Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

"My condolences."

" Thank you. I don't like to think of her death in these terms, but the fact of it is, she told me a while back that I'd be getting some money."

"And this is, what, a business proposition?"

"Paul, I'd like to pay back Anna Montgomery's debt. The hundred and twenty-one thousand." His gaze kept drifting to Paul's hands. He had watched Paul beat a man almost to death once and he wished he could forget what it had sounded like, Paul's fists against the man's limp body. He wished he could forget that he hadn't intervened.

"Awfully generous of you, Daniel, settling someone else's debt."

"Well, I feel a certain responsibility. I brought her here."

Paul smiled. "Your conscience troubling you?"

"It always has," Daniel said.

"You've got the money with you?"

"I don't. I wanted to come here quickly and work something out, but it's likely the estate won't be settled for a few weeks."

"What do you mean, you wanted to come here quickly? Quickly after what?"

"I think we both know," Daniel said.

Paul was impassive.

"The photograph ," Daniel said, "the photograph of Chloe," but even

as the words were leaving his mouth he understood that he had made a colossal mistake, because before Paul's face returned to impassiveness and he leaned forward to begin negotiating the repayment there was a brief light in his eyes, the faintest flicker of confusion, and Daniel saw that Paul had had no idea what Daniel was talking about.

"H a s s h e been in Florida all this time?" Paul asked, when their negotiations were nearly at an end. He had insisted upon a substantial amount of interest. Daniel tried to console himself with the thought that he was doing the right thing after all these years, but he was sick with remorse. He had thought that the photograph of Chloe meant Paul had found them, but it seemed obvious now that Paul had no longer been looking. It wasn't that Paul had found the woman who'd stolen a hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars from him, then— it was that Daniel had brought her whereabouts to Paul's attention.

"No," Daniel said.

"I went to a lot of trouble to find her, back then. I even hired a private detective, but it was just a dead end once I got to Virginia."

Daniel wasn't sure what to say to this, so he said nothing.

"You're a police officer," Paul said, switching tracks.

"A detective," Daniel said.

"What kind of detective?"

Daniel was silent for a moment, but he was too afraid of Paul to lie. " Major Crimes division," he said. "I'm in the Vice and Intelligence unit."

"Vice and Intelligence? What's that translate to in English?"

It occurred to Daniel that no one in the world knew where he was today. If he disappeared in Utah he might never be found. "Gaming," he said. "Prostitution, prescription fraud, narcotics."

"Narcotics." Paul seemed amused by this. "Well, you keep up the good work," he said. "America's children depend on you, man. Daniel, there's one last thing. Did you know my mother was in the insurance business?"

"No," Daniel said, "I don't believe you've ever mentioned it."

"Well, she was. My mom and I, we didn't see eye to eye on most things, but one thing she always used to say was, a person's got to have insurance. And you know, I think she was right about that."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at," Daniel said.

"When I come down to Florida," he said, "for the payment, I want the girl there when I'm counting the money. Just in case the count's off."

Daniel held his gaze.

"Come on," Paul said, "don't look at me that way. If you're in narcotics, you know how it works these days. You pay with money, or you pay with your family."

Gavin made a list of things he didn't need anymore. Number one: electricity. He bought candles in a dollar store and set them up in old beer bottles, which he half-filled with water to counterbalance the weight, and thus he was serenely prepared when the lights blinked out. Number two: the home phone, but this was redundant, because his phone was the kind with a digital call display that plugs into the wall and therefore hadn't worked since the electricity ended. Number three: gas. This one was obvious. He wasn't cooking anymore, and anyway he hadn't opened the fridge since the day the light switches had stopped working. At first he'd thought about emptying it out and cleaning it, taking the dead food out to the curb, but lately he'd been thinking about taping it shut.

There was a night when Gavin stood in the apartment with candlelight flickering all around him and thought, Someday soon this will all be gone . He was listening to classical music on an old battery-operated radio that he'd pulled out of the closet, part of the emergency preparedness kit he'd assembled with Karen a few years back. The Brandenburg Concertos sounded staticky and far away and he had a disoriented feeling that nothing in the room was real. His papers, his clothes, his books, this detritus he'd accumulated all around him, these shadows in these darkened rooms. He could live without most of it, but not all, so he began carrying an overnight bag when he left the apartment. A spare set of toiletries purchased on a credit card— why not? — and a change of clothing, the only clothes he owned that he absolutely couldn't stand to give up: a pair of particularly excellent pin-striped pants, a crisp white shirt that he loved, his best corduroy jacket. The bag also held his camera— the 1973 Yashica with a perfect lens— and a couple pairs each of underwear and socks, his passport, an umbrella, a broken gold pocket watch he'd found at a stoop sale, his laptop, power adapters for the computer and the cell phone. He felt overburdened and weighted when he went out in the mornings.

There were several unopened envelopes from his landlord on his kitchen table. He hadn't paid the rent in some time. He knew that someday soon he'd come home and his belongings would be scattered on the street or closed away behind a lock for which he didn't have the key, and he had salvaged the best of them. He never left the apartment without his favorite fedora.

Gavin had always taken pictures, but now it was different. He took as many pictures as he always had— of angles of light, of interesting graffiti, of street corners— but he no longer bothered to get the film developed. That had always been the expensive part.

S o m e w h e r e a l o n g the way, perhaps in high school, Gavin had fallen into the habit of mentally framing himself in an imaginary photograph and murmuring the caption aloud, mostly to avoid taking his life too seriously. Noted journalist Gavin Sasaki stands in line at the supermarket. Or later, Former reporter Gavin Sasaki ducks out of Barbès before the arrival of the tip bucket. Or later still, Disgraced newspaperman Gavin Sasaki debates whether to put one sugar or two into his Venti latte and simultaneously ponders the ruins of his life. Gavin was spending all his time at a Starbucks near his apartment. His bank account was empty and he'd maxed out two credit cards, but there were one hundred and forty-one dollars left on a third. In the absence of any better ideas, he thought he might as well spend it all on sandwiches and coffee. In one last heroic effort he had fifty résumés printed at a Kinko's, and he walked the streets for two days distributing them at any place he thought he could possibly work, restaurants and coffee shops and bookstores, places that sold cell phones, clothing shops. When the résumés were gone he went back to sitting at Starbucks with his cell phone and his laptop plugged into the wall beside him, but none of the fifty businesses called him back. When the phone finally rang it was his sister.