Annalee smiled. ‘I bet he’s happy.’
‘Jesus,’ Elmo said, ‘let’s hope so.’
The house in Berkeley was on McKinley Street, not far from the high school. When the Helmsbro Movers (‘If we can’t truck it, fuck it,’ their typically Berkeleyan card proclaimed) delivered some ostensible furniture a month later, Annalee and Daniel found reams of blank birth certificates, drivers’ licenses from every state, draft cards, passports, and various official seals of sundry state governments and federal agencies. The small darkroom in the second-floor bathroom had been completed before their arrival, and the Multilith and platen press, flanked by a battery of typewriters, were set up in an adjoining room. After the friendly tutelage of Jason Wisk, their nominal real estate agent, they could document a new identity in half a day. Since Annalee enjoyed the camera work and embossing while Daniel was particularly fond of the printing, the labor divided itself along lines of natural interest. Jason coordinated the job orders, which were steady enough to keep them busy but not enough to be a burden. No customers came to the house; if photos were required, Annalee either worked from negatives shot elsewhere or shot them herself at Jason’s real estate office.
Because Daniel was often hassled for not being in school, he seldom left the house before 3.00 on weekdays. He usually printed till noon and read after lunch for at least a couple of hours before going out to explore Berkeley’s street life.
By mutual agreement, the nights belonged to Annalee. She was particularly taken with Dr Jamm’s Get-Down Club out on Shattuck. She quickly made friends with the musicians and artists who hung out there. Soon she was a singer and lead kazoo in a perpetually ripped aggregation known as the Random Canyon Raiders, whose repertoire included traditional, if obscure, favorites, as well as spontaneous and raucously pornographic sociopolitical polemics. The Random Canyon Raiders were devoted to high times and low art, and Annalee rediscovered a social life. She began to cut loose.
But some trajectories are immune to change: A year later, early in May, looking for a book of poems recommended by one of her Random Canyon friends, she saw Shamus Malloy standing by the chemistry section in the Berkeley Public Library. His hair was black, he was clean-shaven, and, to judge by the pinned sleeve on his jacket, he’d lost his left arm. But she was so sure it was Shamus that she browsed over beside him and tugged his empty sleeve.
Shamus closed the book he was examining and slipped it back on the shelf without acknowledging her. ‘I’ve loved you and missed you every minute for the last two years,’ he whispered, staring at the stacks, ‘and I’m afraid to look at you, afraid it won’t be you, that’ll it be some desperate hallucination, some hungry dream.’
‘Is it cool to hug you in here?’ Annalee said, her open hand pressing against the small of his back.
‘Probably not,’ Shamus grinned, ‘but please, please do it anyway.’ When he turned to look at her there were tears in his eyes.
She felt his arm under his jacket when they embraced.
‘What are we doing inside on a lovely spring day?’ Annalee murmured. ‘Let’s stroll, if that’s permitted.’
‘Everything’s permitted,’ Shamus said, ‘as long as we’re careful.’ He looked in her eyes when he said it, then glanced over her shoulder. ‘After you, milady.’
They walked two blocks to Swensen’s Burger Palace, ordered coffee, and took a table near the back.
‘All right,’ Annalee said, ‘what’s going on. The only news I heard was that you were off treasure-hunting.’
‘True. I holed up by sailing away. We were diving wrecks off Colombia. It was work, but it certainly had its moments. It has to be one of the most astonishing sensations in the universe to stand on deck with a bar of gold, still dripping sea water, raised in your hand. It’s not as wonderful as holding you, of course, but one takes what’s available.’
‘Talk that talk,’ Annalee said. ‘Daniel was asking me the other day why I liked you poets so much; I told him because they talked good.’
‘And how is Daniel?’
‘Thirteen going on thirty, and working hard to cut the apron strings.’
‘That shouldn’t prove difficult – you’re not the somthering type.’
‘You never gave me a chance.’
‘If there’s no other men in your life right now, maybe I will.’
‘Just Daniel, and it’s not clear whether he’s a young man or an old boy. But how about you? Can you come out and play?’ She idly ran a finger around the rim of her coffee mug.
‘My deal with Volta was that I’d be a good boy for two years.
‘So now you’re cool?’
‘Well, not completely. They’re still looking, but the urgency has faded.’
With a thin smile and a definite weariness, Annalee said, ‘So you’re ready to try for the uranium again?’
‘No,’ Shamus said. ‘Plutonium – the dark, decadent queen herself. And this time for ransom: the dismantling of
