And you hired me for—
For the American market. Because, look, Americans care about the backstory. They want to be spoon-fed. It has to be inspirational; it has to warm those little fat-clogged hearts. That’s what I want from you. And believe me, that’s all. I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain, take your money and walk away. Anything else is your own business. I’m on the record now saying this wasn’t my idea.
And if I don’t go through with it — if I stay as I am — you’re saying I’m safe? I can go back to the United States? To Baltimore, even? No dropping a dime on me? No manila envelopes to the Sun?
You’re still worried about that?
Wouldn’t you be?
He takes a deep breath.
Okay. Okay. I can see why you don’t trust me right now. I get that. But I hope you can see, too, why all this was necessary. It’s a process. It’s a — okay, if you want to use that word, it’s a recruitment. All in the service of a larger goal. Tell me, just using common sense, using everything you know about me, knew about me, am I into pointless revenge? Do I hold grudges? I’m telling you to go home. What good does it do me to hold this over your head? In any case, I’d have to expose myself. For them to reopen the case. I’d have to testify.
So you’ve thought about it.
I haven’t thought about it. I’m improvising. You brought it up, remember?
We’re having a staring contest, a don’t-blink contest.
One thing is clear to me, I’m thinking, with a kind of creeping horror. Who was it that said, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you? I lived with the knowledge of what happened to Alan, correction, what I did to Alan, alone for so long that it turned into a dream. Yes, okay, I talked to Cox about it. At the brink of adulthood, fatherhood, I tried to buy some certainty, some quiet skeleton-in-the-closet insurance, under the curtain of attorney-client privilege. But it wasn’t a dream. Someone else has been thinking about it. The parallel life, the worst-case-scenario life, in which I do five in Jessup, maybe three with good behavior, plus five more on parole, and then try to find a job that hires felons with Ph.D.’s. Driving a school bus, maybe. Living in my parents’ basement. Someone else has had that bad dream, too. Planning, waiting, watching. Or not. It almost doesn’t matter. My life, my life, the life I thought I was living privately, was always, all the time, dangling on that string.
Martin, I say, sticking out my lower jaw, as if that will add a little extra rumble, a baritone undercurrent, for once. Will you answer a simple question? If I wanted to be completely safe, if I wanted to know I’d never be found out, if I wanted Kelly Thorndike to vanish off the face of the earth, case closed, no mention of Alan or an accidental—
You think you’re Pablo Escobar? That’s not what this is for.
Answer the question.
We’d never acknowledge you. It wouldn’t even help, for our purposes.
Answer the question.
You want us to be in the Rolodex of every cartel leader, every norteño, every oligarch Putin’s sick of, every minor Al-Qaeda honcho, every spare yakuza and sick sub-Saharan dictator with a billion in IMF dollars in the bank? Because that’s going to be the result. Word gets out. Why would we agree to that? We’re trying to get out of the gray market.
Answer the question.
Yeah. okay. It’ll be easy. Silpa’s ready. The facial surgery — the epicanthus, the eye shaping, a little work on the lips — it’s pretty straightforward, actually. Even the pigmentation. He’s been doing experiments on mice for years. Carotenoids. You wouldn’t believe it. I mean, it really does turn yellow. But look. I’m telling you. Just because Einstein said it was possible doesn’t mean they should have built the atomic bomb. It’s not for you. I’m telling you it’s not for you. He should never have said anything.
Who are you, Martin? I wish I could ask him. And were the tears real? For a moment he seems to shimmer in the air in front of me, like a cheap hologram in a Seventies movie. Friend, comrade, nemesis, exploiter? He licks his lips and looks over his shoulder at Mai. What can money do if it can’t smooth over life’s little inconsistencies?
Martin, I say, Silpa didn’t say anything. Julie-nah did.
I’ve caught him at a pensive moment, looking over my shoulder, elbows on his knees, cradling an invisible globe in the webwork of his fingers. And there he stays. As still as a photograph. As wax. For the longest increment possible he doesn’t even blink, his nostrils don’t flare.
And now, he says finally, his eyes still raised beyond mine, still in the same disembodied position. Now what, Kelly? Now you get to call me a big fat liar?
Martin, I say, my tongue grown thick and dry, a foreign object, a giant’s fat digit resting in my throat. You’re still my friend. I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Really.
Or, I should say, I would have. If I didn’t know about Northern State.
He stares at me for a moment, a Yul Brynner stare, his eyes bubbling out of his skull, and then erupts in a belly laugh. Lord God, he says, wiping away tears again. You called in the cavalry. That’s more than I ever gave you credit for. Good one, Kelly. But just so you know: Silpa’s already aware of my checkered past. Everyone is. Just in case you thought you had one up on me.
So you saved the lies for your biographer.
Oh, come on. I never told you those tapes were the whole story.
And what am I supposed to do, draw up a list? Fact-check every single assertion? I mean, did you ever sell drugs at all? For example?
There’s no time to go back into that now, he says. You know the line the only real crimes are the ones that are never punished? Let’s just put it that way. Anyway, my record was expunged. Thanks to the state of Vermont and its benevolence toward first-time offenders. Though I guess a P.I. can still track it down. There are always gaps that have to be plugged. Look, is this enough? You’ve had your adventure. I take it that now that you’ve exposed me we should be buying you a ticket home.
Exposed me? I want to ask him. Is this what exposure looks like? Should I tell him how close I was, just last night, to breaking the egg of his life wide open, with sixteen keystrokes? Martin is the proof. We could make a pact of mutually assured destruction. But for what? I want a new life, not détente. I want this to be over.
No, I say. I’m staying. The air seems to be crackling, with a smell of ozone. I’m taking your invitation.
Behind me, the bowl clinks on the kitchen counter, and the bathroom door closes. Martin’s face works against itself at angles, assembling three or four different expressions at once.
You know what Alan told me once? I say. You only have one chance to get it right in life. Well, what did he know? Just because I had a happy childhood doesn’t mean I’m preserved in amber. I can change, too. I can be broken and remade.
That’s very poetic, he says. But what’s your plan? Once it all comes out, where will you be? In China? Has Silpa worked this out yet?
Where did all the tension go? The air in the room has shifted, cooled, but Martin hasn’t moved. How did that revelation pass so quickly? He flexes his shoulders and gives a magnanimous hand wave. Look, he says, Kelly, I love you, but you’ll have to make up your own mind. Frankly, I’m on to other things. Silpa will have to run this end of the business once I get started.