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Millstein looked up from his drink. “Who the hell is Henry Kissinger?”
Joyce was a little drunk and very intense, frowning at him across the table. “You’re saying we don’t make a difference?”
“Maybe some people make a difference. Martin Luther King, maybe. Khrushchev. Ke
“People whose names begin with K,” Millstein supplied.
“But not us,” Joyce insisted. “We don’t make a difference. Is that what you mean?”
“Christ, Joyce, I don’t know what I mean. I’m not a philosopher.”
“No. You’re not a repairman, either.” She shook her head. “I wish I knew what the hell you were.”
“There’s your mistake,” Millstein said. “Dear Joyce. Next time you go to bed with somebody, make sure you’re formally introduced.”
Millstein drank until he loved the world. This was his plan. He told them so. “It doesn’t always work. Well, you know that. But sometimes. Drink until the world is lovable. Good advice.” The evening wore on.
They parted around midnight, on the sidewalk, Avenue B. Millstein braced himself against Tom’s breastbone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, about before. I was an asshole!”
“It’s okay,” Tom said.
Millstein looked at Joyce. “You be good to her, Tom.”
“I will. Of course I will.”
“She doesn’t know why we love her and hate her. But it’s for the same reason, of course. Because she’s this … this pocket of faith. She believes in virtue! She comes to this city and sings songs about courage. My God! She has the courage of a saint. It’s her element. Even her vices are meticulous. She’s not merely good in bed, she’s good—in bed!”
“Shut up,” Joyce said. “Lawrence, you shit! Everybody can hear you.”
Millstein turned to her and took her face between his hands, drunkenly but gently. “This is not an insult, dear. We love you because you’re better than we are. But we’re jealous of your goodness and we will scour it out of you if we possibly can.”
“Go home, Lawrence.”
He wheeled away. “Good night!”
“Good night,” Tom said. But it didn’t feel like such a good night. It was hot. It was dark. He was sweating.
He walked home with Joyce leaning into his shoulder. She was still somewhat drunk; he was somewhat less so. The conversation had made her sad. She paused under a streetlight and looked at him mournfully.
She said, “You’re not immortal anymore!”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“No, no! When you came here, Tom, you were immortal. I was sure of it. The way you walked. The way you looked at everything. Like this was all some fine, wonderful place where nothing could hurt you. I thought you must be immortal—the only explanation.”
He said, “I’m sorry I’m not immortal.”
She fumbled her key into the front door of the building.
The apartment was hot. Tom stripped down to his T-shirt and briefs; Joyce ducked out of her shirt. The sight of her in the dim light provoked a flash of pleasure. He had lived in this apartment for more than a month and familiarity only seemed to intensify his feelings about her. When he met her she had been emblematic, Joyce who lived in the Village in 1962; now she was Joyce Casella from Mi
But she was ignoring him. She rummaged through a stack of papers by the bookcase, mainly phone bills; Tom asked her what she was looking for.
“Susan’s letter. The one I was telling Lawrence about. She said I could call. ‘Call anytime,’ she said. She wants me to go down there. There’s so much work to do! Jesus, Tom, what time is it? Midnight? Hey, Tom, is it midnight in Georgia?”
He felt a ripple of worry. “What do you mean—you want to call her tonight?”
“That’s the idea.”
“What for?”
“Make arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
She stood up. “What I said wasn’t just bullshit. I meant it. What good am I here? I should be down there with Susan doing some real work.”
He was astonished. He hadn’t anticipated this.
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m a little drunk. I’m not too drunk to think about the future.”
Maybe Tom was a little drunk, too. The future! This was both fu
She frowned and set aside the papers. “What?”
“It’s dangerous, Joyce. People get killed, for Christ’s sake.” He thought about the civil rights movement circa 1962. What he recalled was a jumble of headlines filtered through books and TV documentaries. Bombs in churches, mobs attacking buses, Klansmen with riot sticks and sawed-off shotguns. He pictured Joyce in the midst of this. The thought was intolerable. “You can’t.”
She held out the letter, postmarked Augusta.
“They need me.”
“The hell they do. One more earnest white college graduate isn’t going to turn the tide, for Christ’s sake. They have TV. They have pinheaded southern sheriffs beating women on all three networks. They have friends in the Ke
“Sometimes I wonder if I know you at all. What’s all this shit about the future?”
“That’s where I’m from.”
She looked at him fiercely. “Tell me the truth or get out of my apartment.”
He described in broad and clumsy outline the train of events that had carried him here.
Joyce listened with focused patience but didn’t begin to believe him until he brought out his wallet and unpacked his ID from the card windows—his Washington State driver’s license, his Visa card, an expired American Express card, a card to access bank machines; from the billfold, a couple of tens bearing a mint date twenty years in the future.
Joyce examined all these things solemnly. Finally she said, “Your watch.”
He hadn’t worn it since his first visit; it was in the left-hand pocket of his jeans. She must have seen it. “It’s just a cheap digital watch. But you’re right. You can’t buy those here.”
He backed off and let her contemplate these things. He was a little more sober for the telling of it and he wondered whether this had been a terrible mistake. It must be frightening. God knows, it had frightened him.
But she fingered the cards and the money, then sighed and looked at him fearlessly.
“I’ll make coffee,” she said. “I guess we don’t sleep tonight.”
“I guess we don’t,” Tom said.
She held the cup in both hands as if it were anchoring her to the earth.
“Tell me again,” she said. “Tell me how you came here.” He rubbed his eyes. “Again?”
“Again. Slower.”
He took a deep breath and began.
By the time he finished it was past two a.m. The street outside was quiet, the light of the room seemed strange and sterile. He was dazed, sleepy, hung over. Joyce, however, was wide awake.