“Well, our boy O’Neill got through,” O’Neill said. “But not first in his class.” He twirled his wineglass. “Folks, I want to be pampered tonight, because I just spent three days with my parents explaining why I wasn’t first in my class. I mean—it was expected.”
“Ah, why would anybody expect you to be first at that zoo?” Dukas said.
“God, yes,” Alan said. “You’re the wrong type, O’Neill. Harry’s an aristocrat,” he told the others, as if that explained everything. He had heard this theory from O’Neill in the long days and nights on the carrier, years before.
“I thought the CIA was the Old Boys’ Club for Ivy League graduates,” Bea said. She was shoveling down vegetarian lasagna. “William F. Buckley was CIA. George Throttlebottom Bush was CIA. I thought the CIA was the Washington branch of Skull and Bones.”
“Yeah,” O’Neill said, holding out his wineglass as Rose went around the table with a bottle, “but I’m a real aristocrat. My father’s a federal judge, my mother’s a partner in quite a good law firm. One of my ancestors was a governor during Reconstruction. I went to Harvard, not Yale, which is a far, far better place, and you’re talking about the CIA of fifty years ago, which is where I would probably have felt at home, except there was the problem back then of my, um, hue.” He sighed. “My mother thinks I’m slumming.”
Rose did her imitation of O’Neill’s mother. “I just wish he’d meet a nice Spelman girl.” More laughter.
“Anyway,” Alan went on, “you got through the course, which is better than about eighty percent of the people do. So, did you get the orders that you wanted?”
O’Neill raised his eyebrows. “Not quite. No-o-o-t quite. In fact, as the Brits say, not by a long chalk.” He speared a floweret of garlic-sauteed broccoli. “I’m afraid I promised my parents that I was going to France. They thought France was where I deserved to go, being their son, and so they made up their minds that I was going there as a glorious addition to the giddy whirl of Parisian embassy life. But that’s not where Harry is going, and Harry can’t bring himself to tell them.”
There was a silence. “So where is Harry going?” Abe said to break it.
“Well, I was able to tell them a, mm, partial truth. I told them that it was classified and secret and terribly hush-hush, and so I couldn’t say much, but I could say that I was going where the people spoke French. They kind of winked and smiled and looked at each other and were real pleased. So I let it go at that.”
Alan grinned at him. “But you’re going to the other place where they speak French. Montreal?”
“Umm—close, but no cigar.” He gave a half-smile. “Africa. The middle part.”
After another silence, Dukas said, “Well, there’s a certain logic in that.”
“What logic?” Bea roared.
“I know you never noticed, Bea,” Dukas said, “but Harry is black. So are the people in Africa.”
“That’s sick!” she shouted.
Did Dukas and Bea dislike each other? Alan wondered. Maybe at base there was something sexual—an attraction gone wrong?
Rose jumped in to make peace, and Abe said something to his wife, and Alan poured more wine. Uproar, uproar, he thought. Well, it was friendly uproar. So far. Trying to make peace, Dukas muttered, “Well, at least Africa’s kind of quiet just now.”
“Like hell,” Alan said. “I’m worried about him already.”
“I thought the good guys took over in Rwanda and the bad guys got shoved out and the killing was over.”
“There aren’t any good guys,” O’Neill growled. “What there is, is three-quarters of a million refugees who’ve crossed into Zaire, which is ready to go up, anyway, and Uganda and Tanzania thinking it’s a great opportunity for them to make out, and there’s me in the middle of it. Thanks for being worried, Al.” He took more lasagna, to Rose’s obvious relief. “They offered me a choice, Bosnia or Africa. I took Bosnia, because I thought I could do the Jugs a spot of good, as the Brits used to say. So they sent me to Africa.”
“Sounds like the Navy.” He knew that under his jokes, O’Neill was worried. Probably about his parents’ reaction. They demanded a lot of him, and getting a posting to Africa would be “disappointing”—as in We’re disappointed in you, Harold. His parents would have preferred even Bosnia, was the implication, because it was in Europe—a place with a history and civilized people who just happened to be massacring each other. Alan thought of the torture barn and the man who had been on the “airplane.”
They were into dessert—Sicilian cassata from a recipe of Rose’s mother’s—and the uproar had quieted down when Bea got on the subject of Israel and then of Jonathan Pollard, the man convicted of turning American classified materials over to the Israelis.
“Pollard is a hero!” Bea cried.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dukas growled.
Bea threw down her napkin. She was goddamned if she was going to listen to anti-Semitic crap, she told them all.
“I don’t have to be an anti-Semite to think an American who sells out his country is a traitor, Bea. Get a grip.”
She scrambled to her feet and her chair tipped over. “I take this seriously!” she cried. Abe was on his feet and waving them both down, saying Don’t, don’t, and they were out of the room.
“You guys shut up,” Rose said. “She’s stressed out about something.” She went after them; seconds later, Abe came back.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry—Al—She’s upset, it’s been—She found that Jessica’s on the pill, okay? Just found out today.”
Jessica was fourteen.
Dukas reared back. “I’m sorry, Abe. I won’t take that crap about Pollard from anybody.”
When Rose came back, they were all looking at their hands. “She’s going to lie down for a little. Lighten up, guys.”
“The perfect hostess,” Alan said, smiling.
“Yeah, somebody compliment me on the food, or something. Wonder Woman Cooks!” She picked a crumb of cassata from Bea Peretz’s plate and ate it. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”
Dukas looked whipped. “I ruined your dinner.”
Rose came around the table and kissed his balding head. “You didn’t ruin anything.” But Alan felt a chill, as if an unwanted future had put its hand on him. It was as if Bea’s daughter, growing older out of his sight, out of his awareness, had become the cause of the break. He thought of his own son, sleeping upstairs: was he, innocent, a kind of time bomb? He found himself thinking, Why can’t things just stay the same?
They all did the dishes and then poured out more wine, and Rose went to check on Bea and Mikey.
“I feel like shit,” Dukas said.
“Shut up about it, it wasn’t your fault.”
They were getting a little drunk, Alan decided. He’d better make coffee.
“I’ve put in for a transfer,” Dukas said. “I’m leaving, too.”
“Good God, why—you love NCIS,” Peretz said.
“It’s Al’s fault—he wrote me this letter. About Bosnia.” He looked accusingly at Alan. “You said they needed cops like me! Well, now they got one!” Now, almost apologetically, Dukas said, “I’ve volunteered for a war crimes unit. NCIS would have sent somebody anyway.”
Alan went to the kitchen to make coffee, shouting back