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without force. The streets gleamed with it. The bright blue door opened and Hadley came out wearing a dark blue woolen coat, with a stand-up collar. The coat was buttoned up to the throat. On the top step she opened a black umbrella, and got under it, and walked across the street to where he was standing.
    “I can’t have you standing out here like some milk calf in the rail,” she said to him. “One of the servants has already mentioned it. My husband will notice, or someone will tell him. What in hell are you doing?”
    “Waiting for you.”
    “Waiting for me to do what?”
    “If I stood here, I knew you’d come out.”
    “All right, I’m out. What do you want?”
    “I want you,” Conn said. His voice was very soft, and nearly uninflected. He was saying things he’d imagined and rehearsed. It was as if he were talking to himself.
    “Goddamn you, Conn Sheridan. You can’t have me. You did have me. It was exciting. You are good at sex and fun to be with. You were a lark that got out of hand. Now you don’t have me. It’s over. Let it go. Get back to killing people, again, for the Republic.”
    “I love you,” Conn said.
    “You’ll get over it,” Hadley said. “I’ll get over it.”
    She kept the umbrella sheltered close to her head, so that as they talked they were faceless. She looked at his chest. He stared down at the unyielding fabric of the black umbrella.
    “I will never get over it,” Conn said, spacing the words carefully.
    “You’ll have to,” she said.
    “I won’t.”
    They were silent then in the hushed sound of the rain. A bicycle hissed by, its rider pedaling carefully on the slick street.
    “I won’t,” Conn said again.
    “Well, I will,” Hadley said, and turned away under her dark umbrella and walked back across the street to her house.
    He didn’t move. She didn’t look back. The rain was very fine, he noticed. It made everything gleam. The blue door seemed a brighter blue.
And the small rain down does fall
, he thought, and wondered where he’d read that. He felt solid in his stillness, like a frozen boulder across the street from her blue door. Therewas not even panic in him anymore, only resolve, which grew as time passed, and seemed to fill him like ballast.
    And he was still motionless when they came for him. A RIC car came up the north side of the square and a lorry full of Auxies came down from the other direction. They were around him before he could move. If he had wanted to move. Which he didn’t. He made no effort to draw either of his handguns. He made no attempt to run. He stayed rock silent, deep inside himself, ballasted with resolve, nearly impervious to anything other than his romantic resolution.
    They took his weapons and handcuffed him. A RIC officer went to the house and brought Hadley to the door. He pointed at Conn, she nodded. He looked implacably across the street at her. Their eyes met. She held his gaze for a moment, nodding as the officer spoke. Then she turned and went back into her house and closed the bright blue door.

1994
Voice-Over
    “‘H e knew when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.’”
    “You talking about your grandfather or about yourself?” Grace said.
    “I’m talking about Jay Gatsby,” I said.
    “Sure.”
    “And Conn Sheridan.”
    “Un-huh.”
    “And me.”
    Grace didn’t say anything for a while. We sat in the bright room surrounded by the dark storm with the careful space between us on the couch and thought about our situation.
    “Tell me a little more about you and me and the perishable breath business,” Grace said.
    “You know the story,” I said.
    “
The Great Gatsby
? Yes.”
    “It’s about a lot of things,” I said. “But certainly it’s about obsession.”
    Grace nodded. I could hear the wind outside the condo. It was an odd juxtaposition of forces. The strong wind driving snowflakes so