Jennifer Government: A Novel (42 page)

“Thank you.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Distract him,” Buy said.

Jennifer was running in one direction and about ten thousand people were running in the other, streaming out of a strip mall. She guessed there was nothing to clear an area like a missile strike.

When she got inside, the place was almost drained of shoppers. She was struck by familiarity: the layout was the same as the Chadstone Wal-Mart mall. There were even two sports cars being raffled. But then, these places were probably all built to the same plan. They were standardized.

She spotted John just as he reached two NRA soldiers. He gasped to them, “Help me! I’m a US Alliance Liaison, there’s a woman with a gun after me!” He pointed at her.

They drew their weapons. “Hold it there, ma’am.”

Jennifer dropped to a walk. She pointed her gun skywards.

“Shoot her!” John shouted.

“Ma’am, you need to drop the weapon, right now.”

She kept walking.

“Ma’am—”

“She’s not going to stop, you dumb fucks! Shoot the bitch!” John began to edge away.

“We’re not kidding! This is your last chance!”

“All right,” she said. She holstered her pistol. A soldier reached for her. She took his arm and twisted. He gasped in surprise, and she rammed his head into the second soldier’s face. They fell to the floor and she kicked their weapons away

“You morons!”
John screamed. He ran for the escalators. He was surprisingly fleet: he didn’t appear to have been injured in the cab crash. She took careful aim.

The bullet clanged off the escalator’s steel sides. John stopped running. He leaned over the railing. “Are you
stupid?”
In the empty mall, his voice echoed. “Do you want me to hurt Kate?”

She corrected her aim, but this time he read her intent and ducked. She missed everything. She jogged toward the escalators.

“If my man doesn’t hear from me, he’ll kill her!” John shouted. But Jennifer didn’t believe that. There was a note of rising panic in his voice, and besides, John wasn’t the sort to make plans in the event of his own death. She caught a glimpse of him scrambling from one escalator to the next. “You better back off, right now!”

He tried to give her the slip on level five, but she saw him reflected in a store window, trying to hide behind a pillar. He was doing something with his hands. She raised her gun and carefully moved toward him.

John heard her coming. “Jen! Don’t do anything stupid!”

“Come out, John.”

“I’m on the phone!” he yelled. “I’m on the fucking phone, do you want me to kill her?”

She stopped.

“That’s right, Jen, I have a live connection here. You better think very clearly.” He stepped out into the open. His cellphone was pressed to his left ear. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. His business shirt was soaked through. “Put down the gun.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You want me to make him hurt her? I can do that!”

Jennifer looked at her gun. It seemed a pity.

“Do it!”

She put the gun on the floor. “Hang up.”

“Kick your gun over here first.”

“You hang up, I’ll give you the gun.”

“Not your place to bargain, Jen. It’s really not.”

Jennifer considered. It would be a bad move for her to give John her gun; very bad. She was pretty sure he’d just shoot her. She put her foot on the gun.

“Careful, Jen. Nice and slow.”

“I don’t suppose you ever saw any of the kids you had killed,” she said. “I did. It was in a mall like this one.”

“Oh,
please,”
John said. “Don’t start
moralizing
. I’ve had about as much of that as I can take. Give me the gun.”

She pushed it with her foot. It spun across the floor, the barrel describing lazy ellipses, until it disappeared off the edge of the level. She heard it hit one of the cars on the ground floor with a bang.

John’s eyes bulged. “Was I not
clear?”

“Hang up the phone.”

“You couldn’t let me go, could you? You had to chase me across half the world. It’s pathetic, Jen. You’re
obsessed
. You think you changed when you left Maher? You think you grew a conscience when you got pregnant? Bullshit. You were a corporate bitch at Maher and you haven’t changed, same as that tattoo. You’re not doing your job. You don’t give a shit about those Nike teenagers. You’re after me for what I wouldn’t give you eight years ago. This is
personal.”

Jennifer didn’t think that was a fair characterization. She was going to debate it. But then her cellphone rang.

A lot of people were hurrying out of the mall, courtesy of Violet discharging a firearm. The Nike Town was just up ahead, and Buy saw a man poke his head out and look at the people scurrying past. As a head, it was nothing to boast about. It looked like Buy felt.

From behind, Hack yelled, “Hey! Asshole!”

The man’s face whipped around. Hack and Claire were by the escalators, waving their arms.

“John, you ugly prick! Hey!”

John stepped out of the store. He was dragging Kate with him. Buy’s heart leapt. Kate’s face was streaked with dried tears.
Just another minute, honey
, he thought.

“What?” John called. “I can’t hear you!” His free hand slipped inside his jacket pocket.

Buy staggered up to him. His arm was bleeding profusely. “Excuse me.”

“Hey.” John’s face wrinkled. “What the hell do you want?”

“Forgiveness,” Buy said, and wrapped his arms around him. “Kate, run!”

“What the
fuck?”
John said. Kate stared at him, frozen. Then she ran. Buy had never seen anything more beautiful than her retreating back and bouncing hair. “Get off me!”

“Sorry,” Buy gasped. “No can do.”

“Let—me—go!” John slammed Buy against the Nike Town door, and he lost all his air in a rush. John pulled back for another attempt. Buy suddenly realized that the Nike Town door handles were long metal swooshes, tapered to fine points. That was kind of dangerous, he thought. Someone could get hurt on those.

John slammed him backwards again. Buy heaved himself to the left and swung John around. John hit the door, and Buy lost his grip. He fell to the floor and coughed.

He almost expected to start feeling John’s business shoes connecting with his ribs. But not really. It had been a good swing: a very good swing.

“Buy?”

“Every obstacle is an opportunity,” Buy said. He tried to laugh, but it came out as a hacking cough.

Blurry faces appeared above him. “Somebody call an ambulance! Call nine-one-one!”

“Use my American Express card,” Buy said. He was full of witticisms; he couldn’t stop.

“Buy, just stay still.”

“Kate. Where is—”

“I don’t know if you want Kate to see this,” Hack said. “John is…he’s on the swoosh.”

“Please, I must see her.” Hack started to leave. Buy grabbed him with his good hand. “Hack. Thank you.”

Hack looked embarrassed. “No problem.”

Buy closed his eyes. He was going to faint soon, and that wasn’t good. There was something he had to do first. He had to hold out.

“Buy! Buy!”

He opened his eyes. Everything was hazy: he couldn’t see Kate properly. Then something wet fell on his face and he realized she was crying.

“Hey. I will be fine. Really.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m really sure.”

“Okay.”

“Now, Kate…” Someone started wrapping something around Buy’s arm. He felt dimly grateful, but it was starting to hurt a lot. “There’s something I need you to do. It’s very important. You have to do it straight away. All right?”

“What?”

“Call your mother,” he said, and passed out.

Jennifer looked down at her pocket. Her cellphone trilled again.

“Don’t answer that,” John said. “Just—just slide it over here. Come on.”

She pulled out her phone.

“I’m serious! Drop the phone!” He was spraying spittle. “Don’t fuck with me, Jen. I’ll do it!”

She considered. Then she flipped open her phone. “Hello?”

“Mommy?”

A surge of emotion rocked her. She couldn’t speak. She looked at John. “Hi, sweetie.”

John dropped his phone and backed away, his palms raised. “Okay, now, Jen, let’s not do anything rash.” His eyes flicked from side to side. “I think there may have been some kind of miscommunication…”

She started walking toward him.

“Jen—Jen! Listen to me. Let’s not make any snap decisions! Let’s not make any value judgments!”

He broke and ran. Jennifer leapt and caught his jacket at the neck, swinging him into the guardrail. His breath whooshed out of him and then she had him bent over the railing, staring down at the cars below. She forced his arm up his back.

“I wasn’t going to hurt her! I swear!”

She whispered, “She’ll be better off without a father like you.”

“No! Jen, please!”

“Like the view? Want to see what I saw in a mall like this one, when you killed a schoolgirl?”

“No!”

“You were wrong about me,” she said. She took her arm off
his neck. It felt better than she had imagined. It was surprisingly satisfying. “John Nike, you are under arrest for the murder of Hayley McDonald’s and up to fourteen other people.”

“What?
What?
”

“You will be held by the Government until the victim’s families can commence prosecution against you.” She hauled him up and marched him toward the escalators. He was a pain to move. His legs kept slipping out from under him, as if he was drunk.

“You’re
arresting
me? Are you serious? I don’t belong in
jail!”

“And yet,” she said.

By the end of the flight, Jennifer felt ready to murder someone. She shifted and fidgeted; she glared at the flight attendants.

“Shhh,” Calvin said. “Settle.”

“A stopover in
Auckland,”
she said. “It’s unbelievable.”

“Read the magazine,” Calvin said. “Or watch the movie. They have computer games; why don’t you play one of those?”

“I want to get home.”

“You want me to ask if you can go up and meet the captain, look at the controls?”

She looked at him.

“Thirty-five more minutes,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “All
right.”
Calvin flicked through a few pages of his magazine. After a while, she said, “By the way…”

He looked up. “Hmm?”

“It’s Malibu Barbie. My tattoo. It’s the product code for a Malibu Barbie.”

Calvin blinked. “Really?”

“I was the Mattel account manager. Plus I lived in Malibu. So I got the tattoo.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“You think it’s stupid.”

“No, no. Not at all.”

“It was very hip at the time.” “I’m sure it was.”

Jennifer eyed him. “You won’t tell anyone this, right? It’s a little embarrassing.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Your secret is safe with me, Barbie doll.”

“Please don’t call me Barbie doll,” she said.

J
ennifer deplaned feeling like she’d been beaten, and walked down a long white corridor where sliding doors opened onto a mass of people. For a second all she could see was a jumble of color. Then Kate was running toward her. Her legs weakened.

“Mom!”

She dropped to her knees and Kate cannoned into her. She felt tiny arms around her neck. “Oh, Kate!”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too, sweetheart.” She closed her eyes. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

“Watch Mommy’s shoulder,” she said. “Let me look at you. Wow! Buy must have taken good care of you.” She looked up, and there he was. He looked awkward. He smiled as if he were trying to stop himself.

“Hi.”

“Come here,” she said.

“Down there?”

“Yep.”

Buy crouched and she hugged him, too. “Ow,” he said. “Watch Buy’s arm.”

“Oh! Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She touched his face. He looked like he wanted to kiss her, so she leaned forward and they kissed. “Thank you so much,” she whispered. “Thank you—”

“It’s okay.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m…happy to have you home.”

“Me, too.” Her voice was a whisper. She hugged them both as tightly as she could. Kate’s small hand wrapped around her own. Jennifer’s face pressed against Kate’s hair, and its familiar smell suddenly squeezed a sob out of her. She cried for a while, and nobody moved.