“Show me the paper.”
“Sure.” Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word “fake” meant nothing really, since the word “authentic” meant nothing really.
“A Colt .44 is a Colt .44,” he called to the girl as he hurried back into the living room. “It has to do with bore and design, not when it was made. It has to do with—”
She held out her hand. He gave her the document.
“So it is genuine,” she said finally.
“Yes. This one.” He picked up the lighter with the long scratch across its side.
“I think I’d like to go now,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again some other evening.” She set down the document and lighter and moved toward the bedroom, where her clothes were.
“Why?” he shouted in agitation, following after her.
“You know it’s perfectly safe; my wife won’t be back for weeks—I explained the whole situation to you. A detached retina.”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
Rita said, “Please call a pedecab for me. While I dress.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he said grumpily.
She dressed, and then, while he got her coat from the closet, she wandered silently about the apartment. She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed. The past makes people sad, he realized. Damn it; why did I have to bring it up? But hell, she’s so young—I thought she’d hardly know the name.
At the bookcase she knelt. “Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.
Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover. Novel. “No,” he said. “My wife got that. She reads a lot.”
“You should read it.”
Still feeling disappointed, he grabbed the book, glanced at it. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “Isn’t this one of those banned-in-Boston books?” he said.
“Banned through the United States. And in Europe, of course.” She had gone to the hall door and stood there now, waiting.
“I’ve heard of this Hawthorne Abendsen.” But actually he had not. All he could recall about the book was—what? That it was very popular right now. Another fad. Another mass craze. He bent down and stuck it back in the shelf. “I don’t have time to read popular fiction. I’m too busy with work.” Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they’re afraid of. But of course really crave.
“One of those love stories,” he said as he sullenly opened the hall door.
“No,” she said. “A story about war.” As they walked down the hail to the elevator she said, “He says the same thing. As my mother and dad.”
“Who? That Abbotson?”
“That’s his theory. If Joe Zangara had missed him, he would have pulled America out of the Depression and armed it so that—” She broke off. They had arrived at the elevator, and other people were waiting.
Later, as they drove through the nocturnal traffic in Wyndam-Matson’s Mercedes-Benz, she resumed.
“Abendsen’s theory is that Roosevelt would have been a terribly strong President. As strong as Lincoln. He showed it in the year he was President, all those measures he introduced. The book is fiction. I mean, it’s in novel form. Roosevelt isn’t assassinated in Miami; he goes on and is reelected in 1936, so he’s President until 1940, until during the war. Don’t you see? He’s still President when Germany attacks England and France and Poland. And he sees all that. He makes America strong. Garner was a really awful President. A lot of what happened was his fault. And then in 1940, instead of Bricker, a Democrat would have been elected—”