American Subversive (38 page)

For there
was
a chance Cressida had seen Paige before. In that Fishers Island photograph. The one she gave me that night at Malatesta.

AIDAN
 

LAST NIGHT, JIM AND CAROL TOLD ME ABOUT PAIGE. IT WAS THE FIRST TIME MY handlers had visited the house together, and immediately I knew something wasn't right. Jim took a seat on the couch and frowned at the fireplace while Carol made tea in the kitchen. I sat in a nearby chair and tried to mask my impatience.

When Carol came in, she set steaming mugs in front of each of us, then sat next to Jim and squeezed his leg.

“You don't do much besides microwave, do you, Aidan? I could write my name in the dust on that stovetop.”

“Your real one or fake one?”

“Ha ha.”

Jim took a sip of tea and started talking. From what he'd heard—and they were only rumors, he stressed, completely unverified—Paige had been hiding out in the Midwest—Ohio or Indiana. They'd found her an apartment in a busy college town, somewhere near the main strip so she could walk places (neither one of us has a car, not yet, because the paperwork—the title transfers, the registrations and insurance—is almost tougher to produce than human papers, our passports and Social Security cards).

“For whatever reason,” Jim continued, “she began frequenting a nearby Internet café. It was a risk, of course, adopting a routine like that,
but she must have felt safe enough to chance it. Or maybe she just needed to get outside, you know . . .” He shrugged, and in that instant I realized I'd been right about Jim and Carol. At some point, probably decades ago, they'd lived as I now live—furtively, invisibly. And they knew exactly what it felt like, spending day after day—and now month after month—cooped up, in hiding. It's the knowledge that gets you, the maddening knowledge that just up the street or over the hill, life is proceeding apace. How many frozen mornings I've woken up and almost walked down the driveway and back into the world. But I know I can't.

I listened closely to what Jim said, hung on every word. Paige had been writing in her apartment, using a secondhand computer and printer. She had everything she needed; and she had nothing at all. And so the café, the Internet:
information.
On the mounting case against us. On the larger case against the country. Perhaps it was just being around people, overhearing conversations, idle chatter: parents with children, students with ideas. I live with that feeling, too—craving the very civilization I've turned my back on. But don't confuse that for regret.

“Apparently,” Jim said, “she went out one morning and never came home. Something unexpected must have happened because she left all her stuff behind.”

“And there were no messages or clues?”

“Not that we're aware of, Aidan. She just disappeared.”

“Well, we'd have heard about it if she got picked up,” I said. “It would have been all over the news.”

“I know.”

“Which means she's still out there.”

“No one knows what it means,” Carol said quietly.

They stayed a while longer, to make sure I was okay. I didn't ask them anything more. They'd told me what they knew, or at least what they could.

“There is one more thing.” Jim stole a glance at his partner.

“Can't wait,” I said.

“You've made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.”

“They still have that?” I asked, surprised. “I thought it was just the TV show now.”

“Maybe that's next. Anyway, congratulations.”

With that, they stepped out into the February snow. It was seven degrees, according to the glazed thermometer hanging by the door. What would I do now? Knowing that Paige was okay had kept me going—and kept me writing. I'd come to think of our dual narratives as unrequited love letters, fervently baring our true feelings—words we wished we'd spoken and one day still might. But now what? I'd never imagined her in trouble. On the run again.

I walked into the empty living room and watched Jim's car inch cautiously down the driveway, the brake lights slowly disappearing into the whiteness, then the dark.

She was out there somewhere. Or worse, she wasn't.

AIDAN
 

I TOOK A CAB FROM THE RENTAL-CAR OFFICE TO FOURTEENTH AND TENTH. IT was still early, before nine, and the West Side restaurants and galleries were all shuttered. I got out on a curb under the High Line and looked around tentatively. Already, I felt like a fugitive, divorced from my life. If being unable to go home had briefly felt thrilling, it now terrified me. Everything had happened so quickly. Two days. I'd been on benders that long, a few of which, I realized then, had at some unspeakable hour involved the hotel in front of me.

I walked into the lobby, such as it was, and stopped at the front desk. It was like an art-house ticket booth, and I waited for the clerk to acknowledge me. He was a small, rueful man who clung tightly to a studied nonchalance, and when he finally looked up and heard me ask for an Isabel Clarke, he eyed his list of guests as if he might fall asleep before he reached the bottom. “Your name?”

“What?”

“Your name.”

“Uh . . . Aidan.”

Shit. Should I have made something up? Of course I should have. But how would Paige have known it was me? The clerk punched a few numbers into his phone, waited a moment, then repeated my name and hung up. He eyed the backpack on my shoulder, wondering, I suppose, if I might be that rare breed that stayed a night or two.

“Room twenty-four,” he said. “Up the stairs and down the hall.”

The lobby resembled a city-hospital waiting room, right down to the bolted-in chairs and vaguely chemical smell. I walked past a sign reading
THE LIBERTY INN: YOUR RENDEZVOUS FOR ROMANCE
and found the staircase opposite the bar, which was already stirring with early life. If I were ever a real writer, I thought, this is where I'd come hang out—get a whole book of short stories in a single day.

Room 24 was at the end of the narrow hall. Paige must have been eyeing me through the keyhole because she opened the door before I knocked. “You told the guy downstairs your real name,” she said, quickly checking the hallway, then closing the door. “You can't do that.”

“I know. Sorry.”

I put my backpack down and looked around. The curtains were closed and the lights were on. The Liberty Inn had run with the prevailing theme since the last time I'd been there (or maybe I just hadn't noticed back then): the king-size bed, still the center of activity, was accentuated now by a cushioned headboard the shape and color of two plump lips; a floor-to-ceiling mirror ran along an entire wall; and on another, a hand-painted mural depicted a gaudy tangle of naked bodies.

“The only thing this room hasn't seen is luggage,” I said.

It was a lame joke, but Paige let it pass. She'd changed her appearance, gone even more native, with tousled black hair and matching dark-framed glasses.

I tried again: “You look like you've moved a few L-stops further into Brooklyn.”

“I had a little time to kill,” she said, pulling self-consciously at a loose strand above her ear. “There's dye all over the bathroom sink, but I'll clean it up.”

“It's alluring,” I told her. And it was. But I'd embarrassed her by saying so, and just like that, our situation caught up to us. We were strangers on the run hiding out in a sex hotel. It seemed impossible, but there it was. There
we
were. I sat down on the bed.

I knew she was changing the subject before she opened her mouth. “No problems with the rental car, I take it? Or your credit card?”

“I don't think so.”

“Okay, good.” She paused. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Sounds like I missed a lot. I'm sorry about Cressida.”

“Why was she going to your apartment?”

“I'm not sure. Probably to return my keys. We haven't been on great terms, and I was supposed to call her, but, well, you showed up and”—and here it went—“Paige . . . there's something I need to tell you.”

“What?”

“There's a possibility, a small one, that Cressida
did
recognize you.”

Paige sat down beside me. She was wearing jeans and a white tank top with lace trim. I turned to talk directly to her, but she continued facing forward, her forearms on her thighs, waiting. So I told her, again, about that dinner at Malatesta, this time including details I'd left out before—the names I'd used to fool Cressida, and the folders, and then the photographs.

I said, “I didn't mention this before because I didn't think it was important. And I'm not sure it's important now. The picture of you and what's his name on Fishers Island was just one of many. There were three or four pages worth of photographs, a dozen Paige Rodericks that Cressida had dug up from across America. I only noticed you because I'd seen the Madison Avenue photo. And even then I almost missed it.”

“I
knew
it. Cressida's reaction, that double take she did on the stairs . . . it was like she'd suddenly remembered.”

“I really doubt it. The chances are just—”

“Chances get you killed,” Paige said.

“Here, I'll call her.” I took my phone out. “I'll be able to tell if she thinks something's up. She's not exactly subtle.”

“Wait! What are you doing?”
Paige snatched the phone out of my hand and turned it off. “You can't use this anymore. I told you that before you left.”

“You didn't
tell me
. You kind of hinted at it.”

“Jesus, Aidan, come on.”

“I can't even call friends?”

“No,”
she practically shouted, before catching herself. “No, you can't, because it may be tapped. Especially after yesterday. Don't you understand the significance of your girlfriend's little visit? It means . . . it means
there's no going back
. They'll be looking for
both
of us now. That's
our reality. It's why I begged you to do what I asked, write that damn post and be done with me. And you wouldn't listen.”

“For good reason.”

“I'm not sure there's such a thing anymore.” Paige stood up and walked over to the built-in wall desk, then turned around and flipped my phone back to me. “But now that you're
in
this, there are some things I need to tell you, because we can't afford even one mistake from here on out.”

And for the next hour she gave me a crash course on survival—how to live on the run, or try. The importance of details. Faces and voices. Clothing and accessories. Names, addresses, license plates. She explained the dangers of cell phones and technology. Stay out of photographs and off the Internet. No landlines either. Public phones were slightly better, because even if the number you were calling was tapped, you usually had time, a minute or two, before a trace could kick in. I sat speechless on the bed, thinking this was how it was in movies—this kind of talk in this kind of room. But on-screen the desperation always led to desire, lust, sex. In reality, I felt anxious and sick to my stomach, because now, finally, it was sinking in. Nowhere was safe.

“Hey,”
she said. “Are you listening? This is important. We have to assume Cressida knows about us, but we need to find out for sure.” Paige looked around the room. “And we have to find another place to stay. This one's a little . . .
obvious
.”

“Well, I took some money out on the way over here. Four hundred bucks, which is pretty much all I've got. Figured I wouldn't be doing much banking for a while.”

“That's right. No ATM cards and no credit cards.”

“What you're trying to say is that you're impressed with my forethought.”

“Vastly.”

“Because I've got another idea,” I said. “About a place to stay. How about Touché's apartment? Just for a night while we work all this out. Hell, he already knows about us, so he'll be cool with it. He likes living dangerously. He grew up with it.”