Wilder sat on a tall stool in front of the stove, watching water boil in a small enamel pot. He seemed fascinated by theprocess. I wondered if he'd uncovered some splendid connection between things he'd always thought of as separate.
The kitchen is routinely rich in such moments, perhaps for me as much as for him.
Steffie walked in saying, "I'm the only person I know who likes Wednesdays." Wilder's absorption seemed to interesther. She went and stood next to him, trying to figure out what attracted him to the agitated water. She leaned over thepot, looking for an egg.
A jingle for a product called Ray-Ban Wayfarer began running through my head.
"How did the evacuation go?""A lot of people never showed up. We waited around, moaning.""They show up for the real ones," I said.
"Then it's too late."The light was bright and cool, making objects glow. Steffie was dressed for the outdoors, a schoolday morning, butremained at the stove, looking from Wilder to the pot and back, trying to intersect the lines of his curiosity andwonder.
"Baba says you got a letter.""My mother wants me to visit at Easter.""Good. Do you want to go? Of course you do. You like your mother. She's in Mexico City now, isn't she?""Who'll take me?""I'll take you to the airport. Your mother will pick you up at the other end. It's easy. Bee does it all the time. You likeBee."The enormity of the mission, of flying to a foreign country at nearly supersonic speed, at thirty thousand feet, alone,in a humped container of titanium and steel, caused her to grow momentarily silent. We watched the water boil.
"I signed up to be a victim again. It's just before Easter. So I think I have to stay here.""Another evacuation? What's the occasion this time?""A funny smell.""You mean some chemical from a plant across the river?""I guess so.""What do you do as the victim of a smell?""They have to tell us yet.""I'm sure they won't mind excusing you just this once. I'll write a note," I said.
My first and fourth marriages were to Dana Breedlove, who is Steffie's mother. The first marriage worked wellenough to encourage us to try again as soon as it became mutually convenient. When we did, after the melancholyepochs of Janet Savory and Tweedy Browner, things proceeded to fall apart. But not before Stephanie Rose wasconceived, a star-hung night in Barbados. Dana was there to bribe an official.
She told me very little about her intelligence work. I knew she reviewed fiction for the CIA, mainly long seriousnovels with coded structures. The work left her tired and irritable, rarely able to enjoy food, sex or conversation. Shespoke Spanish to someone on the telephone, was a hyperactive mother, shining with an eerie stormlight intensity.
The long novels kept arriving in the mail.
It was curious how I kept stumbling into the company of lives in intelligence. Dana worked part-time as a spy.
Tweedy came from a distinguished old family that had a long tradition of spying and counterspying and she was nowmarried to a high-level jungle operative. Janet, before retiring to the ashram, was a foreign-currency analyst who didresearch for a secret group of advanced theorists connected to some controversial think-tank. All she told me is thatthey never met in the same place twice.
Some of my adoration of Babette must have been sheer relief. She was not a keeper of secrets, at least not until herdeath fears drove her into a frenzy of clandestine research and erotic deception. I thought of Mr. Gray and hispendulous member. The image was hazy, unfinished. The man was literally gray, giving off a visual buzz.
The water progressed to a rolling boil. Steffie helped the boy down from his perch. I ran into 6abette on my way tothe front door. We exchanged the simple but deeply sincere question we'd been asking each other two or three timesa day since the night of the Dylar revelations. "How do you feel?" Asking the question, hearing it asked, made usboth feel better. I bounded upstairs to find my glasses.
The National Cancer Quiz was on TV.
In the lunchroom in Centenary Hall, I watched Murray sniff his utensils. There was a special pallor in the faces of theNew York émigrés. Lasher and Grappa in particular. They had the wanness of obsession, of powerful appetitesconfined to small spaces. Murray said that Elliot Lasher had a film noir face. His features were sharply defined, hishair perfumed with some oily extract. I had the curious thought that these men were nostalgic for black-and-white,their longings dominated by achromatic values, personal extremes of postwar urban gray.
Alfonse Stompanato sat down, radiating aggression and threat. He seemed to be watching me, one department headmeasuring the aura of another. There was a Brooklyn Dodger emblem sewed to the front of his gown.
Lasher wadded up a paper napkin and tossed it at someone two tables away. Then he stared at Grappa.
"Who was the greatest influence on your life?" he said in a hostile tone.
"Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. When Richard Widmark pushed that old lady in that wheelchair down thatflight of stairs, it was like a personal breakthrough for me. It resolved a number of conflicts. I copied RichardWidmark's sadistic laugh and used it for ten years. It got me through some tough emotional periods. RichardWidmark as Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death. Remember that creepy laugh? Hyena-faced. Aghoulish titter. It clarified a number of things in my life. Helped me become a person.""Did you ever spit in your soda bottle so you wouldn't have to share your drink with the other kids?""It was an automatic thing. Some guys even spit in their sandwiches. After we pitched pennies to the wall, we'd buystuff to eat and drink. There was always a flurry of spitting. Guys spit on their fudge pops, their charlotte russes.""How old were you when you first realized your father was a jerk?""Twelve and a half," Grappa said. "I was sitting in the balcony at the Loew's Fairmont watching Fritz Lang's Clashby Night with Barbara Stanwyck as Mae Doyle, Paul Douglas as Jerry d'Amato and the great Robert Ryan as EarlPfeiffer. Featuring J. Carroll Naish, Keith Andes and the early Marilyn Monroe. Shot in thirty-two days. Black andwhite.""Did you ever get an erection from a dental hygienist rubbing against your arm while she cleaned your teeth?""More times than I can count.""When you bite dead skin off your thumb, do you eat it or spit it out?""Chew it briefly, then propel it swiftly from the end of the tongue.""Do you ever close your eyes," Lasher said, "while you're driving on a highway?""I closed my eyes on 95 North for eight full seconds. Eight seconds is my personal best. I've closed my eyes for up tosix seconds on winding country roads............