“It shouldn’t be so much work. If somebody wants to leave you, it’s too late. You might postpone the inevitable, but what’s the point of that?” He leaned in closer. “I have to tell you something, sweetheart. I’m not saying I haven’t messed up, because I have. I’ve done a lot of things I never should have done and not done a lot of things I should have. But I do know that you can’t make somebody love you. No matter what you do. No matter how bad you want it. I learned the hard way.”
Interesting. Jewell wasn’t used to parental advice. She blinked at her father in bewilderment. She couldn’t help wondering what had happened to him to make him feel this way. Was he was talking about her mother, or was it one of the fifty million other women who’d probably passed through his life?
“Just like you can’t make yourself love somebody if you don’t feel it in your heart,” he added. “No matter what you tell yourself, how hard you try. You’re just wasting your time. Man, I sure wish we could get another beer.”
“So, what should I do?” Jewell asked.
“Accept it. Move on. It doesn’t mean you stop loving them. You always will. You carry them in your heart. And we got a lot of stubborn hearts in our family, believe me. They don’t listen to common sense. But it doesn’t mean you get what you want. Who you want.”
Jewell was about to respond when she noticed the racket of voices in the waiting area near the security check. She turned just as three men in business suits sprinted in front of the window that looked onto the runway. People standing in line to go through the metal detector scattered like startled birds. A woman stumbled over her luggage and caused a spontaneous pileup of people and belongings. Suddenly everyone in the waiting area near the gate was running. It sounded like a stampede. Someone shouted. Another screamed.
“Jesus, what’s going on?” Logan asked, cranking his head around.
Everyone at the bar turned at once. There was a communal gasp.
The last clear picture Jewell had was of her uncle, who stood frozen in place, a glass of ice in each hand.
33
Wylie set the glasses on the bar, looked up, and saw people running, first one way, then another. Like a scrimmage where no one knew who had the ball. At first he thought there was trouble at the security check, but then he saw the commotion was more toward the center of the pavilion, to one side of the black plastic chairs. He stood on his tiptoes to try to see over the heads at the bar. People charged like panicked cattle. They grabbed children, knocked over luggage, shoved each other out of the way. Oh Jesus, he thought. This was no joke. Something serious was happening. His heart pounding, Wylie crossed the bar and stood near Logan and Jewell.
Someone shouted, someone else screamed. People eating at the La Paz Cantina cranked their necks around and stared. Shoppers ran out of the pet gift store with coffee mugs and dog sweaters in their hands to see what was happening. The gift-shop cashier came out from behind the register. All the noise—loudspeakers, voices, carts, and footfalls—blended into a dull roar. Then, after a moment, Wylie could hear one voice rising above the others. It shouted the same command, over and over. Gradually the other noise died down and people stopped running. Finally, Wylie could make out the words.
“Stop! Stand still! Don’t move!”
Everyone fell back from a point in the middle of the pavilion. One person stood in the center of the ring, like in a children’s game. The cheese stands alone, Wylie thought. He had a sudden, unsettling sense—like remembering a recurrent dream—that all of this had already happened. This was what had been bothering him, he realized, as the hair stood up on his forearms. This was the thing that had been making him jumpy for weeks. Strangest of all, now that it was finally happening, he felt oddly calm.
“Stop! Stand still! Don’t move!”
Wylie recognized him right away. The goofy guy who used to clean the planes, the one who had left a mess on the bar not that long ago. Of course! That’s the way it always was, wasn’t it? The loser. The outcast. The one with a grudge. Like a dime-store thriller. The quiet one. Pear-shaped, awkward, soft. The one no one suspected. Incredibly, Wylie remembered his name, even though he’d only seen it a couple of times on his ID tag. Rudy.
“Stand back! Nobody move!” Rudy shouted like a bad actor who had rehearsed his line many times but still delivered it flat and wooden.
The crowd around him froze. Some crouched, others sheltered their children or clutched their hands to their chests. As he unzipped his jacket, he smirked at the people who encircled him, and slowly raised his arms. There was something graceful about the way he did it, Wylie thought, like a cormorant sunning itself. He had a sleepy, contented look on his face, like he was basking in everyone’s gaze.
An electric jolt shot up Wylie’s spine, from his sacrum to the root of his skull. Taped around Rudy’s chest like a corrugated life vest was a row of red explosives. A wire ran up his arm. There was a trigger in his hand. He leered, twisting his torso slowly, so that everyone could see.
There was nothing anybody could do, Wylie realized. Not a goddamn thing. He calculated quickly, wondering how much punch the ammo would pack, how far the explosion would reach. To him? He clenched the bar, waiting for the blast.
“Please!” a woman shrieked. “Please don’t do it!”
People dropped to the ground and covered their heads with their arms. A baby began to cry, then another. Rudy looked wildly around, his arms still out, taunting them with the trigger in his hand. Any minute now the blast would shatter the crowd, would spray people, luggage, glass, and seats against the walls. Wylie braced, waiting for it.
The crowd waited, too. Speechless, breathless, and unmoving as they counted the seconds before the moment of annihilation. Waited, waited, waited. Waited too long. As Rudy surveyed the ring of faces surrounding him, the defiant jeer on his face melted. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then shook his head. Something in Wylie lifted its head. Perked up. Looked around. A glimmer of hope. Was it possible? Yes. Slowly at first, but then unmistakably, the balance shifted.
The crowd stirred.
A voice rang out from somewhere near the black plastic chairs.
“Get him!”
The ring around Rudy pulled back, then surged in, like a giant drawing breath.
“Get him!” a woman near the bar cried.
A tall black man with cornrowed hair ripped through the crowd toward Rudy, pulling others in his wake. He broke the inner circle, launched himself into the air, and hit Rudy in the chest with his shoulder. The last thing Wylie saw was the surprised look on Rudy’s face, the small, confused O of his mouth. Then he was down. The crowd rushed in, mobbing him.
“The cops are coming! They’re on their way!” someone shouted.
The center of the circle churned with bodies that had piled on Rudy, like piranhas feeding on a cow. People on the edge of the crowd shouted, stood on tiptoe. Suddenly the man with cornrows rose up in the center, holding Rudy by the collar off his jacket. He hoisted him up like a prize, so everyone could see.
“These are road flares!” he screamed. “Nothing but road flares!” He shook Rudy so fiercely that his head snapped back and forth. The cornrowed man bellowed, “They can’t blow up a damn thing! I got some in my own trunk just like this! They’re just road flares!”
Wylie was about to breathe a sigh of relief when there was a huge commotion: the pounding of running feet, shouts, screams. Cops were suddenly everywhere. Soldiers with automatic weapons. They charged past the bar and into the middle of the crowd. Another squad of green-uniformed soldiers, guns drawn, exploded into the pavilion from the other direction. People screamed and dove for cover.
A surge of icy dread hit Wylie’s veins. He’d been in situations like this before. Someone was going to shoot. He could feel it, could smell it in the overcharged air that vibrated with potential destruction. Any movement could trigger it, any sudden noise or false step. The gunmen swept their rifles over the crowd, searching for targets. A few of t
hem trained their rifles on Rudy while others swiveled from the hips, trigger fingers cocked, muscles twitching.
Wylie clenched his jaw, held his breath. As if on cue, there was a scuffle on the side of the bar, just to his right, not ten feet away. He heard a murmur, a scrape, and—sure enough—one of the metal barstools went over with a loud bang, clattering to the floor. The nearest soldier, young and gaunt, reacted. He swung toward the noise, his gun at his shoulder. Wylie could see how terrified he was by the jerky way he moved.
Another stool crashed to the floor.
The soldier planted his feet, leveled his gun, and aimed.
Though he was a good fifty feet away, Wylie felt like he was looking down the barrel of the gun. He saw it up close, a small black circle, perfectly aligned with the middle of his chest. Two points determine a line, he remembered. These were the points, beginning and end: the muzzle of the gun, the middle of his chest. This was it, he realized. His last moment. This was how it was going to end. He only had to wait for the bullet’s geometry, for it to travel the shortest distance between two points.
Hyped on adrenaline, the young soldier didn’t dare wait to see what would happen next. His finger flinched on the trigger.
The shot rang out, the blast reverberated.
It took Wylie a moment to realize he was still standing. He had miscalculated the trajectory, he saw. The bullet was heading for Jewell. But in the silver silence that followed the blast he realized that it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t Jewell.
Logan was on the ground.
34
Jewell watched Logan slide off the barstool, square his shoulders, and step into the path of the bullet. Calmly, cheerfully, as if he were walking through a door. What made him stand up right at that moment? She saw the back of his head, the fabric of his scruffy linen jacket stretched between his shoulder blades. Then he was gone, fallen at her feet.
There was so much commotion in the waiting area, hardly anyone seemed to notice Logan. Only a few amazed faces at the bar turned toward him. Jewell looked past them, out into the terminal where the young, skinny soldier who had fired the gun stood with an expression of blank disbelief on his face.
“No!” Jewell screamed. “No! No! No! No! No!”
Screaming it was the only way she could get through those first few moments. She sank to her knees beside her father. Bar patrons rushed over and pressed in, but Jewell leaned over Logan and shut them out with her hair, which closed around the two of them like a curtain.
He writhed, twisting from side to side.
“Get someone,” she pleaded, raising her head only for the time it took to say those two words.
He stopped moving and opened his eyes. For the first time she realized who her father was. Not a face or a body, or a collection of memories. Not what he’d said or done, but only this moment as she looked into his eyes. It felt so familiar. Pure recognition. She felt his full attention. Each of her cells, every hair follicle, was alert, a receptor, drinking it in. She couldn’t remember a time when words weren’t necessary, but now everything they needed to say passed between them without a syllable. She had never experienced such fullness of expression. The air between them felt thick with words, with understanding. His eyes rested on her, unmoving. She felt bathed by his gaze, fed and caressed.
His hand closed around her finger.
The moment lasted and lasted. It was faceted, broken down into hundreds of pieces. It contained every moment that had come before: the first classroom Jewell had ever walked into, all the houses she’d lived in, every tear she’d shed, the first time she’d laid eyes on Celeste.
As if she were the one who was dying, her life passed before her eyes, but her life to come, not her past. She understood that it was over between her and Celeste, that she would never stop loving her but that they would never be together, and that her love didn’t have all that much to do with Celeste, anyway. It was more her own stuff, all her own stuff. Still, she saw possibilities. She might live in the house under the eaves with the smell of warm hay. She might finish school. After a while she might leave this basin of smog and jittery earth, her home. She might love someone else, and they might love her in return. Life would go on.
“Hey!” someone in the crowd shouted. “There’s a guy down over here!”
As the attention of the crowd shifted away from Rudy and over to the bar, Logan squeezed Jewell’s finger one last time, hard, before the pressure relaxed. The moment was almost over. But before it ended, Jewell realized how amazing it was to live and how easy to die. The line that separated the two was remarkably thin, she learned as she watched the life pass peacefully, almost imperceptibly, from her father’s face.
35
In the river of pain were little islands of relief, a few seconds when the searing agony in Logan’s chest subsided and he was flooded with well-being. He rested then, floating in comfort until it was time to move on and the torment started again. When the pain was too much, just as he was about to go over the edge, relief engulfed him. Not for long, though. Still, he was grateful for those few merciful moments.
He heard the shouts around him, the confusion. He was frightened, terrified, breathing in short gasps, trying to hold on to his breath, to keep his life in the confines of his body, to not let go. He clenched his eyes and concentrated on the pain, got inside of it, and sure enough it started to ebb away, to leave him. His body lightened, his fear dissipated. It wasn’t going to be that bad, he realized. It was almost a relief, the blood running out of him, because with it went all his desire. How amazing: this was really, finally happening. It was a mistake, but it was meant to be. It had been coming, always coming, since the moment he was born. And now here it was. Coming.
As the pain and fear subsided, he opened his eyes and looked at Jewell. So much like his mother. He smelled her hair where it fell around him, soft on his face like the most tender grass when you lie on the ground. Finally he was able to look at her, to get his fill. To look and look. They spoke the language they knew before there were words.
A shiver passed through him. His hands and feet were cold, his nose and lips tingled. He thought of the water—the clear, blue water. He could see it in the distance, sparkling against the sand like liquid glass. He was light, so light. What a great feeling, just to lie there and do nothing. Not a care in the world. Not a goddamned thing to worry about: where the next buck was coming from, what the guy in the next cell might do, or how some cop might come to put his ass away. Nothing. It all left him. Love, humiliation, desire. All gone. The years he’d worked. The children he’d had. The lust and resentment. Couldn’t touch him. The hurts he’d suffered and the names he’d been called. The laughs. The moments of peace. The disappointments. None of it mattered. He’d never felt so good. So rested.
He could hear the water lapping, its wet slap on the creamy sand. He felt sorry for the people who were shouting and milling around him, working themselves up for nothing. He thought of his mother again, how her love had been like the warm sun on his face. The water—the blue, blue water—lapped gently over his feet. It was the most wonderful feeling as it slipped over his toes and then his ankles, as it inched up his legs to his knees. It was the perfect body temperature, neither warm nor cold. When it reached his thighs, every last care flowed out of him. Even Jewell didn’t matter anymore, not his mother or any of his wives, anyone he had ever loved or hoped to love, because all of them had their own lives and now he had his before him. This last thing was his and only his, the water, the tide coming in until he was floating, his body the most delicious weight, every ounce of him bobbing in the most amazing uncaring.
“I’m going,” Logan said, whether aloud or to himself he couldn’t tell.
Time stood still and then it moved quickly. For one brief flash he felt exactly as he had when he was a child. A forgotten feeling when he raised his head and said Here I am. Then his legs flipped up, up over his head, and he tumbled. Over and over and over. Beneath him and over him was th
e blue, so clear you could see the sand below, the sky above. Finally he reached deep water where it was only the blue—the bright, bright blue.
36
The suspect had been apprehended in the terminal, Beth Fong reported. Her hair was mussed on one side, as if she herself had helped with the capture. Shots had been fired. It was unclear who the assailant was, who had been wounded, what the motivation had been. Viewers should stand by for more details, Beth advised. As soon as there was more information, she would give the full report.
Inez switched off the television and hurried across the room to the phone. Things had suddenly become very simple.
She had to get away.
She dialed the home of Vanessa’s friend and waited for the mother to call Vanessa to the phone. Inez heard water running into a sink while she waited. The ping of an electronic game and the laughter of a younger child. Normal sounds of a normal family.
“Come home,” she said when Vanessa answered. “Now.”
Two agents were out in the garage, another parked in an unmarked car across the street. What happened to Rudy wasn’t her concern. Not anymore.
She made another call, remembering the number from the jingle they played on TV. Dial 234-6161 and here comes the Yellow on the run. Funny how things stick in your mind. The dispatcher answered the phone, took the information, said she’d send the cab. It was also funny how easy things were when you broke them down into little steps. All she had to do was grab a few things, wait for Vanessa, leave the house, get to the station.
Rise and enter the city, the Lord had told Saul when he was struck blind on the road to Damascus, and you will be told what to do.
She didn’t need much. Wherever she went in this country, people would need Avon. The money would pile up, just like it had before. And until then? There were shelters for people like her, weren’t there? Churches? Women left men all the time with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Hadn’t her own father left his country and everything he knew with nothing to rely on but his own mind and body? She hurried into the bedroom and pulled the suitcase off the top shelf of her closet.
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