The Cave Dwellers

by Christina McDowell

  Mackenzie thinks for a moment, a look of uncertainty across her face. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you murder someone for it! And if he didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “That’s what I don’t know.…” Bunny says.

  They stare ahead, a black-and-white portrait of Bunny’s great-grandmother looking down at them from across the room, her hair swooped up into a bun atop her head.

  “Do you love Marty?” Bunny asks, switching the subject back.

  “I—you can’t tell him.”

  “You totally love him, I can tell.… Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”

  “What’s your Insta handle?” Mackenzie asks, hoping Bunny will follow her back.

  “It’s bb_queen.”

  “I’m Mackattack1.”

  Bunny takes out her phone and opens the app, pauses on Mackenzie’s profile for a moment, unsure if she wants to follow her, before impulsively hitting the Follow button.

  “Oh my God, look at what Haley just posted, my little sister.” Mackenzie hands Bunny her phone.

  Bunny looks at the photograph. “Oh, shit, that’s Linda Williams.”

  “You know her?” Mackenzie asks, intrigued.

  “My mom knows her, they belong to our club. My mom does not like that woman. She says she’s a gossip, doesn’t trust her.… Your sister slays.”

  “I think my mom wants to belong to your club because she keeps showing me pictures.”

  “Interesting,” Bunny says with enthusiastic skepticism.

  * * *

  Later that evening, when Betsy picks up Mackenzie from her so-called playdate with Bunny, she asks, “So, how did you like Mrs. Bartholomew?” To which Mackenzie replies, “She was lovely. But she thinks Mrs. Williams is a gossip and not to be trusted.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Spring Valley, the “suburb” of the district, home to newscasters and lobbyists, lawyers and partners at Deloitte, was built on top of WWI bombs and a chemical weapons testing site. Before the gray stone mansions, swimming pools, and swing sets, it was an open valley scattered with buried canisters—chemical mortar rounds and 75-millimeter shells of mustard gas, a lethal substance that causes internal and external bleeding, blisters, and blindness. It was a year before the murders that Mr. Cowan, Chase’s dad, was mowing his lawn one Saturday morning when Lincoln, their black Lab, began yelping and whining at the orange plastic fence of the construction site next door for the soon-to-be nine-thousand-square-foot mansion for some diplomat. Mr. Cowan looked at Lincoln to find liquid coming out of his eyes and mouth. Most families agreed to move out after that, to have the ground around their houses inspected for more bombs. Not the Cowans, afraid the value of their house would go down. Men in orange hazmat suits would wave from across the fence each morning while Mr. Cowan sipped his coffee and read the Washington Post. He still has his safe room equipped with the lie detector where he will occasionally ask Chase if he’s addicted to drugs or stolen any of his money.

  * * *

  Marty, Stan, and Billy are hunched over Chase’s laptop. The safe room is covered in blankets and pillows and there’s an old television set up for video games; four controllers take up most of the floor space, and it smells like sweaty gym bags. Add in the metal door with gadgets and bolted locks, and it’s a cross between a teenage boy’s man cave and solitary confinement.

  “Watch this, it’s going to change your life,” says Chase. Stan pulls a bottle of Everclear from his backpack, takes a swig, then passes it to Billy. Chase logs into a private Vimeo account. Marty slides his glasses up his nose and inches closer to the screen as a young brunette makes her way over to a four-posted canopy bed.

  “We’re going to Paris, baby.” Chase laughs. The girl, in her school uniform, green plaid skirt, white collared shirt, Adidas, unclasps her bra from under her shirt and throws it on the floor, her nipples poking through cotton. She places herself on the bed and lifts up her right leg so you can see her pink underwear. This is not a girl from St. Peter’s Academy. This is a girl from the all-girls Holden Farms, which the boys from the all-boys school call Ho-town Farms as though they themselves were exempt from any fuck-boy titles. Her father is a weapons dealer and spends most of the year in the Middle East; she most often serves along the lines of an expense report rather than a daughter.

  She settles into the pillow as a jock steps into the frame wearing a number seventeen jersey.

  “Dude, is that Kevin Dallinger?” asks Billy.

  “Sure is,” replies Marty, “it’s your boy!” He pats Billy on the back. Kevin is on the rival baseball team.

  “That little fucking slut,” Billy whispers at the computer, referring to Kevin, “let’s see those ginger pubes.”

  Stan starts laughing uncontrollably as they watch Kevin on-screen pull down his pants, then climb onto the bed. “I can’t, I can’t!” Stan doubles over.

  “Wait for it, wait for it…” Chase’s enthusiasm catches fire; he pinches the tip of his crotch, scooting closer to his laptop. “We’re goin’ to the Eiffel Tower, baby!”

  The recording shakes on-screen. The person filming sets the camera down on the fireplace mantel, creating a full frontal shot of the queen-size bed.

  As the jock reveals himself on camera, Billy, Stan, and Marty—in unison—cup their hands over their mouths and yell, “Ohhhh!!!”

  “No fuckin’ way is that Danny Davis, I fuckin’ knew he was gay.” Billy fist-bumps Marty as if they had a bet going. Stan takes another swig of Everclear, then pulls a Juul out of his pocket and takes a hit.

  The girl removes her pink underwear, flinging it across the room, and gets on all fours as Kevin positions himself on his knees in front of her. Danny climbs onto the bed, naked, and positions himself behind her, creating the appearance of a girl/boy Eiffel Tower, the girl at its center, the bridge, as she blows Kevin and allows Danny to take her from behind.

  Chase falls over laughing. “It’s so good!”

  “Yo, Billy, I wanna do Eiffel Tower with you and Bunny.” Stan does a little dance.

  “Fuck you, dude.… My Eiffel Tower days are over,” Billy says, feigning old-man wisdom.

  “Oh, your Eiffel Tower days? As if you had any?” Marty calls bullshit and laughs. “You wish, man.”

  “Oh yeah, you’ve never even been to Paris yet, you pussy,” Billy says, insinuating virgin.

  “Yeah, Smarty, you gonna tap New Girl?” Chase asks.

  “Shut up, man,” Marty replies, embarrassed he hasn’t lost his virginity yet. “I’ve been focusing on school and applications and shit, I haven’t had time.”

  “Uh-huh,” Billy replies as if that’s the lamest excuse he’s ever heard.

  “Some of us actually have to work to get into school instead of having our dad’s last name.” Marty hits where it hurts.

  Billy stays eerily calm as if hunting for prey before he gets up and takes a step toward Marty. He backs him up against the wall, cocked head, eyes locked. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” Billy’s mouth is so close to Marty’s face he could lick him.

  “I said some of us have to actually work to get into school instead of having daddy’s last name.”

  Billy grabs Marty by the arms and slams his back against the wall. “Fuck you.” Then spits on the floor, walks over, and unbolts the safe room door. Before he walks out, he turns around. “Fucking virgin.” Then slams the door on them.

  Stan, Chase, and Marty look at each other for a moment in silence.

  “Why is he being so fucking sensitive?” Marty asks, trying to defuse the situation.

  “Dude, that was so unnecessary—you scored a twenty-four hundred on your SATs and your parents are on the board of like every fucking charity in town.”

  “Vhait, Billy’s dad isn’t famous. I don’t get it,” Stan says.

  “He’s about to become the new secretary of defense, asshole,” says Chase.

  “Oh right, well, hope he doesn’t blow us up.”

  * * *

&n
bsp; Billy walks down the long driveway out to his Ford pickup across the street. The cold wind strikes him as if he’s been pushed into an icy pool, knocking off his baseball cap; he catches it midair when he notices a black Suburban in front of the Mexican Embassy just a few doors down, a single man watching from the driver’s seat. Paranoid, Billy pulls the baseball cap low over his eyes, jumps in his truck, and peels off.

  The first snow flurries swirl above thorn bushes surrounding the frame of the Montgomerys’ house.

  “Fuck.” Billy pulls into the driveway. He can see his mother rinsing a wineglass through the window above the kitchen sink but can’t see his father. Even if he tried to sneak in through the basement and take the elevator up to his room, they might hear its creaking, climbing through the walls.

  Billy, instead, decides to greet her in the kitchen, praying his father isn’t home.

  “Where have you been?” Carol asks, the skin on her fingertips white and shriveled, hearing Billy’s footsteps behind her. “I texted you multiple times.” She doesn’t make eye contact with him.

  “I was at Chase’s studying for midterms. I thought you had an event.”

  “We didn’t go to the event. There was a military emergency.” The pressure of Carol’s hand on the sponge inside the wineglass causes it to pop and shatter. It slices her hand. She stumbles back.

  “Mom.” Billy goes to her.

  “I’m fine, it’s just a little glass.” She wraps her finger in a white dishtowel, her back against the corner cabinet. Billy sees her teeth are purple.

  “Let me look,” he says, seeing blood streaming into the garbage disposal.

  “I said, I’m fine.” Carol takes a strenuous breath.

  “Did Dad say what kind of emergency it was?” Billy studies his mother’s body language.

  “It doesn’t matter. Your father isn’t happy, but he doesn’t have time to not be happy, or to make sure that we’re happy.…” She is beginning to ramble.

  “Mom, are you okay?” He is attuned to his mother’s vulnerability for the first time—the absence of his father, the soon-to-be absence of her last son, plunging her into invisibility—and it unnerves him. Carol’s days at the library are quiet, yet the solitude seems to be dissolving into an unexpected kind of cold loneliness.

  “You need to confirm you are going to West Point, the press is making inquiries. That’s all your father wanted me to say to you.”

  “Mom, I haven’t received an e-mail yet,” Billy replies, as if there’s still a chance he’ll be rejected.

  Carol holds herself up with both hands resting on the counter behind her, pink blood seeping through the dishtowel. She locks eyes with him. “Tomorrow,” she says, “do not push your father to the edge.”

  Billy throws her look away deep down with everything else he refuses to release inside of him, and leaves the kitchen. He leaps three steps at a time up the stairwell, a portrait of his grandfather, a D-Day WWII hero and survivor of a plane crash, watching as Billy runs for his room.

  Settling on top of his comforter, he taps on his e-mail app.

  Dear William Montgomery,

  It is with great pleasure that I write to offer you admission to New York University…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Cate sits at her desk, two rooms over from Doug. Another mass shooting has happened since the music festival and now—and in this moment, Cate asks the young intern to change the somehow monotonous breaking news to C-SPAN’s White House press conference. She needs to observe, learn, watch, wait, judge. Despite this cozy historical (hysterical?) office’s privacy, it is public terrain, although average pedestrians often forget that anyone can come knocking. The channel switches.

  A knock at the outer office door. The new, overqualified, and wealthy inheritance-survivor intern turns the brass doorknob. A young female reporter stands in Hunter rain boots. She looks overwhelmingly groomed. She probably graduated from Brown.

  “Hi, I’m Anne Price with the Washington Post, I’m looking for Cate Bartholomew. Is she available?”

  The intern doesn’t speak, having signed a nondisclosure agreement upon getting hired. He simply turns around and walks to Cate’s desk. “Someone is here to see you from the Post.”

  “What?” Cate says.

  “She’s in the doorway.”

  “Okay, well, ask her what she wants.” Cate’s heart starts to pound, belying her smooth outer appearance. Did they find out about the affair?

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” the intern says.

  Cate glares, beyond irritated but aware she can’t appear overly irritated or it might raise a red flag. She removes herself from her written document on behalf of Walter on behalf of Doug on behalf of the committee-of-white-men hearing on the Violence against Women Act on behalf of women, stands, and steps over to the reporter, who is not much older than she is.

  “Can I help you?” Cate asks.

  “Hi, Cate, I’m Anne from the Washington Post, do you have a minute?”

  Cate feels as if the police have arrived at her front door with some horrific news. “What is this regarding?” She looks over her right shoulder, Doug’s legislative director peering from his wooden cubicle to see who this pedestrian is who has appeared at their office door unannounced.

  “Would you like to step outside for a minute?” Anne asks, but it’s more of a suggestion.

  “Let me grab my coat.” Cate saunters to the back of her chair and whips her trench coat over her shoulders like a woman who knows what she’s doing.

  * * *

  The strong smell of coffee grounds blazes through the crowded Starbucks on North Capitol. Cate nurses a pumpkin spiced latte.

  “You like to do things the old-school way—we don’t get reporters showing up at our office unless the Senate is voting.”

  “In-person is always better than an e-mail or phone call, plus I don’t trust anyone in this town.”

  Cate’s radar goes off. Green reporter and new to Washington.

  Completely evident by the most basic statement Cate’s been hearing from Washington newcomers since she was a little girl sitting in Aunt Meredith and Uncle Chuck’s living room talking about the political merry-go-round and those who will never make it more than a few years in the swamp. I don’t trust anyone in this town. The girl has a point, but if you’re in it for the long haul, the point is irrelevant. Cate does what she’s learned to do best in situations where she has the upper hand.

  She placates.

  “Completely,” Cate replies.

  “Do you know this man with Senator Wallace?” Anne pulls up a photograph on her iPhone. The photo shows a man with a sad face, round spectacles, gold Rolex, boat shoes, argyle sweater. He is standing between illuminated white columns of an old mansion; his arm is around Doug’s shoulders, but Doug’s head is turning away from the camera and toward the front door.

  Cate studies the photograph. “I’ve never seen that man before in my life.… What is this about? I only have a few minutes.”

  “We’ve launched an investigation into several high-powered men, a wide range of cases from verbal sexual harassment, to assault, to rape. A few of these men appear to have met at the home of Albert Rasmussen, former top lobbyist at Hill and Knowl—”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Well, this is Tim Miller, and several women have come forward with strong corroborating evidence of harassment and assault.”

  “Okay,” Cate replies, waiting for more information.

  “Have you dealt with or are you dealing with any inappropriate behaviors by Senator Wallace or any other staffer within your office at the Capitol?”

  Cate can’t believe this is happening. It’s too soon. She’s had no preparation. She thought she was in love. And she can’t throw Walter under the bus—not yet, not until she has a plan. She knows she has to think this through very carefully. Another thing she learned from Aunt Meredith: Washington is a small town. It’s not like Los Angeles or New York where you can re
invent yourself; when you’re out—You’re Out.

  “No, no, Doug—Senator Wallace has the utmost integrity. Everyone is very professional and thrilled, truly, to be of service—and to see Senator Wallace get all of this wonderful new exposure.” She is proud of herself for that thrilled, a word she picked up from Meredith and her social sector of women who seem to enjoy adjectives like divine and dashing; it makes her feel mature.

  “Cate, you’re one of the few new press secretaries who are women, and a very young woman to be in such a position, so I wanted to extend an olive branch—to let you know I am here if anything comes up or if anything has already come up and you’re just not comfortable enough yet sharing it. I know there isn’t a truly safe place for you to go, so consider me that.”

  Cate tries not to laugh at Anne’s absurd statement. “I truly appreciate it, and the women who are coming forward are so brave and paving the way for our future—here in Washington, and across the globe,” she replies without missing a beat.

  Anne takes a minute to study Cate’s body language, as though connected to a lie detector. “Of course, Senator Wallace was with Mr. Rasmussen that night. The night this photograph was taken.” Anne pulls up another photograph of Doug, alone, exiting the home through the same moonlit entrance, later the same night.

  “And…?” Cate replies, teetering on hardball.

  “And you know what they say time and time again: ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ ”

  Cate stands up, feeling on the cusp of disrespected.… Has she misread the reporter? Was the statement about trust an affront, a clue, so as to cue Cate to armor up, or is Anne on her side? Does she genuinely want the best for her? Or is Anne just in it for her own personal recognition? If she breaks a big story and knocks out multiple members of Congress and businessmen, what’s in it for Cate other than the loss of a job and being victimized? This isn’t Hollywood.