When Annika passed Luis’s office, he was on the phone, turned to the window, so she couldn’t catch his eye. She looked at the figure his body made against the wall, his broad back, one hand on the back of his hip, his big head shaped somewhat like a walnut. He talked quickly and in Spanish. She stared at him; it hurt to pull herself away.

Snow in New York, 1902
(Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 65.5 cm)
BY Robert Henri
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

After a long time, he came to her again in her cubicle. He sat in another wheeled chair. There was no one in line. Lizette was quiet in her office, and Bobbie was downstairs discussing the crisis with the locksmiths. A half-hour before, Annika had sent a master key downstairs, in the noisy pneumatic tube, to be copied, and when it had come up with its usual wonderfully big bang, even those of them who worked here had jumped.

“They hit the Pentagon,” Luis said to Annika. Somehow his presence made her feel even weaker and more frightened, and she crumpled in her chair.

“What?” she said. “Another one?” She chewed over the news for a moment, then clutched a fistful of her loose dirty hair. “Luis,” she said, suddenly stricken with the idea, “does this mean that they might really be coming here? That they’re — moving west?” “Listen,” Luis said. He kept himself at a distance from her. It was agonizing not to touch him. He was acting no more or less discreet than usual, but at this moment Annika suddenly felt horribly offended. And not only on her part, but on behalf of all humanity; how little seemed amiss in their sweet, precious affair, in comparison to the evil in the world today! She glared at him. He started at the look as he asked her slowly, “Annika, do you know what today is?”

Annika knew he knew she wouldn’t know what today was, and even as he asked, he shook his head with his mouth half-open, looking very alone in his chair. He was often disappointed in her ignorance and her unworldliness. Annika was not completely dumb about the way middle-aged men saw twenty-four-year-old women, and she knew the freshness that she had and Penny didn’t; but in a few frank moments she had asked herself why else in the world was Luis sleeping with her. Because his wife, Penny, was not ditzy and ignorant, but really brilliant, a fluent speaker of Spanish, Hebrew, and French, with a masters degree; a social worker for immigrant children, well-read, eloquent, capable, and smart. And also exquisitely beautiful, in a smooth, statuesque, undeniable way. Annika was young and cute enough to look at Penny and think condescendingly, ‘Oh, how lovely she is, for an older woman; I hope I look like that when I’m fifty.’ But really it was a joke; she didn’t look that good right now.

“It’s the anniversary of the Chilean coup.” Luis laced his tense fingers tightly in his lap and looked hard at her.

“The coup…”

“The coup, the coup,” said Luis. “I don’t know if it means anything. Probably it doesn’t. But people in Chile hate the American government, you know?”

“Why?”

“I just told you,” said Luis, widening his eyes and spreading his hands in front of him. “Because of the coup.”

Annika looked away, embarrassed, but after a moment she turned back to frown at him. She whispered, “Don’t look at me like that. It’s so wrong, Luis, on a day like this, to act like that. We should be comforting each other.” Luis fell back in his chair, looking defeated, and also nervous. He wheeled his chair to the entry and looked both ways down the hall to make sure no one was listening.