Thriller (42 page)

best, not only for their exquisite scimitar shape but because they

were something so intimate he could almost feel her heart beating when he held one on the tip of his finger. She existed in that

one tiny follicle, as if she were a genie who had been put back

into her lamp, to be with him for all time.

He’d made a light box of mahogany with beveled edges and

mitred corners into which he put an 8x10 photo he’d taken of

her on their honeymoon. Her eyes looked dewy and, behind the

halo of her hair spread the fronds of Balinese palms, slightly out

of focus, looking like Tjak, the Balinese bird with a human face.

Behind this photo, he placed the ephemera he periodically collected from her closet, and some of them tended to cast unidentifiable shadows across her face.

That day, however, he found something else, a tiny scrap of

paper with a mark on it. He thought it must be a bit of writing,

though it wasn’t English or for that matter any language that used

Roman letters. The mark looked like a rune to him, something

ancient and therefore unknowable. Thus his suspicions, having

been previously awakened, were aroused.

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In some ways, she was too perfect, and in light of his suspicions, her absolute perfection proved the deepest fissure in her

simulation. In all ways, she was the perfect wife and mother. She

cooked gourmet dinners, provided him with astonishingly imaginative sex, was always there for Christopher when he was ill or

low, was so kind to his girlfriends that many of them kept in

touch with her long after their liaisons with him had ended. She

never complained when her husband went away on business

trips and was grateful for the same treatment when she went

away on her business trips.

The facade was complete, and life went on precisely as it

should have. But nothing in life is perfect and, as Christopher

was quick to understand, happiness is as ephemeral as a cherry

blossom. In fact, it is his own opinion that happiness is illusory.

Take, for instance, the sex. While it had been true that in college he’d left a string of girlfriends behind him, his serial affairs

were not at all motivated by sex, to which he had been indifferent. No, he’d been looking for something. At first, he hadn’t

known what it was, he only knew that each girl in her own way

had disappointed him. Later on, it occurred to him that he was

looking for a shadow, a kind of twin to himself, who possessed

the qualities he himself longed for but did not have.

Lily had performed on him the most elaborate erotic rituals.

It was not surprising that he came to enjoy them, then to actually crave them, but his burgeoning desire bound him to her, and

this bitter revelation plunged him into despair.

As soon as he was able to see through the mirage of happiness

everything changed. Lily, as it transpired, worked for the Agency,

not Fieldstone Real Estate or, latterly, March & Masson Public

Relations. Or, rather, she did work at the offices of Fieldstone

and, latterly, March & Masson, but both entities were owned and

operated by the Agency, stage sets as artfully aping reality as any

of the ones he had designed.

There is a scratching at the hotel-room door, and he turns, facing his fate as if it were the lens of a camera. Let them come, his

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enemies, he is ready for them now, for if they break in they will

find Harold Moss or Max Brandt. It will be of no moment to him

and a bitter disappointment to them. He himself is gone, dissolved like candle wax beneath a flame.

Where was he? Oh, yes, Lily. Of course, Lily. His beginning

and his end.

“I know what you want from me,” she had said at the outset

of their relationship, and she was right, she could see through to

the hollow core of him. In fact, he is convinced this is why she

married him. Since his core was hollow, she could fashion him

into her ideal lover. She could turn him inside out and it wouldn’t

matter, because there’d been nothing there to begin with.

Years later, he had said to her, “What is it you want from me?”

It was night and they were in bed, naked and sweaty from their

acrobatic exertions. She was still on top, reluctant to dismount.

The night was still, as it always was when they made love, as if

it had ceased to exist.

“I should have thought that was obvious. I love you.”

A lie, but not, perhaps, the first one she’d told him, which

might have been, “Don’t look at me like that, it gives me the

creeps,” or then again, while he was making her up, while he was

killing her, “You’re nothing to me. I don’t care whether you live

or die.” And then, reborn on stage, she had glanced into the

wings at the precise spot where she knew he stood for each performance and had smiled at his shadow.

Actors were, of course, adept at creating their own reality, but

lying, well, that was another matter entirely. It seems to him now,

standing on the furthest shore of his life, in the stifling heat of

summertime when it should be winter, that Lily became addicted

to lying as others become addicted to heroin or cocaine. He suspected she had got high from lying—no, not suspected,
knew
,

because in molding him she had given herself away, and he had

known her as deeply and profoundly as she had known him.

Perhaps, in the end, this is how she had come undone—not

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her lying to him, but the nature of her lies. And when the lies

had altered, subtly but definitely, he had known. He’d followed

her on one of her business trips and had seen her put something

in a painted birdhouse affixed to a crooked wooden post out in

the Maryland countryside. She’d left, but he’d stayed to watch.

Twenty minutes later, a car had pulled up and a man got out. The

man went straight to the birdhouse and when he’d pulled out

whatever it was Lily had left for him, he depressed the trigger of

his digital camera at 10X zoom.

The resulting photos he showed to the people at the Agency,

who became immediately agitated.

Then he showed them the scrap of paper he’d found in Lily’s

closet.

“That’s not a rune,” they said, their agitation increasing exponentially. “It’s Arabic.”

He awakens into darkness and a rude snuffling, as if a large

and hostile dog is just outside the door. He’s off the bed in a shot.

When had he drifted off to sleep? He cannot remember and, in

any event, it does not matter. Time has crept on, but it is still the

dead of night.

Reaching under the pillow, he brushes a water bug off the

blued barrel of his semiautomatic pistol. Over the years, it has

served him well, this weapon. On its grips is a series of notches,

one for each of the people he has shot to death with it. In this

way, the dead are always with him, like lovers who have disappointed him. In this way, he can confirm where he has been, how

he has reached the place he is now. To anyone else, this train of

thought might seem perverse, even illogical, but then he’s never

been foolish enough to put his faith in logic.

He rechecks the pistol, although there’s really no need, his spycraft is precise, something in which he prides himself. It is fully

loaded. He takes out a second clip, puts it in his left pocket, then

another for good measure, which he puts in his right pocket.

At that moment, the room is flooded with noise and the door

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shudders on its hinges. He lunges for the jalousie, pulls it open.

The night, fired by a million Buenos Aires lights, comes flooding in, nearly blinding him. He forgets his commitment to remain

in the room and flings open the window. Beyond the crumbling

concrete ledge is a black metal fire escape, onto which he swings.

The noise from inside the room is deafening, and without a

backward glance he hurls himself up the metal rungs, climbing

breathlessly without pausing for even an instant to take in the

high sky, the rearing black mountains. But when he gains the

rooftop, the first thing he sees is the spangled ocean running up

to spend itself on the wide swath of sand, whose color and curve

matches exactly the shape of Lily’s eyelash.

He looks around. The landscape he has ascended onto is flat

as a bare stage, smelling of creosote and decayed fish. Here and

there rise the squat shapes of ventilator housings, but in fact the

rooftop is dominated by the skeleton that holds fast the enormous neon sign advertising the hotel: EL PORTAL,
the doorway,

as if it were a pleasure palace instead of a water-bug-infested hellhole. This he understands completely. It is nothing more than a

stage set, a huge construct of brightly colored fantasy trying to

mimic reality. But up close, its ugly black ironwork looms like a

depressing image of urban sprawl.

Sounds come from below him, chaotic and harsh, and he

backs away. Gun at the ready, he finds the nearest of the blocky

ventilator housings and crouches down behind it. Anyone who

follows him up will come into his sights. At his back the neon

sign perks and sizzles, throwing off colored light like a dying star.

He sees pigeons wheeling across the lurid sky. Far below him a

dog barks, a forlorn sound he somehow comprehends.

All at once, there is movement above the parapet—a shape, a

silhouette darker by far than the glittering night, and he squeezes

off a shot. The shape, more visible now, resolves itself into a figure. The figure comes at him even as he squeezes off shot after

shot. He throws away the empty clip, retreats to another ventilation housing as he slams home the second clip. Immediately,

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he begins firing again until that clip, too, is empty. Retreating to

the crisscross metalwork of the sign stanchion, he reloads with

his last clip. Clambering into the nebula of colored lights as if

it were the last remnant of his past, he fires, this time knowing

the figure will still come on, unwounded, unfazed and undeterred….

He awakens into darkness and a cold sweat, half his mind still

paralyzed. In a way, the nightmare seems more real than his

present reality. It is certainly more real than anything in his past.

The pounding on the door comes as if on cue, as if his nightmare was presentiment. But he puts as little faith in the paranormal as he does in the rational.

No dogs snuffling, instead a human voice from beyond the

barrier. He flicks off the safety of his gun and makes his winding way through the blizzard of torn, cut and folded magazine

pages (he dare not trample them down!) to a spot just beside the

door. He’s onto them! He is too clever to stand in front of it, his

enemies are all too likely to send a spray of machine-gun bullets

through it, having lured him to it with the coaxing voice.

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly and evenly in precisely the

same way he will soon squeeze the trigger of his weapon. Then

he whips around the upper part of his torso so that he can put

his eye to the peephole. He looks out, blinks, looks again, then

whips his body back to safety. He hears the voice again—the familiar voice of his son.

“Christopher?” His voice is eerily thin, cracked from disuse.

“Dad, it’s me. Please open the door.”

He takes another breath, lets it out, striving to calm his mind.

But it’s no use, his son is here. Why?

“Dad?”

“Stand away from the door, son.”

Risking another look through the peephole, he sees that

Christopher has done as he asked. In the peephole’s fish-eye

lens he can see all of him now. Christopher is dressed in a light-
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weight linen suit over a white polo shirt. Polished loafers with

tassels are on his feet. He looks as if he’s just stepped off the plane.

“Dad, please let me in.”

He wipes sweat off his face. Hand on the chain across the door

frame, he pauses. What if his enemies have captured Christopher

and are using him against his will? He’ll never know, standing on

this side of the door. He slides the chain off, unlocks the door and

says, “All right, son. Come on in.” Then he steps back, waiting.

Christopher comes through the door and, without being

asked, shuts it behind him.

“Lock it, son,” he says.

Christopher complies.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to get you, Dad.”

His eyes narrow and his hand grips the gun with more force.

“What d’you mean?”

“You killed Mom,” Christopher says.

“I had to—”

“You had no orders.”

“There was no time. She was a double working for—”

“Dad, you’re mistaken.”

“Certainly not. I saw her put the intelligence—”

“In the birdhouse,” Christopher says. “That was you, Dad. You

put the intelligence there.”

He takes one terrible staggering step backward. “What?” His

head has begun to hurt. “No, I—”

“I saw you do it myself. I took pictures—”

“That’s a lie!”

Christopher smiles sadly. “We never lie to one another, Dad.

Remember?”

His head hurt all the more, a pounding in the veins that cradle his brain. “Yes, I—”

“Dad, you’ve been ill. You still are.” One hand held out in entreaty. “You thought Mom was onto you and you—”