by Scott Turow
'Slow, baby,' I whisper, 'slow,' unable to recall if it's an honest memory or merely fantasy that I whispered this to him long ago.
I come last, throbbing by the end on the wilted heap of him. Afterwards, we lie together in the bed. He grabs the quilted spread, which we did not bother to remove, and wraps it around us. We are surrounded by the smells of hotel linen.
'That didn't take long,' I finally say. 'To get back there.'
'I'd say I was right about everything.'
'I'd say I was homy.'
We laugh. Just giddiness. Life can be all right. 'What do you think the biological function is of female orgasm?' I ask.
'You mean how it happens?'
'From a Darwinian perspective. Men have to come to spill their seed. It's directly related to reproduction. But what do you think nature gets out of letting women feel so good?'
‘I think it's what they call an incentive. Remember Green Stamps?'
'But as long as men were so inclined, and women had this profound desire to be mothers -' Considering, I pause. 'Sex isn't pleasurable for all species. Aren't there cats - panthers, I think -the male has a barb at the end of his business and as he withdraws, she actually snarls and screams. It's the barb that causes ovulation. I learned that ages ago. Wasn't it with you?'
'Wrong boyfriend.'
'No! I'm sure we used to go to the zoo and watch those large cats make it.' He laughs. He was putting me on.
‘I didn't realize voyeurism was the motive,' Seth says. 'My recollection, Judge, is that we were taking Nile.'
'Jesus,' I mutter. He's right. My heart, in reflex, freezes over and I grow silent with the complications. Beneath the coverlet, his fingers trace and retrace the grooved stretch marks left years ago on the good breast by the period of explosive growth I went through at ten, eleven, twelve. I have asked all the doctors if there could be a relationship between that hormonal surge and cancer. They only shrug.
Seth sits up now swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The sight of the older man remains marginally surprising. He is still lean, but his skin holds less color, less tone. There is the inevitable fleshy gathering at the waist, and his back, as he slumps, shows the slightest bow. He is pensive, as we both are, in the aftermath.
‘I don't think much of this Darwin stuff,' he says. 'What would Darwin say about music? What's the survival function of that? And it exists in every culture.'
'It makes me happy.'
'Like your orgasm.'
'Maybe nature wants us to be happy after all, Seth. Do you think that's possible?' He doesn't take an instant. 'Nope.'
'Don't happy people live longer? Isn't there research? Isn't there something tonic to the organism in enjoying the whole grand show?'
'Then I'm doomed,' he says. 'I'm on borrowed time.' His delivery is good and I feel light-hearted and laugh as he intends. 'You still think you can achieve Nirvana?' he asks me.
'Not Nirvana.'
'But you're happy?'
'Happier than when we were young. Like you said, I feel I've accomplished things. I love my child. I'm proud I'm a good parent. I'm a good judge.' I wait then to see if I believe what I have said, if some internal truth meter will buzz in disbelief, but it goes down without a tremor. Seth, in reply, is quietly shaking his head.
‘I don't know many happy anythings, Sonny. Not lawyers. Not journalists. Not Indian chiefs.'
'You're in no position to assess that, Seth. After what you've been through. It's too soon.'
'Two years? I would have thought -' He lifts a hand. 'When it happened'- he takes a breath - 'when he died, there was so much of that disconnected feeling from nightmares, you know, where you're reaching inside to grab hold of whatever part of your soul provides reassurance the terror isn't real? But, of course, what I recognized four times a day was that I wasn't getting out of this one, there was nothing better to wake to. I walked through months like that, and there are times now when I realize that period has never really ended.'
Even now, back in Seattle, he cannot walk north from the house, he says. Down the block a few doors there's a house where they poured a new walk four years ago and Isaac, in a typically ungovernable mood, wrote his name with a stick, carving the ragged letters half an inch deep with his own special mix of strength and fury. The neighbors were so angry they stopped speaking to Seth, even to Lucy. Now the boy is dead and the name is still there. He has gone by once or twice, Seth says, and just dissolved. What a sight: a man in a trench coat, standing on an empty walk before a house where the occupants still hate him, weeping so fiercely that you know he feels he will never remember how to stop.
‘I comfort myself in the most ridiculous ways. I mean, this is nothing compared to the legendary blows of history. I think about what my parents went through. But, you know' - he looks at me - 'there's no relativity to suffering.'
I hold him for quite some time, something I have yearned to do since he first told me. Then he goes out to the living room. He brings wine back for both of us.
'Have you tried therapy, Seth? Was that a joke the other day, about treatment?'
'I've been in therapy longer than Woody Allen. What about you?'
'Surgery? Divorce? I took my turn. It helps.'
'It helps,' he says, but shakes his head. Then he puts the glass down somewhat precipitously on the Louis-something night table, saying he knows what he needs. When he returns, he stands naked before the bed, that fox amid the bushes still red and glistening. He sings a few bars from Steely Dan: ' "The Cuervo gold, the fine Columbian, make tonight a wonderful night." ' He opens his palm, displaying a joint. I actually jolt a bit.
'Where did that come from? Is this a habit?'
'Hobie,' he says. The one word is explanation enough. 'How about it? Old times' sake?'
'You're kidding.'
'Sure, I'll get my guitar. We can have a hootenanny.' 'Don't forget the red lightbulb and the towel to stuff under the door.'
I fear he's gone to get them, but when he returns from the living room again it's merely a pack of matches he's brought. He surrounds himself in a bouquet of smoke. I haven't been this close to the odor in years. Occasionally, there's an amusing fugitive whiff as some teenaged goof passes on the street, or a single breath taken in as something wafts in from the distance in a park or at a concert.
‘I don't,' I say, when he offers it. 'I haven't since I got my law license.'
'Oh bullshit,' he answers in disapproval, not doubt. I'm being conformist, still a generational sin. 'Something has to count, Seth.'
'I suppose,' he answers and picks up the pillows and seats himself behind me on the bed, pulling me back so that I lounge against him as he smokes, snug within the warmth of his legs and the leisure of our nakedness. And what is it that counts, I wonder suddenly, what great absolute can I name? In the land of laws, the one thing I promised myself would not occur has happened. In the great new age, I have found a way to bring myself to shame like the heroines of old-time novels, fucked my way to ignominy like Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina. And for just this moment it does not seem to matter. No, that's not right. It matters even now that I'm not better or more honorable. It matters that I've tried and failed by some measure all my life. It will always matter. But it is, right now, just a fact like many others. Like the glow of the moon or the paths of the migrating birds. When he brings the joint back to my lips, I take it from him. The pungence and the raw taste of the smoke, more or less forgotten, for some reason make me laugh.
'Seduced you,' he says.
'You seem to be an expert.'
'Oh, please.'
'Have you fucked around a lot, Seth?'
He answers that he doesn't think of this as fucking around.
‘I meant before.'
He takes another hit and peeks cutely around my shoulder. 'Is this an AIDS check or character assessment?' 'The latter. I hope.' 'What do you think?' he asks.
'I don't know. I suppose I think yes. But maybe I'm trading in stereotypes
. You know, sort of famous, sort of rich. I always think people like that get loose. Were you?'
The ember of the joint brightens like a lightning bug. 'You first,' he says.
'I don't have anything to tell. Once, when I was a prosecutor, I fell half in love with the defense counsel in one of my cases, but that was temporary insanity. It only lasted a couple of days. And nothing came of it. He's fat and a lot older, and I was pregnant.' Even telling the story, though, it occurs to me that what's going on right now fits my pattern. I only fall for men at the most unlikely moments - as if I need a time when my own security systems are not on high alert.
'That's it?'
'That's it.'
He tokes again.
'Tell,' I say.
'Among the many sad ways I've spent time in the last twenty years have been a couple of really hopeless affairs with women who offered me very little except an admiring audience and the usual animal thrill. And what I discovered is that life offers nothing more depressing than a relationship conducted solely within the wallpapered dimensions of an expensive hotel room.'
'Did Lucy know?'
'Yeah, but it was complicated. This was all before Isaac was born. We had a pretty rough spell then.' 'Like this one?'
'This isn't the same. Not at all. We're not angry. We just seem to be out of gas.'
'Why were you angry then?'
'Why was I angry?' he repeats. 'Lots of reasons. But let's just say that Lucy's arms aren't her only limbs that have been open to humanity.'
'Ah.' Their problems are getting clearer to me all the time. 'That makes people angry.'
'I suppose. But I didn't start wandering to get even. I loved the idea of it. Of falling. For someone. I still think it's the most thrilling thing in life. Does that sound corny? Or just weak?'
'Weak.'
'Yeah.' He knows it. He looks down between his knees. 'That was the lesson I learned from you, though. The thrill.' 'Right.'
'I mean it,' he says and touches the joint to my lips again. 'It sounds like the song. What was his name. Something, something "the thrill of it all - I'll tell them I remember you." '
'Frank Meld.'
He rolls back. 'I would. You know, say that.' 'When the angels ask me to recall -"'
I turn away - I will not let him. What is this old fear? I still don't know, but I feel suddenly the presence of all the men - Seth and Charlie and a number in between - whom I turned from with the same morbid fluttering of the heart. I look at him squarely.
‘I don't know a man who believes less in angels.'
'But I believe in you, Sonny,' he answers, and draws my hand down between his ruddy thighs to appraise the transitory emblem of his faith.
I had forgotten the aphrodisiac magic of marijuana, the forging sensation, like a river current, rippling outward, ever outward to the fingertips. Afterwards, I am sore and spent; the dope makes me sleepy. I wake in a flush of immediate embarrassment. I am laid out amid the rumpled bedding, thick with our musk, without a stitch of clothing, legs wide, oblivious, like somebody on a bender. The overhead fixture, old-fashioned milk glass festooned with silky cobwebs, burns blindingly.
'Two-fifteen,' he says, when I ask the time. I groan and cover myself with the top sheet, then sit up. I always try to check with Everarda.
Seth is seated at the foot of the bed, still naked, his legs crossed. My purse has been emptied onto the spread and he is looking through it, all the telltale detritus of my life. My credit cards are laid out. Photographs. Business cards I've forgotten to throw away. My checkbook. He is eating an apple, a glossy Red Delicious, which looks to be one he bought the other day at Green Earth. Staring at him, I find that I'm no longer stoned. My mouth is stale, dry as a withered leaf.
'May I ask?'
'I'm amusing myself,' he says. ‘I was alone.' I could tell him he's intruding. But that would be hypocritical. I knew he meant to intrude all along.
'And? Are you amused?'
'A little.' He offers the apple and I take a bite.
'Did you do this when we lived together?'
'Of course not.'
'Any surprises?'
‘I have cards from two different travel agents and a brochure on the Philippines from a third. I thought that was interesting. Are you traveling?'
'Not with a six-year-old.'
'But you'd want to go?'
'I'd love to go back. I'd love to go everywhere. Someday.' I shudder with the thought: Travel. Free. Freed of custom, language, everything known. For me, the thought has always brought with it some delicious, unpronounceable fantasy that lurks in me, a tantalizing secret not fully known by anyone, even me. Another life!
'That's where you ended up when we split, wasn't it? The Philippines?'
'With the Peace Corps. I hoped they'd send me to some village, but I taught birth control to women in Olangapo City, near Subic Bay. It was disillusioning at times. I was basically helping a lot of them be whores. But I loved the country and the people. They have tremendous self-respect, in spite of all the colonization. The revolution didn't surprise me.' I recall momentarily the English-language movie houses, the dampness, the fish, the sleek dark boys.
‘I was flabbergasted, you know.' 'Were you?'
'When you joined? I had no idea you'd want to do that.' 'I also applied to be an astronaut.' 'Come on!'
'No, I wanted to go to the planets. Venus, Mars. I'm dead serious. And I was sure it was going to happen. Somehow. In the future. It's strange to realize I'm never going to get there. I really thought I would.'
How had that changed? When I was twenty-two, that destiny had seemed so real. The wish, the need to be a parent, to leave the species better off by one, and everything that came with it -house and things, job and schedule - had blown it all away. That's how it is for everyone. But did I ever really say goodbye to the girl in space who was going to make something spectacular of her desire to get a million miles from her mother? It doesn't matter, I suppose. I'm going home now. Not to the stars.
Seth hugs me as I dress, a silly burlesque of being unwilling to let me go. As I gather the last things, he waits by the door. Suddenly, inexplicably, the future is upon us. There is now a next move. I tell him to come for dinner tomorrow, Nikki will be thrilled. Then he catches me in one final embrace, and in the sheer delirium of weariness I am nearly knocked cold by the unexpected surge of passion, his and my own.
'How do you feel about this?' he asks as he finally lets me go.
After a second, I answer, 'Better than I thought I would.'
Smiles. God, he smiles.
'Great,' he says. Then I'm gone.
MAY 4, 1970
Seth
I wanted to call my father for reassurance, but Eddgar insisted there was no point.
'He's going to deny it,' Eddgar said. 'Either way. If he's gone to the Feds, they'll tell him to lie.'
'They'd never go.' I'd been saying this for days, of course. Even I had to recognize some likelihood that my father, in his desperation over the money or my situation, might have made such an uncharacteristic move. But on balance, I continued to regard it as impossible.
'So where does it come from, Seth?' Eddgar asked me. 'How does the F BI know? They seem to think you were abducted. You had to have told someone. Lucy?' Eddgar asked. 'What does she know?' Both June and he had been put out that I'd taken a traveling companion. It showed a lack of discipline to allow whim to influence my plans. They had no choice, though, but to
accept my terms. I insisted, truthfully, that Lucy knew nothing.
'So who?' Eddgar asked. He peered at me, sallowed by the cheap lamplight. I had settled heavily on one of the beds, weighing it all.
'Maybe it's because I didn't show for induction. Maybe they're after me already.' It was possible I'd made a special target of myself with my anti-draft activities on campus. Maybe one of the Selective Service System's snitches had reported on my plan to flee and the Bureau had swung into action. But that didn't seem convincing to any
of us.
'I went over the conversation with Michael three times,' Eddgar said. 'He called me because the way they were talking made him afraid something had happened to you.'
Michael, of course, could have gotten the wrong drift. And there were other possibilities. I recollected my conversation with Graeme on Saturday. I'd told him enough to make it clear I knew more than I was saying about the bombing. Graeme could have law-enforcement contacts. It would fit his polymorphous view of the world to be living outside conventional boundaries. But that wasn't the prospect that really troubled me as I sat there.
'What?' June demanded. She'd detected something. Perhaps in my posture. Perhaps I'd slumped a bit. Eddgar too was staring.
'Damn it all,' said Eddgar. 'At a time like this he's holding out on us. Lord. Lord! We're in this deep, Who'd you talk to, Seth?'
When I told them what I'd said to Sonny, Eddgar groaned and held his head. June, too, had an excruciated expression.
‘I didn't say anything about you guys. I didn't tell her the plan. She just wanted to know how I was handling my parents. So I said the word, you know? I said, "Kidnapping." But it's not her. It's not possible. She'd never sell me out. Christ, her mother is Zora Milkowski. She grew up with nightmares of the FBI.'
'Half those old Commies are Bureau agents now,' Eddgar said. 'Hoover keeps the CP in business.'
'It's not Sonny.'
Eddgar refused to accept that. And his doubts of course dented,
if only slightly, my confidence in her. Maybe I'd scared her by seeming so far gone. Maybe she'd done what she thought was best for my sake.