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17
David had just finished briefing Jankowsky on his meeting with Bellamy, when Tory rang him on the collar com. “David, can you talk?”
“Something about Ib?” A fist seemed to tighten in his abdomen.
“Nothing yet.”
“Where are you? Is everything okay?”
“I’m at the Atlantic Hotel, David,” she said with a sigh; “my unit is being moved here!”
David frowned. So the military team using CloudMaster at NSSO was being transferred from the Observatory to the computer center at the Atlantic Hotel & Convention Center. Colonel Bentyne, her commanding officer, was directly under General Montclair’s command.
“I’ll be coming to this horrible place every day.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Look on the bright side, Tory. There is a shuttle to the hotel. You can ride to work with me in the morning and then shuttle on.”
“That would certainly be a bright spot. I don’t like this at all, David. Jet’s pretty gloomy about it too. There’s fourteen of us, and nobody’s happy about it. Aw hell, it’s the Army. What did I expect?”
Somebody is tightening control, David thought. Somebody is bringing all the toy soldiers together where they can be better watched. “There’s an upbeat soul. Want to meet me for lunch?”
“Yes.”
“You sound like you need cheering up. I’ll meet you at the Atlantic and we’ll find a little place.”
Wearing civvies, David met Tory in the main lobby of the hotel. She was dressed much like he was—jeans, plaid shirt, sweater, light jacket—because her crew were packing up the office records and supplies. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he told her as they walked toward the elevators. “What a magnificent lobby,” David said as his eyes raked across an acre of hillocks, waterfalls, palm trees, and more greenery. Massive marbled columns in soft honey tones swirling among soft cacaos, loomed into the ceiling. In the cavernous lobby, David turned his gaze upward through the hazy emptiness. Way up, shafts of sunshine cut through small high windows and even higher skylights and leaned through the atmosphere fading intofragments filled with lazily whirling dust motes like lightning bugs.
She whispered: “Isn’t it wonderful? I still hate the idea of working here.” She pushed a button. “My car is in the basement garage. I’m done packing my desk, and I don’t need to hang around.” They stepped inside, the door closed, and the elevator descended.
“Want to spend a few hours with me?” she asked.
“I can’t think of a better way to pass the afternoon.”
The door opened upon a dark vista of concrete and weak lights. The place was packed with light armored infantry vehicles painted with blue and yellow camouflage blobs. Fifty caliber machine gun barrels bristled ominously from ball turrets. A squad of commandos looked up in surprise while unloading ammo boxes from a pallet. Their sergeant frowned as he stepped toward the elevator. “What are—?” he started to say but the door closed.
“Next floor up. Who are they?” Tory asked as the elevator rose.
“You sorta get used to them, and sorta not,” he said echoing what Bellamy had said. They found her car and drove out of the garage, into a welcome gust of wind and daylight. “What a relief to be out of there,” she said.
“It’ll be over in a few months,” he suggested, wondering inwardly, how long did a bunch of idiots need to completely screw up the Constitution? If the Constitution radically changed, the Supreme Court would be almost meaningless until a new body of interpretive law had been built from the ground up.
They passed a cordon of trucks outside, drove past the checkpoints, and into the heart of the city. Despite CON2, the machinery of government was in full motion, and the sidewalks were jammed with pedestrians dressed for office work.
“There is one place I’d really like to go,” Tory said.
“You name it.”
“You can say no.”
“I won’t.”
And she explained as they walked slowly along the paths and lawns, her arm slung through his, their bodies close together. Victor Breen had been a hero of the Vietnam War, a Medal of Honor winner, killed in battle. That was 1972, eleven years before Tory’s birth. She had a much older brother named Vic who’d been five when her grandfather’s coffin came back from the Orient and who’d told her in loving detail about the funeral. The Army had buried Victor Breen at Arlington in a light drizzle while a few scattered flowers came into a late bloom along the endless somber green. Vic told of a U.S. flag draping the coffin. Men in uniform with lots of stripes and braids had attended. Soldiers had fired guns. Taps had quavered hauntingly where Tory and David walked today; Vic retold the story about once a year when the family reunited for Christmas at the house in Davenport.
Today, Tory carried a bouquet of flowers.
“Nice place for a stroll,” David said, holding her lightly, appreciating the specialness of the place.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said. She seems to be growing distant, he thought.
She folded her arms upon herself against the brisk wind, and pressed against him. He liked the feel of her shoulder, then an arm, an elbow, a hand, against his side. They came to the weathered stone. She knelt and laid the flowers lovingly on the grass beside the simple white headstone that read Victor Breen, Col., USA. Moss grew on the stone, filigreed with hairline cracks by many winters and summers. He noticed her eyes brimmed and then tears twirled through the air and spangled the young green grass. Somewhere over a hill covered with brittle orange leaves, at some new gravesite, a volley of shots rang out. Thin, distant strains of Taps floated through the air.
David gave her a paper napkin, and she blew her nose. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He held her, feeling the delicacy of her long body, the wiry strength in her arms, yet the softness of her body. He felt the liquid pressure of her firm breasts against his belly as he held her. They stood silently for a long time, entwined, inhaling one another’s scents, breathing together, stroking, cuddling, holding.
They held hands walking along the paths. The trees were dense, and the sunlight dripped through like a silvery wine full of bird twitter. She held his hand but pulled away a little bit. “David, I guess you like me.”
“I like you a lot.”
“I like you very much, David.”
She pulled her hand away and sat on a boulder. He sat on a boulder near her. She had that cloudy, haunted look again. He watched her hands—strong, feminine, with long fingers—as she picked a leaf apart. She was silent, tearing leaves apart in an intensity that told him to be quiet while she gathered her thoughts. Finally, she wrapped her arms around her knees and looked away. “I wish that we lived in another world where things were easier.”
He waited.
“I wish—you would—love me.”
He said nothing. He loved her already.
“I wish—the timing....”
"What about the timing?"
“I got dropped on my head."
"Huh?"
She laughed bitterly. "I was married to a guy—sales executive, of all things, reservist—who was having affairs right and left. I'll spare you the details. It got to be humiliating, and everyone talked. He was forced to resign his commission, finally, and I had to be reassigned."
"Not the first person in history," David said. "My story is kind of similar. I was married, and she kept up a relationship with an old boyfriend from college. She was—" Out of her mind, he thought bitterly at the memory. "—on a different wavelength." He finished with a lame little laugh.
"I'm sorry," she said darkly. "I hate being high-maintenance, but I'm not ready for the big time again, not yet." She looked down, and her hair looked tousled around wild eyes.
David caught her to him, pulled him against her. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “I am enjoying the moment, okay?”
She nodded, blending against his shoulder. He pulled her tightly to him, and felt her yielding into his aura. He said softly: “Either one of us could get cold feet and run.”
She quaked suddenly with laughter. “Like a scared deer.”
He shook her teasingly. "In the meantime, Miss Deer, Miss Dear, let's just enjoy the moment, huh?"
"I'll try my very best. It doesn't seem overly hard." She traced her fingertip along his eyebrow, down over his cheek, to touch his lips. Arms linked, they walked to the car. In the gravid solitude of these hills and graves, they kissed long and ardently. Then she pushed away. “Come on, let’s go see some museums.”
They heard another volley of shots and the melancholy wail of Taps. For a little while, as he drove across the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River and into the city, she sniffled quietly into her hankie and he thought he could still hear the echoes of that grieving bugle flowing like wine among the hills.
Luckily, the city had jazz and noise and speed to wipe away tears and sadness. Famished, Tory and David had burgers at a little restaurant, then walked along the Mall. They studied fossils and airplanes and colorful gems at the Smithsonian. They walked and talked and laughed and fed ducks and clowned around.
When the sun glittered low among rusty colored leaves, and shadows grew long, she slipped her arm through his. They walked along an endless park, under streetlights, under the watchful gaze of dozens of hungry-eyed young soldiers.
“I had you figured for a rich boy.”
“Sorry. That’s Maxie’s game.”
“I know. Isn’t it disgusting?”
“Yes, poor thing. I almost had the hots for her, but I was so broken up it was all I could do to go to dinner or a movie. My wife had me so spooked.”
She crinkled in a truthful smile. Her voice was silky. “Maxie told me all about you. I thought when she introduced me to you that you seemed so sweet and handsome, I might just let go a little.”
“She pushes people, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.” She burst out in a single giggle of admission.
“I thought you were so perfect and I was amazed you weren’t—what’s the word—haughty.”
“I’m not perfect at all, as you can see.”
“Stop berating yourself. I think you are wonderful.”
She made a wistful face. Her eyes radiated vulnerable belief.
He wanted to do hand-stands to convince her. He gesticulated. “Look at me. I am nothing. I did not know how nothing I am until you came along. You are a goddess. I never figured for a moment that you—well, and I—” He looked around, seeking a metaphor.
After a pause he said simply: “You have made me into a god. I feel like a god when I am with you.”
She sniffed once, almost amused, and put her arm through his. They strolled on, wrapped in a silent coccoon in which they both felt that their personalities had melted and were flowing together like two shades of hot pudding.
They spent the afternoon wandering through museums on the Mall. They gaped here and gawked there, they snacked and played and laughed and clowned around the fountains. They kissed often. She felt light and yielding in his arms. The tip of her tongue made little darting motions between his lips and her breath came in quick gasps as she held his face between the flats of her chilly fingertips. He took her hands and kissed her fingers, smelling bath soap and leather and a light perfume. Too quickly, afternoon wore into dusk and then night fell.
Tired but happy, they walked along city sidewalks toward his car. Just then, he felt a vibration in the sidewalk. She frowned and mouthed: “What’s that?”
The vibration became stronger, with a growing roar of noise. David and Tory and other pedestrians froze at the spectacle of a long column of huge, dark vehicles speeding down the street. They were a battalion or more of combat support vehicles, headed by several humvees, followed by a mobile command post, a communications truck, and an endless stream of flatbed trucks carrying massive shapes whose passage made the streets shake in rhythm with their continuous loud rattling and rolling sounds. Pennants fluttered on antennas as the dark convoy streaked past.
“What are those, tanks?” Tory said, as her body soaked in the vibrations.
David felt troubled as he glimpsed the hulking objects atop the flatbeds. They were partially covered by canvas, but she could see their ugly sides painted in blue and tan camouflage colors. The primary gun barrels protruding from the canvas covers were longer than those on any main battle tank he’d seen, and thicker. His combat arms background came in handy, but his knowledge gave him no joy. “Strange. Those aren’t tanks. They are—” He had to think back. “They are SPH-2010s. Long Toms. They are 200-millimeter self-propelled howitzers. They’re big mobile guns. You drive them someplace and then you besiege your enemy, kind of. Like if he’s inside a mountain, those guns will reduce the mountain to rubble. If he owns an airstrip, up to so many miles away, he’ll soon have just a big hole full of water.”
Tory laughed, looking a little scared. “Siege guns? They need siege guns, here in Washington, to protect a hotel?”
David shook his head, made a sour face. “I dunno. Not my area of expertise. If you pointed one of those at a building, it would be like dropping a 500 pound bomb. One round could probably take out a good chunk of a city block.”
The procession was gone in five minutes, dark as the night from which it had come and into which it went. The ground stopped shaking, the air smelled sweeter, and people resumed their light-hearted chatter in the shadows on the streets.
“I guess the bigwigs are taking no chances,” David said. Somewhere inside of him, a nagging question mark would not go away. Then she diverted his attention. She pulled her arm away and pointed. “Look, a deli. I’m getting tired and hungry. I’ll buy dinner.”
“I’ll go for that,” he said as they walked toward the lights and the food aromas. She seemed suddenly shy and awkward and he couldn’t think of anything to say. The deli was an afterthought in a food wholesaler’s rambling brick warehouse. It was a drafty barn but they found a cozy wood-paneled corner with three shaky little tables. A hooded gas pylon glowing and sputtering in the corner levitated a sphere of warmth. The deli itself was a busy place, fun to watch. Noise echoed into the high ceilings. Delivery people came and went with cheese wheels, beer barrels, baskets of fresh bread, even flowers. The steady line was five or six customers deep, and the counter staff in white coats and red hats were a blur of motion.
Afterward, outside, she slipped her arm through his. “This has been a remarkable day, Mr. Gordon.”
“I think so too.” They sauntered from street light to streetlight bumping hips and feeling alive. “If we weren’t in this crazy situation,” he said, “and if we had this sidewalk and these lights and that good camembert back there, we could probably—” He stopped, turned, and looked into her face. He felt her body against his, as he embraced her. As in a slow dance, maybe to regain some psychic balance, she embraced him. He cupped her shoulder blades, remembering that evening on the rug. She closed her eyes and tilted her face back as he kissed her. Their lips met in a mutual groan of pleasure. Her fingertips played in the gulley of his spine and sent electric tingles through his frame.
Moments later, on the way to the car, she slipped her arm back through his, and pressed against him. “How long do these constitutional conventions last?” she murmured with a wink.
“Well,” he murmured back, “I think the last one was in 1787 and went all summer.”
“Oh good, we’ll have time for more of this Camembert.”
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