The Widening Gyre (11 page)

”I kind of hoped I would too,“ I said. ”I’m doing the best I can.“

”So,“ Susan said with emphasis, ”am I.“

I drank some wine. The truth kept turning to confusion as I tried to speak it. ”I think what you’re saying I can handle,“ I said. ”But I think you’ve overcommitted. You are becoming your work. You don’t talk the same. You use the jargon of the profession, you drink the drink of the profession, you know who the important people are and get next to them. You’ve begun to believe in potluck suppers to boost morale. I’m not sure how much you’re becoming yourself.“

”I’m not becoming myself,“ Susan said. ”I’m trying out selves, I’m working up a self. That’s part of the problem. I never had a center, a core full of self-certainty and conviction. I’ve merely picked up the colorations of the yous: my father, my husband, my…“-she smiled a little- ”… friend. Of course I’m becoming more shrink-y than the shrinks. I’m like a kid in her first year at college. And if it helps you any, you might think of me that way, leaving the nest. Even explaining myself limits me, it’s intrusive, it compromises me. I want to do what I want to do.“

”Unless your supervisor tells you not to,“ I said.

”That’s not fair. It’s not… it’s not even insightful. You still can’t get outside your own view. You can’t understand someone without a goddamned code. You don’t see that for millions of people, male and female, the workplace is the code.“

I shook my head. ”You have committed yourself to everything I’ve worked all my life to stay free of.“

”I know,“ Susan said.

”You endorse a way of life I find not only uninviting, I… I disapprove of it.“

Susan nodded.

”I always assumed,“ I said, and twiddled with my-wineglass as I said it, ”I always assumed that someone who found his or her identity the way you’re finding yours was…“-I spun the stem of the wineglass slowly between my fingers and watched the round bottom circle slowly on the table linen-”shallow.“

Susan’s gaze on me was steady. ”It’s a view you tend to impose on anyone close to you. You believe things very strongly. It burdens people.“

I nodded. ”A person might need to get away from me,“ I said. ”To develop her own views.“ I stopped twirling the wineglass and picked it up and drank some wine. Then I took the wine bottle from the bucket and poured some more into Susan’s glass and mine.

”The thing is, you’re not shallow,“ I said. ”And if you were, it wouldn’t matter. Not only would I follow you into hell. I’d follow you into AT&T.“

Susan sampled some of her sole.

”So I was wrong about that,“ I said. ”Makes me wonder what else I was wrong about. Makes me doubt myself. Screws up my autonomy.“

I took a bite of my squab. It was delicious. I tried the cabbage; it had a magnificent smoky taste.

”How come I’m still hungry when my heart is breaking?“ I said.

Susan smiled. ”Old habits are hard to shake,“ she said.

”The other thing that’s killing me,“ I said, ”is, I suppose, a problem of excessive self-concern. But I have offered you what I had always thought was the most desirable thing in the world. I have loved you absolutely, and completely, and without reservation. And I still do. I guess I’m feeling that you are not grateful.“

”Good heavens,“ Susan said. ”You’re human after all.“

”But that’s not your problem, is it? That’s mine.“

”Yes,“ Susan said. ”It would be worth your while to think about whether you love me for my sake or yours.“

”I don’t want to do that,“ I said.

”Why not?“

”Everybody needs one pipe dream,“ I said.

”Love?“

”Romantic love,“ I said. ”I won’t give it up.“

I followed Gerry Broz around the next day while Washington dug out from what they seemed to think had been Armageddon. In Boston we would have said the storm missed us. Gerry didn’t do anything more remarkable than go to class and then go to the library and then go back to his apartment.

I wandered along behind him and looked at the Georgetown campus. It was a big one, spreading down from the Georgetown Medical Center on Reservoir Road to the low bluff above the river. The older buildings were fieldstone Gothic and the new ones were brick.

In the evening Gerry went up to the library and did more research. While I browsed nearby, three coeds stopped to chat with him. Twice he went outside and smoked a cigarette, and at 9:15 he folded up his notebooks and went back to his apartment. I watched the light in his bedroom window until it went off at 11:30, then I dragged back to the Hay Adams and went to bed exhausted. Sometimes the excitement of an archcriminal is more than a man can manage.

Next morning I was back at it, a thrill a minute. This time we didn’t go to class. We strolled briskly down M Street to a coffee shop where Gerry talked with two very young girls, high school age at best, sitting in a booth, for maybe a half hour. Then we set out on a walking tour of Georgetown, stopping at five homes along the way. I noted the address each time. No novice I.

Broz wasn’t in any of the homes for more than five minutes. Then he returned briskly to his apartment, opened up the garage, got out a red Datsun 280-Z with a T-roof and headed downtown. I followed him in the rental car. He went straight down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, around it on one of the circumference roads, and back onto Pennsylvania on the hill, southeast of the Capitol. He parked about two blocks along, got out, and made another series of visits like the ones he’d made in Georgetown. Then he got back into the car and drove to F Street just east of the White House and went into the Old Ebbitt Grill where he had lunch with three other guys his age, one of whom wore a Georgetown warm-up jacket.

The restaurant was narrow and antique-looking, rising three stories, and divided into several small dining rooms. I had a beer and a hamburger at the bar while Gerry and his associates feasted on the next floor up.

When they left, the guy with the warm-up jacket got into the Z with Gerry, and the other two guys followed along behind in a metallic green Mazda sedan. Behind the Mazda, I made three. Back in Georgetown, Gerry put his Z away and the green Mazda parked outside his driveway. The four men went in and I stayed outside.

In about half an hour the two teenage girls I’d seen Gerry breakfasting with showed up and went in. They seemed highly animated when they went in and when they came out around four in the afternoon it was clear that they were drunk. They giggled as they swayed past me up Thirty-fifth Street. I watched them struggle up the incline, and looked back at the apartment and then back at them. They looked like a better bet, paragraph six. I hopped in my car and followed.

Up the hill the two girls separated. One of them kept going and the other turned right down O Street. I turned down O Street behind her.

Half a block down O she stopped to light a cigarette. She was having trouble in the wind when I came up close to her and stopped and got out of the car. She didn’t even notice me until I was beside her. She was drunker than she had looked from a distance and kept holding the flame of her lighter two inches to the right of her cigarette. I took it from her and took the cigarette from her mouth and lit it and handed both back to her. I took my wallet from my hip pocket and while I did I let her see the gun on my belt. I opened the wallet, held it toward her, then flipped it closed.

”I’d like to talk to you,“ I said.

She squinted at me uneasily.

”Get in the car,“ I said.

”What’d I do?“

”You have the right to remain silent,“ I said. ”You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be assigned you.“

I opened the door. And with a hand on her arm ushered her into the car.

”Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.“

I closed the door and went around the car and got in behind the wheel.

”What’d I do?“ she said again. She was smoking the cigarette awkwardly, as though she hadn’t much experience with it.

I put the car in gear and we rolled slowly along O Street.

”I’ve got a few questions to ask you,“ I said.

”I want to see my parents,“ she said.

”Okay,“ I said. ”We’ll go to your home and see them. I’ll question you in their presence.“

”No,“ she said.

”Okay then, let’s cut the crap. You’re drunk in public, you’re underage, you’ve been to a sex orgy, and you’re in big trouble.“

The part about the orgy was a tribute to invention. Two high school girls with four college boys, drunk in the afternoon, made it a plausible guess. And even if it weren’t true, the charge would scare her.

”You got no right to say that to me,“ she said. But her outrage was weak.

”What’s your name?“ I was very much the authority figure. ”Linda.“

”Linda what?“

She shook her head. I reached over and took her purse. ”You can’t do that,“ she said, and she got much more animated.

I ignored her. Holding the purse between my knees, I fumbled it open with one hand and shuffled through it as I drove.

In her wallet I found a District of Columbia automotive learner’s permit that said her name was Linda Remmert and that she was sixteen and a half. I also found a small packet of cocaine.

I looked at her. She had shrunk back in the corner of the seat looking nowhere near sixteen and a half. There were tears on her cheeks. She had close-cut black hair and a slightly uptilted nose. She had obviously begun the day with makeup, but there wasn’t much left. I turned left on Wisconsin Avenue without saying anything. I put the cocaine and her learner’s permit into my shirt pocket.

”That’s not mine,“ she said.

I didn’t say anything.

”It isn’t,“ she said. Her voice was snuffly and the tears continued to trickle down her cheeks.

”Honest to God,“ she said. ”I don’t know how it got there.“

I kept driving.

”Where we going?“ she said.

I shook my head. We drove some more. She had started to cry softly beside me. I felt like a child molester. Sometimes the end justified the means, sometimes it didn’t. It seemed to me that lately I was having more trouble sorting out when it did and when it didn’t. At the top of the hill on the right was Washington Cathedral. I pulled over in front of it and stopped.

Linda looked at me and tried not to cry.

I turned sideways and leaned my right arm on the back of the seat and said, ”Linda, it’s going to be all right.“

She stared at me blankly.

”What d’ya mean?“

”I mean there’s a way out of this for you.“

She stared at me and didn’t say anything.

”I don’t want to put a sixteen-year-old kid in the house of blue lights. I’m after more important stuff. If you’ll help me, I’ll help you.“

”What d’ya want me to do?“

”First I want you to tell me where you got the coke and then I want you to tell me what you were doing in there with Gerry Broz and then we’ll go from there.“

”I don’t want to get no one in trouble,“ she said.

I nodded. ”Least of all you,“ I said. ”Listen, honey, I gotta have something out of this. I don’t want it to be you, so give me somebody else. Somebody that deserves it more.

In twenty minutes I had it all.

Gerry Broz dealt coke. If you didn’t have money for coke, he’d trade for sex.

“If he thought you were sexy,” Linda said with pride.

“For himself?”

“For himself and his friends,” Linda said.

“If they thought you were sexy.”

Linda nodded. Broz also dealt among many of the Washington fashionables, Linda said. She didn’t know who, but Gerry bragged of the people he sold to.

“Or traded with,” I said.

“Not just kids,” Linda said. “Grownups, middle-aged women.”

“How do you know?”

“They have parties, granny parties they call them. Gerry calls the older women grannies. They let us come and watch.”

“Watch?”

Linda nodded. She thought it was neat. “They have a way to peek. In the bathroom there’s a one-way mirror. You can watch.”

It was obviously the most interesting thing Linda did and she liked to talk about it once she got going. It was as if she’d forgotten why I was asking. She was an excited teenage girl telling about her adventures, except her speech was slurring while she talked. “Sonofagun,” I said. “I’d like to see that.” Linda nodded. “It’s really bogus,” she said. “Some of those women, really high-class women.” She shook her head at the bogusness of it all. “Could you sneak me in?” I said. Her eyes widened.

“I’ll bet you could,” I said. “You sneak me in and you’re home free. It’ll be like I never saw you. I give you back the coke and the learner’s permit as soon as we’re out.”

Linda said, “I don’t know.”

I said, “I’ll bet you could. You can go right in the front door and through the living room and into the bathroom. If everything’s happening in the bedroom, there’s no way they’d see you.”

Linda was silent. “Yeah, that’s… How do you know what the place looks like?”

“There’s not much I don’t know,” I said. “Keep it in mind.” Delphic.

“I don’t know.”

“When’s the next, ah, performance?” I said.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Eleven o’clock.”

“The early bird catches the worm,” I said. “I’ll pick you up right here at ten of eleven. We’ll slip right on in.”

“Okay. I guess. I mean, what if I say no?” I smiled at her without warmth. Every year it got easier to smile without warmth. I was starting to feel like Jimmy Carter.

“Well, how will we do it?”

“You’ll go in,” I said. “Then when the action gets under way, you’ll come and get me.”

“I usually watch with my friend. What if she says something?”

“Tell her not to. Tell her I’m your dad and I believe in togetherness. That’s your problem.”

“You’re older than my dad,” she said.

“Maybe not, maybe I’ve just had a harder life.”

She giggled a little and hiccuped. “Not unless you’ve been married to my mother,” she said.

I let that pass. I didn’t ask how old her father was. I was afraid to.

“Margy’s okay,” Linda said. “She’ll keep quiet.”