by Paul Vidich
It was a few moments before Mueller was able to put his mind around the fact that he had been run off the road. He was on his back in wet earth. He looked at his hands. One ached, but no blood, just bruises mixed with clay and pebbles embedded in his palm. He moved his neck without feeling pain and then saw his bike. It lay on its side against a boulder that erupted from the side of the ditch. Two spokes had popped from the front rim, bent and unridable. He stood and that’s when he knew how badly he was injured. A horrible pain shot up his thigh. A dark wetness seeped from a tear in his trousers. On the ground there was a pointy stick that had snapped from a sapling.
Mueller limped to his bicycle and he confirmed his initial opinion. It couldn’t be ridden. But, in a way, that didn’t matter because he didn’t think he’d be able to work the pedal with his injured thigh. He’d have to walk the bike to town, and that inconvenience, even more than the injury, irritated him.
“Idiot,” he said, under his breath.
He remembered the cashier’s advisory, and Mueller admonished himself for not being more careful, but then dismissed his part in the accident. The car was too big. The road too narrow. Its speed too great. And it had all happened in a split second. The driver, the one he’d had words with, was entirely to blame. “Idiot,” he said.
Mueller had walked a few steps when he saw a small sports car approach from the direction of Centreville. The red convertible slowed and Mueller saw the driver, a young woman in dark glasses and colorful scarf tied under her chin. Her hair whipped behind in the wind. She must see the incongruity of a bicyclist walking his bike, Mueller thought, and he considered whether the two-seater would be able to hold him and the bike. It was getting on to dusk. Better to get a ride and he could always come back for the bike.
Mueller signaled as she passed, and he thought, No, she isn’t going to stop. He glanced back. Stop lady. Have a heart. Surprisingly, he saw her pull over a short ways down the road. Mueller pointed his numb foot in the right direction. He wasn’t aware how much he’d bled until he felt the blood slosh in his shoe. His hand went to his thigh wound and there was a fierce tenderness. He became aware that the young woman was speaking to him in a loud voice, asking a lot of questions, standing there beside him, trying to get his attention. Somewhere in his struggle to provide answers he felt an overwhelming dizziness.
6
* * *
BETH ENTERS THE PICTURE
MUELLER BECAME aware that he was in an unfamiliar room. His long groggy dream tapered off without an ending and vanished in the lifting fog of a fevered sleep and the bright light that seemed to be everywhere. He blinked. There were only sensations at first. He opened and closed his hand, feeling his fingers. He did not comprehend the large canopy that spread over his bed, or the pillows under his head, or the many shelves of children’s books in the room. He became aware he was breathing. Then came the questions, one after the other. Where was he? How did he get here?
He heard a woman’s voice outside in the hall. He couldn’t see anyone through the half-open door, but there was no mistaking her loud instructions.
“There will be twelve tonight for dinner, Lizzy. I want the linen tablecloth, and the nice glasses, and Mother’s silverware. It’s an event and I want it to be festive. Do you think anyone has flowers this time of year? Will you remember it will be twelve? I want the extra place setting in case he is well enough to join.”
Mueller saw a shadow move in the dark hall, and suddenly a young woman came through the door and approached the bed. She wore dark glasses and a soiled work coat over scruffy blue jeans. Her hair was long, whiskey-colored, windblown, and her face was red from sun or cold and streaked with dirt where she’d wiped the back of her gloves. She removed the gloves one finger at a time and gazed at Mueller.
“So, you’re alive,” she said.
Mueller nodded.
“How do you feel?”
Mueller had to think. “I’m okay.” His voice was hoarse.
“Better okay than not okay.” She answered the question that she saw in his expression. “This?” she asked, displaying her dirty clothing. “The garden. My father can’t plant bulbs, but he tries. Mother always did them. I’ve redone them. So . . . here you are.” She gazed at him.
Mueller made an effort to smile. “Where is here?” He tried to sit up, but lancing pain made him reach for his leg.
“Yes, you’re okay, I see.” She helped him lean against the headboard, tucking a pillow under his head. “This is my father’s home. You passed out. Do you remember that? I was asking what happened and you fell over. One minute you were standing there and the next you fell and struck your head. You were quite a mess. The driver of a passing van helped get you in my car. I called the doctor in town. Stitched your leg. Fixed the ugly gash on your head.”
Mueller felt the bandage above his ear. He lifted the comforter and saw cotton gauze wrapping his thigh. A spiderweb of purple colored his skin.
“You’ll live,” she said, unsympathetically. “What happened?”
“I was on my bike. A car went by.”
She looked at him skeptically. “A car went by?”
“He tried to drive me off the road.”
“You’re very lucky.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “Your fairy godmother, it seems. When was the last time you rode a bike?” She put out her hand. “I’m Beth. Is there someone we should call?”
The office? His secretary? “There is no one to call,” he said. “I’ve rented a cottage.” She was a plain woman with a pretty face and her thick work coat gave her the appearance of wide hips. These observations came to him all at once, as he was trained.
“You’re alone?”
“Yes.”
“You’re welcome to stay for dinner.” She threw out, “You were talking a lot in your sleep.” She put her hand on his forehead. “You’re cool now, but the fever lasted all night.”
Mueller was surprised by the calming touch of her palm on his skin. He wasn’t accustomed to kindness from strangers. Cautious. “What did I say?”
“Gobbledygook.” She looked skeptically at him. “You think I’m joking? I couldn’t understand a word. I take that back. There was one word. ‘Stop.’ You kept saying ‘stop.’ There you have it.”
It never occurred to Mueller that he might talk in his sleep. Stop?
“Your pants and shirt are there. We washed them. And there’s your wallet. We put you in my brother’s pajamas. I didn’t undress you.” She said this in response to nothing. “Lizzy had that pleasure.” She said that without an ounce of irony. “So, you’ll join us?”
Mueller nodded. “Yes.” When she was gone Mueller shifted his legs to the side of the bed and tested his footing. He could stand without pain, but his thigh was tender and swollen. He hobbled to his clothes and took his wallet from the back pocket of his pants. Driver’s license, State Department ID, insurance card, cash. Nothing missing. Tradecraft had taught him a trick to know if his wallet had been violated. The trick was simple. Place a human hair in a folded note. Imperceptible to the careless meddler, but he would know the note had been read if the hair was missing. He unfolded the paper. The dark strand was gone.
He sat on the chair and considered his situation. What was next? The Russians would show up sooner or later. The police would ask questions, and probably already had, and the lines would begin to converge. Someone had washed his clothing and mended the tear in his trousers. He went through contortions to place his left leg inside the trousers, grabbing the end of the bed when he wasn’t able to balance on one foot.
At the window, he pulled aside the drawn curtain and looked out onto a wide lawn of spring snow melting under the furious heat of a noon sun. Farther along a small dock jutted into the bay. He leaned forward against the glass and saw a gravel driveway that curved around the front of the
house. A black Cadillac was parked there and a silver-haired man in a European suit stepped out onto the driveway and greeted Beth. They hugged. Mueller was surprised at the emotion on display. He leaned into the window and saw she was crying. He had an odd sensation in the moment. Curious and impatient, those opposite feelings existing in him at the same time.
His thoughts turned to the green Buick that had run him off the road. He would have to deal with that. And then he thought again about his restless night and his fevered talking. He felt his face. It was shaved, but he hadn’t done it. Beth came to mind.
An hour later. He was at the front door of the house about to step into the bright day, when he heard a woman scream.
“You don’t want to do that!”
A stout, jolly maid came out of a dark hallway waving her arms in the air. “You stay in the house, Mr. Mueller.”
His name. They had looked. He smiled and nodded. “I’m just getting some fresh air.”
“The air is fresh in here too. We don’t have stale air inside this house. We don’t want you falling down those steps.”
“I’m fine with walking.”
“You’re good with biking too, I’m told. You don’t know how lucky you was. She was so upset. You was in a fever, talking and going on and on. She was up all night. Worried sick. I don’t want you go down those steps and fall on your damn fool head.”
• • •
Dinner. Mueller sat at one end of the long table between two talky, well-dressed women, but he was silent and could have been sitting by himself. He was the outsider among the lively guests who whispered to each other or debated loudly. Mueller looked at his plate, picked at his entrée, and rubbed his thigh, which throbbed in sympathy with his boredom.
The table was festively set with flowers, wineglasses, bone china, silverware, and serviette rings empty of their cotton napkins. A huge crystal chandelier hung over the table, bathing the twelve guests in warm, flickering light. Two loud ones at the end of the table talked over each other, voices emphatically rising to argue a political point about totalitarianism. The hideous din gave Mueller a headache. He listened, smiled if smiled at, said little.
A stylish older woman in turquoise shawl and strapless gown glanced at Mueller twice before she leaned toward him, eyeing him intently. “You’re awfully quiet.”
“Listening,” he said.
“Oh.” She continued to look at him, waiting.
“He’s the one I found on the road,” Beth said.
Mueller felt like some kind of charity case.
Beth quickly rose from her place and took the seat beside him, empty because the occupant had gone off. She smiled at Mueller. “Are you bored?” she asked.
That obvious? Dinner parties with strangers were low on his list, as were other people’s home movies, and he had little tolerance for shallow conversation about politics. People no longer talked civilly. They argued. “No,” he said. “But I hate politics.”
Beth opened her eyes wide, laughed. She whispered, “I hate these dinners.”
Her comment surprised Mueller. He remembered dirt streaking her cheeks, but the dirt was gone, as was the red flush of sun, and she was transformed. Perfumed skin, wavy chestnut hair, and a black strapless gown that set off her bare shoulders. Without dark glasses her eyes were a startling blue and looked at him with an eagerness that made him want to lean away. Her string of pearls and a giant gold pin that glittered starlike on the dark fabric made her look less ordinary, less chubby.
“They’re all his friends,” she said, nodding toward the head of the table, where a gray-haired, older man with thick eyebrows listened intently to his neighbor. His head was bowed and the other man whispered something. They were in deep conversation on some urgent topic. “He holds this dinner every spring in race week. Mother died a year ago. He is still living the life they had together, but it’s a big house and he hasn’t gotten used to being alone. That’s why I visit. Bad things happen in pairs.” She looked at him. “Red baiters want to make him a target.”
She nodded at a couple at the end of table. “Republicans. A banker from New York and that’s his third wife, half his age. I shouldn’t gossip, but we all do it, don’t we?” She added earnestly, “He’s come out in support of the hearings on Capitol Hill and that’s what makes me angry.”
Mueller resisted the impulse to look at his watch.
Beth turned to another couple. “My father’s partner. Collects art, likes opera. He smokes cigars. You can smell them on his clothes. He thinks he is open minded, but he is hopelessly conservative. My father puts up with him somehow.”
She paused. She contemplated the table of well-dressed guests. “Everyone in this room is worried about something. Anxious about something.” She nodded. “He’s a Jew who got out of Germany, his last name is Fried, and the woman next to him, with the black hair, well, she goes on and on about pesticides that leach into the water table when farmers spray for mosquitoes, and her name is Worthy. Has it ever struck you how some people have names that suggest what they do? Veterinarian named Woolf, or a banker named Nichols. Mueller?” She looked at him. “What do you do?”
“State Department.”
“My brother works there.”
Mueller turned to her and lingered on her face, its lines, and slowly the similarity of brother and sister shaped itself into a certainty. Surprise is a funny thing. It only lasts a second. He remembered the remark, so odd in the moment of telling, how Altman had said it and laughed: “My sister is there, old boy. In her is the end of breeding. She would like someone to speak with and you may be just the one to commit that act of bravery.”
Mueller considered the possibilities that might play out, the danger. The line he could not cross.
The stylish older woman suddenly leaned into Beth, her expression exuberant. “So, how did it feel? Opening night? The reviews were kind. They called it a comedy but I have always thought Measure for Measure was a tough knot to untie. Pride. Humility. The most righteous character turns out to be a lust-addled hypocrite. I’d say that’s a good description of what is happening in Washington today. ‘Some rise by sin. Some by virtue fall.’ You, my dear, were a magnificent Isabella.”
Mueller turned to Beth. An actress?
Dessert was being served when the argument began. The outspoken woman had wrapped her shoulders in her turquoise shawl and curtly addressed the man directly across the table. He had a crew-cut, thin tie, and a military sternness to his clenched jaw.
“On what evidence?” she snapped. “How can you say we’re better than the Russians? They have show trials. We have show trials. How else can you describe the ridiculous hearings that are going on in the Senate?”
She became aware that the guests around her had stopped talking. She looked around for allies. “We are talking about the hearings on Capitol Hill,” she explained. “I disagreed with the idea that some people find popular that there is a thing that the senator calls moral degeneracy, that he says is why Rome fell, and will doom us, which equates communists and homosexuals.”
The room was silenced. The word had jumped from her lips and hung in the air like a bad smell. Guests looked at each other, but no one spoke. The lady looked at their host. “Arnold, they’ve even got you testifying.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. He nodded at one guest, then another. “It’s all a misunderstanding. A few questions about things I did years ago in Vienna. Politics shouldn’t spoil the evening. We’re here to talk about sailing.”
“But we haven’t talked about sailing,” the lady said.
“I will talk about sailing,” he said. “In the den. Shall we go? We have liquor, coffee, wine, tea, whiskey. Out the window you can see the Soviet navy’s cadet training ship, the Sedov. It has four masts. Just arrived from Buenos Aires on a goodwill tour.”
Mueller left the group and found his way outside. He sa
t on a bench with a view of the dark bay. A vast night sky of stars stretched across the water and, in the distance, the dim lights of Washington. Pine scents from evergreens mixed with the ambiguous smells of the warming earth. He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Beth approach.
“The police came by today,” she said, sitting.
He looked at her.
“I said you were recovering. I told them I’d bring you by when you felt better. Tomorrow if you like. You can stay here another night.”
“Who came?”
“The sheriff.”
“From Centreville?”
“Yes. I had called and said you had been run off the road. He was concerned. He asked if the driver was Russian.”
“How would he know?”
“You were by their compound. They drive fast on these roads. I said he might be. Was that wrong?”
“No, he was Russian. Nothing is wrong.”
They sat in silence. Neither of them knew how to carry the conversation forward. Finally, she said, “What brought you out here in the off season?”
“The quiet. I don’t like crowds.”
“It wasn’t the biking?” She laughed.
Was she making fun of him? Her eyes were open wide, but her expression wasn’t mocking. Perhaps she was unsure of herself. He laughed with her. “I haven’t biked since college. I had the wrong shoes.”
“How long are you out for?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How long have you rented the cottage?”
He’d been too vague. Certainly he should appear to have some idea. “A week. Maybe two. I’m taking time off to enjoy the quiet. Catching up on my reading.”
He threw out a few authors he’d read in the last two years, still contemporary enough to suit his purposes, and authors he’d enjoyed so he wouldn’t have to fake a commentary if asked. But she didn’t.
• • •
It had been arranged that Beth would pick up Mueller at the courthouse when he was done with his interview with the sheriff. It was raining again and the blanket of low clouds deepened the green of the scrub pine and darkened the mood. They drove in silence most of the way.
