Detour

FORTY

Paul found himself walking around in a constant cold sweat.

He could hear his wristwatch ticking.

He dreamed Joanna was dead. He was at her wake, talking to Miles.

One morning he thought he heard her voice behind him on the street. When he turned around, it was a young mother pushing a carriage and talking on her cell phone.

Interrogations were called debriefings now. They felt the same. Paul’s progress report was derided for what it was—the essay portion in a test he hadn’t studied for.

“In other words, Paul, you got ugatz,” the bird-watcher said. “It’s back to rat school for you.”

“I need a little time,” Paul said.

There was a problem with needing a little time. There wasn’t any.

He needed to come up with something if the bird-watcher was going to save his wife. If she was still savable.

Now that he was an unofficial DEA rat, he was allowed to sleep in his own bed. Not sleep. Toss, turn, stare wide-eyed at the ceiling.

Two seconds after he’d entered his apartment, someone was knocking on his door.

Lisa again.

This time he couldn’t pretend no one was home.

When he opened the door, she practically fell into his arms.

“Where is she?”

Paul was momentarily confused as to which she Lisa was referring to. Neither one, of course, was currently available.

“Where’s the baby?” Lisa said, scanning the four corners of the room like an eagle-eyed real estate agent, which, in fact, she was.

“There was a problem,” Paul said, ready to trot out the story he and Miles had concocted for general use.

“Problem? What problem? Where’s Joanna?”

“Bogotá.”

Lisa pushed her blond hair back with one hand. She was one of those East Side women who’d crossed the park—born to money that had inexplicably dried up, but still looking very trust-fund.

“Joelle’s visa wasn’t in order.”

“In order? What does that mean?”

“It means it wasn’t functional. We couldn’t get her out of the country.”

“Oh, Paul. That’s terrible. So what’s going on? What are you doing about it?”

“I’m working it out from this end.” Now that Paul was actually trying out the story, he thought it held up pretty well. He himself was a different matter. He wasn’t holding up pretty well. Fatigue seemed to have settled into his bones.

Lisa must’ve sensed this, because she went to embrace him again, bestowing a comforting hug and lingering there long enough for Paul to lean against her.

She smelled like home.

LATER, WHEN JOHN RETURNED FROM WORK, LISA CALLED A babysitter and they both came in, toting a bottle of cabernet.

It was wonderful to see John.

It was terrible to see John.

He was Paul’s best friend, the guy with whom he’d spent more time than he cared to remember, sitting in various West Side bars, relating the ups and downs of baby-making. The guy who’d bucked him up and, on more than one occasion, dried him out.

So while it was enormously comforting to see John’s face, it was discomforting having to lie to it.

Paul was forced to create details on the spot, to make all of it seem convincing, coherent, and perfectly logical. The trick was to mix in enough truthful stuff—everything he remembered about his daughter—to give it the ring of authenticity. Downing two glasses of wine proved only mildly helpful.

It didn’t do anything to alleviate his guilt. Or his fear.

Chatting about Joanna as if she were simply waiting for him back in a Bogotá hotel room felt horrifyingly callous. Joanna might be waiting in a room, but it lacked maid service and you couldn’t pick up a phone and order a burger and fries at 2 a.m. She might not be waiting for him at all.

There were hidden pitfalls in the thicket of lies.

“Give me her number, for Christ’s sake,” Lisa said. “I haven’t spoken to her for ages. Why hasn’t she called me?”

“You know what long distance costs from Colombia?” Paul said. A ten-minute call to New York from L’Esplanade had cost him $62.48.

“Okay, I’ll call her,” Lisa said. “Got the number?”

“I have to look it up,” Paul said.

The room went silent as Lisa and John waited for him to do just that.

And waited.

“Frankly, I’m exhausted,“ Paul said. “I need to turn in. Promise I’ll find it for you later.”

Lisa and John reluctantly stood up. They hugged him, told him that if there was anything they could do for him, he shouldn’t hesitate to ask.

HE COULDN’T SLEEP.

He called Rachel Goldstein.

He was still hoping she might lead him out of the rabbit hole.

“Yes?” Rachel said after he’d identified himself.

“I wanted to check and make sure you’re okay.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“I hardly know you. I appreciate your concern, but I’m kind of baffled at it. You’re not a relative. You’re not a friend.”

“I felt like a friend,” he said. It’s true. For a while Miles had felt like his only friend on earth.

Rachel didn’t bother disputing him.

“How are you holding up?” Paul asked.

“I’m holding on. Eighteen years of marriage and I’m finding out there was a husband I didn’t know. How would you feel?”

One of her sons must’ve come into the room. It’s all right, Paul heard Rachel murmur. I’m fine. Then the sound of a door gently closing.

“Who was he? That’s what I keep asking myself,” Rachel said, her voice sounding unbearably weary. “How do I even remember him?”

“The way you want to, I guess. What’s wrong with that?”

“The way I want to,” Rachel repeated, then said it again. Either because she thought it made sense or because she was ridiculing its stupid sentimentality. “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

Silence.

“I met one,” she said.

“One what?”

“One child. You asked me today if I had met any of the adopted babies, remember?”

“Yes.”

“I did. Once. Not a baby, though.”

“No?”

“A little girl.”

A little girl.

“I think I’ll remember Miles like that. Why not? Walking through the front door with a little Colombian girl in his arms.”

Okay, Paul thought, slowly.

“Do you remember her name?”

“Her name? It was over ten years ago.”

“You sure? If you thought about it a little.”

“Why do you care what her name was?”

Good question.

“Before we adopted, we talked to a couple who used your husband. They adopted a daughter. She looked, I don’t know, around thirteen. I was wondering if it might’ve been her.”

Rachel went silent again.

Think, Paul urged her, think.

“Something with an R maybe? Sorry, I don’t remember.”

R, Paul thought, like her father.

“What about her parents? You remember them? Why weren’t they there?”

“I have no idea. Maybe they couldn’t pick her up till the next day.”

“That’s odd. You’re required to go to Colombia and bring your baby back with you. That’s the way it works.”

“Maybe they ran into problems. The girl, as I recall, had some problems of her own.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Emotional stuff. Something was just a little bit wrong with her.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. She cried and screamed a lot.”

“She was probably scared. Don’t you think that’s normal?”

“I have two children who’ve been scared occasionally. Even terrified. They’re terrified now. Finding out your father killed himself will do that to you. This was different. The girl was afraid of the dark, afraid of the light—afraid of everything. Something was, I don’t know, off. I remember Miles going into her room in the middle of the night trying to calm her down.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. In the morning he took her to meet her parents. That was that. She had beautiful eyes—I can still remember them.”

“Well,” Paul said, suddenly anxious, even desperate, to get off the phone. Something had been buzzing around his brain, something someone said. “You should get some sleep. If there’s anything I can do.”

She didn’t bother saying good-bye.