David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

He showed her to a room upstairs. It was very clean: a mattress on the floor, stacks of books arranged in some organizational system around all the walls. There were blinds on the windows that cut the light into bars.

“Listen,” he said, “that guy we saw was probably just the mailman. But keep the blinds the way they are, I guess, and stay away from the windows. Right? I mean, until we know what’s going on and have a plan. It’s pretty hot in here. But that little plastic fan kicks ass.”

It would do just fine. “Knock on my door at six, will you?” she said. “If I’m not awake.”

“You got it,” said Leo, and closed the door.

She sat down on the mattress. There were nice sheets on it. I bet these sheets do not come in plastic envelopes, she thought, I bet you have to buy these in a linens store . Her shirt stank. She stripped to her bra and lay down. She set the alarm on her Dear Diary phone for 6:03 and put it on the floor beside her. A fat fly bumped against the bright window behind the slats of the blinds, which rattled in counterpoint. She fell into a vat of sleep.

The door swung open a bit and squeaked.

“Lola. Lola Montes,” he said. He was standing in the doorway, backlit. She shuffled her feet beneath the sheets as her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the room. Behind the slatted blinds, there was still daylight. Three hours hadn’t been nearly enough; the sleep held her like vines. “What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s six o’clock,” said Leo.

Her phone began its reveille; she sat up to quash it, and the tawny cotton bedspread fell from her shoulders to her lap. Her near nakedness lit up the room. She covered herself swiftly. Leo launched himself out the door. She should have been embarrassed — she was a principal’s daughter, after all — but she was too tired for embarrassed.

“I got your duffel from the car. It’s here outside your door,” he said from the hallway. “Okay, well, I’m going to go make dinner. Come down whenever.”

She took a long, North American shower. After studying the ingredients, she used some of Leo’s German skin tonics and his hippie body wash.

Dressing, she checked her phone. 1 New Message.

What diff btwn incriminating / embarrassing? If CRANE no use leave him. We’ll keep an eye on him. Proceed to LA.

When she went downstairs, there were two fish on the kitchen counter, headless and frozen. A pot of water on the stove. Leo had begun some sort of rustic preparation around the fish — there were lemons and garlic and some peppercorns that had spilled from their fancy tin and rolled themselves away. It looked like Ernest Hemingway was trying to make dinner.

“You want a drink or something?” he asked her. “Though it would appear I have been relieved of all my ethyl alcohol.”

“Water, please.”

“You sure? I may have some Grey Goose in the toilet tank.”

She didn’t laugh.

“That was a joke,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

He handed her a glass of water. “So I was thinking,” he said.

“Were you?” she said. “A dangerous pastime.”

“Indeed, Lola.”

She almost told him then that her name was Leila, not Lola. Because now they were actually bantering, and the fake name seemed unfair and unnecessary. But she held back. She had to leave tonight.

“I was thinking that you never told me how you hooked up with Dear Diary. You said you were new. Is this really just about keeping us from all being enslaved by our digital overlords? Or are you in it for some other reason?”

Stall. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. Because of the urgency, I guess. There’s something in your eyes. Like a part of your life is being threatened even as we speak.”

Her phone rang and vibrated in her pocket. ROXANA, announced the little screen.

“I gotta take this,” she said. She moved to a sofa in the far corner of the big living room.

Before Leila could finish saying, Hello, big sister, Roxana was yelling down the phone: “This number’s been going to voice mail for, like, two days,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been traveling. You have me now.” Big-sister outrage was sometimes best tabled, ducked, averted.

“Where the hell are you?”

Could she say? Yeah. The Diary phone was secure. “I’m in Portland.”

“Oregon? Why?”

“I’ll explain when I get home.”

“When’s that?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay, well, it better fucking be tomorrow is all I gotta say.”

“Back off, okay? I’m trying to help here.”

“How? By mysteriously delaying your arrival home?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It always is, with you.”

Ignore. “How’s Dad?”

“Suffering through Dressler’s syndrome,” said Roxana. “Usually follows a myocardial infarction: Pleuritic chest pain, tachycardia, fever, fatigue, malaise, anxiety. You’ll be home tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Well, I need to talk to you before you see Dad. And you need to talk to Dylan about the lawyers. They’re saying it’s not the slam dunk you sold them, and suddenly they want to be paid up-front. Call me at work when you land. You have the number?”

“Not the one at that new place. I’ll call your mobile.”

“My mobile doesn’t work in that building. The number there is—” She said ten numbers.

“Got it,” said Leila.

“Say it back.”

This was just big-sister bossy. Roxana could recall long series of digits or words or random code. She could call up whole conversations and repeat them verbatim. It was one of the freak capabilities that had emerged early and made her parents know that she was something else, along with being severely disabled. A phone number was easy-peasy for either sister, though.

Leila said the phone number back to Roxana.

“Okay, I gotta go. Dad came home yesterday. But I want him moved downstairs. We got a hospital bed for the den. The bed guys are outside. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Only after Roxana had quit the line did Leila really let it all sink in. Her throat thickened with grief. She began to cry.

“My big sister was super-pissed at me too,” said Leo, from the doorway.

“What?”

“My big sister. Well, one of them. The one they thought you were at Quivering Pines. She’s flying back up here to talk to me. Very sternly, I bet.”

“Sorry if I got you in trouble,” said Leila, and sniffled a little.

Leo made a pish gesture. “You got me out of trouble. Anyway, I just need to convince Daisy that I’m done being crazy and that I’ll stay sober now. This one actually believes in me, though. So I have some ideas about how to convince her I’m serious. I think I’ll not go into the part about the online underground.”

“It’s my family I’m doing this for, Leo,” she said. “You asked about my being in it for any other reason. That’s the only reason, really.”

And when she said the word family, she started crying again, and he came and sat near her on the couch. He gave her his dish towel. It smelled a little grungy, but she found a clean corner of it to wipe her nose and eyes.

She told him most of it then. About how she’d seen something in Burma, and the e-mail she sent out, and then the guys who started following her, and then the other guys who started following her, and then how her father had been arrested for something he could not have, would never have, done, and about the heart attack. And she told him about Ned from the university saying it was worse than she thought, and about Ding-Dong.com and Heathrow and Dublin and the white Ford and the Horse Market and Ikea. She left out the eye test, though. And she still didn’t tell him her name.