Men in Black

by Scott Spencer

  “I can’t believe I’m meeting you down here,” said Elizabeth. “This is just so weird.”

  “You look wonderful, Elizabeth.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. Ravishing. In fact—I want you.”

  She smiled uncertainly; my little jest hadn’t worked very effectively.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m losing track of what I can and can’t say. So. How’d you know I was down here?”

  “It was in the Miami Herald.”

  “But how’d you know it was—”

  “Mommy told me.” She smiled; it embarrassed her to call her mother Mommy, but she could not break the habit.

  “Mommy knows?” I said in mock horror.

  Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, and Daddy knows, too.”

  “They must be thoroughly disgusted.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They’re academicians, for Christ’s sake. They sat at Max Schachtman’s bedside while he died and told stories of the great Teamsters strike in Minneapolis. They’re principled and rational—and now their son-in-law is traveling around the country pretending to be someone else, flogging a book about flying saucers.”

  “First of all, they both have open minds—”

  “Elizabeth! Nothing in my book is true!” I looked around and then lowered my voice. “Nothing.”

  “It’s just a job, Sam.”

  “And this name I’ve taken for myself. It’s the same name the guy used who wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

  She looked at me blankly; I wasn’t sure she knew what I was talking about.

  “He just wrote it for money,” I whispered. I sounded awfully fucked up, even to myself. “He got paid by the page, you know. Half the time, he just wrote whatever popped into his head. And then look what happened!”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth had always been aggressively uninterested in anything political, and the only history she liked was ancient—if it didn’t involve myths, chalices, and togas, it wasn’t for her.

  “The Holocaust.”

  “Do you think your book can—”

  “Did he?”

  “Who?” She leaned back, as if my breath was bad. (In fact, there was a kind of heavy metal taste at the back of my throat.)

  “John Retcliffe. He meant no harm. From what we know of his life, he bore the Jews no particular grudge. He was just a Polish postal worker. He probably didn’t know any Jews, he probably never laid eyes on one. Like me and creatures from deep space. The Men in Black.”

  “The Men in Black don’t exist, do they?”

  “But the Jews did.”

  “I know, Sam. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But that’s what I’m saying, too. It’s all so fucked up. I wrote something that wasn’t true and now it’s out there. And people are paying attention to it.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Really? Who should I blame? You?”

  “Maybe no one needs to be blamed. Maybe the whole idea of blame doesn’t really make sense.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I mean it, Sam. You don’t look well.”

  “I hate to interrupt…” said Phil, who had drifted over to our table without my seeing him. He tapped his wristwatch.

  “Just a few more minutes, Phil. By the way, this is my sister-in-law, Elizabeth Wexler. Phil’s keeping me company while I flog my book hither and yon.”

  “I work for the firm in charge of his publisher’s publicity,” Phil said, apparently wishing to correct any possible impression that he and I were friends. I heard the edge of disdain in his voice. Really, it was like stepping on a rake: I just hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility that Phil might dislike me.

  I watched him as he left and then turned back to Elizabeth, with greatly renewed urgency.

  “Are you sure you haven’t heard from Olivia?” I asked her, reaching across the table, touching her hand.

  “Not since coming back. She wrote to me in Greece. Why? Is everything okay?”

  I shook my head no.

  “What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked. “Did she get into trouble with that antiques business of hers?”

  “We’re having relationship problems.”

  Elizabeth let out her breath, as if relieved. Were all the Wexlers expecting Olivia to run afoul of the law because of her fast dealings with pack-rat country widows?

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Sam.”

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. I went to the house and she wasn’t there. There were signs of a lot of commotion. I know she’s okay. She left a note. But she and Amanda are gone.”

  “What kind of commotion?”

  “Writing on the wall.”

  “Like the saying?”

  “No. Real writing on a real wall.”

  “What was written?”

  “I don’t know. It had been mostly washed off.”

  She looked at me. I could feel her leg jiggling under the table.

  “Where are the children?” said Elizabeth.

  “Amanda’s with her. I know they’re safe. It’s not about that.”

  “Sam—”

  “You don’t understand. I’m very worried. She’s not taking my calls. And that’s not the half of it.”

  “You two should never have left New York. I knew it, when you moved to that little town. What business do either of you have in a place like that?”

  “I couldn’t afford to stay in New York.”

  “Well, now you can.”

  “Except I don’t have anyone to move there with. Olivia isn’t speaking to me. And Michael has disappeared.” I didn’t give her a chance to say anything about it. “Look, Elizabeth, my life has fallen to pieces.”

  “Your life? What about Olivia’s? What about Michael’s? Where is he? What kind of trouble is he in?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all worked in to the problems between Olivia and me. We know he’s alive and all that. He calls in from time to time. We just don’t know where he is.” My face was scalding; I felt the pressure of tears against my eyes.

  Elizabeth remained silent. She touched the surface of her coffee with her fingertip. She bowed her head. Vigorous strands of gray hair ran alongside her center part. She studied the spermlike squiggles on the Formica table. When she lifted her head again to face me, her eyes were stark.

  “You know, Sam, when Olivia married you, we all felt you would take such good care of her.”

  “Oh, give me a fucking break. Who am I? King Arthur?”

  “You just gave the impression of being aware of what was best.”

  “Being aware is one thing, being able to do it is another.”

  “Are you having an affair, is that it? This ‘commotion,’ these ‘relationship problems’?”

  I had already passed by my chances to tell Olivia the truth, but perhaps I could confess by proxy if I leveled with Elizabeth. Yet I could not say the words. The words themselves could not be uttered.

  “No,” I said. “That’s not it. It’s…very complicated.” In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Bullshit.

  At last, Baz could no longer contain himself. I was about to miss my interview, and this could not be permitted— this would affect him, his sense of well-being, his job, the next installment in the incredible saga that was his life. “You’re going to miss your interview!” he said, his voice rising.

  “I sort of like what Samuel Beckett said to Plimpton,” I said leisurely, “when George was trying to cajole him into giving a Paris Review interview. Beckett said, ‘I have no views I wish to inter.’”

  “That’s very funny,” said Baz. “Maybe on the way to the radio station you can tell me who Samuel Beckett is. But I’ll tell you one thing right now—I feel very sorry for his publicist.”

  I said goodbye to Elizabeth—“Tell Olivia I love her!” I shouted back at her as
Baz gave me the bum’s rush out of Burger King.

  In San Antonio, my book was selling more than all other hardcover books combined. It was particularly popular with the men and women in the nearby Air Force base, many of whom had been appearing on radio and TV before we arrived, telling of their own experiences with unexplained heavenly phenomena. (What I would like them to explain is why, when they roam around San Antonio’s demure, rather poky downtown area, the whites walk on one side of the street and the blacks on the other. They’re fooling around with too much expensive equipment to behave like that.) After San Antonio, I went to Austin, Houston, and then Dallas. The money was pouring in, but there was no one to spend it; the home phone was ringing, but there was no one to pick it up.

  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Madness.

  CHAPTER

  14

  WE FLEW UP FROM DALLAS TO CHICAGO, WHERE, AT the Four Seasons, a half-hour before leaving for the WGN studios, where I was going to be on something called “Chicagoland Confidential,” I called Olivia, and to my immense surprise Michael answered the phone.

  He picked it up right after the second ring; the answering machine came on, too. “Wait,” he said, shouting over the sound of my recorded voice. “Wait.”

  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Wait.

  “Michael?” I shouted, gripping the phone with one hand, grabbing my hair with the other. I was standing at the window, looking down at Michigan Avenue. Rain lashed the streets; the sidewalks were empty except for one figure dressed in black, walking with his shoulder to the wind.

  “I’ve got it!” I heard him calling, his mouth away from the phone. I heard Olivia’s voice in the background, sounding displeased. “Well, I picked it up,” he said to her. “Hello?” he said, to me.

  “Michael, it’s me.”

  “Dad!” I could hear, feel the distress in his voice. The first D was high, piping; the vowel wavered unstably; and then the word ended in a hoarse, strangulated sound.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m back, if that’s what you mean.”

  I closed my eyes, sat on the edge of the bed. So then it was true; it had all happened.

  “When did you come back? Are you all right? God, Michael…”

  “Oh, Dad. Dad.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ve got to get to the hospital. Mom won’t even take me.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “We got caught trying to rob the Connelly house.”

  “‘We’?”

  “Walter Fraleigh, this guy who used to work for Mr. Connelly. He lives in the woods.”

  “He lives in the woods? What woods?”

  “Not anymore. I don’t know where he is. He’s gone, he ran away. He’s really an asshole, Dad.”

  A silence. I tried to put together what was being said to me. Michael took a deep breath; I realized he was crying.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. “Tell me what happened. Please.”

  “My girlfriend got shot.”

  “Your girlfriend? Is that why you ran away?”

  “Don’t you know anything?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Didn’t you talk to Mom?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “She didn’t call you?”

  “No.” Then, worrying that I was contradicting a lie she had told him, I amended it to “I don’t think so. Maybe she left a message I didn’t get. I’ve just been going from place to place.”

  “Her name is Carmen,” he said. “Mr. Connelly shot her. And then he just stood there, staring at us and shaking all over. Johnnie and I got her out of there and put her into the car. I sat with her in the back. She looked at me the whole way and I was screaming like crazy for Fraleigh to drive faster, I could see the life going out of her eyes—”

  “Michael—”

  “He drove us to the hospital. Fraleigh stopped by the emergency room entrance and I pulled Carmen out of the car. ‘You and that nigger can forget you ever saw me,’ he said, and then he and Johnnie took off and left us there.”

  “Oh God, Michael. I’m so sorry.”

  He had been waiting to hear it, and to hear it from me. The spur in my voice was all the permission he needed, and a moment later his sobs rushed into my ear. It was intolerable that I could not touch him, hold him to me.

  “Are you coming home, Dad?”

  “Of course I am. Soon—as soon as I can. Right away.”

  Then I heard a break in the line. “Michael?” It was Olivia, sounding stressed, sour.

  “I’m on the phone, Mom,” he said.

  “Lunch is ready.”

  “It’s me,” I said. “I’m in Chicago.”

  Olivia did not respond. She was recovering from the fact of me. I heard the click of one of the extensions hanging up.

  “Hello?” I said, hoping not to sound too frantic.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Where have you been?” I said.

  “Where have I been?”

  “I’ve been calling. Every day, for I don’t know how long. I went to the house, there was nobody home.”

  “I wasn’t here.”

  “Okay. Where have you been?”

  “Poughkeepsie.”

  “Poughkeepsie? What were you doing there?”

  “Lunch is ready, Sam. I have to go. Maybe we can talk later.”

  “Olivia, I miss you so much. My soul cries out for you.”

  “Give me a break,” she said, but I could tell she was pleased—or at least unrepelled.

  “How’s Amanda?”

  “She’s in a play. She wrote a play with her friend Elektra and the school is putting it on next month.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “It takes place in Barcelona; it’s about thieves.”

  “Barcelona. I didn’t even know she knew where Barcelona was.”

  “She said, ‘If Daddy can write about outer space, I can write about Spain.’”

  “Olivia,” I said.

  She did not answer. And for the first time in a long while I did not flail at the silence. The silence was what I wanted her to say.

  “Are you ever coming back here?” she said, finally. “Your children miss you.”

  “Is Michael okay?”

  “Physically, yes.”

  “Where did you find him? Was it the detective?”

  Outside, the rain poured down as if from high-pressure hoses. I turned away, sat on the bed.

  “No. He came back on his own.”

  “This girlfriend thing—”

  “We can’t talk about it now.”

  “He’s nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listening to every word?”

  “That’s right.”

  I closed my eyes. I could see them there.

  “I am astonished that Mandy wrote a play. Maybe she’ll be a writer, a real writer.”

  “Like her father.”

  “I wish.”

  “It’s time to come home, Sam.”

  Baz managed to get me to the WGN studios, not far from the hotel. Since convincing me to go on TV in Knoxville, Baz had gotten me into several television appearances. In the elevator going up to the studios, Baz told me that tapes of my local appearances had gotten into the hands of the networks and now there was no reason why I shouldn’t agree to go on national shows.

  “This is it for me,” I told Baz. “I’m going back home after this show.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Baz.

  “We’ll see about that, Phil.”

  Makeup and then into the greenroom, where I joined Robert Redford, who was on tour promoting a new scholarship fund for minority filmmakers. He was reading Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, a book of stories by Richard Yates; his blue eyes looked strained and weary behind his donnish half-frames. He glanced at Baz and me as we came in, to see if he knew us, and then returned to his book. He frowned as he read. His skin was rough;
his face was a Wells Fargo pouch filled with his contracts and reviews, his citations, divorce papers, honorary degrees. There was something blessed and enchanted about him; a man-boy in his pastel sweater, his thick, coppery arm hair curling over the leather band of his watch. His hands were sun-spotted; as he turned the page, he sniffed back a bit of postnasal drip.

  I sat on the other side of the room, even though he was near the mineral water, Brie and crackers, and seedless ruby grapes that suddenly looked so appealing. I didn’t want him to think I was snacking as a way of being close to him. He recrossed his legs as he read; there were little grape stems on the floor near him, looking like bitten-off nerve endings.

  I watched Redford read. He looked at his watch, turned the page. There was a purity to him, a sense of the great American hopefulness. I wondered what it would be like to know him. If he was reading Richard Yates, he was wandering rather far from standard reading. I wondered, could not help but do so, if he had ever looked at anything I had written. And then, before I could censor myself, I heard myself saying, “Excuse me.”

  He looked up, smiled.

  “How’s the book?”

  He looked at the book and then back at me. “Amazing,” he said.

  “I read it, a long time ago.”

  “I’m reading the story called ‘A Glutton for Punishment,’” he said.

  “You want to know something? I know I read the book, but, unfortunately, I can’t remember a thing about it.” I laughed. I had somehow stumbled upon the idea that when famous media figures met, they liked to share their shortcomings.

  “Are you a speed reader?” Redford asked.

  “No, just forgetful. Tell me, have you ever read Sam Holland?”

  Redford squinted up at the ceiling. It was clear he had never heard of me, but he seemed a little defensive about it; being a sex symbol might have made him a little touchy about his education.

  “Fiction or nonfiction?”

  “Oh, fiction,” I said.

  He seemed truly distressed. What did he expect—to have memorized the Library of Congress catalog?