"But she was wrong and you lost vast sums."
"We made vast sums. I was entangled, enmeshed. She was always maneuvering. My security was threatened. My sense of a long and uneventful life. She wanted to incorporate us. We got phone calls from Liechtenstein, the Hebrides. Fictional places, plot devices."
'That doesn't sound like the Janet Savory I spent a delightful half hour with. The Janet with the high cheekbones and wry voice."
"You all had high cheekbones. Every one of you. Marvelous bone structure. Thank God for Babette and her long fleshy face."
"Isn't there somewhere we can get a civilized meal?" Tweedy said. "A tableclothy place with icy pats of butter. Malcolm and I once took tea with Colonel Qaddafí. A charming and ruthless man, one of the few terrorists we've met who lives up to his public billing."
The snow had stopped falling. We drove through a warehouse district, more deserted streets, a bleakness and anonymity that registered in the mind as a ghostly longing for something that was far beyond retrieval. There were lonely cafes, another stretch of track, freight cars paused at a siding. Tweedy chain-smoked extra-longs, shooting exasperated streams of smoke in every direction.
"God, Tuck, we were good together."
"Good at what?"
"Fool, you're supposed to look at me in a fond and nostalgic way, smiling ruefully."
"You wore gloves to bed."
"I still do."
"Gloves, eyeshades and socks."
"You know my flaws. You always did. I'm ultrasensitive to many things."
"Sunlight, air, food, water, sex."
"Carcinogenic, every one of them."
"What's the family business in Boston all about?"
"I have to reassure my mother that Malcolm isn't dead. She's taken quite a shine to him, for whatever reason."
"Why does she think he's dead?"
"When Malcolm goes into deep cover, it's as though he never existed. He disappears not only here and now but retroactively. No trace of the man remains. I sometimes wonder if the man I'm married to is in fact Malcolm Hunt or a completely different person who is himself operating under deep cover. It's frankly worrisome. I don't know which half of Malcolm's life is real, which half is intelligence. I'm hoping Bee can shed some light."
Traffic lights swayed on cables in a sudden gust. This was the city's main street, a series of discount stores, check-cashing places, wholesale outlets. A tall old Moorish movie theater, now remarkably a mosque. Blank structures called the Terminal Building, the Packer Building, the Commerce Building. How close this was to a classic photography of regret.
"A gray day in Iron City," I said. "We may as well go back to the airport."
"How is Hitler?'!
"Fine, solid, dependable."
"You look good, Tuck."
"I don't feel good."
"You never felt good. You're the old Tuck. You were always the old Tuck. We loved each other, didn't we? We told each other everything, within the limits of one's preoccupation with breeding and tact. Malcolm tells me nothing. Who is he? What does he do?"
She sat with her legs tucked under her, facing me, and flicked ashes into her shoes, which sat on the rubber mat.
"Wasn't it marvelous to grow up tall and straight, among geldings and mares, with a daddy who wore blue blazers and crisp gray flannels?"
"Don't ask me."
"Mother used to stand in the arbor with an armful of cut flowers. Just stand there, being what she was."
At the airport we waited in a mist of plaster dust, among exposed wires, mounds of rubble. Half an hour before Bee was due to arrive, the passengers from another flight began filing through a drafty tunnel into the arrivals area. They were gray and stricken, they were stooped over in weariness and shock, dragging their hand luggage across the floor. Twenty, thirty, forty people came out, without a word or look, keeping their eyes to the ground.
Some limped, some wept. More came through the tunnel, adults with whimpering children, old people trembling, a black minister with his collar askew, one shoe missing. Tweedy helped a woman with two small kids. I approached a young man, a stocky fellow with a mailman's cap and beer belly, wearing a down vest, and he looked at me as if I didn't belong in his space-time dimension but had crossed over illegally, made a rude incursion. I forced him to stop and face me, asked him what had happened up there. As people kept filing past, he exhaled wearily. Then he nodded, his eyes steady on mine, full of a gentle resignation.
The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. Then the serious screaming and moaning began. Almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom: "We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!" This outburst struck the passengers as an all but total breakdown of authority, competence and command presence and it brought on a round of fresh and desperate wailing.
Objects were rolling out of the galley, the aisles were full of drinking glasses, utensils, coats and blankets. A stewardess pinned to the bulkhead by the sharp angle of descent was trying to find the relevant passage in a handbook titled "Manual of Disasters." Then there was a second male voice from the flight deck, this one remarkably calm and precise, making the passengers believe there was someone in charge after all, an element of hope: "This is American two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what it's like. It is worse than we'd ever imagined. They didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance." This time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. Lance? What kind of people were in control of this aircraft? The crying took on a bitter and disillusioned tone.
As the man in the down vest told the story, passengers from the tunnel began gathering around us. No one spoke, interrupted, tried to embellish the account.
Aboard the gliding craft, a stewardess crawled down the aisle, over bodies and debris, telling people in each row to remove their shoes, remove sharp objects from their pockets, assume a fetal position. At the other end of the plane, someone was wrestling with a flotation device. Certain elements in the crew had decided to pretend that it was not a crash but a crash landing that was seconds away. After all, the difference between the two is only one word. Didn't this suggest that the two forms of flight termination were more or less interchangeable? How much could one word matter? An encouraging question under the circumstances, if you didn't think about it too long, and there was no time to think right now. The basic difference between a crash and a crash landing seemed to be that you could sensibly prepare for a crash landing, which is exactly what they were trying to do. The news spread through the plane, the term was repeated in row after row. "Crash landing, crash landing." They saw how easy it was, by adding one word, to maintain a grip on the future, to extend it in consciousness if not in actual fact. They patted themselves for ballpoint pens, went fetal in their seats.
By the time the narrator reached this point in his account, many people were crowded around, not only people who'd just emerged from the tunnel but also those who'd been among the first to disembark. They'd come back to listen. They were not yet ready to disperse, to reinhabit their earthbound bodies, but wanted to linger with their terror, keep it separate and intact for just a while longer. More people drifted toward us, milled about, close to the entire planeload. They were content to let the capped and vested man speak on their behalf. No one disputed his account or tried to add individual testimony. It was as though they were being told of an event they hadn't personally been involved in. They were interested in what he said, even curious, but also clearly detached. They trusted him to tell them what they'd said and felt.