“I may surprise you. I may survive.”
“No, you won’t. Whatever happens, you’re dead. If you bungle the job, you’re dead. If you pull it off, you’re dead.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You go back to your wife and seventeen kids in Larchmont.”
“I don’t live in Larchmont And I don’t have seventeen kids.”
“How many then? Fourteen? Four? Who the hell cares?”
“You do.”
“I couldn’t care a fucking whit,” she says.
“You’re a liar, Sara.”
“I’m the most honest person you’ll ever meet in your life.”
“Just between you and me, I’m getting tired of hearing young people telling me just how honest they all are. That’s usually a good time to start hiding the family silver.”
“I’m not ‘young people.’ I'm me. Sara Horne.”
“Honest Sara Horne.”
“Yes, Honest Sara Horne, who knows what’s good for her.”
“What’s good for you, Sara?”
“You’re not, that’s for goddamn sure.”
“Neither is involvement in an assassination plot.”
“Who’s involved? I’m as safe as a sparrow, I already told you that.”
“And that’s what you want to do, right, Sara? Play it safe?”
“Certainly. What am I supposed to do? Hang around with you? Why should I? What’s your future?”
“I thought your generation was the one taking all the risks.”
“We took all the risks, yes, and lost. Now it’s your turn. Go blow up your dumb bridge, if you want to. Just leave me alone.”
“The bridge is necessary, Sara. You know it is.”
“Necessary? It’s imperative. But I’m not about to blow it up.”
“Then why should I?”
“You’re asking me? You volunteered for the job, how the hell should I know why? Listen, Arthur, when I was an undergraduate I got hit on the head often enough. If it doesn’t make you stupid, it makes you smart. Let them hit you on the head a little, see how you like it”
“Sara…”
“Do you want me to let you off at the hotel, or will you walk back from my place?”
“Sara, you can’t do this.”
“Can’t I? rm doing it.”
“Not after last night.”
“Last night When was that? I’ve forgotten last night completely.”
“Sara…”
“I don’t want to go to bed with you again,” she says flatly. “I don’t even want to kiss you again.”
“Let me off here.”
“I’ll take you to the hotel.”
“Let me off here, goddamnit!”
She pulls the car to the curb. I get out, close the door gently, and walk away without looking back.
In the room, I sit drinking scotch.
It is close to midnight, and I have not had dinner, and I am getting very drunk. I do not understand Sara. I do not even understand myself. There is a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Man with the Golden Helmet hanging on the wall opposite the desk. The son of a bitch keeps glaring at me. I get off the bed, go into the bathroom, rip some toilet tissue from the roll, come back to the framed painting, wet the edges of the tissue and stick it over the baleful bastard’s head, covering his eyes. There, I think. If you can’t see me, I don’t exist. Which is Sara’s point exactly, isn’t it? If I die alone with no one to mourn me, I will never have lived. Without her to record my passage, I will never have existed. Smart-assed teen-ager. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-assed teen-ager.
I decide to call my son in Boston.
First I will call Sara to tell her I’m going to call my son in Boston. You’ll probably like him better than me, I will tell her, more your age and style, long hair, beard, sloppy clothes, dropping out of school next month to head for San Francisco, start a commune there with three other guys and two girls. Maybe you’d like to go to bed with him, Sara, and then drop him cold the next day. I don’t understand you, I really do not.
I decide not to call her after all, hell with her.
I dial my son’s number.
A girl answers the phone. Her voice is a whisper. I tell her I want to speak to David, and she asks who this is, and I say David’s father, and in the same mournful whisper, she asks me to hold on a moment. There is no sound on the other end of the line. No music, no voices. It is only twelve, twelve-thirty, but there is no sound in my son’s apartment in the biggest college community in the United States.
“Pop?” he says. “God, you must be psychic. I was just about to call home.”
“I’m not home,” I tell him.
“No? Where are you?”
“Salt Lake City. Important contract to negotiate. How are you, David?”
“Well, I'm fine. But we’ve got all kinds of trouble here. That’s why I was going to call. I’d like your advice.”
“Legal or paternal?”
“Both,” David says.
“Oh-oh.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad, Pop. You know Hank and Stevie, two of the guys I was going out to San Francisco with?”
“Well, I don’t know them, son…”
“Yeah, I know you don’t know them, though I think you met Hank once. He wears a headband. He came home that time during the spring break, don’t you remember?”
“I think so, yes. What about them?”
“Pop, they both got busted last night”
“For what?”
“Somebody planted some stuff in their apartment, and the cops came around with a search warrant about two o’clock in the morning.”
“Planted? What do you mean, planted?”
“Just that.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Grass.”
“Any hard stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Speed. And acid.”
“Heroin?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How much of the stuff?”
“Enough, Pop. Lots of it.”
“Who planted it?”
“Well, Hank and Stevie’ve got some ideas, but they can’t be sure. They think it’s this guy they hassled with a couple of weeks back.”
‘What have they been charged with, David? Do you know?”
“Hank’s been charged with possession, presence, and conspiracy. Stevie and the girl who was there have been charged only with presence.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re still here in Boston. They paid the bail…”
“How much?”
“Three thousand dollars.”
“Who paid it?”
“A bondsman. Pop, the cops confiscated all the money that was in the apartment — as evidence that Hank was dealing.”
“How much money, David?”
“Close to fifteen hundred dollars. It’s the money he was going to put in for the California trip. He got it by working, Pop. He’s doing drugs, we all are — but he’s not dealing. I swear to God, Pop, he’s not dealing.”
“Has he notified his parents?”
“He’s going to do that tomorrow. Pop, here’s the point…”
“What’s the point, David?”
“The point is this really screws up the California thing, you know? Also, he’s my best friend, Pop.”
“So?”
“Pop… he plans to jump bail and leave the country.”
“That isn’t wise, David.”
“It’s wiser than spending five to ten years in prison. That’ll ruin his life, Pop.”
“I know it will.”