“We got engaged after we got out of school,” Hood continued. “I gave her an emerald ring that we picked out together. I landed a position as an assistant to the Mayor of Los Angeles and Nancy went to work for a video game company designing software. She actually flew north, to Sunnyvale, twice a week just so we wouldn’t have to be away from each other. And then one night, in April of 1979– – April 21st, to be exact, a date which I tore out of my datebooks for the next few years— I was waiting for her outside a movie theater and she failed to show. I called her apartment, no one was there, so I rushed over. I drove like a crazy person, in fact. Then I used my key, went in, and found a note.” Hood’s pace slowed. He could still smell the apartment.
He could still feel the tears and the thickness that filled his throat. He remembered the song that was playing in the apartment next door, “The Worst That Could Happen” by the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The note was handwritten, quickly. Not Nancy’s usual careful penmanship. It said that she had to go away, she wouldn’t be coming back, and I shouldn’t look for her. She took some clothes, but everything else was still there: her records, her books, her plants, her photo albums, her diploma. Everything. Oh, and she took the engagement ring I gave her. Either that or she threw it away.” “No one else had any idea where she was?” Hausen asked, surprised.
“No one. Not even the FBI, which came and asked me about her the next morning without telling me what she had done. I couldn’t tell them much, but I hoped they would find her. Whatever she had done, I wanted to help. I spent the next few days and nights looking for her. I visited professors we’d had, friends, talked to her coworkers, who were all very concerned. I called her father. They weren’t close; and I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard from her. I finally decided that I must have done something wrong. Either that, or I figured she’d been seeing someone else and eloped.” “Gott,” Hausen said. “And you never heard from her after that?” Hood shook his head slowly. “I never heard of her either,” he said. “I wanted to, out of curiosity. I didn’t try anymore, though, because it would’ve been excrutiating. I have to thank her for one thing, though. I lost myself in work, made a lot of great contacts— we didn’t call it networking back then.” He smiled. “And eventually I ran for and won the office of Mayor. I was the youngest in the history of Los Angeles.” Hausen looked at Hood’s wedding band. “You also married.” “Yes,” said Hood. He glanced at the gold ring. “I married. I have a wonderful family, a good life.” He lowered his hand, rubbed the pocket with his wallet in it. He thought of the tickets which even his wife didn’t know about. “But I still think of Nancy now and then, and it’s probably a good thing it wasn’t her at the hotel.” “You don’t know that it wasn’t her,” Hansen pointed out.
“No, I don’t,” Hood agreed.
“But even if it was,” said Hausen, “your Nancy belonged to another time. A different Paul Hood. If you saw her again, you would be able to deal with it, I think.” “Perhaps,” said Hood, “though I’m not so sure this Paul Hood is all that different. Nancy was in love with the boy in me, the kid who was adventurous in life and love. Becoming a father and a mayor and a Washingtonian didn’t change that. Inside, I’m still a kid who likes to play Risk and gets a kick out of Godzilla movies and who still thinks that Adam West is the only Batman and George Reeves is the only Superman. Somewhere inside, I’m still the young man who saw himself as a knight and Nancy as a lady. I honestly don’t know how I’d react if I saw her face-to-face.” Hood put his hands back in his pockets. He felt the wallet again. And he asked himself, Who do you think.
you’re fooling? He knew damn well that if he saw Nancy face-to-face he’d fall for her all over again.
“So that’s my story,” Hood said. He was facing ahead, but his eyes shifted to the left, toward Hausen. “Now it’s your turn,” he urged. “Did that phone call back in your office have anything to do with a lost love or mysterious disappearances?” Hausen walked in dignified silence for a short while, then said solemnly, “Mysterious disappearances, yes. Love, no. Not at all.” He stopped and faced Hood. A gentle wind was blowing, stirring the German’s hair, lifting the end of his coat. “Herr Hood, I trust you. The honesty of your pain, your feelings— you are a compassionate man and a truthful one.
So I will be honest with you.” Hausen looked to the left and right, then down. “I’m probably mad to be telling you this.
I’ve never told anyone. Not even my sister, and not my friends.” “Do politicians have any friends?” Hood asked.
Hausen smiled. “Some do. I do. But I wouldn’t burden them with this matter. Yet someone has to know now that he has returned. They have to know in the event that anything happens to me.” Hausen looked at Hood. The agony that came into his eyes was like nothing Hood had ever seen. It shocked him, and his own pain evaporated as his curiosity intensified.
“Twenty-five years ago,” said Hausen, “I was a political science student at the Sorbonne in Paris. My best friend was a fellow named Gerard Dupre. Gerard’s father was a wealthy industrialist, and Gerard was a radical. I don’t know whether it was the immigrants who took jobs from French workers, or simply his own black nature. But Dupre hated Americans and Asians, and he especially hated Jews, blacks, and Catholics. Dear God, he was consumed by hate.” Hausen licked his lips. He looked down again.
It was clear to Hood that this taciturn man was struggling as much with the process of confession as he was with the memory of whatever it was he had done.
Hausen swallowed and went on. “We were dining at a caf‚ one night— at L’Exchange on the Rue Mouffetard on the Left Bank, a short walk from the university. The caf‚ was inexpensive, popular with students, and the air there was always heavy with the smell of strong coffee and loud disagreements. It was just after our junior year had begun, and that night everything was annoying Gerard. The waiter was slow, the liquor was warm, the night was chilly, and the collected speeches of Trotsky were only those he gave in Russia. Nothing from Mexico, which Gerard thought was an abominable omission. After paying the bill— he always paid, for he was the only one with money— we went for a walk along the Seine.
“It was dark and we encountered a pair of American students who had just arrived in Paris,” Hausen continued with effort. “They had gone to take some pictures by a remote section of riverbank, under a bridge. The sun had set and they couldn’t find their way back to the dormitory, so I started to give them directions. But Gerard interrupted and said that he thought Americans knew everything. He was yelling, very angry at the two of them. He said that they came to a country and took over, so how could these two not know where they were going?” Hood felt his insides tighten. He had a feeling where this was headed.
“The girls thought he was joking,” Hausen continued, “and one of them put her hand on Gerard’s arm to say something— I don’t recall what. But Gerard said how dare she talk down to him and he pushed her away. She stumbled back over her own foot, into the river. The water wasn’t deep there, but of course the poor girl didn’t know that. She screamed. God, how she screamed. Her friend dropped her camera and ran to help, but Gerard grabbed her. He held her with the inside of his elbow around her neck. She was gasping, the girl in the water was screaming, and I was paralyzed. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Finally, I ran to help the girl in the river. She had swallowed water and was coughing. I struggled to get her to stand still, let alone pull her out. Gerard was angry that I tried to help, and while he yelled at me he held the girl very hard….” Hausen stopped. The anguish in his eyes had spread.
His brow was pale now, and his mouth was slack. His hands were trembling. He balled them to make them stop.
Hood took a step toward him. “You don’t have to continue—” “I do,” Hausen insisted. “Now that Gerard is back, the story must be told. I may fall, but he must be brought down as well.” Hausen rolled his lips together and took a moment to compose himself. “Gerard dropped the girl to the ground,” he continued. “She was unconscious. Then he ran to the river, jumped in, and pushed the other girl down. I tried to stop him, but I lost my footing and went under. Gerard held her there”— Hausen was pushing down with his hands— “yelling things about American girls being whores. By the time I got up it was too late. The girl was bobbing in the river, her brown hair floating behind her. Gerard left her, pulled himself from the water, and dragged the other girl in.