“I’m fine. I work. Susan stays at a friend’s house after school until I pick her up on my way home at night.”
“I didn’t know you had children.”
“Susan’s eleven. She’s a very bright little girl. I’m quite proud of her.”
“Is she asleep now?”
“Oh, yes — it’s well past her bedtime.”
“I’m sorry I came so late. I’ll keep my voice down.”
“I wasn’t hinting, Luke.”
“I — I know. But it is late. I’ll be going in a minute.”
“You don’t have to rush. I never go to bed before midnight.”
“But I’m sure you have things to do — clothes to iron, Susan’s lunch to pack.”
“That only takes a few minutes. Luke — ” Now the woman seemed steadier. “We were always so uncomfortable around each other. Let’s not keep to that old habit.”
“I’m sorry. Edith. You’re right. But — do you know, I couldn’t even call you and ask if I could see you? I tried, and I found myself imagining you’d refuse to see me. I spent all day nerving myself to do this.” The man was still uncomfortable. And as far as anyone listening could tell, he hadn’t yet taken off his coat.
“What’s the matter, Luke?”
“It’s complicated. When I was in their — in the hospital-I spent a long time thinking about us. Not as lovers, you understand, but as people — as friends. We never knew each other at all, did we? At least, I never knew you. I was too wrapped up in what I was doing and wanted to do. I never paid any real attention to you. I thought of you as a problem, not as a person. And I think I’m here tonight to apologize for that.”
“Luke — ” The woman’s voice started and stopped She moved in her creaking chair. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“I know I’m embarrassing you, Edith. I would have liked to handle this more gracefully. But I don’t have much time. And it’s almost impossible to be graceful when I have to come here looking like this.”
“That’s not important,” she said quickly. “And it doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as I know it’s you. Would you like some coffee?”
The man’s voice was troubled. “All right, Edith Thank you. We can’t seem to stop being strangers somehow, can we?”
“What makes you say that — No. You’re right. I’m trying very hard, but I can’t even fool myself. I’ll start the water boiling.” Her footsteps, quick and erratic faded into the kitchen.
The man sighed, sitting by himself in the living room.
“Well, now do you think?” Finchley demanded “Does that sound like Secret Operative X-Eight hatching a plan to blow up Geneva?”
“It sounds like a high school boy,” Rogers answered.
“He’s lived behind walls all his life. They all sound like this. They know enough to split the world open like a rotten orange, and they’ve been allowed to mature to the age of sixteen.”
“We aren’t here to set up new rules for handling scientists. We’re here to find out if this man’s Lucas Martino.”
“And we’ve found out.”
“We’ve found out, maybe, that a clever man can take a few bits of specific information, add what he’s learned about some kinds of people being a great deal alike, talk generalities, and fool a woman who hasn’t seen the original in twenty years.”
“You sound like a man backing into the last ditch with a lost argument.”
“Never mind what I sound like.”
“Just what do you suppose he’s doing this for, if he isn’t Martino?”
“A place to stay. Someone to run errands for him while he stays under cover. A base of operations.”
“Jesus Christ, man, don’t you ever give up?”
“Finch, I’m dealing with a man who’s smarter than I am.”
“Maybe a man with deeper emotions, too.”
“You think so?”
“No. No — sorry, Shawn.”
The woman’s footsteps came back from the kitchen. She seemed to have used the time to gather herself. Her voice was firmer when she spoke once more.
“Lucas, is this your first day in New York?”
“Yes.”
“And the first thing you thought of was to come here. Why?”
“I’m not sure,” the man said, sounding more as if he didn’t want to answer her. “I told you I thought a great deal about us. Perhaps it became an obsession with me. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it, I suppose.”
“Why not? I must be the only person you know in New York, by now. You’ve been badly hurt, and you want someone to talk to. Why shouldn’t you have come here?”
“I don’t know.” The man sounded helpless. “They’re going to investigate you now, you know. They’ll scrape through your past to find out where I belong. I hope you won’t feel bad about that — I wouldn’t have done it if I thought they’d find something to hurt you. I thought about it. But that wouldn’t have stopped me from coming. That didn’t seem as important as something else.”
“As what, Lucas?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you afraid I’d hate you? For what? For the way you look?”
“No! I don’t think that little of you. You haven’t even stared at me, or asked sneaking questions. And I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Then — ” The woman’s voice was gentle, and calm, as though nothing could shake her for long. “Then, did you think I’d hate you because you broke my heart?”
The man didn’t answer.
“I was in love with you,” the woman said. “If you thought I was, you were right. And when nothing ever came of it, you hurt me.”
Down in the car, Rogers grimaced with discomfort. The FBI technician turned his head briefly. “Don’t let this kind of stuff throw you, Mr. Rogers,” he said. “We hear it all the time. It bothered me when I started, too. But after a while you come to realize that people shouldn’t be ashamed to have this kind of thing listened to. It’s honest, isn’t it? It’s what people talk about all over the world. They’re not ashamed when they say it to each other, so you shouldn’t feel funny about listening.”
“All right,” Finchley said, “then suppose we all shut up and listen.”
“That’s O.K., Mr. Finchley,” the technician said. “It’s all going down on tape. We can play it back as often as we want to.” He turned back to his instruments. “Besides, the man hasn’t answered her yet. He’s still thinking it over.”
“I’m sorry, Edith.”
“You’ve already apologized once tonight, Lucas.” The woman’s chair scraped as she stood up. “I don’t want to see you crawling. I don’t want you to feel you have to. I don’t hate you — I never did. I loved you. I had found somebody to come alive to. When I met Sam, I knew how.”
“If you feel that way, Edith, I’m very glad for you.”
Her voice had a rueful smile in it. “I didn’t always feel that way about it. But you can do a great deal of thinking in twenty years.”
“Yes, you can.”
“It’s odd. When you play the past over and over in your head, you can begin to see things in it that you missed when you were living it. You come to realize that there were moments when one word said differently, or one thing done at just the right time, would have changed everything.”
“That’s true.”
“Of course, you have to remind yourself that you might be seeing things that were never there. You might be maneuvering your memories to bring them into line with what you’d want them to be. You can’t be sure you’re not just daydreaming.”
“I suppose so.”
“A memory can be that way. It can become a perfect thing. The people in it become the people you’d like best, and never grow old — never change, never live twenty years away from you that turn them into somebody you can’t recognize. The people in a memory are always just as you want them, and you can always go back to them and start exactly where you stopped, except that now you know where the mistakes were, and what should have been done. No friend is as good as the friend in a memory. No love is quite as wonderful.”