“I think I’ll need you to escort me out of here,” Mary said. Fury turned to nausea. “Please take me outside.”
“The limo will drive us back—”
“Not with you. Please, Ernest.”
“Mary, what is this?” he said, shoulders rising. “This is nothing! It’s harmless. Under the circumstances, the law is ridiculous.”
She pushed aside his waving arms and walked briskly to the door then down the short hallway. “Take me out of here.”
He followed, eyebrows knitted in hurt and puzzled anger. “I haven’t hurt anybody! This will never hurt anyone! What are you going to do? Report this?”
“What were you going to do, sell it to some comb art lover? Have a hellcrown hidden on his premises for him to be caught with?”
“It’s not for sale. It’s a display piece, advertising, it would never leave this building, this studio, it can’t.”
“You paid Selectors for this…You helped people evade the law. I cannot…” She shut her eyes, mouth open, raising and shaking her head. “Tolerate. Allow.” She would not allow herself to cry. In the face of all that would happen tomorrow: this. The disappointment and shock the realization that her anger was in fact not entirely rational that her disappointment was deep not surface that the surface person might in fact tolerate this even be amused by it but not that deep person.
Ernest twisted, raised his fists into the air and let out a roaring scream of frustration. “Then go and tell your goddamned pd. Go! Why are you doing this to me?”
He stopped, chest rising and falling, eyes suddenly calm and expectant. He wiped his hands together. “I apologize,” he said softly. “I’ve made a bad mistake and I did not mean to. I have hurt you.”
Now her tears came. “Please,” she said.
“Yes. Of course.” He instructed the floor manager to call a metro cab.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll take a pd minibus.”
“Right,” he said.
The battle has gone on for too long, John. Everyone knows who I am but me. I do not like my self-ignorance. I feel myself fade day by day. I am being hunted. If I do not learn who I am soon, I will be found and killed. A game! This is the game I play within my head each day to get the words to flow, but it works less and less often, and that may mean
that it is
true.
29
Martin had spent the morning and early afternoon in his assigned room in Albigoni’s mansion, eating the breakfast and lunch purveyed by the expensive arbeiters and catching up on Goldsmith’s written works. He was reluctant to go anywhere unless summoned. That reluctance faded by thirteen thirty. He dressed in onepiece and armwrap and inspected himself in the mirror, then ventured out.
Entering the long dining hall also empty he walked past the left hand line of chairs, impressed by the silence. Sun came clean and clear of dust motes through the tall dining room windows. He scrutinized the huge oak beams, frowning, dawdled a bit in the huge mechanized kitchen and wandered on like a child in a fairy castle.
He encountered Lascal in the study sitting glumly before a slate reading a text page.
“Where is Albigoni?” Martin asked.
Lascal said good morning. “Mr. Albigoni is in the family room. Down the hall past the entryway and to your left, up the half stairs and on the right, two doors down.”
“He’s alone?”
Lascal nodded again. Not once did he remove his eyes from the screen. Martin stood beside him for a moment, shuddered delicately and followed his directions.
Albigoni squatted before a tall Christmas tree in the family room, wrapped packages scattered around him. When Martin entered Albigoni looked up and self consciously began to replace the packages.
“Am I disturbing you?” Martin asked.
“No. We had…done all this.” He waved at the tree and the packages. “Already. She loved Christmas. Betty-Ann. I don’t mind, I suppose. It reminds me of when she was a little girl. We’ve had Christmas trees in here every season since she was born.”
Martin looked on the man with narrowed eyes. Albigoni got to his feet slowly like some lethargic animal sloth or tired gorilla. “When the funeral is done, we’ll give the packages to charity. She didn’t send her packages to us…didn’t bring them yet.”
“I’m very sorry,” Martin said.
“It’s not your grief.”
“It’s possible to be too clinical,” Martin said. “Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.”
“Don’t worry about the pain,” Albigoni said. “You worry about the problem.”
He brushed past Martin and turned, all the lines on his broad fatherly face dragging his expression down, waved his fingers without raising his hand and said, “You’re free to do whatever you wish on these grounds. There’s a pool and gymnasium. Library of course. LitVid facilities. Perhaps Paul has told you that already.”
“He has.”
“Tomorrow we’ll meet in La Jolla. You’ve made out your list, your itinerary…”
Martin nodded. “Physical diagnostic for Goldsmith, mental scan, then I want to study the results.”
“I’ve hired top neurologists to do all this. Carol gave us a few names…discreet, professional. You’ll have everything you need.”
“I’m already assured of that,” Martin said. Fausting orders. What grants would Carol’s neurologists get? What would they be told?
Albigoni raised his eyes to meet Martin’s. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Burke, right now, nothing we are about to do makes much sense to me. But we’ll do it anyway.” He left the room. Martin felt the Christmas tree behind him like a presence. Dark oak and maple furniture; lost forests.
“I’ll take a swim, then,” he murmured. “Everything is in the very best of hands.”
John, I think of Hispaniola as Guinée. Lost home. No Africa, only Hispaniola. We’ve talked of writing your poem. May I come home? I do not know what baggage I’ll bring with me.
30
Nadine had gone on for an hour about the folks at Madame de Roche’s and what she had told them. She had mentioned the Selector’s visit. They had been quite impressed; none of them had ever rated a Selector’s attention. They had expressed worry even fear. “They told me they didn’t want you to come around for a while,” she concluded looking up at him sadly from the couch.
“Truly?”
She nodded.
“More time to work then.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “It took a lot for me to come back here. Courage.” She sniffed. “I thought you might recognize that and congratulate me.”
Richard smiled. “You’re a brave woman.”
“We could go to the Parlour. You know. Pacific.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“They might come back.”
“I don’t think so. It’s Christmas Day, Nadine.”
She nodded and stared at the curtained windows. “That used to be important to me when I was a girl.”
Richard looked yearningly at his desk and the waiting paper. He bit his lower lip gently. + She won’t leave.
“I’d like to write.”
“I’ll sit here and you write. I’ll fix dinner.”
+ She won’t go. Tell her to go.
“All right,” Richard said. “Please let me concentrate.”
“You mean don’t talk. You’d think I could keep my mouth shut but I’m afraid, Richard. I’ll try.”
“Please,” he persisted.
She pressed her lips together toothless mum crone. He sat at the desk and picked up the stat pen, laying down a charged blank line beginning A then erasing it thin whoosh of breath pushing flakes to carpet.