Chapter 19 #5
“Lead singer with the Rolling Fucking Stones,” I said. “How long have you been taking Nembutal? And how many did you take tonight?”
“Got a scrishun,” she said. “None your bi’ness, Jor.”
“How many? How much did you drink?”
“Go-way.”
I spun the tub’s cold tap all the way, then pulled the pin that turned on the shower. She saw what I meant to do, and once again began to slap.
“No, Jor! No!”
I ignored her. This wasn’t the first time that I’d put a partially dressed woman into a cold shower, and some things are like riding a bike.
I lifted her over the rim of the tub in a quick clean-and-jerk I’d feel in the small of my back the next day, then held on tight as the cold water smacked her and she began to flail.
She reached out to grab the towel bar, yelling.
Her eyes were open now. Beads of water stood in her hair.
The slip turned transparent, and even under such circumstances it was impossible not to feel a moment of lust as those curves came into full view.
She tried to get out. I pushed her back.
“Stand there, Sadie. Stand there and take it.”
“H-How long? It’s cold!”
“Until I see some color come back into your cheeks.”
“W-Why are you d-d-doing this?” Her teeth were chattering.
“Because you almost killed yourself!” I shouted.
She flinched. Her feet slipped, but she grabbed the towel bar and stayed upright. Reflexes returning. Good.
“The p-p-pills weren’t working, so I had a d-drink, that’s all. Let me get out, I’m so cold. Please G-George, please let me get out.” Her hair was clinging to her cheeks now, she looked like a drowned rat, but she was getting some color in her face. Nothing but a thin flush, but it was a start.
I turned off the shower, got my arms around her in a hug, and held her as she tottered over the lip of the tub.
Water from her soaked slip pattered onto the pink bathmat.
I whispered into her ear: “I thought you were dead. When I came in and saw you lying there, I thought you were fucking dead. You’ll never know how that felt. ”
I let her go. She stared at me with wide, wondering eyes. Then she said: “John was right. R-Roger, too. He called me tonight before Kennedy’s speech. From Washington. So what does it matter? By this time next week, we’ll all be dead. Or wish we were.”
At first I had no idea what she was talking about. I saw Christy standing there, dripping and bedraggled and full of bullshit, and I was utterly furious. You cowardly bitch, I thought. She must have seen it in my eyes, because she drew back.
That cleared my head. Could I call her cowardly just because I happened to know what the landscape looked like over the horizon?
I took a bath towel from the rack over the toilet and handed it to her. “Strip off, then dry off,” I said.
“Go out, then. Give me some privacy.”
“I will if you tell me you’re awake.”
“I’m awake.” She looked at me with churlish resentment and—maybe—the tiniest glint of humor. “You certainly know how to make an entrance, George.”
I turned to the medicine cabinet.
“There aren’t any more,” she said. “What isn’t in me is in the commode.”
Having been married to Christy for four years, I looked anyway. Then I flushed the toilet. With that business taken care of, I slipped past her to the bathroom door. “I’ll give you three minutes,” I said.
9
The return address on the manila envelope was John Clayton, 79 East Oglethorpe Avenue, Savannah, Georgia.
You certainly couldn’t accuse the bastard of flying under false colors, or going the anonymous route.
The postmark was August twenty-eighth, so it had probably been waiting here for her when she got back from Reno.
She’d had nearly two months to brood over the contents.
Had she sounded sad and depressed when I’d talked to her on the night of September sixth?
Well, no wonder, given the photographs her ex had so thoughtfully sent her.
We’re all in danger, she’d said the last time I spoke to her on the phone. Johnny’s right about that.
The pictures were of Japanese men, women, and children.
Victims of the atomic bomb-blasts at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or both.
Some were blind. Many were bald. Most were suffering from radiation burns.
A few, like the faceless woman, had been charbroiled.
One picture showed a quartet of black statues in cringing postures.
Four people had been standing in front of a wall when the bomb went off.
The people had been vaporized, and most of the wall had been vaporized, too.
The only parts that remained were the parts that had been shielded by those standing in front of it.
The shapes were black because they were coated in charred flesh.
On the back of each picture, he had written the same message in his clear, neat hand: Coming soon to America. Statistical analysis does not lie.
“Nice, aren’t they?”
Her voice was flat and lifeless. She was standing in the doorway, bundled into the towel. Her hair fell to her bare shoulders in damp ringlets.
“How much did you have to drink, Sadie?”
“Only a couple of shots when the pills wouldn’t work. I think I tried to tell you that when you were shaking and slapping me.”
“If you expect me to apologize, you’ll wait a long time. Barbiturates and booze are a bad combination.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve been slapped before.”
That made me think of Marina, and I winced. It wasn’t the same, but slapping is slapping. And I had been angry as well as scared.
She went to the chair in the corner, sat down, and pulled the towel tighter around her. She looked like a sulky child. “My friend Roger Beaton called. Did I tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“My good friend Roger.” Her eyes dared me to make something of it. I didn’t. Ultimately, it was her life. I just wanted to make sure she had a life.
“All right, your good friend Roger.”
“He told me to be sure and watch the Irish asshole’s speech tonight.
That’s what he called him. Then he asked me how far Jodie was from Dallas.
When I told him he said, ‘That should be far enough, depending on which way the wind’s blowing.
’ He’s getting out of Washington himself, lots of people are, but I don’t think it will do them any good.
You can’t outrun a nuclear war.” She began to cry then, harsh and wrenching sobs that shook her whole body.
“Those idiots are going to destroy a beautiful world! They’re going to kill children!
I hate them! I hate them all! Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro, I hope they all rot in hell! ”
She covered her face with her hands. I knelt like some old-fashioned gentleman preparing to propose and embraced her. She put her arms around my neck and clung to me in what was almost a drowner’s grip. Her body was still cold from the shower, but the cheek she laid against my arm was feverish.
In that moment I hated them all, too, John Clayton most of all for planting this seed in a young woman who was insecure and psychologically vulnerable. He had planted it, watered it, weeded it, and watched it grow.
And was Sadie the only one in terror tonight, the only one who had turned to the pills and the booze?
How hard and fast were they drinking in the Ivy Room right now?
I’d made the stupid assumption that people were going to approach the Cuban Missile Crisis much like any other temporary international dust-up, because by the time I went to college, it was just another intersection of names and dates to memorize for the next prelim.
That’s how things look from the future. To people in the valley (the dark valley) of the present, they look different.
“The pictures were here when I got back from Reno.” She looked at me with her bloodshot, haunted eyes. “I wanted to throw them away, but I couldn’t. I kept looking at them.”
“It’s what the bastard wanted. That’s why he sent them.”
She didn’t seem to hear. “Statistical analysis is his hobby. He says that someday, when the computers are good enough, it will be the most important science, because statistical analysis is never wrong.”
“Not true.” In my mind’s eye I saw George de Mohrenschildt, the charmer who was Lee’s only friend. “There’s always a window of uncertainty.”
“I guess the day of Johnny’s super-computers will never come,” she said. “The people left—if there are any—will be living in caves. And the sky… no more blue. Nuclear darkness, that’s what Johnny calls it.”
“He’s full of shit, Sadie. Your pal Roger, too.”
She shook her head. Her bloodshot eyes regarded me sadly.
“Johnny knew the Russians were going to launch a space satellite. We were just out of college then. He told me in the summer, and sure enough, they put Sputnik up in October. ‘Next they’ll send a dog or a monkey,’ Johnny said.
‘After that they’ll send a man. Then they’ll send two men and a bomb. ’ ”
“And did they do that? Did they, Sadie?”
“They sent the dog, and they sent the man. The dog’s name was Laika, remember? It died up there. Poor doggy. They won’t have to send up the two men and the bomb, will they? They’ll use their missiles. And we’ll use ours. All over a shitpot island where they make cigars.”
“Do you know what the magicians say?”
“The—? What are you talking about?”
“They say you can fool a scientist, but you can never fool another magician. Your ex may teach science, but he’s sure no magician. The Russians, on the other hand, are.”
“You’re not making sense. Johnny says the Russians have to fight, and soon, because now they have missile superiority, but they won’t for long. That’s why they won’t back down in Cuba. It’s a pretext.”
“Johnny’s seen too much newsreel footage of missiles being trundled through Red Square on Mayday. What he doesn’t know—and what Senator Kuchel doesn’t know, either, probably—is that over half of those missiles don’t have engines in them.”
“You don’t… you can’t…”