Since it was Saturday, the receptionist and secretarial staff were out. Sarah let Corrigan in and showed him through to her office, where Zehl was studying the figures on one of the terminal screens. Corrigan sat in an empty chair by the machine opposite. Sarah seemed to get a kick out of showing off her computers. Compared to the kind of machines that he’d used over twelve years before, Corrigan found them quaint.
Unlike Sarah, Zehl didn’t presume that all marriage breakups had to produce feelings of resentment, rejection, and traumatic distress. He understood Corrigan’s position and agreed that if the experiment hadn’t worked out, then it was probably as well to call it a day. Very simple, really. Yet Sarah absorbed the message as if she were witnessing a revelation. If feeling this way instead of turning into what sounded to him like a deranged lunatic was abnormal, then he could live with it, Corrigan decided.
Sarah was unwilling to leave it at that, however, but seemed intrigued by what she saw as his refusal to conform. “Is it simply an inability due to some kind of defect?” she asked him. “Or is it the result of a deliberate process: something you just won’t do? Can you tell us?”
“I thought you were supposed to tell me,” Corrigan answered.
“It doesn’t seem to trouble you at all. You really don’t have any qualms about it? Deep down inside, I mean. You don’t feel out of things, insecure?”
“Yes, I feel out of things. No, I don’t feel insecure. Whether that’s deep down or not, I have no idea.”
“You don’t have a desire to be more a part of the world around you?” Sarah persisted. “To feel integrated, accepted by others?”
“Why should I?”
Sarah flashed Zehl a worried look. “At one time you were a professional, one of the best in your field,” she said to Corrigan. “Don’t you have any of that ambition anymore? Are you happy at the thought of being a bartender indefinitely?” It was like listening to a replay of Muriel and Horace, Corrigan thought.
“Look where the other kind got me,” he said.
Zehl was staring at Corrigan with a different light in his eye: brooding, more reflective. For a moment Corrigan had the odd feeling that it was he and Zehl who shared some common insight that the circumstances precluded discussing openly, and not the two specialists.
“Getting back to the immediate future, Joe, what do you think you might do?” Zehl asked, moving them off the subject. “Any possible plans yet?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Corrigan answered. “Just a thought that crossed my mind while I was having breakfast. Maybe I could use a change of scene and start getting in touch with the rest of the wide world again. We’ve talked about it before, but with Muriel out of the way this might be the right time. I was thinking I could take a vacation back to Ireland.”
Zehl frowned. Clearly he was far from instantly enamored at the idea.
“Ireland?” Sarah repeated. Her voice was quavery. For some reason the suggestion seemed to bewilder her. “Why would you want to go to Ireland?”
“I’m Irish,” Corrigan said. “Sometimes people like to go back and see the place they’re from.” Surely it was obvious.
Sarah was shaking her head, but she seemed to be having to search for a reason. “No, I don’t think so, Joe,” she said. “I don’t think that would be possible at all.”
The abruptness of her response set Corrigan at odds again. “Why not?” he objected. “It’s been twelve years now since the Oz project screwed up. I’m in control of my life again. I’m holding down a job that’s good enough to keep me independent.” He drew a breath and looked at her pointedly. “And it wasn’t me who gave up on the marriage this morning and quit.”
Sarah shook her head again. “Your condition is still more delicate than you realize. The stresses of traveling abroad would just be inviting trouble. Yes, you’re right—you have made a lot of progress. Let’s not risk undoing it all now.”
“I went to Japan four years ago,” Corrigan pointed out. He knew as soon as he spoke that it was a weak argument.