Driving is conducive to conversation, but Fried rarely speaks. Jack endures his silent profile across the monotonous miles … Niagara Falls, the Botanical Gardens, the greenhouse at Storybook Gardens; an outing one or two afternoons a week, even dinner and a Leafs game in Toronto one night — he told Mimi he was at a function at the university. Tim Horton was in fine form and Gordie Howe at the top of his game; it might have been fun, but Fried is a dull date and Jack wished bitterly that he were there with his son instead. He provided play-by-play commentary worthy of Dick Irvin, while Fried watched his first hockey game with the rapt attention of an iguana. It was impossible to know whether or not he was enjoying himself. On the drive back to London, Fried said, “I keep this car.” “I beg your pardon?” “You borrow this car to me.” “No sir, I’m sorry.” And Fried’s silence deepened.
Fried puts away a bottle of wine, tucks into a New York strip, but nothing loosens his tongue. Jack picks up the tab — Fried seems not to carry money. And he never fails to place his grocery order over the phone, so that Jack invariably arrives at the apartment laden with bags. Cognac, fresh pouch of tobacco … it adds up.
Simon has reimbursed him, but Jack was faced with a short-term quandary that Simon could not have foreseen: Jack’s salary is deposited directly into the bank by the station accounts officer, and he and Mimi have a joint account. Not every married couple has one but every true partnership does, and that’s what Jack and Mimi have. For Jack to spend close to a hundred unaccounted-for dollars would raise a question in Mimi’s mind.
He got around this hitch by asking the flight lieutenant in the accounts office for an advance. Not unusual, not questioned. Not a problem. A week later Simon wired him the money, and Jack was able to deposit it in his bank on the same day as the rest of his pay. But when Mimi was reconciling the accounts two weeks later, at the dining-room table — he is the MBA, but she is the chief financial officer at home — she looked up and asked why there were two deposits on the same day adding up to his usual pay. He told her the accounts officer had made a mistake — shortchanged him by a hundred, then corrected it. She accepted that, and why should she not?
But it didn’t sit well with him.
When he came home from his first afternoon with Fried, he was speechless when his wife inquired over supper what he had been doing at Storybook Gardens. How did she know? Had she been in London? Had she seen him with Fried? He felt his face flush. She answered his question before he could ask. It turned out there was a wretched sticker on the rear bumper of his car. Black silhouette of a castle turret against a bright yellow background. He hadn’t noticed it when he returned to the parking lot, having waited while Fried stood silently, endlessly, before a series of potted plants in the greenhouse. He told Mimi he had grabbed a sandwich and gone there to stretch his legs between meetings. She didn’t question him, and her subsequent behaviour betrayed no suspicion. And why would she be suspicious?
Yet Jack is annoyed to have felt himself squirm guiltily at his own supper table. It didn’t feel like a “tactical” lie, it simply felt … shabby. He’s angry at Oskar Fried for steadfastly refusing to visit his home, to get over the clandestine nonsense and meet his family under a plausible and congenial cover so that Jack can reasonably be seen to be helping the man out from time to time. To “normalize relations.” He has considered confiding in Mimi but that would mean clearing it with Simon first, and he’d feel like a damn fool asking Simon permission to tell his wife because he’s feeling like a sneaky schoolboy. And Mimi should not have to worry about a Soviet defector on the run from the KGB — not after what they’ve all just been through with Cuba.
He has drawn the line at weekends and his work isn’t suffering, but he missed his son’s first hockey game of the season. When he went to Winnipeg for his meeting with the AOC of Training Command, he was relieved — four whole days without a call from Fried. Without a grocery list, or a lie. He was no one’s servant. No one’s chauffeur.
Scientists are supposed to be curious. Fried has not asked Jack a single question about his work or life in North America, beyond bare utilitarian queries. Jack feels invisible. He reflects on the brief paragraph he read about scientific employees. Non-social, non-participative. He has begun to smell something unpleasant in Fried’s manner. What at first seemed like fear has resolved into something resembling arrogance. Perhaps it’s mere resentment or frustration at having spent so many years in grinding servitude to the Soviet system. Perhaps the poor bastard is incapable of happiness. Jack reminds himself that Fried is a rocket scientist, not a candidate for Miss Congeniality.
But if only he would talk about bloody rockets, even in the most general terms. Jack asked him about USAF but all Fried said was, “I prefer NASA.” Jack was momentarily uplifted — here was a scientist who dreamt of working with the civilian space agency, a purist with his heart set on sending a man to the moon because it was there. But that was short-lived. Jack couldn’t pry another word from him on the subject. When Simon told him that he would be acting as a “housekeeping agent,” Jack had not realized he meant it literally. What did you do in the Cold War, Daddy? I delivered groceries.
Throughout November, Jack juggles family, work, and Fried on the side. He begins to tire, not so much from the activity as from the petty lies. They leave a residue. When Mimi massages the back of his neck out of sympathy for his extra workload in the evenings, he is unable to give in to her soothing touch. Again he feels vaguely guilty. Yet it’s not as though he’s transgressing in any way — not as though he’s having an affair. Still, he is aware of fulfilling every condition necessary for the conduct of an affair — all the trouble and none of the perks. That last thought is unworthy of him, and he resents its intrusion.
Being as adept an observer of his own behaviour as he is of others’, he is aware that his thought process has changed. He knows he is creating grooves and patterns, pathways of deceit that he has sworn to use once only and only for this purpose — yet the pathways will remain. How long before they are grown over with grass and disappear? He shrugs it off by diagnosing himself as perfectly healthy. A normal man with a decent conscience. He simply does not enjoy lying to his wife.
Finally Jack hits on a partial solution: television. He tells Simon that Fried could use one, if only to improve his English, not to mention mitigate the loneliness. He doesn’t mention that Fried seems as self-sufficient as his orchids — except in the area of transport. Simon wires the money and Jack delivers a new RCA Victor to Fried, who carefully untwines an orchid from the rabbit ears. Jack leaves him watching The Beverly Hillbillies, as impassive as ever. “See ya, Oskar, call if you need anything.” Jack smiles to himself as he pulls the door closed. Fried has not even bothered to get up and slide the deadbolt behind him.
The phone rings after midnight. Mimi gets downstairs before he does. He asks who it was but she doesn’t know. “They hung up.” It rings again. Jack grabs it and tells Oskar Fried he has the wrong number. Then he tells his wife, “That’s it for me, I’m wide awake. Think I’ll stroll around the block.”
“At this hour?”
“Sure. Nice and peaceful.”