“There was no plan,” Charlie repeated, raising his voice. That made his head hurt more. Svenson shifted the rifle in his lap.
“Then you’ll simply have to find her,” Mr. G said. “Set a fugitive to catch a fugitive.”
“If you’re so good at gathering information why can’t you find her?”
“I’ve tried,” Mr. G said. “My guess is you’ll enjoy a smoother entrée into her circle. The long-lost comrade coming in from the cold. That shouldn’t be a difficult role to play.”
The answer, the first and instant answer that sounded inside Charlie’s core, was no. “You want me to betray Rebecca, is that it?”
“I told you,” said Svenson to Mr. G. “These sixties types just never grew up.”
“I’m not a sixties type,” said Charlie.
“Then what are you?” asked Mr. G.
Charlie, caught in a pincer movement between surrounding generations, didn’t answer.
Mr. G leaned toward him. The expression in his eyes was complex—intimate, desperate, beyond Charlie’s understanding. He spoke softly. “It’s not a question of betrayal. It’s a question of who you want to be—Blake Wrightman with all his baggage, or Charlie Ochs with all his future.”
“He’ll take the past, every time,” Svenson said. “They’re all living in the past, with their touchie-feelie bullshit and their Beatles records.”
“Shut up,” said Mr. G.
“Sorry.”
“Go away.”
Svenson moved up to the bow and stared out to sea.
Charlie said: “What if I can’t find her?”
“You lose.”
“What if she’s dead?”
“Dead?” said Mr. G, as though it was a possibility he hadn’t considered. “Dead, and you can prove she’s dead?” He thought. “That’ll be good enough.”
“Meaning?”
“You win.”
Svenson turned toward them. “I think we’ve got a deal,” he said with surprise. “At least he’s agonizing about it.”
“Have we got a deal, Charlie?” said Mr. G.
I hope to God she’s dead, Charlie thought. If not, at least I can play for time. Time might change things, he told himself, and almost believed it.
“Do we?”
Charlie answered. He didn’t say “I’ve got no choice” or “You’ve got me in a corner” or “What else can I do?”
He said: “Yes.”
· · ·
The red curve of the sun came edging over the horizon. The cigarette roared away toward the south. There was plenty of light now, more than enough for Charlie to see that the cigarette was without name or number. He switched on his engine and rode Straight Arrow home.
Charlie tied up at his dock, then stripped off his clothes and jumped in the pond. The salt water stung the wound on the back of his head. He scrubbed off the vomit and the blood and went up to the house. It was quiet. Charlie opened the door. He dropped his clothes in the washer and went upstairs.
Emily was still sleeping, her head in the crook of her arm, her hip jutting up under the covers. Charlie gazed down at her for a moment, then went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. The face in the mirror didn’t look nearly as tired, beaten, changed, as it should have. He was about to turn on the shower when she called.
“Charlie?”
He stepped out of the bathroom. Emily lay on her back now, wisps of hair in her eyes, her face a little flushed. She smiled at him. Charlie almost had to look away.
“You’re up early,” she said. “Thinking of hightailing it? With me standing at the altar?”
Charlie made himself laugh.
Emily stretched out her arms to him. “I had the most wonderful dream,” she said. He went closer to her, as if drawn by irresistible gravity. Her arms closed around him. “My big oceangoing man,” she said.
“Oceangoing?”
“You smell like the sea,” Emily replied. “I love it.”
8
Her wedding day: a day, Emily told herself, to savor every moment. Not just because she was old-fashioned: in truth, she wasn’t really all that old-fashioned. Marriage would be a rock in her life, a fortress, but it would not be everything. She would never give up her work, her independence, her sense of possibility. Not that Charlie would ever want her to.
Charlie. Just when she had started to fear that the laws of probability governing the random movements of male and female populations were not going to let her course intersect with that of the man for her, along had come Charlie, living right down the street. Charlie was special. Solid and reliable, yes—and she might have settled for that alone in five years or so—nothing was more important to her. But he was smart too, and funny, and strong, and musical. All that, and he smelled like the sea as well. And like the sea, he had things going on down deep that fascinated her. To study the sea, she had her instruments, her computer models, her flair for mathematics. To study the depths of Charlie, she had to catch a look in his eye from time to time, or a strange chorus on that silver saxophone. So it was a day to savor, not just because of the wedding, but because of who he was. She was a lucky girl.
But everything went by too fast, and Emily was left with a memory tape of fragments, like a video shot by a bundle of nerves and edited by someone who didn’t know the story. Fragments: the shaving nick on the chin of the nondenominational minister that opened every time he dabbed it with his black sleeve; the baby’s flutterings inside her, first when Charlie slipped the gold band on her finger, later when her parents got in the taxi; the tears in her mother’s eyes, through the window, as it pulled away.
Then she and Charlie were back in the living room of the little house, their house, packing up their new camping equipment. They were going away for a few days of hiking on Long Trail.
“Charlie, these sleeping bags are supposed to zip together.”
“Like that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem big enough.” Emily climbed into the zipped-together bags. “You’d better come in,” she said.
“Now?” Charlie said. One of those strange looks surfaced in his eyes.
“For a test. We don’t want to end up like Scott of the Antarctic.”
“Were double sleeping bags his problem?” Charlie said. The strange look—what was it? anxiety? sadness?—vanished from his eyes. He wriggled into the bag. “Seems big enough.”
“Big enough for this kind of activity?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t? Are you going to go virginal on me now, Charlie? That would be false advertising.” Charlie said nothing. Emily undid his belt, reached inside. “Nope,” she said after a few moments, “it’s all verifiable.”
Charlie laughed, and Emily thought, It’s all true, it really is. She knew a lot of single women, other scientists and lab workers, who had just about given up on men and paid the same obsessive attention to their jobs that sitcom moms paid to their families in the fifties. Now she wasn’t going to be one of them. Ahead lay a life balanced and full. She could almost see it.
There was a knock at the door.
Emily felt her husband’s erection soften in her hand. She whispered in his ear, “Let’s not answer.”
Charlie’s face was inches from hers. How alert his eyes were! She loved that about him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it.
There was another knock, more forceful this time.
“Maybe we’d better,” Charlie said.
They crawled out of the zipped-together sleeping bags. Charlie fastened his belt. Emily went to the door and opened it.
Outside were two men with gift-wrapped packages in their hands. The older one was bald with yellowish skin. He wore a bow tie and a seersucker suit that looked a size too big. The younger man stood well over six feet and was almost as broad as Charlie. He wore a blue and white striped rugby shirt and white pants with green whales on them. Both men had big smiles on their faces.
“Would this be Charles Ochs’s house?” asked the man
in the bow tie.
Emily nodded.
The men’s smiles got bigger. “Looks like your nephew’s done all right for himself,” the one with the green whales on his pants said to the other.
“Buzz,” the older man told him, “mind your manners.” To Emily he said, “Tell Charlie his Uncle Sam is here.”
“His uncle? Charlie never mentioned—”
“It’s all right, Em,” said Charlie, appearing behind her. He looked out. “Hello, Sam.”
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” said Uncle Sam, extending his hand. It hovered over the threshold long enough for Emily to see it was trembling before Charlie reached out and took it. Uncle Sam pumped Charlie’s hand with enthusiasm and gripped Charlie’s elbow, southern-politician style. “I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said.
Charlie said, “It’s me.”
“Of course it’s you,” said Uncle Sam. “Haven’t changed a bit. Looking great, just great. This is my associate, Buzz. Buzz, I’d like you to meet my nephew Charlie. And unless I miss my guess, this is the brand-new Mrs. Ochs.”
“Emily Rice,” said Charlie. “She’s keeping her name.”
“Quite rightly,” said Uncle Sam. “My goodness, Charlie, it’s been a while. I’ll bet you’re itching to know how we found you.” Uncle Sam’s eyes were bright, his face turned up, like a dog with a trick.
Emily glanced at Charlie. He had never mentioned an uncle. In a flat tone, Charlie said: “How did you find me?” Emily decided that this was the sort of uncle relatives hoped to avoid, and almost smiled at Charlie’s discomfiture.
“To make a long story short,” Uncle Sam began, and set off on a tale involving a friend of a friend who had once done business with a contractor who had done work for De Mello and had been a classmate of one of the lobsterman’s wives, who in turn had talked about the plans for the wedding party at a high school reunion, and by the end of it they were all sitting in the living room with drinks in their hands—coffee for Charlie and her, water for Uncle Sam, beer for Buzz.
“So the champagne last night was from you?” Emily said.
“Why, of course,” said Uncle Sam. “Didn’t you see the note?”
Charlie, she remembered, had quickly stuck it in his pocket. “There was so much going on, I can’t even remember,” she said, trying to spare Charlie from embarrassment. “But it was delicious, thank you. And you,” she said to Buzz, “must be the gorilla.”
Buzz smiled. His eyes traveled down and up her body, fast and furtive, but they did it all the same.
“You’ve got a live one there, Charlie,” said Uncle Sam. He sipped his water, looked around the room. “Going on a camping trip?” he asked.
Charlie didn’t answer, so Emily said, “Yes.”
“Anywhere particular?” asked Uncle Sam.
“Long Trail,” Emily replied.
“Beautiful country,” said Uncle Sam. “Although it must be forty years.”
“Do they allow ATVs up there?” asked Buzz.
“ATVs?” said Uncle Sam.
“All-terrain vehicles,” said Buzz.
“Good Lord, I should hope not,” said Uncle Sam, and Emily thought: He seems like a nice old guy. I wish Charlie wouldn’t be so rude to him.
“Too bad,” said Buzz. “Nothing like an ATV for really seeing the outdoors.”
“Good Lord,” said Uncle Sam. “Good—” And then he started coughing. The coughing shook his body, doubled it over. Red gobbets sprayed from his mouth, landed on the trouser leg of Buzz, sitting beside him on the couch; the white trousers with the green whales on them.
“Shit,” said Buzz.
Emily bent over Uncle Sam and patted his back. The coughing subsided.
Uncle Sam sat up, took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his lips. “Sorry,” he said, his voice rough and low. “Terrible allergies.”
Allergies? Emily thought. Details—yellow skin, scrawny neck, completely hairless skull—came together in her mind. The prognosis was obvious.
“Shit,” said Buzz again. He was gazing with disgust at the red stains on his pants.
“I’m sure Charlie has something that will fit you,” Emily said. “Throw those in the wash.”
Charlie led Buzz upstairs. Emily took Uncle Sam to the bathroom. Before the door closed she saw him open a bottle of pills.
A few minutes later, they were all back in the living room. Buzz wore a pair of Charlie’s jeans that didn’t quite reach his ankles; Uncle Sam’s skin seemed even yellower than before, and his bow tie was crooked, but he was smiling again. He drank some water, peering over the rim of the glass at Charlie, then at Emily. “What a pair of lovebirds,” he said. “You’re a lucky man, Charlie. I hate to ask you to postpone that camping trip.”
Emily saw Charlie frown. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’ve got some news,” Uncle Sam replied. “Good news, possibly very good news. Certainly the kind of news any couple starting out would love to hear.”
“Let’s have it,” Charlie said, again in a flat tone that struck Emily as rude. Did Uncle Sam raise an eyebrow? She wasn’t sure; he smiled and continued.
“It’s kind of complicated,” he said. “It all goes back to Charlie’s grandfather’s will. Old Ferdie Ochs—a first-class SOB—you’ll pardon the expression, Emily. He left a sloppily prepared will, which he neglected to alter even though one of his children—Charlie’s dad—predeceased him. Ferdie died a few years ago, and that’s when we got an inkling of the mess he’d made of his affairs.” He turned to Charlie. “One of our big difficulties was we had no idea where you were.” He shook his head. “You’ve been a bad boy, Charlie. Avoiding your relatives like this.” His smile faded for a moment, came to life again. “But that’s all in the past. The point is that Ferdie managed to accumulate some choice hunks of real estate, and since your father died intestate, you became one of the major heirs.”
“Choice hunks?” said Emily, and wished at once she hadn’t. She liked the phrase, that’s all.
“Choice,” said Uncle Sam. “But because so much time has passed, we’ve got some hurdles to jump. Charlie has, specifically. There’s a move underway—quite understandable, I suppose, since he hasn’t been in communication with the family, presumed lost and all—to cut him out of the will.” He held up his hand. It was still shaking. “Not to worry,” he went on. “Now that Charlie’s turned up everything should be fine. The law is on our side, or at least that’s what my legal people say. But we have to move quickly. There are statutory time factors involved and other complications I don’t quite understand. The lawyers do. I’ve scheduled a meeting with them for later today.” He leaned across the coffee table, took Emily’s hand. His was cold and damp. “So I hope you don’t mind if we borrow Charlie for a while, my dear.”
“Today?”
“I hate doing this,” said Uncle Sam.
Buzz leaned forward in his chair. “But,” he prompted.
Uncle Sam sighed. “I don’t make the schedule.”
Emily said, “Couldn’t the meeting be postponed for a few days?”
“Naturally I tried that, with the wedding and all,” said Uncle Sam. “They’re not in a postponing mood.”
Emily turned to Charlie. He was staring out the window, didn’t seem to realize she was trying to make eye contact. “I guess our trip could wait for a day,” she said.
“It might take a few days, actually,” Uncle Sam said.
“A few days?”
“This is a complex matter, as I mentioned. But we’re talking about substantial sums.”
“Why don’t I come along, then? I’ve blocked off the time anyway.” Emily turned to Charlie again. He was still staring out the window. “Charlie?”
He faced her. She waited for him to say “Why don’t you?” When he did not, she repeated the suggestion herself.
Was it her imagination, or did Charlie wince, as though with a sudden pain in his gut? Her question was answered by Uncle Sam.
/> “Ticklish,” he said.
“Putting it mildly,” said Buzz.
“I don’t understand.” No one explained. “Do you, Charlie?”
“Not really.”
“Charlie’s not in a position to,” said Uncle Sam. “He doesn’t know the dramatis personae. They’re a suspicious bunch. We told them Charlie was single, not wanting to complicate things with possible heirs.”
“Et cetera,” said Buzz.
“So now if we turned up with a connubial Charlie, they might think we were trying to pull a fast one.”
“Bizarre,” said Buzz.
“But that’s the way they work,” said Uncle Sam.
Emily turned again to Charlie: “You never told me about all this family.”
Charlie started to say something, but Uncle Sam interrupted. “He’s a bad boy. Now aren’t you, Charlie? Admit it.”
Charlie looked at him. “Do you really think that, Uncle Sam?” Emily heard the sarcasm in his voice, wondered why he didn’t treat his uncle more politely. But she knew nothing of his family, nothing of his relationship with Uncle Sam. She did know Charlie, and knew he must have reasons.
“No, no, no,” said Uncle Sam. “I don’t really think that. Just getting in the old needle. Wasn’t I, Buzz?”
Buzz was draining the last of his beer. “What?” he said.
Uncle Sam sighed. Then he rubbed his hands together, as though trying to generate momentum. “Well,” he said, “we’d best be going.” He rose. Buzz rose. Charlie rose.
And Emily. “Now?” she said.
Uncle Sam took her hand again. His was hot this time, and dry. “We won’t keep him long,” he told her. “Promise.”
It was happening quickly. The whole day had been like that. Everyone moved toward the door. “Charlie, shouldn’t you pack something? He said a few days.”
“Not to worry,” said Uncle Sam. “If it takes that long, Charlie can pick up new things.” He chuckled. “A whole wardrobe, if he wants.”
But Charlie didn’t care about wardrobes; he wasn’t materialistic. That was one of the things she liked about him. Now it occurred to her that maybe she was confusing cause and effect; maybe he lived simply not for philosophical reasons, but because of an inability to make money. And now that money was in the offing, he was off, as if he hadn’t been living the life of his choice. But that was speculation, supported by nothing; and it wasn’t him.
Revolution Number 9 Page 6