Visible Empire, page 23
They’d taken the turn in fourth gear, and Robert had registered the magnificent white-brown magnolias lit up by an audacious moon. In the neon of the headlights, he’d registered the green, green grass to the side of the road where there was no sidewalk and no shoulder but merely a foot’s width of flat earth before the shallow dry ditch; he’d registered the image of a traffic symbol floating in the air—not floating, obviously, but attached to a thin post made invisible by the nighttime—and he’d registered the row of arborvitae, too, but by that time it was too late. By that time they were already plowing into the trees, and his forehead was already headed haphazardly toward the dash. He’d known better than to let Coleman drive, but as they’d left the Pink Chateau, he’d felt no moral high ground from which to deliver any kind of ultimatum. Maybe it was a true desire for self-destruction, this willingness to be reckless again and again and again.
Coleman was talking, perhaps had been talking the entire time that Robert was—what was he doing?—just standing there dazed, pondering, trying not to look at the line of blood that was moving southward on Coleman’s face.
“Give me your hand,” Coleman was saying. “Get me out of here. I need help. Lift me up.” The girl was still cleaning out her ears. Perhaps she had a concussion.
It was then, at that very moment, that they heard the sound. It was similar to a barking dog—no, not a barking dog, more like a smothered dog, like a dog being held down against his will—this horrendous sound rose up from somewhere nearby so that the hairs on the back of Robert’s neck quite literally stood up, as did the pores on his arms individuate themselves, as if suddenly chilled by an unanticipated cold front.
The cry ended long enough for Robert’s and Coleman’s eyes to meet. “No,” said Coleman. “Don’t help me out. Get in. Get back in the goddamn car.”
Robert shook his head. He looked up at the night sky. Was he aware that he was shaking his head? That was unclear. “But you heard it,” Robert said. It might have been a question. It might even have been an accusation.
“I’ll leave you,” Coleman said. “So help me god, I’ll drive away and leave you where you stand. Get in the car.”
“You’re bleeding,” said Robert.
“You’re bleeding,” said Coleman.
Robert put his fingers to his forehead. They came away wet. He wiped the blood onto his pants and then stumbled toward the front of the car.
“Don’t go up there. Don’t you dare go up there. The minute you see it, you lose all plausible deniability. Get back in the car or get out of the way,” Coleman called. “I’ll run you over. I’ll do it.”
Robert passed in front of the headlights and looked into the ditch. Then he looked back at Coleman, who—though he’d likely never admit it, not in a million years, not tonight, tomorrow, not ten years from now—appeared terrified by what Robert would say.
Robert looked again into the ditch. His shoulders slumped. He wanted to cry. “It’s an armadillo,” he said at last. “You’ve hit an armadillo.”
The windshield of the Thunderbird was cracked. But even through the distortion, Robert could see the terror leave Coleman’s face.
“An armadillo?” Coleman asked. “In Atlanta? I heard they were coming up from south Georgia, but I never quite believed it.” He slapped the steering wheel in awe. “An armadillo. In Atlanta, Georgia.”
With no nod toward modesty, the girl in the back climbed into the front seat.
Almost clinically, Coleman brought the butt of his palm to his cheek and wiped at the line of blood. He looked at what the gesture had produced, as if assessing the relevance or weight of the evidence that his open hand had brought away. He smiled. “I am a goddamn lucky man.” He said this to the girl. “You know that? I’ve been kissed by angels. An armadillo? An armadillo?” He howled into the night.
The girl stuck a finger in her ear and wagged it back and forth as though trying to remove water.
“You shouldn’t go with him,” Robert said. “You should go to the hospital. You should come with me.”
“You’re going to help her? You?”
“Get out of here, then,” said Robert. “Go already.”
Coleman put a hand on the girl’s knee. He slid it up her thigh. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Robert. “She’s fine. She’s going to be just fine.”
“What about the human condition?” Robert asked. “What about comporting ourselves differently moving forward? What about being better than your old man?”
“To hell with mankind,” Coleman said. “To hell with you and my old man and everything and everyone. There’s just me, Bucko. There’s always only me.”
What scared Robert more than anything was the calmness with which Coleman spoke. An outlandish idea, but his verdict just then was that it was the calmness of money; it was the flatness of privilege. It was part and parcel of that ubiquitous gesture by any man with a certain thickness of bankroll in his back pocket. Robert wanted to punch Coleman then, which wasn’t a new sensation. He also wanted to punch himself, which was also not a new sensation. It sickened Robert to no end that even at a moment such as this, he could be jealous of another man’s bank account.
He put his hands in the air and stepped back, the attitude of someone about to be shot. Behind him, the injured animal grunted.
Coleman pulled away. After a minute or two, the pink taillights disappeared into the night, and Robert was left alone with the dying armadillo. He sat down by the side of the road, his feet only a few inches from the thing. It was on its back, its feet in the air. There was nothing dignified in its position, and there was nothing for Robert to do but wait, which he did. The armadillo breathed slower and slower. Robert just breathed.
The version of Robert that existed even an hour earlier might have pointed a finger at Coleman, might even have decried the injustices of life, the unfairness of it all. He might have focused on the irony of the situation—alone, in need of a hospital, just as Lily had been not twenty-four hours earlier, if the kid called Piedmont was to be believed. The old version would have snorted at the absurdity, scoffed in indignation at his sorry lot in life without once considering or acknowledging his own obvious role.
But this current version of Robert was quiet, contemplative. He felt newly aware, at long last, of the choices he’d made. He could practically see his life on a grid in front of him. He could plot the moments, the turns, the twists, the nosedives. From the upper-left-hand corner of the grid to the lowest-right-hand extreme, he could see the penciled-in dots, see exactly where and how he’d gotten himself—he! of his own volition!—exactly to this spot now.
His path was clear. It led only toward Lily, toward his wife, who’d been waiting—he knew it, he could feel it in his bones—for this precise and particular discovery.
But first there was the armadillo.
Anastasia
At most, it was an hour until dawn. The moon was at a funny angle, somehow still visible between the buildings. The streets were empty. And the drive, despite the wind in Anastasia’s hair, was uncomfortably quiet. There was a sulfurous odor in the air. Her head felt foggy and thick. She tried not to think about the ringing in her ears or about the man who’d gotten out of the car or about the face he’d made as he looked into the ditch or about the howl that had come from P. T.’s mouth after his friend had said, “It’s an armadillo.” She focused instead on the cathedrals, which they were now passing. Lights from inside both churches were on, and the stained-glass windows above their dueling entrances appeared garish, almost neon, against the sky. In just over an hour, the sun would begin its rise, converting the temperature from tolerable to ungodly.
The car slowed, then turned.
“I thought you were taking me to your place,” she said. “Why are we at Genie’s?”
“You’re a good kid,” P. T. said, “a real French fry. You’re fun. I had a nice time walking around the party with you. You’re a looker. There’s no doubt about it. But I try to keep my distance from my aunt’s little numbers. It’s better for the family dynamic if I drop you off and call it a day.”
Anastasia turned away and bit back tears. She hated when she got ahead of herself. She hated giving any man the upper hand. If it hadn’t been for the sudden sight of Tito, crouched behind a large sycamore, midway down the drive, Anastasia might have actually let herself start crying. Instead there was Tito, who huddled down lower as the headlights from P. T.’s car lit up the flora that lined Genie Case’s property.
Anastasia glanced at P. T. It was clear he had already forgotten her; he was already five miles away; and it was obvious he hadn’t seen Tito.
They came to a stop at the top of the roundabout. P. T. didn’t even turn off the ignition.
As she opened the passenger’s door, he touched her leg. “Don’t be blue,” he said. “Genie’ll take care of you.”
It was the last thing in the world she wanted to hear. She moved his hand away and got out of the car. The headlights shone milky pink onto a hydrangea bush just ahead. The hood of the car was badly dented.
“There’s blood on the fender,” she said. She was glad she hadn’t looked into the ditch. She was glad she couldn’t picture the dead thing.
In the dark beyond, Tito stood—his white shirt and yellow pants aglow—and gave a little wave. “You should leave,” said Anastasia, directing her gaze for a final time at the car’s driver.
She shut the door and looked again toward the sycamore, and again Tito stood and again he waved in her direction. “Go,” she said.
Coleman swatted at something invisible on the steering wheel. “I do as I’m told,” he said, and just like that he drove into the night, as though for him she’d never even existed.
Tito ran to Anastasia, practically into her arms. He was sweaty, frantic. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” His eyes were puffy and the knuckles on his right hand were swollen and at least one was split and bloody. She noticed this, the state of his knuckles, because of the glint of the sapphire he was wearing on his pinkie. It was Genie Case’s ring. Anastasia would never forget it. She’d been wearing it that very first day, at the Radisson.
It was only after Anastasia noticed the bright blue stone, its quick bright wink in the light of the porch, that she noticed the torn skin on Tito’s hand, the raised bruising that seemed to spread from one finger to the next.
She took in the ring and its strange position on Tito’s pinkie. She took in the state of his hand. Then she looked him in the eyes. “What happened?”
From inside, the parrot squawked.
“Oh,” said Tito. He bounced in place and clutched at her forearms. Little tears leapt from the corners of his eyes. He was crying, yes, but his actions were somehow counterfeit. She distrusted him—this sudden show of crazed and sweaty affection—now more than ever.
“Oh! You got out! You’re safe!” said Tito. “Skylar was so worried.”
“Worried about what? Where’s Billy?” she asked.
“Oh. Oh. Did you see the guns? We were so scared.”
“What guns? What are you talking about?”
“It was madness,” said Tito. He bounced up and down; his voice was a high-pitched whisper. “There were three of them, but then one of them went berserk. They made us lie down on our stomachs. They turned off the lights. At least two of them had machine guns. The woman next to me wet her pants. She was crying. It was awful. Oh!”
“Are you making this up?” asked Anastasia. “When was this? What are you talking about? At the party? Someone tried to hold up the party?”
“At the Pink Chateau. They didn’t try anything,” said Tito. “They did. They did it. We thought you were still inside. There was some sort of disagreement between them. The two who had guns started shouting at the one who’d been going around with a garbage bag. He looked like a kid. He looked too young to be wrapped up in that sort of thing. They were yelling at him to take wallets and watches, all the jewelry from the women. He was doing it too, doing just what they told him to, but he was moving too slowly. They started shouting at him, telling him to move faster. All of sudden he just stopped. He threw down the bag. He started talking about a movement. It sounded crazy. He made no sense. He just kept asking, ‘Where’s the movement? How’s this a movement?’ Then he called them thieves. The pair of them, the ones with guns for chrissakes, he called them thieves! Of course they were thieves! That’s when we slipped out. We weren’t the only ones. I saw at least a dozen people running across the yard. Somebody must have called the cops. Don’t you think? Oh god, we thought you were still in there, at the Chateau. Skylar felt terrible. Oh. Oh. Oh.”
“Stop saying that. Is Billy here? Is he inside? Where’s Genie? Is she here, too?”
Tito tightened his grip on Anastasia. In fact, where his fingers dug into her, her arms stung.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
He gripped tighter.
“Billy had an idea,” said Tito. “Because of what he saw, because of what those kids did, Billy came up with this crazy plan. But you’ve got to believe me. It was his idea. Not mine. Okay? You believe me, right?”
“Let go,” said Anastasia. “Let go of me.” She allowed her voice to rise. She didn’t want to give in to his hysterics, but his panic—feigned though it might have been—was so palpable as to be contagious.
She shook her arms loose. He looked down, surprised almost, as if he’d forgotten he was holding her—either that, or he hadn’t believed her capable of extricating herself.
“Take me to Billy,” she said. She rubbed herself where he’d held on too tightly. The position—each hand clasped onto an opposing forearm—gave her the look of someone old, decrepit, borderline deranged.
He nodded. “Yes,” he said, now playing a more somber and controlled role. “Of course.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled back. “Fine,” he said. “Come. Just remember. This was all his idea.”
He moved then toward the front door, which Anastasia saw was already ajar. Slowly, she followed. With each footstep toward the house, she became more and more aware of the fact that she was utterly unprepared for whatever was happening inside. If she found Genie Case and Billy sitting on a couch together reading, she would have been unprepared. If she found them in the pool, skinny-dipping in the last of the moonlight, she would have been unprepared. If she found them each in their own beds asleep—given Tito’s current condition—she definitely would have been unprepared. Yet even this self-knowledge—this expectation for the unexpected—left her somehow breathless, somehow even more terribly taken aback when, having walked in and closed the door behind her, she saw, at the foot of the stairs, Genie Case bound and gagged and her brother, Billy, who sometimes went by Skylar, standing over her.
Robert
It was nearly dawn by the time the armadillo stopped breathing. By then, the front of Robert’s shirt was caked with blood. The wound on his forehead was worse than he’d first suspected. The skin between his lip and nose was busted too. He’d collected a few handfuls of magnolia leaves and some of the downed arborvitae and covered the animal as best he could. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
In the hour or so since Coleman and the girl had sped off, only one other car had driven by. Robert had raised his hand—a plea for help, a gesture of request—but the happy couple slowed only long enough for Robert to see the expressions on their faces, lit up by a single silver sparkler that the girl held out her window, change from gay curiosity to downright horror. The boy behind the wheel floored it; the girl dropped the sparkler and pulled in her arm abruptly.
He must have been a truly gruesome sight. Robert wanted to weep.
Twenty feet away, the sparkler flickered and crackled against the asphalt, as the oxygen burned and the glint moved steadily down the shaft until it popped a final time then fizzled into a pile of aluminum dust. The air smelled freshly of rotting eggs.
Who knows who called the medics—maybe Coleman had found a pay phone, made a final grand gesture by way of a phone call; or maybe the young couple had been too frightened to stop but not too insensitive to go for help. It didn’t matter. Robert was grateful. He was grateful for everybody and everything.
Life, he thought again for not the first time that night. But his heart now felt deflated; it was no longer filled up, puffed out with the audacity of self-importance and delusion. Life . . .
When they helped him into the ambulance, he didn’t resist. When they guided his head toward the pillow, he was as gentle as a baby lamb. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sirens overhead. They could take him wherever they wanted. He would do whatever they said. Never again would Robert Tucker put up a fight.
Anastasia
It was amazing how quickly she understood what and why and how it was all happening. Billy and Tito had already emptied the safes, the one in Genie’s third-floor bedroom behind the self-portrait and the one in the second-floor study. From the dining room, they’d opened the many corner cabinets and found the silver. They decided against the china; it would be too cumbersome. And so now, in all, at the foot of the stairs, next to the chair in which Genie sat, bound and with a silk handkerchief shoved into her mouth, there were two duffel bags filled with loot, several wooden boxes, and the Gauguin, shrouded by a blanket.
Anastasia, once she understood, which again was nearly immediately, had gone straight to Genie’s dressing room, where she located an ivory in-laid box in which Genie kept her more everyday jewelry. Even her everyday jewelry had value. Tito had already thought to remove what she’d been wearing that evening.
Anastasia was upstairs still, in Genie’s closet, just to see, just in case there was something she couldn’t live without, when Billy called to her.
“It’s time,” he said. “Our ride is here.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m coming.” She slipped a mink shoulder wrap from a hanger. It was far too hot out to wear this summer, but she could use it as a pillow on the long trip to wherever they were headed. One day it would be winter somewhere.
