I can’t push away the image of Alice, sitting there in her tiny cell, wearing her comfortable red prison jumpsuit. I’m freaked out, of course. And scared. What’s happening to her, and when will she be home? Is she really okay? But I’ll admit, there’s also this: Deep down, in some small corner of my psyche, I feel a spark of happiness. Complicated. Is it wrong that it pleases me to witness this incredible sacrifice she is making for me, for our marriage?
I plug the phone into the charger and search the house for her iPad. I can’t find it anywhere. I search every room, her bags, her dresser drawers. Then I head down to the garage. Her car is an old blue Jaguar X-Type. She bought it with the advance she received from a record company for her first and only widely released record. Aside from her music equipment and some clothes crammed into the back of our bedroom closet, it’s the only thing left from her old life. She once told me, only half-joking, that if I didn’t behave myself, she would drive the Jaguar straight back to her old life.
The car is a mess of papers, files, and shoes, although I know that Alice considers it perfectly organized. She swears she has a system, that she can always find what she’s looking for. She keeps an extra pair of sneakers in the backseat in case she wants to stop for a walk on the beach or in Golden Gate Park on her way home from work, but she also keeps a pair of black boots—because she wouldn’t be caught dead walking the city streets in Nikes. In addition to those, she keeps a pair of black ballet flats, in case her feet have had it at work and she needs to change out of her heels into something less painful. There’s also a shopping bag containing a pair of designer jeans, a black cashmere sweater, a white T-shirt, and an extra bra and underwear, “in case.” And a ski vest, for the beach, plus a trench coat, for the city. On some level, of course, it makes sense to be prepared when you live in San Francisco; you can leave the house in short sleeves and need a coat ten minutes later, depending on the fog. But Alice takes it to the extreme. I can’t help but smile at the tangle of shoes and clothes, so maddening yet so very Alice.
Inside the glove box, I find the iPad. It’s dead, of course, like all of her electronic equipment. It’s a pattern with her; she doesn’t believe in charging her tech items. When she finds them dead, she claims that they must have defective batteries. If I could recover all the hours I’ve spent over the past few years searching for her phones and computers and chargers and mating them all up at the outlet in the kitchen, I would be a much younger man.
Upstairs, when the iPad comes to life, I open the email and do a search for Eric. I can’t remember his last name. Eric is a younger associate, smallish and friendly. I often wonder how he has survived so long at Alice’s firm. The place is a shark tank, where young associates are thrown in at feeding time. Eric and Alice have forged a fairly close working relationship, assisting each other on their various cases and tasks. “In an atmosphere of war, you have to have allies,” she told me the night we first met Eric and his wife at a restaurant in Mill Valley. I liked them both, the only people from the firm I don’t mind spending time with.
Still, I can’t recall his last name. An aunt of mine came down with substantial memory loss at an early age, and every so often, when I’ve forgotten something simple, I ask myself whether I’ve reached the moment from which everything will go downhill.
The search reveals emails from only two Erics. Levine and Wilson. I click on the first one—Wilson—and it immediately occurs to me why the name sounds familiar. Eric Wilson was the bass player and background singer from Ladder, the band Alice fronted before I knew her. Ladder had a short run, though not so uneventful as to go entirely unnoticed. Once, when I was reading one of the many British music magazines that arrive in the mail, I came across a reference to Ladder. A young guitar player from a Manchester dance band was being interviewed, and he cited the Ladder album as one of his early influences. When I mentioned it to Alice, she just made a joke and dismissed it, though later that week I found the issue turned to that page on our bedside table.
Alice, when are you going to leave that loser and come back to me?
The email is from the week before our wedding. I scroll to the bottom and see several friendly emails going back and forth, mostly about music and the old times. There are newer emails from Eric Wilson on the list, though not many. I resist the temptation to open them. It doesn’t seem right. Besides, if I remember correctly, The Manual contains quite a few items related to snooping. I fetch my copy from the living room and find “email” in the glossary, then flip to 4.2.15.
Email snooping or spying is not to be tolerated. A strong relationship is built on trust, and spying diminishes trust. Email snooping, which is often the result of a moment of weakness or insecurity, is punishable by a Class 2 Felony offense. Repeat instances of snooping will be punished at the same level, yet with a four-point enhancement.
I flip back to the glossary and run my finger down the e column, looking for “enhancement.” On the corresponding page, “enhancement” is described only as an exponential application of the appropriate punishment for any offense. The exponentiality of the enhancement may be qualitative, quantitative, or both.
Who writes this shit?
I click down to Eric Levine. I send him an email saying that Alice is suffering from food poisoning and won’t be in tomorrow as planned. I put down the iPad, bring my computer back to the bedroom, and try to get some work done. I slog away for a few hours, then fall asleep. When I wake, the sun is setting and the phone is ringing. Where did the day go? I scramble to the kitchen and grab the phone off the charger.
“Hello?”
“Yay, I thought you weren’t going to pick up,” Alice says. Instantly, I struggle to assess her voice, her tone.
“Where are you?”
“Sitting in the hallway outside my attorney’s office. I’ve been in and out of his office all day, with a break for lunch in a massive cafeteria. There were at least forty of us, but we weren’t allowed to speak to each other. The view out the window is desert and cactus for miles and miles. I can see two huge fences. Floodlights. Visitors’ parking but no cars. One prison bus. A yard, dirt track…”
“Can you see anyone?”
“No. There’s a garden; there’s even a whole thing for lifting weights out in the hot sun. It’s like they just bought the prison and left it exactly as it was.”
“What’s the attorney like?”
“Asian. Nice shoes. Good sense of humor. I get the feeling he’s like us. Maybe he did something wrong, and this is his sentence. Maybe he’s here a day, a week, a month—it’s hard to tell. I don’t think he’s allowed to talk about himself. No last name, just Victor. Most of the people here don’t even use first names. They just address each other as ‘Friend.’?”
“Have they told you what happens next?”
“I appear before the judge tomorrow morning. Victor thinks he can settle it beforehand, if I want to. He says the first offense is always easy. Plus, he’s friends with the prosecutor who’s bringing the charges.”
“What are you even charged with?”
“Lack of Focus. One count, Felony Six.”