Early Warning

There was another long silence, and then Andy said, “Is there something I can do for her?” For me?

“I have a colleague,” said Dr. Grossman. “She might benefit from seeing him.”

But as she left the office, Andy thought, it was nature over nurture, wasn’t it? Ragnarök or nuclear exchange, what was the difference? How appropriate that the DEW Line (the “Distant Early Warning Line”—Andy mouthed the words) ran across Greenland, Iceland, and no doubt Norway. What was his name again — Loki — the one bound to the rocks with chains and ropes made of the entrails of his own son. Loki, the god of the moving earth, of crevasses opening up and caverns collapsing, was the one who had always frightened her, not Surt, the fiery one. When she was Janny’s age, any trembling, even of the branch her swing was anchored to, had put her in a fright. In the last ten years, she had considered and put away her fears — thermonuclear, fallout, Mutually Assured Destruction — one by one. Now they were back, and Janny seemed to sense them. The thing not to tell Janny was that there would be just two survivors, a couple named Líf and Lífþrasir, say Adam and Eve. But not Janny, not Richie, not Michael. Not Andy, not Frank.

—

FRANK DID NOT HAUNT Front Street and Maiden Lane; he circled it, wending here and there, his eye always peeled. He had the time — he’d given up the whoring and the flying and practically everything else. He told Andy that he had taken up golf, and was planning to join a country club but hadn’t decided which one, so he was visiting all of them. He even bought a set of clubs and kept them in the trunk of his Chrysler. But he didn’t drive the Chrysler any where near the Knickerbocker. He zipped over the GW Bridge, down the West Side Highway, then left on Canal Street. Then he parked in a lot near Chinatown, and started walking. Sometimes he walked first toward the river and then south (southwest — his inner compass was still accurate). Other times, he walked down Pearl Street or Gold Street, scanning the passing women.

He saw her twice in the first week in March. Both times, she was wearing the black coat. He followed her at a distance, taking note not only of where she went and which buildings she frequented, but also of whom she spoke to, whether any men walked along with her or picked her up (they did not), and whom she greeted. The first afternoon, he followed her for an hour and never got closer than half a block. The second time, she went into that same brick building after thirty-seven minutes. He needed a plan.

Events at the office interfered for a while. Friskie got drunk and slapped the Sulzberger cousin in the street outside the Waldorf after a dance — it got into the papers; the girl broke the engagement; Dave Courtland said high time, she was a Jew; and Frank had to fly down to Galveston and talk not only to Dave, but to the wife, Anna. It took seventeen days to work out a reconciliation, and the Sulzberger parents were not happy, but, on the other hand, they had not heard the “Jew” comment, and Friskie was a very, very handsome young man. Then the head of the Venezuela office, Jesús De La Garza, came for a visit, and he was in New York for seven days and out in Southampton for a long weekend. After he left, Jim Upjohn told Frank, he tacked a note to the door of the room Jesús stayed in that read, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the going of the Lord.”

The gift was that Frank was sitting at a table in the White Horse Tavern, and he saw her through the window. She passed the outside tables, came in, sat down nearby, and pulled out a copy of The Atlantic Monthly. Her coat was a slender trench, two years out of style. When she pushed her scarf back, he saw she had short, thick hair now, dark with scattered gray streaks, but neatly cut. She was fuller in the bust than she’d been during the war, and had just the beginnings of a belly, though she was neatly girdled. As she read, two wrinkles formed between her eyebrows, and her mouth thinned a bit, though her lips were still fuller than most women’s. She ordered a sherry and kept reading. He squinted: it was an article entitled “Anyone Can Play the Harmonica.” This was true, in Frank’s experience, so he was surprised that there would be an article about it.

She must have sensed him looking over her shoulder, because she glanced in his direction and gave him one of those little smiles. He said, “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.” Her accent was very good, just an underlying melody of the Mediterranean.

Then he said, “May I know you?”

This time she laughed, and it was the same laugh he remembered, merry and deep, the laugh of a woman with plenty of experience.

“I come from a long line of harmonica players.”

“Is that possible?” said the woman.