"Drinks for the house on me," Bill the Cowboy suddenly proclaimed. "Because this looks like the end of the road, amigos." He put two twenties beside his shot glass, but the bartender made no move to pick them up. He was watching Kennedy, who was now calling on Chairman Khrushchev to eliminate "this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."
The waitress who had served my beer, a rode-hard-and-put-away-wet peroxide blonde of fifty or so, suddenly burst into tears. That decided me. I got off my stool, wove my way around the tables where men and women sat looking at the television like solemn children, and slipped into one of the phone booths next to the Skee-Ball machine.
The operator told me to deposit forty cents for the first three minutes. I dropped in two quarters. The pay phone bonged mellowly. Faintly, I could still hear Kennedy talking in that nasal New England voice. Now he was accusing Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of being a liar. No waffling there.
"Connecting you now, sir," the operator said. Then she blurted: "Are you listening to the president? If you're not, you should turn on your TV or radio."
"I'm listening," I said. Sadie would be, too. Sadie, whose husband had spouted a lot of apocalyptic bullshit thinly coated with science. Sadie, whose Yalie politico friend had told her something big was going to pop in the Caribbean. A flashpoint, probably Cuba.
I had no idea what I was going to say to soothe her, but that wasn't a problem. The phone rang and rang. I didn't like it. Where was she at eight-thirty on a Monday night in Jodie? At the movies? I didn't believe it.
"Sir, your party does not answer."
"I know it," I said, and grimaced when I heard Lee's pet phrase coming out of my mouth.
My quarters clattered into the coin return when I hung up. I started to put them back in, then reconsidered. What good would it do to call Miz Ellie? I was in Miz Ellie's bad books now. Deke's too, probably. They'd tell me to go peddle my papers.
When I walked back to the bar, Walter Cronkite was showing U-2 photos of the Soviet missile bases that were under construction. He said that many members of Congress were urging Kennedy to initiate bombing missions or launch a full-scale invasion immediately. American missile bases and the Strategic Air Command had gone to DEFCON-4 for the first time in history.
"American B-52 bombers will soon be circling just outside the Soviet Union's borders," Cronkite was saying in that deep, portentous voice of his. "And--this is obvious to all of us who've covered the last seven years of this ever more frightening cold war--the chances for a mistake, a potentially disastrous mistake, grow with each new escalation of--"
"Don't wait!" a man standing by the pool table shouted. "Bomb the living shit out of those commie cocksuckers right now!"
There were a few cries of protest at this bloodthirsty sentiment, but they were mostly drowned in a wave of applause. I left the Ivy Room and jogged back to Neely Street. When I got there, I jumped into my Sunliner and rolled wheels for Jodie.
8
My car radio, now working again, broadcast nothing but a heaping dish of doom as I chased my headlights down Highway 77. Even the DJs had caught Nuclear Flu, saying things like "God bless America" and "Keep your powder dry." When the K-Life jock played Johnny Horton caterwauling "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," I snapped it off. It was too much like the day after 9/11.
I kept the pedal to the metal in spite of the Sunliner's increasingly distressed engine and the way the needle on the ENGINE TEMP dial kept creeping toward H. The roads were all but deserted, and I turned into Sadie's driveway at just a little past twelve-thirty on the morning of the twenty-third. Her yellow VW Beetle was parked in front of the closed garage doors, and the lights were on downstairs, but there was no answer when I rang the doorbell. I went around back and hammered on the kitchen door, also to no effect. I liked it less and less.
She kept a spare key under the back step. I fished it out and let myself in. The unmistakable aroma of whiskey hit my nose, and the stale smell of cigarettes.
"Sadie?"
Nothing. I crossed the kitchen to the living room. There was an overflowing ashtray on the low table in front of the couch, and liquid soaking into the Life and Look magazines spread out there. I put my fingers into it, then raised them to my nose. Scotch. Fuck.
"Sadie?"
Now I could smell something else that I remembered well from Christy's binges: the sharp aroma of vomit.
I ran down the short hall on the other side of the living room. There were two doors facing each other, one giving on her bedroom and the other leading to an office-study. The doors were shut, but the bathroom door at the end of the hall was open. The harsh fluorescent light showed vomit splattered on the ring of the toilet bowl. There was more on the pink tile floor and the rim of the bathtub. There was a bottle of pills standing beside the soapdish on the sink. The cap was off. I ran to the bedroom.
She was lying crosswise on the mussed coverlet, wearing a slip and one suede moccasin. The other had dropped off onto the floor. Her skin was the color of old candle wax, and she did not appear to be breathing. Then she took a huge snoring gasp and wheezed it back out. Her chest remained flat for a terrifying four seconds, then she jerked in another rattle of breath. There was another overflowing ashtray on the night table. A crumpled Winston pack, charred at one end by an imperfectly stubbed-out cigarette, lay on top of the dead soldiers. Beside the ashtray were a half-empty glass and a bottle of Glenlivet. Not much of the Scotch was gone--thank God for small favors--but it wasn't really the Scotch I was worried about. It was the pills. There was also a brown manila envelope on the table with what looked like photographs spilling out of it, but I didn't glance at them. Not then.
I got my arms around her and tried to pull her into a sitting position. The slip was silk and slithered through my hands. She thumped back onto the bed and took another of those rasping, labored breaths. Her hair flopped across one closed eye.
"Sadie, wake up!"
Nothing. I grabbed her by the shoulders, and hauled her against the head of the bed. It thumped and shivered.
"Lea me lone." Slurry and weak, but better than nothing.
"Wake up, Sadie! You have to wake up!"
I began to slap lightly at her cheeks. Her eyes remained shut, but her hands came up and tried--weakly--to fend me off.
"Wake up! Wake up, dammit!"
Her eyes opened, looked at me without recognition, then shut again. But she was breathing more normally. Now that she was sitting, that terrifying rasp was gone.
I went back to the bathroom, dumped her toothbrush out of the pink plastic glass, and turned on the cold tap. While I filled the glass, I looked at the label on the pill bottle. Nembutal. There were ten or a dozen capsules left, so it hadn't been a suicide attempt. At least not an overt one. I spilled them into the toilet, then ran back to the bedroom. She was sliding down from the sitting position I'd left her in, and with her head cocked forward and her chin down against her breastbone, her respiration had turned raspy again.
I put the glass of water on the nightstand, and froze for a second as I got a look at one of the photographs sticking out of the envelope. It could have been a woman--what remained of the hair was long--but it was hard to tell for sure. Where the face should have been, there was only raw meat with a hole near the bottom. The hole appeared to be screaming.
I hauled Sadie up, grabbed a handful of her hair, and pulled her head back. She moaned something that might have been Don't, that hurts. Then I threw the glass of water in her face. She jerked and her eyes flew open.
"Jor? Wha you doon here, Jor? Why-my wet?"
"Wake up. Wake up, Sadie." I began to slap her face again, but more gently now, almost patting. It wasn't good enough. Her eyes started to slip closed.
"Go . . . way!"
"Not unless you want me to call an ambulance. That way you can see your name in the paper. The schoolboard would love that. Upsa-daisy."
I managed to get my hands linked behind her and pulled her o
ff the bed. Her slip rucked up, then fell back into place as she crumpled to her knees on the carpet. Her eyes flew open and she cried out in pain, but I got her on her feet. She swayed back and forth, slapping at my face with more strength.
"Get ow! Get ow, Jor!"
"No, ma'am." I put my arm around her waist and got her moving toward the door, half-leading and half-carrying her. We made the turn toward the bathroom, and then her knees came unhinged. I carried her, which was no mean feat, given her height and size. Thank God for adrenaline. I batted down the toilet ring and got her seated just before my own knees gave out. I was gasping for breath, partly from effort, mostly from fright. She started to tilt toward starboard, and I slapped her bare arm--smack.
"Sit up!" I shouted into her face. "Sit up, Christy, goddammit!"
Her eyes fought open. They were badly bloodshot. "Who Christy?"
"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."