Vox(89)

Jackie nods, then looks directly at me.

“There!” Sharon says, a note of triumph in her voice, and moves on to Lin.

The first words out of Jackie’s mouth are exactly what I expect.

“Holy fuck. That was worse than that fucking meditation retreat I went on twenty years ago.”

Same old Jacko, I think, and talk to her—really talk to her—for the first time in two decades.





SEVENTY-SIX




By the time we turn in to the Rays’ dirt track that passes for a driveway, Del and Sharon have sketched out everything: Poe’s successful undercover work, Del’s staged arrest, and Steven’s rescue.

“That part was easy,” Sharon says. “He was one floor below the lab. Along with a few army guys who thought they could take over the building. Didn’t work. Those boys have more brawn than brains.” She looks over at Petroski, who’s staring blankly at the air in front of him. “Sorry. I don’t mean you, soldier.”

By the way her eyes move up and to the left, it’s clear this is exactly what she means.

“He did just fine, Sharon,” I say, watching a glimmer of confidence brighten Petroski’s eyes.

Poe cuts the engine and circles around to let us out. When he helps Lin down, her tiny hand disappears into his. The two of them together make a ridiculous sort of King Kong tableau. Lorenzo hops out and reaches up for me with both arms.

“Jean?”

Patrick’s voice cuts through the still night air at the same time I let myself fall against Lorenzo. I break away and walk across the dirt road to my husband, feeling a pull in both directions, sensing that I’m being ripped in two.

“Thank god, babe,” Patrick says, folding himself around me. When Steven appears, the three of us stand in a three-way embrace until Poe has to break it up.

“Later,” Poe says. “Some of us have a long night.”

My long night begins with a quick check on the three sleeping bodies tucked up on an air mattress in Sharon Ray’s living room. It ends with me collapsing face-first on the empty space beside Sonia. The last thing I feel before sleep hits is her tiny chest rising and falling under my arm. The last thing I hear is Poe, in the Rays’ kitchen, laying out the plans for my escape.





SEVENTY-SEVEN




Here is how it happens on this last day.

Patrick kisses us goodbye—first the twins, then Sonia, then me, and finally Steven. He pays extra attention to Steven. You never forget your firstborn, I guess. You don’t love them more, but the bond is different, primal. As he drives away with the single vial hidden in his briefcase, I’m glad we don’t have a dog anymore. We did once, a silly mix of collie and beagle and shepherd that sat morosely on the doormat from the moment Patrick left in the morning until he came home at sunset. I don’t think I could bear watching that dog wait.

It’s bad enough for me.

Everything after his car disappears, taillights glowing in the predawn, is a construct, a video I play while the kids fight over the last brownie Sharon puts out, while Sonia tells her brothers in no uncertain terms that she knows they’re trying to cheat at cards, while Patrick’s half-empty coffee mug sits on a stranger’s kitchen counter, the liquid in it evaporating and condensing into a thick brown sludge. It still smells like shit, this American coffee, but I savor it all the same.

“Just going to lie down for a minute,” I tell Sharon, who’s making breakfast for a dozen hungry people. She waves me off with an all-too-somber understanding, telling me to use her room if I like. I retreat with the rest of my coffee to an unfamiliar place with still-drawn blinds and a ceiling fan humming a monotonous lullaby.

I see Patrick slowing and stopping at the security gate, holding out his identification card to the Secret Service agent, a man who wears a white squiggle in his ear instead of an embroidered SS patch on his arm. He parks, and I think he looks at the sky, maybe toward that patch in the east where the sun presses through the darkness.

The meeting is held over breakfast, but to Patrick it must feel like the Last Supper, and he’s the Judas in the crowd, passing a poisoned cup.

That was the plan, to put it in the water. Or the coffee. Or the champagne that will be popped open and poured out into delicate crystal flutes for twelve distinguished guests to sip while they congratulate one another.

One is President Myers. Another is Bobby Myers, miraculously recovered from his six-day journey into the land of aphasia. I’ll never know whether the brain damage was real or fabricated, but if I had to bet, I know where my chips would fall. There’s Reverend Carl and Thomas the Intimidator. Six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are present, also the attorney general and chief justice, both notorious adherents to the Pure Movement.

Patrick is number thirteen. The Judas Iscariot of the Oval Office.

As I lie here in bed, numbed by the spin of the ceiling fan, these religious coincidences strike me as funny. Water, wine, thirteen men. Reverend Carl and his insanity. They say Christ was one of three things: a lunatic, a liar, or a lord. Mad, bad, or God, as the saying goes. I can’t believe Carl Corbin is a god—even if I believed in such divine entities. Gods may or may not play dice, but they sure as shit don’t load them with mind-altering poisons.

My coffee has grown cold, but I drink it anyway.