“I’ll tell you all about it. But I could use a little time to myself.”
Jane’s face crumpled. “Matt, I would’ve never— If I knew, I wouldn’t have—”
“I know. It’s okay.” He waited by the door, signaling that she should go. He didn’t want to do this now.
“It was a mistake,” she said.
Matt gave a fleeting smile. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Let’s talk.” It was plain she wasn’t leaving.
Just a day ago he’d been mildly devastated that they were through. But after what had happened, he saw things as they were. Matt and Jane were never going to make it. His Rubin friends were surprised it had lasted a year. Shit, Matt was surprised it had taken Jane so long to realize he was a much bigger project than she’d anticipated. And she’d said some mean things in the end: that he was a mess. That he’d never be anything if he didn’t start focusing. On school. On her. That he needed to see someone about his anger at his father. At his brother. That after he’d pummeled that frat boy, she was afraid of him.
The worst part was that she’d been right about all of it, and now none of it mattered.
“Matthew, please, talk to me.”
She followed him as he went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She watched as he removed Ganesh’s ridiculously large clothes. He’d seen Jane twice stop herself from asking about the getup. He stepped into the stall and let the hot water beat down on his face. Through the foggy shower door, he saw Jane’s silhouette disappear.
After toweling himself off, he returned to the room. Jane was sitting on the bed, her mouth downturned.
“Are you going to talk to me?” she said, watching him throw on some jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’m not sure what there is to say.”
He pulled a duffel from under the bed, and began stuffing clothes into the bag. He searched the dresser for the small document pouch, the one his mother had made for him. It held things grown-ups needed—his social security card, passport, birth certificate. It was also where Mom had tucked away the emergency credit card. When the pouch wasn’t in plain view, Matt yanked the drawer from the frame and dumped it on the floor. And there it was, the letter-size, expandable pouch. He scooped it up.
“What are you— Where are you going?” Jane asked as he stalked to the door.
“To get my family.”
CHAPTER 11
Matt stormed out of the building, Jane calling after him. He pushed past the photographers and hailed a cab to LaGuardia. In the back, he bumped around on the cracked vinyl seat for a long while, staring out at nothing. The closing scene from Michael Clayton. The cab slammed the brakes hard, then swerved around a car that had cut them off, the cabbie cursing out the window.
If they crashed, Matt realized, few people would really care. Jane would make a show of how upset she was, and sure, the gang from Rubin Hall would get together, tell a few stories, give some toasts to Matt Pine. But he’d soon become an afterthought. Talked about in the larger context of bad luck or family curses or famous tragedies. One Pine wrongfully locked up for murder, four Pines killed in a freak accident while on vacation, and the other one—what was his name?—dead in a car wreck on the way to the airport to claim the bodies of his deceased family members. They’d say seize the day lest you suffer the fate of the Pines.
Not today, he thought as the cab yanked to a stop outside the airport terminal. Inside, he gave the dour-faced airline worker the confirmation number the FBI agent had given him, and retrieved his ticket. He then found an ATM and breathed a sigh of relief when, after several tries, he remembered the PIN for the emergency credit card: 1010. His parents’ default passcode, October 10, the month and day they’d met in college. Another surge of grief consumed him. Pocketing the five hundred dollars, he then submitted to the torture of modern air travel—long lines, shoes off, no liquids—and soon he was at his gate, the duffel draped over his shoulder.
Matt sat in the chair of molded plastic for a long while, staring blankly out the large windows onto the tarmac. The planes lifted off and landed in the morning sun. Thousands and thousands of strangers who would never cross paths again, intersecting at this one point in time. Grains of sand at the beach. Ants on a hill. He needed to shake the morbid thoughts.
By nine thirty, the gate was getting crowded. It was then Matt had the feeling that someone was watching him. He scanned the crowd—the businessmen yacking on cell phones, the college kids with neck pillows, the rare traveler dressed to the nines amid the sloppy masses—but he didn’t see the culprit. But he had no doubt he was being watched. He knew the feeling.