For half a minute Simon Morley lay almost unmoving, his mind not truly functioning. Then the pain came into his shinbones, his right shoulder and right hip, and the palms of his hands, and he moaned. He got himself up slowly, afraid of discovering a bone had broken. Then he stood, both hands bracing against the wall beside him, his head low between them. Now he pushed himself upright, and in the weak light from the street above, looked down at the scraped-bloody, dirt-smeared palms of his hands, then at the torn trouser legs and the bleeding skin showing through. He turned and, using the black metal handrail, made himself climb the stairs to the sidewalk. On the walk again, he moved on in not quite a run but a frantic hobble.
I saw the theater ahead, saw its sign, Wallack’s, and the posters beside its entrance reading, The Money Spinners. I saw Apple Mary herself, the old lady who sold apples before the theaters, and tried to sprint, desperate to move faster, squeezing, sidling, bumping past baffled angry pedestrians—because Apple Mary stood facing the tall young man in evening dress. She was speaking to him, and—did I really see it? I thought so!—I saw the wink of gold from a coin dropping from his hand to hers, a dozen yards and two or three people between us. He turned, someone just ahead pausing to hold the lobby door open for him, and skipped inside.
I walked now, only a dozen yards, walked past Apple Mary calling, “Apples, apples! Get your apples, get Apple Mary’s best!” shoving one at me. But I shook my head, and stood staring in at the busy lobby, and across the tiled floor saw the group I knew would be there: the bearded father, a ruby stud in his stiff white shirtfront; the smiling gowned mother, and their daughters, the younger in a marvelous gown of unadorned spring-green velvet. When she smiled, as she did now at the tall young man who had given the gold coin to Apple Mary, she looked lovely. I had to hear, had to, and walked in to stand close, hiding my bloody hands at my sides.
“My dear, may I present my young friend,” her father was saying, “Mr. Otto Danziger,” and I watched the tall young man bow, knowing that what had happened had happened, and that I was too late. Now they’d met, these two young people. I hadn’t quite been able to prevent it. And now, in time, they would marry, and have a son. And I knew that far ahead, in the twentieth century I’d left, that son was a man long since grown, Dr. E. E. Danziger—the Project he’d begun in the old Beekey warehouse still functioning under the control of Major Ruben Prien and Colonel Esterhazy, and whatever it was they represented.
But now these were thoughts of a far-off future I no longer belonged in, and I looked again at the handsome new couple, and, not knowing I was going to, found myself smiling. Then I turned and walked out.
The tall man swung in behind Morley as he walked back to Thirtieth Street and turned east. Watching closely, he saw from the slow, painful walk that Morley’s urgency was gone. And now he knew it was over; that whatever it was that Morley was attempting had been prevented. He followed for a long block, however, and for half of the next, making sure. Then—he did not know what had happened, didn’t know what Morley had intended, but knew he’d done what he’d come for. And at the next corner, Morley walking slowly on ahead, the tall man turned away, and began hunting for a cab.
Walking down toward Gramercy Park, I looked around me at the world I was in. At the gaslighted brownstones beside me. At the nighttime winter sky. This too was an imperfect world, and I knew it, did not need to be told. But—I drew a deep breath, sharply chilling my lungs—the air was still clean. The rivers flowed fresh, as they had since time began. And the first of the terrible corrupting great wars still lay decades ahead. I reached Lexington Avenue, turned south, and then, the yellow lights of Gramercy Park waiting at the end of the street, I walked on toward Number 19.
At a ticket window in the small red brick Grand Central station, John McNaughton leaned toward the row of vertical brass rods between him and the waiting clerk. “Winfield,” he said. “Ticket to Winfield, Vermont.”
“Round trip?”
“No.” McNaughton smiled with the pleasure of saying it: “No, I won’t be coming back from Winfield. Not ever again.”
6
JULIA WALKED INTO THE DINING room, set down the big blue-and-white platter of waffles, then walked around to her side of the table. She didn’t speak, though I knew she was going to and what she would say. She pulled out her chair first, sat down, managing her long skirts, inched her chair in, slid her napkin from its carved-bone ring, unrolled it on her lap, then placed her bare forearms on the white cloth, wedding ring catching the light for a moment. Watching me, hunting for signs of my mood, she pushed the syrup in its cut-glass flask closer to my reach.
Finally, voice gentle so as not to rile me, she said, “Si. It’s so far away now. And doesn’t really concern you. Not anymore. Your Major Prien has had his Project to himself now for—is it three years? Or more. And whatever he’s done with it is done.”
I nodded, knowing I ought not be irritable—because I’d had the same guilty thoughts. For months at a time I’d forget the Project, then it would come sneaking back into my mind. I glanced irritably around the room; I didn’t like breakfast in here. Too damn dark. Fine at night, winter especially, when we used the fireplace; this was a different room then. But a house stood wall-to-wall on each side of ours, no light in here except for the chandelier over the table. I preferred the big round wood table in the kitchen, the room full of daylight from two tall, round-topped windows overlooking Julia’s little garden. But eating in the kitchen was unseemly to Julia, and I understood that.
I said, “Julia, I’d like nothing more than to just forget the Project. If I’d only been able to do what I tried to do.” I sat thinking about that. “As I almost did, God damn it.”
“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said automatically.
“If I’d done it. If I’d got to the theater just minutes earlier . . .” I smiled at her, and shrugged. “I could have stayed right here then, content forever. But it keeps coming up in my mind, Jule: What is Rube doing with the Project? What is he up to! It may be a kind of duty to go and find out.”
She leaned toward me over the table. “Then go. Get it over with.” She sat back, keeping her face pleasant, and said gently, “But come back.”
“House,” said Willy on the floor. He was sitting, his back against the wall, legs straight out, turning the linen pages of one of his picture books, touching each and every picture with a fat little forefinger and saying or trying to say its name. He was over three now; talking and edging toward reading as fast as he could go. He was fun, and of course Julia and I looked over at him now, then at each other to smile: we’d made this little man.
“I might not be able to go back.”
“Oh? Why?” She sliced into her waffle with a fork.
“I was in the Central Park a couple weeks ago. Sketching the swan boats for last week’s issue.”
“Yes. I believe I’d like to frame that one.”
“Yeah, it’s a good one. But while I was there, walking along near the Dakota, it got dark, and I glanced up at my old apartment. I always do.”
“So do I. I had Willy there a week or so ago, and I showed it to him.”
“You didn’t tell him—”
“Of course not. Just said Daddy once lived there.”