11/22/63: A Novel (66 page)

I turned off the shower, got my arms around her in a hug, and held her as she tottered over the lip of the tub. Water from her soaked slip pattered onto the pink bathmat. I whispered into her ear: “I thought you were dead. When I came in and saw you lying there, I thought you were fucking dead. You’ll never know how that felt.”

I let her go. She stared at me with wide, wondering eyes. Then she said: “John was right. R-Roger, too. He called me tonight before Kennedy’s speech. From Washington. So what does it matter? By this time next week, we’ll
all
be dead. Or wish we were.”

At first I had no idea what she was talking about. I saw Christy standing there, dripping and bedraggled and full of bullshit, and I was utterly furious.
You cowardly bitch,
I thought. She must have seen it in my eyes, because she drew back.

That cleared my head. Could I call her cowardly just because I happened to know what the landscape looked like over the horizon?

I took a bath towel from the rack over the toilet and handed it to her. “Strip off, then dry off,” I said.

“Go out, then. Give me some privacy.”

“I will if you tell me you’re awake.”

“I’m awake.” She looked at me with churlish resentment and—maybe—the tiniest glint of humor. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, George.”

I turned to the medicine cabinet.

“There aren’t any more,” she said. “What isn’t in me is in the commode.”

Having been married to Christy for four years, I looked anyway. Then I flushed the toilet. With that business taken care of, I slipped past her to the bathroom door. “I’ll give you three minutes,” I said.

The return address on the manila envelope was John Clayton, 79 East Oglethorpe Avenue, Savannah, Georgia. You certainly couldn’t accuse the bastard of flying under false colors, or going the anonymous route. The postmark was August twenty-eighth, so it had probably been waiting here for her when she got back from Reno. She’d had nearly two months to brood over the contents. Had she sounded sad and depressed when I’d talked to her on the night of September sixth? Well, no wonder, given the photographs her ex had so thoughtfully sent her.

We’re all in danger,
she’d said the last time I spoke to her on the phone.
Johnny’s right about that.

The pictures were of Japanese men, women, and children. Victims of the atomic bomb-blasts at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or both. Some were blind. Many were bald. Most were suffering from radiation burns. A few, like the faceless woman, had been charbroiled. One picture showed a quartet of black statues in cringing postures. Four people had been standing in front of a wall when the bomb went off. The people had been vaporized, and most of the wall had been vaporized, too. The only parts that remained were the parts that had been shielded by those standing in front of it. The shapes were black because they were coated in charred flesh.

On the back of each picture, he had written the same message in his clear, neat hand:
Coming soon to America
.
Statistical analysis does not lie.

“Nice, aren’t they?”

Her voice was flat and lifeless. She was standing in the doorway, bundled into the towel. Her hair fell to her bare shoulders in damp ringlets.

“How much did you have to drink, Sadie?”

“Only a couple of shots when the pills wouldn’t work. I think I tried to tell you that when you were shaking and slapping me.”

“If you expect me to apologize, you’ll wait a long time. Barbiturates
and booze are a bad combination.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve been slapped before.”

That made me think of Marina, and I winced. It wasn’t the same, but slapping is slapping. And I had been angry as well as scared.

She went to the chair in the corner, sat down, and pulled the towel tighter around her. She looked like a sulky child. “My friend Roger Beaton called. Did I tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“My
good
friend Roger.” Her eyes dared me to make something of it. I didn’t. Ultimately, it was her life. I just wanted to make sure she
had
a life.

“All right, your good friend Roger.”

“He told me to be sure and watch the Irish asshole’s speech tonight. That’s what he called him. Then he asked me how far Jodie was from Dallas. When I told him he said, ‘That should be far enough, depending on which way the wind’s blowing.’ He’s getting out of Washington himself, lots of people are, but I don’t think it will do them any good. You can’t outrun a nuclear war.” She began to cry then, harsh and wrenching sobs that shook her whole body.
“Those idiots are going to destroy a beautiful world! They’re going to kill children! I hate them! I hate them all! Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro, I hope they all rot in hell!”

She covered her face with her hands. I knelt like some old-fashioned gentleman preparing to propose and embraced her. She put her arms around my neck and clung to me in what was almost a drowner’s grip. Her body was still cold from the shower, but the cheek she laid against my arm was feverish.

In that moment I hated them all, too, John Clayton most of all for planting this seed in a young woman who was insecure and psychologically vulnerable. He had planted it, watered it, weeded it, and watched it grow.

And was Sadie the only one in terror tonight, the only one who had turned to the pills and the booze? How hard and fast were
they drinking in the Ivy Room right now? I’d made the stupid assumption that people were going to approach the Cuban Missile Crisis much like any other temporary international dust-up, because by the time I went to college, it was just another intersection of names and dates to memorize for the next prelim. That’s how things look from the future. To people in the valley (the dark valley) of the present, they look different.

“The pictures were here when I got back from Reno.” She looked at me with her bloodshot, haunted eyes. “I wanted to throw them away, but I couldn’t. I kept looking at them.”

“It’s what the bastard wanted. That’s why he sent them.”

She didn’t seem to hear. “Statistical analysis is his hobby. He says that someday, when the computers are good enough, it will be the most important science, because statistical analysis is never wrong.”

“Not true.” In my mind’s eye I saw George de Mohrenschildt, the charmer who was Lee’s only friend. “There’s always a window of uncertainty.”

“I guess the day of Johnny’s super-computers will never come,” she said. “The people left—if there are any—will be living in caves. And the sky . . . no more blue. Nuclear darkness, that’s what Johnny calls it.”

“He’s full of shit, Sadie. Your pal Roger, too.”

She shook her head. Her bloodshot eyes regarded me sadly. “Johnny knew the Russians were going to launch a space satellite. We were just out of college then. He told me in the summer, and sure enough, they put Sputnik up in October. ‘Next they’ll send a dog or a monkey,’ Johnny said. ‘After that they’ll send a man. Then they’ll send two men and a bomb.’”

“And did they do that? Did they, Sadie?”

“They sent the dog, and they sent the man. The dog’s name was Laika, remember? It died up there. Poor doggy. They won’t have to send up the two men and the bomb, will they? They’ll use their missiles. And we’ll use ours. All over a shitpot island where they make
cigars.
”

“Do you know what the magicians say?”

“The—? What are you talking about?”

“They say you can fool a scientist, but you can never fool another
magician. Your ex may teach science, but he’s sure no magician. The Russians, on the other hand, are.”

“You’re not making sense. Johnny says the Russians
have
to fight, and soon, because now they have missile superiority, but they won’t for long. That’s why they won’t back down in Cuba. It’s a pretext.”

“Johnny’s seen too much newsreel footage of missiles being trundled through Red Square on Mayday. What he
doesn’t
know—and what Senator Kuchel doesn’t know, either, probably—is that over half of those missiles don’t have engines in them.”

“You don’t . . . you can’t . . .”

“He doesn’t know how many of their ICBMs blow up on their launch pads in Siberia because their rocketry guys are incompetent. He doesn’t know that over half the missiles our U-2 planes have photographed are actually painted trees with cardboard fins. It’s sleight of hand, Sadie. It fools scientists like Johnny and politicians like Senator Kuchel, but it would never fool another magician.”

“That’s . . . it’s not . . .” She fell silent for a moment, biting at her lips. Then she said, “How could
you
know stuff like that?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I can’t believe you. Johnny said Kennedy was going to be the nominee of the Democratic party, even though everybody else thought it was going to be Humphrey on account of Kennedy being a Catholic. He analyzed the states with primaries, ran the numbers, and he was right. He said Johnson would be Kennedy’s running mate because Johnson was the only Southerner who would be acceptable north of the Mason-Dixon line. He was right about that, too. Kennedy got in, and now he’s going to kill us all. Statistical analysis doesn’t lie.”

I took a deep breath. “Sadie, I want you to listen to me. Very carefully. Are you awake enough to do that?”

For a moment there was nothing. Then I felt her nod against my upper arm.

“It’s now early Tuesday morning. This standoff is going to go on for another three days. Or maybe it’s four, I can’t remember.”

“What do you mean, you can’t
remember
?”

I mean there’s nothing about this in Al’s notes, and my only college class in American History was almost twenty years ago
.
It’s amazing I can remember as much as I do.

“We’re going to blockade Cuba, but the only Russian ship we’ll stop won’t have anything in it but food and trade goods. The Russians are going to bluster, but by Thursday or Friday they’re going to be scared to death and looking for a way out. One of the big Russian diplomats will initiate a backchannel meeting with some TV guy.” And seemingly from nowhere, the way crossword puzzle answers sometimes come to me, I remembered the name. Or almost remembered it. “His name is John Scolari, or something like that—”

“Scali? Are you talking about John Scali, on the ABC News?”

“Yeah, that’s him. This is going to happen Friday or Saturday, while the rest of the world—including your ex and your pal from Yale—is just waiting for the word to stick their heads between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye.”

She heartened me by giggling.

“This Russian will more or less say . . .” Here I did a pretty good Russian accent. I had learned it listening to Lee’s wife. Also from Boris and Natasha on
Rocky and Bullwinkle.
“‘Get vurd to your president that ve vunt vay to back out of this vith honor. You agree take your nuclear missiles out of Turkey. You promise never to invade Kooba. Ve say okay and dismantle missiles in Kooba.’ And that, Sadie, is exactly what’s going to happen.”

She wasn’t giggling now. She was staring at me with huge saucer eyes. “You’re making this up to make me feel better.”

I said nothing.

“You’re
not,
” she whispered. “You really believe it.”

“Wrong,” I said. “I
know
it. Big difference.”

“George . . .
nobody
knows the future.”

“John Clayton claims to know, and you believe
him.
Roger from
Yale claims to know, and you believe him, too.”

“You’re jealous of him, aren’t you?”

“You’re goddam right.”

“I never slept with him. I never even wanted to.” Solemnly, she added: “I could never sleep with a man who wears that much cologne.”

“Good to know. I’m still jealous.”

“Should I ask questions about how you—”

“No. I won’t answer them.” I probably shouldn’t have told her as much as I had, but I couldn’t stop myself. And in truth, I would do it again. “But I will tell you one other thing, and this you can check yourself in a couple of days. Adlai Stevenson and the Russian representative to the UN are going to face off in the General Assembly. Stevenson’s going to exhibit huge photos of the missile bases the Russians are building in Cuba, and ask the Russian guy to explain what the Russians said wasn’t there. The Russian guy is going to say something like, ‘You must vait, I cannot respond viddout full translation.’ And Stevenson, who knows the guy can speak perfect English, is going to say something that’ll wind up in the history books along with
‘don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.’
He’s going to tell the Russian guy he can wait until hell freezes over.”

She looked at me doubtfully, turned to the night table, saw the charred pack of Winstons sitting on top of a hill of crushed butts, and said: “I think I’m out of cigarettes.”

“You should be okay until morning,” I said dryly. “It looks to me like you front-loaded about a week’s supply.”

“George?” Her voice was very small, very timid. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“My car’s parked in your—”

“If one of the neighborhood neb-noses says something, I’ll tell them you came to see me after the president’s speech and it wouldn’t start.”

Considering how the Sunliner was running these days, that was plausible. “Does your sudden concern for propriety mean you’ve stopped worrying about nuclear Armageddon?”

“I don’t know. I only know I don’t want to be alone. I’ll even make love with you if that will get you to stay, but I don’t think it would be much good for either of us. My head aches so
badly.
”

“You don’t have to make love to me, hon. It’s not a business deal.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Hush. I’ll get the aspirin.”

“And look on top of the medicine cabinet, would you? Sometimes I leave a pack of cigarettes there.”

She had, but by the time she’d taken three puffs of the one I lit for her, she was wall-eyed and dozing. I took it from between her fingers and mashed it out on the lower slope of Mount Cancer. Then I took her in my arms and laid back on the pillows. We fell asleep that way.