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sadness. When you looked closely, the smiles were more cautious now, a wince in the eye, a fear of what else might be taken from them.
    So what to do now?
    The obvious, he decided. Call Olivia back. See what's what.
    It sounded rational on one level and ridiculous on another. What did he really think would happen here? Would the first sound he heard be his wife breathing heavily, a man's laughter in the background? Or did he think Olivia would answer with her usual sunny voice and then- what?- he'd say, "Hi, hon, say, what's up with the motel?"- in his mind's eye it was no longer a hotel room, but now a dingy no-tell motel, changing the
h
to an
m
adding a whole new significance-"and the platinum wig and the smirking guy with the blue-black hair?"
    That didn't sound right.
    He was letting his imagination run away with him. There was a logical explanation for all this. Maybe he couldn't see it yet, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Matt remembered watching those TV specials about how magicians did their tricks. You watched the trick and you couldn't fathom the answer and once they showed it to you, you wondered how you could have been so stupid to miss it the first time. That was what this was like.
    Seeing no other option, Matt decided to call.
    Olivia's cell was programmed into his speed dial in the number one spot. He pressed down on the button and held it. The phone began to ring. He stared out the window and saw the city of Newark. His feelings for this city were, as always, mixed. You see the potential, the vibrancy, but mostly you see the decay and shake your head. For some reason he flashed back to the day Duff had visited him in prison. Duff had started bawling, his face red, looking so like a child. Matt could only watch. There was nothing to say.
    The phone rang six times before going into Olivia's voice mail. The sound of his wife's animated voice, so familiar, so…
his,
made his heart stutter. He waited patiently for Olivia to finish. Then the beep sounded.
    "Hey, it's me," he said. He could hear the tautness in his tone and fought against it. "Could you give me a call when you have a second?" He paused. He usually ended with a perfunctory "love you," but this time he hit the end button without adding what had always come so naturally.
    He kept looking out the window. In prison what eventually got to him was not the brutality or the repulsion. Just the opposite. It was when those things became the norm. After a while Matt started to like his brothers in the Aryan Nation- actually enjoyed their company. It was a perverse offshoot of the Stockholm syndrome. Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal. That was what made Matt pause.
    He thought about Olivia's laugh. How it took him away from all that. He wondered now if that laugh was real or just another cruel mirage, something to mock him with kindness.
    Then Matt did something truly strange.
    He held the camera phone out in front of him, arm's distance, and snapped a picture of himself. He didn't smile. He just looked into the lens. The photograph was on the little screen now. He looked at his own face and was not sure what he saw.
    He pressed her phone number and sent the picture to Olivia.

Chapter 5
    TWO HOURS PASSED. Olivia did not call back.
    Matt spent those two hours with Ike Kier, a pampered senior partner who wore his gray hair too long and slicked back. He came from a wealthy family. He knew how to network and not much else, but sometimes that was enough. He owned a Viper and two Harley-Davidsons. His nickname around the office was Midlife, short for Midlife Crisis.
    Midlife was bright enough to know that he was not that bright. He thus used Matt a lot. Matt, he knew, was willing to do most of the heavy lifting and stay behind the scenes. This allowed Midlife to maintain the big corporate client relationship and look good. Matt cared, he guessed, but not enough to do anything about it.
    Corporate fraud may not be