Happy Birthday: A Novel Read online

  “It can’t be as bad as all that,” Jim said, leaning against Mike’s desk.

  “Actually, it’s considerably worse.” He looked at Jim miserably. They had shared a cubicle at the paper for five years, and had been friends even before that. Mike considered him his best friend, and had been thinking about telling him about the horror that had happened to him, but he was still too upset to do even that. Talking about it would have made it seem all too real and irreversible.

  “You look like the roof fell in.” Jim knew he wasn’t getting fired, their editor loved the reviews Mike wrote, and he hadn’t had a girlfriend in a while, so he hadn’t broken up with anyone. Jim couldn’t imagine what had happened to make him seem that upset.

  “It did,” Mike confirmed with a desolate expression, as Jim sat on the corner of Mike’s desk attentively. “Last weekend.”

  “Something happen to your parents?” Jim asked sympathetically. He knew Mike had had an unhappy relationship with them for years.

  “Who knows? They never call me anymore, and I don’t call them either. The last time I did, my mother was so drunk she didn’t even know who I was. I figured they wouldn’t miss the calls.” Jim nodded. He had heard it before.

  “So what gives?” Mike seemed unusually reluctant to spill the beans about whatever was bothering him. Most of the time the two men confided in each other about everything.

  “I reviewed a restaurant over Labor Day weekend,” Mike began as Jim listened quietly. “I hated the food … well, actually that’s not true. I liked the food, but I thought the chef was underachieving with the menu. It was diner food, prepared by a first-rate chef who is capable of a hell of a lot better. I gave her a lousy review.” He looked mournful about it now.

  “So she’s suing you?” Jim volunteered, and Mike shook his head.

  “No. Not yet anyway. But in time, she could,” he said cryptically, and Jim smiled. If that’s what it was, he knew Mike had nothing to worry about. There were no grounds for a lawsuit in a bad restaurant review, if what he had essentially said was that he didn’t like the food.

  “She can’t sue you for that. Hell, if that were true, you’d be sued three times a week.” Jim laughed.

  “She could sue me for child support,” Mike said bluntly, as Jim’s face grew serious and he looked long and hard at his friend.

  “Would you mind elaborating on that for me? I seem to have missed something here.” Now Jim looked worried too.

  “So did I apparently, my self-restraint,” Mike confessed to him, and felt foolish as he did. “She had a terrific wine list, and I must have tried a half a dozen different wines. We got drunk together, and she’s a hell of a good-looking woman. I don’t remember exactly how or when it happened, but I know that eventually we wound up in bed, and what I do remember was pretty impressive. It would have been memorable, and I would have seen her again, except I decided to write the review I did anyway. I thoroughly dumped on her restaurant, so I thought it would have been tasteless to call her. I never heard from her either, until last week. She invited me back to the restaurant for dinner, as some sort of peace offering, I thought. It turns out that she asked me to dinner to tell me she’s pregnant.” Mike looked almost ill as he said it, and Jim looked stunned.

  “And she wants money?” That much he could figure out, but the rest of what had happened was a little fuzzy.

  “No, not a penny,” Mike said grimly. “Her mother is a well-known TV personality, and the restaurant is successful, in spite of what I wrote about it. She doesn’t want anything from me, nor did she ask me to participate in the decision. She has decided to have the baby, and all she wanted was to inform me.” Mike looked miserably at his friend, who was staring at him in consternation. “I’m screwed whatever I do in this. Either I stay away from her and the baby, and then I’m an asshole who is ruining some innocent kid’s life. Or I get involved, and then I’m up to my neck in a situation I would do damn near anything to avoid. I don’t want a child, ever. I promised myself years ago, after my own childhood, that I would never have children. And now this woman I don’t even know does this to me. I can’t goddamn believe it. And nothing is going to sway her. Believe me, I tried. She is absolutely determined to have this baby, and she doesn’t give a good goddamn if I participate or not. I think she’d almost prefer it if I didn’t.” And in some ways that was true. He could sense it in the way she had told him. She expected nothing from him, which somehow made the situation even harder for him. She was being so gracious about it that it made him look even worse for his violently negative reaction. It was visceral for him. He didn’t want the baby.

  “Does she seem like a nice person?” Jim asked with interest. He was still stunned by what Mike had just told him.

  “Maybe. I think so. All I can focus on is this baby she’s foisted on me.”

  “If she’s not asking you for anything, it doesn’t sound like she’s doing much ‘foisting,’ ” Jim pointed out fairly.

  “Not financially, but she’s sticking me with the responsibility of fatherhood for the rest of my life if she has this baby,” Mike said, looking angry about it again.

  “Maybe that’s not the worst thing that could happen to you,” Jim said thoughtfully. He was two years older than Mike, had been happily married for fourteen years, and had three children he was crazy about. He had been telling Mike for years that he should find a nice woman, get married, and have children. Mike was always adamant when he said no. “Since she’s going to have the baby anyway, why don’t you spend some time with her and get to know her, and see how you feel about it then? It’s hard not to fall in love with your own children,” Jim pointed out to him. He had been there when each of his were born, it had been a life-changing event for him, but he had never had the resistance to having children that Mike very obviously did, and Jim loved his wife.

  “Funny, my parents seem to have managed not to fall in love with me,” Mike said with a rueful grin. “I don’t think parenting is for everyone. That notion is probably the only thing I have in common with my parents. They never wanted children, as they say at every opportunity, and I’m smart enough not to try.”

  “Destiny seems to have decided otherwise,” Jim said as he stood up, and went to sit in the chair at his own desk, only a few feet from Mike’s. He was the paper’s leading art critic, and like Mike, he had a number of gallery show critiques to write. He often invited Mike to go to openings of art shows with him, and whenever he could, Mike took Jim along when he went to check out a new restaurant to review. He was sorry he hadn’t taken Jim with him the first time he went to April in New York. If he had, none of this would have happened. “I think you ought to give this some very serious thought,” Jim said carefully. “This could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. There’s nothing more miraculous in life than having a child.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Mike asked, looking irritated as he tried to concentrate on his computer screen again and ignore everything that Jim had said.

  “I’m on your side,” Jim said quietly. “Maybe this happened for a reason,” he said cryptically. “God moves in mysterious ways,” he added smugly as Mike almost snarled in response.

  “This has nothing to do with God. It has to do with two very drunk supposed adults, who had way too much wine and got into a hell of a mess of their own making,” Mike said, willing to take responsibility for the mistake and the dubious behavior, but not the child.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jim said, and then concentrated on his own computer screen, and for the rest of the afternoon, neither of them said another word.

  * * *

  April didn’t hear from Mike for the next three weeks, and didn’t expect to. She told Ellen that it wouldn’t surprise her at all if she never heard from him again. He so much didn’t want the baby that his solution to the problem might be complete denial, of her and the child. She was startled in fact when the week before Christmas he called her on her cell phone. It was midmorning, a
nd she was getting ready for the lunch crowd. They were booked solid straight through the holidays for the next four weeks. She had even decided to keep the restaurant open on Christmas Day and New Year’s, for their regulars, who wanted a place to go.

  “April?” He sounded somber and tense when she answered.

  “Hi. How’ve you been, Mike?” She tried to keep it light. He sounded so unhappy.

  “I’ve been fine.” He sounded busy. “I’m sorry to call you with news like this. But I was just turning in a story, and all hell is breaking loose here. I thought you’d want to know. It’ll be on the news in a few minutes, and I wanted to give you a heads-up. There’s a hostage situation going on at the network where your mother works. They think it’s been taken over by half a dozen men. No one seems to know yet how it happened, or who they are. The screens have gone blank over there, and your mother was on air when they did.” She did a morning show several times a week, and an evening show. April glanced at her watch as he said it, and realized that he was right. She was right in the middle of the morning show.

  “Is she okay? Did something happen to her?” April sounded panicked, and he felt sorry for her. He had realized during his dinner with her how close she and her family were, even if it was hard for him to understand.

  “I don’t know. The screens just went blank. I think they’re holding two floors, and the building is full of SWAT teams on other floors. They haven’t moved in on the hostage-takers yet. And they’ve managed to keep it off the news for the last half-hour, but the story’s about to break. I didn’t want you to see it on TV.” He sounded sympathetic and worried about her.

  “Thanks, Mike,” she said, fighting back tears. “What am I going to do? Do you think I can go over there?”

  “They won’t let you near it. Stay put. I’ll call you if I hear anything. Turn on your TV. I think the story’s coming on now.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and hung up, panicked by what was happening to her mother. She turned on the TV in the kitchen immediately, and the report was alarming. Six armed gunmen had taken over the network building an hour before. It was hard to believe they could pull it off, but they had. Once they took their first hostages, they kept gathering more, on two floors of the building. The report said that they were heavily armed with machine guns and automatic weapons, were of unknown nationality and origin and could have been from the Middle East or even American terrorists, and they had sealed two floors of the building. All the hostages were being held on those floors and no one had dared to try to free them yet for fear that the hostages would be killed. The broadcaster mentioned which floors were being held, and April realized instantly that one of them was the floor where her mother did her show. Her show had gone dark right after the introduction, as had several others. There were a number of studios on those two floors.

  As she kept her eyes glued to the screen, April quickly dialed her stepmother and told her what had happened. She told her to turn on her TV, and five minutes later, her father called her, in tears. He was as frightened as April was. It reminded them all of 9/11. This wasn’t as dramatic, but the potential risk was huge. It had occurred to everyone that they might blow up part of the building in a suicide bombing and take hundreds of people with them, in a major public statement. Or there was also the possibility that they wanted to use the network to disseminate their message. No one knew yet. But everyone feared that the hostage-takers were extremists of some kind to attempt such a desperate act.

  Within five minutes, responsible Middle Eastern governments and religious groups had denied all association with the attack. Their assessment was that it was possibly a fundamentalist splinter group, and there was no question, the risk factor was major to everyone in that building and possibly within blocks around if they had enough explosives on them to do major damage. No one knew for sure if that was the case. April was sitting with her eyes riveted to the screen, her heart pounding as she listened to the broadcast, and she turned when she felt a hand on her shoulder, not sure who it was. She was stunned to find herself looking at Mike. He had come to the restaurant to be with her. Their vigil lasted all day, as crisis teams tried to make contact with the hostage-takers. By six o’clock that night, the building was still under siege. A few people had trickled out from one of the two floors, when the gunmen moved everyone to a single floor so they could control them better. The SWAT teams had since taken over the abandoned floor, to get closer to where the hostages were being held on the floor above. And those who had escaped said that several people had been shot. There were two bodies in the corridors on the floor that the SWAT team reclaimed, but their identities had not been announced. April prayed her mother wasn’t one of the victims.

  There were SWAT teams on the roof, on the floor below, and the lobby and none dared make a move so far, for fear of endangering the hostages further. Neighboring buildings had been evacuated, as the street below swarmed with crisis teams, equipment, firefighters, and police, waiting for something to happen.

  And through it all, Mike sat with April and held her hand. The restaurant opened for business, and she never left the kitchen. She had sat in the same spot for hours, praying for her mother, while Mike sat with her in silence, and once in a while he tried to get her to eat something or handed her a glass of water. He felt desperately sorry for her. April’s face was deathly white, and he wondered if she’d lose the baby from the shock, but he didn’t dare think about that now. He just wanted to be there for April. Whatever disagreement they had about their accidental child paled in comparison to this major drama. It seemed inevitable that more people were about to be killed, when the SWAT teams moved in to liberate the hostages. And the hostage-takers were threatening to shoot their victims.

  April had no idea how her mother was faring. There was no communication with anyone on the floor where the attackers were holding them captive. Helicopters were whirring overhead, and several had already landed on the roof. No one dared to rush the floor in question for fear that the hostage-takers would kill them all.

  Their first clear message came just after seven o’clock that night. They were a desperate group of Palestinian extremists, willing to die themselves and kill Americans, in protest of recent Israeli commando attacks on the Palestinian-Israeli border. They said they wanted Americans to know how it felt. The Palestinian government denied any association with them, and knew nothing of them. They were protesting the ongoing plight of their people and seeking world attention, even if it meant killing innocent people to do it. Their willingness to die made it difficult for negotiators on the scene to reason with them. By then, all of the responsible Middle Eastern governments were outraged by their actions, and offered any help that was needed. Several delegates came over from the UN to try to assist with the negotiations, and translations if nothing else. They came as a gesture of their good faith, and explained that the group was acting on their own without their own government’s knowledge or blessing, and was being severely criticized by them as well. No one in any government wanted the hostages to get hurt, while the hostage-takers frantically insisted that they were prepared to die for their cause, and take as many victims as possible with them. They appeared to be beyond reason. Their attack on the network had been disorganized but frighteningly effective.

  April just sat there and cried as she watched. She talked to her father and Maddie frequently on her cell phone, and Mike never left her for a minute. He said little, but he was steadfastly there with her and had been all day.

  The scene in the street outside the network building was one of organized chaos and extreme tension. The hostage-takers claimed that they had enough explosives on them to blow up the building, and intended to do so. There were vehicles and men in uniforms of every kind everywhere, SWAT teams, crisis units, the office of emergency services, firefighters, police, police captains, fire chiefs, and there was talk of a National Guard unit being brought in. And UN diplomats were scattered everywhere, looking grim and feeling helpless.
For the moment, they all were. The SWAT teams were poised to attack, but it had to be impeccably done, with speed and precision, and even then there was a good chance that all or most of the hostages could be killed. No one wanted to take that chance with a bungled attack that was badly orchestrated or premature. It was kept out of the news, but a small team of Israeli commandos who normally protected their ambassador had come to advise them, although their presence would have enraged the hostage-takers even more. It seemed like half the Middle Eastern security from the UN was there to help. No one wanted to be associated with the attackers, or to see another 9/11 happen. The tension in the air was palpable, and a command center had been set up a block away, teeming with experts, CIA, FBI. There had been no warning of the attack. It had just happened, and so far, no one dared to make a move, for fear of making the situation worse.

  By sheer coincidence, Jack Adams had been on his way into the building when it happened. He realized he had forgotten his cell phone in the car and had gone back out, and by the time he returned five minutes later, the building was shut down, and he had stuck around to help. All of the police and SWAT teams recognized him, and were impressed that he stayed all day. He looked over building maps with them and conferred with network security, who were as helpless as everyone else. Unless they were willing to risk the hostages, their hands were tied. And at six o’clock, the heads of assorted units were formulating a plan to come up the vents from the floor below and take the hostage-takers by surprise. Jack was listening carefully to the plan with the others and being given VIP status by being allowed to be there.

  The estimate was that close to a hundred people were being held hostage. The terrorists had released no one in the nine hours they had held the building, and given the frantic quality of the hostage-takers’ messages, it was becoming clear to everyone that there was a possibility that they could all be killed. They were impossible to reason with. There was no way of knowing how many had already died. No one was sure, and the terrorists weren’t telling. The captain of the SWAT team had finally established ongoing radio contact with them at four o’clock, and UN interpreters were translating, but so far their messages consisted mainly of threats, and lengthy diatribes about the situation in their country. Several UN negotiators from Middle Eastern countries attempted to talk them down to no avail.