by James Smythe
He thinks that Laurence could disappear, move somewhere quiet, take himself out of the public eye entirely. Maybe he can write a book. He’d get a good advance, a good sell-through. Somebody will want it; scandal always sells. And there can be no meltdowns when it’s written down and printed. There’s nothing to control there.
His phone beeps, a text from Jessie. I am so sorry, I didn’t have a clue, she says. Seriously, not even a hint.
It’s fine, Amit replies. Wasn’t your fault.
I thought about quitting, she writes.
Don’t, Amit says. No point.
I am so sorry, she repeats. He doesn’t reply to that, and then another one comes in. If I can help, please let me know.
Thanks, he writes. Got any jobs going? He puts a smiley face in there. He leaves it, putting his phone back, and he feels good about it. Like, maybe they can move past this now. There’s a second where that lasts and then he takes his phone out again. He writes another message to Jessie. Actually, here you go: what can you find out for me about ClearVista?
Why? she asks.
I want to ask them about the video. You must have people. Moles. Diggers. Whatever you call them. Can’t you get me somebody I can speak to?
I’ll see what I can do, she writes. No promises.
No promises, he agrees. He calls Deanna again, to give her another update. She whispers, because the kids – she calls them that, and it’s amazing how young Lane has suddenly become in her eyes – are asleep. Amit tells her he’ll call back in the morning, when Laurence is awake.
‘Don’t,’ Deanna says. ‘Maybe give it a day or two.’
She lies in bed and thinks about what the video showed. She thinks about Sean, and how she can’t forgive Laurence. They haven’t spoken about it, not ever. Or, not since; but that time, the week around his death, feels as if it never even happened, really. Because they know who is to blame, really. They know how this works. Laurence was preoccupied, and Sean died. Really, when you say it like that it’s remarkably simple. She mourned, and the girls mourned. Alyx couldn’t let him go, and Lane tattoos her body in tribute to him, and Deanna wrote her novel. What did he do? He went back to work. They were all selfish in their own way, but nothing from his selfishness could be shown or shared, nothing could be learned from it by the rest of them.
She sits upright and opens the curtains at the foot of her single bed. In the moonlight, the room is blues and whites. The colors make the room seem colder. She puts the bag on the table and takes the gun out. The best thing to do with it would be to throw it away. Take it to a police station or one of those anonymous gun drop stations. If it doesn’t exist then it cannot be used.
But then, she thinks, if she has it, she has it. It will protect them, if it needs to. She wonders if she could bring herself to use it. She puts the gun back into the bag and goes to her daughters, and she sits on the side of the bed and holds Alyx while she sleeps, for a second; then she goes to Lane’s side and looks at her, and touches her shoulder. Even through the darkness she can see the angry red of the fresh tattoo on her skin, an unfinished bud. She touches it, gently, running her finger along the outside of it.
‘I love you,’ she tells her daughters. She stands up and walks to the door, and she opens it and steps out onto the platform that runs along the top level of the motel. She is dressed in only a T-shirt and shorts, and she thinks how easy it would be to leave with them. To take her pseudonym, whatever it might be, and own it. Run with it. She looks out over the road, which is now totally still; and the woods in front of them, stretching off. There are lights in them, dots of something that could be civilization on the other side. She imagines something else: a reflection of the moon, or water, or some animal, a firefly making its own path. All along the run the rooms are silent, even the one where she has previously heard the sobbing. She wonders what made it stop.
Back in the room, Deanna lies back in the only chair. She shuts her eyes, and she dreams, but the dream is so real and tangible that it might as well be what just happened, her in the room and holding her family tight and then feeling the night air on her skin and knowing that this can get better, if she only lets it.
Amit wakes up and Laurence is gone. The bed is empty. His clothes are gone as well, and his watch, his wallet. Everything that might have suggested that he was ever even here. Amit stands up and rushes to the desk, to the nurse on duty.
‘Laurence Walker?’ he asks. The nurse consults a chart.
‘Says he’s in 3C.’
‘He’s not,’ Amit replies. ‘He’s gone. He didn’t discharge himself?’
‘Not on the records.’ The nurse shrugs. Amit takes his phone out and dials Deanna again, the last number he called. The only number that he’s really called, the last few days.
‘Dee,’ he says, ‘have you heard from him?’
‘No,’ she replies. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve been asleep.’ Lie with the truth; his own rule. ‘I wondered if he had called you.’ He doesn’t want to tell her that her husband is missing yet. No sense in worrying her, or the kids. Missing could mean anything. It could mean that he went to the bathroom; or he went for coffee and he’s going to appear again, and he’ll have a new face for this new day.
‘I don’t think he even has this number,’ she says. Amit goes back to the room and grabs his satchel. He rifles through it; the car keys are gone. He runs to the elevator and hits the button. He rubs his face, days’ worth of stubble covering his chin; his mouth tastes of being asleep. The doors close and the ride down takes forever. He knows, before he’s even near the bay that they used, that the car will be gone. He thinks about reporting it stolen, calling the police and telling them who did it. But that will end Laurence, he knows. That would be it. Everything feels so fractured around him, and he doesn’t know how to pull it together. He wonders how Laurence feels. He calls Hertz, because he’s got a loyalty card, and he asks them where their nearest branch is. They give him a location, only a mile down the road, sending him a pinpoint for his GPS, and he starts to walk.
The car that the ClearVista software predicts for him to want to use is identical to the one that he drove before, the same make and model, the exact same color. It’s a large car that’s everywhere and almost invisible, and he can get this car anywhere and drive it and it will always feel the same. His favored hotel chain, his car, his coffee … Everything is done because it’s easy and familiar. Nothing needs adapting to, because the adaptation has already occurred somewhere way back in the past. Amit searches Twitter while he navigates the parking lot to get out, looking for Laurence’s name. If somebody out there in the world has seen him, maybe they tweeted something about it, he figures; but there’s nothing. Only bullshit. New bullshit, admittedly, but it’s the same as the old. Name calling and slurring and slander. So he drives back towards Staunton, away from New York. This was always going to be his life, he figures: New York to Syracuse to Washington DC, a triangle of freeways and interstates. His phone pings an alert. Laurence has been found. He has made an appearance.
He’s back at the house.
Amit pushes the car harder. He tells himself that he should just stop caring, that he should pull over or turn around. He should drive home and let it lie. But he can’t. That’s not who he is.
The chaos can be seen all along the street. Amit’s stolen car is slammed into two news vans that had been shoved up nose to nose, blocking the driveway. Now, they are almost fused together, their bodywork entwined, the glass from their windshields spilled between them and all over. The trunk door of Amit’s car is hanging open. He sees that his stuff is still in there, the cops on the scene – he recognizes them from the day that they came to examine the broken gate – both examining the pieces of paper Amit had left there, his notes, business cards, phone numbers, pamphlets. The cops are bagging things, siphoning them off, as if they’re evidence. They don’t know how little any of it means now.
Somebody�
��s injured, that much is clear; there’s an ambulance waiting in the street, and two paramedics examining people, checking their eyes, clicking their fingers around their heads and expecting them to react. One of them, a cameraman, has a bandage round his head and is cradling his arm. A woman, an on-air personality – Amit is loathe to think of her as a journalist, because she’s one of the worst, one of the most desperate and cynical – is cradling a swollen ankle. The house’s front door is open and cordoned off. Amit parks down the street, as close as he can, and one of the cops – the less memorable of the two – half-jogs over towards him.
‘No closer,’ he says, as Amit gets out of the car. He squints in recognition, but he can’t place from where.
‘That’s my car,’ Amit says.
‘Which one?’
‘What do you mean, which one? The big black thing smashed into those vans. That’s mine.’
‘Oh,’ the cop says. ‘Was it stolen?’
‘Yes,’ Amit says. ‘No. I work for Laurence. For Senator Walker.’ The cop smirks. ‘Is he all right?’
‘He stole your car? That makes sense.’ He clicks his earpiece with his finger, and Amit goes to speak again, to answer him. ‘Wait,’ the cop says, raising a single finger in the air; and Amit listens as he reports that the vehicle’s owner has arrived on scene, that Walker did indeed steal the vehicle: yet another thing that they should add to the list. He turns back to Amit when he’s done. ‘You were saying?’
‘Where’s Laurence now?’
‘Maybe you can tell us,’ the cop says. ‘Where do you think he would go?’
‘I don’t know.’ Amit wants to find him as much as they do.
‘What about the rest of the family? Do you know where they are?’
‘No idea,’ Amit lies. He knows which hotel they’re in. There are only a couple of options, really, so it won’t take them long to track them down, but Amit’s got a head start on them, however brief. He wants to find Laurence first, get a story sorted. Get him back to a hospital, let the narrative play out from there. It’s all about controlling the narrative. That’s all it’s ever been about. That’s politics; this is politics. ‘Was Laurence looking for them?’
‘No idea. Came through here like a fucking maniac. Smashed into those cars. Nearly killed the nice lady from NBC, you believe that?’ He looks over at the chaos, and then back at Amit. He runs his tongue around his mouth. ‘What you make of it? You work for him. You think he’s gone totally loco?’
‘I think he’s having a breakdown.’
‘Yeah, sure. He was in the war. You hear stories, you know. And there’s a rumor, about his kid? The one who died? Bruises, that sort of thing.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Like I say, you hear stories.’ He looks back, and then clarifies, ‘Being a cop.’
Amit looks at the cop’s badge, on his shirt for his name. ‘Listen, Officer Templeton, can I go to my car? I just want to see if anything’s missing. Anything that could be useful to finding Laurence.’
Templeton nods. ‘Yeah, sure. Don’t take anything from it, though. And tell Officer Robards over there if you find anything? He’ll have some sheets for you to sign, about your vehicle. Before we can release it.’
‘Of course,’ Amit says. He plays ball. He walks towards the wreck of his car, but there’s nothing that he wants from it. He moves instead past the van, out of the gaze of Robards, who is interviewing on the other side; and out of sight of Templeton. The gate at the side is still open, the door hanging wide. Amit rushes down the path at the side of the house and into the garden. The patio doors are unlocked, and he gets inside the house, into the kitchen. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Something. A clue as to what Laurence came here for. He goes through the kitchen quietly and then upstairs, into the kids’ rooms. Amit helped Deanna and the kids pack, and he saw the house when they went to the hotel. He saw what they took and how they left this. Nothing is disturbed. In the master bedroom, there is nothing gone: but the wardrobe has been pulled apart again, and there’s a shoebox on the bed, the lid off. There are photographs strewn – Amit picks some up, and they are of Laurence and Deanna when they were younger, private photos of them smoking and drinking, having fun, kissing, on holidays in swimwear; photographs that you wouldn’t want the press to get their hands on – and the rest of the box is empty. Whatever he was after, it was in here.
And then Amit sees the bullet: a sad, single bullet, lying on the floor at his feet. He picks it up and turns it around in his fingers, examining it. There was a gun, he realizes. That’s what Laurence came back here for.
They are broadcasting from outside the house already. The newscaster, injured ankle strapped up, is standing outside the house, holding a microphone – the boom operator is still being checked by the paramedics, because his side hurts him, though they aren’t sure how bad it is just yet – and telling the country what happened. Amit listens, unsure of what’s true or not; what’s been expanded upon, bent and manipulated.
Laurence Walker is wanted for questioning. He has broken bail. He came here and injured her colleagues, showing scant regard for human life. There was a fury in his eyes: a rage. He was a series of similes: a bull; a bomb; a tornado. He is to be considered dangerous.
He goes back downstairs and out of the garden doors and into the garden, and then the street, back to his car, and he sits there and calls Deanna. The phone rings and rings and he drives away, towards the hotel where she’s been staying. He drives fast.
Deanna and the kids leave the hotel in search of food. Explaining to Alyx why they are staying there is tough, especially given that they’re going back to where their house will be in walking distance. They could go back there to eat, or to get more clothes – or to avoid the shower in the motel, which is old and yellowing and the water comes out almost gray. But that’s not the plan. They’ll have another night in the hotel, maybe two. After that, she doesn’t know. Maybe she can talk with Laurence. Maybe he can persuade her that he is okay; that he just needs to get away from this. Maybe he can persuade her that he is stable. They could call this a day, this part of their lives, and pack up and move. She could go back to work – she was a hell of a copywriter when she first left college and she could pick it up again, she’s sure – and if he can’t get a job for a while, that’s fine. He can take the time off that he surely needs. They could find a little town somewhere just like this where they might not judge Laurence for something that he hasn’t done, Colorado or Utah or somewhere else. Over time, all things blow over, she tells herself. She knows one thing; they have to talk about Sean, and she needs to say all of the things that she never said. She needs to hear that he understands what he did. She bargains with herself. They could go to another country; buy a house in the sun; learn a language. Nobody would know them, there; they would only come back once a year, to visit Sean, to do the ritual with the toys, and to mourn him. She thinks about the practicalities of that solitary visit.
She parks and lets the kids out. A woman that she knows from the church – she works there, handing pamphlets out – sees her and stops.
‘We were all so worried,’ she says, and she reaches for Deanna’s arm. That stupid gesture, Deanna thinks, as if it means anything. It’s so token; so placid.
‘Thank you,’ Deanna says, ‘but there’s really no need.’
‘We haven’t seen you in days. Weeks! We were saying, we should go and see if you were okay. But with the news crews there, we thought … Well, you know.’
‘I know. It’s fine. Thank you for the thought.’ She tries to walk into the diner, the girls in her wake. She stretches her arm out behind her, keeping them guarded.
‘What about your husband? I saw that he was arrested.’ The woman drops her tone, saying it without judgment; or, with the judgment as silent as she can manage. ‘Is he with you now?’
‘No,’ Deanna says. ‘Just me and the girls.’ The woman’s face beams at her.
‘Oh, well! I’m sure t
his will all be better soon.’ She reaches out and puts her hand on Deanna’s arm again. ‘You enjoy yourselves while you can,’ she says, and she lets go and walks off, glancing back as she heads away from them. Deanna brushes her arm where she had been touched, as if the woman’s grip is still there, like an imprint.
‘Let’s eat,’ she says to the girls, still shielding them slightly as she steps forward. She opens the door and the diner tires to pretend that it hasn’t noticed who she is. A booth is free and Deanna takes the girls there. They find seats and June comes over to them. She’s known them for years now, since they first moved here.
‘My God!’ she says. She puts menus on the table in front of them. ‘I was so worried, when I saw the news.’
‘What part of it?’ Deanna asks.
‘Well, what with … well, the arrest.’ She says the word with a scandalized hush. ‘And the video, before! Must have scared you half to death!’
‘The video isn’t real, June,’ Deanna says.
‘There’s not real and then there’s not real,’ June replies. ‘Real as anything, seeing it on a screen like that.’ She smiles at the girls and then crouches next to Deanna and drops her voice to a whisper. ‘We were talking, all of us. It’s hard to lose a little one, and sometimes people don’t deal with it. Sometimes, something goes wrong. You get what I’m saying? Well, and all we want here is to make sure that you and the girls are fine, that’s it.’ A perky smile. ‘Nothing more, but you have to think on yourself.’
‘Laurence is fine,’ Deanna says. She hears her voice; how unsure she sounds to herself, even. ‘Please, June. He’s been under such pressure, and the video was an accident. The company who makes it, they screwed up.’ June flinches at the tone. ‘I’m sorry, June, but that happens, you know it does. And the press … You know what they’re like. They’re taking advantage. Laurence is sick, June. He’s sick, and they’re preying on him. On us.’
