The Traveler

4

Gabriel Corrigan and his older brother, Michael, had grown up on the road, and they considered themselves to be expert concerning truck stops, tourist cabins, and roadside museums displaying dinosaur bones. During their long hours traveling, their mother sat between them in the backseat, reading books or telling stories. One of their favorite tales was about Edward V and his brother, the Duke of York, the two young princes locked in the Tower of London by Richard III. According to their mother, the princes were about to be smothered by one of Richard’s henchmen, but they found a secret passageway and swam across a moat to freedom. Disguised in rags and assisted by Merlin and Robin Hood, the brothers had adventures in fifteenth-century England.

When they were boys, the Corrigan brothers pretended to be the lost princes at public parks and highway rest stops. But now that they were adults, Michael had a different view of the game. “I looked it up in a history book,” he said. “Richard III got away with it. Both princes were killed.”

“What difference does that make?” Gabriel asked.

“She lied, Gabe. It was just another fabrication. Mom told us all these stories when we were growing up, but she never told us the truth.”

GABRIEL ACCEPTED MICHAEL’S opinion: it was better to know all the facts. But sometimes he entertained himself with one of his mother’s stories. On Sunday, he left Los Angeles before dawn and rode his motorcycle through the darkness to the town of Hemet. He felt like a lost prince, alone and unrecognized, as he bought fuel at a discount gas station and ate breakfast at a small coffee shop. As he turned off the freeway, the sun emerged from the ground like a bright orange bubble. It broke free of gravity and floated up into the sky.

THE HEMET AIRPORT consisted of one asphalt runway with weeds pushing out of the cracks, a tie-down area for the planes, and a shabby collection of trailers and temporary buildings. The HALO office was in a double-wide trailer near the south end of the runway. Gabriel parked his bike near the entrance and unfastened the shock cords that held his gear.

High-altitude jumps were expensive, and Gabriel had told Nick Clark, the HALO instructor, that he was rationing himself to one jump a month. Only twelve days had passed and now he was back again. When he entered the trailer, Nick grinned at him like a bookie greeting one of his steady customers.

“Couldn’t stay away?”

“I made some more money,” Gabriel said, “and I didn’t know where to spend it.” He handed Nick a wad of cash and went into the men’s room to put on thermal underwear and a jumpsuit.

When Gabriel came out, a group of five Korean men had arrived. They wore matching green-and-white uniforms, and carried expensive gear along with laminated cards with useful English phrases. Nick announced that Gabriel was jumping with them, and the Koreans came over to shake the American’s hand and take his picture.

“How many HALO jumps you make?” one of the men asked.

“I don’t keep a logbook,” Gabriel said.

This answer was translated and everyone looked surprised. “Keep logbook,” the oldest man told him. “Then you know the number.”

Nick told the Koreans to get ready, and the group began to run through a detailed checklist. “These guys are going for a high-altitude jump in each of the seven continents,” Nick whispered. “Bet it costs a lot of money. They’re wearing special spacesuits when they do it over Antarctica.”

Gabriel liked the Koreans-they took the jump seriously-but he preferred to be alone when he ran through his gear check. The preparation itself was a pleasure, almost a form of meditation. He pulled on a flight suit over his clothes; inspected his thermal gloves, helmet, and flex goggles; then inspected the main and reserve chutes, the straps, and the cutaway handle. All these objects appeared quite ordinary on the ground, but they would be transformed when he stepped into the sky.

The Koreans snapped a few more photographs and everyone squeezed into the plane. The men sat beside each other, two to a row, and attached their oxygen hoses to the aircraft console. Nick spoke to the pilot and the plane took off, beginning its slow ascent to thirty thousand feet. The oxygen masks made it difficult to speak and Gabriel was grateful for the end of conversation. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on breathing as the oxygen hissed softly in his mask.

He hated gravity and the demands of his body. The movement of his lungs and the thump of his heart felt like the mechanical responses of a dull machine. Once he had tried to explain this to Michael, but it felt as if they were speaking different languages. “Nobody asked to be born, but we’re here anyway,” Michael said. “There’s only one question we need to answer: Are we standing at the bottom of the hill or up at the top?”

“Maybe the hill isn’t important.”

Michael looked amused. “We’re both going to be at the top,” he said. “That’s where I’m going and I’m taking you with me.”

Past twenty thousand feet, frost crystals appeared on the inside of the plane. Gabriel opened his eyes as Nick pushed his way down the narrow aisle to the back of the plane and opened the door a few inches. As cold wind forced its way into the cabin, Gabriel began to get excited. This was it. The moment of release.

Nick looked down, searching for the drop zone, as he talked to the pilot on the intercom. Finally he motioned for everyone to get ready, and the men pulled on their goggles and tightened their straps. Two or three minutes passed. Nick waved again and tapped his mask. A small bailout bottle of oxygen was attached to each man’s left leg. Gabriel pulled his bottle’s regulator handle and his own mask popped slightly. After he detached himself from the oxygen console, he was ready to go.

They were as high as Mount Everest and it was very cold. Perhaps the Koreans had considered pausing at the doorway and making a flashy jump, but Nick wanted them back in the safety zone before the oxygen was gone from their bottles. One by one, the Koreans stood up, shuffled over to the doorway, and fell out into the sky. Gabriel had taken the seat closest to the pilot so that he would be the last jumper. He moved slowly and pretended to be adjusting a parachute strap so that he would be completely alone during his descent. When he reached the door, he wasted a few more seconds giving Nick a thumbs-up, and then he was out of the plane and falling.

Gabriel shifted his weight and flipped over onto his back so that he saw nothing but the space above him. The sky was dark blue, darker than anything you could see when standing on the ground. A midnight blue with a distant point of light. Venus. Goddess of Love. An exposed area on his cheek began to sting, but he ignored the pain and concentrated on the sky itself, the absolute purity of the world that surrounded him.

On earth, two minutes was a commercial break on a television show, a half-mile crawl on a crowded freeway, a fragment of a popular love song. But falling through the air, each second expanded like a tiny sponge tossed into water. Gabriel passed through a layer of warm air, and then returned to the coldness. He was filled with thoughts, but not thinking. All the doubts and compromises of his life on earth had melted away.

His wrist altimeter began to beep loudly. Once again, he shifted his weight and flipped over. He stared down at the dull brown Southern California landscape and a line of distant hills. As he came closer to the earth, he could see cars and tract houses and the yellowish haze of air pollution hanging over the freeway. Gabriel wanted to fall forever, but a quiet voice inside his brain commanded him to pull the handle.

He glanced up at the sky-trying to remember exactly how it looked-and then the parachute canopy blossomed above him.

GABRIEL LIVED IN a house in the western part of Los Angeles that was fifteen feet away from the San Diego Freeway. At night a white river of headlights flowed north through the Sepulveda Pass while a parallel river of brake lights led south to the beach cities and Mexico. After Gabriel’s landlord, Mr. Varosian, found seventeen adults and five children living in his house, he had them all deported back to El Salvador, then placed an ad for “one tenant only, no exceptions.” He assumed that Gabriel was involved in something illegal-an after-hours club or the sale of stolen car parts. Mr. Varosian didn’t care about car parts, but he did have a few rules. “No guns. No drug cookers. No cats.”

Gabriel could hear a constant rushing sound as cars and trucks and buses headed south. Every morning he would walk over to the chain-link fence that surrounded the back of his property to see what the freeway had left along its shore. People were constantly throwing things out of their car windows: fast-food wrappers and newspapers, a plastic Barbie doll with teased hair, several cell phones, a wedge of goat cheese with a bite taken out of it, used condoms, gardening tools, and a plastic cremation urn filled with blackened teeth and ashes.

Gang graffiti was sprayed on the detached garage and the front lawn was dotted with weeds, but Gabriel never touched the exterior of the house. It was a disguise, like the rags worn by the lost princes. The previous summer, he had bought a bumper sticker from a religious group at a swap meet that announced “We Are Damned for Eternity Except for the Blood of Our Savior.” Gabriel cut off everything but “Damned for Eternity” and slapped the sticker on the front door. When real estate agents and door-to-door salesmen avoided the house, he felt like he had won a small victory.

The inside of the house was clean and pleasant. Every morning, when the sun was at a certain angle, the rooms were filled with light. His mother said that plants cleansed the air and gave you positive thoughts, so he had more than thirty plants in the house, hanging from the ceiling or growing in pots on the floor. Gabriel slept on a futon in one of the bedrooms and kept all of his belongings in a few canvas duffel bags. His kempo helmet and armor were placed on a special frame next to the rack that held a bamboo shinai sword and the old Japanese sword left by his father. If he woke up during the night and opened his eyes, it looked like a samurai warrior was guarding him while he slept.

The second bedroom was empty except for several hundred books piled in stacks against the wall. Instead of getting a library card and searching for a particular book, Gabriel read any book that happened to find him. Several of his customers gave him books when they had finished them, and he would pick up discarded books in waiting rooms or on the shoulder of the freeway. There were mass-market paperbacks with lurid covers, technical reports about metal alloys, and three water-stained Dickens novels.

Gabriel didn’t belong to a club or a political party. His strongest belief was that he should continue to live off the Grid. In the dictionary, a grid was defined as a network of evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines that could be used for locating a particular object or point. If you looked at modern civilization in a certain way, it seemed like every commercial enterprise or government program was part of an enormous grid. The different lines and squares could track you down and fix your location; they could find out almost everything about you.

The grid was comprised of straight lines on a flat plain, but it was still possible to live a secret life. You could take a job in the underground economy or keep moving so fast that the lines would never fix your exact location. Gabriel didn’t have a bank account or a credit card. He used his real first name but had a false last name on his driver’s license. Although he carried two cell phones, one for personal business and one for work, they were both billed to his brother’s real estate company.

Gabriel’s only connection to the Grid was on a desk in the living room. A year ago, Michael had given him a home computer and arranged for a hookup to a DSL line. Going on the Internet enabled Gabriel to download trance musik from Germany, hypnotic loops of sound produced by DJs affiliated with a mysterious group called Die Neunen Primitiven. The music helped him go to sleep when he returned to the house for the night. As he closed his eyes, he heard a woman singing: Lotus eaters lost in New Babylon. Lonely pilgrim find your way home.

CAPTIVE IN HIS dream, he fell through darkness, fell through clouds and snow and rain. He hit the roof of a house and passed through the cedar shingles, the tar paper, and the wooden frame. Now he was a child again, standing in the hallway on the second floor of the farmhouse in South Dakota. And the house was burning, his parents’ bed, the dresser, and the rocking chair in their room smoking and smoldering and bursting into flame. Get out, he told himself. Find Michael. Hide. But his child self, the small figure walking down the hallway, didn’t seem to hear his adult warning.

Something exploded behind a wall, and there was a dull thumping sound. Then the fire roared up the stairway, flowing around the banisters and railing. Terrified, Gabriel stood in the hallway as fire rushed toward him in a wave of heat and pain.

THE CELL PHONE lying near the futon mattress started ringing. Gabriel pulled his head away from the pillow. It was six o’clock in the morning and sunlight pushed through a crack in the curtains. No fire, he told himself. Another day.

He answered the phone and heard his brother’s voice. Michael sounded worried, but that was normal. Since childhood, Michael had played the role of the responsible older brother. Whenever he heard about a motorcycle accident on the radio, Michael called Gabriel on the cell phone just to make sure he was all right.

“Where are you?” Michael asked.

“Home. In bed.”

“I called you five times yesterday. Why didn’t you call me back?”

“It was Sunday. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I left the cell phones here and rode down to Hemet for a jump.”

“Do whatever you want, Gabe, but tell me where you’re going. I start to worry when I don’t know where you are.”

“Okay. I’ll try to remember.” Gabriel rolled onto his side and saw his steel-toed boots and riding leathers scattered across the floor. “How was your weekend?”

“The usual. I paid some bills and played golf with two real estate developers. Did you see Mom?”

“Yeah. I dropped by the hospice on Saturday.”

“Is everything okay at this new place?”

“She’s comfortable.”

“It’s got to be more than comfortable.”

Two years ago, their mother had gone into the hospital for routine bladder surgery and the doctors had discovered a malignant tumor on her abdominal wall. Although she had gone through chemotherapy, the cancer had metastasized and spread throughout her body. Now she was living at a hospice in Tarzana, a suburb in the southwest San Fernando Valley.

The Corrigan brothers had divided up the responsibilities for their mother’s care. Gabriel saw her every other day and talked to the hospice workers. His older brother dropped by once a week and paid for everything. Michael was always suspicious of doctors and nurses. Whenever he perceived a lack of diligence, he had their mother transferred to a new facility.

“She doesn’t want to leave this place, Michael.”

“No one is talking about leaving. I just want the doctors to do their job.”

“The doctors aren’t important now that she’s stopped chemotherapy. It’s the nurses and the aides who take care of her.”

“If there’s the slightest problem, you let me know immediately. And take care of yourself. Are you working today?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“That fire in Malibu is getting worse and now there’s a new fire in the east, near Lake Arrowhead. All the arsonists are out with their matches. Must be the weather.”

“I dreamed about fire,” Gabriel said. “We were back at our old house in South Dakota. It was burning down and I couldn’t get out.”

“You’ve got to stop thinking about that, Gabe. It’s a waste of time.”

“Don’t you want to know who attacked us?”

“Mom has given us a dozen explanations. Pick one of them and get on with your life.” A second phone rang in Michael’s apartment. “Leave your cell on,” he said. “We’ll talk this afternoon.”

GABRIEL TOOK A shower, pulled on running shorts and a T-shirt, and went into the kitchen. He mixed some milk, yogurt, and two bananas in a blender. Sipping the drink, he watered all the hanging plants, then returned to the bedroom and began to get dressed. When Gabriel was naked, you could see the scars from his last motorcycle accident: pale white lines on his left leg and arm. His curly brown hair and smooth skin gave him a boyish appearance, but that changed as he pulled on jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and heavy motorcycle boots. The boots were scuffed and scratched from the aggressive way he leaned into turns. His leather jacket was also scratched and machine oil darkened the cuffs and sleeves. Gabriel’s two cell phones were attached to a headset with a built-in microphone. Work calls went into his left ear. Personal calls went to the right. While riding he could activate either phone by pressing his hand against an outside pocket.

Carrying one of his motorcycle helmets, Gabriel walked outside to the backyard. It was October in Southern California and a hot Santa Ana wind flowed out of the northern canyons. The sky above him was clear, but when Gabriel looked west he saw a cloud of dark gray smoke from the Malibu fire. There was a closed, edgy feeling in the air, as if the entire city had become a windowless room.

Gabriel opened the garage door and inspected his three motorcycles. If he had to park in a strange neighborhood, he usually rode the Yamaha RD400. It was his smallest bike, dented and temperamental. Only the most deluded thief would think of stealing such a piece of garbage. He also owned a Moto Guzzi V11, a powerful Italian bike that had a shaft drive and a powerful engine. It was his weekend motorcycle that he used for long trips across the desert. This morning, he decided to ride his Honda 600, a midsize sport bike that could easily go over a hundred miles an hour. Gabriel jacked up the back wheel, sprayed the chain with an aerosol lube, and let the solvents seep into the pins and rollers. The Honda had problems with the drive chain, so he found a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench on the workbench and dropped them into his messenger bag.

He relaxed the moment he straddled the bike and started the engine. The motorcycle always made him feel like he could leave the house and the city forever, just ride and ride until he disappeared into the dark haze on the horizon.

WITH NO PARTICULAR destination, Gabriel turned onto Santa Monica Boulevard and headed west. The morning rush hour had started. Women drinking from stainless steel travel mugs drove to work in their Land Rovers while school crossing guards wearing safety vests waited at the intersections. At a red light, Gabriel reached into his outside pocket and switched on his business cell phone.

He worked for two delivery services: Sir Speedy and its competitor, Blue Sky Messengers. Sir Speedy was owned by Artie Dressler, a 380-pound former attorney who rarely left his home in the Silver Lake District. Artie subscribed to several X-rated Web sites and took phone calls while he watched nude college girls paint their toenails. He loathed his competition, Blue Sky Messengers, and its owner, Laura Thompson. Laura had once worked as a film editor and now lived in a dome house up in Topanga Canyon. She believed in a clean colon and orange-colored food.

The phone rang as the light turned green and he heard Artie’s raspy New Jersey accent coming out of his headset. “Gabe! It’s me! Why’d you turn off your phone?”

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“I’m watching a live-cam shot on my computer. Two girls are taking a shower together. It started out okay, but now the steam is messing up the lens.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“I’ve got a pickup for you in Santa Monica Canyon.”

“Is that near the fire?”

“Nah. It’s miles away. No problem. But there’s a new fire in Simi Valley. That one’s totally out of control.”

The motorcycle’s handlebars were short and the foot clips and seat were angled so that Gabriel was always leaning forward. He could feel the vibration of the motor and hear the gears changing. When he was going fast, the machine became part of him, an extension of his body. Sometimes the tips of his handlebars were only inches away from speeding cars as he followed the broken white line that separated the lanes. He looked down the street and saw stoplights, pedestrians, trucks making slow turns, and immediately knew if he should stop or speed up or swerve around the obstacles.

Santa Monica Canyon was an enclave of expensive houses built near a two-lane road that led down to the beach. Gabriel picked up a manila envelope lying on someone’s doorstep and carried it to a mortgage broker in West Hollywood. When he reached the address, he removed his helmet and entered the office. He hated this part of the job. On the motorcycle, he was free to go anywhere. Standing in front of the receptionist, his body felt slow, weighed down by his heavy boots and jacket.

Back on the bike. Kick-start the engine. Keep moving. “Dear Gabriel, can you hear me?” It was Laura’s soothing voice coming into his headset. “I hope you ate a good breakfast this morning. Complex carbohydrates can help stabilize blood sugar.”

“Don’t worry. I ate something.”

“Good. I’ve got a pickup for you in Century City.”

Gabriel knew this address fairly well. He had dated a few of the receptionists and secretaries he had met delivering packages, but he had made only one real friend, a criminal-defense attorney named Maggie Resnick. About a year ago, he had showed up at her office for a delivery, only to wait around while her secretaries looked for a misplaced legal document. Maggie had asked him about his job and they ended up talking for an hour-long after the document had been found. He volunteered to take her riding on his motorcycle and was surprised when she accepted his offer.

Maggie was in her sixties, a small energetic woman who liked to wear red dresses and expensive shoes. Artie said that she defended movie stars and other celebrities who got into trouble, but she rarely talked about her cases. She treated Gabriel like a favorite nephew who wasn’t very responsible. “You should go to college,” she told him. “Open a bank account. Buy some real estate.” Gabriel never followed any of her advice, but he liked the fact that she worried about him.

When he got up to the twenty-second floor, the receptionist sent him down the hallway to Maggie’s private office. He walked in and found her smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone.

“Sure you can meet with the district attorney, but there’s no deal. And there’s no deal because he doesn’t have a case. Feel him out, and then call me back. I’ll be at lunch but they’ll patch it through to the cell.” Maggie hung up and flicked some ash off her cigarette. “Bastards. They’re all lying bastards.”

“You got a package for me?”

“No package. I just wanted to see you. I’ll pay Laura for a delivery.”

Gabriel sat on the couch and unzipped his jacket. Bottled water was on the coffee table and he poured some into a glass.

Maggie leaned forward, looking very fierce. “If you’re dealing drugs, Gabriel, I will personally kill you.”

“I’m not dealing drugs.”

“You’ve told me about your brother. You shouldn’t get involved in his scams to make money.”

“He’s buying property, Maggie. That’s all. Office buildings.”

“I hope so, darling. I’ll cut out his tongue if he drags you into something illegal.”

“What’s going on?”

“I work with an ex-cop turned security consultant. He helps me out if some crazy person is stalking one of my clients. Yesterday we were talking on the phone and, all of sudden, this man says: ‘Don’t you know a motorcycle messenger named Gabriel? I met him at your birthday party.’ And, of course, I say, ‘Yes.’ And then, he says, ‘Some friends of mine asked me about him. Where he works. Where he lives.’”

“Who are these people?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Maggie said. “But you should watch out, darling. Someone powerful is interested in you. Were you involved in a car accident?”

“No.”

“Any kind of lawsuit?”

“Of course not.”

“What about girlfriends?” She stared at him intently. “Anyone wealthy? Some woman with a husband?”

“I took out that girl I met at your party. Andrea-”

“Andrea Scofield? Her father owns four wineries up in Napa Valley.” Maggie laughed. “That’s it. Dan Scofield is making sure you’re all right.”

“We went riding a few times.”

“Don’t worry, Gabriel. I’ll talk to Dan and tell him not to be so protective. Now get out of here. I’ve got to prepare for an arraignment.”

AS HE WALKED through the basement garage, Gabriel felt afraid and suspicious. Was someone watching him right now? The two men in the SUV? The woman with the briefcase walking to the elevators? He reached into his messenger bag and touched the heavy adjustable wrench. If necessary, he could use it as a weapon.

His parents would have run away the moment they heard someone was asking about them. But he had lived in Los Angeles for five years and no one had kicked in his door. Perhaps he should follow Maggie’s advice: go to school and get a real job. If you were connected with the Grid, your life would become more substantial.

As he kick-started the motorcycle, his mother’s story returned to him with all its comforting power. He and Michael were the lost princes, disguised in rags, but resourceful and brave. Gabriel roared up the exit ramp, merged into traffic, and cut around a pickup truck. Second gear. Third gear. Faster. And he was moving again, always moving, a small spark of consciousness surrounded by machines.