Sliver Of Truth

I thought about this for a second, the fact that I’d been under surveillance for I didn’t know how long. I looked at Dylan Grace, a man who’d likely heard every private conversation, read every e-mail, seen every move I made since I met Jake. The thought embarrassed and intrigued me. How well could you know a person, watching her live her life from a bird’s-eye view? You’d see all the faces she wore for the various people in her life. You’d hear the same stories and events repeated for different people, each version sounding a little bit different, tailored for the listener. You’d see her face when she thought no one was watching. You might hear her cry herself to sleep at night or make love to a man she cared for but couldn’t trust. For all of this, would you know her better, more intimately, than if you’d been her lover or her friend? Or did you know her not at all, never having been allowed entry into her heart?

He went on. “I watched your cell phone records, credit cards, ATM records, passport control. I didn’t find anything for two days. I feared the worst. I thought you’d disappeared like Myra Lyall.”

“Then?”

“Then a charge from the Covent Garden Hotel popped up on your Visa bill. I was on the next plane to London. I bribed the desk clerk for your room number, found you in the state you were in. Through my London contacts, I was able to get you some antibiotics and painkillers-that’s what I was jabbing into your arm. I went out to get some more bandages and antiseptic to take care of your wound. When I came back, you’d stumbled into the lobby. I watched as they took you away in an ambulance.”

I thought about the time line of his story. It seemed credible enough under the circumstances. It was still hard for me to believe that this was my life now, that I’d wound up with him here at all. And while I didn’t totally trust this man, I didn’t fear him, either. And these days, that was something.

“Okay, so where’s the rest of the FBI? If you really do work for them, why isn’t there anyone to help us?”

“Because-don’t you get it? I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be behind a desk listening to your phone calls. I’m not supposed to be out here with you.”

“Unsupported?” I asked, using the word he’d used.

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “What now?”

He pressed his mouth into a tight line, and glanced at the fire for a second, then back at me.

“I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

“Great.”

“IF YOU REALLY let life take you, if you release control and stop clinging to sameness, you can’t imagine the places you’ll end up. But most people don’t do that. Most people get this death grip on what they know, and the only thing that loosens their grasp is some kind of tragedy. They live in the same town they grew up in, go to the same schools their parents went to, get a job that makes a decent living, find someone they think they love, marry and have children, take the same vacation every year. Maybe they get restless, someone has an affair, there’s divorce. But it will just be the same boring life with the next person. Unless something awful happens-death, house fire, natural disaster. Then people start looking around, thinking, Is this all? Maybe there’s another way to live.”

Max always ranted like this when he was drinking. He was hung up on the concept of “normal” people and how sad they were. He felt that most people were just zombies, sleepwalking through their lives, and would just die without ever leaving even a footprint on the planet. Max was a titan, a shooting star. In his lifetime he was responsible for the erection of thousands of buildings, countless charitable works in countries all over the world. He put at least ten kids that I knew of through college with the scholarship he established in his mother’s name in Detroit. He had to live a big life. That was his normal.

I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they’re important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators-these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.

Even the psychopaths and sociopaths in this world who commit the most heinous possible acts against innocent victims are in this quest for happiness. But their ideas are twisted and black; these people were wired wrong. Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it’s the absence of something.