Clandestine

I cleared my throat repeatedly to prepare her for my coming as I took the stairs slowly, one at a time. Lorna was lying on her floral-patterned couch, with one arm dangling over the side holding a wineglass. The light from candles placed strategically throughout the room on lamp tables, bookshelves, and windowsills encased her in an amber glow.

"Hello, Freddy," she said as I entered the room.

"Hello, Lor," I returned. I pulled an ottoman up alongside the sofa.

Lorna sipped her wine. "What will you do now?" she asked.

"I don't know. Who told you?"

"The four-star edition of the L.A. Examiner. 'Underhill Resigns in Wake of False Arrests Suits. Communist Ties Cited.' Do you want me to read you the whole thing?"

I reached for her arm, but she pulled it away. "I'm sorry for yesterday, Lorna, really."

"For my office door?"

"No, for what I said to you."

"Was it the truth?"

"Yes."

"Then don't apologize for it."

Lorna's face was an iron mask in the candlelight. Her expression was expressionless, and I couldn't decipher her feelings. "What are you going to do, Freddy?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll paint my car red. Maybe I'll dye my hair red, too. Maybe I'll enlist in the North Korean Army. I've never done anything half-assed in my life, so why be a half-assed Commie?"

Lorna lit a cigarette. The smoke she exhaled cast her in a second halo within the amber light. Her mask was starting to drop. She was starting to get angry, and that gave me heart. I threw out a line calculated to compound that anger. "The wonder got me, I guess."

"No!" Lorna spat out. "No, you bastard. The wonder didn't get you; you got you! Don't you know that?"

"Yes, I do. And do you know the only thing I'm sorry for?"

"Eddie Engels and Margaret Cadwallader?"

"The hell with them. They're dead. I'm only sorry I took you with me."

Lorna laughed. "Don't be sorry. I fell for circumstantial evidence and the brightest, brashest, handsomest man I'd ever met. What will you do now, Freddy?"

I took Lorna's hand, holding it tightly so she couldn't withdraw it. "I don't know. What will you do?"

Lorna wrenched her hand free and began twisting her head sideways, banging it back and forth violently on the couch. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, for Christ's fucking sake, I don't know!"

"Will you stay with the D.A.'s office?"

Lorna shook her head again. "No. I can't. I mean, I could if I wanted to, but I can't. I can't go on with justice and cops and criminal law. When you called me and told me Engels confessed, I went straight to the D.A. Maybe I gushed about you, I don't know, but he had my number, and when Canfield brought Winton to see him and we talked afterward, I knew that I was through in the office. With Engels dead, it's final. I don't even want to be there now. Freddy, will you try to get another policeman's job?"

The naive question was a challenge. I shook my head. "Not unless it's in Russia. Maybe I could be a deputy commissar in Leningrad, something like that. Write parking tickets for bobsleds in Siberia."

Lorna stroked my hair: "What do you want, Freddy?"

"I want you. That's all I know. Will you marry me?"

Lorna smiled in the candlelight. "Yes," she said.

We decided not to lose our momentum. Lorna hurriedly packed a suitcase while I put the top up on the car. We left immediately for the border, cracking jokes and singing along with the radio and playing grab-ass as we highballed it south on Route 5.

Coming into San Diego, Lorna started to cry as the realization hit her that she had lost her secure old life and had gained an uncertain new one. I held her tightly with one arm and continued driving. We crossed the border into Mexico at three in the morning.

We found an all-night wedding chapel on Revolución, the main drag of Tijuana. A fat, smiling Mexican priest married us, took the ten-dollar wedding fee and typed our marriage license, assuring us all the while that it was lawful and binding before man and God.

We drove through the impoverished Tijuana streets until we spotted a hotel that looked clean enough to spend our wedding night in.

I paid for three days in advance and carried our bags to a rickety elevator that took us up to the top floor. Our room was simple: clean, polished wood floors; clean, threadbare carpeting; a clean bathroom; and a big clean double bed.

Lorna Underhill undressed, lay down on the bed and fell asleep immediately. I sat in a chair and watched my wife sleep, believing that the steadfastness of my love for her would cover all the contingencies of life without the wonder.

III

Time, Out of Time

15

Years passed. Years of regret and introspection; years of hitting hundreds of thousands of golf balls, of reading, of long walks along the beach with Night Train; years of trying to live like other people. Years of looking for something to which I could commit my life. Years of learning what works and what doesn't. But mostly, years of Lorna.