“And I mean this from the bottom of my heart-”
“Yeah?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
He snapped his briefcase shut and stood up.
“That’s not friendly, Perry.” His voice was cordial but just barely, as if every word was costing him a little bit of dignity. “I extended the hand of friendship and you just pissed on it.”
“Maybe I was just practicing some gunboat diplomacy.”
“Hey, no harm, no foul.” Now his grin was tighter, narrower, seeming to flatten out the broad planes of his face. “No matter who pays, we’re on her. You know that, right? If Zusane Zaksauskas does walk out of here, there’s not a place on this planet that she can hide from us. She’s ours for life.”
“Lucky her.”
He snorted and started for the door. What stopped him was the surgeon in scrubs and a mask and hairnet standing in the entryway. He glanced at Nolan, and then at me.
“Perry?” the doctor said.
I stood up, felt my heart vault upward into my throat. “Yes?”
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”
I stared at him, and Nolan stared at him, and I could feel the air molecules in the room fall absolutely motionless around us.
“We did everything we could,” the surgeon said, “but she never recovered consciousness after the operation. I am very sorry.”
Nolan sighed and shook his head, then looked back at me. “Sorry about that, kid. Like I said before, though, it’s probably for the best.”
After he left, the surgeon took off his mask and looked at me.
“I thought you told me you weren’t a doctor,” I said.
“What is your American saying?” Erich tapped his finger against his head. “‘I play one on TV’?”
“So Gobi…”
“The body seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Or soon will.”
“I take it you’ll be making the proper arrangements?”
“Ja,” Erich said. “Is already taken care of.”
47. “We Own the Sky” — M83
The day after Gobija Zaksauskas was officially declared dead for the second time in her life, her remains whisked away from the hospital morgue by persons unknown, my mom and Annie and I flew back to the States. My dad stayed in Paris to catch a later flight. How much later remained to be seen. He didn’t tell us, and nobody asked.
Walking through customs at JFK, Mom stopped and looked at the Christmas tree in the international terminal.
“We missed Thanksgiving,” she said, in a funny voice, like she was just now realizing how far away we’d been. I knew how she felt. America sounded loud and frantic in my one good ear, people running, shouting, flights being announced in a barrage of noise and information. All around us, time had passed, and we’d been plunged right back into the flow again, trying to get our balance.
Then, like that, it was December.
Annie and I spent a lot of time at home over the next few weeks, going to movies, playing board games, wrapping Christmas presents, and downloading holiday music. Even the most normal, boring American things felt reassuring somehow, like they were anchoring us into place.
Nobody said much about my dad. I tried to say something once or twice to Annie about it, but she didn’t seem to want to talk, so I let it go. My mom said she didn’t care about getting a tree this year, so Annie and I went out and brought one home ourselves on top of the Volvo while she was at work. Norrie, Caleb, and Sasha came over and helped us decorate it, stringing popcorn and cranberries because Annie had always wanted to do that. We practiced some of the new material and even did a couple of Christmas songs with Annie singing the background vocals on “Santa Claus Is Back in Town.” Mom said it sounded nice, but it was in that distracted kind of voice that could have been referring to anything, or nothing at all. She was being too quiet, spending too much time alone, but there didn’t seem to be any way to mention it.
Two weeks after our arrival back in New York, Chow came home from Berkeley on Christmas break. He stopped by the house one night for pizza and eggnog. Naturally, he’d read about everything that happened with me and Gobi in Europe and couldn’t wait to talk about it-ever since we’d come home, it was all over the news and the Internet and everywhere else.
It was good to see him again, and we stayed up late into the night, talking by the fire. He told me that while they were home, he and his old high school flame were back together “on a temporary basis,” which as far as I could tell meant they’d started sleeping together until they had to go back to their respective colleges in January.
“What about you, dawg?” he said, looking over at the Christmas tree. “Another Christmas at home with your red lights and your blue balls?”
After everything that had happened, it was a pretty freaking insensitive thing to say, but I found myself laughing, and that felt good.
For a long time, I was afraid I’d forgotten how.
Then, two days before Christmas, my dad came home.
He called from the airport, and showed up at the house that night with a full beard and a bag of gifts like Santa except without the laughs. It was all very civil, very polite, and completely jarring. Mom stayed on her side of the couch, he stayed on his. At the end of the world’s most awkward conversation, he said goodbye, hugged me and Annie, and started back for his hotel.
I wanted to say, “Dad, wait.”
I wanted to ask him what really happened with Paula. I wanted to hear his side of the story. There had to be a reason for what he’d done, right?
Someday I want to hear it.
“You coming downstairs?” Mom asked. “Your sister’s making hot cocoa and she wants to watch
I glanced up from the computer. “Maybe in a while.” It was Christmas Eve, and I was not much in the holiday spirit despite a prediction of scattered flurries tonight and Death Cab for Cutie on the radio doing their version of “Baby Please Come Home.”
I looked down at the online application for next fall’s admission to UCLA. It was only half finished, and I didn’t have the strength to seek out one more letter of recommendation. I knew I had to finish it, though. It was time to move forward, to aim past it and punch through. I thought maybe California was far enough away to get a new start.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Mom said. “This came for you.”
I looked at the envelope she’d dropped on my desk. There was no return address. I looked at the blurry postmark. It looked like Fiji.
I tore it open.
It was a Christmas card from the Hotel Schoeneweiss, showing a huge crowd of men and women in Santa suits trying to climb a wooden pole in the annual ClauWau competition in Zermatt. Inside was blank, except for two lines of block print at the bottom.
NEW LOCATION FOR THE HOTEL. ONLY ONE GUEST SO FAR. SHE HAS ASKED TO SEE YOU NEXT TIME YOU ARE IN THE ISLANDS.
