preposterous, rumpled figure. They crowded around him, touching and jostling. Even in these clever precincts? Chardy had no idea what being on television meant, what celebrity meant.
“They love him, don’t they?” he said to Uckley.
“They sure do, sir,” said Uckley.
The room had jammed up and become bright and hot with people. It was not so much furnished as equipped, largely with spacey-looking hi-fi components, a jungle of plants and books. Somebody loved books, for they were ceiling to floor on three of the walls and the other was bare brick. There were little steel spotlights mounted on racks on the ceiling, throwing vivid circles of light on Japanese prints and twisted modern paintings. It was like some kind of museum; somebody had spent a lot of money turning this living room into a museum. Chardy was catching a headache and all the noise and smoke pitched it higher. It looked like Danzig would be here for hours — until the dawn, among the horde of intellectuals.
Not all, but most,
Chardy checked his watch. It was 11:20.
“Have you seen Lanahan, Sarge?”
“No, sir,” said Uckley.
Chardy hunted through the mass of bodies and at last spotted Miles sitting by himself in a corner. He turned back to Uckley.
“Look, do you think you can handle this?”
“There’s nothing to handle, sir.”
“I’ll stay if you’d prefer.”
“No, sir.”
“I may be back in a little while.”
“Take your time.”
Chardy shook himself free of the wall and edged through the crowd. Lanahan sat disconsolately by himself.
“Not your crowd, Miles?”
Lanahan looked up, but did not smile. “I don’t have a crowd,” he said.
“Look, would it be a big deal if I slipped out a little early?”
“It would be a very big deal.”
“Well, I’m going to do it anyway. Why don’t you talk to somebody, have a good time? Meet some people. You look like the village priest at the great lord’s manor for the first time.”
Lanahan looked at him through narrow dark eyes in a field of skin eruptions. Flecks of dandruff littered his small shoulders.
“You shouldn’t joke about priests, Paul.”
“Miles, I’m going. All right?”
Lanahan didn’t say anything.
“Come on, Miles, cheer up.”
“Just go, Paul. You don’t have any responsibility; you can sneak off. I’ll stay. I’m expecting a call from Yost anyway.”
“Be back shortly,” said Chardy. He fought to the hall, squeezed down it to the door, where an older woman stood talking to several others in the overflow.
“Leaving so early? Did you have a coat?”
“No, I’m all right.”
“Glad you could come.”
“I had a wonderful time,” he said.
He stepped out the door, went down three steps, and followed the short walk to Hawthorne Street.
“There he is,” she said.
They watched Chardy pick his way down the steps, pause at the sidewalk for just a second, and then head down the street. They watched in silence until he disappeared.
“Just Danzig. Nobody else. Please, you swore.”
He turned and looked at her with a cold glare.
“Please,” she said. “You promised. You swore.”
“I go now.”
“I’ll come too.”
“No,” he said. “I can go alone. Many people, no guards. People come and go. America is open, they told me.”
“Please. I—”
“No.”
“I’ll be here then. To drive you away.”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I get away. Get away yourself, now. Cross that border now, Dada Johanna.”
He climbed from the car and strode across the street, a tall, forceful figure.
She watched him move. A pain began to rub inside, between her eyes. She sat back. She could not face the future, the explanations, excuses, attention. It all seemed to weigh so much. She thought of it as weight, mass, as substance, a physical thing, pressing her down. She fought for breath. She thought of facing Chardy in the morning. She thought of the pain her parents would feel. She could not imagine it.
She watched. Ulu Beg knocked on the door. She could not see his gun; he’d hidden it, probably under the tweed sport coat.
The door opened. She could see them talking. What would he say? She wanted to cry. She was so scared.
Chardy knocked on Johanna’s door.
There was no answer.
“Johanna?” he called into the wood. “Johanna?”
Now what the hell was going on?
32
Trewitt’s fever rose and rose and rose, pulling him through an absolute kaleidoscope of discomforts, each spangling and fanning into something more unbearable, and since his imagination — the basic stuff of this journey through the fever zone — was prodigious to begin with, the trip was incredible. His fantasies were built of gore and sex and they centered on the body of the woman lying in her own blood. But soon they began to lessen in intensity. Gradually, by the second night, his head began to clear somewhat. It was very cold. The air hurt to breathe. He pulled something about him, a thin blanket that offered no protection.
On the third day he awoke to find himself in a stone shack with no glass in the windows, a stove that burned only junk wood, and a dirt floor across which there scampered a flock of chickens herded by a couple of listless mutts. He felt as though he’d come to in the middle of a movie and looked about for stock figures. But no: only the titanic figure whom he now understood to be Ramirez, in his (Trewitt’s) yellow pants with his (Trewitt’s) Beretta in the waistband, reading a photo-novel whose Spanish title translated into “A Smart-Alecky Young Miss Gets Her Comeuppance,” while munching on a
Trewitt hauled himself up, wobbling the whole way.
“You want a wing? We got a wing left,” was Ramirez’s welcome-back to the man who’d saved his life.
