Nobody Knew They Were There

Thursday, October 24

She arrives at the hotel at the stroke of noon. The university bell tower is tolling the hour when the battered red Volkswagen pulls to the curb. A Negro is at the wheel. (I am forty-two years old, and the word “black,” drummed into my head as derogatory, still comes hard to me. But I am learning all the time.) Sara introduces us. His name is Seth Wilson. He is the university’s writer-in-residence fellow. He wears his hair in an Afro cut, and he ducks his head and smiles sheepishly when he takes my hand. His grip, however, is firm and strong. I immediately distrust him because: He is a writer and Sara has already exhibited a strong proclivity toward such types; he has no reason to smile the way he does unless he is hiding something; it is stupid to have him here on the morning I am going out to reconnoiter a bridge I expect to blow up; he is black, and the thing he is hiding with his guilty smile is his desire to chop off my head with a machete.

We stand awkwardly on the sidewalk in the middle of a Western mountain town, each of us separately wondering what the other has done or is doing to Sara. Race relations are not improved an iota. Sara breaks the deadlock by waggling her fingers at him and sending him off to write the Great American Novel.

“Do you want to drive?” she asks me.

“I thought maybe you had someone else in mind,” I say.

“What?”

“I thought maybe you wanted to take a few dozen other college kids along, explain to them that this is the bridge I’m going to blow up, you know, give them the exact time and date. I thought maybe that’s what you had in mind.”

“Seth is an old friend,” she says.

“And entirely trustworthy.”

“He knows nothing about any of this.”

“Yet.”

I start the car. We drive through the main street of the town in silence. She is wearing a long coat that affords only occasional glimpses of her legs.

“Have you been to bed with him?” I ask.

“Once.” She pauses. “But we didn’t do anything.”

“I'll bet.”

“Well, we necked.” She pauses again. “He has stars on his ceiling. Luminous little stars. I love his ceiling.” She seems to search for words, she is different today. The bored sophisticate is gone. There is only a little girl in a large black coat. “Actually, we talked mostly. He’s a very nice boy.” Her voice sounds wistful.

“Did you tell him you were in love with Roger Harris?”

“I tell everyone I’m in love with Roger Harris. Because I am.”

“Oh? Do you go to bed with everyone?”

“I’ve been to bed with only three people in my life. Roger, you, and Seth. And I didn’t do anything with Seth. Except neck a little. And talk.”

“And look at his luminous stars on the ceiling.”

“Yes, they’re lovely. I love little paper stars on the ceiling.”

This girl, this waif in the enormous black overcoat, is as phony as the one with the haughty expression. Her voice is almost a whisper, she speaks of paper stars in something like profound awe, she wears on her face a look of incandescent wonder. Her hands are folded in her lap like a third grader’s. I notice for the first time that her hair is caught in a pony tail at the back of her neck, fastened there with a wrought silver barrette (another souvenir of Arizona, no doubt). She is wearing flat black ballet slippers. She is lost in her big coat, poor girl, lost in a universe too immense for her, poor little lost darling who spends the night with a Negro looking up at his luminous stars and wondering about the mystery of it all. She is totally full of shit.

“Don’t be cross,” she says. “It’s such a beautiful day. Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“Gorgeous.”

“Soon, they’ll all be gone. Leaf after leaf after leaf.” She turns to me suddenly, the coat opening over a quick flash of remembered knees. “Do you know what the plural of leaf is?”

I glance at her face. Her green eyes are bright with discovery. I am thinking that the only time she is honest is when she is in bed, and I am also beginning to wonder about that

“Of course I know what the plural of leaf is,” I say, and turn my eyes back to the road. We have come beyond the town now. The grade is beginning to slope gently upward as we enter the foothills.

“What is it then?”

“Leaves.”

“No. Leafs.” She nods. “One leaf, two leafs, three leafs. I love leafs, don’t you?”

“No, I love little paper stars.”

“Those, too,” she says, and hugs herself in satisfaction.

“Where’s the heater in this damn car?” I ask.

“There’s a little knob down there. Are you cold? Do you want me to turn it on?”

“Please.”

She begins twisting a knob somewhere near the floor.

“This is Seth’s car,” she says. “I know you’ll be pleased to learn that.”

“Yes, I’m thrilled.”

“It’s very much like Seth, actually. Sweet, and battered, and comfortable and dependable. It’s a nice little car.”

“It’s a darling little car.”

“Would you like some music?” she asks. Without waiting for my answer, she turns on the radio. A rock-and-roll song erupts into the automobile. Sara’s slippered foot beats in time to the music. “Why are you angry?” she asks suddenly. “Didn’t you enjoy last night?”

“Yes, I did. Very much.” I cannot take my eyes from the road now because it is beginning to twist around the side of the mountain. “Didn’t you?”

“That was last night,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve forgotten it already. I've turned it off.” She nods in agreement with herself. “I can do that. Turn things off. Just like that” She snaps her fingers. The sound is like a rifle shot in the small automobile.

“That’s a wonderful knack,” I say drily.

“Yes, it is,” she agrees. “Can you do it? Turn things off? Like that?” She snaps her fingers again. The coup de grâce.

“No, I can’t. Total recall, remember?”

“Right, right, total recall.” She is immediately lost in thought. She bites her lip for effect. A disc jockey is prattling about a skin cream that will remove unsightly blemishes. He finishes his spiel and unleashes another musical assault. “I can hardly remember anything at all about last night,” Sara says.

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s not. I’ve already forgotten almost all of it.”

“What do you remember?”

“Hardly anything.”

“Something though.”

“Yes, something.”

“What?”

“Your kissing me all night long. No one has ever kissed me all night long.”

“Not even Seth?”

“Oh, fuck off with Seth, will you please? He’s just a good friend.”

“And what am I?”

“You’re a forty-two-year-old married man,” she says flatly and harshly and coldly and almost viciously, “who may get killed blowing up a bridge at the end of the month.”

“Two days after Halloween, to be exact”

“All Hallows’ Eve, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. All Hallows’ Eve. And leafs.”

“Yes, leafs,” she says angrily. “And there’s your damn bridge.”

I stop the car and pull up the emergency brake. We both get out. Sara comes around to the driver’s side. We are on a dangerous curve, and there is no time for extended conversation.

“What time will you be back?” I ask.

“Half-past four.”

“What time do you have now?”

“I don’t have a watch.”

“Everybody has a goddamn watch.”

“Except me,” she says, and slams the door, and drives off.

There is a majesty to this ravine and the bridge that crosses it.

I am a city boy and do not normally react hysterically to natural displays, but this V-shaped open wedge in the earth is aflame with autumn, its steep sloping sides racing with reds and oranges and yellows, scattered with the softest browns, boldly scarred with low jagged rock outcroppings, black and gray and the purest white. The sky is tight above it, the flaming hillside burning more furiously against its cool, cloudless blue. Across the divide, the bridge hurls its girders, buries its steel deep in concrete embedded in the cliff’s steep sides.

I must destroy this bridge if we are to survive.

There is a strong wind, and my eyes are wet. It keens in the steel girders, swirls and eddies in the canyon below, sends fallen leaves into frenzied arabesques. The earth is alive. I am here to deliver death.

I start down into the ravine.

The rattle of the leaves (she has brainwashed me, the word sounds incorrect; surely it has always been “leafs”) could easily disguise the rattle of a snake. This is the West, and such things are not unheard of. My eyes scan the terrain. It is difficult enough to keep my footing; I do not need the added burden of having to watch for rattlesnakes. But I study every fallen branch before stepping over it, scrutinize each flat rock for signs of menace coiled and waiting to strike. There is no faithful retainer here to suck out the venom if I am hit. I am alone.

(“If you fail, you fail alone,” Sara has said. “No one will be there to mourn your death.”)

At the bottom of the ravine, I begin making my sketch of the bridge.

Sara picks me up at four-thirty on the dot. She is nothing if not punctual. As soon as I get behind the wheel, she says, “They want to see you.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Why?”

“They want a progress report.”

“There’s been no progress.”

“Maybe that’s why they want a report.”

It is close to five when we get back to town. The long shadows of dusk are claiming the streets. The lamppost lights suddenly go on, evoking a small sharp cry of surprise from Sara.

“I've never seen that before in my life!” she says.

“What?”

“The lights going on like that. They’re either on or off, but I've never seen them actually going on.”

I do not believe her, but I make no comment. Instead, I ask her where the meeting will be.

“At Professor Raines’s house.”

“Are you coming?”

“Of course. Without me, no one will ever know you existed.”

“I don’t find that comical.”

“Sorry,” she says, and grins.

The house is English Tudor covered with ivy. Leaves are burning in a small pile near the low stone wall at the property’s edge. The living room is warmly lighted; an amber rectangle falls upon the front lawn. We walk up the path together in silence. A bird chitters somewhere in the surrounding woods. The cold mountain air has already descended upon the town, and our breaths plume out ahead of us, heralding our approach.

The three of them are sitting around a blazing fire in the living room. Raines rises to draw the drapes. He is a tall thin man with white hair and a prominent nose. He wears a dark suit and black shoes. A Phi Beta Kappa key hangs across the front of his vest. I fully expect him to exchange the secret handshake with Sara. In a wing-back chair near the fire, Epstein — the money man — sits with his hands folded over his chest. He is a man of approximately my height and build, balding, with pinched cheeks and a sallow complexion, looking like an unfrocked rabbi in a houndstooth jacket and gray flannel slacks. He is a French professor. For nine years, ever since the end of World War II, he went to Paris every summer. He stopped going in 1954. He told me this the first day we met, and there was a look of intense longing in his eyes. Hester Pratt is on a hassock to the right of Epstein’s chair. She is wearing a simple green suit with a white blouse, her customary low-heeled walking shoes. She smiles when Sara and I come into the room. There is something in her smile that is calculating and knowledgeable.

“Well now,” Raines says, “I understand you’ve chosen a site, Mr. Sachs. Is that so?”

“A tentative one.”

“The railroad bridge just outside of town, eh?” he says.

“Sara has filled us in,” Hester explains.

“I see.” I wonder exactly how much Sara has reported. Has she told them that I kissed her all night long, that I was the first man who ever kissed her all night long? I glance at her, but she is busy taking notes, recording all these words for posterity, just in case we happen to save the world at the beginning of November.

“Would you like to tell us your plan?” Raines says.

“I plan to blow up the bridge while the train is on it.”

“Will the train be on it?” Epstein asks.

“I checked at the depot this morning, before I went out to the ravine. The California train is due here at eleven-twenty on the second of November. It must cross that bridge to get here. I don’t know exactly what time that will be, but I’ll find out well in advance.”

“You say you checked at the depot this morning?” Hester asks.

“Yes.”

“Discreetly, I hope.”

“No, openly. I told the stationmaster that I planned to blow up the California train and was therefore interested in the time of its arrival.”

“There is no need for sarcasm, Mr. Sachs,” Hester says mildly. “We are, of course, concerned.”

“How long is the bridge?” Epstein asks.

“Two hundred yards across the ravine.”

“How long is the train?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you should find out?”

“I fully intend to.”

“So that you’ll know when to set off your blast”

“That’s what…”

“So that you’ll get the entire train,” Epstein continues, “and not just one or two cars.”

“It would be a pity to go to all that trouble,” Raines says, “and then miss our man.”

“Yes,” Epstein agrees thoughtfully.

“I think you had better check on how many cars there are,” Raines urges.

“I will.”

“And how long each car is. You say the bridge is two hundred yards long?”

“Yes, I measured it this afternoon.”

“How?” Epstein asks.

“With a tape measure.”

“On the bridge itself?”

“Yes. On the bridge.”

“Then your measurements were fairly accurate.”

“Completely accurate.”

“Good,” Epstein says.

“When do you plan to set your charges?” Raines asks.

“The night before the train is due.”

“Will you need help?”

“Is there help available?”

“Well, we hadn’t considered..”

“I think I can manage it alone. But I'll let you know if I can’t”

“You’d better let us know well beforehand,” Hester says. “We may not be able to enlist anyone at the last moment”

“I’ll give you plenty of notice.”

“What sort of explosives will you use?” Raines asks.

I'm not sure yet.”

“Will you be able to obtain them?”

“I can’t tell you that until I know what I’m going to use.”

“What do you ordinarily use?” Hester asks, and leans forward on the hassock, watching me intently.

“It varies with the job,” I tell her.

“What have you used in the past? On various jobs.”

“Dynamite. Plastic. Even nitroglycerin.”

“Very dangerous, nitroglycerin,” Epstein says.

“Yes.”

“Volatile, extremely volatile.”

“Yes.”

“You know, of course,” Hester says, “that when we spoke to Mr. Eisler on the telephone we were not bargaining for wholesale murder. We hired you to assassinate one man, not to demolish a trainload of reporters, advisers, secretaries, assistants, and so on.”

“I realize that. This seems the best way, though.”

“To kill a lot of innocent people, along with the man we want?”

“It seems the best way, yes.”

“Because it’s safest for you this way, isn’t that so?”

“I don’t know if it’s safest for me or not. I do know…”

“Please, Mr. Sachs.”

“I do know that the odds against getting him in a crowded railroad depot are overwhelming. I think this way will work. I’m sorry if innocent people will die, but he's been responsible for the deaths of innocents as well, hundreds of thousands of them. And more to come if we don’t eliminate him now.”

“It still sounds rather cold-blooded,” Raines says.

“It is.”

“One would not guess from appearances alone,” Hester says drily, “that you are such a ruthless man.”

“I am. Either we’re serious about getting rid of him, or we’re not. Either we want an end to all of this, or we don’t. Security measures are getting tighter every day. I’m afraid that if we don’t do it now, if we don’t do it effectively, we may never get the opportunity again. If you…

“We’re all afraid of that,” Raines says.

“Fine. I want to do it this way. If you don’t want me to do it this way, say so now, and I’ll pack my bag and go home.”

“You always seem to be going home, Mr. Sachs,” Hester says, and smiles.

“You always seem to be inviting me to leave.”

“Now, now,” Raines says.

“Yes or no?” I ask.

“Of course, you must do it as you see fit,” Raines says.

“Thank you,” I answer and nod. “This is what the bridge looks like. I think I can send the whole thing tumbling into the ravine if I place my charges correctly.” I extend the lined pad to them. One after the other, they study my sketch.

“I hope you are a better dynamiter than you are an artist,” Hester remarks drily.

“I have to keep telling you, don’t I?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That I’m an expert.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Hester says. “I believe you implicitly, Mr. Sachs.”

In the automobile outside, I ask Sara where she’d like to go for dinner.

“I don’t know where you're going,” she says. “I'm going home.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve got an exam tomorrow. Lots of studying to do.”

“The studying can wait.”

“No, it can’t”

“Well, bring your books over to the hotel and study there.”

“I’d rather not.”

“All right, I’ll come over to your place.”

“Gwen’s home,” Sara says. “Besides, I don’t want to see you any more.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Gee, I don’t know how to make it any plainer. I don’t want to see you any more.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, let’s not go into it, okay?”

“No, let’s go into it, okay?”

“You’re doomed, okay?” she says.

“What’s that, some kind of teen-age shorthand?”

“I’m not a teen-ager, and that wasn’t shorthand, it was simple English. You are doomed, D-O-O-M…”

“I may surprise you. I may survive.”

“No, you won’t. Whatever happens, you’re dead. If you bungle the job, you’re dead. If you pull it off, you’re dead.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You go back to your wife and seventeen kids in Larchmont.”

“I don’t live in Larchmont And I don’t have seventeen kids.”

“How many then? Fourteen? Four? Who the hell cares?”

“You do.”

“I couldn’t care a fucking whit,” she says.

“You’re a liar, Sara.”

“I’m the most honest person you’ll ever meet in your life.”

“Just between you and me, I’m getting tired of hearing young people telling me just how honest they all are. That’s usually a good time to start hiding the family silver.”

“I’m not ‘young people.’ I'm me. Sara Horne.”

“Honest Sara Horne.”

“Yes, Honest Sara Horne, who knows what’s good for her.”

“What’s good for you, Sara?”

“You’re not, that’s for goddamn sure.”

“Neither is involvement in an assassination plot.”

“Who’s involved? I’m as safe as a sparrow, I already told you that.”

“And that’s what you want to do, right, Sara? Play it safe?”

“Certainly. What am I supposed to do? Hang around with you? Why should I? What’s your future?”

“I thought your generation was the one taking all the risks.”

“We took all the risks, yes, and lost. Now it’s your turn. Go blow up your dumb bridge, if you want to. Just leave me alone.”

“The bridge is necessary, Sara. You know it is.”

“Necessary? It’s imperative. But I’m not about to blow it up.”

“Then why should I?”

“You’re asking me? You volunteered for the job, how the hell should I know why? Listen, Arthur, when I was an undergraduate I got hit on the head often enough. If it doesn’t make you stupid, it makes you smart. Let them hit you on the head a little, see how you like it”

“Sara…”

“Do you want me to let you off at the hotel, or will you walk back from my place?”

“Sara, you can’t do this.”

“Can’t I? rm doing it.”

“Not after last night.”

“Last night When was that? I’ve forgotten last night completely.”

“Sara…”

“I don’t want to go to bed with you again,” she says flatly. “I don’t even want to kiss you again.”

“Let me off here.”

“I’ll take you to the hotel.”

“Let me off here, goddamnit!”

She pulls the car to the curb. I get out, close the door gently, and walk away without looking back.

In the room, I sit drinking scotch.

It is close to midnight, and I have not had dinner, and I am getting very drunk. I do not understand Sara. I do not even understand myself. There is a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Man with the Golden Helmet hanging on the wall opposite the desk. The son of a bitch keeps glaring at me. I get off the bed, go into the bathroom, rip some toilet tissue from the roll, come back to the framed painting, wet the edges of the tissue and stick it over the baleful bastard’s head, covering his eyes. There, I think. If you can’t see me, I don’t exist. Which is Sara’s point exactly, isn’t it? If I die alone with no one to mourn me, I will never have lived. Without her to record my passage, I will never have existed. Smart-assed teen-ager. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-assed teen-ager.

I decide to call my son in Boston.

First I will call Sara to tell her I’m going to call my son in Boston. You’ll probably like him better than me, I will tell her, more your age and style, long hair, beard, sloppy clothes, dropping out of school next month to head for San Francisco, start a commune there with three other guys and two girls. Maybe you’d like to go to bed with him, Sara, and then drop him cold the next day. I don’t understand you, I really do not.

I decide not to call her after all, hell with her.

I dial my son’s number.

A girl answers the phone. Her voice is a whisper. I tell her I want to speak to David, and she asks who this is, and I say David’s father, and in the same mournful whisper, she asks me to hold on a moment. There is no sound on the other end of the line. No music, no voices. It is only twelve, twelve-thirty, but there is no sound in my son’s apartment in the biggest college community in the United States.

“Pop?” he says. “God, you must be psychic. I was just about to call home.”

“I’m not home,” I tell him.

“No? Where are you?”

“Salt Lake City. Important contract to negotiate. How are you, David?”

“Well, I'm fine. But we’ve got all kinds of trouble here. That’s why I was going to call. I’d like your advice.”

“Legal or paternal?”

“Both,” David says.

“Oh-oh.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad, Pop. You know Hank and Stevie, two of the guys I was going out to San Francisco with?”

“Well, I don’t know them, son…”

“Yeah, I know you don’t know them, though I think you met Hank once. He wears a headband. He came home that time during the spring break, don’t you remember?”

“I think so, yes. What about them?”

“Pop, they both got busted last night”

“For what?”

“Somebody planted some stuff in their apartment, and the cops came around with a search warrant about two o’clock in the morning.”

“Planted? What do you mean, planted?”

“Just that.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Grass.”

“Any hard stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Speed. And acid.”

“Heroin?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“How much of the stuff?”

“Enough, Pop. Lots of it.”

“Who planted it?”

“Well, Hank and Stevie’ve got some ideas, but they can’t be sure. They think it’s this guy they hassled with a couple of weeks back.”

‘What have they been charged with, David? Do you know?”

“Hank’s been charged with possession, presence, and conspiracy. Stevie and the girl who was there have been charged only with presence.”

“Where are they now?”

“They’re still here in Boston. They paid the bail…”

“How much?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“Who paid it?”

“A bondsman. Pop, the cops confiscated all the money that was in the apartment — as evidence that Hank was dealing.”

“How much money, David?”

“Close to fifteen hundred dollars. It’s the money he was going to put in for the California trip. He got it by working, Pop. He’s doing drugs, we all are — but he’s not dealing. I swear to God, Pop, he’s not dealing.”

“Has he notified his parents?”

“He’s going to do that tomorrow. Pop, here’s the point…”

“What’s the point, David?”

“The point is this really screws up the California thing, you know? Also, he’s my best friend, Pop.”

“So?”

“Pop… he plans to jump bail and leave the country.”

“That isn’t wise, David.”

“It’s wiser than spending five to ten years in prison. That’ll ruin his life, Pop.”

“I know it will.”

“I mean, you know what that’ll do to him.”

“Yes, David, I know.”

“So he’s going to leave the country. The point is should I go with him or not? He’s my best friend”

“Are you asking my advice?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him not to jump bail. If he does, he adds an additional charge to all the others. And if he goes to a foreign country, he can be extradited.”

“They can extradite for drugs, huh?”

“Yes, son.”

“Still, Pop, he’s my best friend.”

“David… friends come and go.”

“Pop, please don’t give me that shit.”

“All right. But you’ll be traveling with a fugitive. And the way things are now in this country, guilt by association is as real as it was dining the McCarthy era.” I hesitate. I don’t know what more to tell him. I am suddenly very fearful for him. “David,” I say, “leaving the country is a cop-out I don’t want you to cop out”

“Deserting a friend is a cop-out, too,” he says.

“David…

“Especially when the goddamn stuff was planted.”

“That’s his allegation.”

“Hank says it was planted, and he wouldn’t lie to me.” He pauses. He is trying to think of what to tell me next When he finally speaks, it is not as a twenty-year-old young man; it is as a child sitting on my knee. “Pop, it isn’t fair.”

“I know it isn’t”

“What shall I do?”

“What about your apartment?”

“What about it?”

“Is there any stuff there?”

“Yes. Some pot, that’s all.”

“Get rid of it”

“I will.”

“And make sure you don’t let anybody in who might…”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow. I want to know what Hank intends doing. And you, too.”

“Can’t I call you, Pop? I may be in and out…”

“No, I can’t give you the number here.”

“What?”

“I said I can’t give you the number here.”

“Why not?”

“I’m at a client’s house, and I can’t divulge his name.”

“Oh,” he says. I know he does not believe me.

“I’ll get to you tomorrow. Be very careful, son.”

“Don’t worry,” he says.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Pop.”

I hang up. The tissue I hung over the painting’s eyes has come loose and is dangling from one comer. I pour myself another drink. I suddenly wish the train would arrive tonight It is getting later and later and later. We are losing them all, we are losing our sons. We are sending them to war, or sending them to jail, or sending them into exile, but we are losing them regardless — and without them there is no future.

I sit drinking steadily.

My conversation with David has dissipated the fine good high I was building, but I am soon on the right road again, drinking myself stiff and silly. I feel like calling my mother. I feel like calling her and saying, Guess what little Sammy grew up to be, Mama? An assassin, how do you like them apples? We have assassinated all the good guys in this country, Mama, and now I am about to knock off one of the bad ones, even the score and change a little history into the bargain. What do you think, Mama? Are you proud of me, Mama?

I am crying when the telephone rings. I am crying, and I do not know why.

“Arthur?”

“What do you want, Sara?” I look at my wrist watch. It is two o’clock in the morning.

“I tried to get you earlier,” she says. “Your line was busy.”

“So it was. Here I am now, What is it?”

“Don’t be angry, Arthur,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me.”

“I’m sorry, anyway.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“Roger called me just a little while ago.”

“Who?”

“Roger.”

“Who the hell…? Oh, Roger. How is old Roger? How are all the Indians doing down there in Arizona?”

“He’ll definitely be here for Thanksgiving.”

“Good, I’m glad. Give him my regards when he arrives, will you?”

“Arthur, I am sorry. I am truly sorry. Please believe me.”

“I believe you, Sara.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“No, no, no need,” I say. “I’ve got a very important job to do. It’ll require all my time and energy. I.ll be occupied morning, noon, and night. Don’t worry about me, honey. You worry about old Roger, okay? Old Roger’s the one you have to worry about, not me.”

“Arthur…”

“Good-bye, Sara darling,” I say, and quietly replace the phone on its cradle.

(Even fantasies must end.)