Yvonne howled with pain and swore fiercely. ‘Take a grip on something,’ I could hear Jim grunting, and Yvonne bellowed again: ‘Waaah! Woody—? Where’s Woody?!’
I rushed toward the stairs, worried suddenly about my wife – how long had I been gone? what were the police thinking about that? – and crashed into Alison’s husband, just stepping out of the bathroom: two glasses slipped from my fingers and exploded on the floor. ‘Oops, sorry!’ I exclaimed, shaken.
‘It’s occupied,’ he replied flatly, touching his beard. I caught just a glimpse of the drawn shower curtains and what looked like my wife’s apron on a hook as he pulled the door firmly shut behind him (probably I should call a plumber, you could smell it all the way out here) and waited for me to precede him down the stairs. If in fact he meant to follow.
‘It’s okay, Yvonne,’ some woman urged (I’d already turned toward the stairs, as though compelled, as though following some dancestep pattern laid out in footprints on the floor), and Yvonne cried: ‘Okay—?! What the hell do you mean it’s okay?!’
My knees flexed involuntarily on the top step: it was (like a sudden wash of color, the fall of a memory scrim) the ski slope again – not now the one on which my mother fell (Yvonne lay sprawled on the landing, one foot sticking out at an angle under Jim’s seat as he bent over her, worried onlookers pressed around), but the recurrent ski slope of my dreams, impossibly sheer, breathtaking, ambiguously crosshatched, disasters at the base: my tip (watched always by rows of dark spectators and now as though pushed from behind) into oblivion … ‘Yvonne—!’
‘Gerry!’ Yvonne cried, looking up at me (they all looked up, Iris Draper, Howard, that woman I’d seen with Noble, Anatole, Daffie, Ginger, as though I were something painted on the ceiling – all but Jim, now gripping Yvonne’s foot by its heel and instep). ‘They’re after me, Gerry!’ The dark side of her face, bruised and bloodied, glistened with tears (the skis were off, I was walking down stairs again), but the eye looked dead: it was the near side alone that seemed to be speaking to me: ‘They’re taking me away by pieces!’ As she said this, Jim pulled steadily against Daffie on the leg, twisting it inward (the toes had been sticking out at ninety degrees), actually stretching the leg as though indeed trying to screw it off, and there was a harsh grating sound – ‘Yowee! Lord love a duck, Jim!’ she yelped and her free leg kicked out, catching Ginger in the back of the knees and making her sit abruptly, her narrow rump thumping the stair with a crisp little knock. ‘Use a little grease!’
‘That’s got it, I think,’ Jim grunted, holding her foot with one hand and wiping his brow with the other. The grating sound echoed in my head like the faint harmonic of some lost memory. Jim pushed her skirt back to study the symmetry of the two legs, and I thought of Ros again, a game we used to play which we called ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple …’ I was breathing heavily. ‘All right, let me have those splints, son …’
Anatole, down a few steps behind him, handed him a pair of croquet stakes, the spikes still muddy. I knelt next to them, bracing myself on the glasses I was carrying. ‘It was Vic,’ Daffie panted, squatting alongside (‘Oh, Gerry,’ Ros would say, ‘did we? I just don’t remember!’), and Anatole said: ‘He was after the cops.’ I could hear his stomach gurgling; he didn’t look all that well. ‘He ran straight into the living room and grabbed the fork away from them—!’
‘The fork—! What was he, starving or something?’ Yvonne squawked, her head resting now in the lap of Noble’s friend. Ginger unpinned a kerchief from one shoulder and handed it to Jim, searched her body for another. Over our heads, Howard and Mrs Draper seemed to be arguing about Tania’s painting of ‘The Ice Maiden,’ Iris finding it too unskillful and farfetched. ‘If that’s all he wanted, why the hell didn’t he ask? Do I look like the resisting type?’
Daffie, leaning over the railing (‘But of course there’s distortion,’ Howard was insisting, ‘there’s always distortion!’), called out: ‘Hey, Nay, is that a fresh drink? Bring it up here like a good old dog! We got an avalanche victim who needs it bad!’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Jim. He was tying Yvonne’s two legs together with Ginger’s kerchiefs. ‘She’s probably got some fever, a drink could make her sick.’
‘Make me sick! Oh boy! That’s a good one!’ Yvonne hooted. ‘Just look at me! Sick would be a goddamn improvement!’
I looked through the railings and saw Alison in the hallway gazing up at me. She glanced past my shoulder, pursed her lips, then beckoned me with a faint little nod and disappeared from view, replaced by Kitty, rushing past, clutching her shirt front together, a flushed grin on her face. Ginger, perched awkwardly on two steps, her ankles wobbling above the stiletto heels, had meanwhile bent over and run her hand between her knees and up the back of her skirt: she smiled suddenly, her little red pigtails bobbing, and whipped another kerchief out, then grabbed her rear as though it were all falling apart back there, crossed her eyes, and tottered bowlegged down the stairs, past Naomi coming up. ‘It’s just too ambitious,’ Iris Draper said flatly (I glanced into the cluster of glasses under my hands, disconcerted suddenly by the sense of being anchored outside time: I jerked my fingers out of them), and Howard sighed with disgust.
‘Gosh, what happened?!’ asked Naomi, staring wide-eyed at Yvonne’s bandages. She leaned down to offer Yvonne her drink, provoking a disapproving sigh from Jim, and there was a sound like a paper sack being popped, then a slow soft tear. Naomi smiled sheepishly at me and shrugged, and Yvonne said: ‘Thanks, honey, you just saved an old lady from a fate worse than life!’ She tossed the drink back as Jim, nose twitching, asked: ‘What’s in that thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Naomi said. ‘I just found it.’
‘Yum!’ wheezed Yvonne. ‘Pure bourbon!’
‘Smells like a salad.’
Below us, Dickie laughed, and Daffie, saddened by her glance over the railing (‘But please,’ Howard was arguing, ‘there’s not arts and crafts, there’s only art or crafts!’), said: ‘Roger once told me a funny thing. He said all words lie. Language is the square hole we keep trying to jam the round peg of life into. It’s the most insane thing we do. He called it a crime. A fucking crime.’
‘You mean he … he thought it was a crime to be insane?’ Naomi gasped, looking distressed, and Yvonne, smacking her lips, declared hoarsely: ‘My oh my! That oughta put some chest on my hair!’
The woman cradling Yvonne’s head winced and exchanged a sorrowful glance with Jim, who said: ‘The thing now is to get you more comfortable. Here, son, you’re young and strong, you take that side and I’ll – can you manage the legs, Gerry?’
‘Sure,’ I said as the doorbell rang. ‘Ah …’
Jim glanced up from under Yvonne’s right arm, a shock of gray hair in his eyes. ‘That may be the ambulance …’
‘Ambulance?’
‘The police wanted an autopsy on Ros.’ Anatole, under the other arm, looked startled and annoyed. Jim pivoted toward the foot of the stairs just as Woody appeared there, coming in from the back. The doorbell rang again. ‘They said here and now, but I told them this was not the place for it …’
‘Woody!’ Yvonne wailed, breaking into the tears she’d been holding back.
I nodded and set her feet down gently. ‘Thanks, Jim. Just a minute, I’ll let them in.’
‘Where’ve you been, for chrissake?!’
‘I’m sorry, I was in conference,’ her husband said, hurrying up the steps with his cousin Noble. As they brushed past me, Noble took a last impatient drag, then flicked his cigarette butt over the railing (Patrick, below, ducked, glaring – behind him: a line of people at the toilet door). ‘I just heard – are you all right?’
‘All right?! Are you crazy?’ She was bawling now, all bravura swept away in the sudden flood. Wilma had started for the door, but hesitated when she saw me coming, turned to check herself in the hallway mirror instead. ‘It’s gonna take three goddamn trips just to get all of me home, Woody! Baw ha
w haw! How can I be all right?!’
‘She’s had a rough time,’ the woman who’d been holding her said, her voice sharp, and Woody, behind and above me, muttered something apologetic about an interrogation: ‘I’m sorry, the police needed help opening some drawers – I think they’re on to something …’
‘It’s the ambulance,’ I explained to Wilma’s reflection, but when I opened the door it wasn’t. It was Fats and Brenda.
‘Ta-daa-aa-ah!’ Fats sang out, his arms outspread like a cheerleader’s, a big grin on his face, and Brenda, squeezed into a bright red pants suit, did a little pirouette there on the porch, one hand over her head, and, snapping her gum, asked: ‘Hey, am I beautiful? Am I beautiful?’
‘But … what are you guys doing out there?’ I asked in confusion.
‘I give up, man,’ Fats replied, rolling his eyes and thrusting a bottle in a paper bag at me. ‘What are you guys doin’ in there?’
‘But I thought – I thought you’d already—’
‘Sorry we’re late, lover,’ Brenda said breathlessly, pushing in and pecking my cheek (‘She’s too heavy for him,’ Patrick was complaining through the banister rails), ‘but it took – hi, Wilma! – it took me an hour to get into this goddamn pants suit!’
‘It’s gorgeous!’ Wilma exclaimed, holding her breasts. ‘Where’d you ever—?’
‘And I got so turned on watchin’ her,’ Fats rumbled with a grin, unzipping his down jacket, ‘that I made her get out of it again!’
‘Which was damn near as hard as getting in – God help me if I—pop!—have to pee!’
‘Never mind, I can’t wear pants anyway,’ Wilma sighed ruefully, turning back to the mirror and giving her hair a pat. ‘The last time I tried it, Talbot said I reminded him of an airbag.’
‘Gettin’ in,’ Fats admitted, jabbing a stiff thick finger at us (‘Or maybe it was Archie who told me that …,’ Wilma mused), ‘it was pretty hard, okay.’ The finger drooped: ‘But gettin’ out …’
‘Or Miles …’
‘Listen,’ I broke in, ‘you have to know, something terrible has—’
‘What? Do I hear somebody at the dartboard?’ boomed Fats, tossing his jacket on the chair over the Inspector’s overcoat: the fedora (now dented as well as spotted, I noticed) fell brim-up to the floor. Above us, glasses kicked, clattered and tumbled. ‘Lemme at ’em!’
‘Talbot likes to do it with mirrors,’ Wilma added, turning away from her reflection. Fats, over her shoulder, was slicking down his pate, someone was hammering on the toilet door: ‘The police are here, Brenda. Ros has been—’
‘Hey, baby!’ Fats boomed out over our heads. ‘Whatta they done to you?!’
‘It’s been a helluva ballgame, Fats!’ Yvonne declared from halfway down the stairs, her arms around Jim and Anatole, Woody carrying her bound legs, Noble cradling the middle: ‘Don’t let it sag, Noble!’ Jim gasped. Patrick’s face was screwed up, his body tense, as though sharing the burden.
‘He says it makes him feel like a movie star,’ Wilma explained to no one in particular. ‘It only makes me feel depressed.’
‘Well, old Fats is here now, honey – you just point out the bad asses who done this to you!’
‘Easy!’ puffed Jim as they reached the bottom, crunching glass underfoot, and Michelle came over to see what was going on. Up on the landing, Alison’s husband was expounding on something to Howard and Mrs Draper, pointing into the depths of the Ice Maiden’s mouth.
‘Say, Gerry, your wife—’
‘Yes, yes, I know, Michelle—’
‘Wait a minute, what’s all that red stuff all over everybody?’ Brenda cried.
‘It’s just what it looks like,’ said Wilma. ‘Wait’ll you see the living room …’
‘All I can say,’ said Noble darkly (Daffie, stepping down, turned her back to the hallway mirror, presenting us with a mocking before-and-after contrast that seemed almost illusory: a time trick that Tania might have used), ‘is it had better come out!’
The downstairs toilet door opened just then: and it wasn’t Janice Trainer who emerged, but the short cop, shirttails dangling, still struggling with his buttons: ‘Awright, awright! Christ!’ he muttered, his face flushed, and ducked into the living room.
‘Blood always does …’
‘They still won’t give them back to me,’ Patrick was whispering to Woody. Woody nodded, grunting sympathetically: ‘See me about it later, Patrick. We’ll see what we can do.’
‘Roger went crazy,’ Michelle explained to Fats, but he wasn’t listening: ‘Here, man, you ain’t lookin’ so good,’ he said, taking over from Anatole. ‘How ’bout lettin’ ole Fats have a cuddle now?’
Anatole, starkly pale, gave up his burden gladly, and as they carted Yvonne off to the living room (‘I’m okay! Send me in again, coach! I’m not finished yet!’ she was declaiming), he turned to Brenda and said, his breath catching: ‘That woman was there when they killed him. He gave her something.’
‘Who, sweetie?’ Brenda asked, smiling up at him (Patrick, behind the boy’s shoulder, bristled). ‘Killed who?’ She blew a teasing bubble, popped it, sucked it in.
‘It was nothing,’ Daffie shrugged. She held her elbow cradled in her palm, cheroot dangling before her face. ‘I saw it. He gave her a small gold earring, that’s all.’
I started. ‘What kind of—?’
But the phone rang and Daffie went to answer it. ‘Who?’
‘Bren!’ Fats bellowed from the living room. ‘It’s Ros! Our little Ros! She’s DEAD!’
‘What? Ros—?!’ she cried and went running in there in her tight red pants (there was a thump, a curse): ‘Oh NO—!!’
The tall officer appeared, scowling, in the doorway, leaning on his short leg, and Daffie with the phone said: ‘It’s for your boss, kiddo.’
‘Fucking bastard,’ muttered Anatole under his breath, and Michelle whispered: ‘I once had a dream about something like this.’
Howard came down, his hips swiveling with drunkenness, and announced petulantly: ‘The upstairs toilet is blocked, Gerald!’
‘I know, don’t flush it. I’m going to call a plumber. As soon as the phone’s free.’
‘Only it was at the art school, a boy who’d been painting me – he was dead but he kept on painting and I couldn’t get away …’
‘Have you seen Talbot, Howard? I can’t find him anywhere.’
Inspector Pardew now stood in the living room doorway, thumbs hooked in his vest pockets under the drapery of his white silk scarf, his impeccability marred only by the dark stains and chalk dust on the knees of his trousers. He gazed thoughtfully at Wilma, then at each of us in turn. Anatole brushed past him, thumping his shoulder (the Inspector seemed not to notice, his eyes falling just then on his overturned fedora), and Patrick followed nervously, making little whimpering noises probably meant as apologies. ‘It was so strange,’ Michelle was saying softly, ‘but then it suddenly became a movie we were all watching. Only I still didn’t have any clothes on. I wanted to get out of the movie theater before the lights came up, I was so afraid …’
Pardew picked up the fedora, smoothed out the dent, brushed it on his sleeve, and, glancing casually at the label of Fats’ jacket, placed his hat on top of it. He seemed all the while covertly interested in Michelle’s description of her attempt to push, naked, past all the people in the movie house of her dream (‘I kept hearing them all laugh, but every time I turned around, they’d be like gaping statues, fixed in some kind of awful terror – and the scary thing about it was I couldn’t find any aisles … !’), ignoring Daffie behind him, holding the phone at her crotch like a dildo and blowing smoke at the back of his head. ‘Is that for me?’ Iris Draper asked, leaning over the banister, her spectacles dangling on a golden chain, and Wilma said: ‘That reminds me of the time Talbot took me to a professional wrestling match, and Wolfman threw Tiny Tim, who weighed about five hundred pounds, right in our laps.’ Yes, the trouble with ritual, I thought, is that it c
ommits you to identifying the center (Pardew, staring at the front door, seemed momentarily nonplussed), which is – virtually by its own definition – never quite where or what you think it is …
‘But then I was in the film again that I’d been watching and I was crying over the dead boy, yet all the time I felt like I had to go to the bathroom …’
‘I know what you mean, dear! When Tiny Tim came crashing down—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Inspector Pardew was saying (he had the phone now and Daffie had vanished), ‘I’m doing everything I can.’ Howard, hands outspread for balance, wobbled past us into the dining room, muttering something about ‘that stupid boy,’ and Michelle, taking my arm, her hand like gossamer, whispered: ‘It’s so eery down here without any music. It makes everybody feel lost or something …’
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