I refit myself behind her and pressed my lips to a tendon at the base of her neck. She seemed interested in talk of my parenting skills. I would convince her yet.
“We’re going to stay together,” I said. And I believed this. Child or no child, we were bound.
She turned to face me. “Let me put this as best I can: I am not keeping this baby. Tomorrow I will go home, and you will not hear from me again. Ever. I know it sounds cruel. You’re very sweet to understand. I have a life of my own. It doesn’t include you.”
She turned away and moved to the edge of the bed.
I blinked. Stunned. I could not lose her again. I could not return to my life without her. I tried to calm down and sync my breath with hers, and when I could not accomplish even this measure of intimacy, I went for the keys in my pocket. Locked her in my bedroom. Made for a spot under a desk in the common area, drew up my legs, and rocked myself to sleep.
The next morning, I ran to the store. Bagels, cream cheese, orange juice, raspberries, an egg-white omelet in case she was the type, a jelly donut in case she wasn’t. Got home and prepared a tray. Coffee and tea, plus an origami flower, because I knew how to make exactly one origami gift, and it was this.
A breeze lilted across my room. I found Esme dressed and framed in the window, which was open. She bent the morning light. And as I watched her jump the sill and tear down the road, I was returned to the work that has been my life’s thrill and challenge ever since.
Thurlow’s cell phone rang; it was Norman. He’d been in touch with the FBI negotiator, who said it was now or never for the ransom tape. Seriously. Now or never. Dean had found a new chair that pleased him well enough, so they were all set.
“Any calls come in that weren’t FBI?” Thurlow’s ear sweat into the phone.
“The press.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
He went to the kitchen. Put a saucepan on the range. Added sugar, water, gelatin, lemon juice, grenadine, coconut. Heated it up, let it sit. Coated the result with silver luster dust, wrapped it in edible foil, and voilà: pink-lemonade coconut jellies for the playing of his last card.
It was almost four. He walked the central artery of the residence but was in no hurry. The house was quiet, though he bet the TV networks were in a tizzy. They awaited the ransom tape and were ready to preempt whatever was on air the second they got it, never mind that if you were watching Oprah at the very moment she disclosed the secret to painless and permanent weight loss, the last thing you cared about was some guy who just wanted everyone to get along.
He lumbered, dawdled, dragged ass. Heavy is the crown of self-disgust. It was true what Norman had said: Everyone would see the tape. And they would be appalled. To be sold out by the man in charge? Just so he could have a family of his own? Wasn’t the Helix family enough? Wasn’t it?
Outside the commissary door, he stood with an ear pressed to the wood. His plan was not to listen but to rest, only he heard what he heard, which added a new dread to the one already fixed in his mind. He swung the door open. No Dean, no film crew or even Norman. Just the four hostages on the floor — cuffed but unguarded and each staring up at him with the cow faces of kids in freshman comp, day one — and Vicki plus former TC Charlotte, screaming at each other.
The women verged on physical contact, so Thurlow took Charlotte by the arm.
She wanted to be on the ransom video. He said, Okay, just go get changed, because she was wearing boy shorts and a tank top. She debated whether it was wise to abandon the room, knowing he might lock her out. He swore up and down that he would not lock her out. She left, and he locked her out.
Meanwhile, Vicki was reapplying lip liner and Bare Escentuals foundation, which she had bought with the gift certificate he had given her. She was adamant he understand this was his gift, and began to tout the boons of mineral makeup and how well it looked on-screen.
He cleared his throat and said, “Vicki, you are not getting on TV, and you don’t belong here, so get out.”
She looked at him through the mirror. He had demoted TCs for less, and she knew it. He sat on the chair from which he would be making his demands, and stood her between his legs. He said, “Okay, Vick, tell me something: how did you even know we were filming today?”
She swiveled between his thighs. “Everyone knows.”
“I see. And what is it you hope to accomplish by imposing yourself on proceedings that do not concern you?”
“Exposure.” And then, because she had rehearsed this part, “So that everyone can see we’re happy and that our way is good.”
He didn’t want to demote Vicki, but she was not leaving him much choice. She doffed her newsboy cap, which was black leather, and smiled, so that whatever was in her mouth reflected light from the overhead. It took him a second to register that it was not a filling or a crown and that she’d been slurring a little, lisping a little, because there were ears in her teeth. A little mic. That traitor.
He sprang off the chair and backed away. Reached for the blanket Dean had folded on a shelf—“Think fireside chat,” he’d said — and threw it over his head.
“Spit it out!” he said, and he thrust his hand from under the blanket.
“What?” she said. “Spit what out?”
“Do it, Vicki. Hand it over.”
“The jelly? You’re mad because of the jelly? They were in the kitchen; I thought they were for everyone!”
“Get out, get out, GET OUT!” he said, and he used his wingspan — helped by the blanket — to corral her out the door, which he then barricaded with the desk. And the chair. And a five-gallon bottle of water he had to roll across the room on its side. Two five-gallon bottles. Three.
He was exhausted. But his labors were rewarded because neither Vicki nor Charlotte, nor both together, could force the door. He heard fists on the wood and a few body slams and then Vicki say, “This is some bullshit,” and Charlotte say, “I left home for this?” though what was noticeable in their remarks was not an upswell of disillusion but the torpor with which it was expressed.
The blanket had fallen to the floor. In lieu of parquet, they had dusted the concrete with wood shavings, which cleaved to the wool. Never mind. Thurlow just wanted to sit and regroup. He took note of the hostages, who had watched the foregoing play out in silence.
These people had names. Their lives were sui generis.
Outside, it had started to snow, maybe to hail. The feds had just cut electricity to the house. It took a minute for the generator to kick on, and in this minute, Thurlow heard ice pelt the roof. Also a voice, one of the hostages, saying, “Mr. Dan? We’re sorry to bother you, but is there any chance we can talk this over?”
He buzzed for Norman, and when he got Norman’s voicemail — where was everyone? — he told him to reinstate the hoods and find a few dishrags, bandannas, whatever, because apparently the hostages had things they wanted to say. Also, he was afraid to leave the commissary without escort. Then again, he hated to be there with them. How bad was it when your only companionship was the four people you’d kidnapped? Bride of Frankenstein came to mind.
He left the commissary through a back door. Slipped through a walk-in closet and into a guest room with a trundle bed and tinted glass doors that overlooked a lawn tombed in snow. Dust congested in the monocle of a surveillance lens overhead. He swiped it with a Kleenex. Cleared his throat. Sat on the carpet, looked at the camera, and emptied his face of anything that was not love.
“Hi, little one,” he said. “My little Ida. I guess it’s time I should be addressing myself to no one else but you. So here is what I expect: Mistakes will be made. In the ferreting out of Helix staff, the wrong people will get hurt. Whoever is out there will scan the house for heat signatures and kill one another in the process. There will be hearings in D.C. and a passing of the buck, and I won’t make it, and you’ll never know.”