More waiting. And now the minutes seemed to matter again as they began to pile up. I paced the control room. Four o’clock came and went, and the phone continued not to ring. Then came four thirty and five, and still no word.
We had to let Marie go. That fact had always quietly filled the studio like ambient noise. You could put it out of your mind, but only for a while. There would be no money paid in exchange for her silence. Not anymore. Undoubtedly, she would go to the police, and it wouldn’t be long—hours? a day?—before we were arrested. And then we would confess. We had no alibi. Also, we were guilty.
We’d been arrogant, believing that any problem could be solved as long as you had intelligence and determination and a little time. We had all those things but couldn’t solve this one, and now time was up. I was beginning to feel ready. Whatever disgraces—prison? Divorce? A hungry media?—I was about to face were, for the first time, being overshadowed by a basic need to do the right thing.
And yet I strongly believed that the way we handled our surrender now would have far-reaching consequences down the road, the way that traveling a few degrees off course could mean, upon crossing an ocean, the difference between landing on your continent and missing it entirely. Although the beginning of this weekend had been out of control, the end of it was still unfolding and, I believed, still subject to our influence. Should we write up a confession? Go to the police ourselves? Have them come here? Evan would know. That was why it was so important for him to get here.
At 6:15 I called his cell again. “We’re waiting for the plane to get here from L.A.,” he said. “The good news is, flights are still coming in and out.”
“How’s it look outside?” I asked.
“Like hell. But I think they’re used to that here.”
By 7:00 we were all hungry. And I really wanted cigarettes. I remained spooked, however, from my run-in earlier and was afraid to go outside. So we all sat around waiting, looking at our watches and at one another and at the telephone that kept not ringing—until, finally, it rang.
There was a problem.
Evan was scheduled to change planes in Chicago, but because of his delay, by the time he’d get there he’d have missed the last plane leaving for any of the New York airports. The only other option was a direct flight to Philadelphia, scheduled to leave Minneapolis at 11:30.
If everything went perfectly, he’d land at 3 AM. We were located about two hours from Philadelphia. That would get him here shortly after 5 AM. It would mean another night in the studio.
Another goddamn night. Another ludicrous phone call to Cynthia—Everything’s great!—followed by a thousand more years of waiting.
“Book it,” I said, and then asked Jeffrey to help me again with the sofa.
Marie retreated obediently to a corner of Room A so we could cram the sofa in for her. We went through the routine again:
“Swear on your grandmother’s life that you won’t try to escape when we open the door.”
“Aren’t we past all that by now?”
“No. Swear it.”
Hesitation. Then a shrug. “I swear on my nana’s life.”
We told her there would be no dinner tonight for any of us. Jeffrey removed the blanket from the bass drum again, spread it out on the floor, and lay down on top of it. Nolan took his spot by the television. I went to the control room and dimmed all the lights in the studio. I sat in my chair for a while and presided over my wrecked kingdom. In this artificial twilight, Marie’s resemblance to Sara increased. It was more than physical likeness—it was the posture, the way she carried herself. And this, I thought, was because of the violence, or the threat of it. It produced a sort of grace, whose purpose was to mask fear. We could tell Marie a thousand times she was in no danger, but she’d never fully believe it. And why should she? To her, violence was always imminent.