"Nightwork" - читать интересную книгу автора (Shaw Irwin)

7

It was late in the afternoon when I arrived in Washington. The monuments to Presidents, generals, justice, and law, all the ambiguous Doric-American pantheon, were wavery in a soft, twilight Southern mist. Scranton could have been in another climate zone, another country, a distant civilization. The streets were almost empty, and the few people walking there in the quiet dusk moved slowly, peacefully. Jeremy Hale had said Washington was at its best on weekends, when the mills of government ground to a halt. In the capital, between Friday afternoon and Monday morning, it was possible to believe in the value and decorum of democracy. I wondered idly what the blonde lady whose taxicab I had shared was doing with her holiday.

There was no message for me at the desk of the hotel, and, when I went up to my room, I called Hale at his home. A child answered, her voice bell-like and pure, and I had a sudden, unexpected moment of jealousy because there was no child to answer for me and to call, with uncomplicated love, 'Daddy, it's for you.'

'Is the game still on?' I asked Hale.

'Good,' Hale said. 'You got back. I'll pick you up at eight.'

It was only five o'clock and I played with the idea of calling Evelyn Coates' number to see which one of the ladies was at home. But then what would I say? 'Listen, I have two hours to spare.' I was not that sort of a man and never would be. So much the worse for me.

I shaved and took a long hot bath. Lying there, luxuriously steaming myself, I counted my blessings. They were not insignificant. 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,' I said aloud in the clouded bathroom. I hadn't stuttered once in five days and nights. In a minor way it was like being able to throw down your crutches and stride away from the spring at Lourdes. Then there was the money in the vault in New York, of course. Again and again, I found myself thinking of it, the neat stacks of bills lying in the steel box, laden with infinite promise. The twenty-five thousand dollars I was going to give Hank was a small price to pay for freeing me from the guilt about my brother that had lain somewhere in my subconscious for so many years. And Evelyn Coates . . . Old man, I thought, remembering the flaccid body in the corridor, you have not died in vain.

I got out of the bath, feeling fit and rested, put on some fresh clothes and went down and had a leisurely dinner by myself, without liquor. Not before a poker game.

I made sure I had the silver dollar in my pocket when Hale came to get me. If there ever was a gambler, dead or alive, who was not superstitious, I haven't heard of him.

Silver dollar or no silver dollar, Hale nearly got us killed driving to the hotel in Georgetown, where the weekly poker game was played. He went through a stop sign without looking and there was a wild screech of brakes as a Pontiac swerved to avoid hitting us. From the Pontiac somebody screamed, incomprehensibly, 'Goddamn niggers.'

Hale had been a careful driver in college. 'Sorry,' he said. 'People drive like maniacs on Saturday night.' If gambling did that to me, I thought, I wouldn't play. But I didn't say anything.

There was a big round table covered by a green cloth set up in one of the small private dining rooms of the hotel, and an array of bottles, ice, and glasses on a sideboard, all under a strong light. Very professional. I looked forward to the evening. There were three other men already in the room and one woman, standing with her back to the door fixing herself a drink as we came in. Hale introduced me to the men first. I found out later that one of them was a well-known columnist, one a congressman from upstate New York, who looked like Warren Gamaliel Harding, white-haired, benign, falsely presidential. The last player was a youngish lawyer by the name of Benson who worked at the Department of Defense. I had never met a columnist or a congressman before. Was I going up or down on the social scale?

When the woman turned around to greet us, I saw that it was Evelyn Coates. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. 'Yes,' she said, without smiling, as Hale started to introduce us. 'I know Mr. Grimes. I believe I met him at a party the other night at your house, Jerry.'

'Of course,' Hale said. 'I must be losing my mind.' He did seem distracted. I noticed that he kept rubbing the side of his jaw with the palm of his hand, as though he had an intermittent itch there. I made a small bet with myself that he would wind up losing that night.

Evelyn Coates was dressed in dark blue slacks, not too close-fitting, and a loose beige sweater. Working clothes. I thought. Dyke? I dismissed the idea. Probably when she was younger she was one of those girls who played touch football with the boys on the block. I wondered if her room-mate had told her about me.

She was the only one in the room who had a drink in her hand as we sat down at the table and started counting our chips. She piled her chips expertly, her long hands deft, pale fingers, pale polished nails.

'Evelyn,' Benson said as the congressman began to throw cards for the first ace to deal, 'tonight you must be merciful.' 'Without fear or favor,' she said.

The lawyer, I noticed, seemed to have a special, teasing relationship with her. I put it out of my mind. I didn't like his voice either, round and self-satisfied. I put that out of my mind, too. I was there to play cards.

Everybody took the game very seriously, and there wag almost no conversation except for the usual postmortems between hands. Hale had told me the game was a moderate one. Nobody had ever lost more than a thousand dollars on any one night, he said. If he hadn't been married to a rich wife, I doubt that he would have called it moderate.

Evelyn Coates was a tricky player, unpredictable and hard-nosed. She won the second biggest pot of the night on a pair of eights. In other days you would have said she played like a man. Her expression was the same whether she won or lost, cool and businesslike. It was hard for me to remember, as I faced her across the table, that I had ever been in her bed.

I won the biggest pot of the night on a low straight. I had never had as much money to back me up in any of the games I had been in before, but, as far as I could tell, I played as I always did. My new-found fortune wasn't reflected in my betting. I folded early a good deal of the time.

The newspaper columnist and the congressman were the eternal pigeons Hale had promised me. They played out of hope and optimism, and were around at the end of almost every pot. Inevitably, it made me doubt their wisdom in other fields. I knew I would read the columnist from then on with great reservations, and I trusted the congressman wasn't in on any important legislative decisions.

It was a friendly game and even the losers were good-natured about their bad luck. I enjoyed playing poker again after the three-year hiatus. I would have enjoyed it more if Evelyn Coates hadn't been there. I kept looking for a wink, a secret, conspiratorial smile, but it never came. I couldn't help beginning to feel resentful. I didn't let it affect my game, but I felt a little extra satisfaction when I took a pot away from her.

She and I were the only winners at two o'clock, when we finished. While the congressman, as banker, bent over the accounts, I fingered the silver dollar in my pocket. The go-ahead sign from Central Park West.

A waiter had brought in some sandwiches, and we started on them while the congressman worked at the table. I couldn't help but think how pleasant it all was, a game that continued, in the same room, with the same friends, week after week, everybody knowing everybody's telephone number, everybody's address, everybody's mannerisms and jokes. Whom would I be seeing next week, what numbers would I dare call, what game would I be playing? For a moment I was on the verge of saying that I would be available next week to give them all the chance to get back their money. Put down my roots in a deck of cards, in the mulch of government. How fast did I have to run? If Evelyn Coates had as much as smiled at me, I believe I would have spoken. But she didn't even glance in my direction.

To give her a chance to say a few words to me away from the others, I went over to a window at the far corner of the room and opened it, pretending I was warm and the cigarette smoke was bothering me, but she still did not make a gesture toward me, didn't even seem to notice that I had moved.

The bitch, I thought, I won't give her the satisfaction of calling when I get back to my hotel. I imagined her in her place with the young lawyer, smooth and tallow-faced, and the phone ringing and Evelyn Coates saying, 'Hell, let it ring,' and knowing who it was on the other end and smiling secretly to herself. I wasn't used to hard women. To any kind of women, if I wanted to be honest with myself. One thing, I decided, as I closed the window with a sharp little click, insisting on my presence, one thing I'm going to do from now on is learn how to handle women.

The columnist and the lawyer began a long discussion about what was happening in Washington. The columnist accused the President of trying to destroy the American press, raising postal rates to drive newspapers and magazines into bankruptcy, jailing reporters for not disclosing their sources, threatening to lift the franchises of television stations that broadcast material which displeased the Administration, all stun" that I had read in his columns whenever I had happened to come across them. Even I, who barely read any newspaper but the Racing Form, was overexposed to all possible opinions. I wondered how anyone in that room, battered by arguments from all sides, ever managed to vote yes or no on anything. The congressman, working on a scratch pad, his forehead sweating from the effort, never even looked up. He had showed himself an amiable man throughout the game, and I supposed he voted as he was told, his attention always on party instructions and on the next election. He had said nothing to indicate whether he was a Republican, a Democrat, or a follower of Mao.

When Evelyn Coates brought up the subject of the Water-gate break-in and said it meant grave trouble ahead for the President, the columnist said, 'Nonsense. He's too smart for that. It'll all just be kicked under the rug. Mark my words. By May, if you ask anybody about it, they'll say, "Watergate? What's that?" I'll tell you,' said the columnist, his deep voice and meticulous speech resonant with the assurance of a man who was accustomed to being listened to attentively at all times, 'I tell you we're witnessing the opening move» toward Fascism.'

As he spoke, he munched on a corned beef sandwich, washed down with Scotch. 'The skinheads are preparing the ground. I won't be surprised if they're not called in to run the whole show. One morning we'll wake up and the tanks will be rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and the machine guns will be on every roof. That hadn't been in any of his columns that I had read. Come to Washington and get the real, authentic, scary dope.

The lawyer didn't seem to be at all ruffled by the charges. He had the calm, good-natured imperturbability of the pliant Company Man. 'Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea,' he said. 'The press is irresponsible. It lost the war in Asia for us. It chums up the public against the President, the Vice President, it holds up all authority to scorn, it's making it more and more impossible to govern the country. Maybe putting the skinheads, as you call them, in control for a few years might be the best thing that .happened to this country since Alf Landon.'

'Oh, Jack,' Mrs Coates said, 'the true believer. The voice of the Pentagon. What crap! '

'If you saw what passed over my desk day after day,' the lawyer said, 'you wouldn't call it crap.'

'Mr. Grimes...' She turned toward me, a little cool smile on her lips. 'You're not in the mess here in Washington. You represent the pure, undefiled American public here tonight. Let's hear the simple wisdom of the masses....'

'Evelyn,' Hale said warningly. I half-expected to hear him say, 'Remember, he's our guest.' But he let it go with the 'Evelyn'.

I looked at her, annoyed with her for taunting me, feeling that she was testing me somehow, for some not quite innocent purpose of her own. 'The pure, undefiled representative of the American public here tonight,' I said, 'thinks it's all bullshit.' I remembered the speech she had made to me, naked, a glass of whiskey in her hand, sitting on the side of the big soft bed in the darkened room, about everybody in Washington being an actor. 'You people aren't serious,' I said. 'It's all a game for you. It's not a game for me, the pure, undefiled etcetera, it's life and death and taxes, and other little things like that for me, but it's just a pennant race for you. You depend upon each other to have different opinions, just the way baseball teams depend upon other teams to have different color uniforms. Otherwise, nobody would know who was leading the league. In the end, though, you're all playing the same game.' I was surprised at myself even as I spoke. I didn't even know that I had ever thought like this before. 'If you get traded to another team, you'll just take off the old suit and put on another one and you'll go out there and try to boost your batting average so you can ask for a raise the next year.'

'Let me ask you something. Grimes.’ the lawyer said affably. 'Did you vote in the last election?'

'I did,' I said. 'I got fooled. The papers printed the sports news on the editorial pages. I don't intend to vote again. It's an undignified occupation for a grown man.' I didn't tell them that, where I expected I'd be by the time of the next elections, there wouldn't be a chance I'd be able to vote.

'Forgive me, folks,' Evelyn Coates said, 'I didn't realize I had introduced a homespun political philosopher into our midst.'

'I'm not absolutely against what he said,' the lawyer said. 'I don't see where it's so wrong to be loyal to the team. If the team's winning, of course.' He chuckled softly at his own joke.

The congressman looked up from his accounts. If he had heard a word of the discussion, or any discussion for the last ten years, for that matter, he didn't show it. 'Okay,' he said, 'it all comes out even. Evelyn, you won three hundred and fifty-five dollars and fifty cents. Mr. Grimes, you won twelve hundred and seven dollars. Everybody else get out their checkbooks.'

While the losers were finding out how much they owed, there were the usual jokes, directed at Hale, for bringing a ringer, me, into the game. Evelyn Coates made no jokes. There was no hint in the way anyone else talked that anything like an argument had just taken place.

I tried to look offhand as I put the checks into my wallet. Luckily, they were all on Hale's Washington bank. He endorsed them for me so that I wouldn't have any trouble cashing them.

We all left together, and there was a jumble of good-byes as the congressman and the columnist got into a taxi together. The lawyer took Evelyn by the arm, saying, 'You're on my way, Evelyn, I'll drop you.' Hale was inside getting a pack of cigarettes from the machine, and I stood alone for a moment watching the lawyer and Evelyn Coates walk off into the darkness of the parking lot. I heard her low laugh at something he had said as they disappeared.

Hale drove silently for a little while. 'How long do you plan to stay in town?' he asked, as we were stopped for a light

'Just until I get my passport. Monday, Tuesday...'

'Then where?'

"Then I'll look at a map. Somewhere in Europe.'

He started the car with a jerk as the light changed. 'God I wish I was coming along with you. Wherever you're going.' The intensity in his voice was disturbing. He sounded like a prisoner speaking to a man who was about to be freed in the morning. This town,' he said. 'Total swamp.' He turned a comer recklessly, the tires squealing. 'That miserable, smooth, molasses-talking Benson bastard ... It's a lucky thing you're not in the government....'

'What're you talking about?' I was really honestly puzzled.

'If you were - in the government, I mean - by Monday night, somebody in your department - higher in your department - would get a little poison in his ear about you.'

'You mean because of what I said about voting and changing uniforms, that stuff?' I tried not to sound incredulous, as though I were really taking him seriously. 'Actually, I hardly meant it. I was joking, or, anyway, half-joking.'

'You don't joke in this town, friend,' Hale said somberly. 'At least not in front of guys like him. I've been trying to get him out of the game for six months and nobody's got the guts to do the job. Including me. You may have been joking, but he for sure wasn't.'

'At one point in the evening,' I said, 'I was on the point of saying I'd hang around till next Saturday.'

'Don't. Blow. Blow as fast as you can. I wish to hell I could.'

I don't know how it works in your department,' I said, 'but can't you ask for an assignment someplace else?'

'I can ask,' Hale said. 'That's about as far as it would go.' He fumbled at a cigarette. 'They have me pegged as unreliable in the service, and they're making sure they can keep an eye on me twenty-four hours a day....'

'You? Unreliable?' It was the last thing I'd ever guess 'anybody would think about him.

I was in Thailand for two years. I sent you a letter. Remember?'

I never got it, I've been moving around a lot....'

'I wrote a couple of reports that didn't exactly go through channels.' He laughed bitterly. 'Channels ! Sewers. Well, they yanked me - politely - and gave me a nice office with a beautiful secretary and a raise in salary and some memos to shuffle that you might just as well paper the walls with. And the only reason they're being so kind to me is because of my goddamn father-in-law. But the message was clear - and I got it. Be a good boy or else ... God! ' He laughed again, a harsh, croaking sound. 'When I think that I celebrated when I found out I passed the Foreign Service exam! And it's all so senseless - those reports I wrote ... I was patting myself on the back - the intrepid truth-seeker, the brave little old truth-announcer. Christ, there wasn't anything in those pages that hasn't been spread over every newspaper in the country since then.' He scraped his cigarette out savagely in the ashtray on the dashboard. 'We live in the age of the Bensons, the smooth poison-droppers, who know from birth that the way up is through the sewer. I'll tell you something peculiar - a physiological phenomenon - somebody ought to write it up in a medical journal - I have days when I have the taste of shit in my mouth all day. I wash my teeth, I gargle, I get my secretary to put a bowl of narcissus on my desk - nothing helps....'

'Jesus,' I said. 'I thought you were doing great.'

'I put on a good act,' Hale said lifelessly. 'I have to. I'm a dandy little old liar. It's a government of liars and you get plenty of practice. Happy civil servant, happy husband, happy son-in-law, happy father of two.... Ah, Christ, why am I letting it all out on you? I imagine you have troubles enough of your own.'

'Not at the moment,' I said. 'If it's so bad, why don't you quit? Go into something else?'

'Into what?' he said. 'Selling neckties?'

'Something would be bound to turn up.' I didn't tell him that there might be a job open as a night clerk in New York. Take a few months off and look around and...'

'On what?' He made a derisive sound. 'I haven't a penny. You saw how we live. My salary's just about half of it. My sainted father-in-law kicks in the rest. He nearly had apoplexy when I got sent home from Asia. He'd burn the house down over my head if I told him I was quitting. He'd have my wife and the kids back living with him in two months after I went out the door.... Ah, forget it, forget it, I don't know why I suddenly went off the handle like this. That sonofabitch Benson. I see him multiplied by a thousand every time I come to work in the morning. What the hell - I don't have to play in that poker game anymore. At least that'll be one Benson I won't have to talk to.' He laughed softly. 'Maybe if I'd won tonight, I'd be telling you what a great life it is right this minute in this dandy little old town of Washington.' He was driving more and more slowly, as though he didn't want to be left alone or have to go home and face the concrete facts of his wife, his children, his career, his father-in-law. I wasn't so anxious to get to my hotel room either. I didn't want to put on the light and look at the telephone on the bedside table and fight down the temptation to pick it up and ask for Evelyn Coates's number.

'I wonder if you'd do me a favor, Doug?' he said, as we neared my hotel.

'Of course.' But even as I said it, I made strong mental reservations. After the conversation in the car, I didn't have any inclination to get mixed up more than was absolutely necessary with the life and problems of my old college buddy, Jeremy Hale.

'Come out to dinner tomorrow night,' he said, 'and somehow get onto the subject of skiing and say you're thinking of going skiing in Vermont the first two weeks next month and why don't I join you?'

'I don't think I'll even be in the country by then,' I said.

'That makes no difference,' he said calmly. 'Just say it. Where my wife can hear it. I have some time coming to me and I can get away then.'

'You mean you have to make excuses to your wife if you want to...?'

'Not really.' He sighed, at the wheel. 'It's more complicated than that. There's a girl...'

'Oh.'

That's it.' He laughed uneasily. 'Oh. That doesn't sound like me either, does it?' He said it pugnaciously, as though somehow he was accusing me of something.

'Frankly, no,' I said.

'It isn't like me. This is the first time since I've been married ... I never thought it would happen. But it did happen and it's driving me crazy. We've just had a few times ... a few minutes, an hour, here and there. Sneaking around. It's killing both of us. In a town like this, with people snooping around like bird dogs after everybody. We need some time together - real time. God knows what my wife would do if anybody ever said anything to her. I didn't want it to happen, I swear to God, but it happened. I feel as though the top of my head is going to blow off. I can't talk to anyone in this town. It's like living with a stone on my chest, day in, day out. I never knew I could feel like this about any woman.... You might as well know who it is....'

I waited. I had the terrible feeling that the name he was going to come out with would be Evelyn Coates.

'It's that girl in my office,' he said, whispering. 'Miss Schwartz. Miss Melanie Schwartz. God, what a name! '

'Name or no name,' I said, 'I can understand. She's beautiful.'

'She's a lot more than that. I'm going to tell you something, Doug - if it keeps going on the way it's been going - I don't know what I'm liable to do. We've got to get out of this town together ... a week, two weeks, a night ... But we've got to ... I don't want a divorce. I've been married ten years, I don't want ... Oh, hell, I don't know why I should drag you into it.'

'Ill come to dinner tomorrow night,' I said.

Hale didn't say anything. He stopped in front of the hotel. TU expect you around seven,' he said calmly, as I got out of the car.

In the elevator on the way up to my floor, I thought, Scranton isn't all that far from Washington after all.

As I got ready for bed I kept away from the telephone in my room. I took a long time getting to sleep. I guess I was waiting for the phone to ring. It didn't ring.

I couldn't tell whether it was the telephone that awoke me or if I had opened my eyes just before it began to ring. I had had a nasty, jumbled dream in which I was hiding out, running, from unseen and unknown pursuers, through dark, forested country, then suddenly in glaring sunlight between rows of ruined houses. I was glad to be awake and I reached over gratefully for the telephone.

It was Hale. I didn't get you up, did I?' he asked.

'No.'

Listen,' he said, 'I'm afraid I have to cancel the dinner tonight. My wife says we're invited out.' He sounded offhand and untroubled.

'That's okay,' I said, trying not to let my relief show in my voice.

'Besides,' he said. 'I talked to the lady in question and — 'The rest of the sentence was muffled by a deep crescendo of sound.

'What's that noise?' I asked. I remembered what he had said about phones being tapped in Washington.

'It's a lion roaring,' be said. 'I'm in the zoo with my kid». Want to join us?'

'Some other time. Jerry,' I said. 'I'm still in bed.' After the outburst in the car after the poker game, I didn't relish the idea of watching him play the role of the dutiful father devoting his Sunday morning to his children. I have never been expert at complicity and didn't relish the thought of being used to deceive infants.

'See you in the office tomorrow,' he said. 'Remember to bring your birth certificate.'

'I'll remember,' I said.

The L'on was roaring as I hung up,

I was in the shower when the phone rang again. Streaming and soapy, grabbing a towel to wrap around my middle, I picked up the phone.

'Hello,' the voice said. 'I waited as long as I could.' It was Evelyn Coates. Her voice was half an octave lower on the phone. 'I have to leave the house. I thought you might have been tempted to call last night, after the game. Or this morning.' Her self-confidence was irritating.

'No,' I said, leaning back. trying to keep the water from dripping onto the bed. 'It didn't occur to me,' I lied. 'Anyway, you seemed somewhat preoccupied.'

'What are you doing today?' she asked, ignoring my complaint.

'At the moment I'm taking a shower.' I felt at a disadvantage trying to cope with that low, bantering voice, the water dripping coldly down my back from my wet hair and my eyes beginning to smart because I had gotten some soap in them.

She laughed. 'Aren't you polite?' she said. 'Getting out of a shower to answer the phone. You knew it was me, didn't you?'

The thought may have crossed my mind.'

'Can I take you to lunch?'

I hesitated, but not for long. After all, I had nothing better to do that afternoon in Washington. That would be fine,' I said.

'I'll meet you at Trader Vic's,' she said. 'It's a Polynesian place in the Mayflower. It's nice and dark, so you won't see the poker-rings under my eyes. One o'clock?'

'One o'clock,' I said. I sneezed. I heard her laugh.

'Go back to your shower and then dry yourself thoroughly, like a good boy. We don't want you spreading cold germs among the Republicans.'

I sneezed again as I hung up. I fumbled my way back to the bathroom with my eyes smarting from the soap. A dark room would suit me, too, because I knew my eyes would be bloodshot the better part of the afternoon. Somehow, I was beginning to have the feeling that I would have to be at my best physically and mentally, anytime I had anything to do with Evelyn Coates.

'Grimes,' she said to me as we were finishing lunch in the dimly lit room, watching the Chinese or Malayan or Tahitian waiter pour flaming rum into our coffee, 'you give me the impression of being a man with something to hide.'

It came as a complete surprise to me. Until then our conversation had been almost absolutely impersonal - about the food, the drinks (she had had three enormous rum concoctions, with no apparent effect) - about the poker game the night before (she had complimented me on the way I played and I had complimented her) - about the various social strata in Washington and where the people of the night before fitted in, all the small polite kind of talk with which a courteous and worldly woman might fill an hour to entertain a visitor from afar who had been asked to look her up by some mutual friend. She was dressed charmingly, in a loose tweed suit and plain blue blouse, high at the throat, and had her dark blonde hair pulled back and tied with a blue ribbon in girlish fashion. I had spoken little, and, if I wondered why she had bothered to call me, I hadn't shown it. She hadn't mentioned the night we had spent together, and I had made up my mind not to be the first to bring it up.

'Something to hide,' she repeated. My questions to her the night I had met her, I realized, had not been forgotten. Had been filed away in that sharp, suspicious mind for future reference.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' I said. But I avoided her eyes.

'Yes, you do,' she said. She watched the waiter finish with his performance and place the mugs of hot coffee, smelling of rum and orange and cinnamon sticks, in front of us. 'I've seen you three times now - and this is what I don't know about you - where you come from, where you're going, what you're doing in town, what business you're in, why you didn't call me after the other night.' She sipped at her drink, smiling demurely over the rim of the mug. 'Every other man I've ever seen three times in one week has regaled me with his complete biography - how his father didn't communicate with him, how important he is, what stocks he's bought, all the influential people he knows in town, what problems he ha» with his wife...'

Tm not married.'

'Bravo,' she said. 'I am in possession of a fact. Mind you, I'm not digging for information. I'm not all that curious about you. It just occurred to me all of a sudden that you must be hiding something. Please don't tell me what it is' -she held up her hand as though to stop me from saying anything. 'You might turn out to be a lot less interesting than I think you are. There's only one thing I'd like to ask you, if you don't mind.'

'I don't mind.' I could hardly say less.

'Are you staying in Washington?'

'No.'

'According to Jerry Hale you're going abroad.'

'Eventually,' I said.

'What does that mean?'

'Soon. In a week or so.'

'Are you going to Rome?'

'I imagine so.'

'Are you prepared to do me a favor?'

If I can.'

She looked at me consideringly, tapping a fingernail absently on the wood surface of the table. She seemed to come to some decision. 'In the course of my duties,' she said, ‘I have come across certain private memorandums of considerable interest. I've taken the liberty of Xeroxing them. The Xerox is Washington's secret weapon. No man is safe if there's one in the office. I happen to have a small sampling of records of delicate negotiations that someday may prove very useful to me. And to a friend - a very good friend. He used to work with me, and I'd like to protect him. He's in the embassy in Rome. I want to get some papers to him - some papers very important to me and to him - safely. I don't trust the mails here. And I certainly don't trust them in Rome. My friend has told me he thinks his correspondence is being tampered with, both in the embassy and at his home. Don't look so surprised. If you'd been in this city as long as I have...' She didn't finish the sentence. 'There's not a soul here I really trust. People talk incessantly, pressures are applied, mail is opened, as I said, phones are bugged ... I imagine your good friend Jeremy Hale intimated as much to you.'

'He did. You think you can trust me?'

'I think so.' Her voice was hard, almost threatening. 'For one thing, you won't be in Washington. And if you're hiding something important of your own, as I believe ... Do you deny it?'

'Let it pass,' I said. 'For the moment.'

'For the moment.' She nodded, smiling pleasantly at me. "As I said, if you're hiding something important of your own, why couldn't you undertake a little secret errand for a friend? Something that wouldn't take up more than a half hour of your time - and keep quiet about it?' She dug in the big leather handbag that she had on the floor under the table and produced a thick, business-size envelope, sealed with Scotch tape. She slapped it down on the table between us. 'It doesn't take up much space, as you can see.'

'I don't know when I'm going to be in Rome,' I said. 'Maybe not for months.'

There's no rush,' she said deliberately. She pushed the envelope a half-inch closer to me across the table with her fingernail. She was a hard woman to say no to. 'Any time before May will do.'

There was no name or address on the envelope. She took out a small gold pencil and a notebook. 'Here's the address and telephone number of my friend,' she said. 'Call him at home. I'd rather you didn't deliver this at the embassy. I'm sure you'll like him. He knows everybody in Rome and you might meet some interesting people through him. I'd appreciate it if you dropped me a line after you've seen him to let me know the deed's been done.'

'I'll write you,' I said.

'There's a nice boy.' She pushed the envelope still closer to me. 'From all indications,' she said evenly, 'you would like to see me from time to time. Am I right? '

'Yes, you're right.'

'Who knows?' she said. 'If I knew where you were and I had a few weeks of holiday, I might just turn up...'

It was pure blackmail and we both knew it. But it was more than that, too. I was going abroad with the intention of losing myself. I had told Hank that I would get in touch with him from time to time, but that was different. He would never know where I was. Looking across the table at this baffling, desirable woman, I realized that I did not want to lose myself completely, cut all ties to America, have no one in my native country who could, in extremis, reach me with a message, even if the message were only 'Happy Birthday' or, 'Will you lend me a hundred dollars?'

'If you're tempted to open this' - she touched the envelope - 'and read what's in it, by all means do so. Naturally, I'd rather you didn't. But I promise you there is nothing there that'll make the slightest sense to you.'

I picked up the envelope and put it in my inside pocket. I was connected to her, even if it was only by the memory of a single night, and she knew it. Just how deeply she was connected to me was another matter. 'I won't open it.'

'I was sure I could depend on you. Grimes,' she said.

'Use my first name, please,' I said, 'the next time we meet.'

'I'll do that/she said. She looked at her watch. 'If you're finished with your coffee,' she said, 'I'll pay and we'll leave. I have a date in Virginia,'

'Oh,' I said, trying not to sound disappointed. 'I thought we might spend the afternoon together.'

'Not this time, I'm afraid,' she said. 'If you're lonely, I believe my room-mate, Brenda, isn't doing anything this afternoon. She said she thought you were very nice. You might give her a call.'

'I might,' I said. I was glad the room was dimly lit. I was sure I was blushing. But I was stung by the callousness of her offer. 'Do your lovers always go with the apartment?' I asked.

She looked at me evenly, undisturbed. 'I think I told you once before that you are not my lover,' she said. Then she called to the waiter for the check.

I didn't phone Evelyn's room-mate. By some perverse reasoning that I didn't really try to understand, I decided that I would not give Evelyn Coates that satisfaction. I spent the afternoon walking around Washington. Now that I knew, at least fragmentarily, what went on behind those soaring columns, off the long corridors, in those massive copies of Grecian temples, I was not as impressed as I otherwise would have been. Rome, I thought, just before the arrival of the Goths. It occurred to me that I probably was never going to vote again, though I was not saddened by the idea. But for the first time in three years I felt unbearably lonely.

As I entered the lobby of my hotel in the dusk, I made up my mind to leave Washington that night. The sooner I arranged to get out of the country the better. As I packed my bags I remembered George Wales' ski club. What was its name? The Christie Ski Club. No worrying about baggage allowance, no worrying about the Swiss customs, all the free booze you could drink. I had no intention of arriving economically drunk when I set foot on European soil, but with the freight I would be carrying, being waved through Swiss customs with a smile had obvious attractions. Besides, if anybody was watching for the clerk who had fled the Hotel St Augustine with a hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, I reasoned, the last place they'd think to look would be the counter where some three hundred and fifty hilarious suburbanites were embarking for a holiday in the snow from which they would all return en masse in three weeks to the United States.

I was just about to close my second bag when the phone rang. I didn't want to speak to anybody and I let it ring. But it rang persistently and finally I picked it up.

'I know you're there...' It was Evelyn Coates's voice. 'I'm in the lobby and I asked at the desk if you were in.'

'How was Virginia?' I said flatly.

'I'll tell you when I see you. May I come up?' She sounded hesitant, uncertain.

'I suppose so,' I said.

She chuckled, a little sadly, I thought. 'Don't punish me,' she said. And hung up.

I buttoned the collar of my shirt, pushed the tie into place, and put on my jacket, ready for all formalities.

'Ghastly,' she said, when she came through the door and looked around her at my room. 'Chromium America.'

I helped her off with her coat, because she stood there with her arms out as though expecting it. 'I don't intend to spend the rest of my life here,' I said.

'I see,' she said, glancing at the packed bag on the bed. 'Are you on your way?'

'I thought I was.'

'Past tense.'

'Uh-huh.' We were standing stiffly, confronting one another.

'And now?"

'I'm not in all that much of a hurry.' I did nothing to make her comfortable. 'I thought you said you were busy today.... In Virginia.'

'I was,' she said. 'But during the course of the afternoon, it occurred to me that there was one person I desperately wanted to see and that he was in Washington. So here I am.' She smiled experimentally. 'I hope I'm not intruding.'

'Come in,' I said.

'Are you going to ask me to sit down?'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Of course. Please.'

She sat down, with neat, womanly grace, her ankles primly crossed. She must have been walking in the cold in Virginia because the color was heightened along her cheekbones.

'What else occurred to you?' I asked, still standing, but at a good distance from her.

'A few other things,' she said. She was wearing brown driving gloves, and she pulled them off and dropped them in her lap. Her long fingers, nimble with cards, deft with men, shone in the light of the lamp on the desk beside her. 'I decided I didn't like the way I talked to you at lunch.'

'I've heard worse,' I said.

She shook her head. 'It was pure, hard-boiled Washingtonese. Defend yourself at all times. Professional deformation of speech habits. No reason to be used on you. You don't have to be defended against. I'm sorry.'

I went over to her and kissed the top of her head. Her hair impelled of winter countryside. 'There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm not as tender as all that.'

'Maybe I think you are.' she said. 'Of course you didn't call Brenda.'

'Of course not,' I said.

'What a stupid, patronizing thing for me to have said.' She sighed. 'On weekends.' she said, 'I must learn to leave my armor at home.' She smiled up at me, her face soft and young in the subdued glow of the lamp. 'You'll forget I said it, won't you?'

'If you want. What else occurred to you in Virginia?'

'It occurred to me that the only time we made love, we both had had too much to drink.'

That's for fair.'

'I thought how nice it would be if we made love stone-cold sober. Have you had anything to drink since lunch?' , 'No.'

'Neither have I,' she said, standing up and putting her arms around me.

This time she allowed me to undress her.

Sometime in the middle of the night she whispered, 'You must leave Washington in the morning. If you stay another day, maybe I'll never let you out of the city again. And we can't have that, can we?'

When I woke in the morning, she was gone. She had left a note on the desk in her bold, slanted handwriting. 'Weekend blues. It's Monday now. Don't take anything the lady said seriously, please. E.'

She had put on her armor for the day's work. I crumpled the note and threw it in the waste-basket.