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thirteen

One result of travel restrictions was that the environs of airports were not as choked as they used to be in the days when anyone could go joyriding on planes whenever they wanted to. Jarrow and Rita soon cleared Midway—heading toward the city, Jarrow saw from the traffic signs—and then turned north onto an avenue posted as Cicero.

"Do you know Chicago?" Rita asked.

"Oh, I've visited from time to time. It's not that far from Minneapolis."

"Is Minneapolis where you're from originally?"

"Yes. . . . Well, close. Do you know a part called Brooklyn Center?"

"Not really."

"It's to the north, a little farther up the river."

"How about you? Is this where you're from?"

"No, from California originally."

"What do you do?"

"I'm with the state government. That's how I was able to get down to Atlanta so fast on Monday. I traded merit points with one of the other girls. You can redeem them for travel passes."

"That's handy."

A few seconds of uncomfortable silence fell. They were still evading the subject that eclipsed all else in both their minds.

Rita carried on, mainly to fill the void, "It's not right though, really. I hate the whole setup. That was why I got out of California—because of the politics. They debit your taxes straight out of your bank there. It's always too much, so you have to file for a refund. All the returns come in right on time."

Jarrow didn't see anything especially wrong with that. "Sounds efficient," he replied. "Spreads out the burden and cuts costs. The state has to have revenue. It's probably cheaper for everyone that way."

"The drug squad can come into your house on suspicion, even if you're not there," Rita countered. They were both venting their frustrated expectations on each other. He had come looking for understanding. She had been half hoping to find Demiro. "I mean, no warrant or anything—just if they feel like it."

"It's a menace that has to be fought by its own rules. Would you rather live in the FER? Private armies of thugs shooting it out on the streets."

Rita emitted an exasperated sigh. "You don't believe all that stuff, do you? Those troubles were over years ago. It's all . . ." Her voice broke off. "Tony, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get used to this. You really do sound like a total stranger."

"But I am," Jarrow replied. "That's what I was trying to tell you on the phone."

She shook her head, tight-lipped. "No. . . . Look, I -accept that it might seem that way to you, but things like that don't happen. You're Tony, with some kind of problem. You've been away, and something very strange has been going on. But you're back now, and I'm still here." She looked across the car and flashed him a look that was meant to say everything would straighten itself out now. "We can work on it together. Okay?"

Jarrow brought his hands up to his face and massaged his eyes wearily.

"Okay, Tony?"

"Please don't call me that."

Rita drew a long breath and exhaled it slowly, making it plain that it was his decision—but she'd tried to make it easy. "All right. What should I call you, then?"

"I said when we talked earlier, my name is Jarrow: Richard Jarrow." The tenseness between them crackled like the air around a power line. Jarrow didn't need a confrontation on top of everything else. He added, forcing a mellower tone into his voice, " 'Dick' would be fine."

"Dick?"

"Yes."

Rita stared ahead, digesting it slowly with a long slow nod to herself. "Okay," she pronounced finally. "Let's talk some more about him, then."

"Go ahead."

"He's this teacher who woke up in Atlanta."

"Yes."

"On Tuesday."

"Right."

Rita bit her lip, hesitating. "Now don't get mad, because I'm only trying to understand and help. But I have to ask this. Is it possible—you know, in your opinion, if you take a totally open-minded attitude toward this—that this Richard Jarrow could be somebody you invented in your head? I mean, things like that have happened before. Sometimes, when a person—"

There was no point in continuing with that line. "No, he's not a figment of my imagination," Jarrow interrupted. "I'm a real person. Go to Minneapolis and check it out if you want. There are plenty of records, people I worked with."

Rita conceded with a nod. "Okay. Sometimes people think they're somebody else who's real too."

Jarrow couldn't contain a wry smile. "You mean it makes a change from Napoleon?"

"I didn't say you were crazy."

"You couldn't have come much closer."

"I'm sorry."

Jarrow tossed out a hand dismissively. "I've got memories, complete memories of personal things, little things. . . . It's not just a case of knowing a few facts. I've lived Jarrow's life. Hiking as a kid, around the lakes in Minnesota. Birthdays, Christmases, the house I grew up in. Other people in the family. How could Tony Demiro know about things like that?"

By unconsciously inventing them to fill in the gaps, he could see her thinking to herself—but she wasn't about to press the issue right now. Approaching it, instead, from a different angle, she said, "But if Jarrow doesn't look like Tony, then where's the person that he does look like? See what I mean? If this guy Jarrow is real, then the person who all these people in Minneapolis know must still be walking around somewhere. If you're him, then who's he? Where does he fit in?"

"He's not walking around," Jarrow said. "I tried talking to those people, but all I got was a hard time." He realized then, with a sinking feeling, that he could have an even tougher problem convincing Rita. She, after all, had her own explanation worked out. And it was irrefutable.

"Why?" Rita asked, glancing across at him again. Her tone was challenging, as if he had just made her point for her. "If they know the guy, how come they couldn't buy that they were talking to him?"

Jarrow sighed hopelessly. "Richard Jarrow died of a stroke in May," he replied.

* * *

After traveling a few miles north on Cicero they exited eastward, toward the upthrust of skyline massed behind the Sears Tower and the Federal Center. Relics from an age of bygone affluence, the monuments glittered like frosty cliffs in the last light of day against the sky darkening over Lake Michigan.

They entered an older part of the city, south of center and west of the Ship Canal and south branch of the Chicago River, from what Jarrow could remember. The streets were mainly of solid, high-built, stone and timber row houses, bearing the signs of transformation over the years as successive waves of fad or commercial promise came and went. There were cinemas that had been bowling alleys, then supermarkets, and had now become miniature malls of sandwich shops and oddments stalls, or capacious used-furniture emporiums piled with Brobdignagian discards—symptomatic of a time when three-car-garage villas in Du Page and Lake counties were being traded for renovated duplexes within walking distance of the Loop. Brick-formed Carlsbads originally built as warehouses had been transformed first into light engineering factories; then later, as industry declined, into antique galleries to professional offices; and were now cellularized into studios and singles apartments. Like butchers who took pride in using everything from the ears to the hoof, it seemed that people loathed letting any part of their cities go to waste.

The street that Rita finally pulled into consisted of two rows of faded, four-floor brownstone walkups facing each other across a short length of pavement with snow heaped along the sides. A group of noisy, heavily muffled children who were playing halfway along moved aside as the car squelched past. Past them, a group of youths was standing around a fire burning in an oil drum by a wooden fence that closed off the far end of the street. Rita parked on the right almost at the end, and led Jarrow up one of the flights of wide, iron-railed steps leading to the front doors. She found her key and let them into a hallway that smelled of cats and musty carpet, from where they went up to one of what appeared to be two flats on the second floor. She shared with a girl called Margaret, she told him, more for the sake of saying something, as they went in.

Feeling more like an intruder than a guest, Jarrow followed her into the living room and looked around. The place was cramped, but cleanly kept and appealingly feminine, with fresh, warm colors, soft furnishings, and flowery decor. Before he had a chance to take off his coat, he was startled to see a picture of himself staring from a niche in the corner, in T-shirt and jeans, grinning and leaning with folded arms against a red pickup.

Then he remembered that, no, that was not him. It was Tony Demiro.

 

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Framed