“You don’t all seem the same to me,” he said.
The only unity I’d found in the guests was economic: none of them were poor. There were men and women, young and old, white, Asian and Iranian and Dutch Americans, straight and gay. We had no profession or other clear trait in common save money—everyone was at least middle-class, no one was on food stamps. I’m a former academic, Kay’s a med student, Navid a producer; Burke is a botanist and between them the Lindas have three master’s and a PhD.
“That’s true,” said Will. “Because the poor don’t weigh in on the channels Don uses to bring his guests together. He can’t find them because he can’t separate them in the social-service world from the population with schizoid conditions. They may be institutionalized or on the streets or just toiling, but they don’t tend to be online so much. He doesn’t have a way to get to them.”
But Don never found me online, or if he did I didn’t know of it. I wondered if Will knew that too.
“Why does he want to bring them in?” I asked.
Maybe it was just group therapy, as Navid had alleged, I was thinking.
“He says it’s just his role,” said Will.
After breakfast we sat on Solly’s cheap, caving-in couch, which pushed us together comfortably in the middle, as Lena played with a magic coloring book Will had brought for her. Depending on how you flip through the book, its pages are blank or black-and-white or startling full color. Lena had wanted to do the trick in our coffee shop, but only a one-year-old had been present, on whom the trick was wasted. Babies think magic is normal, she said.
She flipped through the book as Will and I sat against each other, my laptop on my knees, his arm around my shoulders. Then I brought up the schedule and stared at it. Where before it had annoyed me, now the bristling field of white seemed ominous. Onscreen it didn’t seem inert, as any other file would, but almost radioactive: it bore the weight of grim prediction.
By Ned’s reckoning, it appears—or the reckoning of his aide or campaign runner or secretary, whoever created this schedule—my father will begin hospice in June and die before Independence Day.
NAVID CALLED ME on the phone Will just bought me, his face popping up on the screen. I’d never bothered to use my cell that way before. He was wearing a headset and seemed to be sitting in a car: I saw the curves of a headrest behind him.
“Are you alone?”
I was trying to figure out how to hold the phone so that he didn’t see the inside of my nose or ear. “Lena and Will are here. Can we just talk normally?”
“Yeah. I wanted to see it was you,” he said. “Now I’ve seen.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“So his donors fall into two categories. Industry kingmakers, the ones that run the politicians, first. Then there are others—also rich but not as rich, one or two have as much as half a billion in revenue, sometimes their wealth is shared among smaller entities or they’re hidden behind so-called educational groups, these 501(c)4s—a big corporate entity of biblical literalists that owns hundreds of radio channels, for example. Those guys are his other backers.”
“It’s not so surprising,” I said. “He’s been talking the talk.”
“It’s how he found you,” said Navid. “Turns out these guys have citizen networks. I wouldn’t call it grassroots, there’s too much money moving around for that. Or let me put it another way: there’s money at the top and blue-collars at the bottom. Far’s I can tell, the money at the top talks about ending the separation of church and state, making biblical law the law of the country. Like sharia, right? But Christian. End-times bringers. They use this shit to get the blue-collars to do their dirty work. It’s cynical. So your husband’s friends put out their version of an APB, you go down as a threat on the list they give out to their little-guy helpers across the country, and you’re a target. I’m guessing it was your VIN that tipped them off. You took your car into the shop, right?”
“My VIN,” I repeated slowly.
I thought of Beefy John and the radio poster on his wall.
“Ned knew my father’s cancer diagnosis before the doctors told my mother. Before there was even a biopsy. So I’m thinking maybe there was a scan or something, maybe the doctors knew earlier but just needed the biopsy to confirm to the family. Maybe someone connected to him had access and knew the probability.”
“I couldn’t tell you for sure,” said Navid. “I can’t get into hospital records. There are people who can, but it’s not my bailiwick.”
It struck me after I hung up with him that he’d spoken faster than he used to when he was staying at the motel, he was energetic and focused but without the anger. High.