Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (53 page)

 
          
 
Besides, he was just beginning to enjoy his
new job, and there was nothing to be gained by throwing it down the toilet.

 
          
 
The worms of rationalization began to gnaw at
his soul . . .

 
          
 
But there was one thing he would do, dammit.

 
          
 
He dialed Sarah's number. His number. His home
number.

 
          
 
"Hello?" She sounded cheerful.

 
          
 
"It's me."

 
          
 
"Oh." It was as if he had pricked a
hole in her balloon. He could hear a rush of escaping goodwill.

 
          
 
"How are you?"

 
          
 
"Late."

 
          
 
"How're the kids?"

 
          
 
"At school."

 
          
 
"Oh." So much for pleasantries.
"I found out who put the bug in your car?"

 
          
 
"Oh, really? Who was it?" She added
acidly, "The Chinese?"

 
          
 
"No. It was Epstein's people."

 
          
 
"They admitted it?"

 
          
 
"No. I found out."

 
          
 
"How?"

 
          
 
"Never mind. The point is, 1—"

 
          
 
"So you're quitting." She paused,
and he could almost feel a crooked smile. "Right?"

 
          
 
"The point is, I think there's another
one somewhere."

 
          
 
"Where?"

 
          
 
"I don't know."

 
          
 
"Do you intend to find out?"

 
          
 
"I'm trying. If I do, I'll let you
know."

 
          
 
"Sure, Timothy. What are you going to do
about it?"

 
          
 
"I think I'm doing something right now.
D'you have any idea the risk I'm taking by—"

 
          
 
"Risk!" She emitted a raspy noise that
passed for a laugh. "Your idea of a big risk is jaywalking."

 
          
 
Enough, he thought. I don't have to take this.
"Put a cork in it, God damn it! I've told you. You know. Now you can do
what you want."

 
          
 
"No, Timothy, you do something," she
spat. "Or do you want me to tell the walls and the dashboard what a joke
you are in bed?"

 
          
 
"Wha—"

 
          
 
She hung up.

 
          
 
His hand shook as he replaced the receiver.
But as angry as he was, as fervently as he wanted to call her back and slap her
in the face with his fling with Eva, he was even more startled by the depth of
her rage. Never in fifteen years of marriage, not in the most bitter,
vituperative moment, had she stooped to cheap, easy, tacky—and untrue!
untrue!—cracks about his virility.

 
          
 
Never mind how you feel, he told himself in an
effort to reduce his fever to a manageable temperature, think how she must
feel. He resolved not to be angry, not to detest her, but to understand her and
feel sorry for her.

 
          
 
Sure. You bet.

 
          
 
"Bitch!" he said aloud, and the word
felt exquisite in his mouth. "Self-righteous bitch!"

 
          
 
Foster Pym stood at the bathroom sink, letting
his eyes adjust to the dim red glow from the darkroom bulb he had screwed into
the fixture over the sink. He had tacked a black rubber raincoat over the
bathroom window, and the few rays of light that leaked around its edges would
do no harm.

 
          
 
When he could see, he unscrewed the right
earpiece from Eva's half-glasses and, with a pair of tweezers, withdrew the
strip of 8mm. film. He coiled the strip around a pencil, then slid it off into
a standard 35mm. film cannister. He found an unexposed roll of film and,
following Teal's precise written instructions, loaded it into the frame of the
glasses.

 
          
 
He was worried about Eva. The confrontation
with the President had shaken her badly. She had come home and declared that
she was through: He could call the police, do what he would, she would rather
go to jail for what she had done—naively or not—than risk a life sentence for
something she had been forced to do. She had never so much as hinted that she
might seek immunity in return for informing on him, but they both knew that the
option was open to her.

 
          
 
He had striven to avoid a confrontation with
her. He had accentuated the positive: She had tweaked the lion in his den and
had lived to tell the tale.

 
          
 
She saw only the negative: She had been ten
seconds away from being arrested by the President of the
United States
as a spy.

 
          
 
He said that demonstrated that the President
was only human, not omniscient and omnipotent.

 
          
 
She said it demonstrated that this stupid game
he was playing had dangers far beyond any possible reward.

 
          
 
He tried to appeal to her politically,
reminding her that she had once sent him a paper she had written at
Bennington
entitled "Disarming the American
Bully."

 
          
 
She said that was vapid bullshit and he was
only interested in being allowed to live off the fat of the land for the rest
of his life.

 
          
 
Finally, he had been forced to play two audio
tapes for her, tapes in which she had innocently identified and located three
of her former compatriots who were still at large and still being sought for
involvement in the Glen Canyon Dam affair.

 
          
 
She had thrown a bottle of sherry at him and
burst into tears.

 
          
 
He had tried to comfort her.

 
          
 
She had called him a ruthless bastard and
asked if he had any conscience at all, even about destroying Burnham's life.

 
          
 
He had replied that no, he had no conscience
at all, especially about that simpleton Burnham, at which he was shocked mute
by her expression, which told him unequivocably that she was falling in love
with Burnham.

 
          
 
Which worried him most of all.

 
          
 
She had poured herself a glass of vodka large
enough to stun Rasputin.

 
          
 
He had said that drinking was a silly—not to
mention reckless—way to avoid reality.

 
          
 
She had told him to fuck off.

 
          
 
He pulled the raincoat off the bathroom
window, turned off the red light, and walked into the living room.

 
          
 
Eva was asleep on the couch.

 
          
 
He picked up the telephone and dialed Teal's
number, and when identification had been established, said, "The hostess's
order of B-twelve is in . . . Yes ... All right. . . I'll be there."

 
          
 
He hung up.

 
          
 
"B-twelve?" Eva said foggily from
the couch.

 
          
 
"The code name for our Mr. Burnham."
Pym smiled. "You were the inspiration."

 
          
 
"I was?"

 
          
 
"Isn't that the vitamin you said makes
him believe all is right with the world?"

 
          
 
"So?"

 
          
 
"Well, if we play him correctly, he can
make all right with our world."

 
          
 
Even if, intellectually, Burnham had wanted to
stop seeing Eva, he could not have. He would have lied to himself as facilely
as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the
10:00 A.M.
tumbler of vodka: It may be early here, but
in
Baghdad
it's almost evening; I'll just have this
one shooter now, and then I'll taper down tonight; I'll quit tomorrow.

 
          
 
For, in ways that he sensed but could not
analyze, he was addicted to her. She made him feel good, and not only sexually,
though that was her most obvious achievement: Her sexual wizardry had stripped ten
years off his life and imbued him with a new potency and pride. She nourished
him, literally, by controlling his diet—not, like a health-food nut, feeding
him only what was good for him and would help prevent cancer of the colon,
things like humus and bulgar, but by restricting his intake to those foods
which made him feel physically fine, mentally alert and sexually immortal.

 
          
 
She was entirely nonjudgmental. Whether or not
she was apolitical he had no idea, but whenever, conversationally, he sought her
opinion about an issue that had come up during the day—for example, how to
draft a statement for the President that managed to kick the ass of the
President of France for harboring 173 goggle-eyed Italian terrorists, while, at
the same time, avoided driving the silly bugger farther out onto the radical
fringe—her considered response was invariably based on three priorities: what
would be best for Burnham, what would be best for the President and, last and
least, what would soothe the ruffled feathers of the vocal moralists.

 
          
 
It was so relaxing, especially compared to
life with Sarah.

 
          
 
He had tried, every couple of days for more
than two weeks, to set up a meeting with Sarah, in hopes of talking through
their differences or at least of establishing a modus Vivendi by which he could
see his children, whom he missed with a pain that was physical, visceral. Even
his midget Maoist daughter. Sarah had refused to see him and, by now, was
refusing to take his calls. If she answered and heard his voice, she would hang
up immediately. Sometimes a man answered. Burnham didn't know (and didn't
particularly care) who it was. He assumed it was a bright-eyed towhead from one
of the Hickory Hill litters. Sarah was out. Always.

 
          
 
Burnham didn't know what more to do. Several
of his friends had been divorced, but acrimonious as some of the splits had
been, the combatants had always talked, if only through their lawyers. How do
you force your wife to return your phone calls? He should probably hire a
lawyer who would go to a judge who would issue a writ (he didn't know what a
writ was, but it sounded good) to be served on Sarah who would tear it up. He
could stop paying his rent, but that seemed self-defeating, because if Sarah
and the kids were moved out onto the street, he had no doubt that Sarah would
find a way to have his salary attached. Without speaking to him on the phone.
What he could do, and what he intended to do one of these days, was stop paying
into their joint checking account, close that account, and let her start
papering Georgetown with rubber checks. Unless she had already found a new
sugar daddy to keep her in electricity and cooking gas, that should move her to
make a phone call.

 
          
 
Meanwhile, Eva came to his office each day
around
noon
. If he
could get away, they played squash. If not, they had a quick lunch in the Mess
or, if time was very short, he sent Dyanna down to fetch sandwiches for them.
If he was working—editing a speech or preparing a statement or just
thinking—she read. She seemed pleased to be there, and he was ecstatic to have
her there. He drew sustenance from her. If he was under pressure, on a
deadline, frantic to find an answer, a smile from her could (or so he felt,
and, if there was truth to the precepts of biofeedback, as she insisted there
was, feeling it made it so) lop twenty points off his blood pressure.

 
          
 
Dyanna did not like Eva. At first, Burnham
thought her problem was jealousy: It was one thing for him to have a woman outside
the office, but to establish another female in Dyanna's nest smacked of
professional adultery. Then he realized that the problem was fear. Dyanna was
afraid of Eva: She saw Eva as a destabilizing influence on Burnham, a threat to
his position and, therefore, to hers. She had no control over Eva, and she knew
that Eva had complete control over Burnham, which, of course, meant control
over Dyanna.

 
          
 
Burnham spoke to Dyanna, who denied all such
selfish sentiments and avowed that her concerns were purely moral: Marriage was
a holy vow, and Eva was a home wrecker. She volunteered to keep her feelings to
herself and to be the soul of civility around Eva, which pleased Burnham
because it freed him from having to hint that he was certain that the White
House could provide him with a secretary who was not a spiritual sister to
Jerry Falwell.

 
          
 
The President was unfailingly courteous to
Eva, had taken to calling her by her first name, had even once asked her what
she thought about a value-added tax like those imposed all over Europe (Eva
denied knowing what a value-added tax was).

 
          
 
After the second time the President met Eva,
Burnham had gone to the President and consented to a full-field FBI
investigation of Eva. He said he could not imagine that the FBI would find any
skeletons in her cupboard, but he agreed with the President that it was best
for all concerned that she be certified officially safe.

 
          
 
The President had called the Director of the
FBI while Burnham was in his office, and Burnham had provided the Director with
what few relevant details he possessed: her name, her address, her college, her
job.

 
          
 
Then the President had shaken Burnham's hand
and said, "If she's good for you, Tim, I know she'll be good for the
country."

 
          
 
The only thing Burnham had yet to do was tell
Eva.

 
          
 
He hadn't dared. Not that he was afraid she
wouldn't understand—she understood everything, that was one of her beauty
parts—but she might be annoyed that he hadn't consulted with her before
launching the investigation. Perhaps she had a few youthful peccadilloes that
she'd like to keep private. Perhaps the FBI might dredge up an early marriage—
maybe a child or two—that she had kept from Burnham.

 
          
 
What right did he have to employ the federal
government to steal all her personal secrets? None. Suppose she wasn't who she
said she was, suppose she had been lying to him, suppose . . .

 
          
 
He was supposing himself into lunacy. He had
to tell her, and tell her soon, before any one of the inane fantasies that
competed for space in his head gelled into a credible scenario.

 
          
 
And before she found out on her own, as surely
she would, for soon FBI agents looking like IBM salesmen would fan out across
the land, asking probing questions of her pediatrician, her eighth-grade
field-hockey coach and her gynecologist. One of them would be bound to call her
and ask what was going on, was she being nominated ambassador to
Mali
.

 
          
 
On a Monday when the President was not due
back from
Camp David
until the afternoon, Burnham and Eva went
for a walk on the Ellipse. A light breeze blew from the northwest, carrying mountain
pollens that irritated Burnham's allergies but keeping the humidity down so the
air was pleasantly dry.

 
          
 
Tour buses clustered around the
Washington
Monument
, disgorging graduating seniors from
Cranbury
High School
to mount the cenotaph and there, it was
hoped, to osmose the glory of
America
's heritage amid gum wrappers, cigarette
butts and Magic-Marker messages that said things like "Scungo 154."

 
          
 
Burnham and Eva circled the Ellipse without
speaking— she because she was enjoying the human extravaganza, he because he
was trying to compose a graceful way of telling her about the FBI
investigation.

 
          
 
In his mind he tried: "The President
thinks so highly of you that he wants to spend a quarter of a million of the
taxpayers' dollars to find out more about you."

 
          
 
And: "Our relationship has become
important to more than just us. It's important to
America
."

 
          
 
And: "If I didn't love you so much, I
wouldn't have sicced the FBI on you."

 
          
 
Finally, thinking that he was actually saying
something but in fact still stalling, he said, "I have something to tell
you."

 
          
 
"Oh? What?"

 
          
 
"That first day, when the President came
into my office and saw you there, he—"

 
          
 
"And called me Sarah."

 
          
 
"That's the day. Afterward, he called me
into his office and—"

 
          
 
"Dad!"

 
          
 
Burnham stopped. Why did he stop? There were a
thousand fathers here, and a thousand children calhng to them. The voice was
familiar. He looked around.

 
          
 
"Dad! T.B.!"

 
          
 
It came from behind him. He turned. There,
stopped at a light, was a yellow school bus, and hanging out of one of the
windows was the torso of Christopher.

 
          
 
"Chris!" Burnham jogged to the curb.
He was excited and nervous and happy. He hadn't seen his son in more than three
weeks. He wanted to say everything at once. What came out was, "How you
doing?"

 
          
 
"Awesome! Going to tennis camp."

 
          
 
"School's over?"

 
          
 
"A week ago."

 
          
 
"Oh. Right. Hey, I've missed you."

 
          
 
"Yeah, me too."

 
          
 
"See you when you get back?"

 
          
 
"Sure. I'll call you." The light
changed, and the bus lurched forward.

 
          
 
"Maybe I'll be home by then." Keep
him hoping, Burnham thought.

 
          
 
"I doubt it. Mom's already filed for
divorce."

 
          
 
"What?" The bus was gathering speed,
and Burnham ran alongside, dodging prams and hot-dog stands. "She couldn't
have!"

 
          
 
"She did," Christopher said. The bus
was pulling away now, and he had to shout. "Cruel and unusual punishment,
I think it is. See ya!" He waved and vanished into the bus.

 
          
 
Burnham stood at the comer, staring after the
bus, feeling winded, shocked, betrayed, traduced, raped.

 
          
 
Eva came up behind him and took his hand and
laced her fingers into his.