Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“Not exactly the Waldorf, is it?” Emma said.

“We wouldn’t get into the Waldorf. Have a bath, you’ll feel better. It’s the same water.”

“At half the price. Care to join me?” she said, undressing.

“You go. I have to make some calls.”

“Old girlfriends?”

“No. About tomorrow.”

“Oh,” she said, no longer smiling, then went to the bathroom and closed the door.

He called Tony at Costello’s to arrange the next day’s meeting-“Yeah, two booths, I got it. What you got going, some skirt?”-then talked to a friend on the paper about the wire. He placed a call to Mills, smoking a cigarette by the window as he waited for the long-distance connection.

“I thought you were at the Hotel Pennsylvania,” Mills said.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

There was a pause. “Very funny,” Mills said finally.

“I never made it. It’s hot back here. I decided to cool off in the country instead.”

“Which is why the operator said the call was from New York.”

“Must be a mistake.”

“Yeah. How’d you manage the disappearing act?” Connolly was silent.

“Okay, so I’m just wasting the government’s money. Why’d you call, anyway?”

“To hear what you just told me.”

Mills paused again. “You don’t want to annoy people, Mike, you really don’t. Now what am I supposed to tell him?”

“Tell him there’s a good band on the Pennsylvania roof. He’ll enjoy it. I just want some privacy. Out here in the country.”

“Yeah, privacy. Well, you’ve got it. Unless I can trace the call.”

“Don’t even bother. I’m in a booth. But you probably figured that already.”

“Shit,” Mills said, hanging up.

When he went into the bathroom, she was lying back with her knees sticking out of the water like islands, staring ahead at nothing.

“You going to stay in there all night?” he said, starting to undress.

“Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” she said, still preoccupied.

“Yes.”

“I mean, really all right,” she said, looking up at him.

He nodded. “Come on, finish up and we’ll go out somewhere.”

“You’re joking. I can’t move.”

“Okay,” he said, climbing into the tub and falling on her, splashing water over the side.

“What are you doing?” she said, laughing.

“Let’s stay here,” he said, kissing her.

“Stop. Oh, look at the mess.”

“It’s water. They expect that here.”

“Oh, it’s that sort of hotel, is it?”

“Sure.”

“No, really, we can’t. Look at the floor.” She sat up, water sliding off her breasts.

“I thought you couldn’t move,” he said, holding her by the waist. “Come on, lie down.”

“You ought to cool off,” she said, rolling over on top of him and pushing him under. When he pulled his head up, sputtering, she was already out of the tub, grabbing a towel. He stood up, playing a sea monster, and reached out for her.

“My God, you’re not going to chase me around the room,” she said, laughing. “You look ridiculous.”

He lunged for her. She darted out of the room, and ran over to the fan, but he grabbed her by the waist, pulling her toward the bed.

“We’re all wet,” she said, playing.

“So what?” He lowered her to the bed.

“The bed’ll be sopping.”

“We’ll sleep in the tub,” he said, moving his hand up along her leg, soapy and slick. “Anything else?”

“The curtain,” she said quickly, her breath shallow.

He grinned at her, then got up and flicked off the light. He had thought she might move, but she lay still, the fan blowing over her body. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking at her white skin in the faint light that came from the bathroom, then moved his hands along her legs, passing over her belly until they rested under her breasts. When he bent over and kissed them, one after the other, she shivered.

“It’s not right,” she said. “This isn’t supposed to be fun.”

He moved his face from her breasts up to her neck, lowering his body onto hers so that their wet skins slid against each other.

“Who says? Who made that up?”

She took his head in her hands as he bent to kiss her. “Tell me you love me. Tell me it’s all right.”

“It’s all right,” he said. And then, entering her, he felt her clutch him inside, as if her whole body were holding on to him.

Afterward they showered separately, suddenly shy with each other. She toweled her hair by the fan, rubbing it with a tropical laziness.

“Do you really want to go out?” she said. “Can’t we just have room service?”

“I don’t think they have room service here. Maybe a bellboy with an ice bucket. Do you want a drink?”

“I’d fall over.”

“You’ll feel better after some food.”

“Should I call him now?” she said unexpectedly.

“No. In the morning. Don’t give him any time to think,” he said, a hunter’s voice. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” she said dully, and got up to dress.

They ate in a restaurant near Times Square, oysters wedged in a plate of crushed ice and tall glasses of beer whose coating of frost evaporated in the heat. Outside, the streets were crowded and steamy. Emma picked at her food, barely making conversation, and after a second beer Connolly began to wilt too, so that even the rattling noise of the restaurant became fuzzy.

“Want to go hear some music?” he said.

She smiled at him. “You always said we’d do that. And now that we’re here, I’m too tired to go. Maybe tomorrow. When it’s over.”

“All right,” he said, not wanting to talk about it. “We could go to the top of the RCA Building. There’s always a breeze there.”

“You don’t have to entertain me. I’d be happy with bed.”

But it was too hot to go back to the hotel, so they went to an air-cooled movie instead, where the crisp refrigerated air reminded him of the Hill. The newsreel was still filled with clips of German atrocities and now the long lines of DPs shuffling sadly past the bomb sites. The feature, something called Pillow to Post, with Ida Lupino, was bright and shiny, oblivious to what had come before, and halfway through Connolly forgot what it was supposed to be about. Emma took his hand in the movie, holding it lightly, as if they were on a date.

The streets were as crowded as before, people pouring out of the theaters and flirting and eating ice cream cones. The lights were dazzling. Knickerbocker beer. A giant Pepsi in perpetual effervescence. Here, anyway, the war was over, but everything familiar seemed to him suspended. They had all come out to pass the time while they waited for the next thing, the feature after the newsreel. What could it be except brighter, worth the wait?

He steered away from the theaters and they walked back on quieter streets, still holding hands, easy with each other, listening to the sound of her heels on the pavement. He’d thought of a drink in the Astor Bar, or now the Biltmore, but all that seemed curiously part of the past too, nothing to do with them. Now they were a couple, eager to get home. When she smeared her face with cold cream back in the room, it seemed to him more intimate than lovemaking, a new familiarity.

He sat at the window while she drifted off to sleep, restless, and it occurred to him then, looking at her, that the trip wasn’t about tomorrow anymore. Tomorrow would take care of itself. But while he waited, his life had changed. This was what it meant to be married. Her help, so casually asked for, now bound him in some deep obligation. If they stopped now they could be as they were, idly suspended like the crowd, hidden away in this cocoon of humid air. Instead, he would compromise her, as determined and heedless as Oppenheimer to see his project through. But they weren’t going to stop-it was sleep talking, the nighttime jitters. This was the next thing. She had understood before he did, accepted it. She turned over in bed, no longer fitful, breathing deeply. He had always loved her fearlessness. Now she was offering it to him, a secret marriage. They could have something more than peace. He thought of her leaping up the trail at Chaco, eager, lending him a hand.