"Your house? This house belongs to me, and you know—"
"It may belong to you, but it's my legal residence, and as long as it is I determine who is welcome in it. Matt is my friend, and I won't have him insulted in my house. If he says he's telling you the truth, he's telling you the truth. Now, please leave."
Howard stood there, stunned. In his youth he had been all too familiar with being ordered around, but it had been quite a long time since anyone had done so, and even longer since someone had told him he couldn't have something once he had set his sights on it. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. Matt watched him, interested but not particularly afraid of what he would say next, while one phrase went around in his mind: Matt is my friend. Friend? Just what did she mean by that?
Andrea stood up and took Howard's hand.
"Howard, let's go," she said quietly. Matt thought she looked a little confused and conflicted. There had been a lot for her to absorb in the last hour, much more than for any of the rest of them. She needed time to think it all over. In the meantime she was shrewd enough to know nothing good could be accomplished here tonight by dragging out an unpleasant scene.
Howard seemed to realize that too, finally, and his posture gradually softened and he looked away from Matt and allowed himself to be led toward the door. But he couldn't resist a parting shot.
"You haven't heard the last of this," he said.
Matt stayed silent until they had gone. Then he stood and turned to Susan.
"Have I cost you your job here?" he asked. "Hah! Doesn't he wish?" She saw his uncomprehending look, and shook her head wearily. "I haven't filled you in on my wonderful life yet, have I? No, don't worry, I'm not angry, I was a lot more interested in hearing your story than telling mine. But I'm going to fall asleep right here on the carpet if I have to talk or listen any more tonight. We'll have to save the rest for tomorrow, okay?"
She looked away from him.
"There's a guest room at the end of the hall upstairs. Nobody's used it since I moved in—I don't have much of a life, outside of the park—so there are no sheets on the bed. I'll go up and—"
"It's not a problem, Susan. I've slept on much worse, believe me."
"You'll have to tell me all about it tomorrow." She suppressed a yawn. "Well, are you okay for tonight, then?"
Other than having a broken heart? "I'm fine," he said.
She moved to him a bit awkwardly and gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek, which hurt more than a punch in the nose. But she lingered for a moment and whispered in his ear.
"You were lying to Howard, weren't you?"
He kissed her cheek, and whispered, "Yes."
MATT stood for almost an hour by the luminous dial of the watch he had worn religiously since the first day of his release from the prison cell in New Jersey, something he had not done in his earlier life. The moment he hit the street he had been seized by a powerful desire to know what time it was, to always know what time it was. Eight weeks in a cell where the lights were never turned off could do that to you. It was a Seiko solar-powered radio chronometer with a stainless steel case and embedded electronics; you could drop it from the Resurrection Tower and run over it with a tank and it would still keep perfect time from the Naval Observatory atomic clock.
He spent the time doing what he often did when confronted by a situation he felt inadequate to deal with. He asked himself what the hero of a romantic comedy would do. He remembered Clark Gable erecting a sheet—the walls of Jericho, he called it—in a motel room, and assuring Claudette Colbert that the wall would not be breached, correctly following the mores of the 1930s. But it was Susan who had put up the sheet, hadn't she? And this wasn't the twentieth century.
What would a modern hero do? Probably never have gone meekly to the guest bedroom in the first place, Matt guessed. But if he did he sure wouldn't have slept there. He would have strode confidently down the hallway at some romantic hour of the night to his lover's room, opened the door, and she would either have been eagerly waiting for him or he would have slipped into her bed and she would have been pretending to be asleep, and then pretend to be overpowered. Both of them would have bright, witty, sexy things to say to each other. Rudolph Valentino would have ridden all night on his camel and sneaked into her tent and ravished her, even if she resisted at first.
Nevertheless, the wee hours of the morning found him making his way carefully over the plush carpeting, his heart throbbing in the back of his throat. What's the worst she could do? Scream and shout? Throw things? He'd slink back to his room, or even out the front door and into the night, humiliated, but at least aware of where he stood.
The door would be locked, he was sure.
It wasn't. It turned easily under his hand. Now the alarm will go off, he told himself. But it didn't. He pushed the door slowly open and a wedge of light gradually widened and fell across the king-sized bed, where the covers had been turned back. Susan was lying there on her side, nude, her back to him. She rolled over and sat up on one elbow, then swung her legs over the side and sat up, facing him.
"Took you long enough," she said.
"THERE seems to be so much we need to talk about," Matt said, later, "and I can't seem to think of a damn thing to say."
"I've visualized it many times," Susan said, as she nestled herself a little more snuggly under Matt's protective arm. "I saw myself screaming and shouting for, oh, hours and hours. Then kicking your miserable ass right out the door. Then crying all night long."
"Did I say I'm sorry yet?"
"I think you did. Several times. I was a bit too busy there for a while to listen very carefully."
"In case I didn't, I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be. In a way, it's a good thing Howard showed up when he did. Just listening to you tell it like you did explained so much. I wondered why you never contacted me but through those damn postcards. I had no idea you'd been arrested."
"I never was, actually."
"You know what I mean. Abducted? Kidnapped? Whatever you want the call the atrocity they put you through. I lost a lot of faith in America tonight." "You want to know something funny?" Matt said, and laughed quietly. "In a way, it made me feel better about this country."
"I am. Think about it. There are a lot of places where, if the government thought I knew something they just had to have... well, I'd still be in that cell, or a lot worse one, and they'd be torturing me every day. Lots of other places they might not torture me, or at least not much, but they'd never let me loose."
"I can't believe this."
"I've had five years to put it in perspective. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending it. It was wrong, it was immoral. Unconstitutional—though probably not illegal, if you can follow that reasoning. Bad form, poor sportsmanship, nasty and rotten and not fair, all of that. But I'm alive, and I'm out, and I never thought that would happen. Movies and books and television shows have convinced us of
that. What I found out is that some people in the government have some scruples."
"If you have a billionaire on your side," Susan snorted.
"There's that, that sure helped. I also don't doubt that even this NNSA has forms to fill out and oversight of some kind, a bureaucracy to answer to. Nobody operates with total impunity, everyone worries about a paper or electronic trail that may one day bring them in front of a congressional committee."
"Covering their asses."
"Don't knock it. There are lots of ways to cover your ass, but the best one is to not do the
crime."
Susan nestled herself back against his chest, nuzzled his neck.
"You've changed, Matt."
"Is that good, or bad?"
"It's just different. I think I like it. I think you've learned a lot."