“Have you gone deaf, Roz?” Louisa asks. “I just asked which suburb did Jane Ann move to?”
“Oh . . . sorry . . . Glenview.”
“Right. Glenview. That’s the one I want to check out for us.”
“We are not moving to the suburbs,” Henry says. “You okay, Roz? You’ve gone all pale.”
“No. It’s nothing. Sorry. My mind wandered.” Lots of men were injured during the war. It’s probably not the same one at all. Still, her heart is slamming. She slips her arm around Ava’s shoulders.
“So how much fun was that Wiener schnitzel?” she asks, pushing the words through the tightness in her throat.
“So fun! It’s my favorite now.” Rosalind glances up and watches the man’s azure eyes leave her face with the suddenness of fingers being snatched from a burning stove.
CHAPTER THREE
The following week, Rosalind spots him running in the rain to catch her bus at the next stop. Dripping wet, he steps onto the vehicle without acknowledging her gaze. Later, she feels him watching her and it makes her prickle. What does he want? She notices him two days later at Janice’s perfume display, just when the store’s about to close. He pushes bottles from side to side as though evaluating them. But when Janice asks if she can help, he shakes his head and leaves. Rosalind feels increasingly scared. Why is this man always there, a flicker in the corner of her eye? She considers calling the police, but he hasn’t done anything wrong. If he comes near her on the street, she imagines that she will scream. A siren in the din of human movement.
Zeke, the one friend who loves her no matter what she reveals about herself, has begun calling him “Shadowman.” Inseparable since adolescence, she and Zeke are each other’s cheering section and speak often. The fact that he can never love her as a man loves a woman is a sad truth that somehow binds them closer. “I want a painfully accurate description of this fellow, Bunny. Every. Single. Detail,” Zeke says.
“Well, he’s attractive in a brooding sort of way. Weirdly tall. Intense blue eyes. His hair is short, blond. He moves like an athlete. Why would he follow me?”
“You know I love riddles.” He clears his throat. “Okay, two possibilities: He finds you attractive, or you’re on his hit list.”
“Would a man follow a woman so assiduously if he just liked her?” she asks.
“You’re a pretty girl,” Zeke says.
“He can’t be following me for a good reason.”
“Maybe the poor fellow’s found love and is too shy to approach. Even handsome men can be shy.”
She sighs. “I’d say there’s a twelve percent chance of that, and an eighty-eight percent chance there’s something nefarious going on. Thanks for trying to make me feel better, though.”
Later, alone, thinking of the man, she starts to shake and has to pour herself a slug of Chianti from a half-drunk bottle Zeke brought her more than a year ago. After she lost her job in ’47, she started drinking a little, then a lot, trying to combat the loneliness, the pain of not knowing where her life was going. It wasn’t just the loss of Weaver; it was losing herself as a scientist that wounded most. One minute she and her fellow physicists were crossing a virgin space together. No one had ever reached the other side, and they could see it, practically touch it. Her ideas were making it easier for them to reach the infinite. Then nothing. She was barred from the party. Shunned. No Weaver. No science. The oblivion of alcohol seemed a necessary recourse.
But oblivion is a wounding place. She was waking up groggy. Her memory—which Fermi once called photographic—was compromised. She could no longer multiply complex numbers in her head or recall the thousand details of ordinary moments as she usually did. Once, she woke up on the floor. Just like her father’s infamous flask-toting housekeeper.
So she employed science. She calculated how long it would take to completely excrete the alcohol. She studied how alcohol is metabolized, its effect on the liver. Its long-term effects. The mathematics of sobriety, she told herself. She stopped cold turkey. Each night she tried to multiply larger and larger numbers in her head. She glanced at photographs and tested how many objects she could remember. She calculated. She kept charts. And she held on to Zeke’s bottle of Chianti to remind herself she had power over her own desire to hide from pain. She should have thrown it out, she thinks now. It’s been a long while since she’s drunk a sip of alcohol. And this wine has surely turned. Black residue sinks to the bottom of her glass. But envisioning the tall man with the blue eyes, his interest in her suddenly overwhelming, she swallows it down, sediment and all.
* * *
Friday, as she’s stepping out of the dentist’s office building, she spots her pursuer at the bus stop across the street, reading a newspaper with a frown. It’s time to put a stop to this. Her heart dancing against her throat, her hands clenched tight, she approaches. He looks up with a start.
“Why are you following me?” she asks. There are hundreds of people around. Still, her heart’s slamming.
Sun lines splay around his brilliant cornflower eyes. Long blond lashes and the sudden rosiness of his cheeks lend him a certain vulnerability. She tries to focus on that.
“Look. Miss Porter, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Dear God. He knows her name.
“I need to get back to work.”
“If you’d had your tooth pulled, you’d have been delayed.” He points to the building from where she’s just come. “Your supervisor won’t guess.”
“How do you know where I was? Who are you?”
“Over coffee.” He’s glancing at the neon sign across the street. WINDY CITY DONUTS. There are plenty of people inside, despite the off-hour.
“What makes you think I’d have coffee with you? I want you to stop following me. Do I have to call the police?”
He takes a breath and, with a pained smile, reaches into his jacket. Pulling out a worn wallet, he reveals a brass badge and an ID.
“My name is Charles Szydlo.” His voice is soft and careful. “FBI.”
She’s so surprised, it takes her a moment to say, “You’re joking.”
He shakes his head.
“What could you possibly want with me?”
“Come sit for a few minutes,” he says, glancing again across the street. “I’ll explain.”
She takes a deep breath, hesitates, and then nods. An FBI agent. The improbability of it hits her. As they cross at the corner, she tries to get a sense of him. Erect, isolated. A soldier once, for certain. Before the war, she imagines he was a different man. The spray of lines around his eyes tells her that at one time he smiled a great deal. Now he doesn’t smile at all. He points through the bakery window to a pan of crullers with chocolate glaze. “I’m getting one of those. You?”