“Felker took the tour with Ranger Nguyen seven times a day and asked her many questions afterwards. Was there a stamp tax on stamps or just on tea? Why was it One If by Land and Two If by Sea? Didn’t the redcoats come by river, which is neither? He asked his questions and she answered brightly, missing part of her lunch hour. It pleased her to be quizzed on her beloved subject and he thought up new tough questions to please her further. She went back to work after lunch and he was there again. This went on for several days and after work one night he was waiting by her car.
“He said, ‘I am here to protect you, Miss Nguyen.’
“She became afraid. He followed her to Cambridge in his car, staying very close. He stood outside her apartment building and was still there in the morning. He followed her to work, staying very close. He took her tour again, again, again, asking no questions now, watching the crowd, as he had been trained to do at Beltsville long ago. He followed her to lunch and home again that night. She called the cops and they arrived, two meatheads in a cruiser. Felker flashed his creds and said he was a fed working on a case. The cops looked at him and saw a guy who looked exactly like a fed. They looked at Nguyen and saw a somewhat strung-out gook. They said, ‘Have a good one, Agent,’ and got in their car. Nguyen, by now a weeping mess, called her dad in Baton Rogue. Her father called an army buddy from the war. I’m not sure which army they were buddies in. I’m assuming it was ours, I mean theirs — our theirs, if you know what I mean. The father’s army buddy owned a string of Boston pizzerias. The pizzeria owner also owned a nickel-plated. forty-five, not the Double Eagle, but the next Colt up the line, I think it’s called the Binding Arbitrator. He crept into the parking lot of Nguyen’s building. Felker stood alone by the entryway, faithfully on post. The army buddy came around the dumpster, shouting at Felker to leave the girl alone. Felker saw him, saw the gun, and shouted something very similar. The army buddy fired, hit Felker in the chest. As they loaded Felker into the ambulance, Ranger Nguyen was beside herself, covered in his blood.”
Gretchen and Tashmo were standing at the door to Gretchen’s room. Gretchen knocked once, quietly. Tashmo saw the knob turn from inside.
“Why did you tell me all of this?” he asked.
“Because she wants to see you one last time.”
The balconies on Gretchen’s side of the inn looked across the parking lot at a river pier. It was a cold night by the ocean and Tashmo felt the cold, leaning against the railing, hands and wrists dangling over. Lydia Felker was standing at the end of the balcony, six feet away, as far away as she could be without jumping.
“Lloyd’s dead,” she said, “and I accept it, and though I accept that most of what he told me toward the end was imaginary, I think that it was true in a different way. Ted and Fred and Ned, the battle over parking spaces — I think we could spend the rest of our lives decoding what he meant.”
She was older. She was gray and shorter, which Tashmo knew was a certain filling out around the midriff, which looked like shorter on a woman. He saw troopers smoking in the street. This made him think of smoking, which made him think of sex, which made him think fleetingly of butter.
“We’ll be fine, me and the boy,” Lydia said. “Your Director has promised to see about Lloyd’s line-of-duty pension, and there’s always my residuals. They rerun my Cannons, my two-part Harry O. Seventies crime drama is in vogue again on cable. The college kids just love it, the ties, the Fords, the facial hair. I get puppy-dog e-mails from sophomores at Caltech saying, ‘You are the greatest frightened witness ever.’ They ask me on dates, like I’m still the girl I was on television. So innocent, these kids. They ask me for a lock of hair. It’s like something from a Brontë sisters novel — a lock of hair, a token, a remembrance. It’s touching, this innocence, so I pluck a hair for them, dye it, and send it along with a form letter I’ve developed. Did you ever love me, Tashmo? Tell me, yes or no.”
“No,” he said.
“You’re a coward to deny it. Remember the day it rained at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? You tried to dump me that day, but I was undumpable. Remember Reagan at his ranch and you so sexy with your saddle sores? Remember the trailer on the beach? We made love and scrambled eggs. Then Reagan went to the Hilton, dragging you and Lloyd to a rendezvous with Hinckley. I know you loved me in the trailer. Tashmo, tell the truth.”
Helplessly he said, “What difference does it make?”
“I conceived a son the night we scrambled eggs. I named him Jasper Jason Felker, and we raised him together, Lloyd and I, and he has been nothing but a source of total joy since the first morning he made me puke from the womb, through pregnancy and birth and babyhood. Even his sullen adolescence was a gift to us. Jasper is a brilliant, soulful boy, an artist and a vagabond, and we loved him, Lloyd and I, and he is your son.”
She was an actress. This was the first thing Tashmo told himself.
He said, “I thought you used protection.”
“Ironic, no? It’s always the small flaw which leads us, unwillingly, to something wonderful.”
“Did you tell Lloyd?”
“How could I tell Lloyd that you — of all people, you—had betrayed him? Lloyd admired only two men in the world: you and Ronald Reagan. He thought you and Reagan were the same, or similar, as pets resemble masters. He said you and Reagan had an easy way of living. He meant this as a compliment. He said it was an admirable knack. He always said, ‘Sure, intelligence and a glimmer of selfknowledge are attractive in a person, but there’s something to be said for simply living. Cowboy Tashmo simply lives.’ I think he always wished that he would someday find a way to escape his brain and simply live. No, I couldn’t tell him, not for many years. I waited until Jasper was a man. Then I told Lloyd about you and me, and he took it beautifully, as I knew he would. He said he didn’t care. He said a father is someone who’s around. He said he was at peace with his achievements. Then he quit the Plans Department or whatever you call it, and after that — well, we know what happened. Gretchen says he left the detail and walked into a flood. Did you see him when he did it? Was he happy? I think he was happy, Tash. He was simply living. Step outside the Dome. Step into the glorious and accidental world.”
“Did you tell the kid?”
“No, and I don’t plan to. Jasper shouldn’t lose his father twice.”
The river slid by.
Lydia said, “Jasper’s waiting in the Windstar.”
The Ford Windstar minivan was parked in the turnaround outside the Governor Weare. Tashmo paused, one hand on the door, looking back at the women on the curb. Lydia looked exultant. Gretchen, next to her, looked merely hard.
Tashmo climbed in the front seat.
Jasper Felker sat in back, strumming a guitar, listening to a CD through earphones. The CD was called Learn to Play Guitar.
Tashmo said, “They call me Tashmo. Your father was my best friend a long time ago. I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sick about it. And I want you to know that if you ever need to talk to someone — to a guy, an older guy, someone of your father’s generation, I’d be honored to be that guy for you. I can’t replace your father, Jasper. No one can. But maybe, I don’t know, you might feel the need one day to hash out some life problem with a man of the world, and I want you to know that you can always count on me.”
Jasper took the earphones off. “What’s your name again?”