to exhibit. That we might be flying to disaster and death.
She said, “We’ll be back by the sixth. At the latest. Maybe the seventh, if I have any trouble booking our flight back.”
“If you have trouble, call me and I will book it,” he said at once, then checked himself, like yanking a puppy back on a leash. “But I am telling you again, I don’t see why you are doing this. Why you are going there. Why you won’t tell me.”
“Just promise me you won’t tell anyone where I’m going or who I’m with,” she said. “Promise me. Tell people I’m just going on a business trip like usual, if anyone asks. Anyone. Police, mom and dad, anyone. Promise.”
“For years I have closed my eyes to many, many things that you have done,” he said, after a long, stunned silence; he wasn’t looking at her any more, just me, his bronze-coloured eyes sparking and seething. “Where I could not close my eyes, I closed my mouth. Sometimes, as you asked. Sometimes, when you did not ask. But I cannot promise this time. Especially because you are going with him. If your mother—”
“Her especially. Tell her I’m going to... check up on the university endowments from last year.”
“If. She. Asks.”
“Just tell her that!” she finally snapped, taking a step towards him; both he and I backed off in actual fear. “And I want to hear you promise it!”
“Joanna, the house, these things that have happened, I cannot lie about everything to everyone. You don’t know what you’re getting into. Whatever this is, whatever you are doing, you can tell me, and I will help take care of it. I know you are... I know you are...” He cast around for a word, his face writhing. “Special. That you have done much more than a girl your age would normally do. But sometimes, adults have to—”
“We have to go,” she said, cutting him off. Reminding him of his place, I thought, wincing. Not a friend. Not a parent. Just an assistant. “I said, promise.”
“Yes,” he muttered, fists shaking at his sides. “I promise.”
“Thank you.” Something deep in her chest wheezed like an accordion; stress bringing back a whisper of her childhood asthma, long outgrown. I wondered if it would resurface on such a long-haul flight, in that dry air. Shit.
“We’ll be back. Wait for my call. And water the plants,” she added as she walked away. I scuttled after her, giving him a half-hearted wave. I didn’t like the guy, but I hated for that to be our final goodbye. He lived for her in a way that I didn’t; the ways we loved her and worried about her were so different.
I wondered what he would be doing if she hadn’t found him. The way she talked about him in interviews, two prodigies finding each other, as if it was meant to be. No mention of his parents having kicked him out of their house, how he’d been homeless for part of his degree, his tuition paid for but nothing else. I didn’t know the rest of the back story, and he didn’t like that narrative anyway. In interviews, he’d simply say that he decided to work for Johnny because he believed she was doing good work, work that would make a real difference in people’s lives. “She made me a generous offer and I saw that we could be of assistance in each other’s research.” His face in those TV spots like I’d always seen it—sharp, bright, focused, just like hers. Maybe that was what she had seen in him. A mirror face, a brightness.
What had she seen in me? Not that, obviously. Maybe opposites attracting. I wasn’t her other half the way Rutger was, and that had been his goodbye. I wondered what mine would look like.
In gloomy silence we got dinner at one of the few restaurants still open, apathetically shoveling noodles and rubbery shrimp into our mouths, not really tasting it, fueling our engines.
“You’d think we’d be having filet mignon and fancy champagne for our last meal,” I said.
She choked on a laugh, the first real one I’d heard in what felt like forever. “You’d think so, eh? Like, um, garnished with a whole lobster.”
“And a big fuckin’ truffle.”
“Yes! A truffle as big as a volleyball. And some gold leaf.”
“And... what else is really fancy? You’d know, Richie Rich fancy. Some rare cheese? Made with like, whale milk or something?”
“Ew!” She thought, looked at the ceiling. “But