I lock the door behind me, two dead bolts and the chain. Had Terrance really just leaned over and kissed me? My God, what does that mean?
For a few hours, I wrestle with my homework. There’s the regular Friday calculus quiz tomorrow, and even though I’ve only been out a day, I’m still behind. It’s hard work, made harder by my mind constantly flying like a ghost back to the feel of his hands as they rubbed mine in the back of the cab, hands with long, thin fingers, hands befitting an aristocrat with a number in his name. That was the important part, wasn’t it? Not the kiss. The way he rubbed my hands. God, he’s literally the only thing I’ve found in this city that doesn’t hurt.
Somehow I manage to get through the homework, and at eleven o’clock, I make a sandwich and pour what’s left of last night’s wine into a plastic cup and turn on the Mexican soap opera I watch to keep my Spanish tight.
Two secret lovers at a grand party—she in an evening gown, he in a tux—agreeing to meet in the cobertizo. Cabin? Shack? No, not in this rarefied world. It’s an elegant boathouse, richly appointed in brass clocks and chubby leather chairs and a stuffed falcon on a shelf. Dangerous, meeting like this, they both agree, what with the party so close, still audible, even. Do you love me, he asks. Sí, Emilio, she says, siempre, siempre.
The wine is warm in my stomach, and my brain is feeling furry. I slide down on the couch, my head sinking into a throw pillow, and think about Tompkins Square for the eight thousandth time tonight, how the rain looked like blobs of paint on the sidewalk. He’s rich, I think—he must be, to live where he does. But so what? How much was holding me like that in the doorway as we hid from the rain worth? I don’t know, but you don’t measure it in money.
And that’s what I’m thinking about as my eyes close and I feel myself falling backward, just falling backward through the warm wine buzz and into sleep. The soap opera is still on, a heated argument now. Emilio and someone—her father? And on the show, someone else is knocking at the door, but Emilio and the other guy just keep talking over it. Jesus, answer it already.
Then I snap awake. The knocking isn’t on the TV; it’s at the door to my apartment, firm and urgent. Come now, it says. I approach the door groggy but wary, and look through the peephole. It’s Bela, dressed in a bathrobe. Behind him stand two figures in cheap-looking suits. One’s a woman, and her dishwater-blond hair is tied back in a ponytail. She’s pretty, I think, athletic, maybe forty. The other one is a guy, maybe late twenties. He has a heavy red face and his black hair is cut short like a military recruit’s.
I unlock the two dead bolts and open the door as far as the chain will let me.
Bela wrings his hands. It’s not nervousness, but something else. “These people—they need to speak with you.”
“Can you open up, please, Gwendolyn?” says the woman.
I close the door, unlock the chain, and open it again. The woman steps forward and unfolds a wallet showing a badge and an ID card with her photo on it.
“Gwendolyn, hi. My name is Special Agent Kavanaugh and this is Special Agent Mazlow. We’re from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.”
Now it’s the man’s turn to show his badge and ID, but I don’t need to look at it. I know them already—not these two specifically, but I know their kind, what they do, what it means when they show up. I know the next words out of their mouth before they even say them.
“My dad,” I say, my voice low, almost a whisper. “What happened to my dad?”
Agent Kavanaugh places a hand gently on my shoulder. “We’d like you to come with us, okay? Can you do that, Gwendolyn?”
I knock her hand off my shoulder. “What happened to my dad?” I repeat, louder now, almost a shout. “Is he all right?”
“Gwendolyn,” Agent Kavanaugh says. “Your dad is missing.”
Four
Kavanaugh and Mazlow stand on either side of me in an elevator that smells like disinfectant. The button for the sixth floor is lit up. BUREAU OF DIPLOMATIC SECURITY it says next to it.
When I visited my dad here in the drab concrete building downtown where the State Department has its field office, there were metal detectors at the front entrance, and I had to wear a red badge marked VISITOR. But there’s none of that now. As we climbed out of the big SUV with sirens and lights that Kavanaugh and Mazlow used to get us here, the security guards just waved us through.
I’m deposited in a small conference room where mismatched tables have been pushed together and a collection of ratty chairs lines the walls. “Stay put,” Kavanaugh says. “Mazlow will be right outside the door if you need anything.”
She disappears, and I’m alone in the room, wishing they’d let Bela come with me. The fluorescent lights above me buzz and flicker, casting a sickly light over everything. The only window in the room is covered with closed blinds. I lift one of the metal strips and find that the window faces a hallway, and from here I can see into the room across from me. Kavanaugh is there, along with six or seven others. They’re gathered around a whiteboard where they’ve written some sort of timeline:
20:37
SMS from Bloom at Café Durbin to Paris Station all clear
20:42
Phn from Bloom to daughter no answer/no vm
20:55
Call from Bloom to Feras/confirm
21:22
Leave Feras Meeting at Café Durbin/SMS to Paris Station all clear
21:32
Phn offline/dead
Kavanaugh is speaking to two men I recognize. One is Joey Diaz, a political officer like my dad. He’s a handsomely stocky black guy who’s been a friend of my dad’s for years. They were stationed in Dubai together, and Joey, along with his wife and two kids, spent Thanksgiving and Christmas at our apartment there two years in a row. The other guy I’ve seen, too. Chase Carlisle is his name, and he’s my dad’s boss. I know little about him other than that my dad says he’s from an old Southern family and knows everyone in Washington.
Carlisle’s about fifty or fifty-five, I think, pink-skinned and wearing the standard-issue tired suit, buttoned uneasily over his middle-aged bulk. His hair, though, is the same as I remembered, sharp part on the side, dyed perfectly brown. As Kavanaugh speaks to them, Carlisle looks over in my direction, and I pull back instinctively, letting the blind fall back into place.
A moment later, Diaz and Carlisle come through the door to the conference room. Joey gathers me into a hug. “It’s going to be all right, Gwendolyn,” he says. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Why don’t you sit, Gwendolyn,” Carlisle says, his Virginia accent pleasant and soft.
“I’ll stand, thank you,” I say, trying to make my voice as calm as I can.
“Gwendolyn,” Joey says, hands on my shoulders, eyes directly into mine. “Your father disappeared shortly after meeting a colleague of ours in Paris, someone we—”
“Very misleading, Joey,” Carlisle says, cutting him off. “You’re implying it’s a kidnapping, and we have no evidence of that.”