Let us in!
But the woman who opened the door just stood there—blocking entry.
M. Mardigian.
She looks younger than fifty-three. Condor mining her data isn’t creepy, you’ve done that. M. Mardigian’s hair is gray highlighted blond, and unlike most women in Washington, she wears it curling past her shoulder blades. She looks like the part-time yoga instructor Condor says she is, a slow flow, subtle but stocky, strong. Her face is a pleasant rectangle, big nose, unpainted slash of lush lips. Her eyes are set too wide. She lets the two visitors standing in her hall tumble into their slitted blue gaze.
“Wow,” she deadpanned. “You never know who’s gonna knock on your door.”
Faye felt the disturbing force of her and Condor in this empty hallway.
Felt peepholes on the other apartment doors staring at them.
LET US IN!
The yoga woman scanned Faye, then her blue gaze settled on Condor, a wrinkle crossing her brow as she said: “You show up here with your daughter?”
“We’re not that lucky,” said Condor.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Faye flashed one of her three sets of credentials. “Homeland Security. Let’s step inside, Ms. Mardigian. You’re not in any kind of trouble.”
“If you’re here, we all know that’s some kind of not true.”
Condor asked the graying blonde blocking the door: “Can I call you Merle?”
She stared at him.
Said: “Word around work is that you’re some kind of spook.”
Bust in, push in, bowl her over in ten, nine, eight—
Call her Merle stepped back out of the doorway and pulled Condor in her wake.
Faye edged between Merle and the black door, wrapped her fist around the lock-button knob, closed that black slab to block out the world. Faye glanced away from their hostess only long enough to shoot the deadbolt home, fasten the door’s chain.
Merle’s husky voice said: “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel safe.”
“Sorry,” said Condor. “You’re not.”
“Thanks to you?”
“Guilty. At least, in the personal sense.”
“This is personal?” She sent her eyes to Faye. “So what do you want with me?”
Already got it, got in here, thought Faye. Just need to stay in control.
“Would you do me a favor, please, Ms. Mardigian? Sit over there on the couch.”
Yoga woman wore a gold pullover and dark blue jeans. Was barefoot. She settled on her couch. Faye saw the woman force herself to relax, to sit back from poised on the edge of the black leather sofa, to act as if nothing was too wrong.
Faye followed Condor’s lead. “Thanks. Mind if I call you Merle?”
“You’ve got the credentials to do a whole lot no matter what I mind.”
Condor claimed one of two swivel chairs across the glass coffee table from Merle.
Good, thought Faye. The chair closest to the door. He could probably grab Merle if she made a break for it, definitely catch her before she could defeat the locks and chain.
“Con—Vin will keep you company while I follow procedure. Take a quick look through your apartment. To be sure we’re alone. To be sure we’re safe.”
“Does safe come with a warrant?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” said Faye.
Her eyes swept the kitchen: no visible knives, a landline phone on the wall.
The fifth-floor windows showed the night—Jesus, it’s only ten o’clock! Call her Merle had a balcony big enough to stand on. Or jump from. A wet team could rappel down from the roof, swing crash bust through the glass with blazing machine guns.
Faye walked to the bedroom as Merle asked Condor: “What do you know about me?”
Faye kept the white bedroom door open so she heard him answer: “Not enough.”
In the bedroom. Windows with another suicide-sized balcony. A queen-sized bed. Dressers. Clothes hanging in a closet where a dozen pairs of shoes lined the floor, tidy couples waiting to be wanted.
Voices drifted in as Faye quietly slid open bureau drawers.
Merle asked again: “What do you want from me?”
Condor replied: “That’s … complicated.”
Underwear, leotards, sweaters. Jeans, yoga-type tops and pants. No gun.
“Complicated is never the answer you want.”
“Let’s wait until Faye—”
“So she’s the boss? Who I should pay attention to?”
Framed photographs on the bedroom bureaus: Mother. Father. A middle-class house somewhere beyond the Beltway. A 1960s little girl jumping rope. A near-thirty Merle, fierce and glowing as she marches down the steps of the Capitol building. A cell-phone shot of this-age her stretching into a yoga pose while the class watches.
“You should pay attention to what’s smart.”
“Who gets to decide ‘smart’? You?”
No wedding picture. No pictures of children. No pictures of men. Or women. No group photos from an office party. No snapshots of friends’ kids, nephews or nieces.
Thumbtacks held picture postcards above the bedside table where a cell phone rested in its charger beside a landline extension. A piazza in some Italian city. The theater district of London at night. The gargoyles on Notre Dame in Paris.
Faye’s stomach scar burned when she saw the postcard of Paris. America’s trained spy lifted the edge of the Paris postcard, then each of the others: no stamps on the backs, no written notes or Merle’s address. Had she gone there, gotten them for herself?
“Please, trust us.”
“Gosh, nobody’s ever said that before.”
The bedside table that held the phones had two books—fictions, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, a woman named Maile Meloy writing Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It. The bedside table’s bottom drawer rattled with tubes of this and jars of that, moisturizers, Vitamin E oil. Bottles of headache meds, over-the-counter sleep aids.
“Doesn’t matter if I trust you.”
“Matters to me.”
Faye found a white cardboard box from a dress shop under the bed.
Pulled it out—filled with photos, letters, a menu from a long-gone cafe.
Closed the lid on that coffin of memories, pushed it back under the bed.
Found nothing under the pillows.
“What happened to your face? It looks … smeared.”
“That’s left over from trying not to be me.”
“How’d that work out?”
“I ended up here.”
On the other side of the bed by the closet, a bedstand held a laptop computer. Faye clicked onto the e-mail—messages about yoga classes from the head teacher at some studio where Merle subbed and taught the “Sunday seniors seminar.” No Facebook or other social media accounts. Faye didn’t bother to snoop for financial records, pushed the POWER button until the whisper whine of the laptop turned off.
“Who are you now?”
“Better.”
Faye slid open that bedstand table’s bottom drawer. Odds and ends, an art deco glass pipe plus a plastic baggy with, say, a quarter cup of green marijuana.
She closed the drawer. Thought: Good, Merle chooses to live like an outlaw.
“And all this is your ‘better’ plan?”
“None of this was any plan until an hour ago.”
The closet felt … culled. Gaps between the hangers with skirts and dresses, blouses, slacks, jackets. Empty spaces on the top shelf. Empty floorboards between the pairs of shoes, mostly office wear, but there, in the back, three pair of out-of-fashion high-heeled shoes, the kind of rhinestone footwear that once carried a little black dress from one big-dollar event to another to a not-so-quiet end of the night.
“So if I wasn’t part of your plan, why have you been hawking me?”
“I was trying to work up the guts to do more than dream.”
Faye knew she couldn’t do a squirrel team full toss of the bedroom. Didn’t
think she needed to. Her eyes roamed over shelves of books. When she’d been recovering in the private hospital room, Faye’d avoided the TV mounted above her post-surgery bed for the controllable magic of books. Novels, not tomes of facts she knew were hollow of the hidden world where she lived and had just almost died. Now she stared at dozens of books on Merle’s walls, knew all but a few were fictions, thought: So she’s looking for visions that make you feel something true, not data about other people trapped with you in a version called history. Looking for escape. Looking for …
Whatever. Maybe Merle just liked the thrill of a good story.
“This is no dream. This is the edge of a nightmare.”
“This is all I got.”
Faye dropped Merle’s cell phone into her black coat’s pocket. Closed the laptop, carried it and the receiver for the landline phone in her left hand.
Bathroom, through the door beside the closet. A shower tub. Faye’s free right hand opened the mirrored medicine cabinet: Nail scissors, lethal but only if you got lucky and knew what you were doing. More tubes and lotions. A half-full bottle of prescription pills she recognized from Condor’s inventory as a generic antidepressant.
Voices in the living room came only as murmurs in this blue bathroom.
Faye toed open the cabinet under the sink. Toilet paper, other junk. Shelves held towels. A white bathrobe hung from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.
She walked back to the living room where Condor sat across from this woman they’d trapped who more and more scored like an innocent bystander.
Merle spotted her electronics under Faye’s arm. “Did you get what you need?”
Faye left the electronics on the glass coffee table.
Opened two closed doors in the living room: a big closet, coats for all seasons, boots, a pillow and blankets on the top shelf; second door, a small bathroom.
Faye took off her backpack purse and her black coat, put their weight over their reluctant hostess’s phone and laptop. Felt Merle’s eyes drawn to the gun on her belt, the magazine pouch. Felt the ambushed woman’s eyes follow her.
Faye sat in the other chair, said: “You have to understand our situation.”
“No I don’t,” said Merle. “I just have to survive it.”
Condor said: “Go for more than just that.”
Take over. Faye said: “I’m a Federal agent, CIA detailed to Homeland Security. Con—Vin … He’s one of us, though how is not what you need to know. Someone penetrated the system, fit Vin for a frame. Now probably just wants him dead. Me, too.”
“Call for help, backup. Rescue. This is America, these are our streets.”
“If we call or e-mail, we’re in the system. We won’t know who will hear and find us first. This might be America, but the streets belong to whoever makes us run.”
“Run? What if I get off the couch here and walk right out—”
“Merle, I’m sorry,” said Faye. “That’s not going to happen.”
Faye bored her hunter’s gaze through the older woman sitting on the black couch.
“Oh,” whispered Merle. “Okay. I get it.”
Merle blinked. “Why do you keep calling him Con?”
Give trust to get trust. “That’s his classified code name. Condor.”
“Is anybody ever who they say they are?” said Merle.
“He is,” said Faye. “Except…”
Condor beat her to it: “I’m kind of crazy. Sometimes I space out. See ghosts. I’m officially not supposed to remember so that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Remember what?” said Merle.
“Yeah,” said Condor.
Get her to focus, thought Faye, get her to what she needs to get over.
Faye said: “We’re sorry for the truth, which is you’re stuck with us now. We need a place to hide. Every other place is compromised. We need to figure out what to do, rest. We’ve hijacked your life—not because of anything you’ve done but because you’re just who we came up with. And sorry, but we’re going to keep doing that until we can leave. We’re asking you to cooperate. Don’t try to call anyone, e-mail, whatever.”
“Got it, but really, I can just go to a hotel and—”
Faye said: “We can’t take that risk. You, out there, alone.”
“What risk did you just pin on me?”
“I won’t lie to you. There’s been … combat. Some deaths.”
“Some deaths?”
Condor said: “Nothing we wanted, nothing we could avoid.”
Merle shook her head. “Deaths. Combat. Now you’ve signed me up for a … a civilian casualty, as collateral damage.”
“No,” said Faye. “Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody will know about you until we get back in with the good guys.”
“Your promise went from nobody to somebody in a blink.” Merle gave the younger woman a brokenhearted smile. “It’s good to know where I stand.”
“You don’t know,” said Faye. “Neither do we. But we know we’re here, we know you’re covered when you’re with us, we know we’ll die to keep you that way.”
“That’s a hell of a promise for a first date.” Merle blinked. Let her gaze address both of the strangers in her house. “Is that all you want?”
“Truthfully,” said Faye, “we want all we can get.”
“Oh.”
Merle looked around where she called home. Shuddered. Seemed to shrink.
Then Faye saw her inhale this new reality.
Merle whispered: “What do we do now?”
“Not much,” said Faye. “Hunker down. We’re safe, but we’re both wiped out.”
“Are you hungry?” Merle shrugged. “I buy giant frozen lasagnas, bake and cut it up and refreeze cooked portions for…”
She shrugged. “For my old ordinary everyday life.”
“That’s not where we are now,” said Faye. “But we’re still hungry.”
“Then let’s deal with that,” said Merle. “Can I…?”
Faye nodded permission for the older woman to get off the couch, walk into her own kitchen, open her refrigerator and pull out an aluminum baking tub three-quarters full of tomato & meat sauce and pasta, put it on the counter—
Merle froze.
Whispered: “Jesus!”
Here it comes, thought Faye.
“You people show up and people are dead and you’ve got guns and I’m just…”
Faye said: “Breathe. Just breathe. You can do this.”
“All my life, that’s what I keep hearing.” Merle’s eyes drifted to somewhere other than this kitchen, this apartment, this time of strangers and guns. “You can do this. You can do this. ‘You wanna do this’ doesn’t … But you can do this.”
“You’re doing great,” said Faye, braced for Merle to go off, full hysterics, throw the aluminum tub of lasagna through the trapped air of this white-walled kitchen, charge the front door, scream for neighbors, for help, for anyone but who was here to hear her.
The husky-voiced woman muttered: “If I’m doing great, why am I here?”
Condor walked to two steps from Merle in the kitchen. Silver-haired, still wearing his black leather jacket, staring at this woman he’d stalked, told her: “You’re here because of me. The last thing I ever wanted was for you to be here like this. But you’re all I’ve got, all I know, my only chance. You’re who matters.”
Merle whispered: “I shouldn’t have gone for coffee yesterday.”
“Who knows where our shouldn’t-haves start?” said Condor. “All we’ve got is what we do.”
Merle stood in her white-walled kitchen, breathing hard.
Condor not touching her.
And here I am, thought Faye. Two strangers to save while not getting whacked.
Merle said: “There’s leftover salad.”
Five microwave beeps, clattering dishes, stools scraping across chessboard-sized white square kitchen tiles to the island counter, and there they were, Merle perched on a stool between the stoves and the co
unter, Condor sitting across from her with his plate of lasagna and leafy green salad and glass of water, the same nourishment in front of Faye, who perched on the stool closest to the door with her back to it but her eyes able to see the older couple on stools in the open kitchen of this apartment.
Where we are all trapped.
Faye and her comrade fugitive were almost done with the food that another time might have had some taste when Merle said: “What happened?”
Condor said: “The less you know, the better it will be for you.”
“Really? Ignorance equals safety?” Merle shook her head. “Forget about trying to sell me that, not while I can’t walk out my own front door.”
Faye saw Condor’s eyes—tired, drooping, yet following the sway of the captive woman’s hair as she shook her head no.
“What happened?” whispered Merle.
Faye sighed. “Again, what we can tell you about this—”
“No,” interrupted Merle. “That’s not what I’m talking about now.
“What happened?” she said. “Do you ever think about that? Here you are. With only who you’ve been. What you’ve done. What you thought was going to happen and never did. What little you can still do. Chunks of time fallen backwards away from you, and here you are locked in some landlord’s mouse hole…”
She shook her head. Stared at the counter and the glass of water she had yet to drink.
“You’re walking,” said Condor. “See a store window that reflects cars, other people, but you don’t see yourself in that mirror. Then you do, a face you barely recognize.”
Merle said: “What kind of crazy are you?”
“Older.”
The two of them laughed.
Faye noted how Condor slumped on the stool. Remembered their captor’s medicine cabinet. Asked her silver-haired colleague: “Do you have any of your meds?”
“None that will make me go back to not seeing,” he said.
From his shirt pockets, from his black leather jacket in the living room, Condor fetched pill bottles he lined out on the counter by his red sauce–smeared dinner plate.
Faye watched Merle scan the bottle labels. Watched Merle read the label for Condor’s bladder control pills that also increased his ability to … Saw that knowledge flash through Merle but couldn’t tell what it meant to the older woman.