Spy.
**** Yes, typical newspaper error.
†††† The vast building of kitchens, shops, and parlors is horseshoe-shaped with nearly all doors opening directly onto a continuous screened horseshoe porch and all of this wraps around a quadrangle of trees and grass.
‡‡‡‡ Central Maine Power.
§§§§ Yes, this is the woman with two kids delivered by Gordon’s old friend, the barely-making-ends-meet socially responsible lawyer, on that chilly night in the farmhouse dooryard.
¶¶¶¶ And this was before almost total Artificial Intelligence and robotization was the Market God’s command.
Pleased to Meet You
Foggy. Flights out of Boston can’t get off the ground. And none are lifting off from here. Paul and Jacquie Lessard and Rick Crosman trudge off to the airport food vendor by the escalator to buy frozen yogurts. Nathan Knapp has gone to find a men’s room. Gordon St. Onge stands at the big plate-glass window looking out into the dark fog. Arms folded over the chest of his short black-and-red wool Sherpa-lined vest. Plastic billed cap (Bean’s Logging and Pulp) low over his eyes. The graying chin of his short beard looks more electric than the overhead fluorescents. A lot of people have been staring at him. They actually stop in their tracks and gaze, the way some would read graffiti on a turnpike overpass.
A moment ago, someone actually asked, “Are you Gordon St. Onge?” Some whisper and stare. But all in all, they let him be.
He hunches deeper into his vest and layers of shirts. It’s hot as hell in here. Dry heat. He is dripping under his clothes but can’t get the nerve up to take off his wool vest and outer shirt. He feels big and stupid and bare enough. He does not feel like a “prophet” or a “leader,” as some have called him. He feels weird in these kinds of places.
A man steps up beside him at the plate glass, looking out. The man is of average height. A confident man. Ultra confident. Gordon reads this right away. A man, Gordon thinks, who might gauge your value by your financial portfolio, not by the weight of your soul. This guy is not dressed like a politician or an attorney on the go but he does, indeed, move like one. He wears an olive-colored camp shirt with patch pockets and faded and worn but not witheringly ragged jeans. Gordon sees a sport jacket on the plastic seat the man has just been sitting in. No valise. No computer, such as so many carry now. Not even an overnight bag. If you leave your carry-on unattended these days, it will be considered a bomb by airport authorities, and confiscated. Then your valise or satchel will be somewhat detonated. And maybe you will be mercilessly grilled.***** Gordon looks into the guy’s face. He is nearly a Rex York look-alike. Maybe it is not an attorney’s bearing, maybe military. But what is the difference?
The guy looks at his watch. It has a breathless little hairlike gold second hand, sweeping away the moments, unlike Rex’s watch face, which is black and complicated and manly and cluttered with lifesaving outdoorsy data.
Gordon looks back out at the fog.
The man speaks. “Gordon St. Onge, we met once. Mutual friends . . . Morse and Janet Weymouth, at their home . . . a few years ago.”
Gordon seriously studies his face, Rex’s face. Rex’s age. Late forties, early fifties. But the mustache is trimmer, doesn’t crawl down along the jaws. And the eyes are not pale and steely like Rex’s but a boggy brown-green. And rather warm. And the voice has a touch of Deep South so that the word “at” is pronounced “ay-hat” and “friends” is “frey-yends,” single syllables made sensuous and sludgy, though Gordon has heard southern accents less diluted than this. This guy’s words are wrenched by so much world travel and so many crowds but still his subtle drawl has its beguilement.
Someone passing by is now staring just as hard at this man as others have been staring at Gordon.
Now he puts his hand out and Gordon puts his hand out and both hands lock hard. “Bruce Hummer,” the man says.
Gordon nods. “I . . . ah—”
“It was a long time ago,” the guy says with a chuckle. “Neither of us was infamous then.”
Gordon squints, blinks. He thinks the guy does seem familiar, but not from any of Janet and Morse’s dinner parties. It’s the name, Bruce Hummer.
The guy offers no more priming of Gordon’s memory, just says, “Fog’s going to keep a lot of people stranded for the day. I’m thinking of renting a car and driving down to beautiful fog-free New York.”
Not just his accent but the disciplined march of his phrases is mesmerizing.
Gordon is starting to really feel the weight of the airport’s overheatedness.
For a couple of minutes they discuss the fog. And they agree that airport architecture does not fall into any category of art. Bruce snickers, “Even a pipe organ booming away on Bach, lighted candles in crystal chandeliers, lovely gals in rustling skirts, gents in capes bowing or clip-clopping by on white stallions couldn’t beef up the ambience in one of these vinyl caverns.” They both chortle grimly.
Bruce Hummer asks Gordon questions. Gordon, not likely to ask a stranger questions, just dutifully answers the questions asked of him. “Family coming back from Texas,” and “I saw her earlier this month.” Then a wink, “She looks great in blue.” He swallows. “But Morse. Not great. Not good.”
Bruce presses his hands to the plate glass, palms flat, fingers spread, a heaviness creeping into his soft drawl. “Morse is mortal, it turns out.”
Gordon runs some fingers preeningly down one side of his own mustache, thinking he needs to be drunk.
The stranger smiles as he also seems to have come three steps closer. “Janet said your kids are all sharp as tacks.”
Gordon groans with the Dumond House memory fluttering and flickering panoramically.
Bruce is now telling of a piece of property he owns up on the coast, near Bar Harbor, oceanfront. His eyes flick down over Gordon’s red-and-black plaid wool vest then back to his face, that kind of peacocky dark and gray beard with the intense, uncertain pale eyes in dark lashes. Not Hollywood handsome nor would Manhattan give the time of day to such a visage. But in a mountain hollow, Bruce doesn’t doubt, this Guillaume St. Onge is the sun, the moon, and the stars to those many and several hearts that rumor has it, and media has it, are all his.
Bruce confides, “Lina and I had a small place built there but we never used it. I mean never. Not together. I just came from there now. It’s my self-inflicted solitary confinement. Just me and the chipmunks. And acorns coming down.” His closed-mouth smile
