was the very first thing I asked you, and you said no. Nothing unusual. An ex-boyfriend signing you up for membership in a hate group, at a modern-day Nazi website, well, I would consider that unusual. ”
“It’s, he’s, I don’t know…”
The assistant director shook his head. “Please don’t offend me any further with any other lame excuses. This is your last day here, Ashley. Even if your excuse is the truth, well, we cannot have this, one way or the other. Nasty boyfriend, or true belief. Both are completely unacceptable in the atmosphere of tolerance we try to promote here. This is the pornography of hate. I won’t allow it. And, to be frank, I’m not sure I believe you. We will mail you your final paycheck. Good night, Miss Freeman. Please do not come back here again. And please”-he added as he pointed to the door-“don’t expect a recommendation.”
Ashley alternated between tears of frustration and utter fury as she made her way back to her apartment through the fast-descending night. With each step, she grew angrier, so much so that she barely saw the shadows and darkness surrounding her. She quick-marched with military precision down the city streets, trying to decipher some plan of action, but unable to, her rage was so complete. She let it overcome her, so that her entire body quivered. No one in her right mind would allow someone to screw up her life so completely, and as she considered herself fully in her right mind, she decided that it was going to stop, that night.
She threw her jacket and backpack on the bed and went straight to the telephone. Within seconds, she had dialed Michael O’Connell’s number.
His voice sounded sleepy, disconnected, when he answered the phone.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“You know goddamn well who it is,” Ashley said in a voice that was on the edge of a shout, filled with bitterness.
“Ashley! I knew you’d call.”
“You bastard! You’ve screwed up my work at school. Now you’ve cost me my job. What sort of creep are you?”
He was silent.
“Leave me alone! Why can’t you leave me alone?”
He remained silent.
She picked up momentum. “I hate you! God damn you, Michael! I told you it was over, and it is! I never want to see you again. I can’t believe you would do this to me. And you say you love me? You’re a sick and evil person, Michael, and I want you out of my life. Forever! Do you understand that?”
He still didn’t reply.
“Do you hear me, Michael? It’s over! Ended. Finished. Completed. However you want to understand it, but it’s all over. No more. Got it?”
She waited for a response and got none. Silence slithered around her, enveloping her like a vine.
“Michael?” She suddenly thought he wasn’t there, that he’d disconnected and her words were simply disappearing into some immense electronic void. “Do you get it? It’s over.”
Again, all she heard at first was silence.
She thought she could hear his breathing.
“Please, Michael. It’s got to be over.”
When he did finally speak, it took her by surprise.
“Ashley,” he replied almost brightly, a little laughter in his tone, as if he were speaking a different language, one that was utterly foreign to her. “It’s just wonderful to hear your voice. I’m counting the days until we can get back together again.”
He paused, then added, “Forever.”
And then he hung up.
“But something happened?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Something, actually many things, happened.”
I watched her face and saw that she was struggling with the details of what she wanted to say. She wore reluctance in much the same way that someone puts on a warm sweater in the winter, in anticipation of some wind and cold and a shift in the weather for the worse.
“Well,” I said, a little exasperated by her oblique manner, “what’s the context here? You got me into this story by saying that I was supposed to make sense of it all. So far, I’m not sure what I’ve really gathered. I can see the games that Michael O’Connell was working. But to what end? I can see the crime taking shape-but what crime are we thinking about?”
She held up her hand. “You want things to be simple, don’t you? But crime isn’t so simple. When you examine it, there are many forces at work. Do you wonder, sometimes, whether we help create the psychological or maybe emotional atmosphere in which bad things, terrible things, take root, flourish, and then flower? We’re like a hothouse for evil, all in ourselves. Seems that way sometimes, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t answer this. Instead, I watched her as she stared down into her cup of coffee, as if it could tell her something.
“Doesn’t it seem to you that we live these incredibly diffuse, disjointed lives? Once upon a happier time, you grew up and stayed where you were. Probably bought the house down the street from your folks. Helped run the family business. So we all remained linked, in the same orbit. Naive times. The Honeymooners and Father Knows Best on television. What a quaint idea: Father knows best. Now, we get educated and we depart.”
She paused, then asked, “So, what would you do then, when it became clear to you that someone had decided to ruin your life?”
She added, “And don’t you see? From our perspective, looking at the story from our safe spot in this world, it’s easy to see that there is this person out there trying to ruin their lives. But they couldn’t see that.”
“Why not?” I blurted out.
“Because it’s not reasonable. Because it made no sense. I mean, why? Why would he want to do this to them?”
“Okay, why?”
“Not yet. You need to find that out for yourself. But some things are clear: Michael O’Connell, with half their education, half their resources, half their prestige, had all the power. He had twice their smarts because they were like everyone else and he wasn’t. There they were, caught up and entwined in the midst of all his evil, and yet, they couldn’t see it. Not for what it was. What would you do? Isn’t that the question? Awful things have happened, but what is the real threat?”
I didn’t directly answer. Instead, I repeated myself, trying to get an answer, “But something changed?”
“Yes. A moment of lucidity.”
“How so?”
She smiled. “A lucky phrase. In what was fast becoming a most unlucky situation.”
19
At first, Ashley was overwhelmed by rage.
Seconds after Michael O’Connell’s voice disappeared from the cell phone, she threw it across the room, where it exploded against a wall like a gunshot. She bent over at the waist, her fists clenched, her face contorted, flushed, teeth grinding. She picked up a textbook and threw it in the same direction, where it slammed on the plaster and thudded to the floor. She paced into her bedroom, seized a small throw pillow from the bed, then pummeled it, like a boxer in the last round, throwing rights and lefts recklessly. Seizing the pillow and sinking her hands into the fabric, she pulled it apart. Bits and pieces of synthetic stuffing flew into the air around her,
