The American Ambassador (29 page)

He looked at his watch, nodding, still distracted.

No harm in having a little fun, though. She said, “Brian? Bill likes you fine. It's just that he's nervous, not knowing what's wrong with him. It doesn't have anything to do with you.” A double edge there, she hoped.

He looked up, a broad grin on his face. He truly did appear ten years younger than his age, and in Excellent Health. “Really? I hope so, El. We go back so damn far, way back to the Kennedys. Only a few of us still around.” He had conjured an image of the tsar's household guard, valiantly struggling with the Bolsheviks at the gates. “Hell, that's so long ago, I was with the agency then, though I kept the connection pretty quiet. No one knew anything.”

With his mysterious comings and goings he had been about as inconspicuous as Allen Dulles. She said ambiguously, “1 know, Brian.” It was a cachet, having been with the CIA in the nineteen sixties. It was like having been with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Stein in Paris in the nineteen twenties, raising hell. She wondered suddenly what had happened to the man with the fourteenth-century VD, if he recovered, or if it fell off, or what.

He said, “They were swell days, weren't they?”

“Dandy,” she said.

They were silent a moment. The doctor lit another cigarette. She wondered if he had heard her sarcasm. Probably not. He was not the sort of man who listened carefully. He raised his eyebrows when he heard his name on the public address system.
Dr. Fowler . . . Dr. Fowler . . . Dr. Fowler
. . . He smiled apologetically. Time to go.

“I'll be back,” he said. “I'll talk to Bill tonight. Give him the word.”

“The sooner the better,” she said. Then, “Tell him everything.” She wanted to say, Tell him you haven't told me. But she didn't. An argument would delay him, and she wanted to see Bill.

“There's one more thing, El. Is he worried about Bill Jr.?”

“Why would he be worried about Bill Jr.?”

“I don't know. Maybe it was something I heard somewhere. Or something he said. Everyone worries about their kids.”

“What did you hear, Brian?”

Perhaps it was something in her tone, low, serious, almost seductive, but he looked at her queerly, shrugging.

“About Bill Jr.,” she said.

He shook his head, the memory apparently out of reach.

She said, “It could be important, the stories that float around this town—”

Fowler said, “It was something in my mind, I've got this ragbag of a memory.”

She said, “Yes, you do.”

“—here today, gone tomorrow.”

She was silent, looking at him evenly.

“As I said, it's important for him to go into this in the right frame of mind. A confident, constructive frame of mind. I wish you'd talk to him about the tranquilizers. If something's bothering him . . .” He smiled and moved off, waving his cigarette like a wand. Suddenly he stopped and turned back to face her, his eyes changing expression, dark to light. He looked like a cartoon character who suddenly got it. She waited. “And did I tell you, El? You're looking marvelous. That's an exceptionally pretty outfit. Bill's a lucky, lucky man. I'd have to say. You don't look a day over thirty-five!” And then he turned, a kind of stately pirouette, and still smiling brilliantly—it was the smile of a film star, or male model, or talk-show host—strode away down the corridor.

 

“I didn't know what happened to you. When you didn't come in I thought you'd gone back home, that I'd pissed you off. That you'd said, Nuts to this. Nuts to husbands. Nuts to hospitals. Nuts to visiting hours. Nuts to us. Nuts.”

They were alone at last, Carruthers and Hartnett having made their good-byes. There was no one else in the solarium. It was dark outside and the rain had stopped, but the atmosphere was damp. It was a dispiriting room, without heart; she closed her eyes, trying to revive her spirits. She emptied the glass ashtray, then spread a napkin on the low table and took out the pâté and the shaker, ice cold to the touch and sweating. The napkin was white with blue initials, a wedding present. Looking at it made her feel better.

“I was talking to your sawbones.”

“Fowler the Prowler? Where is he now?”

“They paged him. He'll be back. He said he'd be back later on.”

“He has news then?”

She struggled with the can opener until he took it from her, testing the blade with his thumb, then working it around the edges of the tin. The rasp of the blade was the only noise in the room. He looked ghastly, and the fluorescent light didn't help. He had lost his Vineyard tan. His skin had a yellowish look to it and he was breathing hard, levering the blade. She opened the shaker and poured gin into the two metal cups.

She raised her cup. “Confusion to the enemy?”

He looked at her and smiled. “Massive confusion.”

“What did they say, those two? Carruthers looked embarrassed, as if I'd interrupted something. Or is he always embarrassed?”

“You did.” He took a sip of the drink and sat back; the plastic chair sighed. “And I wish you'd come in sooner, if you had maybe they'd've stopped talking. Christ, I hate it when people talk at me. Got so I could concentrate only on the smoke rings, and when they saw that, it didn't make them stop, only try harder. They started talking at once, as if there were no time. Dumb of me. When I saw you in the doorway I should've waved you in. That would have stopped them, seeing you. It's a hell of a disadvantage, being in pajamas and a robe and feeling like hell when they're in suits and ties, feeling great. But they're gone now. And you're here.” He paused and shrugged, as if he'd lost his train of thought; she observed him move inside himself, and wait. “What did Prowler say?”

“Says you have some shrapnel in your neck and it's pressing on the nerve. Says they'll operate day after tomorrow.”

“Difficult operation?”

“Pretty difficult.”

“Well, he's not going to do it.”

“No. The chief resident's going to do it. Prowler's assisting. I was waiting for him to say that the chief resident was the best in the world or on the East Coast, but he didn't. He said he was good, though.”

“That's not bad news. Could be worse.”

“It's good news, Bill.”

“I guess it is,” he said.

“Except for the unks,” she said.

He looked at her.

“And the unk-unks.”

“Is that CIA horseshit or what?”

“Airline jargon. You want to hear more?” She explained to him about unks and unk-unks. It took a moment to get him laughing, but it didn't last long.

“Did you ever have days when everything stood still, no forward motion? Those are the days when the past catches up with you. You have to stand still to let it come alongside, and then you have to wait and listen to what it has to say. It's never what you expect. You start to walk again and it puts its dead hand on your arm. It's not finished. You damn well wait until it is finished. You're captive. Until it's ended, you can't move. It's all familiar; the thing has total recall. You try to jerk your arm away, but it won't let you go. More you fight, the stronger it gets. You ever have days like that, Elly?”

She said, “I just had one.”

He smiled. “Don't tell me about it.”

“I won't,” she said.

“You've got to keep fighting it, though.”

She thought suddenly that he was talking about something else. “Yes,” she said sharply. “Yes, you do.”

He leaned forward. “I'm happy with what I've done.”

“Working for the government.”

“Working for the government,” he said.

“I don't much care for the past tense in that sentence, Bill.”

He dipped his head, embarrassed. “Too much introspection today. Too much Carruthers. Forget I said it.” He looked at her. “You get any work done?”

She said, “Some.” She was angry with him.

“What was it today, hands? Eyes?”

“Bill Jr.,” she said. “His forehead.” She began to explain about the forehead, its planes and shadows. Then she described the girl with the umbrella, the image still stuck fast in her memory. In a moment they were laughing about the psychiatrist across the street. He seemed to have an inordinate number of female patients, so many of them young. He himself was not young but he had a pointed beard, very Viennese.

He said, “What else did Prowler have to say?”

“He thinks you don't like him.”

“How could he ever have that idea?”

“It hurts him. He's pretty busted up about it.”

“I'll have to watch my step, then.”

“And he's worried that you don't feel good about yourself.”

“Poor Prowler.”

“You've got to watch it with the tranquilizers. When you refused the Valium, he took it as a slap in the face.”

“Listen. You tell him I feel terrific about myself. I feel good about myself all day long, and him, too.”

“He's an awful horse's ass, Bill.”

“He's comic relief. I thought you liked him.”

“I don't like him. He's a horse's ass. I think he dyes his hair.”

“He does, definitely,” Nodding agreement, smiling broadly. “It must be hard as hell to do, salt-and-pepper hair. Maybe he gets Julia Child to do it for him.”

“He has a young wife.”

“Maybe she does it. Maybe it's sexy, her dying his hair.”

“I doubt it. I'll bet he keeps it a secret. Everyone has a secret, I'll bet that's his secret.”

“I've known him a long time.” He smiled. “This is one of those days I think I've known everyone a long time. But I'm not certain he wears well. I think I liked him better twenty years ago, when he was on the prowl. When he was physician-in-residence at Langley, a boy debutante, fresh out of Harvard Medical School via Yale, Exeter, and the North Shore.”

She said, “Bill.”

“What else did he say about the operation?”

“He says you'll feel better when it's over.”

He wagged his left hand at her. “Restored to good use?”

“I didn't ask him, specifically.”

“Say anything about convalescence?”

“He's coming by later tonight, give you all the details.”

“I'd rather hear them from you.”

“Bill, I'm sorry. I was upset.”

“Look, Elly.” He poured fresh drinks into both their cups. She thought his color was returning. That would be the vivifying qualities of gin. Gin and laughter. Droll stories. He looked at her and smiled sadly, and she knew that he had shifted direction. But when he spoke it was only to say “Thanks for the drinks.”

“I bought you some cigarettes and magazines and
Billiards at Half-past Nine.”

“Do you know what I'd like? One of those cassette players, with earphones, so that I could listen to music at night, in bed. Some Brahms, and Wagner. Do you think you could find
Tannhäuser
on tape?”

She smiled. “
Tannhäuser
at half-past nine? Funny music to go to sleep to, Bill. It's not exactly a lullabye.”

He said, “It's patriotic music. It's their version of a Sousa march. I figured that out the other day. I've been thinking a lot about patriotism lately. There hasn't been a hell of a lot else to think about so I've been thinking about that.”

She was alert now. She thought of him as a pitcher in the ritual fidget before the delivery of the ball, scuffing the dirt, hitching his pants, correcting the bill of his cap, juggling the ball, looking in for the sign. It was up to her to give him the sign. She said, “I was going to bring
Sports Illustrated
to your roommate, and then I remembered that he can't see. So I didn't bring it.” She told him about the ball game, Ripken Jr.'s homer in the bottom of the tenth. She was giving him time to get together whatever it was he had to get together. It was not good news. Carruthers and Hartnett, god damn them. She should have walked into the solarium straightaway. But he had not seemed to want that. “The convalescence can't be too long, Bill. You'll get out of here, and we'll go back down to the Vineyard, hang out on the Vineyard until Thanksgiving.” She looked at him closely. His eyes were closed. She took a deep breath. “Fowler said something else. He said that you seemed worried. He asked if you were worried about Bill Jr.”

His eyes popped open. “Fowler said that?”

“I asked him where he got that idea, but he didn't answer. He said maybe he'd heard it somewhere or assumed it. He was very cagy. Said that everyone's worried about their children. I didn't like hearing it, especially from him. It made me think that maybe he knows something that I don't know.”

“He still works for Langley, you know. Free lance, odd jobs, this and that.” A ghost of a smile. “He's a character in
Tannhäuser
, too. One of the spear carriers, a second-rate baritone. But definitely part of the action.”

“Well, no one ever leaves that place. You sign on, you're in for keeps.”

“He likes it. It suits him.”

“I know.”

He looked at her. “So he's heard something, El. Word's around.”

“What has he heard, Bill?”

He toyed with his cup, then took her hand. His eyes were bloodshot. She could feel his trembling and leaned closer, across the table. She kissed him. Rising, he shuffled over to the window. “You remember Warren Winston? They're worried about him, he and his committee have a fix on Bill Jr. and me. They know about Kleust, and what the Germans have, and when we saw him in Hamburg. It's part of Winston's committee's investigation, international terrorism and so forth and so on, ja-da, ja-da, jing-jing-jing. I suppose he thinks he's on the trail of Carlos or Abu Nidal, the trail that ends at Qaddafi's tent or a bomb in the nursery.” He paused, noting that she had declined to smile at his sarcasm. He said, “Probably the committee has a line into the West Germans as well as the Department.” He turned, his back to the window now. “I'll probably be called to testify. Maybe you, too. It'd be executive session, probably. But you never know with those pricks.”