The orange doors slid open.
Condor said: “Sometimes all you can choose is where you’re trapped.”
Faye helped him into the cage.
Pressed the button labeled STREET.
Zeroed her pistol out the cage’s entrance until that gray cavernous void disappeared beyond sliding-closed doors, orange on the outside, but in here, in the cage, steel walls of smudged silver mirrors showing Faye’s crazed reflection, showing Condor’s panting grotesqueness.
Lurch, and the elevator lifted them up.
“At least one more hostile posted by top of the escalators,” said Faye, her gun at her side, her heart slamming against the ballistic vest.
“You think nobody called the cavalry?” said Condor.
“Whose cavalry?” muttered Faye.
Lurch. Bounce. Stopped.
Faye posted to one side of the elevator doors.
Condor to the other.
Second date in the cool blue D.C. night, Heather and Marcus as savvy as all twenty-four-year-olds stand on the street near a Metro stop, by the elevator that’s sixty feet from the escalators, a perfect site for D.C.’s eco-friendly Bike Share program, lock-up racks all over the city with stand-up-handles orange bicycles to rent & ride & return, Marcus’s idea that Heather hoped he, like, hadn’t needed to get from some magazine or a Perfect Dates dot com, meet at the bike stand between their starter jobs downtown, work clothes but never mind, they’re young and thus in enough shape to not sweat out the ride to the Potomac waterfront, let him buy her a fish sandwich off one of the boat/restaurants floating tied up to the wooden wharf, shame that soft-shell crabs aren’t in season, white bread and tartar sauce and so good, sitting on benches watching moored yachts rock back and forth in the wide gray river as the sun sets, seagulls screeing, and hey, Marcus listens to everything Heather prattles on about and only says one or two not-smart things, then they pedal back close to where she lives and now they’re standing there, aw-kward, each trying to figure out the next move because even though it’s only the second date, well, you know, except they don’t have much in common even if they’re in each other’s cute zone, so instead of locking the bikes into the steel rack, they’re dawdling, watching something weird going on over by the top of the escalators where maybe two dozen people stand talking about like going down or not going down, what’s that near the bottom of the escalator stairs and did you see those flashes, did you hear bangs, people have their cell phones out filming, like, nothing Heather and Marcus can see, check out that especially agitated bearded guy in a trench coat by the escalators and—
DING!
Orange metal doors on the Metro elevator beside Heather and Marcus …
… slide open.
Out of the elevator darts, like, somebody’s kind of cool, way-intense older sister.
And OMG! right after her stumbles some Friday-night slasher-movie monster all silver-haired and shit-brown-smeared-faced with a weird body and maroon nylon jacket.
The older sister spots the bearded guy over by the subway escalators.
But bearded guy stares down the tunnel toward whatever, doesn’t see her see him.
Older sister zooms right up to Heather and Marcus and OMG! that’s like a fucking real gun as she says: “Give us the bikes, hold hands, keep your other ones where we can see them and walk don’t run down the street that way.”
Sister Gun nods the opposite direction of the subway entrance.
“Don’t scream, don’t cell phone, don’t do anything but hold hands fucking move!”
Heather and Marcus remember that second date for, like, the rest of their lives.
Faye swung onto the orange bike, turned to see Condor struggling onto his bike.
Darted her eyes back toward the subway escalators, through the gathered crowd—
The bearded guy in a trench coat met her stare.
“Go!” she yelled to Condor, gambling that the posted rear guard gunner wouldn’t cut loose on a city street for a less than sure shot through this small crowd.
Faye powered the bicycle into the street. No cars as she pedaled away from the subway, glanced back and saw the weird image that was Condor trying to keep up.
Lumbering across and down the street from Faye comes a Metro bus.
She glanced over her shoulder to check on Condor …
Saw a dark sedan skid around the corner behind them.
The sedan fishtailed, locked its headlights on the two bicyclists like a yellow-eyed dragon on rabbits. The sedan gunned its engine.
Faye whipped around, saw the giant Metro bus looming now four car lengths away, three, and yelled: “Condor!”
The woman biker zoomed straight into the path of a rushing-closer bus.
Whoosh and she’s across that traffic lane, standing hard on the pedals, cranking the steering handles to the left—Bike’s wobbling skidding gonna spill!
But she bounced off a parked car, pedaled back the way she came.
Condor wheeled his bike behind the bus as a dragon-eyed sedan shuddered past him, brake lights burning the night red. Condor pumped pedals to follow Faye.
Car horns blared behind them as the sedan almost slammed into oncoming traffic while trying to make a U-turn to chase the bicycles.
Spinning red & blue lights on city cop cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck illuminated the entrance to the subway. Faye biked away from that chaos, powered down an alley, heard gravel crunch and Condor curse as he biked after her.
Yellow dragon eyes and a growling engine filled the alley a block behind them.
Two cyclists shot out of the alley and across the side street then into the opposite alley half a block ahead of a yellow-eyed monster roaring in their wake.
There! Off to the right: yellow glowing open door!
A Hispanic man in a kitchen worker’s white uniform spotted two bikers charging toward where he stood in an open doorway. His eyes went wide, his jaw dropped. Black plastic trash bags jumped out of his hands as he leapt out of the way. Two bikers shot past him through the open back door under the blue neon back door sign:
Nine Nirvana Noodles
The Washington Post review called Nine Nirvana Noodles “a twenty-first-century culinary revelation” with its menu of peanut sauce Pad Thai, Lasagna, Lo Mein, Macaroni & Cheese, Udon, plus three daily specials, but the restaurant critic had no clue about who really owned this fabbed-up former hole-in-the-wall destined for hipness.
Faye ducked her head/braked her bike as she blew into the shiny metal kitchen.
Veer around that chopping table—knife worker leaping out of the way!
The wobbling woman biker pushed her foot off the grill.
Black rubber smoke from the scorched sole of her shoe polluted food aromas.
A redheaded waitress dropped her tray of steaming yellow noodles.
BAM! Faye’s front tire banged open twin doors to the dining room, a long box of white-clothed tables below wall-mounted computer monitors that streamed Facebook and YouTube mixed with muted clips from old TV shows, the moon landing, presidential addresses, movies like Blade Runner and Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove.
A waiter jumped out of Faye’s way/fell onto a table of divorced daters.
Exploding dropped plates. Screams from splashed hot tea. Behind her, Faye heard Condor’s bike crash into this dining room.
A waiter and a customer crouched to grab the crazy biker woman.
“Police emergency!” Faye threw her GPS-hacked cell phone at the two citizens.
“Open the fucking doors to the hospital!” Faye yelled to the hostess in the white blouse and black leather skirt, hoping “hospital” would inspire the clearing of an exit.
Whatever worked, worked: the front door opened.
Faye shot through it, skidded to a stop outside the restaurant, looked back for—
Crashing tables busting glass screams—“Don’t touch him he’s sick!”
Condor pushed his bike out the restaurant’s front door, swung onto it, y
elled: “One’s chasing us on foot!”
They sped away from Nirvana, pedaled two more blocks, a zig, a zag, an alley.
Faye heard Condor’s bike skid, stop.
Turned in time to see him wave his hand at her, slouch, wheezing, spent.
Two bikers staggered in the garbage can alley behind slouching houses where American citizens lived. Near Faye, a gate on a peeling wooden fence as high as her shoulder hung broken in its frame. She swung off her bike, eased inside the gate …
Somebody’s backyard. What started its existence as a modest middle-class 1950s house was now sixty-some years later probably worth more money than it and all its companions on this block sold for when new. A watch light glowed over the back door, and through rear windows, she saw that a lamp shone deeper into the first floor. No lights on the second floor. Nothing that made her believe anyone was home.
She dropped her bike on the lawn, went back to the alley, muscled Condor and his bike into the backyard, dumped them on the night’s spring grass.
Still wearing my backpack!
Faye dropped that gear bag on the lawn.
Stared at the nylon-jacketed mess sprawled in front of her.
A garden hose snake lay in the grass near Condor. She unscrewed its sprinkler, walked to the faucet and turned it on. The hose in her hand gushed cool water.
Faye drank hose water, drank again. Splashed cool wet on her face.
Water tumbled from the hose as she shuffled toward the man sprawled on his back on the grass. Faye sprayed his face: “Get up! You don’t get to die yet.”
Choking, gasping, flopping … Sitting, Condor sitting on the grass.
She turned the hose away from him.
He said: “I’m too old for this shit.”
“Shit doesn’t care how old you are.”
Pale light from nearby houses and streetlights let them see each other.
He said: “How much makeup is still on my face?”
“You’re a disgusting smear.”
“Squirt it all off.”
And she did as he sat there, raising his hands to clean them, too.
“Enough,” she said.
He rolled onto his hands and knees, pushed and staggered to his feet.
Like Faye, drank and drank again.
She turned off the hose.
Came back to him as he took off the maroon nylon jacket, the baby carrier. From the infant pouch came a black leather jacket, drier than his black jeans or blue shirt.
The .45 rode holstered on his right side, the ammo pouch on his left.
Condor checked his vials of pills, muttered that it felt like they were all there.
Looked at her.
Faye whispered: “Who did we just kill?”
“Who’s trying to kill us?” answered Condor.
“Now?” she said. “Everybody.”
15
The way I always do.
—Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”
Taxi, you’re in the backseat of a yellow taxi.
Smells like burnt coffee and pine-scented ammonia and passengers’ sweat.
Your sweat.
A cool breeze through the driver’s open window bathes your sticky face.
Look out your rolled-up window.
The street-lit night streams surreal images. Sidewalks. Stores. Bar lovers hurrying into their neon cathedrals. The window catches your blurred reflection sitting beside someone you barely know. The glass vibrates from your pounding heart.
Condor and Faye stumbled through blocks of alleys toward a 7-Eleven, caught a break when Faye waved down a long-way-from-home taxi.
Condor lied to the cabby about where they were going.
The cabby lied about the shortest way to get there.
Drove through Georgetown.
The yellow taxi glided through that zone of boutiques, bars and restaurants, clothing franchises just like in most malls back home, sidewalks where charm mattered less than cash. Houses off these commercial roads sold for millions and still held graying survivors who’d pioneered Georgetown for Camelot’s glory of JFK, but the streets now belonged to franchisers with factories in Hong Kong and Hanoi.
The cabby turned up his radio—loud, brassy music not born in the U.S.A.
Condor stared out the taxi window.
Saw him holding a red flower amidst unseeing strangers on the sidewalk.
“Rose men,” whispered Condor.
“What?” Faye’s eyes darted from sidewalk to sidewalk to side mirror to side mirror to the rearview mirror to the taxi’s windshield and back again.
“Jimmy Carter was President. Middle Eastern guys popping into Georgetown restaurants, table to table, selling single roses for a dollar. They were spies. Savak, Iranian secret police brick boys working for the Shah, tracking dissidents, exiles, allies.”
“Way before my time,” said Faye. “I’m a Reagan baby.”
“So who are the rose men now?”
“You tell me.”
The taxi rumbled through dark residential streets. Blocks of apartment buildings lined main avenues. Town houses and cramped GI Bill homes filled the side roads.
They drove two blocks past their true destination.
Condor and Faye scanned cars parked along the curbs. Looked for vans. Looked for hulks in the bushes, lingering inside alleys or stairwells to basements. Looked for security cameras. Tracked rooflines for silhouettes under the dark sky.
The cabby stopped at the intersection Condor’d requested.
Said: “You sure this where you want to go?”
“Sure,” said the old man in the black leather jacket as the woman who could be his daughter paid the fare they all knew was bogus. “This is where she grew up.”
“Feels familiar.” True & False intertwined from this woman who slipped into her backpack as the cabby hesitated so the change from the corrupt fee became his tip.
Condor and Faye watched the cab drive away into the night.
Stepped back out of the cone of light from the corner streetlamp.
Faye scanned the surrounding darkness. “You sure this where we should go?”
“Everything about you will be lit up in crosshairs,” he said. “You told me nothing about this is in my target packet for Sami’s headhunters.”
“Do you think this is the right thing to do?”
“It’s the only do I got left,” he told her. “Don’t ask me any more than that. Or come up with a better idea and come up with it fast. I’m dead on my feet.”
“Not yet,” she said. “Not on my watch.”
Then she let him lead her where he’d never been before, where he’d dreamed, where he already felt falling into déjà vu.
“Nothing’s ever like it used to be,” he muttered as they walked through the dark.
He heard concern in her voice as she said: “Concentrate on here and now.”
This residential neighborhood smelled of bushes and grass and sidewalks damp from the previous night’s rain. Freshly budded trees lined the boulevards, spread their thickening branches like nets poised over where Faye and Condor walked.
TV clatter floated from an open window as someone surfed their remote—sitcom laughter, crime drama sirens, dialog from fictional characters viewers could trust.
Coming toward them across the street: a woman in a yellow rain slicker muttering encouragement to the rescue mutt scampering on the end of her leash: “Come on now, you can do it, yes you can.”
Out of the apartment building next to their destination came a clean-shaven man zipping up a leather jacket that was brown instead of Condor’s black. He didn’t notice they slowed their pace until he drove away in a car with taillights like red eyes.
“You sure this is the right address?” asked Faye when they stood outside the glass lobby door to a seven-story apartment building built during the Korean War. Through the glass entrance, they saw no one in the lobby, no one waiting for the elevator.
Condor pointed to the label
beside the buzzer for Apartment 513:
M. Mardigian
Because you never know, Faye pulled on this main glass door: locked.
She tapped the “M. Mardigian” label. “If we buzz and get a no, we’re fucked.”
They looked behind them to the night street.
“We can’t stand out here exposed, waiting for a chance to try a hitch-in,” she said.
Condor pushed his thumbs down two columns of buzzer buttons for the seventh floor.
The door lock buzzed as a man’s voice in the intercom said: “Yeah?”
Faye jerked open the heavy glass door, told the intercom: “Like, thanks, but never mind, I found my key!”
Condor and Faye hurried into the lobby.
“You’d think people would have learned the spy tricks by now,” said Faye.
“If they did, we’d be stuck out in the cold.”
Steel silver elevator doors slid open.
He hesitated. Felt her do the same.
Then she said: “Come on. We’ve got nowhere to go but up.”
They got in, pushed the button for five.
Steel doors slid closed. This silver cage rose toward heaven.
Make it work, you can make this work. And nobody will get hurt, it’ll be okay.
Faye watched him with skeptical eyes.
Inertia surged their skulls as the elevator stopped. Silver doors slid open.
A lime green hallway. Black doors, brass apartment numbers over peepholes. Dark green indoor-outdoor industrial carpet that smelled long overdue for replacement.
Apartment 513. No name label, no door decorations, nothing to set it apart from other slabs of entry into strangers’ lives in this long green hall. The round plastic peephole stared at them, a translucent Cyclops eye beneath brass numbers.
This is where I want to be never wanted this shouldn’t do this déjà vu.
Poetry. Clong.
Condor whispered to Faye: “Try to look like just a woman.”
Faced the slab of black.
Raised his fist …
Knocked.
16
Survival is a discipline.
—United States Marine Corps manual
Let us in.
Faye watched the black door swing open & away from her in this musty green hall. Smiled as she secretly coiled to charge or draw & shoot or … Or.