For another twenty minutes he refused to face it. Like someone looking for a lost wallet, he kept returning to the same places over and over again, until finally the woman from mall security started to get suspicious. You knew this had to happen, he told himself, as he turned and walked toward a waiting taxi. But why now? Something was making him stupid, he thought, and then he revised that to conclude that he couldn’t blame anything but himself. He was stupid. The loss of Elizabeth, the plaque in his cerebral arteries, the accumulation of guilt and suppressed panic washing over him was like the panic of someone coming off hard drugs and suddenly facing years of pain. What had Beatrice taught him to call this? The rebound effect. Yes, that was it. A sense of black doom descended like a summer storm. He felt like he was six years old again. He took a cab back to the Rosaria Hotel, and while he was packing, he saw a patrol car pull into the parking lot. Quickly finding the fire stairs, he left by the back entrance. He hailed another cab and asked the driver to take him to the nearest phone booth, which turned out to be out near the Dixie Highway. After instructing the driver to wait, he took what was left of the quarters and dropped one into the pay phone. Again he dialed the number from memory. A recorded voice came on and announced that it was a long-distance call-$3.35 for the first three minutes and $1.05 for each additional minute. He went back to the driver to break a twenty and ended up taking all the small change the man had for an extra five dollars. Back in the booth, he dialed the cellular number. There were some electronic hems and haws, and then a voice picked up. “Hello?”
“Hello, Beatrice,” he said.
There was a brain-numbing silence on the other end. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. Then her voice came back. “Peter?”
“Yes, it’s me. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
He wondered if it were true. Probably not. “Where are you?” she asked.
“Where are you?”
“Miami. Peter, if you’re here in the city, you’re in terrible danger.” “Believe me, I know that. Are you all right? I tried to call you at the lab ” “Yes. I’m all right.”
“Thank God. Listen,” he started to say and then found he couldn’t go on. Tears filled his eyes. “I know why you’re calling.”
“Then tell me.
“She left you.
“That’s not why. I need to see you,” he said. “Does she know now?”
“I had to tell her.”
“You had to tell her what?”
Why was she being so obtuse? “Everything,” he said. “Everything? Are you sure?” Her voice carried an odd teasing quality. “And just how did she take it?” “Not well. How did you expect her to take it?” he said, heartened by the fact that they were at least sparring once more. I’ve missed you, Beatrice.” “No, you only think you have.”
“Have it your way. I’m sorry. However you want to make me pay- “You’ve had me, Peter. The whole time.” He stopped, took a deep breath. “Beatrice, you’re not making any sense- “Just not to you. You were always a beat behind. Like Einstein baffled by his tax returns. Tell me, darling, do you know how to travel through time?” Darling, was all he could think. Otherwise he was utterly lost. “Do you think,” he heard her say, “you can get back to the summer of ’67?” “Beatrice, my head hurts.”
“I know. Just get on the time machine. Someone will meet you, I promise.” Her voice went away and came back, this time very loud. “I’m sorry, I don’t respond to telephone solicitations,” she said into the phone. “How did you get this number, anyway?” “Beatrice, did someone come in? Freddy? Henderson?” “And, no,” she said, softly again, “I don’t forgive you for a minute. Goodbye, darling, and happy landings. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.” 16
The summer of 67 had been their first at Vieques. Whenever they wanted to get away from the base or from Freddy or from the bur(lens of uneasy conscience, Peter and Beatrice would fly to Miami, rent a car and drive the causeway to Key West. It was Key West where they had discovered deep-sea fishing, tantric sex and French cooking. To Peter and Beatrice, Key West was Paradise Regained. Key West. It hit him like a thunderbolt that that was where she wanted him to go. Key West was where she was waiting for him. Unless, of course, it was a trap. If it were a trap, then Beatrice had deeper reserves of hatred than he had ever dared guess, more guile than Machiavelli and a real shot at an acting career. What he had heard in her voice was tender condescension and wifely disapproval, not anger. Nor the sound of a woman scorned. She had more the sound of a woman in control. It occurred to him that kind of control could be deadly No. She’s not going to betray me, he thought. No matter what I de-serve. Still, as the cab rolled down Route 1, he kept turning to look out the back window while he listened for the sound of choppers. And he replayed their phone conversation in his head, over and over. I told Elizabeth everything. She might well have passed that along to Wolfe and Henderson. What, after all, did she owe Elizabeth? There Beatrice might prove vindictive, and who could blame her? He had hurt her terribly. He had thrown her over for someone else, someone young like his new self Fifty years of marriage, and nothing they had built together had withstood the imperatives of newfound youth. That’s how she would see it. But would she want Elizabeth dead?
She had been in collusion when it came to the death of Hans, he reminded himself. She had agonized over it, yes, no question, hut in the end, she had approved it. The greatest good for the greatest number. Genius conquers all. Moral piracy, that’s what it amounted to, but she had gone for it, Or had she seen that by now? In what he knew any hack psychiatrist would diagnose as obsessive ruminations, he passed through Key Largo, Islamorada, Layton, Key Colony Beach. Somewhere around Marathon or Big Pine he fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of his wife as a Janus-faced monster, one face young and dismissive, the other smiling and old. Then it was the young face that was tender and the older that of Medusa. The next thing he knew the driver was shaking him and they were at Truman and Duval, in the heart of Key West. “Where you wanna go, buddy?” the cabby asked. Peter sat up and rubbed his eyes. “You know the Cafe des Artistes?”
“Over on Simonton?”
“That’s the one.”
He had the driver drop him a block away and approached the place cautiously on foot. Just short of it he stopped. Should he chance it or phone the restaurant from outside? Nay men were going in and out, but they were in uniform and mostly with wives or girlfriends; the people looking for him would be dressed in civilian clothing. Or would they be? He reminded himself that there were several bases here, so the presence of military was no particular cause for concern, in or out of uniform. Besides, the look of the place reeked of intrigue. It was part of an old hotel and was supposedly built in 1934 by Al Capone himself. No wonder Peter was paranoid. He wondered why he and Beatrice had found it so inviting before. More innocent days, perhaps. He went inside, inquiring at the desk if a Beatrice Jance had arrived. The desk clerk informed him that she had checked in that morning. His heart was in full gallop by the time he located the house phones and rang her room. There was no answer. On an impulse, he walked back through the ornate lobby to the restaurant. The floor tilted under his feet.
He ignored that. Looked around.
And there she was, eating quietly at their favorite table. In that room, sitting amid flowers and paintings by Key West artists and set off by the room’s dark woods and linen-covered walls, she was stunning, set like a jewel in his memory. It was as though he had simply returned from one of his solitary walks along the shrimp-boat docks- thirty years ago-to meet her for lunch. Even the Rameau harpsichord suite playing on the stereo, he remembered that too. “Beatrice?”
She looked up in alarm. “Good Lord, you’ve lost your mind completely.” Her gray hair was tied in a chignon and she was wearing a loose-fitting beach dress with an orchid print. She looked casually wan and worn and entirely wonderful. “May I sit down?” She studied his face as though she had forgotten it. “What if I’m being watched? Hasn’t that occurred to you?” “Are you?”