If I looked at the floor, it was easier not to cry. I didn’t respond. He waited a beat.
“We know you helped him kill them.”
My head flew up.
“What are you talking about?! I’m seventeen! The way they were killed, I couldn’t have done it!”
Officer Downing contemplated his nails for a moment. He turned toward Officer Carroll. “Did we release any details regarding the murders?”
“Nope.”
Officer Carroll was beginning to look more and more like his bitch daughter.
“We’re going to have to take you in. If the headmaster doesn’t mind?”
She bowed her head.
As we walked out (the bell had rung for the end of fourth period; some kids were rushing to lunch, others to class; I heard someone say that they’d found weed in my locker), we passed the open door of a girls’ bathroom. I turned and saw in the cracked mirror that an enormous smear of chocolate flavoring encrusted the left side of my mouth. Despite everything, I was still me.
* * *
Ayale didn’t waste time: upon arrival at the station, he sat before the three officers into whose care he’d been roughly shoved and quietly explained what his rights were, how he understood that perhaps they were not aware of just how furiously they’d trampled all over them, and that the only way to rectify this situation—which was hanging by a thread, he thought they ought to know—was to either immediately release him on some kind of probationary status or allow him to call his lawyer, wait for his lawyer, and discuss the situation with his lawyer. Then, and only then, would he be able to answer questions. Since this consultation period was bound to take no less than forty-eight hours, it was imperative that they either provide accommodation or release him into his lawyer’s care, and also, he’d had neither breakfast nor lunch and would appreciate a sandwich, for which, of course, he would pay, just as soon as they returned his wallet. Coffee would also be wonderful.
Temporary exit procedures can take no time at all, with the right people driving them forward. Ayale lunched at South Street Diner, where he kept looking over his shoulder and the unfamiliar day staff gave him funny looks, as if they could smell the stench of dubious authority.
* * *
I was taken to another precinct, where one of the secretaries gave me a white foam cup filled to the brim with Lipton tea, which I had trouble keeping steady. I was put into the care of a man and a woman, the former with red hair, the latter with none; her head sparkled and looked as though olive oil had been rubbed into its small-pored surface.
“Would you consider Ayale a good man?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Would you say that he has the best interests of everyone in mind, be it himself, you, his friends, his family, society?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s just what I think.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“No.”
“Did you talk about the murders with him?”
“A little bit.”
“What did you say to each other?”
“That it was really sad.”
“What else?”
“That was it.”
“What’s your general opinion of him?”
I couldn’t just believe them without speaking to Ayale first. No matter how compelling the evidence, no matter how probable their theories—and what did it mean if I knew someone who seemed likely to kill, to subjugate?—I couldn’t just take the word of the enemy. Even if I still didn’t understand who the enemy was.
“I have a lot of respect for him.”
“Do you respect his engineering of an uprising on another continent?”
“No comment.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Yes.”
“Or because you don’t want to?”
“Yes.”
“Does it bother you that the men who were supposed to be protecting you would have killed you if it meant saving themselves, saving him? That he, quite frankly, didn’t care about you at all?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Words were difficult to form, what with the snot and tears that were clogging my every facial orifice.
“Let’s take a break.”
* * *
Word spread fast as to my whereabouts. When Ayale got wind of what was going on, he called up some contacts and had them keep a lookout. Upon leaving that night, exhausted, having promised to return in the morning, I found a taxi waiting at the curb. I didn’t question its origin and fell asleep in the back, waking up only when the driver gently shook me.
“Oh hi … where are we?”
He helped me out; one of my legs had fallen asleep.
“Sixth floor, second door on your right.”
I had trouble getting my bearings. I was standing by one of the entrances to what I now saw was an enormous apartment complex. It reminded me in structure and style of the one that had been set ablaze, and when I faltered, he gently pushed me forward.
“Can’t you just tell me where I am?”
“I’m so sorry. Take care.”
I watched, confused, as he ran into his car, honked three times, and peeled away. Having nothing else to do, I followed his instructions.
When I arrived at the door in question, it swung open and a hand pulled me inside, none too gently. The apartment seemed lit with the sole agenda of creating as many pockets of darkness as possible. There were lamps everywhere, but most were covered with scarves, so that all illumination was filtered in such a way that everyone and everything looked sprayed with a light smattering of grime. The woman who led me inside was my height, and when she turned, I saw that she was somewhere in her mid-twenties.
After sitting me down on a couch, she returned a few minutes later with a tray of soft drinks, the bottles laid out flat like the servants do it in Ethiopia, and a basket of salted peanuts, because kolo is hard to find. Next was a pot of hot coffee, and when I bolted upright from sleep, Ayale was sitting across from me, tranquilly sipping from my cold mug.
“Why don’t you ever put in sugar?”
“You!”
He looked up sharply.
“What?”
It was taking my brain too long to wake up, and now he had my coffee.
“I was at the police station.”
“Oh?”
“It was horrible.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me exactly what you told them.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on first?”
He began to pace the room.
“As I understand it, at around the same time that you were taken, I was brought before the police and was allowed to leave after about thirty minutes. For various reasons, it took me four hours to get home, where my front door had been kicked in. Inside, all electronics had been removed, highly sensitive papers were missing, others were scattered. Furniture was scuffed. For some mysterious reason, all forms of soap had been confiscated.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I went straight back to the police, to the exact station where I had been apprehended.”
“What?”
I had never heard anything more moronic. Ayale nodded, grimly enjoying how, once again, I wasn’t nearly agile enough to follow the leaps and bounds of his thinking.
“I wanted them to see me as a genuine victim, innocent enough to view the police as a force of good. It didn’t escape me that it had to be one of theirs who had so thoroughly explored my home, don’t worry.”
“So?” My vocabulary was gone.
“After filling out some forms, I was waylaid and told that new information directly implicated me. When asked about sources, proof, of course they weren’t at liberty to say. I’d expected as much.”
“They know everything,” I said quietly.
He sat down.
“I
know they do. Tell me what you said. I need to evaluate the extent of the damage.”
This took hours. I could barely get through half a dozen sentences without him interrupting and asking me to clarify a detail or go back over a sequence of events that he hadn’t quite understood. I spoke on automatic, too tired to be frightened, and when I’d finished, the layer of grime had been replaced by an ashy glow, courtesy of the just rising sun. The girl reappeared with coffee and toast. Ayale thanked her kindly, and I eked out a smile that she didn’t return. He reached for a piece, and the scraping of the butter knife echoed in this room that persisted in resisting natural light. It was only after finishing his first slice that he spoke.
“I’ll get someone to drive you home.”
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Is it true? Were they lying?”
He finished a second slice before he spoke.
“I’ll be leaving tonight.”
“You said not for another year!”
I almost felt betrayed; what a joke.
“Once you start losing, it’s hard to get out of that pattern. Remember that.”
Everyone’s always telling me to remember things that I’d rather forget.
“Where will you go?”
“I think you know.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“Would you change anything?”
He guffawed.
“You’ve always asked the wrong questions. There are people who help you and people who hurt you. You keep the former until they become the latter and hope that you never hurt the former. I made a mistake. That’s the only change that matters now.”
The girl returned and waited by the door until I rose and walked toward her. When I had passed through the doorway, I turned back, perhaps for a last glimpse or plea, but she blocked my view, and so there was nothing for it but to keep moving, from the complex to the taxi, from the taxi to my door, from my door to my father, from him to the explanations about where I’d been, what was wrong, why were there so many police officers on our street, what was wrong, for God’s sake.
As he shouted, I thought back to a lifetime ago, when I’d first met Ayale; I’d been so arrogant, so sure I was something special because I had one or two quips up my sleeve. He’d made a mistake when he’d kept me, perhaps the first of his life. I had failed him. I was a failure. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps it was he who had failed me.
My father was crying, Ayale was leaving, and I was failing. We were all accounted for now.
ON THE SUBJECT OF HOW IT ENDED THERE BEFORE WE CAME TO HERE
The fallout was swift in that there were no ostensible signs of one. Investigations into the murders continued, while the murders themselves didn’t. No valid connection between them and Ayale has yet to be publicly announced, while the Ethiopian rumor mill remains split on the subject.
My father received a garbled account that featured parking lots in light doses, Ayale as a hapless victim of a blurry foe, and the police as the truly regrettable by-product of it all. I was too afraid to walk at my graduation and received my diploma in the mail. When I showed it to my father, he gazed at the Latin before handing it back.
“It’ll be good for you to go away. Meet new people.”
I had already made my decision.
“I’m not going to college. I’m sorry. I just can’t yet.”
He stayed silent, searching for his lighter, finding a box of matches underneath the couch.
“I’ll pay you back the deposit. I’ll get a job. But I can’t do it.”
He lit his cigarette.
“I’ll make you a deal.”
“What’s the deal?”
I was wary of anything that resembled a covenant.
“Defer your status.”
“And do what?”
“I’ll think of something.”
A month later, he told me that we were going to B______, to soak up a new environment, take part in a better adventure. I refused. When asked why, I said only that I couldn’t. When asked if I had a better plan, I assured him that any plan was better than going to B______. He gently explained that it was all arranged and that if we stayed in Boston, he had it on good authority that neither of us would be safe. I even more gently replied that he had no idea what he was talking about, especially in terms of what was safe. He leaned against the counter by the sink, arms crossed.
“I know that he’s involved with B______. I don’t know how or why, nor do I want to, and I hope you don’t, either, because from the little I know, it sounds like a mess. I don’t want you to worry about that. We’ll be fine. Anyway, you haven’t done anything wrong.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he shook his head. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
My father has always specialized in gifting me ways out, with escalating degrees of escape: I’d graduated from a T pass to a trip to an island that just barely existed.
The police called me back in three more times. It was soon clear that they had nothing concrete on me. The questions remained the same, and the last session was purely perfunctory, a farewell tour of the station whose weak tea I was growing to enjoy, yet another routine into which I could throw myself.
The waning of the authorities’ interest correlated with the complete absence of suspects. It slipped out on my last visit that Ayale’s whereabouts were unknown, as were those of their source: somehow, through some channel that the police had failed to observe, they’d disappeared, and the cops’ frantic attempts to locate them were for naught. The disciples were fragmented, useless, becoming invisible. Food lost what little taste it had left.
The time immediately preceding our departure was notable only for a marked increase in stasis. I slept as much as my body would let me and consumed as little as would allow me to sleep. It was a time of complete peace between my father and me: we’d reached an understanding.
Sunday brunch was recommenced. My father said things like this preserved our humanity, and I understood what he meant enough to go along with it.
One morning he left. I didn’t understand his certainty, but I obediently defrosted the refrigerator, broke the lease, dragged all of our furniture onto the sidewalk, and waited for a sign that I was to follow. Our landlord was only too glad to be rid of us, sick of our delayed rent and the police presence that he suspected was our doing.
We’d been receiving letters from a million people named Anonymous. They were either excruciatingly detailed or almost insultingly brief. The former enumerated the reasons I was a horrible person and inquired as to how I could live with myself. They invited me to peruse the enclosed lists of plagues that God would soon visit upon me, my family, and my progeny.
The latter wished only that God would forgive me, because they surely wouldn’t.
These notes continued until the day I left for B______. I wonder if new ones keep arriving, piling up on the doorstep that is no longer ours. I wonder if our landlord has finally read some and, if he has, what he thinks it’s all about.
When I arrived on B______, I felt as though I’d forgotten to do or bring something crucial, how one might feel after leaving the oven on, the door open, a wallet full of hundreds on the unmade bed. I think now that it was really Boston I left behind—or, rather, the version of Boston that contained the version of me to which I’d grown so accustomed.
We are nearly returned to the beginning now. I have nearly nothing more to say.
PART III: ON THE SUBJECT OF REVELATIONS THAT MEAN LESS THAN ONE WOULD EXPECT
It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken at length to anyone. There’s little to say. The excitement of the beginning, as remembered by the original settlers, has faded by our second month. We have as little idea of what happens next as we do what’s happening now, and are no better informed as to how we’re involved in either phase. The last few morning reports state only: all is as usual. These pronouncements intractably cement our suspension; I’ve even begun to notice—or perhaps it’s
my imagination—that the children are no longer growing, taking on new characteristics, trying out new phrases and gestures. When I give one of them a snack or bat their hands away from a sharp object, it’s always the same apple I offered yesterday and the day before, it’s the same gesture to remove the same limb from the same surface, which never ceases to be at that degree of sharpness and in that precise location of that specific room. We have become trapped on a mechanized track, which, as we sleep, tugs us back to where we began.
Many don’t understand what we’re all waiting so expectantly for, and still they wait. They’ve gathered from the murmurs that we’re bounding forward to a new world, one of our own choosing, even though most of us weren’t consulted during the process. The reasons for this endeavor, the potential consequences, the very real current effects escape them, hold no interest for them, or imply something so disquieting that they’ve decided, perhaps wisely, to cease investigating; the answers might be too horrifying to live with.
My free time has become excruciatingly plentiful: the children barely move anymore, there’s no need to even halfheartedly chase them like in the dubiously happier days, and we stopped playing travel and betting on three-legged races a long time ago. Our hearts just aren’t in it anymore.
When I started asking about the Danga, my father questioned if I was thinking of joining their illustrious ranks. He made like this was a joke, putting on what I imagined he imagined to be a teasing tone of voice. Living in such close quarters with him has enabled me to instantly recognize where he is on his emotional barometer. His only admission of feeling something other than blind good humor came in our first and only conversation about the Danga.
“Have you asked the others? They’ve been here longer—they probably know more.”
“But you’re the only one who’s been in the same room as them. The others say that’s never happened before.”
We hid more than we showed. His tone of polite interest belied a fright that ate away at his internal organs, a condition that our one doctor has diagnosed as stress. I didn’t mention that what the others said was never spoken directly to me, that I gathered information from around corners and the stilted chatter of the children.
The Parking Lot Attendant Page 16
