Among the Dead (25 page)

I love you. You asked me a few weeks ago why I was so desperate to take this vacation and I said that I needed to get away from the office for a while, and that's true, but there's more. For six months you've noticed that I've been distant, and I have been. You asked me if there was another woman, and I said no, but I was lying. I had an affair with [name deleted]. If s over now. I wanted to take this trip so that we could find a way to heal ourselves. I don't know how you'll take this, and all I can say is that I beg you to forgive me, but if you don't want to, I will understand. I love you.

‘That's so sad,' said his mother. ‘I hope she read it before she died.'

‘They're holding the name of the woman he was fucking.'

‘Leon,' said Frank's mother. ‘That's not fair.'

‘They shouldn't have printed it at all,' he said. ‘It's an invasion of privacy.'

‘It's on all the news now. It was on the national news already.'

His father pointed to the picture of a black man on the front page. ‘There's your Lonnie Walter. The cocksucker who killed your family. They found his note too, but they're not releasing it. They say he carried a gun on to the plane, he used his airline security pass to sneak a gun through.'

‘Did he sneak on to the plane?' asked Frank.

‘No, he had a ticket. The gate attendant knew him, and he told her he was taking a vacation. And she knew that the guy who had fired him was on the plane, and she mentioned that to a friend.'

‘She was worried that Walter was going to kill him?'

‘No, just that it was going to be embarrassing for the supervisor, to see this guy he'd fired on the plane with him. They think he shot the supervisor, grabbed a stewardess, and then he got into the cockpit and shot the crew.'

Lonnie Walter was forty-five, light-coloured, bald. He had little dots around his eyes that were like raised freckles, or beauty marks. The picture was from an airline file. So he was dead too. Frank wondered if he had been listed among the dead in the long lists, if he had paid for his ticket. Of course he had, thought Frank. He had sneaked the gun past security at the employee entrance to the airport, and then again at the terminal. He had entered the main terminal from backstage, but they wouldn't have let him on the plane without a ticket. Now all airports were sure to change their security systems. Everyone working at the airports would have to pass through those metal detectors. It would cost a lot of money. The price of travel would go up.

How long will it take them to find me? he wondered. Of course they'll find me. And they'll find Mary Sifka. The paper assumed the letter writer was dead. ‘I guess he's dead,' said Frank.

‘Lonnie Walter, he's in hell as we speak,' said Leon.

‘Not Walter,' said Frank. ‘The one who wrote the letter.'

‘Oh, God, of course,' said his father. There was no reason to believe the letter writer had not died on the plane. And there was no clue yet to let them connect this thing to Frank. That six months' distance was something only Anna complained about. To his mother and father he had always been distant. The attachment to Mary, which for so long gave him comfort, finally corroded all of his connections, even to Madeleine. This distance became a punishment. What else could he have done but confessed? But now everything was fucked up. How soon would everyone know everything?

Why did Anna keep the note after reading it? If she had put the note in her handbag, which surely exploded with the crash, the paper would either have burned with the passengers or else would have been lost in the wet muck after the fire trucks had finished spraying the area down. But the existence of the note meant they
would easily trace it back to Frank, because the police, or the crash investigators, or the county coroner had found it in his suitcase.

And then Frank felt a terrible sadness for Mary Sifka, because even if the letter had been separated from the luggage, there was Mary's name. It didn't matter that the letter was so coyly un-addressed and unsigned; unless a little piece of hot shrapnel grazed the note card, scorching, beyond recognition, only her name, they were looking for her.

‘It was on the national news?' asked Frank.

‘The crash? Of course,' said his father.

‘The letter.'

‘That's going to be the big thing from all of this,' said his father. ‘You'll see. We'll know the girlfriend's name by tomorrow. They can't keep that stuff out of the news for long. It's the papers that are holding back the names, I guess until they notify the next of kin.'

Frank thought of telling his mother and father that the letter was his. What would it cost him? He had an answer: he wanted more than anything to keep their sympathy, for however many hours he had until someone restored the deleted name, because they would hate him once the world could say ‘Mary Sifka'. For the rest of their lives shame would dog their mourning. The mother and father of that man who wrote the letter. The adulterer. Mary Sifka's real in-laws.

‘Let's go somewhere,' said his mother. ‘I'm hungry.'

Frank said he didn't know where to go. His father said that Lowell had made reservations for them at an Italian place he liked. Awful San Diego Italian food, with rancid oil, and badly chopped stalks of parsley drowning in the salty tomato sauce.

‘Is he coming?' asked Frank. Frank didn't want Lowell there, since his brother was sure to be obsessed with the letter and would want to talk about it.

His mother said that he wasn't. I should tell them the letter is mine, thought Frank. His feet were cold. Cold feet. It was true, the blood was somewhere else. Where? What was the evolutionary function of cold feet? Where did the genius of adaptation decree that some protection from predation derive from cold feet? How could he run from danger with cold feet? And what was the danger in the truth, if he told the truth now?

His
HEAD WAS SPINNING
. And just as something in him shrieked when he made the leap into that first pornographic tableau with
Mary Sifka, now the ice-flow moved from his feet up his legs, and then, without warning, he was scared shitless. So even that exhausted phrase came from experience: before he could look down, he knew that he was standing in a puddle of his own shit.

His guts had opened. Everything inside of him was sliding into his underpants, his boxer shorts, not even jockey shorts with an elastic at the thigh to hold the crap in, like a diaper. So the shit dribbled down his legs, and out his cuffs, over his shoes.

He cried, ‘Mom!' and his mother looked down at his feet, trying to understand.

‘Frank?' she said.

‘I don't know what's happening to me,' he said, lurching into the bathroom a few steps away. His parents rushed towards him, but he shut the door.

‘Frank, what happened?' asked his mother.

His father said, ‘Jesus.'

I'm sick,' said Frank. He wondered if they were standing in his shitty trail. Someone would have to clean it up tonight, it would smell, or else they would have to change rooms. He could go to a market and buy rug-cleaner, the spray kind, and a sponge or paper towels, whatever the directions on the rug-cleaner package said was best for cleaning it up. Maybe there was something in a pet store for cleaning up cat and dog shit, deodorizing a carpet. He would let his parents sleep in his room tonight, he would stay here. The shitty imprints of his shoes, like the shoe shapes used to plot dance steps. And what steps had he described? A straight line. A cha cha without the return. A cha!

He stepped into the bath tub and turned on the shower. It was hard to adjust the temperature, and he settled for too cold, something to wake himself up. He had to untie his shoelaces, smearing his fingers, but he washed them off. His mother or father had taken a shower already, because the little bar of soap had been unwrapped. He took off his pants and tried to wash the legs out by putting the shower head through the top, but the pressure wasn't strong enough. San diego conserves water. So he changed the stream from shower to faucet, and pulled the pant legs inside out. He opened the complimentary shampoo, and worked up a lather. Glops of loose shit collected in the tub's narrow drain. He used a wash cloth to scrape the pants clean, and the job was done. He washed his shoes out, cleaned the soles, and put them on the rim of the tub. Then he turned the handle to change the stream
from faucet back to shower, and, taking off his shirt, he washed himself. He made the water warmer, and when the temperature drifted to cold, he turned it up, letting the water burn him, so he could sterilize his skin, so he could soap, and soap again, and rinse off, and soap again, using the hotel's inexhaustible supply of hot water, to make himself clean.

One of them knocked on the bathroom door. His mother.

He told her he was feeling better.

She asked for his room key, so she could get clean clothes for him. Did he want a doctor?

‘No.'

Was it something he ate?

‘Maybe, yes. But it's over.'

He apologized. She asked him why.

Because you wanted a nice dinner tonight.

She said it had been selfish of her to think of going out.

He said they could still go out. Whatever it was, was over.

No, she said, she had already ordered from room service. And she had spoken to Anna's parents, who were coming in to Los Angeles tomorrow, from Philadelphia. Her two sisters were already there. Somehow they had missed the news that Frank was alive. When he could, they wanted to talk with him. They sent their love. They were so sorry for him.

‘Take my room tonight,' said Frank.

His mother asked him why.

‘Do I have to explain?'

‘But you were sick, Frank. Everyone gets sick.'

His mother was silent, and he could hear her mumble or whisper something to his father. His father probably wanted to accept the offer of the clean room.

‘We'll get you a doctor,' said his mother. So Leon was thinking of Frank's health, not his own comfort? So they were being parents now?

His father came to the door. ‘Frank?'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘Don't be embarrassed about this.'

‘Thanks for saying that.'

‘It's not food poisoning, is it?'

I can say it now, thought Frank. Easily. I can say, ‘No, Dad, I'm
scared shitless by what's going to happen when you know that I wrote the letter.' But he said, ‘No.'

‘It's everything.'

Frank said it was.

‘We'll stay in this room. It's really not bad. Did you clean up in there?'

‘I tried to. I think you need fresh towels, though.'

‘I'll call.'

‘What will you say?'

‘Nothing, I don't have to explain myself to those assholes.' This was Lowell's voice too. So his father wasn't a complete loser. Why didn't I learn those lessons? Frank asked himself. What did Lowell see that I didn't, why does Lowell love them more than I do? Look at what they're doing for me now, the love, the care.

‘I'm sorry,' said Frank.

‘I told you not to be,' said his father.

‘I'm sorry for everything,' said Frank, and he meant, everything that's going to happen.

‘We love you,' said his mother.

‘For now,' he said.

‘The key,' said his mother. It was in his wet pants. He gave it to her, opening the door just wide enough for his hand, and then closed it. He sat on the edge of the tub and waited for his mother to bring him clean underpants.

When he was dressed, he went back to his room. A man and woman were in the hall, next to the elevators, arguing. They were both dressed expensively, his suit was dark grey, and she wore blue, and a white shirt with ruffles at the neck. They were probably in their late twenties, and they were angry with each other.

‘This is my floor,' said the man. ‘I got here first.'

‘You can't claim it, you don't own it,' said the woman.

‘I hate to cite precedence, because I'm sure you don't understand the concept, but there's a long-established principle of finders, keepers here.'

‘It isn't finders, keepers, that's not it at all. It's more like the claims of imperialism.'

Then they saw Frank, and they stopped talking.

‘Is there something wrong?' Frank asked.

‘No,' said the woman.

‘Have you made a choice yet?' said the man.

‘What do you mean?' asked Frank.

The elevator came. The woman said, ‘We have an agreement, you know, not to fight for the same one. You can check it.'

The man seemed to know what she was talking about, and they both got into the elevator.

Frank wasn't sure if he understood what he had seen, but it would have been something to discuss with his wife. She liked to hear abstract anecdotes from the world, and try to complete someone's story with only a fragment, a glimpse.

Back in his room the message light on the phone was blinking. There were two messages from his brother, one from Bettina Welch, and another dozen left by reporters, including two from Ron Godfrey.

While he looked at the messages, the phone rang. It was Lowell.

‘Mom and Dad said you were sick. They asked me to find you a doctor.'

‘I'm OK now.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘All systems go.'

‘Yeah, all systems go over the rug,' said Lowell, and he laughed. ‘What happened?'

‘I think everything just got to me.'

‘Everything's just getting to you.' Lowell sounded a little bit drunk. This astonished Frank and then left him feeling lonelier than ever. His brother, after all, had not lost his own family, and with a few days passed already, Lowell was slipping back into the general drift of life. Lowell could afford to take an evening off from managing Frank, and like the camp counsellor who makes fun of the weakest boys in the bunkhouse, after they've gone to bed, Lowell needed the release.