“I don’t want to talk about this.”
She looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the mirror. “Two acquaintances,” she said, “two friends, two fellow sailors marooned together on a hostile ice floe, speaking the wrong language, talking about an accident that occurred six or seven years ago in another country.” She was putting gel in her hair, making it harder and spikier. “What harm would it do?”
He sighed.
“Why not tell me? She betrayed you.”
“She didn’t—”
“She left.”
He stared down at the tabletop.
“When you find her,” she said, “when you finally find her, do you really think she’ll come home with you, after all this?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. I just want to make sure she’s all right.”
A long time passed in silence, while she sprayed something in her hair to make it stand on end and then brushed silver powder over her eyelids.
“Michaela,” he said finally, “I would do a great deal for you. But I can’t tell you what you want to know.”
“You know,” she said, “I was thinking earlier today, while I was dyeing my hair, I was thinking my father and you have a lot in common. You were both left by Lilia.”
“You were left by Lilia too.”
She sat still for a moment, looking at her reflection, and then stood up slowly and moved past him to the clothing rack. There was a new-looking plastic bag hanging from one of the cheap wire hangers; she tore it open and pulled out a pair of black feathery wings. They were the sort of thing a child might wear on Halloween night, fluffy and not very large. She slipped the elastic loops over her bony shoulders and spent a few minutes trying to make them even in the mirror.
“Jacques bought them for me,” she said. “So I’ll be like the sign.”
He watched her. She smiled at herself and did one slow turn in the mirror, admiring the wings from every angle. She was beautiful to him. He had an image of Michaela as a little girl, dressing up for Halloween in a pair of angel wings in the years before her parents left her, and he closed his eyes.
“If I told you . . .” he began, “if I did tell you, would you promise . . .” and instantly regretted saying even this much, but it was already too late; she was already moving around the table to kneel in front of his chair, there were already tears in her eyes, she was already holding his hands in her own, and Lilia, far away in a previous life, was already careening toward the accident in the backseat of her father’s car.
38.
In a bar on the outskirts of Ellington, New Mexico, a few miles from the town of Stillspell, Christopher was sitting alone with a whiskey and planning his departure from the United States. It was evening, the day after Lilia’s sixteenth birthday, and Lilia was moving ever farther away. He was aware that she was somewhere to the north, and frightened by his awareness. He didn’t see Clara come in; she slipped onto the barstool beside him and ordered a Coke without looking at him.
“I don’t know anything,” she said, “first of all.”
“Right.” He struggled to flatten his voice and make his accent longer and more Southern, more American.
“But let’s say I knew someone,” she said. “Let’s say I knew someone who knew someone.”
He nodded.
“I mean, suppose I knew someone who’d been, for a very long time, perhaps years, inviting a fugitive . . .” She glanced around theatrically and lowered her voice. “What if she’d been inviting a fugitive into her home for a long time? A criminal. Would she be implicated?”
“Not if she were ignorant of his crimes.”
“What if she weren’t?”
“Well,” he said, “then I suppose it’s something else.”
“What if she’d seen this man . . . what if she’d seen him on television, with his little girl, before she even met him, what if she knew exactly who he was when she saw him in person for the first time, but never let on and never told anyone?”
“For Christ’s sake, Clara, stop speaking in the third person. I’m not asking you to turn him in.”
“But I thought you were,” she said, and turned white when she realized what she’d said.
“Listen,” he said, “I approached you for a reason, and it wasn’t to get to him. I don’t want you to ever go to the police, do you understand?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she replied indistinctly.
“No, you’re not planning on it, but you might get scared, and the thought might cross your mind. You might get into a fight with him, you might wake up one day and decide you’re sick of wondering why he did it. I can see that you’re pregnant, and you might be panicking because you’re going to have his child and you’re not convinced that he won’t take that child away too, you might do something unplanned and regrettable and tell someone before you realize what you’re doing, and I’m asking you not to.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“It’s never black and white,” he said. “You know it was an abduction. But what if he saved his child?”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
“No,” he said, “you do follow; stay with me here. Look, it isn’t the best parent who gains custody. It’s just the one with the best lawyer.”
She was silent.
“Even setting the question of lawyers aside for a moment,” Christopher said, “the mother almost always gets custody. It’s just the way it is. Imagine that his ex-wife wouldn’t let him see their daughter, imagine that she’d obtained a restraining order for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, so that the man was barred from approaching his daughter by legal means. And then, after all this, imagine that the child was in danger and had been hurt once, badly; imagine if he was alerted to this, and the only action he could think of was to take her away in the middle of the night? Once he’d done that, there was no undoing that moment. It never was possible to stop taking her away, once he started; he’s still taking her away, because he’s still taking care of her.”
Clara was still, looking down at her glass.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve been working on this case for years now. I interviewed her brother a few months ago, finally, and he—”
“What took you so long?” she asked indistinctly.
“It’s a long story. A contract expired. Clara, listen, I know what happened to her. I know why she has scars on her arms. It’s still an abduction, it’s still against the law, but imagine that he saved her life. Wouldn’t that mitigate everything else? Absolutely everything?” He was silent for a moment, toying with his hat on the bar. “Her father took her away because he felt he had to, and if you care for either of them, never go to the police. That’s all I wanted to say to you.”
There were tears on her face. “Thank you,” she said.
He left her there and went back to his car in the half-empty parking lot. He drove back past the Stillspell Hotel, past the Morning Star Diner with all its windows alight. The highway was almost empty. He drove well above the speed limit, covering ground. In a car somewhere far ahead, Lilia was singing along to the radio with her father. They had left New Mexico. They would stop at a motel soon; it was getting late. But Christopher, behind them, drove through the night.
39.
“Are you still awake?” Lilia whispered. It was the middle of October, and a crescent moon was rising outside the bedroom window of the apartment in Brooklyn. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Eli was lying on his back beside her in the darkness; she had been speaking softly for nearly a half hour, telling a long story about cars and motel rooms and driving away, and he was listening in perfect silence.
“Of course I’m awake. It was your sixteenth birthday. Clara brought home a cake.”
“Right,” she said. “We ate cake up on the rooftop, and then the next day we left. It was just a short trip we were taking, gone for a few days and then back home to Stillspell, but the day after we left there was an accident.”
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“A car accident? Were you hurt?”
“You have to promise never to tell anyone.”
“Sure,” he said.
“No, promise you won’t tell anyone this part, no matter what, even a long time from now, even if you’re angry with me.”
“Why would I be angry with you?” In sixteen days she would leave him and travel away again, but only one of them knew that.
“Just promise you won’t tell anyone, no matter what.”
“Okay,” he said, “I promise. No matter what.”
40.
On a narrow highway in the mountains, old and in considerable disrepair, two cars moved quickly under a brilliant sky. The car in front was a small grey Toyota, purchased specifically because it was absolutely forgettable. The car traveling behind was a sky-blue Ford Valiant with Quebec license plates, and it had been directly behind the Toyota for nearly an hour. There was a newer highway nearby—wider, safer, with a less calamitous drop-off on the right shoulder—but the first car had pulled onto the old highway an hour ago, and the second car was in pursuit. Lilia’s father swerved around potholes, a fallen branch, hands clenched on the steering wheel. Sometime earlier he had turned off the radio. Now he drove ten miles above the speed limit in charged speechlessness, and ten miles above the speed limit wasn’t fast enough.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said finally, quietly. For him, it was an extraordinary admission. He pulled over sharply to the side of the highway and cut the engine. The blue Valiant slowed as it moved past them and pulled over on the shoulder of the road ahead. In that moment before the driver’s-side door opened, the stillness was nearly absolute.
The man who emerged from the car had an almost spindly look about him. He was tall and slump-shouldered, in a rumpled brown suit jacket and faded blue jeans. He had a brown fedora, which he removed from his head as he approached. He carried it in both hands in front of him, like a present. Lilia’s father was rolling down his window, and the only sounds were the man’s footsteps approaching on the pavement, and wind in the pine trees by the sides of the road. Her father’s other hand was on the key.
The man rested his forearm on the roof of the car, looking in. He didn’t look like an FBI agent.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. He spoke with the softest traces of Lilia’s mother’s accent. “It’s just that I’ve been traveling alongside you for a while. For quite some time.” He was looking directly at Lilia, frozen in the passenger seat. “I’m going home tomorrow, and I won’t be coming back to this country again. I just wanted to tell you that you don’t need to travel anymore.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lilia’s father said.
“Look, I understand why you did it,” the detective said. “I have a daughter in Montreal, and I wish I’d done the same sometimes.” A car was approaching; it passed in a blur of red and he was quiet for a moment, watching it recede. “I spoke to Simon last year, and I know why you did what you did. I know what happened that night. I just wanted to say good-bye, to wish you the best, I just wanted to tell you—”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“You ever heard the story of Icarus?” the detective asked. “I’ve been reading it recently. This is what it comes down to: I don’t mind not being the hero of the story, I don’t mind being the shepherd watching you fly out over the sea with your child, but I don’t want to be the Minotaur.” He straightened up, his hands in his pockets, looking away down the hill. “I don’t know how else to put it,” he said. “I just don’t want to chase you anymore. I’m going to say I couldn’t find you, and that’ll be it. That’ll be it. I don’t think anyone else is looking for you anymore.”
Lilia’s father was staring straight ahead through the windshield, not speaking, but Lilia saw a muscle working frantically in his jaw.
“Good luck,” said Christopher. “Lilia.” He stared at her for a moment longer and smiled. “A pleasure to see you, as always. Your brother sends his regards. Happy birthday, my love.” He turned away and walked back toward his car. Lilia sat still beside her father, watching Christopher recede; the detective started his car and drove away, disappeared around a bend in the highway ahead and was lost behind the pine trees, and only then did her father turn the key in the ignition.
It took her a few minutes to realize that he was still driving too fast.
“You don’t know your mother,” he said when she looked at him. His voice was hoarse and he’d gone pale. There was sweat on his forehead.
“He said he wasn’t going to chase us anymore.” She felt sick.
“It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d tell him to say. You don’t know your mother, it’s exactly the kind of thing she’d . . .” The blue car had come into sight up ahead. “She will never stop chasing you,” her father said. “She will never give you up.” The detective was driving slowly now, like a sightseer. He was driving one-handed, resting his other arm on the edge of the open window. He craned his neck briefly to look up; Lilia followed his gaze and saw the mountains, the sheer rock just visible above the trees to the left. “Lilia,” her father said, abruptly calm, “get in the backseat behind me, and put on your seat belt.”
The highway turned and twisted through dark pine forest. In the seat behind him Lilia pressed her face to the glass to look up at the sky. She wanted to be anywhere else in the world. There were hawks circling in the high blue air. The Valiant was very close now, and she forced herself to look at it. She saw the detective glance up into his rearview mirror, and she was close enough to see the expression of benign surprise. He raised his hand to wave, uncomprehending.
“Lilia,” said her father, “cover your eyes.”
She didn’t cover her eyes. Her father was pulling up alongside the detective’s car; he glanced back and forth between the detective’s car and the highway ahead, and then slowly, with methodical precision, he began to turn the wheel to the right. The grind and screech of metal on metal was unbearable, but she couldn’t look away, and both cars were moving toward the edge of the road. Lilia’s father was looking out the passenger-side window, judging the distance and the degree of force required, gradually easing the other car off the road. There was a very short period when it seemed possible that the detective might still manage to stay on the highway, might still swerve to safety at the very last possible instant and speed ahead and make it after all, but her father gave the wheel one last, barely perceptible turn, so that Christopher’s car left the highway altogether and began a sideways, almost slowmotion slide off the edge of the embankment, down the hill, flipping slowly over onto its side and then upside down and then out of sight as she turned to watch out the back window, and she heard the nerve-shattering impact of metal around the trunk of a tree.
It wasn’t the accident itself that broke her, but the way he surrendered to it. It seemed, no matter how she tried to reconfigure the moment in her memory, that the detective looked sideways at the car forcing him off the road with a calm, almost eager expression. He was ready for the accident. There was a fleeting moment when he met Lilia’s eyes, just at the end: he smiled and allowed himself to slide over the edge. He made no discernible effort to stay on the road.
41.
Michaela rose from the floor of the dressing room and left the room without speaking, picking her jacket up off the floor as she went, pulling it on over her lopsided wings. Eli followed her up the stairs, lost her in the crowds on the dance floor, and found her again on the frozen sidewalk outside, shivering and speaking into her cell phone. “I don’t care,” she said, “meet me there anyway.” She put the cell phone in her jacket pocket and looked at him as if they’d never met.
“Michaela?”
“Eli,” she said.
“Who were you talking to?”
She looked at him without answering. There was a blankness about her. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him.
?
??I told you the story,” he said. “Now you have to tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. She was here the night you came.” She began walking away from him with stiff, tottering steps; he reached out to steady her, and they walked together arm in arm. “She was in the dressing room that night, before I brought you down there. I guess I should’ve brought you down sooner, before she had a chance to leave.” She stopped, pulled her arm away from his, fumbled in her jacket pocket. “She said she’d wait for me in the dressing room till I came back,” she muttered. “Fucking liar.” She extracted a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her jacket.
“People fail you,” he said impatiently. “It’s a chance you take. Where’s Lilia?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “She left. She was supposed to be in my dressing room when you . . . fuck,” she said. The lighter was clicking uselessly. “You have a light?”
There were two matchbooks in his pocket. He didn’t smoke but had at some point acquired the habit of compulsively collecting promotional matchbooks from restaurants.
“You want Le Gamin matches or Café Universale matches?”
She gave him a blankly vicious look, like a wild creature deprived of food. He gave her both matchbooks.
“Your pronunciation’s terrible,” she said when the cigarette was safely ignited. They’d made slow, wavering progress to a street corner; the light changed to red just as they reached the edge of the sidewalk, and he watched her shivering and smoking. He took her arm again and she leaned into him silently.
“I’m sorry, Michaela,” he said uselessly. “It’s an awful story.” The cold was agonizing; he’d never imagined this quality of wind. It was possible to imagine his blood freezing under his skin, and there was ice in his eyelashes. It was eleven P.M. on a Sunday, and Rue Ste.-Catherine was all but deserted. Neon signs flickered from behind the barred windows of clubs. Girls Girls Girls. Danseuses Nues.