Nan caught the nature of Jillian’s mood immediately. “Oh God, Jill,” she said, “you sound so sad.”
Jillian sighed and without thinking about it, reached out with her free hand and touched the radio.
“It’s just this city, Nan,” she said. “It… it just gets inside you. Under your skin.”
“Well, don’t let it get inside you,” said Nan firmly. “That’s how you got into trouble after Mom and Dad died. To be honest, you sound now the way you did then.”
Jillian did no answer. She realized that she was holding the radio and she stared at it.
“You know, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea,” Nan continued. “The two of you moving up there to New York City. Maybe it’s too much. Culture shock; you know?”
Jillian looked away from the radio. “Spencer needed it,” she replied. “And I wanted to do it.”
“How is Spencer?” Nan asked archly. “Is he taking good care of you?”
Nan had always been slightly jealous of her sister and her apparently perfect relationship with her apparently perfect astronaut hero husband. She did her best to conceal her jealously, but both sisters knew it was there. By unspoken agreement they never talked about it, though Nan was not above making some sly jokes about it from time to time.
Jillian was silent for a moment. “Well…, you know, it’s not easy for him, either. A new job, so many new people. But you know him, Nan, he never complains.”
Nan laughed. “You want me to come up there and kick his ass?” Then she was silent a moment. “Oh, Jil1y,” she said sorrowfully, “you seem so sad.”
“No,” Jillian answered quickly, trying to force some the brightness she did not feel into her voice. “No, not at all. I’m okay, Nan. It’s just so different up here. It takes some getting to used to. I guess we underestimated how much.”
Nan appeared to believe this or decided to pretend that she did. “Have you found made any friends up there? Have you found someone to talk to yet, at least?”
“Oh yeah,” said Jillian. “The doorman is a real chatterbox. Can’t get him to shut up.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Nan replied, “and you know it. Have you found a doctor to talk to?”
“No… Not yet,” said Jillian slowly.
Nan sounded deadly serious now. “Promise me, Jill. If things get bad. If they get the way they were before, you have to promise me that you’ll find someone to talk to.”
Jillian turned as she heard Spencer’s keys sliding into the lock in the front door.
Nan was insistent. “July? I want you to promise me that? Okay? Promise?” Because if you don’t—”
Jillian cut off her sister. “I have to go. Can I call you tomorrow, Nan? I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
But Nan would not be put off so easily. She tried desperately to keep her sister on the phone. “No, Jillian,” she said quickly, “don’t go, okay? We have to talk.”
Jillian looked down at the radio on the table, then toward the front door of the apartment.
“Jillian?” said Nan.
“I really have to go now, Nan,” said Jillian.
She heard the front door open and the tap of Spencer’s footsteps in the hallway.
“Jillian,” he called. “Where are you?”
Jillian put down the phone as Spencer walked into the room. “Spencer,” she said. “You’re so late… I was beginning to get worried about you.”
Spencer looked surprised. “Didn’t you get my message?” he asked. “I had a dinner meeting tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” Jillian replied. “I didn’t check the answering machine. I didn’t think of it.”
“My fault,” said Spencer. “I still haven’t got this corporate thing down yet.” He kissed her warmly on the lips. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Will you wait up for me?”
She nodded and he kissed her again. “I won’t be a minute,” he said, making for the bathroom. Jillian lay in bed. The light in the bedroom was off, but the door to the bathroom was open. The light was on in there and clouds of steam rolled out from Spencer’s shower. Suddenly the water stopped pounding in the shower and Jillian could see her husband toweling off. He was a spectral form in the steam. As she looked into the bathroom, his shadow fell across the bed, across Jillian’s body.
From inside the cloud of steam, Spencer called out to her. “You feeling okay?”
Without thinking about it, Jillian placed a protective hand on her belly. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”
11
Like a high school girl afraid of getting busted for smoking, the next morning, Jillian carefully checked every stall in the girls’ bathroom at school. To her great relief all of the stalls were empty and she chose the one farthest from the door, locking securely. She did what she had to do, then stood up and pulled up and rearranged her clothing. But Jillian did not leave the stall— rather, she stood there for a full five minutes, staring at the small plastic square she held in her hand. Gradually the few drops of urine she had managed to get into the specimen container were searched for something called HCG. If it could not be detected in a woman’s urine she was not pregnant and a big black minus sign would appear on the little plastic gizmo. A few minutes after taking the test’s the HCG was detected and the mark turned positive.
It was as Jillian had suspected: she was pregnant.
“Do you ever think of what if I had an F-15 in World War II? Or even a B-17 In World War I?” Jackson McClaren asked his dinner guests. “What if you had had a simple handgun in the Middle Ages? Think of the power you would have had. Did you ever think of something as simple as a technology out of time?”
Shelley McLaren replied first. “No’s Jackson,” she said. “The subject doesn’t come up all that often in the circles 1 move in. We tend to talk about other people.”
Jillian and Spencer laughed, but Jackson ignored his wife’s snide remark. He always did.
The McClarens were entertaining the Armacosts in the dining room of their Fifth Avenue apartment, an apartment so huge and palatially appointed and furnished that it made Spencer and Jillian’s apartment look like a mean and impoverished hovel by comparison.
Jillian could not tell how many servants the McLarens employed—she wasn’t sure if she had seen the same one twёice—but they moved around the table serving each person, silently and faultlessly. It was almost as if they weren’t there at all. It was more that plates arrived and where whisked away by magic. The most astonishing thing to Jillian was how at ease the McLarens were with all this luxury. They took having servants in stride, as if that was the way things were meant to be, one human being serving another.
McLaren was still on his subject, warming to it as he expanded on it. “Think of having an F-15 in September of 1940. One airplane would win the Battle of Britain. And would do it in a matter of minutes. Think of it.”
“I did once think of what it might have been like if I had been a nun and lived an impoverished life in the service of others,” said Shelley McLaren. “The thought lasted about a minute and a half as I recall. Maybe less.”
Jackson ignored his wife once again. “What kind of ass could you kick with that type of advanced technology. It would be amazing, truly amazing.” The tycoon seemed particularly taken with Jillian and appeared to be talking directly to her.
“Tell me, Jackson,” said Shelley, “just how many kinds of ass are there?”
This time Jackson McLaren did not ignore his wife. He chose from the cluster of glasses in front of his plate, a rich red claret and took a deep swallow.