The Three-Day Affair (17 page)

Her compliment filled me with satisfaction, though I didn’t believe I’d done anything to earn it. “You know I’d never—”

“I know you won’t. There’s no need to say anything.”

My fear, now, was that we were creating just those sorts of “Leo” moments in Marie, instilling the presumption of violence and
betrayal
in a person who hadn’t asked for it and didn’t deserve it. She’d been foolish, trying to get more money out of us. And greedy. But in the scheme of things her faults were small-time and forgivable.

At some point during my musings, she had lain down on the sofa. She turned onto her side and curled up her legs, making
herself
smaller, and then was still.

Sleep, Marie
. From the control room I further dimmed Room A until it went black.
Sleep
.

The philly-bound plane had sat on the runway so long it needed to be de-iced all over again, and by the time Evan called us
saying
he’d touched down in Philadelphia, it was nearly five in the morning.

“Sorry if I woke you,” he said.

“You didn’t,” I said.

He hadn’t woken any of us. Jeffrey, Nolan, and I had spent these hours apart. Even after Evan’s call I spent two more hours staring at my hands, wishing for my friend to get here already while
simultaneously
hoping he’d never arrive. At seven thirty he called again from the parking lot behind the studio, asking to be let in.

Only two days earlier I’d tried to keep Evan away. Now, despite my stiff limbs, I couldn’t get to the door fast enough.

The bright morning sun nearly took my breath away. It must be how gamblers feel stumbling penniless out of a casino and being shocked that the colorful world is carrying on
without
them. Evan stood in the doorway, framed by the morning light. He wore a gray business suit and carried his computer bag. He looked tired, but if his expression reflected what he saw, I must have looked worse. We shook hands. “Thanks for
coming,” I said, and led him into the studio. “It’s good to see a friendly face.”

We kept walking down the hallway, past the bathrooms.

“Look, Will,” Evan said, “are you going to make me guess what’s going on? Or are you going to tell me …” We had rounded the corner into the main recording room. Evan stopped walking and looked around.

There was a drum set and guitar amplifiers and cables and
microphone
stands, but what he saw, I’m sure, were the pizza boxes and full trash bags, and a television, and when Nolan and Jeffrey came around the corner from the control room he saw one friend with a bandaged head and another with a busted lip. And of course he saw the girl—looking tired and miserable, but curious, too—on the floor of Room A, sitting on the sofa and looking at him quite calmly, almost as if he were the one imprisoned and on display, like at a zoo. She sat with her head in her hands, with only her gaze trained on us. She looked incapable of becoming excited anymore, of getting her hopes up, though she must have been wondering if this new man who’d entered the room was indeed the savior I’d promised or merely the beginning of some new indignity.

“What the hell have I just walked into?” he asked.

We had planned to tell him everything. Nolan, Jeffrey, and I would sit in the control room with Evan and begin back at the Milk-n-Bread, telling him what we’d done, and, as best we could, why we’d done it. We would try to convey how basic concepts like
time
, like
morality
, had become distorted and unpredictable when mixed with the impurity of panic.

Nobody would raise his voice. Nobody would interrupt. We wouldn’t even rush. Evan had flown halfway across the country. Marie had been our hostage for three days. What did it matter if we explained ourselves in thirty minutes or an hour? We would
confess everything and calmly ask for his counsel. We would
follow
his advice wherever it led us.

That was our plan, but it didn’t happen. Because the moment Evan saw Marie, the rest of us were forgotten. He rushed over to Room A, opened the door, and went inside.

Their conversation looked strangely animated. Almost heated. It went on a long time, nearly an hour, and when they emerged, Evan looked distinctly perturbed. Not sad, exactly. Annoyed, and frustrated. Like a student who’d failed an exam because of trick questions. Marie was with him. Not running for the door. Just standing beside him.

We caught up with them in the main studio. “So,” I said, “what’s the verdict?”

Evan said nothing, just continued on with his annoyed look, lips pursed, head shaking slightly. Marie stared me down. Didn’t nod, didn’t say a word. Her gaze moved to Nolan, with his
bandage
and his bloodstained hair. And to Jeffrey, his lip swollen, his eyes ghoulish from lack of sleep.

“This young lady narrated quite a story.” Evan frowned. “I keep telling her that maybe she wants to rethink what she told me. That maybe her recollection isn’t exactly right. But she insists that it is.”

“I know it must sound crazy,” I said, “but I swear, we never meant—”

Evan held up his hand like a stop sign. “She says that you, Will, first met her several weeks ago at the convenience store where she works. That you heard her singing along to the radio one day and complimented her voice. Said it was the best voice you’d heard in ages. Then, last week you invited her to record some demos at your studio while your friends were in town. You began to fill her head with talk of how you all would make her a star.”

Marie stood beside him, nodding right along.

“On Friday,” he continued, “you all came here to begin
recording
, but little by little it became clear you didn’t like what she was doing. You didn’t like her voice as much as you’d first thought. You told her to try harder. You all worked late into the night.” He spoke dispassionately, as if he’d memorized a set of lines but was bored by them. “She thought she could prove to you all that she had what it takes. But now you’re telling her you were wrong. Now you’re telling her she has no talent. You’ve crushed her dreams and wasted her time, and for that she wants
compensation
.” He turned to Marie. “Do I have it right?”

She nodded. “They made a promise, and now they’re backing out.”

I started to ask what the hell the two of them were talking about, but Evan cut me off again.

“I’ve suggested to her,” he said, “that maybe her story isn’t
entirely
accurate. But she insists that it is. So I’m asking all of you, is that the way it happened?”

So this, I thought, was how Evan would be able to wake up in the morning. How he’d decided to square his felon friends with his professional obligations. Evidently, he was willing to get his hands dirty, but only if his sensitive ears remained ignorant.

I looked at Nolan, at Jeffrey. Nobody said a word.

“Very well,” Evan said. “Then shall we move on from here?”

Move on from
where
? I was thinking, when Evan said to Marie, “Go on. Tell them what you want.”

Marie looked at me and shrugged. “Two million.”

Sleepy, confused, I asked her what she meant.

“That’s how much I want.” She looked at each of us. “Two million dollars, for my time. And for keeping quiet about … everything.”

Nolan let out a short, mean laugh.

“You’re the victim here,” I reminded her. “Don’t become the criminal.”

“But I want two million dollars.”

“Shut up,” Nolan said.

“You shut up,” she shot back. “I’m not sure any of you people should be giving advice, okay? You aren’t exactly role models.”

“We’re trying to help you,” I said.

She waved me aside with the back of her hand. “I don’t need your help. Me and your friend Evan had a nice talk, and now I know what needs to happen. You guys are going to pay me two million dollars. Otherwise, I change my story. I walk into the
police
station and I tell them that you’ve done something horrible and dirty. That the three of you kidnapped me and locked me up and threatened to kill me. And
you
”—she nodded to Nolan—“I’ll tell them that you
tried
to kill me.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“Well, you could’ve fooled me. And now you’re going to pay. All of you. Any questions?”

I had two million of them but was shocked into silence. We all were.

“Evan,” I said, “help us out here.”

“You have some fucking nerve.” Evan’s face looked reddened and hard. “Let me remind you that you called me. Not some local attorney, not the police. You called me, your friend Evan. Well, first of all, I’m not your friend anymore, and after today I don’t ever want to hear from any of you again. Second, I’m a deal maker. That’s my job. I make deals. And you knew that when you tracked me down and demanded I fly across the whole goddamn country through a goddamn snowstorm to be here.” He looked around the studio and shook his head in disgust. “The truth is, I think you’re a coward, Will. I think you’re all cowards. And I think this young lady is being terribly foolish. You said it right—she’s
the victim. So do I think she’s doing the right thing? Fuck, no. But she’s made you an offer. She’s willing to deal. So you should all consider yourself damn lucky, and either put up or shut up.”

We were all quiet for a while. It was Jeffrey who finally spoke. “To begin with,” he said calmly, politely, “we don’t have anywhere close to that kind of money.”

And suddenly we were considering it.

Marie shrugged again. “I don’t care. Come up with it.”

She was fearless. I had to give her that. “You don’t understand,” I said. “You’re asking something of us that we can’t give.” I had ironic visions of robbing banks. Of kidnapping some other girl for ransom in order to pay for this one.

She sighed. “I thought maybe you all didn’t want to spend your lives in prison. Your friend Evan thought so, too. But I guess we were wrong.” And with that, she walked quickly to the exit.

She was halfway out the door when Nolan said: “Wait.”

After nolan’s mother died, his father had sued her original
doctor
, the one who’d failed to diagnose her cancer. The suit
settled
out of court for $1.5 million. Nolan had never mentioned this to me before now. Or that when his father had died last year from a massive heart attack, all the money had gone to him. He’d
invested
half a million for his retirement. The other million he had just begun to spend on his senatorial campaign.

“See that?” Marie said. “We’re almost there already.”

And the rest of us? Cynthia and I had close to eight thousand in a savings account, plus another two thousand in a checking account.

Jeffrey’s investments, once worth a fortune, now totaled slightly under a hundred thousand dollars.

“And I’m sure you can all sell some stuff if you need to,” Marie said. “I’ll give you until Friday.”

“No,” Nolan said. “I don’t like this. How do we know you won’t take the money and then go to the police anyway?”

“You don’t,” she said. “That’s a chance you’ll have to take.”

“No, it isn’t. Get the fuck out of here,” Nolan said. “Go on. Turn us in.”

Did he mean it? Was he ready to lose everything now, when all that stood in our way was money?

Marie didn’t leave. She stood there a minute watching Nolan, and then she clenched and unclenched her fists, and her face seemed to relax a little. I thought she might be about to lower her demand to something halfway reasonable.

She said, “Sixteen fifteen.” We waited for her to explain. “My nana’s assisted living facility. Timber Cove. That’s her room number.”

“I don’t know what you’re telling us,” Nolan said.

“Her name is Emily Cole,” she went on, as if that clarified everything.

“Again,” Nolan said, “I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do. You know exactly. If I ever blab, you have my
permission
to visit her. In room one six one five.” She said the
numbers
slowly, so we’d remember. And in case there was any doubt what we were talking about, she added, “She’s on oxygen.”

Before writing up the agreement, Evan insisted that Marie leave the studio in case she felt under any duress or threat.

“If you really mean to go through with this,” he instructed her, “then come back in a half hour. We’ll be waiting for you.”

Next he was walking her to the recording room door, and then he was opening it for her, and this time the door closed behind her and she was gone.

Evan returned alone. “This is the sleaziest thing I’ve ever heard of. The whole thing fills me with unhappiness.”

Although I respected Evan, I couldn’t help thinking,
You weren’t there
. So easy to judge when he wasn’t there, in that car, with Jeffrey yelling at me to drive. I really had thought somebody was dying. Had Evan been behind the wheel, what would he have done? Sat there in the Milk-n-Bread parking lot and sorted out the confusion?
No. When your friend shouts at you to drive, you drive. You step on the gas. And what about the moment he figured out there was no injury? Would he have stopped then? Maybe. Or maybe he’d have hesitated for just an instant with the knowledge that somehow his entire life had become wrapped up in what he did in those next few seconds. The thought would be unavoidable. So he thinks. He hesitates—just for an instant. But when you’re behind the wheel, a couple of seconds is a very long time. Long enough to be down a road you never imagined taking.

You weren’t there
, I wanted to say again. Instead, I looked at my watch and prepared for the longest half hour of my life.

Less than five minutes later, she was back.

“So can we pretend a half hour has passed?” she asked. “I’d really like to get this show on the road.”

In addition to drawing up a contract, Evan wanted a recorded statement from Marie. I set up a microphone and fed a roll of blank tape into the reel. Marie stood in front of the microphone and began to read what Evan had written for her:

She could always change her story, of course. She could go to the police, or claim she was pressured into signing something that wasn’t true. But if she did any of those things, it would be hard for her to explain away the two-million-dollar wire into her checking account.

We listened back to the tape. Then each of us signed one of the four copies of the contract that Evan had handwritten. We each were to take a copy and deposit it in a safety-deposit box that nobody else had access to. Marie folded up her copy and stuck it in her back pocket like it was a grocery list.

Monday morning, she would call me at the studio with her checking-account number and wiring instructions. Evan told me to tape-record that call—additional evidence of our mutual agreement—and put it into my safety-deposit box along with the contract. Nolan and Jeffrey would wire their shares of the money to me by the end of day on Thursday. By noon on Friday, I would wire the entire two million to Marie.

We actually shook hands like business partners. And without another word, she left.

The sound of her fading footfalls filled me with relief, but new anxieties were already building. Like being not only a felon but also flat broke. We all were. And I sensed that in spite of the agreement we’d all reached, or maybe because of it, I’d never sleep soundly again for fear of being awakened in the night by a heavy fist on my front door.

Her footfalls continued to diminish, and then all trace of her was gone. We waited for the second hand on my watch to circle five times. I rewound the tape, put it back in its case, and shut off the console and studio lights. Then we walked down that same hallway and outside to the world from which we’d removed
ourselves
some forty hours earlier.

Outside, the sun shone obscenely. I made a visor with my hand
and looked left and right down Lincoln Avenue. Cars passed, a few pedestrians were out for a Sunday stroll, but she was nowhere in sight. Was she in some nearby building calling for a cab? Calling the cops? Had she already flagged down a passing squad car?

Squinting under the hot light, we walked to my car. A piece of paper flapped underneath the windshield wiper. An
advertisement
for a new dry cleaner. I pocketed the flyer. Jeffrey and Nolan got in. Evan went to his rental car. He’d follow us home.

I started the engine and drove. Nolan sat beside me; on his lap was the tape container that on Monday I would put into my safety-deposit box.

We were silent the whole way, each of us thinking about the cars we’d sell this week, the credit cards we’d max out, the various means by which we would raise, before Friday, the few hundred thousand dollars that we were short. We looked out our windows as if we were lifelong prisoners who’d sprung free to find that the outside was only a larger version of the inside.

We played golf.

First, though, we ate most of the food in my refrigerator. Then we changed into shorts and collared shirts, loaded our clubs into my car, and headed out to the course. Should it ever come to our needing an alibi, at least some people would have seen us out there playing. And while the timing wasn’t exactly right—Marie was free by then, obviously—we hoped that our golfing might imply innocence. Would kidnappers hit the links so soon after committing their crime?

But also, we didn’t know what else to do with ourselves.

The drive out to the Kittatinny Mountains took us into the less populated part of New Jersey. The peaceful part. There, the afternoon air felt soft and summery, and the sun cast sharp
shadows as we bounced our carts along the narrow fairways, contemplating our next shot. The course was as advertised—completely secluded, with beautiful sloping fairways and speedy greens. We spent the next four hours discussing club selection, the prior hole, the next hole. I shared a cart with Jeffrey, and when the girl came around on her beverage cart, we bought sodas and hot dogs.

I wasn’t too surprised that Evan decided to join us. He might have despised us now, but we had been friends for thirteen years—a long time—and I supposed he preferred his last image of us to be on the golf course, where we were at our least complicated, our most innocent.

Jeffrey sipped his soda and said it tasted better than the sodas in California.

“I think the carbonation’s different,” he speculated.

Evan asked, “Are we playing ‘winter rules’?” when his ball got stuck in a fairway’s soggy spot.

I was struck by how easy it was for us to play this game
together
, to act as if nothing were any different from the last time we were all together.

Only Nolan was quiet. Contemplative. I wasn’t sure how he’d play at all with his injury, but he did, for a while. Rather than ride in Evan’s cart, he preferred to walk the fairways alone. After the ninth hole he bought a soda and sat by himself on a bench, away from us. Somehow I knew it wasn’t his ear that made him stop. I imagined he must be thinking about his return to Missouri in the morning, to whatever was left of his campaign.

He walked the second nine holes with us, hitting only the
occasional
shot, sometimes just looking out into the woods. For the rest of us, though, it could’ve been any Sunday of golf.

My short game was off, but my drives were better than usual.

When Evan sank a twenty-foot putt, he couldn’t stop his mouth from curling into a smile.

A passing shower dropped warm, light rain on us for ten
minutes
and then stopped.

A beaver scrambled across the fairway. Later on, two deer stood and looked at us before loping off into the woods.

And while we were standing at the tee box on the eighteenth hole, the afternoon winds having picked up a little, we saw not one but three eagles overhead, riding the currents of spring air. We stopped what we were doing to watch them climb and dip and climb again, until finally they flew over the mountain ridge and were out of sight.

After putting the last hole, we all shook hands and said, “Good round.”

Back at the cart return, the kid wiping down our clubs with a towel smiled and asked, “Did you gentlemen have fun today?”