Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (45 page)

 
          
 
How had this creature been recruited? He was a
stereotype of the American go-getter: slick, hip, rich. What could the
Soviet Union
possibly offer him that he would value?
Money?

 
          
 
Maybe he was being blackmailed. Maybe he had
relatives in the
USSR
. Maybe he was a restless failure in search of cheap thrills. Pym had
read newspaper accounts about all intelligence services being plagued these
days by such volatile romantics.

 
          
 
Still, the man was not altogether stupid, for
Pym now understood the advantages of meeting in a cattle car like this: In an
open park, or on a
Potomac
bridge, two agents could be seen and, with
modem technology, easily overheard. In here, a dozen rowdies could hatch a plot
to firebomb the
Vatican
and nobody would suspect a thing.

 
          
 
Pym stood over the man and dropped the copy of
US on the table. He said, "Teal?"

 
          
 
The man's eyes were sleepy, the lids drooping
halfway down his eyeballs. For a second, Pym thought he was drunk. But then he
saw the eyes scan him like a computer searching a data bank, absorbing
information from his shoes to the crown of his head.

 
          
 
"Hey, man," Teal said. "Grab a
chair."

 
          
 
Pym sat.

 
          
 
"Long time no see."

 
          
 
Long time? Pym thought. How about never? He
said, "Yes."

 
          
 
"What you been up to?"

 
          
 
"This and that. Business has been
slow."

 
          
 
"Sure." Teal was trying to be
genial, but his hooded eyes made Pym feel he was being appraised by an asp.
"There was talk maybe you'd gone out of business."

 
          
 
Pym felt ice in the back of his throat.
"What? That's—No!"

 
          
 
A waitress stopped at the table. She held a
tray of empty glasses in one hand, a pencil in the other. She was exhausted.
Perspiration streaked her eyeliner. Her long fingernails were cracked, the
polish chipped. Her hair dangled like weeds. She smelled rancid.

 
          
 
"What'll it be, man?" Teal asked.

 
          
 
"Bourbon," Pym said. "Yes,
bourbon."

 
          
 
"And bring me another Chivas,
Honey."

 
          
 
As the waitress scribbled. Teal ran his eyes
up and down her. He said, "Hey, babe, what's your sign?"

 
          
 
"Get stuffed," said the waitress,
and she turned away.

 
          
 
"The Constellation of Get Stuffed."
Teal laughed. "Don't you love this country?"

 
          
 
Pym's eyes must have betrayed his surprise,
for all he was able to say was, "But what are you—" before Teal held
up a hand, cutting him off, and shook his head.

 
          
 
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta
do," Teal said.

 
          
 
"Oh."

 
          
 
"So what's goin' down, man?"

 
          
 
"I've got a new contact," Pym said.

 
          
 
"Where at?"

 
          
 
"The White House." Nicely
understated, Pym complimented himself as he waited for the impact of the three
magic words to penetrate Teal's carapace of cool.

 
          
 
Teal said nothing. His expression didn't
change. After what seemed to Pym to be a month, Teal turned away and took a sip
of Scotch and spat out "The White House." Teal's contempt suggested
that Pym had just revealed an agent in place at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 
          
 
"Yes!" Pym was angry, defensive.

 
          
 
"I don't know where you're comin' from,
old man, but the fact is that nobody in the White House knows fuck-all worth
fuck-all, except right up at the tippy-top. It's too compartmentalized. The
NSC's a bunch of drones. One guy knows which Venezuelan has the clap, another
guy knows which Nigerian has more Swiss bank accounts than the Swiss, and maybe
a third guy knows which Berbers like to hump camels. But they never talk to
each other. The only people who really know anything are functionaries in the
State Department, the CIA and the NSA."

 
          
 
"But—"

 
          
 
"Of course, I may be underestimating
you." Teal leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands folded, his
eyes bulging under their lids and making him look even more like a reptile.
"Maybe you're gonna tell me that you've turned Dennis Duggan or Mario
Epstein or—sure, why not?—Benjamin T. Winslow his very self. Are you?"

 
          
 
"Not—"

 
          
 
"Because if you are, I'm gonna have you
sent to the funny farm."

 
          
 
Never in his life had Pym struck another human
being in anger, but now he had to clutch his knees to keep his hands from
flinging the table on top of this impudent weevil.

 
          
 
"Listen here, you . . . you . . . horrid
little know-it-all . . ."

 
          
 
Teal blinked. In his time he had probably been
called every street name ever coined. But "know-it-all"?

 
          
 
Pym shoved his copy of US into Teal's lap and
snatched Teal's copy of People from the table. "You look at those papers.
If they're worthless, then you can put a black mark through my name and forget
I ever existed. But if any brains are growing under that toupee of yours,
you'll appreciate what I've given you, and you can call me." Pym rolled up
the magazine, pushed back his chair and stood.

 
          
 
"Toupee?" said Teal.
"Toupee?" He grabbed a handful of yellow hair and pulled at it.

 
          
 
Pym could hear his phone ringing as he turned
his key in the ground-floor door. It was still ringing when he arrived at the
second-floor landing, but then it stopped.

 
          
 
He wasn't worried. Teal would call back every
ten minutes. That was the established routine in such cases. Besides, it might
do the insufferable snot good to be kept waiting.

 
          
 
Assuming, that is, that the caller had been
Teal. Perhaps it had been Eva. Or Ivy. Perhaps . . .

 
          
 
He poured himself a glass of sherry and sat on
the couch.

 
          
 
It had to have been Teal. The documents were
good. Good? They were sensational! A mental defective could see that they were
dynamite.

 
          
 
Dynamite. Perhaps Teal had concluded that he,
Pym, was dynamite, too quick-tempered and unpredictable to be reliable. He
shouldn't have mouthed off. Perhaps Teal was this very minute arranging for Pym
to be hit by a taxi.

 
          
 
Stop it.

 
          
 
He took a sip of sherry and looked at his
watch.

 
          
 
The phone rang.

 
          
 
"Hello."

 
          
 
"Teal."

 
          
 
"Mallard."

 
          
 
"The hostess wants you to know that your
hors d'oeuvres tonight were very good. Very, very good."

 
          
 
Control yourself, Pym commanded. Don't shout
"hooray" or say something stupid like "I told you so."

 
          
 
But it was difficult, for Pym felt proud,
redeemed, alive. He said, "That's very nice to hear."

 
          
 
"She hopes you will be able to do more
catering for her. Soon."

 
          
 
"I'm sure I will. I don't know exactly
when, but please tell her I'll be in touch."

 
          
 
Pym was about to sign off, when he remembered
Ivy. He said, "I have to pay one of my . . . suppliers."

 
          
 
"The hostess will give you an advance.
How much?"

 
          
 
"It's not money. It's ..." How could
he say this in catering code? He couldn't. He had to be specific. But suppose
somebody was listening. Nobody was listening! But suppose ... He decided to
speak quickly, as if speed would boggle the mind of any interceptor.

 
          
 
"I need a high-school diploma from a
genuine, accredited public or private high school in the
District of Columbia
, this year's graduating class, along with a
grade transcript showing high marks in all subjects, especially computer
courses, made out in the name of Jerome Peniston." He spelled
"Peniston."

            
"And I need it fast."

 
          
 
There was a silence. He hoped Teal was writing
down the details of the request.

 
          
 
"Look in your mailbox at eleven tomorrow
morning," Teal said.

 
          
 
Hair. All Burnham could smell, all he could
see, was long blond hair. It cascaded over his face, slipped between his lips,
tickled his nostrils.

 
          
 
He held his breath, willing himself fully
awake, afraid that this was another dream.

 
          
 
No, this was real. Through the strands of gold
he saw the drab green YMCA wall, and the shafts of dirty light that seeped
through the window washed the world in gray.

 
          
 
He buried his face deeper into her hair,
touching her shoulder with his nose and smelling the rich scent of her warm
skin.

 
          
 
They lay like silverware in a presentation
case, perfectly matched, his front molded to her back. Had either one made a
sudden move to either side, he or she would have tumbled out of the narrow bed.

 
          
 
He touched his tongue to her shoulder and made
tiny circles with its tip, savoring the taste of salt and mystery.

 
          
 
Between his legs, a morning glory awoke to
greet the day.

 
          
 
"Mmmmm," Eva said, wriggling back
against the gentleman caller. "Hello to you, too."

 
          
 
"I'll go brush my teeth."

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
"I smell like a dragon."

 
          
 
"I don't think you want to walk down the
hall with that thing waving in the wind." She pressed backward with her
hips, and, like a horse turned loose after a long day's ride, Burnham's beast
charged for home.

 
          
 
Eva whirled, straddled him, locked her mouth
on his, and guided him into her.

 
          
 
Burnham was transported. He thought of
nothing, which, when he realized he was thinking of nothing, amazed him: For
years, he had assumed that elaborate fantasizing was a critical key to his
capacity for making love.

 
          
 
She had taken him to another exotic
restaurant—Pakistani, this time—and once again had ordered for him. He had been
edgy, almost anxious, for there could be no deluding himself about the
initiative: He had made the move, and, in his mind, that made him a brother to
Faust—^the irredeemable sinner. But rationalizations were pounding on his
mental door, pleading for the chance to soothe him. He was the wronged
innocent, cast out by an unreasonable harridan. He was a human being in need of
solace, and if home was not where the heart was, then he could—should—explore
other vineyards.

 
          
 
And so on and so forth, until at last he
decided to take refuge in a facile Hemingwayesque conclusion, that good is what
makes you feel good.

 
          
 
The first course looked as though it had been
pre-chewed and sprinkled with yellow dust. It tasted delicious, but even before
the plates were removed he began to feel depressed, a heavy, leaden sense of
unfocused gloom that made him slump in his chair and fight to keep from
weeping.

 
          
 
Eva noticed immediately. She must have been
studying him.

 
          
 
"Are you all right?"

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
" 'S the matter? Sick?"

 
          
 
"Dead. Just dead."

 
          
 
"Huh," was all she said. She
summoned the waiter and, pointing to several items on the menu, commanded him
to bring them as quickly as possible. Then she smiled and took Burnham's hand
and said, "You'll feel better."

 
          
 
"Who cares?" He thought it would be
polite to smile back at her, but all he could manage was a lugubrious grimace.
Anyway, he didn't give a damn.

 
          
 
The second course looked like loam sprinkled
with raisins, and eating it was like gnawing on a sponge. He didn't want to eat
it, all he wanted to do was be buried at sea, but she coaxed and prodded him as
if he was an infant.

 
          
 
No more than two mouthfuls had found their way
to the pit of his stomach, when the curtain of despair began to rise and a vista
of broad sunlit meadows opened before him.

 
          
 
"Good God!" he said, grinning.
"What have you wrought?"

 
          
 
"We are what we eat." She shrugged
modestly.

 
          
 
"I guess so! Have you ever considered
being the personal dietitian to the free world?"

 
          
 
"I'd be happy being ..." She paused,
and her eyes lowered. "... personal dietitian to you."

 
          
 
"You've got it! Never leave my side.
Infuse me with goodness at every step." He looked at his hands, as if they
might give a clue to this sudden surge of well-being. "Damn!"

 
          
 
He ate more, and the more he ate the better he
felt, and the better he felt the more he talked. He told her about his past,
about how he got the job at the White House, about how he met Sarah, about his
marriage and his children, about the problems with his marriage (they seemed
distant and unimportant), about the President's recent inexplicable affection
for him. He restrained himself from mentioning the CIA report on the pasha of
Banda and the episode with Toddy/ Teresa, but his restraint came not so much
from discretion as from impatience: He was in a hurry to explain everything
about himself, to bare himself in homage to her, and the minutiae of his work
did not reveal anything about him.

 
          
 
It wasn't until he had finished his monologue
that he realized that Eva had been holding one of his hands in both of hers.
"This is very embarrassing," he said.

 
          
 
"What is?"

 
          
 
"I think I'm falling in love with you,
and I'm not exactly in a position to—''

 
          
 
"You're not falling in love with
me."

 
          
 
"I'm not?"

 
          
 
"No. You're in love with the way you
feel, and you think I had something to do with it." She toyed with his
fingertips. "I'm flattered, though."

 
          
 
"You didn't just have something to do
with it. You did it."

 
          
 
"Well, maybe a little." She raised
one of his fingertips to her mouth, and she breathed on it.

 
          
 
Burnham had never realized that the neural
network included a highway from the fingertip to the loins, but he did not have
to close his eyes to imagine—to feel, to know—that it was not his fingertip
that she was breathing on, not really.

 
          
 
"I do know one thing," she said
softly, "that'll make you feel good, that'll make us both feel good."

 
          
 
Guilt never reared its inhibiting head that
night. Burnham had no time to entertain it. In fact, he didn't even have time
to remove his socks.

 
          
 
Now, SUPINE, pressed into the rickety iron bed
by Eva collapsed on top of him, stroking the fine hairs at the base of her
spine, feeling her heart pumping as fast as his, he wondered if he felt guilty.

 
          
 
Sort of, he decided.

 
          
 
What did "sort of" mean?

 
          
 
Well, he had to feel guilty, because he had
broken his troth to Sarah. On the other hand, he couldn't possibly feel regret,
not at the wonderful thing that had happened or at the wonderful way he felt.
But—

 
          
 
"Don't think," Eva said into his
neck. "Feel."

 
          
 
She was right, of course, so that's what he
resolved to do. Feel.

 
          
 
They parted at the comer of 17th and
Pennsylvania
. The walk had been no more than a block,
but Burnham had had to struggle not to take Eva's hand and lace his fingers
into hers and stroke her palm.

 
          
 
When they stopped, he did take her hand.
"Can you have lunch?"

 
          
 
"Want to play squash?"

 
          
 
"I don't know if I can. Or when. I told
you, things are weird over there. But they won't starve me to death. Can you
come to my office?"

 
          
 
"Okay. When?"

 
          
 
"Twelve-thirty? One?" Burnham didn't
know what to tell her. He had no idea when he'd be free. He had no idea what
he'd be doing. He had no idea, period. "I don't know!" he said, too
loudly.

 
          
 
Startled, she took a step backward.

 
          
 
"No, no," he said, squeezing her
hand. "It's just I don't know what to tell you, and I can't expect you to
hang around all day."

 
          
 
"Maybe another—"

 
          
 
"No! I have to see you." It occurred
to him then that he was almost raving, on the comer of
17th Street
and
Pennsylvania Avenue
. He breathed deeply, and smiled, and said,
"You know what you've done, don't you? Turned me into a junkie."

 
          
 
"Really? What are you hooked on?"

 
          
 
"What do you think? You!"

 
          
 
Eva laughed. "You're sweet," she
said, and she patted his cheek, "but you sound like a song from the
sixties. By somebody like The Temptations. I don't think that'll go over very
well in the White House."

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"Tell you what: I'll come around
twelve-thirty, and if you're busy, I'll wait, and if you're still busy at
one-thirty or two, I'll leave. Fair enough?"

 
          
 
"You're an angel." He bent to kiss
her.

 
          
 
She pulled away. "Stop," she said.

 
          
 
"You're right."

 
          
 
"I'm serious."

 
          
 
"Okay." He dropped her hand and held
his own up in capitulation. "No more Cyrano."

 
          
 
"How do I get in there?" She nodded
at the gray stone wedding cake that was the E.O.B.

 
          
 
"I'll clear you at the front door. Just
give your name."