Koko

about concealing it. Really rich people made the only convincing liberals. And Pat Caldwell had known Judy Poole for more than ten years, ever since Michael and Harry Beevers had left the army—they had made a perfect foursome, Judy thought. Or would have, if Harry Beevers had not been so insecure. Harry had nearly ruined their friendship. Even Michael hadn’t liked him.

“It’s all because of Ia Thuc,” she said to Pat, once they were talking. “You know what they remind me of? The men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the ones who fell apart and turned into drunks. They let it become too much for them—almost as if they expected to be punished for it.”

“Harry never expected to be punished for it,” Pat said. “But Harry never expected to be punished for anything. Don’t be too hard on Michael.”

“I used to try not to be,” Judy said. “I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble anymore.”

“Oh dear.”

“Well, you got divorced.”

“Well, I had reasons,” Pat said. “Reasons on top of reasons. Reasons inside reasons. You don’t want to know about all that.”

Judy did want to know—Michael had told her that he thought Beevers was a wife beater—but felt that she could not come out and ask.

“Michael called from Bangkok,” she said after a pause, “and I was terrible to him. I don’t like myself when I’m like that. I even told him I was going out with someone else.”

“I see,” Pat said. “When the cat’s away?”

“Bob is a very nice, very dedicated, very stable man,” Judy said, somewhat defensively. “Michael and I haven’t really been close since Robbie died.”

“I see,” Pat repeated. “Do you mean you’re serious about your friend?”

“I could be. He’s healthy. He never shot anybody. He sails. He plays tennis. He doesn’t have nightmares. He isn’t carrying poison and disease around inside him.…” Judy astonished herself by beginning to cry. “I’m lonely—Michael makes me lonely. All I want is to be an ordinary person and to have an ordinary middle-class life.” She began to cry again, and took a moment to steady her voice. “Is that a lot to ask for?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” Pat said reasonably. “But clearly you don’t think so.”

“I don’t,” Judy fairly wailed. “I’ve worked hard all my life! I wasn’t born in Westerholm, you know. I’m proud of my home and my accomplishments, my achievements, the whole way we live! That counts! I’ve never asked for a handout, I never took anybody’s charity. I made a good place for myself in one of the most exclusive, expensive towns in the entire country. That means something.”

“No one would dispute that,” Pat soothed.

“You don’t know Michael,” Judy said. “He’s perfectly willing to throw it all away. I think he hates Westerholm. He wants to throw everything away and go live in a slum, it’s like he wants to cover himself with ashes, he can’t stand anything nice …”

“Is he sick?” Pat asked. “You said something about poison and disease.…”

“The war got inside him, he carried death around inside him, he sees everything upside-down, I think the only person he really likes here is a girl who’s dying of cancer, he dotes on her, he gives her books to read and he finds excuses to see her, it’s awful, it’s because she’s dying, she’s like Robbie, she’s a smart Robbie.…” Now Judy was in tears again. “Ah, I loved that poor kid. But when he died I put all his things away, I was determined to put it all behind me and get on with things.… Oh, I suppose you’ll never forgive me for getting so emotional.”

“Of course I forgive you, there’s nothing to forgive. You’re upset. But are you implying that Michael is suffering from an Agent Orange-related illness?”

“Have you ever lived with a doctor?” Judy laughed unpleasantly. “Do you know how hard it is to get a doctor to go to a doctor? Michael’s not healthy, I know that much. He won’t go for a checkup, he’s like some primitive old man, he’s waiting for it to go away—but I know what it is! It’s Vietnam, it’s Ia Thuc! He swallowed Ia Thuc, he ate the whole thing up, he drank it the way you’d drink some poison, and it’s eating him up. For all I know, he blames me for all his problems.” She paused, and collected herself. “Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, there’s my anonymous caller. You ever have one of those?”

“I’ve had a few obscene telephone calls,” Pat said. “And Harry used to call me up, after I made him move out of my apartment. He never admitted it, but he’d stay on the phone, just sort of breathing, hoping I’d get scared or feel sorry for him or something.”

“Maybe Harry’s calling me up!” Judy uttered a muffled sound that might have been laughter.

6

Intimations that something had gone wrong followed Maggie all the way to Pumo’s door. A crowd of boys at the subway’s exit surrounded her as soon as she came up the steps, dancing in close to her and calling her “little Chinkie.” “I show you a good time, little Chinkie.” They were just aimless, bored adolescents, too frightened of women to approach them individually, but Maggie suddenly felt too scared of them to risk doing anything but shoving her hands into her pockets, averting her head, and walking straight ahead. The odor of marijuana surrounded the boys like a cloud. Where was Pumo? Why didn’t he answer his phone? “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” one of the boys begged, and Maggie lifted her chin and gave him a look so powerful that he fell back on the spot.

The rest of the boys continued following her for nearly a block, making half-intelligible growls and yells. The night had become very cold, and the wind burned Maggie’s face. The street-lamps shed a morbid yellow light.

She needed time to absorb the General’s offer. She would not reject it without fully considering it, and she might not reject it at all. It was possible that in time the General might accept her training at a medical school in New York, if any such school would take her in. If she were a medical student with her own room up in Washington Heights or over in Brooklyn, if she were busier than any four restaurant owners, if Tina could see that she had her own life … then he couldn’t accuse her of making a meal of his own.

The worst intimation yet that something had gone wrong interrupted the pleasant pictures this possibility gave her. From the end of the block Maggie had been seeing a sliver of yellow light beside the entrance to Saigon, and had taken for granted that it was a reflection in a pane of glass or a strip of polished metal awaiting storage inside the foyer. Now it struck Maggie that it was at least half an hour too late for the workmen to be around. In this neighborhood, they would never leave anything outside at night.

As soon as she got closer to the restaurant, Maggie saw that the door itself hung open half an inch, letting the light from the staircase spill out. This was not merely an intimation of trouble, it rang like an alarm bell. Pumo would not have left his street door gaping open in a thousand lifetimes. Maggie jogged toward the shaft of light.

When she put her hand on the door, she realized that if Pumo had not left it open, some other person had. She was already pressing the buzzer that communicated with the apartment, and snatched her hand away before it gave any more than the dot of Morse code.

She hung in the doorway a moment, fairly panting with indecision. She moved a few steps to the side and pushed the buzzer for the restaurant, thinking that Vinh might be inside. She pressed it again, and this time held it down, but nothing happened. Vinh was not home.

There was a pay telephone around the corner on West Broadway, and Maggie moved away to call the police. But maybe Pumo had simply left the door unlocked, and was sitting upstairs in a blue funk.

Or maybe Dracula had returned to ransack the loft. The memory of how she had found Pumo lying on sheets stiff with drying blood moved her back to the door again and lifted her hand to the buzzer. She pushed, held it down longer than she had the restaurant’s buzzer, and listened to the noise ring out through the loft and down the stairs.

“Look at Maggie skulk, I bet she’s spyin’ on someone.”