But what it had become since then-a twisted ring of stinking metal, circling the city-was madness in the mind of Constantine.
“Seventeen years, huh?” Polk said.
“That’s right.”
“Still got family here?”
Constantine shook his head, answered without thinking. “No.”
Some time later they took the exit ramp at Georgia Avenue and headed south. Polk drove into downtown Silver Spring, stopping at a red light where Route 29 crossed Georgia. Constantine looked at the tall, clean, partially unoccupied office buildings, and at the Silver Theatre, a deco house now boarded up and locked. His mother had taken him there to see Goldfinger when he was eight years old, and from it he remembered only an oriental man with a deadly iron hat, and his embarrassment at his mother’s loud, gin-fueled comments throughout the show. Later, in a conciliatory gesture, she had bought him a yellow-and-green parakeet at the wooden-floored Woolworth’s up the street. Constantine had let the bird go free that same night.
“Where we going, Polk?” Constantine said as the car lurched forward on the green.
“Charlotte lives in a rent-controlled job on Connecticut,” he said. “I’ll head west at Missouri, take Military from there.”
“Any motels along this way?” Constantine said, thinking that Military would take them along the perimeter of the old neighborhood.
“Sure, there’s one at the District line.”
Constantine said, “Drop me there.”
Polk waved his hand. “I told you, Connie, you’re with me. Charlotte’s got an extra room and an extra bed.” He smiled and winked once again. “Maybe an extra friend.”
“This is what I want, Polk. Do me a favor and don’t argue it. Drop me at the line and pick me up in the morning. Okay?”
Polk nodded. He drove under a railroad bridge and up an incline, and a little past that they crossed the line into D.C. He pulled the car to the curb in front of a motel sign advertising adult movies in each room, letting it idle as he reached into his windbreaker for a thin roll of bills. Polk unwound the rubber band that held the bills tight and began to count off some paper. Constantine put his hand over Polk’s.
“I’ve got money, Polk. It’s okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
“I’ll pick you up at nine, all right, Connie? You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“Yeah.” Constantine opened the passenger door, reached into the backseat, retrieved his pack, and slung the strap over one shoulder. He bent down and put his head through the open window. “So long, Polk.”
“So long, Connie. See you in the morning.”
Polk put the Dodge in gear and drove off down the street. Constantine turned and walked through the glass doors, into the orange lobby of the motel.
Constantine bought cigarettes and checked into his small room two stories above and facing Georgia Avenue. A streetlight rose outside the frame of his window, though darkness had not yet fallen and the light had not yet been switched. Constantine had a shower and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a clean denim shirt that had been pressed from the steam of the shower. He left the hotel and walked down the street.
At a Korean carryout named the Good Times Lunch Constantine ate a dinner of deep-fried cod and green beans, and washed it down with a can of beer. He had another beer sitting at the counter, listening to rap from the store’s small radio, watching the traffic lighten through the window, as dusk came and then the dark. Constantine left the carryout, bought a fifth of Popov vodka at a liquor store two doors down, and walked back to the motel.
He poured a drink of vodka over ice in his room, and had it sitting on the edge of his bed. The drink backed by the two beers pushed him toward sleep, but he poured himself another and after that he did not think of sleep.
Constantine pulled a phone directory from the closet and looked up Katherine. He figured she would have kept her maiden name. He found her name and number in the Maryland book, along with her husband’s. He pushed the numbers into the touchpad of the grid on the bedside phone. After three rings, she picked up.
“Hello?” It was her. More formal, no longer a child, but it was her.
“Katherine?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Constantine.”
She didn’t answer. For a few seconds Constantine listened to her breath, and the raucous sound of young children, and over that a man’s voice raised in exasperation.
“Yes, it’s me. It’s Katherine.” So the husband was in earshot and she didn’t want him to know who was on the line. Constantine smiled.
“I’d like to see you tonight, Katherine.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m only in town for the night.” Constantine waited. “Anyway, I think you’ve already decided. Am I right?”
A long silence. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Where?”
“The library,” Constantine said, chuckling. It was where she had told her parents she was going at night, years ago, when she met him on the hill at Lafayette playground.
“Come on,” she said, an edge to her voice.
Constantine swirled ice and vodka in the plastic motel cup as he gave her the address. “I’ll be in the lounge next to the lobby. Okay?”
“Give me an hour,” she said, hanging up the phone.
To freshen up, he thought, as he killed the rest of his drink.
The motel lounge was done in burnt orange a shade down from the orange of the lobby. The customers and the staff of the lounge were all neighborhood types and in their late thirties and early forties, and the music on the sound system reflected their collective past. The bartender had been playing the Commodores, BT Express, and Ohio Players on the house stereo for most of the night.
Constantine sat on the vinyl seat of a booth against the wall, against a smoked-glass window that gave to a view of the lobby. He sipped a rail vodka over ice and dragged on a Marlboro between sips. Katherine sat across from him, a Glenlivet and water in the long fingers of her impeccably manicured hands. It was their second round of drinks.
Katherine nodded at the pack of smokes parked on the table next to Constantine’s drink. “Give me one of those, will you? If I’m going to smell like it and breathe it I might as well enjoy it.”
Constantine looked her over. Her brown hair was shiny and straight and hung to her shoulders, her dark makeup tasteful, highlighting concisely her light brown eyes. As a teenager she had been on the heavy side, and when she had walked into the lobby that night, a cream silk shirt tucked into a black skirt, Constantine had noticed the loss in weight. A workout queen, he guessed. Tight, tan legs, and no stockings.
He shook a smoke out of the pack and pointed it toward Katherine. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
Constantine lighted her cigarette.
She blew smoke across the table and shook some hair behind one shoulder. “I sell medical supplies. That’s what I do. Anyway, I told Robert I had to go out tonight, to meet a client.”
“What you told your husband makes no difference to me,” he said.
Katherine said, “All right.” She looked around the bar and smiled, moving her head arrhythmically to the music. The man was playing Bohannon’s only Top 40 hit, the one where the background singers spell the name out into an echo machine and repeat it over a pre-go-go beat. “You remember this one?”
“I remember it,” Constantine said.
“You took me to Carter Barron one summer night, to see this guy. Bohannon and two other groups, under the stars.”
“You’re talking about Funkadelic, and the Delfonics. That was a show.” Afterwards they had taken a blanket, a candle, and a bottle of Spanish wine and walked into Rock Creek Park, the dew soaking through the blanket as
