Chapter 11

“Going to work today, honey?” Pamela casually inquired as she poured herself a cup of joe. She might have suspected it by the way Oswald was furiously fighting his necktie, which was something he wore only when he was nervous. “Save yourself the trouble. About the tie. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Says you,” Oswald noted, a finger caught where it shouldn’t have been. “I appreciate the sentiment, but now’s really not the time. I’ve got to do this, and I will do it. Tie this thing, I mean.”

“I’m sure you will,” Pamela said. “I know about your call from Connecticut. Who do you know there?”

“Call? What call?” Oswald said, sincerely confused, and the tie wasn’t helping.

“The one you received yesterday,” Pamela said. “I overheard some of it. I didn’t understand what you were talking about.”

“So you did some investigating,” Oswald said, still distracted. “Something of a Pliny, isn’t it? You doing that, I mean.”

“As far as I could tell, it was a residential number,” Pamela continued. “There has to be someone you know there, or someone you’ve previously contacted?”

“No, no,” Oswald said, the tie still winning. “The caller initiated, everything. I don’t know who he is, never seen him before.”

“But you must know why,” Pamela pressed on. “Why he called. At least it wasn’t a she.”

“I hope you don’t seriously, or haven’t seriously considered that,” Oswald said. “That I would be having an affair.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Pamela said. “It would be a natural conclusion.”

“And this is an unnatural beast,” Oswald said, and as soon as he did he seemed to know how to handle it. “There. Uh, that’s better.”

“Good,” Pamela said, presuming she had struck a cord. “This wasn’t a pimp, was he?”

“A pimp!” Oswald chortled. “God no, the guy from Connecticut was not a pimp. This was not a hotline. As far as I know, you make those call yourself. Not that I have any firsthand experience.”

“Pliny might say otherwise,” Pamela said. “Your reputation, Flyboy, that might, too.”

“My reputation,” Oswald snorted back again. “You haven’t talked to Pliny about this, have you?”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” Pamela said. Her hand was hovering over her cup, where it sat on the counter. She might have been entertaining a nasty destination for the coffee therein.

“No, no,” Oswald insisted, popping some pieces of bread down the toaster, now that he thought of it. “But I’d rather not have him involved in this. Again.”

“I have a right to be concerned,” Pamela said, “to involve Pliny if I find it necessary.”

“It’s not,” Oswald insisted. “You found out how useful he was the last time.”

“Yes, I did,” Pamela said.

“Please,” Oswald said. “You’re not still entertaining some of his more idiotic malaprops, are you? The guy knows exactly the wrong thing to say, for almost every situation. I love him, but he‘s a dope when it comes to anything but engineering. Even you wouldn‘t have enjoyed Volkov’s company.”

“What does the Russian have to do with it?” Pamela said, picking her cup up and taking a sip.

“Nothing, except the point of irritation,” Oswald said. “Why does nobody understand that plain and simple stress might account for my behavior, my reactions since the assignment, or during it?”

“Pliny said you were fine up there,” Pamela said.

“Pliny says a lot of stupid things,” Oswald said. “We’ve already been over that.”

“You have,” Pamela said. “Doesn’t mean it’s the last word on the subject.”

“You really don’t trust me?” Oswald said, as his toast popped up. He hated to turn away just then, but he had to. Only one thing was worse than a potential argument, and that was lukewarm toast. The butter was pretty much useless at that point. He didn’t need his new sense to know Pamela did not share the sentiment, but it was a significant priority for him.

“I’d love to,” Pamela said. “As long as you started playing straight with me. I deserve that, don’t I?”

“It’s not about you,” Oswald said, buttering his toast. “I have some things to work out. Dr. Rolland agrees as much, and if you won’t take my word for it, please trust the person you and the Agency sent me to so I could explore my neuroses. They’re quite amusing, actually. I could probably make some money from them.”

“Like the comic strip idea?” Pamela said, and purposefully took another sip to smother any other reaction.

“That was not a bad idea,” Oswald retorted. “I just grew uninterested in it.”

“And as interesting as this conversation is, it can’t go on indefinitely,” Pamela said, transferring the rest of her coffee into a traveling mug. “We can talk more later.”

“Yes, Dr. Rolland,” Oswald joked, and cleared his mouth of crumbs when his wife advanced to kiss. “I’m fine, really.”

“I’m sure you are,” Pamela said, and pointedly stared at the ring her cup had left behind on the counter. “There’re two ways for that to go. We’ll see which one.”

The old Oswald would have cleaned it up immediately. The new Oswald had once already trashed the entire kitchen with the intension to clean everything, like he needed a reason. After that, the room had become considerably less pristine, and it was Oswald’s project to observe the ways in which it changed. Warren, for instance, came down for breakfast, pulling a plate out of the cabinet and placing it squarely on top of the coffee ring, thus smudging it onto both surfaces. “Pop tarts,” he announced, and Daddy obliged, while also hollering for Hattie to come join her brother. When the pastries rose from the toaster, Oswald placed them on Warren’s plate, and watched as it was carried to the table, where a part of the ring would be transferred to a new location. Pamela must have been expecting for this sort of thing to be a proving point for Oswald, to see how long he could last before breaking and cleaning things again. Or she might be assuming that he was intending to try and break her, to make her do the cleaning instead of him for a change. The result was that the kitchen was not cleaned and Oswald’s experiment could continue.

The coffee ring, such as it now was, would soon dry out, leaving a sticky smudge behind, and Oswald was impressed with the natural artistry of it. He also enjoyed the Pollackian spackles of sauce on the stove, and the coffee grinds littering the counter. Soon the ants would be back, and Oswald treasured that the most. There were other rings, like these left behind by glasses that had been filled with water. The sheen, off of every surface was gone. The kitchen no longer appeared new; no, far from that. Oswald wondered if he should have been keeping a diary on the transformations, but decided that recording it would have taken away from the purity of the experience. All he wanted to do was experience it.

“Daddy could tell us a story about this,” Hattie observed, and Oswald noticed how the ants had already returned. He was careful not to indulge himself too much, especially not in front of the kids. In truth, he didn’t have to. Even a glance was enough to tell him everything he wanted to know, and he was fearful he might fall into a trance if he strayed longer. “Eat your breakfast. We’ll be going soon.”

This was the first morning in a long time he would be driving his kids to school. When Pamela absolutely could not, which was often, they had taken the bus, and Oswald knew how Hattie especially did not like to do that. How Pamela had convinced him not to drive them as soon as he’d returned, he didn’t know. The only place he had been going to was the office of Dr. Rolland, and those sessions were in the early afternoon, where he wouldn’t have an excuse to wait around for the end of the school day. He had been discouraged from doing that, the fear being whatever came up in that day’s session might pose a danger for his state of mind. Oswald considered that hogwash, an excuse. But it had only been for a few weeks, so he played along. He had gotten quite good at playing along, and if anyone had cared to notice, things would have changed. He just didn’t know if for the better or worse, but he was inclined to pick neither. These questions were not a result of any personal concerns but rather out of imagined fears. What they didn’t know was far worse.

Oswald was going to work, and waiting for him there was the next step in the shoes of his new identity. The boy from Connecticut played a role, but what that was he didn’t know, and maybe the boy didn’t either. The only thing Oswald knew for certain is that he had just scratched the surface of whatever was going on, or for whatever he was beginning to understand.

So he dropped his kids off at school and headed for what he knew to be the next leg of his destination. Bob Taliaferro was there to greet him, and neither was pleased about that, but both pretended to be. Oswald excused himself to his office, which he hadn’t seen in a very long time. “Hello,” he said, to the old friend it was. Nothing had changed, as if no one had stepped foot in it in the year he’d been away. He took a look around, to reacquaint himself, and for the first time noticed the hole in the corner, between paneling. It had been there before, he realized. He had just never noticed it before.

“Strange,” he murmured, and as he did so a succession of ants marched from it, in a single line such as he’d never seen in real life. They were coming straight at him, and what‘s more, he could hear their chatter. They sounded angry.