American Subversive (45 page)

And I didn't miss it anyway.

“How do I look?” Paige asked, grabbing my arm. Her eyes were swamped in blackness. She had cheeks like a geisha's. And her outfit: she'd slipped on a (Club Monaco) miniskirt and torn her tank top in all the right spots. And still, her lips carried the moment. They were a deep scarlet and looked as sticky as a stamp. She laughed. “Ridiculous, I know.”

“I'd hardly say—”

“Okay,” Simon called from up front. “Keep your eyes open for a place to park.” We both moved forward and knelt behind the center console. Simon had turned left and was heading west on Fifty-first Street. Up ahead, spotlit like a launching pad, stood the eerie black hulk of N3's worldwide headquarters. We slowed down. The only legal parking was on the opposite side of the street, but it didn't matter: all the spots were taken anyway. We drove slowly past—glancing at the wedged-open exit door—and began circling the block.

“What about cameras?” I asked. “Can't they trace the van if we park too close?”

“It's got dead plates,” Paige and Simon said at exactly the same time. They both grinned, which made me feel better.

We found a space the second time around. It wasn't perfect—a delivery truck parked in front of us blocked out the driver-side sight lines—but the person in the passenger seat would still have an unobstructed view of the building. Simon backed us in.

“What if Lindsay's in disguise?” he asked. “Changed her hair again or something.”

“I'll still recognize her,” Paige said.

Unbuckling his seat belt, Simon reached into the compartment between the two front seats and held up a pair of compact binoculars. “Here, these should help.” With that, he slipped into the back and checked the mirror, though he hardly had to. In his ball cap, untucked shirt, and faded jeans, he was the very embodiment of a sleep-deprived overnight producer. The three of us leaned in close and went over everything one last time. Then we moved on to the equipment. Paige climbed up front and focused the binoculars on the building while Simon tested the two-way radios. Satisfied, he put one into his pocket and placed the other on the console between the two front seats. Then he wrote down the address of the farm in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

“Just in case,” he said, handing me the piece of paper.

When the sidewalk was clear, Simon hopped out. We watched him walk briskly toward the smokers' door, where four studio-tech types—three men and a woman—stood in a loose circle, puffing away. None of them looked up as he went past and disappeared inside.

Paige stayed in the shotgun seat, so I climbed behind the wheel. Several minutes went by before I realized I was still clutching the address, crumpled and damp from my sweating hand. I smoothed it out and laid it on the dash. Paige glanced at it, then went back to watching the door through the binoculars. I, in turn, watched her, or a vaguely pornographic version of her. For her transformation was unnervingly entire, right down to the jangling plastic bracelets (where had she found those?) and hair clips. She was sitting that way again, one leg brought up against her chest, only now her legs were bare, her skirt running up her thigh. That I could think like that just then. But it was the last familiar feeling left, the only carryover from that life to this one. Paige was immediate, and all else was finished
or to come. Cars flashed past. Lights changed. The city stuck on endless repeat. I'd broken that cycle. A kid who believed in the importance of nonbelief, the essentialness of inaction. I closed my eyes and was soon engulfed in one of those vague circle-of-life ideas, this one about the far side, where pure selfishness joined its direct opposite, arms locked in mutual disregard for the system at the center. But, no, I was only trying to explain all this away. And you can't explain love.

A red light flashed on the walkie-talkie lying between us. I nudged Paige. She picked it up and pressed the
TALK
button. “Go ahead,” she said softly.

“I'm in an empty storage room on the ground floor,” Simon whispered. The reception was static-free. His voice was electric. “It's all lights and rigging. Should be safe for now. Any sign?”

“Not yet,” Paige said. “I'll let you know.”

“Okay.”

She put the radio down and resumed her watch, relating what she saw, the smokers coming and going, never more than three or four at a time. Soon, she fell silent. On the sidewalk beside me, well-dressed couples passed with increasing regularity. Dinners were ending, theaters emptying. The city I'd known.

Keith suddenly seemed like a myth.

I heard Paige say my name, and for a moment it didn't register. But when I turned to her, she was staring at me. “I just . . . I just wanted to let you know,” she started, “that I'm really sorry about Julian. I know what it's like to be betrayed by someone you trust. It's the loneliest feeling in the world.”

“I guess he was caught in a tough position,” I said. But the words had barely escaped before I wished I could take them back. Cressida I could have predicted, but Touché's betrayal had been so stunning and complete that I had, until that moment, refused to accept it as fact. Instead, I'd decided Drudge must have got it wrong, that my “acquaintance” wasn't ratting me out, but trying somehow to warn me, to save me. But, no, Touché was only saving himself. He'd traveled with me as far as distraction and mild adventure would allow, then run back home to hide. All these years I'd reveled in his soothing self-assurance and celebrated the vague mysteries of his life, as if not knowing him,
never
questioning
him, would make us closer. Which is how I'd ended up with a best friend I barely knew. Why had this never bothered me before? Perhaps because it was hardly unique. My world was full of such friendships; it was the basis of the modern urban bargain—that we could flutter in and out of each other's lives like moths, as long, of course, as we kept to the light, the inconsequential, the marginalia. As long, in other words, as we never truly came to know anyone.

I shook off the thought. Beside me, Paige was beginning to fidget. When the walkie-talkie lit up again, she grabbed it impatiently. “Go ahead.”

“Anything?” Simon's voice was measured but insistent.

“No.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe they've come and gone.”

“Or they're not coming at all,” Paige said. “It's almost midnight.” She held the radio up, awaiting a response, but none came.
“Simon?”
she whispered tentatively.

“I'm here, I'm here,” he said after a moment. “Just had to check the studio, make sure I was alone. I'm going up to the sixth floor to look around. It'll be fine. There won't be anyone up there.”

“Well, be careful.” Paige put the radio down. She smiled a bit sadly. “Jesus, I sound like my mother.”

“No one ever asks how
you're
holding up,” I said.

“Not too much, no.” She peered through the binoculars again. “Bobby used to.”

“Well,
I'm
asking.”

Paige brought the lenses to her lap and gazed out the passenger window. Her eyes were wet, but I didn't see the tears until she wiped them away from her upper lip, smudging the layers of gloss she'd applied. “Shit,” she said, pulling down the mirrored visor. She dug the lipstick out of her pocket and handed me the binoculars. “Will you watch the building a second?”

I leaned over the center divider, so as to see around the delivery truck. Two new smokers were standing outside the exit door—a man holding a pizza and a woman talking to him. I saw the woman rub her bare arms. The temperature was dropping. The lenses were so
powerful that if the man had opened the pizza box, I could have named the toppings. But I couldn't concentrate. Paige was only a few inches away. I could smell the gloss, hear her pursing her lips. I didn't want to move, lest the moment pass. Did she sense it, too? The anxious tug. The sensation of flight. And now her breath, steady and assured. I could feel it on my cheek.

“Aidan,” she whispered, her voice a harmony line, searching for accompaniment.

I lowered the lenses, my prop, and turned to her in what seemed like slow motion. What came next? Her hand, light on my arm, I'm sure, though what I remember were her lips, delicate and freshly painted, grazing mine. I kissed her back, her lower lip soft and red as a bull's-eye, lingering between my teeth, below my tongue, our tongues, the moment suspended, a twisted take on that great American tableau: two kids in a parked car, fumbling around in the dark . . .

“Not now,”
she sighed, pulling away.

“What? Sorry.”

“The radio, I mean.” The red light was on. Paige picked it up, pressed the button. “Go ahead.”

Simon's breathing came through the small speaker.
“We're late,”
he hissed.

“What?”

“The device. It's already here, in the closet.”

“Is it armed?” Paige asked, her voice suddenly cool again, methodical.

“Looks like it. Hold on.” Paige held the walkie-talkie away from her, as if it were suddenly a threat, until Simon's voice returned with a low crackle. “Yeah, it's good to go. Keith didn't color-code the wiring, but I think I can still defuse it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, it's been a while, but—”

“Leave it then,” Paige said. “Leave it and come back down. We'll call the cops.”

“No, no, I can do this. But it's too dark in here. I need to move it into the office across the hall.”

“Simon . . .”

“It's okay, no one's around. Just give me a minute.” The radio went dead.

“They've already been there?” I asked, half-stunned, as I tried to add it all up.

Paige nodded. “Keith must have known someone would try to stop him—Simon or me or the Feds. I guess Lindsay snuck inside and planted it while we were still downtown. We must have just missed her. Here, start the car. When Simon's finished, I'll tell him to come down and meet us on the corner of—”

The light came first, a brilliant, blinding flash, all white and burning yellow, followed by the sound, like a deep sonic boom, dull for how close it was. The ground shook, then there was silence—always silence in these things—a second or two that burrowed into me forever. It was shattered by falling glass, then everything was falling, like before, hurtling down from a great height as if the city itself were coming apart. And, of course, it was, everything was—

“Go, go, just drive.”

I stepped on the gas and hit the truck in front of us, I remember that much, then Paige was half out the window, looking plaintively up at the gaping hole, the missing chunk of tower, but the smoke was already too thick, and somewhere the sirens were starting, the sirens and the screams, from the building, from the street, and it was all I could do to dodge the detritus, the random debris, and steer us away from the falling world.

PAIGE
 

FOR A LONG TIME I WAS IN COLUMBUS, OHIO, LIVING ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF a narrow Weinland Park duplex five blocks from OSU. The neighborhood lay like swamp water in the tall shadows of the campus, stagnant and blighted by a profusion of drugs and a lack of anything else. By day, people loitered on stoops or went fitfully about their business—what business they had—no heads raised, no questions asked. By night, booming hip-hop provided a sound track to the drunken howls of students and the panicked cries of victims, to the sirens and occasional gunshots ringing out from what little Section 8 housing the city hadn't yet razed. My block was a fault line between worlds—ivory towers and rotting porches, progress and its opposite, and of course, all the transience and shiftlessness made it the perfect place to hide out, to remain invisible.

I was living as Isabel Clarke and everything was in order—my papers, my backstory, even my appearance (blond now: why not?). My handler was a kid whose parents had spent time in prison for their revolutionary sins. That he was young (twenty-five?), male, and in obvious awe of recent events was initially worrying, but he was sweet and sincere. And he appeared trustworthy. Anyway, I could hardly send him back. I took my chances and settled down to work.

What I started writing—three months ago now—was an
explanation for my actions. What it threatened to become was something else entirely. Because
I
had become someone else. And I don't mean Isabel Clarke. I mean that I had changed, evolved, on the
inside,
and fleshing out the events of my recent life began to help me understand exactly how. Everything had happened so quickly—a single year bookended by death—and I needed time. Aidan, I believed, and
still
believe, was writing his own story, and that made a seemingly futile exercise—for who will read these words unless something goes horribly wrong or wonderfully right?—potently worthwhile. There we were, two kids from disparate backgrounds, sifting through the rubble of our culture for hints on how to live, how to survive, what to give in to, and what to fight for. Because the American playbook had been thrown out. This, anyway, is what I envisioned, an examination of the self, a journey with, if not a happy ending, then at least a kind of moral conclusion. Something to point to. Unfortunately, as must be obvious by now, I never got that far. Such were my circumstances: I couldn't even write about a life interrupted without getting interrupted writing.