“Mike?”
“Yeah.”
“This is no good.”
Rodgers raised his eyes. “What? The lo mein?”
August was caught off guard. He grinned. “Well, that’s a start. First joke you’ve made since — when? The twelfth grade?”
“Something like that,” Rodgers said sullenly. He idly picked up his cup and took a sip of tea. He held the cup by his lips and stared down into it. “What’s there been to laugh about since then?”
“Plenty, I’d say.”
“Like what?”
“How about weekend passes with the few friends you’ve managed to hold on to. A couple of jazz clubs you told me about in New Orleans, New York, Chicago. Some damn fine movies. More than a few nice ladies. You’ve had some real nice things in your life.”
Rodgers put the cup down and shifted his body painfully. The burns he’d suffered during torture at the hands of the Kurds in the Bekaa were a long way from healing, though not so long as the emotional wounds. But he refused to lie on his sofa and rust.
“Those things are all diversions, Brett. I love’em, but they’re solace. Recreation.”
“Since when are solace and recreation bad things?”
“Since they’ve become a reason for living instead of the reward for a job well done,” Rodgers said.
“Uh oh,” August said.
“Uh oh is right,” Rodgers replied.
August had sunk a hose into a cesspool and Rodgers had obviously decided to let some of the raw sewage out.
“You want to know why I can’t relax?” Rodgers said. “Because we’ve become a society that lives for the weekend, for vacations, for running away from responsibility. We’re proud of how much liquor we can hold, of how many women we can charm our way into bed with, of how well our sports teams are doing.”
“You used to like a lot of those things,” August pointed out. “Especially the women.”
“Well, maybe I’m tired of it,” Rodgers said. “I don’t want to live like that any more. I want to do things.”
“You always have done things,” August said. “And you still found time to enjoy life.”
“I guess I didn’t realize what a mess the country was becoming,” Rodgers said. “You face an enemy like world Communism. You put everything into that fight. Then suddenly you don’t have them anymore and you finally take a good look around. You see that everything else has gone to hell while you fought your battle. Values, initiative, compassion, everything. Now I’ve decided I want to work harder kicking the asses of those who don’t take pride in what they do.”
“All of which is very heartfelt,” August said. “It’s also beside the point, Mike. You like classical music, right?”
Rodgers nodded. “So?”
“I forget which writer it was who said that life should be like a Beethoven symphony. The loud parts of the music represent our public deeds. The soft passages suggest our private reflection. I think that most people have found a good and honest balance between the two.”
Rodgers looked down at his tea. “I don’t believe that. If it were true, we’d be doing better.”
“We’ve survived a couple of world wars and a nuclear cold war,” August replied. “For a bunch of territorial carnivores not far removed from the caves, that ain’t bad.” He took a long, slow sip of tea. “Besides, forget about recreation and weekends. What started this all was you making a joke and me approving of it. Humor ain’t weakness, pal, and don’t start coming down on yourself for it. It’s a deterrent, Mike, a necessary counterbalance. When I was a guest of Ho Chi Minh, I stayed relatively sane by telling myself every bad joke I could remember. Knock-knocks. Good news, bad news. Skeleton jokes. You know: ‘A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a gin and tonic… and a mop.’ ”
Rodgers didn’t laugh.
“Well,” August said, “it’s amazing how funny that seems when you’re strung up by your bleeding goddamn wrists in a mosquito-covered swamp. The point is, it’s a bootstrap deal, Mike. You’ve got to lift yourself out of the muck.”
“That’s you,” Rodgers said. “I get angry. Bitter. I brood.”
“I know. And you let it sit in your gut. You’ve come up with a third kind of symphonic music: loud passages that you keep inside. You can’t possibly think that’s good.”
“Good or not,” Rodgers said, “it comes naturally to me. That’s my fuel. It gives me the drive to fix systems that are broken and to get rid of the people who spoil it for the rest of us.”
“And when you can’t fix the system or get back at the bad guys?” August asked. “Where does all that high octane go?”
“Nowhere,” Rodgers said. “I store it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s the far eastern idea of chi—inner energy. When you need it for the next battle it’s right there, ready to tap.”
“Or ready to explode. What do you do when there’s so much that you can’t keep it in anymore?”
“You burn some of it off,” Rodgers said. “That’s where recreation comes in. You turn it into physical exertion. You exercise or play squash or call a lady-friend. There are ways.”
“Pretty lonely ones.”
“They work for me,” Rodgers said. “Besides, as long as you keep striking out with the ladies I’ve got you to dump on.”
“Striking out?” August grinned. At least Rodgers was talking and it was about something other than misery and the fall of civilization. “After my long weekend with Barb Mathias I had to take a sabbatical.”
Rodgers smiled. “I thought I was doing you a favor,” he said. “She loved you when we were kids.”
“Yeah, but now she’s forty-four and all she wants is sex and security.” August twirled noodles around his fork and slid them into his mouth. “Unfortunately, I’m only rich in one of those.”
Rodgers was still smiling when his pager beeped. He twisted to look at it then winced as his bandages pulled at the side.
“Those pagers are made to slip right off your belt,” August said helpfully.
“Thanks,” Rodgers said. “That’s how I lost the last one.” He glanced down at the number.
“Who wants you?” August asked.
“Bob Herbert,” Rodgers said. His brow knit as he took his napkin from his lap. He rose very slowly and dropped it on the chair. “I’ll call him from the car.”
August leaned back. “I’ll stay right here,” he said. “I’m told that there are three women to every man in Washington. Maybe one of them will want your plate of cold-growing string beans.”
“Good luck,” Rodgers told him as he moved quickly through the small, crowded restaurant.
August finished his lo mein, drained his cup, and poured more tea. He drank it slowly as he looked around the dark restaurant. This state of mind Rodgers was in would not be easy to dispel. August had always been the more optimistic of the two. It was true, he couldn’t glance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or flip past a cable documentary about the war or even pass a Vietnamese restaurant. Not without his eyes tearing or his belly burning or his fists tensing with the desire to hit something. August was usually upbeat and hopeful but he was not entirely forgiving. Still, he didn’t hold on to bitterness and disappointment the way Mike did. And the problem here was not so much that society had let Mike down but that Mike had let himself down. He wasn’t about to let that go without a serious struggle.
When Rodgers returned, August knew at once that something was wrong. The bandages and pain notwithstanding, the general moved assertively through the crowded restaurant, weaving around waiters and customers instead of waiting for them to move. He did not rush, however. The men were in uniform and both foreign agents and journalists paid close attention to military personnel. If they were called away in a hurry, that told observers which branch and usually which group within that branch was involved in a breaking event.