Sacrifices of Joy (17 page)

I saw him the moment I entered the restaurant. A brightly lit establishment with a fresh, American-fare theme, it was easy to see him sitting at a pale green padded booth. He wore a sharp, three-piece beige suit, his goatee defined, his smile brighter than the tracked spotlights that cast a vibrant glow on each table. I saw him sitting there, his mouth moving nonstop as he retold some story about his news travels or broadcasting exploits, I was sure, judging from the unmistakable gleam in his eyes.

I also saw the woman sitting across from him at the table.

She had thinly arched eyebrows, a narrow, pointy nose, and shiny black hair cut in a perfect bob, similar to the one I wore before I went natural. She was the color of French vanilla ice cream. No, more of an ashy gray, I decided, getting a better look at her features as her head bounced up and down in laughter. Was she blushing?

Years ago, I'd seen Leon in a diner booth, laughing along with a beautiful woman sitting across from him. I'd been initially heartbroken, but the woman turned out to be his long-lost niece. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had committed to helping her get back on her feet following a rough and tragic start to life.

Maybe that's why I felt numb at the moment, not wanting to read anything or feel any way about the present scene before me. There was probably a very simple, straightforward explanation as to why Laz was eating lunch with a woman who seemed to be blushing. She could be a coworker, an intern who followed him like a groupie, or even someone he was investigating for a feature story.

Or she could be his bed partner.

I hadn't shared my cookies with him. Who's to say he wasn't finding satisfaction elsewhere?

“How many in your party, ma'am?” A college-aged young woman approached me with menus in hand.

“Oh, I . . . I'm not staying.” I turned to the door, wondering about my prudence at making this stop when I had a flight to catch.

“Sienna!”

My hand was on the door handle when I heard my name. I turned around and Laz was standing there. “What are you doing here?” His eyes were slightly narrowed, but a playful grin danced on his lips. The woman with whom he'd been dining had jumped to her feet and was nearly stomping toward us.

“I, uh . . .” How did I even begin to answer that question? I really didn't want Laz to know about my trip to San Diego.

Clearly I hadn't fully thought out this pit stop.

“Hi, I'm Camille.” The woman was up on us. She spoke in a nasally voice and extended a manicured hand. Up close I could see that she had clear hazel eyes and a smattering of freckles. She smiled, but a challenge was not missed in her tone. Regardless, she saved me from having to explain my presence. At least for the moment.

“Camille, this is Sienna, my fiancée,” Laz interjected before I could respond. A broad grin filled his face as he pulled me in for a quick hug. Her smile had instantly disappeared and from the expression that remained, I could almost hear the exclamation that ran through her mind:
He never told me he was engaged!

“Just having a working lunch, Sienna. You are more than welcome to join us,” Laz continued, nearly directing me to where the two had been sitting.

Camille had composed herself enough to keep the irritation out of her face and voice, but she wanted to make sure that I understood how important and intelligent she was. “Yes, I am a program analyst for Homeland Security, and Laz and I sometimes spar over politics and debate government policies.”

She's his source!
It clicked, and Laz knew it did because he gave me a subtle nod and I got the hint to keep mum.

He may have been using her for inside information to advance his career, but it was clear to me that Camille had other objectives with him in mind.

“I wish I could stay, but I can't.” I politely shooed away the hostess who kept circling us with a menu. “I have somewhere I need to be in a few minutes, but I saw that Laz had checked in here on Facebook, and I thought it would be fun to surprise him with a quick, unexpected visit.”

“Oh, how nice. What exactly is it that you do?” Camille was looking for an opening to disparage me.

“I'm a social worker and I provide therapy to children, teens, and adults and individual, family, and couples counseling. I have my own practice,” I threw in for good measure, though I immediately regretted it. I was never the type of woman who felt the need to compete for a man's attention. I mean the man had already asked me to marry him.

“Oh, a psychotherapist.” She frowned, and I could not tell if she was disappointed that she couldn't think of an instant jab, or if she'd had a bad experience with therapy in the past. With her obvious need for attention, security, and superiority, I guessed it was the latter.

“So you don't have a few moments to join us, Sienna? Maybe you can weigh in on our discussion about how much privacy from the government we're entitled to in the name of public safety.” He winced as soon as he said it, realizing that he'd given me the door I'd been unknowingly waiting for in front of his source.

“Well, I really do need to go, but I must say, I keep getting bad feelings about that client I told you about. I wish the government would violate his privacy and investigate him.” I gave an innocent smile.

Laz narrowed his eyes and discreetly shook his head. I knew that he was merely trying to protect his source, but shoot, I was trying to protect the whole darn country.

If I was wrong and crazy, at least my heart was in the right place.

I went for it.

“Camille, you work for Homeland Security. I was at BWI just before the explosion and I met this man who really made me feel uncomfortable. He came to my office a couple of times this week and the things he talked about only made my bad feelings about him grow.”

I didn't miss her cut a look over at Laz, who had suddenly become consumed with tinkering with his watch.

“You talked about this with Laz?”

“A little.”

“I think he mentioned your concerns to me.” If her smile grew any bigger, it would drip right off of her face. I could imagine her thoughts again:
This woman is a nutcase. If I can prove that to Laz, then maybe he will pick me. Pick me! Pick me, please!
I was certain that was her line of thinking as she relaxed her shoulders, ready to fully engage with me.

“I've really got to go, but perhaps I can call you in a few hours after my . . . I mean, well, do you have a card?” I stumbled over my words and she looked even more pleased.

“I have a classified position and don't feel comfortable giving out my contact information, but I can take your card.”

Oh, she was really feeling special about herself, wasn't she? For all I knew, this girl could be, probably was, somewhere on the bottom of the totem pole at her agency, but I didn't care. I needed somebody with the right channels to hear me.

It felt like my duty.

And the continuing sense of urgency pushed me forward, even at the expense of looking like a fool.

“Here's my card.” I passed one to her, getting a flashback of the last time I'd handed out my card.

At the airport.

To that man whose name I still could not confirm.

“I don't have a name for you, but I will fill you in on what the man talked about when you call.” Maybe I was over thinking. The doubt began creeping back in as I realized that neither she nor Laz seemed to be too worried about whatever else I had to say about the man I'd met.

There already was a suspect in custody, I reminded myself. I started feeling foolish as Camille stared silently at my business card.

“Oh, something else.” I dug into my purse, wanting to feel like I had a smoking gun that would make them both take me seriously. I pulled out the wad of paper that the man had written on and thrown into the gutter. “He touched this, so there might be prints on it. It's kind of dirty, but I'm sure your office has the right tools to handle it.” A small giggle escaped my lips as I held out the trash ball in my palm.

She was still staring at my card, her smile gone.

“Okay, I'm leaving,” I mumbled, still waiting for her to take the paper out of my extended hand. When she still didn't look up, I turned once again for the door.

“Wait.” She grabbed my shoulder. Reaching first for a cloth napkin from the hostess stand, she used it to pluck the wad of trash from my hand. “I will be calling you soon. Don't go far.”

All remnants of her smile had disappeared, and a seriousness came through her voice that wasn't there before. She turned back to the booth, her eyes back to studying my card.

I had not a clue what she was thinking.

“Bye, Laz.”

“See you soon, Sienna.”

I could see the question in his eyes as I left, and I knew that I had not imagined the change in tone that had just happened with Camille.

As I got into my car, I recalled that my dinner last night with Laz had abruptly ended when he'd gotten word of breaking news. “Don't read too much into it, okay? I don't want you worrying,” was all he'd said about whatever he'd learned.

I'd not heard of any new developments.

Maybe it was something insignificant that the networks had glossed over. Or maybe the development had not been released and was not public knowledge.

Either way, I had to find out what it was.

I didn't trust his “source.”

Changing gears.

I'd done what I could to save the world; now I had to do what was necessary to change my marital status.

Flying over the country, staring down at the fields and towns, I thought about the many trips I'd taken with RiChard during our short time together. From lush green hills in Africa to thick canopied rainforests in South America, I'd covered a lot of ground in the months when my marriage felt real. That was a blurry span of about a year and a half; no, maybe two years, my time with RiChard. I'd blocked so much out of my mind from that period of my life, it seemed a hazy fog crowded out any clear thoughts or memories.

Except the blood on his hands when he said he'd killed for Kisu.

It had not all been bad, though. Before I began questioning the goals and tactics of his personal mission to bring social justice to the world, I found myself learning, growing, awakening on my trek around the globe.

A forgotten memory surfaced in my mind of a stop we made in a rural Guatemalan community. Though we could not change the entire school system, or secure adequate educational opportunities for the entire village that we'd visited, RiChard and I were able to talk a farmer into letting his daughter go to school. The father had only sent her younger brothers to the single-grade schoolhouse that was an hour-and-a-half walk from their home, believing that his daughter should solely focus on domestic duties and had no need to expand her mind. However, after he found out I had not only gone to elementary school, but had graduated from high school with all As and Bs, he reconsidered and took out a loan for her to begin formal education. The idea of a better life for her, and not just her brothers, had never been fathomable to him.

I recalled feeling bad at the time that I could not say I'd finished college, but I rejoiced to see her off on her first day of school ever at age nine. Just before she joined the path to the schoolhouse along with her brothers, she came up to me, reached up her hands, and cupped both of them on my cheeks. We stared at each other in silence for several seconds, and I saw a fierce, independent, determined spirit in her eyes. I knew that we had just unleashed a fighter.

Yes, I'd done good with RiChard, but it was not because of or for him, contrary to Laz's belief. I was a social worker in the essence of the word long before I became one by license. I'd believed as long as I could remember that everyone deserved a fighting chance to have a quality life.

RiChard had not taught me that. He simply confirmed who I was, and I'd been living out my ideals of my own accord in the near twenty years he'd been absent.

“What would you like to drink, ma'am?” A flight attendant stood over me, her cart of beverages in the aisle. I had not even noticed that she'd passed a cup of ginger ale to the woman sitting next to me.

“Oh, I don't want anything. Thank you.” I swallowed down my own saliva as my stomach twisted into knots.

What was I doing? What was going to happen?

I shut my eyes as the attendant rolled her cart to the next row of seats. I imagined walking into the café and seeing Kisu after all these years.

And why did I think he would have answers?

I opened my eyes again, as if the act would help me see, think, or understand more clearly. Kisu and RiChard had been like brothers, I recalled, remembering the camaraderie between them when Kisu joined our global adventure. RiChard had wanted him to serve as a translator for the languages he himself didn't know, especially once we'd set our eyes on rural villages in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the place of Kisu's birth. We flew first to Paris to meet with him, where Kisu agreed to pause from his doctoral studies at the Sorbonne to come with us.

None of us knew that RiChard would later trick Kisu into faking his death under the premise of making him a martyr for their broad causes. We would only find out later that RiChard really just wanted Kisu out of the picture so he could take Kisu's fiancée, Mbali, as his own wife, though RiChard was still technically married to me. I was left bamboozled and in the dark for well over a decade, satisfied with his infrequent letters and packages from his continued supposed trips around the world, never suspecting a thing.

He'd lied to all of us.

I felt so hot inside that a cold soda probably would have turned into a rolling boil had I'd accepted one from the flight attendant.

Tonight, I was getting my answers, though I could not keep track of what questions I wanted to ask.

Maybe I should write some questions down,
I considered, as I often did when I was in the middle of trying to make sense of a complicated clinical case.

I'd only bought a carry-on with a change of clothes and my purse, and my workbag, which was stuffed with Laz's envelopes and my folder of notes on that man from the airport.

Without having another way to contact him, holding on to his folder seemed like the only way of still keeping him close until all my doubts were dismissed.

Or confirmed.

Perhaps I should have given Camille the phone number I'd scribbled down in my notes, The one time he'd called had been from a phone number with an Ohio area code.

Maybe I'll call it when this plane lands,
I considered, as I flipped anew through the folder.

One thing at a time, Sienna.
I needed to focus on getting ready to meet Kisu. I shut the folder, but as I did my eyes caught notice of the blank registration form Bennett had left in the waiting room the first day he'd visited my office.

It was blank except for a hand-drawn illustration he'd made in ink in the top right corner.

I opened the folder back up and stared at the drawing of the windowsill with the cat sitting on it. It was the same picture he'd drawn on the crumpled-up piece of paper he'd thrown in the gutter and I'd retrieved and given to Camille as my only “evidence.”

I guessed that woman had good reason to believe I was working on one macaroni less than a full box.

But something had changed in her demeanor in those final seconds I spent with her and Laz at the restaurant, after I'd given her my business card. I could not put my finger on it, but I recalled thinking that I needed to know what breaking news story I had somehow missed despite my continual check-ins to CNN's headlines.

Unless it was a story that had never been reported.

Reality check.

There was nothing I could do about news I didn't know about. I had no further actions to take regarding the drawing of a cat in a window from a man whose name, actions, and whereabouts were completely unknown to me.

There was nothing I could do about any of it, at least while I was on the plane.

I gave myself permission to stop thinking about it all and focused yet again on what questions I could ask Kisu.

That's why I had gone digging for notepaper, to keep my thoughts organized, I remembered.

I opened my workbag up again, forcing myself to stay on task, to come up with my questions.

Where do I have blank paper?
I shook my head as I shuffled through the notes and envelopes in my bag. I pulled out one.

Laz's life résumé.

I opened it, took out the stack of awards and certificates, yearbook pages, pictures.

I smiled.

“Hey, ain't that the news man who comes on channel fifty-five?” The woman in the seat next to me stared at the images in my lap. She looked around my age, but had a slightly worn, rugged appearance to her eyes, face, and even her hands. “He is a fine somebody. If I thought I could get away with it, I would create some breaking news of my own, just to get him to cover the story. That's wrong, isn't it?”

We both chuckled.

“You know him from somewhere?” She pointed to the papers in my lap.

“Yes.” I paused. “He's my fiancé.”

“Really? Congratulations. You are a blessed woman. I ain't jealous.” We both laughed again.

I guess I am blessed,
I considered as the woman settled back into her seat and flipped through a magazine. Laz was a good catch. He was handsome, successful, and apparently into me.

Then why did I feel so unsettled?

I do feel unsettled,
I acknowledged to myself.
Don't do this right now. Focus, Sienna.

I needed to stay on task, come up with my questions for Kisu. I took a final look at some photocopied pictures of Laz in a high school letterman jacket. I hadn't known that he was a wrestler in high school, I realized as I flipped through a couple of more photos. What else would I learn about him from his pictures?

As I put the stack of papers back in the envelope, the question struck me. Pictures do tell you something about a person.

That man's drawing.

It obviously had some significance to him as he kept putting on paper the exact same illustration.

Another realization.

He was obviously obsessed with the Internet. Wasn't there a way to look up images online? I was sure of it, and decided that the moment I was able to, I would scan the picture and search to see if it showed up anywhere in the virtual universe.

The universe.

It was broad and limitless and filled to capacity with matter, but that man was somewhere in it, even if he believed he did not exist. And the odds were that something about him, even a small detail, was somewhere online. It seemed nearly unavoidable for it to be otherwise. My mind told me this, but more importantly, my mind agreed.

I had something to work with, and the thought gave me comfort.

Enough to settle down and finally pull out my pen and paper.

I had the paper. I had the pen. But no questions for Kisu came.

I decided to take a nap.

Something told me that I needed to get my rest now while I could. That sense, that knowing, did not comfort me.