Hard Rain (8 page)

But Philip entered her a little too soon. And he came a little too soon. Or maybe it was just the image of Kate, getting in the way. Jessie's orgasm stayed inside. She heard Barbara cry out again down the hall.

They lay on opposite sides of the bed, not touching. “Didn't you come?” Philip said.

“No.”

“God, I'm sorry. That's never happened before, has it?”

No, Jessie thought, it's a first in the history of the human race. But she just said, “No.”

There was a silence. Then Philip said, “Do you want me to … do something about it?”

“Go to sleep, Philip. It's no big deal.”

He patted her thigh. His hand had gone cold. He cleared his throat. “Do you like it?”

“Do I like what?”

“‘Valley Nocturne.'”

“It's good. You don't need me to tell you that.”

“I do.”

A little later, Philip said, “You know Mrs. Stieffler, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn't mind meeting her. And some of her friends.”

Jessie explained why she couldn't help him. He said nothing.

Rain drummed on the roof. Jessie tried to sleep, but couldn't. She allowed herself to take some comfort from Lieutenant DeMarco's nonnews. She took some more from the fact that Barbara was helping her. Rain drummed on the roof.

“What's that?” Philip said, much later. He was a light sleeper.

Jessie listened. She heard someone moving in the hall. Jessie smiled in the darkness. “Barbara,” she whispered. “Looking for cigarettes.”

They heard feet going downstairs, heard a briefcase opening, heard an irritated mutter. “Barbara's a … hard person, isn't she?” Philip said.

“She's the best of the best,” Jessie said.

Philip rolled over the other way. Jessie thought about Barbara's boy theory.

She heard the front door open and shut. The liquor store was closed by now, but they had cigarettes next door to it at the all-night grocery. Jessie closed her eyes. She listened to the rain.

An awful shriek of rubber snapped her up into a sitting position. The next moment came the sickening thump of something hard striking something soft. Then rubber shrieked again.

“Oh, God,” Jessie said, and she was out of bed, running down the hall, down the stairs, out into the rain. Barbara lay in the middle of the road.

“Oh, God.”

Jessie fell to her knees and took Barbara in her arms. Barbara's eyes were open. “I was wrong about the sixties, Jess,” she said, so faintly that Jessie could barely hear. “There was you.”

She said no more. A moment later there was no life in her at all. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Jessie held Barbara tight, rocking her back and forth, back and forth. She didn't stop until the police came and pulled her away.

Only then did Jessie notice that Barbara had borrowed the big yellow slicker to protect her from the rain.

8

Senator Frame: Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the prospective legislation be printed in the RECORD at this time.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD as follows:

S. 4076

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

Section 1.
SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS

a)
SHORT TITLE
—This Act may be cited as the Federal Polygraph Law.

—from the
Congressional Record

“This won't hurt a bit,” said the young man, slipping a blood pressure cuff around the woman's arm. He pumped in air until it felt uncomfortable; you couldn't call it hurting. Then he strapped two sweat detectors to her fingers, fit a narrow rubber belt around her chest and a wider one around her waist, and flicked a switch on a metal box that lay on a desk between them. Four styluses quivered in anticipation.

“Follow the Redskins?” the young man asked.

“Is that the first question?”

“Ha, ha,” he said. “Nope. Just making conversation.” But he didn't make any more of it. Instead he adjusted a dial on the metal box, pumped a little more air into the blood pressure cuff and took out a notebook. He wore an identification tag on his lapel: John A. Brent, Jr.

“Must it be so tight, Mr. Brent?”

“Excuse me?”

“The blood pressure thing.”

He looked at a dial on the metal box. “We're well within the standard range,” he said. “It won't be long.”

“How long? My husband didn't tell me.”

“Not long.” The young man opened his notebook; his eyes scanned the writing inside.

“My husband gave me to understand that this would be …”

He looked up. John A. Brent, Jr.'s eyes were instruments for seeing; the revelation capacity had been shut down. “Yes?”

“Pro forma.”

“Pro forma?” he said. His eyes returned to the notebook. The woman didn't know whether he was ignorant of the expression or was merely avoiding answering it. To find out she'd have to be on the other side of the metal box; he'd have to be the one connected to it.

The thought made her angry. She could feel her heart beating faster, her breathing becoming more labored, her pores starting to open: all grist for the black box, and they hadn't even begun. This insight reminded her of a dinner party where someone had said that beating the machine was easy. All you had to do was artificially raise the tension level during the control questions—“Bite the insides of your cheeks; squeeze your feet into the floor; simply remember the worst pain you've ever felt.”

“What about thinking of sex?” someone had asked.

“Only if it's adulterous.” A rather witty conversation for Washington, these days, she thought. It must have taken place at the Canadian embassy. What a pass things had come to.

“Now, I'm going to ask you a series of questions,” Brent said. “Please keep your answers simple.” He licked his thumb and turned a page. “What is your name?”

Something about his gesture made the woman lose perspective, made her see things not as they were—a publicity exercise that would soon be over, to be followed by lunch at Le Pavillon and some shopping—but as they would appear to an uninformed observer or a camera: state functionary, human peeling machine, citizen. What had it been—simply the sight of his thick pink tongue wetting the ball of his thumb? A glimpse of something animal lurking under all the high tech?

Glancing first at Mr. Brent, who was watching the styluses, the woman bit the inside of her cheek. She discovered that her dinner party informant had never put his ideas into practice: cheek-biting precluded normal speech. Instead she dug a fingernail into her palm and answered, “Alice Frame.”

The graph paper in the metal box began rolling. The styluses dove down and started scratching. The young man glanced without expression at the four lines appearing on the paper and went on.

“Where do you reside?”

“We have a farm near Sweet Briar, Virginia.”

Styluses scratched. Paper rolled. Brent watched the spidery lines grow. Silence continued until Alice felt compelled to add, “We also have a house in Palm Beach and a ski chalet in New England.”

“Where in New England?”

“Does it matter? Near Morgantown, Massachusetts.”

Brent licked his lips. Then he asked, “Are you married?”

“That's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it?” The styluses did something that made Mr. Brent frown.

“Please make your answers direct. Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“What is your husband's name?”

“Edmund.”

“What does he do?”

“What he likes.”

Brent frowned. “What is his job?”

“As you know, he's a member of the United States Senate.”

Brent watched the styluses. The frown lines receded on his forehead, but didn't quite disappear.

“Do you have children?”

Alice drove her fingernail into her palm, but not to fool the machine. It just happened. “No.”

“Could you speak up a little, please. Children?”

“No.”

Brent's eyes tracked the black lines moving across the paper in the metal box. He frowned again. Then he licked his thumb and turned another page in his notebook.

“Have you ever had an unauthorized meeting with a representative of a foreign power?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been the subject of a blackmail attempt?”

“Object,” said Alice.

“Excuse me?”

Alice sighed. “No. No one has tried to blackmail me.”

She stopped digging her nail into her palm. She answered the rest of Mr. Brent's questions as quickly as she could. All she wanted was for it to be over.

Brent unhooked her. He didn't thank her or say good-bye. Protocol for these situations hadn't been developed. The world awaited the coming of a new and steely Emily Post.

Alice went out the door, into an elevator, out into a lobby. Photographers clicked cameras in her face. Microphones were stuck in front of her mouth. Then Edmund was beside her, his hand around her waist. He flashed his white smile, proud as a papa whose kid had won the race.

“Shit,” said Dahlin.

“Fuck,” said Keith.

They were watching a twenty-five-inch Mitsubishi video monitor. Dahlin jabbed at the remote-controlled pause button. A woman's face froze on the screen. She was middle-aged, but obviously possessed the kind of bones and money that would keep her beautiful for another ten or twenty years. That was no comfort to the two men confronting her image.

Keith rose and walked across the room. He stared abstractedly at a framed blowup on the wall: a grainy photograph shot from overhead. It showed a bald man with a big strawberry mark on his forehead. He appeared to be urinating against a hedge. Keith turned to Dahlin, sitting behind his desk.

“Don't blame me,” he said.

“Who mentioned blame?” replied Dahlin.

“I wouldn't blame you.”

“If I mentioned blame?”

“I wouldn't. Maybe you think I put him up to it.”

“That's too strong.”

“But I encouraged him.”

“That's about right.”

“He would have gone ahead anyway.”

“Probably.”

Their heads turned toward the screen.

“Shit,” said Dahlin.

“Fuck,” said Keith.

“He doesn't have to worry about crap like this.”

“Who?”

“Him.” Dahlin pointed his chin at the urinating man on the wall.

“Hell no. That's what makes America great.”

“That's a good one,” Dahlin said. But he didn't laugh.

“What are we going to do?” Keith asked.

“How about nothing?”

Keith took off his horn-rimmed glasses and polished them on a monogrammed handkerchief. “Nothing?” he said.

Dahlin frowned. “You missed a smudge.”

“Where?”

“The right lens.”

“This one?”

“The other one.”

“That's my left.”

“It's my right.”

Keith nodded. He polished both lenses. “I'm not sure it can be nothing,” he said.

“From where you sit.”

“That's part of it.”

“Then,” said Dahlin, “it'll have to be something.”

Keith gazed out the window. In the distance flowed the river, dark gray under a light gray sky. Beyond it rose the city with its monuments to this and that. “Maybe I should handle it myself,” he said.

“You? What kind of talk is that? How can it be you? He knows you. She knows you. Why do I have to do all the thinking myself?”

“Sorry.”

“Objectivity,” Dahlin said, “appearance of. Commandment one.” He opened his desk drawer, took out a pipe and reamed it violently. “We'll just have to treat this like a normal …” He searched for a word. After a while, he gave up.

They looked at the woman, quivering very slightly in the freeze-frame. It was a close-up—none of the fluttering equipment showed. Dahlin lit his pipe. Time passed. Smoke rode convection currents through the air. The phone on Dahlin's desk buzzed. He didn't pick it up. The river flowed. On the far side, little figures chased an invisible football across a football field. They darted around, lay down in piles, jumped up, darted around.

“I've had a thought,” Dahlin said at last.

“Shoot.”

“How about Zyz?”

“Zyz?”

“Why not? At least it would get him out of the office.”

“Surely that's not our first—”

Dahlin interrupted: “And what possible harm could he do?”

“He's not exactly toothless.”

“Maybe not. But what harm could he do? What possible harm?” Dahlin repeated. When he found a point to make he made it over and over. It was the foundation of his career, maybe the foundation of all successful careers in Washington.

Keith had no answer.

Dahlin puffed his pipe. The room began to smell like a waste disposal plant. His lips moved around the pipe stem. “Zyz,” he said. “Just the ticket.”

9

Number 22, gleaming in white and gold like some knight of yore, was game enough, but he just didn't have the speed. Two thick-necked boys in purple hit him before he could turn the corner. The impact made noise—an artificial one of plastic on plastic, a natural, deeper one of flesh on flesh. Number 22 went down hard; pain knocked the grown-up mask off his face, exposing to all the boy his mother knew. But no one saw, except the man jogging on the track around the field.

Squirting from number 22's grasp, the ball bounced over the chalk sideline onto the track. The jogger, a big man in a plain gray sweatsuit and all-purpose ten-dollar sneakers from J. C. Penney, kicked it back without breaking stride. He didn't appear to aim it anywhere, didn't appear to kick it very hard, but the ball flew straight to the referee, standing at midfield. The referee eyed the jogger for a second or two. Then he signaled fourth down and blew his whistle.