Chapter 35

"All right, Larry, do you want to tell me what this is all about?"

She'd been uncharacteristically silent on the drive back, and now that I was back in my room she was piping up again with serious concern underlying it. I still wasn't ready to tell her, though, if I could put it off a bit longer.

Wasn't that the procrastinator's litany? Never do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow. I did have my reasons for delay, such as they were, though; I knew I was going to set off a stormcloud. We hadn't fought once, or even argued seriously, since she'd come to me this way, and I wasn't looking forward to the first one.

"Well, I had to find out if it worked, didn't I?" I stalled. "And I did, it works good. See why I wanted this instead of just buying a gun?" Maybe I could divert the flow.

Not a chance. "No," she said flatly. "You're going to have to tell me sooner or later, darling. It's not like you can sneak off to do whatever it is you're thinking of. So tell me now."

She was right. I'd put off saying anything while I was trying to see if the Liberator could actually work for me, but I'd gone as far as I could in that direction and it did, in fact, do what I needed it to do. Besides, I had to have her help, and lots of it, if I had any hope of pulling this off.

So I told her. I tried to put as good a spin on it as I could, but even to me it sounded seriously weak. The last-ditch effort of the doomed man, was all I could hear. The thing was, since I hadn't been able to verbalize my thoughts it was the first time that I, too, was actually hearing what had been only an incompletely formulated idea before. I went on for a little while before I finally just sort of petered out.

To my astonishment she didn't immediately dump all over my plan. Actually I'd been expecting her to cut me off mid-explanation and tell me it was half-assed before I'd even finished. As it was, though, she heard me out in utter silence, and then the silence seemed to go on just about forever when I ran out of things to say.

"Susan?" I asked tentatively.

"I'm here."

"Well?"

She sighed audibly. "You know I think the whole idea is insanely risky, sweetheart," she said. "I mean, you knew that all along, right? It's why you've been keeping all this to yourself, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but..."

"I know," she picked up for me. "'But.'"

"'But' is right," I burst out. "All I've been doing for the past week is marking time and hiding out. How long can I keep doing that? I'll have to keep moving, try to stay a step ahead of everybody, and how long can that go on? And what happens when I run out of money and the credit cards get canceled, what then? Become a homeless bum on the streets? I can't work, not in my field, not even schlepping burgers at some fast-food joint, they want ID for that and it'd be sending up a beacon for somebody with your Senator's connections. So what? What else can I do?"

"I know, dear," she said again when I ran out of steam.

"You know, I've got a damn life," I went on more reasonably. "With you in it it's a pretty fucking good life, and I want to live it, want us to live it. But how're we going to do that this sort of way?"

"I know," she repeated for the third time. "Larry, I really do know. I mean before this, before Bobby and everything, I had a life, too."

"Not—" I started.

"Yeah, not much of a life, I know that too, but I was living it," she interrupted. "I wasn't going to go on that way forever, you know. Another year or two, three at the outside, and I was gone. Finished with that life and that way of living. I had things in mind like going back to school, college, going to concerts and operas and plays and all, living a life of ease and privilege."

Actually that sounded a lot like what she had been doing, the short time I'd known her at least. "Well... ," I started, confused.

"OK, yeah, pretty much the way I was," she acknowledged. "Except you. There was no guy in my retirement fantasies. Hell, I thought men like you were a little girl's daydreams, like Prince Charming or whoever. It's like I told you before, the two months we had together were my time to live out my child's dream. I could pretend to be Mrs. Costain, fix you dinners for when you got home from work—except I was a lousy cook, wasn't I?—but anyhow, make love to you at night, go exciting places on weekends, you know, the whole thing like you see in the movies and on TV. Well, old TV."