“I wouldn’t feed them off the table if they didn’t beg,” he said.
“And they wouldn’t be begging if you didn’t feed them. Or haven’t you noticed that they never park themselves anywhere near me while we’re eating.”
He looked back down at the dogs. They had resumed their positions on either side of his chair, Jill sitting barely at rest and shifting her weight from one front paw to the other, Jack staring at him in rigid and unblinking expectation, his snout tilted upward.
“It’s a vicious circle,” he said.
“Or maybe just you being a pushover for any creature in need.” She picked up her muffin and nodded her chin at his plate. “You ought to have some of that food yourself.”
He turned toward his dish and ate without enthusiasm, still unable to muster an appetite. On the stereo, Waller had launched into “Cash for Your Trash,” his left hand swinging between octaves to lay down rhythmic bass and chord patterns, his right hand running up the scale with a bright introductory melody line.
Gordian found himself listening to the opening vocals.
“Haven’t heard this one for ages,” Ashley said, waiting until midway through the song to comment.
He nodded, took a bite of his eggs.
“I believe,” she said, “that no other performer has ever been quite so up about being down. If you catch my meaning.”
Gordian turned and looked at her.
“I do,” he said. “When you consider that he was a black man in a time of obscene racial inequality, then take into account everything his generation lived through… the first World War, the Depression, World War II. If memory serves, he made his final recordings just as we were about to send our boys to Europe.”
“Stormy weather,” she said.
He nodded.
“His music’s all about surviving bad times with a kind of resolute good humor,” she said. “About having confidence that just being here, and alive, gives us the chance to see better times ahead… trite as that may sound.”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” he said.
“To the trite part, or the other?”
“Both,” he said. “But mostly the other.”
They ate quietly and listened to the personnel on the various recordings — Benny Carter, Slam Stewart, Bunny Berigan, and others, in addition to Waller himself — roll through driving versions of “Lulu’s Back in Town” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”
Ashley watched him awhile, then gestured toward the phone on the table.
“So,” she asked. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m expecting to hear from Dorset at NASA,” Gordian said. “We’ve been working to get the Orion inquiry up and running. I’ve given a lot of attention to its procedural mechanisms, but Alex Nordstrum talked to me yesterday about another aspect of the probe that ought not be neglected.”
“Alex?” Her eyebrows rose with surprise. “I thought he was busy stroking off on the fairway.”
Gordian gave her a thin smile.
“I think you mean teeing off,” he said. “Anyway, I asked him to come to the office as a favor and he did.” He shrugged. “You know.”
She looked at him.
“No, I don’t, but I’m assuming it’s a male thing that you can explain to me later,” she said. “Tell me what the two of you discussed.”
“In a nutshell, he reminded me that we need to earn the confidence of the American people rather than sit back and take it as a given. I’ve got some very definite ideas about how to accomplish that based upon his suggestions, and don’t intend to let this turn into anything resembling the debacle where an outside commission appointed by the White House went head-to-head against the space agency because of skepticism about its in-house probe.”
“Well-deserved skepticism, as I recall,” Ashley said.
“Yes,” he said. “There are going to be doubts about the credibility of this investigation’s findings no matter how thorough a job is done. But if we can’t manage to cut them down to size, I don’t think the program will ever recover.”
She swallowed some of her muffin. “How’s Dorset feel about your input? People get territorial.”
“Thus far, we’re in synch. Chuck is a reasonable man and has the best interests of NASA at heart.” He turned to face her. “Also, he’s got very little choice but to be receptive to my suggestions. Without UpLink’s technology and access to foreign governments there’s no ISS. Period.”
She smiled at him.
“Hard to imagine anyone trying to ignore you when you get that steely look in your eyes,” she said.
He cleared his throat, lowering his head to study his plate, a boyish sign of embarrassment that Ashley pretended not to notice.
She decided to wait a few seconds, then asked, “Which of your specific recommendations is Dorset supposed to call about this morning?”
“I told him who I’d like to head up the investigative task force. Unequivocally.”
“And?”
“And his only real problem — or concern, I should say — was that he didn’t want anybody in his organization to feel resentful about being bypassed for the job.”
“Understandable,” Ashley said. “Turf again. You know how it can be.”
“I do, Ash. But there’s no time to worry about NASA’s bureaucratic harmony right now. The faster we get things done, the better. There’s the Russian launch at the end of the month, and I want to see it come off without postponement. Because I am concerned about what’ll happen if my old blowhard friend Senator Delacroix, or somebody equally good at being on the wrong side of every issue, starts calling the entire cooperative effort into question on the talk shows.”
“Delacroix,” she said. “He the one you saw wrestle that big stuffed bear in the hammer-and-sickle trunks?”
“On the Senate floor.” He exhaled slowly. “Anyway, Dorset’s going to let me know if the person I want is even interested in the appointment. If this pans out the way I’m hoping it will, we’ll have taken a huge step toward gaining the public trust. And it’ll be a deserved step.”
“Any reason you haven’t named your pick to me?”
He shrugged, looking slightly awkward.
“Pure superstition. Another mark of an old flier,” he said. “I’ll tell you if you insist, but—”
She held up her hand. “Far be it from me to lay on the jinx. Being an old flier’s wife, I know how to sit back and keep my fingers crossed until you’re ready. Just don’t forget that I’m waiting for the dish.”
They were silent for a bit, eating their breakfasts, Jack and Jill watching Gordian’s fork with undeviating involvement. On the stereo, Fats Waller belted out a line about someone’s pedaling extremities being obnoxious. Gordian smiled almost imperceptibly and ate with increasing relish.
All at once, Ashley wanted to reach over and hold him tightly in her arms. But she refrained, just as she had chosen not to ask him any questions about what had occurred in Brazil. She would not do that, not yet, though what little she already knew made her suspect it represented an impending threat to her husband’s safety that, like others he’d had to face in the past, would keep her tossing restlessly in bed tonight and for many nights to come, fearing it might take him from her forever.
Their breakfasts finished now, they sat listening to the stereo in the fresh grass-scented air and sunshine pouring through the veranda’s open louvers. His plate cleaned off except for a single wedge of toast, Gordian glanced down at each of the dogs and then gave Ashley a questioning glance.
“I don’t think you should,” she said. “But if you go ahead and do it, there’d better be no complaints about the rotten, hungry hounds to me or Julia afterward.”