“Did they leave messages?”
“They said to tell you they’d called.” We are in the corridor now, walking toward the elevators. “Aren’t you going to call them back?”
“Later.”
“Sara sounded very young.”
“She w very young.”
“How young, Sam?”
I do not answer.
It is bitter cold in the street outside. The afternoon sun is waning, and the mountain air is sweeping in over the town. I think ahead to the morning of the bridge. I hope it will not be cold. I hope it will not snow. I hope it will all go just as Weglowski and I planned it today.
“Why are you here?” Abby asks.
“To blow up a bridge,” I tell her.
“Be serious.”
“To kill a man.”
“Sam…”
“Yes, Abby?”
“Do you know that David is in trouble? Do you know that he plans to run off to Denmark with his drug addict friend?”
“His friend is not a drug addict.”
“His friend is a drug addict and a pusher besides. He’s been shooting heroin. And selling it That’s what they found in the apartment”
“David said there was no hard stuff in the…”
“David is a liar.”
“He does not lie to me.”
“He lies to everyone. He lies to you, he lies to me, he lies…” Abby takes a deep breath. “The only person he ever told the truth to in his life was Adam. And Adam’s dead. And David’s about to run off to Denmark with a drug addict.”
“Perhaps not.”
“No? What are you doing to stop him?”
“I’m blowing up a bridge on November second.”
This time she stops, and turns and looks at me. There is a familiar expression on her face. I have seen it there a thousand times in the past, whenever I tried to explain to her a course of action I had already decided to pursue. She wore this same expression when I told her I was defending the Baltimore Five; she wore it when I told her I was writing the brief for the Hoffstadter case. She wears it now. It is bewildered, it is concerned, it is utterly feminine. I love this woman very much, I realize. I love her very much, and I have been unable to talk to her since last April.
The wind sweeps in off the mountains. We are walking again. She is silent, my wife, and I am silent beside her.
“Which bridge?” she asks at last “A railroad bridge.”
“Which man?”
“The man who killed Adam.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asks.
“I am serious, Abby.”
“Don’t do it, Sam.”
“I’ve already contracted for the job.”
“What do you know about bridges? About killing?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do it. Please.”
“I have to.”
“I’ll stop you. m call the police. I’ll….”
“Abby, I told you because I trust you. Don’t betray me now.”
“We’ve done nothing but betray each other for as long as I can remember,” she says, and suddenly she is weeping. I put my arm around her. The sidewalk is somewhat slippery here, and we walk slowly and clumsily, edging our way across the ice. To the casual passersby, to the college students in their long flowing mufflers and their striding boots, we must appear at first (from a distance, or perhaps even closer, perhaps even passing a hairs-breadth away on this bitter afternoon) to be a doddering couple abroad in a treacherous world, unable to cope, the old woman weeping, the old man shuffling across the icy sidewalk, his arm around her for support.
“There’s a poem,” I tell her. “Do you know it?”
“What poem?”
“The others would come/More often than John/Now they are gone/ I’m alone.”
“What poem?” she repeats, sobbing. “What poem?”
“I just recited it.”
“That isn’t a poem.”
“It’s a poem. A very sad one.”
She is still weeping, snuffling her tears into a tissue. I offer her my handkerchief and she takes it with a small nod and blows her nose, turning her head away as though embarrassed to have me witness this intimate act.
“Sam,” she says, “which one of them are you sleeping with?”
“Neither.”
“Or both,” Abby says.
“Neither.”
I can tell this woman I am about to blow up a railroad bridge, but I cannot tell her I am sleeping with a twenty-one-year-old law student named Sara Horne. This I cannot tell her, for it would destroy her as readily as Weglowski’s charges will destroy the trestle.
“Then who are they?”
“Hester is the one who hired me. Hester Pratt. She teaches English here at the university. Sara Home is recording secretary for the group. I’ve been in constant touch with both of them since I arrived.”
“When did you get here?”
“Early Monday.”
“Where were you before then?”
“What do you mean?”
“You left New York after work on Thurs…”
“I spent three days in Los Angeles. Researching tractor companies.”
“Sam, I find all this spy stuff ridiculous.”
“I’m not enjoying it too terribly much myself.”
“Then come home.” She stops again. She has an annoying habit of stopping dead on the sidewalk whenever she wishes to make a point, so that sometimes I am caught in mid-stride, a step or two ahead of her. I have never liked this about her. She usually does it when we are having a heated argument. It always makes me feel foolish and observed. I do not mind feeling foolish right now, but the one thing I do not want is to be observed.
“Keep walking, Abby,” I say, and there is a harsh edge to my voice. She hesitates only a moment and then falls into step beside me. “Don’t do that again,” I warn her. “If you do, m leave you standing here. Do you understand me?”
“Secret Agent X-9,” she mutters, but I know she will not repeat the action.
The street lights come on.
(Was it only last Thursday that Sara discovered street lights coming on?)
“Why are you doing this?” Abby asks.
“Because Adam is dead.”
“Adam was a fool. And so are you.”
“Abby..
“Adam was a fool. He could have stayed in college and had his student deferment. No. He had to prove something. So what did he prove?”
“He proved he was willing to..
“To die.”
“No. To take a stand for what he believed was right”
“Oh. And what did he believe was right? That he should be drafted?”
“Damn you, Abby, you know that’s not what he believed!”
“He believed in magic and nonsense. He believed in your “Me? What..?”
“He believed that you, by defending those Baltimore draft dodgers and later Hoffstadter, who deserved to be hanged if ever anyone…”
“Hoffstadter was trying to prove something!”
“Yes, just the way Adam was trying to prove something, just the way you're trying to prove something now. What the hell are men always trying to prove? Why don’t they come home, and make love, and shut up? What are they always trying to prove, for Christ’s sake? That they’re men? All right, already, we believe you. You convinced Adam you were a man, didn’t you? You convinced him you were taking a stand, you were speaking out, you were doing your share in correcting the ills of our great and beloved.
“I was! If I hadn’t defended those kids…”
“Somebody else would have, and you know it That isn’t the point, Sam.”
“What is the point, Abby?”
We are talking in very low voices, we are almost whispering. We are walking swiftly now past glowing shop windows, the sidewalks before them scraped clean. We have not really talked since April 26, when Adam was killed, and now we are talking rapidly and in hushed voices, as though anxious to get it all out immediately and forever, but frightened lest either of us might really hear what we are saying.