A clump of cars passed coming the other way, a caravan of station wagons and campers loaded with frightened-looking men in madras shirts and housewives with their hair in scarves. Wendy gave them a wave and they waved back sadly.
“What are you thinking?” Wendy said again.
“You keep asking that.”
“I want to know what you’re thinking and I can’t think of another way to put it,” she said.
“I know you want to know, and you know I want to know, so we both know we want to know what we’re thinking all of the fucking time.”
“It helps me to say it out loud. It’s an old nurse thing, if you really want to know. You ask how they’re feeling again and again until they finally tell you, or at least give a hint.”
“Only when the operation is over, Klein said. Only when it’s over can you write a solid operation plan. You write it after the mission and it comes out perfect. That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Sounds like your department. Mine wouldn’t do it that way. We’d tweak it to shed the best light on the Corps, but we would never revise an operation plan after the mission and postdate it,” Wendy said. “We’d stamp it top secret and redact everything in it and stash it away for the future.”
Only when the story is over and the report is written — or not written — can the truth of my love for you be fully known, Singleton thought.
Then he said it aloud as they approached the end of the bridge, easing down into the Upper Peninsula.
“Are you trying to say you love me?” Wendy said.
“I won’t be able to say it until this operation’s over. I mean, of course I do love you, but the kind of love I’m thinking about is something I won’t know until I write up a report and sort through everything that’s happened this summer so that I’ve honestly done it justice.”
“Bullshit, I think you said you love me.”
“I think what I’m saying is that before I can really say it, I mean in the way I want to say it, so you hear it the way I want you to hear it, I’ve got to make sure I know for sure if this entire thing was a fucking setup, something they anticipated, playing matchmaker in a major way, or if it was just a matter of pure chance, the two of us, in the lobby, that first lunch, that second lunch, the whole thing.”
“Rake faked his death so that Status would think he was dead but he’s really alive and Relations would think he’s alive but he’s really dead. Is that the way it’s working?” she said, flicking the lighter and pinching what was left of the joint, holding it to the flame with shaking hands. “Who cares if they knew we were together early on? They understood that we were two trainees who might work well together and find Rake, but the rest…”
“Was set up to fuck with me,” he said. “To fuck with us.”
“One minute you seem to believe in the goals of the Corps. The next minute — usually when you’re high — you say the Corps is just a big structure to hold irony so Kennedy could go on with the war.”
“I didn’t say that. Klein said that early in the summer. When he still sounded reasonable to me, when he was talking World War this, World War that. I didn’t say it. He said it and I told you what he said, and now you quote it back to me.”
“That day you came over to my father’s house.”
“What about it?”
“You seemed pathetic to me.”
His throat got tight. When they were only half in love, Singleton thought, the fights had been petty and fun, a prelude to make-up sex. Now they were heading into a storm. It really did seem to matter who was right and who was wrong.
“How so?”
“Well, my father seemed like a man. I hate the way that sounds, but it’s true.”
“Do I seem pathetic?”
“Yes,” she said. “Not as pathetic as you seemed that day at my house. Or even at the safe house. You seemed particularly pathetic.”
“How so?”
“I knew what you were thinking. You sided with the operative. You took his information and you ran,” she said.
“And you ran with me,” he said.
They were off the cloverleaf at the end of the bridge, turning west per instructions, following the coast of Lake Michigan.
“I didn’t have a choice. I don’t have one right now.”
“You had a choice. You have one right now. I can stop the car and let you out,” he said. His voice was tight and angry. The fuzzball in his head was singing.
“You need me in this operation. You need me, period.”
We went over the bridge, made note of some jumpers opening the hatch to a tower. We had a brief, terse exchange about the nature of the Corps, and the nature of our mission. We silently agreed to disagree. Then we relished the cool northern summer air and we felt ourselves committed, agent-to-agent, he would write, if he did write. Our confusion was acute. A debilitating sense of not understanding our own actions was internal. We understood that the Corps believed Rake was dead and that Klein either didn’t believe he was dead or was putting on an act that he didn’t believe he was dead.
“Your father, he was the pathetic one,” Singleton said.
“The word is pitiful. I felt pity for you. I used to feel pity for my father, but when he talked to you I heard a new tone. He seemed pitiful and pathetic until he talked to you. Next to you, he seemed heroic. You might think he told those stories again and again, but the truth is, Dad kept his mouth shut. He folded it up and went on with his life. I knew he’d been through trauma. I knew he was walking around holding it all in to protect me. But I respect him because he’s a fully functioning man.”
The whine in his ears was getting higher and louder and the road seemed to flex from side to side. He gripped the wheel tight while Wendy looked him over and told him he looked like he was getting sick, or having a flashback.
“I’m not having a flashback. At least not a pharmaceutically induced one. I’m still thinking about how I’ll put this in words, explain this part of the mission.”
“The president was finally killed. All hell broke loose. We took off.” She frowned. “Why this obsession with the operation report? Why do you feel this need to put everything into a system?”
“How did Ambrose get hold of that file? If they keep them under lock and key, how did he get a copy?”
“They wanted him to have a copy. When they handed it to him they knew he’d hand it to you.”
“I need to know. I need to know,” he said.
He pulled over to the side of the road, under tall pines clutching sandy soil, the isolated sunlight, dappled, coming down through the branches, and got out. Across the road, empty beach stretched to the west. There was an old grill and a pump with a working handle.
“I came up here as a teenager,” he said. “We camped on this beach, or somewhere near it.” He sat on a picnic bench carved with old names and dates. He put his face in his hands and suddenly began to sob.
“I feel genuinely sorry for myself. I feel this huge pity for myself.”
Wendy spread her arms and took a deep breath. “This is a real place and it’s beautiful, and it smells good, too. I say, fuck whatever they’re trying to do to us. We’re heading up to the target if he’s alive or dead, and we have to follow our guts on this.”
Looking out at Lake Michigan, across the road, he sensed again that he’d been here as a teenager, and that it had something to do with Rake, and the firebomb, and that scene in Hue. On a hot summer day he might have seen the Chicago mirage, the streets and towers visible high over the water, an optical trick of heat and light fantastic to behold if you were lucky enough to catch it. Whether or not it ever happened, the idea held a place in the hearts of Michiganders, who kept it alive from generation to generation. He felt the urge to cross the street and wade into the lake, which would be cold enough to unfold him completely if he stayed under long enough.