Rapture

While Bonnie talked to Georgianne, Jeff moved away and lit a cigarette. He would have loved to kiss and touch the girl at that moment, and catch the sound of Georgianne's voice, but just the thought of doing it made him tremble, and he was afraid his body would betray him in some way to Bonnie. She told her mother, as she had her roommate, that she would be out with friends for most of the weekend, not to expect to find her in, that she would call again. Bonnie kept it vague, but she sounded so casual and convincing that no serious questions were asked. Jeff, watching her from the armchair across the room, admired what he saw. She was cool, she could deal with a delicate situation, and in a few years she'd probably be able to get people to do whatever she wanted. She showed more potential than Georgianne ever had, but he knew he was looking for something else. In the long run, Bonnie might well prove to be too much to handle. Georgianne was the dream, a promise of love secure and solid.

"Are we going anywhere tonight?" she asked after hanging up.

"Sure. Let's go out and get something to eat," he replied. "I'm starved."

"Okay, great. Now let me just see what I can come up with here. Don't panic."

Jeff smiled but said nothing. He took another sip of malt and watched. Bonnie pulled on her panties and black jeans, then a clean pair of Jeffs socks and her boots. She found the one white shirt he'd bothered to bring and put it on, rolling the sleeves up over her wrists. She tucked it in her jeans and left the top four buttons unfastened. Then she took his off-white linen jacket from the closet and tried it on. The sleeves were again too long, but she carefully folded them back, forming neat cuffs. Finally she arranged her scarf so that it looked like an explosion of silk and color erupting from the breast pocket of the jacket. She grabbed her handbag and went into the bathroom to apply some make-up. When she returned, Jeff noticed the faint lavender lipstick and the blue shading around her eyes.

"Well?"

"Fantastic," he told her. "You look better in my clothes than I do."

"No offense, but I should hope so."

They took a taxi into downtown Boston and wandered around the streets for a while, enjoying the cool night air. They ate in an Italian restaurant, talking about college and Bonnie's future. Jeff painted a glamorous picture of high-tech work in Southern California, telling her of the endless possibilities, the generous pay, and how important it was to get some practical experience. He didn't want her to think she had to stay on at Harvard until she had her master's degree and doctorate.

After dinner they walked until they came upon a place called the Seafront, a night club that featured a good jazz quartet. No one questioned Bonnie's age. They drank through two sets of music. Then she tried to persuade Jeff to take her to one of the strip bars in the Combat Zone.

"I want to see what they're like," she explained over an elegant saxophone solo. "I'd be safe with you."

Safe. The word seemed to echo in the back of Jeff's mind, but he wasn't sure why. He liked Bonnie's sense of curiosity, though, and her trust in him.

"I've been in those kinds of places," he said dismissively, a man of the world. "They're full of lonely men, tourists, and other stray suckers."

Bonnie looked as if she were about to answer that, but she stifled it beneath an odd smile.

Back in the hotel room later, they took their clothes off, got under the covers, and watched a made-fortelevision movie about cloning. Rock Hudson created Barbara Carerra in his laboratory and then had to ex plain the twentieth century to her. It wasn't easy. Why bother? Jeffs mind drifted. He was trying to understand something about sex. Time was the extra, invisible ingredient. Sex was one way Bonnie forged ahead with her life, seizing her future and making it the present. But for Jeff it seemed to be all about the past, his way of driving back through the years toward some lost, incomplete version of himself. When he made love to Bonnie, wasn't he also making love to Georgianne? Or was he really just trying to penetrate a ghost that existed only in the spirit world of his own mind? Could Georgianne ever be as good as he hoped and dreamed? That was the cruelest question of all. Before he fell asleep, he tried to plan how he would talk to Bonnie about her mother. There had to be a right way. He had a crucial opportunity in the palm of his hand, but he also knew that time was working against him-and his ghost.

In the morning, Jeff and Bonnie walked to a diner for breakfast and then strolled along the Charles watching four- and eight-man shells streak downriver. She put her arm through his and they walked slowly, close together, like lovers. She mentioned her father almost accidentally, in reference to something else, and Jeff did not respond. A moment later she stopped and looked at him.

"What do you think about my father's murder, Jeff?" she asked. "What do you really think?"