The Laws of our Fathers (55 page)

    'Ah.' Their problems are getting clearer to me all the time. 'That makes people angry.'

    'I suppose. But I didn't start wandering to get even. I loved the idea of it. Of falling. For someone. I still think it's the most thrilling thing in life. Does that sound corny? Or just weak?'

    'Weak.'

    'Yeah.' He knows it. He looks down between his knees. 'That was the lesson I learned from you, though. The thrill.' 'Right.'

    'I mean it,' he says and touches the joint to my lips again. 'It sounds like the song. What was his name. Something, something "the thrill of it all - I'll tell them I remember you." '

    'Frank Meld.'

    He rolls back. 'I would. You know, say that.' 'When the angels ask me to recall -"'

    I turn away - I will not let him. What is this old fear? I still don't know, but I feel suddenly the presence of all the men - Seth and Charlie and a number in between - whom I turned from with the same morbid fluttering of the heart. I look at him squarely.

    ‘I don't know a man who believes less in angels.'

    'But I believe in you, Sonny,' he answers, and draws my hand down between his ruddy thighs to appraise the transitory emblem of his faith.

    I had forgotten the aphrodisiac magic of marijuana, the forging sensation, like a river current, rippling outward, ever outward to the fingertips. Afterwards, I am sore and spent; the dope makes me sleepy. I wake in a flush of immediate embarrassment. I am laid out amid the rumpled bedding, thick with our musk, without a stitch of clothing, legs wide, oblivious, like somebody on a bender. The overhead fixture, old-fashioned milk glass festooned with silky cobwebs, burns blindingly.

    'Two-fifteen,' he says, when I ask the time. I groan and cover myself with the top sheet, then sit up. I always try to check with Everarda.

    Seth is seated at the foot of the bed, still naked, his legs crossed. My purse has been emptied onto the spread and he is looking through it, all the telltale detritus of my life. My credit cards are laid out. Photographs. Business cards I've forgotten to throw away. My checkbook. He is eating an apple, a glossy Red Delicious, which looks to be one he bought the other day at Green Earth. Staring at him, I find that I'm no longer stoned. My mouth is stale, dry as a withered leaf.

    'May I ask?'

    'I'm amusing myself,' he says. ‘I was alone.' I could tell him he's intruding. But that would be hypocritical. I knew he meant to intrude all along.

    'And? Are you amused?'

    'A little.' He offers the apple and I take a bite.

    'Did you do this when we lived together?'

    'Of course not.'

    'Any surprises?'

    ‘I have cards from two different travel agents and a brochure on the Philippines from a third. I thought that was interesting. Are you traveling?'

    'Not with a six-year-old.'

    'But you'd want to go?'

    'I'd love to go back. I'd love to go everywhere. Someday.' I shudder with the thought: Travel. Free. Freed of custom, language, everything known. For me, the thought has always brought with it some delicious, unpronounceable fantasy that lurks in me, a tantalizing secret not fully known by anyone, even me. Another life!

    'That's where you ended up when we split, wasn't it? The Philippines?'

    'With the Peace Corps. I hoped they'd send me to some village, but I taught birth control to women in Olangapo City, near Subic Bay. It was disillusioning at times. I was basically helping a lot of them be whores. But I loved the country and the people. They have tremendous self-respect, in spite of all the colonization. The revolution didn't surprise me.' I recall momentarily the English-language movie houses, the dampness, the fish, the sleek dark boys.

    ‘I was flabbergasted, you know.' 'Were you?'

    'When you joined? I had no idea you'd want to do that.' 'I also applied to be an astronaut.' 'Come on!'

    'No, I wanted to go to the planets. Venus, Mars. I'm dead serious. And I was sure it was going to happen. Somehow. In the future. It's strange to realize I'm never going to get there. I really thought I would.'

    How had that changed? When I was twenty-two, that destiny had seemed so real. The wish, the
need
to be a parent, to leave the species better off by one, and everything that came with it -house and things, job and schedule - had blown it all away. That's how it is for everyone. But did I ever really say goodbye to the girl in space who was going to make something spectacular of her desire to get a million miles from her mother? It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'm going home now. Not to the stars.

    Seth hugs me as I dress, a silly burlesque of being unwilling to let me go. As I gather the last things, he waits by the door. Suddenly, inexplicably, the future is upon us. There is now a next move. I tell him to come for dinner tomorrow, Nikki will be thrilled. Then he catches me in one final embrace, and in the sheer delirium of weariness I am nearly knocked cold by the unexpected surge of passion, his and my own.

    'How do you feel about this?' he asks as he finally lets me go.

    After a second, I answer, 'Better than I thought I would.'

    Smiles. God, he smiles.

    'Great,' he says. Then I'm gone.

    

    

    
Seth

    

    I wanted to call my father for reassurance, but Eddgar insisted there was no point.

    'He's going to deny it,' Eddgar said. 'Either way. If he's gone to the Feds, they'll tell him to lie.'

    'They'd
never
go.' I'd been saying this for days, of course. Even I had to recognize some likelihood that my father, in his desperation over the money or my situation, might have made such an uncharacteristic move. But on balance, I continued to regard it as impossible.

    'So where does it come from, Seth?' Eddgar asked me. 'How does the F BI know? They seem to think you were abducted. You had to have told someone. Lucy?' Eddgar asked. 'What does she know?' Both June and he had been put out that I'd taken a traveling companion. It showed a lack of discipline to allow whim to influence my plans. They had no choice, though, but to

    accept my terms. I insisted, truthfully, that Lucy knew nothing.

    'So who?' Eddgar asked. He peered at me, sallowed by the cheap lamplight. I had settled heavily on one of the beds, weighing it all.

    'Maybe it's because I didn't show for induction. Maybe they're after me already.' It was possible I'd made a special target of myself with my anti-draft activities on campus. Maybe one of the Selective Service System's snitches had reported on my plan to flee and the Bureau had swung into action. But that didn't seem convincing to any of us.

    'I went over the conversation with Michael three times,' Eddgar said. 'He called me because the way they were talking made him afraid something had happened to you.'

    Michael, of course, could have gotten the wrong drift. And there were other possibilities. I recollected my conversation with Graeme on Saturday. I'd told him enough to make it clear I knew more than I was saying about the bombing. Graeme could have law-enforcement contacts. It would fit his polymorphous view of the world to be living outside conventional boundaries. But that wasn't the prospect that really troubled me as I sat there.

    'What?' June demanded. She'd detected something. Perhaps in my posture. Perhaps I'd slumped a bit. Eddgar too was staring.

    'Damn it all,' said Eddgar. 'At a time like this he's holding out on us. Lord. Lord! We're in this
deep,
Who'd you talk to, Seth?'

    When I told them what I'd said to Sonny, Eddgar groaned and held his head. June, too, had an excruciated expression.

    ‘I didn't say anything about you guys. I didn't tell her the plan. She just wanted to know how I was handling my parents. So I said the word, you know? I said, "Kidnapping." But it's not her. It's not possible. She'd never sell me out. Christ, her mother is Zora Milkowski. She grew up with nightmares of the FBI.'

    'Half those old Commies are Bureau agents now,' Eddgar said. 'Hoover keeps the CP in business.'

    'It's
not
Sonny.'

    Eddgar refused to accept that. And his doubts of course dented,

    if only slightly, my confidence in her. Maybe I'd scared her by seeming so far gone. Maybe she'd done what she thought was best for my sake.

    Eddgar paced to think. He and June talked a bit.

    'We aren't going to know,' he said at last. 'Not for certain. Perhaps it's your parents. Maybe it's Sonny or someone else. Or just the draft. But if we assume the worst,' Eddgar said, 'then the FBI will be right there when you pick up the money. They'll surveil the whole thing. They'll follow you until they're sure there's no explosive device, or that it's been deactivated, and then they'll take you down.'

    Eddgar described this prospect with arrogant certainty about the predictability of the police. I was sure there was a saying somewhere in
The Little Red Book
about knowing the enemy. In the meanwhile, I thought through what he'd said. I was trying to calm myself, to remain rational. The memory of Hobie, with his puffy, drugged-out look, up against the wall in that checkerboard hellhole, remained with me. And I was guilty about being indiscreet with Sonny. I felt obliged to find a way to go ahead.

    'So then I'll have to admit I was scamming, right? I'll say I needed the money to get to Canada. They're not going to bust me for kidnapping myself, right?'

    Eddgar considered me briefly. 'They
will
prosecute you for evading the draft. If the Bureau grabs you, you'll end up in the army. Or the slammer.'

    I had been oddly free of fear until that moment. Guilt and shame abounded, but I had, with certain obvious yearnings, followed the model of June and Eddgar, coldly working through the practicalities. Now I felt plain panic.

    'I'm out,' I said.

    'Wait,' said June. 'Wait. Are we looking at this the right way? We're overstating the risks. Seth, you've said from the start your parents wouldn't contact the law. So it's probably something else that brought the Effin' BI around. Even if we assume it's Sonny, they don't have any hard information. Right? Isn't that what you said? The guys who came out tonight have already gone home for the day. They'll work on it in the morning, if they have time. And even on the odd chance your parents did go to the FBI, we told them you'd pick up the money tomorrow. That's when the Bureau will set up.' June turned to Eddgar. 'Seth should fly to Las Vegas tonight.'

    'Fly? How am I going to afford that?'

    'Can you get hold of a credit card?' June asked me.

    'You mean someone else's?' At some point I was going to have to stop being easily shocked by June.

    'Too risky,' Eddgar said. 'Much too risky for Seth.'

    'Then suppose Seth doesn't pick up the money,' said June. 'What if it's someone else?'

    'We said I'd present my driver's license.'

    'So we get someone who fits your description,' she said. Photo IDs were still in their inception.

    'Like?'

    'How about Michael?' She looked to Eddgar for approval. 'Michael?' I asked. 'What does Michael want to get involved with this for?'

    'He needs a distraction,' said June dryly. I didn't have the courage to see how Eddgar absorbed that.

    'And what happens if they grab Michael?' I asked.

    'They won't draft him,' June said.

    'They'll hold him for kidnapping,' Eddgar said.

    No one said anything. June and I both watched Eddgar as the digits tumbled in his mind.

    'First,' said Eddgar, ‘I agree with June. The risk is minimal. Minimal. But we want none.' Between them, they began to debate how that could be accomplished. As they responded to each other, I was visited again by the sensation I'd had when I entered the room, that I was seeing something charged and private and vaguely perverse in actually witnessing the Eddgars in their moment of collaboration. Anyone else remained to some degree an intruder.

    The plan emerged by turns between them, traded back and forth. Michael would be told that the F BI was looking for me because of the draft and that the money in Las Vegas was needed to support me in Canada. He would know no more, and could say nothing if questioned. To protect him from kidnapping charges, in the unexpected event that anything went awry, I would go to Las Vegas with him. I would be seen in his company, a happy volunteer, on the same plane, at the same motel, the rental car counter. For my safety, though, I would observe the pickup from a distance, part of the giddy gambling throng in the Roman Coin's mammoth casino. If anything misfired, if the Bureau or hotel security or the Las Vegas police stepped in as he received the money, I would depart instantly, mix into the crowd, and go North. If worst came to worst, if Michael was held, I could call the FBI and my parents and explain what I needed to explain when I reached Canada.

    Even after this scheme was fully described, deliberated, quilted together between them, a strangled voice reared up in me. Crazy, it said, this is crazy.

    'It's an insane thing for Michael,' I said.

    'He'll do it,' said June. She stood up and ran her hands down her thighs to smooth her dress. Her face was harshly contained. 'I'll talk to him,' she said.

    When I got back to Robson's, the dinner rush was beginning. Sonny was behind the lunch counter, holding a coffeepot and flirting in a harmless way with an old guy in a flannel shirt, a heavyset man with rough skin. The hour and the needy way he savored her attention, like a flower turning toward the sun, made me think he was a widower. She touched his hand to still him when she saw me. My look appeared to alarm her. 'You fucked up,' I told her.