Janet nodded, thinking how close the State Department headquarters were to a Georgetown he’d earlier said he didn’t know very well. Whether or not he visited Georgetown was hardly any business of hers, she thought. “Must be interesting,” she said, wishing as she spoke she had managed to avoid the cliche.
He shook his head. “Not at my lowly level,” he said. “General analysis. Long reports that take weeks to prepare and weeks to print for nobody to read.”
“Why bother in the first place?”
“Paperwork is the lifeblood of bureaucracy,” said Sheridan, self-mocking. “I’m just one of the billions of bureaucrats who write billions of unread reports that need huge forests of trees cut down to make the paper to print them on. It’s people like me who make cities possible in the cleared spaces.”
“Thank you,” laughed Janet, trying to respond. She decided, guiltily, that she was enjoying herself and because of that guilt made an immediate qualification. Not actually enjoying herself: relaxing, she thought again. More than she had for a very long time. There was nothing wrong in that: nothing disrespectful to Hank’s memory. Just coming out of seclusion.
“Your turn,” Sheridan said. And then at once, conscious of her slight stiffening, he said: “No! Forget it. Let’s just drink our drinks… damned sight safer than that punch back there. By now they’ll be swinging from the chandeliers.”
She said, “You’re very considerate.”
“And you’re very vulnerable.”
“Does it show that much?”
“Is the Grand Canyon a ditch?”
“It was just…” she set out, stopping almost at once because the words weren’t there. “… So complete,” she started again. “I didn’t want… didn’t need anybody else. Neither did he. Which is what makes it worse because now he isn’t here any more there’s nothing. Just emptiness, like a hole I can’t climb out of…” Exactly that, she thought: she had buried herself.
“Don’t,” said Sheridan, gently. “Leave it.”
“Let me.”
“You sure?”
Janet nodded, jerkily, eyes down on her drink again. She started to tell him, stumbling again at the beginning until the surroundings receded, going right back to Oxford where they’d met, she reading Modern History and Hank-whom she called Henry now, as she had in those early days-was studying law. Strangely there was no embarrassment telling this calm, unmoving stranger how Hank had moved in with her after four months and how she’d followed him back to America after they’d both graduated. She talked of the luck they’d had in his getting a position with the downtown law firm on 13th Street and of her own matching good fortune in getting a place-low in the pecking order at first-in the Middle East division at Georgetown University where she was now a senior lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies.
“There was no warning,” she said, bitterly. “Nothing. And he’d always been so fit. He’d always worked out in England and he jogged when we came back here and we played tennis most weekends in the summer. It was just tiredness at first and we didn’t think anything of it because he was working so hard, trying to prove himself in a new job. But it got worse and then he started to lose a lot of weight…” Janet gulped at her drink, needing a break in the narrative. “Did you know there isn’t any pain, with cancer of the liver?”
Sheridan shook his head.
“That was another obscenity, along with so much else,” she said. “He just faded away. Literally. Every day he seemed to get smaller, like he was collapsing inside. Which he was, I guess. We tried everything, of course: went to all the experts about a transplant which they said wasn’t possible because it had been discovered too late to prevent the spread. I said I still wanted it done and they said he was too weak by then: that he could not withstand the shock of surgery…” She drank again. “So we just waited. That was the worst part, the thing I couldn’t take. The helplessness. Just having to wait and accept there was nothing I could do… nothing that anyone could do. My mother came across towards the end and we just sat around and watched… that was all we could do. Can you imagine what that was like
…”
“No,” said the man. “I don’t think I can.”
“Do you want to hear something ridiculous?” Janet stretched out both hands, palms upwards, and said: “When he was so wasted away that I could pick him up like this, like a baby, I decided it wasn’t going to happen. I convinced myself that it was going to go away, as quickly as it had come, and that he was going to get better again and we were going to go on just like we were before. Have the baby we’d talked about and that he would start his own law firm, which was another plan: make a lot of money so we could move to Chevy Chase…” Janet laughed, bitterly. “Can you imagine that! On the day he died, the Friday, I couldn’t cry because I was too angry: I told my mother there’d been a mistake…” She gave another humorless, head-shaking laugh, unable to believe it herself.
“But you didn’t go back to England?”
Janet looked up at the man, caught by how quick he was, how direct. She nodded and said: “My family wanted me to. Wanted me to get a job at a university or an institute there; put America behind me. I almost went but then I thought about it and somehow it seemed like giving up. Does that sound funny?”
“Maybe,” Sheridan said. “Maybe not.”
“Anyway!” she said, with forced briskness. “I didn’t go and here I am. And that’s it, the story of Janet Stone.”
They looked at each other for several moments and then Sheridan said: “I can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound trite.”
“Thanks for not trying,” said Janet. She was abruptly astonished at herself. She hadn’t talked to anyone like this, not to Harriet and not even, she didn’t think, to her mother. Was it because he was a stranger, someone completely uninvolved and unaffected? She felt embarrassed. But not, she realized in further surprise, anything else. No ache at the memories, no pain. The feeling of embarrassment worsened.
“Do you want another drink?” asked Sheridan.
“No, thank you,” she said at once. Was that why she’d talked so much, because of the whisky? Of course not. She said: “You go ahead, if you want one.”
“No,” he said. “I’m fine.” He looked around them and then out into the street. “Have you eaten? Georgetown seems to have cornered the market in restaurants.”
“No, thank you.” She’d done enough, said enough. This was an early outing, after all.
“OK.” He smiled his crooked smile at her, open-faced, and said: “I guess it’s time to go then?”
“I guess so,” she said.
Outside the street was again completely devoid of taxis.
“Isn’t it always the way?” He shrugged.
“Like I said, it won’t take long to pick one up.”
“My car really is close,” said Sheridan. “Practically at the junction of Dumbarton and Wisconsin.”
Janet looked unsuccessfully in every direction and then said: “That would be kind.”
It was a Volkswagen, a Beetle, an inconspicuous gray car matching the inconspicuous man. Although it was dark there was sufficient light from the Wisconsin Avenue illumination for Janet to see the interior was immaculate and very clean.
“Where to?” he said.
“Rosslyn.”
Janet began worrying as they drove over Key Bridge, trying to push the concern away by the reassurance of the evening so far. There had not been any furtive hand-on-the-knee, my-place-or-yours nonsense. He’d actually held back, at every opportunity. So it would be overreacting to become frightened now. Janet recognized, in a further revelation of the evening, she was in a situation she didn’t know how to handle: had forgotten how to handle. For as long as she seemed able to remember Hank had always been with her, always there, controlling everything and keeping her safe. But Hank wasn’t here any more. And she was being driven back to an obviously empty apartment by a man she knew only by name-if that was his real name-and a vague reference to the State Department. The apprehension began to burn through her and she felt the perspiration wet on her face and wetter still on her back. She shifted in her seat, edging closer to the passenger door.