Now and Again (47 page)

But now the matter of where to meet arose. The first place he thought of was the munitions plant lunchroom, but that wasn't realistic. Maggie no longer had an employee badge; nor, for that matter, did he. But again, as if the coffee shop had been inhibiting his problem-solving skills and the fresh air was the thing needed to jump-start mental activity, the answer came unbidden. The bus station! A transportation hub was the obvious place, but on what day and in which city? The last time they had played the travel game, he had wanted to go to Tahiti. How realistic was that?

Lyle hurried along the sidewalk to where the truck was angled in between two sleek late-model cars. The fender Will had dented in the snowstorm was starting to rust. A crack spidered across the windshield, and the defective muffler was hanging nearly to the ground. But it still started right up every time he turned the key, and he didn't reckon a man could ask much more of his truck than that.

Just as he was backing out of his parking space, he saw True Cunningham walking along the sidewalk, surrounded by a group of friends. “True,” he called out. “Hey, True!”

“Why, Lyle, I haven't seen you in I don't know how long! Maggie called me a few days ago, but when I looked for you at the plant, they told me you were no longer working there.”

Lyle motioned her over to the open window, hoping the others wouldn't follow her. “I want to get a message to Maggie,” he said. “I know you have experience with, well, with sending messages via—”

“ESP,” True finished for him in an exhibition of the very skill he was looking for.

“Exactly. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“Sure I can, honey. Now what kind of a message are you hoping to send?”

True's friends were standing on the sidewalk, craning their necks to hear what she and Lyle were talking about. Even if he took True someplace private and swore her to secrecy, it was only a matter of time before she broke down and gossiped about his business. And if, for some reason, she tried to keep his secret, the police might get it out of her, or it might be picked up by the hidden surveillance cameras everyone was installing, not to mention the fact that cell phones could surreptitiously be switched to record. Lyle put the truck in gear and tried to look as if he were late for something. “Never mind, True. I'll call you later to explain.”

When he turned onto Park Drive, he had to stop while a group of boys crossed the road, loaded down with gear and headed toward the town baseball field for an evening practice. Lyle had never been on a baseball team, never had a bunch of buddies he could rely on. It was just as well, he thought now. It might have made him soft, and first and foremost, a man ought to rely on himself.

He nestled the truck in behind a grove of cottonwood trees and spent the night alternately dozing and sending Maggie messages via ESP. Don't come home
,
he thought, but he didn't know if he could send the messages or if she could receive them. The sweat pooled in his armpits and on his brow. It had upset him to see the firepower in the sheriff's truck, and now a horrible dread came over him. What if the bus station had come to mind because Maggie was sending a message to him? Where would she go if she could go anywhere? Suddenly he knew, and it wasn't New York City or the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. It was Red Bud, Oklahoma. Don't come home, he thought again as he drifted on the edge of sleep. And don't go to the bus station. Whatever you do, Maggie, don't go there!

P
enn spent his last day in New York City shopping for an engagement ring. He hadn't known it would be so complicated: How much did he want to spend? Which cut of stone did he find appealing? Should the band be platinum or gold, and if it was to be gold, what about alloy and purity?

At each store he went to, a sales associate laid a velvet tray on the countertop and set out a selection of rings for Penn to admire. He had always been sure of himself, but now he couldn't seem to make up his mind on anything. “Perhaps you should bring your fiancée in with you,” suggested an unsmiling salesman. “The ladies tend to have definite ideas about these things.”

“She's not my fiancée yet,” said Penn.

“I see,” said the salesman, arching an eyebrow as if what he saw was not entirely pleasing. “I assume you've discussed marriage with her, though. These days couples usually discuss the ring.”

They talked about marriage endlessly, but it was always in the context of another bridegroom and another bride, and now Penn couldn't remember anything Louise had told him. He wondered if he was supposed to feel happy as he shopped, or at least as if he was trading his money for a chance at happiness. He supposed he wasn't unhappy, even if he was a little irritated when the saleswoman at Tiffany's ignored him to wait on a woman who clutched an expensive purse and disapproved of invisible flaws in an array of pearl necklaces.

“Pearls are a natural product,” said the saleswoman. “Natural products have flaws, which is one of the reasons we value them.”

“But why so pink?” asked the customer. “These aren't for my daughter, after all. They are for me.”

“What about this double strand?” asked the saleswoman. “They're really lustrous. Or, have you considered yellow—or even black?”

“Heavens, no,” said the woman. “Those are far too modern for my taste.”

When it was his turn, Penn found out that there was color to diamonds as well.

“Color is just one of the four Cs,” said the saleswoman. “Cut, clarity, color, and carat. Your job is to balance these attributes without straining your budget. Even an imperfect diamond can appear quite brilliant to the naked eye.”

“Only quite brilliant?” asked Penn.

“Quite, quite brilliant,” said the saleswoman.

Perhaps he should come back with Louise even if it ruined the surprise. Or he could buy a cheap glass ring for the proposal with the idea that they could replace it with the real thing down the road. He tried to imagine the scene: the little blue box, Louise's trembling fingers, the inevitable awkward seconds between the moment Louise first saw the substitute ring and the moment she realized it was only temporary. Much as she might be a costume jewelry convert, he didn't think she would settle when it came to an engagement ring, and he didn't want his first words after “Darling, will you marry me?” to be a long-winded explanation for why the ring he was putting on her finger was only standing in for the one they would choose together. And when would they choose it? He couldn't expect Louise to wear the temporary ring for the long months he was overseas.

Penn walked down Madison Avenue, pausing now and then to gape into the shop windows and trying not to feel defeated. It was a warm summer Friday and clutches of excited shoppers gave the city a festive air, but he couldn't help feeling critical of their high spirits. By the time he reached Forty-second Street, the crowds had thickened and changed. Now it was men and women in suits who crowded the sidewalks talking into their cell phones or rushing to catch an early train to the suburbs or the beach. Instead of turning west toward Louise's apartment, where he planned to shower and change his clothes, something made him jump into a gap in the revolving door of the library just as a woman with children was coming out. “Hi, kids,” he said, but the girl ignored him and the boy peered at him suspiciously from behind his mother's leg.

He made his way up the escalator to the room where his eyes had been opened, fully expecting to encounter the homeless man sprawled on the floor where he had first seen him, but of course he wasn't there. “I'm looking for a man who used to come in here to read books on war,” he said to a librarian sitting at the information desk. “Have you seen him lately?”

“I'm new here, but I can ask my colleague.”

Penn waited while the man went off and came back again with an older woman. “You must mean the professor,” she said. “He hasn't been here in several months, but there's a soup kitchen two blocks away. I know he used to eat there.”

Penn hurried along the sidewalk to where a group of haphazardly dressed people were clustered near a recessed entryway. It was 4:40, and a sign taped to the inside of a window said the door wouldn't open until five o'clock. He was supposed to meet Louise for an early dinner before heading to the airport to catch a flight to DC, where he would board a military transport plane. He hadn't yet told her he was going back to Iraq, and he had counted on the ring to soften the blow. But now he concluded it might be better to put off the proposal to a day when he had more time and less on his mind. That morning he had gotten up early with the pleasant sense that the day stretched endlessly before him, but now he felt rushed and indecisive. It would be folly to propose in such a harried state of mind—that and the news of his departure would ruin the atmosphere for a romantic celebration. In any case, he didn't have a ring. He leaned against the side of the building and ran his fingers against the grimy stone cladding. He still had to shower and change his clothes and head uptown to the restaurant, so if he waited until five for the soup kitchen to open, he risked being late for Louise.

He paced the length of the block and back again. Just when he had decided he was compounding his folly by waiting when he didn't even know what he was hoping to discover, an old man came around the corner tapping a gnarled stick in front of him. It took Penn almost a minute to recognize the professor. Something fundamental about him had changed, and when he banged his stick on the ground, it was without his previous air of conviction. Penn introduced himself and explained what he had been doing in the months since they had met, but the man showed no sign of recognition.

“We talked about war,” said Penn. “You told me that man is warlike, but that he doesn't like to think of himself that way.”

“I say that to everybody,” said the professor, stopping to cough into a grimy handkerchief. “Everybody who will listen, that is.”

“I gave you half a bagel.”

“Ah,” said the professor. “Half a bagel.”

“We talked about philosophy,” said Penn.

“Philosophy!” wheezed the professor. He squinted at Penn and leaned forward, balancing on unsteady feet with the help of the flimsy stick. “It seems to me that there is only one worthwhile philosophical question, and it isn't whether or not…” He started wheezing again. His eyes were red and runny, and his skin seemed to erupt in new boils while Penn watched.

“It isn't whether or not man is warlike. Of course he is. It isn't whether or not the system works to sustain itself. Of course it does. So the question is not whether it is even possible to be outside the system or whether man is doomed to be a cog in a killing machine, it…” He coughed and scrutinized his handkerchief and seemed befuddled by what he saw.

“What is the question, then? What were you going to say?”

“It is whether it is possible to be both moral and…” Here, he was taken by a paroxysm of painful coughing, accompanied by what seemed to be a memory lapse. “Where was I? Where was I?” he asked. The professor poked his stick in Penn's direction, hitting him on the kneecap, but his grip was so feeble that it bobbled and dropped from his hand.

Penn stooped to pick it up, trying to conceal his agitation. “You were saying there is only one worthwhile philosophical question.”

“Thank you, young man. Yes, exactly. I believe there is.”

“What one is that?” Penn felt increasingly desperate, and while it occurred to him that he was listening to an old man's ramblings, he was certain the professor possessed the kernel of truth he was looking for.

Now it was the old man's turn to say, “What? What one is what?”

“The question!” cried Penn, but the professor's response was interrupted when a volunteer in a red apron came with a ring of keys to open the door for the long line of people that had formed on the sidewalk.

“What's for dinner?” shouted the professor.

“Come in and you'll find out,” said the volunteer.

“I'm hoping it's not meat loaf,” said a scrawny woman who was standing near them.

At the sound of the keys, another horde of people had materialized, and now they were jostling for position in the line. The professor used his stick to clear a space for himself as the volunteer called out, “One at a time, please! There's plenty for everybody!”

“But it's not yet five!” cried Penn. His wristwatch, which had been given to him by his father when he went off to college, was finely calibrated and had neither lost nor gained a minute in the nine years he had owned it.

“One at a time,” the volunteer called again. Cooking smells wafted out the door to mingle with the exhaust from a passing bus and the stink of rotting garbage that curled up from the curb.

“What's the one philosophical question?” Penn was shouting now, but the old man had scuttled up to the door and was vanishing through it. “Can you at least tell me that?”

The volunteer smiled benignly at Penn. “It's hard to think about philosophy when you're hungry,” she said. “Come back after dinner. Maybe you'll get your answer then.”

Penn slung his duffel over his shoulder and wandered through a nearby park where an art class was experimenting with line and form. “Solids and voids,” said a bearded man when Penn stopped to peer over his shoulder at the abstractions on his canvas. The face of Penn's watch showed 6:04. It was too late to shower, too late to change his clothes, too late to be on time for Louise. He walked another block west and turned north on the Avenue of the Americas. It was seventeen blocks to the restaurant overlooking Central Park. He imagined hailing a cab and getting locked in rush-hour traffic or jogging up the avenue on foot, becoming sweatier with each block while Louise tapped her long fingers on the tablecloth and ordered a bottle of imported water and then a selection of appetizers when he still didn't appear. He saw her choosing an expensive wine and sending it back when it wasn't quite what she expected.

Suddenly it seemed easier to go back to the war than to face Louise without a ring, without a life plan, without a polished sense of who he was or how he was going to answer life's big questions. With only a vague sense of what those questions were. All around him, people were making small protests against fate: the taxicab drivers fighting over a customer, the fat woman enjoying a candy bar, the thin woman shaking a tambourine and belting out a gospel song. Even the proprietor of a nearby newsstand waved cheerfully at the headlines:
MARKETS SLAMMED BY BIG OIL
,
RUSSIA WIDENS
ATTACKS ON GEORGIA, CRISIS DEEPENS AS BIG BANKS FAIL, OKLAHOMA WOMAN SOUGHT IN LEAKED DOC PROBE.
He followed a carefree young woman who tossed her hair and crossed against the light. Then Times Square exploded in front of him, and he felt a wave of happiness wash over him, or if it wasn't happiness, it was at least a sense that cross-purposes and conflicting messages and questions with no clear answers weren't necessarily bad and might even be evidence of progress. He told himself that he had done a little good in the warehouse. He and the men had started something, and whether or not they finished it wasn't up to him. He'd call Louise. Or he'd leave a message with the maître d' of the restaurant. He'd send her flowers. Meanwhile, he had a plane to catch.

On the plane, Sinclair went over his orders again. He was being assigned to an engineer battalion that had undergone intensive stateside training with a new generation of robotic devices that were now being deployed overseas. The first wave of combat robots had been plagued with technical issues and precipitously pulled from the theater after reports of malfunction and friendly fire. But improvements had been made and hopes were high that the new devices would save soldiers' lives. He re-read the spec sheets: the Groundhog was equipped with an M249 light machine gun that could shoot a thousand rounds per minute with 100 percent accuracy; the Parakeet could fly thirty miles per hour and hover in place as long as its power source lasted, which depended on factors like wind resistance and operator skill. If only they'd had a robot scouting the supply route that terrible day. But now he was being given a chance to save future soldiers even if there was nothing he could do about the past.

He put his head against the seat back and closed his eyes, happier than he'd been in a long time. He wondered what the new troops would be like. He wondered if there would be a businessman like Kelly or a computer whiz like Le Roy or an escape artist like Pig Eye—Edwards, he corrected himself. Paul Edwards was his name. Or a poet like Danny or a captain like himself, given leadership before he was completely ready for it. He knew that in some respects the men and women were all unique—of course they were—but in other respects, they were all the same.

I
t was early morning when the last truck driver let Maggie out at the Red Bud exit. Now and then a car sped off the highway heading toward town, but she didn't try to flag it down. What if it was someone she knew? She wouldn't know how to answer the inevitable questions and she didn't want to lie, so she walked with her head down, eyes glued to the dirt. Every time she caught a glimpse of her shadow stretching behind her, she thought it might be Dino, but of course it wasn't. She tried to decide whom she had let down more—God, because she hadn't kept her promise to him, or Tomás and George, because nothing she had done for them had made a tangible difference. She remembered how she had declared so confidently to anyone who would listen, “Saving someone else's son is the only way to save my own.” But she hadn't saved someone else's son. So far, she hadn't saved anybody. All she'd done was to raise the hopes of people who couldn't stand too much more disappointment, which didn't seem particularly kind under the circumstances. When she turned onto Old Oak Road, her heart started knocking like the engine of the truck on a cold day. Lyle! she thought. Will! And then she knew who it was she had let down most of all.