11

January 1976

Teel reached Bart Simms at the Senate office building. There was no delay. He came right on the line.

“Your sister is coming over to visit me tomorrow and I know how much you want to see her, so why not try to get to my place at about ten fifteen in the morning?”

The twins clung to each other and wept at the center of Teel’s enormous drawing room. After a while Teel brought Bart some legal papers to sign—she was Bart’s lawyer he explained to Enid—then they all took the papers to a bank at 34 East 34th Street. When the ritual of a safe deposit box was over, Enid and Bart said good-bye to Teel. Teel watched Enid with narrowed eyes as Bart handed his sister into a taxi.

Bart took Enid to his hotel apartment on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties. They took a shower together, then they got into bed and made love until the late afternoon. After that he dressed her in his pajamas and sent down for some food.

“You have changed,” Enid said, touching his face. “You have changed so much.”

“Everything happened the way we planned. I am a senator now. I don’t know where it went wrong. It got confused. I got lost somewhere. The reason I say such ridiculous things is that not much has been real since you vanished.”

“Before China, when I was here, that is the way it was for me. But everything is too real now. I get frightened. I wish I could go back to how it was then.”

“We can’t go back.” Bart shuddered. “It is a river. We are downstream. Soon we’ll find the sea.”

“But real isn’t good, Bart. Everything is too clear and too ugly.”

“You have changed, too,” he said. “I can hear it.”

“If only we could have stayed together.” Tears came into her eyes. “We can never be like that again. Not really like that.”

“Who took you away from me?” he demanded. “Who took you into China?”

“I can’t tell you that now,” she said. “I’ll tell you some day, I promise. But I can’t tell you now.”