Eye Contact (40 page)

Disgusted, Manning decided his time would be better spent doing some sleuthing of his own. So he nudged Farber, who dozed next to him on the bench, telling him, “Let’s get out of here.”

Standing in the street now, he waves at a cab in the distance, and this one, at last, switches lanes to pull over and pick him up. Moments later, he and Farber jump into the backseat. Manning tells the driver, “Stadium, please.” The cabbie nods, saying nothing—he could easily guess their destination.

As the cab nudges its way into the congested traffic, Manning turns in his seat to zip open the computer case and dig out a folder. As he glances out the rear window, something catches his eye. A familiar figure, lanky and catlike in his Ray-Bans, has just rushed out of the building and limped to the curb, frantically hailing a cab several car-lengths behind them. Under his breath, Manning asks, “Huh?”

Farber turns to him. “Huh, what?”

“Take a look,” says Manning, jerking his head over his shoulder. “It’s our pal Victor Uttley. He just flounced out of the cop shop. Do you suppose he was there on business of his own? Or was he following us?”

“Way down there?” asks Roxanne. “I’m impressed, Neil.”

Roxanne, Neil, and Claire have arrived at the stadium, worked their way through the main entrance, passed through the metal detectors, and followed directions to the gate that takes them inside the arena itself. They stand at the top of a steep aisle that leads down past many rows of seats—hundreds, it seems—to a special seating area on the field. Neil has secured passes for an enviable block of seats only eight rows from the stage.

“You may wield clout at Zaza’s, Rox, but this is my domain, at least for today. I deserve some special treatment—I’ve worked my butt off for over a year on this project.”

Roxanne glances behind him, eyeing his derrière. “It’s still there,” she assures him, “and it’s fetching as ever.”

“Thank you,” he says dryly. “Shall we descend through the masses, ladies?”

They begin the long trek toward the field, stepping past row after row of spectators, who form giant concentric rings of fluttering color. The rings grow tighter with each step downward, until at last the threesome has arrived on the ground. From that perspective, the sky has been reduced to a luminous blue circular ceiling, as if painted there in the manner of an old movie palace. Wisps of a few unthreatening clouds drift silently eastward. From huge stainless-steel poles topping the aisles, flags of every nation snap in the warm July breeze.

“Here we are,” says Neil, finding their row. “Those must be ours.” He points to a section of six empty seats, conspicuous among the crowd, which by now is packed tight, numbering nearly a hundred thousand.

As they excuse themselves and sidestep past other seated spectators, Claire comments, “What a pity that the others will miss this.”

Sitting, Neil sighs. “Who knows?—maybe they’ll see it on TV.” He can’t shake the uneasiness of finding the loft trashed. And he’s still plenty angry about Manning’s episode with David. He knows, though, that Manning would have enjoyed today’s ceremonies, and he’s proud to have helped make this happen. He’s proud to have secured this seating—they wouldn’t have gotten nearly so close if they’d relied on Manning’s press connections. This is Neil’s day to shine, and Manning’s not here to share it. Yes, Manning is involved with an important story, but Neil knows only too well, in the final analysis, that Manning isn’t here today because Neil walked out on him, Neil made a show of smashing a crystal glass on the floor, Neil called him a son of a bitch. Neil tells the others, “At least we have the luxury of a little elbow room.”

They arrange themselves with Neil in the middle. There are two empty seats next to Claire, one next to Roxanne. Claire tells the others, “There’s plenty of room here for our sweaters, if you’d care to pass them over,” which they do. Then Roxanne offers, “I can keep an eye on the purses over here.” Claire passes her purse to Roxanne, thanking her, but Neil tells her, “I forgot mine.” Roxanne jabs his ribs with her elbow.

Claire squints at her watch. The sun glares on its too tiny face. She asks, “What time do you have, Neil?”

He checks. “Four-forty. Only twenty minutes to go. Having been involved with much of the planning, I’m sure the program will begin at the stroke of five precisely. It’s funny: I’ve spent a heap of time on all this, but it’s out of my hands now. Even so, I’m a nervous wreck.” Discovering the intrusion of his home hasn’t helped either.

Claire laughs. “That will pass, dear, as soon as things get under way. I’ve sat through enough opening nights to know exactly what you’re feeling.” She pats his arm. “And believe me, I sympathize. It’s a long show, isn’t it?”

“Right,” Neil tells her. “It’s a four-hour program, so it has to move like clockwork. The president doesn’t finish till nine, then the sky show begins. We’re not certain how long that will last—it’s all been so hush-hush—but by then it won’t matter. It’ll all be over.”

“God, Neil,” says Roxanne through a chortle, “you make it sound like doomsday.” She snaps open her purse and puts on a big pair of rose-tinted sunglasses.

Outside the stadium, Manning and Farber scan the crowds from the backseat of their cab, which moves at a crawl. The driver asks, “Want me to drop you here?—we’re not gonna get much closer, and the meter’s pushin’ fifty bucks.”

They’ve wasted another hour in traffic, and Manning checks his wallet before answering. “No,” he says, confident he won’t need to visit another cash machine, “just keep going. We won’t be getting off here anyway.”

The driver looks over his shoulder as if Manning must be nuts.

Manning fans the cash from his wallet, jerking his head onward toward the stadium. The cabbie shrugs, returns his eyes to the road, and drives forward, deeper into the crowd.

Farber is half asleep, but tries to appear alert, assisting Manning in his search, although he wouldn’t recognize Jim, Manning’s detective friend, even if he saw him. Manning’s gaze darts through the crowd from face to face, but he knows, of course, that the odds of actually finding Jim are infinitesimal. Jim could be anywhere in the city at this moment, and even if he happened to be out here, working the throng, Manning could not reasonably hope to find him.

What Manning hopes, in fact, is to spot Neil. Even if only in passing, only through a glimpse, Manning wants to see with his own eyes that Neil is safe, that he’s made it here to this event, the opening of a festival that he’s worked so hard to create. He knows that Neil will be with Roxanne and Claire—with Carl and Hector, too, he presumes—so Manning is searching for any of those five faces. But it’s Neil’s face he wants to see, and he wonders what that face will tell him. Will Neil be giddy with the excitement of the day (he certainly deserves to be), or will his happiness be overruled by the tyranny of emotions that forced him away from the loft to stay with Roxanne? And what if Manning were to beat the odds and actually
see
him here? What would he do—stop the cab, elbow through the crowd, drop to his knees, and make a scene that would only humiliate Neil, dashing any possibility of reconciliation?

This is absurd, Manning tells himself. Yes, he has hurt Neil. Yes, he wants him back. He wants things the way they were. But he’s not going to achieve that here, not now. He has already said that he’s sorry, and he has tried to explain that his slip with David was partly—largely, though not altogether—beyond his control. Neil’s reaction has also been partly, though not altogether, beyond his own control. Neil will have to work this out in his own mind, and that’s going to take some time. Whether or not they resume a life together, the decision is now Neil’s. There’s nothing else Manning can do to persuade him.

Manning’s mind feels numbed by all this, and he realizes that his emotional state has not yet allowed him to deal with the tragedy of David’s sudden death. Manning has tried for nearly a week to forget what he and David did that night, to put the experience firmly behind him. But it did happen, and it surely meant
something.
It was more than just a dirty little episode to be swept away and tactfully forgotten. David was a friend, a young colleague, and that night he became something
else
to Manning, though Manning’s vocabulary is not equipped with a word to define that expanded relationship. Certainly, they became more than friends. Just as certainly, they were much less than lovers. With time, Manning may have been able to analyze it, to define it, to reconcile it with the bedrock relationship he has worked to build with Neil. But now, of course, those issues are moot. David is gone. And for all Manning knows, Neil may be gone as well.

The crowds outside the cab are starting to thin in the minutes that precede the opening of Celebration Two Thousand. Arlen Farber has nodded off to sleep, chin to chest. Manning can afford to agonize over his emotions no longer. He tells the driver, “You can turn around now. Civic Planetarium, please.”

At the stroke of five precisely, a clock radio clicks on just as an announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem.”

Nathan Cain’s eyes blink open. He has napped all afternoon in the dark-curtained bedroom of his office suite, exhausted from the ordeal of yesterday evening and the hectic night that followed. He needed to catch up on lost sleep, rejuvenating himself for the evening that will follow, an evening that has been planned to the minute for nearly a year.

Through a thick Italian accent, a vigorous tenor (certainly not Paganini) wails, “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air …” That soaring verse never fails to stir Nathan Cain’s patriotism. He can’t just sit there, let alone lie there, while a hundred thousand people at the stadium have risen to their feet. So he hops out of bed, stepping into his ostrich slippers, cinching the blue silk dressing gown around him, but he feels momentarily dizzy, and his injured hip aches—he ought to know better than to get up so fast. “O’er the laa-aand of the freeee, and the home of the braaaave.” Tumultuous whoops and applause crackle through the radio. Cain switches it off. Silence.

He sits on the edge of the bed, kneading the torn and never-healed musculature of his leg. Its throbbing creates an eerie sensation that reminds him of a field hospital in Korea where overhead lights throbbed to the beat of a faulty generator. He grimaced as an exhausted surgeon drew the shard of metal from his thigh. Under those makeshift circumstances, anesthesia was crude at best, and that night Cain was certain that it wasn’t working at all. But he grit his teeth, he didn’t yell, he didn’t faint. Buddy, the young man who saved him—not the doctor, but the fellow soldier who dragged him from the fray and carried him to safety—sat at his side through the surgery and gripped his hand, letting Cain siphon strength from their friendship. When the wound was at last cleaned and sutured, Cain slept.

It was a restless sleep, interrupted by the delirium of drugs and the racket of war. But then arrived that lucid moment, a brief stillness in the night when his mind cleared and guns stopped and others slept. He turned his head on the cot and saw Buddy sitting there, alert and smiling, still holding his hand. Cain smiled back at him. “I owe you for this one,” he said quietly. “You could have gotten yourself killed. What’s the matter with you, Buddy? Are you nuts?”

“No, Nathan,” Buddy told him, leaning close to his ear. Then, in a moment of supreme weakness Buddy added, “I’m your friend. I love you.” He gently pressed his lips to Cain’s temple and kissed the salt of dried sweat from his sideburns.

Cain stopped breathing, but his mind spun. Under the life-or-death circumstances of battlefield heroics, Buddy’s display of affection was acceptable, even appropriate, wasn’t it? But Cain knew that Buddy’s words were a testament to more than friendship. Cain also knew, deep between the crags of his drugged consciousness, that Buddy had tapped into something mutual that had never been spoken. Those unspoken words—I love you too, Buddy—stuck in Cain’s throat, and he knew that now, if ever, was the time to speak them. Dare he?

He breathed again. “Are you nuts?” he asked. Sliding his hand from Buddy’s grasp, Cain rolled onto his shoulder, turning his back to his friend.

Now he stands, bends over, reaches under the bed, and pulls out his briefcase, stowed there for safekeeping while he rested. Tossing it on the bed, he covers it with a fold of the comforter, leaving a telltale lump in the bedding. Then he crosses the room and opens the door to his bath.

Inside, he removes his robe, slippers, and silk undershorts. He reaches through the doorway to a huge tiled shower room and turns the faucets. When the water running on his forearm meets his satisfaction, he steps inside and ducks under the hot spray. Without closing his eyes, he lets the drops hit him squarely in the face, remembering the next chapter in the history he has shared with Buddy.

Both men rose quickly in the military ranks, with Buddy enjoying an extra boost from the valor he exhibited in saving Cain. Cain would retire with the rank of colonel, then focus his energies on building a communications empire, while Buddy remained in the military and eventually found himself at the Pentagon, where he now answers to only a handful of others. Cain still calls him Buddy, though he is known by his given name, of course, to the press, the public, and the presidents he has served. These two powerful men have remained close friends for nearly fifty years since that night in Korea. And they have never discussed that incident on the cot—except once, earlier this year.

Standing in the shower now, purging his nap-grogginess, Cain goads his brain back to full alert. This accomplished, he soaps his body, washing efficiently. The finishing touch, as always, is to lather up a finger and scrub the crack between his buttocks. Then he rinses, turns off the water, and dries himself with a blanket-size Turkish towel.

He grooms himself quickly, combing his thinning hair with a sharp, precise part that runs from the left temple to the center of his scalp. Then he slips on a clean pair of underwear and pads out of the bathroom, leaving the robe behind.

In his bedroom, he opens several closet doors, revealing a complete wardrobe that allows him to dash from the office perfectly attired for any event, be it golf-casual or white-tie. This evening, though, he needn’t impress anyone (God knows, he won’t be
seen
), so he settles on basic black—turtleneck, tropical wool slacks, and plain-toed oxfords. Checking himself in a mirror, he gives a grunt of approval, then closes the closets.