One from Without

by Jack Fuller

  “Sam?” she said, touching his arm.

  “The wind,” he said. He fumbled to open his baggy old parka. “Sorry. I’ve got a handkerchief.” The zipper stuck. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

  Sara reached into her pocket and pulled out a cocktail napkin she always kept there just in case.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” she said.

  If she let him go upstairs like this, the talk on the Admin News Network would be merciless.

  “No, really,” he said.

  “You look like you need a drink,” she said, controlling his arm now. “Come on. The lunch crowd’s gone. We’ll have Au Bon Pain all to ourselves.”

  He let himself be led, not willingly, not unwillingly. She steered him to a table in the corner.

  “What in the world has happened to you, Sam Gunderman?”

  He offered his nose to the napkin again.

  “Coffee black?” she said.

  She took his silence as assent and brought him a cup. This wasn’t like looking at a stranger and playing the game of what does he need. She had known Sam forever, all his techie quirks.

  “OK,” she said, sloughing off her coat. “What is it?”

  He sat up straighter.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Well, it wasn’t the wind.”

  “I’ve been driving around aimlessly,” he said. “I went south. I went north. When I got here, I walked to the lake.”

  “Nice day for it.”

  “I blew off a meeting,” he said. “I never do that.”

  The gossip on the Admin News Network was that somebody had seen his wife with another man. He wasn’t going to talk to her about that. No man would.

  “I’ve got no taste for coffee,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “When I’m in a state, I always go shopping.”

  “No, really,” he said. “I have things I have to do.”

  “We’d better get a move on then,” she said.

  Her confidence was enough to propel him out the door. Brooks Brothers was several blocks into the wind. She would have liked to take him to a custom tailor. She thought of bespoke blouses as a continuous massage for the spirit, just the knowledge that something in the world had been cut for you alone. But he required help right this minute, ready-made.

  She marched him in the bitter cold with a determination that warmed her. He began to lag behind. She stopped to let him catch up and then took his arm. He pulled back, and she said, “So I don’t blow away.” He seemed to accept that, even to carry his head a little higher.

  The store was busy with a sale. She did not know the people in menswear, but she had no trouble attracting someone. Then the salesman saw Sam and hesitated.

  “Right here,” said Sara.

  “Are you looking for something in particular?” the salesman said to her.

  Sara did not warm to men who shot their cuffs.

  “A good dress shirt, maybe two,” she said. “And a sweater.”

  “I never wear—” Sam said.

  “You do have cashmere,” she said.

  “Of course,” said the salesman. “Blue or white in the shirts.”

  “One of each,” she said. “Oxford cloth.”

  “Collar?” said the salesman.

  Sam seemed at a loss.

  “Button-down,” she said. “Moderate collar-point length.”

  “Size?” said the salesman.

  She turned to Sam.

  “Medium,” he said.

  “At the neck and sleeve,” said the salesman.

  “Measure him top to bottom. Who knows what we’ll want him to try on before we’re done,” she said.

  She touched the zipper of Sam’s parka and went behind him to lift the heavy thing from his shoulders. She did this with such skill that the salesman lifted his eyebrows and tilted his chin in recognition. Her first real job had been at Carson, Pirie, Scott during a Christmas break. She was in charge of rehanging men’s jackets and slacks, but occasionally, when everyone else was engaged, she minded a customer. It turned out she had a flair for it. She knew when a man wanted to be told what to try on and when he had control issues. She knew how to settle a jacket on his shoulders so that it felt like a caress. They asked her to stay on full time as a real salesperson, and she was tempted. But at school she could outperform the men, not just serve them.

  “There,” she said, handing the parka to the salesman, who took it with one finger and draped it over the counter.

  After he recorded Sam’s numbers, he went to a vast wall of shirts.

  “It would be great for you to wear one of them back to the Dome,” she said.

  “The dressing rooms are right over there,” said the salesman.

  Sam went to change, and Sara looked through the sweaters, holding one after another up against the salesman’s chest.

  “They’re classics,” he said.

  “I want them to feel downright Italian,” she said.

  “This is Brooks Brothers, ma’am,” said the salesman.

  Sam returned from the rear of the store.

  “A huge improvement,” she said. “How does it feel?”

  “A little scratchy.”

  “Think of the smell of a new car,” she said. “You’ll miss it when it goes away. Now pick one of these.”

  He took the sweaters and looked at the price tags.

  “Way too much,” he said.

  “You’re good for it,” she said. “If you’re not, I am.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Then get out your credit card,” she said. “You’ll thank me later.”

  Sam balked.

  “Let me pick up the check,” she said. “How many times have I called you with a mess?” She answered the salesman’s look. “Computers,” she said.

  “Ah,” said the salesman.

  “I couldn’t,” said Sam.

  “Damsel in distress,” she said. “You’ve been a regular Galahad. You didn’t send me some kid. You patched me up yourself. You don’t think that’s worth the price of a sweater and two lousy shirts?” She turned to the salesman. “No offense.”

  Sam pulled out his wallet and put a Visa on the counter next to the parka.

  “Try the sweater on while the nice man starts ringing you up,” she said.

  Sam picked one up and headed for the dressing room.

  “You can slip it on right here,” said the salesman.

  Sam raised the sweater overhead and pulled it down over his hair, tousling it. The transformation was remarkable.

  “Can I interest you in a topcoat?” Sara said.

  A piano organized a room. A viola usually gave it depth, but this young man’s tone had an edge that cut right through. Only a conductor with a special ear would warm to it. Solti would have. Barenboim maybe not.

  But that was rushing. This was the young man’s first big moment, and it was a long way from Symphony Center, though as he kept reminding her, the audience would actually be paying.

  “The caesura,” she said when he failed to pause. “The silence must be total. The listener must have time to wonder whether it is the end. Why don’t you try it again.”

  The young man looked to her for the downbeat. She gave it with a drop of her head, feeling for an instant some small sense of what Solti must have felt.

  They could have rehearsed with a recording of the piano part. This was how the young man practiced. But Donna wanted to do her very best by him, so she had hired at her own expense the finest accompanist she could find. She lost track of how many times the young man had thanked her.

  “You are going to make my name,” she said.

  Of course, she already had her husband’s.

  The piece suited the young man, Arnold Bax’s “Legend,” with lots of double stops and great, emerging crescendos. It was no wonder he let his forward motion barrel straight through the caesura. Momentum was the very thing that made the silence speak. She
liked the jazz musicians’ word. They called it a break. Done right, it split time as if it were a gem.

  He began again.

  “Good,” she said to herself in the perfect caesura he made. When the piece ended, she said aloud, “You are ready.”

  “I sure hope so, Mrs. Joyce,” he said.

  She took the pianist into the hallway to give him his fee. When she returned, she no longer saw a violist. It was a high school boy in a varsity jacket. She touched the letter.

  “For God’s sake, don’t break a finger,” she said.

  “I’m off-season,” he said. “Here. I almost forgot.”

  He pulled his mother’s folded check from his pocket. As she reached for it, her cell phone vibrated. She never muted it all the way, because when she did, she often forgot to unmute it. Brian hated that.

  The young man left as she brought the phone to her ear.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Ten minutes out,” Brian said.

  “You’re early.”

  “See you soon.”

  She found Mrs. Yu in her room watching the Travel Channel.

  “He’s early,” she said.

  Mrs. Yu sprang off the bed.

  “What time dinner?” she said.

  “You don’t need to get started yet,” said Donna. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  Mrs. Yu followed her into the large kitchen and began pulling pans out of the inlaid cherry cabinets and opening and closing the doors of the two refrigerators as if she were taking inventory.

  “Really,” said Donna. “You can watch your show. I’ll let you know the plan when there is one.”

  But Mrs. Yu was as busy as she would have been preparing to feed a wedding reception, which the kitchen could handle, with its stove that was good enough for a star in Michelin, its three ovens, and in the middle a stainless counter the size of Île Saint-Louis. Donna rarely cooked anything more than a cup of soup in the microwave. She was a Suzuki student playing a Guarneri.

  She passed through the living room, which Mrs. Yu once said could house a village. One wall was entirely windows opening out on the lake. All you saw was water and sky, some days with absolutely no line in between. If you didn’t know better when you came into the living room, you might have thought they were on a high bluff. In fact, it was only a few steps down to a small beach and a removable pier the groundskeeper put in every spring so they could launch kayaks or their Sunfish, if they ever found the time.

  Whatever Mrs. Yu was doing, the house was silent. Donna rarely had music on during the day unless she was ready to listen, but it was playing inside her head every waking hour, and probably many of her sleeping ones, too. Only in high school had she realized that her classmates were not immersed this way. That was how she had decided to make music her life. But she had never imagined then that it would be this life. Musically she had worked hard to get where she wanted to go. But the lake and sky, the extraordinary sound system, the concert grand in a room designed for her fiddle, these were all Brian.

  She dropped the morning papers in the recycle bin on the way to the bedroom. There she checked her face, which was all right, and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she came out, she heard the car turning into the long drive and hurried to the door. Brian was on the phone in the backseat, so he didn’t see her come down the walk. The driver’s window hummed down.

  “I have a huge favor to ask of you, Robert,” she said.

  “The kids,” he said.

  “I hate to slow you down when you have a chance to get home early for a change.”

  “It’s still light out,” he said. “I’m way ahead of the game.”

  “What game is that?” said Brian as he hit the button on the phone. Robert knew not to answer idle questions. Brian sat looking through the messages on his BlackBerry before finally opening the door. “Have you been waiting long?”

  She gave him a hug, and he pecked her cheek.

  “You must be frozen,” he said.

  Inside, they took off their coats and hung them on the rack. There was a time when Brian would have immediately taken off his suit jacket, too, pulled down his tie, and opened his collar. That was a job ago.

  “How was your day?” she said.

  “You first,” he said.

  “My child star is nervous because people will be paying two dollars apiece to hear him,” she said, “one for students and seniors.”

  “Are we going?” Brian said.

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Maybe we should try,” he said. “I haven’t been here for you enough lately.”

  “Busy time.”

  “I wish I knew how to lead two separate lives,” he said,“one entirely for the family.”

  “The deal you’ve been working on,” she said, “is it going well?”

  His eyes turned toward the darkening lake.

  “Hasn’t gone at all,” he said. “It hit a reef.”

  “A caesura,” she said.

  “English?” he said.

  “A silence that lets the passion speak,” she said. “Then the music begins again.”

  “Get two of those two-dollar tickets,” he said, pulling down his tie and unbuttoning his collar. “And after this is all done, we’ll really reward ourselves.”

  She did believe he wanted that.

  “Shall I tell Mrs. Yu to start dinner?” she said.

  He stood in the temporary office Grace had used. The picture frame had vanished, her yellow plastic mechanical pencils. Everything had gone back home with her. He had never thought to get her address in New York. It had been so abrupt. Gail could get her coordinates from the bank, but what would he use them for? To say that he didn’t blame her for leaving? That he had tried to break free of Fisherman, but that you never can? Even if you throw yourself into hard numbers, the ambiguities are always inside you.

  I told you too much, Grace. I told you too late.

  8

  His plane landed in a dirty fog, and he went directly from immigration down into the Heathrow Tube station. When he came up again at Euston, the fog had burned off, and he was disoriented by the intensity of the light. It was as if being underground had lagged him back into the Washington night, suspending him between one unreal city and another.

  His flat was a studio as close to Bloomsbury as he could afford, a half-step above London University student digs, with what passed for a kitchen on one wall, a mush of a bed on the other, and one window high up under the eaves. He had to stand on a chair to see out of it, which wasn’t worth the effort, since nothing was there except an expanse of tarpaper, litter, and chimney pipes.

  He threw down his bag, reset his watch, and decided it was time for lunch, which he picked up at a shop down the street. Fully intending to stay awake through dinner to get himself synced for work the next morning, he picked up a book Fisherman had given him about Russia’s history in the Caucasus and beyond and sat down on the sofa.

  He woke up in darkness, lying half atop the book. Without hope of sleep until the sun caught up, he rose and showered behind the mildewed curtain. The bus to Marble Arch did not run often at this hour, which gave him plenty of time to review his circumstances. There was Fisherman. There was Nederlander. There was McWade. There was Bradley. There used to be Grace. And he was alone. When the bus finally came, both decks were vacant. Along the way, a sad, old drunk stumbled on, then a few others.

  Rosten’s windowless office seemed to exist in a time zone all its own. He switched on the autopsy fluorescents. On the desk was a note in Fisherman’s hand telling him to check his safe. He hung his trench coat on the steel rack, turned on the warm desk lamp, extinguished the overheads, and took the coffee pot down to the gents to fill. When he returned, his hands were so unsteady he had trouble measuring out the grind.

  He had hung a rendering of Sterling Library on the wall opposite the desk. It seemed askew, so he went to level it. When he did, it seemed tilted the opposite direct
ion. After several attempts, he gave up. It wasn’t the watercolor; it was his eyes.

  He opened the safe and found three sets of folders, held together by heavy rubber bands, lying unfiled in the top drawer. The first set contained the usual Slavic and Eastern European names. But the individuals in the second set were different: Farzin Ibrhimi, Hamal Nabiev, Botir Ghazanfar. The material inside their files read like translated verse.

  Even when he was just starting to work for Fisherman, the lives of the Russians and Czechs and East Germans had been reasonably familiar. They rose through the ranks of the classless society, ranks not all that different from the ones in which Rosten found himself. Yes, the guideposts along the way were different (Look Left), but that was just a matter of convention.

  In contrast, this man from Kyrgyzstan might as well have been a Canto in Chinese characters. None of the others were any less opaque. The men—they were all men—came from the southern Soviet Republics or Afghanistan. Many had Russified names, but from their histories it was clear that they were nothing like the usual Ivans.

  The doorknob rattled before Rosten got to the third set.

  “So the prodigal has returned,” said Fisherman, more chipper than morning. “You look spent. Perhaps you partied.”

  “My trip was entirely work-related,” said Rosten.

  “Yes, work.”

  “If you don’t think it was, why did you send me?”

  “You really should have become more wary of assumptions by now,” said Fisherman. He sat down across the desk in the penumbra of the reading light. “So you met Isaac McWade.”

  “I didn’t expect contact at that level,” said Rosten.

  “And what was your assessment?”

  They weren’t talking about Ivan. Or Nederlander. This was someone close to the President.

  “Efficient in the meeting,” said Rosten. “Cordial but guarded at lunch.”

  “You broke bread with him,” said Fisherman.

  “He seated me next to him,” said Rosten. “I learned that he once had worked for you, too.”

  The cuttlefish flashed nothing.

  “The others must have taken notice,” he said.