And West Is West (8 page)

“Thanks for letting me crash,” she says.

Shelly follows and takes her arm. “Hey. I was gonna suggest you use our couch for a week or two. You know, till you figure stuff out. Anyhow, a couple of falling-apart old farts like us wouldn't mind the company.”

AFTER NEWT AND
Miss Shelly leave for work at Tattoo Heaven, Jessica leashes Skittles and explores the neighborhood. Several nearby homes stare vacantly with foreclosed eyes. Occasional children twirl behind the fences of drought-struck yards. An older boy on an undersized bike pedals toward her and Skittles, his front wheel in the air. He turns at the last instant and Skittles jerks against her collar while Jessica pulls her back.

“Tattoo freak daughter,” the kid says.

At a corner store she scavenges groceries from the inadequately stocked shelves.

Late in the afternoon, she cleans up the kitchen sink and makes chicken thighs and okra. As the sun settles toward the rooflines Newt arrives. He is without Miss Shelly.

“Just dropped her at her CPA class,” he explains.

“CPA?”
Jessica says.

“The tattoo business isn't what it was. Not for us. Young people want to get tattoos from young people.”

“You're not old,” Jessica lies.

“We're old enough to not be cool, and that's ancient,” says Newt. “Plus, when you're over fifty you got to start saving. Shelly figures her face tattoos might scare off clients so she's going to work online or over the phone. Anyway, she has a plan. She's the brains around here.”

Newt and Jessica eat and after dinner Newt snaps a chicken bone and lets Skittles lick its marrow from his fingers. Behind him sits a side table heavy with framed photographs. They are mostly of people in black leather who might have been Newt and Miss Shelly's peers twenty or thirty years ago.

“Do you have any children?” Jessica asks.

“Nah, we never got around to having kids. But then we also never got around to getting legally married. I suppose we're common law by now, or would be if they had it out here. Back in the day you would have called us anarchists. Mainly we partied. I did anyway. But time caught up with us. You never think it's going to happen when you're young. Then one day the mirror starts scaring the crap out of you.”

After they clear the dishes Newt spreads a newspaper over the plank table and drops onto it a gnarled clump of green-brown vegetation. “Mind if I clean this?” Then he extracts a sizable joint from his t-shirt pocket and puts it between his lips. “Old school,” he says.

In communion Jessica takes out the pack of cigarettes she bought at the corner store. She taps one up. “You mind?” she asks in turn.

“I almost do,” Newt says. “Those things'll kill you. They spray 'em with pesticide. But this”—and he shows Jessica the doobie—“is one hundred percent guaranteed organic.”

Newt lights up and offers Jessica his flame. As they creak back in their chairs with their separate drugs, a thought strikes her. “Don't you have to pick up Miss Shelly?”

He smiles. “Oh, I'm never too stoned to drive. Anyway, a classmate is dropping her.”

By the time Newt has deseeded the cannabis, Jessica is almost high from the aroma. Newt wraps the waste into the newspaper. That's when they both notice the lost-in-the-desert article Shelly had shown her that morning. Carefully Newt tears it free. “For my scrapbook. To remember you by after you've gone on your way.”

“Can I have it?” she asks.

The next day Jessica returns to the corner store to buy an envelope and stamp. She mails the clipping to Florida. Only the clipping. It will be enough to let Don know that she is alive, that she is as well as can be expected, that she is thinking of him. But she dare not tell him where she is, which is off the grid—unless there happen to be transistors in her fillings.

She's not paranoid crazy enough yet to imagine she might be wired with transistors. But, after all, her business had been surveillance; she knows there are watchers watching out there and that the watchers can do bad things since she has done the worst of those things. Killed innocent people. If she wrote again of that event to Don, his watchers would learn of it and hers would not be happy. They might send people to make sure she keeps quiet. They might have done so already. She dares not risk including a return address.

CHAPTER 13

Florida

My Dearest Jessica,

Getting an envelope addressed in your hand sped my heart. But finding no letter inside almost stopped it. The prison authorities claim there was only the newspaper clipping. But why should I trust them after they took all your other letters? Now I must guess how you are doing from a scrap of newsprint and this is torture. For it seems I have brought upon you my own bad luck. Know that I would cut off my toes to get you back your Air Force job. For you not to be burned and laid up in a hospital. But what can I do?

Do you know a man called Voigt? An Air Force colonel. He wrote to say he would return your letters to me after they were redacted. I looked up the word and it means censored. Maybe I should tell him that I can recite from memory what you wrote and will keep quiet about it only if he rehires you. A man like me in a cage has his fantasies.

Anyway. I can only pray that your situation will improve. Except for losing your letters mine has. I got a new cellmate. An honest to God professor named Ramirez. He is a funny man who calls me Senor Aldridge no matter how many times I tell him first names are fine. His is Ector and Ector does not have the hygiene problems of my old cellmate. Like all born Cubans Ector wears pressed clothes and washes behind the ears. He plays a sweet guitar too. Nylon string. Kind of soothing to hear him strum. I am listening right now because the professor gets to practice in our cell.
This is part of the warden's music program just like allowing CD players. I have one of those thanks to your cigarette money. But it seems your generosity is a one way road. For what can I give back? Only my best hopes. So here they are.

With luck Jessica you will not get this letter because you are no longer where I sent it. With luck you are healthy again and out of the hospital and putting your new life together. With luck you will be leaving the problems of your old life behind. I know you have lost much. Your job. Your Air Force friends. Your future as you imagined it. But do not let misfortune break you like it broke me.

Your loving father,

Don

CHAPTER 14

New York City, Ulster County

“Who's the babe?” asks John Guan. A kleptomaniac when it comes to his co-workers' personal data, Guan has cracked Ethan's BlackBerry password. Sitting in Ethan's chair, heels propped on Ethan's desk, he is going through the photos on Ethan's phone. Ethan has just returned to his office—a windowless twelve-by-twelve shell next door to the UIB servers. The white noise of their spinning hard drives penetrates the walls. But, frankly, Ethan finds the buzz soothing. And this space is his alone, not a cubicle in a bullpen.

“Here's your coffee. Now get out of my Aeron, shithead,” he tells Guan.

“Touchy.” Guan stands up, a good foot shorter than Ethan, and hands over Ethan's BlackBerry.

Actually, more often than not, Ethan finds Guan likable. As with most of the workers in the analytics section of the UIB tower, Guan is socially inept. Guan's difference is that he embraces his awkwardness—an archeologically stained tie, for example, is his hipster beard; the saggy jeans and Keds, his concept of gangsta; his bedhead hairdo of cowlicks, a punk manifesto; the way he frequently probes an ear with a finger, his version of the “peace out” sign. But when you need good data fast, Guan's your go-to. He can add a column of twenty ten-digit numbers quicker than Ethan can click the sum button in a spreadsheet. But this is only a parlor trick. Though fourth-generation American, Guan knows Mandarin and the Mandarin mindset. He can tell you what to expect out of Beijing and Shanghai—and right now Ethan wants him for just that. He is adding scenarios to his drone-strike algorithm and needs variables and odds pertaining to potential Chinese reactions. China, after all, is heavily invested in natural resources in Africa, where US drone activity is increasing. Guan moves to the chair opposite Ethan's desk and slurps his coffee.

“Give me five,” Ethan says, referring to the number of scenarios he hopes to plug into his model.

“I'll give you twenty-five.”

“No, too much work.”

“But you want to be accurate. You want to duplicate the potential reality of the situation.”

“And you know that's impossible. I just need to model close enough to know if there'll be movement between euros and yuans in
most
situations.”

“
Okay
, I get it,” Guan says. “You wanna track yuans to tell if you're over the euro.”

“Uh, yeah.”

Guan looks intensely at Ethan's left ear—Guan never looks anyone in the eye; the ear is as close as he gets. “But you should also register if the renminbi is making the dollar duller and the peso passé.”

“Fine,” Ethan says and leans back in his chair. “Please, go ahead. Get it all out of your system.”

“Thanks a zloty.”

Ethan looks at his BlackBerry, at the image Guan has brought up. Zoe.

“I'd like to pound her,” Guan says.

“What?” Ethan says. “Fuck you.”

“Oh, sorry. She's your current see, huh?”

“My ex.”

“Ex-
cellent
,” says Guan. “You need to give me her number right now.”

“Don't think so.”

“Ahh, I understand you well, white man.” Guan twists the ends of a long, imaginary mustache. “Your winky is as tiny as you are tall. You fear that I bling your ex briss, do you not?”

“If you mean ‘bring her bliss,'
no
,” Ethan says, trying to keep up with Guan's ADHD.

“You make fun of my race? The way I speak?” Guan pounds a fist on Ethan's desk. “There will be a person for you to see up in human resource!” Then Guan unknots his fake-angry face. “Seriously, guy, aren't you seeing another female now?”

At work Ethan does not discuss his relationships, and especially not with Guan. But Guan has broken into his phone and Ethan now sees that he has missed a text—a text that Guan has apparently read.

“Mangez avec moi?”
says Guan just as Ethan scans the same words in Yahvi's message. Guan points a finger at him. “You guys with the schnozes get all the chicks. Big nose, big hose, am I right, bitch?”

Ethan only needs one hand to calculate his successes with women over the years. But as these dates were not with paid escorts or Russian mail-order brides, he appreciates Guan's point. He has been luckier than the average dedicated numbers worker. The clan of the quant does not devote much time to normal relationships. Whether it is their unwritten code of work-focused behavior or a weakness in the altruism allele of their genetic code, the lonely quant is more likely to settle for, as John Guan might say, cash and marry.

“Right,”
Ethan says.

ETHAN PASSES THROUGH
UIB's light-flooded lobby and out into the relative dark. This time of year, mid-November, he walks a path of neon and brake lights from Exchange Plaza to Battery Park—a route he follows with postal dedication despite heat waves or blizzards or the gloom of night. It is the sole good thing he does for his heart.

A block into the walk, his thumbs retrieve Zoe's number from his BlackBerry. The thought of calling her has weighed on him all week.

“Sorry, you've got my voicemail,” says Zoe's digitized voice. “And I've got your number. I'll get back to you soon.”

“Hey, Zoe,” Ethan starts, attempting to be casual. “Look, I've been meaning to call. About your dad's papers . . . Sorry I didn't mail them up there until Saturday. I, uh . . .” Ethan stops himself from going on, from recanting his ignorance about the folder's contents. “Sorry about the delay. If you need anything you have my number. Take care of yourself.”

And that is it. He is through. Ethan is worried that the papers tell only part of the story—possibly a grotesque story that he would not want to help Zoe uncover.

Having recently seen
Chinatown
, he speculates that Susan Leston might be both Zoe's mother
and
her sister. The doctor's euthanasia of his unaware wife legally made him a murderer and revealed his problematic morals. Incest may be a leap, but it is not a leap over a canyon. Yet if this were true, wouldn't Leston have destroyed the papers?

The other alternative is almost as complicated—that Zoe has a father she never knew. That she is kin to a whole family she doesn't know. Some apparently sad or pathetic family that Dr. Leston was trying to protect his granddaughter from.

Whatever the truth, the doctor's gambit to make Ethan responsible for Zoe will not work. He is moving on.

Ethan strides along Trinity Place, not as invigorated as usual by the walk. He shortens his stride past the construction bordering Church Street as he opens the photo album in his BlackBerry. Locating the Zoe folder, he begins to delete her images—the way he might delete virus-infected email. Zoe is not the only one who needs protection from her past. Erasing her from his life is the best thing that Ethan can imagine for the both of them.

Then he calls Yahvi.

“Hey you,” Yahvi says, her breezy voice dispersing the Lestons' clouds. “I've just finished the second movement of my Ganesh suite. It poured out of me. Bollywood references and all.”

“That's great,” Ethan says.

“You don't think I'm a sellout? Making the India link so explicit.”

“Come on. You're expressing your heritage.”

“Yeah. Kind of. I'm almost guaranteed to get a grant or award if I write . . .
ethnic
.”

“Artists do what they need to do to get by. I bet Alex wishes he was from somewhere cooler than Delaware.”

“You mean like me? Ohio.”

An incoming call bleeps. “Hold a sec,” Ethan tells her and then looks at his phone. Zoe's picture smiles up from the screen. He lets the phone chime . . . and answers on the last ring before voicemail. “Hey.”

Zoe sounds distracted. “You just called? I was finishing with the real estate agent.”

“How'd it go?”

“The house goes on the market Sunday. She thought we could get a better price if we did some cleanup. But I'm going to dump it, contents and all.”

“That's understandable.” Crossing Vesey, Ethan dodges a veering Mister Softee truck—he doesn't ever recall seeing one in motion. They're usually lurking on side-street corners.

“God
dammit
, Ethan,” Zoe says.

Hearing her sob, this is exactly what he had feared. Emotion. “Zoe—”

“Look, I don't care about the house, or that the lawyer said my father was broke when he died. I care that I didn't know who I was. And you read these papers, didn't you?”

“Wait, Zo, no. Not at first. But, then, uh, yeah, just before the funeral.”

“So why didn't you give them to me
yourself
? You drop this on me through the mail?”

“Zo—”

“I don't even know what to think. Oh, hell!”

“Zoe. Are you okay?”

“Oh, I am just great, Ethan. Getting better every second.” Zoe's voice sounds distant. As if she has put down the phone to free her hands.

“What's going on up there?”

Zoe doesn't say for a second. “What do you think? I'm filling a tumbler with my dad's Hendrick's.
Fuck
you, Ethan. Fuck you for not taking even the smallest responsibility on your own. Damn you. Damn him.”

“Just a sec, Zoe. I was on another call.” Ethan switches to Yahvi. “It's work. Call you back.”

“Phooey!” Yahvi says and is gone heartbreakingly fast.

Ethan goes back to the other line. “Zoe?” he asks. But she is not there. “Shit,” he says and redials, but to no result. And then he calls Alex. The phone rings and rings. Finally there's a pickup. “Alex!” Ethan says.

“Non
,
c'est moi,”
says Juliette, Alex's latest, whom he'd met at Alex's last opening.

“Let me speak to Alex,” Ethan says. He has stopped on the sidewalk. Pedestrians are peeling around him in a stream like schooling fish.

“
Ami
, he is busy in the middle of work. You know, in the
zone
.”

“Juliette—”

“And later, Ethan, we have an event tonight that will be very, very important, you understand. This is Alex's future. Okay. I will give him your message and tell him to call when he can.”

But Ethan has not given Juliette a message. “It's about Zoe.”

“Ah,” Juliette says. “Poor girl. You are taking care of her, I hope. You know she is your responsibility.” And then
“Quoi?”
Juliette says, but not to the phone.
“Ami,”
she says to Ethan, “Alex needs me for something. You take care. I will pass on your message.”

Ethan tries Zoe again. Again there is no answer. As the people on the street dodge around the obstacle he's become, he feels himself turning. Physically turning back toward UIB. He is calculating. If he puts in three hard hours tonight he can complete the programming he needs to do for work tomorrow. Coffee and a five-hour energy drink will get him through. He will keep trying to reach Zoe. Maybe he will even try to call her neighbors—but what was the couple's name? Really, though, why is he getting nervous? Is it because he
does
owe her a face-to-face? He has been an asshole about those papers. And there's still time, if not to correct the situation then to make him feel less crappy about it. If he gets a Zipcar after writing code tonight, he can get up to Accord by one. He'll sleep in the car outside the house until morning if he has to and that's okay. He needs to prove to Zoe, to himself, that he, unlike her father, is human, is
not
a monster.

“HEY,” ETHAN SAYS
to Zoe in her hospital bed.

She swallows, winces, blinks up at him, brings a hand toward her throat.

“Easy,” he says taking the hand. “You've got an IV.”

She lifts her eyelids higher, struggling as if they're held by elastic tape. “Eth?” Zoe says. “Oh God. My head.”

“I came up last night,” he says, leaning closer. “I knocked after I saw you on the couch. You weren't getting up so I broke in.”

“Oh, Ethan,” she says, looking at the tubes running toward her forearm, the monitor beeping by the bedside.

“It's okay, Zoe. They just pumped you out a little. I don't know. I may have overreacted bringing you here, but I couldn't wake you up.”

“I just took a couple of pills, Ethan. And a drink. That's all.”

“No. I know. It's cool. No one thinks you did this on purpose.”

When the doctor comes, he eyes Ethan carefully and then charges him with making sure that he disposes of Dr. Leston's pill stash.

“This is not going to happen again,” the doctor states firmly.

“No, sir,” Zoe says to the man's deep-set eyes. She swallows, blinking with pain.

“Your esophagus will heal from the tube in a couple of days. Stick with soft foods.”

“Yes, sir.”

BY NOON ZOE
has signed herself out of the hospital. She has not said much to Ethan so far—it hurts to speak. Nor has Ethan said much to her. The sun, however, is shining. It is a crisp, pleasant day. In the hospital parking lot Ethan opens the passenger's door for her.

Leaf-peeping season is over and a flickering background of bare foliage goes by as he drives. Ethan turns now and again to gaze at Zoe, who does not look at him. The hospital was not far and it takes only ten of these long looks before they are pulling up to her parents' house.
No
, he is still trying to get this right. Her
grandparents'
house.

“You may as well come in,” she tells Ethan. “Wouldn't want you to get in trouble for not clearing out my dad's . . . my granddad's stash. Who knows what I'm liable to do next.”

“Zoe,”
Ethan says.

She smiles at his scold. “Ethan, I would have been fine. I was brought up in a doctor's household. For God's sake, I
know
about pills. Come on in. I'll make us some eggs.”