Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

“Looks like the same thing.”

“In Chicago.”

“Shit’s still coming in. No IDs yet, but it matches. Single victim, as far as they can tell. Out on Lake Shore Drive.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the old woman told you? Anything?”

“You want to know? You want to know the one and only thing she said since you left?”

“Shoot.”

“She said she’s waiting to speak to you. Otherwise, nothing.”

“I guess I’d better go in there and talk to her, then.”

“Yeah. I guess you’d better.”

She went with Pete into the precinct station, into the interrogation room. The woman was exactly as Cat had left her. Same ramrod posture, same taxidermist eyes. She was surrounded, however, by a half-dozen burly suitors from the FBI.

Pete ushered her in. The FBI guys parted reluctantly. Cat sat across from the woman, who blinked, shook her head slightly, and offered Cat a wry, coquettish smile.

Cat said, “I’ve been to your apartment.”

“But he wasn’t there, was he?”

“No,” Cat said. “He wasn’t.”

“He’ll be along. I wouldn’t worry.”

“I saw what’s on the walls.”

“I thought they should grow up with poetry. It’s been good for them, I think.”

“Why did you choose Whitman?”

“He’s the last of the great ones. Everyone since seems so slight.”

“That can’t be the only reason.”

“Everybody wants a reason, don’t they? Let’s say this, then. Whitman was the last great man who really and truly loved the world. The machinery was just starting up when he lived. If we can return to a time like Whitman’s, maybe we can love the world again.”

“That’s the message you wanted the boys to get?”

“Oh, I don’t think you get a message from poetry, really. You get a sense of beauty. I wanted my boys to understand about beauty. My family is bringing beauty back.”

“You said you were part of a big family.”

“People are so scattered nowadays. We used to live in villages.”

“Where’s the rest of your family?”

“I’m afraid we’ve lost touch.”

“I think you can tell me where some of them are.”

“No, really, I can’t. I’ve just been raising my babies here in New York. No one ever calls. No one writes.”

“You told me, ‘It’s time.’ Someone must have told you that.”

“Oh, that was decided a long, long time ago. June 21 of this year. It’s the first day of summer. It’s when the days start getting shorter. Doesn’t it always seem too soon, this early dark?”

A large FBI hand landed on Cat’s shoulder. She looked up. Older guy, uncanny resemblance to Bashful in Snow White. She’d never met this one.

He said, “We’re going to take over now.”

“It’s been nice talking to you, dear,” the woman said.

“Give me a little more time,” Cat said.

“We’re going to take over now,” the man repeated.

She understood. The interrogators were about to step in. Ordinary persuasion had reached its limit.

Cat said to the woman, “It would be better for you to tell me anything you know. Right now. These other people are not going to be gentle with you.”

“I don’t expect anyone to be gentle with me. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, then.”

The woman said, “Take care of him.”

“Take care of who?”

The woman laughed, sharply and suddenly. Her laughter was high, crystalline, songlike; although it seemed genuine, she enunciated clearly: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped.

Pete walked Cat out to the sidewalk. A breeze, smoke-tinged, was blowing down Pitt Street from the north. Truck horns bellowed from the Williamsburg Bridge.

“Sweet mother of God,” Pete said.

“I don’t think they’re going to get anything more from her.”

“You might be surprised. They’ve brought in the guys who don’t take no.”

“I mean, I don’t think she knows anything.”

“She knows things.”

“Okay. Probably she knows about a plan that was set in motion years ago. Probably she knows a few names that aren’t real names, attached to people who won’t ever be found.”

“These guys can do a lot with a little information.”

“I know that.”

“You should go home and get some rest.”

“What about you?”

“Soon. I’m out of the picture now, too.”

“But-”

“It spooks me, is all. I’m going to hang around here a little longer. I’m just not quite ready to go home and get into bed.”

“I understand. I can stick around with you.”

“Naw. Get some sleep. You’re on duty in, like, three hours.”

“Right.”

“Chicago. Fucking Chicago.”

“She said she has a big family.”

He closed his eyes, rocked slightly, as if he might lose his balance. He said, “I don’t want to think about it.”

“Who does?”

“Right,” he said. “Who does?”

They stood there together in the 3:00 a.m. quiet. Something was happening. Maybe it was no big deal; maybe it was small and only looked big, as Pete had said just a few days ago. It might even be a copycat, some Chicago-based citizen of the Bizarro Dimension who’d looked at the headlines and thought, Hmm, hug somebody and blow him up, interesting idea, why didn’t / think of that? Or maybe, at worst, it was a handful of lunatics, scattered around dangerous, yes, but not majorly dangerous, not history-changing dangerous. How many Bolsheviks had brought down the czar? She should know that.

Still. She had a feeling, and she was someone who relied on feelings.

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

She wanted to tell him that there might be somewhere. There might be grass and mountains, a little house. It wasn’t heroic it was in fact more than a little bit cowardly to want to slip away, to think of saving yourself and maybe another person or two, to try to live out your life in some hamlet while other people worked the front lines.

And besides, Pete couldn’t go. He had obligations. Even without obligations, he wasn’t the house-in-the-country type. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

“Don’t start smoking again,” she said.

“It’s just for now.”

“Right. See you.”

“See you.”

She left him there, standing in the quickening air, under the rumble of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The boy woke up a little after seven. Cat was sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Hi,” he said. “Hi.”

“Are we going now?”

“Yes. Let’s get your clothes back on.”

He jumped out of bed, got into his jeans and jacket. Cat took up a pad of yellow legal paper and a pen.

“I’m ready,” the boy said. “Just a minute,” she answered.

She wrote:

Pete -

I have to go away. Tm not in my right mind. I wonder if I’ve been crazy for years without realizing it. I seem to have caught something from all the nuts I’ve talked to. I seem to not want this life or anything else thats readily available. I can’t work for the company anymore. I need to find something else to do.

What I want to say. [1] В бумажном носителе данное предложение — “ What I want to say” зачеркнуто . (прим. верстальщика). Try to keep your self safe. I want to thank you for all the love you’ve given me. If that isn’t unbearably corny.

She put the note on the kitchen counter. She still had the bomb in her bag. Not a good idea to leave it. She’d figure out a way to get rid of it so nobody would pick it up.