Late the next morning, viciously hung over, Reisden came down to breakfast. Harry was in the dining room, up not much earlier than he; Perdita had talked with him late last night. Reisden poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down, narrowing his eyes against the sun glaring off the tablecloth. Harry ostentatiously continued to read the paper.
It was quiet. Of course: no piano music, not from here, not over the water from the Clinic. Never again, until Harry told Perdita she could play.
I can take you, he told Harry silently. I’m Richard. Richard owns everything you thought you had. Richard has Gilbert. Give your Perdita back her music and you can have all of it. G-d knows I don’t want it.
Adair had been right: One didn’t want the money, but the power.
Leaving his coffee, he went outside. Gilbert had cleared away the broken glass from the porch but had missed a shard by the stair riser. Reisden picked it up, a vicious little dagger of glass. He felt as if he wanted to cut himself, to feel a placid, simple emotion like pain. He had been in this state before; he was afraid of it.
Gilbert came up from the garden. He smiled tentatively at his Richard; Reisden handed him the bit of glass. “I'm going to take the auto out for a while.”
He drove a little too fast over the Knights’ narrow bridge, too fast by far over the twisting unpaved roads outside town. A road he took at random came out at the top of the hills north of the lake. He was far enough away to cover with his hand the view of everything from Island Hill to the railroad station. To the south he could see across hazy green hills the view toward Boston and New York.
If I were truly sane I would drive to New York now. Everywhere but here I can be Alexander Reisden.
And what good would that do him? If being Alexander Reisden had worked, he wouldn’t be here.
Did he in the least want to become Richard? If he decided to try it there would be a long and boring fight, which he had little chance of winning. What would he do it for? Money he had enough of, he didn’t need multiple millions and a full-time staff to manage it. He wouldn’t have children or a wife to leave it to.
But I can.
If he was Richard, he was sane.
He sat in the car with the breath knocked out of him, looking out over the bowl of the valley. It was as if someone had left him the whole valley—which, if he was Richard, was something close to true. He couldn’t see the situation all at once, not in the detail he needed.
My G-d, to be rich and sane and to have all one’s chances to take again. It was a little too much to understand.
No. Most certainly no. He didn’t want to be Richard.
On the other hand, he would much prefer to be sane.
He drove back slowly. Being back at the house felt awkward and tentative, like acting on a decision not really taken. He shut himself up in the telephone closet under the stairs and put through a call to New York.
“Alexandre?” Louis said through the wires.
"J’avais tort,” Reisden said. “I was wrong. I didn’t want to kill Tasy.” He took a deep breath. Speaking French felt stiff after two months thinking and speaking in English. He massaged his temples. Thinking of Richard too much was like pushing against pain.
Long silence. “Good,” Louis said.
Neither one of them knew what to say after that. The telephone line sang tensely like a cicada.
“Was that what you went off to find out?” Louis asked finally.
“Not at the time. I didn’t know.”
“You hurt me, up in Boston.”
“Yes. Not only there.”
He had never apologized to Louis; apologies for what Louis knew about him would have cost his last shred of pride. “I have been so wrong I don’t know how to be right yet. This is all new. Nothing’s clear.”
“At least something is happening.”
“Oh, my G-d, yes.”
“What about Paris?”
He hadn’t thought about Paris. Valleys upon valleys opening.
“Alexandre? Tu es lá?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Fool not to say yes, I’ll go to Paris, though he knew already that someday he would. “It’s all a little too early. Don’t ask me yet.”
“But tell Berthet not to hire anyone else? Because he hasn’t.”
“Don’t for G-d’s sake let him hire anyone else.”
No sound on the other end of the line. Then finally Louis cleared his throat. “Ouais, OK. Ça va bien. ”
“Yes, everything’s all right.” More or less all right. Again, neither of them said anything, trying to deal with that confusion when relationships change. “Have you found anything in the lab?”
“It was good you called. O’Brien wants to send you some results. And he wants your results from last winter.”
“I’ll telegraph Lotmann to send them, and of course I want to see O’Brien’s work. What’s it about?”
Reisden could sense Louis grinning. “The package will arrive on Monday.”