He doesn’t answer. But he seems to indirectly accede by asking: “So you’re here as boyfriend, not journalist?”
I ignore him. I think I’ve begun to understand Faith’s secret, or at least the first part of it.
“You told Alan Parsons about this? You gave him ammunition to use against her.”
“Get out of my office.”
Another insight. He didn’t tell Alan Parsons. Then, another silent A-ha. He has no idea about Alan Parsons. Alan was a hacker who got to know Faith at a coffee shop. Alan needed Faith’s help to seduce someone else- namely, me. So he hacked into her email or computer or whatever, and figured out Faith had her own weak spot, something to exploit: she had slept with a school administrator to help her nephew. Alan essentially blackmailed her to help get my attention on the subway platform. If she didn’t go along with it, he’d expose her seduction of this imbecilic dean of admissions.
It’s a theory, at least.
The doofus reaches for the landline phone. I lean over and I hold the receiver in place, daring him to turn this into a physical confrontation.
“If you kick Timothy out of school, I’ll. .” I pause. I don’t like the gravity and cliched nature of the threats poised on my tongue. I can’t say them and mean them.
“You obviously don’t have kids, Mr. Idle.”
I blink, stung. I drop his gaze and glance out the picture window behind him. On the bench, the boy flies the airplane over his head, amused, captivated, free, healthy, alive.
“My son is Isaac.” A whisper, or maybe I just think it.
“If you had kids, you’d understand that you should let this go. Faith is a big girl looking out for her nephew. Your threats aren’t helping him or her. But I’m willing to let this go. End of story. Okay?”
“Excellent decision, Carl.”
I look again at the boy with the airplane. I suddenly can’t breathe. I take a step backward, let myself out the door. And then I’m running down the hallway. Sprinting.
It’s the most lucid I’ve been in days. It’s the first time my head has cleared. I can see the memory fragments now, talking to Polly over the fortune cookie, then discussing that night with Wilma, the therapist, getting my homework assignment. Focus on what you’ve lost. Blink, I see the hospital, Isaac born, tiny, Polly so pale. The chaos and the doctors.
I’m outside, down the path, between the out-of-place trees on the front of the out-of-place school. I’m sitting in the Audi. I pull out my phone, turn it on, hear the urgent beep demanding it be plugged in. I dial.
“What do you want?” the voice answers.
“Now.”
“I told you: tonight.”
“Now, or I go to the police. And the press. I know everything.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Twin Peaks?”
“No.” He doesn’t continue.
“Where?”
“Mount Davidson. Rainy now. No one will be there. At the cross. Thirty minutes.” The phone dies.
I’m sure he’d prefer a nighttime exchange. Faith for my information, and the brain images and the Juggler. At night, it’s dark, free of witnesses, easier to dispatch us. During the day, I’ve got a better chance.
Don’t I?
Do I care? No.
I can see clearly for the first time since my head smashed onto the subway platform why my life has come undone. No, I can see it clearly for the first time in much longer than that, maybe eight months.
I’ve got to outrun the memory. I’m willing to die trying.
48
Fog so dense it requires windshield wipers greets me at the foot of Mount Davidson. It’s more of a huge hill, really, accessible by a cul-de-sac at the edge of St. Francis Woods, one of San Francisco’s ritziest neighborhoods. The mansions here defy the urban space limitations elsewhere in the city.
A ten-minute winding-trail walk up the mini-mountain leads to the top. There, when the fog permits, you get a splendid view of downtown and the East Bay. But the bigger payoff is the massive cross looming over Mount Davidson, an unlikely and imposing 103-foot concrete crucifix built in the 1930s, its upper edge popping just above the high trees on San Francisco’s highest hill.
In the late 1990s, it was nearly felled by city residents who disliked the church-and-state implications of a massive religious symbol mounted on public lands. It was preserved through a deal with the Armenian Church, which rewrote the narrative to make this not just any cross but a memorial to Armenian genocide in Turkey.
And in the 1970s, Clint Eastwood nearly died here at the hands of a serial killer in the first Dirty Harry movie.
If it was good enough for Clint, it’s good enough for me. Not a bad place for an agnostic to meet his own end.
I park in the cul-de-sac in front of a home with a massive oval front window. I push open the heavy door of an Audi I have no business driving, or, rather, that I certainly can’t afford. Not on my own. I see the nick in the driver’s-side door, just below the handle, where, just a month before Isaac was born, Polly got woozy and hit a cement wall pulling out of a parking lot. It was the last time I remember her driving this car, or any other. I look in the backseat at the car seat, empty.
I should be coming up with a plan. I should find a sharp stick with which to defend myself. I should figure out how I’m going to confront Andrew Leviathan and Gils Simons. There are a thousand things I should do.
I open the back door. I slide in next to the car seat. From the tag still hanging off the side I can see that it’s made by Graco. The plush gray fabric is so clean, unstained, pristine. There’s a rubber band still around the clasps that would hold in place my precious cargo.
Would. In theory.
This car seat has never been used.
I lean my head next to it. I close my eyes. I see Polly sitting at the Chinese restaurant, her smile at 40 percent, sad, poised to tell me something, holding her empty fortune cookie. I shake my head, making the image disappear.
I pull my phone from my pocket. I know it is almost dead for wont of a recharge. But I push the power button anyway. An Apple emerges onto the screen. Then it beeps and shows me an image of a battery near empty with a red sign, indicating five percent left.
Five percent may be all I need.
From my contact list, I call up Polly’s phone number. I press it to dial. I put the phone on speaker. I hear the phone ring only once. It answers: “This number is out of service.”
The phone dies.
Out of service. The last time I called, when I was at the hospital getting my concussion checked, a woman answered and didn’t recognize my voice. She asked me to stop calling. She must be tired of me calling her, asking for Polly. She finally put the number to bed.
I exhale and lay my head against the side of the car seat. I feel the plastic edge press uncomfortably against my temple. I ignore it. I close my eyes and I see Polly. She opens the fortune cookie and discovers it is empty inside. She manages a bitter half laugh.
“How appropriate,” she says. “My future looks bleak.”
“Senor.” I hold up my hand to the waiter with the gimp knee. “Another fortune cookie for the fine lady.”
He nods and disappears into the kitchen.
“I have something to tell you, Nathaniel.”
Polly looks down. I follow her gaze to the water-stained tablecloth beneath her glass, seeing the damp trail
