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11
I half-expected Deke or Miz Ellie to buttonhole me after the second night’s performance, looking
grave and telling me they’d had a phone call from Sadie, saying that I’d lost my everloving mind. But
that didn’t happen, and when I got back to Sadie’s, there was a note on the table reading Wake me if
you want a midnight snack.
It wasn’t midnight—not quite—and she wasn’t asleep. The next forty minutes or so were very
pleasant. Afterward, in the dark, she said: “I don’t have to decide anything right now, do I?”
“No.”
“And we don’t have to talk about this right now.”
“No.”
“Maybe after the fight. The one you told me about.”
“Maybe.”
“I believe you, Jake. I don’t know if that makes me crazy or not, but I do. And I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Her eyes gleamed in the dark—the one that was almond-shaped and beautiful, the one that
drooped but still saw. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, and I don’t want you to hurt anybody
unless you absolutely have to. And never by mistake. Never ever. Do you promise?”
“Yes.” That was easy. It was the reason Lee Oswald was still drawing breath.
“Will you be careful?”
“Yes. I’ll be very—”
She stopped my mouth with a kiss. “Because no matter where you came from, there’s no future for
me without you. Now let’s go to sleep.”
12
I thought the conversation would resume in the morning. I had no idea what—meaning how much—I
would tell her when it did, but in the end I had to tell her nothing, because she didn’t ask. Instead she
asked me how much The Sadie Dunhill Charity Show had brought in. When I told her just over three
thousand dollars, with the contents of the lobby donation box added to the gate, she threw back her
head and let loose a beautiful full-throated laugh. Three grand wouldn’t cover all of her bills, but it
was worth a million just to hear her laugh . . . and to not hear her say something like Why bother at all,
when I can just get it taken care of in the future? Because I wasn’t entirely sure she really wanted to go
even if she did believe, and because I wasn’t sure I wanted to take her.
I wanted to be with her, yes. For as close to forever as people get. But it might be better in ’63 . . .
and all the years God or providence gave us after ’63. We might be better. I could see her lost in 2011,
eyeing every low-riding pair of pants and computer screen with awe and unease. I would never beat
her or shout at her—no, not Sadie—but she might still become my Marina Prusakova, living in a
strange place and exiled from her homeland forever.
13
There was one person in Jodie who might know how I could put Al’s final betting entry to use. That
was Freddy Quinlan, the real estate agent. He ran a weekly nickel-in, quarter-to-stay poker game at