The door opened wider and displayed her full face with the astonished expression frozen there, though her lips quivered and seemed almost to form a smile. “...What?”
“Always meeting in hotel rooms.”
And she backed away, shaking her head in disbelief, hand over her mouth, eyes filling with tears, as I stepped into the room, shutting the door behind me; she was thin but not emaciated, her face gaunt but not skeletal. She wore a short-sleeve mannish sportshirt and rust-color slacks and no shoes and looked neat and clean.
That’s all I had time to take in before she flew into my arms, clutching me desperately, and I held her close, held her tight, as she wept into my clerical suitcoat, saying my name over and over, and I kissed the nape of her neck, and maybe I wept a little, too.
“You’re here,” she was saying, “how can you be here? Crazy... you’re here... so crazy... here...”
Our first kiss in a very long time was salty and tender and yearning and tried not to end, but when at last she drew away from me, just a little, still in my arms, and looked at me with bewilderment, she didn’t seem able to form any more words, the surprise had knocked the wind from her.
And so she kissed me again, greedily; I savored it, then pulled gently away.
“Take it easy, baby,” I said, running a finger around my clerical collar. “I got a vow of celibacy to maintain.”
And she laughed — with only a little hysteria in it — and said, “Nathan Heller a priest? That’s good... That’s rich.”
“That’s Father Brian O’Leary,” I corrected, stepping away from her, taking a look around her room. “If anyone should ask...”
Her living quarters were identical to mine, save for a few additional allowances for an American “guest”: a well-worn faded green upholstered armchair and, near the window looking onto the neighboring house and the rooftops beyond, a small Japanese-magazine-arrayed table with a reading lamp and an ashtray bearing the residue of several incense sticks. Incense fragrance lingered, apparently Amy’s antidote to the ever-present Garapan bouquet of dried fish and copra.
But she had the same woven-reed carpet, padded quilts for a bed, low-slung teakwood table with floor cushions. On the clothesrack, among a few simple dresses and the inevitable plaid shirts, hung the oil-stained, weathered leather flight jacket she’d worn when she flew me in her Vega from St. Louis to Burbank. I checked the walls — including behind her dresser mirror — for drilled holes, found nothing to indicate we were being monitored. I didn’t figure we had much to worry about: the Japanese weren’t exactly known for their technical wizardry.
Nonetheless, we both kept our voices hushed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, studying me with wide eyes that didn’t seem to know whether to be filled with joy, disbelief or fear. “How in God’s name did you...?”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” she said, with a sigh of a laugh, “hell no,” a rare swear word from this proper creature, and she flung herself into my arms again. I squeezed her tight, then held her face in my hands and studied it, memorized it, and kissed her as sweetly as I knew how.
“Why did do you this?” she asked, cheek pressed against my chest, arms clasped around me, grasped around me, as if she were afraid I might bolt. “Why did you...?”
“You know me,” I said. “I was hired. Works out to a grand a week.”
And she was laughing quietly into my suitcoat.
“You just can’t admit it, can you?” She looked up at me, grinning her wonderful gap-toothed grin. “You’re a romantic fool. My mercenary detective... coming halfway around the world for a woman...”
There was something I had to ask, had to know, though I knew she was brimming with so many questions she didn’t know where or how to start. With us standing there, in each other’s arms, I said, “I thought... maybe...”
She was studying me now, almost amused. “What?”
“That there might be... someone else here with you.”
“Who?” She winced. “Fred? He’s in that horrible jail... poor thing.”
“No, I... Amy, was there a baby?” It came out in a rush of ridiculous words. “Did you have your baby and they took it away from you?”
She smiled half a smile, and it settled on one side of her face; she touched the tip of my nose with a finger lightly, then asked, “Who told you I was pregnant?”
“Your secretary.”
“Margot?” The grin widened. “I bet you slept with her.”
“Almost. How about you?”
She slapped my chest. “I shouldn’t have confided in that foolish girl. I hope you’re not too disappointed... I hope you didn’t make this trip just to be a father... but most men would be relieved to hear it was a false alarm.”
I hugged her to me, whispered my response into her hair. “I am relieved... not that I wouldn’t mind being a father to a child of yours... but to think our kid would be caught up in these circumstances.”
She drew away, her eyes hooded in understanding, nodded, taking my hand, leading me to the quilted sleeping mats on the floor. We sat there, cross-legged, like kids playing Indian, holding hands.
Her smile was a half-circle of embarrassment. “Nathan, I’m afraid... it was something else...”
“What was?”
“What I thought was the baby. There never will be a baby... not in these circumstances, or any other.”
“What do you mean?”
She squeezed my hand. “What I thought was pregnancy, Nathan... was early menopause...” Shaking her head, her expression grooved with wry regret, she added, “The, uh, symptoms are similar.”
I slipped an arm around her, pulled her against me. “You picked a hell of a climate for hot flashes, lady.”
She laughed softly. “I didn’t feel a thing... I was so ill with dysentery when they brought me here... can you imagine? I arrive at the dysentery capital of the world with a case of the world-class trots... They had me in the hospital here for many, many months... I almost died.”
“Were you ever in that jail?”
She rolled her eyes, nodded vigorously. “Oh my goodness, yes... the ‘calaboose,’ they call it. Same cellblock as Fred — that dirty little building with the four nasty cells. But I only lasted three days. I passed out and woke up, I don’t know... six months later.”
I frowned. “Then you really did almost die. What, were you in a coma?”
She shrugged. “Or they kept me doped up. I don’t really know...” She studied me through narrowed eyes, as if only now she had convinced herself I wasn’t an apparition. “What are you doing here, Nathan? Who sent you on this harebrained expedition? G. P.?”
My laugh was harsher than I intended. “Not hardly. He had you declared dead, I don’t know, two years ago; he’s already remarried.”
The blood drained out of her face; so did the emotion.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry... I don’t mean to be so cold about it...”
“It’s all right. It’s just... I knew he didn’t love me, anymore. And I never loved him, not really. But we were... a kind of team, you know? A partnership. I think I... deserved a little better from him, is all.”
“You’re preaching to the choir on that one.”
She flashed me the gap-toothed grin and slipped a finger in my collar and tugged. “Preaching to the preacher, you mean. What’s this about? Who did send you, you wonderful lunatic?”
“The same star-spangled bunch who sold you out,” I said. “Uncle Sam and assorted nephews.”
And I filled her in, giving her a brief but fairly complete rundown, from my unofficial investigation in July of ’37 (she was fascinated and astounded to learn that I’d heard her capture on the Myers family Philco) to my current mission, right up to my role as I.R.A. emissary Father O’Leary — leaving out what Chief Suzuki had asked of me.