Foxx,
after weighing his limited choices, decided on option
A: a well-planned accidental meeting at the Fogg Museum
opening. He made two seemingly logical assumptions.
First, Tina, who he desperately wanted to see, would
be at the Fogg. She had, after all, come all the way
from London to help curate the show. And second, Arabella,
who he did not want to confront, would not be there.
She, after all, had made a point of despising museum
art.
The opening was in
the Fogg's Italian Renaissance courtyard, a venue that
he particularly admired. Its sixteenth-century Florentine
facade replicated the world in which Machiavelli had
devised, The Prince, a book about the Game of
Nations before they were nations. It had provided Foxx
with many of the ideas for his Ajax Scenario. After
checking his duffel coat and book bag, he found a strategic
niche in the courtyard from which he could scan the
arriving guests as they cued up at the bar for a drink.
When he located Tina, he would choreograph the necessary
steps to bring about the chance encounter.
The courtyard filled
up dozens of people. He could see professors in their
tweedy jackets with arm patches, straggly-dressed students
and well-suited Brahmins from Boston, but not Tina.
There goes assumption one, he thought, looking at his
watch. It was 6:30 PM. Disappointed, he walked over
to the bar and, crashing the cue, got a drink. Then,
he saw his second assumption also was mistaken. Standing
diagonally across the courtyard from him, wearing a
sexy blue dress, with a slit that ran up to her thigh,
was Arabella.
Arabella was pointing
to a painting on the wall while talking to the man in
a charcoal jacket and khaki pants. He could see that
her dress, lashed around her, was much too tight. She
seemed to be bursting through the slit. He wondered
if she had borrowed it from her thinner sister. He then
recognized who she was taking to. It was his obsequious
student, Brixton Steers. Wasn't he supposed to be in
Iran? He hoped they were not discussing his Pathological
Politics.
Arabella
and Steers moved towards the next painting. Then, turning
towards the bar, she cocked her head suddenly, looked
in Foxx's direction, and turned away.
Had she seen him? Foxx
didn't wait to find out. Putting his drink down, he
ducked out of Machiavelli's court, reflecting on, as
he retrieved his coat and books, how even the best laid
plans go astray.
He trudged through the snow
on Quincy Street. Harvard Yard was almost empty. The
caroling bells in Memorial Chapel reminded him most
of the students had gone home for Christmas. He cut
across the quadrangle, heading towards the Yard entrance
to Widener Library. Tracy had told him Kim Roosevelt
had written a monograph on diplomacy in the Levant.
Foxx wanted to read before he returned to Washington
for the third round of the Game of Nations. After making
his way up the slippery steps, he found the door was
shut. A sign instructed him to use the front entrance.
Another reversal. He started back down and saw the white
fur coat propelled by jean-clad legs crossing Harvard
Yard.
He made an instant mid-course correction. Keeping
a safe interval, hee followed the fur coat across Harvard
Square, down Brattle Street.
Tina knew exactly where
she was going. Casablanca. Cambridge's newest movie
house, The Brattle, had just opened with a re-run of
the nineteen-forties classic. She stopped to admire
the poster showing Humphry Bogart in a trench coat kissing
Ingrid Bergman. Then, she bought a ticket.
In hot pursuit, Foxx
entered the lobby. He then paused. Better not rush in,
he thought. He still wanted her to interpret their meeting
in the dark as an accident of fate. He bought a large
bag of buttered popcorn and waited ten minutes.
Tina was sitting in the middle of the second row in
a near-empty theater. Her long legs were uninhibitedly
draped over the row in front of her. Her fur coat occupied
another seat. Why not, the theater was practically empty.
Foxx hesitantly shuffle down the aisle, pretending not
to notice Tina, as he sat down two seats away. She seemed
totally engrossed in the movie. He put the popcorn bag
on his lap and tried to focus on the film he had seen
a dozen times before.
On the screen, Rick's Cafe filled
with an assortment of Moroccans in silk robes. Turks
in fezzes. German officers with Swastikas, French Legionnaires.
Everyone was plotting with everyone. Off- screen, he
felt an intruder in his lap.
Tina had moved next to
him and was dipping into his popcorn. He feigned surprise,
"Tina? I thought you'd be at the opening."
"What for?
I've seen the paintings," she said, scooping out another
hand of popcorn. "I don't enjoy intellectualizing about
them at openings. That's Bela's department."
"I need
to speak to you about Arabella..."
"This in my favorite
part. Ssssh." She raised her finger to her lips, first
to command his silence, then to lick off the butter
from the popcorn.
Back on screen, Bergman
was confessing to Bogart, "If you knew what I went through!
If you knew how much I loved you, how much I still love
you!" Tina, without diverting her eyes from the screen,
she reached over and scooped another handful of popcorn.
"Arabella was my best student..." he had carefully rehearsed
his explanation in his mind.
"I'll bet," she said,
her hand scraping the bottom of the bag for the last
kernel of popcorn. Bogart gave Bergman a nineteen-forties
style kiss. "Misunderstandings happen," he resumed his
rehearsed speech.
She leaned over to his ear. "Will
you shut up about Bela," she whispered. "What she wanted
from you was an A, which I'm sure you will give her.
"
"There also might have
been some silly infatuation..."
"Infatuation? Maybe
with her beau, Brixton. She's going off to Teheran with
him for Christmas. Now can I watch the movie in peace,"
she said, turning away and leaning on the seat in front.
He shut up, doubly-crushed, watching
Bogart walked off into the desert with a French policeman,
saying it was the beginning "of a beautiful friendship."
He didn't buy that ending. Tina slipped on her fur coat,
without even looking at him.
"Bye, Tina," he began
to leave. No response. "Small world. Quite a coincidence
running into to you in Casablanca." He walked up the
aisle alone.
"Small world? Coincidence?"
she said, catching up with him and looping her arm though
his arm. "You followed me here all the way from Harvard
Yard. "You need to take a remedial course in spy-craft.
C' mon, I'll take you to the Blue Parrot."
They had their giant
cappuccinos in the Blue Parrot, the theater's cafe,
which took its name and decor from Casablanca. They
both sat in huge white wicker, as a waiter in a fez
served them from a copper tray. Life imitating art,
as it always does, Foxx concluded.
Foxx described his
consulting work in Washington. He told her about the
bizarre Gaming Center, the Ajax Scenario he had designed
and the computer. "They even have a man search the Gaming
Center for hidden microphones as if any would care?"
"I am fascinated by what men try to keep secret but
can't," she said, listening with rapt attention.
"That
could be a dangerous hobby."
"Don't I know it," she
answered.
He could see she was
intrigued. He described the machinations over chromium
the mythical country called Zemblia in the Middle East.
He spoke of his role with a touch of self-deprecating
humor, which allowed him to brag without sounding immodest."Can
you believe grown men, diplomats, no less, actually
play out my mad scenario to get control of Zemblian
chromium?"
"Chromium? In the Middle
East?" Doesn't sound very likely."
"Its a fictional situation." He explained,
as Tracy had explained to him, that hypothetical constructs
were used teach crises-management. The idea was to exclude
personal biases. The purpose was to prepare for an unforeseen
event. He could see that she did not understand hypothetical
constructs. He moved his hand on top of her hand. "Its
only a game, Tina."
"Game?" she said, squeezing
his hand. "Is it only a game? Maybe it's not chrome
they are playing for."
"It could be any hypothetical
commodity."
"Has it occurred to
you, Jake, that they are after a real commodity and
a real countr?." Foxx was willing to humor her. He saw
the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
"Ah, intrigue," he smiled.
"Ok, what do think it's all about?"
"Crude," she answered.
"Millions of barrels of crude oil."
"But there is no oil
in Zemblia," he said, taken back.
"Its not Zemblia. It's
Iran."
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