A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [64]
“So,” Kitty 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,” Kitty asked the general in the most friendly, conversational voice, “or do you burn them first?”
“Miss Jackson,” Arc said, with a tense, meaningful look. “The general cannot understand you.”
The general wasn’t smiling anymore. He was a man who couldn’t abide not knowing what was going on. He’d let go of Kitty’s hand and was speaking sternly to Arc.
Lulu tugged Dolly’s hand. “Mom,” she hissed, “make her stop!”
Her daughter’s voice startled Dolly out of a momentary paralysis. “Knock it off, Kitty,” she said.
“Do you eat them?” Kitty asked the general. “Or do you leave them out so the vultures can do it?”
“Shut up, Kitty,” Dolly said, more loudly. “Stop playing games.”
The general spoke harshly to Arc, who turned to Dolly. His smooth 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 Kitty and seized her tanned arm. She leaned close to Kitty’s face.
“If you keep this up,” Dolly said softly, “we will all die.”
But one glance into Kitty’s fervid, self-annihilating eyes told her it was hopeless; Kitty couldn’t stop. “Oops!” she 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 Kitty 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 Kitty, the soldiers had contracted around her, and the actress was obscured from view.
Lulu was shouting, trying to drag Dolly onto her feet. “Mommy, do something, do something! Make them 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 Kitty; Dolly had an impression of kicking from within their midst. She could still hear Kitty’s high, reaching voice:
“Do you drink their blood, or just use it to mop your floors?
“Do you wear their teeth on a string?”
There was the sound of a blow, then a scream. Dolly jumped to her feet. But Kitty was gone; the soldiers carried her inside a structure hidden in the trees beside the landing pad. The general and Arc followed them in and shut the door. The jungle was eerily silent: just parrot calls and Lulu’s sobs.
While the general raged, Arc had whispered orders to two soldiers, and as soon as 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, crying as they sped back through the jungle and then the desert. Dolly rubbed her daughter’s soft hair, wondering numbly 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 across the seat.
Lulu slept hard during the flight, clutching her Kate Spade bookbag. Dolly didn’t sleep. She stared straight ahead at Kitty’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 purse.
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