* * *
—
He’ll never be warm again, doubts he’ll live until spring. It’s so cold, the flesh beneath his fingernails aches. His toes are blue. His skin, a dead lavender. Huddled beneath the blanket, knees to chest, one foot folded beneath the other. Damn blanket’s thin as a cobweb. As cold as he is, his muscles burn. All day he hoisted fifty-kilo sacks of cement from a freight train to a warehouse. The prisoners are building a dam for Nagoya. When he drops the sacks on the pile, the cement bags expel ghostly clouds of lung-irritating dust. He coughs them out now, moves closer to Harris. All the men share their pallets. It’s the only way to stay alive. They don’t care if their bed partners smell rank. If the bones of their bedmates press through their skin. Heat. Humanity. He coughs again.
“Can it, Szydlo,” Harris says. “I need my sleep.”
“Sorry.”
“I tell ya, when I get home, I’m going to sleep under that fat quilt my granny made in my own damn soft bed without you, pal.”
“Likewise.”
“And I’m going to turn up the radiators until everyone in the house wakes sweating and swearing. I don’t care what my ma says about the bill.”
“Yeah. Oh yeah.”
Charlie thinks of his own soft bed in his room at home, the pillowcases his mother embroidered with bluebirds, the crisp, ironed sheets, the warm eiderdown. What’s the likelihood he’ll ever see any of it again? Or his parents?
A few hours later, he wakes. Thin, blue mountain light is scratching through the small, high window. The guard they hate the most, whom they call Gargle for all his throat clearing, has opened the door. He’ll beat any man who doesn’t jump from his bed. Charlie’s shivering more than usual. Has the temperature dropped precipitously? Is he sick? He shoves Harris’s shoulder. “Bud, get up. Gargle’s here. Move it.”
Nothing.
Raising his head, he glances over. Harris lies there looking more comfortable than he has in months.
“Harris?”
The knowledge creeps up Charlie’s spine: He touches his bunkmate’s hand. It’s stone-cold.
Later, two other inmates carry the body away, no one supporting Harris’s head, so it flops from his neck like a fish on a line. Charlie wants to call out, Take me too! He’s sobered to realize that the idea of death gives him more hope than living.
* * *
Startled out of his thoughts when the light on the switchboard begins to flash—Miss Porter’s getting a call—Charlie grabs the headset and yanks it on. He shivers. The memory has left him with the same old question: Why has he lived when so many others died?
“Hello,” Rosalind answers. She sounds distracted, tired.
“Hello, Roz.”
That plummy British newsreel enunciation could only be Weaver. “It’s late. I’m sorry. I didn’t wake you, love, did I?”
“I was just . . . just getting ready for bed.”
“I know I’ve been a bore, calling too often,” Weaver says. “But I need to see you. If you’ll give me a single chance. That’s all I’m asking.”
“No.”
“But you don’t know what’s at stake for me.” Weaver sounds choked up.
“All right. What’s at stake for you, Weaver? Tell me.”
“My life’s been broken since I left you.”
“And mine hasn’t?”
“Listen. I know you’re angry. You have every right. But hear me out. See me one time. Let me tell you what really happened.”
Silence. Then: “Why should I trust you?”
“Because I have things to say that might change your mind. If you only knew the truth . . . you’d understand.” And then, lowering his voice into a covert whisper, he says, “I can’t say any of this over the phone.” Charlie sits forward. Does Weaver suspect the line is tapped?
“It’s late,” Miss Porter says. “I’m going to bed.”
Oh Christ! Say yes to him!
“Tomorrow night. I’m begging you.”
Miss Porter takes a breath loud enough for Charlie to hear. Maybe she’s too tired to resist. Maybe Weaver’s worn her down. Maybe she’s doing it because she believed Charlie when he told her that the world’s safety rests on her shoulders. For whatever reason, she says, “Fine, Weaver. Forget dinner, though. Forget wooing me. If you want to see me, come at eight P.M. tomorrow. Don’t stay more than an hour. And don’t expect me to feed you.”
“Thank God and thank you,” Weaver says. “Sleep well, Duchess.”
She hangs up without a good-bye. Charlie yanks off the earphones and laughs out loud.
* * *
Rosalind sits in the dark in her living room. On the ceiling, the lights from Lake Shore Drive dance and spin. She needs to go to bed. She needs to forget the phone call. How will she fall asleep with Weaver’s voice in her head? Weaver once was her drug—one that gave her pleasure, then left her desperate. Well, she’s clean now. With Weaver still living in Hyde Park, and Rosalind no longer traveling to the South Side for work, she’s managed not to run into him a single time. The last thing she wants is to be drawn back into her addiction. When she sees him, she’ll say to his face, Stop calling. Give it up. It’s over. I’ll never let you back into my life.
If Special Agent Szydlo was listening, how smug he must feel that she said yes. He even briefly suggested that seeing Weaver again gave her a shot at revenge. She’s never seen herself as a vengeful person. But she is curious. Could Weaver truly be the brute who’s put their entire world on edge?
As much as she once loved Thomas Weaver, there was always a wall of mystery around him. A silence, a darkness, the suggestion of secrets. Why has he been calling out of the blue? Why must he see her suddenly? What if, for just one night, she could tear down that wall, expose his secrets, and then, joyfully, set them aflame?
* * *
When Charlie gets off the L at Damen, the streets have puddled; the wind is merciless. Thank God he brought a raincoat this morning. In the first two blocks, he passes two drunks, a fellow in a waiter’s uniform, and a shivering young prostitute in a flimsy yellow dress. She asks, “Hej, chcesz się zabawić?” wondering if he’s looking for fun.
“Przepraszam, nie,” he says.
She’s clearly hungry and cold. There’s nothing about her that looks fun. There are so many Displaced Persons from the war now, souls battered by change and loss. Since the Jerries invaded, they say more Poles live in Chicago than any city outside of Warsaw. He’s ready to hand her the five-dollar bill in his wallet. But before he reaches her, a car sidles up and she gets in. He can’t help aching for her young life.