All That Follows

Leonard does not hold his smile for long, however. A moment later and he’s panicking again. The half-heard bulletin, with its totemic lock of hair and the always chilling word deadline, snaps him free from his earlier illusions. His all-too-recent and romantic entreaties for Nadia to allow her daughter this one chance to be the little heroine suddenly seem disastrously poor advice, given for the benefit of no one but himself. He has naively hoped that when this is over and everything is told, he will be reported as a genuine comrade by her mother to Lucy, a man who backed her up, not let her down, a man who’s still prepared to throw his pebble at the wall. But the revelation that Nadia served fourteen months and Lucy is a prison kid and he’s a bit — a lot — to blame has darkened everything. He knows he ought to go back into the cafeteria at once and tell the two women he has changed his mind, that caution — he’ll call it circumspection — is always sensible in situations such as this. He ought to do it straightaway, because at this very moment — if he has understood his wife’s intentions clearly — Francine will be charming Nadia, persuading her to go along with what Leonard has proposed, that she keep Lucy’s secret for a while. And Francine will agree with him. She always loves an escapade.

But if there is an escapade, costs and consequences are bound to follow it. Especially for Lucy. She’s piling up problems for herself — and for her mother now. Monday is two days away, and two extra days is a deep hole into which the police might pour a thousand men, as well as dogs, helicopters, news teams, public appeals, not to mention money. One million euros? Two million? He has heard of such cases before and has been shocked by how much such operations cost — and by how unamused and vengeful the police, the public, and the courts can be when it turns out that the missing person wasn’t kidnapped after all but playing games, “playing costly games with people’s lives.”

Leonard steadies himself. He thinks it through again from the bottom up, rehearsing the debates he has already had with himself and with Nadia and Francine for and against Lucy’s “genius.” It’s possible, of course, that the police will merely bof and shrug when they learn the truth, as they are bound to. Lucy ca

Leonard can imagine the headlines already: “Tearful Mother Knew Lucy Was Not Kidnapped” and “Kidnap Mother Charged.” Francine will be implicated too. He has a sudden image of his wife, defiant in the courts. “I accept that you were a minor player in this deception, misled by your husband,” the judge is telling her, “but nevertheless this has been a thoughtless and costly hoax and one for which an exemplary custodial sentence is inevitable.” Now Leonard is almost ru

Leonard uses his own cell phone, standing on the landing of the store. It doesn’t matter if his calls are being bugged or logged. He isn’t hiding anymore. He texts in “National Defense Agency” and co

NOW HE AND FRANCINE WALK arm in arm from the waste ground to the hostage street. There are fewer gawpers at the barrier than on Thursday, fewer know-alls with opinions that they want to share and spread. And there are fewer men in uniform in the approaches to the house. Nobody at all is keeping armed watch behind steel shields in what has been designated an arc of fire. Keep It Tight has been replaced by Keep It Calm. The nation is a little bored with Maxim Lermontov, it would appear. He’s let them down. He hasn’t starved or handcuffed anyone. He hasn’t fired his gun enough. He hasn’t tossed a body out of an upper window, providing drama and pictures for the evening news. He hasn’t tried to master an escape or released a second video detailing future misch-apps. Instead, he and his two accomplices have simply run a tidy house for four days, ordering in food and toiletries like any family. It is even easy to imagine Maxie fascinating those nonvolunteers inside, the hostages for whom he will seem to presume a duty of care, the two sons especially. They will be glued to his great smile, no doubt, his sense of fun, his devastating and unstable charm, his artificial tenderness.

Tonally, today the house is like the sky, grayed out and smudged. The weather is contagious, showering the suburb in gloom. The street seems washed of energy, and muted. The afternoon is deepening as what little light there is sinks behind the rooftops. No bulbs are burning in the hostage house; all lights are doused, nor are there any in the evacuated neighboring and opposite houses. There are no moving window silhouettes or twitching curtains. Behind the barriers the television crews have been downgraded, and the remaining journalists are mostly juniors detailed just to keep an eye on things and then call for more experienced backup should anything kick off. Restricted by the police to one small area, they pass their time sitting under their fishermen’s umbrellas, texting, smoking, drinking coffee from their flasks, watching palm sets. Except for one wall-perched cat, wondering why nobody is passing to stop and rub its back, and pigeons on the roof, the hostage house is not worth looking at. The only sounds are the drones of distant traffic and, occasionally, a dog barking.

Leonard and Francine walk twice across the street, hoping perhaps to catch some sign of life inside the house, but see nothing to detain them any longer.

“It looks more interesting on the television,” Leonard says. He feels he needs to apologize, as if somehow the scene’s lack of energy is his responsibility. “What do you suppose is going on in there?”

“They’re watching television,” Francine says. “That’s how it works. That’s the deal. We watch them, and they watch themselves. It doesn’t happen on the street. It only happens on the screen.” Leonard nods but does not meet her eye. She’s said as much before to him, and meant it as a criticism. She thinks he watches television far too much, that the remote console is well named. He is consoled by it; he is unreachable.