Rapture

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Au Bon Pain.

He knew Bon: Bon was good, as in Bon Ami household cleaner, or as in Bonjour, one of the three or four French words he did know. Bonjour, monsieur, merci, oui. He'd been a student of German, not French. Bon was good.

Bonnie, as they say in Scotland.

Au was a mystery. Pain was a mystery.

But were they so difficult? Let Au be Oh. Let Pain be Pain. Oh Good Pain! It sounded like something out of Shakespeare, or a toast by the Marquis de Sade. He smiled. The line went perfectly with the jingle on a television beer commercial. "Here's to good pain, tonight is kind of special ..." With good pain. Through good pain. By good pain. Toward the good pain. Pain a la mode. Pie, that was it. Pain had to mean pie. For Good Pie. Disappointing, but then, the solution of a mystery often is. For Good Pain. He liked that much more. For Good Pain, stop here. It sounded punk, and he was feeling punk.

At the next table a small crowd had gathered around two young men locked in a five-minute game of lightning chess. Fingers flew, pieces banged about the board, and the clock was hammered continuously. The challenger lost his dollar. The winner looked philosophical. He was mediocre, a club-strength player, but he could keep his cool for five minutes, which was more than many others could do in the face of a reckless, unsound attack. If you say A, you must ...

It was a mistake to be sitting there, he knew. He could be seen first, at any time, and that was the opposite of what he wanted. The coffee at the bottom of his cup was too little and too cold to bother finishing. He crushed his cigarette in the plastic ashtray, stood up, and left the outdoor terrace of the Cafe Au Bon Pain.

He walked past the newsstand and on up the street as far as the Old Burying Ground. He carried a paperback of Katz's Life After Nuclear War, which he had purchased that same morning. It was the first of May, and his first full day there. The sun was shining brilliantly on Harvard Square.

Early afternoon now. He resumed his post on the concrete bench outside the Science Center. It was the easiest way. She had to take at least one course in that ugly building, and even if she didn't, she was bound to pass by sooner or later. He had patience, and plenty of time. He waited and watched, glancing up through mirrored sunglasses whenever a female came along. Otherwise he stared at the book open on his lap. Apparently it would take only 335 warheads to set the Soviet Union back a thousand years. But was that far enough?

He looked like someone else, not Jeff Lisker. Not Phil Headley, nor even the equally mythical Jonathan Tate, which was the name he currently used for purposes of airline tickets, hotel registrations, and traveler's checks. He had let his hair grow for most of April. It wasn't really long, but longer and fuller. Then he'd gone to a unisex salon in West Hollywood, not so much for a cut as to have the color and style changed. Gone was the dull brown, gone, too, the part that had been with him since childhood. Now his hair was a kind of muddy cream color, and it was swept back on his head. Ted and Callie hadn't liked the change but Jeff didn't care. He had to use mousse every morning to keep the part from reasserting itself. He had also applied peroxide to his eyebrows, with mixed results. He wore a pair of scuffed loafers, corduroy jeans, a Dodgers T-shirt, and an old, comfortable tweed jacket he'd been surprised to find he still had in his closet. He hoped he looked like a graduate student or a member of the faculty.

Another fool's errand? Possibly. Probably. What would he say to Bonnie when he did see her? He didn't have the slightest idea. But he had already decided that it was pointless to sit around in Ventura County and try to figure these things out in his head. Now that he was on the scene, something would happen, or it wouldn't. All it would cost was time and money, and he had those to bum.

Jeffs feelings for Georgianne were no less intense than they had been the last time he'd spoken with her, nearly three months ago. It had to be love-there was nothing else to call it, and he couldn't begin to consider the alternatives. Say love, then. But why did he feel as if he were being victimized? It shouldn't be happening this way. What did he have to do, how far did he have to go to demonstrate his love? Didn't she understand how strong her hold on him was? Obviously not. Georgianne was one of those women who go through life scarcely realizing the effect they have on some men.

There was nothing he could do but go along with the situation and hope it would take a turn in his favor at some point. He had tried to forget about her back in February, when he'd stopped calling her. Ten months of remarkable effort had come to nothing, and his instinct had been to cut his losses. But it hadn't worked out that way. Georgianne still dominated his thoughts, like a river of lost opportunity flowing through his life. The desire to pursue and possess that one woman refused to fade away. She never called or wrote, but that didn't matter. Georgianne never let Jeff go.

He had found himself returning to Diane. She became Georgianne in a bikini, or in a slip and bra, or in a teddy, or in black patterned stockings with her skirt riding up while she sat and read a book and Jeff watched. But the satisfaction he got with Diane was diminishing, the illusion more difficult to maintain. Georgianne was under his skin, in his blood, and no substitute would do. Diane's hair didn't smell the same as Georgianne's, her body didn't feel quite the same in an embrace. Even when they both had their clothes on, Diane's breasts lightly touching his chest somehow felt wrong. Jeff had two Georgiannes locked in his head-the one from high school and the one who lived now-and Diane couldn't fully translate into either of them.

Jeff liked to regard Georgianne as a special project. He couldn't give up on her. As an intellectual puzzle, he thought she might still be solved, that he would finally figure out what it took to win her. And on an emotional level, the idea of abandoning her never had a chance.

It hurt him that she never called. She hadn't lifted a finger to contact him at any time since they'd met on the street in Danbury almost exactly a year ago. During the period when he was calling her twice a week it was understandable, perhaps. But in February, March, and April it wasn't. Their last conversation, after all, hadn't ended on a sour note, not openly, not really. By then, he thought, she owed him at least one damn phone call. She had the three numbers at which he could be reached, Lisker-Benedictus, his private line at work, and his home telephone, but the call never came. She just let him go.

Through the rest of February and into March, Jeff had experienced a growing sense of disbelief. Could she really forget about him so easily? Was that how she regarded their friendship-if he called or was there in person, fine; otherwise, she didn't give him a thought? It was a shocking conclusion, one that he refused to accept. Hadn't she told him she felt bad about not staying in touch with Mrs. Brewer, her long-time neighbor in Millville? Perhaps it was just Georgianne's way, a fact of no particular significance. Besides, she had more than enough to keep her busy. Her life was in a state of uncertainty. She had to decide about her job, her house, her whole future, and all of this coming in the aftermath of her husband's death and her daughter's going away to college.

By April, Jeff was actively planning how to get himself back into Georgianne's life. A telephone call. A long letter. A surprise visit. He considered these ideas among others, but nothing appealed to him. Points of access were limited. He blamed himself for the failure in February and he knew that a rerun would be disastrous beyond words.

It was around the middle of April when he began to think about Bonnie. He had met her only a couple of times, almost a year ago now, but whenever she came to mind it was as a potential ally. The girl had seemed to like him well enough, but beyond that superficial impression was the fact that she wanted to be a scientist. Jeff was a computer scientist. Bonnie would understand him and respect him for what he was and what he did. Her way of looking at things, he reasoned, could not be so very different from his. There had to be a meeting point, a common ground between them, and that in turn might provide the key to Georgians.

Knobs, the fellow who had sold Jeff the coke and the phony driver's license, was taking a short but mandatory sabbatical at a state facility. His soul mate, a petite Brazilian transsexual known as Creamy, was looking after the family business and had provided Jeff with the Jonathan Tate identification. The fee was higher this time, adjusted apparently to take account of the inflation rate in Brazil. Jeff paid, but he shook his head all the way back to Santa Susana, wondering why he had bothered with this pointless charade. His meeting with Bonnie would be friendly. There was no hostility or rivalry involved, as there had been with Sean. There would be no unpleasant confrontationover what? Either Bonnie could help him or she couldn't, that's all there was to it. But if he didn't need to cover his tracks, the urge to do so proved irresistible. It was as if he had to take that one little step away from himself before he could act. And to act was everything.

He spotted her that first afternoon. It was nearly half past two when Jeff looked up and recognized Bonnie. How easy it proves to be, he thought, suppressing a grin and turning his head down to the book. She clicked past, a glimpse of boots, black jeans, and a high fanny. Jeff trailed casually after her. Bonnie's hair had become a full, flowing mane. She went into the Science Center and took a seat in Lecture Hall C. Jeff thought about sitting a few rows behind her, but decided it was a bad idea. It would be a poor setting if she happened to recognize him there. He bought coffee instead and waited at one of the Cinzano tables down the hall, next to the Cabot Science Library. If Bonnie left the building the same way she had come in, she'd pass him again.

He was reluctant to approach her and introduce himself on campus. He was afraid she wouldn't be able to give him more than a few minutes before she had to hurry off to another class, a meeting with her adviser, or some other scheduled appointment. He wanted time alone with her, and he thought his best chance would come if he caught up with her out on the street. He waited and read. Apparently a one-megaton warhead could wipe out greater Waterbury. Ah, but there were at least two contradictions in that theory.

Bonnie reappeared an hour later. Jeff followed her outside. She was strolling now, rather than walking purposefully. He adjusted his sunglasses, lit a cigarette, and trudged slowly a safe distance behind. She passed Memorial Church, the Widener, came out on Quincy Street, then turned up Massachusetts Avenue toward the Square. At the newsstand, she bought Interview and Elie. Jeff was ready to intercept her if it looked like she was heading back to campus, but she crossed to Au Bon Pain, where she bought iced tea and sat at a table by herself. Jeff smiled. If he had stayed there, she would have come to him. But he didn't mind, he was pleased. It was still the first day, after all, and he'd wasted very little time. He kept his sunglasses on and sat down across the table from her.

"Hello, Bonnie."

She looked up, a blank expression on her face.

"I said: Hello, Bonnie."

Now she sat back and smiled.

"Hi, Jeff. What took you so long?"

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