She lowered the volume and said, “The TV’s gone.”
The old gray Sony portable that for years had sat on the counter, always tuned to the news, had disappeared.
“Yeah,” he stirred the spaghetti and shrugged, offering no explanation.
But she knew this was part of his mechanism to insulate himself from what he had done.
Pete had been home for three days.
She’d only arrived back this morning.
After being kicked loose from the ghost house in the Hollywood Hills she hadn’t wanted to return to Brooklyn and had impulsively accepted an assignment up in Utah. An Artforum spread on how Robert Smithson’s massive piece of land art, Spiral Jetty, a coil built of mud and basalt rocks—large enough to be seen from space—looked decades later.
Ann had dallied longer than she’d needed, finding the remoteness clarifying.
She’d spoken to Pete on the phone. Short, empty conversations about schedules and flights, leached of all intimacy. He’d volunteered nothing about what had happened in Syria and Turkey and she had asked no questions. Like most of the world she’d watched CNN, but had no desire to know how he had transubstantiated the doppelgänger into the corpse of the real Catherine Finch.
Ann had rejected his offer to fetch her from the airport, and had caught a cab, arriving an hour ago. Their embrace had been awkward.
As she sat at the table she said, “Pete?”
He looked up from his stirring. “Yes?”
“That night, in L.A., at that diner?”
He leaned against the counter, apparently at ease, but an errant finger swiveled his wedding ring. “Yes?”
“Were you going to tell me something more about why you were on the plane from Frankfurt?”
He frowned, composure regained. He was a professional liar, after all. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Then how did you find out about me and Arkady.”
“Oh, just something an asset said.”
“After all those years?”
“I was talking to him about the eighties. Determining the veracity of his information. Your name came up.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
He turned and strained the spaghetti and Sinatra warbled on about having one more for his baby and one more for the road. Ann leaned across and clicked off the boombox.
Pete squinted at her through the steam and she said, “I’m going away.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“But you’ve only just arrived.”
“It’s an assignment for Time. Paris and Vienna.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks. Maybe a little longer.”
“Can’t you blow it off?”
“I could, but I don’t want to.”
“Okay,” he said, still looking at her.
She thought he was going to say something, wanted him to say something. Wanted him to at least try to get her to change her mind, but his eyes drifted from hers to the line of ants that were climbing the counter near the sink.
He tore a rectangle of paper towel from the roll and gently scooped the ants up and carried the paper to the back door, where he stood and shook them out into the garden.
Sitting at the table, the wine vinegary to her tongue, Ann found this little ritual cloying. Precious.
She looked away from her husband standing in the doorway, and when he spoke she didn’t hear him.
They would be divorced by Christmas.
TWENTY-TWO
A man’s voice. American. Then a woman’s voice. Also American.
She opened her eyes to a glare of light and a face that resembled hers.
Then darkness.
When she opened her eyes again she was lying alone and realized that she was in a moving car. She wanted to scream from the pain.
The car stopped and she heard a door open and slap closed and feet on gravel. The door beside her gaped and hard light fell on her with a hot weight. The light was blocked as a face swam into focus.
A gray-haired man’s face.
The car rocked as he climbed up into the seat beside her. He took her hand in his and they sat for a while and she wanted to ask him to help her but she couldn’t.
She heard the man sigh and then she saw him lift a blanket and she felt it cover her nose and mouth as he pressed it down on her.
Some reflex caused her to fight for just a second. Then she relaxed and let the darkness come, and felt all the pain and all the terror wash away, and she wished, as her last breath left her, that she could thank him.
THE END
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