things couldn’t be more ugly and uncomfortable, Frank forced Marlowe to stand in for him beside my mother, put the ring on her finger, and offer her a chaste kiss on the cheek. My boyfriend became my stepbrother before my eyes. I watched in horror as my mother and her new husband leaned their bodies against the glass that separated them until guards dragged Frank back to his cell.
On the bus my mother cried all the way home in the tatty, short wedding dress she wore under a raincoat. Marlowe had some kind of look on his face that I couldn’t read. I tried to take his hand so my mother wouldn’t see. He pushed me away cruelly. I went to the back of the bus to sit alone, hollowed out and numb. After a while my mother fell asleep and Marlowe moved back beside me. He took my hand and rested his head on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I thought about my father and his false assurances and then how he’d left without a word. I thought about what my mother had told me about Marlowe, that he was a liar just like my dad. The bus smelled like cigarettes and vomit. I leaned my head against the windows and watched the orange groves roll by.
With the death-row wedding and Frank’s new trial starting just a week later, I became a pariah at school. I was no one before all that; I was quiet and flying under the radar, doing well but not well enough to attract attention. I wasn’t especially ugly or noticeably sexy, so no one even saw me. As the trial dragged on, though, people had somehow become confused by the media coverage and thought I was Frank’s daughter. Someone left a dead bird in my locker; someone tripped me in the hallway; someone flung spaghetti at me in the cafeteria. I wept in the bathroom, trying to wash the sauce out of my hair.
And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, Frank was acquitted. My mother’s prayers had been answered. Her husband was coming home.
20
When I return from my appointment, the house has an aura of emptiness. There will be no mealtime negotiations (Eat three pieces of broccoli, Victory, and then we can have dessert), no bath-time adventures (the race between Mr. Duck and Mr. Frog continues), no quiet time in Victory’s room before she drifts off to sleep. All the comforting rituals of the day have been suspended.
As I pour myself a cup of coffee-not that I need any more caffeine-I hear Esperanza in the laundry room. I call her name, but she doesn’t answer. I decide to wait awhile before I tell her she can have the rest of the evening off. I don’t want to be alone, knocking around this house that never feels quite like home unless Victory is in it, too.
Gray has gone to the offices of Powers and Powers, Inc., in the city just forty minutes away-for what, I don’t know. I have been there myself only a couple of times. It’s a small space with an open floor of cubicles and a couple of conference rooms with long wooden tables and ergonomic swivel chairs, big flat-screen monitors, and state-of- the-art video-conferencing equipment. It’s like any other office where any other business is conducted-antiseptic, impersonal, the smell of bad coffee or burned microwave popcorn wafting from the break room. The printer jams, someone has to change the enormous bottle on top of the watercooler, people stick pictures of their kids on the sides of their computer monitors.
Gray’s work is not as Mission Impossible as it sounds. After the end of the Cold War, firms like this have begun to play a role in world warfare in a way that had always been reserved for the military. Powers and Powers, Inc., refer to themselves as private security consultants, as Detective Harrison mentioned, and that’s accurate. But they have also sent their operatives to help suppress the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, end the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and support the rebuilding effort in Kosovo. At their best, privatized military companies provide targeted and specialized services formerly associated with government military forces. When working in conjunction with established and recognized states, they can be very effective. If, however, they operate without conscience- and there has been enough of this to make people worry-these companies, employing the most highly trained paramilitary personnel throughout the world, can have a destabilizing effect on established states.
Powers and Powers employs a staff of just under a thousand former Special Forces and elite law-enforcement personnel. Their services range from hostage negotiation to emergency response, from arms training to small tactical operations to private security. They hire out their services to governments, corporations, and individuals. There has been a lot of controversy about the industry, so Drew and Gray prefer to keep a low profile. Few who know us, in fact, know what they do. Even other tenants in their building don’t know the true nature of their work. And even I don’t have any knowledge of their specific operations at any given time. I find I don’t mind this. I guess I’m more comfortable than most with secrets and lies.
I take advantage of Gray’s trip to the office and go down to an Internet cafe on the beach, order a latte, and log in to an account I created a long time ago. Amid the slew of spam, there’s a message from Oscar. It reads, “What’s the problem, Annie?”
I’m surprised that he remembers me, though he assured me he would. I’m also a little frightened. Part of me was hoping that he’d no longer be operating.
I sit for a second, not sure how to answer his question. I look around me and spot a young girl in a wetsuit hanging open to reveal a bikini top. She’s tan and bleached blond, sipping an energy drink and surfing the Web. There’s an old man in a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops eyeing her over his coffee. You can tell he thinks he’s still got it. But he doesn’t.
“I have reason to believe the past is about to catch up with me,” I write. “I need an escape hatch.”
I send the message and wait, sip on my latte. It’s weak and foamy; I wish for New York City coffee, coffee that’s like a punch in the face. There’s a television mounted in the corner of the cafe tuned to CNN. On the screen: a gallery of murdered women and a caption that reads, COPYCAT? The sound is down, and white closed captions scroll across the screen.
I check the e-mail in-box. There’s already a message waiting.
“I’ll consider myself on standby,” it reads. “In the meantime start telling people you’re taking up a new hobby. Tell people you want your scuba certification. When you’re sure you’re ready, you know what to do. Don’t be hasty. This is for keeps.”
I finish my coffee and reflect on his words. Sitting in the cafe watching the old man try his game with the surfer chick, everything takes on a nebulous unreality, as though I’m waking from one of my dreams. I remind myself that nothing is done yet. I’m still okay. I’m still Annie Powers.
After a while I leave the cafe and walk toward my car. I have a terrible headache behind my right eye. As I put the key in the lock, I see the girl I noticed at Ella’s party. She’s standing over by the entrance to the cafe I didn’t see her when I first came out. She’s leaning against the masonry wall, staring at me with that same expression, looking more unkempt than I remembered but still waifishly pretty. As I move toward her, she turns and starts to walk away quickly. I follow.
“Hey,” I call after her, though why I am following her or what I’ll say when I catch up to her, I have no idea. I just feel this desperation to know her name. She takes a left, is out of sight, and I pick up my pace almost to a run. But when I make the turn, she’s gone. I look up and down the street. She’s nowhere to be seen. My heart is pounding as though I’ve just run a marathon; a familiar panic is blooming in my chest. I get back to my car, shut and lock the door. My airways are constricting, and there’s a dance of white spots before my eyes. It’s a full-blown panic attack. I try to breathe my way through it, like my shrink has taught me. I turn on the car and blast the A/C; the air is hot at first, then chill. I start to calm down. I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror. My face is a mask of terror.
“What is wrong with you?” I say aloud. “Pull yourself together.”
After a while, when I can breathe again and the inner quake has subsided, I drive home. My headache has reached operatic proportions.
