Alongside Night(46)
“Unless your dietary laws—” began Mr. Ferrer.
“We don’t observe them,” said Lorimer. “We’d be delighted to join you.”
“Good. We usually eat when we get back—ten o’clock.”
After good nights were said, Elliot and Lorimer were given keys and returned upstairs, Elliot removing overcoat, jacket, and shoes, then collapsing on the living-room couch. Lorimer got her travel bag and took out a purse, presenting fifteen eurofrancs to Elliot. “What’s this for?” he asked.
“My half of the rent.”
“I didn’t ask you to split it.”
“I’d be paying one way or another. This limits my obligation.” Elliot shrugged, a difficult motion while supine, and took the bills, returning several to Lorimer. “I don’t understand,”
she said.
“You paid for dinner. The least I can do is pick up the bribes.”
She shrugged and took the bills.
“You know,” said Elliot, “you have a lot of chutzpah for a goy.”
She grinned. “If you’re going to play a role, you might as well play it to the hilt.”
“Maybe you can. But ‘to the hilt’ is exactly how I can’t play it.”
“Why not? You speak the idiom better than I do.”
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Alongside Night
Elliot paused for a moment. Interesting, he thought. “Uh—
never mind. Let’s just hope Mr. Ferrer doesn’t invite me to a steam bath.”
She shrugged again. “Coming to bed?”
“Soon,” he said. “I just want to scan the paper for a few minutes.”
“Okay.”
Elliot remained on the couch for another moment then dragged himself over to the dining table, pulling off the first section of the Times. After reading the article on the Texassecession issue up to the continuation notice, he flipped to the bottom half of the front page for the first time. There was a story headlined:
VREELAND WIDOW ASSURES PUBLIC HUSBAND DIED
NATURALLY.
Alongside Night
151
Chapter 16
Sunday it rained.
It began after five, drops of sleet pelting their bedroom window like distant shots ricocheting. Inside the darkened room, a boy and a girl lay next to one another under covers, their body heat irradiating each other against the outer cold. She reached over, turning on the light. “You still haven’t slept any, have you?”
He stared blankly up at the ceiling. No.
“You think talking about it would help any?”
“It might make me feel better. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“I wouldn’t be any closer to solving the problem. She reached over to the bed table, got a cigarette, and lit it.
“How do you know? You don’t have a monopoly on brains.”
“I don’t have the right to lay it on you.
“It would break a confidence?”
“No, that’s not it,” he said.
“Then feel better. Tell me.”
“It’s not your problem.”
“For Christ’s sake, you’re keeping me up, aren’t you? It fucking well is my problem.”
Elliot did not say anything.
“Look,” she said, “I’ll trade you problems.
He smiled slightly. “I have a feeling you’d be making a bum deal.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. As a matter of fact, we still don’t know the first thing about each other.”
She tickled behind his ear. “The first thing?”
“Well, yes, there’s that. But you can’t fuck all the time.”
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Alongside Night
“Why not?”
He smiled slightly. “Okay, we’ll trade. You start.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Sure I trust you. You start.”
“Bastard.” She took a puff. “All right, I guess you won’t turn me in. I ran away from home.”
“Definitely a firing-squad offense,” Elliot said, only slightly sarcastically.
“Quite possible. I took some microfilm with me.”
“Getting more interesting.”
“The FBI file on the Cadre and other subversives. The only complete copy left in existence after the firebombings of Bureau offices.”
Elliot was slightly awed. “And it was just laying around home?”
“Well, not exactly lying around,” she corrected him. “It was in a safe I saw being opened once. By my father. I was hiding at the time.”
“What was this file doing in your father’s safe?”
“My father is Lawrence Powers, director of the FBI.”
Elliot turned over onto his elbow and examined her face closely. “You’re not bullshitting?”
She drew a cross between her breasts.