War in a Beautiful Country

  She thought she had learned enough about fear when she unthinkingly left a friend’s toddler alone at an open window in a high rise apartment; or when showing her paintings to the public felt like an on-coming car crash; or when she realized the glider plane had no motor; or when her marriage died because no one loved her. Or, worse, because she loved no one, but had begun to cry for dogs in the news.

  She used to be afraid of dying like this. Now she was afraid of living like this.

  ii

  During the day when the sun shines on us, it is easy to think we are the center of the universe. At night we cower with evidence from the stars that we are not.

  So what if I die? I’m ridiculous. Not just cosmically ridiculous, but everyday ridiculous, ordinary ridiculous. Regina had a frequent fantasy of all life being nothing more than a blob of sap on a twig. Or a dew drop on a cobweb. And this miniature universe was made up solely of our own thoughts: our own thoughts making up, in exquisite detail, a world that contained everything that ever existed, every action or conversation, every event that ever happened, even every television commercial ever seen, everything that made up the landscape and portrait of our own lives and times, the world as each individual knew it, just sitting there like a piece of snot on a string. This personal universe had no other reality than our own thoughts. Why not? She didn’t know what else there was. Maybe this was why Regina never wanted to empty herself of her own thoughts. They kept her company. She even hated to give them up to sleep.

  When I’m dead, my thoughts will be gone; they are all the life there is of me.

  Regina sighed. She wished she could take a vacation from her own personality. She was getting to be a pain in the neck to herself. I’m not in the mood for myself anymore, she thought. I think too much. I’m too serious. I’m not frivolous enough. I need to do more meaningless things. I should embrace the randomness of peril like a mathematical probability. At least half of the time nothing happens.

  What am I protecting? It’s our own lives that are the enemy. No matter who we are, whether or not we’ll be blown up by some crazed bomber, we are all galloping toward death anyway.

  A bus crash. Boom.

  An aneurysm. Boom.

  An earthquake, avalanche, lightening.

  Old age.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Bomb.

  Because death is unknown, life becomes the puzzle.

  iii.

  “What if, when we die, instead of the answers we think we are going to get, we just pass on to another level of misunderstanding?” one of her classmates had challenged the philosophy instructor.

  “Well, Ms. Parker,” the instructor threw at her, “what about it?”

  This was in the era when Regina knew everything.

  “Do you think the universe did all its stuff just waiting for us to arrive in one millennium or another?” she answered. “We didn’t exist before; we will not exist again. If a star can burn itself out into nothingness, why would we have a different fate. Made up of star dust, we go where stars go.”

  “Of course, there is life after death,” Marius said when she once repeated this theory. “Why?”

  “Because there has to be some purpose.”

  “Why? What purpose?

  Marius hated these conversations. “Maybe there doesn’t have to be any more purpose,” Marius continued with his exasperation showing, “than just being part of the universal skin. We are the cells of the skin of some entity that is humanity and we get sloughed off and replaced. And the whole skin is the important organ, not the cell.”

  Regina held on. “Maybe. But a bunch of cells coming and going to serve some theoretical package wrapping still does not mean there is an afterlife.”

  “You asked me ‘what purpose.’ That’s my version of ‘purpose’.” he declared testily.

  “Believe me,” Regina changed her tone, “I really hope there is an afterlife for the sake of all the people miserable and unlucky in this one. I do wish for a higher power, someone to make my case to…you can’t talk to the natural order of things. It’s like an ethereal bureaucracy. There is no way to get its attention. In reality, you just have to watch indifferent nature run over you with a truck while you are alive, and abandon you when you are dead.”

  Regina always thought she would die lonesome. She knew she would die alone. Well, maybe in the end there would be a few people the inconvenience of her funeral would annoy.

  iv.

  If I die now I’ll never have what I’m entitled to, she thought.

  Maybe I should contact one of those charities which, if you have a terminal disease, they try to give you what you wish for—like baseball tickets or an oboe.

  But we’re all going to die, so why wasn’t there an organization that gave you what you wished for all your life.

  Probably because in some deep primitive recess we know death, being the inevitable order of things, isn’t that important after all. She had heard it a million times on the news “….only one dead…”

  A mere personal challenge.

  She had always thought someday she’d get around to becoming an organ donor, so she wouldn’t be entirely useless both in life and in death. But of course if she got blown up, she’d be in pieces, and that would do no one any good; she would be worthless even for the body farm where forensic scientists let you lie out in the field to test how your corpse bleeds, crumbles, decays, oozes, and sinks in on itself.

  Hell, there wouldn’t even be enough left of her to train the cadaver dogs.

  A new kind of depression had set in.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  i.

  Detective Walker waited for Drew at the counter. He knew Drew was furious but would come anyway. It was either come here or go to the station. Walker wanted to talk to Drew because he was the last person to handle Regina’s mail, and this time the “birthday” threat was postmarked from New York City.

  “Would I be so foolish!” Drew asked him over the phone.

  Maybe.

  Walker knew you never knew, especially since it was he himself who had foolishly slipped the previous newspaper article, meant to seem like another threat from the unknown bomber, under Regina’s loft door. That one time.

  Just that one time.

  It was easy. In another common New York contradiction, even those who live with four locks on their own doors leave their building entrance open. He walked right in. If anyone questioned him, or if Regina caught him, well, he had a right to be there: he was on her case. He wondered why a woman like her would want to live in an old factory. Didn’t they ever paint these walls? He started to climb the stairs; he had eyed the iffy, old freight elevator and decided that all the tenants probably took the stairs.

  She wasn’t home. In the dim hallway, he bent down and slipped the envelope out of his gloved hand under the large metal door. He never even questioned what he was doing. It was necessary. It became necessary when it seemed the real notes had stopped and he was possessed to find, or make, a reason to stay in contact with Nina. She was now entirely uncooperative with him and had shut him out since their little ride together, referring all questions about Regina to Regina. There was nothing he could do about this, except maybe take the drastic step of forcing a subpoena on her, but he knew that would make everything worse. And he didn’t have grounds. He needed a reason she could not turn away from.

  If it weren’t for Nina, Walker would have given up Regina’s case altogether, and not even allowed Angela to spend time on it anymore. But his perverse attraction to Nina kept them both on the job.

  And who knows, maybe Drew did send this latest note. Or maybe he sent all of them. Or none of them. Walker wanted a booth so he and Drew could talk but they were all filled. He hoped one would open up before Drew got there. The counter was too noisy.

  “Just coffee, lots of milk, no sugar,” Walker said.

  The waitress gave him a New York “are-you-nuts-’just-coffee’-in-this-madhouse-give-your- seat-to-a-
paying/tipping-customer” stare.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” Walker said with authority.

  “Put in your own milk,” she said.

  Actually Walker was crazy about eating at coffee-shop counters during the lunch rush in busy areas of Manhattan. “If you ever want to see what real work is,” he once told his wife,” you’ve just got to watch a short-order cook and the counter person during lunch hour. It rivals air traffic control. The police could solve every crime in the city if they had half that intensity and coordination...”

  “I like restaurants with tablecloths,” his wife said.

  Walker continued, “It’s a dance, a ballet. They have the timing of a goddamn symphony orchestra. It’s jazz, syncopation, and a Wagnerian opera, all leading to a rousing crescendo....”

  “What are you blabbering about. It’s just lunch.” his wife said.

  Just lunch..! He was sorry she had never seen the beauty of it all.

  “Well, detective,” Drew said, appearing at the counter, “What do you want?”

  Walker noticed three young women had received their bill and he knew their booth would soon be empty. He’d flash his shield for it, if he had to. “Let’s go over there,” he told Drew.

  They stood by the table while the bus boy cleaned it up and then they sat down. No one protested.

  “What do you want, boys,” a short, agitated woman in very white shoes asked, as she threw two laminated eight-page menus down on the table and one skimpy paper napkin each, and some warm knives, forks, and spoons that had just come out of the hot dishwasher and were still wet.

  “How would we know,” Walker said, picking up the thick over-elaborate menu and waving it pointedly.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, and rushed off without being offended.

  “What do you want from me?” Drew asked Walker again.” You know I didn’t send that card to Regina, so what do you want?” By now Drew had been told about all the threats. When he heard the extent of them, he felt cheated, left out. It became clear to him that his role in Regina’s life was not that important to her. It confirmed what he had already perceived as Regina’s growing distance from him. Which actually suited him fine..

  Walker did not like Drew. He was too young, too good-looking, and too much of what all that brings out in a person.

  “How do I know you didn’t send it?” Walker said.

  Did Regina tell Walker she wanted to break it off? Is this why Walker, in his mind, might think this was a motive for Drew and was focusing on him now? Drew had no way of knowing that although Regina no longer cared for him, in her fear, she wanted him to stay.

  Anyway, it was Drew who was tired of Regina—her gloominess, this whole stupid mess that never seemed to end. And also because he had enough time with her. After all, where were they going; it wasn’t going to last forever. He never intended to close his options, put himself in a box, a cage. He was not someone who wanted to have the whole picture of his life before him. But of course now he had to defend the relationship or Walker would truly see him as a suspect.

  Drew just shook his head in disgust and didn’t answer.

  “Why would I?” Drew finally said. “Why would I possibly want to? It’s not logical.”

  “Well, I’m becoming less logical,” Walker said, “Hell, it’s fruitless being the only logical person in an illogical world. So, I’m thinking: maybe you’re one of those normal nuts. There are plenty of those.”

  Drew said. “You’re a pretty weird cop, if you ask me. First you tell poor Regina, who’s scared half to death and is wondering if she is sane herself, that there is no bomb, that there is no threat, that she’s not in danger. Then you suspect she is doing it to herself. And the next thing you know, you’re accusing me--me!--the last person in the world to do anything to Regina!”

  The waitress pushed her round stomach into the straight edge of the table to take their order, which they gave without ever having looked at the menus.

  “I think you’re doing something to Regina, alright,” Walker said, “but I’m not sure what it is. What are you...half her age? What is she....paying you? And now she’s stopped, and you’re mad....What?…you thought she could help you with your career....what is your career anyway?...and now she won’t....What is it, is she a cover because you’re gay and she’s going to tell....what....? No, I wouldn’t do that,” Walker said as he grabbed Drew’s wrist. “No, that’s worse than sending the card. Look, I could make just that one move very bad for you, but I’m giving you a break here. Talk to me.”

  Rage made Drew unable to talk, even if he wanted to. Although Walker and Drew had kept their voices down, people started to look around apprehensively, not sure who these two men were or what they were going to do. But everyone relaxed when the waitress brought their order and Drew and Walker seemed to back off each other. Drew bit into his phony turkey sandwich and chewed furiously, silently. Walker sipped his watery tomato rice soup with low, evenly spaced liquid sounds.

  Finally Drew sighed, realizing that between them it wasn’t he who had the power. “Ok, I’m sorry. But I’m tired of everyone suspecting me of every bad thing under the sun because of the difference between my age and Regina’s. If I were an older man with a much younger woman you wouldn’t be making such a big deal”

  “No,” Walker said, “I’d be questioning the woman. Listen, for centuries older men with younger women have been the butt of jokes, and the women suspected of anything but love. People hate things that are different. They were made that way. Nature is a jerk, you know. It only cares that the woman is young enough to drop one of her species, and that the man is strong enough to kill something to feed it, so that the little creature can grow up and repeat the endless, and meaningless---to nature at least--cycle. Nature doesn’t give two hoots about who likes whom. And even when people use their brains about this, even when none of it makes sense any more, that old primitive arithmetic is hovering around in the air like the damp of a primeval forest.....so don’t blame me....”

  “Well, it’s a shame...” Drew said. He chewed some more. “This whole thing is a shame. And I have to tell you that it has really changed Regina. She is now totally obsessed with death.”

  “Death is a valid human concern,” Walker shrugged.

  Walker knew Drew didn’t send Regina the threats. He wasn’t nervous enough.

  “Let me ask you,” Walker said, too chummily, “could it be her sister?”

  “You mean Nina!? Don’t be silly. You know how close they are.”

  “No, I don’t,” he lied.

  “Come on. They finish each other’s sentences and laugh at each other’s jokes”.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Walker pictured Nina laughing. He did not like the fact that Drew had the opportunity to be on such friendly terms with her. Because of her sister, he probably spent a fair amount of time with Nina, which provoked a jealous pang.

  “Are you sure she’s so innocent?” Walker said. He wanted to talk negatively about Nina so he wouldn’t continue to want her in his life. He always wanted to take her down, take away her power over him.

  “Maybe she’s trying to blow her sister up…..not kill her, maim her….. so she’ll be just like her.....Now there’s a motive for you.”

  “I so much don’t believe what I’m hearing that I know even you don’t believe what you’re saying,” Drew responded.

  “Well, I’ll have to investigate her again anyway.” Surprising himself, Walker had just laid the groundwork to get back to Nina.

  And she wouldn’t have a choice.

  ii

  Walker didn’t really know Nina, so it puzzled him as to why he, who got involved, but always loosely and pragmatically, with women, became so suddenly and all-consumingly obsessed with her, to the point where he had become foolish, forgetting all his professionalism, leaving false notes for her sister, and falsely accusing everyone else.

  And now her.

  Nina knew. She had seen it before
and she didn’t like it at all. At first she noticed the well-dressed man outside so often as she left her office, she thought he worked in the building. Sometimes he would just walk past and glance at her. Other times he would wait nervously near the curb, ordinary behavior for a New Yorker looking for a taxi or to cross the street. Soon he would stand a few feet from her, against the wall, and smile as she came by. It started to occur to her that he was around more often—lunchtime, quitting time—and paying more attention to her than the mutual awareness of people who are frequently thrown together by innocently sharing one location in a big city.

  One day as she waited in the sunshine for a co-worker, he tried to talk to her, but he was so upset she thought he would be sick. “Jeez, this guy is so freaked out. What’s his problem…..” she muttered to her friend as they left for lunch.

  Nina did not want him to talk to her, upset or otherwise. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. Her decidedly dismissive manner usually sent men scurrying away.

  The next time she saw him, he was carrying a camera. He started to walk behind her.

  “What do you want!” Nina said as she suddenly stopped in front of him.

  He seemed prepared for this. “Ah….look…I know you see me….watching you…But I can explain! I’m…a photographer…and I think you would make a great model…..”

  “A what?”

  “….a model…I can see it in the photos…”

  He fished in his camera bag for a large manila envelope.

  “….what photos…..?”

  “These.” He said proudly, and more securely.

  “You’ve been photographing me!??!” Nina hissed before he got the pictures fully out of the bag. Her jaw was tight, her breath was frozen. “When? Where? Why?”

  “I followed you a few places…you didn’t see me…it was ok…photographers do that all the time, and here, look, they turned out great.” He was relaxed now. He handed her the photos.

  Nina did not know what to expect, but automatically imagined the typical cliché “model” photos: face in profile with interesting light, casual laughter, a head turned in sidelong glance.

  Instead, they were long shots of the way she walked, and cropped shots of the braces and crutches she walked with. There was one photo at the nearby Public Library, as she struggled up the long flight of steps with all her distorted movements—the unbendable legs with the ass sticking out, the bulging arm muscles lifting her full body weight—clearly captured.