Anna’s old department chairman asked her to teach a section of his survey course on Near Eastern history in the fall. It seemed easier to say yes than no, so Anna accepted. The course work bored her, but she found some of the young men attractive. They were neater than she remembered, shorter hair and better dressed, and also more frightened of women. She slept with several of them that first term and enjoyed it, in a recreational sort of way. They were so eager and clumsy, and she was tired of proficient men. She didn’t take offense when one of the undergraduates confided, after a frantic few minutes of passion, that he thought older women were sexy. He was right. Older women were sexy.
Taylor called in October. He had sent several letters before, via the agency. Anna had recognized his handwriting and thrown them away, unopened. When Taylor finally reached her on the phone, she wasn’t surprised, even though the number was unlisted. Taylor was good at things like that.
“How are you anyway?” he asked in his rough-and-ready, how-ya-doin’ voice.
“Fine,” said Anna.
“What are you up to?”
“Teaching. Getting my doctorate. Taking it easy. Starting over.”
“Me, too.”
Anna didn’t say anything. She wasn’t especially curious what Taylor was doing.
“Really,” he said. “I’m starting over. I quit. Moved to California, bought a place in Santa Monica. Nice spot. You should see it.”
“How are you paying the mortgage?”
“The movie business. An old college friend of mine is a vice president at one of the studios. He likes listening to my spy stories, so he signed me up to write a script.”
“You’re a screenwriter?” asked Anna. She laughed aloud. “That’s perfect.”
“Why fight it? It’s the eighties.”
“I suppose so.”
“Listen,” said Taylor. “I’d like to see you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t you get my letters?”
“I didn’t open them. I threw them away. What did they say?”
“That I feel bad about what happened. Not just the end. The whole thing.”
“You shouldn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I love you.”
“Come off it.”
“Seriously. Maybe I really do love you.”
“So what? That’s nice of you to say, but it doesn’t matter. We’re starting over. You said so yourself.”
“You sound pissed off. And sad.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be honest.”
“Do you want to see me?”
“Not really.”
“Do you hate me?”
Anna shook her head. It’s a little late, she thought. But at least he wants to connect. That was something.
“No,” she said. “I feel sorry for you. You’re an overgrown kid.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I should have warned you about Stone. I knew he was out of control, but I couldn’t do anything about it. It was my fault.”
Anna was sick of the call. He was shameless, even in his apologies. She wanted to hang up, but she was still too polite for that.
“What is your problem, Alan?” she said at last. “You’ve got some part missing, but I still don’t know what it is.”
“I’m a neggo. That’s my problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It’s prep school slang. Forget it.”
“I have to go,” said Anna.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see me?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Thanks for calling. It was a nice thing to do. But don’t call me again.”
Taylor took a deep breath. He was about to say something.
“Goodbye,” said Anna. She hung up the phone. Taylor had it wrong, again. It wasn’t anger that she felt. He was part of a life that was dead. Cold. The fire had gone out. What was there to say?
The presidential election was held in November. The winner was the Republican candidate, an amiable conservative who promised, among other things, to restore the CIA to its former glory. Anna read an article in the newspaper several weeks later about the “transition team.” In agate type, among the people listed as advising the President-elect on how to revitalize the agency, was one “Edward Stone, retired intelligence officer.”
Anna corresponded regularly with Margaret Houghton, and tried very hard to sound cheery when they talked on the telephone. But Margaret was no fool. She sensed that all was not well and in December, a week before Christmas, she made a surprise visit to Cambridge. She invited Anna to dinner at Locke-Ober’s, her favorite restaurant in Boston and a place, she confided, where two different men had proposed marriage to her, in two different decades.
Margaret looked more refined and birdlike than usual, her hair sprayed precisely in place, her nails lacquered and buffed. She was a picture of elegance, frozen in a perpetual late middle age. Anna, in contrast, had the look of a slightly shopworn graduate student. She had let her hair grow long, wore no makeup, and was wearing a simple white dress. She was no longer dressed to kill, or even to wound. Most worrisome of all, to Margaret, was that when the waiter arrived to take orders for cocktails, Anna requested a club soda.
“Outrageous,” interjected Margaret. “I won’t hear of it. This is Locke-Ober’s, for heaven’s sake, not Tommy’s Lunch. A bottle of champagne, please. The best you have.”
“A half bottle,” corrected Anna. “I’m not going to drink much.”
Anna politely sipped the champagne when it arrived and, despite Margaret’s urging, ordered grilled trout and a salad for dinner. She made conversation amiably enough, but it was like a verbal meringue. Mostly air, with nothing solid or substantial inside.
“What’s come over you?” Margaret asked eventually. “You seem to have lost your edge.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Anna, ever pleasant and agreeable. “I think I have lost my edge. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, which is fine with me. I like it this way.”
“Well, I don’t. I’m worried about you. You seem to have lost your appetite for life.”
“Maybe I’m not hungry.”
“Fiddlesticks. You’re not the anorexic type. The problem with you before was that you were voracious. You threw yourself into things, and you believed too much what other
