Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

“It feels exactly the same being with you. It is just the way I remember it,” he said.

“Yes.” She forced a swallow.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t care if they find me,” he said.

“What do you mean you don’t care?”

He pushed his empty glass toward the center of the table. “I decided about ten years back I wouldn’t hide from them anymore. I would just do my thing, inconspicuous and law-abiding but not hidden and paranoid. I tread lightly, sure, but no more running away, no more name changing, no more cold sweats in the night. I just do my thing and accept that sooner or later they’ll figure it out. Jesus, your son figured it out in like a week. So I will just go on until the day, which will seem like all the others, that I am finally apprehended.”

“I get it,” she said.

“ Apprehended, though, that’s the word, which is seized and taken, a much more accurate word than arrested, which means stopped. Because things don’t stop at the arrest, do they? They begin there with a whole world of trials and lawyers and then the plodding consecution of those endless, circumscribed, uniform days,” he said.

She exhaled. She felt so weary.

“Are you really prepared for all of that?” he said.

“What you describe isn’t so different from my current life. But if you know they’ll get you, why not turn yourself in, make a better deal?”

“No way. I will sit in my little bare room forever, but no way will I volunteer to sit in their little bare room. I just won’t make my so-called freedom a prison by trying to evade them. I did that for too many years, and I won’t live like that.” Nash sounded as though he was about to launch into something, but then he stopped. “But, of course, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Goddamn it,” she said, lowering her voice. “It would have been so much”—she didn’t want to cry again—“so much easier if I knew someone else in the same position. If we could have talked even once.”

A few more people trickled into the bar. Louise started to get up to leave. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” Nash said. She stopped. “Listen, you should tell them about me. You can get a better deal if you tell them,” he said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can. You want to spend time with your son again, don’t you? Be part of his life. Because that is what we are talking about. You tell them it was my idea. You tell them you didn’t realize what you were doing. Mary, take advantage.”

“No.”

“I owe it to you,” he said.

“No you don’t.”

“I want to owe it to you.”

She was starting to feel dizzy. “I thought you always blamed me for what happened.”

“Never. I knew how it would go. I knew someone was going to end up dead,” Nash said. Someone sat in the booth next to theirs. Nash leaned toward her a bit and spoke in a low voice. “There was a moment, a very clear moment, when I knew not only that it might happen but that it would definitely happen. And I was still willing to do it. And not because I really believed we would change anything for the better. I did it as a testament to my own certainty, as a test of my conviction. I needed to prove to myself I could go all the way.”

“I didn’t realize we could kill someone,” Louise said.

“Let me ask you something. If we had killed one of the targets, one of the board guys who knowingly developed land mines or antipersonnel devices, dioxin poisons or napalm. If we had taken out someone like that instead of a housekeeper, how would you feel about it?”

“It would feel no different. It still would have cost everything and probably changed nothing. Nothing for the better, anyway.”

“I’m not so sure. I’m more culpable, see? You are excused. I am not.”

She rubbed her eyes. She felt totally drained.

“So turn me in,” he said.

“You sound like you want me to do it.”

“There was no answer.”

“Try again.”

“I let it ring and ring.”

“Maybe you dialed the wrong number.”

“No, but I’ll try it again.” Louise remembered exactly how it all went down. She remembered how Bobby took a deep breath and then picked up the receiver.

“There’s no time,” he said. He looked at his watch.

“How much time is left?” Tamsin said.

“Thirty minutes,” Bobby said.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Maybe she already left,” Bobby said.

“She might be vacuuming and not hear it,” Mary said.

“Jesus, oh shit,” Tamsin said.

“We have to call the police,” Mary said.

“Yeah, I’m doing that,” Bobby said. He grabbed his jacket.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to use the pay phone on Eighth Street. You keep trying that number.”

“Hurry up!” shouted Tamsin.

Bobby looked at her, then spoke to Mary. “I’ll be back soon. Everything will be fine. Don’t panic.”

“Yeah.”

He ran out.

Tamsin started muttering. “I knew this would happen. Oh God.”

“Nothing has happened. Let’s keep trying the line.” Mary dialed and waited. A busy signal. She held it out so Tamsin could hear it. She redialed. The repetitive signal sound.

“I think the phone might be off the hook.” She looked at her watch. Time just kept going forward. Everything kept going forward. The moment approached. Tamsin was crying.

“Maybe she left.”

“No, the phone is busy.” How can this be happening?

Bobby came back.

“Okay, people, let’s get it together. We split up. Listen to the news. If everything is okay, we meet at the farmhouse and stay there until things cool out.”

“And if things didn’t go okay?” Mary said.

“We do what we discussed we’d do. What we have to do.” Bobby grabbed Mary’s hand. Tamsin was at the door, leaving. “Tamsin!”

“What?”

“Be cool. Don’t panic.”

She nodded. Then she left.

Bobby shook his head. “Shit, I knew it.” He pulled their bags from under the bed and looked around. He started to quickly pack.

“It’s going to be okay, isn’t it? The police got there in time, right?”

“I’m going to make some phone calls and get some money,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Get ready.”

She listened to the radio and emptied the apartment of any evidence of them. She wiped rubbing alcohol on every surface. There wasn’t any news.

When Bobby walked in later, he didn’t say anything. She knew instantly — his face was white. He was sweating.

“Oh no,” she said.

“I’ll drop you at Grand Central, and then I’ll go to Port Authority,” he said. He spoke in a flat, low voice.

She couldn’t speak.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded.

“No talking in the cab, okay?” He picked up their bags.

The cab ride went so fast. Why was everything moving so fast?

At the station he kissed her. After he left, she walked quickly to the women’s room, closed herself in a stall, bent over the toilet and waited to be sick.

Louise watched the news as always. More KGB files had been opened and made public. The files revealed several previously unknown British and American agents. She watched the press descend on a petite, ancient lady. Under a code name, she had spied for decades, all the while living the life of a modest civil servant. The cameras hounded this lady in her lace collar and barrette-clipped hair. Why? They Wanted to Know: Why and What and How. She told them she had no regrets.

“How much did they pay you?” they asked.

“I did not want money. I’m not sure the younger generation understands. I’m not sure they accept it. We wanted the Soviets to be on equal footing with the West. We wanted them to have a chance. We believed in it. It was what we thought was right.”