They're Watching (2010) Page 12

  I paused, taking in the surreal scene. In light of the ripped-apart house, the bugged raincoat, and the date we had with the curb drain in a few hours, it seemed bizarrely domestic.

  "Look, I gotta go. Patrick just walked in. . . . I know, I know. You'll be fine." She hung up, tossed the phone into the cushions, and said, loudly. "That'll teach you guys to listen in." A weary half smile. "They probably committed hara-kiri in their surveillance vans. Speaking of . . ." She reached into her purse, withdrew the cigarette-pack jammer, and clicked the black button to knock out any surveillance devices that might have regenerated since Jerry's visit.

  "You didn't say anything to Janice?"

  "Please. Our problems pale in comparison to hers. Besides, I'm not sure how to slip this into casual conversation."

  "You did a great job," I said. "With the house."

  She blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. "Still looks like a ten-car pileup."

  I handed her one of the throwaway phones. "I programmed the number of mine in here. I don't want to not be able to talk to you when we're apart."

  Her face changed. My words hung there, so I replayed them, heard what they meant to her, to us. A few days ago, we were barely speaking.

  I sat beside her. She offered her glass, and I took a sip. "It's pleasant," she said. "Being nice to each other for a change."

  "We should have solicited techno-stalkers months ago."

  "I was sitting here looking at our house. All the crap in it. Dunn-Edwards Shaved Ice paint. Cavetto molding. That stupid chandelier I picked up in Cambria. And I thought a week ago this all looked perfect. And it felt like shit living here. At least it's honest now. This mess. This is where we are."

  A prim distance between us, we stared at the spray of wires where the plasma used to hang, sharing a glass of wine and waiting for midnight.

  The black duffel tugged at my shoulder, bulging with the gear inside. We stood at the curb, Ariana clutching her jacket closed against a biting wind. Given the comforting yellow glow spilling around our curtains and blinds, it was easy to forget how torn up our house was inside. Apart from the occasional porch light, the neighboring houses and apartments were dark, which, along with an odd lapse in traffic, made the crowded neighborhood seem abandoned.

  "Three minutes." Shuddering, she looked up from her cell-phone clock to peer at the mouth of the curb drain. "Hope it's wide enough."

  As I stepped toward the gap, dead leaves crumbled underfoot against the metal grate, brown flecks spinning down into darkness. A mossy smell rose with the warm air. I guided the end of the bulging duffel through the curb drain. A snug fit, but a fit.

  Ariana checked the time again. "Not yet." She looked across at the apartment balconies, then down the slope of Roscomare Road, her eyes tearing from the cold. "Wonder where they're watching us from."

  A silver Porsche flew by, the engine's roar shattering the calm. We both recoiled, Ariana raising her arms as if to shield herself from a hail of drive-by bullets, me stepping back, almost losing my footing on the curb. The driver, annoyed beneath his baseball cap, had scowled at our overreaction; he wasn't going that fast. My head buzzed from the shot of adrenaline and the burn-out blend of sleeplessness and caffeine. Ari and I took our positions again. Placing a foot on the end of the bag, I waited for her signal.

  How much our lives had changed in four days.

  Moths battered the flickering streetlight. Crickets sawed.

  "Okay," she said. "Heave-ho."

  I shoved. The bag bunched at its midsection, then popped through. We waited to hear it hit, but instead there was a muffled thump. A soft landing. I looked down between my shoes through the metal grate, my eyes straining to discern the shape in the darkness.

  What came into focus first were the whites of the eyes.

  My skin was tingling everywhere--the back of my neck, up my ribs, the inside of my mouth. I blinked and the eyes were gone, the duffel with them. Just a muted sound against the moist, buried concrete--the faint heartbeat of footsteps padding away beneath the street.

  Wearing sweats and a T-shirt, I stepped out of the bathroom, drying my wet hair with a towel. When I pulled it off my head, I noticed Ariana in the doorway of our bedroom with her nighttime cup of chamomile and the cigarette-box jammer.

  "Sorry," she said. "I don't like being downstairs alone right now."

  Unspoken rules had evolved with astonishing rapidity. We'd stopped changing in front of each other. When she was in a room with the door closed, I knocked. When I showered, she kept out of the bedroom.

  "Then you shouldn't be downstairs alone," I said.

  We sidestepped each other, giving wide berth, changing positions. I didn't continue down the hall, and she didn't climb into bed. Instead she leaned against the bureau, still filmed with drywall dust. We studied each other, my hands folding the towel, unfolding it, folding it again.

  I cleared my throat. "Do you want me to stay upstairs tonight?"

  She said, "I do."

  I stopped folding the towel.

  Her hand circled. She was trying for casual, but her eyes hadn't gotten the memo. "Do you want to stay?"

  I said, "I do."

  She walked over, turned back the comforter on my side. I sat on the mattress. She went around and slid in. Her clothes were still on. I got in, also fully dressed. She reached over and turned off the light. We sat with our backs against the curved headboard. I couldn't remember even touching the new bed before now. It was as comfortable as it looked.

  "Do you really?" she asked. "Watch me cry some mornings through the window?"

  "Yes."

  Even in the dark, we were looking straight ahead instead of at each other.

  "Because you want to know what? That I'm still sorry?" Her voice was thin, vulnerable. "That I still care?"

  We sat awhile longer. "I want to come in to hold you," I said. "But I can never find the nerve."

  I sensed her face rotate, slowly, toward mine. "How 'bout now?" she asked.

  I lifted my arm. She slid down beside me, put her cheek on my chest. I stroked her hair. She was warm, soft. I thought of Don's hands. His goatee. I felt a compulsion to pull away, but I didn't. I considered the distance between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should do. A collision of alternate selves, a crossroads to alternate futures. My wife had cheated on me. And now I was holding her. We were together, right now. I was afraid of what that would look like--not to others but to myself. In my quieter moments. Driving to work. Sipping coffee between classes. Watching a clever movie scene about extracurricular fucking, Ari stiffening beside me, our sudden chagrin in the dark of a theater. That stiletto jab of paradigms past, of how it was supposed to be.

  "I think I want to have a baby," Ariana said.

  My lips were suddenly dry. "I've heard you have to have sex for that."

  "Not right now."

  "I wasn't suggesting--"

  "I mean, not a baby right now. Or even soon. But being threatened like this, I've been thinking about our life a lot. I'm sure you have, too. I've got stuff I like to do--the furniture, my plants. But I'm not gonna be content to turn into one of those women who drives her SUV up and down these hills, going to stupid appointments and Whole Foods. I mean, look at Martinique. That's where I'm headed."

  "You're not--"

  "I know, but you know what I mean." Her hand twitched, looking for something to do. "I want to have a baby, but at the same time I'm terrified that I want to have a baby for all the wrong reasons. Does any of this make sense?"

  I made a soft noise of support. A flash of copper pipe gleamed where we'd torn through the drywall by the bathroom. Her head rose and fell with my breathing. We lay there awhile longer, as I worked my feelings into words.

  "I don't want to keep doing what I've been doing," I said. "Or at least I don't want to feel the same way doing it."

  "Yes. Exactly." She came up off my chest, excited. "So here we are. Now. Off balance from all this crap, but at least seeing cle
arly. Let's not upset that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What if you don't check for that e-mail Sunday? What if we just stick our heads in the sand and pretend nothing's wrong?"

  "And you think it'll go away?"

  "Let's pretend it will. Let's pretend that everything's like it was before hidden cameras and Don Miller and screenplay deals. Just for tonight."

  We lay together, fully dressed, in our bed. I held her until her breathing evened out, and then I lay there awake, listening to her sleep.

  Chapter 24

  Gmail's home page glowed back at me from my computer. The filled-in ID and password, my finger again poised above the mouse, Ariana over my shoulder, her breath scented of the strawberries she'd eaten in a cereal bowl with milk and sugar. The day, like yesterday, had passed in an excruciating crawl, Ariana and I on top of each other, slogging through mind-numbing work and household tasks, trying not to reference clocks and watches. The time in my menu bar showed 4:01 P.M.

  As my finger lowered, Ariana said, "Wait." She pulled the mariposa--orange again--out from behind her ear and fiddled with it. "Listen, I know we were getting suspicious there for a while. Of each other. Now that we're getting clearer, I just wanted to ask you . . ."

  "Go on."

  "Is there something--anything--you want to tell me?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like what that e-mail's gonna hold?"

  "As in me snorting blow off a stripper's thigh? No, there's nothing, Ari. I've been racking my brain, and I can't think of a single thing." I clicked "Log In" brusquely, in protest of her question. Then it hit me to ask, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

  She leaned forward. "What if it's me and Don?"

  As the page loaded, I sat with that one, the weight of it low in my stomach. That was all I needed--my wife's one-night mess sent right to my desktop. A high-water mark of invasiveness. The thought brought to mind a snatch of my conversation with Punch--how e-mails, even once they're deleted, leave an evidence trail in the hard drive.

  With dread, I stared at the loading page. It hadn't occurred to me that once I opened that e-mail, I couldn't control what it carried with it. Into my computer.

  Before I could do anything, there it was, a single e-mail staring out at us from my in-box. The sender line, blank. Subject line, blank. For now, the unopened e-mail still resided safely on the server, not yet called up on my computer. I moved the cursor all the way to the side of the screen, in case it decided to double-click the e-mail by itself.

  They'd visited this computer already, printed out those JPEGs of our floor plans. I checked the history function of Explorer to see which Web sites had been recently visited. It listed none I didn't recognize.

  "Wait," Ariana asked. "Why aren't you opening the e-mail?"

  I mimed someone listening, then gestured a question: Where's the jammer? In answer she tugged the fake pack of Marlboros from her pocket. She never let the thing out of her sight.

  "I don't want to do this here," I said. "From my computer."

  "Look," Ari said, still back a step, "if it is me and Don, we might as well face it together."

  "No, I mean I shouldn't be retrieving data from them on my computer. Even if I erase it, the record of it stays in the hard drive somewhere. Or they could use an e-mail to piggyback in some virus that lets them read my computer remotely."

  "Wouldn't they have just installed that when they were here?"

  I was up now, whistling down the stairs, Ariana at my back. I said, "Jerry checked our computers for spyware, remember?"

  Tugging on my shoes, I hurried for the garage. "Wait," she said. She pointed at my feet.

  I looked down. I was wearing my bugged Nikes. Cursing, I kicked them off and stepped into my loafers. Given my white socks, not my best look, but I didn't want my stalkers to know I was heading to Kinko's.

  Patrick Davis.

  That's all the e-mail said, though my name had been turned into a hyperlink. Buried in a rented corner cubicle, I looked over my shoulder. The Kinko's guy was busy servicing a loud woman in louder clothing, and the other customers Xeroxed and stapled at the bank of copiers toward the front of the store.

  Raising the hem of my shirt, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Gritted my teeth. And clicked on my name.

  A Web site popped up. As I took in the Internet address--a lengthy series of numbers, far too many to commit to memory--bold letters appeared: THIS WEB SITE WILL ERASE UPON COMPLETION OF ONE VIEWING. They faded into the black background, a ghostly effect.

  Digital photos flashed one after another, like a PowerPoint presentation.

  Ariana's greenhouse framed against our trees at night.

  Then, inside, the shot bathed in a green, otherworldly glow.

  The row of pots on the middle shelf of the east-facing wall. Her lavender mariposas, unpicked and unworn these past months.

  A familiar hand in a familiar latex glove, lifting the end pot and saucer. Beneath them, on the soft wood, a purple jewel case.

  That disc hadn't been there three nights earlier when Ariana and I had searched the greenhouse.

  I was leaning forward at the monitor, my hands tensed like talons. The discs, the devices, the phone call--none of it had acclimated me to watching someone pry around in our possessions, in our lives. If anything, my reaction was worse, trauma compounding trauma, sandpaper on raw skin.

  The photo disappeared, replaced by a written address: 2132 Aminta St., Van Nuys, CA 91406. Desperately, I looked for a pen and some scrap paper--none in my cubicle. I flew around the corner to the next desk, knocking over the plastic supply caddy and grabbing a pencil and Post-it from the spill. When I got back to my monitor, the typed address had been replaced by a Google Maps screen, the location marked smack in the shittiest part of Van Nuys. I managed to jot down the address, grabbing it from the location bubble, before that screen also blipped off.

  The next featured four numbers, evenly spaced: 4 7 8 3.

  I wrote those down as well, an instant before they were replaced by a shot of a dingy apartment door. Flaking paint, cracking seams, and two rusty numbers nailed where a peephole should be: 11. One of the nails had come loose, so the second 1 had sagged to a tilt.

  And then, like a breath of icy air down my rigid spine, a message appeared, as bold as its type: GO ALONE.

  The browser window closed on its own, quitting out of the program. When I reopened it, it had no records stored of recent Web sites visited.

  There was no evidence, no artifact that said this was anything more than an evil dream. All I had were an address and four mystery numbers written in my own hand.

  Chapter 25

  "That's it?" Ariana asked.

  On the couch next to me, she turned over the purple DVD case as if it had a Blockbuster write-up on the back. The cover still sported a spot of moisture from the plant saucer.

  "We must've missed something," I said, already fussing over the remote. We stared again at the plasma, remounted somewhat crookedly on our wall.

  The picture flickered back on. Grainy black and white--probably a security camera. A basement, expansive enough that it wasn't residential. A dangling bulb putting out a throw of weak light, a set of stairs catching the shadows. A generator, a water heater, several unlabeled cardboard boxes, and a spread of blank concrete floor. On the second-to-bottom stair, what appeared to be a mound of cigarettes. A bank of fuse boxes, just in view on the far wall. Superimposed on the screen, the date and a running time stamp: 11/3/05, 14:06:31 and counting.

  The footage ended.

  "I don't get it," Ariana said. "Is there some coded meaning that we're missing?"

  We watched the DVD through again. And again.

  She bounced off the couch, exasperated. "How the hell are we supposed to figure out what that is?"

  She watched with dread as I plucked the Post-it from the coffee table. That Van Nuys address.

  I ejected the DVD, nestled it in its case, and slid it into my back p
ocket. Sitting on the floor in the foyer, I laced up my Nikes. I needed to wear them sometimes to not give away that I'd discovered the tracking device embedded in the heel. Might as well do it now while I was following orders.

  Ariana stopped me at the door to the garage. "Maybe you just shouldn't. You don't know what's behind that door, Patrick." Her voice trembled with intensity. "You don't know how to handle this kind of thing. Are you sure you want to go poking a stick into this?"

  "Look, I'm not Jason Bourne, but I know a little."

  "You know what they say about a little knowledge." She started to cross her arms but thought better of it. "They could just be hoping that you're dumb enough to show up. What can they do if you don't?"

  "You want to find out?"

  She didn't answer.

  I stepped down into the garage. "We've got to figure out what this is. And who's doing it to us."

  "Think, Patrick. Right now? This moment? Nothing's really happened to us yet. Our house is safe. You could just come back in here with me."

  At the side of my car, I paused to look at her. For an instant I thought about going back inside, making a cup of tea, and grading student scripts. What could they do if they built a maze and no rat showed up? Was there more risk in scuttling along through their twists and turns or staying still and waiting for the walls to close in?

  The keys poked the inside of my fist. "I'm sorry," I said. "I have to know."

  She watched me from the doorway as I backed out. She was still standing there when the garage door shuddered down, wiping her from view.

  Down in the bowl of the Valley, dusk seemed heavier, thickened with smog. Car fumes and sickly-sweet barbecue fragranced the still air. Crushed Michelob cans and fast-food wrappers lined the gutter. The apartment building was your typical Van Nuys disaster--crumbling stucco, deteriorating concrete walkways, a bent security gate. Air conditioners hung from windows, dripping condensation. The Vacancy sign flapping from the rain gutter was hardly enticing.