Page 229 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

When George Jakes was a mile from the White House, traffic slowed to a stop for no apparent reason. He banged on his steering wheel in frustration. He pictured Maria weeping alone somewhere.

People started to blare their horns. Several cars ahead, a driver got out and spoke to someone on the sidewalk. At the corner, half a dozen people were gathered around a parked car with its windows open, listening, presumably to the car radio. George saw a well-dressed woman clap her hand to her mouth in horror.

In front of George's Mercedes was a new white Chevrolet Impala. The door opened and the driver got out. He was wearing a suit and hat, and might have been a salesman making calls. He looked around, saw George in his open-top car, and said: "Is it true?"

"Yes," George said. "The president has been shot."

"Is he dead?"

"I don't know." There was no radio in George's car.

The salesman approached the open window of a Buick. "Is the president dead?"

George did not hear the reply.

The traffic was not moving.

George turned off his engine, jumped out of the car, and started to run.

He was dismayed to realize that he had got out of shape. He always seemed too busy to work out. He tried to think when was the last time he had done some vigorous exercise, and he could not remember. He found himself perspiring and breathing hard. Despite his impatience, he had to alternate jogging with fast walking.

His shirt was soaked with sweat when he reached the White House. Maria was not in the press office. "She went to the National Archives Building to do some research," said Nelly Fordham, whose face was wet with tears. "She probably hasn't even heard the news yet."

"Do we know whether the president is dead?"

"Yes, he is," said Nelly, and she sobbed afresh.

"I don't want Maria to hear it from a stranger," George said, and he left the building and ran along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the National Archives.

*

Dimka had been married to Nina for a year, and their child, Grigor, was six months old, when he finally admitted to himself that he was in love with Natalya.

She and her friends frequently went for a drink at the Riverside Bar after work, and Dimka got into the habit of joining the group when Khrushchev did not keep him late. Sometimes it was more than one drink, and often Dimka and Natalya were the last two left.

He found he was able to make her laugh. He was not generally considered a comedian, but he relished the many ironies of Soviet life, and so did she. "A worker showed how a bicycle factory could make mudguards more quickly by molding one long strip of tin, then cutting it, instead of cutting it first, then bending the pieces one by one. He was reprimanded and disciplined for endangering the five-year plan."

Natalya laughed, opening her wide mouth and showing her teeth. The way she laughed suggested a potential for reckless abandon that made Dimka's heart beat faster. He imagined her throwing her head back like that while they were making love. Then he imagined seeing her laugh like that every day for the next fifty years, and he realized that was the life he wanted.

He did not tell her, though. She had a husband, and seemed to be happy with him; at least, she said nothing bad about him, although she was never in a hurry to go home to him. More importantly, Dimka had a wife and a child, and he owed them his loyalty.

He wanted to say: I love you. I'm going to leave my family. Will you leave your husband, live with me, and be my friend and lover for the rest of our lives?

Instead he said: "It's late, I'd better go."

"Let me drive you," she said. "It's too cold for your motorcycle."

She pulled up at the corner near Government House. He leaned across to kiss her good night. She let him kiss her lips, briefly, then pulled back. He got out of the car and went into the building.

On the way up in the elevator he thought about the excuse he would make to Nina for being late. There was a genuine crisis at the Kremlin: this year's grain harvest had been a catastrophe, and the Soviet government was desperately trying to buy foreign wheat to feed its people.

When he entered the apartment, Grigor was asleep and Nina was watching TV. He kissed her forehead and said: "I was kept late at the office, sorry. We had to finish a report on the bad harvest."

"You shit-faced liar," said Nina. "Your office has been calling here every ten minutes, trying to find you, to tell you that President Kennedy has been killed."

*

Maria's tummy rumbled. She looked at her watch and realized she had forgotten to have lunch. The work she was doing had absorbed her, and for two or three hours no one had come into this area to disturb her. But she was almost done, so she decided to finish off, then get a sandwich.

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