by Robin Winter
Chapter 88: Oroko
January 1970
Lagos, Western Region,Nigeria
Oroko spent the evening in the raucous room filled with perfumes and bright colors, his formal suit giving him automatic passage to this event. He looked an old-fashioned guest, not a servant, among the shining silver and brilliant crystal on lavender linens.
At a pause in Lindsey's conversations he oversaw the mixing of her usual drink from a freshly opened bottle at the bar and carried it to her. Some small risks like these she insisted he allow. She acknowledged him when he intruded on her momentary solitude. He looked down at her, taking in her aloofness and restraint.
She stood very straight and calm, dressed as usual in understated style, the soft cream of her dress accenting the light gold hue the sun had given to her skin. She looked lovely but unsexed, despite the curve of her breasts.
"Here, madam," he said.
Lindsey accepted the vermouth and twist that he handed over, a smile moving her thin mouth. He watched a group of well-dressed and jeweled women approach, listened to their greetings.
Lindsey answered. Oroko admired both her restraint and the courtesy. He didn't comment after they had gone, for it was not his place. She hid so much, so well.
She put her barely tasted glass on the table under the window and looked directly up at him, as if asking why he stood there.
"Is it time yet?" he said. "Time to bring Gilman in?"
She took a moment to answer.
"Gilman will find Wilton. Let her have her prize. Let her enjoy her safety before we take it. Maybe she can help Wilton. We'll wait."
"Yes, Madam," he said, and bowed once more.
He wondered idly if she would ever notice his death. Never as she had Sandy's, but as an American missed a pet, perhaps, or a guard dog. He wasn't tame, but he didn't think that mattered to Lindsey.
Sandy was fun. He'd wanted to spend time in her company, even in the beginning when he'd thought she was a girl lover and Lindsey might be too. He'd killed one man when the fool blathered of such matters at a bar. Waited until they all went out the door in a group, slipped his favorite blade in between the ribs and back out so fast in the dark it seemed he'd only given a friendly punch in the chest. The drunk staggered off toward home with a grumbling complaint about being hit so hard, then died a block away. Assault by person or persons unknown. A common event in a city like Lagos.
Oroko would never forget the night Sandy died. He couldn't call it a failure, because Lindsey survived. He'd been away on orders. He did his job. But he'd lost his friend, the one friend who had known what he was and did not seem to care. Sandy was nothing like the pleasant fools he drank with at the bar or played football with on the university grounds. He knew if you asked them, they would never remember where or when they first met Oroko. Only that he knew how to share his luck and a laugh. They enjoyed the drinks he bought and the jokes he told. For a moment he felt as if Sandy stood near, waiting to tell him something funny.
Chapter 89: Gilman
January 1970
In Transit and New York, New Hampshire, USA
Gilman gazed through the rounded window of the jet at the clouded land below. Speed and distance seemed imaginary. The muted engine roar lulled and she pressed her fingers against each other in her lap. Naked without surgical gloves. Unnaturally idle. In this sterile self-reflecting cylinder, her hands lay useless.
She craned to see the landscape dulled by thick windows, so far down beyond her reach. Around her, rows of clean fuzzy seats and strange people in nice clothes. Like dolls, all of them in identical peace. No one asking who or what she was or how she had come to sit here. As if there had never been a question whether or not she could or should. She stared at the dim yellows and gray greens and the tortuous rivers of Africa as though she could memorize it all. As if Africa could be so tamed, and memories of blood and blasts and loss could be bled of color and impact to be fitted into an airplane seat and the single small suitcase at her feet.
They were out. She and Sister Catherine and Allingham had escaped. It was over. And nothing she felt seemed important enough to be real. Even saying goodbye to Sister Catherine on her way back to her convent in Ireland, blurred.
Gilman remembered screams in the dark, the flare of petrol fires, the frenzy of wounded she couldn't quiet, much less heal. Biafra died last night, and she had fled, deserted her post. Now she imagined how the flaring sunlight of early morning grew bright on the pitted red dirt and shattered asphalt of Airstip Annabelle in that tangled woodland somewhere in a dead country.
When she first stepped off the plane into the warm soft hand of Nigeria, how wonderful it had seemed, a place where she was desperately needed, rapturously welcomed, where her touch worked magic, her spells of healing stitched by catgut and salved with medicines, all pushing back the night.
Nigeria would deal with the remnants of Biafra's desperate army as it pleased, and no international witnesses remained to act as conscience for the winners. For Gilman it was done, and there was nothing left to see. Nothing to do.
She turned to her seat companion, noting the lines that exhaustion and tension had forced into Allingham's face. His mouth hung open, his unshaven cheeks stubbled with black bristle, and his stale breath stank. She knew nothing and everything about this annoying man. So much to dislike in him, but he'd stayed too. She hadn't outlasted him, and she looked away, shamed by the thought.
She glanced around at the faces of the other passengers, feeling branded, not by her worn and faded garb, both stained and crumpled, but by some mark of difference. A deep worn rut of sustained fear. She looked again at Allingham's sleeping shape, then turned back to the window. The plane rose above a bank of bright cloud, and she could no longer see the land.
New York received the refugees with indifference. The airport dazed Gilman. She saw a bright-lit fantasy, filled with bland faces, rich, fleshy, so pale. Faces preoccupied, hastening about their business, no one looking back at her when she searched their expressions. None of the cheerful greetings the Nigerians always had for strangers and foreigners. No flashing smiles.
So cold outside, a cold that cut through and bit her bones. She shivered waiting for the airport bus. She remembered meeting Wilton here once, years ago, but of course no one had come for her, nor for Allingham. The bus drew up nearby, she clambered on board and dropped the heavy American coins into the slot. After the aluminum coins of Biafra, this money felt strange in her hand.
"Gilman," Allingham said, "I'm getting off next stop. American Airlines."
"I thought you'd…"
"Go with you to find your friend Wilton? Why? She's not my friend. You have her address. You don't need me to hold your hand. I'm going home."
"What home? Where will you go?" Gilman said in surprise. "What will you do?"
She felt the anchor slipping, her lungs closing with fear at Allingham's departure. What was wrong with her? She had a destination—Wilton's house and Wilton's welcome. But Allingham? Where would he find anyone who would understand who he had been for the past few years? An ugly guy who'd once been fat, or at least soft in the body. She looked at him and wondered what he was.
"As I said, I'm going home. Did you know I have a family? You never asked. I have a wife. Not that she misses me, but I have one. My parents are alive, Gilman. I wrote home almost every week. I have a real life here."
Unlike you, she heard.
"I haven't been gone that many years. I'll get back into practice in Illinois. I can outgrow the bad habits of combat medicine."
He balanced in the bus's sway when it pulled over to the curb.
"Good luck, Gilman."
He grabbed his bags and pushed his way down the aisle.
Rounding the corner, her weary eyes searching for the familiar square house, Gilman paused. She became aware all at once of her tangled hair and smudged cheeks, her newly purchased winter coat and boots. She'd been in such a hurry to escape all the crowds and strangers
in New York City.
She smiled at the old brown house. She shook off the snow from her aching feet and started slogging, her eyes anxious for some sign of life within. Surely Wilton was here. Where else would she have gone, but here? Gilman caught sight of a Volkswagen beetle in the front yard and she relaxed. Typical Wiltonesque economy.
Gilman rang the front doorbell. Damned cold out. She stamped her feet. She was beginning to feel good about being back, about having made it in one piece. Against all expectation. Maybe she would go back into practice in the States, maybe there was a place for her. Maybe she could at last accept the inheritance from her long-dead parents. She'd earned it by now.
The door opened and Gilman froze in dread. A small blonde woman smiled at her, reserved and puzzled.
"Yes? Can I help you?"
"I was looking for a friend of mine," Gilman said, her words pleading. She hated the sound. "Kate Wilton."
The woman looked at her, holding onto the doorknob as if Gilman might be crazy. Gilman brushed a stray bit of hair out of her eyes.
"I'm sorry. She doesn't live here. You have the wrong address."
"But she has to.
The woman looked worried at Gilman's protest, a frown pulling her eyebrows together. She reassessed Gilman from head to brand-new boots, shivering a bit herself from the cold draft.
"This is her house." Gilman found herself babbling. "It belonged to her family, her father's grandparents built it over a hundred years ago and she was headed home."
"Here," the woman in the doorway said. "Come in."
Leading the way through the remembered entry into the living room, the blonde woman gave Gilman another curious but not unkind look.
"We're renting the place through a lawyer named Sullivan down in Topsfield and sharing it with another couple," she said. "I don't know as I've heard of anyone named Kate Wilton who's involved."
They entered the living room, all chintz and shabby antiques. A tall skinny man in blue jeans and a plaid blue flannel shirt turned from the bookcase. He had a soft brown beard and pale eyes that examined Gilman without much surprise while the small woman explained. He shook his head.
"No, never heard that name."
Gilman discovered that she was shivering.
"But this is her house," she said. "I visited her here before. I know she's back in this country. She left before I did. She doesn't have anywhere else to go."
"She must have sold it," the man said. "You just came from overseas to find her? You didn't call her? Write? But you're American."
"Yes."
Too complicated to explain, Gilman realized. She bent to pick up the suitcase again.
"Are you okay?" the woman asked.
"Where did you come from?" The man frowned.
"Biafra. I mean Nigeria," Gilman mumbled, starting for the door. Now all she wanted was to escape, to find out what happened to Wilton, to think…The man behind her drew in a sudden hiss of breath.
"Wait a minute," he said. "You mean the place in Africa where all the kids were starving to death? We saw that on TV. Walter Cronkite."
Gilman nodded. She took another step toward the door.
"Hey, do you have someplace to go?"
"Yes," she said quickly. "It's okay. Really. I better hurry."
"You sure? Were you in the Peace Corps?"
"No," Gilman said. "Thank you. Good-bye."
She walked fast down the street, turned the corner. She wanted to run. All she could think was that she had to look like she knew where she was supposed to go in case they watched her from Wilton's windows. A few turns and several blocks later she stood once more at the Greyhound Bus Station with its stained and scraped snow mounded in hard lumps along the edges of the parking lot. The cloud cover seemed thicker, darker, threatening more snow. She looked up at the bus waiting there, the casual line of motley folk assembling at the steps. "New York City" the bus said on the front display.
That would have to do.
Finding the Topsfield Massachusetts lawyer Lawrence Sullivan in the phone book proved easy. Calling him did not. Gilman completed all but the final digit then she couldn't make herself finish.
She felt the staring windows by the desk, sensed the little trickle of cold that came in under the sills. This taupe-and-blue motel room felt so empty. Not even a gecko or mouse. Gilman tried to argue herself out of the creeping unease, even fear, that held her back, but she couldn't. Finally she hung up the phone.
There had to be another way. If Wilton weren't making the decisions, who was? Lindsey. Had to be. Gilman looked at the phone in her hotel room. Okay. Worst case scenario. Wilton wasn't miraculously cured.
As soon as she said that to herself she felt a slow tide of anger rise, anger at herself as much as anyone else. Why had she believed that Wilton was all right?
She should've known better. Remember Wilton's condition when Gilman said goodbye to her in Lagos? God, what a fucking deluded fool she was. She'd only believed that Wilton was cured because she wanted it to be true. She wanted someone to go home to. She imagined Wilton waiting here for her, patient and forgiving, the friend for all time. Someone who would understand everything, with whom even silence would have comforted.
But Lindsey sent Wilton to America, doubtless because she saw Wilton as a potential danger, and with Sandy dead, there wasn't anyone to stop Lindsey from putting Wilton away. Far away. If she were Lindsey Kinner, what would she have done with a liability?
Chapter 90: Gilman
June 1970
Boston, MA, USA
"Dr. Lowenstein? I'm Katherine Gilman. My father knew Doctor Jacobs, who recommended you…"
"Glad to meet at last. Your letters caught my interest."
He was a large-boned fellow of considerable height, with a comfortable face, everything about it exaggerated. Big nose, big mouth and extremely blue eyes. He'd allowed his balding to progress with no attempt to halt or conceal the inevitable. She liked that. Now he listened attentively to her prepared tale, while he folded and unfolded his carpenter's hands on the orderly desktop. She'd given background in their correspondence, and now she limited what she said.
"So you wish my help in making inquiries?"
"If you doubt my legitimacy, you can check my record with Bellevue and the International Red Cross," Gilman said. She regretted her tone as soon as the words left her mouth.
"You recognize the problems?" Lowenstein didn't show any reaction to her manner. "If you locate your friend in a hospital or care unit she'll probably not be fit for release. Also you'd have quite a tussle persuading the authorities to release her to your custody. What facilities do you have to offer her?"
"Yours. I want to place her with you. I know you run an excellent private hospital for psychiatric patients."
"If she is a patient. If she hasn't deliberately disappeared on her own and by her own choice."
Gilman had a sudden terrifying vision of Wilton on the streets, bundled up in someone else's dirty rags, picking rat leavings from a garbage can. Gilman couldn't allow that to be true. She couldn't bear it. She saw herself plucking at vagrants' elbows, searching forever through the icy streets of Chicago or Boston or New York.
"If. And if she's in a custodial institution, you know what they're like even better than I do. Anything you have to offer will be an immense improvement," Gilman said, "and every day will damage her, until we save her."
"Save her. What would you suggest we do if she has a legal guardian who opposes her removal?"
"You're the specialist. You could inquire about her case as one that accidentally came under your attention. You could be intrigued for professional reasons. You could write to the person who's telling her lawyer what to do."
"And why should you interfere?"
"I've said it before. She's my friend and was once my patient. We went through a lot together. I told you the basics. You saw Biafra on television," Gilman said. There must be some way to pull this man out of his rote channels.
&n
bsp; Then Dr. Lowenstein nodded. "That's all right, Dr. Gilman. I simply needed to hear your answer to that question in person. Let me think it over. Shall I call you tomorrow afternoon?"
Gilman hesitated before she agreed. Again, she knew it was enough of a pause for Lowenstein to notice, but too late for her to hide it. He was going to refuse to take the case when he called. She hoped she hid her sense of disappointment when she mouthed the necessary polite closing.
She crossed the room and turned the doorknob, then Lowenstein coughed.
"Doctor," he said. "Permit me to take you to dinner. I'd like to know more than your letter told me, have some idea what the subtext is here. Let me call my wife, and I'll tell her where I am in case something comes up at our hospital."
"Why would anyone give up a doctor's life in America to go to Africa and hang on through a civil war?" Lowenstein asked. He lifted his glass of red wine.
A small restaurant, homey. Gilman could smell roast chicken, maybe beef.
"I'm no Peace Corps type." Gilman knew how defensive she sounded. Not good. Relax, act simple and earnest and above all honest.
"At the very least, there's ambiguity," Lowenstein said. "I see it in your face, have from the start when you say her name. Wilton. You name her by her surname, like you can't deal with her sex. But that's not the real issue, is it?"
Lowenstein's expression of concentration told Gilman he moved into psychiatrist mode. He looked so normal, steady, older, comfortable as a familiar piece of furniture. Must help him a lot in his profession. She needed him to cure Wilton. She would do anything to get him on her side, wouldn't she? Even talk?
"Having fun analyzing me?" Gilman looked into the deep center of her wine, weighing her options. Maybe she could say enough to convince Lowenstein she wasn't crazy. Wasn't under some compulsion that would bite him later if he helped her.
"Wilton wasn't responsible for what happened to me. She gave me opportunity, that's all. I wanted to visit Africa. Hospital work in the States depressed me. Bored me." Gilman said. "I thought about marriage and children. But God, I knew so many children who came from that kind of thought. Bandages on discontent, that's what Wilton used to say in college."
