One day, after a rainfall, Constantine sat in the National Park Garden near Syntagma Square. He noticed a small boy crying and pointing at his tricycle, which was stuck in the middle of a large puddle on an asphalt track that surrounded a small pond. Constantine walked into the water and retrieved the bike, carrying it to the boy. The boy was wearing elastic-banded trousers and red suspenders over a striped green shirt. He said “thank you” in Greek, and receiving no response, put his arms out to hug Constantine. Constantine picked him up and held the boy to his chest, immediately feeling something that scared him, a connection to the child that brought on an odd but acutely heavy sense of loss. He realized then that the road he had taken had not been natural or right but rather the long, aimless act of a man who had no center. He realized the import of the stability mat had eluded him, and that realization frightened him. Constantine put the child down and returned to the hostel, where he loaded his pack and walked, without a good-bye to Voula, out into the street.
He drank that night, wandering from one taverna and discotheque to the next, catching an early morning cab to the airport, where he boarded a flight to New York City. Landing in JFK, the first American voice he heard was from a uniformed man who was loading luggage onto a moving belt. The voice sounded foreign to his ears.
Two weeks later he had taken a job in Annapolis, and then he had run from that, and now he was sitting next to a puckish old man in a hopped-up Mopar, cruising the interstates of Maryland. He drummed his fingers on the dash, thinking mat after seventeen years the sum of his accomplishments had been one big broken circle with a gaping dead end. But Constantine had been wrong about a lot of things, and he would be wrong about this too. Everything always added up to something, and the real trip was about to begin.
Chapter
4
THE Capital Beltway was a jumble of sooted automobiles tailgating at a steady sixty by rush hour’s ass end. The sun hung gauzy through the filmy grayness of the cloudless sky, and the air smelled of tar and exhaust. There had been a Beltway when Constantine left town in 1975, and in fact it had been in place for ten years before that. But what it had become since then—a twisted ring of stinking metal, circling the city—was madness in the mind of Constantine.
“Seventeen years, huh?” Polk said.
“That’s right.”
“Still got family here?”
Constantine shook his head, answered without thinking. “No.”
Some time later they took the exit ramp at Georgia Avenue and headed south. Polk drove into downtown Silver Spring, stopping at a red light where Route 29 crossed Georgia. Constantine looked at the tall, clean, partially unoccupied office buildings, and at the Silver Theatre, a deco house now boarded up and locked. His mother had taken him there to see Goldfinger when he was eight years old, and from it he remembered only an oriental man with a deadly iron hat, and his embarrassment at his mother’s loud, gin-fueled comments throughout the show. Later, in a conciliatory gesture, she had bought him a yellow-and-green parakeet at the wooden-floored Woolworth’s up the street. Constantine had let the bird go free that same night.
“Where we going, Polk?” Constantine said as the car lurched forward on the green.
“Charlotte lives in a rent-controlled job on Connecticut,” he said. “I’ll head west at Missouri, take Military from there.”
“Any motels along this way?” Constantine said, thinking that Military would take them along the perimeter of the old neighborhood.
“Sure, there’s one at the District line.”
Constantine said, “Drop me there.”
Polk waved his hand. “I told you, Connie, you’re with me. Charlotte’s got an extra room and an extra bed.” He smiled and winked once again. “Maybe an extra friend.”
“This is what I want, Polk. Do me a favor and don’t argue it. Drop me at the line and pick me up in the morning. Okay?”
Polk nodded. He drove under a railroad bridge and up an incline, and a little past that they crossed the line into D.C. He pulled the car to the curb in front of a motel sign advertising adult movies in each room, letting it idle as he reached into his windbreaker for a thin roll of bills. Polk unwound the rubber band that held the bills tight and began to count off some paper. Constantine put his hand over Polk’s.
“I’ve got money, Polk. It’s okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
“I’ll pick you up at nine, all right, Connie? You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“Yeah.” Constantine opened the passenger door, reached into the backseat, retrieved his pack, and slung the strap over one shoulder. He bent down and put his head through the open window. “So long, Polk.”
“So long, Connie. See you in the morning.”
Polk put the Dodge in gear and drove off down the street. Constantine turned and walked through the glass doors, into the orange lobby of the motel.
CONSTANTINE bought cigarettes and checked into his small room two stories above and facing Georgia Avenue. A streetlight rose outside the frame of his window, though darkness had not yet fallen and the light had not yet been switched. Constantine had a shower and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a clean denim shirt that had been pressed from the steam of the shower. He left the hotel and walked down the street.
At a Korean carryout named the Good Times Lunch Constantine ate a dinner of deep-fried cod and green beans, and washed it down with a can of beer. He had another beer sitting at the counter, listening to rap from the store’s small radio, watching the traffic lighten through the window, as dusk came and then the dark. Constantine left the carryout, bought a fifth of Popov vodka at a liquor store two doors down, and walked back to the motel.
He poured a drink of vodka over ice in his room, and had it sitting on the edge of his bed. The drink backed by the two beers pushed him toward sleep, but he poured himself another and after that he did not think of sleep.
Constantine pulled a phone directory from the closet and looked up Katherine. He figured she would have kept her maiden name. He found her name and number in the Maryland book, along with her husband’s. He pushed the numbers into the touchpad of the grid on the bedside phone. After three rings, she picked up.
“Hello?” It was her. More formal, no longer a child, but it was her.
“Katherine?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Constantine.”
She didn’t answer. For a few seconds Constantine listened to her breath, and the raucous sound of young children, and over that a man’s voice raised in exasperation.
“Yes, it’s me. It’s Katherine.” So the husband was in earshot and she didn’t want him to know who was on the line. Constantine smiled.
“I’d like to see you tonight, Katherine.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m only in town for the night.” Constantine waited. “Anyway, I think you’ve already decided. Am I right?”
A long silence. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Where?”
“The library,” Constantine said, chuckling. It was where she had told her parents she was going at night, years ago, when she met him on the hill at Lafayette playground.
“Come on,” she said, an edge to her voice.
Constantine swirled ice and vodka in the plastic motel cup as he gave her the address. “I’ll be in the lounge next to the lobby. Okay?”
“Give me an hour,” she said, hanging up the phone.
To freshen up, he thought, as he killed the rest of his drink.
THE motel lounge was done in burnt orange a shade down from the orange of the lobby. The customers and the staff of the lounge were all neighborhood types and in their late thirties and early forties, and the music on the sound system reflected their collective past. The bartender had been playing the Commodores, BT Express, and Ohio Players on the house stereo for most of the night.
Constantine sat on the vinyl seat of a booth against the wall, against a smoked-g
lass window that gave to a view of the lobby. He sipped a rail vodka over ice and dragged on a Marlboro between sips. Katherine sat across from him, a Glenlivet and water in the long fingers of her impeccably manicured hands. It was their second round of drinks.
Katherine nodded at the pack of smokes parked on the table next to Constantine’s drink. “Give me one of those, will you? If I’m going to smell like it and breathe it I might as well enjoy it.”
Constantine looked her over. Her brown hair was shiny and straight and hung to her shoulders, her dark makeup tasteful, highlighting concisely her light brown eyes. As a teenager she had been on the heavy side, and when she had walked into the lobby that night, a cream silk shirt tucked into a black skirt, Constantine had noticed the loss in weight. A workout queen, he guessed. Tight, tan legs, and no stockings.
He shook a smoke out of the pack and pointed it toward Katherine. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
Constantine lighted her cigarette.
She blew smoke across the table and shook some hair behind one shoulder. “I sell medical supplies. That’s what I do. Anyway, I told Robert I had to go out tonight, to meet a client.”
“What you told your husband makes no difference to me,” he said.
Katherine said, “All right.” She looked around the bar and smiled, moving her head arrhythmically to the music. The man was playing Bohannon’s only Top 40 hit, the one where the background singers spell the name out into an echo machine and repeat it over a pre-go-go beat. “You remember this one?”
“I remember it,” Constantine said.
“You took me to Carter Barron one summer night, to see this guy. Bohannon and two other groups, under the stars.”
“You’re talking about Funkadelic, and the Delfonics. That was a show.” Afterwards they had taken a blanket, a candle, and a bottle of Spanish wine and walked into Rock Creek Park, the dew soaking through the blanket as they made love.
Katherine shifted in her seat. “In a few years, my oldest girl will be out on dates. It’s a shame—she’ll never do the stuff we did, never know those good times. The nights in D.C., the concerts at Fort Reno. I won’t let her, you know? It’s too dangerous now, with the guns. It’s crazy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, you heard. You haven’t been around.”
“I’ve seen the world,” he said.
Katherine smiled. “You took a helluva slow boat.”
Constantine nodded and butted his cigarette in the ashtray. Katherine did the same and looked at him coyly as she blew the last of her smoke in his direction. He looked around the place, listening to the music, watching a sad-eyed man bobbing his head to it at the bar, and then he looked back at Katherine. Her eyes were still on him.
Constantine said, “Let’s go upstairs.”
Katherine pulled a twenty from her wallet and signaled the waitress.
CONSTANTINE broke the seal on the motel cup and tore away the paper. He pulled some cubes from the room bucket, dropped them into the two cups, and poured vodka over the ice. He walked across the room, turning off the lamp on the way. He handed Katherine her drink where she stood against the wall nearest the window. He tapped her plastic cup with his.
She nodded and drank deeply, closed her eyes. Constantine looked out the window and saw rain falling thickly through the glow of the streetlight.
Katherine opened her eyes and placed her drink on the formica-top dresser. She slipped her hand behind Constantine’s neck and pulled his face down to hers. Her lips were cool from the ice and her tongue bit of scotch against his.
Constantine put his hands up into her skirt and slipped them behind her panties. He pushed his groin into hers and freed one hand to unsnap the fastener on the side of her skirt. The skirt fell to the ground, Katherine kicking it away sharply with the toe of her pump. Constantine unbuttoned her blouse, his fingers brushing the warmth of her smooth belly as they traveled down. He released the hook on the front of her brassiere, peeling it back and off her shoulders. In the light he saw her chest redden, as it had always reddened when he undressed her, and he smiled. Katherine kissed him again, pushing her tongue aggressively into his.
He led her to the bed, where she lay back, her feet still on the floor. Constantine undressed quickly and lowered himself onto her, rubbing his phallus along the front of her panties. He squeezed one dark nipple into stone, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he kissed her open mouth. Then he turned her over, pulling her panties down below her knees and off her pumps.
Constantine took Katherine in the yellow light that spilled in from the streetlight outside the window.
KATHERINE showered while Constantine freshened his drink. He sat on the edge of the bed and sipped vodka, listening to the water run behind the door. After a while it stopped running and ten minutes later Katherine walked out into the room.
She was dressed and made up exactly as she had been when he had looked at her in the lobby through the smoked glass of the lounge. He watched her walk to the dresser and clasp her watch to her wrist. He watched her straighten herself in the dresser mirror.
She looked at his reflection in the mirror as she pulled the cuff of her shirt down over her watch. For the first time that night he could not see a trace of the girl in the woman’s face.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Katherine said. “Why did you have to do that?”
Constantine butted his cigarette in the night-table ashtray. “It was the one thing we never did,” he said.
She looked him over. “So that’s what it’s about for you. New experience. Nothing deeper than that.”
Constantine shrugged unconsciously. Katherine’s eyes glazed.
“You want to know something?” she said, their eyes still connected in the mirror. “What I told you earlier, about those good times we had—that was all bullshit, Constantine. The truth is, I’ve got a life now, and a career, and a beautiful family. When I look at my children, and I think I ever knew guys like you, it just makes me feel dirty.”
Constantine said, “How do you think you’re going to feel when you look at them tonight?”
Katherine took her eyes from the mirror and picked her handbag up off the dresser. She tucked it under her arm and walked with her head up to the door. She opened the door and walked out, closing it softly behind her.
Constantine listened to her footsteps in the hall, and when he heard the bell of the elevator he rose and stepped over to the window. A minute later Katherine walked through the lobby doors and out onto the sidewalk below.
He watched her step off the curb into the wet street. A car filled with kids passed in front of her and accelerated at a puddle. Katherine stepped back and avoided the splash. She wound her straight hair back behind one ear, walking with a forced bounce in her step as she crossed the street. She slipped once on a patch of slick asphalt, the heel of her pump sliding out from under her. But she caught herself, and quickly put the key to the lock of her imported sedan. Katherine lit the smooth ignition, pulled away from the curb, and drove north toward the suburbs.
Constantine turned his head, stared deeply into the darkness of the motel room. So that was over now too.
Chapter
5
CONSTANTINE sat freshly showered under the cloth awning of the motel the next morning at nine o’clock, his backpack leaning up against the brick wall at his side. The rain had continued in spasms through the night and now came steadily and with the added push of wind. He smoked and listened to the hiss of the southbound tires on the wet street.
The yellow Super Bee approached just after nine and stopped at the curb, pointing north. Constantine put his Jansport over his shoulder and trotted through the rain, across the street to the car. He threw his pack in the backseat and climbed in next to Polk.
“Mornin’,” Polk said.
“Morning.”
Polk wore the blue windbreaker buttoned high, with a triangle of white T-shirt showing below the neck.
He held a styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, a small ring of plastic cut from the top. He took another full cup off the dash and handed it to Constantine.
“This’ll start us off,” he said.
Constantine tore a piece from the lid. He blew on the steam that twisted out of the hole before he sipped. He took his Marlboros out of the breast pocket of his denim shirt and tossed them onto the deck of the dash. It was a gesture to let Polk know that the cigarettes were theirs. The ride south was going to be long, and everything from then on would be cut straight down the middle.
They rode out toward the suburbs of Wheaton and caught the Beltway east. A half hour later they were on Route 4, and soon after that the crispness of country had returned to the air. Gradually the traffic died out and then it seemed to be just the two of them and the occasional pickup passing from the opposite direction. Constantine noticed a stone marker at the head of the unnamed two-lane that they had taken the previous day. Polk turned onto the road and gave the Dodge some gas.
They drove past woods and took a wide curve, past more woods fenced with a split rail, and then a clearing. The big colonial sat back in the clearing. Polk slowed and steered the Super Bee between the squat brick pillars, stopping at the iron gate. He glanced at his watch and shifted in the bench.
Through the windshield Constantine could see the figure with the field glasses framed above the portico in the center window. The figure moved out of the frame, and the iron gate opened inward. Polk eased through the gate and drove toward the house.
A thickly barred cage containing a doghouse stood thirty yards to the left of the house. In front of the doghouse, behind the bars, a black Doberman lay calmly on its belly, its thick head up and tracking the movement of the Dodge. The bars on the cage matched the thickness of those on the front gate.