Why did I think we were angry with each other? We had fallen so thoroughly out of contact that it seemed there must be a reason, though we’d never fought, or even disagreed, since the band broke up. Maybe it was still that. That could have been the reason I gave myself. But the look he gave me wasn’t the wariness of an old wound; it was fresh outrage. As if he wanted some kind of an answer. Finally, I thought: he blames me for not seeing it coming. For not warning Cheryl. For being too busy being who I was supposed to be, for not dropping out, if that’s what you would call it, for not going into full-time mourning before the fact. For not being self-evidently shattered. And I thought: fuck you, Martin. Fuck you and get me out of here. At the end of the meal we hugged once again, even more awkwardly than the first time, our arms curved into stiff hoops like jai alai baskets. I’ll see you, he said, and ambled down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the parking lot.
—
I’ve lived with this guilt for so long — nearly twenty years — that I’ve accepted it as a condition of living, a solid vestigial node, like a tumor, like a bullet lodged near my spine. Has it cast its own pall over my life? Of course. Is there a certain relief in knowing that someone else knows?
There would be, if that person was an impartial listener. A therapist. Wendy. Why, again, did I never tell Wendy? Not because I was afraid she’d betray me; because she would have been appalled that I avoided the consequences. To her the shame would have been unbearable. She would have wanted me to confess.
Did I say I’ve been living in white dreamtime? The time in which all crimes are historical. Back then. Lessons learned. Things are different now. Who would have thought that history could whip around, like a dangling snake, and bite me across the knuckles? He owns me, I’m thinking. His way or three to five in Jessup. Of all the ways I expected to be transformed by grief, by loss, by a catastrophic personal loss over which I had no control, this was never one.
The thing about blind spots, someone told me once, is you don’t see them.
—
So listen, Cox’s voice is saying now, on my voice mail, which I’m only listening to now, having fished my phone out of my jacket to charge it before bed. I found something. Took me nearly a month to confirm it, but here we are. Martin Lipkin, aka Matthew Wilson, aka Mark Wilbury, aka Wilbur Martinson, Internet aliases including BodyMore, Grnmnt10234, XcashKingX, and Alan93. Served eighteen months at Northern State Penitentiary in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. November 1998 to May 2000. Credit card fraud. Identity theft. Story was, he worked for a business that leased ATMs to gas stations, and figured out a way to get the card numbers out of the machines in his spare time. Pretty minor-league stuff. Or it would have been, if the purchases hadn’t been so large. He maxed out every card he found — tens of thousands of dollars, maybe two hundred thousand altogether. Strange thing was, the purchases were all overseas. No cars, no jewelry, no Xboxes or WaveRunners. Nothing that could be seized. In fact, the D.A. never discovered what it was he was buying at all. That’s why he served his full sentence. Kid had no traceable assets, nothing with which to pay a fine. Of course, insurance covered the banks’ losses. Probably ruined a few people’s credit ratings, though. And after release, he skipped parole and disappeared. There’s still a warrant out for him in the state of Vermont.
—
I need to hide, I can’t help thinking, I need to leave, I need a conduit, a way out. I need to become not me. As I settle back into bed, beyond sleep, I feel myself grasping Martin’s hand at the edge of a cliff, the wind behind us, straining my calves to stay upright, and then, by some wordless signal, we jump at the same moment, jump over the thick shining waves, the stone-dark bottomless ocean.
BOOK TWO. EXODUS
1
Out of a dream of my childhood, a hike up Mount Cardigan on a bright autumn day, scampering up a long granite face at a gentle incline, bursts of October light filtering through canopies of yellow and red and orange — I open my eyes to the sun streaming through a gauzy curtain above my bed, the shutters drawn back, the branches of a rubber tree thrusting up into a pale sky strewn with jet trails.
Five or six different species of birds are singing all at once, competitively, trying to drown one another out. An avian pep rally. It’s the sound of mid-morning, they’re saying, the day fully established, the hard business of seed cracking and grub probing under way, and I look down at my watch and see 10:30. Someone should have come to get me by now.
But since they haven’t, since the day seems unscheduled — not that Martin ever gave me an itinerary, an agenda, not that I have any proof of being here other than a stamp in my passport and a boarding pass jammed into a shirt pocket — I sit up in bed and take a long breath, a waking breath, whatever that means. When you wake up in a new country, I’m thinking now, your senses are the sharpest. Newness, to the touch, to the nose, to the tongue, is a series of small insults. I ought to be paying full attention. I’m on retainer, after alclass="underline" a professional visitor. A professional writer. Why is that so hard to say? I should be taking everything down.
The room — which was dark when I came in, past midnight, and I tumbled into bed without even turning on the bedside lamp — is much bigger than I imagined. The bedroom opens into an alcove with a writing table and a couch, and the look is Thai Resort Classic, even I can see that, all teak and rattan and silk, lustrous green-and-gold scarves hung on the walls, a pair of brass kneeling monks on the coffee table, an antique-looking map labeled SIAM over my bed. Thorough, expensive, and generic: too perfect, like a stage set for one of those reality TV shows where I’m a strapping nitwit from Des Moines, a doe-eyed dental hygienist from Wilkes-Barre. On the writing table, in a square glass vase, a bouquet of orchids, of course, bound up with pencil-thin shoots of yellow bamboo. The room smells of incense and also something drier, more chemicaclass="underline" wood polish. Antiseptic. Pledge, Dettol, Febreze. Someone has put a lot of time into this, I’m thinking, a room that says, you are having an experience. You are getting what you paid for. Without demanding of you anything at all.
Someone downstairs — the birds have died down for a minute — is speaking Japanese.
It’s been years, and I hardly studied it conversationally, mostly just scholarly Japanese, the stock language of articles on Asian literature and linguistics, but I can pick out a few words, here and there, the shape and direction of the sentences. Of course we pay for… the airport… no visa requirements… full private bath. Yaha. Yes, Yaha. What does Yaha mean? I wonder. I will mail you the brochure! he says, whoever it is, speaking formally, as to a client, a customer. Call me back! I can almost hear the bow. In Japanese, even speaking on the phone, you bow.
A secretary, I’m thinking. An assistant of some kind. Maybe, from the sound of it, a separate business on the side. Nothing unusual about that. Just that Martin didn’t mention it. But who thinks of everything? In a place this size, would I expect to be all alone?
The house belongs to him. I’m remembering this now. How, in the car, pulling through the gate, Martin couldn’t resist a proprietary smile. You get sick of staying in hotels, he said. No matter how nice they are. And in any case I have business interests. Makes sense to maintain a presence. An address. I let clients stay here sometimes. These perks, you know, in the business world, sometimes that’s all that matters. People are shallow. Sometimes all they want is a gesture.