Children of Paranoia

  I tried to run around the next corner and disappear, but I couldn’t push off with my left leg. Instead I wobbled toward the turn, the walking nightmare following close behind me. Despite his injury, his legs were in better shape than mine. I turned the corner before he got too close to me. Then I waited.

  I could hear him walking, both his feet dragging along the ground like a drunk’s. I looked down at my jeans. Everything below my knee on the back of my left leg was a dark purple. Fuck, I thought. This wasn’t good. The monster stepped closer to the corner. He came relentlessly. If he’d had any sense, he would have taken another route, or he just would have given up and tried to save himself. He came nonetheless. His left hand, extended with his gun out in front of him, crossed the edge of the building first. I reached out with my hand and grabbed his wrist. I pulled his hand, holding the gun, far above our heads to keep him from being able to point the gun at me. The motion ended up pulling his body toward mine. Our chests collided and our faces were now only inches apart. He was weak.

  I looked directly into his eyes and saw death. How many times had I seen that before? He returned my gaze. Only God knows what he saw. Then he spoke. “They brought me here to kill you,” he said to me, the blood pouring down his face. As he spoke blood ran into his mouth and collected in the corner of his lips. The thickness of the blood muffled his words, making him sound as if he were half underwater. He stared directly into my eyes. “They brought me here to kill you. They knew you’d come back. They knew.” With each word, I could feel more strength slip from his body. I lifted my gun and pointed it into his chest. Even in his weakened state he wouldn’t take his eyes off mine. I jammed the muzzle of the gun into his ribs. I’m sure he felt it, but he continued to stare at me coldly. “They brought me here to kill you,” he repeated again, spraying blood on me as he spoke. I pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into his heart. He gasped one more time after I fired. Suddenly, we were no longer struggling. My hand was still wrapped tightly around his wrist and I was holding him up. I had seen death before and his was imminent. I kept holding him up. I decided to let him die on his feet. With his last gasp of life, he looked at me again. His eyes were now confused, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening, as if he’d completely forgotten who I was. Then his body shuddered and he was gone.

  I dropped his body in the alley. I reached down, and with the only clean patch of his shirt that I could find, I wiped the blood from my face. The struggle over, the pain in my leg returned with a vengeance. I had to get back to the hotel. I had to fix myself up as much as possible. I had to find you and then we had to leave. It all seemed so urgent now. I should have gotten you ready before this. I should have told you to wait at the hotel. The blue-eyed bodyguard’s words kept echoing in my mind. “They knew you’d come back. They knew.” I could hear him speaking them again and again through his bloodstained lips. They know, I thought. They always fucking know. If we were going to get away, we had to give ourselves as much time as possible. We’d run and hide and run and hide until our trail was untraceable. It was the only way.

  I took my gun and put it back in my backpack. I looked back at my leg again. I could see the hole in my jeans where the bullet had gone through. There was nothing in the front. The bullet was still lodged in my leg. I’d have to get back to the hotel, clean out the wound, and pressurize it to stop the bleeding. I was pretty sure I’d be okay. There was pain, but I didn’t think that the bullet had hit any bone. It was simply lodged in my muscle. Clean the wound, make sure it doesn’t get infected, stop the bleeding, and I’d be fine. That and a half a bottle of painkillers would do the trick.

  I limped out into the street, gazing at myself in the reflection in the window of a nearby building to make sure that I looked presentable. From the knee up I looked fine. My skin was a bit shiny from sweat, but there was nothing too extreme to give me away. I hadn’t heard a single siren yet. Any moment, I expected to hear the roar of police cars racing down the street. The sound didn’t come. It didn’t make sense to me, but I wasn’t about to question my luck. I’d read later that the buyers, who were themselves armed to the teeth, had warned the entire restaurant not to call the police. They did not want to find themselves mixed up with Canadian officials. They stayed in the restaurant for another fifteen minutes, guns drawn, sitting across from two corpses, and finished their meal. When they finally left, they told everyone in the restaurant to wait twenty minutes before calling the police. They said that they’d find anyone who disobeyed. They asked for twenty minutes, they got ten. Those ten minutes probably saved my life.

  My leg ached with each step. I bit down on my bottom lip and kept moving. The inevitable sirens, those that I wouldn’t hear until I was half a block from my hotel, inspired me to keep moving. My hotel was only about ten blocks from the restaurant, maybe half a mile. The walk took me nearly twenty minutes. As I neared the hotel, I heard sirens for the first time. They’d be a few minutes too late to catch anyone and twenty minutes too late to save anyone. When I reached the hotel, I gritted my teeth and did my best to walk through the lobby without a limp. I went immediately over to the elevator and pushed the “up” button. The waiting there, watching the numbers above the elevator drop ever so slowly as the elevator car approached the lobby, was the most painful moment of all. I turned my body so that no one could see the back of my bloodstained jeans. After about thirty seconds, the bell went off and I stepped inside the elevator. Once inside, I slammed on the button to close the doors.

  When the doors opened again, I stumbled out and headed toward my room. I took out the key card and opened my door, nearly falling over as I pushed my way inside. I fell to the floor and immediately stripped off my jeans. The blood on the jeans had begun to coagulate so I had to actually rip the jeans off my leg. It would have been fine except for the fact that the bullet hole had started to scab over, so when I pulled off the jeans, I pulled off the scab as well. The blood, which had slowed down, began to flow freely again. I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the shower. I stepped into the water, as hot as it would go, and began to scrub the wound with soap. I’d have to make do with the limited resources that I had. After scrubbing out the wound, I walked over to the minibar. I left the water running in the shower. I opened up the minibar and grabbed every miniature bottle of liquor they had and dragged them back into the shower. I lay down in the tub on my stomach, letting the hot water splash against my back, and, one by one, I opened up the bottles of vodka, scotch, and gin and poured them into the hole in the back of my leg. Each successive bottle stung a little less. When the alcohol was gone, I scrubbed the wound again with soap and water. It continued to bleed. I got out of the shower and dried myself off. I took an old T-shirt and I wrapped it around my leg, tying it tightly over the bullet hole to stop the bleeding. Once that was done, I grabbed a bottle of painkillers and downed a handful. Eventually that would dull the pain, although I’d need something stronger if I really wanted to forget it.

  What was there left to do? I sat down in a chair, naked except for the T-shirt tied around my leg, and took a moment to rest. “They brought me here to kill you. They knew you’d come back. They knew.” What the fuck did that mean? My mind raced. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to lie down and sleep. I wanted to forget the faces of the dead. It wasn’t going to happen. Not then, not ever. We had to move. I picked up the phone and dialed your number. It rang twice. You picked up.

  “Maria. It’s me. We have to go.”

  “I know.” Your voice sounded sad, resigned, but there was no urgency. I needed urgency.

  “No, Maria. You don’t know. We have to go now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? What happened? Why now?”

  “Just trust me. We have to go now. Come to my hotel. Bring everything you think you’ll need but no more than what you can carry.”

  “This is crazy, Joe. We can’t go now. We can’t just get up and go like that!” It was crazy
. You had no idea how crazy. I didn’t even know how crazy.

  “We don’t have a choice, Maria.” I tried to keep my voice calm but stern. I should have prepared you better for this. But it didn’t matter. No matter how well I prepared you, you wouldn’t have been ready. After telling you where I was, I got dressed. I left the T-shirt tied around my leg, although I was pretty sure that the bleeding had stopped. I threw everything I owned in a bag. I called down to the front desk and told them that I would be out of town for a few days but that I would keep paying for the room and that I would like them to hold it. They were happy to oblige. Almost exactly nineteen minutes after I had hung up on you, there was a knock on my door.

  We took a bus to Boston. You slept most of the way, your head leaning up against my chest. As requested, you had packed light, carrying only a couple changes of clothes and a toiletry bag. I stared down at your face as you slept, your head bobbing up and down as the bus bounced over the bumps in the road. You slept through the bumps like they were nothing. I had to protect you. I didn’t want to be the worst thing that ever happened to you. My hope was that one day you’d think that meeting me was a blessing. Every morning I wake up with that same hope.

  We didn’t have any trouble at the border. I warned you that I was traveling with a fake passport and under a fake name. The lying didn’t faze you. That boded well for our future.

  When we got to Boston we rented a car. We’d drive the rest of the way. We were headed to New Jersey. I thought we’d be safe there. I didn’t call my mother to warn her that we were coming. After this trip, I knew that it was doubtful that I’d ever see my mother again. Before that happened, I wanted her to meet the mother of her grandchild. For one moment, I just wanted us to feel like a regular family.

  Throughout the car ride from Boston to New Jersey, you were quiet. The only question you asked during the entire trip was “Are you sure you can do this, Joe?”

  “Do what?” I asked, trying to figure out what you were talking about.

  “Are you sure you can leave the War behind?”

  I thought about it. I thought about what the War meant to me. I thought about the family of mine that they’d killed. I thought about my father and my sister. I thought about what Jared had said about my future. I thought about the friends I was leaving behind. I knew I’d never find friends like that again. “I’m sure,” I answered.

  “How can you be sure?” you asked, sensing my thoughts, knowing that I hadn’t given up on the War.

  I looked at you. I looked down at your stomach, still hiding the secret that would change my life forever. “I had a good reason to fight. Now I have a better reason to run.”

  Twelve

  It was dark by the time we reached my mother’s house in northern New Jersey. We had been on the road for nearly five hours. I wasn’t comfortable speeding. The guys at Intel would be able to track us to Boston, where we rented the car using one of the fake IDs that they had given me. My hope was that eventually, as long as we spent cash and stayed out of trouble, they’d lose our trail. It was still two weeks before I was supposed to check in. We were supposed to have those weeks to lose ourselves among the masses.

  I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s little house and killed the lights. You were asleep when I pulled up. You’d been sleeping a lot. Thus far, it was really the only sign that you were pregnant. I knew my mother hadn’t heard us pull up because I didn’t see her peer out of the kitchen window the way she did whenever she had visitors. This was going to be a surprise. I looked at you, asleep in the passenger seat, and realized that this was going to be a series of surprises. I thought about how long it had been since I’d actually seen my mother. Three years? Five years? When was the last time I’d seen her? I couldn’t even remember. I looked at the house. I had so many memories of that house—some good, some awful.

  I leaned over and shook you awake. “We’re here.”

  You woke up slowly and gazed out the windows, turning your head to get a sense of your surroundings. All you could really see from the car were trees and forest. “This is New Jersey?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered, leaning over to kiss your forehead. I was happy—as happy as I could be under the circumstances. Happy to be home, happy to be bringing you home with me. “It’s not all toxic waste dumps and highways.”

  “It’s beautiful,” you said. You opened the door and stepped out of the car. The air was brisk but still much warmer than in Montreal. It smelled like pine trees and burning wood. Mom had a fire going inside. You couldn’t see another house from the driveway, just woods. “You grew up here?”

  “For most of my childhood, yeah. We moved into this house after Dad died. This was supposed to be our little hiding spot. We probably should have moved after they killed my sister but I think my mom just thought, Fuck it. If they wanted to come get her, let them come. They never came back. My friend Jared lived only ten minutes from here and my friend Michael lived a couple towns over. I met them when I lived in this house, so not all the memories are bad. Where they grew up, it’s a little more civilized.”

  “This is where they killed your sister?” I nodded. You began hugging yourself and rubbing your arms to fight the cold.

  I slammed the car door behind me, as I had every evening coming home as a teenager. It was a signal that my mother and I had. We were supposed to make noise when we came home because they would never make noise. You flinched when the door slammed. The cool night air had been so peaceful. “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay,” you replied.

  After slamming the door closed, I stood there for a few seconds, peering into the kitchen window, waiting. As if on cue, my mother’s face appeared. She pushed aside the curtains and looked down at us. She looked old—old and tired. I waved into the window as she looked down. When she realized who it was her face began to beam. Then it disappeared again. I knew she’d be making one last mad dash around the house to straighten up. She’d want it to look good for guests. We were probably the first guests she’d had in years. “Let’s go,” I finally said to you. You started walking down the thin stone path toward the front door. “Not that way,” I called out to you as you walked. “We’re family. We go in through the side door.” I led you around the side of the house toward the door that went directly into the kitchen. You huddled behind me as I knocked on the door, hiding yourself from my mother’s view until I was able to make a proper introduction.

  My mother was at the door in a flash, pulling it open and grabbing me in a giant hug before we even had a chance to say hello. After a minute, she finally eased up on her grasp of me but she didn’t let go. As she held on to me she said, “This is such a wonderful surprise. Just wonderful.”

  “Good to see you, too, Ma,” I said as she finally let me go.

  “Now come inside. It’s cold out,” my mother ordered. That’s when I stepped aside to give her a view of you. “And who is this?” my mother asked me with a triumphant smile on her face.

  “Mother,” I went forward with the formal introduction, “this is my girlfriend, Maria. Maria, this is my overbearing mother.” My mother gave me a playful slap across my arm.

  You reached your hand out, expecting my mother to shake it, but in seconds she was all over you with a hug nearly as long as the one she’d given me. I looked over my mother’s shoulder at your face as she hugged you. You were in a daze. I had told you so much about the horrors in my life that my mother must have seemed an anachronism.

  When my mother finally let you go, she took two steps back and looked you up and down as if eyeing a piece of artwork. “Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing?” she said. “Well, Maria, you can call me Joan. It’s wonderful to meet you.” You didn’t reply, still dazed from the welcome. “Now, let’s get both of you inside before we all freeze to death.” Then my mother ushered us inside. I limped up the steps.

  “Oh my, Joseph, are you okay?” my mother shouted when she noticed the limp. The wound was healing well but
it still hurt. The pain had dulled but spread over my entire leg.

  “Just a small work injury,” I replied. She took that as a signal to let it drop for now.

  The place was exactly as I had remembered it. The spatulas were even in the same place. My mother led us through the kitchen and straight into the tiny living room. She sat you down right in front of the fire, trying to warm you up. I hadn’t brought a girl home since I was seventeen. I really didn’t know how my mother was going to react. I sat down in the love seat opposite my mother, who sat in the middle of the couch. We were each, at most, five feet from each other. My mother looked us both over again in silence, as if trying to paint the picture with her mind. Eventually she spoke. “So, to what do I owe this visit?” She looked at you when she asked the question. You looked at me. Perhaps we should have prepared for the questions in the car. I hoped she didn’t think we’d come to announce an engagement.

  “I got a couple of weeks’ vacation, Ma. Maria and I decided to take it together.” You looked relieved when I spoke, relieved that you didn’t have to talk yet. “I wanted her to meet you.” I knew that this last part would make my mother happy and hoped, in vain, that it would stop the questions for a little while.

  “Where did you guys drive from?” Again, my mother looked at you when she asked the question. Again, I answered the question anyway.

  “We drove from Boston after taking a bus from Montreal. Maria’s a college student in Montreal.” The conversation was a little dance with neither you nor my mother knowing exactly what you were allowed to say. My mother handled it by asking questions. You handled it by shutting up completely.

  “Really? A college girl? That’s wonderful. We could use a little education around here. And what are you studying, dear?” You looked up at me to make sure that you could safely answer this question. I nodded to you to let you know that it was safe to speak.