“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I suppose we changed. See, I liked to think she finished it, because I was still in love with her even after it was over. But apparently she was still in love with me too. Yet it got to a stage where we could barely sit in the same room together. I don’t know, it was just messy, and we were young. She’s married now, they’re both teachers. They have two children.”
Jem sat in silence for a moment, looking almost saddened, adding then in a distracted aside, “Do you still think about her?” For a couple of years he had, all the time, but not now; he wasn’t sure he even remembered what it was to think about someone like that.
“Occasionally,” he said, “in passing, but I stopped being in love with her a long time ago too, and there’s been no one else since.”
“You’ll fall in love again though,” she said, pitched halfway between question and statement, like she needed reassurance.
“Of course,” said JJ, casually, giving it little enough thought to believe in it himself for the moment, “I’m sure I will.” That seemed to satisfy her, whatever track it was she’d been following, and she changed the subject again, talking about the movie she’d seen with Freddie the previous night, going back to his house, a quick biography of the Sales family, subjects meshing into each other, questions to JJ as they occurred to her, the conversation open-ended like one they’d continue in the times ahead of them.
A couple of times as they talked he thought back to those questions about love, questions that had come across as crucially important to her, as though she had some deep concern for his emotional welfare. And it took him a while to realize that the questions hadn’t been about him at all but had been a sounding board for whatever was going on in her own life, between her and Freddie or whoever else.
Yet she’d have been right to be concerned about him, because all of his emotions had been smothered, mechanized, things he expressed through memory rather than reflex. And maybe that was why he was drawn to people like the girl in Moscow, Jem herself, because they were beyond reach, and it was easier for him to keep feelings like that at a distance.
The remainder of the tea had long gone cold in their cups when Jem’s eyes skipped to the door and she said, “Hey, Ed.” She jumped up and kissed him on the cheek, telling him to sit down with JJ while she got some coffee. JJ asked him about his journey, biding his time till she came back. She asked the same questions then before leaving without ceremony, taking the tea things with her.
Once they were alone Ed let a lazy satisfied smile creep across his face and said, “Korzhakov and Mavrodi were Naumenko’s men; we’re in business.”
JJ’s head cleared, coming around quickly to the real business of his being there, to what he did, the half of him that Jem hadn’t unearthed. “So what’s next?” he asked.
“Naumenko’s in Athens. I’ve taken the liberty of getting you a ticket for tomorrow.”
“Me? Why not you?” A voice started in his head, a voice which had first sounded in the bookstore with Tom, and if it was a setup this would be the perfect sting. His gut though was telling him that Holden was okay, and that no one, not even Berg, would engineer a setup that elaborate anyway. He still didn’t like the idea of a face-to-face with Naumenko, but he knew that was how those people worked and Ed was already explaining why it had to be him.
“I don’t know if Naumenko would believe me. Like I said, he never forgave me for David so he might not trust my intentions here. You on the other hand”—Ed nodded like he was impressed by his own reasoning—“you’ll have him eating out of your hand. I know the man, and I know your reputation, and he’ll admire you even more for having the balls to just walk in there.”
“Who says I have the balls?” JJ said, smiling, adding a second later, “Okay I’ll go, but I’ll book my own ticket.”
Ed raised his eyebrows and said, “You can trust me, you know, JJ.” He looked hurt that JJ was suspicious, even now, but it was a sentiment that probably didn’t go much beneath the surface.
“I know I can; it’s just a superstition of mine.” It was partly trust, even with Holden, but it was partly superstition too, a feeling that it would be bad luck to take an air ticket from someone else. And thinking of it now brought back a memory of Aurianne again, telling him how safe air travel was, how much more likely it was to be killed some other way, any other way.
Even so, he’d buy his own ticket, and this time in remembering Aurianne he thought of Jem too, the brief flowering of friendship he’d found here with her in these couple of days, a simple reawakening of what it meant to be with a person and feel wired because of it.