“I’m not going to interfere with Anabel. And you’re not going to, either.”
“So you care more about your ex-wife than you do about your daughter. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You were the same way in Berlin.”
“It’s just the way it is.”
“And where does that leave your girlfriend? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“It has nothing to do with Leila.”
“Presumably you’ve told her who Pip is?”
“Yep.”
“Quite a shock, I’d guess.”
Tom turned and gave him a smile. It took Andreas a moment to recognize the cruelty in it. “You want to know something?” Tom said. “It’s been good for me and Leila. This famous sunlight of yours. It’s been good for us.”
Andreas closed his eyes. Creating darkness was that simple. He mentally sank into it, wishing it were a deeper darkness. “Say more,” he murmured.
“You sent us Pip.”
“I see.”
“It was hard on Leila. I finally had to tell her everything, including what you and I did in Berlin.”
“But you told her that a long time ago.”
“No. Only after I found out what you’d done to me.”
“You told her.”
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe as long as you leave Pip alone. Leila’s a vault, the same as me. But, just so you know, you did us a favor.”
“I helped you…”
“She and I were stuck in something. It wasn’t such a bad thing. But we needed a push.”
“I helped you…”
“Don’t get me wrong — what you did to Pip is unforgivable. I didn’t come here to thank you. I’m simply giving credit where credit is due.”
The darkness into which Andreas was falling was so contourless that he had a sensation of spinning, and to spin was nauseating. Bad enough to have failed to ruin Tom’s life. But to have inadvertently made it happier …
He opened his eyes and stood up.
“I have some pressing work,” he said. “Why don’t you eat lunch, take a nap. We’ll go for a walk when it cools off. Say four o’clock?”
“Thanks, but no,” Tom said. “I’ve said what I came to say.”
“Stay the night at least. Your daughter liked to hike the trails here.”
Tom looked at his watch. He was obviously calculating how soon he could get away from Andreas and back to his woman. In twenty-five years, nothing had changed.
“You’ve already missed the afternoon flights,” Andreas said. “There’s a lot to see here. There’s nothing in the city.”
“I’d need a ride very early in the morning.”
“Of course. We’ll arrange it.”
Upstairs, alone in his room, he opened his copy of Tom’s home hard drive. He searched “andreas” and “anabel” and got few matches, nothing interesting. Tom’s security was lousy — his log-in password, recorded as keystrokes, was leonard1980, no caps, no special characters — and his desktop was punitively well organized, folder after folder of third-party PDFs and boring photographs and business letters that he hadn’t bothered to password protect. There was, however, a subfolder labeled X, in his main documents folder. This subfolder contained a single file, a river of meat.doc, password protected. Andreas tried leonard1980 and was denied access.
The file was substantial, nearly half a meg. He entered obvious variations on leonard1980 before giving up and wading into the keystroke log, the shortness of which was both a plus (less to wade through) and a serious minus, since Tom might not have used all his passwords since the spyware was activated. There was a leonarD1980 and a leonard198019801980. Neither of them opened a river of meat.doc. He went through the keystroke log again, keeping his eyes less focused, the better to see patterns, and this time he noticed a le1°9n8a0rd, followed by numbers that suggested online banking. This slightly less crappy password opened the document.
It appeared to be a novel or a memoir. He searched for his own name and found it toward the end. Everything about the document argued for its being a memoir, an attempt at precise and honest recollection, but when he reached the point in the narrative where Tom spoke of loving him he didn’t believe a word of it. The narrative didn’t become true again until the narrator turned against him. Then it all made sense again. Then it was exactly as he’d always known it was: nobody who knew him could love him. And they were right, as he’d been right. There was something very wrong with him.
He clawed his face. Time was passing. He stared at the computer screen for what seemed like a millisecond but must have been half an hour, because the document file was closed and he knew how the story ended. He was typing le1°9n8a0rd as the subject header of an email. He selected andtylertoo@cruzio.com from his address book and attached a river of meat.doc. The reason he couldn’t feel time passing was that his mind was moving faster than it ever had before, moving without him, leaving him behind. He hit Send.
Tom was waiting for him on the veranda. Andreas couldn’t look at him, but friendly words were issuing from his mouth, the number of hectares that Los Volcanes comprised, the protection status of the national park to the north. They walked down to the river and across the plank bridge and up the first trail leading to a height, a lesser pinnacle. As the trail steepened, Tom began to huff.
He ought to have moderated his pace, for Tom’s sake, but it seemed urgent to reach the top as soon as possible. It seemed to him he had an assignation with a woman who might leave. He had something most glorious to dedicate to her. It was urgent that she not leave. Or die — that was it. She might die before he made it to the top. She wasn’t even there but she might die before he got there. Even though he hadn’t asked her to come and visit him, he hated her for not coming. Hated her and needed her and hated her and needed her. Everything was effect now, nothing cause. He had a dim recollection of having been a lucky person. Surely it was lucky that she’d survived her cancer treatments. She could still receive his dedication, if only he could make it to the top in time.
At the summit was a mirador with a rough-hewn bench. The pinnacles on the far side of the valley were aflame with the setting sun, but already this side of the valley was in shadow. The edge of the cliff was rounded and slippery with sandstone gravel. Below was a drop of several hundred meters, vertical bare rock with a few hardy epiphytes clinging to it.
Tom came huffing up the trail, his face red, his shirt blotched with sweat. “You’re a fitter man than I,” he said, dropping onto the bench.
“The view is worth it, don’t you think?”
Tom dutifully raised his head to take in the view. Multiple flocks of parakeets were screeching in the valley. But the beauty of the red rock and green foliage and blue sky was only an idea. The world, its being, every atom of it, was a horror.
When Tom had caught his breath, Andreas turned to him and opened his mouth. He would have liked to say Everything is a horror to me. Won’t you be my friend again? But instead a voice said, “By the way? I saw your daughter naked.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
He would have liked to say You won’t believe this, but I loved her. “I told her to strip, and she stripped for me. Her body is exquisite.”
“Shut up,” Tom said.
I hardly knew her, but I loved her. I loved you, too. “I had my tongue in her pussy. It was very nice. Very lecker, to use the apt German word. She liked it, too.”
Tom lurched to his feet. “Shut the fuck up! What is wrong with you?”
Won’t you please help me?
“She didn’t do anything you didn’t want to do yourself. The only difference is that she did it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”