57

If H1 were to mulct me for even twenty dollars, he’d give me the slip, and though I neither needed nor wanted him with me, I couldn’t let him run away from the situation, because I wanted to run away from the situation, and when everybody runs away from the situation fascism happens, or the death of journalism, or pythons running wild in the Everglades. Anyway, he could help. I had a few ideas where to look for H2, but H1 knew his hotspots. Should the trail run cold in Cap Ferret, he could point me to the Swiss chalet outside Montreux. Or the apartment in Venice. Or, whatever, the houseboat on the River Cam or the mountain lair at Innsbruck. Wherever H2 was, I needed to go. I couldn’t save my sister over the phone or by any other indirect means. Nor could A fend for herself. She never could before, and she certainly couldn’t now after years of otiose living, her every whim satisfied by paid vassals.

My mother said that A said that I already had A’s new phone number. Meaning: someone planted it on me. I searched through the papers and books on my desk. On the back of one of the notebook pages in the top folder was a red ink scrawl in a neat hand that was not mine. It was a British cellphone number. Which could easily have been planted while I was drugged and pinioned like a butterfly. Or during the I-don’t-know-how-long it took to spirit me back to my apartment.

I painstakingly entered each of the numbers in the long form you have to use when dialling overseas, still, in the twenty-first century. The dial tone was British; there were three rings before a sleepy female voice answered.

V? said the voice.

A?

What’s going on? Maman said you were in trouble.

There was the sound of her muffling the phone with her hand, talking to someone else. A lengthy stretch of fraught silence.

A? I said, after a while, making a wtf gesture to H1, who shrugged.

Hello, Vanessa. This is H2.

What are you doing with my sister?

She’s here of her own free will. She can leave any time.

Put her back on the phone.

That is not possible. I had to give her an injection of a powerful sedative.

You rapey fucking bastard. I will rip your balls out with my teeth.

He sighed. So much spirit. Such a waste.

Where are you?

I cannot tell you where I am. I value too greatly my balls.

I hung up. I had an idea.

I have an idea, I said to H1.

I went to my laptop and logged into Apple Support. Looked for a number where I could call a human person. Called. Waited on hold. While I was waiting I decided to make H1 and myself a Singani Sazerac.

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Three hours and several of these delicious creations later, I was talking to an apparently human person who claimed to be endowed with the requisite authority.

My name is Angelique de Saxe, I said. Someone stole my phone. And I’m away from my computer so I can’t use ‘Find My iPhone’ because I don’t remember my iCloud username or password.

I know everything about A, because almost everything about A is the same as everything about me. I was taking a chance that H2 would be overconfident enough not to throw away A’s real phone, whose number I still had in my contacts. I figured that the number I’d called was a burner acquired for single use. But if he’d kept her iPhone, and left it on – there would be good reasons for doing so if he wanted to keep up the illusion that she had not been kidnapped – I’d be able to track her to wherever they were.

The process of getting Apple Support to reset A’s username and password is called social engineering by hackers. I know this because I once translated an Italian thriller about cybercrime that was so convincing I threw out my digital devices and rebooted my life with new, air-gapped devices, despite which I’m convinced everyone is tracking my every keystroke. There’s a word for this new kind of paranoia, or there should be. Not that it matters. We know we’re being watched and we keep playing with our toys. Maybe we like being watched.

H1 was drifting around my living room, gawking at the art on my walls.

What is this blurry photo? he asked.

Francesca Woodman. She killed herself in 1981.

Because she couldn’t figure out how to focus her camera?

Threw herself out of this apartment. That’s why I bought it.

The apartment or the photograph?

Both.

He didn’t have anything smart to say after that. Or ever, but I’m not the type who keeps score.

I like the one with the swan, he said.

But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead, I said, because I didn’t want him to see my emotional response to the mention of my favourite photograph.

Check out the Charline von Heyl painting on the other wall, I said. More your speed, I should think.

He walked over to the painting.

Why do you say that? he said. It’s hideous.

It’s called Bois-Tu De La Bière? I said.

He stationed himself directly in front of the emphatically yellow canvas edged with spidery black scratches which spread and triangulated towards the middle.

It’s still hideous.

Somehow, at length, my daft plan worked. I reset A’s password. I logged into her account and tracked her phone.

What the hell, I said, as the map scrolled and then centred, a blue dot pulsing where her phone, and hopefully A, were situated.

H1 looked over my shoulder. Where is this?

Ever been to France? I said. Using my sarcastic voice. AKA my voice.

I never leave Paris, he said.

It’s in the Alps. The fucking Alps.