The Last of the Wise Lovers

by Amnon Jackont

  This time she had either written hurriedly, or else had been pretty upset, because the grooves were especially deep. I sprinkled the base powder over the page and I copied the letter onto the wrapper of a roll of toilet paper. This is what I copied:

  My love,

  I've just now come home. So little happened during our meeting and so much has happened since. It seems to me ... has become habit: our meetings get more empty and more difficult each time, but once they're over they take on new life in my mind, becoming memories that I replay obsessively.

  I don't know why. Is it because there are things I must not say to you when we're together, things related to love, the future, us? Is it because the knowledge that today I am prepared to give up everything, to leave it all in order to be with you, scares you, until I can admit it only to myself, in secret?... the love inside me is too big for you, too binding, too frightening? … I don't want to force you to want more than you are willing to permit yourself. And so the only real fulfillment of our relationship takes place in me, inside my head, after I've come home.

  But tonight everything has changed, because for the first time you, too, have joined this late fulfillment, via this same thing that... and you managed to place it tenderly, wisely, and with your unbelievable discretion in my glove compartment. When did you do it? While we were talking, or while I leaned my head on the steering wheel and cried, or while I bent over to look for the keys that had fallen?

  There: now you, too, are part of the experience of "after", and because of this (and only because of this, for I've never, ever done what you've asked because I expected a reward) I'm willing to take what was in the envelope and see it as your special way of expressing your love, as your contribution to the long journey still ahead of us.

  I will be sensible. I won't do anything hasty that we haven't talked... first. But I'm filled with renewed hope. Hope for me and for us.

  I kiss you and send you my love, my wise lover, my tough but tender, fearful yet brave, crafty yet guileless lover.

  I tore out the page - which was now covered with reddish powder - and I tossed it into the toilet. Then I opened the hamper.

  It was not hard to find the bottle. It was resting on the bottom, under a week's worth of dirty laundry. The pills inside it were small and light blue. It seemed to me I had seen them somewhere before, but I didn't remember where. On the label there was a list of vitamins and a promise that the contents would bring about especially rapid renewal of skin cells. I studied one pill. It bore a small mark, perhaps a letter. I remembered it, too, but from where?

  I put the bottle back where I'd found it. Now I just had to find the envelope with the surprise inside. I felt around among the dirty clothes. Not a trace of it. I overturned socks, looked in pockets, unrolled sleeves. I didn't find a thing. When Mom decides to hide something, she does it so well that sometimes even she can't find what she's hidden. The narrow window near the ceiling was starting to get light. I put everything back the way it had been. The laundry seemed to have expanded while it was outside the hamper, and I had to bunch it together to get it back in. When I stuck my hand in to give it one last push, I hit on something hard and crinkly.

  At first I thought it must be a bug and I even pulled my hand out in alarm. When nothing came crawling or flying out, I bent over to have a closer look.

  The envelope was there, stuck by a Band-Aid to the side of the hamper. Carefully I pried it free. The tongue hadn't been licked closed, but had been stuffed inside. I opened it.

  It was filled with money. A lot of money - at least, it seemed like a lot to me. I counted it. The first time, the result was $8,900. The second time, $9,000. I guess there was $9,000 there in hundreds, crisp, new bills, with that clean, metallic, bank smell. And this is what "my love" had managed to place "tenderly, wisely, with unbelievable discretion" in the glove compartment of her car.

  Without even thinking I said out loud, "Holy shit." Later I realized that that's exactly what Dad says when he's pissed off. And I was really pissed off, especially because I knew what she was trying to deny in her letter - maybe even to herself: this money was a reward. How many slides had she passed him? How much was each slide worth to him? How often did he pay? I sat down and reread the copy of the letter. What "long journey still ahead of us" was she talking about, what "renewed hope"? What was she plotting: to run away from home? To marry him?

  I was worried about her. I was angry, but also worried. After I'd stuck the envelope back in place (I was really tempted to peel one bill off for myself...) I again took out the bottle of vitamins. I turned one of the pills over in my hand, trying hard to concentrate and remember where on earth I'd seen it before.

  Just then someone behind me said, "What are you hiding there, Ronnyleh, cigarettes?"

  Aunt Ida. That's all I needed. I hastily closed the bottle and threw it in among the laundry, approximately where I'd found it. I slid the pill that was in my hand into my pocket, and mumbled something about looking for a lost sock.

  Aunt Ida sighed and went toward the toilet. I went off to my room, but I couldn't possibly sleep. The house was filled with warm, dank night air. I didn't feel like sticking around. Aunt Ida was still in the bathroom, so I washed myself off quickly in the sink that was in the garage, changed my clothes, and started off for the bus stop. The first bus left at 5:15 and was practically empty. By 6:40 I was at Port Authority. I had $54.00 left over from my last two weeks' pay. I went into a diner on 6th Avenue and had two eggs with a roll and a glass of milk. Then I went to the library. It was still closed. I peered inside. A guard I didn't recognize sat sleepily at his post and, without getting up, showed me nine fingers: we open at 9:00. I sat down on the steps and waited.

  I thought about the fact that it was already the 3rd of September, and that someone who was waking up just then, at that very moment, would be washing and eating something and going somewhere without fathoming that maybe he had just another three or four days to live. My whole body was tensed with the need to warn him, like the need I feel sometimes at the movies when someone sneaks up behind the hero. For several long moments I asked myself why it was so important for me to warn someone I didn't even know, and by doing so to ruin everything for everyone - especially Mom. Only when I got up at 9:00 did I realize why: I wanted to warn him in order to protect Dad from the crime he might commit, and to cover up for Mom, who, as far as I was concerned, just had to prevent what was about to happen - except that she was too blinded by this love of hers, too cut off from reality and any sense of self-restraint.

  In the meantime, the doors had been opened and everyone had arrived. Including Ms. Yardley. Again the Catalog Room seemed a stalag. Everything was most orderly at the computer terminals, as if the day before had never been. At 9:30 Mr. K. crossed the room. He looked weak and tired. I tried to calculate how long it had been since we'd seen each other. A day? Maybe two? How could a guy go downhill so fast in two days? A few minutes later I asked permission to go out. From the look on her face I could tell that Ms. Yardley had intended to refuse, but I was already halfway toward the door.

  *

  He was sitting in his room wearing his familiar, pained expression. The usual piles of papers and junk were on the desk in front of him, and it was impossible to tell what Miss Doherty had taken - if she had indeed taken anything.

  When he saw me, he tried to smile. The result was only a distorted twitch.

  I sat down without asking permission and said, "I was worried about you."

  "I was ill."

  A kind of reddish rash seemed to be spreading over his face, under the skin. I averted my eyes so as not to embarrass him.

  "How are things with you?"

  I was dying to talk, but something stopped me. I answered a banal "Good."

  He didn't give up. "What good? Did something get cleared up?"

  I had to admit that nothing had.

  He reached for the drawer and pulled it out with some difficulty. "I want you to take the slide
...”

  I didn't want to be there when he discovered the absence of the things Miss Doherty had taken.

  "I don't want it," I said quickly, "the best place for it is with you."

  His hand released the drawer and fell limply in a gesture of concession - or perhaps of weariness. Someone knocked on the door.

  He answered a weak, "Yes?"

  It was the messenger from the public relations department who'd prepared the "Last Concert of the Summer" invitations with me a few days earlier, bringing in some proofreading for his signature.

  She looked at him and said, "Gee Mr. K., you don't feel so good, do you?"

  He gave her another one of his wan smiles and said, "No, not so very good." The messenger cleared her throat politely and left.

  Only after she'd left did I realize that I hadn't heard a polite little `ahem', but that cough. Not exactly, not in the same voice, but the same kind. I imagine you could tell from the look on my face, because K. immediately asked, "What's wrong?" a spark of alertness glimmering from the depths of his eyes.

  "Do you know her?"

  The alertness became a bemused glance. "Does she interest you?"

  "Her cough... is it always like that?"

  "Asthma." His face went grey again. "This is a bad season, the humidity is rising." A gust of damp wind blew in through the window, as if in assent. He tried to change his position, and twisted his face in discomfort or pain. "Could you close the window a bit?" he asked, taking a small pillbox out of his pocket.

  I didn't get up, though, but stared, hypnotized, at the pillbox in his hand, my own hand plumbing my pocket feverishly. The pill had gotten lost somewhere between the folds of cloth, and it took me a few seconds to find it. He looked at me, bewildered. I put the pill down opposite him. He took it between his fingers and studied it up close.

  "Someone told me that these were vitamins," I said.

  He looked at it again. "No. I don't think so."

  "You use them."

  He took a pill out of his pillbox and put it next to the one I had brought. They were exactly identical. Now a new suspicion awakened in me - this time of K. I'm sure you'll agree that, under the circumstances, there was a certain logic in this. I wasn't sure what the connection was between K. and Mom, or what his motive to harm her could possibly be, but his intention to do so would have explained his interest in me, his warmth toward me, and his display of friendship and willingness to help.

  "What are they, these pills?" I asked, looking him in the eye.

  "Pain killers. You take one every few hours and it's released gradually into the bloodstream, relaxing you...” He shut his eyes for a moment, "but it also makes you weak, less alert, and tired. Very tired."

  Something in the frank, precise way he spoke diffused my suspicions. I began to think about Mom. Who had given her those pills under the guise of vitamins? Who would benefit from her being tired and groggy?

  "Are you sure?" I asked again. He shook the two pills out of his hand and placed them side by side again. They were so similar to one another that it was impossible to tell them apart.

  I remembered the window. I got up and closed it. He thanked me with a nod of his head. From where I stood he seemed small and helpless. His eyes were again closed. His chest rose and fell.

  "Can I get you anything?" I asked.

  He indicated `no'. "I don't want them to know. I need this job." He rubbed his eyes and tried to sit up straight in his chair.

  I supported him from behind. His back was damp with sweat. "What... what exactly are you sick with?" I asked.

  He didn't answer.

  I asked again.

  He waved his hand in dismissal and began to poke through the papers on his desk.

  Suddenly I felt a wave of affection and gratitude toward him. I kneeled next to him and grasped his arm.

  I said, "I want to be your friend."

  About ten minutes have passed between the writing of the previous line and the writing of this one... I've read the previous line over and over... and it seems stupid and ingratiating. But at that moment, in K.'s little wooden box of an office, I really meant it. My disenchantment with Mom, my suspicions of Dad, my boredom with Debbie, and my embarrassment over Miss Doherty - all of them contributed to making me want this man as my friend.

  He placed his hand gently over mine and said, "That's kind of you, but it's already too late for me to make new friends."

  I stood up and faced him.

  He bestowed another one of his wan smiles on me. "That's very... in any case... that was kind of you."

  But I still felt the need to do something for him, to proffer something, to give. Again I thought of Miss Doherty.

  "There's something I want to tell you," I said.

  He didn't seem interested.

  "Something that happened here yesterday, in this room."

  He started alert.

  "Someone was here and...” a few people walked down the corridor outside, talking at the tops of their voices. "No," I said, hitting the plywood walls. "Not here. We'll talk outside."

  He wiped his forehead and glanced at his watch. "During lunch hour."

  "Where?"

  "There's a bar on the corner of...” he furrowed his brow in concentration. "No. The newsstand across the street is better."

  I left without saying goodbye; after all, we were supposed to meet again in less than an hour.

  *

  At exactly 2:00 o'clock I stood at the newsstand, watching the entrance to the library. The glass doors opened but it was Miss Doherty, not K., who walked through them, laden with a large bag and carrying a heavy coat folded under her arm. She glanced at her watch, descended the stairs and crossed the street, heading straight for me.

  I stepped aside, ducking into the entryway of the camera shop next door. She went into the newsstand and I started off down the street, still watching for K. A minute later she said from behind me, "Hi."

  I turned around. She smiled as if we were old buddies.

  "Waiting for someone?"

  "Yeah... I mean, no."

  "Yes or no?"

  "Yes."

  She pouted so sweetly that if I hadn't been tense and preoccupied I would have been quite taken with her.

  "Pity. We could have gone for a drink together."

  Her friendliness was suspicious. I mumbled something noncommittal, then stared right past her, over her shoulder. K. was leaving the library, dressed in an old raincoat. He walked to the edge of the sidewalk, poised to cross the street.

  I was embarrassed and even a bit worried. As far as I knew, they absolutely couldn't meet. I thought of signaling him to wait a minute, until I could get rid of her. But he got a jump on me when he lifted his glasses to his forehead, to see better. I signaled him vaguely that it was nothing. He responded with a very weak shrug of his shoulders.

  "I've got to go," I said to Miss Doherty, and I turned down the street, to throw her off. When I turned back around, she was already halfway toward the opposite sidewalk, and K. had disappeared.

  I looked up and down the street, at the library and at the entrance to the camera store. Then I crossed the street and went into the library. I searched the corridors, the rooms, the bathroom and, of course, his office. The lunch break was already over and Ms. Yardley was breathing fire, but I continued to search for him until the end of the day - in vain.

  On the way home I continued my search. I walked around and around the library, I peered into the bars on 42nd Street and I walked the length of 5th Avenue down to about 34th Street. There wasn't much hope, but I couldn't stand another mystery.

  I could think of a whole bunch of scenarios that would explain his disappearance. Most of them were connected to those little blue pills he needed - which reminded me of the problems at home, and especially of Mom. My concern for her grew so great that the matter of the money she'd received seemed insignificant by comparison. I called her from a pay phone. A truck that was unloading goods at Macy's was maki
ng a terrible racket. When I screamed, "How are you?" everyone on the street turned to look at me.

  "What happened? Why are you calling?" she asked.

  "Nothing. Just to see how you're doing."

  "That's very nice of you. I was beginning to think you didn't love me anymore, the way you used to."

  Just not that, I thought, just don't start with that.

  "So everything's fine...” I said with a note of finality as I glanced at my watch: almost 7:00. If she'd been all right up till now, then I still had time to get home and hide the bottle of pain killers.

  "Of course everything's fine," she said bemusedly, "except for the fact that your Aunt Ida's had a particularly crazy day. She stole a bottle of pills from me."

  "What pills?"

  "Vitamins."

  "How do you know it was her?" I asked warily.

  "I saw her fiddling with the empty bottle. She's hidden the pills themselves and she's not willing to tell me where."

  "I'm on my way home."

  "I won't be here. I'm going to the hairdresser and then to a friend's. There'll be food in the fridge and on the stove."

  Even though the pills were missing, whoever had given them to her was still plotting, and I hadn't a clue who he was. The man she loved? No, it wasn't possible. Was it K., after all? That, too, seemed impossible. Dad? I didn't even want to think about it. The only thing I could do was to stay with her as much as possible, to protect her as much as I could.

  "Wait for me," I said quickly. "We'll go together."

  She was silent. I could imagine the surprise that she felt, after all those times she'd wanted me to go with her so she could show me off, and I'd refused.

  Finally she said, "No, I'm afraid today it's impossible. I absolutely must go," her voice dripping with that sticky, sentimental sweetness I'd come to hate more and more.

  *

  From the corner of the street I could already tell that something was amiss at our house. A strange car stood in our driveway. On the driver's door, under the county crest, it said "Sheriff's Office". The garage door was open. I ran inside, practically toppling a fat guy who was taking samples of something sticky off the carpet at the top of the stairs.