“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

He didn’t understand, so she explained. “You didn’t make a conscious decision to keep it a secret; the idea of sharing it simply never entered your mind.” She took a breath. “That makes it worse. It means that it’s hardwired into you. It’s something that’ll never change.”

“People can change. Remember? Dr. Ray said that, too.”

“Before you suddenly decided to return to the field without even running it by me? Or before she told you that you weren’t taking our sessions seriously enough?”

Suddenly, this transatlantic visit felt like a mistake. It was as if she were looking for reasons to reject him, milking them out of whatever new facts she had discovered. The truth, though, was that Milo still didn’t understand. “You need more time?” he asked.

“Time for what?” She glanced at him. “You’re working in Europe again. If we give the marriage another try, then what kind of marriage are we talking about? I’m still not interested in moving, you know. I like my job. I like the life I’ve got here. Stephanie’s in a great school.”

He rubbed his face. Despite the many times he’d planned and played this conversation in his head, she was irritating him. “Why do I have to have all the answers? Why can’t we just play it by ear?”

“Because we have a child, Milo.”

All the air seemed to leave the car.

She gave him a quick look. “What did you think would happen here? Did you think we’d fall in love all over again and you’d return to your… I don’t know. Do you even have a home?”

He didn’t answer. It was out of his hands now.

“Maybe you think we can have some kind of satisfying long distance relationship. But tell me: Could we really depend on you showing up for birthdays and holidays? You’re not working a nine-to-five.” She stopped at a light. “Unless you’re quitting. Is that it?”

“Not yet,” he managed.

Silence followed, and after they’d gotten moving again she spoke more softly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, and one thing I couldn’t understand was myself. Why didn’t I go with you back in July? My husband comes to me, tells me his life is in danger, and the only way we can all stay together is if we leave the country. You made it very clear, Milo. An idiot could have understood.”

He waited.

“I couldn’t understand why my ‘no’ had come so easily. There were plenty of practical reasons, but those weren’t enough. It was my unconscious making the decisions, and my unconscious knew that, even without all the melodrama, there was something wrong in the marriage. Maybe I’d never really trusted you in the first place. Maybe my love had its limits. I don’t know, and I still don’t. All I know is that if we got back together it couldn’t stay the way it was. It would take work. We’d have to work together to figure out what was wrong and then see if we can fix it. Not that one-sided therapy we were doing before, but real, engaged therapy we’re both committed to.”

She knew how to make him feel as if he’d lost control of a debate; all she had to do was use that word of hers, “unconscious.” It made her into the adult, standing alongside Dr. Ray; it made him into the child. And as if he were indeed a child, a swift fantasy took hold, a shallow reasoning: She was confused. She was confusing herself. Their marriage had gone so well for six years, and now that a few problems had appeared she’d lost faith. Patrick-yes, her ex was obviously deluding her. So Milo would take control. He would get her to pull over and then overpower her. He would move her to a place where he had control, where he would have the time and means to convince her of her bad logic, because that’s all it was-bad logic. It left out love, and any logic that ignored love was flawed from the outset.

Then the fantasy left, as quickly as it had lumbered into his head, and he knew that this had been the problem all along-he’d been thinking like a Tourist. For Tourists, everything is possible; contradictions are minor inconveniences. Tourists, like children, believe the world is theirs. He hadn’t been like this before. The job had infantilized him.

She said, “I asked him. Yevgeny. I asked him if you could just leave your job and come back. Just like you, he said, Not yet. He said you needed more time.” She waited for him to dispute that. He didn’t. “Remember what I told you before? When we met, you were a field agent, but if you’d stayed one I wouldn’t have married you. I’m not the kind of wife who can take long absences, or worry that my husband won’t make it home at all. So, you know what I told Yevgeny? I told him that when you quit running around the world, when you finally fall back on the name you were born with, then you should come and see me. Did he tell you that?”

“No,” Milo said.

“Well, he should have. You wouldn’t have wasted a trip.”

12

She pulled up outside the Franklin Avenue A-train station in Brooklyn, from which he could ride to Howard Beach and take the AirTrain to JFK. For a full minute they sat in that awkward silence of farewell. He sat hating Yevgeny for offering him the unrealistic hope that is the lifeblood of the desperate.

Then, perhaps taking pity, Tina tugged on his sleeve, muttering, “Come here.” She pulled him close and kissed him hard on the mouth. She tasted of chewing gum. Though he knew that it was pity, he would take it in lieu of anything else. They lingered for a moment; then she pulled back. “I mean what I said. You get your life straight, come back home, and I’m willing to give it a try. But here, you understand? Not in some other country with fake names. And we work on it with Dr. Ray.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do, mister.”

He grinned. She had offered him a plan. “Give Stef my love.”

“You sure about that?”

“Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “I’ll give it to her myself when I can stay more than a few hours.”

A brief smile joined them; then Tina jolted. “Oh! Take this.” She popped open the glove compartment and fished out the iPod he’d given her months before, with headphones and a car-lighter charger.

“No. It’s yours.”

“Please,” she insisted. “I never listen to the damned thing, and a few weeks ago I dropped it. Broke it. Pat got it fixed, but… look, all your music got wiped.”

“After Pat touched it?”

“Ha ha. He filled it before giving it back, but I still don’t listen. So, please, take it back. He filled it with seventies crap-you’d like it. Besides, I can’t really imagine you running around the world without it.”

He held it in his hand. “Thanks. I mean it. And don’t give up on the Olympics. The more I think of it, the better the idea sounds. Tell Pat to get those tickets before they sell out.”

“I’ll do that,” she said and let him kiss her again. Once he was standing on the wet sidewalk, she lowered the window. “One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Cut out the smoking, will you? You taste like an ashtray.” She winked and raised the window as she drove away.

He boarded a slow train, not worrying about the time. In the cool cloud of his hope-the better hope that she had offered him-he wasn’t in a hurry to do anything. There was always a chance, even for louts like himself. He would catch an outbound flight with his Tourist passport, and even hope that Drummond was keeping watch, and that this unscheduled visit with his wife would provoke his anger, and perhaps lead to a quick dismissal.

It would weaken Adriana Stanescu’s position with his father, but for the moment he didn’t care. He’d regained that lack of empathy that Tourism drills into you.

Who knew? Maybe by morning he’d be free.

When switching trains at Howard Beach, he gave the rest of his Davidoffs to a beggar, and at JFK he purchased a ticket to Paris with his Sebastian Hall credit card. He joined the line at the security check. In front of and behind him anxious travelers sighed and grunted as they removed their shoes and unpacked their laptops and undid their belts. Milo followed suit, though he carried no luggage.