Dark Rivers of the Heart

that stranger had been a friend or an enemy.
        He didn't want to alarm Darius or Jessica.
        Late that afternoon, after Ondine and Willa returned from the mall with their aunt and after Darius and Bonnie's son, Martin, came home from school, Darius decided that they needed to have a little fun. He insisted on packing everyone-the seven of them-into the VW Microbus, which he had so lovingly restored with his own hands, to go to a movie and then to dinner at Hamlet Gardens.
        Neither Harris nor Jessica wanted to go to movies and dinners in restaurants when every dollar spent was a dollar that they were mooching.
        Not even Ondine and Willa, as resilient as any teenagers, had yet bounced back from the trauma of the swat attack on Friday or from having been put out of their own home by federal marshals.
        Darius was adamant that a movie and dinner at Hamlet Gardens were precisely the right medicines for what ailed them. And his persistence was one of the qualities that made him an exceptional attorney.
        That was how, at six-fifteen Monday evening, Harris came to be in a theater with a boisterous crowd, unable to grasp the humor in scenes that everyone else found hilarious, and succumbing to another attack of claustrophobia. The darkness. So many people in one room. The body heat of the crowd. He was afflicted, first, by an inability to draw a deep breath and then by a mild dizziness. He feared that worse would swiftly follow.
        He whispered to Jessica that he had to use the bathroom. When worry crossed her face, he patted her arm aad smiled reassuringly, and then he got the hell out of there.
        The men's room was deserted. At one of the four sinks, Harris turned on the cold water. He bent over the bowl and splashed his face repeatedly, trying to cool down from the overheated theater and chase away the The noise of the running water prevented him from hearing the other man enter. When he looked up, he was no longer alone.
        About thirty, Asian, wearing loafers and jeans and a dark-blue sweater with prancing red reindeer, the stranger stood two sinks away.
        He was combing his hair. He met Harris's eyes in the mirror, and he smiled. "Sir, may I give you something to think about?"
        Harris recognized the question as the very one with which the tall man in the blue Toyota had initially addressed him. Startled, he backed away from the sink so fast that he crashed against the swinging door at one of the toilet stalls. He tottered, almost fell, but caught the hingeless side of the jamb to keep his balance.
        "For a while the Japanese economy was so hot that it gave the world the idea that maybe big government and big business must work hand in glove."
        "Who are you?" Harris asked, quicker off the mark with this man than he had been with the first.
        Ignoring the question, the smiling stranger said, "So now we hear about national industrial policies. Big business and government strike deals every day. Push my social programs and enhance my power, says the politician, and I'll guarantee your profit."
        "What does any of this matter to me?"
        "Be patient, Mr. Descoteaux." ttbut-"
        "Union members get screwed because government conspires with their bosses. Small businessmen get screwed, everyone too little to play in the hundred-billion-dollar league- Now the secretary of defense want's to use the military as an arm of economic policy."
        Harris returned to the sink, where he had left the cold water running.
        He turned it off.
        "A business-government alliance, enforced by the military and domestic police-once, this was called fascism. Will we see fascism in our time, Mr. Descoteaux? Or is this something new, not to worry?"
        Harris was trembling. He realized that his face and hands were dripping, and he yanked paper towels from the dispenser.
        "And if it's something new, Mr. Descoteaux, is it going to be something good? Maybe. Maybe we'll go through a time of adjustment, and thereafter everything will be delightful." He nodded, smiling, as if considering that possibility. "Or maybe this new thing will turn out to be a new kind of hell."
        "I don't care about any of this," Harris said angrily. "I'm not political."
        "You don't need to be. To protect yourself, you need only to be informed."
        "Look, whoever you are, I just want my house back. I want my life