“You sent us Pip.”
“I see.”
“It was hard on Leila. I finally had to tell her everything, including what you and I did in Berlin.”
“But you told her that a long time ago.”
“No. Only after I found out what you’d done to me.”
“You told her.”
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe as long as you leave Pip alone. Leila’s a vault, the same as me. But, just so you know, you did us a favor.”
“I helped you…”
“She and I were stuck in something. It wasn’t such a bad thing. But we needed a push.”
“I helped you…”
“Don’t get me wrong—what you did to Pip is unforgivable. I didn’t come here to thank you. I’m simply giving credit where credit is due.”
The darkness into which Andreas was falling was so contourless that he had a sensation of spinning, and to spin was nauseating. Bad enough to have failed to ruin Tom’s life. But to have inadvertently made it happier …
He opened his eyes and stood up.
“I have some pressing work,” he said. “Why don’t you eat lunch, take a nap. We’ll go for a walk when it cools off. Say four o’clock?”
“Thanks, but no,” Tom said. “I’ve said what I came to say.”
“Stay the night at least. Your daughter liked to hike the trails here.”
Tom looked at his watch. He was obviously calculating how soon he could get away from Andreas and back to his woman. In twenty-five years, nothing had changed.
“You’ve already missed the afternoon flights,” Andreas said. “There’s a lot to see here. There’s nothing in the city.”
“I’d need a ride very early in the morning.”
“Of course. We’ll arrange it.”
Upstairs, alone in his room, he opened his copy of Tom’s home hard drive. He searched “andreas” and “anabel” and got few matches, nothing interesting. Tom’s security was lousy—his log-in password, recorded as keystrokes, was leonard1980, no caps, no special characters—and his desktop was punitively well organized, folder after folder of third-party PDFs and boring photographs and business letters that he hadn’t bothered to password protect. There was, however, a subfolder labeled X, in his main documents folder. This subfolder contained a single file, a river of meat.doc, password protected. Andreas tried leonard1980 and was denied access.
The file was substantial, nearly half a meg. He entered obvious variations on leonard1980 before giving up and wading into the keystroke log, the shortness of which was both a plus (less to wade through) and a serious minus, since Tom might not have used all his passwords since the spyware was activated. There was a leonarD1980 and a leonard198019801980. Neither of them opened a river of meat.doc. He went through the keystroke log again, keeping his eyes less focused, the better to see patterns, and this time he noticed a le1o9n8a0rd, followed by numbers that suggested online banking. This slightly less crappy password opened the document.
It appeared to be a novel or a memoir. He searched for his own name and found it toward the end. Everything about the document argued for its being a memoir, an attempt at precise and honest recollection, but when he reached the point in the narrative where Tom spoke of loving him he didn’t believe a word of it. The narrative didn’t become true again until the narrator turned against him. Then it all made sense again. Then it was exactly as he’d always known it was: nobody who knew him could love him. And they were right, as he’d been right. There was something very wrong with him.
He clawed his face. Time was passing. He stared at the computer screen for what seemed like a millisecond but must have been half an hour, because the document file was closed and he knew how the story ended. He was typing le1o9n8a0rd as the subject header of an email. He selected
[email protected] from his address book and attached a river of meat.doc. The reason he couldn’t feel time passing was that his mind was moving faster than it ever had before, moving without him, leaving him behind. He hit Send.
Tom was waiting for him on the veranda. Andreas couldn’t look at him, but friendly words were issuing from his mouth, the number of hectares that Los Volcanes comprised, the protection status of the national park to the north. They walked down to the river and across the plank bridge and up the first trail leading to a height, a lesser pinnacle. As the trail steepened, Tom began to huff.
He ought to have moderated his pace, for Tom’s sake, but it seemed urgent to reach the top as soon as possible. It seemed to him he had an assignation with a woman who might leave. He had something most glorious to dedicate to her. It was urgent that she not leave. Or die—that was it. She might die before he made it to the top. She wasn’t even there but she might die before he got there. Even though he hadn’t asked her to come and visit him, he hated her for not coming. Hated her and needed her and hated her and needed her. Everything was effect now, nothing cause. He had a dim recollection of having been a lucky person. Surely it was lucky that she’d survived her cancer treatments. She could still receive his dedication, if only he could make it to the top in time.
At the summit was a mirador with a rough-hewn bench. The pinnacles on the far side of the valley were aflame with the setting sun, but already this side of the valley was in shadow. The edge of the cliff was rounded and slippery with sandstone gravel. Below was a drop of several hundred meters, vertical bare rock with a few hardy epiphytes clinging to it.
Tom came huffing up the trail, his face red, his shirt blotched with sweat. “You’re a fitter man than I,” he said, dropping onto the bench.
“The view is worth it, don’t you think?”
Tom dutifully raised his head to take in the view. Multiple flocks of parakeets were screeching in the valley. But the beauty of the red rock and green foliage and blue sky was only an idea. The world, its being, every atom of it, was a horror.
When Tom had caught his breath, Andreas turned to him and opened his mouth. He would have liked to say Everything is a horror to me. Won’t you be my friend again? But instead a voice said, “By the way? I saw your daughter naked.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
He would have liked to say You won’t believe this, but I loved her. “I told her to strip, and she stripped for me. Her body is exquisite.”
“Shut up,” Tom said.
I hardly knew her, but I loved her. I loved you, too. “I had my tongue in her pussy. It was very nice. Very lecker, to use the apt German word. She liked it, too.”
Tom lurched to his feet. “Shut the fuck up! What is wrong with you?”
Won’t you please help me?
“She didn’t do anything you didn’t want to do yourself. The only difference is that she did it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Somebody please help me. Mother, please help me.
“Were you thinking of me when you butt-raped your Anabel?”
Tom grabbed him by the collar. He seemed very close to striking a blow.
“I thought Pip might enjoy that little scene. That’s why I sent her your document. Just now, while you were taking your nap. I included the password.”
Tom tightened his grip on the collar. Someone took hold of his wrists.
“Don’t strangle me. There are better ways to do this. Ways you can get away with.”
Tom let go of the collar. “What are you doing?”
Someone went closer to the edge of the pinnacle. “I’m saying you can push me.”
Tom stared at him.
I’m unbearably sad about this.
“I polluted your daughter. Just because she was your daughter, just for the fun of it. She said it was the best ever. I’m not making this up. It’s all factual truth—she’ll admit it if you ask her. And then I sent her your document, to make sure she knows how filthy she is. Didn’t you promise to destroy me if I did that? If I were you, I’d kill me.”
Tom looked afraid now, not angry.
Please help me. Not that anyone ever did
.
“Sit down on the ground, so you don’t fall. And then give me a hard push with your feet. Doesn’t that sound good to you? Especially if I—here.” Someone took a pen out of his pocket. “I’ll write a note absolving you of responsibility. I’ll write it on my arm. Here, see, I’m writing it on my arm.”
The writing, on sweat-dampened skin, and with hairs interfering, went slowly, but his hand was firm. The text was complete in his head without his having thought of it.
YOU KNOW ME TO BE HONEST. NO THREAT COULD COMPEL ME TO WRITE UNTRUTH. I CONFESS TO THE MURDER OF HORST WERNER KLEINHOLZ IN NOVEMBER 1987. I AM SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACT I COMMITTED TODAY. ANDREAS WOLF
Someone showed the words to Tom, who was sitting on the bench now, his head in his hands.
“This should suffice, don’t you think? The confession itself provides the motive. If need be, you can corroborate the confession. But I don’t think anyone will question it.” Someone extended a hand to Tom. “Will you do it?”
“No.”
“I’m asking you as a friend. Do I have to beg?”
Tom shook his head.
“Do I have to drag you along with me?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Tom. You know what it’s like to want to kill someone.”
“The difference is I didn’t do it.”
“But now you can. You want to. At least admit you want to.”
“No. You’re psychotic, and you can’t see it because you’re psychotic. You need to—”
The sound of Tom’s voice stopped. It was curious and abrupt. Tom’s mouth was still moving, and there was still the distant rush of water, the screeching of parakeets. Only human speech had ceased to be audible. It was very disorienting and had to be the Killer’s work somehow. But someone was the Killer. Had the Killer always been deaf to speech?
In the mysterious selective silence, he wandered away from Tom, out to the edge of the cliff. He heard a scrabble of feet on gravel and looked back to see Tom standing up, gesturing to him, apparently shouting. He turned back to the precipice and looked down at the tropical treetops, the large shards of fallen rock, the green surf of undergrowth crashing against them. When they began to drift slowly closer, and then moved rapidly closer, and more rapidly yet, he kept his eyes open wide, because he was honest with himself. In the instant before it was over and pure nothing, he heard all the human voices in the world.
The Rain Comes
Fog spilled from the heights of San Francisco like the liquid it almost was. On better days it spread across the bay and took over Oakland street by street, a thing you saw coming, a change you watched happening to you, a season on the move. Where it encountered redwoods, the most local of rains fell. Where it found open space, its weightless pale passage seemed both endless and like the end of all things. It was a temporary sadness, the more beautiful for being sad, the more precious for being temporary. It was the slow song in minor that the rock-and-roll sun then chased away.
Pip was feeling not so temporarily sad as she walked up the hill to work. Sunday morning, early, the streets were empty. Cars that in sunshine might have looked merely parked looked abandoned in the fog. From some direction and some distance, a raven was croaking. Fog subdued the other birds but made the ravens talkative.
At Peet’s, she found the assistant manager, Navi, loading pastries into the display case. Navi had wooden disks the size of poker chips in his earlobes and was scarcely older than Pip, but he seemed completely at peace with corporations and retail. It was her first day of work post-training, and the way he oversaw her, as she booted up the register and filled receptacles with liquids, was all business and no indulgence. She felt almost weepingly grateful to have a boss who was nothing but a boss; who let her be.
Three customers were waiting in the fog when she unlocked the front door. After she’d served them, a lull came, and into this lull walked a person she recognized. It was Jason, the boy she’d tried and failed to sleep with a year and a half ago, the boy whose texts she’d read. Jason Whitaker with his Sunday Times. She’d thought of him, their Sunday mornings, when she’d applied for the Peet’s job. But she’d figured that by now he’d found some other coffee place to be enthusiastic about.
She waited, with the particular exposure of a barista, while he claimed his preferred table with his paper and came over to the pastry case. To herself, she was no longer the person who’d left him waiting forever in her bedroom and then rained abuse on him, but he had no way of knowing this, because, of course, she was also still that person. When he stepped up to the cash register, he saw this person and blushed.
She gave him an ironic little wave. “Hello.”
“Wow. You work here.”
“It’s my first real day.”
“It took me a second to recognize you. Your hair is short.”
“Yes.”
“It looks nice. You look great.”
“Thank you.”
“Wow, so.” He looked over his shoulder. No one was behind him. His own hair was shorter, his body still skinny but less skinny than before. She remembered why she’d wanted him.
“What can I get you?” she said.
“You probably remember. Bear claw and a three-shot cappuccino, tall.”
She was relieved to turn away from him and work on his drink. Navi was occupied at the back with a large plastic drum.
“So are you part-time here?” Jason said. “Do you still work for the alt-energy place?”
“No.” She tonged a bear claw from the case. “I’ve been away. I just came back.”
“Where were you?”
“Bolivia and then Denver.”
“Bolivia? For real? What were you doing down there?”
She got the milk steamer squealing so she didn’t have to answer.
“This is on me,” she said when she was finished. “You don’t have to pay.”
“No, come on.”
He pushed a ten-dollar bill at her. She pushed it back. It lay there on the counter. Keeping her eyes on it, she said, “I never apologized to you. I should have apologized.”
“God, no, it’s OK. I’m the one who should have apologized.”
“You did. I got your texts. I was so ashamed of myself I couldn’t write back to you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am, I suspect.”
“It was like a perfect storm of wrongness, that night.”
“Yah.”
“That guy I was texting? I’m not even friends with him anymore.”
“Seriously, Jason, you are not the one to apologize.”
He left the money on the counter when he went back to his table. She rang up his purchase and put the change in the tip jar. A year and a half ago she might have resented him for being cavalier about the money, but she was no longer that person. Somewhere she’d lost her capacity for resentment, and for hostility as well, and thus, to some extent, for being amusing. This was a real loss, but there was nothing she could do about it except be sad. She was pretty sure the loss predated the knowledge that her mother was a billionaire.
For a while the stream of customers was steady. Navi had to pull her out of the weeds more than once; accidental coffee and dairy wastages were running high. During another lull, Jason returned to the counter. “I’m taking off,” he said.
“It was nice to see you again. I mean, discounting my excruciating embarrassment.”
“I still come here every Sunday. But now you can think, ‘Oh, that’s just Jason.’ I can think, ‘Oh, that’s just Pip.’”
“Is that something I said?”
“It’s something you said. Will I see you next Sunday?”
“Probably. It’s not a popular shift.”
He started to leave and then turned back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounded like something I didn’t mean. Asking if you’d be here next week.”
“It just sounded friendly.”
“Good. I mean—I’m ki
nd of with someone else. I didn’t want to send the wrong message.”
She felt a small pang but no surprise. “Message of friendliness received.”
He was walking away when she found herself laughing. He turned back. “What?”
“Nothing. Sorry. Unrelated.”
When he was gone, more laughter escaped her. A stupid condom! Was anything funnier than a condom? If she hadn’t left Jason and gone downstairs to get one, a year and a half ago, she might never have taken Annagret’s questionnaire, and everything that had happened to her since then wouldn’t have happened. If she’d had a boyfriend, she wouldn’t have wanted to leave town. She would never have learned about the other condoms, the comedy of that. The comedy of her even existing. Navi was giving her a chiding look, but she couldn’t stop laughing.
In the afternoon, when her shift ended, she walked back down the hill. The sky was as clear as if there’d never been such a thing as fog. In theory, she was now supposed to work on a piece the Express had commissioned, a firsthand account of life as a Sunlight Project intern. But no matter how long or good the piece was, she wouldn’t get more than a couple of hundred dollars for it, and she still had her loan payments to make; hence the full-time job at Peet’s. She also didn’t know how to write about Andreas. It might be a year, or a decade, before she could sort out how she felt about his death, and she already had so much else to sort out, such a mountain of unsorted material, that all she’d been good for, after putting in her hours at Peet’s, was whacking dead tennis balls against the door of Dreyfuss’s garage.
Dreyfuss was supine on his living-room sofa, watching an A’s game. He was recovering from treatment of an intestinal parasite for which the freeganism of his housemates Garth and Erik was probably responsible. Garth and Erik themselves were temporarily in the Alameda County jail. Three days ago, they’d “assaulted” a real-estate agent attempting to show Dreyfuss’s house to prospective buyers, and crowdfunding by their anarchist friends had yet to raise enough bail for both of them.
“Someone smells like coffee,” Dreyfuss said.
“I brought you scones,” Pip said, unzipping her knapsack. “Do you want milk with them? I brought some milk home, too.”