“I don’t know, maybe I have. I suppose I have. Because now it’s real, he means it’s real, it’s going to happen.”
“He’s the organizer you told me about on Monday.”
It always surprised and pleased her when he remembered the things she told him. He had other patients, he was being paid to listen to her, he didn’t have to remember, but he did. “Yes, he is,” she said. “He came up from Puerto Rico.”
“Has he met with Stan?”
“Stan took him out to the base today. That’s why I’m late.”
“Perhaps this man will decide the job is too difficult. Perhaps he’ll tell Stan it can’t be done.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “They’ll do it,” she said. “I know they will. I can see it in all their eyes.”
“The new man, too?”
“Him especially.”
“What do you see in his eyes?”
“I don’t know, it’s — it’s hard to explain. That he’s going to do it, that nothing will stop him from doing it.”
“Hmmmm. When do they plan it for?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it would be a payday, wouldn’t it? Or the day before. When does the Air Force pay again?”
“The fifteenth. Next Tuesday.”
“Four days from now,” he said. “Can they get ready that quickly?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I remember, with Marty, it always took a week or two, sometimes more. They don’t even have all the men yet. Marty said it would take more than just the three of them.”
“So it would probably be the payday after next,” Dr. Godden said. “The first of October. Let me see, that’s a Thursday. Three weeks from yesterday. They probably won’t want to stay around this area much longer than that. That is, if you’re right and they really intend to do it.”
“They’ll do it,” she said, in the tone of voice she might have used to say, everybody dies.
“We have three weeks to find out,” Dr. Godden said. “But if it’s still in such early stages, I don’t think you can really be as sure as you are. You know what I think it is?”
“The same old thing,” she said, smiling a bit shyly at the pattern in the carpet, knowing what he was going to say.
“You tell me,” he said, urging her gently.
“It’s the feeling of being undeserving,” she said. “The feeling that I don’t deserve to have anything good, so I won’t get anything good. I’m sure they’ll do it because I’m sure they’ll get caught and then I won’t have Stan. Because I don’t deserve Stan.” She sneaked a quick look at him, saw his sympathetic face, his balding head gleaming in the light. Looking quickly back at the carpet she said, “I know that’s part of it. But that isn’t the whole thing. I mean, Marty did get caught.”
“Once,” Dr. Godden said. “And how many times did he commit robberies and not get caught?”
“Oh, lots,” she said. She was no longer amazed at how easily she could talk with Dr. Godden about robberies and criminals. It was almost as though he were a priest; different, but sympathetic, never judging, never condemning, never trying to force her to conform to what society might want. How many people could she talk to about Marty, be truthful, tell them her ex-husband was a robber, it was his profession? Most people would be shocked, they’d want to call the police or at least to stop having anything to do with her. But Dr. Godden took everything just the same; calm and understanding and without judging. She could talk to him about anything, about sex or Marty or her parents or anything at all and it was never a problem.
Now, calm as ever, Dr. Godden was saying, “Then there’s no reason to believe they’ll be caught this time. After all, Stan is the only one among them who isn’t a professional at this sort of thing.”
“But even if they don’t get caught this time,” she said, exploring her fear further now, “it won’t be any good. Stan will want to do it again, he’ll want to become like Marty. Or like the other man, Parker.”
“I see,” Dr. Godden said. “You’re afraid Stan will turn out to be your first husband again.”
She nodded rapidly, frowning at the rug.
“That’s a not unusual fear among girls in your situation,” Dr. Godden said. “But frankly, from what you’ve told me of Stan I think it more likely one taste of that sort of life will be more than enough for him. Who knows, the experience might be good for him, he might come out of it much more likely husband material than he went in.”
It was wonderful how Dr. Godden always found a calmer way to look at things, a more pleasant way. And a lot of the time his way turned out to be right, and all her fears and doubts and premonitions turned out to be nothing but the old insecurity again, the old inadequacy and unworthiness.
“I guess,” she said hesitantly, “I guess the only thing we can do now is wait.”
“That’s all,” agreed Dr. Godden.
2
Stan took a shot of the vault, peeled the print out of the back of the camera, saw it had come out as well as the rest, and strolled on back to his desk. He tucked the photo into the envelope in his center drawer with the rest, put the camera back in the side drawer, and was typing away like sixty when Lieutenant Wormley came back in from the head.
“Don’t work so hard,” Wormley said on his way by. “It’s only Saturday.”
“Yes, sir,” said Stan. Wormley was a fuzzy-faced chinless wonder, an ROTC second lieutenant two years younger than Stan. He continued on down the rows of desks now, went into his own glass-enclosed cubicle next to Major Creighton’s office, and buried his face again in Scientific American. Stan had taken all his pictures except the vault shot while Wormley was lost strayed or stolen inside that magazine.
Sergeant Novato had been tougher to work around. A tough, compact little man who’d never expected assignment anywhere that required brainwork, he took the tasks of this office a hell of a lot more seriously than anybody else, and on the Saturdays when he was on duty he got more accomplished than most people did in a full eight-hour weekday. But it was his very busyness that had helped Stan to shoot around him. When Novato was bouncing around the files, in and out of one drawer after another, pulling this file, Putting that file back, Stan got his pictures of the other end of the office. And when Novato was down there, absorbed in arithmetic at his desk, Stan took his pictures in the other direction.
He’d already taken care of the exterior shots and the staircase on the way in, and the shot of the vault through the window of Major Creighton’s office finished the pictures he wanted from here. So now all he had to do was wait for twelve o’clock — another interminable forty-five minutes away — and then drive around the base a little to get the rest of the pictures Parker wanted. He’d be home by one-thirty at the latest.
It was a good thing Lanz had gone along with the switch. Otherwise it would have been tough to get these pictures for Parker. But Lanz had been happy to switch Saturdays with Stan — just to put off his own duty day — so here he was, and the pictures were done.
Nobody seemed to know why the Saturday morning skeleton staff was required, but then nobody seemed to know why the Air Force wanted almost anything done the way they did. It was just a fact of life, that’s all; on Saturday mornings one officer, one non-com and one airman had to be on duty from eight till noon. It was less trouble on the lower ranks than on the officers and non-coms, since there were more airmen to divvy up the duty among themselves, but it was still an occasional pain in the ass.
Stan’s next duty wasn’t scheduled for another five weeks, but Jerry Lanz had agreed to switch with him, and the two other people on duty this morning had turned out, in their separate ways, to be perfect for what Stan had in mind. He’d done a small amount of typing, a large amount of picture-taking, and all in all he considered the morning, unlike most of these stinking Saturdays, well spent.