Establishment by Howard Fast

turned to her. “How the devil did you know I thought of robbing a bank?”
    â€œOnly because if there were one impossible, romantic way to go, you’d go that way.” He stood there and she watched him. “Did you ever wonder why I love you so much?”
    â€œNow and then.”
    â€œI’ll tell you. Because now and then you make me feel quite wonderful. I’m trying very hard not to be maudlin. When do you want to go?”
    â€œYou can still say no. You’re not Jewish and your father has no stake in this.”
    â€œMaybe he has.”
    He sat down, toying with his drink and staring at the briefcase. Barbara waited. Minutes went by. Then he said, “I’ll call Brodsky and get him over here tonight. I think it’s time you met him. We’ll leave in the morning. I’ll take my Ford, and we’ll drive down. I’ll arrange for Gomez to pick it up at Barstow after we leave—if we leave. That should be in two or three days.”
    â€œI want you to keep in touch with me.”
    â€œSure. No question. I’ll call you from L.A. and from Barstow. And then wherever we stop.” He went over to her and drew her to her feet. “I don’t know what to say.”
    â€œGet back quickly, that’s all. We’ll work things out. We have a lot of years ahead of us, Bernie.”
    â€œWhen you talk to your father, tell him that someday I’ll find a way to repay him.”
    â€œHe doesn’t want to be repaid.”
    â€œIt won’t be long. Two, three weeks. I promise you, Bobby.”
    â€œJust do it and get it over with.”
    ***
    They made love that night tenderly, as if they had just found each other, as if they were two people who had met by chance and discovered that each delighted the other. As Barbara lay beside him, naked, his hands touching and caressing her, she remembered the first time, so long ago, and she recalled the same tentative quality that had charmed and seduced her then, as if in each movement he feared rejection, his hands conveying his wonder and pleasure. In a way, his lovemaking was like that of an adolescent; it was touched with disbelief. His gestures apologized for his huge, hairy, muscular bulk, and she loved it that she was so small beside him, so slender and womanly. She lay in his arms in a strange valley between joy and anger, sensing both emotions at the same time, and afterward, when he slept, she put her face in the pillow and gave way to tears.
    ***
    There were no tears in the morning when she said good-bye to him and to Irv Brodsky. Brodsky was the epitome of the unheroic. He was small and skinny, diffident, vulnerable, smiling shyly as he told her not to worry. “The only thing dangerous about a thing like this,” he told her, “is getting nervous, and me and Bernie, we don’t get nervous. We been through a lot together from the Spanish war on. And I’ll send him back. You can count on that.”
    They left, and Barbara went back into the house. Through the window, she watched them crossing the street, the big, lumbering man and the small one walking quickly to keep up with Bernie’s long strides. They didn’t look back.
    Barbara went into the tiny room on the first floor where she did her writing. She rummaged through her files and found a letter that Bernie had written to her in 1941. It was a long letter, explaining why he had left her in Paris and what had happened to him during his journey to Marseille. She didn’t have to read it. She knew its contents by heart; and trying to understand what had prompted her to dig it out again, she had a strange, frightening feeling that this man, her husband, Bernie Cohen, had never really been there and that all she possessed of him was this letter.
    Barbara shook off the thought, put the letter back in the file, and went upstairs and dressed Sam to go outside. She felt relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted off her