After dinner they walked until they came upon a place called the Seafront, a night club that featured a good jazz quartet. No one questioned Bonnie's age. They drank through two sets of music. Then she tried to persuade Jeff to take her to one of the strip bars in the Combat Zone.
"I want to see what they're like," she explained over an elegant saxophone solo. "I'd be safe with you."
Safe. The word seemed to echo in the back of Jeff's mind, but he wasn't sure why. He liked Bonnie's sense of curiosity, though, and her trust in him.
"I've been in those kinds of places," he said dismissively, a man of the world. "They're full of lonely men, tourists, and other stray suckers."
Bonnie looked as if she were about to answer that, but she stifled it beneath an odd smile.
Back in the hotel room later, they took their clothes off, got under the covers, and watched a made-fortelevision movie about cloning. Rock Hudson created Barbara Carerra in his laboratory and then had to ex plain the twentieth century to her. It wasn't easy. Why bother? Jeffs mind drifted. He was trying to understand something about sex. Time was the extra, invisible ingredient. Sex was one way Bonnie forged ahead with her life, seizing her future and making it the present. But for Jeff it seemed to be all about the past, his way of driving back through the years toward some lost, incomplete version of himself. When he made love to Bonnie, wasn't he also making love to Georgianne? Or was he really just trying to penetrate a ghost that existed only in the spirit world of his own mind? Could Georgianne ever be as good as he hoped and dreamed? That was the cruelest question of all. Before he fell asleep, he tried to plan how he would talk to Bonnie about her mother. There had to be a right way. He had a crucial opportunity in the palm of his hand, but he also knew that time was working against him-and his ghost.
In the morning, Jeff and Bonnie walked to a diner for breakfast and then strolled along the Charles watching four- and eight-man shells streak downriver. She put her arm through his and they walked slowly, close together, like lovers. She mentioned her father almost accidentally, in reference to something else, and Jeff did not respond. A moment later she stopped and looked at him.
"What do you think about my father's murder, Jeff?" she asked. "What do you really think?"
It was a clear, bright morning, but there was a brisk breeze coming off the Charles. She was watching him with curiosity and interest, he thought, rather than with any real suspicion. He felt safe and unworried, and although he didn't care for the subject, he hoped he could use it to reassure Bonnie in some way. Especially about himself.
"It was mistaken identity," he said.
"Do you have any doubts about that?"
"Not really. Do you?"
"Sometimes I wonder if ..."
"If it was someone your father knew?"
"Yes."
Jeff took his time cupping his hands and lighting a cigarette, then tossing the match aside before speaking.
"Of course that's a possibility," he allowed reasonably. "But then you have to look for a motive. Who were your father's enemies-that kind of thing. And from what I understand, your mother and you and the police couldn't think of any reason why someone would have wanted to ... do that. It's been quite a while now. Mistaken identity isn't nice. It's absurd, when you think about it. But it also makes a kind of sense. What else could it be? I thought you said yesterday that you did think it was mistaken identity. But obviously you don't. Okay, what do you suggest instead?"
He hadn't expected to say so much, but now he was pleased. The words had come naturally, and he could feel the confidence growing within him as he spoke. How long would it take to bury Sean, for Chrissake? It seemed to work, because Bonnie looked less sure of herself.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't have any thing ... not really, I guess. It's the not knowing that hurts.'
But you do know, if you let yourself," he said obscurely. 'It's hard, but it's the acceptance of death."
Too much, he thought immediately. She can't handle that yet. Still, it was good to get it said. Sooner or later she would realize he was right. For now, Bonnie had fallen silent and had a distant look on her face. She started walking again. Jeff kept up with her.
"Hey, are you all right?" he asked, patting her back gently.
`Yeah, sure." She pushed across a smile. "You know what I'd really like though? A change of clothes."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jeff cashed a few more traveler's checks, and they spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in downtown Boston. They walked from the Common to Faneuil Hall Marketplace and browsed leisurely from shop to shop, buying slices of pizza, cookies, and ice cream as they went. Jeff liked being out with Bonnie, and he felt safely anonymous in the crowds that thronged the Marketplace.
Later they toured the Computer Museum on Congress Street, near the waterfront. Bonnie seemed to enjoy it, which pleased Jeff, because it had been his idea and she'd been reluctant at first, hoping for something more exciting. As they came back past South Station, he babbled on about supercomputers, and she asked some intelligent questions. If I had the time, he thought, and I wanted to make a special project of it, I could get her out of biology and into advanced computer science for sure. Bonnie was raw talent, and a lot of it, just waiting to be developed. It was something to think about-if other things didn't work out right.
They wandered through Chinatown. Bonnie seemed to be steering them in a certain direction, and a few minutes later she stopped.
"Know where you are?" she asked.
"Sure. Chinatown."
"Anything else?"
"I give up. What?"
"Wang," Bonnie said, pointing to a large white building a block away. Yesterday's smirk was back on her face.
"Oh yeah," Jeff muttered. "So it is. Actually, that's the back of it, or the side. When I went there the other day, a taxi dropped me off in front, and I called for another cab when I was ready to leave, so . . ." He was aware that he was trying too hard to explain his lack of recognition, and shut his mouth.
"Of course," Bonnie said.
They resumed walking, and a few minutes later they came out onto Washington Street, which seemed to be lined with strip clubs, dingy bars, sex shops, and X-rated movies. The sidewalks were crowded with hustlers, pimps, hookers, tourists, the curious, the lonely, and the lost.
"The Combat Zone, I presume," Jeff said.
"That's right. Want to take in a show?"
'No thanks.'
"We could, you know. We'd get away with it."
"I thought you wanted to get some clothes," he reminded her, and made a point of studying his watch.
"You're right," she said reluctantly. "I don't know how early the stores close on Saturday. We better get over to Filene's." But she dawdled a moment more in front of a window display. "Any of those girls look better than me?" she asked. "What do you think?"
"No, none of them," Jeff replied with an indulgent smile. "Come on, now."
When they got to Filene's, Jeff slipped a small wad of money into Bonnie's hand and told her to put it in her pocket discreetly.
"I'll wait out here for you," he went on, sitting down on a bench in the pedestrian walkway. "Get whatever you want, but don't wave that cash around or make a big deal about it. Don't draw attention to yourself."
"I know, I know. Secret mission. Hush hush. You sure you want to wait here?"
"Why? How long will you be-fifteen minutes?"
"Are you kidding? Come on, Jeff, give me time to look around a bit. How about an hour? You can come with me."
He sighed. "All right, I'll meet you here at four. That's almost an hour. In the meantime, I'm going to find a cold drink. Okay?"