No. He wasn’t ready. He would report in when he got back to America. Nothing would happen before then anyway. He walked on, leaving the consulate behind.
HIS PASSAGE TO Frankfurt and then New York went smoothly. He felt none of the elation he expected when his Lufthansa 747 touched down at Kennedy, only the knowledge that he couldn’t escape his duty much longer.
The immigration officer hardly glanced at his passport, and he spent his first morning in Manhattan wandering as he had in Hong Kong. But he couldn’t help but see the city through Khadri’s eyes, as one big target: the tunnels, the bridges, the New York Stock Exchange, the Broadway theaters, the subways, the United Nations.
And Times Square, of course. When he’d last seen it, the square — really a bowtie-shaped intersection where Broadway meets Seventh Avenue — had been seedy and rundown. Now it matched its claim to be the world’s crossroads. At Forty-fourth Street and Broadway, he watched tourists and locals crawl over one another like ants at a messy picnic. Oversized neon advertisements glowed from the new office towers. News crawled endlessly on digital tickers, the world reduced to dueling strips of orange and green. Drivers leaned on their horns and street vendors tried to outshout them, hawking Statue of Liberty keychains and drawings of Tupac. A huge Toys ‘R’ Us store occupied the corner where he stood, proof that the place had become an all-ages attraction. Wells remembered what somebody — he didn’t know who — had supposedly once said about Times Square: “It must be beautiful if you can’t read.” Business got done here too. The headquarters of Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Viacom were within two hundred yards. Plus, you could drive a truck right through it. If the World Trade Center was Ground Zero, Times Square was Ground One.
Wells could feel a timer counting down somewhere. He headed into the subway and looked for a train to Queens. Eight hours later he was on a Greyhound bus headed for Charleston with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket. He’d stashed the other fifteen thousand in a safe-deposit box in Manhattan, just in case.
TWO DAYS LATER, Wells walked through the Minneapolis airport with a brand-new South Carolina driver’s license in his pocket, thanks to that state’s liberal rules for issuing licenses. He was headed for Boise, and from there through the Idaho backcountry to Missoula. He had two stops to make, three people to see: his mom, son, and ex-wife. His last errand before he reported in.
He hadn’t told anyone he was coming. He wanted to surprise his ma, show up in Hamilton and sit in her kitchen while she brewed a pot of coffee and scrambled some eggs. He would kiss her cheek and tell her he was sorry he’d been gone so long. She’d forgive him as soon as she saw him. Mothers were like that. At least his was. As for Evan and Heather…he’d have to see.
He had two hours to kill before his flight to Boise, so he found a TGI Friday’s and sat at the bar to watch the NCAA men’s basketball final, Duke versus Texas. After a few minutes, the man at the next stool turned to look at him. Early forties, a faint tan, close-cropped hair, a thin gold chain around one wrist. “Duke or Texas?”
“Duke,” Wells said. He wasn’t keen to talk, but the guy looked harmless enough.
“Me too. Where you headed?”
Wells shrugged and looked up at the television. The guy didn’t take the hint.
“Me, I’m going to Tampa. I hate Northwest. I flew a hundred and twenty thousand miles last year. They didn’t even upgrade me out of Tampa. I couldn’t believe it. They
“Yeah,” Wells grunted. The guy must be a salesman. Not that he planned to ask.
“You married?” the guy said. “I’m married. Five kids.”
“Congratulations.”
“Hey, you don’t mind shooting the shit, do ya?”
Wells found himself unable to tell the guy to get lost. He seemed kind of sad, and Wells hadn’t had a casual conversation with another American in a long time. Call it field research.
The guy downed half his beer in a single gulp. “I better switch to shots. Lemme buy you a beer. Name’s Rich, by the way.”
“I don’t drink,” Wells said.
Rich looked at the bartender. “Double shot of Cuervo for me and a beer for my friend—”
“I told you I don’t drink.”
“Sorry, man. Just being friendly. A Coke then.” Rich nodded to the bartender. “You know, I never minded flying before 9/11. Since then I get hammered every time. Even still.”
Wells wondered again if he should leave. He didn’t feel like talking about September 11. He thought about it plenty on his own. But he supposed airports were a natural place for the topic.
“I think to myself, what would I do if somebody pulled out a box cutter?” Rich said. “Tell you what, I’d go down fighting. Be a hero, like those guys on flight 93.”
“Hero?” Wells couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.
The bartender set a generous helping of Cuervo in front of Rich. “You don’t think those guys were heroes?” Rich looked insulted.
Wells didn’t know much about what had happened on flight 93, but he knew this: trying to save your own skin didn’t make you a hero. Everybody wants to live. You were a hero when you risked your life to save someone else. Usually. Sometimes you were just stupid. He had seen men throw their lives away just to prove they were tough.
Still, some famous battles were remembered for the courage of one side against overwhelming odds. Take Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, the Confederates swarming Cemetery Hill against the Union Army. The attack had been a disaster, but the Rebs would always be known for their bravery. Were they heroes or fools? Did the fact that they were fighting for slavery change the answer?
But Wells didn’t feel like debating heroism with Rich the salesman. “Sure. They were heroes.”
Rich raised his shot to Wells. “
I’ll bet I’m about to find out, Wells thought. Rich tipped the Cuervo down his throat and pounded the glass against the bar. “My marriage is so messed up.”
Wells tried to look sympathetic.
“My wife, Barbara, she caught me screwing the maid. Consuelo. She’s so pissed. Barbara, that is. Consuelo doesn’t care much.”
Wells racked his brain for an appropriate response. He failed to find it. America seemed to have gotten a lot chattier in his absence. He vaguely remembered television talk shows like
Rich looked at him and pressed on. “I mean, Barb wasn’t supposed to be home. She comes in, she starts screaming, ‘Fuck you fuck you,’ really screaming—”
So much for being polite, Wells thought.
“You have any dignity?” Wells looked Rich in the eye, a stare that had frozen guys in places much tougher than this. “You even know what that word means? Telling some guy you never met about how you cheated on your wife and got caught. I don’t know you and I don’t want to. Thanks for the Coke.” Wells picked up his bag.
“You don’t understand,” Rich said. “I’m under so much pressure. You know what it’s like trying to pay for two houses and three cars? I can’t remember the last time I slept with my wife. I just needed to touch someone. My life sucks—”
“You know what sucks?” Wells said. “Stepping on a land mine and getting your legs blown off. And you’re four years old. Riding around in a Humvee waiting to get torched by a bomb you can’t even see, like our guys are doing in Baghdad right now.”
“I know—”
“You don’t know shit. You don’t have a clue. You can’t imagine how most people in this world live. And most of ’em have never in their lives bitched as much as you did in the last five minutes. Divorce your wife. Quit screwing the maid. I couldn’t care less.”
“What the fuck do you know about how tough the world is?” Rich said. “You’re sitting here watching TV just like me.”
“Not anymore,” Wells said. He slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar for his Coke and headed for his gate.
