Dolly's first big idea was the hat. She picked teal blue, fuzzy, with flaps that came down over the general's large, dried apricot ears. The ears were unsightly, Dolly thought, and best covered up.
When she saw the general's picture in the Times a few days later, she almost choked on her poached egg: He looked like a baby, a big sick baby with a giant mustache and a double chin. The headline couldn't have been worse: General B.'s Odd Headgear Spurs Cancer Rumors/ Local Unrest Grows.
Dolly bolted to her feet in her dingy kitchen and turned in a frantic circle, spilling tea on her bathrobe. She looked wildly at the general's picture. And then she realized: the ties. They hadn't cut off the ties under the hat as she'd instructed, and a big fuzzy bow under the general's double chin was disastrous. Dolly ran barefoot into her office/bedroom and began plowing through fax pages, trying to unearth the most recent sequence of numbers she was supposed to call to reach Arc, the general's Human Relations Captain. The general moved a lot to avoid assassination, but Arc was meticulous about faxing Dolly their updated contact information. These faxes usually came at around 3 a.m., waking Dolly and sometimes her daughter, Lulu. Dolly never mentioned the disruption; the general and his team were under the impression that she was the top publicist in New York, a woman whose fax machine would be in an office with a panoramic view of New York City, not ten inches away from the foldout sofa where she slept. Dolly could only attribute this misapprehension to some dated article that had drifted their way on Google. Or maybe the general had known four years ago that he would want a publicist eventually, and had saved old newspapers or copies of Vanity Fair or In Style or People, where Dolly had been written about and profiled by her then-nickname: La Doll.
The first call from the general's camp had come just in time; Dolly had hocked her last piece of jewelry. She was copy reading textbooks until 2 a.m., sleeping until five, and then providing polite phone chitchat to aspiring English speakers in Tokyo until it was time to wake Lulu and fix her breakfast. And all of that wasn't nearly enough to keep Lulu at Miss Rutgers' School for Girls. Often Dolly's three allotted hours of sleep were spent in spasms of worry at the thought of the next monstrous tuition bill.
And then Arc had called. The general wanted an exclusive retainer. He wanted rehabilitation, American sympathy, an end to the CIA's assassination attempts. If Gadhafi could do it, why not he? Dolly wondered seriously if overwork and lack of sleep were making her hallucinate, but she named a price. Arc began taking down her banking information. "The general presumed your fee would be higher," he said, and if Dolly had been able to speak at that moment she would have said, That's my weekly retainer, hombre, not my monthly, or Hey, I haven't given you the formula that lets you calculate the actual price, or That's just for the two week trial period when I decide whether I like working with you. But Dolly couldn't speak. She was crying.
When the first installment appeared in her bank account, Dolly's relief was so immense that it almost obliterated the tiny anxious muttering voice inside her: Your client is a genocidal dictator. Dolly had worked with shitheads before, God knew; if she didn't take this job someone else would snap it up; being a publicist is about not judging your clients -- these excuses were lined up in formation, ready for deployment should that small dissident voice pluck up its courage to speak with any volume. But lately, Dolly couldn't even hear it.
Now, as she scuttled over her frayed Persian rug looking for the general's most recent numbers, the phone rang. It was 6 a.m. Dolly lunged, praying Lulu's sleep hadn't been disturbed.
"Hello?" But she knew who it was.
"We are not happy," said Arc.
"Me either," Dolly said. "You didn't cut off the--"
"The General is not happy."
"Arc, listen to me. You need to cut off the--"
"The general is not happy, Miss Peale."
"Listen to me, Arc."
"He is not happy."
"That's because -- Look, take a scissors--"
"He is not happy, Miss Peale."
Dolly went quiet. There were times, listening to Arc's silken monotone, when she'd been sure she heard a curl of irony around the words he'd been ordered to say, like he was speaking to her in code. Now there was a long, long pause. Dolly spoke very softly. "Arc, take a scissors and cut the ties off the hat. There shouldn't be a goddamned bow under the general's chin."
"He will no longer wear this hat."
"He has to wear the hat."
"He will not wear it. He refuses."
"Cut off the ties, Arc."
"Rumors have reached us, Miss Peale."
Her stomach lurched. "Rumors?"
"That you are not 'on top' as you once were. And now the hat is unsuccessful."
Dolly felt the negative forces pulling in around her. Standing there with the traffic of Eighth Avenue grinding past beneath her window, fingering her frizzy hair that she'd stopped coloring and allowed to grow in long and gray, she felt a kick of some deep urgency.
"I have enemies, Arc," she said. "Just like the general."
He was silent.
"If you listen to my enemies, I can't do my job. Now take out that nice silver pen I can see in your pocket every time you get your picture in the paper and write this down: "Cut the strings off the hat. Lose the bow. Push the hat farther back on the general's head so some of his hair fluffs out in front. Do that, Arc, and let's see what happens."
Lulu had come into the room and was rubbing her eyes in her pink pajamas. Dolly looked at her watch, saw that her daughter had lost a half-hour of sleep and experienced an inner collapse at the thought of Lulu feeling tired at school. She rushed over and put her arms around her daughter's shoulders. Lulu received this embrace with the regal bearing that was her trademark.
Dolly had forgotten Arc, but now he spoke from the phone at her neck: "I will do it, Miss Peale."
It was several weeks before the general's picture appeared again. Now the hat was pushed back and the ties were gone. The headline read, "Extent of B's War Crimes May be Exaggerated, New Evidence Shows."
It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?
La Doll met with ruin on New Year's Eve three years ago, at a wildly anticipated party that was projected, by the pundits she'd considered worth inviting, to rival Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. The Party, it was called, or the List. As in: Is she on the list? There were nominal hosts, all famous, but the real host, as everyone knew, was La Doll, who had more connections and access and juju than all of these people combined. And La Doll had made a very human mistake -- or so she tried to soothe herself at night when memories of her demise ploughed through her like a hot poker, skewering her in her sofa bed so she writhed in agony and drank brandy from the bottle -- she'd thought that because she could do something very, very well (namely, get the best people in the world into one room at one time), she could do other things well, too. Like design. And La Doll had had a vision: broad, translucent trays of oil and water suspended beneath small brightly colored spotlights whose heat would make the opposing liquids twist and bubble and swirl. She'd imagined people craning their necks to look up, spellbound by the shifting liquid shapes. And they did look up. They marveled at the lighted trays; La Doll saw them do it from a small booth she'd had built high up and to one side so she could view the panorama of her achievement. From there, she was the first to notice, as midnight approached, that something was going wrong with the translucent trays that held the water and oil: They were sagging a little -- were they? They were, slumping like sacks from their chains and melting, in other words. And then they began to collapse, flop and drape and fall away, sending hot oil onto the heads of every glamorous person in the country and some other countries, too. They were burned, scarred, maimed in the sense that tear-shaped droplets of scar tissue on the forehead of a movie star or small bald patches on the head of an art dealer or model or generally fabulous person constitutes maiming. But something shut down in La Doll's brain as she stood there, at a safe distance from the burning oil: She didn't call 911. She just watched in frozen disbelief as her guests shrieked and staggered and covered their heads, tore hot, soaked garments from their flesh and crawled over the floor like people in medieval altar paintings whose earthly luxuries have consigned them to hell.
The accusations later: That she'd done it on purpose, that she was a sadist who stood there delighting as people suffered -- were actually more terrible, for La Doll, than watching the oil pour mercilessly onto the heads of her 500 guests. Then, she'd been protected by a cocoon of shock. But what followed she had to watch in a lucid state: They hated her. They were dying to get rid of her. It was as if she weren't human, but a rat or a bug. And they succeeded. Even before she'd served her six months for criminal negligence, before the class action suit that resulted in her entire net worth (never as large as it had seemed) being distributed in small parcels to her victims, La Doll was gone. Wiped out. She emerged from jail thirty pounds heavier and fifty years older, with wild gray hair. No one recognized her, and after a few gleeful headlines and photos of her new, ruined state, they forgot about her.
When the headlines relating to General B had definitively softened, when several witnesses against him were shown to have received money from the opposition, Arc called again. "The general pays you each month a sum," he said. "That is not for one idea only."
"It was a good idea, Arc. You have to admit."
"The general is impatient, Miss Peale," he said, and Dolly imagined him smiling. "The hat is no longer new."
That night, the general came to Dolly in a dream. The hat was gone, and he was meeting a pretty blonde outside a revolving door. The blonde took his arm and they walked inside. Then Dolly was aware of herself in the dream, sitting in a chair watching the general and his lover, thinking what a good job they were doing playing their roles. She jerked awake as if someone had shaken her. The dream nearly escaped, but Dolly caught it, pressed it to her chest. She understood: The general should be linked to a movie star.
Dolly scrambled off the sofabed, waxy legs flashing in the streetlight that leaked in through a broken blind. A movie star. Someone recognizable, appealing -- what better way to humanize a man who seemed inhuman? If he's good enough for Her...that was one line of thinking. And also: The general and I have similar tastes: Her. Or else: She must find that triangular head of his sexy. And even: I wonder how the general dances? And if Dolly could get people to ask that question, the general's image problems would be solved. Gone. It didn't matter how many thousands he'd slaughtered -- if the collective vision of him could include a dance floor, all that would be behind him.
There were scores of washed up female stars who might work, but Dolly had a particular one in mind: Pia Arten, who seven years ago had debuted as the nervy, stoic girlfriend of a football player stricken with leukemia, and stolen the movie out from under the famous male lead. She'd been nominated for best supporting actress, and standing on the red carpet in a gold crushed velvet dress, she'd been impossible to look away from. But Pia had turned out to be one of those unfortunate people who couldn't take the bullshit, a handicap that had resulted in perfectionism, bad behavior and (it was rumored) spectacular acts of self destruction: sending a bag of horseshit to an iconic male actor, yanking off a balding director's baseball cap and tossing it into an airplane propeller. No one would hire Pia anymore, but the public would remember her. That was what mattered to Dolly.
Pia wasn't hard to find; no one was putting much energy into protecting her. By noon, Dolly had reached her: weary sounding, smoking audibly. Pia heard Dolly out, asked her to repeat the generous fee she'd quoted, then paused. In that pause, Dolly detected a familiar mix of desperation and squeamishness. She felt a queasy jab of pity for the actress, whose choices had boiled down to this one. Then the pause ended with Pia saying yes. Singing to herself, wired on cappuccino made on her old Krups machine, Dolly called Arc and laid out her plan.
"The general does not enjoy American movies," came Arc's response.
"Who cares? Americans know who she is."
"The general has very particular tastes," Arc said. "He is not flexible."
"He doesn't have to touch her, Arc. He doesn't have to speak to her. All he has to do is stand near her and get his picture taken. And he has to smile."
"Smile?"
"He has to look happy."
"The general rarely smiles, Miss Peale."
"He wore the hat, didn't he?"
There was a long pause. Finally Arc said, "You must accompany this actress. Then we will see."
"Accompany her where?"
"Here. To us."
"Oh, Arc."
"You must."
Entering Lulu's bedroom, Dolly felt like Dorothy waking up in Oz: everything was in color. A pink shade encircled the overhead lamp. Pink gauzy fabric hung from the ceiling. Pink winged princesses were stenciled onto the walls: Dolly had learned how to make the stencils at a jailhouse art class, and had spent days decorating the room while Lulu was at school. Long strings of pink beads hung from the ceiling. When she was home, Lulu emerged from her room only to eat.
She was part of an intricate weave of girls at Miss Rutgers's School, a mesh so fine and scarily intimate that even her mother's flameout and jail sentence (during which Lulu's grandmother had come from Minnesota to live with her) couldn't dissolve it. It wasn't thread holding these girls together, it was wire. And Lulu was the steel rod around which the wires were wrapped. Overhearing her daughter on the phone with her friends, Dolly was awed by her authority: She was stern when she needed to be, but also gentle. Sweet. Lulu was nine.
She sat in a pink beanbag chair, doing homework on her laptop and IMing her friends (since the general, Dolly had been paying for wireless). "Hi Dolly," she said, having stopped calling Dolly Mom when she got out of jail nine months ago. Lulu narrowed her eyes at her mother like it was hard to see her. And Dolly did feel like a black-and-white intrusion into this bower of color, a refugee from the dinginess surrounding it.
"I have to take a business trip," Dolly said. "To visit a client. I thought you might want to stay with one of your friends so you won't miss school."
School was where Lulu's life took place. She'd been adamant about not allowing her mother, who once had been a fixture at Miss Rutgers's, to jeopardize Lulu's status with her new disgrace. Nowadays, Dolly dropped Lulu off around the corner, peering around dank Upper East Side stone to make sure she got safely in the door. At pickup time, Dolly waited in the same spot while Lulu dawdled with her friends outside school, toeing the perfectly manicured bushes and (in spring) flowerbeds, completing whatever transactions were required to affirm and sustain her power. When Lulu had a play date, Dolly came no further than the lobby to retrieve her. Lulu would emerge from an elevator flushed, smelling of perfume or freshly baked brownies, take her mother's hand and walk with her past the doorman into the night. Not in apology -- Lulu had nothing to apologize for -- but in sympathy that things had to be so hard for both of them.
Lulu cocked her head, curious. "A business trip. That's good, right?"
"It is good, absolutely," Dolly said a little nervously. Lulu knew nothing of the general.
"How long will you be gone?"
"A few days. Four, maybe."
There was a long pause. Finally Lulu said, "Can I come?"
"With me?" Dolly was startled. "Can you -- but you'd have to miss school."
Another pause. Lulu was performing some mental calculation that might have involved measuring the peer impact of missing school versus being a guest in someone's home, or the question of whether you could manage an extended stay at someone's home without that someone's parents speaking with your mother. Dolly couldn't tell. Maybe Lulu didn't know herself.
"Where?" Lulu asked.
Dolly was flustered; she'd never been much good at saying no to Lulu. But the thought of her daughter and the general in one location made her throat clamp. "I -- I can't tell you that."
Lulu didn't protest. "But Dolly?"
"Yes, darling?"
"Can your hair be blond again?"
They waited for Pia Arten in a lounge by a private runway at Kennedy Airport. When the actress finally arrived, dirty haired, reeking of smoke, dressed in jeans and a faded yellow sweatshirt, Dolly was assailed with regrets -- she should have met with Pia first! The girl looked too far-gone, too spent; people might not even recognize her! While Lulu used the bathroom, Dolly hastily laid things out for the actress: no mention of the general's name in front of Lulu; look as glamorous as possible (Dolly glanced at Pia's small, beaten suitcase); cozy up to the general with some serious PDA while Dolly took pictures with a hidden camera. She had a real camera, too, but that was just a prop.
They boarded the general's plane at dusk. After takeoff, Pia ordered a double martini from the general's airline hostess, sucked it down, reclined her seat to a horizontal position, pulled a sleep mask over her eyes (the only thing on her that looked new) and commenced to snore. Lulu leaned over her, studying the actress's worn, delicate face. "Is she sick?"
"No," Dolly sighed. "Maybe. I don't know."
"I think she needs a vacation," Lulu said.
Twenty checkpoints presaged their arrival at the general's compound. At each, two soldiers with submachine guns peered suspiciously into the black Mercedes with Dolly and Lulu and Pia in the backseat. Four times, they were forced outside into the scouring sunshine and patted down at gunpoint. Each time, Dolly cringed on Lulu's behalf, searching her daughter's studied calm for signs of trauma. In the car Lulu sat perfectly straight, pink Kate Spade bookbag nestled in her lap. She met the eyes of the machine gun holders with the same even look she must have used to stare down the many girls who had tried in vain, over the years, to unseat her.
High white walls enclosed the road. They were lined with hundreds of plump shiny black birds whose long purple beaks curved like scythes. Dolly had never seen birds like these. They looked like birds who would screech, but each time a car window slid down to accommodate another squinting gunslinger, Dolly was surprised by the total silence.
Eventually a section of wall swung open, and the car veered off the road and pulled to a stop in front of a massive compound: lush green gardens, a sparkle of water, a white house whose end was nowhere in sight. The birds squatted along its roof, looking down.
Their driver opened the car doors, and Dolly and Lulu and Pia stepped out into the sun. Dolly felt it on her newly exposed neck, a discount version of her trademark blond chin-length cut. The heat forced Pia out of her sweatshirt, which mercifully revealed a clean white T-shirt underneath. Dolly noticed marks on Pia's bare arms: small pink scars. "Pia, are those..." she faltered. "On your arms, are they...?"
"Burns," Pia said. And she gave Dolly a look that made her stomach twist until she remembered very dimly, like something that had happened in a fog or when she was a child, someone asking her -- begging her -- to put Pia on the list, and telling them no. No way, it was out of the question -- Pia's stock was too low.
"I did it myself," Pia said.
Dolly stared at her, uncomprehending. This made Pia grin, and for a second she looked mischievous, young. "Lots of people have, Dolly. You didn't know?"
Dolly wondered if this might be a joke. She didn't want to fall for it in front of Lulu.
"You can't find a person who wasn't at that party. And they've got proof. We've all got proof -- who's gonna say we're lying?"
"I know who was there," Dolly said. "I've still got the list in my head."
"You?" Pia said, smiling at Dolly. "Who are you?"
Dolly was quiet. She felt Lulu's gray eyes on her.
Pia did something unexpected then. She reached through the sunlight and took Dolly's hand. Her grip was warm and firm, like a man's. Dolly was startled to feel a prickling in her eyes.
"It's bigger than all of us," Pia said softly. "That's the horror of it."
A trim, compact man in a beautifully cut suit emerged from the compound to greet them: Arc. The sight of him eased the tension that had been building in Dolly.
"Miss Peale. We meet at last," he said with a smile. "And Miss Arten--" he turned to Pia, who looked even scruffier beside the meticulous Arc-- "it is a great honor as well as a pleasure." He kissed Pia's hand with a slightly teasing look, Dolly thought. "I have seen your movies," Arc said. "The general and I watched them together."
Dolly steeled herself for what Pia might say, but her answer came in a sweet voice like a child's, except for the slight curve of flirtation. "Oh, I'm sure you've seen better movies," she said.
"The general was impressed."
"Well, I'm honored. I'm honored that the general found them worth watching."
Dolly glanced at the actress, expecting mockery, but it wasn't there. Pia looked humble, absolutely sincere.
"Alas, I have unfortunate news," Arc said. "The general has had to make a sudden trip." They stared at him. "It is very regrettable," he went on. "The general sends his sincere apologies."
"But we...can we go to where he is?" Dolly asked.
"Perhaps," Arc said. "You will not mind some additional travels?"
"Well," Dolly said, glancing at Lulu. "It depends how--"
"Absolutely not," Pia interrupted. "We'll go wherever the general wants us to go. We'll do what it takes. Right, kiddo?"
Lulu was slow to connect the diminutive kiddo to herself. It was the first time Pia had spoken to her directly. Lulu glanced at the actress, then she smiled. "Right," she said.
They would leave for a new location the next morning. Arc offered to drive them into the city that evening, but Pia wasn't interested. "Forgive my lack of curiosity," she said as they settled into their two-bedroom suite, which opened onto a private swimming pool. "But I'd rather enjoy these digs. They used to put me up in places like this." She gave a bitter laugh.
"Just don't overdo it," Dolly said, as Pia headed for the wet bar.
Pia turned. "Hey. How was I out there, Mamacita? Any complaints so far?"
"You were excellent," Dolly said, then added softly, so Lulu wouldn't hear, "Just don't forget who we're dealing with."
"I want to forget," Pia said, pouring herself a large drink. "I'm trying to forget. Aren't you?" She raised her glass to Dolly and took a sip.
So Dolly and Lulu rode alone with Arc in his charcoal gray Jaguar, a driver peeling downhill along tiny streets, sending pedestrians lunging against walls and darting into doorways to avoid being crushed. The city shimmered below: millions of white slanted buildings steeping in a smoky haze. Soon they were surrounded by it. The city's chief source of color seemed to be the laundry flapping on every balcony.
The driver pulled over beside an outdoor market: heaps of sweating fruit and fragrant nuts and fake leather purses. Dolly eyed the produce critically as she and Lulu followed Arc among the stalls. The oranges and bananas were the largest she'd seen, but the meat looked dangerous. Dolly could see from the careful nonchalance of venders and customers alike that they knew who Arc was.
"Is there anything you would like to buy?" Arc asked Lulu.
"Yes, please," Lulu said, "one of those." It was a starfruit; Dolly had seen them at Dean and DeLuca a few times. Here they lay in obscene heaps, studded with flies. Arc took one, nodding curtly at the vendor, an older man with a knobby chest and a kind, worried face. The man smiled, nodding eagerly at Dolly and Lulu, and Dolly was taken aback to see that he looked afraid. As if she could hurt him. As if she would ever do such a thing.
Lulu took dusty, unwashed fruit, wiped it carefully on her sweater and sank her teeth into its bright green rind. Juice sprayed her collar. She laughed and wiped her mouth on her hand. "Mom, you have to try this," she said, and Dolly took a bite of crunchy orange fruit that was some combination of melon, apple and plum. She and Lulu shared the starfruit, licking their fingers under Arc's watchful eyes. Dolly felt oddly buoyant. Then she realized why: Mom. It was the first time Lulu had used the word in nearly a year.
Arc led the way inside a crowded teashop. A group of men hastened away from a corner table to give them a place to sit, and a forced approximation of the shop's former bustle resumed. A waiter poured sweet mint tea into their cups with a shaking hand. Dolly tried to give him a reassuring look, but his eyes fled hers.
"Do you do this often?" she asked Arc. "Walk around the city?"
"The general makes a habit of moving among the people," Arc said. "He wants them to feel his humanity, to witness it. Of course, he must do this very carefully."
"Because of his enemies."
Arc nodded. "The general unfortunately has many enemies. Today, for example, there were threats to his home, and it was necessary to relocate. He does this often, as you know."
Dolly nodded. Threats to his home?
Arc smiled. "His enemies believe he is there, but he is far away."
Dolly glanced at Lulu. The starfruit had left a shiny ring around her mouth. "But...we're there," she said.
"Yes," Arc said. "Only us."
Dolly lay awake most of that night, listening to coos and rustles and squawks which sounded like assassins prowling the grounds in search of the general and his cohort: herself, in other words. She had become the helpmate and fellow target of General B, a source of fear to those he ruled.
How had it come to this? As usual, Dolly found herself revisiting the moment when the plastic trays first buckled and the life she had relished for so many years poured away. But tonight, unlike countless other nights when Dolly tipped down that memory chute, Lulu lay across from her in the king sized bed, asleep in a frilly pink nightie, her doe's knees tucked under her. Dolly felt the warmth of her daughter's body, this child of her middle age, of an accidental pregnancy resulting from a fling with a movie star client. Lulu believed her father was dead; Dolly had shown her pictures of an old boyfriend.
She slid across the bed and kissed the side of Lulu's face. t had made no sense at all to have a child -- Dolly was pro choice, riveted to her career. Her decision had been clear, yet she'd hesitated to make the appointment -- hesitated through morning sickness, mood swings, exhaustion. Hesitated until she knew, with a shock of relief and terrified joy, that it was too late.
Lulu stirred and Dolly moved closer, enclosing her daughter in her arms. In contrast to when she was awake, Lulu relaxed into her mother's touch. Dolly felt a swell of irrational gratitude toward the general for providing this one bed -- it was such a rare luxury to hold her daughter, to feel the faint tap of her heartbeat.
"You know I'll always protect you," Dolly whispered into Lulu's fragile ear. "Nothing bad will ever happen to us."
Lulu slept on.
The next day they piled into two black armored cars that resembled jeeps only heavier. Arc and some soldiers went in the first car, Dolly and Lulu and Pia in the second. Sitting in the backseat, Dolly thought she could feel the weight of the car shoving them into the earth. She was exhausted, full of dread.
Pia had undergone a staggering transformation since the day before: She'd washed her hair, put on full makeup and slipped into a gold crushed-velvet dress that Dolly instantly recognized as the one she'd worn to the Academy Awards years ago, after her first movie. The gold fabric brought out flecks of gold in Pia's eyes. The effect was beyond anything Dolly could have hoped for. She found Pia oddly painful to look at.
They breezed through the checkpoints and soon were on the open road, circling the pale city from above. Dolly noticed venders by the road. Often they were children, who held up handfuls of fruit or cardboard signs to the jeeps as they approached. When the vehicles flew past, the children fell back against the embankment, perhaps from the speed. Dolly let out an involuntary cry the first time she saw this and leaned forward, wanting to say something to the driver. But what exactly? She hesitated, then sat back and tried not to look at the windows. Lulu watched the children, her math book open in her lap.
It was a relief when they left the city behind and began driving through empty land that looked like dessert, antelopes and cows nibbling the stingy plant life. Without asking permission, Pia began to smoke, exhaling through a thin slit of open window. "So, kiddo," she said, turning to Lulu. "What big plans are you hatching?"
"You mean...for my life?" Lulu asked.
"Absolutely."
"I don't know," Lulu said, thoughtful. "I'm only nine."
"Well, that's sensible."
"Lulu is very sensible," Dolly said.
"But what do you imagine for yourself, that's what I'm asking," Pia said. She was restless, fidgeting her dry, manicured fingers as if she wanted another cigarette but was making herself wait. "Or do kids not do that anymore."
Lulu, in her wisdom, seemed to divine that what Pia really wanted was to talk. "What did you imagine," she asked, "when you were nine."
Pia considered this, then laughed. "I wanted to become a movie star."
"And then you did."
Pia lit a fresh cigarette. "I did," she said, closing her eyes as she exhaled. "I did."
Lulu turned to her gravely. "Was it not as fun as you thought?"
Pia opened her eyes. "The acting?" she said. "God, I could do it every minute, every second. But I hated the people."
"How come?"
"They were phony. They lied constantly. And when you got through all the phoniness and the lying, it turned out they were mean."
Lulu nodded as if this were something she knew all about. "Did you try lying too?"
Pia laughed. "I did, actually. I tried it a lot. But whenever I managed to pull it off, I had this urge to put a gun in my mouth. That's what's called a no win situation, kiddo."
"I don't want to be an actress," Lulu said. "I don't like having to say the same thing again and again."
Pia glanced at Dolly. "Where did you get this kid?"
They drove and drove. Lulu did math. Then social studies. She wrote an essay on owls. After what felt like hundreds of miles of dessert, punctuated by bathroom stops at outposts patrolled by soldiers, they tilted up into the hills. The foliage grew dense, filtering out the sunlight.
Without warning, the cars swung off the road and stopped. Dozens of solders in camouflage seemed to materialize from the trees. Dolly and Lulu and Pia stepped out of the car into a jungle crazed with birdcalls.
Arc came over. "The general is waiting," he said. "He is eager to greet you."
Everyone moved as a group through the jungle. The earth under their feet was soft and red. Monkeys scuttled in the trees. Eventually they reached a set of crude concrete steps built into the side of a hill. More soldiers appeared, and there was a creak and grind of boots on concrete as all of them climbed. Dolly kept her hands on Lulu's shoulders. She heard Pia humming behind her: not a tune, just the same two notes repeated.
The hidden camera was ready in Dolly's purse. As they climbed the steps, she took out the activator and held it in her palm.
At the top of the stairs the jungle had been cleared away to accommodate a slab of concrete that might have been a landing pad. Sunlight poured down through the humid jungle air, making wisps of steam at their feet. The general stood in the middle of the concrete, flanked by soldiers. He looked short, but that was always true of famous people. He wasn't wearing the blue hat, or any hat, and his hair was thick and unruly around his grim triangular face. He wore his usual military regalia, but something about it all seemed slightly askew, or in need of cleaning. The general looked tired -- there were pouches under his eyes. He looked grumpy. He looked like someone had just yanked him out of bed and said, "They're here," and he'd had to remind himself of who the hell they were talking about.
There was a strange, short pause when no one seemed to know what to do.
Then Pia reached the top of the stairs. Dolly heard the humming behind her, but she didn't turn to look; instead, she watched the general recognize Pia, watched the power of that recognition move across his face in a look of appetite and uncertainty. Pia came toward him slowly -- poured toward him, really, that was how smoothly she moved in her gold dress, like the jerking awkwardness of walking was something she'd never experienced. She poured toward the general and took his hand as if to shake it, smiling, circling him a little, seeming embarrassed to the point of laughter, like they knew each other too well to shake hands. Dolly was so taken by the strangeness of it all that at first she didn't think to shoot; she missed the handshake completely. It was only when Pia pressed her narrow gold body to the general's uniformed chest and closed her eyes for a moment that Dolly came to -- click -- and the general seemed disconcerted, unsure what to do, patting Pia's back out of politeness -- click -- at which point Pia took both his hands (heavy and warped, the hands of a bigger man) into her own slender hands and leaned back, smiling into his face -- click -- laughing a little, shyly, her head back like it was all so silly, so self conscious-making for them both. And then the general smiled. It happened without warning: His lips pulled away to reveal two rows of small yellow teeth -- click -- that made him appear vulnerable, eager to please. Click, click, click -- Dolly was shooting as fast as she could without moving her hand, because that smile was it, the thing no one had seen, the hidden human side of the general that would stun the world.
All this happened in the span of a minute. Not a word had been spoken. Pia and the general stood hand in hand, both a little flushed, and it was all Dolly could do not to scream, because they were done! She had what she needed and they were done, without a word having been spoken. She felt a mix of awe and love for Pia, this miracle, this genius who had not merely posed with the general, but tamed him. That was how it felt to Dolly now -- like there was a one-way door between the general's world and Pia's, and the actress had eased him across it without his even noticing. He couldn't go back! And Dolly had made this happen -- for once in her life, she had done a helpful thing. And Lulu had seen it.
Pia's face still held the winsome smile she'd been wearing for the general. Dolly watched her scan the crowd, taking in the dozens of soldiers with their automatic weapons, Arc and Lulu and Dolly with her ecstatic shining face, her brimming eyes. And Pia must have known then that she'd pulled it off, engineered her own salvation, clawed her way back from oblivion and cleared the way to resume the work she loved more than anything. All with a little help from the dictator to her left.
"So," Pia said, "is this where you bury the bodies?"
The general glanced at her, not understanding. Arc stepped quickly forward, as did Dolly. Lulu came too.
"Do you bury them here, in pits," Pia asked the general in the most friendly, conversational voice, "or do you burn them first?"
"Miss Arten," Arc said, with a tense, meaningful look. "The general cannot understand you."
The general wasn't smiling anymore. He was not a man who could tolerate not knowing what was going on. He'd let go of Pia's hand and was speaking sternly to Arc.
Lulu was yanking Dolly's hand. "Mom," she hissed, "make her stop!"
Her daughter's voice jerked Dolly out of a momentary paralysis. "Knock it off, Pia," she said.
"Do you eat them?" Pia asked the general, "or do you leave them out so the vultures can do it?"
"Shut up, Pia," Dolly said, more loudly. "Stop playing games."
The general spoke harshly to Arc, who turned to Dolly. Arc's forehead was visibly moist. "The general is becoming angry, Miss Peale," he said, and there was the code; Dolly read it clearly. She went to Pia and took hold of her bare arm. She leaned close to her face.
"If you keep this up," Dolly said softly, "we will die." But one glance into Pia's pained, broken eyes told her it was hopeless. Pia couldn't stop.
"Oops!" Pia said loudly, in mock surprise. "Was I not supposed to bring up the genocide?"
Here was a word the general knew. He flung himself away from Pia as if she were on fire, commanding his solders in a strangled voice. They shoved Dolly away, knocking her to the ground. When she looked back at Pia, the soldiers had contracted around her, and the actress was hidden in their midst.
Lulu was shouting, trying to drag Dolly onto her feet. "Mommy, do something, do something! Make it stop!"
"Arc," Dolly called, but Arc was lost to her now. He'd taken his place beside the general, who was screaming with rage. The soldiers were carrying Pia; Dolly had an impression of kicking from within their midst. She could still hear Pia's voice:
"Do you drink their blood, or just use it to mop up your floors?"
"Do you wear their teeth on a string?"
There was the sound of a blow, then a cry. Dolly jumped to her feet. But Pia went on, unbowed. "I hope they haunt you," she bellowed hoarsely. "I hope they visit you in your sleep."
And then she was gone; the soldiers carried her through the door of a structure hidden in the trees beside the landing pad. The general and Arc followed them in. The jungle was eerily silent: just parrot calls, and Lulu's sobs.
It was because of Arc that Dolly and Lulu got out. While the general raged, Arc whispered orders to two soldiers, and when the general was out of sight they hustled Dolly and Lulu down the hill through the jungle and back to the cars. The drivers were waiting, smoking cigarettes. During the ride Lulu lay with her head in Dolly's lap, sobbing as they sped back through the jungle and then the desert. Dolly rubbed her daughter's soft hair, wondering in a numb, helpless way if they were being taken to prison. But eventually, as the sun leaked toward the horizon, they found themselves at the airport. The general's plane was waiting. By then, Lulu had sat up and moved away from Dolly across the seat.
Lulu slept hard during the flight, clutching her Kate Spade bag. But Dolly didn't sleep. She stared straight ahead at Pia's empty seat.
In the dark of early morning, they took a taxi from Kennedy to Hell's Kitchen. Neither of them spoke. Dolly was amazed to find their building intact, the apartment still at the top of the stairs, the keys in her pocket. It hardly seemed possible.
Lulu went straight to her room and shut the door. Dolly sat in her office, addled from lack of sleep, and tried to organize her thoughts. Should she start with the embassy? Congress? How long would it take to get someone on the phone who could actually help her? And what would she say?
Lulu emerged from her room in her school uniform, hair brushed. Dolly hadn't even noticed it was light. Lulu looked askance at her mother, still in yesterday's clothes, and said, "It's time to go."
"You're going to school?"
"Of course I'm going to school. What else would I do?"
They took the subway. The silence between them had become inviolable; Dolly feared it would never end. Watching Lulu's wan, pinched face, she felt a cold wave of conviction: If Pia died, Lulu would be lost to her.
At their corner, Lulu turned without saying goodbye.
Shopkeepers were lifting their metal gates on Lexington Avenue. Dolly bought a cup of coffee and drank it on the corner. She wanted to be near Lulu. She decided to wait on that corner until her daughter's school day had ended: five-and-a-half more hours. Meanwhile, she would make calls on her cell phone. But Dolly was distracted by thoughts of Pia in the gold dress, oil burns winking on her arms, then her own insane pride, thinking she'd made the world a better place. The memory made Dolly almost sick.
The phone was idle in her hand. These were not the sorts of calls she knew how to make.
When the gate behind her shuddered up, Dolly saw that it was a two-hour photo shop. The hidden camera with its roll of film were still in her purse. It was something to do; she opened the door and went in.
She was still standing outside the shop an hour later when the guy came out with her pictures. By then she'd made a few calls about Pia, but no one seemed to take her seriously. Who could blame them? Dolly thought.
"These, uh...did you use Photoshop or -- or what?" the guy asked. "They look, like, totally real."
"They are real," she said. "I took them myself."
The guy laughed. "Come on," he said, and Dolly felt a shudder deep in her brain.
What else would I do?
She rushed back home and called her old contacts at the Enquirer and the Star, a few of whom were still there. Let the news trickle up. This had worked for Dolly before.
Soon a messenger arrived at her apartment to pick up the prints. Within a couple of hours, images of the General B. nuzzling Pia Arten were being posted and traded on the web. By nightfall, reporters from the major papers around the world had started calling. They called the general, too, whose Human Relations Captain emphatically denied the rumors.
That night, while Lulu did homework in her room, Dolly ate cold sesame noodles and set out to reach Arc. It took fourteen tries.
"We can no longer speak, Miss Peale," he said.
"Arc."
"We cannot speak. The general is angry."
"Listen to me."
"The general is angry, Miss Peale.
"Is she alive, Arc? That's all that matters."
"She is alive."
"Thank God." Tears filled Dolly's eyes. "Is she -- are they -- treating her okay?"
"She is unharmed, Miss Peale." Arc said. "We will not speak again." They were silent, listening to the hum of the overseas connection. "It is a pity," Arc said, and hung up.
But Dolly and Arc did speak again. Months later -- a year, almost -- when the general visited Washington and then came to New York to speak at the UN about transitioning to democracy. Dolly and Lulu had left the city by then, but one evening they drove into Manhattan to meet Arc at a restaurant. He wore a black suit and a wine-colored tie. He seemed to savor retelling the story, as if he'd memorized its details especially for Dolly: how three or four days after she and Lulu had left the general's redoubt, the photographers began showing up. First one or two whom the soldiers ferreted out of the jungle and imprisoned, then more, too many to capture or even count -- they were superb hiders, crouching like monkeys in the trees, burying themselves in shallow pits, camouflaging themselves in leaves. Assassins had never managed to locate the general with any precision, but the photographers did: scores of them surging across the borders without visas, curled in baskets and wine casks, rolled up in rugs, juddering over unpaved roads in the backs of trucks and eventually surrounding the general's enclave, which he didn't dare leave.
It took ten days to persuade the general he had no choice but to face his inquisitors. He donned his military coat with the medals and epaulettes, pulled the blue hat over his head, took Pia's arm and walked with her into the phalanx of cameras awaiting him. Dolly remembered how startled the general had looked in those pictures, newly born in his soft blue hat, unsure how to proceed. Beside him Pia was smiling, wearing a dress Dolly hadn't seen before, black and close fitting. Her eyes were hard to read, but each time Dolly looked at them, rubbing her gaze obsessively over the newsprint, she'd heard Pia's sardonic laugh in her ears.
"Have you see Miss Arten's new movie?" Arc asked. "I thought it was her finest yet."
Dolly had seen it: a romantic comedy that showed Pia in a footloose mode Dolly hadn't seen before. She'd gone with Lulu at the local theater in the small upstate town where they'd moved shortly after the other generals began to call: first G, then A, then L and P and Y. Word had gotten out, and Dolly was deluged with offers of work from mass murderers eager for a fresh start. "I'm out of the game," she'd told them all, and directed them to her competitors.
Lulu had opposed the move at first, but Dolly was firm. And Lulu had settled in quickly at the local public school, where she took up soccer and found a new coterie of girls who seemed to follow her everywhere. No one in town had ever heard of La Doll, so Lulu had nothing to hide.
Dolly had received a generous lump sum from the general shortly after his rendezvous with the photographers. "A gift to express our immense gratitude for your invaluable expertise, Miss Peale," Arc had said over the telephone, but Dolly had heard the smile and understood the code: hush money. She used it to open a small gourmet shop on Main Street, where she sold fine produce and unusual cheeses, artfully displayed and lit by a system of small spotlights Dolly had designed herself. "This feels exactly like Paris," was a comment she often heard from New Yorkers who came on weekends to visit their country houses. Now and then she would get a shipment of starfruit, and Dolly always put a few aside to eat with Lulu. She would bring them back to the small house they shared at the end of a quiet street. After supper, the radio on, windows open to the night, she and Lulu would feast on the sweet, strange flesh.