“No.” He cleared his throat. “No, honey. Just a job.” Gently he removed the newspaper from her side, poked it in half and tried to find something else to read.
“Joey,” she said. She reached across the tablecloth suddenly and covered his hand. “I know you. And I know I shouldn’t have let you take this job, not this one.”
He looked up and was surprised and strangely moved to see her clear brown eyes glistening. As he forced his shoulders to shrug and his mouth to smile, she placed her other hand as well over his. From the open kitchen window sprang the sounds of bright chains of children on their way to the elementary school. He could almost see their black bowl haircuts and dirty feet. He wished he could help them, but it was already too late. He blinked, trying to concentrate.
“Babe,” he said calmly, resurrecting a pet name they had abandoned before he went overseas. “One more semester and I’m finished with night classes. Look. You know the size of the government checks, and you know they aren’t going to get any bigger. We both know Ray can’t take me on without a degree—”
“You know he would, Joey, if you ask him again. What’s a brother for?” Instantly she darkened, regretting the last. She held to his hand, hoping that he would let it pass.
“Now let me finish,” he said slowly. “I can’t handle a position like that yet, not without leaning on someone half the time. I have to do it right. This damned uniform is just a job until I’m ready. Till then, well, what else do I know? Really, now?” He flipped her hands over and warmed them with his. “I have to make things right before I go ahead, to feel like I’m my own man. I thought you understood that.”
“Oh, I know all that. I’m sorry. I know. It was just all the details, the whole horrible thing, these last few weeks. It sounds so awful.”
She rested her forehead on her arm and cried for a few seconds. Then she pressed her nose and stood up, stacking the dishes. “Come on, you big jock. You’ll be late.”
He pushed away from the table and crossed the kitchen in three steps. He took his wife in his arms and held her close for a long minute, while the electric clock hummed high and white on the wall.
She rocked back and forth with his body. Finally she began to laugh.
“Get out of here,” she said, trying hard.
“Meet me at work,” he said. “I’ll take you to Fernando’s for dinner.”
The tears settled diamond-bright in her eyes. She kissed him noisily and pushed him out the door.
She watched him through the window.
He came back in.
“Forgot something,” he said. He walked briskly to the breakfast nook, picked up the morning paper and dropped it in the waste can. “Give my love to the ice cream man,” he said before he shut the door again.
“Hey, I don’t even know the . . .”
He was gone and she stopped laughing. She went to the can and picked out the paper. She spread it on the table and stared down at it.
“Jesus,” she said very seriously. “Oh Jesus, Joe . . .”
The latest headline read:
Lissa, now in tank top and embroidered Levi’s, toed into her sandals and slipped down the stairs, her thin fingers playing lightly over the handrail.
“Sharon?” On the wall at the foot of the stairs she noticed the poster Sharon had brought with her from New York. It was one of those old You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s advertisements, showing an Indian biting into a slice of rye bread; Sharon had replaced the Indian with the horribly burned face of an Asian child, and now she saw that someone had written across the face with a red marking pen the words You Don’t Have to Be a Unicorn to Enjoy the Tapestry in an unmistakably feminine hand. She wondered what that meant. “Has anybody seen Sharon?” she called, tapping her nails on the railing. Then, “Is anybody here?”
She thought she heard voices and stepped off the stairs. But she saw only the bright, still day outside the open front door, and the two familiar Security guards at the edge of the dry lawn. They stood with their hands behind their backs and, Lissa thought, peculiar smiles on their faces; as they rocked on their heels their billy clubs swung tautly from wide, black belts.
Something about them gave her the creeps.
Her eyes listlessly scanned the living room, finding nothing to settle on.
She stepped away from the open front door. Sharon must have left it open. On the way out, probably to see Eliot.
She could call Eliot and find out, couldn’t she?
She took two steps toward the phone. She stopped. The thought of the newly installed tap put her off again. Damn it, she thought. It irks me, just the idea of it. It really does.
She sighed. She stood in the middle of the rug, her left hand resting on the back of the sofa and her right hand fingering her left elbow. She took a breath, held it, let it out. Then she went over to the big front door and nudged it shut. With her back. She didn’t particularly want to look outside.
Officer William W. Williams was doing push-ups on the grass.
“How many I got, John?”
“Uh, forty-seven by my count, Bill.”
“You lyin’!”
“You’re not going to break no record today, Williams,” said Officer Hall around a lumpy chili dog from the food service machines.
“You shut up, Hal.” Williams spat to one side and pumped three more times. The muscles on his shining arms inflated with each stroke.
“Fifty,” said Joe matter-of-factly, “and still counting.”
Williams quivered high on his corded arms for a beat, then dipped again.
“Mother,” he breathed.
The sun, setting some kind of record for April, beat down in shimmering waves, now mercifully on the tin roof of the pergola so that the officers were able to remove their spongy hats, at least for half an hour. Joe felt not quite a breeze but at least a shift in the hovering air layers here in the shade; the sweat in his short black hair was beginning to evaporate, cooling and contracting his scalp. It was, he thought without knowing why, a day for ice cream. Williams, however, chose to remain under the sun, bridging again and again over the blanched grass.
“What did the Chief have to say this morning?” asked Joe. “Sorry I missed the briefing.”
The men did not answer.
As far as Joe could see the campus was deserted, the gray buildings flat and silent, the sparsely sown trees moving not at all in the noonday heat. Though he knew better, Joe wondered idly if anyone other than Security was on the grounds today.
Old John, white-haired and better suited to a Santa Claus costume than a black uniform, folded his hands unsteadily.
“It was another one of his pep talks, Joe. You know Withers.” Joe didn’t very well, but it didn’t matter. “I guess you didn’t miss anything.”
Hall resumed chewing.
Joe realized that Williams had suspended over the lawn. Finally he moved. Down.
“Well, I hope we get him,” offered Joe, “and soon. A guy like that has got to be sick, and needs help.”
Up. Williams stopped.
Hall stopped eating.
Joe felt odd. He repeated to himself what he had said, trying to figure why they were uptight. Something about Withers, maybe. Except for old John, they didn’t seem to like the Chief. That must be it.
“Hell,” said Hall, “this is the easiest job in the world. We don’t have to do anything. A person commits a violation, he does himself in.” He spoke carefully, as if laying out a scientific fact. “Because if he’s human, he’s ashamed of the act. That’s all the lever we need.” Barely changing his tone he said, “Look at that one, will you?”