Entry #1: The Job
Two Pigeons. A novel.
Now that I decided to do this favor…to take on this assignment, this job…I might as well try to keep a record. I guess a journal of sorts.
I’ve worked as a journalist for most of my adult life. Well I did until I got laid off for the last time. That was before the war. Now I’m mostly unemployed or…barely employed…living off a house that I inherited from my parents twelve years ago. But even when I was paid to write about the world…when I still cared about such things…I had never been able to keep a diary. Oh I tried. Many times. I just could never keep it going. Every time I did only banalities would come out. What I ate. What I did. What I watched on television. What I said to someone. How I felt about something someone said. I’d just end up doing a catalogue of things I did that day. I’d bore myself to death writing it all down and then I’d bore myself even more when I’d reread my entries a few days later. Still I’d go on for a while, thinking that the trick was just to persevere and that something would happen…that I’d break through some wall and start writing in a deep and literary fashion, the kind of writing that educated people from the 19th century somehow managed to pull of multiple times a day in their letters and journals: eloquent, lucid, fully formed thoughts and sharp observations about myself and the world around me. But the emergence would never come. It would all be the same banal stuff, day in and day out. So after a few weeks of trying, I’d stop. It really weighed on me. I mean…I wrote for a living, chronicled complex issues, got awards for it, published two books and made a documentary. Writing was my life. It was the only thing I really knew how to do. But I couldn’t keep a simple record of my own thoughts and observations. It was frustrating and embarrassing. I believed…and still do…that it revealed a fundamental flaw in my abilities. I wasn’t really a writer. Sure yeah I could describe what others had done, I could synthesize concepts and I could come up with novel interpolations of historical events…and I could do all these very well. But deep down I was essentially parasitic. I required a host. I couldn’t create without attaching myself to some one or something else…an entity that had more vitality that me.
So although this is sort of a journal, I don’t want to call it that. And it’s really not. It’s not even about me. It’s about my old friend Misha and his disappearance. In that way it continues my parasitism…I’m doing what I know best. To be honest I’m not even sure how long this experiment will last. No doubt my friend will turn up soon…probably fresh off some marital affair…contrite and apologetic, begging his wife to take him back. This “journal” will then end and I’ll go back to my downwardly mobile life with a bit more money in the bank and nothing more.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should probably start from the beginning — or from where my part in this story begins.
It all started five days ago when I got a strange call from Misha’s mom Rita. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in close to twenty years. Hell I hadn’t seen her son Misha in probably a decade. She wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, other than that it was about him and that it was very important and that she needed my help. She sounded distressed, her voice quavered. I agreed that I’d come to their house, which is in Cupertino, the next day.
I took the train down from San Francisco and then a taxi over to their house. I had to go through two security cordons — one leaving the train station and the other as we approached the foothills. They lived on the western edge Cupertino…in the hills, in a house house built into the side of small canyon. It was very private and very nice.
Dima, Misha’s dad, met me at the door after I went through decon and sheaved my feet in plastic baggies. We shook hands and said how great it was to see each other.
“You look good,” he said.
“You too,” I replied.
“How long has it been?”
“Twenty years, at least,” I replied.
He walked me into the living room. It was one of those clean minimalist suburban houses. Open plan...you could see pretty much the entire first floor from any spot inside. The big open kitchen, the living room, the foyer, the little reading nook with the fireplace. It was nice outside, a perfect 80 degrees. But all the windows were sealed shut, as was the big glass wall separating us from the seamless inside/outside patio with views of the canyon, which now, in the summer, was the color of butter cookies.
Rita, the mom, was on the couch in the living room. We made some small talk. They asked about my daughter. I praised their home and asked if they had it built custom. They were clearly proud, telling me that it was constructed with a survival suite — an off-the-grid basement apartment dug into the hill to use in case of heatwaves and power failure. They said it even had a water catchment and filtration system.
“Misha insisted that we build it. This was before the…the catastrophe even happened,” Dima sad.
“Our boy is so brilliant. He was always ahead of the curve,” Rita added.
I nodded, impressed. I assumed this house was Misha’s work. His parents were doctors. Successful, yes. But not successful enough to own a home like this.
Then Dima finally said, “You’re probably wondering why we called you out here?”
“Yes, very.”
And then they explained, interrupting each other and finishing each other’s sentences. Misha had disappeared three weeks earlier. He ate breakfast with his wife and three daughters, kissed them goodbye, left the house to go to work, and was never seen again.
I was surprised. “Disappeared? Was he kidnapped?” Such things do happened these days. More and more actually. Organized crews out of the slums running ransom schemes on people with big sums of money in the bank…people like Misha.
“No, it’s worse,” Dima said.
“Leah would have just paid and that would have been the end of it. Thank God she has the money,” Rita added.
“Worse? He…he passed away?” I asked timidly,
“No, no!” Dima said, throwing up his hands. “He’s alive thank God. Leah talked to him last week. Only briefly. By phone. He—”
“—He told her to forget about him,” Rita said, cutting in. “He told her that he’s starting a new life. He told her not to worry. That he’s fine. That he’s better than he has ever been, and that the house, the money and all that is all hers. He wouldn’t explain anything more, telling Leah she wouldn’t understand.”
“Yeah and then he just hung up,” Dima. “And that’s it.“
“We haven’t been able to reach him ever since,” said Rita.
I looked at the two of them. Dima with his piggish face and body, small button nose. Rita, thin and petite, her head the shape of an almond. I first met them when I was ten, almost forty years ago. They came to America at about the same time as us and lived just a few blocks away, so our families became friends. They were probably in their mid-thirties back then, younger than me. A lot of time had passed and their diminished bodies showed the years…although they tried to hide it. Dima had some kind of hair job done and Rita’s face was all taunt and reflective. The skin on her hands was paper-thin and gray but her lips were puckered and pink like a newborn’s. I had trouble looking straight at her. I always get this feeling when I interact up close with people who’ve had gratuitous work done. It’s the same feeling I have around someone horribly disfigured…like a burn victim or something.
“Do you want a drink?” Dima asked, getting up and heading the direction of the kitchen. “Sorry I should have asked earlier.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you’re having.”
“A beer ok?”
“Yes. That’s perfect.”
As he was in the kitchen, I turned to Rita. “Do you think it’s an affair? Did he run off with someone? ”
Rita shook her head. “Leah, that was her first thought, too. But it doesn’t make any sense, she thinks. He hasn’t touched any of his money. Not the investment funds. Not the regular bank accounts. If he ran away with a woman he’d need to live off something—”
“—The whole thing is a mystery,” Dima said, handing me a beer. “It’s like he just disappeared. Off the map.”
“You can imagine that Leah is devastated. Everything was normal and then just one day,” Rita said, trailing off. “How could he just walk out like that? Not just on his wife but his three daughters. We just don’t understand. Leah doesn’t know what to tell her girls.”
“Have you talked to the police?” I asked.
“The police won’t help. They said there’s no law against a person leaving his family,” Rita said.
“The only issue is child support,” Dima cut in. “But that’s done through the courts and it’s not an issue. He left everything to Leah.”
“What about his friends? You know that Misha and I haven’t been close for a long time. So I wouldn’t really know—”
“No—” Dima said.
“—None of his friends have any idea why he’d leave like that,” Rita cut in.
“So there was no warning? None at all?”
Dima shook his head.
“I see,” I said, nodding.
I actually didn’t see. I was a confused as to why they had called me all the way out here from San Francisco. Were they hoping I might have an insight into his disappearance? Did they think I knew something? Rita was looking down at her hands, fidgeting with her rings. Dima had sat down and was staring out into the distance through the glass wall. The sun had just set behind the ridge out back and the house was lit up in a hazy orange. I wasn’t sure what to say so I sat there, drinking my beer, enjoying the view. Then, finally, Dima got to why they called me out there. Turned out they had a job offer. They wanted me to track Misha down.
The tale of Two Pigeons continues. Read Entry #2: The Offer next. To read all installments of the novel please become a paying subscriber.