American Subversive (32 page)

“It's a studio.”

“What floor?”

“The top.”

“There any other way out?”

“The roof, but the emergency exit door's been locked for years.”

She considered this for a moment, distastefully.

“Also, hello,” I said, coming around. “How are you? Nice to see you again.”

She ignored me. “If I come up, how do I know you won't call the cops?”

“I might if you keep asking me that question.”

Paige smiled, but so slightly that if I hadn't been staring at her, I would have missed it. I was still astonished, and not at all certain this wasn't some kind of setup. But that didn't make sense. Nothing did.

“I'll follow you inside,” she said, looking down the empty block.

I could have said no, of course, could have turned around, run upstairs, and called the police. But looking back on it, I don't think that even crossed my mind. Instead, I was thinking we had to get off the street, get somewhere safe, and if that meant my apartment, then fine. What were my motivations? I could tell you they were pure or impure, but they were neither. I was only reacting. I was scared.

So in she came, trailing behind me up the stairwell, her vintage Converse high-tops so quiet that twice I turned around to make sure she was still there. At my front door she paused, steeling herself to cross the threshold, relinquish a degree of control. “It's okay,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. She stepped inside and the door closed behind her.

We stood there awkwardly. Ten minutes earlier I'd been monitoring a commenter debate over which Jonas brother was more likely to end up in rehab, and now . . .

“Here, sit,” I said, gesturing at the couch.

“I'm fine.” She was still near the door. I had no idea what to do. I almost wanted to put on music, open some wine, make small talk—the reflex of so many bachelor years in New York, to make the girl comfortable, set her at ease:
keep her there
. I was disconcerted, and not, initially, by the many questions and complexities surrounding her sudden appearance, but, again, by the simple fact of her beauty. It was entrancing. Her deep brown eyes flitted about the apartment, taking in each poorly painted wall, glancing into dusty corners, then up at my sleeping loft. Watching her, I thought I saw a trace of desperation, and all at once I realized the trouble
she
must be in. To be coming here. To me.

“Do you want some water or something?”

She didn't respond. She was still scanning the room, and I turned away to let her judge me in privacy. It didn't take long, and I can only imagine the conclusions she reached—the ball game still on, the laptop surrounded by tortilla chips and cheap magazines, old newspapers stacked on an old chair, and the absurdly small bookshelf lacking in anything substan—

“I'm not sure how to do this,” she said. “How to talk to you.”

“About what?” I asked dumbly.

“I need you to do something. But first I need to know
why
. I just . . . it doesn't make sense. You ardently pursue me, and then, when you've actually tracked me down, you don't go public or tell the cops. Do you know the trouble you could be in? What if the Feds came crashing through your door and found us here together? What if I'd been tailed or something?”

“Were you?”

“Of course not.”

“How do you know?”

Paige walked over to the counter that separated my small kitchen from the rest of the space (such as it was). She pulled out a bar stool and balanced against it.

“Twenty-five years,” she said. “Minimum. That's the punishment for harboring a suspected terrorist.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Yes.”

“But I don't even know what you did.”

“That's not what you said back at the fair.”

“I was bluffing.”

I came over and took a seat on the only other stool. It was almost like we were flirting, neither of us sure how to get past preliminaries to the substance of the situation. The horrible enormity of it. It must sound strange, I know, but Paige's involvement in the bombing never seemed less likely than at that moment, when she was closest.

“Tell me why you came here,” I said.

“Do you smoke?”

“Not really. I don't have any, if that's what you're asking.”

“Okay then, a beer?”

“Sure.”

I walked around the counter and opened the fridge. Several Miller Lites lay strewn across the bottom shelf. I grabbed two, twisted off their caps, and slid one across the cheap Formica. I almost said
Cheers,
then thought better of it.

“So tell me,” I tried again. I was still in the kitchen, the counter between us.

She took a long sip, like a sip in a commercial, and when she put the bottle down, she pushed her long bangs to the side of her face. “A lack of better options, I guess.”

“That's the name of a friend of mine's band. But with a
the
. The Lack of Better Options.”

“Cute,” she said.

“Do you live here, in New York, in more . . . um . . .
normal
circumstances?”

“No. I did, once.”

“What part of town?”

“Seriously?
That's
what you want to know?”

“I'm just making conversation. You're not exactly chatty.”

She exhaled audibly, then swiveled on the stool and faced me head-on. “Okay. Listen carefully. I'm going to tell you what I know about the bombing, and I want you to break the story on Roorback.”

“What?”

“I want you to expose me. Expose the entire operation.”

“But that would be suicide.”

“Perhaps, but if you don't . . . well, if you don't, it'll get much worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's another bomb,” she said, in the same even tone that an ex-girlfriend had once used to tell me she was pregnant. “And this one . . . I need to stop it, stop
them
.”

“Your
compatriots
?”

“They were, yes.”

“And you, what, grew a conscience? Lost your nerve? Found the Lord?”

Paige smiled introspectively. “You make it all sound like a whim, a little phase. Tell me, Aidan—it is Aidan, right?—when was the last time you believed in something?”

“I believed you were real, and then I chased you across New England.”

She sighed. I waited. “I'm sorry, you're right. I didn't mean to sound accusatory. It's just that . . .” She cleared her throat. “We were talking about the bomb. The next one. It's supposed to go off this coming Saturday night. If I tell you what I know, will you post it?”

“Why the sudden reversal?”

“Because this one's designed to kill.”

We took things slowly. Information. Revelation. She was backing off a precipice and hadn't yet found solid ground. A place to rest. I turned off the TV and tried to tidy up on the fly, cursing myself for having no candles or aromatic anythings. It was such a guy's place, but she didn't seem to notice. When I finally sat down on the couch, she moved there, too, taking a seat at the far end so as to keep the space between us—the
worlds
between us—intact.

“Is it always so noisy?” she asked, looking out through the open window. The sky was darker now and empty over the river.

“I guess. With the highway and all. I can close the window.”

“No, it's fine. I'm just not used to it anymore.”

“Talk about not used to things. You should have seen me in Vermont, this cabin I had back in the woods.”

“I did,” she said.

She grinned, but it was cursory. She was already someplace else. I waited, and when she started to speak, I didn't interrupt. Her story began in North Carolina, with a ragtag group of environmental activists, then migrated north. She spoke in short bursts—Keith and Lindsay; targets and Actions—and it sounded, from her lips, like a logical progression of events. Until you placed them in a larger context. Until you actually realized what she was talking about, trying to accomplish: awaken a country by violently exposing its sinister soul. It was beyond the realm of rational human behavior. Yet she seemed, as she recounted her exploits, far saner than most people I knew. As for the bombing itself? However despicable the method, it was hard to argue with the results. America was now keenly attuned to Indigo's sins. The way Paige and her cohorts had played the press was brilliant, and for an unsettling moment, I glimpsed common ground between us—that deep and abiding distrust of the media. But, Jesus, the ways we'd gone about addressing it!

Paige began to relax. She settled into the cushions, accepted some chips and salsa. And she kept talking, unburdening herself: Internet protocols, dynamite runs, fake identities. She explained the growing rift between her and the others, the human toll of so much pressure. Then she told me about the shrapnel-sprinkled bomb. And what it was meant for. She stiffened, bracing as if for judgment. But she already knew what I thought. My open mouth, my visible shock, said it all.

She'd arrived back at the reason she'd come: the Roorback exposé. It was the only way she could stop the next Action without turning herself in.

“I want you to write the truth about everything,” she said, “except for this—my being here. Tell them you got the information out of me up in Vermont and have spent the intervening time trying to confirm the details. And one more thing: don't post the story for at least twenty-four hours. I need a head start.”

“Where are you—?”

“
Don't
. It's best that way. Just do exactly what I told you and you'll be on the
Today
show before the week's out. Now, do you have any questions? Because it's important you get the facts right.”

“No.” I had a million.

“Okay, then.” She put her hand out and I shook it. It felt more like a dare than a deal. “I'm going now.”

“
Wait,
” I said. “You can spend the night. Take the bed, I'll sleep on the couch.”

“Thanks, but I need to keep moving.”

“Come on. It's getting late. You'll be safer here than anywhere else. I'll write your story first thing in the morning, and you can proof it yourself. Plus, I'm renting a car to drive up to Connecticut tomorrow, so I can give you a ride out of the city.”

She cocked her head to the side. Had she hoped I'd ask her to stay? I couldn't tell. “You're really not expecting anyone?”

“Now? No. This isn't a hotel.”

I could see her thinking, weighing risks. The scale hung low on both sides.

“I need a cigarette.”

“I'll get you some.”

“And a shower.”

“Go right ahead.”

She rubbed her eyes, then brushed her bangs back again.

“You won't fuck me over?”

“I won't, I promise.”

Maybe she believed me. Or maybe she had nowhere else to go. Either way, her demeanor changed. She sank back into the couch and drew her legs up under her.

“Do you want some wine?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I walked over to the kitchen, opened a bottle of red, and poured two glasses. Then I scanned through iTunes and landed on Bowie's “Life on Mars?” Applicable, I thought, clicking
PLAY
.

I brought the wine over, handed her a glass, and retreated to my side of the couch. We sipped in awkward silence. What, I wondered, had led her so astray, this perfect daughter of America? She'd glossed over that part—the beginning, the idyllic before. I was about to ask about her childhood, but she beat me to it.

“It's your turn to talk,” she said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me. Start with your family.”

And so I did. Like Shakespeare, I began with the secondary characters—my parents' current spouses and lovers—and went from there, working backward through time. It seemed easier that way, and less complicated. Julie and my father, Simon and my mother. Paige gazed back and forth between me and the window,
through
me and the window, but I had the feeling she was listening intently. At some point on the reverse time line, I arrived at my city childhood, that liberal-family ideal, then further back still, to my parents' early activism, hoping it might stir Paige. But it didn't. The gap was too great, the past too far away.

I got up and changed the music. A Brooklyn band she'd never heard of. I floated the idea of ordering food, and Paige responded enthusiastically, even perching beside me on the couch as I shuffled through a dozen menus (we settled on a down-market pizza place because they also sold cigarettes). It was the first time we'd been together for more than a few seconds without something between us—cushions or a countertop. She was feeling more comfortable.

The buzzer rang a half hour later. I went down to intercept the deliveryman, and when I got back, Paige was scrolling through the music on my computer.

“I can't remember the last time I went to a concert,” she said.

“Well, you can't go now.”

“Oh, I don't know. Crowds can be the safest places.”

“You wouldn't even let the pizza guy come upstairs.”

“Fair enough.” She smiled, mouth wide, teeth so white, so American.

I brought two of my three existing plates over to the coffee table and we ate. For a while we talked about what everyone else talks about, books and movies, who'd gotten married, who'd died. She knew a lot, her long days online more than compensating for her off-the-grid seclusion. I poured more wine, and when she went to the bathroom, I dimmed the lights just a bit. If she noticed—of course she noticed—she didn't say anything. The conversation slowly devolved, from the uptown of my youth to the downtown of the present, and that's when she began retreating, her eyes glassing over—that thousand-yard stare in a three-hundred-square-foot room. When I asked a question and she didn't respond at all, I put my glass down and said her name.