Hearts of Sand(63)

“So?” Andy asked. “Did he end his days living in the Caribbean with native girls?”

“There are no native girls in the Caribbean,” Kyle said. “And he ended his days in a modest two-story house where he’d lived for most of his adult life. He didn’t make a dime out of the polio vaccine. He gave the formula away for free on condition that the people who made the stuff also give it away or free. He thought making sure no child ever again got polio was more important than the money.”

Andy shook his head. “If you think I’m going to admire that, I don’t. It’s a stupid Hollywood gesture. You need money to survive in this world, and there’s no point in scraping by if you don’t have to. I don’t see you scraping by. You had a job with Legal Aid. You didn’t stay there.”

“No,” Kyle admitted. “I didn’t.”

“And that friend of yours out in Alwych,” Andy said. “Tim what’s his name, that runs the clinic.”

“Brand,” Kyle said.

“He may spend his time running a free clinic, but he’s got trust fund money out the wazoo. He isn’t putting himself in any danger of going broke.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Life’s a bitch and then you die,” Andy said. “There isn’t anything that would make me sit still with scraping by if I didn’t have to. And the only reason why I don’t go for the kind of thing the senator did is that I know I wouldn’t get away with it.”

“I’ve got to go,” Kyle said. “I’m supposed to be doing something with fireworks for a party tonight. Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Do you think it was all about the money for them, too?” Kyle asked. “John Adams. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson.”

“Sure it was,” Andy said. “They were a bunch of rich guys who didn’t want to pay taxes to Great Britain. I can’t believe you’re having this fit. You never struck me as that kind of guy.”

“I never struck me as that kind of guy, either,” Kyle said.

He got out of the booth and reached under the table for the briefcase that was identical to the one he’d brought, but much lighter. Then he walked down the length of the deli and out into the bright hot air.

2

By eight o’clock, Tim Brand was willing to admit that there was not going to be much business at the clinic for the night. He went out the back door to sit on the low stone wall next to the stairs that led up to Main Street. It was usually quiet back there, except for the nurses taking cigarette breaks.

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and checked for messages, but there were none of any importance. He took out a package of Altoids peppermints and opened it. He stuck three of the things in his mouth and felt his tongue burn.

There was a noise at the top of the cement stairs and he looked up. A woman was coming down toward him, wearing a longish skirt and a T-shirt and espadrilles. He knew who she was immediately, but what his mind told him was: She’s still eighteen.

The woman got to the bottom of the stairs, and the face became—well, not eighteen anymore.

We’re both forty-eight, Tim thought.

Virginia came the rest of the way down the stairs and took a seat a little ways from him on the stone wall. Then she took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her skirt and lit up.

“I can’t do this in public anymore,” she said. “Put a picture of this in the paper and I’m probably done. I love cigarettes, though. I think it’s one of the great injustices of the world that they aren’t good for you.”

“They are good for you in some ways,” Tim said. “It’s just that, in other ways, they kill you. I thought you’d quit.”

“I thought I’d quit, too. I smoke about five of the things a day now. It’s better than the old three packs.”

Tim watched as Virginia studied her cigarette. People rarely noticed it, but they looked remarkably alike. It wasn’t that common in fraternal twins.

“Is there a reason for the visit?” he asked. “It can’t be just because you’re in town. You’re in town a lot without coming to see me.”

“I could say I came because there are things I wanted to know, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well,” Virginia said, “I’d like to know why it’s all right for you to do what you do and at the same time deny women common ordinary things men would expect to have without issue, but when I fight for women to have those things, I’m just advancing a selfish agenda. I’d like to know why denying and depriving and restricting women is an acceptable foible in someone doing Good Works, when it wouldn’t be an acceptable foible to treat anybody else that way. Why is it, Tim, that what women need is always a side issue?”