The Names

I sat in the office alone, sending telexes, doing numbers on the calculator. It seemed to me that ever since the first of those island nights I'd been engaged in an argument with Owen Brademas. I wasn't sure what the subject was exactly but felt for the first time a weakening in my position, a danger.I also felt I was ahead of myself, doing things that didn't correspond to some reasonable and familiar model. I would have to wait to understand.Why had I gone to the Mani, knowing they might be there, and why with Tap? Was he my safeguard, my escape?I read reports, drafted letters. Mrs. Helen arrived, chiding me for being in so early, for looking so worn-out. She went to the alcove to make tea, Zou Zou Bop Golden tea, which someone had brought back from Egypt.I worked until ten that night, enjoying it, finding a deep and steady pleasure in the paperwork, the details, the close-to-childlike play of the telex, of tapping out messages. Even putting my desk in order was a satisfaction and odd comfort. Neat stacks for a change. Labeled folders. Mrs. Helen had devised for herself an entire theology of neatness and decorum, with texts and punishments. I could understand, faintly.I went home and made soup. Tap had left his hat behind. I resolved to stop drinking, although I'd had only a couple of glasses of wine in the last week or so. It was a setting of limits I thought I needed. A firmness and clarity, a sense that I could define the shape of things.