Our Children's Children

35

Judy was at her desk. Notes were beginning to accumulate on the spindle. The lights on the console were blinking.

"You get any sleep?" asked Wilson.

She looked up at him. "A little. I lay awake thinking, scared. It's not good, is it, Steve?"

"Not good," he said. "It's too big for us to handle. If it weren't for the time element, it wouldn't be so bad. If we only had a little time."

She gestured toward the door leading to the lounge. "You won't tell them that, will you?"

He grinned. "No, I won't tell them that."

"They've been asking when you're going to see them."

"Fairly soon," he said.

"I might as well tell you," she said. "No use waiting. I am going home. Back to Ohio."

"But I need you here."

"You can get a girl from the secretarial pool. Couple of days and you won't know the difference."

"That's not what I mean…"

"I know what you mean. You need me to shack up with. It's been like that for how long — six months? It's this damn town. It makes everything dirty that it touches. Somewhere else it might have worked for us. But it isn't working here."

"Damn it, Judy," he said, "what's got into you? Because I didn't come out last night…"

"Partly that, perhaps. Not all that, of course. I know why you had to stay. But it was so lonely and so many things had happened and I sat there thinking and got scared. I tried to call my mother and the lines were busy. A poor scared girl, for Christ's sake, running back to Mama. But suddenly everything was different. I wasn't a sleek, competent Washington hussy, any longer; I was a kid in pigtails in a little town deep in Ohio. It all started with my getting scared. Tell me honest now, I had a right to be scared."

"You had a right," he said soberly. "I'm half scared myself. Everyone is scared."

"What's going to happen to us?"

"Damned if I know. But that wasn't what we were talking about."

"Monsters running loose," she said. "Too many mouths to feed. Everyone fighting one another or getting set to fight."

"We were talking about you going to Ohio. I'm not going to ask you do you really mean it, because I know you do. I suppose that you are lucky to have a place to run to. Most of us have no place. I'd like to ask you to stay, but that would be unfair. What's more, it would be selfish. But I still wish you would."

"I have a plane reservation," she said. "With the phone tied up and all, I was surprised to get one. The country's in a panic. In a time like this you get that terrible helpless feeling."

"You won't like Ohio. Once you get there, you won't like it. If you're scared in Washington, you'll be scared in Ohio."

"I still am going, Steve. Come six-fifteen tonight and I'll be on that plane."

"There's nothing I can say?"

"There's nothing you can say," she said.

"Then you'd better let the press in. I have some news for them."