Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [194]
As they were leaving, the man Frank had hit with his hand ax gave it back to him, frowning heavily as he thumped it into Frank’s palm. “You could hurt somebody,” he said. “Maybe leave it on your mantelpiece.”
“On my dashboard,” Frank promised.
They found themselves alone, standing outside the Watergate’s old hotel lobby entrance. The blackout was ongoing, although generators now lit many buildings in this part of town. Sirens in the distance sawed away at the night.
“So you threw your rock at him again.”
“Yes. I corrected for my release and almost got him.”
“You could have wrecked everything.”
“I know, but we’d gone off the plan. I didn’t want him to shoot you or get tasered and spaz out and shoot you by accident. I just did it.”
“I know, but that guy was right. You should put it away.”
“I’ll put it in my glove compartment,” Frank said. “It’ll be like my home defense system.”
“Good.”
Frank said, “You know, your ex kept saying that you tweaked the election all by yourself.”
She stared at him. “I’m sure he did! That’s how he tried to set it up, too. But I’ve got the evidence of how he framed me along with everything else. And now these guys have it.”
“Well good. But why didn’t you tell me from the start that you were working with these guys?” Frank gestured in the direction of the mouth of Rock Creek. “You could have told me back in the summer, or even up in Maine.”
“It’s best never to say any more than necessary in situations like that. I was trying to keep you out of it.”
“I was already in it! You should have told me!”
“I didn’t think it would help! So quit about that. It’s been tough. It’s been over a year since I had to go under, do you realize that?”
“Yes, of course. It feels like it’s been about ten.” Frank put up a hand. Clearly time for limited discussion. Gingerly he reached for her, palm out. Her hand met his, and their fingers intertwined. “Okay,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been scared.”
“Me too.”
They walked down the driveway under the awning to Virginia Avenue. They could see the cars’ lights on the Key Bridge. Their cold hands were having their own quick conversation. For a long time they just stood on the sidewalk there, looking around.
“Do you think it’s really over?” she asked in a low voice.
“I think maybe so.”
She took a deep breath, shuddered as she let it out. “I can’t even tell anymore. The group he was part of was pretty extensive. I don’t know if I’m going to feel comfortable, just—you know. Coming back out into the open.”
“Maybe you don’t have to. They’ll help you set something new up, like in the witness protection thing. I asked them about it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I want to show you San Diego.”
She looked hard at him, eyes searching his face, trying to read something. Their hands were still squeezed hard together. Things were not normal between them, he saw. Perhaps she was still angry at him for asking about the election stuff. For wanting to know what was going on. “Okay,” she said. “Show me.”
“But our Icarian thoughts returned to ground
And we went to heaven the long way round.”
—Thoreau
CUT TO THE CHASE
Today’s post:
I think for a while we forgot what was possible. Our way of life damaged our ability to imagine anything different. Maybe we are rarely good at imagining that things could be different. Maybe that’s what we mean when we talk about the Enlightenment. For a while there we understood that the ultimate source of power is the imagination.
“Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the Fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into the service of economic royalists. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control of government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor and their property. And as a result the average man