At last, after he’d toweled himself until his skin felt pleasantly irritated, he brushed his teeth, wrapped the remaining dry towel around him, and stepped out of the bathroom.
After the steam in the bathroom, the comparatively cool air of the bedroom made his bare chest tingle. Unexpectedly, self-consciousness replaced his weariness. He was suddenly very aware that the room had only one bed, that Jill was sitting up in it, pillows propped behind her, covers pulled up to her bare shoulders, and that she looked self-conscious also. Her gaze flicked nervously from him to the droning television set.
“Anything on the news?” Pittman tried to sound casual.
She shook her head.
“Nothing about Standish? Nothing about us?”
“No.”
Pittman approached the bed, and Jill visibly tensed.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She stared at the television.
“You’re sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
Pittman sat on his side of the bed. “Hey. Come on, talk to me.”
“I…”
“If we can’t be honest with each other, I guarantee we’ll never survive this.”
“I made a mistake before you went into the shower,” Jill said.
“Oh?” Pittman shook his head in confusion. “What was that?”
“I joked about going in with you to help you shower.”
“Yes. I remember. So what?”
“Bad joke.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be a tease. I don’t want to lead you on.”
“I’m confused.”
“You’re not the only one,” Jill said.
The television kept droning. Pittman vaguely understood that the announcer was talking about an economic conference that was taking place in Geneva. But he didn’t take his gaze off Jill.
“In Boston, we said certain things to each other. I love you.” Pittman felt as if he was being choked. “I don’t say that easily. I treat those words very seriously. To me, they’re a commitment.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Then you regret making the commitment, is that it?” Pittman asked. “It was a mistake? You confused depending on each other under stress with being in love? You want to correct the misunderstanding? You want to set the record straight?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then I really don’t…”
“I don’t want to take anything back. I love you,” Jill said. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
“Then what’s the problem?” he managed to ask. When he touched her shoulder, he felt her sinews harden.
“This room. This bed.” Her voice dropped. “I told you I don’t want to be a tease.”
“Ah. I think I’m beginning to understand. This is about whether or not to have sex.”
With disturbing intensity, Jill focused her eyes upon him.
“You’re tired,” Pittman said. “I understand.”
Pittman had never been looked at so directly.
“Everything’s been happening too fast,” Jill said.
“It’s okay. Really,” Pittman said. “No pressure. I figured things would happen when they were supposed to.”
“You mean that?”
When Pittman nodded, Jill visibly relaxed.
“Making love shouldn’t be an obligation,” Pittman said. “It shouldn’t be something you feel you have to do because the circumstances put pressure on you. We’ll wait. When we’re both relaxed, when the time feels right…”
“You want to know how confused I am?”
Pittman didn’t understand.
She took his hand, and immediately he did understand. He leaned toward her as she raised herself up toward him. His blanket fell at the same time the sheets that covered her slipped away. Their lips touched. Their bodies pressed against one another. Feeling her smooth breasts against his skin, Pittman thought that his heart had never pounded so hard and fast. At once he didn’t think about anything except how much he loved her.
Much later, when time began again, Pittman became conscious that he lay beside her, that his arms were around her and hers around him, that his love gave him a reason to live.
His buoyant mood was canceled as a man’s voice made him frown. “The television.”
“Yes,” Jill murmured. “We forgot to turn it off.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Pittman sat up abruptly. “Listen. It’s about Victor Standish.” His heart pounded fast again but this time making him nauseous with shock, as he stared toward the chaotic scene of an ambulance and police cars in front of a mansion, emergency lights flashing while policemen made way for attendants bringing out a body bag on a gurney.
A somber announcer was saying, “… verified that the distinguished diplomat Victor Standish died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
SEVEN
1
No matter how desperately Pittman wanted to, he couldn’t sleep. The shock of learning about Standish’s suicide kept him and Jill awake, watching CNN for further details until after 2:00 A.M. A summary of Standish’s long, distinguished career was punctuated by photographs of him and the other grand counselors, first as robust, steely-eyed, ambitious-looking young men, later as elderly icons of diplomacy standing with bolt-straight dignity despite their frail bodies, some of them bald, others with wispy white hair, their faces wrinkled, skin drooping from their necks, but their eyes communicating as much ambition as ever.
When it became clear that the report wouldn’t be updated until the morning, Pittman reluctantly turned off the television. In the darkness of the hotel room, he lay tensely in bed, his eyes open, directed toward the murky ceiling. Beside him, Jill’s eventual slow, shallow breathing made him think that at least she had finally managed to shut off her mind and get some rest. But Pittman couldn’t stop the announcer’s words from echoing through his frantic memory: “… died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The suicide was totally alien to Pittman’s expectation. He strained to analyze the implications. The grand counselors had killed one of their own, Jonathan Millgate, in an effort to keep him from revealing information about them. The cover-up, which had involved using Pittman as a scapegoat, had gotten so out of hand that another grand counselor, Anthony Lloyd, had died from a stroke. Now a third grand counselor, Victor Standish, had shot himself, presumably because of fear. Earlier, Denning had said gleefully, “Three dead. Two to go.” But Pittman didn’t share Denning’s manic enthusiasm. True, Pittman was encouraged that a fissure of weakness had developed in what he had assumed was an armorlike resolution among the grand counselors. But if the tension was affecting them so extremely, there was every danger that the remaining two grand counselors, Eustace Gable and Winston Sloane, would succumb to age and desperation.
Damn it, Pittman thought, I have to do something. Soon.
When he and Jill had arrived in Washington that evening, one of his primary emotions had been rage, the urge to get even with the grand counselors for what they had done to him. But his encounter with Bradford Denning had made him realize the consequences of rage. The emotion had so distorted Denning’s approach to life that he had wasted his life. Indeed, tonight he had worked himself into such a frenzy that his rage had nearly killed him.
As Pittman continued to lie wearily, rigidly on the bed in the dark hotel room, it occurred to him that Denning’s rage and the grand counselors’ fear were mirror images, that Denning and the grand counselors were unwittingly destroying themselves because of their obsession with the past.
But not me, Pittman thought. What I’m doing isn’t a disguised version of a death wish. It isn’t a version of the suicide I attempted a week ago. Indeed he was struck by the irony that suicide, which had seemed reasonable and inevitable to him, now was shocking when someone else committed it. I want to live. Oh God, how I want to live. I never believed I’d feel that way again.