Free Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel Page B

Department of the Interior, yeehaw.” Like he was going to tell his mother about his speed dates, the RYLS, or anything suckered to the baileys of his heart and climbing over.
    “Neddy, I get that you are upset, and that I’m supposed to be patient with whatever you say to me, but at some point, my patience will run out.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he stopped to consider whether this was true. He tended to apologize by default and figure it out later. But yes, he was sorry. He didn’t want to be an asshole, no matter that his whole life was a lie and it was this woman’s fault. He yanked at the crotch of his suit; it had been riding up his legs. Maybe this was what he should tell his mother, that he was dressed like Luke Skywalker and, let’s face it, would take his privates in hand the moment they hung up. He stared at the strap mullioned down his chest and between his legs.
    “Nice rumor,” he said.
    “Do you think it’s crazy?”
    “Probably. The Helix is dangerous? Far as I know, they’re just trying to help.”
    Then again, it was possible. Anything was possible now that so many people had thrown in their lot with a weirdo cult whose galvanizing and inexhaustible resource was loneliness in America.
    There was a pause on the line. He could hear her thinking. She was worried; he’d have liked her to worry more. Finally, she came out with it. “Do you need help, Neddy? Because I know some people in D.C., and if your insurance won’t cover it, your father and I have, you know, the funds for it.”
    He laughed. “You want to palm me off on a shrink?” He laughed again until he noticed a slick of peanut oil on his X-wing fighter jumpsuit.
    “No,” she said wearily. “I think it’d be better if you just kept it all inside.”
    “The Helix is harmless,” he said. “But even if it weren’t, that stuff never goes down well. What are they going to do? Storm the castle?”
    “There’s a castle?”
    “Compound. Whatever.”
    “They have a compound? How do you know?”
    “Mom, stop. I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
    “It’s amazing,” she said. “The passion is there. Everyone seems so excited about the Helix.”
    “Are you seriously wondering why?”
    He knew she was staring at the family photos ordered atop the piano—her, Max, Ned, year after year—because when she said, “No, not really,” it was plangent for all the ways those photos betokened what had been lost to them as a family.
    “I gotta go, Mom,” he said. And even though she had not said bye, he hung up.
    Esme turned off the TV. She was peeling a clementine. The rind was clotted under her nails and tinting them orange. She was not surprised news of ARDOR had gotten out. Security leaks were a D.C. special, ever since that megalomaniac sprung the Pentagon Papers. These days you couldn’t piss on a toilet seat without someone telling the Washington Post. Still, it pained her to imagine the project name on someone else’s lips and contextualized poorly. It wasn’t even her idea, this name, just some guy at the Joint Chiefs tapping the JANAP 299 for a suitable word, the irony being that these words traditionally hewed to projects that did not bear out their meaning (Manhattan Project, anyone?). And yet there it was, ARDOR, which classified Jim Bach’s stint to dismantle the Helix and its guru.
    Esme heard a phone ring, but since it was not her phone—cell, inhouse, or the secure line—she looked up at screen two just as Anne-Janet considered the name on her caller ID—Do I answer? Do I have the stamina? Can I alchemize my mood from depressed to effervescent?—and then listened to the dial tone on the machine. Ned had hung up. Damn. Double damn, since now she couldn’t call him back. If she called him back, he’d know she was screening. What sort of a woman screens? A reclusive, awkward woman who doesn’t know how to wear makeup or to feather the underside of a man’s penis with her tongue.
    Anne-Janet