He bellowed laughter, and in that moment she nearly picked up his own coffee cup and threw it at him. Instead, she locked her hands together tightly under the table and squeezed them. Denny goggled at his father and then burst into his own peal of laughter.
‘Honey,’ Walt said. ‘I have nothing against him, I have nothing against what he’s doing. In fact, I respect him for it. If that fat old mossback Fisher can go from a broke lawyer to a
millionaire during fifteen years in the House of Representatives, then this guy should have a perfect right to pick up as much as he can playing psychic…’
‘Johnny doesn’t lie,’ she repeated tonelessly.
‘It’s a gimmick for the blue-rinse brigade who read the weekly tabloids and belong to the Universe Book Club,’ he said cheerily. ‘Although I will admit that a little second sight would come in handy during jury selection in this damn Timmons trial.’
‘Johnny Smith doesn’t lie,’ she repeated, and heard him saying: It slipped off your finger.
You were putting his shaving stuff into one of those side pockets and it just slipped off …
you go up in the attic and look, Sarah. You’ll see. But she couldn’t tell Walt that. Walt didn’t know she had been to see Johnny.
Nothing wrong in going to see him, her mind offered uneasily.
No, but how would he react to the news that she had thrown her original wedding ring into the toilet and flushed it away? He might not understand the sudden twitch of fear that had made her do it – the same fear she saw mirrored on those other newsprint faces, and, to some degree, on Johnny’s own. No, Walt might not under-stand that at all. After all, throwing your wedding ring into the toilet and then pushing the flush did suggest a certain vulgar symbolism.
‘All right,’ Walt was saying, ‘he doesn’t lie. But I just don’t believe
Sarah said softly, ‘Look at the people behind him, Walt. Look at their faces. They believe.’
Walt gave them a cursory glance. ‘Sure, the way a kid believes in a magician as long as the trick is ongoing.’
‘You think this fellow Dussault was a, what-do-you-call-it, a shill? According to the article, he and Johnny had
never met before.’
‘That’s the only way the illusion will work, Sarah,’ Walt said patiently. ‘It doesn’t do a magician any good to pull a bunny out of a rabbit hutch, only out of a hat. Either Johnny Smith knew something or he made a terribly good guess based on this guy Dussault’s behavior at the time. But I repeat, I respect him for it. He got a lot of mileage out of it. If it turns him a buck, more power to him.’
In that moment she hated him, loathed him, this good man she had married. There was really nothing so terrible on the reverse side of his goodness, his steadiness, his mild good humor – just the belief, apparently grounded in the bedrock of his soul, that everybody was looking out for number one, each with his or her own little racket. This
morning he could call Harrison Fisher a fat old mossback; last night he had been bellowing with laughter at Fisher’s stories about Greg Stillson, the funny mayor of some-town-or-other and who might just be crazy enough to run as an independent in the House race next year.
No, in the world of Walt Hazlett, no one had psychic powers and there were no heroes and the doctrine of we-have-to-change-the-system from-within was all-powerful. He was a good man, a steady man, he loved her and Denny, but suddenly her soul cried out for Johnny and the five years together of which they had been robbed. Or the lifetime together. A child with darker hair.
‘You better get going, babe,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ll have your guy Timmons in stocks and bonds, or whatever they are.’
‘Sure.’ He smiled at her, the summation done, session adjourned. ‘Still friends?’
‘Still friends.’ But he knew where the ring was. He knew.
Walt kissed her, his right hand resting lightly on the back of her neck. He always had the same thing for breakfast, he always kissed her the same way, some day they were going to Washington, and no one was psychic.