Gideon (43 page)

The grin made her heart soar, and she reached over to touch him, to cup her hand against his flushed cheek.

“Come on,” she urged. “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

She matched his grin, kissed him lightly on the lips. “You did your job,” she said. “Now it’s time to collect your reward.”

He touched her cheek lightly. Ran the palm of his hand down toward her neck, just skimming the surface of her skin. Her neck, was fine, very few lines. Tight and elegant and aristocratic. Her shoulders were silky smooth and white, as if they’d never been touched by the sun. His other hand came up now and he gripped her tightly, ran both hands down her bare arms. As thin as she was, the arms were soft, just a little too much flesh on them. He knew that she did not like her arms, never had, but she didn’t flinch at his touch. Instead she moved closer to him, shifting her weight and the position of her legs on the bed, her mouth closer to his, her breasts grazing his chest.

Everything was spinning out of control. Everything was lost. Destroyed. For the first time in his life he felt completely and utterly alone. Abandoned. And it was that isolation that was eating away at him, paralyzing him, slicing through his insides and causing such suffering as he never even guessed existed.

He had many fears and just as many suspicions. He was not a stupid man. Nor did he live in a cocoon. There were things he knew, things he could only try to piece together.

The one thing that was absolute was that every piece was adding to his pain.

The violence of their lovemaking jolted him from his reverie. They had made love so often over the years that there were no surprises. Yet this time their hunger for each other left them both a little breathless. Perhaps because they both sensed it would be the last time.

“Can you sleep?” she whispered when it was over, brushing his hair back off the top of his ear with her fingers.

“I think so,” he answered.

“Do you want me to hold you?”

“If you’d like.”

“I’d like,” she said. “I’ll hold you and you’ll sleep. and for tonight the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

She guided his body over so he was on his side, then she glided over the sheets so she fit against his back and his legs, wrapped her arms around his chest. He was sweating, even in the icy room. She brushed a trickle of his sweat from his collarbone and held him even tighter.

“Whatever you want to do,” she said, “whatever you
have
to do, you know it’s fine with me.”

He nodded, but her words were muffled because he was already almost asleep. She waited until she was sure he was no longer awake, then she too closed her eyes. It took her a little longer to sleep because she had always been more of a realist than he was. She knew what was going to happen, where the future, such as it was, would lie. But eventually she too succumbed to the hour and her own exhaustion and finally drifted off.

They slept that way, Tom and Elizabeth Adamson, the president and First Lady of the United States, until it was nearly morning.

Until, once again, the dream came and the president woke up screaming.

* * *

It had never felt like this.

Not the first time, when they’d hungered for each other so fiercely. Not the last time, when every touch was tinged with sadness and the sense that things were ending. Not any of the times in between, when they’d laughed and lusted and experimented and felt that everything the rest of their lives was going to be perfect.

They had no barriers between them this time. They wanted each other, and they both realized they needed each other.

“Do you want me to hold you?” he’d asked when they got into the motel bed.

“No,” she’d told him. “I want you to make love to me.”

Carl realized that her body had changed. It had become harder, leaner. She’d been working out, and when she turned over, fluttering her hands to draw him closer, he could see the muscles ripple on her shoulders. Her body thrilled him, and he couldn’t stop touching, stop kissing, every inch of her. He could tell that everything he did excited her, and that excited him even more. There was a certain strength to her now, and not just a physical strength. When he finally entered her, he felt as if she were swallowing him whole. As if they’d become one person.

Amanda had not expected this rush of joy. It began as a physical need. She had to hold someone, she had to connect with someone. Even after they kissed, it did not set off the electric sensations she was experiencing now. He had changed as a lover. He was far gentler, more sensitive, more concerned with her desires. When he began gently massaging her back, kissing the nape of her neck, running his nails through her now short hair, moving his tongue down her spine, she felt weak. She felt a sense of surrender. But she knew it was a mutual surrender.

They made love until early in the morning, until they were exhausted and drained. Until each of them knew they had nothing left to give, physically or emotionally. When they were done, no words were spoken. No promises were made as they clutched each other and held each other tight. But both Carl and Amanda vowed silently, separately, never to let the other go.

* * *

“We should talk,” Elizabeth Adamson said. “She was in bed, watching her husband stand by the window, partially hidden in the predawn shadows.

“There’s no need,” he said wearily. “I know what you want.”

“Do you?”

“You want me to resign.”

“Yes,” she said, “that is what I want. it’s the only way I think I can save you. Keep the whole.”

“Whole?” His lip curled up in disdain. “What happens to my presidency? I just hand it over to Jerry Bickford?”

“He’s earned it. He’s loyal. He’s honest.”

“He’s old, he’s sick, he’s weak.”

“He’s kind.”

“In this town, kindness
is
weakness. He can’t even handle being vice president anymore. You heard him. He wants out.”

“He’ll change his mind.”

“Jerry Bickford hasn’t changed his mind in thirty-five years.”

“It’s not so easy to turn this job down.”

“No. And it’s even harder to give it up. My God, Elizabeth, do you realize what would happen? What it would do to the party? The chaos … the damage it could cause …”

“Tommy, I don’t want to talk politics. I just want you to do what’s best.”

“For the country?”

“No, my dear. For
you
.”

“There
is
no best for me anymore.” The words sounded bitter. Defeated.

“Then for
us
.” When he looked at her blankly, she said, softly, almost to herself, “Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this is that we’ve forgotten there is an us.”

“Elizabeth.” Tom Adamson’s voice was deep and clear. It resonated throughout the bedroom. “I’m the president of the United States. What I am aside from that, what
we
are, is of no consequences.”

“No,” she cried. “It’s the
only
thing of consequence. What we are, what we mean to each other—”

“You’re talking about what we
were
, not what we
are
.”

“Then let’s go back. Let’s go back to when we could breathe again!” She saw him wince, as if her words were opening up some old wound inside him. As if they were opening up some old wound inside him. As if they were pulling him toward a place he could never really return to. “We can finish the farmhouse in the Ozarks. We can ride bareback at dawn and go skinny-dipping in the pond and not worry that some damn photographer are camped out on the rocks. You can fish and carve that mantel you’ve been saying you were going to carve for—what is it now, twenty years? You can go to a university and teach. Or if you miss the action, you can start a foundation, sit on a board. Tom,” she pleaded, “we can start our lives all over again. We can make love in the daytime.”

He turned around now, and his face emerged from the shadows.

“We can never go back,” he whispered. “I told. I told someone about …” And now he said the word he hadn’t uttered in so many years.“Gideon.”

“Yes,” she said. The word came out slowly and sadly. “Yes, you did. You told a priest.”

“You know about that?” Then he shook his head in wonder. “Of course you do. You know everything.”

“I know everything about
you
, my darling. I know when you’re strong. And when you’re hurting. And …”

“And when I’m weak?” Their eyes met across the room, through the shadows. “You
do
know everything about me. Which means you know I can’t resign.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whatever you told him … whatever
anyone
knows … it doesn’t matter.”

“Nothing matters.”

“That’s not true, Tom.
We
matter.” For the first time in many, many years she thought she was going to burst into tears. “Lord, how we matter.”

“No.” Tom Adamson said. “Someone knows about Gideon. So
nothing
matters.”

The room was absolutely quiet now. No sounds intruded from outside the window. It was as if the real world had receded far into the distance. “Please come back to bed,” she urged.

Tom Adamson nodded wearily. He took one last look out the window at her garden shimmering in the rising sun.

“I’m coming,” he said.

But even as he spoke, even as he thought about all they had shared, all they had won and all they had lost, he knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t stay for very long.

* * *

They woke up in each other’s arms. Amanda’s eyes opened first, and for a minute or two she watched him sleep. The sun was doing its best to penetrate the thick motel curtain drawn across the window. It managed to sneak through just enough to cast a faint glow on a stained patched of brown carpet at the foot of the queen-sized bed.

Carl stirred now. She saw his eyes open, take in the room, and, for a moment, register confusion. Then he saw her. He smiled, but even before the smile, she could see in his eyes that his confusion had turned to warmth. He was comforted seeing her, and for that she was glad.

They had many things to say to each other, she knew. Things they
needed
to say to each other. But those things could wait. What was it Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
? The problems of two people in this world didn’t amount to a hill of beans? A little much, maybe. But not so far off track. Their relationship could wait. They had bigger problems to solve. They were close to Gideon, she knew that. So close they could both feel him.

And thirty minutes after they’d awakened, they’d thrown on their clothes, quickly downed some strong, black coffee, and were back in their rickety, stolen pickup truck, getting even closer.

They drove slowly through the town of Warren, Mississippi, soaking in everything possible, doing their best to memorize the layout and any potentially important landmarks. Periodically Carl would mutter to himself as he thought he recognized something from the diary. Occasionally people looked up, but their interest didn’t last long. Carl paid no attention to their curious glances. He was lost in the extraordinary experience of seeing the reality of a town he had created on paper.

Their first stop was at the local newspaper office, the
Gazette
. Amanda went in without Carl—if anyone was going to recognize him, it would be in the newspaper office—and told the clerk there that she was researching a book on the economic history of the South. It didn’t take her long to latch on to the history of Warren’s factory. It had been built in the midst of the Industrial revolution, turning out rubber products. By the 1939s it was mostly producing tires. The salient point, as far as Amanda was concerned, was that the factory was flourishing in the mid-1950s. She struck gold when she discovered that in 1969 there was a lawsuit filed against the factory. Several people in the town claimed that the manufacturer was spewing toxic waste into the river. Between the years 1964 and 1969, seven children in this small town had been born with some type of physical deformity. One had been born with no arms, one with no right foot. Those were the two most extreme cases, but the others did not make for pleasant reading, either. In addition to those seven, two babies had been born severely retarded during the same period. Several ecologically aware citizens had enough sense to blame the rubber factory and take action. Amanda read until she came to the end of the suit, which was settled in 1977. The case had dragged on for so long, several of the families involved in the litigation had left town by then. The remaining filers settled for $12,500 each in exchange for dropping all charges. Two of the lawyers for the suing families went to work for the factory, which closed its doors in 1979.

Amanda rushed out of the newspaper building and filled Carl in on what she’d learned.

“We’re definitely in the right place,” he said. “The football field, the factory, the physical layout, just a few miles from the auditorium where Elvis played—it all fits.” He lifted the cap and settled it father back on his head.

“So let’s go find us a witness,” she said.

The town hall was half a mile away, and that was their next stop. It was near the ghostly railway station. They parked right in front of the two-story brick building, deciding that they should tackle this one together. As they walked through the front door, their hands sought each other out. Their fingers locked together and squeezed tightly. Then they were hit by a burst of cool air-conditioned air and were face-to-face with a tall, white-haired black man. He was perhaps six foot three, although he was stooped over several inches, as if he had a heavy weight on his back. His face looked as if it was carrying the same weight. There was a streak of pain and grief in his eyes and mouth that was quite startling and almost unbearable to look at.

“Hello,” Amanda greeted him.

“May I help you?” the man wanted to know. His voice was deep and dignified and commanding. It seemed to echo throughout the room.

“Yes. We’re reporters with the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
.”

“That right?” He was neither believing nor disbelieving. Not interested in them, not uninterested.