Endgame Novella #2

by James Frey

  The lies come effortlessly, especially that last.

  Petra is the only place that has ever felt like home.

  Maccabee was born in Warsaw, Poland, as was his mother, and his mother’s mother. But Petra is the Nabataeans’ ancestral home. Tourists may flock to its unearthed temples and archaeological digs, but only Maccabee and his people know of its miles of caves, deep beneath the earth. It was here, thousands of years ago, that the Nabataeans mined gold for their gods. It was here, through centuries of dutiful labor, that they earned their place in Endgame, earned their chance at salvation. And it was here that, three years ago, Maccabee knelt on barren ground and spoke the ancient Nabataean oath that would seal his destiny. His mother may have secured him the role as Player through manipulation and blackmail, but in that sacred place there was only truth. Maccabee swore to do battle for his line, and mingled his blood with Petra’s ancient soil. A part of him will always live in that darkness beneath the Rose City, and it’s the part of him that always yearns to go home.

  “You have people there waiting for you?” she asks. “Missing you?”

  “No wife, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says. “No girlfriend either.”

  “Family?” she says.

  “No one of note.”

  “How sad,” she says, and sounds like she means it.

  Maccabee knows a vulnerability when he sees it. He nods. “I never knew my father,” he says. “And my mother . . . she’s dead.” He feels disloyal saying the words, but this is simply a part like any other. Ekaterina would want him to play it to the hilt.

  “I’m sorry,” Serena says. “Was she a good mother?”

  He lets a careful note of regret slip into his voice. “I wish I could say yes.”

  “So do I,” she says, and sighs softly. “But it’s harder than it looks.”

  He puts his hand over hers. They lean toward each other, and for a moment he can feel it, the current running between them wild and dangerous. She feels it too; she must.

  Then she stiffens and pulls her hand away.

  “I’ve let this go on longer than I should, Maccabee. You should get home. You’ll miss your curfew.”

  He doesn’t let his eyes widen. He doesn’t let his jaws tighten. He doesn’t even let his heartbeat rise. He allows himself no somatic signs of shock.

  It takes all the effort he has.

  She shakes her head, laughing harshly. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have my people investigate every student at my son’s school? Especially his roommate. Maccabee Adlai, born in Poland—excellent description of Jordan, by the way, that was an especially nice touch—father unknown, mother investment banker. Very much alive. Unremarkable academic record, impressively clean disciplinary one, at least compared to my son. Hobbies include swimming laps and breaking girls’ hearts. Do I have it about right?”

  He relaxes, just a millimeter. She doesn’t know quite as much as she thinks she does, at least. But she knows enough to be a problem for his mission.

  His mind spins.

  He hears his mother’s voice.

  Find her vulnerability.

  Use it.

  “Just about,” he admits. “So if you know who I really am, what are we doing here?”

  “You first,” she says.

  He’s flying blind. But he has excellent instincts. He can turn this around. Get back in control. “I’m a bit of a fan,” he says, and has enough control over his somatic responses to force a blush. “I’m intending to go into business, and your leadership of Intellex has been truly inspiring, especially your—”

  “That’s crap,” she says sharply. “Try again.”

  She’s giving him a second chance; he senses he won’t get a third.

  “I felt sorry for you,” he says. The words pop out without thinking. Her eye twitches, and he knows he’s struck gold.

  His people have always been good at that.

  “You felt sorry for me,” she says.

  He nods.

  She looks like she’s considering exactly how swiftly and how flat to crush him beneath her heel.

  “Funny,” she says, without any humor in her voice. “Because here I was feeling sorry for you.”

  “You’re right: Jason’s wasted,” Maccabee says, ignoring that. “He’s always wasted, but I thought he’d keep it together for you. When he didn’t, I thought about you sitting here by yourself waiting for him, and . . .” He shrugged. “I figured you could use some company.”

  “So you decided to pretend you were a decade older and hit on me?” Serena shook her head. “I think you’re the one who wanted some company, Maccabee. I think it’s parent visitation week and your parents aren’t here. I think you’re too tough to admit that bothers you.”

  “So you thought you’d indulge the poor motherless child?”

  “It passed the time,” she says.

  “Time’s up,” he tells her, and stands.

  She puts her hand over his.

  Yes.

  “Stay,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “I thought maybe . . .” She hesitates and, for the first time that night, looks uncertain of herself. “Will you tell me about my son?”

  They talk long into the night. Maccabee tells her about her son, answering all her questions with the truth. What Jason drinks, who he sleeps with, how much he pays the geek down the hall to do his homework, where he actually goes (Ibiza beaches, Thai discos, Amsterdam brothels) when he claims to be visiting colleges. Maccabee owes nothing to the roommate, and besides, he likes this about Serena, how desperately she wants to know, how honestly she judges her own ignorance.

  “I should know all of this already,” she says, more than once. “What kind of mother doesn’t know?”

  “You have more important things to think about,” he points out. “Jason’s a big boy. He can screw up all on his own.”

  She doesn’t believe him, he can tell. But he can also tell she likes to hear it.

  When they run out of sordid details about Jason’s life, she begins to ask him about his own, and Maccabee finds himself telling her the truth, or at least a version of it. No, he can’t stand the food; yes, he thinks several of the teachers are subpar; his favorite courses are physics and philosophy, his least favorite art. All the tedious, mundane details of his tedious, mundane life, and Serena acts genuinely interested, complimenting him on his facility with languages and arguing with him for nearly an hour over his philosophy teacher’s interpretation of Kant.

  “Tell me about your childhood,” she says.

  His childhood: He remembers, dimly, cold afternoons in Warsaw, drinking a steaming cup of hot chocolate from the Wedel café, then padding through the snow in azienki Park. He remembers his mother’s gloved hand folding around his mitten, holding him tight and pulling him upright when he stumbled, but this must be a false memory, because his mother is not the hand-holding type. He remembers the day she told him of his destiny, and all the days that followed: the weapons training, the series of strict instructors who taught him ancient Aramaic and knife throwing and electrical engineering and the beautiful variety of ways to kill a man. Poisoning. Strangling. Stabbing. Neck breaking. Shooting. Smothering. Maccabee is a master of them all.

  His childhood is a series of firsts. The first time he kills a living creature: a fawn in a snowy field, shot dead by his arrow. The first time he kills a living human being: one of his mother’s business rivals, all too ready to underestimate the 10-year-old sitting beside him on a park bench, hypodermic needle secreted beneath his sleeve. The first time he kills someone he knows: the very instructor who taught him so many ways to kill, because, his mother says, “What better test of your skills could there be,” and anyway, “It’s the safest way to ensure he won’t talk.”

  His childhood is a blur of cities, New York and Mumbai and Hong Kong and Buenos Aires, so many houses and penthouses and villas and not one of them an actual home. His childhood is a series of good-byes, because his
mother is always leaving him, again and again, for one piece of important business or another; his childhood is a stretch of long absences, punctuated by the joy of her return, the glow of her attention for as long as he can hold it.

  His childhood is a triumph, because he passes the tests set for him by his Nabataean elders with flying colors. Because it all plays out as his mother promised: he is taken to the secret caverns below Petra’s ruins; he is sworn to serve his people; he is given the great honor of saving his line. Because his mother stands by watching, and afterward she calls him “my Player” and shakes his hand and he knows he has done well.

  His childhood is no childhood at all, but a series of tasks and missions. He works hard to exceed expectations.

  “It was nothing special,” he tells Serena, shrugging. “We moved around a lot.”

  “That must have been hard for you,” she says.

  “I’m pretty tough.”

  “Children shouldn’t have to be tough,” she says.

  “I was no ordinary child.”

  She smiles. “I suspect that’s the most truthful thing you’ve said tonight.”

  It takes hours, but eventually she’s comfortable enough, or tipsy enough, to answer his questions about her, to confess the truth of her broken marriage and her fears that she’s ruined her children’s life. Her shameful secret, that she resents her children for not loving her the way she loves them; the depressing truth of motherhood, that love persists unconditionally, no matter how irrational. That sometimes she wishes she could stop caring, and she wonders whether her children wish that too.

  They talk through one bartender shift and then another, until finally the woman behind the bar lays down their bill, her polite way of suggesting they leave. Maccabee reaches for it, but Serena snatches it out of his grasp.

  He’s about to argue when the bartender says, “Oh, go ahead, let your mother pay. It makes her happy, trust me.”

  Maccabee and Serena both laugh at that; he lets her pay.

  It’s funny, Maccabee thinks, how this woman assumes they’re mother and son, when no one ever guesses that about him and his own mother.

  It should be funny, at least.

  They walk out of the bar and into the hotel lobby. Serena has good taste in lodging: no old world opulence here. The Schlosshotel is all bare surfaces and clean lines, the simple elegance that only the truly wealthy can afford. The hotel has no need to advertise its luxury; luxury is assumed. Serena fits in here well, and it’s another thing Maccabee likes about her. She’s comfortable enough with her power that she doesn’t need to advertise it; like Maccabee, she knows how to wear a mask.

  “It was nice to meet you, Maccabee,” she gives him her hand to shake. “It was a lovely evening.”

  He turns it flat, raises it to his mouth and presses his lips to her fingers. “Enchanting,” he says, and smiles to show he’s both joking and not.

  “It was nice,” she said. “Having a little company.”

  “I don’t have to go yet. You don’t have to be alone tonight. If you don’t want to.”

  “Very funny,” she says.

  “I’m just suggesting a nightcap. Not anything untoward. Unless you want something untoward.”

  “You’re my son’s age—you’re my son’s roommate.”

  “You’re lonely. So am I. But I’m a little less lonely, tonight. Is that such a bad thing? Is it so wrong to want that to last a little longer?”

  “What people would think . . .”

  “Who cares about people?” he says. “I care about us. About you.”

  “You don’t even know me,” she points out.

  He cocks his head, as if to say, Oh, really?

  “Maybe I care about you too,” she admits. “Maybe that’s why you have to leave now.”

  He simply stands there, watching her. Lets her watch him, his broad shoulders and his thick biceps, his warm eyes and dimpled chin.

  “Maccabee . . .”

  He waits.

  Meets her gaze, lets the silence sit between them.

  It’s important to let things take their course.

  Let her think she’s in charge.

  Wait her out.

  The lobby is deserted, except for a lone busboy and the man behind the check-in desk, crisp in his starched white suit, as if it were nine a.m. rather than three in the morning.

  Working at one of the finest hotels in Europe, they’re well practiced in the art of not seeing. So they carefully avert their eyes as Serena Porter leans toward the handsome boy young enough to be her son. He holds himself very still: it’s important, for a woman like her, to believe she’s in control. That she make the first move.

  He closes his eyes. Feels her breath, a warm mist of cinnamon and whiskey.

  Soft lips brush against his forehead. He can sense her hesitation—and her need.

  She burns with it.

  She burns for him.

  He whispers her name, quiet as a sigh, and then her lips are pressed to his, gently at first, then urgently, the kiss a question, a desire: More.

  Please.

  The hotel staff continue to do their best not to see.

  No one watches Serena take his hand and lead him onto the elevator.

  No one sees what happens when the doors slide shut and close them in.

  She’s a sound sleeper. He extricates himself and climbs noiselessly out of bed. There’s a black leather bag sitting on the corner of the bathroom sink, and he finds the thumb drive exactly where Ekaterina said it would be, tucked into a bottle of aspirin. He retrieves his pants from the rumpled pile of clothes by the bed, folds them neatly, and slips the drive into the pocket. It’s that easy. Then he retrieves the spy cam he positioned on the nightstand earlier, and puts that into the pocket too. He doesn’t need to check the footage: he’s good at gauging angles, sight lines. He got everything he needs, a little extra insurance. Ekaterina will love it.

  Maccabee climbs back into bed. Serena stirs, her eyes opening.

  “I dreamed you left,” she says, groggily.

  “Not yet,” he assures her, and takes her in his arms.

  She nuzzles her head into his shoulder, breathes a luxurious sigh. Their fingers weave together. “That’s some ring,” she says, her thumb rubbing the thick brass ring on his pinkie.

  The ring is embedded with stone cut from the mountains of Petra. He wears it always, to remind him of his duty and his home.

  “Someone gave it to you,” she says. It’s not a question, but he answers anyway.

  “My mother.”

  “I’m sure she loves you,” Serena murmurs, drifting back into sleep. “She wants to do better by you. All mothers do.”

  Maccabee holds her tight, imagining how it must feel to be held, to feel safe and protected.

  “You’re a good mother,” he whispers into the dark, but Serena is already asleep.

  This time, Ekaterina chose the restaurant. And, just as he feared, it’s a dive. Grim and gritty, the aluminum table streaked with fluids, the source of which he chooses not to contemplate. They’re tucked into a booth in the back, ignored by the handful of bedraggled customers, most of whom are hunched over cooling cups of coffee and look as if they’ve been there for weeks. Ekaterina is tucking into a steaming plate of bratwurst; Maccabee sticks with water. Even that might not be safe, judging from the filthy condition of the glass.

  Sometimes he thinks his mother drags him to these dumps to punish him. For what, he can’t imagine. Never has he disobeyed or disappointed her.

  Never has he even seriously considered it.

  “Well?” she says.

  He places the thumb drive in her open palm.

  She nods. “Any trouble?”

  There’s been plenty of trouble—a demerit and a lecture for skipping his curfew, a breakup with the tedious and tediously suspicious girlfriend, who wouldn’t stop whining about wanting to meet his mother, a Latin test that, in his exhaustion, he forgot not to let himself ace—but none of it
was the kind of trouble she means, or anything she’d want to hear about. And she certainly wouldn’t want to hear about the note he left by Serena’s pillow, just before he slipped silently out of her room. You look beautiful when you sleep, the note said, and it was true.

  He shakes his head.

  She doesn’t congratulate him on a job well done, or thank him for his efforts.

  He’s performed up to expectations, and Ekaterina doesn’t thank people for doing their duty.

  In his pocket is another thumb drive, the one with the incriminating video, the little something extra.

  “What are you going to do with it? Whatever’s on that drive?” he asks her.

  Ekaterina betrays no surprise, but Maccabee knows her well enough to see it in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  “How badly are you planning to hurt her with it?” he asks.

  Her eyes narrow. “Does it matter?”

  “I’m just curious,” he says.

  Serena’s no fool. She’ll deduce who took the thumb drive—she’s in no position to report the theft, given the way it happened, but she’ll know. Whatever happens next will be on him.

  “Why are you asking me this?” she says, her voice starting to rise.

  Again, they’re speaking in their ancient dialect, protecting themselves from eavesdroppers. Maccabee has a sudden, inexplicable urge to switch into Polish, the language of his childhood. He was not the kind of boy who threw tantrums—excess of emotion was forbidden in their home—but he fantasized about it sometimes, watching other children on the streets of Warsaw, their faces red and fists clenched, tears streaming as they screamed at their mothers, No, I won’t, you can’t make me! He studied those children intently, wondering how they dared protest, and wondering why their mothers allowed it—why some of their mothers would scream back, faces equally red, finger wagging and threats pouring out, while other mothers would take their children in their arms, hold tight until the wailing quieted. When he was very young, he would lie in bed at night, imagining, practicing, sometimes even whispering the words to himself in the darkness: No, Mother. I won’t.