"I guess so. I already did. Except-"
"Except what?"
"-I don't think you have anything to worry about. I liked it."
"That's not the issue."
"So what is?"
"I liked it too. That's why I did it. Not just with you, but with all those others. Remember what you said before? About doing it because you wanted to know what it would feel like?"
"I was talking about dropping the bombs."
"Yes, well, the same thing is true for me. I did it because I wanted to know what it would feel like."
"How many times did you do it?"
"What difference does that make?"
"Well, it's what Voltaire said. If you do it once, you're experimenting. More than once and you're a pervert."
I said, "I'm a pervert."
She sat up across from me. She wrapped the blanket around herself to keep warm. "So, you're a pervert and I'm a bitch. We deserve each other. The good as well as the bad."
I stared into her face. She was dead serious. I'm a pervert. She's a bitch.
So what?
I still loved her. And she still loved me.
I started laughing. So did she. I held out my arms, she fell into them. "Do you know why I love you so much?"
"Why?"
"Because I do, I just do. You make me laugh. I never would have believed that about Colonel Lizard Tirelli, that you would have such a sense of humor. You make me feel good. And you make me feel safe. And most of all, because you accept me the way I am."
After I finished kissing her and she finished kissing me, she said, "Listen, sweetheart, I don't have any choice in the matter. I love you because you're committed."
"Even though I'm guilty as hell?"
"Especially because you're guilty as hell."
"Lizzy," I said. "There's something else I have to tell you."
"What?"
"I lied."
"About what?"
"I lied to the president of the United States today-I mean, yesterday. About the people in the camps. She asked me if they were still human. And I said no. I said it was my experience that they'd sold out their humanity. That isn't true. That was a lie. I know how human they are. I only said that because . . . because I wanted her to drop the bombs. I wanted revenge."
"I know," she said.
"What?"
"I know," she repeated.
"The thing is, I lied! And that was the issue on which the president was going to make her decision, wasn't it? About the people in the camps. And I told her they weren't people any more, I helped her justify the dropping of the bombs."
Lizard looked grim. She said, "I know. Now, I have a confession for you. We knew you would do that. That's why we put you in front of the president. Dr. Zymph, Dr. Foreman, and a couple of other people approved it. I was there. I work with the Advisory Board, sweetheart. We wanted those bombs dropped. Listen to me: I'm just as big a jerk. I dropped them! Do you think the decision was made solely on the basis of your testimony? No, there were a lot of other reasons why those bombs had to be dropped. You were there . . ." She started laughing suddenly. "Oh, no-the irony of it-you were there to mitigate the guilt of the decision!"
"Huh?"
"So we wouldn't have to wallow in it-like you do!"
And suddenly I saw it too. And we both burst out laughing!
l rolled her under me and said, "I have never had this much fun in bed in my life! It feels positively indecent!"
"Good! It's something else to be guilty about!" She wrapped her legs around me. "Do something perverted."
"Okay. Where do you keep the Boy Scouts?"
"In the fridge. Second shelf."
"Mm. Are we going to get any sleep today?"
"You'll sleep in October-"
69
Hawaii
"Genius is a perpetual notion machine."
-SOLOMON SHORT
"But it's such a touristy thing to do-" I protested.
"Foreman invited us," Lizard insisted. "It's a privilege."
I shrugged. "All right," and followed.
We rented bicycles from a stand opposite the beach and pedaled down the busy avenue toward Diamond Head. It loomed like a big ocean wall.
I was amazed at Foreman's energy. I had trouble keeping up with him. I began to be grateful for stop lights. "Over there," he pointed, "that's the Honolulu Zoo. You should go some time. They still have three rhinocerouses. Probably the last three in the world. It'll be something to tell your grandchildren about, won't it! There might not be any more."
The light turned green and he pushed off again. I looked at Lizard, "I thought you said he wanted to talk to me."
"He does." She pushed off after him.
I muttered something unprintable and followed them both. Why bicycles? Why couldn't we have driven? I still hadn't gotten used to the weather here in Hawaii. It was either too hot or too wet, or both at the same time. The locals were saying all the rain was unseasonable. I didn't care. It felt like more excuses.
We rode past some houses, then up a hill and halfway around the crater, up another hill, through a tunnel and out into the wide open center.
I came to a stop just outside the tunnel. And stared. "I've never seen anything like this before."
And then I knew I had. A long long time ago. The memory came floating back. I'd forgotten
When I was nine years old, my mother had taken me to visit a friend of hers, a Chinese lady. The lady had shown me a bowl. She had made me sit down, then she placed it in my lap and put her hands around mine so we both held it at the same time and she told me to look into the bowl. Inside the bowl was a world, little houses of ivory, little trees of jade, little streams of ebony, little people made of gold.
"It's a window into paradise," she said. "It took over a hundred years to make. Four generations of a single family worked on this bowl. It's very valuable, but that's not why I keep it. I keep it because it's also very very beautiful. It's my own private little world."
I looked into that bowl and I felt awe. I couldn't pull my eyes away. I wanted to climb down into that bowl and explore every little copse and gazebo. I wanted to meet the tiny golden ladies under their delicate golden parasols. I wanted to see the ebony animals and birds in the tiny green garden. I wanted to live in that beautiful little world.
That was the feeling I had now, looking down at the center of Diamond Head crater.
It was a private world, a bowl both huge and tiny at the same moment. There was no sense of scale here, no sense of time. We were looking down across a lush green landscape, but not a tame one like the inside of that Chinese grandmother's jade bowl. No, this was a wilderness. It curved away from us into the distance, but the opposite wall of the crater was still too close. The bowl felt small, but the more you looked into it, the bigger it became. You could fall into this world. You could be lost in it and never be heard from again. You would not want to come back. You could hide a secret world here.
In fact, God already had.
The meadow was spread like a green blanket from here to forever. There were some small buildings on one edge of it. There were deep forests all around it, sprawling and lush and bright with blossoms. There were magic things living beyond those trees, I knew. And they came out on moonlit nights and danced on this broad green field, hidden away from the eyes of human beings.