Guy Novel

by Michael Ryan

  “Arrangement? When was it arranged?”

  “Before we landed in Washington to meet with the president,” Sheed said.

  “Really? Angela had all this planned that far in advance?”

  “Very resourceful, Mr. Wilder. I can’t possibly replace her.”

  “Neither can I,” I said.

  22.

  I pulled into my driveway at midnight, one week to the minute after I pulled into my driveway from the Irvine Improv sailing on adrenaline. Could that have been only a week ago? O Angela. I had been ready to give up women and work day and night like a termite. My life was going to be entirely different. It was watch out world, here comes Robert Wilder! Now it was watch out Robert Wilder, here comes the world. My life was going to be entirely different all right. I was fucking devastated. My heart wasn’t just broken. It was crushed, vaporized, annihilated. Again I popped the hatchback, grabbed my suitcase, and rolled it behind me up to my door. Again the door was open, about three inches, but this time I didn’t think Krista. I thought Angela. Again the lights were out and the apartment was dark and I pushed the door open and stepped inside and flipped on the lights.

  And there she wasn’t. The desk chair was exactly as she left it when she swung around like Mrs. Bates’s skeleton in full Islamic regalia and told me that if I didn’t go with her I’d be dead before morning. Republican ninjas. How stupid did I have to get before I got smart? I should just leave the chair at the precise angle she left it to remind me. If I needed a further reminder, I still had my Prince Abdullah in a ziplock bag. I should wear it all the time, including the mouche on my dick, attached with superglue, in the unlikely event I ever felt inclined to use it again. “My dick” not “Private Wanky.” Court martial: Private Wanky. Henceforth, may his name never be uttered among civilized peoples.

  My apartment consisted of three rooms: the living room/study, furnished with one lamp, one Swedish recliner, one desk, and the Angela Chase Memorial swiveling desk chair; the bedroom, with the bathroom on one side and the door to the deck overlooking Renate’s garden on the other side; and the kitchen, with the small dining table where I served eggs to Renate and Krista and ate my permafrost burritos. Krista apparently had not been here while I was gone. There were no empty cans of Diet Coke on the floor, no empty bags of Ripples, no empty boxes of Weight Watchers lemon chicken dinner, no heavy metal CDs by Death, Fear Factory, and Weird Looks, and no used dishes in the kitchen sink. Just Sparky’s dog bowl and his squeaky pig chew toy at their usual places next to the refrigerator.

  Sparky. I had forgotten completely about Sparky. I hadn’t thought about him at all during the past week. Poor Sparky had been in the kennel for ten straight days. I consoled myself with the self-berating thought that Madge loved him better than I did. No doubt he was perfectly happy. I’d go pick him up in the morning.

  Time for bed. It had been a long day, a long flight next to Angela’s blatantly unoccupied seat on the Concorde. Until the cabin door was closed and locked, I hoped she would run onto the plane at the last minute and jump into my lap like the happy ending of a chick flick. She wasn’t waiting for me in my bed either, but my computer was, with a note taped to the monitor:

  Happy Anniversary. Where the fuck are you?

  Yr former friend,

  Don

  I carried the computer piece by piece to my desk—processor, monitor, keyboard, and mouse—and dumped it onto the pile of papers with my unsigned license to marry Doris on top. That left only my clothes to strip off—the Banana Republic khakis and polo shirt and Calvin Klein briefs Angela had bought for me in Abu Dhabi. Maybe I would burn them. Angela took both white silk robes, hers and mine. I thought this was mean of her, almost vindictive. As if to tell me the white silk robe wasn’t really mine. I was only renting it.

  And so it went: my high-speed blender brain. Stuck on autopilot chop liquefy and puree. Of course I couldn’t sleep. I was beyond exhaustion, having fretted my way home on the Concorde refusing yet more fabulous complimentary French food and complimentary French wine and rehashing over and over the previous evening with Angela. How could she leave me like that? Right after we had vowed our eternal love? But what could I do now? I had to find a way to live with what had happened. Or not.

  Then it flashed on me that this is exactly what she had to do when she was eighteen and her parents killed themselves: find a way to live with what had happened. Couldn’t she have designed the week to make me feel how she felt when she lost her parents? The fact is she could. As elaborate and intricate as it was, she was more than capable of planning it. (Very resourceful, Sheed said.) And she left me because she needed to make me experience how she felt so I truly understood her and we could be married forever.

  Fortunately this story was so implausible it put me to sleep. The next morning I woke to pounding on the front door that sounded like a SWAT team battering ram but turned out to be a messenger in a uniform hand delivering a large brown envelope from Sheed. I made a pot of coffee in the kitchen and opened the envelope: my HBO contract ready to sign and send to Odom Bucket and a letter-sized envelope containing a check for $20,000 with this note, “I hope this lifts your spirits. Best wishes, Folsom Sheed.”

  It didn’t, of course, but aside from being devastated I guessed I wasn’t worse off than when I returned from Irvine a week ago—and I was $20,000 richer. I obviously wouldn’t have to pay for Sheed’s legal services and I could almost pay for the Unwedding Dinner. There was another knock on the door, this one much quieter. I could see it was Renate and I called to her to come in.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked her when she walked into the kitchen. She was carrying her big straw gardening hat and green metal watering can.

  “No thank you,” she said. “I saw your car in the driveway.”

  “Yes, well, I’m home,” I said.

  “You always tell me when to expect your return and I must have misunderstood. I thought it was one week ago.”

  “I left again rather quickly,” I said.

  “Your friend Don came over and he had no idea where you were either, but Krista said you were fine and you were in ‘a far-off land.’ That’s how she put it, ‘a far-off land.’ ” “How is Krista doing?” I asked.

  “She’s doing well, remarkably well. She also said you have a broken heart now too. Just like her. I suppose she must be referring to your marriage.”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing Renate meant my first nonmarriage, not my second. Two in a week—must be some kind of record.

  Renate continued, “Although Krista also said that she wasn’t in love with you anymore, because now you’re in love with someone else. She said she was allowed to love you before because she knew you didn’t really love the woman you were going to marry—what was her name? I don’t want to call her what Krista calls her.”

  “Witchbitch,” I said. “Her name is Doris.”

  “Doris, yes. What Krista said about you makes no sense of course, but she is much happier and even wants to go out. She has a date with a boy she met in the hospital. He is coming over and they will sit in the garden. Of course I’m not letting her go anywhere with him alone.”

  “That’s great, Renate. I’m glad she’s doing better.”

  “And how are you, Robert? Did you have a good trip?”

  “Very interesting trip,” I said.

  “And your friend Don said you have an HBO special. That’s wonderful. And here I am taking up your time. We will all watch your HBO special together,” she declared enthusiastically as she went out the door.

  I sat at the table finishing my coffee. What Krista told Renate about me was uncanny as usual, but no more incomprehensible than many of the other recent events involving females. Maybe I would join a monastery and apprentice myself to Mr. Hanh and learn how to speak in a falsetto and giggle. Or I could start a paranormal act with Krista. I could call on people in the audience and she could tell them how they feel.

  What to do today? There was Sparky to pi
ck up, but that wasn’t going to help me find Angela. There was Don to call. And there was Sheed to pester. At least he could tell me the real story about Jalalzada. The newspapers said Jalalzada had been killed when he fell under his Jeep. “Fier Lion Est Mort” read the headline in Le Monde. “Proud Lion”: Angela’s I-thought-affectionate ironic nickname for me seemed a lot more ironic than affectionate when I read that it was Jalalzada’s not-at-all-ironic nickname in Afghanistan.

  I got dressed and was almost at Sheed’s office when I realized I could drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel and personally deliver the HBO contract to Odom Bucket at his table in the Polo Lounge where he always ate breakfast. And I could use that as an excuse to snoop around the hotel and talk to waiters or valets or bellboys to ask if they had seen Angela.

  But Bucket wasn’t there and the staff I talked to either didn’t know Angela or said they’d be fired if they gave out information about hotel guests—despite my ridiculously making sure they saw the denomination of the bill I was holding in my hand. They were all very polite, except the maitre d’ at the Polo Lounge, an impeccably suave leading-man type who sneered at my hundred-dollar bill and said he considered Miss Chase a personal friend and would never disclose information about a patron no matter the price and he would thank me to leave the premises before he called security.

  This left Sheed again. When I pulled up at his office building, the valet parking attendant just smiled. Between Washington, Turkmenistan, Paris, and my various costume changes, I had lost the ticket he gave me at the Santa Monica Airport. But he knew my Z and had let me have it anyway. When he handed me the ticket this time, I said, “No way is this coming back without a stamp.” He said, “You will excuse me, señor, if I believe it when I see it.”

  “Welcome home, Robert,” Tori said as I approached her desk. In-your-face black lace was today’s theme, peek-a-boo under a blazer. Welcome home indeed.

  “How are you, Tori?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to call me, so I started dating somebody,” she answered, as if this were how she was. “He’s from the gym too.”

  “I’ll catch you the next time around,” I said.

  She laughed. “Three months max. The guy’s a broker. I’ve gone out with about twenty of them. They never last longer than three months. They’re all so nervous. And they have to be at work before six A.M. when the Stock Exchange opens in New York. They can’t go five minutes without checking their pork belly futures. Then they’re so tired all they want to do is sleep all weekend. He’s buff but who needs it?”

  I commiserated with her about that for a while, before I asked if I could see Sheed.

  “I told him you were here when the security desk called me. You must be his top priority VIP client. He said you could go right in.”

  I took three steps toward his office before I recalled the parking ticket in my sweaty little palm. I hadn’t put it in my pocket this time so I wouldn’t forget. I spun around and asked Tori to stamp it. This surprised her too—that despite my urgent meeting with the high-powered lawyer I would be thinking about my parking ticket.

  “It will be waiting for you when you come out, along with a confidential document that needs your signature,” she said.

  I couldn’t imagine what that might be. But I was not, under any circumstances, going to pay for parking again.

  Sheed shook my hand, and said he was glad to see me. Before I could open my mouth, he told me Angela had been spotted in Islamabad.

  “I’m sure that’s why you’re here, Mr. Wilder,” he said. “And that is all I know. Richard Clarke called me this morning and wanted to know what was going on.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I can tell you what I told him. Angela is not on a mission for the president. I did not tell him she doesn’t work for me or the president anymore, since they’d kill her if they knew that.”

  “Who would kill her? Why?”

  “They take out rogue agents. They don’t allow freelancers in Islamabad, I assure you. Intelligence activity is all about control. They don’t play with wild cards.”

  Despite myself, that made me worry about Angela. It must have shown on my face.

  “There’s no sense worrying, Mr. Wilder. Angela knows what she’s doing, whatever it is.”

  “What is she doing?” I asked, a question I seem to have asked Sheed before.

  “Short answer is I don’t know. She’s not communicating with me.”

  “Long answer?”

  “Long answer is she’s probably going to Mazar-i-Sharif for Jalalzada’s funeral. She feels she’s responsible for his death.”

  “Is she?” I asked.

  “That’s a silly question, Mr. Wilder. Everyone in the intelligence community knows the terms of engagement. Moral responsibility is a complex question and ultimately irrelevant. Responsibility for success is what matters. And no one is more successful than Angela Chase.”

  “What happened to Jalalzada?”

  “Betrayed by his own men. His closest cohort was infiltrated by al-Qaeda. He was staging an attack on bin Laden, and that’s all they were waiting for. The situation in Afghanistan is more dangerous than ever, which is why I hope Angela isn’t there herself. But I’m afraid she is. You know she was in love with him.”

  “That’s not what she said,” I said.

  Sheed smiled, almost imperceptibly. Either genuinely, or a great piece of acting. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder. I wish I could help you.”

  “Would you contact me if you hear from her?”

  “Of course I will. But I don’t expect to hear from her.”

  He then reached up with his tiny hand and actually patted my shoulder in consolation before he showed me out. It felt like a hummingbird resting on me before flying off to the next blossom.

  I walked out of his office and past Tori’s desk again like a zombie. She must have stepped into the ladies room to adjust her lip implants, and I arrived at the valet parking stand not only without a stamp on my ticket but also without a ticket. The attendant loved it.

  “Fifty dollars for a lost ticket, señor. But for you this one is on the house.”

  He was about to go for my car, when Tori came flying out of the front door with the stamped ticket and the envelope with CONFIDENTIAL printed in red ink all over it. She ran up to me and gave me a big hug, which made me wince, and ran back through the door almost before it had swung all the way shut. She did so much aerobics she wasn’t even breathing hard.

  The attendant said to me, “I would chop off my arm at the elbow for an embrace from this mamacita, and you make a face like you were at the dentist.”

  “She’s stronger than she looks,” I said.

  He sighed heavily. “I will never understand Anglos,” he said. “I think you are all crazy.”

  “You understand us perfectly. We are all crazy.”

  He laughed, and got my car. For the absurdity of it, I gave him the hundred-dollar bill the Polo Lounge maitre d’ sneered at. He said he’d use it the next time he had to go to the dentist.

  I swung by Don’s before I stopped at Madge’s to pick up Sparky. The kids were at school, Francine was probably off by this time on another lecture tour, and Don was in his attic study consorting with the muse.

  “The man from Porlock,” he said when he came downstairs. “And I was just getting to the part where Kubla Khan realizes he’s delusional and needs therapy. Where have you been for the past week?”

  “No way you’ll believe this one,” I said. I told him everything, as usual. What else are best friends for? It took awhile and, as usual, he listened to the whole story without blinking.

  Then he said: “Of all the lawyers in LA, I refer you to the one the sexy bank robber works for. What are the odds of that? Not to mention the rest of it.”

  “It’s great,” I said. “I can blame you for everything.”

  “Say again why Sheed thinks Angela’s in Afghanistan.”

  “He said she
was spotted in Islamabad.”

  “Okay. That’s possible. There’s also life on Mars. The little green men are just too little for us to see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was spotted? In a hijab? With a million other women in Islamabad wearing the same black veils? Angela must have distinctive eyes.”

  “She sure does. There are no others like them,” I said.

  “Uh huh,” Don said, and rolled his eyes. “How many times has Sheed lied to you before today?”

  “Twice. Angela’s brother and the Republican ninjas.”

  “Three’s the charm. And what’s that confidential document you’re supposed to sign?”

  “I forgot I had it,” I said. I was holding the envelope in my hand and tore it open. “ ‘Nondisclosure Agreement.’ The meeting with Clinton.”

  “Why didn’t Sheed ask you to sign it in his office?”

  “No idea.”

  “Maybe it would make his sharing all this classified information about Angela seem less generous? More like an exchange?”

  “Never occurred to me.”

  “Of course not. You said Angela told you she studied how to lie. Who do you think was her teacher? So why is Sheed lying to you again? Why would he tell you Angela was in love with Jalalzada? What does he want?”

  “I guess for Angela to keep working for him.”

  “Bingo. If I’m reading him right, he just plays his best card then watches what happens. Like a good politician. I don’t think he’s invested in anything, which is the reason he’s so good. If he loses Angela to you, he’s not going to blow his brains out. Wherever she is, I think she’ll be back.”

  “Are you just telling me this so I don’t blow my brains out?”

  “Why would I? I’d inherit your computer and it’s a lot better than mine. I installed a surprise on it for you. Did you plug it in yet?”

  “I left as soon as I got up this morning. How did you wangle it away from Doris?”

  “Doris is a very compassionate woman. I’m telling you, you passed up a gem. Anyway she doesn’t love you anymore. She’s got a new boyfriend.”