Final impact

Vernon nodded, his lips turned down at the corners. Louisa smiled, but it was the sort of sad, encouraging smile you offered to someone trying to bear up under great pain.

“We would understand it if you met someone else,” she said. “You’re a good man, Phillip. Any woman would be lucky to have you.”

“Well, there won’t be any other women,” said Kolhammer. “But it’s good of you to say that. And it’s good of you to have me here. Not everyone would have been so welcoming. I’m not…uhm. Well, not everyone likes me. And that’s only going to get worse in the future.”

“Oh, you can’t listen to them know-nothin’ peckerheads,” said Vern.

“Vernon!” his wife scolded.

“Well, that’s what they are,” said Vernon. He leaned forward to grab himself another drink. “Listen, Phil, you gotta do what you think is right. That’s all God ever asks of a man. Not everyone’s gonna agree with you. Hell, sometimes even I won’t agree with you.” Vern winked at him over the foaming neck of the beer bottle. “That’s when you’ll know you’re wrong, by the way.”

Kolhammer snorted. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Do you think you’re going to run for office soon?” asked Louisa.

Kolhammer took a long draw on the icy-cold beer. Moths batted up against the porch netting, and a dog began to bark in the distance.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “I really don’t know.”

7 AUGUST 1944

NEW YORK CITY.

It took the concierge three trips to haul up all of the mail Julia had accumulated while she was away. It sat in a big pile on the massive table in the center of the kitchen in her open-plan apartment. Constructed of wooden beams salvaged from a warehouse slated for demolition, it was at least ten meters long, and inset every two meters with sunken ice buckets for holding bottles of wine and champagne. Two of these had filled up with letters and parcels, and a great mound of mail lay between them. Julia simply couldn’t face the idea of sorting through it all. It was late, coming up on midnight, and she had been to a war correspondents’ dinner in the Oak Room at the Algonquin.

She was almost fully recovered from her injuries but found herself getting tired easily. That had started when Dan had died and had been getting worse ever since. She missed him and Rosie and even geeky little Curtis more than she could have imagined. Some days the pain was like a hole where her heart should have been. She took a jug of ice water from the fridge, a new model Kelvinator that aped the looks, if not the performance, of the double-door Jenn-Air back in her apartment in 21C New York. It seemed that no matter how much money and energy she invested in trying to create a fortress of uptime solitude in here-and she had invested shitloads-the contemporary world always had some way of sneaking back in.

She was heading for the bedroom, glass of water in hand, ready to flake out for about twenty-four hours, when her eyes fell on a package from her lawyer in California. Maria O’Brien had moved out to the Valley when her firm’s headquarters had been completed, and they talked only infrequently at the moment. Julia had given her a check-signing authority for her investment account; all she really needed to do was sit back and watch it grow exponentially. Two years ago that would have been enough to keep her entirely happy. Now, as long as the money was always there, she was largely disinterested in the actual math.

Still, at least it wasn’t hate mail-or even worse, fan mail.

She grabbed the parcel on her way past. It might be dull enough to lull her off to sleep.

Julia had a long hot shower, followed by a short cold one. It’d been a stinking night outside, and she had the contemporary air-conditioning cranked up high. It was an AT Carrier model mean to chill a restaurant much bigger than her place. Domestic A/C hadn’t really taken off yet. Stepping out of the cold shower into the frigid dehumidified air felt like an insane luxury after the steam-press heat of the streets.

Wrapping a silk kimono around herself, Julia walked to her bedroom, her legs aching in anticipation of her collapsing onto the mattress. She ripped open the parcel and tipped out another sealed package and a handwritten note. It was from Maria.

Hey Jules,

This was sent to you c/o the office out here. Our security guys checked it. No boom-boom. But it’s marked confidential, so that’s all I can tell you. Call me if you need a hand.

Best,

Maria

The note was dated for the previous day. Frowning, she checked the outer parcel and saw that it had no postage marks. It’d been hand-delivered via the front desk while she was out at the dinner.

Julia opened the inner parcel and spilled the contents out onto her sheets. A photograph came down next to her pillow, and she was more than a little surprised to see Artie Snider’s mug grinning up at her. She grinned back. She hadn’t seen the big palooka in ages. Not since he’d turned up at that Kennedy gig with Slim Jim Davidson. What a fucking night that’d been…