“I called the house,” she said. “I called and called. They said the phone’s disconnected.”

“Aw,” he said. “Damn Communists. They hate to pay their bills, they just hate it. Not like they don’t have the money.”

“Jackie,” she said. “Something’s happened.”

She sat down again, and held her head. Jackie took from his pocket a great handkerchief, snapped it and spread it on the step, and sat beside her. He said nothing more, only waited for her to begin: and when she could, she told him all that had happened, what she had been told, what had been asked of her.

“And what did you say?”

“I said I would. I said okay I would.”

“You did?”

“Well what could I say? What if I said no and they did something, something…I just couldn’t tell them I wouldn’t.”

He took his pipe from his pocket and began to stuff its great mouth with shaggy tobacco. “And do you plan to tell Falin about this?” he asked. “I mean about them and what they said?”

“Of course. Of course I will. What do you think.”

He marveled at her. “God damn,” he said. “A double agent.”

“What do they want?” she said. “Why did they say those things? They said they want to be sure about him. But what does that mean? What do they think?”

“Well,” Jackie said. “Look at it from their angle. Here’s a guy who wrote some kind of allegorical poems some time ago, poems nobody seemed to take a lot of notice of, but nobody objected to very much either, and then got some other poems published in other countries, for which you can go to prison or worse. Then he writes a letter, an open letter, to Khrushchev and admits all that stuff, and calls Khrushchev on stuff. Right?”

“I guess.”

“Well, then what? Nothing. They call him in to question him, but he always comes out again. Then suddenly it’s in the papers that there’s been a trial and he’s been stripped of his citizenship and is being sent out of the country. Not what usually happens over there. So it makes you think.”

“Makes you think what? What?”

“Well what if a deal got made. What if they told him, okay, we’ll make it look like we got mad and threw you out, if you’ll agree to act as an agent for us over there. It’s that or. You know.” He made a gun with his hand and shot himself in the temple.

“He’s not a spy,” Kit said. “He’s not.”

“Well,” Jackie said. “How about this, though. Maybe he was an American agent, all along. And he was in danger of being exposed. And we planned it all, the open letter and all, because we had this way of getting him out, by having him kicked out for his provocative act, because we have guys high enough up in their system to do that.”

“We do?”

“Maybe we do.”

She thought of Milton Bluhdorn: Your country went to a lot of trouble for Mr. Falin. “Well then why,” she said, “do they want to spy on him? Why would they want me to?”

“An agent can always be turned one more time,” Jackie said. “If the Russians sussed out the Americans’ plan, they could be pretending to be fooled by it. And Falin might still really be their guy. The only way to be sure a spy ain’t changed sides is to end his career.”

She covered her face in her hands.

“And you’re planning to tell Falin what they wanted you to do,” Jackie said.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Acourse you will. And acourse they must have thought of that.”

She studied his face, trying to guess where his thought was headed. “If they thought that,” she said, “then what good would it do them, to, to.”

“Maybe all they care for him to hear,” Jackie said, “is that they asked about him. That they can get to people he knows and ask them. Just to let him know they’re thinking about him.”

She only looked at him, until he seemed to see in her face the dread and disbelief she felt; he took her hands and lifted her to her feet. “Aw hell with ’em,” he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. “They’re just being paranoid, no doubt. Knowing they don’t know everything, but not knowing what it is they don’t know, which is probably nothing anyway.” He held her tight. “Surely’s nothing, in fact. Surely.”

They walked.

“She asked me, the dean did,” Kit said, “about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

Jackie said nothing.

“She said she thought it didn’t mean anything that I was at that meeting, that it was just curiosity.”

“Well that’s all it was.”

“Yes. But how did she know about it?”

Jackie shook his head, in wonderment or ignorance or disgust. “Man,” he said. “Oh man.”

“Do you still have your car?” she asked him.

“Oh sure.”

“Would you take me out there? To his house?”

“Well,” Jackie said, and stopped to light his pipe. “Yes. I’d be happy to. But you know you got to get used to this game. Maybe you wouldn’t want to race right over there soon as you can. Looks…Well you think how it looks.”

“Just take me,” she said. “Please.”

She made him stop as soon as they came near the house and she could see in the driveway the green convertible, its top still down, so that she knew Falin must be home; and she told Jackie she’d walk from there. He sat with the VW’s engine running, looking at her as though trying to see her insides, what she knew or thought she knew that was causing her to act as she did; then he shook his head and threw up his hands, not up to me; and she kissed his cheek and got out.

“I’ll wait,” he said to her out the window.

“No don’t,” she said.

“It’s a long walk back to town.”

“It’s okay. Don’t wait.”

The grasses were yellow and the trees browning and riddled by bugs, whose noise filled up the still day. The house too looked more aged, used, battered than it had. She went around past the lilacs, which had grown nearly together to block the path. When she saw that he sat at the gray picnic table in his undershirt her heart swelled and then shrank painfully. Everything now different, hurt, endangered, that had been so strong and full before.

“Hi.”

He turned, and his face filled with pleasure but not surprise to see that it was she. He had a blackened bone-handled kitchen knife with which he was cutting tomatoes on a flowered plate. He rose as though he meant to come and embrace her, but she stopped before she came close to him, and so he paused too, still smiling.

“Tomatoes,” she said. Her hands behind her back. “Nice.”

“Yes. They are now ripe. So huge and red, so generous. Not potatoes yet.”

“Something’s happened,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“You know?” she said.

“I know that something has happened. While we wrote poems and tomatoes grew.” He sat slowly again, and showed her with a hand that she should sit opposite him. But she still stood.

“What?” she said. “What happened?”

“Kyt,” he said. “I am very glad to see you. I am so very glad.”

She sat then by him, uncertain, feeling that she was already betraying him, that if he touched her she would poison or taint him; but when he put his hand on her shoulder it calmed her. He didn’t say anything, only waited, and she told him what had happened, the dean and Milton Bluhdorn and the questions asked her. As she spoke he withdrew his hand from her.

“And he asked these things of you to learn—to learn what?” he asked. “What is suspected?”

“That you might be connected to, to. Your old country and the leaders there. That you might be still on their side really.”

“You mean what is called asset of theirs.” He cut a wedge of the big beefsteak and salted it from a glass shaker.

“Called what?”

“In capitalist countries, so called. Assets are friendly or helpful ones, people or institutions willing to do secret work. They ask if I am Soviet asset. Not American asset.” He said it lightly, dangerously. “Assets of course can become liabilities, move to other column of books. If they are exposed or become for any reason useless.”