The motel had cable, and cable had a semi-dirty movie about a kid comes home from college to his house in Beverly Hills and there’s nobody there but the new Swedish maid. Sure. “I’ll give you fifty-seven thousand dollars,” Frank told the set, “for every time that happened in real life.”
Somewhere in through there he fell asleep, and when the knock came at the motel door, waking him, there was a black-and-white war movie on instead. He switched it off, readjusted the towel around his middle, and let in a black kid carrying the pizza in a box and wearing a cap with the pizza store’s name on it. He gave the kid a whole lot of money for one lousy pizza, and then when he opened it the smell was too strong. He shut the box and went back to bed and lay there awake, thinking.
The pattern had changed. That was what had happened today, he’d gone through the looking glass like Alice, he was on the other side now, and the pattern was completely different.
The lawyer lady had talked about the pattern, had talked about the rubber band attached to his back with the other end still in his cell, and all along he’d known she was right. He’d known it would happen again. He’d be out for a while and then he’d fuck up and then he’d be back in, the same old pattern, over and over, world without end, amen.
No more. World with end. The law would surely find some way to tie him to the robbery of the old man and the shooting of fat slob Joey. He didn’t know exactly what it would be, fingerprints or saliva or threads from his coat or some damn thing, but something would lash him tight to that robbery-and-murder.
Frank had an almost religious respect for the forensic scientists who worked with the authorities. He believed they were omniscient and omnipotent and damn near omnipresent. And that meant, if the law ever got its hands on Frank Hillfen again, they would drape that robbery-and-murder around his neck, and he’d be gone.
I can’t go back, he thought. Not this time. That’s the change, that’s what’s different now. Now I can’t go back.
I need Mary Ann Kelleny’s five-mil job. The big one.
Hardly dunking about it, Frank got up and ate half the pizza, washing it down with cold water from the sink. The five-mil job. What would it look like?
Ananayel
Fantastic! He did all that on his own! I didn’t influence the proceedings in any way, I haven’t even had contact with Frank Hillfen since Mary Ann Kelleny gave him the ride to Omaha. (Isn’t it touching how he saves that business card? There’s something really very sweet and vulnerable about Frank. Hopelessly self-destructive, of course — of course! — but endearing, like a flea-ridden dog.)
And he surely remembered what Mary Ann Kelleny had to say to him, didn’t he? And he made a mess of things absolutely on his own and without my help. He made himself ready so fast I don’t even have the others in position yet.
Susan is still seeing Grigor Basmyonov sometimes, though less often than before. But she still phones him during the week when Andy Harbinger has monopolized her weekend. I’m afraid a vegetable love isn’t enough to distract Susan completely from Grigor. I’m afraid we’re going to have to become more deeply involved with one another.
But why should this affect me so strongly? When adrift, of course, when in my usual self, I still am my usual self, calm and obedient, but when in Andy’s body I find myself increasingly nervous, expectant, apprehensive. As though there were things to be learned. Things to be learned? From Susan Carrigan?
21
There was a special on PBS that night about efforts being made to preserve the artistic heritage of civilization, the struggle against everything from acid rain to mindless looting, and a little puff piece in the paper mentioned that the International Society for Cultural Preservation would be prominently featured on the program. From the bank, that morning, Susan called Andy up at Columbia — he taught sociology up there — and left a message with the faculty secretary, as she had done before. He called back half an hour later, and she invited him to come watch the program with her. “The organization it’s about is the one where I met Grigor, in Moscow. Remember the cocktail party I told you about?”
“Sure. What time’s it on?”
“Nine o’clock. I’ll make dinner, we can eat before.”
“White or red?”
Meaning the color of the wine he should bring. “You decide,” she said. “I’ll make chicken.”
Buying the chicken and the new potatoes and the baby green beans and the three kinds of lettuce on her way home from the bank, Susan found herself betting Andy would bring white wine, given that choice. Because it was bloodless.
Immediately she rejected that thought, angry at herself. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, so denigrating, knew she should be grateful she’d found a man happy to give her companionship without making demands, but then sometimes she couldn’t help wondering why it was supposed to be such a big deal to be around a person who never made demands. Maybe she wanted demands. Maybe she should demand demands.
She grinned at herself over the lettuce bins, and a guy smirked at her and said, “You’re beautiful when you smile,” and she turned her back on him, heading for the cashier.
When Andy arrived, just after seven-thirty, he was carrying a brown paper bag up against his left side, and used his right arm to bring her close and kiss her cheek. How pretty he is, she thought yet again. He always surprised her with how good-looking he was, as though his appearance faded slightly every time they were apart.
“A treat tonight,” he said, and reached into the bag, and brought out a bottle of French red wine; good stuff, from the look of it. “For dinner,” he told her, as she took it.
So she’d been wrong. “Great,” she said, looking at the label.
“And,” he said, full of repressed excitement, “this is for now!” And out of the bag came a bottle of champagne.
“Why, Andy!” she said. “You surprise me!”
His smile bubbled over with delight. “I hope to,” he said.
There’s something about knowing you’re going to, but you haven’t yet, nobody’s even made a move or a suggestion or a hint yet, and yet you both know it’s going to happen, this time it’s going to happen; there’s something delicious in those last moments before you fall into one another’s arms.
Susan couldn’t remember when it was exactly that she’d known, whether it was when he’d brought out the red wine, or not until he’d shown her the champagne, but somewhere in there she’d understood that he’d made a decision. And that she agreed with it.
How will he do it? she wondered. He always seems so confident, but we’ve really known one another a while now with no moves at all, so what does that mean?
And how will I do? Will I be a klutz? One or two incidents in her life when she’d been a klutz came into her mind, keeping her edgy, but over the edginess was the knowledge that it was going to happen.
And tonight he didn’t at all do that sort of fading-out thing that happened with him sometimes when they were watching a movie or TV. He would be there with her, and then a kind of glaze would come over him, his eyes became dull, his face less expressive. It was as though he were taking a nap, asleep with his eyes open, but somehow it was more than that. Once, in a movie theater, she’d touched the back of his hand when he was like that, and it was so cold it frightened her. But then he’d responded immediately to her touch — he always responded immediately from the fading-out thing, if his attention was called on — and when he’d used the same hand a minute later to pat the back of her hand it was no longer cold. Had she imagined the coldness? She didn’t believe it, but she’d been reluctant to find out for sure. Since then, if she saw him fading out, she’d speak to him but not touch.