“Oh, no,” I said, pushing the map away from me. “No way.”
“I’ll take that as a thank-you,” he said, pushing it back. “Thank you, Zach, for helping me find a way to crack this capitalist clique that’s clearly holding a bunch of definitely illegal files on me and countless men.”
“Not countless.”
Zach shrugged.
“I’m not doing it. I’m not the B-and-E type.”
“You don’t even know what type you are,” he said. “Isn’t that the point? That you don’t know what you want? Freud said that a man who doubts his own love must doubt every lesser thing.”
“Freud thought women were dickless hysterics.”
“Irrelevant. Doubt is healthy until it eclipses knowledge.”
“Who said that?”
“Me, I say things.”
He wasn’t wrong. Religion, love, marriage—was there a single belief system to which I subscribed or submitted? What becomes of a person like that, a social heretic who can’t even keep a ring on her finger? One thing I did know was that my life was no surrealist painting. That was Clive’s life, Clive’s mission to bring the unconscious to the surface, to subvert reality. My life was more like a pointillist painting, distinct dots that formed a single image. None of which were meant to be counted, not one by one. None of which were then meant to be seen this close.
Zach was growing peevish and taking it out on the granola bar. Ever since he left my house last night, he’d been sending me texts. It was wrong for these men to remain ignorant of their participation in what amounted to an unregulated clinical trial. As for me? I was no better than a lab rat flinging herself into a vat of acid for the benefit of a pharmaceutical company.
“I’ll tell you what I do know,” I said. “I know I’m the type who doesn’t like jail.”
“Fine, suit yourself.”
For years, Zach had wanted to dissolve the threesome of me and Clive and Vadis as if we were a big bank. If confronted, he’d say he thrived on the idea of being the ostracized one, the reliable narrator, but at the granular level, he only ever wanted to be included. He only ever wanted to be invited into our cult of three, to dive into a conversation without a “who are we talking about?” I’d tried to break ranks for him on multiple occasions, felt it was my responsibility to do so, but the man couldn’t last five minutes without misfiring mating dances for Vadis or taking jabs at Clive.
“You barely care about my personal life,” I told him. “You want some convoluted Clive vengeance and you’re using me to do it. Or using me to get to Vadis. You don’t have to break into a building to show her what a big man you are. Just ask her out and see what happens.”
“And to think,” he gasped, agog, “I came to an office for you.”
“I have to get back to work,” I said. “I have one night left at the fair before Clive packs up the tents. Boots is home tomorrow night.”
I made a gesture of checking the time, consulting my wrist. My naked wrist, naked as it should be. I followed it to my naked finger, naked as it shouldn’t be.
Zach got up, leaving the map on the bench.
“I could have just emailed this to you,” he said, walking toward the entrance, raising his voice. “And don’t talk to me about legality because we both know Clive wouldn’t arrest you. He needs you. Maybe I am using you, but they’re definitely using you. I love you like a second cousin, Lola, but you’ve always been a deputy for that man’s agenda!”
The security guard looked up like a startled wolf cub.
“I’ve come to terms with it!” I shouted, passing back through the turnstiles.
15
From the start, Clive had said that the more I participated in the experiment, the more effective the Golconda would be. You’ll find coincidences pick up naturally. He also said the system itself would grow stronger. It would train itself to herd cats, to see which bait worked and which did not, thus expanding the scope of the Golconda. Chinatown first, then the rest of Manhattan, then the whole city, then the whole world. If I doubted this before, I believed it now. Because for its grand finale, it had gone international.
It took me a moment to register Pierre. He was sitting on a low stoop, a lip of concrete at the weary tip of East Broadway, where the bustle of the preceding blocks petered out. He was reading a book with the jacket removed, sitting with his feet too far out into the sidewalk, disheveled and louche. Like deposed royalty. He was drinking from a lidless coffee as if he were looking out over the Luxembourg Gardens.