Tilting the Balance

“Do you’really want to know?” Her chin went up defiantly. Pushing her made her angry, all right; he’d been afraid it would, and he was right. Before he could answer what might have been a rhetorical question, she went on, “As a matter of fact, we did, night before last. And so?”

Jens didn’t know and so. Everything he’d looked forward to-everything except work, anyhow-had crumbled to pieces inside the last half hour. He didn’t know whether he wanted to pick up those pieces and try to put them together again. But if he didn’t, what did he have left? The answer to that was painfully obvious: nothing.

Barbara was still waiting for her answer. He said, “I wish to God it had been me instead.”

“I know,” she said, which was not the same as I wish it had, too. But something-maybe the naked longing in his voice-seemed to soften her. She continued, “It’s not that I don’t love you, Jens-don’t ever think that. But when I thought you were gone forever, I told myself life went on, and I had to go on with it. I can’t turn off what I feel about Sam as if it were a light switch.”

“Obviously,” he said, which made her angry again. “I’m sorry,” he added quickly, though he wasn’t sure he meant it. “The whole thing is just fubar.”

“Fubar? What’s that?” Barbara’s eyes lit up. She lived for words. When she found one she didn’t know, she pounced.

“I picked it up from the Army guys I was with for a while,” he answered. “It stands for ‘fouled’-but that’s not what they usually say-‘up beyond all recognition.’ ”

“Oh, like snafu,” she said, neatly cataloging it.

After that, silence stretched between them. Jens wanted to ask the one question he hadn’t put to her-“Will you come back to me?”-but he didn’t. Part of him was afraid she’d say no. A different part was just as much afraid she’d say yes.

When he didn’t say anything, Barbara said: “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, which was honest enough to make her nod soberly. He went on, “In the end, it’s more or less up to you, isn’t it?”

“Not altogether.” Her left hand spread over her belly; he wondered if she knew it had moved. “For instance, do you want me back-under the circumstances?”

Since he’d been asking himself the same thing, he couldn’t exclaim Yes! the way he probably should have. When a couple of seconds passed without his saying anything, Barbara looked away. That frightened him. He didn’t want to throw her out, either. He said, “I’m sorry, dear. Too much landing on me all at once.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” She shook her head wearily, then got to her feet. “I’d better get downstairs and help with the work, Jens. I’ve sort of turned into assistant Lizard liaison person.”

“Wait.” He had work, too, a load that was going to quadruple now that the Met Lab was finally here. But that didn’t have to start at this precise instant. He got up, too, hurried around the desk and took her in his arms. She held him tight; her body molded itself to his. It felt so familiar, so right. He wished he’d had the sense to lock his office door: he might have tried to drag her down to the floor then and there. It had been so long… He remembered the last time they’d made love on the floor, with Lizard bombs falling all over Chicago.

She tilted her face up, kissed him with more warmth than she’d shown down on East Evans. But before he could try dragging her down to the floor even with the door unlocked, she pulled away and said, “I really should go.”

“Where will you stay tonight?” he asked. There. That brought it out in the open. If she said she’d stay with him, he didn’t know what he’d do-not go back to the BOQ, that was for sure.

But she just shook her head and answered, “Don’t ask me that yet, please. Right now I don’t even know which end is up.”

“All right,” he said reluctantly; he’d been up when they held each other.

Barbara walked out of the office. He listened to her footsteps receding down the hallway and then in the stairwell. He went back to his desk, looked out the window behind it. There she came, out, of Science Hall.

And there she went, over to Sam Yeager. No doubt who he was, even from three floors up: plenty of men in Army uniforms standing around, but only one of them stayed by the two Lizard prisoners. Jens felt like a Peeping Tom as he watched his wife hug and kiss the tall soldier, but he couldn’t make himself tear his eyes away. When he compared the way she held Yeager to how she’d embraced him, a cold, inescapable conclusion formed in his mind: wherever she slept tonight, it wouldn’t be with him.

At last Barbara broke free of the other man, but her hand lingered affectionately at his waist for an extra few seconds. Jens made himself turn away from the window and look at his desk. No matter what happens to the rest of my life, there’s still a war on and I have a ton of work to do, he told himself.