“I want to marry you,” I said.
“My God,” she said softly. “Just when I’m ready to say it’ll never happen, Jake-alias-George says right now.”
“Not right now, but if the next week goes the way I hope it does… will you?”
“Of course. But Idohave to ask one teensy question.”
“Am I single? Legally single? Is that what you want to know?”
She nodded.
“I am,” I said.
She let out a comic sigh and grinned like a kid. Then she sobered. “Can I help you? Let me help you.”
The thought turned me cold, and she must have seen it. Her lower lip crept into her mouth. She bit down on it with her teeth. “That bad, then,” she said musingly.
“Let’s put it this way: I’m currently close to a big machine full of sharp teeth, and it’s running full speed. I won’t allow you next to me while I’m monkeying with it.”
“When is it?” she asked. “Your… I don’t know… your date with destiny?”
“Still to be determined.” I had a feeling that I’d said too much already, but since I’d come this far, I decided to go a little farther. “Something’s going to happen this Wednesday night. Something I have to witness. Then I’ll decide.”
“Is there no way I can help you?”
“I don’t think so, honey.”
“If it turns out I can—”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that. And you really will marry me?”
“Now that I know your name is Jake? Of course.”
11
On Monday morning, around ten o’clock, the station wagon pulled up at the curb and Marina went off to Irving with Ruth Paine. I had an errand of my own to run, and was just about to leave the apartment when I heard the thump of footsteps descending the outside stairs. It was Lee, looking pale and grim. His hair was mussy and his face was stippled with a bad breakout of post-adolescent acne. He was wearing jeans and an absurd trenchcoat that flapped around his shins. He walked with one arm across his chest, as if his ribs hurt.
Or as if he had something under his coat.Before the attempt, Lee sighted in his new rifle somewhere out by Love Field,Al had written. I didn’t care where he sighted it in. What I cared about was how close I’d just come to meeting him face-to-face. I’d made the careless assumption that I’d missed him going off to work, and—
Whywasn’the at work on a Monday morning, come to that?
I dismissed the question and went out, carrying my school briefcase. Inside were the never-to-be-finished novel, Al’s notes, and the work-in-progress describing my adventures in the Land of Ago.
If Lee wasn’t alone on the night of April 10, I might be spotted and killed by one of his co-conspirators, maybe even de Mohrenschildt himself. I still thought the odds of that were unlikely, but the odds of having to run away after killing Oswald were better. So were the odds of being captured and arrested for murder. I didn’t want anyone—the police, for instance—finding Al’s notes or my memoir if either of those things happened.
The important thing to me on that eighth of April was to get my paperwork out of the apartment and far away from the confused and aggressive young man who lived upstairs. I drove to the First Corn Bank of Dallas, and was not surprised to see that the bank official who helped me bore a striking resemblance to the Hometown Trust banker who had helped me in Lisbon Falls. This guy’sname was Link instead of Dusen, but he still looked like the oldtime Cuban bandleader, Xavier Cugat.
I enquired about safe deposit boxes. Soon enough, the manuscripts were in Box 775. I drove back to Neely Street and had a moment of severe panic when I couldn’t find the goddam key to the box.
Relax,I told myself.It’s in your pocket somewhere, and even if it isn’t, your new pal Richard Link will be happy to give you a duplicate. Might cost you all of a buck.
As if the thought had summoned it, I found the key hiding way down in the corner of my pocket, under my change. I put it on my key ring, where it would be safe. If Ididhave to run back to the rabbit-hole, and stepped into the past again after a return to the present, I’d still have it… although everything that had happened in the last four and a half years would reset. The manuscripts now in the safe deposit box would be lost in time. That was probably good news.
The bad news was that Sadie would be, too.
CHAPTER 22
1
