Revolution Number 9 (38 page)

He grabbed her wrist. The match fell, went out. And they were back in the tiny universe with just his voice: “So something else exploded, some other bomb. A bomb you and Malik planted—under the flowerpot probably, because you came back with grass stains on your knees.”

Silence.

“I want to know about that bomb.”

More silence. At last she said, “You want off the hook, is that it?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Keep your voice down. Someone might hear.”

“Where?” He tried to keep his voice down, but it wouldn’t obey.

“Christ. Daddy got it for us. I think from the Panthers. Is
that what you want to know? You turn out to be a fine upstanding citizen. Congratulations.”

It was what he had wanted to know, but he felt no relief. “Why did you do it?”

“Get another bomb? Because we didn’t think you could pull it off. Malik didn’t think you could. I knew you a little better—I didn’t think you would. And I was sure you’d done something tricky—the way you were so calm that night.”

“But that didn’t stop you from telling your father that it was my fault, that I rigged the timer.”

“That wasn’t to protect me. It was to protect him. He couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d thought someone had actually died because of something he’d done. He’s an idealist.”

Charlie laughed out loud. “But you’re a pragmatist.”

“Correct.”

“Committing pragmatic little murders when necessary, like down at the Oakland docks.”

Rebecca said nothing. Charlie reached for the matches, wanting to see her face, but the package was empty. He felt for the knapsack, took it, began backing away, toward the hatch. “I’ll leave the keys in the car,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’m not going to help you. Not this time.”

He felt her shift her body. He half expected her to reach for him, to hold on to him. Instead, something hard and cool touched the side of his head. She hadn’t been sleeping that whole time in the backseat; she’d had time to push a few pieces around in her own mind, time to silently take the gun out of the suitcase.

“Yes,” she said. “This time too.”

The chapel bell struck five.

I
t was the kind of freighter Hugo Klein always imagined when he pictured freighters: old and slow, streaked with rust on deck and hull, smelling of oil and grease. This one was Polish: the
Wladyslaw Gomulka
, too decrepit to bother renaming. Simple, heavy meals were served for passengers in the officers’ dining room at seven, noon, and six; simple, heavy snacks at ten and three. Klein, following the captain’s instructions, stayed in his cabin. At six, ten, noon, three, and six, he would hear a metallic clatter outside his door, open it, and find food, little of which he ate. He napped during the day, slept as he hadn’t slept in years at night. No phone calls, no clients, no enemies, no battles: just the throb of the engines deep below, and the constant rocking of the sea. In this rusty cocoon Klein dreamed boyhood dreams of adventure and desert isles, and imagined sailing the
Wladyslaw Gomulka
forever.

But Klein didn’t lose track of time, and he was up early, dressed and alert on the morning he had to be. He gazed out the porthole. The ocean was deep blue and smooth, like blueberry jelly. It was going to work. She would be safe in Cuba, and he would be safe too. Safe from her: that was the implication, and he didn’t shrink from it. Whatever had happened at the pier—and her story was that she had gone along reluctantly and that the group had been on the point of abandoning the idea when the guards saw them and started shooting—she seemed to be the only survivor. That didn’t surprise him. She was strong and brave, and in another time and place might have become an historic figure, like La Pasionaria. She’d been willing to … yes: throw her life away for a cause. He remembered her as a baby, the most beautiful thing he had ever
seen—and those eyes, shining with her brightness. His own eyes dampened. No, he told himself. How could he think like that, so conventional, so bourgeois? She hadn’t thrown her life away. That was how others lived—in office towers, factories, country clubs, compromising their identities away. She was pure. And if not effective, so what? Even Christ had been a failure in his lifetime.

But she was the only survivor. That bothered him. And if Andrew Malik had indeed been murdered, that bothered him too.

There was a knock at the door. It was the captain, a fat little man in skimpy shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. He beckoned with a hairy finger.

Klein followed him down the corridor, up stairs, on deck. It was deserted. A bright red boat hung on a hoist at the stern: an inboard, about twenty-five feet long, with a dive platform, a Canadian flag sticker on the windscreen, and no name.

“Pretty pretty,” the captain said.

He took a chart from his pocket, unfurled it. Three X’s were marked on it, two offshore, one on land. The coastal X marked Cosset Pond, the offshore X’s their present position and the rendezvous point. The hairy finger traced the route: the inward and outward compass bearings were written on the chart. The offshore X’s seemed close to land, not far outside the territorial waters. The captain was earning his money.

“Hokay?” he said.

“Okay.”

He handed Klein the keys. Klein climbed into the red boat. The captain went to the controls, pressed a button. The hoist swung the boat out, high over blueberry water. It was going to work.

“Pliss to fair liv yacket,” the captain called, and lowered him over the side.

· · ·

Spanish voices woke him. Soft Spanish voices in the corner of a dark room, a man’s and a woman’s. They fell silent. There was a giggle, later a moan, then footsteps, going away.

Goodnow sat up. Something tugged at his arm. He looked down. His arm was a shriveled white thing emerging from the
shadows. There was a needle in it, attached to a tube that ran from a plastic bag hanging on a hook. Hospital: but he had no idea what hospital, or how he had entered. He searched his mind for his most recent memory, and found it: fluffy clouds, seen from above.

A lovely image, like fields of snow and childhood Christmases, and he savored it for a while. Some time passed before he made an astonishing discovery: he was without pain. Goodnow was not a religious man, but his first reaction, perhaps stimulated by those thoughts of Christmas—not any Christmas he had known, but the Christmas of Dickens and advertising—his first reaction was that he had died. Was this the afterlife, Spanish lovemaking in the corner, a needle in the arm, no pain?

The tube was taped to his arm. He stripped off the tape, pulled out the needle. Blood bulbed out, trickled over his skin. He raised his forearm to his mouth and sucked it. Why? He didn’t know, but it tasted good.

Goodnow swung his legs over the side and stood up. He did it easily, like a young, healthy man, without pain. He felt strong. It had been so long since he had felt any strength at all that he almost couldn’t put a name to the feeling.

He went to a closet, found his clothes. He let the pajama bottoms he was wearing fall to the floor and dressed himself. He couldn’t find his shoes and socks, but his wallet was there and so were a set of Avis car keys. He walked barefoot out into a hall, entered an elevator, pressed G, was lowered, got off, crossed a lobby, and went outside.

He looked back: “Boston City Hospital,” read the sign. He moved away, around a corner, up a side street, not thinking, just going in the direction his feet wanted to move. Cars were parked in the lane. One of them had an Avis sticker on the bumper. The horse knows the way, as he had told Svenson. He stuck the keys in the door. They worked.

Goodnow got into the car and drove. He turned this way and that, and then saw the expressway. It loomed ahead of him, a skeletal structure, black against a band of red that had broken through in the east. He turned onto it and headed south, toward Cosset Pond.

Day broke overhead, a beautiful blue day. He pressed his bare foot on the gas and swung into the passing lane;
driving like a teenager on a big date
, he thought with a smile. Yes, he’d lost Svenson, and that was too bad. And Charlie Ochs had proved unpredictable. But Hugo Klein had talked to Charlie on tape, and if Svenson hadn’t had the tape when he died, then it was possible that Charlie did. Even if he didn’t, he would remember the conversation. That might be enough. Goodnow pressed a little harder on the gas.

He didn’t slow down until he came down off the highway and into Cosset Pond.
A pretty little place
, he thought. His plan was to follow the road over the bridge that spanned the cut, where the Pond emptied into the sea, and continue around to Charlie’s house. But just before the bridge, he saw a restaurant, the Bluefin Café, and all at once was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt a hunger so deep. He was desperate for food. He parked, went in, almost running, and ordered two roast beef sandwiches and a piece of pecan pie to go. The waiter glanced down at his bare feet but said nothing.

Goodnow carried the food back to the car and crossed the bridge. Instead of driving to Charlie’s, he turned onto the little track that led to the lookout over the cut and parked at the end.

Goodnow gazed across the water, all the way to the horizon, where sky blue and sea blue met. Lovely. He unpacked a sandwich, took a big bite.

The pain got him then: pain that made all his previous pain unworthy of the name. The Gerber baby had sprung up to full size during the night and was going to split him apart. Goodnow’s new strength vanished at once. His hands, frantic, rooted in his pockets for the pills. They were gone. He thought of the needle, the tube, the drip, knew what had been in it, and started to cry. He had the strength for that. Then the Gerber man inside him flexed his muscles. Goodnow doubled up, his head against the glass.

The line where sky blue met sea blue was a black line. It began to thicken, to thicken and thicken, eating the blue away.

“W
hat does wifey know?” Rebecca said. She sat in the passenger seat of the Tercel, the gun in her lap, her fingers loose around the grip.

“Her name is Emily,” Charlie said. “And the answer is nothing.”

“What are you going to tell little Emily?”

“She’s taller than you are. And she’ll probably be at her office. If your father comes soon I won’t have to tell her anything.”

“And if not?”

“Some story. A favor for a friend, boat rides, bullshit.” Rebecca nodded. “And after?”

“After what?”

“After I’m gone. What are you going to tell her then?”

“As little as possible,” he said. The truth was: everything.

He looked at Rebecca out of the corner of his eye, scanning her face for some reaction, some sign of belief or disbelief. There was none. That left him with three facts he didn’t like: the fact that she knew that he knew what Hugo Klein had done; the fact that she believed her father was a great man; and the fact of the gun.

The Atlantic came into view, blue sparkles between the tourist traps. “Are we there?” Rebecca said.

“Almost.”

They had crossed the country. He remembered how long it had taken to go the other way, by bus and thumb, twenty-two years before. If he was an orbiting body, his path of revolution was eccentric. Otherwise the country had shrunk; perhaps it had, perhaps that explained the past twenty-two years.

The road wound through forests of scrub oak and pine, topped the rise marking the glacial moraine, and dipped down into Cosset Pond. He had driven into Cosset Pond many times, but never with this feeling that stirred in his chest. He knew what it meant: for twenty-two years he had lived here as an imposter; now it was his rightful home. And he’d only been gone for nine days.

“Quaint,” Rebecca said, taking it in.

Charlie drove past the Bluefin Café and onto the bridge. He glanced over the water, saw a trawler, sailboats, a water-skier, but no speedboats coming in from the open sea. A lone car was parked on the lookout. Charlie crossed the bridge, followed the road around the pond. Through the trees he caught his first glimpse of
Straight Arrow
tied to the dock, and the house in the background. He had to force himself not to press harder on the gas.

Charlie turned onto his street. The yellow Beetle was in the driveway. He parked in front of the house, behind an old pickup with Georgia plates. They got out of the car. Rebecca had her suitcase in one hand, the gun in the other. It wasn’t pointing anywhere, just hanging at her side. “Open the trunk,” she said.

Charlie opened it. They looked down at the three canvas bags, one stained red-brown. “Bring them,” she said.

They walked to the house. Rebecca hardly limped at all. Charlie set the canvas bags on the stoop, took out his key and unlocked the door.
Be at the office
, he thought.
Be anywhere but here
. He opened the door, pushed the canvas bags inside with his foot, went in. Rebecca followed.

“Emily?” he called. “Em?”

No answer.

Rebecca looked around. “I expected a higher standard of housekeeping,” she said.

The house was a mess: papers on the floor, plates of half-eaten food here and there, an empty quart of whiskey on the saxophone case.

“Em? Em?”

No reply.

Rebecca went on into the kitchen. Through the doorway
Charlie saw her peering out the window at the pond, the cut, the ocean beyond. He bent down and picked up the bottle: some bourbon he had never heard of; the price sticker read “$6.95.” It had left a ring on the saxophone case. He opened the case, half expecting to find a pool of bourbon soaking into the velvet. There was no bourbon inside, just the saxophone: but broken, smashed, flattened, as though someone had jumped on it with both feet.

He went into the kitchen, thinking she might have left a note. But there was no note, just dishes in the sink, garbage overflowing the bin, more empty bottles. Rebecca was still looking through the window. She pointed. “Is that where he’ll come from?”