Underground Airlines(27)
“What was it? Sula—what was it?”
“Right, well”—I smiled, apologetic site-analyst smile—“see, that’s what we’re working on changing. The company’s wanting to start opening some American locations. Raise brand awareness. So I’ve been traveling to some cities, investigating available retail properties in storefronts and shopping centers, and then what I’ll do is submit an analysis to Jakarta as to the relative desirability of each potential location.”
I had delivered this short speech, with the same dull Dirksonian earnestness, ten or twelve times in the past. Most people, you could watch them glaze over the minute you said words like analyst, words like relative desirability. But this girl, this Martha—her eyes were open to the story. She was nodding with fascination, as if I’d announced that I was a contract killer.
She even asked a follow-up question, asked what makes a location suitable or unsuitable, and I gave her the combination of factors: pedestrian traffic, neighborhood demographics, competition, while Lionel shrieked and giggled with his new friends. I could keep this up all day if she wanted to. My identity was researched: backed up, backstopped, and double-backstopped.
Martha sighed. “I’ve been to, like—Vincennes. That’s my world travels.” Her eyes were far away. “What’s the best place you’ve ever been?”
“Best?”
“Yeah, best. You know. Most interesting.”
Bell’s Farm. Bell’s Farm was interesting. “Chicago,” I said.
“Aw! Chicago! I would love to go to Chicago. Have you been there a lot?”
“I actually—” My throat felt rusty. The room breathed chlorine. How long had it been since I spoke to anyone this way? “I lived there for some time.”
Lake Shore Drive, the first time, skyscrapers lordly and glass-walled, hovering magisterially above Lake Michigan, reflecting gloriously at one another. My astonishing, terrifying sentinels of liberty.
“I’ve never been,” Martha said. Her shoes were off. Her toes were in the water. Among her tattoos were twin butterflies, one on each ankle, perfectly symmetrical. I noticed. I notice everything. “You believe that? I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life. I even lived in Gary for six months once. And I never got up there.”
“That does seem like a shame.”
“You’re telling me!”
She closed her eyes, like she was picturing it: picturing herself in Chicago. I pictured myself there, too, eating a hot dog. I pictured Castle. I opened my eyes again.
“I don’t know,” Martha was saying. “I never got hold of the right weekend, I guess. And then the kid happened, and—well. You don’t have kids, huh?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, they’re great.” She leaned into me, gave me a big stage whisper. “But they f*ck everything up.”
Martha laughed, and her eyes found her boy, goofing around with these white kids, trying to dunk one under, his sleek body spangled with droplets. Another woman had come in, meanwhile, a middle-aged white lady in a black bathing suit, freckle-specked cleavage and sandy hair and big midwestern arms, with a towel wrapped around her waist. She took a look at us, at me and Martha sitting there talking. Then she looked at the pool.
“Watch this,” Martha said. “Just watch.”
“What?”
“Just watch.”
But I knew; I knew what Martha knew. The woman put her hands on her hips. We knew what was coming. Even Jim Dirkson knew.
“Marcus? Dylan? Jamie?” The woman waved her kids in, like a lifeguard when there was a shark. “Time for lunch.”
“What?” squealed one of the white children.
“We just got here,” said another.
The boys treaded water, their freckled faces twisted at the injustice. Lionel bobbed beside them. The teen, sitting on the pool steps, wrinkled her nose. “I thought we were gonna swim first.”
“Nope,” said the mom. “After. Come on. Now.”
The family climbed out, and the woman toweled them off and hustled them out. Lionel was left alone, treading water, a solitary buoy. Martha raised both middle fingers and pointed them at the lady like guns. We heard the children, their complaining voices growing dimmer as they disappeared down the corridor.
Lionel went under and then came up, crested the blue surface with a harvest of sparkling droplets across his curls, his mouth a small disappointed line, watching the other kids trudge away.
“Do we have to go, too?” he said softly.
“No, sweetness. We’re good. You’re good. I’m just chatting with Mr.—God, I forgot it.”
“Dirkson,” I said quietly.
“Right, right. It’s a nice name.”
“Thanks.” I muttered it. Murmured it. I didn’t know where the name Dirkson came from. It came from Bridge, or from Bridge’s people. It probably came from a Gaithersburg phone book. Martha was still talking, small talk, talking about the Batlisch hearings. “Have you been watching my girl Donatella, by the way? Squaring off up there? She is my hero.”
“Well, anyway,” I said suddenly and stood up. “Anyway.”
I was walking fast. Behind me I heard Martha saying “Jim…” and the boy, too, I heard him calling after me from the water’s edge, giving me back the word I gave him—“Controversy!”—but I was gone.