated up into his senses, strangely complete in air and texture, almost dreamlike in their exactitude. Like sitting on the vinyl backseat of his uncle John’s station wagon between his cousins Michael and P.J. with the windows rolled down, thrilled to be out of his mother’s apartment and on the way out to the Cape, the voice on the radio calling the game as the miles of scrub pine blurred green across his eyes; and later, the deep, ineffable happiness of returning to his cousins’ house, a beautiful dusk place full of shouting and motion and the clutter of sports gear and toys, his uncle and aunt’s orders barked and ignored, Michael not turning off the hose but letting the water run all the way to the bottom of the drive, where they built their hurried dams for the pleasure of watching them overrun, glimpsing in his cousins’ casual disregard of their father’s rebukes the freedom that came with bossy parents — to resist, to push back against a strength and solidity your petty acts could never overcome.
Or waiting out in front of the apartment, out in the cold air for his mother, after snow had fallen, wanting not to be late again to Mass because then everyone would turn to look at them; making a snowball with his bare hands as he waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs; watching her walk to the car in her black wool coat and blue dress, her once-a-week face made up with blush and lipstick; his hand burning on the frozen pack in his fist, seeing her breath and his, wishing his snowball were hard enough to smash the windshield but knowing it wasn’t; and then entering the car, going back into that silence that wasn’t even punishment or rebuke but simply her way of getting by, the air from the whining defroster cold on his face at first, its stale plastic scent soon erased by the sharper smell of his mother’s cigarette.
Like taunts, these memories were, the past trying to claim him back at his weakest moments.
If he could just sleep, he kept thinking, then his concentration would return. He could switch off the news and his brain would stop shaking loose these useless recollections and he could focus again on the problem at hand.
He headed down into the lobby and out to the car waiting to take him to the Ritz. On the way there, he dialed Mikey.
“I don’t know how you got those papers,” Mikey said, “but they did the job. You won. That Graves Society’s a joke. She stopped making donations three years ago. And their taxes — anyway, the court tossed Cushman’s order out. Charlotte Graves isn’t getting title to anything.”
“Does she have an appeal?”
“To God, maybe.”
“Good. I want you to call the broker and get the house listed.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You beat her.”
“Yeah, I heard you. But I need it listed. I want the asset in cash.”
“I just won your fucking appeal for you! I spent a year building you a house for Christ’s sake. You picked the investment, we cleared the land, you got your mansion. Now just live in it for a few years, would you? Turn a real profit.”
“I appreciate all you did. I’ll have Sabrina handle the broker if you want.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m your friend, Mikey. But the situation, it’s changed.”
FROM THE HOTEL WINDOW, Nate could see a young couple down at the Arlington Street gates in shorts and sun hats. They paused to consult a map as their children ran ahead to gawk at the statue of General Washington mounted on his horse, his bronze eyes casting a permanent gaze up Commonwealth Avenue. Beyond the gates, in the Boston Public Gardens, the branches of the weeping willows swayed over the edge of the pond.
As he watched the man drop down on one knee to photograph his wife and children gathered beneath the statue, Nate dialed Emily’s cell phone again, impatient for her to answer. Two months ago, she’d left for college and they’d spoken on the phone most weeks since. But for the third time that day her line went straight to voice mail. As he was about to hang up, his handset beeped and he saw that she was calling in.
“So you’re on it as well?” she said. “The other two have been calling me all day telling me how deeply important all our friendships have been, Jason waxing on about how much he loves me all of a sudden. It’s so mid-nineties. They’ve never been to a rave in their life. You guys are all going to wake up depressed with jaw aches.”
“I’m not on Ecstasy. I’m not with them.”
“So what’s with all your calls? What’s the emergency?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just checking in, seeing how it’s going up there. Is your roommate still a hassle?”
“I don’t believe you’re not in a crisis, but whatever. We can talk about that in a minute. To answer your question, yeah, she’s definitely a problem. The whole vegan, bisexual, anti-NAFTA, Nader-voter situation I could more or less deal with if she’d just keep it to herself. You’d think she’d at least shut up when she meditated, but no, that’s when she chants. And she has the gall to warn me about the false consciousness of cynicism. She’s a cross between a Hari Krishna and a Stalinist. It’s obviously just an aggressive formation against whatever void of boomer parenting she suffered, but I don’t see why I should have to cope with it.”