Save the Enemy Page 6

  “I’ll help,” Pete says.

  We walk back into the perfect house, filled with the rich and friendly. My brother isn’t in the kitchen, he’s not in the living room. I could call him if he’d carry a cell phone, but he won’t, on the grounds that given the lack of study, he’s not yet convinced that long-term exposure to the radiation won’t cause cancer, and, he says, he has no one to call and can’t think of anyone he’d want to hear from.

  Pete goes off upstairs to look. I stay on the bottom floor. Ben is not in the den, where I thought I might find him watching something on the gigantic television, amidst the many books. A girl named Lucille from the lacrosse team is in there with some guy from the class below us.

  “You’re here with Pete?” she asks me. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

  “Kind of,” I say.

  “You know Anne’s liked him since second grade,” she says, which of course I didn’t know. I also don’t know how girls at this school react to interlopers. Probably politely.

  I walk upstairs, toward a large black and white photograph of a glamorous woman smoking. I open a closed bedroom door, startling some in flagrante delicto classmates (Brian Keegan from English class, who says, “Hey Zoey, how’re your psychic powers?” when he sees me—he’s fooling around with a girl I’ve seen around but don’t think I know) but I don’t find my brother. Shit shit shit shit. I run into Pete coming out of the bathroom. Or restroom. Or latrine. Or whatever stupid word rich people use in expensive houses.

  “No luck,” he says. He takes my hand as we walk down the stairs and start asking people if they’ve seen Ben.

  People ask, “Who?”

  “My brother,” I say. “He’s wearing suspenders.”

  I’m feeling more and more on the verge of tears. As always, these days—but this time it’s my own fault. I’m so upset about losing my brother I’ve forgotten to be humiliated by wearing stupid clothing.

  Why did I bring him here? Why did I even want to be here myself? I don’t get these kids. This is not my world. My father is missing, my dog is missing, I’m wearing Amish clothing, I probably won’t get into college, my mother is dead, my brother—where is my brother?

  Pete’s sister finds me. She says that Ben walked out the door some ten minutes earlier, telling her to tell me that he was leaving, going to …

  “Georgetown? I think he said Georgetown,” Abby says, shifting in her big silver shoes. She has her hair tied up in a knot on top of her head. “He said there was some lobbyist’s house he had to go to or something. P.F. Chang’s? No, wait, that’s that crappy Chinese restaurant …”

  “P.F. Greenawalt,” I say. “Of course.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “I don’t really know lobbyists. Just the ones my parents are friends with. MAN, I’m so wasted! Are you so wasted?”

  How could I not have known, just immediately, that’s where my brother had gone? All these years of living with Ben and having my deductive logic skills honed via Dad’s constant lectures, and still, I’m a fucking moron. A moron in a bad dress. I go back to find Pete again. He’s in the kitchen, talking to Muffy and Anne.

  “You find Ben?” he asks me when I come over.

  “He left,” I say to him. “I have to go find him. I really have to go find him. This is a disaster.”

  “We’ll go get him. But I’m sure Ben’s fine,” Pete says. “He’s fourteen, right?”

  What a comforting thought. No one’s ever talked about my brother before as if he could just be “fine.” I contemplate the idea of it. Then I realize that, like me, he’s got no money with him. He’s got a better sense of direction than I do, at least. If he had to, he could probably walk home. Though he forgets to look both ways when he’s crossing the street, so …

  “I think I know where he is.” To get the address, I dig the business card out of my tote bag—a different one from the other night, the one that holds the gun, and which I believe and hope is still in my nightstand.

  “I’ll come,” Pete says.

  Pete puts his hand on my shoulder and steers me out the front door. We walk out onto the tree-lined residential street. It’s gotten chilly and I’m shivering. Pete takes off the leather jacket and hands it to me. I put it on. It is softer than silk, softer than velvet. I have that feeling again, of panic and elation and anxiety and family and the possibility of sex and the possibility of growing up and the possibility of losing—maybe even already having lost—everything I care about, all mixed into an alienating cocktail of a head-state.

  Pete is in the here and now. He asks where we’re going.

  “Georgetown,” I say.

  “Then we should get a cab,” he says, raising his arm. And magically, one appears.

  SCRAMBLED

  Chapter Six

  The cab driver is from Ethiopia and listens to NPR. He tells us that DC has the second-largest Ethiopian population in the world.

  “Outside, of course, of Ethiopia,” he says.

  Pete has been to Ethiopia. His mom, he says, used to be in the State Department. She was some sort of attaché. When he was a kid, she took him and his sister along on a lot of trips. He says he doesn’t remember much about the trip—he was young—but does recall eating raw beef by hand with a bunch of mid-level diplomats in Addis Ababa. Pete and the driver share information about a certain Ethiopian jazz musician who’d recently turned up in a club on U Street after being missing for some twenty years. They make tentative plans to go see him play together sometime soon. I half-listen. Pete takes my hand, keeps talking. Eavesdropping on this worldly conversation takes my mind off what we’re doing in this cab hardly at all.

  I watch out the window as the city passes, from yuppie Dupont through somewhat sterile Foggy Bottom into Georgetown. We drive along M Street for a little bit. The gorgeous girls with glossy hair and leather boots have shopping bags, even near eleven at night. They do not wear flowered dresses. The boys have popped collars. They look like assholes. “Date-rapey,” Mom would have said. She liked to point out guys who she thought would carry roofies. She told me never to accept a drink from one of them, but that it could, in some circumstances, be acceptable to have them pay for dinner. Helpful life lessons were Mom’s forte. Oh, Mom. Were you joking? Did you mean it? Did you teach me what to look out for well enough? Did Dad teach me how to get myself out of the fixes you didn’t teach me to avoid? I look for more assholes; I look for Roscoe. I miss my parents. I have this crazy feeling of wanting to make babies with Pete.

  The cab takes us up to O Street and along the street of beautiful houses. The houses here look like the ones in Old Town but somehow, without any clear visual difference (to me), they look even more expensive. The cab stops in front of a large stone house. The meter reads $14.75. I look at Pete. He pulls out his wallet.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to him.

  “You’re very cute,” he says, as we get out of the car, and I realize, with a sick stab in my stomach, that this is the very spot where my mother was killed. I haven’t been back to this spot since the week after she was found there, shot on the sidewalk. We kept going back to look for Roscoe. Dad made me knock on all the doors on the block to see if anyone had seen our dog, because he doesn’t like talking to strangers. No one had seen a dog. Several people invited me in to have cups of tea, though. They saw the crying and cold girl asking about the dog that went missing when her mother was killed outside on the sidewalk. I declined, since Dad didn’t want me leaving him alone outside.

  I don’t know how I could not have realized we were coming back now to that same place. I suppose the world goes on, reusing the same settings. Or else that my mother being killed here, and P.F. Greenawalt’s business card sending us here, is something other than just a weird coincidence.

  “Okay,” I say, taking in a deep breath. I want Pete to ask what we are doing, coming to this odd house in Georgetown late at night. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  I can see in the front window, as I stand ringing the doorbe
ll. Leather couches. Rows and rows of books. Dark portraits of severe men in military uniforms. No sign of my brother.

  “Whose house is this?” Pete asks as the door starts to open. I wish I knew. No one answered the door here when I came by looking for Roscoe.

  Before me is a short guy, about five four, with dark hair gelled into rows of crispy waves and wire-rim glasses. He appears to be in his mid-thirties, maybe. It’s hard to tell given his clothes: schlumpy white button-down shirt, wrinkled khaki pants with pleating at the hips that makes it look like he’s got hips made for birthing. If the guy at the Postal Museum looked nerdy, this guy looks like the dude that guy would call a nerd.

  “Is my brother here?” I ask the guy. I am still feeling slightly woozy. I may ask this more loudly than intended.

  “You must be Zoey,” he says in a nasal voice. “I’m P.F. Greenawalt. Political Consultant. Come in. Please. I’m anxious to speak with you. I knew your mother.”

  “I’m Pete,” says Pete in his easy way, following. “Should I call you P.F.?”

  P.F. Greenawalt pauses for a second and looks Pete over. “Mhm,” he then says, nodding and leading us toward the back of the house, into a big kitchen.

  My mother. How does this guy know my mother? Why is he anxious to talk to me? My brother is sitting at a farm table. I feel a surge of the sweetest relief I think I’ve ever felt. Just as quickly, it’s gone. The gun is in the middle of the table. Perhaps not the gun. Maybe it’s just a gun.

  “Sit down,” P.F. says, pointing at the table. “I was making your brother some eggs.”

  I sit next to Ben. I whisper to him, “Are you okay?” He shrugs and pulls away.

  “So,” says P.F. “How do you like your eggs?”

  “Scrambled,” says Pete.

  “How do you know my mother?” I ask.

  “We met when your family moved here,” he says, as if that somehow explains anything at all. My mind whirls. Ben stares. P.F. cooks. Pete asks him questions about being a Political Consultant—who does he do it for, how long has he been doing it, etc. P.F. says he’s got his own small firm. He has a variety of clients. He does some consulting on elections. And some other things, which is how he met my mom.

  “Do you spend a lot of time on the road?” Pete asks. “My mom used to do that. Hard on the family.”

  “I enjoy most of the travel,” P.F. says.

  “Have you ever come across something called a ‘J-File’ in your work?” I ask. My brother gives me a look.

  “Zoey, can you help me carry something in from the other room?” P.F. asks, putting three plates of scrambled eggs on the table.

  I follow him up a flight of stairs. We go into a room with a harpsichord in it.

  “I’ve always been interested in the Renaissance,” he says by way of explanation. Then he points to a well-worn leather chair in a corner, underneath a framed Harvard diploma. I sit down.

  “J-File,” P.F. begins. “What do you know about a J-File?”

  “What do you know about it?” I ask him.

  He closes his eyes a moment, then pulls the bench from underneath the harpsichord and sits on it.

  “Your brother came to my house tonight asking why my business card was in the pocket of a man who accosted you the other night,” P.F. says. “I didn’t tell him. Though when he pulled out a gun …”

  “Why was it there? The business card, why was it in that man’s pocket?”

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Seventeen,” I say.

  “You are too young,” he says, “to have to be hearing any of this—”

  “I haven’t heard anything yet,” I interrupt.

  “Your mom,” he begins, “was coming to see me when she got … murdered. She was bringing me a, a, a … a record. A record of … of bad things. It’s called a J-File.”

  “What kind of bad things? Why was my mother bringing this to you?”

  P.F. Greenawalt, Political Consultant, looks exceedingly uncomfortable. He pulls a piece of paper out of a pocket and fidgets with it, twisting it into a string, then untwisting it. I grab him by the wrist and dig my nails in a little bit. Dad called this move “the human handcuffs.” It was very effective when he, a grown man, used it against me as a small eleven-year-old.

  “Just tell me,” I say, quaking. “My father is being held hostage. His kidnappers say that I have to bring them the J-File. I don’t know what it is or where it is, and I can’t get him back without it.”

  “Oh, hell,” P.F. Greenawalt says. He twists his wrists out of my hands, using a deft move that Dad didn’t know or neglected to teach me. My nail catches on his skin and rips, which hurts. Now I have a hangnail. I try to bite it off. It starts to bleed. I watch the blood bubble on my cuticle. The pain of it is odd because I don’t really feel it in my finger. I feel it in my stomach. I feel nauseated. (Not nauseous. Nauseated. Mom was a stickler for correct usage.)

  “Do you have a Band-Aid?” I ask. I don’t want to suck on the blood because it’s gross and I think it might undermine my authority here.

  P.F. Greenawalt sighs and leaves the room. I sit there, trying not to wipe my finger on one of the leather chairs. But then I do anyway. I don’t want to get blood on my dress. My gross dress would be even more gross. More punk rock, though. The blood leaves a mark on the leather. I lick my finger and try to wipe it out, but the spot just gets darker and more damp.

  Finally P.F. comes back with some damp, generic-brand Band-Aids. He holds them out to me. He doesn’t seem to notice the blood on the chair. I take the bandages from his hand, then grab his wrist again, smearing some blood on his hand.

  “Please tell me,” I say.

  He extracts his wrist again, frowning, then wiping his hand onto his pants. He seems ruffled. Then again, I have no idea what is running through his mind or how he’s feeling. He made my brother eggs after my brother pulled a gun on him.

  “Your mother was bringing me the J-File,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “She was killed on the sidewalk outside my house. I believe by someone from the group whose nefarious activities would have been exposed by this list … This is all speculation, of course.”

  “And you don’t think that the person who killed her also took the J-File?”

  “I don’t think so. If she had it on her, then why would your father have been kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone other than the kidnappers got the J-File. And why did my mother have the list at all?” I ask.

  “I really can’t say,” says P.F.

  “Was it my dad?” I say. “Is my dad …?” It sounds too preposterous to contemplate. But all of this is preposterous. “Is my dad a spy of some sort? A murderer?” He’s such a goofy libertarian, I think. Did he take Ayn Rand to some crazy logical extreme for real? Is he responsible for my mother’s death? My mother’s murder? I know Mom says no when she comes to visit Ben in his dreams. But on the other hand, he is responsible for trying to teach me martial arts. And he’s such a goddamn weirdo. And he’s my dad. And I miss him. And I don’t know what to think.

  Neither, apparently, does anyone else.

  “I really don’t know,” P.F. says. “I would just encourage you to find the list. And bring it to me.”

  “But my dad,” I say. “My dad.”

  “If my clients have the file, they can save your father,” he says.

  “Why can’t they save him without the list then?” I ask.

  “They don’t have a bargaining chip without the J-File,” he says.

  “But if I have the J-File, then why shouldn’t I just give it to them directly to get my father back?”

  “Look, Zoey,” P.F. says. “This is how it has to work. You have to trust me.”

  He has a smear of my blood on his trousers now, and I have so many questions. I don’t know if this is the time to push … My judgment feels impaired. This also feels like a situation for which I don’t have a body of experience to guide my intuition.

  I reach out t
o grab his wrist once more for good measure. Perhaps I should have tried a different move. He doesn’t seem surprised, or even annoyed, and definitely not scared. He just moves his arms out of reach, then comes back to pat my own.

  “Your eggs are cold,” P.F. says. He isn’t so much cold as he is cool. As a cucumber. An incredibly dorky cucumber. “Zoey, you have to trust me,” he says again. “Does your hand hurt? I’m sorry you got cut.”

  The fuzzy boldness gives way to P.F. Greenawalt’s certainty. I touch my hangnail.

  “I’m okay,” I say loudly, like I’m objecting.

  We go back downstairs. Ben and Pete have finished their eggs and are spinning the gun around on the table. It slows and stops, pointing right at me as I approach the table.

  “That seems unsafe,” I say.

  Pete opens his hand. He’s taken out the bullets, a small cluster of shiny, brass-colored things. I pick one up. It’s cold and lighter than I thought it would be. I give it back. Pete puts all the bullets in his front pocket.

  “They’re just pieces of metal,” he says, trying to make me feel safe, I think.

  “Let’s go home,” I say.

  “Do you need a ride?” P.F. Greenawalt asks. “I can drive you.”

  This saves me the problem of needing to expect Pete to pay. But I don’t think that I want P.F. Greenawalt, Political Consultant, knowing where I live. On the other hand, he probably knows already. He knew Mom. He knew who I was when I appeared at his doorstep.

  “I’m tired,” Ben says.

  “There probably won’t be any cabs nearby,” Pete says.

  I stare at P.F. Greenawalt.

  “It’s no trouble,” he says in his nasally voice. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you kids and I hadn’t made sure you got home safe.”

  I’m tired, too, I realize. I pick up the gun and put it in my tote bag. It’s about as heavy as a hardback volume of The Sun Also Rises. With the two of these objects, the tote has gotten uncomfortably heavy on my shoulder. It would really be terrible if I got, like, scoliosis from walking all the way home to Virginia with The Sun Also Rises and a gun in my tote bag. I finally nod, surrendering.