“Wet, tired, and not up for this.”
Lauren smiled thinly. “I notice your fingers look okay, though, and your phone is still working- so it must be your brain that’s out of whack. That must be why I don’t fucking hear from you.”
I tossed my keys on the counter and went into the bathroom and came out with a towel. I dried my face and hair. “What do you want, Laurie?”
She closed the magazine. “I don’t want anything, except to know that you’re all right. I heard about what happened… with those photos.”
“Well, I’m fine- superb, in fact.”
“So I see.”
“Is there something else?”
She looked at me and sighed. “Things will cool off with Ned and Jan. Just give it a little time.”
I threw the towel on the counter. “Sure, things will be fine. In no time they’ll be as warm and fuzzy as ever.”
“They’ll be okay, Johnny. They-”
“No, they won’t. When this passes, assuming it passes, there’ll just be something else and something else after that; it’s inevitable. Because they’re right- Ned and Jan and David- they’re right. I’m not like them, my life isn’t like theirs, and I’m not good company. And none of that is going to change.”
Lauren shook her head. “They just don’t get what it is you’re doing with yourself, Johnny. I’m not sure I do either, but so what? We’re your family.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not real life. The world is full of brothers and sisters who have nothing to do with one another. Maybe we should take a page from their book.” I went around the counter to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of cranberry juice, and took a glass from the cabinet. “I’m best left alone, Laurie. It was stupid for either of us to think otherwise.”
“Meaning what?” she said softly. “You’re saying adiA?s to all of us?”
“I’m just being realistic.”
“Is Jane a part of your new realism?”
I filled the glass and took a drink. “You’re out of bounds now,” I said, but she didn’t care.
“You know she’s been staying with me the last couple of nights? She’s not comfortable here while those people are still… watching. She said it creeps her out.”
“That makes two of us.”
“It’s not just the being followed, it’s that you didn’t tell her anything about it. And that you keep working on whatever this is, even though you have no client- and even with this threat.”
“This is really not your business, Laurie.”
“You can understand why she’d be a little scared.”
“I understand perfectly,” I said slowly.
Lauren looked down at her white hands for a while, and then she looked at me. “You won’t meet a lot of people like her, Johnny. She-”
“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Don’t you have someplace else to be? Don’t you have a husband somewhere, and a job? Go spend your time on them. Go have a kid or something. Go lead your own fucking life.” My voice was tight and harsh, and Lauren went quiet. She turned away from me and stood near the windows. The rain had grown heavier and made a sound like ice on the glass.
“That’s pretty funny, from someone who barely has a life himself, who runs away from any chance of having one, who’d rather poke around in someone else’s life than lead his own. It’s pretty funny- in a sad, pathetic kind of way.”
I sighed. “Do you have even a clue of what you’re talking about?”
“Of course not. How could I have a clue? How could anybody? That would mean you let someone intrude on you and your anger. That would mean you actually told someone what the hell happens inside your head.”
I laughed nastily. “I’ll leave the psychobabble to you; you have a knack for it. I think chemistry is my ticket to better living.”
“Right, right, it’s a big joke, getting help. Who the hell could possibly need that? Certainly not you. You’ve got your own personal twelve-step program going, a perpetual one-man meeting. Tell me, do you serve yourself doughnuts and coffee and give out little tokens for each day of joylessness? Probably not doughnuts, I guess; those might be too much fun. And they might somehow interfere with getting those precious miles in. Now, in which step do you pledge yourself to complete and utter isolation? Is that before or after the hair shirt and the self-flagellation?”
“You’re pretty funny yourself,” I said quietly, but it didn’t slow her down.
“I guess you’ve made it work for you, though,” she said. “I mean, I can’t remember the last time I heard you mention Anne.”
“Jesus-”
“Do you talk about her to anyone, Johnny? Can you even bring yourself to say her name?”
I stared at Lauren’s back. Her shoulders were stiff and her head was bent. “You should get the fuck out of here,” I said.
Lauren laughed bitterly and turned to face me. “That might carry more weight if I didn’t actually own this place,” she said. Her green eyes were wet, and she ran a hand over them and looked at me. “But you’re right, I should go. There’ve got to be better ways for me to spend my time.” She’d walked to the door and pulled on her raincoat and picked up her umbrella. “You don’t get that many chances, Johnny,” she’d said from the doorway. “You should try not to fuck this up.”
I heard the hiss of tires on asphalt. A gray Mercedes pulled up to the building’s entrance, and even before it stopped a security guard came out at a run to open the glass doors. Two men climbed out of the car. I recognized one as Jeremy Pflug. The other, I assumed, was Hauck. They spoke briefly with the guard and Pflug glanced my way, and then they went inside. I took my feet off the dash and locked the car and walked across the lot. Nobody ran to hold the doors for me.
The lobby was stone- smooth and pale on the floor, rough blocks of gray and tan on the walls- and it was spare, with no art or corporate logo or sign of any kind hanging, and no waiting area for visitors. The only adornment- if you could call it that- was the guard station, like a stone fortification at the far end of the space. A guard was waiting there, and so was Pflug.
“The early bird,” Pflug said. He looked at my cheek and put a finger to his own and smiled. It was wide and toothy and entirely unappealing on a Sunday morning- or at any other time. The Long Island lockjaw was less pronounced today, and he’d traded his duck hunting look for something more corporate: gray trousers, blue blazer, white shirt. He wore the jacket open, and I could see a shoulder rig under his left arm, and the butt of something heavy hanging there.
“Assume the position for me, John,” he said, and gestured toward the guard station.
I was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt, and unless you were blind or stupid it was pretty clear I wasn’t carrying. Pflug was yanking my chain, and I stared at him.
He shook his head and smiled. “Rules are rules, my friend, and we’ve all got to live with them. So be a good scout or go away- I don’t care which- but you’re not going in without a pat-down.”
I sighed and held my arms out. The guard came around the stone counter with a hand-held metal detector. He was maybe twenty, and tentative, and he ran the wand quickly along my sides and legs and around my waist. It warbled at the car keys in my pocket and at my belt buckle but was otherwise quiet. I put my arms down and he stepped back and looked at Pflug.
Pflug shook his head. “No, no, no,” he chided the guard. “Where did you learn to do this, at Wal-Mart? You can’t rely on that little gizmo; you’ve got to lay hands on him. You’ve got to grab him.” A blush and a pained expression spread across the guard’s face, and he looked from Pflug to me and back again. I helped him out.
“Take me to Hauck or go explain to him why not,” I said to Pflug. “That’s your choice. I’m done with this sideshow.” The guard went back behind the counter and studied his clipboard intently.
Pflug smiled and shook his head. “Don’t get yourself in a twist, John, we’re going, we’re going.” He went around the guard station and into a corridor on the left. I followed.
The corridor was paneled in shiny blond wood. The lighting was soft and the carpeting was thick. We progressed in silence, past darkened offices and around corners, to a smoked-glass door. Pflug pushed it open.