Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"She cares about you, and the two of you are going to have to decide what to do about this. Now come on. Get your stuff and let's go."

"But they'll know," she whined-as if I were forcing her to go to school with a bad haircut. "Jamal and the rest. They'll know where I am."

"Sweetheart," I said. "You've been wandering around the same clubs as always, drunk out of your mind-"

"I'll stop. I won't drink anymore. I promise."

"Well, that would be a good idea. But the fact remains: I found you. They can find you. So we're gonna go home and talk to your mother and figure out what to do. Now get your stuff."

All this I pronounced with fatherly calm and fatherly demeanor and authority, but my heart was sour with anxiety and I felt the walls closing in.

Dragging her heels and making that peculiarly ugly grimace teens reserve to express the illimitable vastness of their disgust with an unfair, hypocritical, and cruel adult world, Serena slouched back to the bathroom to prepare herself for the journey home.

Meanwhile, I phoned Lauren. Finally she answered. She sounded harried. "What?"

"Where the hell were you last night?" I said.

"I was out, Jason. All right? People go out sometimes."

"Well, I have Serena."

"I know. I got your message. That's great. I really, really appreciate it. Can you keep her till I'm finished working? I'll come pick her up on the way home."

"No," I said. "I'm bringing her over now."

"There won't be anyone here now, Jason. I have to go to work. Guess what: Not everyone's rich. Y'know?"

I remembered how she begged me to help her. I'm scared. I can't sleep at night. All that. I was glad she was on the phone just then, that she wasn't in the room with me. I'm an old-fashioned man in a lot of ways. I don't believe in hitting women. But frankly, I find the only way to avoid hitting women is to avoid women who need to be hit. Right then, Lauren needed a smack in the face, maybe a couple of them. I was itching to give them to her, so I was glad she wasn't in the room.

I spoke through a throat tight with anger. "I'm bringing her over. If you're not there, I'm bringing her to your office."

"You don't even know where my office is." Taunting me, she sounded just like her daughter.

So I treated her like her daughter. "You're a paralegal at Watson and Mantle. I'll bring her there."

That shut her up. It felt good to shut her up. Not as good as hitting her would've felt, but good.

"So you want me to get fired?" she said finally. "I need this job, Jason."

"Your daughter's in trouble, Lauren," I said. "I mean, real trouble-as in, you're gonna need to call the cops and get the lawyers you work for to help you. So look, I'm bringing her to your house or I'm bringing her to your office. Which is it gonna be?"

There was another pause on her end of the line. Then she said, "Shit. Shit! You are such a self-righteous asshole!"

"Yes, I am. And I'll be there in half an hour." I ended the call.

Serena took a long time in the bathroom. When she was done, I ushered her out to the red Mustang. I drove for the expressway.

We didn't try to make conversation. Serena huddled in her bucket seat, in her rumpled pink party dress. She pouted and stewed, sneering out the window. I sneered out the windshield, working the wheel. I was well pissed off by now. Pissed off at Lauren, pissed off at myself. I was furious at that helpless feeling of catastrophe closing in-cops and courts and killers-and my mind scrabbling like a rat, looking for a way out.

Ruefully, I remembered evenings sitting on my patio, on the patio of my house on the Hill. I remembered sitting with my wife whom I loved, watching my children, whom I likewise loved, playing in the grass. Everything was pretty much A-OK back then. What was it? Three days ago? I had money in the bank and a cheerful spouse who brought me lemonade and happy kids who got good grades in school and were eager to do well in the world. And when I thought back to those bygone times, I could remember how once or twice, my wife and I, gossiping together the way couples do, would sit on the patio and talk about some friends or neighbors who had gone down the Road to Disaster. We couldn't help but notice, at those times, that their turn onto the Road to Disaster was always very clearly marked. It was always very obvious what they had done wrong. Maybe they'd spent too much money or neglected their children or cheated on their spouses or become addicted to drugs or alcohol. Whatever it was, it was never anything subtle; it was always very plain what had led them down the Road to Disaster. Sometimes it even happened that these friends or neighbors would come to Cathy and me at some point and ask us for our advice. "We are heading down the Road to Disaster," they would say. "What can we do to avoid the Disaster at the end?" And Cathy and I would answer, "Stop. Stop going down that road. Stop cheating on your wife or spending too much money or neglecting your children or drinking. Turn around and go back and go down another road instead." And every time-every single time-they would say to us, "Oh, no. Oh, no, we can't do that. We can do anything else, but we can't go down another road. We have many good and sound and necessary reasons why we must go down the Road to Disaster. Therefore give us some other advice. Give us some advice that will make the Road to Disaster end somewhere other than in the Disaster to which it inevitably leads." It was the strangest thing, but that's what they would say. Then, when they reached the Disaster at the end of the road, when it loomed like a brick wall in front of them, and they struck it with a devastating crash that left everything they cherished in ruins, my wife and I would sit on the patio together and shake our heads and say to each other, "Why didn't they stop? Why didn't they turn around and go down another road?" We would talk like that, you know, in that way you do, as if you're sorry for your friends, and maybe you are sorry, but you can't help blaming them a little, too, and you're even secretly satisfied that it happened to them and not to you, that you are the sort of person who doesn't go down the Road to Disaster, who goes down a different road instead.

These conversations with my wife on the patio came back to me now and it was a bitter business. Because here I was, sure enough, hurtling along the Road to Disaster myself, and I had many good and sound and necessary reasons why I couldn't stop, why I couldn't turn around-Serena might be my daughter, Serena needed my help, Lauren had neither the money nor the common sense to do what was necessary-and at the same time it was as obvious as it could possibly be that I was a raging fool to be here, that I'd been a fool every stupid step of the way. Why had I agreed to go see Lauren in the first place? Why had I let her talk me into finding Serena? Why hadn't I told my wife what I was doing so we could discuss it, so I'd have someone on my side when things went wrong? What was your problem? I asked myself angrily. Was the good life too boring for you? Was it the idea of adventure that drew you away from your patio on the Hill or the fantasy that you might have sex with an old girlfriend or the need to show her what a big, solid, responsible man you'd become by rescuing her from her fucked-up existence, by fixing everything for her? Jesus in his Heaven, boy, are there ever going to be ten solid seconds between the cradle and the fucking grave when you aren't governed by vanity or greed or your heat-seeking dick?

So I drove on, past the car dealerships and gas stations. Turning onto the expressway service road away from the sun and into the bright blue sky. It was late morning. The rush was over. The traffic was breaking up, moving fast. I hit the entry ramp and gunned the engine just to blow some of the frustration out of my system. The Mustang sliced into the stream of cars, and melded with it. We headed toward Queens.