The Fugitives (16 page)

One evening soon after the affair was disclosed, at the height of the bedlam, I found myself in Rae’s bedroom, in my old bedroom, in Rae’s and my old bedroom, looking in my old bureau for an old sweater that I could wear instead of the one that had been soaked with whiskey when Rae had thrown her drink at me. Even by the standards of that period it had been a bad night. Susannah was AWOL. In one of the bureau drawers I found Rae’s panties. They were women’s cotton briefs of the most workaday sort, faded and plain, white or in solid colors. Impulsively, I removed a pair from the drawer and held them up, noting how sturdy and thick the material was—light didn’t even penetrate. Panties to sit at the kitchen table and pay bills in, panties to wash a sinkful of dishes in, panties to shift uncomfortably on a hard auditorium seat at the PTA meeting in, panties to clean a house in, panties to
build
a house in; and I thought, with the thumb and forefinger of either hand hooked through the elastic waistband and pulling the fabric taut, that I surely had left my wife, my children, my home, and my belongings in order to trade these drab garments for a drawer full of lacy, diaphanous, dramatically cut lingerie. I could, in fact, after being dumped by Susannah, simply take her underwear as my severance. I could consult with it about my problems, I could ask its advice, I could wait, and wait, for it to declare its love for me, I could ask it to keep me company when I was lonely, I could relate to it all that had happened to me during the day, I could take it to dinner, to the movies, to parties, and afterward I could fuck it and then tightly hold it while I slept. Her underwear at least wouldn’t drive me nuts. Her underwear would never decide that it wanted to be returned to the shop where it had been bought, or that it needed to spend a week alone in the dresser thinking things over; her underwear would never disappear for hours at a time and then return home and without a word fling itself into the washing machine. Her underwear would never change its mind and decide that it would prefer to be cut more conservatively, or that what it really wanted was not to be underwear at all but a smock or blazer. Of all of life’s demands requiring the collaboration and support of a trusted and reliable partner, there were none that a drawer full of foundation garments couldn’t fulfill at least as well as Susannah could. It was a bitter and terrifying revelation.

13

N
ABLES
was annoyed with her. His annoyance had a restraint to it that made it expansive, boundless. It became oceanic, tidally repetitive. If Kat had worked for a different man, she might have taken such patiently resolute irritation for a leadership technique picked up in some management seminar at the Marriott conference center, not a personality trait. He laboriously shored up the point he was making, shored it up in sonorous tones, shored it up until it was obscured behind the support he’d provided the argument. She listened to him while she drove from the rental car lot at the Cherry City airport. It did not ebb. It was like listening to a radio preacher.

“People do not say this directly, Kat, but I can tell sometimes that they believe I possess secret knowledge. They come to me with questions about this and about that, important questions as well as insignificant ones. And yet there’s nearly always a subtext present. The subtext has to do with what is the knowledge I seem to possess. You cannot work in a position of some responsibility for as long as I have done without being able to detect this subtext. Subtext is perhaps everything. Some might say context. I would argue subtext. Context provides a valid means of interpreting subtext, yes, but the one informs the other
mutatis mutandis
. Are you familiar with this once-common phrase?”

A man wearing a reflective orange vest appeared in the roadway about thirty yards in front of her, carrying himself with the slow and unselfconscious bearing of men and women who stand amid herds of traffic for a living, pointsmen and toll plaza attendants. He signaled to her to detour left: the airport was shutting itself down, section by section.

Nables went on. “In either case, people may be correct. They may be correct that there is a certain knowledge I possess. But this knowledge only can be acquired empirically. One thing I do know for certain is that journalism is not a metaphysical undertaking, Kat. Possibly it seems to you that it is. I have little doubt that much of what you learned in college shunted aside reasoned argumentation in favor of brazen assertions. Conventional wisdom is always going to favor the brazen assertion. It is going to favor the utterances of men and women of unwavering self-certitude. Some might say that the modern condition calls for this. That it is in the nature of the times. But historically, Kat, it has been ruinous. I need refer only to the best-known examples of destructive dictatorships to demonstrate my point. Certitude is an understandable comfort to a species as physically and morally fragile as we are, but it is ruinous when applied when it is reason that is required. The point is that I possess neither certitude nor secret knowledge. I possess the experience that enables me to act in a way characteristic of myself and worthy of the position I occupy.”

The snow was falling heavily. Kat hunted for the wiper controls in the rental, twisted the climate control knob to direct the airflow at the windshield and drive back the fog spreading from its edges into her field of vision.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

Nables drew a breath. “I believe that I have earned a measure of respect from those with whom I work, Kat. To be clear: respect is not something that is doled out in accordance with mystical beliefs. One earns it. Respect needs to be earned. Beyond the basic conceptual framework of it as something of which we are all deserving, respect is not something we come to automatically, nor is it something we apportion equally. We do not put it on a scale and then cut it into wedges for equal distribution to all. Personally, I find respect to be a challenge. A true challenge, as stern a challenge as any my mother encouraged me to step up to as a young boy. How do I respect this person with whom I disagree? Who observes unfamiliar customs? Who simply looks different? How do I grant them the benefit of the doubt, which perhaps is all respect adds up to in the end? How do I find a way to do this?”

The large white flakes descended thickly, falling at a slight angle; decorous and individually distinct in the streetlamps, swarming and chaotic at the level of the headlights. They massed on the windshield between swipes of the wiper blade.

“Rising to this challenge has given me a certain ability to empathize, Kat. I mentioned subtext earlier. For any event in reality, there is a subtext that is equally real. Perhaps more real. Perhaps reality is nothing but subtext. Human beings offer up very little that can be trusted on the basis of appearances alone. One could argue that what we call reality often is no more than the setting in which subtext thrives. Look at us in our clothes. What are you wearing right now?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind that. I am suggesting only that beneath our outward appearance, things often are quite different, radically different, than what one might anticipate. I wear a sign that says ‘Midwest Editor.’ You wear a sign that says ‘Staff Writer.’ Do you understand what I’m trying to get at?”

“Not exactly.”

“What I am trying to express is that the outward signs say that we are not equals. But inwardly, we are equals, in many respects. And therefore, because we are equal inside, it should go without saying that you should, out of respect, grant me my authority.”

“I still don’t understand.”

At the top of a slight rise a stoplight appeared suddenly out of the snow, and she braked, fishtailing slightly. She thought she’d try the Holiday Inn this time. Something out of the glide path. Although nothing’ll be landing tonight.

“Ahem. I mentioned challenges earlier. One challenge that I encounter in my position of responsibility is the subordinate, the protegé, if you will, who does not bother to consult with me. Do you know what it is that troubles me most about this? The fact that, deep down, these persons know that my experience and my judgment are sound. Deep down inside, these persons know that it is my sound judgment, developed from years of experience, that stands between them and their doing exactly as they like, no matter how foolhardy it may be. Does this sound familiar to you, Kat?”

“I don’t know. Should it?”

“Oh, I should think so. I should think so, Kat.”

“You’re breaking up,” she said.

She imagined him sitting in his Steelcase enclosure, the phone pressed to his ear, listening into the white silence. The long-suffering Nables. It occurred to her all at once how badly he wanted her to be on his side. It was mildly insulting.

SHE ASKED FOR
a room facing the water. Once inside, she discovered that the bay window was neatly cut off by a wall dividing her room from the one next door. Standing in the awkward little alcove formed by the remainder of the window—more like an abrupt 45-degree convexity in the wall—she noted that her view consisted of a tiny sliver of the harbor and a large section of the mostly empty parking lot below. Snow fell through the night. She called room service and ordered a BLT.

Time to deal with Justin. She said it singsong to herself. He would likely be eating now, fragments of barely edible dreck, stored leavings in plastic sacks shoved into a corner of the freezer and stiff with cold. There was an eloquent blank white rectangle provided on some of the sacks suggesting that an industrious homemaker might, if he or she so desired, write down the name of the thing the bag contained and the date on which it had been stored. Around their house, no one so desired. This was how the gourmet fed himself when she was away: she knew his rebuke so well. Discomfort food, she called it.

There were times when she entertained herself by inventing a third party, always biased in her favor, to whom she could explain the situation: a licensed counselor in some homemade space on the lower floor of a two-flat, sometimes a judge in an open court pastiche that was strictly the product of her imagination’s collision with Hollywood. Tonight she invented parents, a solid pair of hazy ethnicity and class background. Mom bustled. Dad brewed coffee. She sat at a dinette table. Bits of tender routine. It was safe, with no sign of struggle; she could pour herself into it completely. He won’t even feed himself, Dad. Forget that he can eat anywhere he wants anytime. Forget that about six of his hipster friends own gastropubs and tapas bars. He won’t even go to Jewel and pick up a barbecue chicken. I mean, whatever. Bla bla bla, I know it sounds corny. To you guys it must just seem like a rough patch. But I swear rough patch sounds good compared to this. I feel honestly like I’m going crazy. He follows me around. He’s always
talking
. Everything is a disappointment but he doesn’t really want to change anything. Except me. I’m always in the position where I either have to lie or get yelled at. I’ve never had so many secrets in my entire life. Even from Danhoff. Danhoff wanted
me
at least, whoever I really was.

Suddenly she remembered Danhoff as she’d last seen him. She and a kind-of boyfriend were at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor having lunch when he’d walked in and gotten in line. She knew what a small town A2 could be and she mostly avoided it, but Danhoff had always thought the place overrated and was on record as having said that it was absurd to wait in a line out the door for a sandwich and in any case his taste did not run, never had run, to sandwiches or deli fare generally. So of course here he was. She was only a little surprised because this was the uncomfortable scenario she was always expecting, if not prepared for, and she avoided looking in his direction. She became conscious of herself acting: nodding, smiling, raising the cup to her lips in what she took to be an unmindful manner. It wasn’t like she had to. Act, that is. They had no legal ties. She’d done everything on the up and up. Time—some time, anyhow—had passed. She glanced quickly at him and instantly could tell that he’d spotted her spot him. He stood staring straight ahead with a kind of deflated dignity that she recognized, almost missed: there was both a hurt and a sense of duty not to embarrass her with even a friendly encounter, and this guy opposite her wiping Russian dressing from his mouth with the back of his hand had no clue about the historical energies running through the room, had no idea that as soon as Danhoff had entered her field of vision he and his face and his Russian dressing had basically been pushed out of her history, this would be the last date; she could never turn up with this guy anywhere in the world where Danhoff’s presence was at least a theoretical possibility—whoever the hell he was, dangling his shiny fingers limply over his plate and trying to figure out how to politely express all his interesting date-thoughts with his mouth full. Kat swelled with a feeling of shame. She couldn’t go up to Danhoff. She couldn’t sit here. She couldn’t leave.