Deception (22 page)

She looked away, demurely. She reached for her glass of water, sipped it, then carefully wiped lipstick off the rim. They both started to speak at the same time:

“What happened to—”

“How's your—”

“You first.”

“No, go ahead.”

“What happened to your leg?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He opened it again, wondering if he would tell her all of it now—the Project, the betrayals, the accident.

Instead, he heard himself saying, “I miss you.”

She smiled.

“I want—we should try again.”

She reached for his hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Jim,” she said.

“It's just a part of life. It's just all part of it, Rachel. I know it's sad, but it doesn't mean we can't be there for each other …”

“Jim.”

“I'm not saying it wasn't my fault as much as yours. I don't know why it's got to be anyone's fault. I mean, when you consider—when you think of what—”

“Jim.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head, slowly, and took her hand back.

His tongue scraped over his lips. “Excuse me,” he mumbled. He pushed out of the booth, reaching for the cane.

The bathroom was beside a bank of pay phones. He went in and found it mercifully empty. He turned on the cold water, then leaned both hands against the sink. The tears were coming. He looked in the mirror and saw his face screwing up like a child's. His lip was quivering; he was about to blubber. He reached for the water and splashed two bracing handfuls across his face. Better. He turned off the tap, tore a paper towel from the dispenser, and patted viciously at his cheeks.

Before returning to the restaurant, he looked at himself in the mirror again. His color was high. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheekbones were stunningly clean. He looked like a corpse, or like a man on a hunger strike. How had he lost so much weight without realizing it?

After a moment, he went back to Rachel. “Sorry,” he said, clambering into the booth with less grace than the first time.

She was looking at him sadly.

“So,” he said. “You don't think, um …”

“I think,” she said quietly, “that things happen for a reason.”

“A reason?”

The waitress sidled up to the table. “Ready to order now?”

“Just coffee, thanks,” Keyes said.

“Coffee. Thank you,” Rachel said.

The waitress rolled her eyes, took the menus, and turned away.

“What does that mean—things happen for a reason?”

Rachel produced a wad of Kleenex. She set it on the table, at the ready.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that God did what He did for a reason, Jim.”

Keyes blinked.

“He called Jeremy back to Him for a reason. We can't hope to understand what that reason is. But He does. And if we'd been meant to stay together, then we would have. But we didn't. He has a plan, Jim. We need to trust in that—to trust in Him.”

A moment passed.

“You've got to be fucking kidding,” Keyes said.

The waitress brought their coffee, snapping her gum.

“Rachel,” he started again, when she had gone.

“Yes.”

“I'm … Please listen.”

“I'm listening.”

“I need you. When it comes down to it, we need each other. We're in this together, aren't we?”

A strand of hair fell from behind her ear; she pushed it back.

“We're in this together,” he said again. He heard the tone of his own voice—desperate, cracking—but was unable to change it. “I mean … do you remember Jeremy's report? I thought—I didn't know what to think. I didn't think anything. But now I see. I think I see. It's not just … there are things bigger than us, that we can't understand. And when he wrote about all the tails being tied up together, he was …”

“The tails?”

“The rat king. His report?”

Rachel looked confused. She shook her head, very slightly.

“You were upset by it,” he said. “Well—it doesn't matter.”

The tears were coming again; he wiped at his nose.

“Was it my fault?” he asked. “I should have gotten the car checked? Is that what you think? But I did. Every five thousand miles, a full checkup, oil change, the whole thing. Like clockwork. Two weeks before the accident, I had it checked. I never told you that. But that turn signal should have been working. It
was
working. It wasn't my fault.”

“I know.”

“It wasn't.”

“I know.”

He lifted his coffee, looked at the oily slick on the surface, and set it down again. “Honey,” he said. “If you don't … if you won't come back, then I'm … afraid of what I might do.”

“What you might do,” she echoed.

He nodded.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't even know.”

A family in the next booth was listening. Because he was crying, of course. He forced the tears down. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I'm scared,” he said plaintively. “That's all.”

“I've got to go. I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry.”

“Listen,” he said. “Let's go away. Remember our honeymoon? Remember that little stretch of beach? Let's go there. Let's go tonight—right now.”

“Jim …”

“Please. Rachel. I'm so scared—”

“I'm seeing someone,” she said.

3.

She pecked a kiss on his cheek. “I'm sorry,” she said, then slipped behind the wheel of her car and fired the ignition.

He watched the car roll to the exit of the parking lot. Then he leaned against the Dumpster, enveloped in the smell of rot. He would have liked to cry again. If he could cry, maybe he could get some of the bad feeling inside him out. But he couldn't cry. The chance had passed. The feeling was inside him for good.

He found himself looking at the restaurant's sign: IHOP. Yet another acronym. He hated acronyms. They were meaningless. IHOP. What did that mean?
International House of Pancakes
, it meant. But what did
that
mean? The words were nonsense.
International House of Pancakes.
Was it really international? Was it really a house made of pancakes? No. It made no sense.

None of it made any sense.

Rachel's car was idling at the exit of the parking lot. She was trying to make a left turn into rush-hour traffic. Good luck, he thought.

I'm seeing someone.

He set the cane, and moved toward the car. He rapped on the passenger-side window. She looked over, surprised. Keyes opened the door and slipped inside. The interior of the car smelled of pine.

“Jim,” she said. Now
she
was crying, he noticed. Lucky her.
She
got to cry;
she
got to get it out. She got to be weak, while he always had to be strong.

“Rachel,” he said.

“I'm so sorry.”

He reached out one hand, and began to massage the back of her neck.

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss him. But I just can't do it anymore.”

The traffic zipped past them. She would never be able to make a left turn into that, he thought coldly.

“When it first—for a while I thought—oh, God.” She reached for the parking brake and pulled it, then began to look through her pockets for another wad of Kleenex. “For a while I thought we might still have a chance. But now I just … I can't do it anymore.”

She opened her purse, still looking for Kleenex. His hand was still massaging the back of her neck, gently.

When he slammed her head into the steering wheel, the horn gave a startled bleat.

He pulled her head back and slammed it forward again. He saw a small piece of molding come off of the wheel. It was faux wood grain, he noticed. It had come off with barely a provocation. Piece-of-shit car, he thought.

Then he slammed her head into the window. The glass cracked. He did it again. The window became a web of soft, broken fragments; but it didn't fall out of the frame.

He put both hands around her throat and began to squeeze.

Rachel's face was turning purple. She didn't look ten years younger than her age anymore, he thought. Now she looked her age—older. He throttled her, shaking her head back and forth. Her temple was bleeding from the contact with the window. The traffic kept zipping past them, oblivious.

Her breath was hissing. Her hands were coming up, clawing at his face. He sneered, and squeezed harder.

She began to kick. Her feet connected with the bottom of the dashboard, twice, three times. He wondered if any of the molding would come off.

Then her struggles were weakening. After another moment, she was still.

He looked at her. His own breath was rasping in and out, burning his lungs.

Rachel was a rag doll, limp.

“I'm seeing someone,” he mimicked. His voice was a high, cracking falsetto. “I'm seeing someone. I'm seeing someone.”

Rachel didn't answer.

The traffic keep whizzing past.

Keyes sat without moving for what seemed like a very long time. Then he opened his door and stepped out of the car. He leaned against the cane, trying to catch his breath.

Soon he had caught it. He lurched around to the driver's side, shoved Rachel into the passenger's seat, sat down, and took off the parking brake.

He turned right, merging
with
the traffic instead of trying to turn against it, as any sane person would do.

TWENTY-ONE

1.

The two-berth sleeping car was clean and carpeted, with its own private washbasin and two beds that folded up, during the day, to transform the space into a sitting room.

Hannah had no memory of the first night, between Istanbul and Bucharest. As soon as the train pulled out of Sirkeci station, at a few minutes past eleven, she fell sound asleep in the lower berth. When she awoke the next morning, the Bosfor express was navigating the sunny river valleys of Bulgaria. The man had visited the dining car; a breakfast of bread, jam, and hot tea was waiting for her. He sat facing the rolling green landscape past the window, a newspaper held unopened in his lap.

As she ate, Hannah marveled at the fact that she had been able to sleep at all. In one way, she supposed, she'd had no choice. Her body had demanded rest. But if she had truly felt unsafe around the man, she would have found a way to avoid sleep. He had returned her purse to her, and there were pills in the purse that could have kept her awake. For the time being, however, she supposed he couldn't hurt her. He needed her to deliver the technical details that he thought were in her head. When—and if—the meeting with his contact occurred; when—and if—she was able to follow her charade through to the end, and convince the man that the secrets in the book were valuable—then she would need to watch herself.

But before that, if things went well, she would have the book. And then she would be long gone.

During the meal, her eyes kept moving to the dull knife with which she'd spread the jam. Did she have what it took to pick up that knife, as the man's attention was focused through the window, and …

… and what?

Lunge toward him, and bury the knife in his throat?

She did not.

They spent the day in the compartment, exchanging no more than a dozen words. The man slept for a time, again using his bag with the book inside as a pillow. She sat watching him, wondering if she could pick up the knife and do it now. She was still watching, still wondering, when he sat up, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, and reached again for the newspaper, groggily.

In late afternoon, he visited the dining car again, and returned with sandwiches and a fresh thermos of tea. They ate in silence, watching the sun drop slowly behind the low hills in the distance.

That night, she slept less well. Her body had become accustomed to the motion of the boat: rolling, pitching, yawing, up and down, forward and back. The train, by comparison, was a side-to-side phenomenon, jiggling her like dice in a rack. When she did manage to fall asleep, the slumber was fitful. She felt in all too much motion: side to side on a train that was speeding forward, on a planet that rotated on two axes, circling a sun that circled the center of a galaxy that was itself in dizzying, never-ending motion.

Some time after midnight, the train stopped moving.

Hannah blinked awake. The man had left his own berth to look out the window. A moment later, a knock came at the door. Hannah's heart moved to her throat; her eyes found the man's. He nodded once, although she didn't know just what that meant.

They filed off the train with the other passengers, then stood in a line in the chilly predawn as their passports were checked by armed soldiers. Once again, the job she had done on her forgery passed inspection; and whatever passport the man was using did the same. They returned to their compartment in the small hours of the morning, and presently the train began to move again.

Hannah dozed.

2.

The third morning found the landscape changed: The greens had deepened and thickened, indicating an approach to western Europe.

They folded up the beds and then sat down to breakfast. It seemed to Hannah, judging from the new landscape, that they must be nearing their destination. And so the man, she supposed, might soon begin to dig for more details. She had given him only the briefest sketch of her burgeoning lie—enough to let him pique his contact's interest, but not enough to make Hannah herself unnecessary.

Sure enough, as the meal was finishing he said: “I've been wondering about something.”

Hannah looked up. She popped the crust of bread she'd been holding into her mouth, and chewed.

“The formula,” he said. “It describes the engine itself? Or the propulsion method used by the engine?”

She bought herself a few moments by chewing, then by swallowing, then by dabbing at her lips with a napkin. Her pulse thrummed lightly in her throat.