another.
“Yes, I know you,” Harris said.
“You were told to come alone,” the contact admonished, but not angrily.
“We wanted to say good-bye,” Darius told him. “And we didn’t know…We wanted to know — how will we contact them where they’re going?”
“You won’t,” said the man in the reindeer sweater. “Hard as it may be, you’ve got to accept that you will probably never see them again.”
In the Microbus, both before Harris had made the phone call from the pizza parlor and after, as they had found their way to the park, they had discussed the likelihood of a permanent separation. For a moment, no one could speak. They stared at one another, in a state of denial that approached paralysis.
The man in the reindeer sweater backed off a few yards to give them privacy, but he said, “We have little time.”
Although Harris had lost his house, his bank accounts, his job, and everything but the clothes on his back, those losses now seemed inconsequential. Property rights, he had learned from bitter experience, were the essence of all civil rights, but the theft of every dime of his property did not have one tenth — not one
They said good-bye with fewer words than Harris would ever have imagined possible — because no words were adequate. They hugged one another fiercely, acknowledging that they were most likely parting until they met again on whatever shore lay beyond the grave. Their mother had believed in that far and better shore. Since childhood they had drifted away from the belief that she had instilled in them, but they were for this terrible moment, in this place, fully in the faith again. Harris held Bonnie tightly, then Martin, and came at last to his brother, who was separating tearfully from Jessica. He hugged Darius and kissed his cheek. He had not kissed his brother for more years than he could recall, because for so long they had both been too adult for that. Now he wondered at the silly rules that had constituted his sense of mature behavior, for in a single kiss, all was said that needed to be said.
The incoming waves crashed through the pier pilings behind them with a roar hardly louder than the pounding of Harris’s own heart, as at last he stepped back from Darius. Wishing there were more light in the gloom, he studied his brother’s face for the last time in this life, desperate to freeze it in memory, for he was leaving without even a photograph.
“Must go,” said the man in the reindeer sweater.
“Maybe everything won’t fall over the brink,” Darius said.
“We can hope.”
“Maybe the world will come to its senses.”
“You be careful going back through that park,” Harris said.
“We’re safe,” Darius said. “Nobody back there’s more dangerous than me. I’m an attorney, remember?”
Harris’s laugh was perilously close to a sob.
Instead of good-bye, he simply said, “Little brother.”
Darius nodded. For a moment it seemed that he wouldn’t be able to say anything more. But then: “Big brother.”
Jessica and Bonnie turned away from each other, both of them with Kleenex pressed to their eyes.
The girls and Martin parted.
The man in the reindeer sweater led one Descoteaux family south along the beach while the other Descoteaux family stood by the foot of the pier, watching. The sward was as pale as a path in a dream. The phosphorescent foam from the breakers dissolved on the sand with a whispery sizzle like urgent voices delivering incomprehensible warnings from out of the shadows in a nightmare.
Three times, Harris glanced at the other Descoteaux family over his shoulder, but then he could not bear to look back again.
They continued south on the beach, even after they reached the end of the park. They passed a few restaurants, all closed on that Monday night, then a hotel, a few condominiums, and warmly lighted beachfront houses in which lives were still lived without awareness of the hovering darkness.
After a mile and a half, perhaps even two miles, they came to another restaurant. Lights were on in that establishment, but the big windows were too high above the beach for Harris to see any diners at the view tables. The man in the reindeer sweater led them off the sward, alongside the restaurant, into the parking lot in front of the place. They went to a green-and-white motor home that dwarfed the cars around it.
“Why couldn’t my brother have brought us directly here?” Harris asked.
Their escort said, “It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to know this vehicle or its license number. For his own sake.”
They followed the stranger into the motor home through a side door, just aft of the open cockpit, and into the kitchen. He stepped aside and directed them farther back into the vehicle.
An Asian woman in her early or middle fifties, in a black pants suit and a Chinese-red blouse, was standing at the dining table, beyond the kitchen, waiting for them. Her face was uncommonly gentle, and her smile was warm.
“So pleased that you could come,” she said, as if they were paying her a social visit. “The dining nook seats seven altogether, plenty of room for the five of us. We’ll be able to talk on the way, and we’ve so much to discuss.”
They slid around the horseshoe-shaped booth, until the five of them encircled the table.
The man in the reindeer sweater had gotten behind the steering wheel. He started the engine.
“You may call me Mary,” said the Asian woman, “because it’s best that you don’t know my name.”
Harris considered keeping his silence, but he had no talent for deception. “I’m afraid that I recognize you, and I’m sure that my wife does as well.”
“Yes,” Jessica confirmed.
“We’ve eaten in your restaurant several times,” Harris said, “up in West Hollywood. On most of those occasions, either you or your husband was greeting guests at the front door.”
She nodded and smiled. “I’m flattered that you would recognize me out of…shall we say, out of context.”
“You and your husband are so charming,” Jessica said. “Not easy to forget.”
“How was dinner when you had it with us?”
“Always wonderful.”
“Thank you. So kind of you to say so. We do try. But now I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your lovely daughters,” said the restaurateur, “although I know their names.” She reached across the table to take each girl’s hand. “Ondine, Willa, my name is Mae Lee. It’s a pleasure to meet you both, and I want you to be unafraid. You are in good hands now.”
The motor home pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, into the street, and away.
“Where are we going?” Willa asked.
“First, out of California,” said Mae Lee. “To Las Vegas. Many motor homes crowd the highway between here and Vegas. We’re just one more. At that point, I leave you, and you go on with someone else. Your father’s picture will be all over the news for a time, and while they’re telling their lies about him, you will all be in a safe and quiet place. You will change your looks as much as possible and learn what you will be able to do to help others like yourselves. You will have new names, first and middle and last. New hairstyles. Mr. Descoteaux, you might grow a beard, and you will certainly work with a good voice coach to lose your Caribbean accent, pleasant as it is to the ear. Oh, there will be many changes, and more fun than you imagine there could be now. And meaningful work. The world has not ended, Ondine. It has not ended, Willa. It’s only passing through one edge of a dark cloud. There are things to be done to be sure that the cloud does not swallow us entirely. Which, I promise you, it will not. Now, before we begin, may I serve anyone tea, coffee, wine, beer, or a soft drink perhaps?”
