The Bradbury Report (20 page)

We drove north on Route 133 towards Montreal. We'd gone fewer than twenty miles, when, just before a town called Sabevois, the green car came up behind us and sounded its horn once.

“The green car,” I said to Anna.

“I've been watching it,” she said.

“They want us to pull over.” There were two men in the car, the driver motioning us to the shoulder. “What do we do?”

“We pull over,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“What do you have in mind?”

It was clear I had nothing in mind.

“I was mistaken,” she said, looking in the rearview mirror. “I do recognize one of them.”

“Is that good or bad?” I said. “For us.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “Stop fretting.”

Anna pulled off the road. The green car stopped on the shoulder, right behind us.

“Why don't we get out?” Anna said.

We got out of the truck. On both sides of the road, where we were, there were fields. A hundred yards ahead was a white clapboard farmhouse set back from the road. Running alongside the house a windbreak, a line of tall evergreens. Otherwise, there was nothing within view. The traffic passing in either direction was light. As they came upon us, a few of the northbound cars slowed to see what might be going on.

The two men in the green car got out and walked our way. I recognized the taller of the two men from Anna's journal. (
She
should be writing this report.) The other man, a black man, had not appeared in the journal. He, too, was tall, and thin, but—there was no reason to expect otherwise—his head and hands were normal size. The four of us stood by Anna's truck, on the side away from the road. The man with the scary hands—they
were
scary—looked at me. He did not speak. What was it like for him to look at me? Except for Anna, he was the
one person who had seen the clone and also, now, his original. It would have been disquieting for him to see, in such swift and stark relief, the effects of age—the abrupt passage of a man from undiminished youth (however narcotized and helpless) to the penultimate stages of disintegration—the skull just beneath the skin. All very gothic, a convention of nitwitted horror films, yet, in this case, my case, real and no doubt shocking.

He spoke first, to Anna.

“Here you are,” he said.

“And you, as well,” she said.

“How was your trip?”

“Not bad,” she said. “Yours?”

“Trying.”

“Well, it's beautiful today.”

“It is,” he said. “It's beautiful here. Have you been into Canada before?”

“Once,” she said.

“In Quebec?” he said. “
Dans cet endroit même?
”

“No,” she said.

He did not introduce the black man, who, in any case, kept his focus on the road.

I looked over at the green car. There was no one in the backseat. Did they have the clone in the trunk?

“Shall we have some more conversation?” He spoke only to Anna. “Before we get down to business?”

“Not on my account,” she said.

“You don't feel friendly towards me.”

“I don't,” she said. “You're right.”

“People generally don't,” he said. He smiled. “Something to do with my appearance.”

“Not at all,” she said.

“No. I accept it,” he said. “But there are a few things we must do. And we are on the same side.”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I'm not sure I know what side I'm on.”

“I knew your husband,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”

“What things must we do?” Anna said. “Why don't we just do them?”

“All right. Now we swap cars.”

“Here?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “You'll go on to Montreal in the car. We'll drive your truck back to Iowa. We'll leave it parked in your driveway. For a while at least, it will appear you are home.”

“Where is the clone?” I said.

“The paperwork for the car,” he said to Anna, “title and registration and insurance, is in the glove box.”

“In whose name?” she said.

“Your new one,” he said.

The black man handed him a manila envelope, which he gave to Anna. “A new passport for you, and a new driver's license.”

“What about him?” she said. She meant me. I have to admit, the way she said it felt, at that moment, gratuitously impersonal.

“Tomorrow morning at eleven,” he said, “take him to Centaur Office Supplies on the Rue de la Montagne. Will you remember that? Or shall I write it down?”

“Remember that, will you?” Anna said to me. She was teasing now, wanting to salve my feelings, which she had, in fact, hurt.

“They're expecting you,” he said. “They'll take his picture. We'll make him a new passport and driver's license. You'll have it before you leave Montreal.”

“I have a driver's license,” I said. “I won't give up my driver's license.”

“No one's asking you to,” the man said, speaking to me for the first time. “Just use the new one.” To Anna, he said: “We have the money you'll need for your time in Canada.” The black man handed him another, smaller, manila envelope. He gave it to Anna. “Wait until you're back on the road to count it. Please be frugal. If you need more, we'll try to provide it.”

“How much is there?” I said.

Again, to Anna: “You should have enough.”

“Tell them to keep their money,” I said to Anna. Then, to him: “Keep your money.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Anna said.

“We don't need it,” I said.

“Of course we do,” she said.

“In Montreal,” he said, “you'll stay in the Hotel Bonsecours on the Rue St.-Paul. Pay with cash. There's a street map of Montreal in the envelope with your passport and driver's license. I've written the name of the hotel and circled its location. Park the car in their garage. We've reserved a room for you, under your new name. You'll register as man and wife.”

“That's no good,” Anna said.

“I agree,” I said.

“It will be only a short stay. We'll send word to you there about where you go next.”

“What do we do until then?” I said.

“That's up to you,” he said to me. “If I were you, I'd calm down and try, while I could, to enjoy myself. You've a long way to go. It will be difficult.”

“That's hardly reassuring,” I said.

He laughed. He put his big hand, palm down, on top of my head. “So are you,” he said. “Hardly reassuring.”

 

We were in the green car. I was driving. Anna had opposed my taking over, but I told her I wouldn't get in the car unless she consented. We'd gone not much more than a mile when she said, with some urgency, “Slow down.”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Please, Ray,” she said. “You're going way too fast.” She put her hand on my right knee, to let me know she was serious and, by her touch, to coax me to ease up on the pedal.

“I'm angry,” I said. I slowed down.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I
was
going too fast.”

“You were. You're a bit of a kook. You know that?”

“I'm really not,” I said. “I've never been a kook. Not at all.”

“Well, take it easy,” she said.

I took a breath. “I will. I'll take it easy.”

“All right. Hotshot.” She patted my knee, then took her hand away. “There's no rush.”

I took a few moments to adjust the side mirrors and the rake of my seat. I had dropped below the speed limit. “Let me just say, I didn't like that guy.”

“I could tell.” She smiled at me. This was a good woman I'd been thrown in with. “He didn't like you either.”

“This is a lousy car,” I said.

Anna turned in her seat, away from me. She looked out her window. We were passing an industrial park that extended for what seemed like half a mile. “I miss my truck,” she said.

When she said this, I tried to remember (I couldn't, still can't) the figure of speech in which a part stands in for the whole.

“What kind of car
is
this?” I said.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Korean.”

“Maybe,” Anna said. “I don't know about cars.”

She picked up the smaller of the two manila envelopes and opened the clasp.

“How much did we get?” I said.

“Watch the road,” she said. “I'll count it.”

There were four stacks of bills, each stack bound with a thick rubber band. Anna counted one stack. “Looks like there's ten thousand dollars, Canadian.”

“Total?” I said.

“It looks like it.”

“That won't last very long.”

“We'll have to see,” she said. She picked up the other envelope and took out the passport and the driver's license.

“What's your name?” I said.

She looked at the license. “Jane Grey. I'm from Hastings, Nebraska.”

“Have you been to Nebraska?”

“I've been to Omaha,” she said. “I don't know where Hastings is.”

“I've not been in Nebraska.”

“I like my name,” she said. “Makes me sound like the heroine of a Victorian novel.” She opened the passport and looked at her picture. “Dear Lord.”

“Let me see,” I said.

“Not a chance,” she said. “Where did they get this picture?”

“Let me see it.”

“Just drive,” she said.

I would get my passport and driver's license Sunday afternoon, at the hotel, the day before we left for Ottawa. My new name was Oliver Grey. Maybe because it sounded so fusty, the name pleased me. The picture was, I thought, flattering. Anna thought so, too. It was the same pose on the driver's license. This was my first alias, long before I adopted, for the purposes of my report, a pen name, long before Anna gave the name to me, before I'd ever heard of Ray Bradbury.

As we neared Montreal, the drive became exacting. I had little experience driving in a city of this size. It was Friday afternoon, three o'clock. On the outskirts of the city, traffic was already heavy, and angry, in both directions. My fellow drivers seemed maniacal. The road signs were in French. Anna navigated. She had a road map opened in her lap, but even she was tentative. At the junction of Highway 133 and Highway 10, against Anna's clear directive, I pigheadishly went east when I should have gone west. We drove almost five miles before I would admit I'd made a mistake. When we were going in the right direction, heading back towards the city, Anna, who seemed to me unflappable, asked if I'd been to Montreal before.

“I have been,” I said. “One time. With my parents. Before my father died.” I'd been young enough, I told her, that I had no memory of
the place. I did not tell Anna—I'm not sure now why I withheld this information—that I'd been to Montreal one other time, still many years ago, with Sara.

Sara and I spent a long weekend there in early spring. We saw the sights, ate at some good restaurants (I can remember a Portuguese restaurant, near McGill, where I had sea bass for the first time), and generally enjoyed ourselves. We were celebrating the news that Sara was pregnant. In a long overdue attempt at rapprochement (this is the chapter for French), Sara's father offered to pay for our trip, but Sara turned him down.

When we were in Montreal, Sara had not yet begun to show. Nor had she experienced any morning sickness. She was in perfect health—there would be no signs of preeclampsia until a week and a half before her due date—and very happy. I was happy, too.

 

It was past four when we found, mostly by accident, the Rue St.-Paul and the Hotel Bonsecours, a narrow, four-story brick building, its exterior characterless, among a crowded stretch of small antiques shops and ethnic restaurants. The entrance to the Bonsecours was well-hidden: a single glass door—the hotel name stenciled in small black letters on the glass—which opened onto a steep flight of cement steps. The hotel lobby, small and purely utilitarian, was on the second floor, the guest rooms above on the top two floors. I parked the car in front of the hotel in a space reserved for unloading. I tried to help Anna with the bags. It was as much as I could do to carry one bag up the stairs, and I had to rest halfway. Anna made several trips. I left her with the bags to register at the reception desk—it was she who had the newly forged driver's license and passport—while I went down to move the car to the hotel's garage. By the time I'd rejoined Anna in the lobby, I'd had to climb three flights of stairs out of the garage, and then the daunting hotel staircase from the street. I was pretty much spent. Our room was on the fourth floor, Anna said. There was no elevator.

“You'd better give me a minute,” I said.

“Are you all right?” Anna said.

“I'm okay.” In a corner of the lobby there were two fake-leather
chairs on either side of a low table. On the table, someone had left a magazine. “Can we sit there?” I said. “Just until I catch my breath.”

“You sit,” she said. “I'll take the bags to the room.”

“No, no.” I said. “I don't want you to do that. Stay with me. Let's sit and talk. Then I'll help.”

We sat down. I tried to take some deep, long breaths.

“Pretty crummy place they send us to,” she said.

“Maybe the rooms are nice,” I said.

“You think so?”