That did it. She began crying, hard. He fetched her some tissue and joined her on the couch and put his arm over her shoulders. She let him do it.
"The first weeks," he said, "about the first six months, I dreamed about this meeting. Laura, I couldn't believe you were dead. I thought, in jail somewhere. Singapore. She's a political, I told people, somebody's holding her, they'll let her go when things straighten out. Then they started talking about your being on the Ali Khamenei, and I knew that was it. That they'd finally gotten you, that they'd killed my wife.
And I'd been half the world away. And hadn't helped." He put his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. "I'd wake up at night and think of you drowning."
"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It wasn't our fault, was it? What we had was good, it was really going to last, to last forever. "
"I .really loved you," he said. "When I lost you, it just destroyed me."
"I want you to know, David-I don't blame you for not waiting." Long silence. "I wouldn't have waited either, not if it was like that. What you and Emily did, it was right for you, both of you."
He stared at her, his eyes bloodshot. Her gesture, her forgiveness, had humiliated him. "There's just no end to what you're willing to sacrifice, is there?"
"Don't blame me!" she said. "I didn't sacrifice anything,
I didn't want this to happen to us! It was stolen from us-they stole our life.
"We didn't have to do it. We chose to do it. We could have left the company, run off somewhere, just been happy."
He was shaking. "I would have been happy-I didn't need anything but you."
"We can't help it if we have to live in the world! We had bad luck. Bad luck happens. We stumbled over something buried, and it tore us up. " No answer. "David, at least we're alive. "
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Hell, you're more than alive, Laura. You're goddamn famous. The whole world knows. It's a fucking scandal, a soap opera. We don't 'live in the world'-the world lives in us now. We went out to fight for the Net and the Net just stretched us to pieces. Not our fault-oh hell no! All the fucking money and politics and multinationals just grabbed us and pulled us apart!"
He slammed his knee with his fist. "Even if Emily hadn't come in-and I don't love Emily, Laura, not like I loved you-how the hell could we have ever gone back to a real human life? Our little marriage, our little baby, our little house?"
He laughed, a high-pitched unhappy sound. "Back when I was a widower, there was a lot of rage and pain in that, but
Rizome tried to take care of me, they thought it was ... dra- matic. I still hated their guts for what they led us into, but I thought, Loretta needs me, Emily cares, maybe I can make a go of it. Go on living."
He was as taut as strung wire. "But I'm just a little person, a private person. I'm not Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I'm not
God. I just wanted my wife and my baby and my work, and a few pals to drink beer with, and a nice place to live."
"Well they wouldn't let us have that. But at least we made them pay for what they did."
"You made them pay."
"I was fighting for us!"
"Yeah, and you won the battle-but for the Net, not for you and me." He knotted his hands. "I know it's a selfish thing. I feel ashamed sometimes, worthless. Those little bas- tards out in their submarine, they're still out there with their four precious home-made A-bombs, and if they fire one, it's gonna vaporize a million people just like us. They're evil, they have to be fought. So what do you and I matter, right?
But I can't see on that scale, I'm small, I can only see you and me."
She touched his hands. "David, we still have Loretta.
We're not strangers. I was your wife, I'm the mother of your child. I didn't want to be what I've become. now. If I'd had a choice I'd have chosen you:"
He wiped his eyes. He was fighting the feelings back, becoming distant. Polite. "Well, we'll see each other some- times, won't we? Holidays-that sort of thing. Even though
I'm in Mexico now, and you're still in the company."
"I always liked Mexico."
"You can come down and see what we're working on. The
Yucatan project .. some of those guys from Grenada ... their ideas weren't all bad. "
"We'll be good friends. When the hurt passes. We don't hate each other-we didn't mean to hurt each other. It only hurts this bad because it was so good when we had it."
"It was good, wasn't it? Back when we had each other.
When we were still the same size." He looked at her through his tear-streaked dark face. Suddenly she could see the David she had lost in there, somewhere. He was like a little boy.
They had a reception for her downstairs. It was like the other receptions in her honor, in Azania, in Atlanta, though the room was full of people she had loved. They had made her a cake. She cut it, and everyone sang. No journalists, thank God. A Rizome gathering.
She gave them a little speech that she'd written for them on the plane, coming in. About the Lodge-how the enemy had killed a guest, insulted their house and their company. About how they had fought back, not with machine guns, but with truth and solidarity. They had paid a price for resistance, in trouble and tragedy.
But today the Malian conspiracy was exposed and in utter wreckage. The Grenadian regime was wiped out. The
Singaporeans had had a revolution. Even the European data bankers-Los Morfinos-had lost their safe havens and were scattered to the winds. (Applause.)
Even Vienna had been shattered in the world upheaval, but
Rizome was stronger than ever. They had proven their right to the future. They-the Lodge personnel-could be proud of their role in global history.
Everyone applauded. They were shiny-eyed. She was get- ting much better at this sort of thing. She had done it so many times that all the fear was gone.
The formality broke up and people began circulating. Mrs.
Delrosario, Mrs. Rodriguez, were both in tears. Laura con- soled them. She was introduced to the Lodge's new coordina- tor and his pregnant wife. They bubbled on about how nice the place was and how much they were sure they'd enjoy it.
Laura did her "humble Laura" number, patient, detached.
People always seemed surprised to see her speak reason- ably, without hair-tearing or hysteria. They had all formed their first judgment of her from watching Gresham's tape.
She had seen the tape (one of the innumerable pirated copies)
exactly once, and had turned it off before the end, unable to bear the intensity. She knew what other people thought about it, though-she had read the commentaries. Her mother had sent her a little scrapbook of them, carefully clipped from the world press.
She would think about those comments sometimes when she was introduced to strangers, saw them judging her. Judg- ing ' her, presumably, by the kind of crap they'd seen and read. "Mrs. Webster was thoroughly convincing, showing all the naive rage of an offended bourgeoise" Leningrad Free
Press. "She recited her grievances to the camera like a cavalier's mistress demanding vengeance for an insult"-Paris-
Despatch. "Ugly, histrionic, gratingly insistent, a testament that was ultimately far too unpleasant to be disbelieved"-
The Guardian. She had read that last one ten or twelve times, and had even considered calling up the snide little creep who'd written it-but what the hell. The tape had worked, that was enough. And . it was nothing compared to what they said about the poor wretched bastards who used to run Vienna.
All that was old news now, anyway. Nowadays everybody talked about the submarine. Everyone was an expert. It was not, of course, an American Trident submarine-FACT had lied to her about that, small surprise there. She had told the whole world that she'd been on a "Trident" submarine, when a Trident was actually a kind of missile.