Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

Johanna Weber was there again, a tugboat still steering him through the harbor. “As loudly as you like, Daniel. Never a wrong note. Not like Hans. But come, some coffee, Mr. Connolly?”

“Or perhaps you’d like a drink,” Emma said, holding up her glass. For an instant, Connolly wondered if that explained the shine in her eyes.

“Coffee would be fine,” he said, and Johanna Weber beamed, clearly pleased, and took him in tow to the tall urn. Emma gave him a weak, ironic salute with her glass.

“Here,” Johanna Weber said, handing him a cup. “Shall I get you some cake?” But she was distracted by a new arrival, and Connolly watched the party game begin all over again, one accurate name following another.

The day had been somber-these were some of the same faces he had seen drawn and grieving in front of the Admin Building-but the party had taken on a life of its own, and as each voice rose to be heard above the others, the small house hummed with a kind of decorous gaiety. The Webers’ rooms were small but, unlike other interiors on the Hill, had the settled look of lives accumulated bit by bit. The heavy furniture, the antimacassars, the shelves of porcelain knickknacks, seemed to have come out of a time machine launched when the world was solid, weighted down and explained by things. There were no cactuses or Indian throws or anything else to suggest they had all gathered on a cool night somewhere on the Parajito Plateau. Warmed by the lamps and the yeast cakes and the smell of furniture polish, they were back in old Heidelberg. The Webers were at home.

“Don’t be noble,” Emma said, coming up to him at the urn and handing him a drink instead. “You’ll want two of these in you before they start playing.”

He took the drink and smiled. “Past experience?”

“Years of it.”

“What was that all about?” he said, gesturing to where they had talked before. “Jealous husband?”

“Daniel? No, he wouldn’t dream of it. That was about Johanna. Always on the qui vive. She gives me the pip.”

“A gossip?”

“Terrible, and she doesn’t have much to go on. She already thinks I’m disreputable.”

“Why?” he said, biting into a cake.

“Consorting with the lower orders, I suppose. She’s a fearful snob.”

“Lower orders meaning me?”

“Well, let’s just say you’re not a scientist. There’s always a pecking order, even here.”

“Who else do you consort with?”

She looked up at him, then took a sip before she answered. “You’ll do for now.”

“Your husband seemed nice.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Just don’t. God, here she comes again.”

“Ah, Mr. Connolly,” Johanna Weber said, as if saying his name aloud sealed it in memory. “You’re meeting people, good. Emma’s an anthropologist, did she tell you?”

“Yes, we were just talking about the Anasazi,” Connolly said.

Johanna Weber hesitated, clearly surprised. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” she said, recovering. “Emma’s become quite an expert on the subject.” She looked at Emma to contradict her.

“In an amateur sort of a way,” Emma said smoothly. And then Frau Weber was being embraced by a new arrival and they were alone again.

“You’ve got a pretty good memory yourself,” Emma said. “However did you remember the poor old Anasazi? Most people can’t even pronounce it.”

“Anthropologist?” he said playfully.

“Pompous old trout. Everybody has to be something grand. Her maid is probably an Indian princess. And you—”

“Dick Tracy?”

“No, darling, Hoover at the very least. What’s the J stand for anyway, in J. Edgar?”

Connolly shrugged. “Maybe it’s like the O in Louella O. Parsons. Maybe they’re the same person.”

She laughed. “That’s a thought. Do you take anything seriously?”

“Everything. Freud tells us there are no jokes.”

“Does he really?”

“Uh-huh. Of course, he meant something else, but I doubt he had much of a sense of humor anyway.”

“How do you know things like that? Who are you, anyway?”

“You pick up things in the paper.”

She looked at him appraisingly. “I don’t think so.”

“But then, you’re an anthropologist,” he said easily.

“Quite. Maybe you’ll be my next project. The mysterious Mr. Connolly.”

“Don’t drop the Anasazi yet. That would be fickle.”

She was quiet for a minute, studying him over the rim of her glass. “Tell me about yourself,” she said softly.

“Such as?”

“Well, who are your people, as they used to say at garden parties.”

“My people? My mother’s dead. My father works at an insurance company and spent his life doing crossword puzzles in ten minutes and resenting the fact that he worked for people who couldn’t. He saved everything to send me to school.”

“Then what happened?”

“I went to work for the same people and now he resents me for the education he wanted himself. It’s a very American story.”

“You like him.”

“I feel sorry for him. Not quite the same thing.” He paused. “Yes, I like him.”

“And you-are you good at crosswords too?”

He nodded. “I used to be. In the genes, maybe. I like figuring things out, watching them fall into place.”

“And have they?”

“No. Only in puzzles.”

She stopped, still staring at him. When she spoke again her words seemed almost unconscious, drawn out of her in a trance. “What are you working out now?”

“Now? I don’t know. Why I’m here in a room full of pinheads eating cake instead of getting shot on Okinawa. Why anybody’s on Okinawa in the first place. What the Jap pilots think about when they crash into the ships. Why somebody got killed in a park. What are we going to do after the war.” He stopped, looking at her. “Why I’m pretending I’m thinking about any of this. All I’m really trying to figure out is how I can go to bed with you.”

She looked at him as if nothing had been said, but the longer she was silent, the more real the words became, hanging between them like visible shapes. For an instant he thought he had frightened her, but he held her eyes without apology, determined to play the hand through. Then, still saying nothing, she took a drink and walked away from him into the room.

He stared after her, unable to read any expression in her movement, not sure what he had done. Then people closed around her in the crowded room and she was gone. Someone at the table jostled his arm, and finally distracted, he looked at the rest of the room. People were still eating and talking. In the music corner, one of the players began tuning his viola.

“Now where is Hans,” Johanna Weber said to nobody in particular, busy now with a new hostess assignment. Connolly decided to look for the bathroom before the music began. The room had become even warmer, and despite the chill someone had opened the door to let in the fresh night air. He brushed past some smokers lining the narrow hallway and went through a half-open door to the bedroom. The bed was heaped with jackets and coats, and in the corner, under a desk lamp, Professor Weber and another man were leafing through pages. The room itself seemed oddly solemn, a refuge from the conversation just steps away, and Connolly realized that the effect came from the men themselves, wordlessly and gravely turning the pages of a magazine. He had clearly interrupted them, but Weber, glancing over his shoulder, nodded with an automatic courtesy.

“The bathroom?” Connolly said.

“Through there,” Weber said, pointing to a door. And then, still courteous, “This is Friedrich Eisler. Friedrich, Mr. Connolly.”

Connolly nodded, but both men returned to the magazine as if he had gone. “Oh, Friedrich,” Weber said, a plaintive sound of such quiet distress that Connolly stopped, alarmed. The room suddenly was no longer solemn but filled with the disturbance of something gone wrong. Connolly looked toward the open magazine- Life, or something like it-and stopped, shaken.