Eric looked around his living room—familiar surroundings to him, alien ones to Jan, but, yes, doubtless recallable by Nikki Van Hausen even though she’d never been here. It was easy to forget that the intimate way he knew Jan was echoed by the way Nikki knew him.
But it wasn’t the same, God damn it. It wasn’t. Nikki was a complete stranger to him, just as he was to her. Oh, sure, it was probably interesting to her in an abstract way that she had someone else’s memories, but there was no emotional connection between him and her.
“Sweetheart,” said Eric—and a memory, or rather a lack of a memory, hit him; Tony had never called Jan that, or any other term of endearment. He went on: “It’s okay. We never have to see her again, or even think about her.”
But Jan shook her head once more. “She knows—or will know—what you just said. And she’ll resent it—she’ll think you’re insulting her. Don’t you see? She’s got the same level of access to you that you have to me; she can’t help but be fascinated by your life.”
“I’m sure she just wants to get on with her own,” Eric said.
“Just like you did?” Jan replied, looking at him across the intervening coffee table.
“It’s different,” he said again.
“I don’t know,” Jan said sadly.
“Just don’t think about it,” Eric said. “As one of my favorite writers once said, ‘Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.’ ”
“I don’t think I can ignore this.”
He hesitated for a moment, then got up, crossed over to her, perched himself on the wide padded arm of the chair, and reached to stroke her tattooed shoulder. But she flinched, and he stopped.
After a moment, she rose and walked out of the living room, heading to the second bedroom, the one that was there for when Quentin visited, leaving Eric wondering at what point in the future—the next day, the next week, the next year, the next decade—Nikki Van Hausen would recall what him having his heart broken felt like.
Chapter 39
Under normal circumstances, Bessie Stilwell might have wished to spend more time in Los Angeles. She’d always wanted to see the Walk of Fame, and find the stars there for Cary Grant and Christopher Plummer and James Dean. And it certainly was nice to be somewhere warm after Washington. But her son was still in the hospital, and although she’d seen him first thing this morning before she and Darryl had flown here, she needed to get back, to be there for him.
They left the TV studio and headed straight for the Los Angeles Air Force Base. Bessie was put in a secure waiting room, with two uniformed Air Force guards standing outside the door, while Darryl went off to speak to the base commander. She lowered herself slowly, painfully, onto a wooden seat and picked up a magazine off a table—but the type was much too small for her to read.
At last, Agent Hudkins returned. “Okay, ma’am,” he said. “Everything’s set. I’m sorry we have to make two big flights in one day.”
“That’s all right,” Bessie said. “I need to get back to my son, anyway.”
“Yes, ma’am. Shall we go?”
Janis was lying on the bed in the guest room, in a fetal position, her eyes closed, thinking about what she’d done. Part of her was elated at having left Tony. And part of her was terrified, wondering what the future held.
And, of course, there were the memories of Josh Latimer being shot. They were still vivid, but they weren’t real anymore; they felt like any memory felt, with no sense that the thing was happening again right now. The soldier she’d met today, Kadeem Adams, had post-traumatic stress disorder; his flashbacks felt like the horrific things were really happening again. But, thankfully, it seemed Jan wasn’t going to be experiencing that immediacy every time she recalled Josh being shot.
“Jan…?” Eric’s voice, not much above a whisper—the kind of tentative uttering of a name one uses when testing if someone is asleep.
She opened her eyes. He was silhouetted in the doorway, a thin, bald man, leaning against the jamb. “Hmmm?” she said.
“Dr. Griffin called. There’s going to be a press conference about Jerrison’s condition at 4:00 P.M. He wants me to be part of it.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Do you want to come?”
“How long will it take?”
“Could be a couple of hours. He wants us all to go over what we’re going to say first, before we face the reporters.”
She hadn’t been part of the surgery. “Can I stay here?”
“Of course,” and although he didn’t say it, she heard in his tone and was grateful for it, “For as long as you like.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I’m going to head out. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. You like Chinese.” She’d never told him that, but he knew. “There’s some leftover kung pao chicken.”
“Thanks.”
Jan soon heard him leave the apartment. She lay there a while longer, hugging her knees, but at last she got up, left Quentin’s bedroom, and headed into the living room.
The furniture was nicer than any she’d ever owned; everything in her place had been named for some damn Swedish lake or river and had been assembled with an Allen key. But this stuff—the coffee table, the bookcases, the cabinets, all in what she guessed was cherrywood—was expensive.
Besides numerous hardcover books—a luxury Tony had never let her buy—there were objects on the bookshelves: an Eskimo soapstone carving of a bird, a quill pen, a bronze medallion with the word “Champ” engraved into it, a white marble chess piece. Each of them doubtless had a story behind it—they were keepsakes, mementos—but they meant nothing to her.
But there was someone beside Eric who could tell the story behind each one: Nikki Van Hausen.
It was a distinctive-enough name, Jan thought, although, if she were married, it might be her husband’s first name that was in the phone book.
Jan exhaled noisily. If she were married. This Nikki woman knew everything about Eric, but Jan didn’t know even the most basic facts about Nikki.
She went into Eric’s office. He had a MacBook Air sitting on a glass-topped workstation, with a Safari browser window open. She typed “Nicky Van Hausen” into Google, but that produced too many hits to be useful. But adding “real estate” to the string quickly turned up pay dirt, thanks to Google’s offering the correct spelling of the first name: her website, but also, Jan was surprised to see, an article from this morning’s Washington Post. Upon getting word of the memory linkages that had occurred at LT, a clever reporter had interviewed Nikki, since she remembered the operation as clearly as Eric himself did.
Her website—which offered “2% commissions” and “free home appraisals”—gave her phone number. Jan picked up the handset in this room, then set it back down; she didn’t want the Caller ID to show Eric’s name. She went to the marble entryway, got her purse, dug out her cell—and saw that she had four voice messages from Tony. She shuddered, ignored them, and placed the call.
“Nikki Van Hausen Realty,” said a perky voice.
“Is this—” Christ, she still didn’t know if it was Miss or Mrs. “Um, is this Nikki?”
“Speaking.”
“Nikki, this is Janis Falconi.”
There was silence for three or four seconds. “Oh.”
“I need to talk to you,” Jan said.
“What about?”
Jan’s turn to hesitate. “Sharing Eric’s memories.”
“Look, about that article, I didn’t—”