“It is a car?” Natalia said, catching the glint of chrome as they strode across the grass hand in hand.
When they were there, when he'd let Madison in to scramble over the seats and Natalia, her mouth slack, had pulled back the driver's side door to peer inside at the dash, he said, “Top of the line. Or nearly.” He paused, watching her run a hand over the upholstery. “I could have gone for the S600, but it's such a gas hog-four hundred ninety-three horses. I mean, think of the environment.”
Natalia was giving him a puzzled look. “But where,” she said, “is my car?”
“Mommy, Mommy!” Madison shouted, bouncing so high on the rear seat her head brushed the roof.
“I traded it on this,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “For you. For Madison. You can't have her on your lap all the time, I mean, she's growing up-look at the size of her.”
“But I love my Z-car.” Natalia's lips were clenched. Her eyes hardened.
“I know, baby,” he said, “I know. When we get to New York I'll get you another one, I promise.”
Her head came up now, up out of the dark den of the interior, with its rich new smell and the shining screen of the GPS system. “New York? What are you talking about?”
Later, after they'd put Madison to bed, they had a talk. It was the kind of talk he hated, the kind where you were up against the wall, no place to hide, and everything was going to come out sooner or later. He felt vulnerable. Irritated. Felt as if he was standing before the judge all over again, the lawyer, his probation officer.
Natalia had made coffee and they sat across from each other in the living room, holding on to their mugs as if they were weighted against a hurricane wind. She was watching him closely, her eyebrows lifted, both hands clenched round the mug in her lap. “So, you are going now to tell me what this is all about? That I should have to leave my home and tear up-is that how you say it? — tear up my daughter when she is just to start in school?”
“You love me, right?” he countered, leaning forward to set his mug on the coffee table. “You've told me that a thousand times. Did you mean it?”
She didn't respond. Outside, a pair of blue lights drifted across the bay.
“Did you?”
In a reduced voice, she said that she did. One hand went to the throat of her silk blouse; she fingered the necklace there, pearls he'd given her. Or paid for, anyway.
“All right, good. You're just going to have to trust me, that's all”-he held up a hand to forestall her. “Haven't I given you everything you could possibly want? Well,” he said, without waiting for an answer to the obvious, “I'm going to continue to do that. No, I'm going to give you more. Much more. Private school for Madison, the best money can buy, and you know the best schools are on the East Coast. You know that, don't you?”
Her face was ironed sober, no trace of theatrics or antipathy. She was trying hard to comprehend. “But why?”
“It's complicated,” he said, and he glanced up at a movement beyond the window, a flash of white, the beat of wings, something settling there on the rail-an egret. Was that an egret?
“Yes?” she said, leaning into the table herself now, her eyes probing his.
“Okay,” he said. “You just have to-listen, my name isn't really Dana.”
“Not Dana? What do you mean? This is a joke?”
“No,” he said, slowly shaking his head, “no joke. I–I “adopted” the name. Because I was in trouble. It was-”
She cut him off. “Then you are not a doctor?”
He shook his head. There was the shadow of the bird there, faintly luminous, and he couldn't help wondering if it was a sign, and if it was, whether it was a good sign or bad.
“And all this”-her gesture was sudden, a wild unhinged sweep of her hand-“is a lie? This condo, this coffee table and the dining set? A lie? All a lie?”
“I don't know. Not a lie. Everything's real-the new car, the earrings, the way I feel about you and Madison.” He glanced away and saw that the bird was gone, chased by her gesture, by the violence of her voice. “It's just a name.”
There was a long moment of silence during which he became aware of the distant murmur of the neighbor's TV, a sound that could have been the wash of the surf or the music of the whales. But it wasn't. It was only the sound of a TV. Then she said, “So, if you are not Da-na, then who are you?”
He never hesitated. He looked right at her. “Bridger,” he said. “Bridger Martin.”
PART III
One
“IT'S GOOD,” Bridger said, using his hands for emphasis. “I like it.” He nodded his head vigorously, chin up, chin down. His smile widened. “Really good.”
“Really?” she said, and felt the color rise to her face. “You're not just telling me that, are you?”
They were sitting in her car across from Mail Boxes Etc. in the town of Mill Valley, California, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. She'd never been here before, had never in fact done anything more than attach the name to a place she knew vaguely to be somewhere north of the city. It was a pleasant-enough town, she supposed, with its oaks and pines and the mountain that loomed over it, the streets that managed to seem urban and rural at the same time and the carefully cultivated small-town feel-just the sort of place a thief might want to live. Trees to hide behind. Money that spoke quietly. Anonymity.
They'd been here, in the parked car, for two hours now. The day before, they'd checked into a motel in Monterey-Bridger had insisted on taking her to the aquarium there, which she loved despite herself, sharks tapping some hidden energy source with the flick of a fin, fish floating like butterflies in the big two-story tank as if this were the Disneyland of the sea-and they'd got up early that morning and driven straight through to Mill Valley. Bridger's map, downloaded from Map-Quest, with a red star indicating the Mail Boxes franchise they were looking for, took them right to the place without fret or deviation, and if she'd expected it to look sinister, expected the criminal himself to be grinning at her from behind the copy machines, she was disappointed. The store looked no different from any other Mail Boxes Etc. There it was. People going in, people coming out.
But what to do next? Bridger wanted her to go right up to the counter and carry off an imposture, tell them she'd lost her key, show them some proof (if she wasn't Dana Halter of #31 Pacific View Court, then who was?) and see what was in the box, a bill, correspondence, a bank statement, anything that might show the residential address. Then they'd turn the tables. Then “they'd” go to “him.” She knew he was right. That was the logical thing to do, because they could sit here watching the place forever and still the guy might not show up or if he did they could miss him-all they had was a photograph, after all, and photographs offer up one version only, the version of the moment, and what if he'd grown a beard, dyed his hair? Or he might send somebody else for his mail-his wife, his daughter, his gay partner for all she knew. He could be wearing a hat, sunglasses, he could come in with a bag over his head. No, Bridger was right, but she was the one who had to go in there and break the law, not he. All her life she'd had to struggle with social situations, struggle to make herself understood while people gave her that don't-touch-me look, and what if the person behind the counter said, “What number?” “What number?” That would kill the whole thing-they'd probably call the police on her. A woman with a suspicious high bludgeoning voice trying to scam-that was the word, wasn't it? Scam? — some innocent citizen's mailbox key for what had to be a nefarious purpose. What could she say-that she'd forgotten the number of her own box? Another lie to layer it smooth: “I've been out of town and it just slipped my mind, well, because this is my second home up here, my vacation place, actually, and I, well, I don't”-“I just forgot…”