Category — Book Excerpt

After the drinks and the dinner service, after the lights were dimmed and the curtains pulled, Robert extracted the television screen from the armrest of his business-class seat. He was not interested in the movies. He switched the channel to the flight tracker—a cartoonish map of the Gulf of Mexico with a little white plane suspended above, pointed south, creeping toward the tip of Colombia. Every few seconds, the screen refreshed itself, updating Robert on the air speed, altitude, distance traveled, time remaining. The dispassionate data comforted him, reminding him that he was making progress, that he was not lost.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, hoping to join the symphony of snoring bodies in the darkness around him. But he rarely slept in public. On those rare trips when his body did relent, he would often jerk awake wildly disoriented, spilling drinks and alarming neighbors—a side effect of a life spent constantly on guard. And then there were those rarer occasions when a flight attendant would awaken him to stop his shouting—a side effect of something worse.

Robert opened his eyes, sat up, and took a deep breath. He would not sleep tonight. Instead, he’d spend the next seven hours and forty-three minutes watching a little white plane inch its way to Buenos Aires. He didn’t mind; at least it would be a quiet night, bathed in the blue glow of the flight tracker, his guardian compass, his night light.

The light did not bother the woman passed out in the window seat next to him. If only she could have stayed awake a few hours longer. Dina. A cute but unnaturally tan woman in pink sweats. She was a model from Dallas on her way to Argentina for breast implants.

They’re cheaper there, Dina had told him after the drinks were served. And the surgeons are world class.

She’d flirted with him, drunk on pisco sours. He’d told her he was in sales, a safe cover. Up here, in business class, almost everyone was in sales. Up here, he could have been anyone, which was why he lived for these brief moments of recess, acting out the role of someone else high above the earth, moments when he could imagine life as a civilian, unburdened by the nasty ways of the world, drinking pisco sours with Dina from Dallas.

She’d told him he should be a model, another cover he once used. She ran a hand through his dark hair. He ordered more drinks. He said her before breasts looked perfect as is. She gave him her business card and invited him to Dallas to test drive the after.

For effect, Robert had opened his laptop, pretending to read sales reports. Now he saw that, as if to taunt him, even the computer had fallen asleep. He checked to make sure Dina was still out, then poked the laptop awake. He studied up on the agent he was to meet in Buenos Aires, Lynda Madigan. She would be his partner for the duration of the assignment. Robert didn’t want a partner, let alone an agent he didn’t know, but he needed an interpreter, and she spoke fluent Spanish.

He imagined Lynda looking through a similar file, one on him, and he wondered what else Gordon, his boss, might have told her. Though they were all in the business of keeping other people’s secrets, Robert didn’t want to share any of his. But even Gordon didn’t know everything that had happened five years ago. Robert kept those other memories to himself, hoping that he could somehow suffocate them. Instead, he ended up preserving them, perhaps all too well.

Now, as he leaned his head back in his seat, he felt the memories returning. He could see the slowly undulating horizon of ice as he hovered low behind the controls of a helicopter, looking for a Zodiac, a break in the ice, a bright red parka.

As the clouds had descended, so had he, landing on a low, tabular iceberg. He left the engine running and stepped onto the ice. The fog surrounded him, leaving his eyes with little to do but dilate. He started off into the white emptiness, arms out in front, chasing every change in hue, hopeful that he was headed in the right direction, though in reality he was lost in any direction. When the engine noise faded, he called her name, hearing only wind in response.

The ice had begun to shift, growing pliable. He looked down to see the tops of his boots bathed in blue water. The iceberg was descending. He hopped onto a neighboring berg and called her name again, louder. This ice, too, became unsteady, so he hurried to the next iceberg, then the next. The icebergs, once joined together like a completed puzzle, had begun to separate, revealing expanding rivers of indigo, until Robert found himself stranded on a lone sheet of ice, his feet now immersed in the sub-zero water. He could no longer hear the helicopter. He shouted her name, his ankles now underwater, its icy grip working its way up his calves, then his thighs, and he whispered her name, prepared for the end, to be with her again, then his chest, then his arms—

Robert opened his eyes to see Dina leaning over him, her hands gripping his shoulders.

“What?” he asked.

“You were yelling,” she said.

Robert looked at the flight tracker—two hours and thirteen minutes remained until landing, the little white plane hovering over the southern half of Brazil. Dina took her seat again, and Robert reached for a water bottle. He wiped the perspiration from his face. He sat up and noticed the blinking eyes in the darkness around him. He picked up his laptop from the floor and turned to Dina. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Who’s Noa?”

Robert didn’t answer. He had already opened his laptop, pretending to read sales reports.

(From The Tourist Trail, Chapter 2: Robert)

One of the principal characters in The Tourist Trail is a penguin. He goes by the name of Diesel.

Diesel is based on a very real penguin named Turbo.

Turbo is now a celebrity of sorts. He has his own web page — and his own Facebook page. I expect a movie deal is forthcoming.

Why is Turbo so special?

Penguins are largely indifferent to humans, but Turbo is different. He seems to enjoy hanging out with humans. Nobody feeds him, mind you. He’s not in it for the food. And, unlike his brethren, he won’t bite if touched.

I had the pleasure of meeting Turbo several years ago.

Here’s my fictional take on Turbo, aka Diesel:

The first time Angela heard his knock, she’d opened the door, and he’d hobbled over to the bookcase, peering at the Patagonian field guides as if he had a book in mind. His breath was raspy, like a purr, which she had never noticed outdoors on the wind-deafening hills. Angela had stood by the door, holding it open; Emily sat at the desk. They remained motionless as Diesel toured the cramped room, investigating every eye-level oddity—the half-open file cabinet, mud-stained Wellingtons, a pile of knee pads, a fire extinguisher. She imagined him as an explorer among penguins, one given to researching humans. Off alone in the field, sacrificing his childbearing years, all for the greater good of knowledge. What notes would he take? The humans are easily approached, yet spastic in nature and prone to outburts. They seem oddly attracted to Punta Verde. Most visit for a few hours and are gone again. Perhaps the land is of spiritual significance. Tagging them will prove challenging.

Diesel had returned to the bookcase and looked up at Angela. He wasn’t about to leave on his own, and if she could have gone back in time, to that room on that morning, she would have closed the door instead of ushering him back outside.

Robert saw her hundred yards ahead, seated between bushes. Her short, messy red hair matched Doug’s description, and her face was windblown to a nearly matching shade. She was oblivious to Robert, and as he got closer, he saw why—she was coaxing a penguin out of its nest with some sort of hook. Then she gripped its head tightly, as its wings flapped and bit at the air; it looked as if the bird would either fly away or take off her index finger. But the woman did not seem at all bothered by the commotion. With one hand holding the bird, she used the other to scribble notes in a journal.

“Are you Angela?” he asked.

“That’s me,” she said, not bothering to look up. She straddled the bird, silencing its wings, returning a sense of calm to the scene. Yet whatever she was trying to do next, the bandage on her left hand was clearly causing her problems.

“You need help?” Robert asked.

“Ever handle a penguin before?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t need help.”

“I’ve got two good hands, at least.”

She sized him up, and he felt oddly insecure that she paused for so long.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Come over here and position yourself next to me, just like this. Now, I’m going to get up and you’re going to slide over and hold her between your legs just like I’m doing. I’ll keep a hold of her head.”

He did as instructed.

“Now, see how I’m holding her. First put your left hand over my right, just like that.  Now your right. Hold firm but not too tight. Do not let go.”

The bird between his knees was stronger than he expected, and the feathers were not smooth but finely knit, like the exterior of his synthetic jacket. Angela held the caliper to the penguin’s beak and feet, and Robert felt a sudden childlike excitement come over him. The penguin raised its head with an almost human look of indignation, and he couldn’t help but feel sorry for it.

“You can let go now,” Angela said.

Robert released his hands, widened his knees, and the penguin scampered back into its nest. Robert stood, brushed the dirt off his pants, then slowly circled one of the bushes, looking at birds crowded underneath, in distinctly separate cubbyholes, like some thin-walled tenement, so many eyes and beaks following his movements.

“I had no idea there were so many penguins here,” he said.

“There used to be more.”

“Why do they move their heads back and forth like that?” he asked.

“They’re trying to frighten you away.”

“They think I’m a predator?”

“Worse. They think you’re a tourist.”

Robert looked up at Angela, with her backpack on, notepad in one hand, staring at him impatiently. He suddenly remembered why he was there.

“Actually, I’m an FBI agent.”

“Looking for a missing bird?”

“I’m looking for the man involved in the altercation this morning. I believe you know him.”

Angela began scribbling something into her notebook as she spoke. “As you can plainly see, I spend too much time with penguins to notice every tourist who passes through.”

(From The Tourist Trail, Chapter 8: Robert)

In a parallel universe, Ethan told himself, Annie was his girlfriend. She had decided to settle down, had decided that she wanted children after all. A programmer always considered multiple outcomes for every scenario, and Ethan stayed focused on the outcomes that favored his dreams. The challenge was in knowing how to effect this change. Annie’s mind did not work like any algorithm he had known, and every day his mind kept busy trying to debug it.

In the absence of clues, Ethan figured his best strategy for winning her over was plain old proximity. He attended all of her protest events and fundraising drives. He joined activists holding angry signs at busy intersections as drivers honked at them. And he sat next to her the evening that Adam Cosgrove delivered his keynote speech at the Hillcrest Community Center. The room was crowded with people who looked and dressed a lot like Annie and Adam—hemp clothing, long hair, tattoos; Ethan felt like more of an outsider than ever before. Physical proximity alone, he had begun to realize, was only making him feel more distant from her. He needed to go further if he wanted to be a part of her world. His mind whirled as Adam spoke about protests and animal rights, his battles with the law and his time in prison. And when he asked for questions from the audience, Ethan was the first to raise his hand.

“How would one go about building an incendiary device?” Ethan asked. “Like the one you used?”

To answer, Adam demonstrated. He picked up an apple-juice container from the potluck table. You needed only to fill it with fuel, he said, then to shove an old cotton t-shirt into the top and insert a slow-burning fuse. He held up a cellular phone and his iPod. He explained how to set the device off remotely, at a precise time.

Ethan had no idea how soon he would regret asking that question, how soon he would be running the scenario through his head over and over again, as if it were an algorithm he could go back and fix—the if/else equation that worked reliably in computers but always led to surprises in real life.

If Adam had not answered the question. If Adam had not provided such detail. If an unfinished condominium development in La Jolla had not been set on fire later that evening by a similar type of device. If Ethan had not raised his hand, none of these things would have happened—and Adam would not have been arrested by the FBI the following morning. And Annie would not have left Ethan to run to Adam’s defense.

So many ifs, all set in motion by one question. Ethan had always lived in a world of undos, of parallel universes. But he could not undo what he said. He could only watch as Annie slipped out of his universe and into someone else’s.

(From The Tourist Trail, Chapter 14: Ethan)

He explained the name, an alias, and his pursuers—various coast guards, police bureaus, and intelligence agencies.

“I do battle with whaling ships,” he said.

“Like Greenpeace?” Angela asked.

“They fight with words and water guns,” he said. “We fight with the hulls of our ships. We ram them. We mangle their props.”

“You sink them?”

“On occasion.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“No.”

Angela left it at that. She didn’t want to know more, to find out anything worse.

“Are you married?” he asked.

“Do I look like I have time for a marriage? Out here attending to wayward men?”

A sneeze broke the silence that followed.

“What was that?” he asked.

“A penguin.”

“Penguins catch colds?”

“They sneeze to exhale the salt from their beaks.”

“I could probably do the same,” he said, rubbing his nose. “I was married once.”

“You?”

“She was a volunteer. Earnest. A scientist, like you. Told me I was full of shit one day, and I was hooked. We made it official in Ushuaia. Had the ceremony on the ship in middle of the Drake Passage. It’s not easy saying I do with forty-foot waves lapping at your feet. That time of year, the sun never sets, the body never gets tired. There’s a sense of collective euphoria. It’s as if you’ve stepped outside of the world and none of the old rules apply. Eventually, however, you have to head north again…

(From The Tourist Trail, Chapter 5: Angela)