women in uniform swipe their ID fobs at the catering van for their free drinks and sandwiches. Techies in hi-viz jackets fuss and tinker with their aerials and armories, issuing and taking back the beam guns or laser tasers that frontline officers from the National Security Forces are authorized to carry and far too ready to use. The army and police forces do not mix with the rescue services, Leonard notices. Taking lives and saving lives are worlds apart. And they all despise the television crews. They are like playground gangs, keeping to their own kind and unhurriedly sharing their boredom with familiars. So the siege continues. Nothing new has happened this afternoon, he thinks, and is disappointed. Now Leonard understands what has pulled him back onto this open ground, something worse than prurience: it is the hope that the hostage-taking has been ended quickly while he’s been in the pub, not only for the victims’ sake, and not at all for Maxie Lermon’s sake, but for his own well-being.
L EONARD SETS OFF ON THE JOURNEY home in a media-silent van. He needs to stay calm and unruffled, and he has to think. He’s overreached himself, that much is obvious, and he suspects that getting back to safe and level ground will not be trouble-free. This is a tangle from which he knows he has to extricate himself at once. He imagines the conversation he will need to have with Francine, proving something she already knows: that he is foolish and suggestible, that thanks to him Celandine’s old room is being given up to a missing young woman, but not the one his wife is praying for. Kidnapping of any kind is an offense, he tells himself, no matter that the victim is a coconspirator and more accountable than she might seem. The newspapers, the police, will know the truth: here is a “teenage child” who should expect good counsel and a restraining hand from her elders, not help and encouragement. Threatening violence is also an offense, even if the threat is little more than theater and could never produce anything other than blanks. And then there is the lesser crime of wasting police time. No one would blame Lucy for that. She’s too immature, they’d say, to be the ringleader, to be the instigator of such a devious venture. Seventeen-year-olds have limited judgment, and less experience. But a man of almost fifty? How could a man of almost fifty, wittingly and willingly, go along with such a plan and give no thought to any of the consequences? Leonard Lessing … Mister. Lennie. Less … On tenor … You are charged with willful mistreatment of a minor. And conspiracy. How do you plead? No, this is not a good idea at all.
He flicks on the drive-time news and, hoping for too much, waits for an update on the hostages. But he has to listen first to the main items of the day, the forthcoming Reconciliation Summit and the many protests planned, and then a report from Los Angeles predicting a majority yes vote in California’s unofficial Proposition 101, nicknamed Montezuma’s Revenge, calling for the Latino state’s secession from the union. “It is feared,” the correspondent says, “that should these polls prove accurate and the majority embark on forced implementation, then many non-Latino Californians might resist with violence.” Leonard imagines himself and Maxie holed up among the redwoods, comrades in arms, an International Brigade of two. It’s For Whom the Bell Tolls filmed at Big Sur, though whether they would be fighting for or fighting against the rule of the WASPs of America is not clear. Am I the only one, he wonders, the only adult anyway, who has such childish, self-deluding fantasies? Is everyone a reckless hero in their dreams? Is everyone a Mr. Perkiss in their dreams?
Maxie himself is the third item in the newscast. It has been a quiet day for him and everyone involved, the presenter says. Pizzas and fresh fruit have been delivered by “elderly representatives” of the St. John Ambulance
L EONARD SETS OFF ON THE JOURNEY home in a media-silent van. He needs to stay calm and unruffled, and he has to think. He’s overreached himself, that much is obvious, and he suspects that getting back to safe and level ground will not be trouble-free. This is a tangle from which he knows he has to extricate himself at once. He imagines the conversation he will need to have with Francine, proving something she already knows: that he is foolish and suggestible, that thanks to him Celandine’s old room is being given up to a missing young woman, but not the one his wife is praying for. Kidnapping of any kind is an offense, he tells himself, no matter that the victim is a coconspirator and more accountable than she might seem. The newspapers, the police, will know the truth: here is a “teenage child” who should expect good counsel and a restraining hand from her elders, not help and encouragement. Threatening violence is also an offense, even if the threat is little more than theater and could never produce anything other than blanks. And then there is the lesser crime of wasting police time. No one would blame Lucy for that. She’s too immature, they’d say, to be the ringleader, to be the instigator of such a devious venture. Seventeen-year-olds have limited judgment, and less experience. But a man of almost fifty? How could a man of almost fifty, wittingly and willingly, go along with such a plan and give no thought to any of the consequences? Leonard Lessing … Mister. Lennie. Less … On tenor … You are charged with willful mistreatment of a minor. And conspiracy. How do you plead? No, this is not a good idea at all.
He flicks on the drive-time news and, hoping for too much, waits for an update on the hostages. But he has to listen first to the main items of the day, the forthcoming Reconciliation Summit and the many protests planned, and then a report from Los Angeles predicting a majority yes vote in California’s unofficial Proposition 101, nicknamed Montezuma’s Revenge, calling for the Latino state’s secession from the union. “It is feared,” the correspondent says, “that should these polls prove accurate and the majority embark on forced implementation, then many non-Latino Californians might resist with violence.” Leonard imagines himself and Maxie holed up among the redwoods, comrades in arms, an International Brigade of two. It’s For Whom the Bell Tolls filmed at Big Sur, though whether they would be fighting for or fighting against the rule of the WASPs of America is not clear. Am I the only one, he wonders, the only adult anyway, who has such childish, self-deluding fantasies? Is everyone a reckless hero in their dreams? Is everyone a Mr. Perkiss in their dreams?
Maxie himself is the third item in the newscast. It has been a quiet day for him and everyone involved, the presenter says. Pizzas and fresh fruit have been delivered by “elderly representatives” of the St. John Ambulance
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