They walked up to the footbridge over Rock Creek, then along the promenade fronting the Potomac. Down into a sunken concrete plaza, set between office buildings, where there was a row of tables outside a bar. They floated down the steps hand in hand and sat at one of them.
After they ordered (she a bloody mary, he white wine), she pressed a forefinger into the top of his thigh. “But look—another reason I had to see you—I needed to tell you, I’m pretty sure that Ed is on to who you are. I think he’s tracking you.”
“He’s been doing more than that,” Frank said. “That’s why I wanted to find you. I’ve been getting harassed these last few weeks.” He told her all that had happened, watching her mouth tighten at the corners as he described each incident. By the time he was done her mouth was turned down like an eagle’s.
“I wondered about that. That’s him all right,” she said bitterly. “That’s him all over.”
Frank nodded. “I was pretty sure.”
He had never seen her look so grim. It was frightening, in more ways than one; you would not want her angry at you.
They sat there for a few moments. Their drinks arrived and they sipped at them.
“And so…?” Frank said.
After another pause, she said slowly, “I guess I think you’ve got to disappear, like I did. Come with me and disappear for a bit. My Plan C is working out really well. I’m in the area here, and I have a solid cover identity, with a bank account and apartment lease and car and everything. I don’t think he can possibly find any of it. At this point I’m the one surveiling him, and I can see that he’s still looking, but he’s lost my trail.”
“But he’s tracking the people you were surveiling,” Frank supposed.
“I think that’s right.”
“And so, he’s figured out I must be the one who helped you get away?”
“Well—judging by what he’s doing to you, I think he might still not be quite sure about it. He may be kind of testing you, to see if you’ll jump. To see if you react like you know it’s him. And if you did, then he’d know for sure. Also, you might then lead him to me.”
“So—but that means if I disappear, then he’ll be sure I’m the one. Because I’ll have jumped, like he was looking for.”
“Yes. But he must be pretty sure anyway, that’s the thing. And then he won’t be able to find you. Which is good, because I’m just—I’m afraid what he might do.”
Frank was too, but he did not want to admit it. “Well, but I can’t—”
“I’ve got an ID all ready for you. It’s got a good legend and a deep cover. It’s just as solid as mine.”
“But I can’t leave,” Frank objected. “I mean, I have my job to do. I can’t leave that right now.” And your fucking ex can’t make me, he didn’t say.
She frowned, hesitated. Maybe her ex was worse than Frank had thought. Although what did that mean? Surely he wouldn’t—wouldn’t—
She shook her head, as if to clear it and think things through. “If there was someone at your work that you could explain the situation to, that you trusted? Maybe you could set up a system and send your work in to them, and like that.”
“A lot of it is done in meetings now. I don’t think that would work.”
“But…” She scowled. “I don’t like him knowing where you are!”
“I know. But, you know.” Frank felt confused, balked—caught. He was moving into his zone of confusion, beginning to blank out at the end of trains of thought—“I have to keep doing my job,” he heard himself say. “Maybe I could just make a strong effort to keep off the radar when I’m away from work. You know—show up for work out of the blue, be there in the office, but with everyone else, all day, in a high-security environment. Then disappear out of the office at the end of the day, and he won’t be able to find where. Maybe I could do that.”
“Maybe. That’s a lot of exposure to get away from every day.”
“I know, but—I have to.”
She was shaking her head unhappily—
“It’s okay,” he said. “I can do it. I mean it. The White House compound is a secure environment. So when I’m where they know where I am, I’ll have security. When I don’t have security, they won’t know where I am. I’d rather do it that way than stop everything I’m doing!”
“Well, that’s what I had to do!”
“Yes, but you had to, because of the election and everything.” Because you were married to him.
She was eagle-mouthed again. “But look,” she said, “you’re in on that too, okay? Thanks to me. I’m sorry about that, but it’s true, and you can’t just ignore it. That would be like I was being, when you showed up and I didn’t want to leave camp.” She sipped at her drink, thinking things over. At last she shook her head unhappily. “I’m afraid of what he might do.”
“Well, but to you too,” Frank said. “Maybe you should go back up to Mount Desert Island. I was thinking if you stayed away from your friend’s place, it would be a good place to hide.”
She shook her head more vehemently. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got stuff I’ve gotta do here.” She glanced at him, hesitated, took another drink. She frowned, thinking things over again. Their knees were pressed together, and their hands had found each other on their own and were clutched together, as if to protest any plan their owners might make that would separate them.
“I really think you should come with me,” she said. “Get off the grid entirely.”
Frank struggled for thought.
“I can’t,” he said at last.
She grimaced. She seemed to be getting irritated with him, the pressure of her hand’s grip almost painful.
Worse yet, she let go of him, straightened up. She was somehow becoming estranged, withdrawing from him. Even angry at him. An invitation to be with her, all the time—“Listen,” Frank said anxiously, “don’t be mad at me. Tell me how we’re going to keep in touch now. We have to have a way. I have to.”
“Okay, yeah, sure.”
But she was upset by his refusal to go with her, and distracted. “We can always do a dead drop,” she said as she continued to frown over other things. “It’s simple. Pick a hidden spot where we leave notes, and only check the spot when you’re positive you’re clean, say once a week.”
“Twice a week.”
“If I can.” Her mouth was still pursed unhappily. She shook her head. “It’s better to have a regular time that you’re sure you can meet, and keep to that schedule.”
“Okay, once a week. And where?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed to be getting more frustrated the more she thought about things.
“How about where we were making out, back there in the trees?” Frank suggested, trying to press past her mood. “Do you know where that was, can you find it again?”
She gave him a very sharp look, it reminded him of Marta. Women weak at geography—he hadn’t meant it that way. Although there were women who didn’t have a clue.
“Of course,” she said. “Down there by the mouth of the creek. But—it should be a place where we can tuck notes out of the rain, and be sure we can find them and all.”
“Okay, well, we can go back out there and bury a plastic bag in the leaves under a tree.”
She nodded unenthusiastically. She was still distracted.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back up to Mount Desert Island?” Frank asked.
“Of course I do!” she snapped. “But I can’t, okay? I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do around here.”
“What? Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help! Especially not if you stay exposed in your job and all!”
“But I have to do that.”
“Well. There you are then.”
He nodded, hesitantly. He didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Shall we go back out there and pick a spot?”
“No. There’s a pair of roots there with a hole be
tween them. I felt it under me, it was under my head. You can put something in that gap, and I’ll find it. I need to get going.” She checked her watch, looked around, stood abruptly; her metal chair screeched over the concrete.
“Caroline—”
“Be careful,” she said, leaning down to stare him right in the face. She brought her hand up between their faces to point a finger at his nose, and he saw it was quivering. “I mean it. You’re going to have to be really careful. I can see why you want to keep going to work, but this is no game we’re caught in.”
“I know that! But we’re stuck with it. Don’t be mad at me. Please. There’s just things we both still have to do.”
“I know.” Her mouth was still a tight line, but now at least she was looking him in the eye. “Okay. Let’s do the dead drop, every week. I’ll check on Saturdays, you check Wednesdays.”
“Okay. I’ll leave something there for this Saturday, and you get it and leave something for Wednesday.”
“Okay. But if I can’t, check the next week. But I’ll try.” And with a peck to the top of his head she was off into the dark of Georgetown.
Frank sat there, feeling stunned. A little drunk. He didn’t know what to think. He was confused, and for a moment overwhelmed, feeling the indecision fall hard on him. When you feel love, elation, worry, fear, and puzzlement, all at once, and all at equally full volume, they seem to cancel each other out, creating a vacuum, or rather a plenum. He felt Carolined.
“Fuck,” he said half-aloud. It had been that way from the moment they met, actually; only now it was intensified, fully present in his mind, still felt in his body. Abruptly he finished his drink and took off into the dark. Over the creek’s footbridge, back to the spot where they had kissed.
One of the trees on the river side of their impromptu layby had the two big roots she had referred to, growing out in a fork and then plunging down into the rich loamy earth and reuniting, leaving a leaf-filled pocket. He tore one of the clear plastic credit card holders out of his wallet, took a receipt from his pocket and wrote on the back:
I LOVE YOU I’LL LOOK EVERY WEDNESDAY WRITE ME
Then he put it in the sleeve and buried it under leaves shoved into the hole. Topped it all with leaves and hoped she would find it, hoped she would use it and write him. It seemed like she would. They had kissed so passionately, right here on this very spot, no more than an hour or so before. Why now this edge of discord between them?
Well, that seemed pretty clear: her desire for him to disappear with her. Obviously she felt it was important, and that he might even be in danger if he didn’t join her. But he couldn’t join her.
That feeling was in itself interesting, now that he thought of it. Was that a sign of decisiveness, or just being balky? Had he had any choice? Maybe one would never go into hiding unless there were no other choice. This was probably one cause of Caroline’s irritation; she had to hide, while he didn’t. Although maybe he did and just didn’t know it.
Big sigh. He didn’t know. For a second he lost his train of thought and didn’t know anything. What had just happened? He looked down on the bed of leaves they had lain on. Caroline! he cried in his mind, and groaned aloud.
H E WAS SITTING WITH RUDRA at the little table under their window, both of them looking at laptops and tapping away, the room itself slightly swaying on a wind from the west. After the heat of the day, the cool fragrance coming off the river was a balm. Moonlight broke and squiggled whitely on the black sweep of the water. Frank was reading Thoreau and at one point he laughed and read aloud to Rudra:
“We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains on the horizon which I had never seen before—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for three score years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.”
Rudra nodded. “Henry likes the same things you do,” he observed.
“It’s true.”
“A treehouse is a good idea,” Rudra said, looking out the windows at the dark river.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Frank read on for a while, then: “Here, listen to this, he might as well be at the table with us:
“I live so much in my habitual thoughts that I forget there is any outside to the globe, and am surprised when I behold it as now—yonder hills and river in the moonlight, the monsters. Yet it is salutary to deal with the surface of things. What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold? There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind, blowing from over the surface of a planet. I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience. Why have we ever slandered the outward?”
“What say, speak bad?” Rudra asked. “About this?” He waved at their view. “Maybe that is your third good correlation. The outer and the inner.”
“I want something more specific.”
“Maybe he means we should stop reading, and look at the river.”
“Ah yes. True.”
And they did.
But the next night, when Frank drove into the farm’s parking lot after work, late, and got out of his van and headed for the treehouse, Qang came out of the big farmhouse and hurried over to intercept him.
“Frank, sorry—can you come in here, please?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Rimpoche Rudra Cakrin has died.”
“What?”
“Rudra died this day, after you left.”
“Oh no. Oh no.”
“Yes. I am afraid so.” She held his arm, watched him closely.
“Where is he? I mean—”
“We have his body in the prayer room.”
“Oh no.”
The enormity of it began to hit him. “Oh, no,” he said again helplessly.
“Please,” she said. “Be calm. Rudra must not be disturbed now.”
“What?” So he had misheard—
“This is an important time for his spirit. We here must be quiet, and let him focus on his work in the bardo. What say—help him on his way, by saying the proper prayers.”
Frank felt himself lose his balance a little bit. Gone weak at the knees—yet another physiological reaction shared by all. Shock of bad news, knees went weak. “Oh no,” he said. She was so calm about it. Standing there talking about helping Rudra through the first hours of the afterlife—suddenly he realized he was living with aliens. They didn’t even look human.
He went over and sat down on the front steps of the house. Everything still scrubbed, new paint, Tibetan colors. Qang was saying something, but he didn’t hear it.
After a while, it was Drepung sitting beside him. Briefly he put an arm around Frank’s shoulders and squeezed, then they just sat there side by side. Minutes passed; ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
“He was a friend,” Frank explained. “He was my friend.”
“Yes. He was my teacher.”
“When—when did you meet him?”
“I was ten.”
Drepung explained some of Rudra’s role in Khembalung, some of his personal history. Frank glanced up once and saw that tears had rolled down Drepung’s broad cheeks as he spoke, even though his voice and manner were calm. This was a comfort to Frank.
“Tell me what happens now,” he said when Drepung was silent.
Drepung then explained their funeral customs. “We will say the first prayers for a day and a half. Then later there will be other ceremonies, at the proper intervals. Rudra was an important guru, so there will be quite a few of these. The big one will be after forty days, as with anyone, and then one last one at forty-nine days.”
Eventually they got up and clomped up the centr
al stairs of the treehouse, winding around the trunk of one of the main trees. Then down the catwalk to their room.
Others had already been there. Presumably this was where Rudra had died. The sight of the empty and sheetless bed cast another wave of grief through Frank. He sat down in the chair by the window, looked down at the river flowing by. He thought that if they had not left their garden shed, maybe Rudra would not have died.
Well, that made no sense. But Frank saw immediately that he could not continue to stay there. It would make him too sad. Then again (remembering his conversation with Caroline) moving out would help his evasion of Cooper anyway. He was free to go and do the necessary things.
In the days that followed, Frank moved his stuff out of the Khembali treehouse back into his van, now the last remaining room of his modular house, compromised though it might be. He usually parked it in the farm’s little parking lot, just to be near Drepung and Sucandra and Padma; he found that nearness comforting, and he did not want them to think that he had abandoned them or gone crazy or anything. “You need the room,” he kept saying about the treehouse. “I like it better now to be in my van.” They accepted that and put four people in the room.
As the days passed they went through one or the other of the various stages of Rudra’s passage through the bardo—Frank lost track of the details, but he tried to remember the last funeral’s date, said to be the most important one for those who wished to honor the memory of that particular incarnation.
He was at a loss for what to do when not at work. The Old Executive Offices, though much closer to the centers of national power, were nowhere near as comfortable to spend time in as the NSF building had been. It was not possible to sleep there, for instance, without security noticing and dropping by to check on him. Meanwhile his van was probably still GPSed and would be one of the ways that Edward Cooper was keeping track of him. He needed it for a bedroom and to get out to the Khembalis, and yet he wanted to be able to drop off the grid every day when he left work.