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.”
“Yes.”
“The — the water’s boiling in the kitchen. I’ll bring the coffee.”
“All right.”
“You’re still wearing your coat, Lucas.”
“I’ll take it off.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Rogers looked at Finchley. “What do you suppose she’s leading up to?”
Finchley shook his head.
The woman came back from the kitchen. There was a clink of cups. “I remembered not to put any cream or sugar in yours, Lucas.”
The man hesitated. “That’s very good of you, Edith. But — As a matter of fact, I can’t stand it black any more. I’m sorry.”
“For what? For changing? Here — let me take that in the kitchen and do it right.”
“Just a little cream, please, Edith. And two spoons of sugar.”
Finchley asked, “What do we know about Martino’s recent coffee-drinking habits?”
“They can be checked,” Rogers answered.
“We’ll have to be sure and do that.”
The woman brought the man’s coffee. “I hope this is all right, Lucas.”
“It’s very good. I-I hope it doesn’t upset you to watch me drink.”
“Should it? I have no trouble remembering you, Luke.”
They sat quietly for a few moments. Then the woman asked, “Are you feeling better now?”
“Better?”
“You hadn’t relaxed at all. You were as tense as you were that day you first spoke to me. In the zoo.”
“I can’t help it, Edith.”
“I know. You came here hoping for something, but you can’t even put it in words to yourself. You were always that way, Luke.”
“I’ve come to realize that,” the man said with a strained chuckle.
“Does laughing at it help you any, Luke?”
His voice fell again. “I’m not sure.”
“Luke, if you want to go back to where we stopped and begin it again, it’s all right with me.”
“Edith?”
“If you want to court me.”
The man was deathly quiet for a moment. Then he heaved to his feet with a twang of the chair springs.
“Edith — look at me. Think of the men that’ll follow you and me until I die. And I am going to die. Not soon, but you’d be alone again just when people depend on each other most. I can’t work. I couldn’t even ask you to go anywhere with me. I can’t do that, Edith. That’s not what I came here for.”
“Isn’t it what you thought of when you were lying in the hospital? Didn’t you think of all these things against it, and still hope?”
“Edith — ”
“Nothing could ever have come of it, the first time. And I loved Sam when I met him, and was happy to be his wife. But it’s a different time, now, and I’ve been remembering, too.”
In the car, Finchley muttered softly and with savage intensity. “Don’t mess it up, man. Don’t foul up. Do it right. Take your chance.” Then he realized Rogers was looking at him and went abruptly quiet.
In the apartment, all the man’s tension exploded out of his throat. “I can’t do it!”
“You can if I want you to,” the woman said gently.
The man sighed for one last time, and Rogers could see him in his mind’s eye — the straight, set shoulders loosening a little, the fingers uncurling; the man standing there and opening the clenched fist of himself. Martino or not, traitor or spy, the man had won — or found — a haven.
A door opened inside the apartment. A child’s voice said sleepily, “Mommy — I woke up. I heard a man talking. Mommy — what’s that?”
The woman caught her breath. “This is Luke, Susan,” she said quickly. “He’s an old friend of mine, and he just came back to town. I was going to tell you about him in the morning.” She crossed the room and her voice was lower, as if she were holding the child and speaking softly. But she was still talking very rapidly. “Lucas is a very nice man, honey. He’s been in an accident — a very bad accident — and the doctor had to do that to cure him. But it’s not anything important.”