felt that a whole new life was opening before me.
It was perfectly true. One was.
Beech Hill
Bubba goes off by himself like this every year—don’t you, Bubba?” So Maryanne had said, and looked venomously at Bobs. He recalled it as he sat in Beech Hill pretending to read, his legs primly together, his back (because, no longer young, it hurt if he sat on his spine) straight.
“I suppose he needs it. Uh . . . needs the rest.” Thus Mrs. Hilliard, a friend of Maryanne’s friend Mrs. Main.
“That’s what I always say. I say: ‘Bubba, God knows you work hard all year. We don’t have much money, but you go off by yourself like you always do and spend it. I can get around in my chair perfectly well, and anyway Martha Main will come over to look after me. Nobody ought to have to take care of a cripple forever, but if it wasn’t for Martha I don’t know what I’d do.’ ”
Mrs. Hilliard had asked, “Where do you go, Mr. Roberts?”
Someone came in, and Bobs looked up and saw the countess, black hair stretched tight around her after- midnight face. His watch said seven and he wondered if she had been up all night.
At seven, fifty-one weeks of the year, he was at work. He looked at the watch again. Twelve hours later he and Maryanne had dinner, again at seven. Afterward he read while she watched television. At six he would get up, and at seven relieve the night man.
Bishop came in, followed by a young man Bobs had not seen before. The young man was pale and nervous, Bishop portly and assured behind mustache, beard, eyebrows, and tumbling iron-gray forelock. “You’re among us early this morning, Countess.”
“I could not sleep. It is often so.”
Bishop nodded sympathetically, then gestured toward the young man beside him. “Countess, may I present Dr. Preston Potts. Dr. Potts is a physicist and mathematician—the man who developed the lunar forcing vectors. You may have heard of him. . . .”
More formally he said to Potts, “Dr. Potts, the Countess Esterhazy.”
“I
Potts stammered: “Our a-a-astronauts have trouble sleeping too. If you imagine you’re in space it might help you f-f-feel better about it.”
The countess answered, “We are all in space always, are we not?” and smiled her sleepy smile.
For a moment Potts stood transfixed; then he managed to smile weakly in return. “You are something of a mathematician yourself. Yes, we are all in space or we would not exist—perhaps that’s why we sometimes have trouble sleeping.”
“You are so clever.”
“And this is Mr. Roberts,” Bishop continued, drawing Potts away from the countess. “I cannot tell you a great deal about Mr. Roberts’s activities, but he is one of the men who protect the things you discover.”
Bobs stood to shake hands and added: “And who occasionally arrange that you discover what someone else has just discovered on the other side. Pleased to meet you, Dr. Potts. I know your work.”
“Looks a lot like Bond, doesn’t he?” he overheard Bishop say as the two of them left him. “But he’s different in one respect. Our Mr. Roberts is the real thing.”
Bobs sat down again. There was a Walther PPK under his left arm, but it was no help and he felt unsettled and a little afraid. Behind him, at the far end of the big room, Bishop was introducing Potts to someone else—Claude Brain, the wild animal trainer, from the sound of the voice—and Bobs caught the words: “Welcome to Beech Hill.”
Each year he came to Beech Hill by bus, with an overnight stop. The stop had, itself, become a ritual. In fact, the entire trip from the moment he carried his bag out of the apartment was marked with golden milestones, events that were—so strong was the anticipation of pleasure—pleasures themselves.
To enter the terminal and buy his ticket, to sit on the long wooden bench with the travel worn, with the servicemen on leave, with the young, worried, cheaply clothed women with babies and the silent, shabby men (like himself) he always hoped were going to their own Beech Hills but who, in their misery, could not have been.
To sit with his bag between his feet, then carry it to be stowed in the compartment under the bus’s floor. To zoom the air-conditioned roads and watch the city slip behind. The hum of the tires was song, and if he were to fall asleep on the bus (he never did) he would know even sleeping where he was.
And the stop. The hotel. A small, old, threadbare hotel; they never put him in the same room twice, but he could walk the corridors and recall them all:
Checking in, he always asked if they had his reservation, and they always did. A card to sign—
And the room: a small room on an air shaft, bright papered walls with big flowers, a ceiling fixture with a string. And the door, a solid door with a chain and dead bolt.
He always changed at the hotel the day he arrived, not waiting until morning. This time too, he had removed
