The reason Jeff called that curious meeting was that it had come to the surface right away—too quickly not to be suspicious, according to Jeff—that his name was not Geoffrey Blaylock and that he was wanted in the States for blowing up a munitions plant. It was all a plot, was what he thought, but then he’d seen a lot of plots, some that he’d thought up himself. “Extradition” was the word now, or so we thought, because the provincial police had gotten in conversation with the RCMP before you could draw your breath and say it. But outside of filling in a lot of forms, nothing whatever happened. They said he could get a lawyer. Jeff said he would think about it. We’d certainly no money for that. We waited, but nothing happened.
Except that Ethan died.
I came in from practice at the theater and found Jeff home early, sitting on the bed, holding the news about Ethan like an object. I knew then what he would do. But I waited for him to tell me.
“I can’t live in exile,” was what he finally said, two days later. “I won’t do it.”
The three of us walked near the river, out on Isle Ste.-Hélène. We went up to an old watchtower built of stone. There were little walkways over streams, and a lake where swans floated, thinking whatever swans think about.
When we went to the airport, I left Kathy with Estes. The ticket was for Chicago. Jeff was meeting an editor there to discuss ways of writing for Ramparts. It was clear they valued him. It was also clear that if he could cross this time, he could keep on crossing, daring fate. I didn’t know if it would work. I just knew he had to.
Back at Estes’s place, he had huddled with Kathy, telling her all sorts of secret things to remember, to promise, to hang on to. It was nice she and Jeff loved each other. I always thought Jeff might think she was a nuisance until she got big enough to march in a protest.
It was October, the most beautiful time there, and because of Canadian Thanksgiving, Jeff had a long weekend off from work. We sat in the airport. I never held anybody’s hand so tight. I had gotten cold on the way and he had given me a jacket of his to wear. We looked out the window at the planes and then it was time. He went toward the passport check. It took them awhile over his, but then they stamped it.
“Jeff,” I said at the last minute, and started after him. They caught my arm and held me back. He vanished around the corner. It was his jacket. I meant to give it back. But because I still had it on, it seemed it was me and not him going off toward the plane. The jacket had his smell and contour and it seemed to be on him still. It was a strange division, or rather a kind of swap: me going, he staying.
I hung around awhile until I could see the plane through the window, leaving the ground for a cloudless cold blue sky. Someday, I thought as I walked away, I’ll ask him, “Did you think you were me, waiting down below, and I rising up with the plane, leaving?” I bet if I thought it, he thought it, too. We had gotten like that, since he came back this time.
They picked him up in Chicago, at the airport. Somebody from the Justice Department. But, as Jeff said, it might as well have been the Immigration people, or the State Department, or the CIA, or the FBI, or any number of other forces kept handy for the purpose of gathering up whoever did unlawful things.
They took him back to San Francisco where it all had happened, and I was without him again, in Montreal.