David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Roxana didn’t ask about how Leila had been diverted, and she didn’t ask about the people in Dublin, and she didn’t ask about what they wanted Leila to ask the guy in Portland about. Roxana asked only one question.

“So this is your fault?”

Leila sat there, stomach-punched.

“Isn’t that what you said Ned said? That the evil cabal people did this to Dad because you went snooping around where you didn’t have any business being, like you do?”

“Like I do? What the fuck, Roxana? Do not choose right now to pick me apart. Why would you do that?”

Leila had wanted to slug her sister one thousand times in her life. She had succumbed only once, at her own eleventh birthday party, when Roxana had stolen the love and pity and admiration of the room yet again, and on purpose. She’d learned then that slugging the armless is considered very poor form.

“If Dad gets hurt by this—” Leila said, after catching her breath.

“If?”

“—if Dad gets more hurt by this, I will never forgive myself, okay? I will hate myself, actually. Every day. I promise. Please, Rox. Right now, just help me find these people.”

Roxana’s face was set hard, but something gave in her eyes, and she spun in her netted chair. There was a mouse and a joystick below her desk; she worked them swiftly with her toes.

“You said ‘Dear Diary’?” she asked.

Leila nodded confirmation.

Roxana entered the words in a search field, using an eye-line entry device, flitting her gaze over a keyboard on a screen.

“I already put the name into all the search engines,” said Leila.

“Yeah. These aren’t really search engines,” said Roxana snootily.

As Roxana searched she asked Leila more about Dear Diary. Leila tried not to sound like a jabbering nutjob when describing it. But Roxana used a stay-silent trick that made Leila blab to fill the void, until Roxana said, “Leila. This totally evil cabal thing — you sure that’s not just…is it possible that you, you know, went native a bit when you were in Burma?”

Roxana, with her pretending not to know that the neocolonialist language bugged the shit out of Leila.

“Went native?” said Leila, ticking her head to the side.

“Just be sure these people aren’t playing you. Sometimes you want to do good so bad that you forget to be careful.”

Ah, the Roxanian condescension. The big sister’s knowing know-it-all-ness. “Well, they obviously didn’t play me, Roxana, because I didn’t get them what they wanted and they still helped us out.”

“Yeah. Dylan told me what their ‘help’ amounts to. Dad pleads to some dinky shit, and everyone still thinks he’s a pedophile. You said they use fifteen-digit identifiers?”

Leila nodded. She had decided to go with they, not we; she had omitted mention of the eye test, just as she had with Dylan.

“Okay, did she say the Dear Diary homepage or a Dear Diary homepage?” asked Roxana.

“‘The.’”

“I just don’t want you mixing with the wrong side,” said Roxana. She was really pressing her advantage here, the fact that Leila had asked for her help and had to just sit there and take this.

“The wrong side?” said Leila. “You serious? You looked outside of your bubble recently? Shit is going down out there.”

“Look, Leila,” said Roxana, “did a squeegee man give you a particularly pathetic look today? I know you’re always out there swinging for the dispossessed, but remember that it’s only because we got here that you can swing for anyone. Only because they let us in.” This was the line she was always returning to. “You think I would have done okay under Ahmadinejad?”

“Once he realized you could calculate rocket trajectories, I bet you would’ve done fine.”

“I would have been dead or behind some dumb wall before that. You know it.”

Leila rolled her eyes. She wanted to stamp her feet. “Look. Yes. You’re right. I do not think you — or any of us, actually — would have done okay under Ahmadinejad.” Roxana didn’t look appeased. “Rox. I’m proud to be an American. Okay?”

“Are you really, though? Aren’t you one of those apologetic Americans? That’s kind of what you do professionally, isn’t it?”

“Screw you, Roxana. I’m not out there apologizing for the Bill of Rights. And just so you know? Every year, wealth and power are becoming more concentrated in a smaller mafia. Five hundred men, fifty multinationals. The way to get really rich is still— still, Rox, and we’re well into the new millennium — to take advantage of all the poor schmucks beneath you. The way we have it set up now, there have to be thousands of poor people to offset each rich person. You think I apologize too much? Maybe you should be apologizing to some girl who has to shit in a canal while you have people building you prosthetics.”

“Okay. Okay,” said Roxana. Leila’s burst of anger had worked. “I’m sorry I said that about your job. I actually think that what you do is admirable,” Roxana conceded, shrugging her pear-like shoulders. “But you’re wrong about how we have it set up now. All those poor people are welcome up here, with us. I love this country, Leila. And I think anyone talking about its overthrow is misguided. And I think that so-called radicals are dangerous, because they move too quickly, like children. And, like children, they fall off walls. They usually end up bringing about something other than what they intended.”

“I’m not trying to overthrow America. Have you considered that it’s the other guys who are doing that, that they’re the ones subverting and co-opting and rigging things? We’ve got to push back before it’s too late to push back. We’ve got to at least be ready.”

“But you said it’s a postnationalist organization,” said Roxana. “That sounds to me like a bunch of affluent anarchists. Turtleneck types with tiny glasses of red wine.”

“Okay. You’re affluent now,” said Leila, moving in. “You know that, right? Like, more affluent than I am; more than Mom and Dad are. Any idea or politics you have is, by definition, affluent .”

“I’m just saying. Either your new friends have pull or they don’t. They can help us or they can’t.”

“They definitely have pull, Roxana. I saw things.”

“Mysterious much?” prompted Roxana.

“Just, you know, the way they switched my papers in Heathrow, the way they kept me safe in Dublin. They have a robust network. But I can’t access it since I got back here. They gave me this weird phone, Roxana.” Leila reached into the white deli bag and pulled the little Nokia from the extra mayonnaise sachets and napkins and sugar packets (for bulk) and creamer pucks (for the signal confusion said to be caused by the reflective racket of the foil lids).

“You aren’t supposed to have that in here,” said Roxana. This pleased Leila because it laid bare for a moment the brown-nosey quality in Roxana, which the magazine profilers never mentioned since they were generally there for the overcame-adversity angle. “It won’t work, anyway. The whole building’s shielded.”

“Fine. But just look at it. When you called me when I was in Portland, your call rang through to this one. I also used it to exchange text messages with the woman from Dublin. But it hasn’t made a peep since I left Portland. Now when you call me, your call comes to my BlackBerry, the BlackBerry I left at the front desk. This one, the Nokia, the Dear Diary — its little green light stays on always. The clock knows the time zone. It’s not a smartphone. Like, there are no apps. I can compose a message, but when I try to send it the screen just reads, No secure path available.”