The Night Travellers

4. Dilemma

Dilemma Fred's problems at last caused him to be sitting waiting in a Sansom Street restaurant, a rathskeller, just out of and near the main business section of Philadelphia, down toward an area where secondhand jewelry shops flourished, one after the other, and little bent men squinted through eyepieces to judge the quality of gemstones. The restaurant had settled itself in this spot long ago, and set about successfully attracting businessmen who wanted a good lunch. But on Saturday few people were there, and no sounds of heavy traffic came down from the districts a few blocks away. Fred was sitting where he could look out of the windows. He saw her coming. He could see her accustomed motion, exactly what he had come to expect of her, bending slightly forward along that sidewalk empty of crowds, but by long habit adjusted to walking with and against crowds, acknowledging no one. A city woman. Dark. Neither short nor tall. Neither thin nor fat. He noted gray, undefended , in her hair. How could that be? It was. She entered, found him, came to his table. He rose. They sat. Her suit was trim, her blouse crisp, her bag, of cavernous black leather, was worn and interesting. She put it on an empty chair. Stella Honderas . Estrella. Or sometimes, more intimate, a childhood name, Estrelita. No questions till they ordered lunch. Then, "So what about the situation?" She knew what he was bound to have come for. "It's not good," he admitted. "I must act." The day before, he had seen Kate do something he still could not believe. He would never reveal it; it had frightened him. "Success on your trip, however. So you said." 337 4 358 THE N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S "They broke all the rules, that bunch, and more than a few laws got smashed as well. The line Blaise stepped on was a little plant the government had bought up near SanFrancisco.There wasnews about its being a place for making some sort of war explosive. Not napalm, for a change, but some sort of handy little grenade-type gadget. Supposed to blind and paralyze wherever it hit. The crazy part is, they hadn't even started making the stuff. Just a night watchman out there. Nothing to stop them from hitting it. So ..." "So? What about it?" "I got them to press charges. The FBI is more than interested, whenever they can get hold of something or somebody they can move against. You'll never guess all the places I've been—Texas, Michigan, New Jersey, Chicago. Discovering America. This really is a great country, you know. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker." "You got the boy locked up?" "No, not that. Shipped out to Vietnam. I had hoped to get Kate's daughter and the little girl here, or at least into the country, near us, reinstated somehow. Not quite worked out yet. All I could get was the child." "Living with you?" "Yes." "So the mother's bound to follow?" "That's the hitch." "She won't?" "Won't. And furthermore, the kid—" "The kid wants her mother." "How'd you know?" Stella laughed. Their plates arrived. Sauerbraten. Red cabbage. Steins of beer. Stella took a sip and pushed hair from her neck comfortably. "I really do not think," Fred Davis said, buttering his pumpernickel , "that Kate is a woman who should have children near her." "You should have married me," said Stella. Her husbandhad abandoned her years before, leaving her to raise two little girls. She adored them. "I know," Fred agreed. "You wouldn't now if you could." "You fished up your Boston snob first. Look what happened to that. Then you picked your Southern magnolia. Now look." "It's better not to marry," said Fred. Decisions 359 "Kate has told me for years," he continued, "she wanted more than life itself to have another chance at motherhood. She felt on the first round she'd had too much on her, responsibility, money worries. So I move heaven and earth. Well, wrong again." "But what's wrong with it? Except the child is homesick." "Kate expects too much, I think. Nothing short of being perfect. Little manners to observe, fine little dresses to wear just right. Her moods shift with the speed of light. Once...