“No,” she’d told him. “Those people don’t exist.
“I love you,” he’d said.
She’d exhaled, trembling slightly. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that. . Hoping. . I don’t know how it happened, but I feel the same. I love
“I want you to know that you’ll always be special to me,” Buchanan had said.
Juana had started to frown.
“I want you to know,” Buchanan had continued, “that-”
Their waiter had interrupted, setting down a tray with their steaming coffee and hot sugar-covered beignets.
As the aproned man left, Juana had leaned toward Buchanan, her voice low but tense with concern. “What are you talking about?”
“-that you’ll always be special to me. I’ll always feel close to you. If you ever need help, if there’s anything I can ever do. .”
“Wait a minute.” Juana had frowned harder, her dark eyes reflecting a light in the ceiling. “This sounds like good-bye.”
“. . I’ll be there. Any time. Any place. All you have to do is ask. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“You bastard,” she had said.
“What?”
“This isn’t fair. I’m good enough to risk my life with you. I’m good enough to be used as a prop. But I’m not good enough for you to see after. .”
“That’s not what I meant,” Buchanan had said.
“Then what
“I didn’t mean to fall in love. I-”
“There aren’t many reasons why a man walks away from a woman he claims he loves. And right now, the only one I can think of is, he doesn’t believe she’s good enough for him.”
“Listen to me. .”
“It’s because I’m Hispanic.”
“No. Not at all. That’s crazy. Please. Just listen.”
“
“But tomorrow I have to.”
“Have to? Why? Because of the people we work for? To hell with them. They expect me to sign up again. But I’m not planning to.”
“It’s got nothing to do with them,” Buchanan had said. “This is all about me. It’s about what I do. We could never have a relationship after this, because I won’t be the same. I’ll be a stranger.”
“What?”
“I’ll be different.”
She had stared at him, suddenly realizing the implications of what he was saying. “You’d choose your work instead of-?”
“My work is all I have.”
“No,” Juana had said. “You could have
Buchanan studied her. Looked down. Looked up. Bit his lip. Slowly shook his head. “You don’t know me. You only know who I pretend to be.”
She looked shocked.
“I’ll always be your friend,” Buchanan had said. “Remember that. I swear to you. If you ever need help, if you’re ever in trouble, all you have to do is ask, and no matter how long it’s been, no matter how far away I am, I’ll-”
Juana had stood, her chair scraping harshly on the concrete floor. People had stared.
“If I ever need you, I’ll send you a goddamned postcard.”
Hiding tears, she had hurried from the restaurant.
And that was the last time he had spoken to her. When he returned to their apartment, she had already packed and left. Hollow, he had stayed awake all night, sitting in the dark, staring at the wall across from the bed they had shared.
Just as he stared out at the darkness beyond the window of the compartment in the speeding train.
3
He had done it again, Buchanan realized.
He’d become catatonic. Rubbing at the pain in his skull, he had the sense of coming back from far away. The compartment was dark. The night beyond the window was broken only by occasional lights from farms. How long had-?
He glanced down at the luminous dial on his pilot’s watch, Peter Lang’s watch, disturbed to see that the time was eight minutes after ten. He’d left Washington shortly before noon. The train would long ago have left Virginia. It would be well into North Carolina by now, perhaps into Georgia. All afternoon and most of the evening? he thought in dismay. What’s happening to me?
His head throbbing, he stood, turned on the lights in the locked compartment, felt exposed by his reflection in the window, and quickly closed the curtains. The reflected haggard face had looked unfamiliar. He opened his travel bag, took three aspirins from his toilet kit, and swallowed them with water from the tiny sink in the compartment’s utility washroom. While he urinated, he felt his mind drifting again, going back six years, and he concentrated to pay attention to now.
He needed to get into character. He had to rebecome Peter Lang. But he also had to be functional. He couldn’t keep staring off into space. After all, the whole point of going to New Orleans, of finding out why Juana had sent the postcard, was to give himself a purpose, a sense of direction.
Juana. As much as he needed to focus on reassuming the character of Peter Lang, he had to focus on Juana. She’d be- what? — thirty-one now. He wondered if she’d kept in shape. She hadn’t been tall, and she’d been thin, but her military-trained body had compensated. It had been hard and strong and magnificent. Would her thick dark hair still be as short as when he’d known her? He had wanted to run his fingers through it, to clutch it, to tug it gently. Would her dark eyes still be fiery? Would her lips still have that sensuous contour? She’d had a habit, when she’d been concentrating, of pursing those lips and sticking them out slightly, and he had wanted to stroke them as much as he’d wanted to touch her hair.
What was his true motive for going back? he wondered. Was it really just to give himself mobility?
Or had the postcard awakened something in him? He’d repressed his memories of her, just as he’d repressed so much about himself. And now. .
Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go. Maybe I should have. .
No, he thought. The past is a trap. Leave it alone. Obviously, it’s not doing you any good if it makes you catatonic. What you’re feeling is a bush-league mistake. In your former lives, you left plenty of unfinished business, a lot of people whom you liked or at least whom your assumed identities liked. But you’ve never gone back before. Be careful.
But I didn’t
Your controllers would have a fit if they knew what you were thinking.
The trouble is, I remember her so vividly.
Besides, I promised.
No, a warning voice told him.
Exactly. And right now, that’s who I am.
