Secret Lives (3 page)

The mountains. The valley. The river. A chill, a shiver down the spine. The sense of the world opening up right before his eyes. He photocopied the page from
Granta
. He put it in his shirt pocket, over his heart. Now he had two separate visions of the same place. Now he knew he was not alone.

The very next week, Minneman told his friends and family that he had to take a trip. He packed up his bags, liquidated his savings into traveler’s checks and cash, and booked a flight to Prague. On the flight, first to New York, and then through Amsterdam to Prague, he hummed to himself, his mind firmly locked on what lay ahead of him. The carry-on bag between his feet held the stamp, still in the envelope, still in the position he had found it, as if it were a compass direction, as if to remove it would be to lose his place in the world. Lewis & Clarke would help guide him.

The sentence about Sonoria still lay in his shirt pocket, next to his heart. Every once in awhile, he would pull it out and stare at it, and almost cry.

When he landed in Prague, safely in a taxi heading toward the visitor center, where he would find out how to rent a car that would take him to the border of the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, from whence he would proceed on foot, with a backpack and a walking stick, into the mountains, searching for little signs, clues, for what he sought—when he landed in Prague, the tingle in his palms, the faint scent of mint-and-chocolate in the air, told him that he was close, that he was about to enter the Republic of Sonoria, that he was free . . .

ALLEN LEWIS

Allen Lewis (Padre Allen) is an Episcopal priest and banker who loves to cook and collect first edition science fiction and fantasy hardcovers. Padre Allen leads a stable, fulfilling life that often creates solace for others. And yet, behind that gentle smile, those sometimes rambling but always authentic sermons, beats a heart intent on vengeance. Yes,
revenge
! A base emotion, and one Padre Allen only allows himself to succumb to once every few years, when he boards an airplane for the Australian coast, near the Great Barrier Reef. Once there, Padre Allen dons a steel mesh scuba suit loaded with pockets of chum and jumps off a fast boat into the churning water . . . and, weightless, floating, fast descending, carries out his private war against the Great White Shark. There is nothing personal about his assault. No relatives or friends have succumbed to the deadly charms of the Great White’s teeth. No chunk of thigh has been separated from the priest in years past, leaving that tell-tale semi-circular bite mark, made official by the faint trace of long-removed stitches. Nothing in the Bible commands him to wrestle sharks. Nor has he any political or social issues with the Great White. Instead, he wages this one-man war against the Great White solely on the basis of having been frightened out of his mind upon first seeing the movie
Jaws
. Nothing before or since has quite affected him in this way. He seeks to conquer that feeling, to understand it over and over again. And so, down in the briny depths, where swims the hawksbill turtle, where the lacy fronds of certain sea grasses sway hypnotically back-and-forth, where the moray eel peeks furtively from its hidey-holes, and where the Crown-of-Thorns starfish makes its laborious and tortured way across the coral reef, deathstar of Death Stars, so too Padre Allen becomes part of the landscape, framed in light, framed in shadow, armored suit a-gleaming. As the sharks approach, as he can sense the powerful
swash
of tails, the blocky gray of their bodies appearing through the murk, see that grinning mask of pure ferocity, there is always a moment when Padre Allen wishes he were one of them—so perfect, so certain, so unwavering, with no hint of the doubt he has always been assailed by. God’s creatures. Beautiful in their sensible yet senseless aggression. And then they meet in mortal combat until his air gives out and he rises to the surface, chumless, battered and bruised, his faith born anew.

PETER LAVERY

Peter Lavery works for Pan Macmillan on the third floor of the Pan Macmillan building in London. A tallish man who has been known to appreciate a good red wine, Peter spends his days stamping out the incessant “rabbiting” of his authors, whilst simultaneously coordinating
this
and acquiring
that
. Dealing with writers is his joy and his burden. They are always e-mailing him about something—“rabbiting on” even when not writing books—and yet he loves them all.

Still, sometimes, as much as he enjoys his job and working with the nefarious Stefanie Bierwerth and the devious Rebecca Saunders, Peter needs a break. Whenever he feels the restlessness coming on, whenever the pressures of the job begin to rise like a tide against cliffs, he walks down the stairs to the basement. The basement is filled with rats, cockroaches, and Pan Macmillan employees. After a few minutes of nonchalant conversation to allay suspicions, he saunters over to the far wall. He is usually sweating a bit by now, for this is the moment of greatest peril. He looks around, this way and that. When everyone is busy typing away at a computer keyboard or looking at cover proofs, when no one is looking at him—

—in one quick, twirling motion, Peter presses the hidden button and hugs the wall as it swivels open, depositing him in the secret tunnel behind the wall . . . before sliding innocently back into place, no one the wiser.

Safe, Peter breathes in a mouthful of the salt air that wafts faintly toward him. To his left is a natural grotto holding several bottles of merlot, pinot noir, burgundy, and cabernet sauvignon. In front of him lies the tunnel, carved from the rock over many years by Peter himself, finally completed only a few years before. The floor of the tunnel has train track running out toward a smudge of light in the distance. A miniature train car idles on the track in front of him. Peter lets out a deep sigh of satisfaction. “Free for awhile,” he mutters. “No more rabbiting for awhile.”

Selecting a bottle of wine, Peter sits down on the plush cushion atop the seat, pulls a red lever—and off the car goes, down the tracks, accelerating to a pleasant thirty kilometers per hour.

The sea scent gets closer and closer. The train car rocks gently from side to side in a pleasing way. The breeze picks up, the murky circle of light ahead more distinct, until eventually it replaces the walls of the tunnel entirely . . . and Peter is released into the light.

The light comes from the pale blue sky above, seems to reflect off of the black sand beach and the mirrors of tidal pools, before sliding up across the arc of brambly cliffs that frame the scene. With a light bump, the train car comes to a stop at the end of the track. In front of Peter is a former Blackpool tram car, converted into a cottage get-away. It is bedecked in barnacles, the green paint fading and chipped.

This is Peter’s refuge, and inside all that seems eroded on the outside has been restored: a galley kitchen, all gleaming stainless steel and polished wood; a bunk bed; a living room with two comfortable chairs and a number of books and magazines; a refrigerator for the occasional beer; a phonograph and stereo system; and, most of all, blessed solitude.

Peter has never been exactly sure where this place is in relation to London; nor can he remember how the tram car came to be in this place. All he knows is that he has found it, and he is grateful.

He looks at his watch and reminds himself that he should return in a day or two. Time passes differently in this place; when he returns, it will be as if he never left.

Meanwhile, he will drink his wine and listen to his music and read his books and watch as, out in the water, strange phosphorescent creatures breach hard above the crystalline water, under twinned murky suns, all thoughts of author rabbiting driven from his mind.

STEFANIE BIERWERTH

Stefanie Bierwerth works for the Tor UK imprint of Pan Macmillan in the Pan Macmillan building in London. She works with the secretive Peter Lavery and the nefarious Rebecca Saunders. Her life is very busy, but very rewarding: like Lavery and Saunders, she helps provide honest work for dysfunctional individuals, namely writers, who would otherwise have no way to earn money. In her free time, she reads mysteries and thrillers for entertainment, and sometimes she visits relatives who live in Florida. At least, she
says
she is visiting relatives in Florida. In fact, Stefanie Bierwerth is lying through her teeth. The truth? She leads a double life. While in England, she works as a book editor. While in Florida, she has a second career. It may certainly be true that she has relatives in Florida—in the Tampa/St. Pete area to be precise—but they have no knowledge of her whereabouts during most of the time she spends in Florida.

Typically, she will spend two or three days with her relatives—long enough to take photographs to show to her friends and colleagues back in London, a kind of
proof
of innocence, in a sense—and then rent a car and travel across the state to St. Augustine. It is in St. Augustine that Stef pursues her second career, in the limelight.

This career is not something she embarked on as a whim. It has taken five years in the gyms of London, five years of careful coaching in gymnastics classes, and five years of training in all manner of muscle-shattering physical disciplines.

And all for the pursuit of one dream: to wrestle large reptilians in St. Augustine at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. But “wrestle” is too crass a word for the art form that Stef has mastered. As a twenty-foot alligator enters a death roll with Stef perched atop its thrashing body, spectators forget even to gasp, for the balance Stef shows is akin to the logrollers of yore, to high wire acts over Niagara Falls. These giant saurians—they rage, they hiss, they snap and dart, they wriggle, they thwack their tails in bone-crunching displays of strength. (And the smell—well, the smell is simply dreadful; nose plugs recommended.)

The nimble muscularity and brutality of wearing down a huge alligator “must be seen to be believed,” as the posters read.

And yet, some delicacy, too: a dandelion rubbed under the chin of Old Peculiar, as the farm’s largest alligator—a twenty-six-foot-long monstrosity—is called, will put him to sleep as quickly and easily as Stef’s specialty: the Sleeper Reptile Death Grip, invented and perfected by her and only her.

As she strides down the hall on Pan Macmillan’s third floor, strong as an ox, she laughs to herself, just daring one of them, just one of them, to challenge her to a fight.
For they know not who they tangle with.

They call her “Stef the Editor” in London. They call her “The Alligator Wrestler” in Florida.

Who is to say which is the more difficult profession? For no writer alive is so unwary as to be put to sleep by a dandelion rubbed under the chin . . .

REBECCA SAUNDERS

Rebecca Saunders works for the Tor UK imprint of Pan Macmillan in the Pan Macmillan building in London. She works with the secretive Peter Lavery and the devious Stefanie Bierwerth. Rebecca hails from Australia, a frank and forthright country, entirely above suspicion of any kind. During her time off, Rebecca visits exotic locations such as Iceland and Egypt, the Czech Republic and Sweden. There, to those who meet her, she is the perfect tourist—polite and knowledgeable, self-effacing yet witty, fair but not an easy mark.

“Australians make such great tourists,” more than one hotel clerk has been known to say after one of her visits.

Little do they know that Rebecca is a spy, an expert in espionage, and comes from a long line of spies. What more perfect cover than working for a publishing house and being an Australian citizen?

All of Rebecca’s female relatives are spies—going all the way back to her great-great-great-grandmother—although Rebecca does not know this. She has never questioned the impulse that made her want to become a spy, never knew it lived in her blood from her birth. Little does she know that when her mother visits her in London, her mother has her own missions, just as crafty, dangerous, and adrenalin-pounding as Rebecca’s own. Does Rebecca’s mother know that
Rebecca
is a spy? That information is a closely guarded secret. She lacks the proper security clearance.
Eyes only.

Running across rooftops in Prague, pursued by enemy agents, gleefully jumping from roof to roof, holding the papers that were the object of her mission. Snapping photos with a tiny camera hidden in her fake eyeglasses at a symposium of foreign diplomats in Cairo. Exchanging gunfire with Basque separatists in a remote rural area of Spain—whilst driving fast over a dangerous gravel road, in an Aston Martin with the top down. (She can load and unload a Glock in .24 seconds.) Every day holds some new adventure.

But do they see this, her co-workers, as Rebecca prowls the halls of the Pan Macmillan offices? Do they know she could disable any one of them in .23 seconds with a carefully aimed kick? Or that in .34 seconds any one who even looked at her funny could be knocked unconscious by their own shoes? Or that in .45 seconds the annoying author who sends all the e-mails could be, if he ever visited the offices again, flying through a window?

No, they don’t know any of this, because it’s a
secret
. If she told you, she’d have to hurt you (at the very least).

SYDNEY MILLER

Sydney Miller is currently a water resources planner. In the past, while serving in the military, Sydney worked with chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf and helped destroy them while on the Johnston Atoll near Hawaii. However, few people know that Sydney is perhaps the foremost writer of water puppet plays in the West. This ancient art, developed in Southeast Asia, requires a strong knowledge of the water and of the dramatic arts. In Asia, vast pools are filled with milk to make them cloudy. The puppeteers lurk beneath the water, breathing through straws as they animate the puppets that seem to walk on water. Sydney has forgotten where he got the urge to create water puppet plays, but it was from looking at a Time Golden Book with a blurry photo of a scene from just such a play. Now, Sydney has built a secret swimming pool which he keeps filled with chlorinated milk at all times. For years, he has scribbled down his intricate, twelve-act plays in the margins of official army journals, keeping the details sharp in his memory. Now that he’s settled down as a water resources planner, he has found the time to stage many of the plays. Sydney has a unique style for these plays, since he has been reluctant to tell his family about his pastime—or to enlist other actors in the production of his plays. Or, even, to divulge the secret of his tarp-hidden swimming pool. But many is the rainy Sunday afternoon when he can be found submerged in his milk pool, breathing through a straw, as he manipulates the ten finger puppets on his hands and the ten toe puppets on his feet—creating a great crescendo of drama such as the world has never seen. Someday, he thinks, he will go legit. He will stage his plays at the public pool, to a great and watery applause. Someday . . . But until then, this is his secret life.