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Show Motherlunge a novel 222 "You know Pavia's guy?" I said. "The time-and-child-molester guy she told us about? That was Steig, I bet." "Yeah, I bet you're right." Eli turned onto his side next to me. He yawned. "He hasn't contacted her at all," he said, meaning Cassandra. Steig had gone back to Israel as soon as the spring semester was over. "His wife may have had it by now." "Well, it would be really hard to take," Eli agreed. "I don't blame her. She's supposed to look the other way, pretend she doesn't know about his American girlfriend?" "I meant her baby," I said, laughing. "By now, his wife may have had the baby." I patted Eli with one hand while still gripping my folded-up legs with the other. "Did Pavia tell you what my dad said about you, on his last night here?" I asked. "No." In Eli's darkened bedroom, the small green light from the stereo cast a reassuring governmental glow. It was, I imagined, the same dim luminescence tinting the faces of , the two young soldiers in an underground bunker somewhere in eastern Montana, the ones I had once read about whose job it was to watch the screens for incoming nuclear threats while half a mile above them, antelope bedded down for the night in the long, end-of-summer grass. Back in the big city in Eli's room, I smiled. My dilated eyes wandered over the rectangles of photos on the wall, the bookcase, the dresser. I picked out my backpack in the comer, which looked hewn and monumental. I cleared my throat. "He said to Pavia, 'Eli's a weird little fucker, but he thinks Thea's the cat's ass.'" |