“It’s Lilly’s book,” Franny said. “It’s not our book.”
“In a way, it is,” Lilly said.
“Precisely,” Frank said, “and the way I understand publishing, it’s out of her hands now. Now is where we either get taken or we make a killing.”
“It’s just about growing up,” Lilly said. “I’m sort of surprised they’re interested.”
“They’re only five thousand dollars interested, Lilly,” Franny said.
“We need fifteen or twenty thousand to leave,” Father said. “If we’re going to have a chance to do anything with it, back home,” he added.
“Don’t forget: we’ll get something for this place,” Freud said, defensively.
“Not after we blow the whistle on the fucking bombers,” said Susie the bear.
“There will be such a scandal,” Frank said, “we won’t get a buyer.”
“I told you: we’ll get the police on our ass if we blow the whistle at all,” Freud said. “You don’t know our police, their Gestapo tactics. They’ll find something we’re doing wrong with the whores, too.”
“Well, there’s a lot that is wrong,” Franny said. We couldn’t look at each other; when Franny talked, I looked out the window. I saw Old Billig the radical crossing the street. I saw Screaming Annie dragging herself home.
“There’s no way we can’t blow the whistle,” Father said. “If they actually think they can blow up the Opera, there’s no talking to them.”
“There never was any talking to them,” Franny said. “We just listened.”
“They’ve always been crazy,” I said to Father.
“Don’t you know that, Daddy?” Lilly asked him.
Father hung his head. He was forty-four, a distinguished gray appearing on the thick brown hair around his ears; he had never worn sideburns, and he had his hair cut in a uniform, mid-ear, mid-forehead, just-covering-the-back-of-his-neck way; he never thinned it. He wore bangs, like a little boy, and his hair fit his head so dramatically well that from a distance we were sometimes fooled into thinking that Father was wearing a helmet.
“I’m sorry, kids,” Father said, shaking his head. “I know this isn’t very pleasant, but I feel we’re at the turning point.” He shook his head some more; he looked really lost to us, and it was only later that I would remember him on Frank’s bed, in that dressmaker’s dummy of a room, as looking really quite handsome and in charge of things. Father was always good at creating the illusion that he was in charge of things: Earl, for example. He hadn’t lifted the weights, like Iowa Bob, or like me, but Father had kept his athletic figure, and certainly he had kept his boyishness—“too fucking much boyishness,” as Franny would say. It occurred to me that he must be lonely; in seven years, he hadn’t had a date! And if he used the whores, he was discreet about it—and in that Hotel New Hampshire, who could be that discreet?
“He can’t be seeing any of them,” Franny had said. “I’d simply know it, if he was.”
“Men are sneaky,” Susie the bear had said. “Even nice guys.”
“So he’s not doing it; that’s settled,” Franny had said. Susie the bear had shrugged, and Franny had hit her.
But in Frank’s room, it was Father who brought up the whores.
“We should tell them what we’re going to do about the crazy radicals,” Father said, “before we tell the police.”
“Why?” Susie the bear asked him. “One of them might blow the whistle on us.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked Susie.
“We should tell them so they can make other plans,” Father said.
“They’ll have to change hotels,” Freud said. “The damn police will close us down. In this country, you’re guilty by association!” Freud cried. “Just ask any Jew!” Just ask the other Freud, I thought.
“But suppose we were heroes,” Father said, and we all looked at him. Yes, that would be nice, I was thinking.
“Like in Lilly’s book?” Frank asked Father.
“Suppose the police thought that we were heroes for uncovering the bomb plot?” Father asked.
“The police don’t think that way,” Freud said.
“But suppose, as Americans,” Father said, “we told the American Consulate, or the Embassy, and someone over there passed on the information to the Austrian authorities—as if this whole thing had been a really top-secret, first-class kind of intrigue.”
“This is why I love you, Win Berry!” Freud said, tapping time to some interior tune with his baseball bat. “You really are a dreamer,” Freud told my father. “This is no first-class intrigue! This is a second-class hotel,” Freud said. “Even I can see that,” he said, “and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind. And those aren’t any first-class terrorists; either,” Freud said. “They can’t keep a perfectly good car running!” he shouted. “I, for one, don’t believe they know how to blow up the Opera! I actually think we’re perfectly safe. If they had a bomb, they’d probably fall downstairs with it!”
“The whole car is the bomb,” I said, “or it’s the main bomb—whatever that means. That’s what Fehlgeburt said.”
“Let’s talk to Fehlgeburt,” Lilly said. “I trust Fehlgeburt,” she added, wondering how the girl who had virtually been her tutor for seven years had actually become so convinced of destroying herself. And if Fehlgeburt had been Lilly’s tutor, Schwanger had been Lilly’s nanny.
But we wouldn’t see Fehlgeburt again. I assumed it was me she was trying not to see; I assumed she was seeing the others. At the end of the summer of 1964—as “the fall season” loomed—I was doing my best not ever to be alone with Franny, and Franny was trying hard to convince Susie the bear that although nothing had changed between them, Franny thought it was best that they be “just good friends.”
“Susie’s so insecure,” Franny told me, “I mean, she’s really sweet—as Lilly would say—but I’m trying to let her down without undermining what little confidence I might have given her. I mean, she was just beginning to like herself, just a little. I had her almost believing she wasn’t ugly to look at; now that I’m rejecting her, she’s turning into a bear again.”
“I love you,” I told Franny, with my head down, “but what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to love each other,” Franny said. “But we’re not going to do anything.”
“Not ever, Franny?” I asked her.
“Not now, anyway,” Franny said, but her hand trailed across her lap, across her tight-together knees, and into my lap—where she squeezed my thigh so hard I jumped. “Not here, anyway,” she whispered, fiercely, then let me go. “Maybe it’s just desire,” she added. “Want to try the desire on someone else and see if the thing between us goes away?”
“Who else is there?” I said. It was late afternoon, in her room. I would not dare be in Franny’s room after dark.
“Which one do you think about?” Franny asked me. I knew she meant the whores.
“Jolanta,” I said, my hand involuntarily flying from my side and knocking a lampshade askew. Franny turned her back to me.
“Well, you know who I think about, don’t you?” she asked.
“Ernst,” I said, and my teeth chattered—I was so cold.
“Do you like that idea?” she asked me.
“God, no,” I whispered.
“You and your damn whispering,” Franny said. “Well, I don’t like you with Jolanta, either.”
“So we won’t,” I said.