The Comedy is Finished

thought, or I shall wither.

Everything was pressing in. Peter wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Larry was to a degree right; the pressure was becoming too great. That was why the deadline had to be met, why they didn’t dare let this thing drag on any longer. Six P.M. today; four hours from now. There had to be an answer by then, period.

And if the answer was no?

“We’ll kill him,” Peter muttered aloud. “And start all over.” And next time, if Davis were dead, they’d be treated more seriously by the other side.

Oh, God, how his cheeks hurt! How he wished he could stop the chewing, chewing, chewing. Sometimes he’d hold a knuckle in his mouth and bite down on that, but with his lips parted the air could touch his wounds, causing them to sting and burn even more. Rubbing his cheeks with both hands, moaning in his throat at the pain, Peter stood just outside the front door and tried to think what to do next.

Not go back inside; he couldn’t deal with another Larry scene, not now. And God alone knew what was happening with Liz. No, not back into the house.

In front of him, the hill sloped steeply upward, clothed in a ground cover of dark green ivy. A red brick path meandered up through the ivy, slanting along the hill face, here and there becoming shallow brick steps. At the top, he knew, was an untended garden, where remnants of asparagus and strawberries struggled amid choking thick weeds. Some previous owner had planted that garden, which had not been cared for in at least three years. Having no other possible destination, Peter climbed the path, moving slowly, holding his jaw clamped shut.

At the top, the land leveled somewhat and the brick path widened into a kind of small patio, with a stone bench facing the view of the valley over the roof of the house. At one end of the patio was a small weathered plywood toolshed, barely four feet high. The garden was beyond the patio on the level width of land, and beyond that, just before the hillside rose steeply upward again, was the fence marking the property line, with a small locked gate leading out to a blacktop driveway, a common road shared by several of the neighbors farther up the hill. Peter, reaching the level part, glanced without interest at the tangle of plants in the garden, then stood looking out at the Valley, trying not to think, trying not to chew.

After a few minutes, he sighed and turned to sit on the stone bench, and that was when he saw the trousered legs jutting out from behind the toolshed. He cried out, reflexively, as though he’d been punched in the throat, and actually felt his heart bulge inside his chest. Icy terror drenched him, and all he could do was stand there, strangling, his eyes fixed on those legs. Who? For the love of God, who?

But then the person, who had been sitting back there with his legs stretched out, leaned forward, his grinning monkey face coming into view, and Peter gasped, “Oh! Oh, it’s you! Jee-sus! Son of a bitch, you scared the hell out of me!”

“Why, Peter,” said the sly monkey face. “What an effect I have on you.”

“Jesus God.” Peter was sure he would fall, he was that weak and dizzy. Clutching the stone bench, he lowered himself onto it and sat there panting. “Oh, Ginger,” he said. “For God’s sake, Ginger, don’t ever do that.”

Laughing, enjoying himself hugely, Ginger Merville clambered to his feet and came over to sit beside Peter. “If you could see your face—!”

“What—what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Paris.”

“I came back.” Ginger shrugged, still delighted with himself. “We’re off to Tokyo, actually, but I thought it’d be fun to come back en route, see how the old plantation’s getting along without me.”

“But where’s Flavia?”

“Still in Paris. She’s flying direct. Over the po-o-o-ole,” Ginger said, sweeping one arm over his head, languidly wiggling callous-tipped fingers.

Peter was catching his breath now, calming down. He said, “What’s the matter with you, Ginger? Do you want to get involved? The whole idea was, you’re in Paris, we broke into your house, you didn’t know a thing about it.”

“Well, I don’t know a thing about it. I’m staying at a beach place in Malibu. You know; Kenny’s place. He still has it, after all these years.” Then Ginger smiled in a sympathetic way, giving Peter a consoling pat on the knee. “Don’t worry, my dear,” he said, “I’ve explained it to just everybody. Since the house is for rent, and I’m only here two or three days, I didn’t want to open the place and mess it all up. Ergo, the beach house.

“Ginger, you’re crazy,” Peter said. But then, since in fact that was true, he awkwardly added, “You’re risking your position. And what for? There’s no point coming here.”

Ginger leaned closer, smirking as though he were about to confide a dirty secret. “I want to see him,” he whispered.

Peter stared in shock; this was a dirty secret. “See him!”

“Through the window. I’ll slip into the pool—”

“No! For God’s sake, Ginger!” Peter’s repugnance showed on his face. “If you want to see him, watch television, they have all his movies on.”

“I know,” Ginger said. “Just as though he were dead. But I want to see him, Peter, in my little hideaway room.”

“And he’ll see you.”

“I’ll wait till after dark.”

“It’ll all be over by then,” Peter said confidently. “The deadline’s six o’clock.”

Ginger’s smile turned mock-pitying. “Oh, come off it,” he said. “You know they can’t gear up by then. Twenty-four hours? You must be joking.”

Twenty-four hours. It was true, they’d captured Davis only yesterday afternoon. Emotions create their own time, and it seemed to Peter now as though he and Davis and Mark and Larry and Liz and Joyce had been imprisoned together for months. He said, mulishly, “It has to end.”

“But not by six o’clock, not today.”

“We’ll kill him,” Peter said, glowering as though Ginger were on the other side, as though this were the negotiation.

Ginger’s monkey face at last forgot to smile. “Peter,” he said, looking and sounding worried. “Don’t lose your cool, Peter. Killing Koo Davis isn’t the object of the exercise.”

“I know that. You don’t have to remind me.”

“But I’m awfully afraid I do,” Ginger said. Squeezing Peter’s knee, he said, “Forgive me for being a schoolmarm, but you do remember the object of the exercise, don’t you?”

“Ginger, stop it.”

“I’m just terribly afraid you’ve become caught in the drama of it all. Don’t become a Dillinger manque, my dear.”

“I won’t,” Peter said sullenly. He didn’t like being lectured, and particularly not by a shallow creature like Ginger.

“Ease my mind, Peter,” Ginger said. “Tell me again the object of the exercise.”

Peter pressed the heels of both hands to his cheeks, squinting against the pain. “Not now, Ginger.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Ginger said. “America today is very very roughly analogous to Russia between 1905 and 1917; between the revolution that failed and the revolution that succeeded. The revolution of the sixties failed, the cadres are dispersed, the militants have faded back into normal life, the threat to this society is ended. For now.”

“All right,” Peter said.

“Your task in this period,” Ginger persisted, “is to maintain yourself and prepare for the next round, the successful round. And I am backing you to be one of the new leaders.”

“Yes.”

“You may not be the Lenin of the New American Revolution, but you’ll be one of those with him in the sealed train.”

“Yes.” Peter lowered his hands from his face, and sat up a bit straighter. Hearing his own ideas recited back to him, in all seriousness, was bringing him out of his funk, reminding him that all this had a reason.

“Brownie points,” Ginger said, with his elfin grin. “Brownie points with the remaining revolutionaries.