Prisons, according to Bonnie Card, were highly underappreciated.
They’d had this conversation nearly a decade earlier, in the Berkshires, on the lakefront deck of the Cards’ summer retreat. The cottage itself was a clapboard structure constructed from red cedar and bald cypress around the turn of the twentieth century. At first, the choice of wood had mystified Arnold. Why import cedar boards from Ontario, or barge cypress planks up the Connecticut River, when the local forest abounded with white pine and Balsam firs? Bonnie and Gilbert hadn’t a clue. They’d purchased the property from a real estate firm in Pittsfield. Enough history for them. But Arnold had made a point investigating the construction. He’d spoken to the former owner of the defunct summer camp across the lake, who’d referred him to the elderly widow of a local dairy farmer. The only answer she’d offered was: “All the houses around here are built like that.” Eventually, the proprietor of the local bookshop, where the botanist had led an informal discussion on floral-based dining, had unravelled the mystery: One hundred years earlier, there’d been hardly a tree within a day’s walk of the Cards’ cabin. Only pastureland. Miles and miles of defoliated brush. So the Brahmin textile magnate who was erecting the cottage as a fishing lodge, forced to cart in his lumber, had splurged on the most lavish softwoods he could find. That also explained the maple floors on the lower level and the tamarack wainscoting in the bedrooms. “It’s incredible how you can spend so much time in a place and yet know so little about it,” Arnold had mused. Bonnie had responded with her tirade against the penal system.
How often do you think about prisons? She’d asked. Not often, right? Maybe when you pass a sign on the interstate warning you not to pick up hitchhikers. Or on the rare occasion you hear about a jailbreak or violent uprising on the evening news. But prisons are the defining moral feature of our culture—the atrocity by which future generations will judge us. The Medieval Church had its Inquisition. The South had Negro slavery. We have two million men and women behind bars. Which is something we never think about, on a daily basis—though it’s far more important than wondering about how our homes were built or with what sort of wood. Arnold recalled insisting that he thought about prisons all the time: Hadn’t he even taught a workshop on gardening for juvenile offenders at Riker’s Island? That had just whetted Bonnie’s appetite. You think about prisons in the abstract, she’d said. Incarceration is a misfortune that happens to other people. Occasionally, when you feel a human connection to one of those people, let’s say Nelson Mandela or the Birmingham Six, you find the concept of imprisonment unsettling. Because it could have been you. That’s the reason Kafka’s The Trial is so disturbing. But the truth of the matter is that you never reflect upon what it means to spend thirty years in a small padlocked cell. You don’t appreciate the horror. And I mean whether for a crime you didn’t commit or a crime you did commit, because if imprisonment is torture, whether or not the prisoner is guilty is beside the point. Bonnie had later expanded this sermon into a highly controversial article for a British magazine in which she referred to American prisons as “concentration camps for the poor.” That had provoked outrage from Holocaust survivors and public prosecutors, but also leading prisoner rights groups, which weren’t exactly thrilled to find themselves allied with Professor Babykiller. Now, a terrorism charge hanging over his head, Arnold couldn’t shake Bonnie’s final words on the subject: People like Arnold Brinkman don’t think about prisons because people like Arnold Brinkman don’t end up in prisons. Maybe people like him might spend a few months in a country club jail if they misappropriated other people’s money, but these institutions were like boarding schools for recalcitrant adults, wall-less facilities surrounded by chalk lines, not real prisons where rape and isolation defined the daily routine. That Arnold might be sent to a run-of-the-mill locks-and-bars federal penitentiary—for many years, if not forever—was absolutely unthinkable. He refused to let that happen.
But what then? Arnold wasn’t exactly capable of holing himself up in the basement of the nursery with a stockpile of ammunition, a là Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—nor was he foolish enough to try. He certainly wasn’t ready to call it quits with a cup of hemlock. The wisest choice would have been to follow Vince Sprague to Fiji—or some similar island sanctuary, because one atoll probably wasn’t large enough for the two of them—but that sort of escape required planning and connections and time. Arnold had none of these. He wasn’t even sure where he’d put his passport. Moreover, he couldn’t possibly hope to make it past airport security. That was the difference between Arnold and his ex-brother-in-law: Celeste’s husband was just another obscure white-slaver, not even a footnote on the crime-blotter. The Tongue Terrorist was a household name. Which meant, ironically, that Gilbert Card had been right. It was all about borders. And Arnold was on the wrong side of them. He’d end up spending the rest of his life in a 8’ x 10’ cell, another darling of the Left like Mumia Abu-Jamal or Lisl Auman, because he happened to be standing on one side of an arbitrary political boundary, a line as imaginary as the equator. In some countries, sticking out his tongue at the American flag would have made him a hero. He could have been elected mayor of Havana or Tehran. But that did him little good in New York City after 9-11. Even the so-called liberals would offer a half-hearted, apologetic defence: We deplore his actions, but we believe in the principles of free expression. Because we do love America. He had hundreds of “free-thinking” friends, but not one couple he could call upon who would let him hide out in their cellar while the FBI hunted for him. Not if that meant jeopardizing their own freedom or compromising their grandchildren’s chances of preschool admission. He also had a rolodex full of college classmates and hiking partners, every last one of whom, he sensed viscerally, would have handed Anne Frank over to the Germans. Even Bonnie and Gilbert would urge him to turn himself in. Only Judith might help him—if she could. And Guillermo. He didn’t doubt the business manager would shield him from a hail of bullets, if necessary. But loyalty and utility were not one and the same. Where could the Venezuelan possible conceal him that the authorities wouldn’t think to look? What Arnold needed was a new friend: an instant Sancho Panza. Or a sure-shot mistress of the Belle Star-Calamity Jane variety.
That’s when he thought of the girl. Why not? They shared no common past, no mutual acquaintances. She wasn’t enough part of his life that the powers-that-be would ever think to trace him to her. Maybe he could offer the girl a trade: He’d do the damned interview her way if she’d let him hide in her closet. Not forever—just long enough for him to gain his bearing. Long enough to arrange for a more permanent escape. Even Judith couldn’t reasonably fault him for contacting the girl under these circumstances. Arnold knew enough not to return home: As much as he longed to see his wife, to discuss this crisis like any other family emergency, he imagined the FBI was already ensconced at their townhouse—lifting fingerprints from their glassware, scanning their computer for pornography, exploring their basement with a Geiger counter. So he’d have to take the initiative and grant himself Judith’s permission to contact the girl. They were a nation at war, right? Well, war made strange bedfellows. Metaphorically speaking. If his only friend turned out to be a radical reporter half his age, Arnold was no longer in a position to turn down any offer of assistance. He was even willing to eat crow and concede that he needed Cassandra’s help desperately, an admission he sensed that the reporter would relish. Luckily, he’d kept her handwritten business card. Where he’d stashed it, of course, was another matter entirely. He rummaged through his desk drawers, finally turning them over on the blotter in frustration. The contents still smelled of sweet tobacco from his pipe-smoking days. It amazed him what junk he’d collected over the years: matchbooks from upscale restaurants, insects preserved in amber, his mother’s old address book—which he’d used to telephone her surviving friends on the night she’d died. He had contact information for dozens of retired social workers. But no handwritten card. Of course not. Because the card, he recalled, was in the pocket of his overalls, and his gardening outfit was hanging on the hook in his tool shed.
On the television, they were showing a taped interview with two college kids who’d begun marketing “Tongue Traitor” paraphernalia. T-shirts and caps. The shirts featured gargantuan mouths with protruding tongues and captions like: “The Tongue Traitor: From His Lips to Osama’s Ass” and “Loose Tongues Topple Towers: Keep Your Mouth Shut.” Arnold swept his elbow across the desk, knocking the television to the carpet. The set emitted a flurry of sparks, but continued broadcasting. He didn’t unplug the device—no need to risk electrocuting himself. That would just be more headline fodder for the tabloids. The disabled television reminded him that what the situation called for was level-headed thinking. Before his employees started showing up for work or a SWAT team surrounded the building. Arnold scoured the nursery in search of a phone book. In his haste, he accidentally overturned a bin of exotic bulbs, but didn’t bother to retrieve them. Fifty dollar tulips rolled under glass display cases. The only directory Arnold managed to find was a set of Staten Island yellow pages from the mid-1980s that had been used as a doorstop. Lucinda most likely had white pages for all five boroughs in her cabinets, probably for the surrounding counties as well, but she’d locked her office door. Guillermo possessed the spare keys, not Arnold. Which meant he’d have to dial the operator and risk having the FBI trace the call. No, that wouldn’t do. That’s exactly how second-rate crooks got caught. They figured the police would overlook one minor clue—like leaving the blood-stained knife in their freezer or the getaway car parked in their driveway—as though the authorities didn’t have the sense to trace a 411 call and find out which address he’d requested. Or maybe he was paranoid. In any case, there was no point in hanging out at the nursery. Far better to make a go of it on the streets. Arnold raced down the rear steps of the loading dock and darted across the back alley, nearly toppling over the auburn-wigged transvestite from the costume shop. The old woman was perched on a milk crate, reading a fashion magazine and smoking a cigarette through a holder.
“Goodness, Mr. Brinkman,” said Gladys. “You startled me.”
“Do you have a phonebook?” he asked.
The drag queen folded shut her magazine and blew a perfect ring of smoke. She massaged her forehead as though Arnold’s request required deep reflection. “I remember when you didn’t need a phonebook,” she said. “All you did was ring up the operator and tell her who you wanted to speak to. That was outside Laramie, Wyoming, of course. We had a party line when I was a boy.”
“Please, Gladys. This is an emergency. Can I borrow your white pages?”
“Heavens. I really don’t know if we have any. You’d have to ask Anabelle and she’s still upstairs.” The transvestite scooped a plump Abyssinian cat onto her lap and began stroking its coat. “I wish I could sleep half as many hours as Anabelle does. A good night of Z’s works wonders for the complexion.”
“Can we wake her?” pleaded Arnold.
“Wake Anabelle?” Gladys appeared genuinely shocked—as though he’d suggested axe-murdering the old woman rather than rousing her. “You’ve clearly never seen my sister without her ten hours.”
Arnold usually got a kick out of the ‘sisters’ and their idiosyncrasies. Anabelle, the older of the pair, was a Korean War veteran. Gladys had been a star of the longhorn rodeo circuit in the late 1950s. Both were practicing Catholics—“the most devout cross-dressers south of 14th Street”—and they’d actually met at Sunday vespers on the weekend after the Stonewall riots. The pair enjoyed a cat-and-mouse relationship with the young Polish priest at St. Felix’s, Father Stanislaw, who allowed them to take communion but insisted on calling them Andy and Gary. Since the transvestites lived above their shop, and Gladys suffered severe insomnia, she often greeted Arnold in the early morning with anecdotes about “poor Father Stan” and his adventures in cognitive dissonance.
“I’m afraid my sister doesn’t do mornings, Mr. Brinkman. They take such a toll. But if you’ll stop by later in the day, I’m sure she’d love to see you. She is always saying that we should invite you over for tea one of these afternoons.” Gladys smiled genially. “My, my, Mr. Brinkman. You look out of sorts.”
Arnold held back the urge to grab the old woman by the shoulders and shake her. “I don’t have time for this now, Gladys” he said. “I’m in desperate trouble.”
“We know that,” answered Gladys. “Poor Father Stan mentioned you in his homily. He was warning us against the sin of irreverence.”
“I need your help.”
“We’ve been counting the Rosary for you every night.”
“Goddam it, Gladys. You’re not listening to me. If I don’t find this address, I’m going to end up in jail. You’ve got to help me.”
Gladys looked distressed. “You want an address?”
“That’s right, Gladys,” said Arnold. He spoke slowly, articulating every word. “I need you to wake up Anabelle so we can look up an address in the telephone directory.”
“Oh, is that all?” Gladys answered with apparent relief. “Why not find the address on the Internet?”
“Can you do that?”
The transvestite smiled. “You truly are an odd duck, aren’t you, Mr. Brinkman? Come inside and we’ll have you your magic address in a heartbeat.”
She led him up the iron stairs into the long, narrow shop. Costumes blanketed every inch of wall space. These included the standard assortment of Halloween and disguise-party fare—clusters of Elvis masks, Che Guevara masks, masks of pop-culture figures whom Arnold didn’t recognize—but also several full sets of medieval armour and a phalanx of vintage nativity outfits. Above the counter hung sizeable photographs of each Pope since Pius XII. There were the harried Paul VI, the genial John Paul I, a beaming John Paul II and a solemn Benedict XVI facing each other in an eternal game of good cop – bad cop. But the ‘sisters’ had reserved the place of honour for a larger portrait of John XXIII blessing Jackie Onassis. Beneath the pontiff, they’d written: GOOD POPE JOHN, ONE OF US. What exactly they meant by this, whether to suggest that the late Cardinal Roncalli had possessed the common touch, or had worn women’s clothes, wasn’t clear. In addition to the papal gallery, there were posters of Mother Theresa, and St. Francis, and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. A stringy spider plant hung beside the cash register. The internet terminals, which had been added one-by-one over the course of a decade, ran along both of the side walls. None of the computers matched. Gladys settled down in front of the newest model and asked for Cassandra’s full name.
“What kind of name is Cassandra?” asked Gladys.
“It’s Trojan,” answered Arnold.
The transvestite plugged the name into the machine. “It’s a gorgeous name. I thought it might be from the Caribbean.”
“It means, she who entangles men,” said Arnold.
Gladys stopped typing. “Well, it looks like she does her entangling in Brooklyn.” She printed the address on a post-it note. “I’ll admit you’ve peaked my curiosity, Mr. Brinkman. I thought you were already spoken for.”
“Purely business,” Arnold answered—too defensively. “But please don’t tell anyone I asked you. Not even Father Stan.”
“I can’t keep a secret from Anabelle.”
“Of course not. But nobody else,” said Arnold.
“Discretion is one of my two virtues,” Gladys assured him. “My other virtue is indiscretion.”
“I owe you,” he answered.
Arnold examined the address, penned in the daintiest script. He was about to ask the old transvestite for a map—the girl lived in Brooklyn, for Chrissake!—when he heard the first wail of sirens. They were at a distance, but approaching. In a matter of minutes, they’d have the nursery encircled. If Arnold started running now, he could easily avoid that particular vice—but how to get to Brooklyn without being recognized? Every toddler old enough to speak could pick the Tongue Terrorist out of a line-up. Mickey Mouse’s face was less familiar. Which meant he’d have to travel by night, possibly through underground sewers, or——. That’s when he stumbled upon his plan B.
“Say, Gladys,” he said. “I think I’d like to buy a mask.”
“You’re better off waiting until the autumn stock comes in. There’s a much wider selection and the rubber will be fresher.”
Arnold scanned the walls. “I need something now. As quickly as possible.”
“Well, let’s see. First, I’ll have to measure your head.”
“I don’t have time for that. How about one of those pirate masks?”
“It will only take a moment,” said Gladys. She shuffled over to a cabinet and returned with a tape measure. “All of our costumes are custom fit.”
“Don’t you have anything one-size-fits-all?”
“Heavens, no!” retorted Gladys. “My ‘sister’ would sooner die.”
She wrapped the measuring tape around Arnold’s skull and whistled. “Twenty-six inches!”
“Is that good or bad?” asked Arnold.
He’d never given much thought to the size of his cranium.
“That’s enormous. It’s the equivalent of a size nine hat.” She returned the tape measure to its drawer. “I don’t know if we have much in that size.”
“Please, Gladys. Before the cops get here.”
The old transvestite ducked into a walk-in closet. She reappeared several minutes later with two masks. “I’m afraid your options are limited. It’s either going to be Mr. Nixon or Mr. Reagan—but Mr. Reagan is only a size twenty five and seven-eighths. He may chafe a bit around the ears.”
“You really don’t have anything else?”
“You’re lucky we have these, Mr. Brinkman. We generally don’t stock anything over a size twenty-four.”
“Okay. I guess you have what you have. Which do you think is less conspicuous?”
Gladys held one palm skyward in a half shrug. “We sell ten times as many Nixons. Even when he was President, we didn’t sell many Reagans.”
Arnold held each mask in one hand. He suspected he’d get a harder time for wandering around Greenwich Village disguised as the cowboy. People still despised Reagan in downtown New York. He despised Reagan. Nixon’s offences had been so long in this past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed more like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
He drew the rubber mask over his head. It was tight-fitting and very warm. Arnold’s nostrils filled with a pungent, synthetic aroma that had to be carcinogenic—and with his luck, he feared he might develop an acute-onset carcinoma of the nose. But his choices, it appeared, were either rubberized air or iron shackles.
“So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,” Arnold said in his best Nixonian voice. “I ask for your support.” He held up his fingers on both hands in a pair of victory signs.
Gladys sighed. Outside, the sirens rose in intensity.
“That bad?” he asked.
“You look fine. It’s me that needs the help. I honestly can’t remember whether or not Reagan and Nixon ran against each other.”
Arnold passed the morning rambling about the city. He left the Village quickly, afraid his acquaintances might recognize his gait, and squandered a good deal of time sampling mushrooms on the Great Lawn of Central Park. In the afternoon, he rode the subway up to the Bronx and strolled about the Botanical Gardens. The poppies and yarrow were just starting to bloom—and when he was certain nobody was looking, he snacked on a bouquet of dogbane. Although he was wearing his Nixon mask, nobody paid him very much attention. That was one of the great pleasures of New York City;; he could have wandered around the streets in his bathrobe and slippers, like one of those mob bosses feigning insanity, and most people wouldn’t have batted an eye. It wasn’t the “live and let live” spirit you might find in Alaska or the Mountain West. He’d learned that the hard way at the baseball game. It was more of a collective immunity to the unusual, an acceptance that in a city of eight million people, many of them refugees from various forms of orthodoxy and tradition, one was bound to run across one’s share of nutcases. Passers-by relegated Arnold into that category—and thought of him no further. Only in an Italian section of the Bronx, where he’d gone for a cup of espresso, did his costume draw anything other than amusement. A retired Sicilian shoemaker buttonholed the botanist outside a café and explained why he’d voted for Nixon: in ’60, ’68, ’72, and as a write-in candidate in ’76. “You stand up for what you believe in these days and everybody comes down on you,” complained the pudgy, red-faced man. “They gave Nixon a raw deal. Just like Mussolini.”
He finally set out for Brooklyn in the early evening. There was no point in showing up at the girl’s place any sooner—she’d still be at work, churning up propaganda for the neo-Trotskyites, and he might appear suspicious if he spent too much time hanging around outside her building. On the way, he ducked into an appliance shop and watched the network news on the floor-model televisions. The war was still the lead story, but his disappearance was a solid number two. A Deputy Attorney General stood at a podium in Washington and outlined a series of charges that Arnold would face, noting soberly that none of these offenses made the botanist eligible for the death penalty. The Justice Department was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to Arnold’s capture; Spotty Spitford’s organization had sweetened the pot with $25,000 of its own. The bank of televisions showed footage of Gilbert Card, standing on the steps of Arnold’s townhouse, pledging his friend a vigorous defence if he turned himself in. Even the mayor weighed in with a somewhat diplomatic statement about the importance of maintaining public order. Yet Arnold learned the most crucial information from the network’s terrorism consultant, a retired Air Force colonel, who speculated on the ways in which the FBI was conducting its search. “They’re probably tracing his electronic footprints,” said the gravelly-voice officer. “Credit cards, calling cards, ATMs. When he runs out of money, he’ll turn to plastic. Then it’s just a matter of time.” Up until that moment, it hadn’t even crossed Arnold’s mind that he could be traced through his bank cards. He checked his billfold. Less than eighty dollars. Eighty dollars wouldn’t go very far in New York City—not even in the outer boroughs. That meant another long subway ride over the East River. Cab fare was out of the question.
He arrived in Brooklyn after dark. The girl lived in a converted warehouse several blocks from the waterfront in what had once been a Polish-Ukrainian neighbourhood. According to an exhibit on the subway platform, these early inhabitants still maintained a foothold through nearly a dozen churches—half-Catholic, half-Orthodox—including one that offered Latin masses and the old liturgy. There were also diners serving up blintzes and kielbasa, a twenty-four hour “borscht bar” internationally renowned for its cabbage rolls, a pan-Slavic credit union, and a handful of merchants who advertised in Cyrillic script. But the area had turned over three times since the initial influx of Eastern Europeans—first Dominicans arrived in the ’80s, then Bangladeshis and Egyptians in the ’90s, and now recent graduates poured in from the liberal arts colleges of New England. The panels in the exhibit generously referred to these underemployed twenty-somethings as “up-and-coming writers and artists.” Cassandra’s building showcased the community’s ethnic mix. The ground floor housed an Iranian furniture wholesaler, a Ghanaian hair-braider and a Moroccan butcher shop, but out front a team of Hispanic men were examining the engine of a battered Pontiac, and across the street a portly Black woman was hanging laundry on a clothesline. Arnold was relieved that the girl’s name was the only one on her mailbox. No roommate. No live-in boyfriend. Yet he felt genuinely nervous, as jittery as a teenager anticipating a date, as he pushed the girl’s buzzer.
“Come on up,” called the voice through the intercom. The door unlatched electronically and Arnold entered. He found himself in a small vestibule that smelled pungently of urine and cleanser. A cracked mirror hung opposite a teapoy stacked with unwanted advertising circulars. The staircase was narrow and highly uneven, its wooden steps and canvas-draped railing practically screaming “Fire Trap!” Arnold wondered which was preferable: Life behind bars or death by burning? The botanist knocked on the girl’s door. It opened instantly and the girl’s eyes appeared through the crack.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply. A dog snarled behind her.
That was when Arnold realized he was still wearing his mask. “Give me a second here,” he said. He pulled the disguise over his head—letting his face breathe for the first time in hours.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Cassandra. “The intercom’s gone haywire. I can speak out, but I can’t hear anything at this end. Some good that does. I thought you might be some sort of push-in rapist with a Watergate fetish.”
“I’m not nearly that imaginative.”
She closed the door to unlatch the chain and then opened it again all the way. “You’ve really become something of a celebrity since last time I saw you.”
“Lucky me. Can I come in before somebody sees me?”
The girl looked him over. She was wearing a button-down men’s shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “Okay, you can come in,” she agreed. “But just for a minute.”
She stepped aside and Arnold found himself in a studio apartment that reminded him of a college dormitory room. Cardboard bookshelves lined two of the walls, while a pink dresser and a futon ran along the third. One window sill supported a jar of seashells and a stunted hedgehog cactus; a snug kitchenette separated from the main room by a waist-high plaster divider. Above the futon hung a reproduction of Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”—that haunting image of the crippled farm girl dragging her broken body across a field. This was more-or-less how Arnold had felt since his encounter with Spotty Spitford. On the futon, its head cocked alert, sat a massive German shepherd.
Arnold smiled at the dog. The animal growled back. “It’s alright, honey,” soothed Cassandra. “It’s just an old friend of mine.” The girl shut the door behind her. She settled onto the mattress and scratched the beast behind her ears. “Son of a President’s not used to visitors, are you girl?” she explained.
“Son of a President?” asked Arnold.
“Because in America, even the son of a President can grow up to be President. And if we can elect this guy, why not a German shepherd?” Cassandra kissed the dog on the top of its wet nose. “But you’ll have to forgive her. She’s a bit overprotective.”
“That’s good to know,” said Arnold. “If I ever open a prisoner-of-war camp, I’ll be sure to call you.”
The girl scrunched up her face at him and stuck out her tongue. She retrieved a beer from the table, but didn’t offer Arnold anything to drink. “So what have I done to deserve such an honour?” she asked. “You know it’s not every day I get a visit from a notorious criminal.”
Arnold looked around the room. There were no chairs. He didn’t dare sit on the futon without permission. Instead, he walked to the window and gazed down at the stone courtyard. Ailanthus trees poked through the cracks in the pavement. On the fire escape sat a long, low trough full of compost in various stages of decay. It let off an earthy, but not unpleasant scent. He reflected that if he were ever to cheat on Judith—which, of course, he wouldn’t—it would have to be with a woman who composted her biodegradable waste.
“I need a place to stay,” he said. “Just for a few days.”
“Until you figure out how to flee the country?”
Arnold nodded. “Something like that.”
“I was just discussing you with my boss,” said Cassandra. “I was saying how ironic it is that it’s easy for terrorists to get into the country, but it’s a million times harder for them to get out.”
“I’m not a terrorist. Spitford provoked me.”
“I know that,” retorted Cassandra. “I’m on your side, remember.”
“So you’ll let me stay?”
The girl smiled at him sympathetically. “Let me see….” she said. “No.”
“No?”
“You screwed me over completely. It was totally humiliating to tell my boss that you’d backed out on our interview. And then you didn’t answer my phone calls for, like, three days. And now you want to crash at my place?”
She’d folded her arms across her chest. Arnold couldn’t tell if she was bluffing.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. It can be a bit distracting when you’re being harassed by Black Nazis.”
“Whatever. I’m not risking prison for harbouring a terrorism suspect. I’m an idiot even to let you be here. If I had any common sense, I’d turn you in for the reward money.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, I wouldn’t. But you have to go.”
This wasn’t going according to plan. It hadn’t crossed Arnold’s mind the girl might actually turn him down, but she sounded sincere.
“I was one hundred percent in the wrong about the interview,” he said. “I promise I’ll make it up to you. Why don’t we do another interview?”
“And like what am I supposed to do with it? If I print it, I’m basically admitting I’ve been talking to the most wanted fugitive in the country. I’m not looking to be the next Judith Mitchell.”
“They let her out eventually.”
“Because she was really on their side. Screwing over Valerie Plame is not the same thing as screwing over God and apple pie.”
“You can print it as soon as I leave. You can say you interviewed me last week. You were at my office….You even have witnesses.”
The girl appeared genuinely torn—not nearly as enthusiastic as he expected. Her thick eyebrows came together in absorbed reflection. Then she stood up suddenly, crossed over to the bureau and retrieved a tape recorder from the upper drawer. “Fine, you can stay,” she said. “But a couple of days, tops. So don’t get too comfortable.”
“And we do the interview right now,” she added. “I’m not trusting you and any farther than I can kick you.”
“Throw you. The expression is ‘farther than I can throw you.’”
“Fuck off. You say things your way and I say things my way. It’s called evolution.”
Arnold had been wandering the city all day wearing a hot rubber mask. He was thirsty. His calves ached. His hair felt heavy and matted. The last thing he wanted at the moment was an argument about linguistics. Or almost the last thing. The only thing he wanted less was a grilling on complex political issues.
“Can I at least take a shower—?”
“Now,” snapped Cassandra. “Before you screw me over again.”
“Once bitten, twice shy,” mused Arnold.
“I don’t let myself get bitten,” retorted the girl. “And I’m never shy.”
“I didn’t mean anything….” he said—but it wasn’t worth apologizing.
She lit a clove cigarette and made room for him on the futon. “Have a seat,” she said, patting the mattress. “I don’t get bitten, but I also don’t bite.”
“How about the dog?” asked Arnold.
“Son of a President? She only bites when I tell her to,” answered the girl.
“How reassuring,” he muttered—but he settled hesitantly onto the corner of the bed.
Cassandra poked her head into a mini-fridge in the corner. “You want a beer before we start?”
“No thanks. I put my foot in my mouth enough when I’m sober.”
“Suit yourself.”
She returned to the futon with one beer and took a swig. Then she turned over the cassette and pressed the record button.
“Interview with Arnold Brinkman. Monday, May 21,” the girl said into the machine. It was actually Friday, May 25. “So, Mr. Brinkman,” she continued, “Can you tell me how this all came about? Was it something you’d been planning for a long time or was it a spontaneous protest?”
Arnold took a deep breath. “I’d been planning it for a long time,” he said. “I’ve been terribly disturbed by the events of the last four years….of American’s increasingly bullying role on the world stage…and this was my way of showing my opposition.” Total bullshit—but exactly what the readers of the Daily Vanguard wanted to hear. Not a word about the Scottsboro Boys or Sacco & Vanzetti. “I’m a bit surprised at how much publicity I’ve inspired. Surprised, but also pleased. It’s because I love America—with all of my heart—that it pains me to see her drift so far astray.”
The girl grinned. She flashed him a thumbs-up. “So the war must have been a major motivating factor for you?”
“How couldn’t it be?” answered Arnold. “I have such deep respect and admiration for our boys—and girls—in uniform. But the flag no longer belongs to ordinary patriotic citizens like them. It’s being held hostage by the military-industrial complex, by Big Oil, by a right-wing conspiracy of greed. That’s why I wouldn’t stand up—not to dishonour the flag, but to honour the principles it stands for.”
He mouthed the word “bullshit” at Cassandra. She glared back at him.
“And how does your wife feel about your one-man protest?”
Arnold squeezed and un-squeezed his fist, letting the knuckles crack. “Judith is a very independent-minded woman,” he said. “So I’m very reluctant to speak for her…. But I do know that she’s also deeply troubled by the gross injustices perpetrated in the name of the American flag.”
“Injustices,” prodded Cassandra. “Would you say atrocities?”
“Sure,” agreed Arnold. “Atrocities. Carnage. Mayhem. You can trace it all back to the massacre of the Native Americans.”
The girl pounded her fist on the railing of the futon.
“I’m just saying….”
“—That the United States is currently committing atrocities abroad.”
Arnold cupped his fist in his palm. “Yeah. I guess I’m saying that.”
“Good,” answered Cassandra. She shut off the machine. “You pass.”
“With flying colours?”
“In a manner of speaking. I wish I could ask you about that manager of yours, but then they’d know I did the interview after his arrest.”
“What arrest?”
“The feds finally caught up with him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You really don’t know, do you? That office manager of yours. Sambarino—?
“Zambrano. Willie Zambrano.”
“That’s him. Well he’s actually Willie Vargas. As in: Willie Vargas, Castro’s man in Caracas. He blew up a Peruvian jetliner in the early 60s.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody fucking told me. I heard it on the radio on the way home.”
“Willie? Apolitical Willie?”
The girl took another swig of beer. “I can’t tell if you really didn’t know or if you’re snowing me. But in any case, it’s amazing what secrets people have. Right now, we’re doing a story on a big name conservative politico—I can’t tell you his name—who has a second family living in Florida. I mean children, grandchildren. He’s even served on the P.T.A. down there a number of years ago. His wife in New York doesn’t have a fucking clue.”
“But you’re going to do her a favour and tell her.”
Cassandra shrugged. “We just report the news. We don’t make the news.” She hoisted her bare feet onto the bed and settled into the lotus position. “Everybody’s pretty screwed up, when you get right down to it. You can live with someone your entire life and not know the first thing about him.”
“I can’t believe this. Willie doesn’t have a political bone in his body. He doesn’t even vote.”
“Maybe he reformed,” answered Cassandra. “Not that it will do him much good now. He’ll probably face a firing squad in Peru.”
“You think?”
“This administration’s taken such a tough line on terrorism, they don’t exactly have much wiggle room. If he’s lucky, he may get a straw pallet next to Lori Berenson. In my humble opinion, he’s probably better off being shot.” The girl set her empty beer bottle on the window sill. She retrieved another pair of beers from the refrigerator and passed one to Arnold. “I’m sure he’s glad you generated all this publicity for him. If not for your tongue antics, they’d never have caught him.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Mr. Foot-in-your-Mother,” said the girl. “It’s starting to look like a conspiracy.”
“You don’t think it strikes anyone as a bit weird that a wanted terrorist has been employing another wanted terrorist for the last thirty years….I bet they’ll sock you with a conspiracy charge too.”
“Shit,” said Arnold. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“You’re not good luck, are you?” asked the girl. “But you are famous. The Bare-Ass bandit abducted two federal judges this afternoon and ran off with their robes, but not before making them sing We are teapots, short and stout stark-naked in a five-star restaurant, and you’re still the lead story on the news. Or you and Willie and the rest of your henchmen.”
“I’m starting to feel like Job,” said Arnold.
“You’re starting to look like Job too,” said the girl. “You might want to think about shaving. And, for what it’s worth, you stink.”
“Thanks. Anything else?”
The girl took one of the pillows from the futon and handed it to him. “You sleep on the floor,” she said. “You also wake up on the floor.”
“I wake up on the floor,” he repeated.
It hadn’t crossed his mind that he would wake up anywhere else. But something in her tone of voice suggested that she had been debating other possibilities, so much so that he kept waiting for her to add the words: “For now.” She didn’t. Instead, she took a shower while Arnold listened to the news on the radio. The media was indeed speculating that he’d conspired to cover up Willie’s past. They’d raised the bounty on his head to $125,000. That meant he was worth two school teachers, five convenience store clerks. As a fugitive, this terrified him. As a taxpayer, it raised his gall. Who in hell’s name would pay that kind of money to apprehend an unpatriotic botanist? He turned off the radio and tried to find a comfortable position on the floor. In the morning, after she’d gone to work, he’d shower and shave at his leisure.
When Cassandra emerged from the bathroom, she was wearing only an apricot towel. A second towel was wrapped around her hair. Arnold tried to keep his gaze off her bare, dripping thighs. This was particularly difficult as she rose on her toes to pull shut the heavy curtains, letting the towel inch up her body.
“It’s good for your back,” she said.
“What is?”
“Sleeping on the floor.”
Arnold grunted. By that logic, he might as well sleep on a bed of nails—they’d be good for his character. He looked up at the dog, still perched on the futon. The animal glowered at him as though preparing to pounce.
“He’s not going to maul me in my sleep, is he?”
Cassandra laughed. “He is a she. And she’ll leave you alone—as long as you stay on the floor.”
“But she gets to sleep on the bed,” observed Arnold. “That seems fair.”
“Do you know why she gets to sleep on the bed? Because I trust her.”
Then Cassandra flipped off the lights and the room went black—but not before the girl winked at Arnold. Or at least he thought she’d winked at him. It had happened so fast, he couldn’t be certain.