“But if you just disappear, they’ll call the police, they’ll worry...”
“Then let me telephone.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said, thinking the doctors would talk sense into him. She wouldn’t at all mind having Grigor here, but what about his medicines? What about the entire hospital routine? Would he survive on his own, and for how long?
“Let me do it in private,” he said. “There is a telephone in the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
He walked there, with some help from Maria Elena, who saw to it he was more or less secure on the tall stool near the wall phone before she left the room, pulling the swing door closed.
In the front hall were Frank and Pami, getting ready to go out. At first, Maria Elena thought they intended to leave permanently, and something very like panic touched her, making her arms shiver with nervousness. “Frank?” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you going away?”
He grinned at her. “I’m not that easy to get rid of. Pami and me’re gonna go get some groceries. We kinda used everything up last night, didn’t we?”
It was true. The unexpected addition of three new people, and Grigor as well, had left Maria Elena with very little food in the house. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said, with a sudden rush of relief, knowing he didn’t after all mean to go away, at least not now, not yet. “I’ll make a list,” she offered. “I’d go with you, but Grigor...”
“No, that’s okay,” Frank told her, “we can handle it. And that’s good, you make a list. And tell us how to get to the store.”
She did all that, and he kissed her goodbye without awkwardness in front of Pami, and they left. Maria Elena stood in the living room near the sleeping Kwan and watched out the window as Frank and Pami got into his Toyota and drove away.
How extraordinary to have this house full of strangers all at once. To go from the loneliness of life with Jack — without Jack, really — to absolute solitude, and then all at once to this. In place of Jack’s aloof perfection, these imperfect people, sick, criminal, dying. But how much more alive to be among these dying than to be with Jack.
I don’t ever want them to go away, she thought, though she knew that death would be taking some of them very soon, no matter what.
Faintly she heard Grigor’s voice calling, and hurried out to the kitchen, half afraid he’d fallen, hurt himself, was in some sort of crisis she wouldn’t be able to handle. But he was still perched on the stool, leaning on the counter. He held out the phone, saying, “They want to talk to you. I told them I refuse to go back for at least a week.”
As she was taking the phone, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Don’t give them your address or phone number or anything.”
“All right.” Into the phone she said, “Hello?”
It was Dr. Fitch, one of the staff she’d gotten to know; an older man, calm and professional, with an orange and gray beard. He said, “Mrs. Auston?”
“Yes, Dr. Fitch, hello.”
“Are you a party to this, then?”
“Well, I guess I am.”
“Is Grigor right there?”
“Yes, he is.”
“All right, then,” said his professional voice. “You needn’t say anything, I’ll talk. Except that we could keep him physically much more comfortable than you possibly can, Grigor’s right about the hospital not being able to do him any good any more. Mrs. Auston, there’s no particular reason why he isn’t dead already. He may last a week, he may last a month. If he stays with you, the likelihood is he’ll die with you. Will you be able to handle that?”
“I think so,” she said, holding tight to the phone.
“I want you to write down some phone numbers,” he said. “If you need help, any time, for anything, call.”
“Thank you, I will.”
She wrote down on the pad by the phone the telephone numbers he gave her, and the over-the-counter medicines that might be symptomatic help if Grigor began to break apart in this way or in that way. He then urged her to urge Grigor to rethink this idea, saying, “He might go as long as two days without serious difficulty, but certainly no longer. Very soon it will become extremely uncomfortable there for both of you.”
“I understand.”
Grigor sat smiling with closed lips as she finished her phone conversation, then said, “We will pretend you told me everything he said you should tell me.”
“Good.”
“This afternoon,” he said, “we will go for a ride. You will show me things.”
“I’d like to,” Maria Elena said.
“And if there’s a tomorrow,” he said, with that compressed little smile, “we will do something else.”
When Frank came back with groceries, he was bouncing and fidgety with some kind of excitement. Grigor was back in the living room by then, seated on the sofa, watching Maria Elena help Kwan down a small amount of broth. Frank appeared in the doorway holding full plastic bags in both hands. “Grigor,” he said. “When we get this stuff put away, I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll stay right here,” Grigor promised.
Frank and Pami put the groceries away, and then returned to the living room, where Kwan was still sitting up, trying to drink. Frank sat on the sofa beside Grigor. He kept snapping his fingers while he talked, apparently unconsciously. He said, “Pami and I were talking in the car. Did I tell you about the five-million-dollar hit?”
When Grigor said no, Frank told him — and Maria Elena and Kwan — the lady lawyer’s advice. “She didn’t know it, but she was right,” he said. “The only way I’m gonna get out from under my own history is with the one big solid hit, and then quit. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what that hit is, and now I got it.”
Clearly, Grigor had no idea what Frank was talking about. Polite, nothing more, he said, “And it’s something you want to talk to me about?”
“You bet it is. You really want to get into that nuclear plant, like you said last night? No fooling?”
“No fooling,” Grigor said, sitting up, becoming more alert.
“And you studied that stuff,” Frank pressed him. “How to run them and all that.”
“I have read about them,” Grigor said. “No one person can run such a place, but I do know how it’s done. Some of the mathematics I wouldn’t be able to do, that’s all.”
Kwan clapped his hands to get their attention, and when they looked at him he grinned weakly and pointed at himself. Frank said, “You’re a math guy?”
Kwan nodded.
“And you want to be in on this?”
Kwan nodded, and waved an imaginary flag.
Grigor translated: “For propaganda, like me.”
“I don’t care what people’s reasons are,” Frank said, and asked Kwan, “You could definitely help Grigor, if he needed it?”
Again Kwan nodded.
Grigor said, “Frank, I don’t understand what your reasons are. You want to invade that plant?”
“You bet,” Frank told him. “All I have to figure out is how to pick up the money.”
“What money, Frank?”
“The money they’ll pay us,” Frank said, “to give them back their nuclear power plant, undamaged. You do your joke, whatever you want, just so I can do my thing.”
Pami, twisted mouth and scrawny voice, eyes full of leftover anger, said, “Frank and me, we gonna kidnap the plant.”
“Hold it hostage,” Frank said. “For a five-mil ransom.”
Maria Elena had been sitting near Kwan. Now she stood up, looking and sounding scared, saying, “Frank, are you sure? That’s so public, so dangerous. What if you’re caught?”