Empire of Lies

by Andrew Klavan

  And the truth is: I wanted to see her. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to do the rough things with her I used to do. If my desire for her was part of the past, then it was the past I was after. It had sucked me back in. I was sinking in it. And I did not want it to let me go.

  Her place was off campus, one of a row of renovated brick apartment buildings on Broadway, with storefronts and cafés on the ground floors. I didn't call ahead to tell her I was coming. In some part of my mind, I didn't really believe I'd go through with it. Right up until I reached her neighborhood, I felt sure I was going to turn back. Even once I got there, I thought I would just drive by her building like a kid too frightened to take a dare. Hell, even when I lucked into a parking space right on the street not twenty paces from her door, even as I was walking to her door in the rain, I didn't believe anything would come of it. I would just keep walking past or I would turn around, and I would drive home, shaking my head at myself.

  Then, of course, there I was, in the entryway, shuddering from the wet and cold, my heart pounding with excitement and anticipation. There was a triple row of brass mailboxes. I felt that surge below my belly again at the simple sight of her name—Anne Smith—on a mailbox in the middle row. I pressed the white button above the box. I was thinking: I just want to see her, that's all. It's not as if I'm actually going to do anything. But at the same time I was telling myself to stop—stop being a child about it. The truth was—I was telling myself—it didn't make a damn bit of difference what I did, not in the big scheme of things, not in any scheme, not really. It was just what it was, that's all; a moment of life, that's all. People did this sort of thing and you only lived once and it was a messy business and this was the sort of thing that happened. Ridiculous to make some big puritanical deal out of it. What were you supposed to do anyway? Live out your life in some sort of straitjacket of repression? Be some kind of good little boy all the time, some sort of eunuch? It wasn't your fault things were like this. You were what your life had made you, what nature made you, and history and so forth. You couldn't get away from that. It was useless to think you could. Even worse, it was phony and hypocritical to pretend you had.

  "Yes?" the woman's voice was tinny and mechanical over the intercom.

  "It's Jason Harrow," I said.

  The door buzzed. I pushed in. It wasn't much warmer in the foyer. I kept shuddering. Or maybe that was the excitement. I wasn't sure.

  Anne's apartment was on the fourth floor. I moved to the stairs. My heart was really thumping now—bang bang bang against my ribs. I started up the first flight. I was thinking: It's not as if we're actually going to do anything. And anyway, it was no big deal if we did. A peg in a hole. You had to stop tormenting yourself about these things.

  Then, as I reached the second-floor landing, a door opened. A woman stood just within, looking out through the gap. She was about the same age as Anne, but skinny and blonde, with a narrow, pleasant face.

  "Hi," she said uncertainly. "Can I help you?"

  It startled me—I was so immersed in my own inner drama, the heart beating, the thoughts doubling up on themselves. For a moment, I just stood there, gaping at her, feeling flushed and hollow with a sense of having been caught out, pinned by a spotlight as I crept guiltily through the dark.

  "No, I—" was all I could manage to say, and I pointed at the next flight to show I was headed upstairs.

  "Oh," said the woman, with a friendly smile. "You rang my bell by mistake."

  "I did? Oh, I'm sorry, I—"

  "No—no problem. It happens all the time. You have to hit the button under the box, not on top of it."

  I got off a smile back at her. "Sorry. Sorry I bothered you."

  "No problem," she said again. She closed the door.

  I continued on up the next flight, but my steps grew slower and slower as I reached the top as if I were a toy that was winding down. As I stepped onto the third-floor landing, I came to a full stop. My frantic thoughts faded and my mind went quiet except for the thunder of my beating heart.

  It came to me then that I might change my mind. It came to me that I had an unlooked-for chance to do that. When I thought about it, I mean, it came to me: I had rung the wrong bell, not Anne's bell. Anne had no idea I was here. No one had any idea I was here. I could simply turn around and go back down the stairs. I could simply leave. I could still get out before I did something stupid—which, let's face it, was what I had come here to do.

  Without really reaching any sort of definite decision or anything, I found that I had turned around. I was heading back down the stairs. I started to go more quickly—then even more quickly—afraid that the blonde woman on the second floor might open her door again and see me hightailing it out of there, running as if for my life. I didn't slow down when I got outside, either. I was afraid I might bump into Anne, afraid I would have to explain to her what I was doing here. By the time I reached my car, I was practically sprinting through the drizzling mist. I leapt into the front seat. I was in such a hurry, I had to wrangle my key into the ignition.

  I peeled away from the curb like a fugitive, racing to beat the light at the corner. I drove off through the sparser uptown traffic quickly. I did not slow down until I had reached the park, until I was heading across town through the park.

  I had done the right thing. I knew that. This adultery business—I mean, it's all right on TV and in the movies and such, in history books and in novels and so on, where no one gets hurt. But again, what's the point of telling a story if you don't at least try to tell the truth? And the truth is: My wife's life and happiness were all in our marriage. My children's happiness depended on ours. I was the head of our household—the man in charge—I had authority over all their lives and was responsible for them. Plus I loved them. I loved them. I didn't want them to become like ... well, like everyone else, you know: mere artifacts and relics of a feckless era. With those grim, cynical faces you see everywhere. With those hurt, bitter eyes. Saying: Well, that's the way of things. As we all know, that's just the way. I want my family to be able to say instead: No. A man can live by his word. A man can do the decent thing. My husband did. My father did. So can I.

  So I did it: the decent thing, the only wise, the only honest, the only honorable thing.

  And, of course, I drove home despising myself for it, thinking: What a coward you are, Jason. What a miserable fucking coward.

  Juliette's Tear

  That was the night it began. The worst of it, the end of it. Most of the details you probably already know: the race against time, the bloodshed, the devastation, and the rest. A lot of it you've probably seen replayed endlessly on TV. If you were paying attention—if you gave a damn—you know some of my part in it, too. You've heard me called a hero and a monster—sometimes by the same people. You've heard me accused of lying, of racism, and, yes, of murder. But no one—no one until now—has told the whole awful, grisly truth about the things I did, the role I played.

  There were riots in Paris that night, I remember. Angry mobs ranged through the city setting cars on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. The trouble had started just after sundown. Earlier in the day, an official at the Louvre had announced that Ingres's Odalisque, the painting that had been slashed recently by an Islamo-fascist vandal, would soon be restored to the permanent exhibit. Rabble-rousing radical imams spread the word among their followers that this was an offense against Islam. The fires began in the suburbs and quickly spread. The government—being the French government—immediately surrendered and recanted. But it didn't matter: The disturbances went on. At the height of the violence—this was the lead story, the real shocker—there had been a seemingly organized assault against the Louvre itself. The video showed the army of white-shirted, brown-skinned men breaking like a moonlit wave out of the shadows into the museum's illuminated courtyard. Their faces were bright and twisted in the joy of their outrage. The line of police, their suits blue black, their shields black, their helmets black, looked
like a phalanx of myrmidons as they fearfully tried to hold the onslaught at bay. The rioters threatened and shouted. Their Molotovs flew in bright arcs against the Paris sky. Some of the flaming bottles sailed over the cops' heads and smashed against Pei's pyramid, the museum's modern entranceway. The pyramid's glass caught the sudden crowns and medallions of flame and threw the light of them against the Renaissance facade of the palace itself. The palace's verdigris roof, its spotlit arches, the statues arrayed in its niches and around its base leapt with the bursts of sudden fire and seemed to come alive. Other homemade bombs, meanwhile, burst with savage gaiety against the black police shields. The explosions reflected off the cops' helmet visors, revealing glimpses of the tough, frightened eyes behind. The silhouettes of the rioters danced and whirled out of the darkness and across the firelight then melded back into the surrounding darkness again. On my brother's gigantic TV, it all had a sort of hellish grace.

  "These are not riots," one policeman said—speaking anonymously for fear of losing his job. "This is Holy War."

  I sat on the sofa in the television room, looking up at all this from a turkey sandwich on a paper plate. Now and then, I sat back and tipped a plastic water bottle to my lips. No more wine. I was finished with that. I wanted my head clear so I could come to a final decision about what I was going to do about Serena.

  After a while, I got tired of watching Europe die. I started changing channels.

  On Feel the Fear! contestants were eating dung beetles for cash prizes.

  On Sparkle for the Prosecution, a single mother-slash-DA was trying to convict a group of Christian child molesters.

  On Shoutdown, an Egyptian feminist was crying out to an interviewer, "They're taking over our mosques, they stone and mutilate our women, they murder dissenters. If the West will not condemn them, who will save us?"

  Oh, and look! Here was Sally Sterling on Hollywood Tonight— perky blond Sally with her kissable lips—saying, "Juliette Lovesey reveals the shocking truth in this exclusive emotional interview."

  Listen, I wouldn't mention this, but it turned out to be important. No, really. What happened on this show during the next few minutes changed everything in the end. Hard as it may be to believe, Sally's interview with Juliette became a matter of life and death.

  Juliette, you see, had cried on camera. Now this was a big deal. You could tell it was a big deal, because Sally wouldn't even show the whole interview right away. She just kept tantalizing us, showing us the moment when Juliette's lips trembled, when her eyes swam, showing it again and again, only to cut it off cruelly, saying, "We'll have more of that interview later in the program."

  Then we—we whose tears fall piteously but off camera—we, the Great Unwatched—had to wait through the commercials for the full catharsis. Buy a pad that keeps your menstrual blood from staining your underwear. Get cheaper loans online, get a better credit card, watch a new TV series about a serial killer who works for the police. And don't forget to pick up a box of laundry detergent to get those really tough bloodstains out of your panties...

  And then at last, at last, Sally delivered the goods. There was Juliette in the usual canvas chair, her tanned, shapely legs crossed, her hands resting ladylike on her skirted thigh.

  "This is not something I ever wanted to talk about publicly," she was beginning to say, when ... well, you remember that scene where the monster latched onto the guy's face in the movie Alien? That's how close the camera got to Juliette. It zoomed in so hard and tight we could almost feed on the trembling of her lips, practically drink the single tear that glistened on the long underlashes of one fabulously vulnerable eye. That crystal droplet hung there for a moment of indescribable pathos and suspense and then, as a grateful nation gasped with compassion and release, it spilled down over one sweet, high, fragile cheekbone to leave a trail of shine on the peach complexion by L'Oréal and...

  "Yes," said Juliette, dabbing at the corner of her eye with a fingertip. "Yes. I am going to have Todd's baby."

  Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

  "And you're going to keep it," said Sally. She had her Compassionate Face on now. She was leaning forward in her own canvas chair, her own legs in their elegant black slacks crossed ladylike at the knee.

  "Oh, yes," said Juliette, bravely flicking another tear from her eyelashes with a slender knuckle. "I love children, and I just don't think another abortion would be right for me right now."

  "And Todd...?" Sally asked, with that infinite gentleness and sensitivity she did so well.

  "Well, you know, in the end, he wasn't ready for the commitment I was hoping he would make," Juliette replied nobly. "But he really is a wonderful man, and I wish him every happiness."

  "Even"—it was a hard question but, as a professional journalist, Sally had to ask it—"even if that happiness is with Angelica Eden?"

  "Yes. Yes. Of course." Juliette's tears were over now. You could see in the set of her cleft chin that her native strength was flooding back into her. What a woman. "This is the way of things, you know. Love doesn't always last. People move on. It happens. You have to let them follow their hearts."

  Now, gauging her moment, Sally began to alter the interview's tone, to lighten it, to bring it back from its dark, confessional depths. With a girlish, conspiratorial smile, she asked, "Do you know yet if it's a boy or a girl?"

  And Juliette brightened instantly, pleased and shy as any young mother, only so much more beautiful. "It's a boy! I'm going to name him Portobello."

  "Portobello." Sally giggled. "Like the mushroom?"

  "Yes. I really—oh, I can't tell you how much I love them. And it's just always seemed to me such a beautiful word."

  "Wonderful," said Sally. "So let's talk about your new film, The End of Civilization as We Know It."

  So it went on—as it would, in fact, go on, days and years and even decades, I suspect. Because the thing is, the audience—the Great Unwatched—they loved her from that moment forward. From then on, endlessly it seemed, the TV, the magazines, the Internet would leap upon her every little lust and rumbling, spreading her joys and twitches and discontents across our consciousness as if they were some ocean-sized puddle making up in area what it lacked in depth. The audience would tune in for all of it. The pregnancy, the birth, the difficult partings when Juliette tore herself away from her baby to go filming on location, her son's picture-perfect childhood, his own early movie roles, his wild nightclubbing, his first stint in rehab, and Juliette's selfless dedication to preventing teen depression and suicide through the Portobello Fund, named in his memory. Even in her twilight, when her looks were fading, she would still command the magazine covers with interviews asking why—why? why?—were there no good parts in Hollywood for older actresses? On this night—this last night before the worst of it—Juliette went from being a starlet to a star.

  And that, as I say, changed everything.

  Cathy on the Phone

  I turned the TV off after that. No Patrick Piersall tonight. I'd had enough of him that morning in the Ale House. And then, too, it was all Patrick Piersall somehow. On every show on every channel, he was the presiding spirit: The Wonderful Wizard of Me.

  I phoned my wife.

  "Hey you," she said. "When are you coming home? It's lonely in my bed at night."

  "Tomorrow. The house is all cleaned out. Mitzi can stage it and put it on the market without me."

  "Excellent. I can't wait to have you back."

  "I have to tell you something," I said. "It's kind of nasty."

  "All right." The warm, cheerful voice changed tone. It became flat and cautious. "What's the matter?"

  "I went to see an old girlfriend the other day...."

  I heard her breathing stop hundreds of miles away. Then, with false and pitiable lightheartedness she said, "And did you set your marriage vows at naught and destroy my happiness, your children's, and your own?"

  I laughed. "No. I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid." She breathed again a
nd I loved her. It was the first time it occurred to me to feel glad that I hadn't gone through with my visit to Anne that day. "I should've told you before I went. I'm sorry."

  "Never mind. What happened?" It was typical Cathy. Not a word of anger out of her. Just another shift in tone. Now she sounded a little less like the wife and mother she was and more like the lawyer she used to be, ready to figure it all out, whatever it was.

  I sighed. I pinched my eyes closed, holding the phone to my ear. "She has a kid. A daughter. She claims she's mine from the old days."

  I heard her give a little grunt, as if I'd struck her. "Oh, no, Jason. Oh, no," she said. "Do you think it's true?"

  "I can't be sure. I don't think she's even sure. She married another guy and told him the kid was his, too."

  "All right. All right." Now I could practically hear her gathering herself, gathering her resources to confront the thing. "So she's not really someone we can trust, in other words."

  "No."

  "And the girl. Have you seen her? Does she look like you?"

  "I don't know. A little, I guess. Everybody looks pretty much like everybody when you come right down to it."

  "All right," she said again. "All right. Well, we'll have to get a DNA test. What does the woman want from you? The mother? Does she want money?"

  "I don't think so. She just..."

  "Wants you back."

  "Wants to draw me back into her life, yeah. Show me her life. Make me feel bad about it."

  "Misery loves company."

  "Pretty much, yeah. The thing is: It kind of worked. I mean, the kid's a mess."

  "Well, I'm not surprised," said Cathy primly.

  "Yeah, but I mean she's really gotten herself into a situation. She says—the girl—Serena—she says she witnessed a murder."