—Sure. OK. I’ll pull up.
—And you sir, you been wearing your seatbelt?
—What business—
—He was just relaxing while we waited for—
—Make sure you do.
The cop slapped the roof of the car and she pulled around the corner.
—I thought we beat the fascists, said Oppenheimer.
—Well, it’s all for—we know some things about public health we didn’t know then, said Ann. —Statistics—
—It wasn’t him, burst out Szilard, sliding into his seat again. —It looked like him but it wasn’t. I had a feeling it was just the three of us here, but I wanted to make sure. Why’d you move the car? I thought I’d lost you.
—We were fugitives on the lam, said Oppenheimer. —The law was after us.
—It was a no-stopping zone, said Ann. —Can we go now?
—Dick Feynman, bright young man, mused Oppenheimer, as Ann pulled away from the curb. —But sadly, deranged. I just read it yesterday: he once locked himself up in Bob Serber’s basement. He was trying to teach the dog to speak English.
The restaurant had a full bar and apparently, in Oppenheimer’s opinion, it was never too early for bourbon. Ann left the two scientists at the table and called Ben, standing outside the front door with the phone hot against her ear, in the shade of a honey locust.
—I’m with Oppenheimer and Szilard, she said, —I’m trying to find out if I’m dreaming them or they’re dreaming me.
—I hope you’re dreaming them, said Ben calmly.
But after he hung up he told the guys he would be back in half an hour. He exchanged his workboots for soft-soled shoes on the back patio and padded through the house, passing the vast cathedral space of the dining room, where Yoshi was nodding patiently as Lynn said, —I mean it’s just not the way I pictured it. So OK. So I’m the client and I’m not happy. I’m paying. Get it? So then make them rip it out!
He stopped in the laundry room to bend over the faucets of the industrial sink. He scrubbed his nails and washed his hands as usual, looking out the small, deeply set window at a bushy young box elder slated for destruction. He would not allow this; he would remove it with roots intact and replant it elsewhere, in his own yard if need be.
He and Yoshi and the other workers were under orders to use only this bathroom. The guest bathrooms were barred from what Roger liked to call “work traffic,” since the perfection of their delicate floors of tropical hardwood and slate could easily be marred by heavy boots.
Ben was glad, personally, because he had ventured into the front bathroom on his first day, ignorant of the rules, and found it chock full of angels. China angels and glass angels holding potpourri were massed on the surfaces, counters, window sills, even the edge of the bathtub, along with stuffed, fabric angels, beanbag angels, stone angels, painted angels, plastic angels, even angels made of twigs and dried flowers. On the wall there were black-and-white photographs of babies with angel wings affixed, sprouting from their baby backs. Cherubs were crowded on the toilet tank, staring at him as he stood over the bowl.
They appeared to take a prurient interest.
Love of knowledge can draw on its credit indefinitely, Ann was thinking as she pocketed her cell phone and turned away from the shade of the tree. In love and knowledge there are two ostensibly virtuous quantities, so love of knowledge is ironclad.
Reaching for its heavy iron handle of the restaurant door she looked at the gleaming glass and the dark wood, felt drawn to them, these strong and beautiful surfaces. She saw the scientists inside and felt the momentum of returning to them, returning to the anomaly, the spectacle of them sitting and eating and saying they were people they could not possibly be, not, at least, if everything she had ever learned in her life was still true.
Feeling the air-conditioning rush up to meet her, goose bumps rise on her arms, she thought: Love of knowledge is still and always sacred, no matter what damage it inflicts.
Driving he wondered if it was wrong that he was tracking her down, if his appearance would irritate her or strike her as intrusive. He hated to make her uncomfortable: her discomfort, even slight, made their separateness heavy. He was happiest when he could interpret the tacit understandings between them as evidence that they were the same.
On the other hand there was something in her demeanor that warned him to pay close attention, that signaled to him the presence of novelty. Where she was concerned he did not want novelty. He wanted everything to continue.
Parking the truck in a dirt lot across the street, mimicking Ann unawares, stalker after stalker, he walked around the side of the building gazing into windows. He wanted to know that she was in the company of others, safe where she’d said she would be. She was not at a window table and finally he had to put his face up close to the glass, stucco window edge against his cheek, dotting it with points of almost-puncture, to see inside without being seen. He did see her then, at a table in the bar area, talking to a portly man who resembled a lawyer, an insurance salesman, someone in a workaday profession. A few feet away, standing with his elbow on the bar, smoking, a third man—gaunt, elegant, and somewhat effete—watched them with an aspect of listening.
Ben stayed motionless, his eyes fixed on them, until the thin man finished his cigarette and ambled over to rejoin the others.
—What we need, said Szilard, —is to get a meeting with someone who can pull strings in the Department of Defense.
—He wants to get you both fingerprinted, to prove who you are, explained Ann to Oppenheimer.
—Why you are so eager to establish our identity is a mystery
