Revolution Number 9 (32 page)

She lay in bed—their bed—for a long time. She learned that peace and quiet were not the same thing. She fell asleep—and down into a dream of San Francisco, this time speeded up, like a synopsis. Going into labor on the Golden Gate Bridge. Tires bursting. Traffic disappearing. Getting stuck in the car. Someone coming toward her. But this time it wasn’t Uncle Sam. It was Charlie. He had a big grin on his face and a Molotov cocktail in his hand. Her unconscious worked a calculus of its own.

Emily awoke in a sweat. She got up, went into the bathroom for a glass of water. She drank it looking out the window, the back window, with its view of the pond.

The night was still, the pond like black glass. Nothing moved except a light on
Straight Arrow
, bobbing down at the dock.

Charlie.

Emily, in her nightdress, ran downstairs, outside, across the lawn, and onto the dock; her bare feet made no noise on the planks. A cone of yellow light shone on
Straight Arrow
’s console. The casing was open. Emily saw wires, tools, the shadow of a man, and his hands, working in the yellow cone.

“Charlie?” she said. But even as she spoke, she was thinking about those hands, too lean, so capable.

Something metal clattered on
Straight Arrow
’s deck. The light went out. Emily heard a grunt, quick footsteps; and then the light was on again, shining in her eyes. She smelled mouthwash, deodorant, aftershave.

“Hi,” said a voice, and she felt again one of those hands on her shoulder. The light declined, down her body, clad in the thin nightdress, down to her bare feet. In its penumbra she could make out Jack Pleasance standing before her, pliers and screwdrivers in his snakeskin belt.

“Mr. Pleasance,” she said, jerking out from under his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What needs to be done, ma’am.”

Emily’s voice rose, rose on the force of her frustration, doubt, worry. “You’re on our property, Mr. Pleasance. I want you to leave now.”

He smiled: a gleam in the night. His hand disappeared in his pocket, emerged with another gleam. He raised it to his teeth, bit into it, pulled. A straight razor opened in the space between
them; the kind of razor that cowboys used. It went with his boots, his belt, his squinting eyes.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s you and me go inside and discuss it.”

Emily considered turning to run; she considered jumping into the pond. But with the baby inside her could she outrun him, or outswim him? She didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that he would use that razor on her, that he would have no compunction about using it, that he wanted to use it. The proof was in his smile.

B
y the time Charlie found Hugo Klein’s office, it was almost dawn, the morning after the deaths of Brucie, Svenson, and the little Chinese man. Klein’s office was in Berkeley, on Shattuck, a few blocks below the university. Charlie went into a coffee shop on the opposite side of the street, had a cup of coffee, then another. He tried to remember when he had last slept. Had it been in Toronto, or before? He ordered a third cup. This seemed to please the counterman, who paused to complain to Charlie about the kind of money ballplayers were making, and waited for some indication of agreement. But Charlie, thinking of Candlestick the night before, and the way it had glowed like an artifact from a more-advanced planet, said nothing.

The night began to pale. Charlie paid his bill and left the café. He stood across the street from Klein’s office. Dawn gave it color and shape: a creamy affair with arched windows and red tiled roof, that could have passed for the palacio of some minor Castilian figure, perhaps one who had been unable to land the architect he wanted.

Hugo Klein appeared at seven in a long low convertible. He stepped out, wearing a sweat suit and jogging shoes, smoothed his hair, and stretched his arms to the sky, like a triumphant Olympian. A young man in a three-piece suit hurried out of the building, got in the car, and drove it away. Klein didn’t go inside; instead, he started loping up the street. Charlie, in street shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt, followed him on the other side, trying to pass for a jogger on his morning routine. In some places he might not have gotten away with it; in Berkeley, no one looked at him twice.

Klein wasn’t fast, but he kept a steady rhythm, his silky mane bobbing up and down in syncopation. The sun was still behind the hills, leaving them in a half-light. Klein turned right, ran past the university, and up into the hills, not slowing his pace at all. Charlie, on the other side of the street and about fifty yards behind, broke a sweat. Klein was running easily now, and faster. That suited Charlie, although he really wasn’t built for distance running. He didn’t know where Klein was going, couldn’t have explained why he was following him, but it felt good to sweat, to run—as though he was getting something accomplished. He almost forgot about Brucie and Svenson and the little Chinese man.

Three quarters of the way to the top of the hill, Klein turned again, and jogged north on a pleasant street, green and quiet. The sun rose over the hilltop, pouring saturated color on green herb gardens, a red tricycle on an uncut lawn, bundled yellow newspapers, Klein’s silvery bobbing mane. As Klein came to a house with a beat-up Ford compact in the driveway and a blue Toyota Tercel on the street in front, he reached into his sweat suit. Without pausing, or even slowing down, he slipped something through the rear window of the Tercel. Something red, Charlie thought: fiery for one moment in the sun, like a hot coal.

Klein ran on. Charlie crossed the street, jogged past the Tercel, stopping to look inside. A red rose lay on the back seat. He glanced at the house: it had a yard just big enough for a single palm tree; weeds grew out of the eaves troughs; 227 was the number on the doorpost, in tin.

Ahead, Klein rounded a curve and disappeared. Charlie
quickened his pace. His feet were hurting now, and he thought about removing his hard shoes. He was still thinking about it when he picked up Klein again, turning at a cross street.

They started downhill, Klein about fifty yards in front, a sweat stain growing in the middle of his back. Ahead, the bay was baby blue in the early light, and fog was stacked up over the city across the water like whipped cream on a wedding cake. Klein ran all the way down to Shattuck, then turned left, completing the rectangle. People were on the streets now; a few of them greeted Klein, looking up at him with smiles on their faces. Charlie couldn’t see Klein’s expression: he could only observe how he lifted his knees a little higher, pumped his arms a little faster, each time someone said hello, the sweat stain spreading across his back. Klein picked up speed as he neared his office. He was almost sprinting when the young man in the three-piece suit opened the front door and let him through.

Charlie stopped on the other side, breathing hard, hard enough to want to hold his sides. He resisted. The young man looked up and down the street, as though storing mental images of the outdoors for the long office day ahead, and closed the door. The city hummed.

Charlie stayed where he was. His pulse and breathing fell to their normal rates; only his mind kept racing. He watched Klein’s office, hoping the door would open, hoping Klein would come back out, hoping for something. But Klein didn’t come out, and Charlie began to doubt that he would until the end of the day. Charlie didn’t want to wait all day. He took off his shoes and socks and started walking.

He walked along Shattuck, up Bancroft Way, past the university; then up the hill, and left, retracing Klein’s run along the green and pleasant street until he came to the house with the palm tree and the tin 227 on the doorpost. The old Ford was still in the driveway, but the blue Tercel with the red rose on the backseat was gone.

Charlie stood before the house, shoes in hand. He heard a trumpet playing, not far away. The song was “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” but the tempo was very fast and the tone was honking, rude, funny. Technically the player wasn’t bad, almost good enough to bring it off. Charlie listened as the
trumpeter tried one thing, then another, moving farther and farther from a simple tune about streams and dreams. The music died abruptly, leaving various ideas unresolved. It was only then that Charlie realized that the sound had come from inside 227.

Charlie had moved onto the driveway and now stood by the old Ford. His mind was back in the spring of 1970, watching Rebecca. She was running toward him across the central quad, her eyes excited and happy. But she wasn’t running toward him at all: past him, unseeing, and into the arms of her father. Hugo Klein, smiling with pride, handed her a bunch of red roses. Hadn’t there been another time when he had seen Rebecca with red roses—or perhaps a single one? When?

The night of the bombing.

The door of 227 opened. A young man came out. He had a duffel bag in one hand, a trumpet case in the other. He might have been twenty or twenty-one. He was almost as tall as Charlie, almost as broad; his hair and skin were a little darker. Charlie registered all that, but not consciously. His conscious mind, so recently full of images of Rebecca and red roses, was now absorbing the fact the young man looked just like him; or just as he had looked when he was twenty or twenty-one—say, back in 1970.

The young man, carrying the duffel bag and the trumpet case, walked toward the beat-up Ford. Then he noticed Charlie standing at the edge of the lawn, shoes in hand. He gave Charlie a pointed glance, perhaps expecting he would go away, opened the trunk of the car, then glanced at him again and saw he hadn’t.

“Something I can help you with?” asked the young man, laying the bag and the trumpet in the trunk. Charlie saw a rugby ball and pair of cleats beside the spare tire. They didn’t look like baseball cleats, but he was too far away to be sure.

“What’s your name?” Charlie said. It was the first question to separate from the wriggling nest of questions that had risen in his mind; the words popped out before he could stop them.

The young man straightened. His chest swelled, in the inflationary manner of threatened mammals. “Why do you want to know?”

“I heard you playing. You play well.”

“Thanks.” The young man closed the trunk with a bang.

Charlie stepped forward, onto the lawn. He felt the grass under his feet, drier and coarser than the outfield grass on the ball field at Morgan, and wished his shoes were on. “I …”

“Yes?”

What had Malik said? Rebecca, pregnant with Malik’s child, had left Toronto in late summer or early fall of 1970, gone to San Francisco for an abortion. But Malik hadn’t known that the child wasn’t his, and he hadn’t known that the abortion never happened. Wasn’t that the only explanation of what he was now seeing with his own eyes? That left the question of how to begin.

“I knew your mother,” Charlie said.

“Yeah?” replied the young man. “She’s not home.”

The next question, had Charlie still been following Mr. G’s agenda, was: where is she? It remained unasked. Instead, Charlie heard himself say, “What about your father?”

“My what?”

“Your father.”

Charlie, almost without realizing it, had begun to cross the lawn. The young man squinted at him over the top of the car. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Blake Wrightman,” Charlie replied.

The young man’s face, healthy, unwrinkled, unlined, still partly the face of a boy, didn’t change expression. “I think there’s some kind of mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother never mentioned you. And I don’t have a father.”

“Everyone has a father somewhere.”

“Mine died in Vietnam.”

“Who told you that?” Charlie’s voice rose despite himself.

The young man’s voice rose too. “What do you mean, who told me?” He looked closely at Charlie, his eyes coming to rest on the shoes in Charlie’s hand. “I’ve got to get going,” he said, and opened the car door.

Boy, it was your grandfather who died in Vietnam:
that was Charlie’s thought. He almost said it out loud. Then the lines of
the young man’s family tree began to come in focus. Everyone had two grandfathers. The young man’s other grandfather was Hugo Klein. What were the implications of that?

The young man was getting into the car; the conversation was over for him, one of those chance urban encounters with a crank. Charlie walked around the car.

“Wait.” Afraid of causing damage, he’d been too oblique.

The young man paused, halfway into the car. “Why don’t you get out of the sun for a while? You’re a little mixed-up.” He sat in the driver’s seat and started to close the door. Charlie grabbed the inside of the frame. The young man pulled; Charlie resisted. The young man was strong, Charlie stronger. As soon as Charlie realized that, as soon as he realized what he was doing, he let go of the door. It slammed shut. Too late. The young man was looking up at him through the open window with animosity, his tolerance for street-crazy behavior exhausted.

Charlie stepped back. “It’s a mix-up,” he said, “but not the kind you think.”

“No?” said the young man, sliding the key into the ignition. “Who is it you’re looking for exactly?”

“Your mother. Rebecca Klein.”

“That’s not my mother’s name.” The young man turned the key and shifted into reverse.

“Look at me,” Charlie said. “Look at my face.”

The young man looked at him, looked at his face. What was obvious to Charlie was invisible to him. “You’d better get some help,” he said. “Try the Med Center.” He stepped on the gas. The car squealed out onto the street, swung around, stopped with another squeal, then jerked forward and sped away. In a few moments it rounded a leafy curve and vanished.

Charlie stood on the grass, looking at nothing, smelling exhaust. He sat down and put his shoes on. He was lacing them when he saw a man coming along the sidewalk. The man had long gray hair, a full gray beard; he wore sandals and a blue robe that reminded Charlie of some Saharan tribe. He was reading a book, reading aloud: his muttering grew audible. As the man came closer, Charlie could make out the title. It was
Dune
. The man drew alongside Charlie, raised his hand palm
up like a priest of some ancient and orthodox cult. He spoke. “How does your garden grow?”