Rapture

He walked past the newsstand and on up the street as far as the Old Burying Ground. He carried a paperback of Katz's Life After Nuclear War, which he had purchased that same morning. It was the first of May, and his first full day there. The sun was shining brilliantly on Harvard Square.

Early afternoon now. He resumed his post on the concrete bench outside the Science Center. It was the easiest way. She had to take at least one course in that ugly building, and even if she didn't, she was bound to pass by sooner or later. He had patience, and plenty of time. He waited and watched, glancing up through mirrored sunglasses whenever a female came along. Otherwise he stared at the book open on his lap. Apparently it would take only 335 warheads to set the Soviet Union back a thousand years. But was that far enough?

He looked like someone else, not Jeff Lisker. Not Phil Headley, nor even the equally mythical Jonathan Tate, which was the name he currently used for purposes of airline tickets, hotel registrations, and traveler's checks. He had let his hair grow for most of April. It wasn't really long, but longer and fuller. Then he'd gone to a unisex salon in West Hollywood, not so much for a cut as to have the color and style changed. Gone was the dull brown, gone, too, the part that had been with him since childhood. Now his hair was a kind of muddy cream color, and it was swept back on his head. Ted and Callie hadn't liked the change but Jeff didn't care. He had to use mousse every morning to keep the part from reasserting itself. He had also applied peroxide to his eyebrows, with mixed results. He wore a pair of scuffed loafers, corduroy jeans, a Dodgers T-shirt, and an old, comfortable tweed jacket he'd been surprised to find he still had in his closet. He hoped he looked like a graduate student or a member of the faculty.

Another fool's errand? Possibly. Probably. What would he say to Bonnie when he did see her? He didn't have the slightest idea. But he had already decided that it was pointless to sit around in Ventura County and try to figure these things out in his head. Now that he was on the scene, something would happen, or it wouldn't. All it would cost was time and money, and he had those to bum.

Jeffs feelings for Georgianne were no less intense than they had been the last time he'd spoken with her, nearly three months ago. It had to be love-there was nothing else to call it, and he couldn't begin to consider the alternatives. Say love, then. But why did he feel as if he were being victimized? It shouldn't be happening this way. What did he have to do, how far did he have to go to demonstrate his love? Didn't she understand how strong her hold on him was? Obviously not. Georgianne was one of those women who go through life scarcely realizing the effect they have on some men.

There was nothing he could do but go along with the situation and hope it would take a turn in his favor at some point. He had tried to forget about her back in February, when he'd stopped calling her. Ten months of remarkable effort had come to nothing, and his instinct had been to cut his losses. But it hadn't worked out that way. Georgianne still dominated his thoughts, like a river of lost opportunity flowing through his life. The desire to pursue and possess that one woman refused to fade away. She never called or wrote, but that didn't matter. Georgianne never let Jeff go.

He had found himself returning to Diane. She became Georgianne in a bikini, or in a slip and bra, or in a teddy, or in black patterned stockings with her skirt riding up while she sat and read a book and Jeff watched. But the satisfaction he got with Diane was diminishing, the illusion more difficult to maintain. Georgianne was under his skin, in his blood, and no substitute would do. Diane's hair didn't smell the same as Georgianne's, her body didn't feel quite the same in an embrace. Even when they both had their clothes on, Diane's breasts lightly touching his chest somehow felt wrong. Jeff had two Georgiannes locked in his head-the one from high school and the one who lived now-and Diane couldn't fully translate into either of them.

Jeff liked to regard Georgianne as a special project. He couldn't give up on her. As an intellectual puzzle, he thought she might still be solved, that he would finally figure out what it took to win her. And on an emotional level, the idea of abandoning her never had a chance.