“I don’t see the point of this. There’s nothing you can do down there.”

“I can’t sit on my hands.” The line inched forward. She glared at the clock, worried about the time; traffic on the bridge had coagulated around a stalled car and she was late. “Will you do something for me? Will you keep feeding the fire under your friend O’Hillary?”

“Sure—sure.”

“Not that it’ll do much good. It’s a grotesque farce. They’re all engaged in this monstrous masquerade.”

“You’re getting alarmingly paranoid about this, Carole.”

“I am? Then why is it, do you suppose, that I could hire one solitary middle-aged man with a limp and no pull at all, and he was able to accomplish in six days what all the forces of the most powerful government on earth failed to do in fifteen?”

“Your man Crobey may think he knows the name one of them used fifteen years ago but that’s a far cry from catching them. He’s no closer to them than anybody else is. Why persist in this absurd anti-Washington neurosis? You know they’re doing everything they can.”

The queue crept forward a notch. Howard put the case down to free his hands for a cigarette. Carole said, “Don’t you know those things will stunt your growth?” Agitation made her bounce up and down on the balls of her feet; she kept looking resentfully at the clock above the oblivious ticket clerk. A metallic disembodied voice ran around overhead, half comprehensible—“Mr. Equation Funeral, Mr. Equation Funeral, please report to the American Airlines information desk.”

“You’re flagellating yourself,” Howard told her in an intense hiss. “Stop building dungeons in the air. No one’s conspiring to cover up Robert’s murder.”

“Howard, I’ve never known quite such a round-heeled pushover as you are. Working in the guts of it all this time I’d have thought you’d have learned better. I hold these truths to be self-evident: That irrespective of realities, the deformed indoctrinations of nationalistic stupidities will take precedence every time over basic human morality; that the secret war against Castro is not over just because the President of the United States goes on television and says it’s over; and that us niggers are being discriminated against because these terrorists happen to be the right political color—therefore they will be protected whatever their crimes.”

“Carole, your mouth runneth over.” Howard had gone very pale; he glanced around to see if anyone had overheard.

She slapped her bag down on the counter and demanded her ticket. When that rigamarole was completed—“Aisle or window?… Smoking or nonsmoking?”—she snatched up the boarding pass, hiked her bag over her shoulder and turned to Howard to make a grab for the overnight case. Howard kept it, determined to race along with her to the plane. Striding across the terminal he got some of his color back. “I get awfully tired of banging up against that brittle impregnable wall of your wise-ass cracks,” he drew a shuddering long breath to continue, “and I wish that just once in a while you’d give the rest of the world credit for possessing at least a tenth of the lofty moral values that you claim to possess.”

There was another queue at the security funnel. The metal detector kept beeping and several men were emptying out their pockets of coins, keys, cigarette cases, ballpoints. The loudspeaker announced the final boarding call for Carole’s flight to San Juan.

She began to push forward, cutting into the line, fuming.

Howard grabbed her sleeve. “Calm down. They won’t take off without you—they wouldn’t dare.” The afterthought amused him; she saw it in his eyes and knew abruptly that he was patronizing her. She couldn’t stand it.

She said, “You can still be a master of the gentlemanly shiv when you want to be,” and icily put her shoulder to him.

The queue began to move again. Carole placed handbag and overnight case on the moving belt. “Try to keep me posted, will you?”

“Yes, I’ll try.” He wasn’t quite being evasive; he was just staying low-key in order to counterbalance her. She knew he wasn’t her enemy. Looking back from beyond the checkpoint she caught the gentle worry in his face. He still had a hopeless remnant of feeling for her.

Howard waved; and she ran to catch her plane.

Incidents could be remembered but it was hard to recall a passion that was dead. She had loved, or been infatuated with, or had fond affection for, or perhaps merely sought refuge in Howard; but what she remembered most vividly from their marriage was the moment in Alexandria when they had looked at each other and realized they were stuck with each other. It was too depressing; not a word had passed between them but after that they had gone about embittering each other’s lives until there was no possibility of re-warming the soufflé of pastel dreams with which they had fed their initial illusions. The question of blame didn’t come into it: Vindictive-ness had consumed them both. Now it was burnt out and she was grateful for that because she was able to view him as human.

Nothing remained between them except a distant fondness, as for a cousin who lived two thousand miles away with whom you exchanged Christmas cards and perhaps a biennial phone call. They were still wired tenuously to each other by memories of the dead child. Robert—Robert, she thought, we owed you a better chance than you got. She knew in her intellect that nothing she could do would make up for it. But all the same she was on this plane.

Crobey collected her in the midst of a chattering mob. He looked a bit surly. Making no offer to carry her bag he led the way outside into a drizzling rain that matted her hair in seconds. Crobey trudged across the parking lot without talking to her at all and she felt as if she were an errant schoolgirl being tugged along by the ear. He folded himself in behind the wheel of a little bullet-shaped car, not opening the passenger door for her, waiting stone-faced with his hand on the ignition until she pushed her case into the back seat and got in. Then Crobey turned the key; the starter meshed brutally; he jerked the lever into drive and the car lurched forward.

She said, “You’re bilious tonight.”

“Yeah. I had one of those submarine sandwiches. It keeps surfacing.” Finally he came out with it. “I don’t recall inviting you.”

“I don’t recall giving you a choice.”

He drove it onto the expressway. An amazing traffic of suicidal imbeciles zigzagged all around them. Carole composed herself. “Do you think you could be an angel and give me a progress report?”

“Not much to report.” The wipers batted back and forth. Red tail-lights swam in the windshield. A huge baroque old car fish tailedpast, swerving, cutting in too soon, and Crobey had to stab the brake. She warded off the dashboard with her palm. “I made a little progress,” he conceded.

She let the silence run until it was clear he wanted prompting. “I’m not just here to feed you lines. What progress?”

“Somebody seems to be interested in me.” He had his attention on the rear-view mirror.

“The Rodriguez gang?”

“Or anybody. My ex-wife’s private detectives, who knows.”

The expressway ended in a muddy rubble of construction. Crobey maneuvered it through the side streets onto Avenida Ashford. The tall beach-front hotels might have been in Miami Beach. Reflected neon colors melted and ran along the wet pavements. A fool blocked Crobey’s progress, leaving them stranded at the stoplight. When the light changed Crobey kicked the pedal; the car shot forward half a block and abruptly, without signaling, Crobey turned it into a narrow passage.

Street lights shone pale along the empty alley; at the far corner a traffic light blinked red, on and off. Crobey pulled in to the curb and extinguished the lights.

She reached for the door handle but Crobey stayed her. He kept watch on the mirror. After a while he said, “All right,” and switched on the lights and drove on.