Triggers

And, now, in front of them, yet another echo, another aftershock, another flashback, the latest example of the ongoing, never-ending wave, the sick inversion of the old adage: the wants of the evil few outweighing the desires, the hopes, the dreams, the lives, of the many.

“It can’t go on like this,” Eric said, as much to himself as to Jan.

“It won’t,” Jan said, and he marveled for a moment at the notion of her—the young one—comforting him about the future.

They walked closer to the White House, making their way around the snow-covered Ellipse to stand by the brown metal fence at the south end. Lots of workers were scurrying about the spacious grounds, looking through rubble, collecting the countless scraps of paper, trying, Eric supposed, to make sure no fragment of a classified document could be recovered by souvenir-seekers. It was such an odd view: the ruins of the White House framed by picture-perfect trees with beautiful snow on their boughs.

Eric was startled by a rough voice. “Guess I’m not the only one.”

A man in tattered clothes, a filthy blanket around his shoulders, and a worn parka beneath that, had sidled up to stand next to Jan. He was rubbing his hands together for warmth.

She looked at him. “Pardon?”

The man indicated the White House with a movement of his head. His hair was long and might have been white if it were clean. “The only homeless one,” he said. He wasn’t making a joke, it seemed; he sounded genuinely sad.

Jan nodded, and so did Eric. On a normal day, he might have ignored the man, or briskly walked away. But this was not a normal day.

“Don’t you have any gloves?” Jan said.

“Did,” the man said. “Don’t.”

Jan pulled off her bright red ski mittens and proffered them. “Here.”

His scraggly eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”

“Sure. I can get another pair.”

Eric put his arm around her shoulder.

The man took them with his left hand andwith his right he grasped Jan’s now-naked hand and shook it. “Thank you, miss. Thank you.”

Jan didn’t flinch; she didn’t pull away from the contact. She let him hold her hand for a few seconds. “You’re welcome.”

“Well,” he said, looking again at the wreckage, “just wanted to see how the cleanup was going. Gotta get back to my usual spot.”

Eric looked at Jan just in time to see her eyebrows go up. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” she said.

“Yup. I was one of the last to go over there. Just eighteen.”

Eric was intrigued. “And you’re there every day?”

The old man nodded. “With my friends.”

“Other vets?”

“No,” he said. “My friends. On the wall. Their names. I point ’em out to people, tell ’em stories about them—those that need to hear ’em. Young folk, folk that don’t know what it was like. Can’t let people forget.”

“Darby,” said Jan. “And David. And Bob.”

The man looked just as surprised as Eric felt. “And Jimbo,” he said. “Don’t forget big Jimbo.”

Jan nodded. “And Jimbo, too.”

The old man looked like he wanted to ask her a million questions—but then his face changed, and he nodded, as if the questions had been answered. “You’re a good person, miss.”

“So are you,” she said, and then Eric’s heart skipped a beat when she added one more word, a name—his name: “Jack.”

Jack looked startled, but then an almost beatific calm came over his face. He smiled, put on his new mittens, and started shuffling away.

“You’ve never met him,” Eric said. He’d formulated it in his mind as a question but it came out as a statement.

She shook her head.

“But you know him now.”

“As well as you know me.”

Eric turned and looked back across the Ellipse, toward the Washington Monument. Jack was getting further away.

“Why do you suppose that happened?” he asked.

Jan put her hands in her coat pockets, presumably to keep them warm, but then she pulled them out again and looked them over, turning them palm up then palm down. “He touched me,” she said. And then: “I touched him.”

Eric frowned. “When Josh Latimer died, the chain was broken. I was connected to you, but you weren’t connected to anyone. And so—”

“And so my mind sought a new connection,” said Jan.

“But he wasn’t the first person to touch you since Latimer died,” Eric said.

Jan frowned, considering this, and Eric frowned, too, recalling her memories, and then they both said, simultaneously, “No, he wasn’t.”

And Jan went on: “But he was the first unlinked person. Everyone else who touched me—you, Nikki Van Hausen, and Professor Singh—was already linked to somebody.”

“What about the MRI technician?”

“He was wearing blue latex gloves. And, anyway, I’m not sure he touched me.”

“We should go after Jack,” Eric said and he started to walk south.

Jan reached out with her arm—the one with the tiger tattoo hidden beneath her clothes, although they both knew it was there—and stopped him. “No,” she said, turning to look at where the White House had been, “we shouldn’t.”

Chapter 44