Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [181]
There in the trees below stood the Korean War Memorial. Caroline emerged from these trees, saw him on the levee and waved. She hurried up the next set of broad shallow steps, and there under the cherry trees they embraced. She hugged him hard. Her body felt tense, and out here in the open he felt apprehensive himself. “Let’s go back to my van,” he suggested. “It’s too open here.”
“No,” she said, “your van chip is on active record now.”
“So they know I’m here?”
“It’s being recorded, is a better way to put it. There’s comprehensive coverage in D.C. now. So they know where you drive. But they don’t know I’m here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. As sure as I can be.” She shivered.
He held her by the arm. “You’re not chipped?”
“No. I don’t think so. Neither of us are.”
She took a wand from her pocket, checked them both. No clicks. They walked under the cherry trees, dark overhead against the city’s night cloud. There were a few solitaries out, mostly runners, then another couple, possibly trysting like Frank and Caroline.
“How can you stand it?” Frank said.
“How does anybody stand it? We’re all chipped.”
“But most people no one wants to trace.”
“I don’t know. The banks want to know. That means most people.” She shrugged; it happened to everyone, that’s just the way things were now. Best not to want privacy.
But now, under the cherry trees, they were alone. No cars, no chips, phones left in their cars. They were off the net. No one else in the world knew where they were at that moment. It was somewhat like being in their little bubble universe of passion. A walking version of that union. Frank felt her upper arm press against his, felt the flushing in all his skin, the quickened pulse. It must be love, he thought. Even with Marta it had never been like this. Or was it perhaps just the element of danger that seemed to envelop her? Or the mysterious nature of that danger?
They sat on one of the benches overlooking the Tidal Basin. For a while they kissed. The feeling that poured through Frank then had less to do with their caresses, ravishing as they were, than with the sense of sharing a feeling; the opening up to one another, the vulnerability of giving and receiving. Very possibly, Frank thought in one of their hard silent hugs, their histories had caused them both to want this feeling of commitment more than anything else. After all the bad that had happened, a way to be with someone, to let down one’s guard, to inhabit a shared space. . . . Them against the world. Or outside the world. Maybe she was like him in this: that she needed a partner. He could not be certain. But it felt like it.
She curled against him. Frank warmed to her manner, her physical grace, her affection. It was different with her, it just was.
But she wasn’t free. Her situation was compromised, even scary. She was breaking promises both personal and professional. That in itself didn’t bother Frank as perhaps it should have, because she was doing it for him, and because of him; so how could he fault her for it? Especially since she also made him feel that somehow he deserved these moves, that she liked him for real reasons. That she was right to do what she was doing, because of the way he was to her. Reciprocity: hard to believe; but there she was, in his arms.
The world seeped back. A distant streetlight winked on the breeze.
“You’re staying with those friends again?”
She nodded into his shoulder. Her body felt like she was falling asleep. He found this very moving; he could not remember the last time a woman had fallen asleep in his arms. He thought: maybe this is what it would be like. You would only ever know by doing it.
“Hey gal. What if one of your