by Nancy Kress
Cavanaugh smiled. “Got it, Chief.”
He found his cubicle, signed in his password on its computer, and checked it by calling up his e-mail. In two minutes he was back in Felders’s office. “Marty? Could I take a rain check on dinner? In fact, could I leave right after the case meeting?”
“Leave? Why?”
Cavanaugh thought of saying, I have to unpack; there are all these boxes and I can’t even find my ties … but a good look at Felders’s face changed his mind. He and Felders had always been honest with each other. And Marty was—had been—could be again—his friend.
“It’s Judy. Yesterday I sent her flowers and a letter, but she just sent me an e-mail, and …” Men didn’t talk to each other like this, even men who were friends. Judy’s e-mail had said, Thanks for the roses. Don’t call me.
“Judy?” Felders said. “She fucking you over?”
“No. More my fault.”
“I always thought she was too good for you.”
“Yes,” Cavanaugh said simply, and the two men stared at each other. Then Felders shrugged. “Go after her then. But after the meeting. You can work the weekend for the time you’ll miss. And if you do get lucky, I don’t want to hear about it.”
Which meant, Cavanaugh knew, Good luck.
After the meeting he raced to Judy’s new apartment. It was in an acceptable but not upscale part of D.C. She came to the door in shorts and T-shirt, her red hair frazzled from tugging on it, which meant she’d been writing. She went still.
“Robert.”
“Judy. You look wonderful,” he said, which was true. Thinner, more toned, glowing. What had she been doing to herself? Or someone to her? Behind her, the apartment looked different from Judy’s other places, too. Stripped-down, minimalist. Not a knitted doohickey in sight.
“Thank you,” Judy said. “I just sent you an e-mail asking you not to call me.”
“I know. I got it. But I’m not calling; I’m here. Can I come in?”
“I don’t think so. I’m on a deadline for a big science article.”
“I won’t stay long.”
“You won’t stay at all. We don’t have anything to say to each other, Robert.”
“Not true,” Cavanaugh said. “I have something to say.”
She studied him. “You look different, Robert. More … I don’t know. Just different somehow.”
“Good. Because what I have to say is different. Judy, will you marry me?”
She went white, then red. But the chromoscape lasted only a moment. Afterward she said calmly, “Don’t you have to wear a tie to work anymore, Robert?”
“Yes. Will you marry me?”
“No.”
Despite his shock—it had always been she who pushed, he who refused—Cavanaugh didn’t gape at her. He shifted his weight, planting his shoes more firmly on her threshold. Still, his startlement must have showed; Judy smiled faintly.
“Surprised you, huh? I’m sorry, Robert. It’s not that I don’t … still …” Her voice broke and he took a hopeful step forward. But she held up a warning hand. “No, don’t. You don’t understand, Robert. I need to be able to trust my husband. Trust him not to disappear, not to be unfaithful, not to generally treat me like an albatross around his neck. I had all that before with Ben, and I don’t want it again. You just aren’t trustworthy. You appear, you disappear, you move back with your ex-wife, you reappear when you want to. No, no. I don’t want that. I’m sorry.”
She closed her apartment door.
Robert knocked on it again. Nothing happened. He said through the hollow-core metal door, “Judy, please open up. I have something else to say. Please open.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll say it through the door.” He stopped to think, to say it right. “I made a bad mistake, letting you go. I didn’t want to have to …” What was the word those talk-show shrinks used on the radio? “Commit.” He didn’t want to use it; Judy deserved better than radio psychojargon. “… to choose. But I choose now.” On the basis of incomplete evidence, with reasonable doubt, without any guarantees about the future. “I choose a life with you.”
Some muffled words from beyond the door. Curses? Maybe, but maybe not.
“I want to marry you, Judy. Please open the door.”
He waited. The door didn’t open. But from behind it she said, clearly this time, “Oh, damn it, Robert …”
“Will you marry me?”
“No. I don’t know. I can’t believe you’d ask me now. No. Maybe.”
Robert drew a long breath. From maybe it wasn’t ever that far to yes. Not if you stuck with it.
“I’m leaving now, Judy. But I’ll be back after work tonight. Okay?”
“What time?”
He calculated rapidly. “Six-thirty. Count on it, sweetheart.”
No answer. But it was okay. She’d be here.
Cavanaugh drove back to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Baltimore to get down to work.
Epilogue: Six Months After
Melanie walked wearily out of the makeshift Nigerian hospital, which was the usual polyester-tent-and-wood-hut misalliance, toward the river. It fell here abruptly into a waterfall. The air at the top was clean and sweet, with the fresh, living scent of water. Melanie drew in deep, great breaths and rubbed the back of her neck.
Lassa fever. And at the beginning of an epidemic this far from even a moderate-sized town, forget the protocols; everyone did whatever was necessary to fight the epidemic. She’d been moving patients all day.
A small Nigerian boy scampered toward her. “Miss! Miss!” he called, obviously glorying in his English, which had a strong British accent. “Some person rings you by this telephone!”
He actually held Dr. Duchamp’s portable phone in his hand. Marveling that Duchamp would let it out of his sight—it was their only quick link with the rest of the world—Melanie took the phone from the interested boy.
“Hello?”
“Melanie? Robert Cavanaugh. Have you seen the New York Times?”
The New York Times. Here, on the far edge of nowhere, in the midst of an epidemic. Ah, Robert.
“They’ve broken it, Melanie. They’ve made the arrests on malaria reading. In Ireland.”
“Ireland?”
“Yes. I couldn’t tell you before, but Broylin …” The connection filled with static.
“Robert? Robert?”
No use. The connection didn’t clear. Maybe the satellite was out of range. Was that how these phones worked? Maybe she’d heard wrong. Ireland? How could that be?
“Miss, miss, come, come! The mother of my mother!” Another child, looking anxious. Another victim.
Melanie pushed malaria reading to the back of her mind. She was burning to know what had happened. But Ireland was far away, and America even farther. Lassa fever was here and now.
She followed the child to the mother of his mother.
∞∞ E N D ∞∞
