Fun With Problems by Robert Stone

stacked. Eric had left a daisy and a wild rose on the table, and a note with them that read:
    "Daisies are better than meat, and roses are sweeter than wine."
    "Fuck's that mean?" Taylor asked her.
    When she went outside the fog was still heavy on the island. As she drove Taylor to the ferry slip they passed Eric slogging unhappily downhill.
    "It's him!" Taylor said, craning his neck to look.
    "Yup." Annie said.
    "Well, at least you didn't stop to give him a ride."
    "At least he's not riding a black helicopter," said Annie.

    At the ferry slip armed men in flak jackets who looked as though they actually belonged in black helicopters had more or less barricaded the dock.
    "You're late for school," Taylor told his wife as he put his ID card around his neck. "Better rush."
    "I'm late anyway." She watched Taylor hold up his papers in a surly way for the agents. They looked after him briefly as he walked up the gangway.
    Annie drove back through town and up the hill toward home. On the way she passed Eric making slow progress down. She made a two-point turn and pulled up beside him.
    "C'mon, Eric," she said. "I'll give you a ride as far as town." Eric threw his bag in the back and climbed into the passenger seat.
    "Do you remember us?" she asked him. "Taylor and me?"
    "I remember you."
    "Thanks for the daisy," she said. "Hey, you're the height of weirdness."
    "Right."
    "You were living dangerously last night."
    "Yeah. I blunder into that." As they rounded a bluff over the ocean, going slowly in the bad visibility, Eric said, "I fell in love with you. You're beautiful."
    She laughed.
    "But really," Eric said. He seemed close to tears. "I love you, Annie."
    "Yeah? You're funny. Last night you were a scream."
    "Didn't you feel it?"
    "I'll take you as far as town," Annie said. "Don't forget your bag."

    "But didn't you?"
    "I'm attracted to you," she said. "That's true."
    He raised his hand to his forehead. "So?"
    "So nothing," she said.

    On Heron's Neck that morning the Secretary was cross. When the steward came knocking he swore at the man.
    "Aye aye, sir," the steward said soothingly through the door. Of course they were Navy stewards and that was naval usage, but it was not a phrase often heard outside the uniformed branch. Then, from a distant corridor, what sounded like a disrespectful utterance echoed for a second or two. Some barbarous holler, maybe in Tagalog. It was strange and it made the Secretary angry. Certain arms of the naval intelligence service believed an Austronesian-speaking spy agency was providing Moro jihadis with information on naval operations. It was similar to the Mormon yeoman spies the Joint Chiefs had run in the Nixon days and to the Mossad frames that functioned with American collaborators under several Israeli governments.
    The fog was thicker than ever. There was a breeze spinning the mist but it seemed not to help, and the settled damp looked dirty to the Secretary. No poetry in this soiled cotton blanket. The Secretary actually wrote poetry. One poem began:
If I manifest manhood'S pride

Yet I know its pain, its secret

Griefs...
    Not much poetry in anything that day, though. And he had the odd feeling that the night before, his six-month plan had been brushed aside politely. Better, he thought, to have kept his mouth shut and waited for signals.

    There seemed no question of flight this Monday. Coast Guard cutters prowled the fog for foolhardy windsurfers, lost sport fisherman, disoriented boaters. The Navy's small boats were one cape away. The Secretary ordered that the ferry be chartered again. His security detail drove him to the pier.
    "I guess it didn't occur to you to provide for this," he said to the chief of his detail as they drove over the moor. Depressing dark green vegetation, what you could see of it.
    "Sir" was all the agent said. A swarthy man, short hair treated at the top in some contemporary fashion. The Secretary looked at him long enough for his stare to register. "I suppose