Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (44 page)

“They still are, actually.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“We doppeled you guys in Radio Cab. And the doppels are still live—two of them, anyway. There are Bluebirds sitting on your hotel and on Leo’s house. Bluebirds never made Lola, so her doppel slipped them again. But there was something else. Very strange. There was someone else following you.”

“Yeah. You,” said Mark.

“No. Someone
else
else,” said Hazards. “That’s why we had to do the Olympia beneath the Burnside Bridge.”

“It’s gotta be the mailman,” said Roman to Constance and Trip.

“The mailman?” said Mark.

“There’s said to be an uncorrupted U.S. government intelligence agency inside the U.S. Post Office,” said Roman.

“It’s the fucking tooth fairy,” said Constance.

“Constance is a doubter,” said Roman.

“This has happened before, though,” she said. “An allegedly uncorrupted police front or intelligence agency gets near us, sends a signal that they’re after the Committee also, that we have common cause. They pretend to be soliciting our help. In every case, it’s been a ruse. Pope has hollowed out every agency he turns; he takes the best pieces back to the Committee and leaves behind the stationery and all the dim lifers. This mailman guy will turn out to be the same. You watch.”

“Whatever with that,” said Mark, trying to get the room back. “I may have damaged my chances with Straw. And if Pope’s guys are outside my hotel, I bet it’s because he intends to keep me from Straw and from getting back on
Sine Wave Two
.”

The others considered this. “Well, your doppel’s holed up in his hotel, drinking,” said Constance. “Just like you were going to be. As long as the Bluebirds think you’re that guy in there, we can move you around freely.”

The
just like you were going to be
was unnecessary, thought Mark. “Yeah, but it’s going to be awfully hard to slip back on board without Pope’s say-so. They run a tight ship.”

“Think of a way, Dixon,” said Constance.

Mark thought.

“You guys got an outside line here?” he asked her.

L
eila found Leo in the barn with his head pressed against the pony’s brown neck, his eyes closed, a serene smile on his face.

“Leo? You okay?” she said.

He opened his eyes, looked at her. “You smell this pony?”

She had been olfactorily aware of the pony since it showed up at the landing strip; pony was indeed a pleasant smell, or this pony was, anyway. “Okay, but you know how you’re in recovery? Or sober? Or whatever you’re calling it?”

“Yeah. You think this isn’t allowed?”

“What? Pony sniffing?”

“No. The eye test.”

“No. No. I’m sure it’s allowed. But if you’re feeling kind of ecstatic right now, don’t let it confuse you. This patch will be over in a few hours.”

“That’s no reason not to enjoy it,” said Leo. Then he looked the pony in her spheroid eye and asked: “Wouldn’t you agree, beast?”

Seeing him there, so blithe and pony-intrigued, Leila was angry. It felt misdirected from the get-go, the anger toward him. But it was a strong feeling, and she wanted to give it words. “And it’s not the important part of this, anyway.”

“What’s not the important part of what?”

“Feeling transcendentally interesting or sublime or even connected is not the important part of Dear Diary. Or of life, really. We have work to do, Leo.”

She had his attention. He stopped petting the pony and turned more squarely to her. “Those things you mentioned are pretty important to me, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “I mean, I let go and slip out into the big void too sometimes, you know. But I think most of the work we’re supposed to do is self-tethering. You have to at least
try
to connect yourself to the plain old world you live in.” A scrap of a poem came back to her. “‘For us, there is only the trying.’”

“Yeah, I know,” said Leo. “‘The rest is none of our business.’”

He knew that one! “But do you really get that? If things don’t go the way you want them to go, are you going to think you’re a failure?”

“What are we talking about, Leila?”

He was so disarming. She’d meant to be scolding him, and here he had ducked it like an aikido master and moved in closer to her. She could smell the salt of him.

“The letter you wrote to me.”

“Yeah, well, listen, if I was way off base, I’m sorry. It was worth a shot.” He didn’t look sorry.

“You weren’t off base, Leo.” They were standing close again, charged particles between them like fireflies. “But that teepee-wigwam thing of yours is a bad system. You’re either a genius or a loser? What if you’re neither? What if you’re in between, a little of both? That’s much more likely.”

He didn’t look loony anymore. He looked as clear-eyed as a raptor. “I know that. I know how I’m
supposed
to feel. I’m supposed to be okay with myself or change what I’m not okay with. But I’m halfway through my life, Leila, and it’s always been this way. Most of the time, I’m a loser. When I’m a genius, why shouldn’t I grab hold of the feeling? At least that way I can pull up the average.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she said. “But feelings aren’t vines in a jungle; you don’t grab hold of them. You get through them or you enjoy them or whatever.” She was thinking of the plate smasher, and her one girlfriend, in college, and a maternal uncle—addicts all—who seemed always to be at the center of storms they could just as easily have steered around. “There’s a basic problem in the way you’re approaching this.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” he said.

“Sorry. No. That’s kind of an asshole thing for me to say.”

“I don’t think it rises to asshole,” he said. “But why do you care, Leila? I mean, about these habits of mine.”

Why did she care? Was that love, or whatever was preliminary to love? It felt more like a tapeworm, or like that Alpine-hatted worm from the Richard Scarry books, with a little suitcase, come to live behind her sternum. Leila had always suffered from what she feared was a deficit in romantic drive, a condition stigmatized in women. Even the people she had most loved she could not exactly recall
falling
in love with. It had felt rather more like moving slowly up a steep grade.

“Because you were right,” she said. “What you said in the letter. That there was more supposed to happen between us. It’s happening now, isn’t it?”

He nodded. The pony lifted her head. Her wild black nostrils flared and sniffed.

“Okay, but I’m not just some experience,” she said. “I go forward and backward in time. And if we’re going to do this, I want to know that you’re reliable. Are you reliable?”

He was looking out at the sky through the door behind her. She let twice the reasonable amount of time go by and then said, “Leo?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking.”

“You shouldn’t have to think so long to answer that question,” said Leila.

“I would like to one day live with you in Rome and bathe our child in an iron tub. Actually, any kind of tub, really. With you, I would always try my hardest—God loves a trier, they say. And I wouldn’t lie or hide. I want to feed you and fuck you and ask you what’s up and walk with you through whatever searing desert, down any choked street, into what joy and trouble might be ours.”

The words brought her to the edge of a high cliff.
Rome? Our child?
Why, how, did he let himself race forward like this? She could have fallen into him then, but he kept speaking: “But all those are just promises and fantasies, so I don’t see why they should mean that much to you. And reliable?” He made a little orchestra conductor’s flourish before his temple.

“What does that mean?” she asked, imitating the gesture, gutted by his swerve and disclaimer.

“It means that I feel like my mind’s a wild card. I don’t want to say I’m reliable and then spend my life trying to live up to that.”

She thought:
His mind’s a wild card? Sounds worrisome.
She said: “I think that’s exactly what you should do.”

“What?”

“Spend your life trying to live up to ideals. The rest is none of our business.” She could see him take that in.

“But what about when two or more of the ideals you’re trying to live up to come into conflict?” he said. “Like when you get to some door and you can’t be both reliable and adventurous and still get through the door?”

She left him there then, with the pony and his stupid angst, his Hamletian hemming. Why would he not just settle on one or the other? Their child in a bath in Rome, or not? It would be too much work, loving a man like that, torn as he was by twenty decisions a day. She walked back across the still meadow; the moon had set, and the sky was a blue speckled bowl.

She went back inside and found Mark and Constance and Roman clustered around a computer. Not one of the computers that Dear Diary appeared to fabricate here—the old laptops gutted and re-filled with the novophylum plants. The computer they were sitting around looked like an old PC, with a tower and a big monitor. Both were wrapped in tinfoil. Mark’s Node was attached to the computer’s tower with a short USB cord. A cable the gauge of a garden hose ran from the back of this setup along the floor and into the butt of a rifle that Trip was holding. He was making himself comfortable in a wooden chair by the window. Then he used another chair, overturned, to make a sort of aiming cradle, and he pointed the rifle out the window, at the sky.

Leila saw then that it wasn’t a rifle but a sort of a telescope. Where there should have been a muzzle, there was a tiny ceramic parabolic antenna.

Constance made a finger-to-lips be-quiet sign at Leila. Leila stopped where she was.

“Wait for it,” Trip said without looking at the people behind him. He trained the rifle telescope low over the far horizon. “Okay. Keyhole access in three seconds. Two. One. Established.” Leila could see he was concentrating keenly on his aim.

“Go,” said Constance to Mark.

Mark pressed a button on his Node. Leila heard the bubbly ring of the call he was making.

“Hello?” said a voice from the PC.

Mark spoke at his phone. “James. It’s me. Mark.”

“Mark? That’s not what the screen says. Why are you calling cloaked? Parker says that’s for emergencies only.”

“I know, James. It’s just that it’s Parker I’d rather not talk to right now. I was afraid he might intercept the call. He seems rather upset with me.”

“He
is
upset with you, Mark. We all are. I heard about your performance at Nike. You know I’ve really done a lot for you, Mark.”

“I know, James. I know. And the thing at Nike, that was bad shellfish I had the night previous. I’m mortified, I assure you.”

Silence from Straw.

“But the thing is, James, I’m not sure Parker understands us. I’m not sure he is able to appreciate the…nature of the connection between us. Maybe even
I
have wanted to turn away from it at times, you know? Because I was afraid, because I have been afraid…of accepting the closeness that you’ve offered me.”

“Closeness?” said Straw. The line a bit crackly.

Mark shut his eyes and continued. “Our minds, James. The way our minds have become close. If I could just talk to you again, about this job you want me to do.”

“You’re accepting the job?”

“Oh, yes, James, yes. But I want to accept it in person, with you. Maybe by the pool. I’m sorry I was seasick that last time. I want you to show me more. I want to learn from you now. I want
you
to teach
me
.”

“This is wonderful news, Mark. I hoped you would come to see it this way.”

“When can I come back to you, James? Can it be soon? Where are you? I’m still in Portland.” Mark really did manage to sound ardent.

“Nils!” they could hear Straw shout at someone on his end. “Nils!” Then an inaudible reply. “Where are we?” Then a hard-to-understand response from Nils. “An auspicious stroke, Mark,” said Straw. “We’re gleaning the transpacific cable-five network.” More crackly static. “We’re nearby.” He conferred again with Nils in the background.

In the corner by the window, Trip made a
wrap it up
gesture by spinning an index finger above his head. He was still aiming keenly.

“Can you get to the coast by tomorrow evening?” came the old man’s voice through the computer. “Can you get to these coordinates?” He read out a GPS point.

Mark looked quickly at Constance, who looked at Roman, who thought for a sec and nodded once.

“Of course, James,” he said. “But, listen. Can we keep Mr. Pope out of this for now? He and his people are such brutes. I do see why we need men like him, but he’s taken against me, and I’m not even certain he wants the same things you want from New Alexandria. We should speak before anything else happens. Just you and me.”

“Very well, Mark. I’ll send a Zodiac to collect you. What shall we dine on tomorrow?
Bucatini al vongole?
Melon balls and a crisp Riesling? I’ll speak to Chef.”

“Sounds delicious, James. Until tomorrow, then.” Mark hung up.

In the corner, Trip relaxed his rifle. “I didn’t like that at all,” he said. “That was one hundred and ten seconds. That’s a long time to keyhole-connect.”

“It was worth it. Mark will be on board in less than twenty-four hours,” said Roman.

Leila could tell that Trip still didn’t like it. “Let’s hope the Committee won’t notice two minutes of anomalous satellite cross-feeds over southwest Oregon,” he said.

Leila looked at Mark. “You okay?” she asked him. “Nice work with Straw. I was getting a little steamed up there.”

Mark smiled. “I read some Oscar Wilde at Harvard.”

I
n the blue dark of the little loft, Leo could make out potted ferns and begonias running up the eaved walls toward the skylight. Mark was slack-jawed asleep on a sort of chaise or fainting couch. His socked feet stuck out like two spokes of a ship’s wheel.

Leo and Leila made their beds on the floor, quickly and quietly, like soldiers.

“’Night, Leo,” said Leila, and turned herself away from him.

He figured she was steamed at him for not calling her back when she walked out of the barn. “Good night, Leila,” he said.

He still wasn’t really tired. How could these two just sack out? Big day, he thought. Definitely should journal about this one. He slowed his breathing, counted the begonia leaves backlit by the night sky.

But his sleeping bag was made for a little girl. It was printed with the image of a cartoon heroine, and only about three quarters of him fit into it, so he appeared to be emerging from it, as if interrupted between pupa and imago. Leila was in a man-size green sleeping bag. But she was asleep already. Was she really asleep? He felt such a charge between them, her shoulders maybe eighteen inches from his sternum. She was a shell and he was the sea.

“Leila,” he whispered at the back of her neck, which he saw now was downy. Maybe her shoulder stirred. There was a catch in her breath. Leo, his nervous system in a sort of flare, was aware of all of it. But after a minute, she had not responded. Outside, a night bug
skritch-skreek
ed at intervals. He didn’t say her name again. If she was really asleep, he did not want to wake her. So he just lay there, half out of his sleeping bag, like a banana begun.

He fell into a sleep, and dreamed that he and Leila were trying to replace a lightbulb together, climbing two sides of the same ladder. The higher they climbed, the closer they came to each other. But the light they had to reach kept receding, until, just to keep from falling, they had to hold each other. They fumbled tools between them. At one point, Leila was wearing only a tool belt. But then he was alone at the top of the ladder, standing on a step that bore the warning
THIS IS NOT A STEP
and he felt that he would fall at any moment. He tipped forward and woke from the hypnagogic jolt. His sleeping bag had ridden down and now was more just a sack around his lower half. He felt, beneath the sleeping pad and the gritty carpet, a crude transition in floorboards that his ribs were straddling. He was cold.

“Leila,” he whispered. “Leila.”

She made a sound with
n’
s and
h’
s.

“Leila, can we switch sleeping bags?”

Nothing.

“Leila,” he whispered again. “You awake?”

She sat upright in her bag like a woken zombie. “Yeah. Sure.” Then she slipped from her sleeping bag, all waist and hips and static cling. She was by far the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on, and the whole thing was pretty much in slow motion. But Leila was just as quickly asleep in the smaller bag. No buzz came off her body as it was coming off his. He was pulled toward her; he was the sea and she the moon. He remembered that a high-school physics teacher once told him that the moon was always falling. That’s what orbit is, after all.

Leo tried to tip himself back into sleep. But he was distracted by a tiny orange light playing on the cabin window below him. He looked closer and made out the shapes of Constance and Trip and Roman. They were out on the porch, in a sort of conclave. The orange light was the embered tip of Trip’s cigarette. Their voices were indistinct and night-muffled, but the tempo and the interruption rate made Leo know that they were worried. He hoped they had this all in hand. Constance had said there would be scones for breakfast.

He fell asleep again, and this time his dreams were too abstract to decoct. The ladder scenario was not reprised, except possibly as a dream within a dream, but this time in Aramaic or something.