“Touchdown,” he says.
The taxi slows and turns left on Fifty-Ninth Street to make its way east. Across Fox’s face, the city lights roll and flash. He stares right back, cold sober, which is about the most terrifying thing you can imagine. I don’t flinch, however. Maybe I’m too drunk to focus, maybe I’m too drunk to care. The air is fresh for June, as clean as you can possibly hope for at the beginning of a Manhattan summer, and the windows are cranked down to allow this miraculous breeze inside.
“Let’s stop here and walk,” I say. “I could use the air.”
Fox leans forward to the driver and says something. The taxi pulls to the curb at the corner of Lexington Avenue. My palms are damp around my pocketbook. Fox pays the driver and jumps out to swing around the bumper and open my door. For once, I don’t beat the gentleman to it—not that I don’t appreciate niceties, you understand. I’m just too impatient under ordinary circumstances, too eager to get on with wherever it is we’re going. Tonight there’s no rush, and I need the help. I need a steady arm to draw me from the taxi and set me on my feet on the good solid New York sidewalk.
We don’t say an awful lot. Sumner Fox doesn’t seem to talk much, as a rule. Nor does he touch me, except when I stumble, stepping off the curb at First Avenue. We turn down Sutton Place to the sound of the traffic whisking along the East River Drive, the horns and distant shouts and nighttime music.
“How do you like the city?” I ask.
“It’s all right. It’s like they say, it never sleeps.”
“You strike me as a country boy, that’s why I asked.”
“I guess I like the country most. But I can appreciate what the city has to offer.”
“I remember VE Day. That was something, Mr. Fox. Every stranger you met was your new best friend. Never kissed so many men in my life. I remember thinking when I went to bed the next day, there was no place I’d rather be on a day like that, celebrating a thing like that.” I pause. “Of course, you were out in the Pacific, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
I don’t often curse myself, but I curse myself then. A Japanese prison camp, that’s what Uncle Charlie said, though not even Ruth Macallister dares ask him for certain. I find myself wondering, out of the blue, where Iris was on VE Day. She must have been in Europe itself, some embassy or another. I suppose they celebrated, all right. She and Sasha.
A handkerchief appears before me. “Here,” says Fox, and it’s only then that I realize I’m crying.
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“I figured.”
We walk on to my apartment building, another block down on the corner of East Fifty-Sixth Street. The doorman doesn’t look at all surprised to see me. He trades a glance with Fox that looks like a question, and Fox makes the absolute briefest negative shake of his head.
I proffer the handkerchief. “Thanks for the loan.”
“Keep it.”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
He takes back the handkerchief, and in that instant I regret insisting. It seems so pointlessly rude.
“Why were you tailing me?” I ask.
“It’s my job.”
“To make sure I’m not in secret communication with my sister, maybe?”
“Something like that. But also to demonstrate, if I can, that you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m on your side. I’m on hers. She’s not in any trouble with us, not if I can help it.”
He says this sincerely, and I don’t for a moment imagine he could be lying. I’m not saying my instincts about people are never wrong, but they’re only wrong if some prejudice on my part interferes with their natural operation. My instinct about Sumner Fox is that he’s a straight shooter. If I were going to trust any FBI man, I would trust him.
But I’m not going to trust an FBI man. I know what I know, after all.
“I appreciate the lift home, Mr. Fox. I do hope I didn’t ruin your evening.”
“Not at all. Take some aspirin and get some rest. And try not to worry so much about your sister.”
“Who said I was worried?”
“You did.” He tips his hat and steps back. “We’ll find her, never fear. Good night, Miss Macallister. You’ve still got my card, if you hear anything?”
I pat my pocketbook. “Right here.”
My apartment is not the kind of shabby shoebox you ordinarily associate with single Manhattan career girls. If you must know, it used to belong to my parents. I grew up in this apartment and, since neither my brother nor my sister ever had any use for it, haven’t set foot within its walls in years, I had it redecorated ten years ago according to my own taste. The room we once called a dining room has been converted into a library. Harry’s room I kept as it was, because Harry’s the kind of brother who might turn up at any moment after a decade’s absence and expect his dinner kept warm and his scotch with ice. The room I once shared with Iris became a spare bedroom for theoretical guests, and my parents’ bedroom now belongs to me.
But I can’t sleep yet. How can I sleep with my nerves in such a fizzle? I run a bath and sink gratefully into the warm water with a cigarette and a glass of Alka-Seltzer. I instruct myself not to think about Iris, but when my eyes close, there she is. All this time I’ve banished her without effort, and now that I need her gone—absolutely must be clear of Iris for my own peace of mind—she won’t leave me alone.
I have twenty-two years crammed full of memories of Iris, but she keeps appearing to me from her hospital bed in Rome, after the accident. She was a mess. Bruises everywhere, one eye socket so black and puffy you couldn’t make out the eyeball within, to say nothing of the broken ankle and various bandages stuck upon her body, so that she resembled a half-finished mummy. She was asleep when I came in, but her eyes opened the instant I came to the bed. She smiled bravely because she didn’t want me to worry. “I’m sorry,” she sort of croaked.
Sorry!
I don’t cry much, and I certainly wasn’t in the messy habit in those years. What a waste of time—what a crummy way to spend an afternoon. But I came within a kitten’s whisker of breaking down in that moment. Iris was sorry! She was sorry to have occasioned all this trouble. She took the blame on her delicate shoulders.
You understand, therefore, that Iris and I are not estranged because she failed me in some unforgivable way. Iris would never fail anybody. There is not one disloyal bone in her body, not one atom of her that would not sacrifice itself for your sake. People might call that weakness, but I’ve always envied her for it, if I’m honest with myself and with you. She will never stagger under the weight of guilt, as I do—she will know regret, which is the lot of all mankind, but not because she’s done anything to hurt you.
By the time I rise from the bath, dripping and wrinkled, it’s practically dawn. Saturday, thank goodness, so I don’t need to trouble myself about work. I brush my teeth and spread the cold cream over my face and find a clean pair of pajamas in the chest of drawers. The air in the bedroom is warm and stuffy and humid from the bath. I open a window and pull back the covers, and as I begin the ascent into bed my toe discovers something flat.
I glance at the floor. Just under the edge of the bedframe lies the snapshot Iris enclosed in her letter.