But still, she hadn’t divorced him.
“That’s part of the deal. She keeps the video to herself and goes on pretending they’re happily married. In return they lead totally separate lives, separate bedrooms, separate vacations, he pays her a monthly stipend and guarantees payments on her car, things like that. She hardly has to see him, except at public events.”
“Not as good as a clean separation.”
“It’s what she wants, Adam. She feels like it gives her some power over him. She’s saving all the money he gives her, in case he tries something. But he sees other women. What he calls discreet short-term relationships. Which Jenny says means high-priced hookers and bar pickups, basically.”
And that was how things had stood until a couple of months ago, when Jenny herself had called me. She used Geddy’s phone (he was in DC with his band), which meant she distrusted her own phone, which meant the situation with Aaron must have heated up again.
At first I didn’t recognize her voice. Jenny had been a social smoker almost as long as I had known her, but her years with Aaron had ramped it up into a full-blown pack-a-day habit, and her voice was a charcoal drawing of the voice I remembered. It had lost its tentativeness, too. “A while back you told Geddy you’d be willing to help me. Is that right?”
I felt blindsided. “Of course. But I’m not sure—I mean—”
“I know Geddy told you about Aaron and me. So I don’t have to rehash all that business, do I?”
I told her what I knew. “So you had an arrangement with Aaron—I guess something changed?”
“I want to go public,” she said. “I want the video to go viral. But I can’t just post it online. I need legal advice. And I need protection. I thought of you because I know Aaron has been cozy with the Het sodality, and I know Tau isn’t okay with that.”
This was when the Griggs-Haskell bill was being vetted in committee. Damian and other sodality leaders had been looking at how various congressmen were likely to cast votes. Aaron was one of the congressional reps who were firmly in the pocket of the Het lobby. He had benefited considerably from PAC funds we had traced to wealthy Het contributors. So yeah, Tau had an interest in seeing Aaron discredited, if it would affect his vote on Griggs-Haskell. Though I had a fleeting wish Jenny hadn’t pitched it quite so bluntly. Clearly, she wasn’t pinning her hopes on my own refined sense of moral duty.
“I can have a word with some people if you like. Can I ask what changed your mind?”
She paused, then said flatly, “Aaron’s in what I guess you would call a long-term extramarital relationship.”
“And you’re not okay with that?”
“I don’t give a rat’s asshole about Aaron’s affairs. Except … I’ve met this woman. She’s someone perfectly trivial, but she shows up now and then on the cocktail circuit. She’s reasonably good-looking but mousy and timid, which is how Aaron likes ’em. And lately I’ve noticed how she dresses. Long sleeves in summer. How she walks sometimes. I ran into her in a bathroom at the Blue Duck Tavern, putting makeup over what looked like a serious bruise. Doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to add it up.”
“That’s what changed your mind?”
“Well, yeah. Because I thought I had solved a problem. But I had only solved my problem. The real problem is Aaron. He’s still out there, doing what he does. The only difference is that some other woman is feeling the pain.”
“And you want to stop him.”
“I want to paint the word abuser on his fucking forehead. Or as close as I can get.”
Okay: I promised to speak to someone, see whether Tau could help. Then I said, “How are things otherwise? Jesus, Jenny. I haven’t talked to you in a dozen years.”
“Thanks, Adam.” The intensity drained from her voice. “I’m pretty busy, actually. No time to chat. But you can reach me through Geddy when you need to.”
Chapter 17
The lights went out all over North America and across much of the rest of the world that evening, but from Schuyler it looked, at least at first, like any other power blackout.
So we did what everyone else does when the lights wink off. Geddy peeked outside and reported that the whole neighborhood was dark, so we knew it was more than a blown fuse. Mama Laura handed me a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen and sent me to the basement to fetch the emergency candles she kept there. (A years-old box of yahrzeit candles, no doubt from the tiny kosher aisle in the local supermarket. I was sure Mama Laura didn’t know the use for which they were intended, though Rebecca winced when she started lighting them.) Jenny tried to call her mother but reported that her phone was also dead. Mama Laura went upstairs to see if my father was still awake (he was not) and to fetch the battery-operated radio they kept by the bedside.
We gathered in the living room. Geddy put the radio on the coffee table and cranked up the volume. The radio was an old analog model, and the only station we could tune in was a local one. The evening news-and-sports guy was struggling to keep up with the situation: he said the blackout appeared to be continent-wide and that wireless and internet service was disrupted and intermittent. There had been no official statement from the federal government, “that I know of.” He said people should shelter in their homes. He repeated something Aaron had suggested, and which the wire services must have announced shortly before the blackout became complete: telecom and utility problems were probably due to viral malware that had been released in India but had spread uncontrollably. There was still no reliable news from that part of the world, but the last social-media posts from the city of Surat showed “a bright cloud and column of smoke” from the direction of Mumbai more than a hundred miles distant. “But of course that doesn’t prove anything,” the newscaster added.
“Isn’t this awful,” Mama Laura said.
Mumbai. Amanda had relatives there. There were Tau communities there, too, not to mention countless people who would have qualified as Taus had they ever taken the test. Relatives of a different kind.
I took a candle and navigated my way to the bathroom, where I tried to call Trev. But my phone was as dead as Jenny’s. Which meant I was out of touch with my team. Which created a whole new set of problems, and I needed to talk to Jenny about that.
Fortunately for our chances of having a private conversation, Jenny was a smoker. Mama Laura wouldn’t allow a cigarette to be lit in the house, so Jenny excused herself to step outside. Geddy and I followed her onto the back porch, but Geddy hurried back inside as soon as she took out her pack of Marlboros—he hated the smell of burning tobacco. I waited for the screen door to swing shut behind him.
Jenny gave me a careful look. The night was cool but windless, and her face was softened by the light of the rising moon. She could almost have been her younger self, Jenny Symanski and Adam Fisk, just hanging out. She said, “Okay, so what now?”
The plan had been admirably simple. What Jenny wanted from Tau was protection. Not just from Aaron but from the media shitstorm that would follow her release of the video. One official press conference, one official statement, a signed affidavit, then she wanted to disappear. Because, as she had said when we first discussed this, “It’s not just a career-killer for Aaron. It’s an embarrassment to me. I look at myself in those videos and all I see is someone—what’s the word? Cowed. Cringing. Like a whipped dog! It’s fucking humiliating. Not exactly what I want to show the world.”
“But you weren’t cowed,” I told her. “That’s why the video exists, because you weren’t cringing, you aren’t letting him get away with it.”