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Bassett arrived home to find Jane asleep on their couch, still in her work clothes. Sitting across from her now at their kitchen table, Bassett thought Jane took longer to wake up from a nap than anyone he knew who enjoyed a beating pulse. It completely threw off her system, She awoke dazed, confused, disoriented, uncertain of what day it was, unsure of where she was, then took hours to recover. It was hard to describe, this look of hers. It was a look he’d seen on the face of cadavers. Young women, that is. Not men. It put him in mind of an adolescent who’d been sent off to camp on holiday, only to find no one her age when she finally arrived.
Holding a mug of coffee between two hands as if holding it for warmth, Jane said, “I’m going to the grocers.”
“This evening?”
“What should I get?”
Bassett listed several things he knew they were low on. Staples, primarily.
She made no move to rise, get a pad, make a list. Just to see what she would do, he railed off several things he knew you couldn’t get from their green grocer, calipers, a micrometer gauge, thirty gauge chrome-nickel wire. “Get Nichrome if they’ve got it, don’t try to pinch pennies by buying some generic.”
Jane looked into the coffee she was holding as if it contained something she’d forgotten she wanted. “Anything else? You ate the red and yellow peppers both, then left over the bells. No more bell peppers, I assume. No more broccoli neither. It just went to waste.”
“Well, if you find them on sale, I could use a few lengths of onecentimeter copper tubing, I imagine. Make each of them, oh, I don’t know, say six centimeters long. If you have to take longer than that, I can always cut them down here at home. Once I have the wire, all I have left to acquire is a six volt battery and a switch. You got the fulminate powder I asked for last time, didn’t you?”
“If you asked for it, Bassett, I got it.”
“Right. I thought you probably did.”
She sipped her drink. The coffee, apparently, was cold. She put down her cup. With the tip of one finger, Jane traced the petals of the indeterminate flowers in the pattern of the table cloth. “Is that it?”
“That should do it. It’s almost complete, you see.”
“What? What’s almost complete?”
“Well, there’s still the plutonium. I’ll have to get the plutonium— don’t ask me from where, Jane. I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What?”
“I’ve only gotten as far as the detonator, you see. Fortunately your mother got me the firing circuit for Christmas last year, bless her heart. That sped things up a bit, didn’t it. Did I tell you I wrote her and offered her thanks?”
“Who? Wrote who, my mother? You hate my mother, always have.
You can’t stand to be in the same room with her, either one of you.
You wrote to my mother?”
“Not a long letter, just a note. She’s helped me in other ways as well, did I tell you? It was the dear old girl herself who said, Basset me boy? Let me tell you, fuse wire melts when you get it too hot.
You can’t just use any wire at all, it’s got to be special.”
“Special?”
“Oh, yes indeed, Jane my dear. You don’t think I came up with chrome-nickel wire on my own, do you? Give credit where credit is due. How else but through your mum would I know what to ask for?
Now, I’m sort of a tin-cap-insulator wire- packing-material kind of a sod myself. But your mother, Jane? Your mother’s much more sophisticated when it comes to explosives. Oh yes. Did you know she served as an advisor to a key Al Quaeda cell?”
“Sophisticated? My mother? What are you talking about?”
“The design, Jane.”
The phone rang in the other room. “That’s probably her right now.
We’re in this together, did I tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Oh yes, I’m not going this alone.”
“Should I get it? It’s probably Judah. How much longer are the two of young going to be in Domestic Disputes?”
Bassett answered, “No, let it ring.”
“All right, I’ll get it then, if that’s what you want.”
She returned shortly thereafter. She took the chair across from his, retrieved her cup, sipped from the cup, stared down into the coffee.
“ It’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Mum. She said to tell you that copper tubing wasn’t worth piss unless you sealed the firing leads with wax at each end.”
“Who is it really?”
Jane looked up. “Judah. Who do you think?”
*
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