“Don’t be cross,” she says. “It’s such a beautiful day. Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
“Gorgeous.”
“Soon, they’ll all be gone. Leaf after leaf after leaf.” She turns to me suddenly, the coat opening over a quick flash of remembered knees. “Do you know what the plural of leaf is?”
I glance at her face. Her green eyes are bright with discovery. I am thinking that the only time she is honest is when she is in bed, and I am also beginning to wonder about that
“Of course I know what the plural of leaf is,” I say, and turn my eyes back to the road. We have come beyond the town now. The grade is beginning to slope gently upward as we enter the foothills.
“What is it then?”
“Leaves.”
“No. Leafs.” She nods. “One leaf, two leafs, three leafs. I love leafs, don’t you?”
“No, I love little paper stars.”
“Those, too,” she says, and hugs herself in satisfaction.
“Where’s the heater in this damn car?” I ask.
“There’s a little knob down there. Are you cold? Do you want me to turn it on?”
“Please.”
She begins twisting a knob somewhere near the floor.
“This is Seth’s car,” she says. “I know you’ll be pleased to learn that.”
“Yes, I’m thrilled.”
“It’s very much like Seth, actually. Sweet, and battered, and comfortable and dependable. It’s a nice little car.”
“It’s a darling little car.”
“Would you like some music?” she asks. Without waiting for my answer, she turns on the radio. A rock-and-roll song erupts into the automobile. Sara’s slippered foot beats in time to the music. “Why are you angry?” she asks suddenly. “Didn’t you enjoy last night?”
“Yes, I did. Very much.” I cannot take my eyes from the road now because it is beginning to twist around the side of the mountain. “Didn’t you?”
“That was last night,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve forgotten it already. I've turned it off.” She nods in agreement with herself. “I can do that. Turn things off. Just like that” She snaps her fingers. The sound is like a rifle shot in the small automobile.
“That’s a wonderful knack,” I say drily.
“Yes, it is,” she agrees. “Can you do it? Turn things off? Like that?” She snaps her fingers again. The coup de grâce.
“No, I can’t. Total recall, remember?”
“Right, right, total recall.” She is immediately lost in thought. She bites her lip for effect. A disc jockey is prattling about a skin cream that will remove unsightly blemishes. He finishes his spiel and unleashes another musical assault. “I can hardly remember anything at all about last night,” Sara says.
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s not. I’ve already forgotten almost all of it.”
“What do you remember?”
“Hardly anything.”
“Something though.”
“Yes, something.”
“What?”
“Your kissing me all night long. No one has ever kissed me all night long.”
“Not even Seth?”
“Oh, fuck off with Seth, will you please? He’s just a good friend.”
“And what am I?”
“You’re a forty-two-year-old married man,” she says flatly and harshly and coldly and almost viciously, “who may get killed blowing up a bridge at the end of the month.”
“Two days after Halloween, to be exact”
“All Hallows’ Eve, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. All Hallows’ Eve. And leafs.”
“Yes, leafs,” she says angrily. “And there’s your damn bridge.”
I stop the car and pull up the emergency brake. We both get out. Sara comes around to the driver’s side. We are on a dangerous curve, and there is no time for extended conversation.
“What time will you be back?” I ask.
“Half-past four.”
“What time do you have now?”
“I don’t have a watch.”
“Everybody has a goddamn watch.”
“Except me,” she says, and slams the door, and drives off.
There is a majesty to this ravine and the bridge that crosses it.
I am a city boy and do not normally react hysterically to natural displays, but this V-shaped open wedge in the earth is aflame with autumn, its steep sloping sides racing with reds and oranges and yellows, scattered with the softest browns, boldly scarred with low jagged rock outcroppings, black and gray and the purest white. The sky is tight above it, the flaming hillside burning more furiously against its cool, cloudless blue. Across the divide, the bridge hurls its girders, buries its steel deep in concrete embedded in the cliff’s steep sides.
I must destroy this bridge if we are to survive.
There is a strong wind, and my eyes are wet. It keens in the steel girders, swirls and eddies in the canyon below, sends fallen leaves into frenzied arabesques. The earth is alive. I am here to deliver death.
I start down into the ravine.
The rattle of the leaves (she has brainwashed me, the word sounds incorrect; surely it has always been “leafs”) could easily disguise the rattle of a snake. This is the West, and such things are not unheard of. My eyes scan the terrain. It is difficult enough to keep my footing; I do not need the added burden of having to watch for rattlesnakes. But I study every fallen branch before stepping over it, scrutinize each flat rock for signs of menace coiled and waiting to strike. There is no faithful retainer here to suck out the venom if I am hit. I am alone.
(“If you fail, you fail alone,” Sara has said. “No one will be there to mourn your death.”)
At the bottom of the ravine, I begin making my sketch of the bridge.
Sara picks me up at four-thirty on the dot. She is nothing if not punctual. As soon as I get behind the wheel, she says, “They want to see you.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Why?”
“They want a progress report.”
“There’s been no progress.”
“Maybe that’s why they want a report.”
It is close to five when we get back to town. The long shadows of dusk are claiming the streets. The lamppost lights suddenly go on, evoking a small sharp cry of surprise from Sara.
“I've never seen that before in my life!” she says.
“What?”
“The lights going on like that. They’re either on or off, but I've never seen them actually going on.”
I do not believe her, but I make no comment. Instead, I ask her where the meeting will be.
“At Professor Raines’s house.”
“Are you coming?”
“Of course. Without me, no one will ever know you existed.”
“I don’t find that comical.”
“Sorry,” she says, and grins.
The house is English Tudor covered with ivy. Leaves are burning in a small pile near the low stone wall at the property’s edge. The living room is warmly lighted; an amber rectangle falls upon the front lawn. We walk up the path together in silence. A bird chitters somewhere in the surrounding woods. The cold mountain air has already descended upon the town, and our breaths plume out ahead of us, heralding our approach.
The three of them are sitting around a blazing fire in the living room. Raines rises to draw the drapes. He is a tall thin man with white hair and a prominent nose. He wears a dark suit and black shoes. A Phi Beta Kappa key hangs across the front of his vest. I fully expect him to exchange the secret handshake with Sara. In a wing-back chair near the fire, Epstein — the money man — sits with his hands folded over his chest. He is a man of approximately my height and build, balding, with pinched cheeks and a sallow complexion, looking like an unfrocked rabbi in a houndstooth jacket and gray flannel slacks. He is a French professor. For nine years, ever since the end of World War II, he went to Paris every summer. He stopped going in 1954. He told me this the first day we met, and there was a look of intense longing in his eyes. Hester Pratt is on a hassock to the right of Epstein’s chair. She is wearing a simple green suit with a white blouse, her customary low-heeled walking shoes. She smiles when Sara and I come into the room. There is something in her smile that is calculating and knowledgeable.