Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [161]
“Yes, yes yes yes yes,” Edgardo said, as if pooh-poohing the idea; and then he went silent, as if thinking it over; and then he made no other response at all, but as they made the turn under the Lincoln Memorial, changed the subject to the difficulties that Chase was having with Congress.
The following Wednesday after dinner, Frank went to the mouth of Rock Creek to check the dead drop, and there was a new note.
OUR FIRST SPOT MIDNIGHT LOVE C
In just a couple of hours, if she meant tonight! Thank God he had thought to check! Thank God and thank Edgardo. Frank ran to his VW van, which he had parked in the boathouse parking lot, and drove north on Wisconsin at speed, in a state of high excitement. In Bethesda he took a right and parked in a dark spot near the little park they had first met in. He got out, walked to the bench under the little statue of the girl holding up the hoop. The empty cipher, there in the dark; he waited; and suddenly there she was, standing before him.
They banged together and hugged. “Where have you been?” Frank said roughly, face in her hair. “I’ve been so scared.”
She shook her head for him to be silent, ran a wand over him. “I heard,” she said at last, hugging him again. “I’ve had to be away. But I’ve been in contact with your friend’s friends, and they told me you were concerned.”
“Ah. Good old Edgardo.”
“Yes. But you need to understand, I have to stay clear of any possibility of them finding me. And a lot of the time you’ve been chipped.”
“I’m trying to stay completely clean when I’m not at work. I got rid of my van and got a new one, an old one I mean, and it’s clean too.”
“Did you come here in it?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
He led her to it, holding her hand. At the van she said, “Ah, cute,” and checked it with her wand and another device from her fanny pack. “It’s all clear.” And then they kissed, and then they were climbing inside the van, kissing their way to the little mattress up in the back.
Once again everything else fell away, and he was lost in the little world they made together, completely inside the wave. There was no sexier space than the little overhead mattress of a VW van. And something about it, some quality—the presence of ordinary sheets and pillows, the fact that she had come out of hiding to reassure him, their complete nakedness, which had never before been true—the comfort and warmth of this little nook—even the fact that Diane was with Phil now and Frank entirely committed, no confusion, mind clear, all there, all one, undamaged and whole—the look in her eye—all these things made it the sweetest time yet. The calmest and deepest and most in love.
Afterward she fell asleep in his arms. For an hour or two he lay there holding her, breathing with her. Then she stirred and roused herself. “Wow, that was nice. I needed that.”
“Me too.”
“I should go,” she said. She rolled over onto him, pushed his numb nose with a finger. “I’m going to be out of touch again. I’ve still got some things I’ve got to do. Your Edgardo’s friends are looking like they will turn out to be a help when the time comes, so look to word from him.”
“Okay, I will.”
“There’ll come a time pretty soon when we should be able to act on this. Meanwhile you have to be patient.”
“Okay, I will.”
She rolled off him, rooted around for her clothes. In the dark he watched her move. She hooked her feet through her underwear and lay on her back and lifted up her butt to pull them up and on, a nifty maneuver that made him ache with lust. He tugged at the underwear as if to pull it back down but she batted his hand away, and continued to dress as if dressing in tents or VW vans or other spaces with low headroom was a skill she had had occasion to hone somewhere. It was sexy. Then they were kissing again, but she was distracted. And then with a final kiss and promise, she was off.
ONE AFTERNOON AT WORK, just before she left, Anna Quibler got an e-mail from her Chinese contact, Fengzhen. It was a long one, and she made a quick