A Week from Friday

by Georgia Bockoven

  "That's enough!"

  His tone, the set of his jaw and the rigid way he held himself told Janet she had pushed him too far. He looked ready to explode.

  "Pull over to the curb," he demanded, his fury barely in check.

  They were still over a mile from his house, but she complied as soon as she found a space.

  Without saying another word, he opened the door and got out. He started to walk away, turned and came back. Leaning down to talk to her through the window she had opened, he said, "If you ever get rid of that chip on your shoulder, call me. But don't make it too long; I won't wait forever." He turned and again walked away from her. Only this time he kept on walking.

  As Janet watched him disappear into the dense fog, she made no attempt to stop the flow of tears or to control the sobs that wracked her shoulders. She knew she was watching the best thing that had ever happened to her walk out of her life, but she was helpless to stop him. A voice in the back of her mind kept repeating that she was lucky their relationship had gone no further than it had. Now she could cut her losses and get on with her life with only a fraction of the pain she would have felt had they become more deeply involved.

  She listened to the voice, even though she knew it was lying to her. How much more involved could someone be than to give their heart? How much more pain was it possible to feel?

  Eric's topcoat flapped open as he walked along Lombard, but he was as oblivious to the frigidly damp air as he was to the people who stared at him as he passed. Where did someone begin picking up the pieces when his world had collapsed around him? For him, there was only one place, The Promise. He considered hailing a cab for the long trip home but couldn't face being with another person, so he just kept on walking. By the time he had walked down Lombard and through the Presidio, he figured he was halfway to The Promise, and since he was still unwilling to be around anyone, he continued his solitary journey. As though obsessed by one purpose, he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, made his way through the steep hills of Sausalito and then down to the dock area. It was well past midnight when he was at last home.

  Exhausted and chilled to the bone, he went straight to his bedroom, stripped off his clothes and collapsed on the bed, wrapping a huge down comforter around him as he turned his face to the wall. As he lay there, he became barely cognizant of the telephone ringing somewhere in the distance. Only wishing it would stop, he never once considered the possibility that it might be Janet who was trying to reach him through the call forwarding he had placed on the house phone.

  Janet let the phone ring ten times before she gave up and went to bed. It was probably for the best that she hadn't been able to reach Eric. What would she have told him if she had? Somehow, after all they had been through that night, telling him she was calling just to make sure he had made it home all right seemed unbelievably cruel. As long as she lived, she would never forget the look on his face when she had accused him of thinking of her as a hooker.

  She went over to the closet where she had hung the beautiful white dress she had found in the Neiman-Marcus bag. It was made of a sensuous material that would catch in a breeze and cling to her legs. It must have taken Eric a long time to find such a dress in the middle of winter. Was it possible she was wrong about him? Were the problems between them created by her own imagination? She knew the question would haunt her for a long time to come.

  10

  Janet purposely owned an alarm clock that made an annoying buzz, because that was the only way she would get up in the morning. The trade-off was considerable—five to ten minutes of grumpiness as she fumbled around getting ready to start the day in return for a guarantee that she would get up. She was best left alone until she emerged from the shower, which usually gave her enough time to shed her irritation at being awakened by an obnoxious noise.

  This morning, because the alarm had gone off at 3:00 A.M., barely two hours after she had gone to bed, her grumpiness was taking longer than usual to wear off. She ran her fingers through her hair and yawned as she made her way across the room to look out the window. It was dark outside—very dark. She cupped her hands around her eyes to try to see whether it was raining. There was moisture glistening on the metal swing set, but it was hard to tell whether it had come from the fog or was a remnant of yesterday's rain.

  The mere thought of riding all the way to Livermore on the back of a motorcycle was enough to make her want to crawl back under the covers. With a concentrated effort, she resisted the impulse and headed for the bathroom, planning to stand under the hottest water she could tolerate. At least she could start the day warm.

  Earthquake arrived promptly at three-thirty, looking as fresh and raring to go as he would in the middle of the day. Janet invited him into the house for a cup of coffee. After considering her invitation for a minute, he came inside. "We really should be leaving soon, though," he said, reaching up to take off his helmet. "We don't want to be late."

  "God forbid," she groaned as she walked ahead of him into the kitchen. When she turned to hand him his cup, she almost dropped it. Since she'd seen him on Friday, he'd grown a full head of curly brown hair. "How did you do that?" she gasped, hardly recognizing him.

  He grinned. "Easy. I took it out of a box this morning and glued it on. What do you think?"

  Without the Mohawk he looked positively preppy. "I think your parents would get down on their knees and kiss the ground if they could see you."

  "You think it will make them feel better about what I've done after I get arrested?"

  "I wouldn't go that far." She handed him the cup. "Speaking of arrested, the leaders of this thing are aware that I'm not one of the volunteers, aren't they?" Protests had become so numerous and well organized since the seventy's, that most groups nowadays asked for volunteers to go to jail, rather than having the police haul everyone in. That worked out better for everyone. The police didn't have to search for places to hold hundreds of prisoners, and those going to jail could make plans ahead of time to be off work, or away from school, for a few days.

  "Fear not. I made sure your name wasn't on the list."

  She was having trouble keeping her eyes off him. The transformation from punk to preppy was amazing. She doubted anyone who had known him only with a Mohawk would be able to pick him out in a crowd, including herself. "Why the wig?" she asked, unable to contain herself any longer.

  "I figured no one would take me seriously the other way," he said softly, radiating sincerity as poignantly as a lonesome puppy in a pet store window.

  All thought of trying to talk him into letting her stay home so that she could go back to bed and get some sleep left her mind. If Earthquake cared so much about what they were doing that he was willing to compromise his normally militant attitude about his hair and dress, the least she could do was show up at the protest with him. "Come on," she said, taking his arm. "Isn't it about time we got going?"

  By the time they arrived in Livermore, Janet was regretting every tender thought she had had in Palo Alto. She was convinced she was an idiot—no matter what the provocation—ever to have agreed to what had turned out to be a two-hour ride on the back of a motorcycle in weather colder than she had dared to imagine.

  They passed the town and traveled east until they reached the Greenville Road exit, then turned off and went south for two and a quarter miles on a winding, narrow road. When Earthquake slowed down and made a right turn, she lifted her head from where she had had it sheltered in the middle of his back and looked around. They had pulled into an asphalted area that a sign identified as the East Gate. A guardhouse stood between locked chain-link-fence gates, and there was a sign demanding that they stop and display their badges. To the left were several brown buildings and a parking lot. Another sign, which said Visitor Center, pointed to the buildings. Everything behind the guardhouse was enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire, which were angled outward to keep intruders from climbing over the top. Everywhere there were white placard
s that stated Tresspassing—Loitering Forbidden by Law. Less plentiful were the yellow placards evenly spaced along the fence. The printing on them was too small for her to read from that distance.

  Other than the foreboding nature of the place, the most prominent feature was the lack of activity. "Where is everyone?" Janet asked, looking around the empty parking lot.

  "I don't know," Earthquake replied, lowering the kickstand and reaching into his pants pocket for a piece of paper. He studied the paper for a minute before getting off the bike. "We're at the East Gate, right?"

  She nodded.

  "And today is Sunday?"

  Again she nodded.

  "Then I can't understand why we're the only ones here." He stuffed the paper back into his pocket.

  "Maybe they all met someplace else and are planning to come in together. It would certainly make it look more impressive to do that than to have everyone drifting in singly." She didn't believe what she'd said, but Earthquake looked so crestfallen she felt she had to offer some thread of hope. She looked around again. "That must be what they're doing. I don't even see Casey's car anywhere." Casey had spent Saturday in Stockton visiting the parents of her latest boyfriend, which meant she would be coming from the opposite direction they had come.

  "Oh, I must have forgotten to tell you, Casey's not going to be here today."

  Janet let out an exasperated sigh. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me too much." Then another thought struck. "But if she's not coming, and you're going to jail, how am I supposed to get home?" There was no way she was going to manhandle his bike back over those mountains in the middle of Sunday traffic. Sitting on the back when the roads had been relatively clear had been bad enough.

  "Don't worry, there's at least a dozen people coming from Stanford who would gladly give you a lift back home."

  "If they ever get here, that is," she said glumly.

  "Oh, ye of little faith."

  There it was again, that indomitable cheerfulness. The way he was acting, a person would think the prospect of going to jail was the highlight of his life. She took his hand for balance and climbed off the bike, wondering how long it would take for the numbness to wear off from her buttocks and thighs. She stretched and then hugged herself against the cold. All in all, she decided as she looked around, what had started out as a miserable day was keeping itself directly on course. It was becoming painfully obvious that what she had hoped—to get to the lab, wave a sign for a few minutes and be on her way again—was not going to come to pass.

  Earthquake started across the parking lot, and having nothing better to do, she followed. They stopped when they reached a place where there was a clear view of the buildings behind the fence. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory looked huge, but somehow it wasn't nearly as imposing as she had anticipated. The structures that were visible were mostly single story and had an air of impermanence about them, reminiscent of pictures she'd seen of military bases that had been hastily constructed during World War II. Maintenance trucks, stacks of tin drums and what looked like a conglomeration of spare parts made the area she could see clearly from where she was seem rather on the seedy side. She wasn't sure exactly what she had expected, but it certainly hadn't been this.

  She looked around some more, noting how far the facility went back from the fence. She wasn't able to see to the other side. "This place is gigantic," she whispered, her voice filled with awe. She wasn't aware she had spoken her thoughts aloud until he answered.

  "And dangerous."

  She glanced up at the barbed wire, then over at the locked gate, subliminally taking in the profusion of warning signs against trespassing. Another chill slithered down her spine, only this one had nothing to do with the cold. If she hadn't been too crazy about coming here before, she was even less so now that she'd seen the facility. "What do you think we should do?"

  "Huh?" Obviously as mesmerized as she was by all that surrounded them, Earthquake, too, had drifted into a world of his own.

  "About being the only ones here," she prompted.

  He shrugged. "I'm not about to let something like that stop me."

  "You're not?" What better reason could there be?

  "This is too important, Janet. We can't let one little setback stop us."

  "We can't?" She was more than willing. But she could almost hear the wheels churning in his head, destroying her hopes for an easy getaway. "I don't know what's happened to everyone else, but we're here, and our voices count for something."

  "Earthquake, you can't be serious." But she could see by the gleam in his eye that he was. "Be reasonable… what can only two people do?"

  "History is filled with occasions when all it took was one person to make a difference."

  "Name one."

  "Joan of Arc."

  "My God, Earthquake. If you recall, she was burned at the stake for her efforts. I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of sacrifice."

  "Okay, so Joan of Arc was a poor choice for an example. There have been plenty of others."

  Realizing she would never be able to talk reason into him as long as they were still at the facility, she took his arm and tried to steer him over to the bike. "Why don't we go into Livermore," she said reasonably. "Surely there's a restaurant open by now where we could get some breakfast and talk this whole thing over."

  "If we did that, by the time we got back here again it would be too late for us to do anything."

  Precisely, "Better not to do anything at all rather than screw up what you do."

  "Is that the best you can do?"

  "It's still early."

  "Ah, Jan, think of it. We might have a chance to change history today. Are you going to let that pass you by?"

  "Would you please come down off that cloud you're perched on this morning? What makes you think whatever we do today is going to make any difference to anyone?"

  "What makes you think it isn't?"

  "I'm a realist."

  "And I'm a dreamer, and I refuse to let my dream of a safe world for everyone be destroyed."

  He said the words with such heart-wrenching sincerity, she could argue no more. "All right, Earthquake," she said with a resigned sigh. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Help me get inside."

  "What? Haven't you noticed all the signs telling you it's against the law to trespass in this place?"

  "I'm not going to stay inside. I'm just going to hang the sign I brought with me on the side of that building and then come right back out again. As soon as I'm through, we can go home."

  "What good is hanging a sign going to do? They'll just take it down as soon as they see it."

  "If we're lucky, they won't see it before we get the media out here. Think, of it, Jan. Something like this could get picked up by the wire services and get national attention." He grasped her shoulders. "You know how people love 'little guy makes good' stories. This could start a grass roots movement that could snowball into—"

  "Enough. If we're going to do this, let's get it done before people start showing up for work."

  He gave her a bone-crushing hug. "Thanks, Jan. I'll never forget you for this."

  As she watched him run back to the motorcycle for his sign, she shook her head in disbelief at how easily she had capitulated. Obviously her strong will and stubbornness only surged to the fore when it came to dealing with Eric. With anyone else, she was a pushover.

  When Earthquake returned, he was wearing a smile that went ear to ear and was carrying a white sheet folded up under one arm. "You're never going to be able to get over that barbed wire without tearing yourself to pieces," she said in one last attempt to dissuade him.

  "I have that all taken care of." He pulled a pair of wire snips out of his pocket.

  "I see you came prepared." She should have known as much.

  "Actually they're part of the tool kit I carry on the bike. I never thought they'd come in so handy."

  Janet heard a car coming and turned to face the road. She breathed a sigh of r
elief when it kept going. "Could we please get this over with? I'm beginning to get the creeps."

  "Where's your spirit of adventure?"

  She glared at him.

  "All right. I get the picture. Here—" he handed her the bedsheet "—you hold this while I climb over. When I'm on the other side, toss it to me." He stuck his toe in the fence and grabbed hold with both hands. When he was balanced near the top, he took the wire snips back out of his pocket and started to work on the barbed wire.

  Janet noticed she was standing near one of the yellow signs and stepped closer to read it. On top was a notice that stated that the property they were trespassing on belonged to the United States Department of Energy. "Do you know who owns this place?" she asked, surprised by what she had discovered.

  "Uh-huh… the Energy Department."

  Score one for him. She stepped a little closer to read the fine print farther down. In legalese it told her the same thing the larger white signs proclaimed, only it took a hundred more words. The Department of Energy didn't want any unauthorized person on or about their property, and it was saying so in no uncertain terms. Because she was the type of person who read the backs of cereal boxes and the mastheads of magazines when there was nothing better available, she continued reading.

  Whoever willfully violates the aforesaid regulation shall upon conviction thereof be punishable by a fine of not more than a thousand dollars.

  A thousand dollars. "Earthquake—do you know what kind of fine is involved in this thing if we get caught?" She had grave doubts the courts would be as patient as Eric had been about getting paid.

  "Uh-huh."

  "And it doesn't bother you?"

  "Ouch!"

  "What happened?"

  "I stuck a barb in my thumb."

  "Are you all right?" she gasped.

  "Don't get carried away, Jan. It's my thumb, not my throat."

  She nervously shifted her weight to the other foot. "Are you about through?"