Page 4 - Just Deserts

Prologue

with people around here will evaporate once they learn I’m nothing
more than a lucky devil who won the lottery. I won’t elaborate
further on my paranoid attitude; I’m quite aware that it is
incomprehensible to anyone who has not been in my position.
But Doreen and the other three had been living under the
same pressures: that was what calmed me down and ultimately
brought me to her place at the appointed time. All the same—just to
be safe—I had it checked out first by a reliable operative. Indeed, the
apartment had been rented for several months to a single woman
who fit Doreen’s description (but not under that name, of course). In
the past week or so she seemed to be intentionally making herself
visible to the outside world, parking her car on the street and
standing at the window with the drapes drawn apart. So I went.
And it was Doreen who answered the door, looking not too
much the worse for wear and possibly a bit the better for what
she wore. Gerald was already there, balancing a cup of coffee
and a plate of cookies on his lap while reading a dog-eared
paperback; he had not aged, even though it might have done him
some good. We made small talk until Carlos and Lester arrived.
They at least resembled the conventional image of success: slight
paunches, real or cosmetic tans, expensive clothing and
accessories—but I couldn’t really reconcile their external
appearance with the slovenly grad students I had known and
tolerated. Nor could I help noticing the decor in the apartment: not
very personalized, the sign of a pied-a-terre. But Doreen wouldn’t
have risked inviting us to her real home, no doubt a cozy hideaway as
private as my own.
Anyway, after she had bustled about with refreshments and
finally come to rest in an armchair, the five of us just sat there for a
few moments in silence. We four men looked at her. Then she spoke.
Her exact words, naturally, cannot be quoted despite my phenomenal
memory; but in this, as in all the encounters I shall report upon or
reconstruct, you must allow for a modicum of poetic license and
dramatic reorganization. As various congressional hearings have
amply demonstrated, verbatim transcripts of conversation are
exceedingly dull and difficult to follow.

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