Ordinary Decent Criminals

So what are you doing here?”

“You asked me to dinner.”

He would not dignify her with a response.

“All right.” She put her hands flat on the table. “I travel. For the last ten years, I must have been out of the States for eight. I used to go back between trips; not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was living a fairy tale: that my real life was in the U.S. Every time I flew into Philadelphia late afternoon, I knew better by nightfall. The best safeguard against the rude news that you can’t go home again is to stop trying.”

“Don’t you miss your family?”

“Not precisely, though I am frightened my parents will die. Or get old, for that matter. I travel with an illusion of reverse relativity. I move at the speed of light and I age while everyone back home stays the same. In my head Philadelphia remains an impeccable diorama I can enter at will. But you know how you can leave for two weeks and come back and the furniture’s re-arranged, the mailboxes are repainted on your street? Try leaving for two years. Or twenty.”

“So now it’s twenty, is it?”

“Why not? I haven’t been back for three. And my parents will die; I’ll be in Pakistan. I’ll have to decide whether to go to the funeral, and it will cost a lot of money.”

“Would you? From Pakistan?”

“Right away,” said Estrin, with a lack of hesitation that surprised her. “Burning my way though a dozen Glenfiddiches and staying horribly sober anyway and hating myself, continent after continent, coming back too late. Years too late, not just a few days. Because if I had any integrity I’d book Lufthansa tomorrow and throw myself into my mother’s arms while I still have the chance.”

“You get along with your mother?”

“I don’t anything with my mother; we never see each other, thanks to me. She writes much more than I do. Chatty stuff, though sometimes— Well, my parents are liberal, urban, educated, but lately I get the same feeling from my mother that I would if she came from Dunmurry, you know? She’s sad like any mother, in an ordinary way. I’m not married. I have no children. I don’t even have a career. I have stories. Mothers don’t care about stories. She feels sorry for me. And maybe she should.”

“Meaning you feel sorry for yourself.”

“Sometimes,” she said defiantly. “Why not? Who else is going to?”

He tsk-tsked and leaned back. “Self-pity is indulgent.”

“I can stand some indulgence. I’m a good enough little soldier. I’m hardly frolicking across the continents with Daddy’s Visa card. It hasn’t been easy.”

Farrell gently flaked a forkful of sole and glanced up at her with a dance of a smile. “No, I’m sure it hasn’t been. How have you managed to support yourself now?”

Estrin smoothed her napkin in her lap. “No, the work hasn’t been that hard, or that’s not what’s been hard … I just keep going and going and I’m getting—”

“Tired.”

“Yes,” she said gratefully.

“I’d think you were beginning to run out of countries.”

“There’s something else you run out of well before countries,” she warned. “Though it’s been a good life. I’ve picked grapes in Champagne, lemons in Greece. I’ve made plastic ashtrays in Amsterdam, done interior carpentry in Ylivieska. I’ve bused trays in the Philippines under Marcos, manufactured waterproof boots in Israel, and counseled in a German drug-abuse clinic in West Berlin. Now I’m at the Green Door, and that’s just a sampling— I swear I’m not off target and it could be the best of lives forever if I were perfect, but I’m not and something is going wrong …”

As she drifted off, he touched her hand, and the question was intent: “How old are you?”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you before. I’m thirty-two.”

“That is—incredible.”

“I know.”

“Then you’re past thumbing around Europe in patched jeans. What are you doing?”

“You mean, when am I going to settle down and do something? Product is slag. The only difference between my life and a foreign correspondent’s is I don’t write it down. Does that matter? Someone’s sure to cover the fall of Marcos without my help. I am my product.”

“You don’t want to accomplish anything?”

Estrin folded her arms. “I’m not convinced you believe in accomplishing anything yourself.”

“I try to keep my work—”

“Whatever that is.”

“Safe from my nihilism.”

“You mean you don’t allow what you believe to affect what you do.”

“I believe a number of things,” he hedged. “They’re not all comfortable sitting next to each other is all … Like certain women.”

“It’s called cognitive dissonance, and it’s dangerous as all fuck.”

“Suits me, then.”

She sighed. “I may be just making excuses. I always was a no-frills talent. I made ‘good grades,’ but at nothing in particular.”

“Are you running away?”

“From what? I didn’t leave my family behind in Pennsylvania sliced up with an electric carving knife. I don’t think I’m running away any more than I would in a Philadelphia condo with an answering machine and regular lunch dates. It doesn’t matter where I am, Farrell. So I might as well go as stay. And I like other countries. You—you’ve got a lot of spark, but you have this morose side. My autobiography doesn’t usually sound this depressing.”

“I depress you?”

“No, I must think torment will impress you.”

“I thought you didn’t care if people liked you.”

“I lied.” They toasted. The crystal sang.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” she expanded. “I haven’t lived for ten years out of a backpack. Especially for the last five, I’ve stayed places—I move into houses and buy dustpans. Right now I have a dynamite house on Springfield Road. I buy flowers, I have a whisk! Because you have to put together something to leave before you go.”

“Is that what you’re doing tonight?”

She didn’t answer. She ordered brandy. Estrin had spilled out. This man had made her tense as no man had for months, but that was earlier, and now she felt herself break and spread over the restaurant like a neatly cracked egg, her eyes shining, double yolks. “So though I’m not ambitious, I do work hard, because I like the feeling. In Israel, I got up to pull boots at four, and it was loud and hot. I did overtime. Before I left Kiryat Shemona I ran the night shift, and was the only Gentile ever offered membership in that kibbutz. In Berlin, the clinic tried to send me to school in social work. In the Philippines, I was a hotel dishwasher, but when the head cook disappeared they put me in to pinch hit; found out I pickled a mean ceviche and kept me there. So I ran the kitchen for six months; while the busboys ambled in late afternoons the color of polished walnuts, I worked twelve, fourteen hours a day and turned the color of kiwi fruit.”

“You’re not complaining.”