“When he went out of business, an oilman from Texas bought the marble soda fountain for his game room. It was a beauty. You remember it, don’t you?”
“You’re older than I am.”
The lights went green, and he turned right and followed Chestnut down to Central Street, which was sedate, tree-lined, steadfast in its beauty, accommodating some of the oldest houses in town, including his own, the grounds exotic with topiary, sculptured bird baths, and, in spring and summer, brilliant flower beds, for which his wife had garnered prizes, though professional gardeners did the work. Passing the house, he smiled with the smugness of a man who felt richly deserving of everything that had been given to him, which included his father’s name. He was Junior as a child.
His smile thinned when they skirted a former meadow now muddled with splits, gambrels, and ranches. “They’re creeping up on me, Fran. My father predicted the Hispanics would overrun Lawrence and the blacks would make Boston ugly, but he never predicted this. Do you know what the trash is in Andover? It’s the engineers, the computer specialists, all the high-tech people. They’re the new factory workers, except they wear clean clothes and live in overpriced houses.”
“The bank’s making money off them.”
“Hand over fist, I don’t deny it, but it doesn’t mean I have to like them. I don’t want them sitting near me in church, but I look around and there they are.”
“Take your next right. It’s shorter.”
“Never was a road there before.” He coasted down it. “Years ago real estate brokers protected the town, but now they sell to anybody.”
“Don’t blame the brokers. Blame the developers. Blame Bauer Associates. That’s the biggest. You’re all making money.” She gave him a wink, which he missed, and then reached into her purse for a cigarette. “But you’ve always wanted it both ways. Like you had it with me.”
“We had good times.”
“Does your wife know I exist? If you mentioned my name, it wouldn’t mean anything to her, would it?”
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”
“You worried about my health or yours?”
“Both.”
She lit up. “Turn left.”
He took the turn easily, one large hand on the wheel, and casually mentioned her husband, who had not held a steady job in years and now seldom left the house. “How’s he doing, Fran?”
“He’s doing fine,” she said cynically. “He watches C-Span from the moment he gets up to when he drops off. If you want to know what’s going on in Washington, he’ll tell you. Otherwise he’s out of it. Once upon a time I felt sorry for him. Now he’s shit under my shoe, probably what I am to you.”
Fellows looked hurt. “Be fair, Fran.”
“Like life?”
He parked in the front lot of the Silver Bell, and they walked toward the glass entrance, she with a slight stoop. Before they reached the doors he stopped and said, “I’ll tell you what. Let’s circle the place and give it the once-over. You go that way, and we’ll meet here on the other side.”
“What’s that going to prove?”
“It’ll give us a perspective.”
“We already have one.”
“Do it my way, Fran,” he said with quiet force and watched her turn away, her thick coat a cumbersome weight, her hair lifting only a little in a wind that was dying out. He waited until she had put a distance between them and then entered the motel through its glass doors. He received a fast greeting from Chick the desk clerk, who was eating a powdered doughnut out of a sheet of paper.
“Nice to see you, Mr. Fellows.” The old man’s smile shot out of the faceful of wrinkles, the black mole rising to his cheekbone. “Case you’re looking for Mrs. Gately, she’s not here. ’Course if it’s important I can call her.”
“No need,” Fellows said, keeping his tone light, a bit put off by the old man’s bright eyes. “Mrs. Gately says you work long hours, don’t get much sleep. I don’t see how you do it. I need my eight hours.”
“I catnap, Mr. Fellows. I can sit in my chair and do it. Some people see me, they think I’m dead. I’m surely not.”
“I guess business isn’t all that great.”
“One week it is, next week it might not be. Has its ups and downs like any business.” He finished off the doughnut and wiped the sugar from his chin. “You ought to go in the coffeeshop and get a doughnut. We get them fresh from the bakery.”
“I might do that,” Fellows said. “Actually, I’m here to look around. I guess you know Mrs. Gately is buying the place.”
“Yes, sir, I do. She told us all and said none of us have to worry about our jobs. That’s a comfort to me, Mr. Fellows. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t come here.”
“You’d make out, Chick.”
“No, Mr. Fellows, don’t think I would. Well, sir, if you want to look around, go ahead. Place is yours.”
“Thank you, Chick.” Fellows started to step away but then briskly turned back as if from a sudden thought. “That poor girl who was murdered here. Terrible thing. You were on duty, right?”
“I was coming on duty. You want the truth, Mr. Fellows, I don’t like to talk about it. Especially after what’s happened to the boy.”
“Yes, I can understand that. What room was it?”
“Forty-six. In the rear.”
“Anybody in it?”
“No, sir. Nobody.”
“I think I might peek in. Got the key handy?”
“No sense to that, sir. Nothing to see. It looks like every other room here.”
Fellows smiled. “Call it morbid curiosity. We all have it, don’t we?”
“No, sir, not me.”
“You’re one in a million,” Fellows said and held out his hand for the key.
• • •
Sergeant Dawson drove William Rollins back to the cemetery, back to his car, which in the fading daylight seemed to have sunk somewhat into the ground. Rollins stared at it but did not get out. He slipped off his glasses, and his eyes looked lost, as if the sockets had grown. He said, “Why did you do that to me? I know you’re not a cruel man.”
“I had to know.”
“You wanted to watch my reaction, study my face.”
“Something like that.”
“A polygraph would have been kinder.”
“This was quicker.”
“But not scientific.”
“I’ve never been that kind of cop. Maybe now I’m paying the price. Put your glasses on, Counselor. You make me nervous.”
Rollins reached inside his coat, pulled out his slim regimental necktie, and polished his glasses with the tail. He pressed too hard and one of the amber lenses fell out. Carefully he wedged it back into position and snapped it in. “When I heard the voice, I wanted to believe.”
“You think I didn’t?”
He returned the glasses, shiny and secure, to his face. “It has to be somebody sick.”
“Who’s healthy, Counselor? Are you?” Dawson leaned past him and pushed the door open. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I’m getting sick of graveyards.”
Rollins climbed out into the darkness of the day and looked back in before shutting the door. “Can I consider myself in the clear now?”
“More or less,” Dawson said.
“Why only more or less?”
“I’m learning to hedge,” Dawson said and shoved the car into gear. He might have said more but kept it between his teeth.
He left the cemetery with headlights blazing, laid a heavy foot on the accelerator, and pressed down on curves along a back road as if he carried a special invulnerability. Four minutes later he lurched into breakneck traffic on the southbound side of Interstate 93 and fought his way to the outside lane, where few cars were traveling under seventy.
Within twenty minutes he saw the twinkling of the Boston skyline.
• • •
In room forty-six of the Silver Bell Motor Lodge Fran Lovell looked sharply at Ed Fellows
and said, “This is what you had in mind all along, isn’t it?” He replied quietly, his lie transparent, meant to be. She stood with her coat open but her hands snugged into her pockets. The room had a chill. He had hiked the thermostat, but the heat was slow to come. When he drew near, she made her neck long and let him kiss it. “I suppose I should’ve guessed,” she said.
“Be good to me,” he whispered. His Adam’s apple jerked. His teeth scraped her skin.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “My husband has eyes.”
He breathed softly, relishing. “Like you used to be,” he implored and reached inside her roomy coat. His big knees brushed hers, producing in her the same questionable sensation her unspayed cat did when arching its tail and rubbing against her bare legs.
“I’m not the same person,” she said but tossed her hair with girlish frivolity. She let him undo her blouse but impeded his effort with her bra. “They won’t be like you remember.”
“It won’t matter,” he proclaimed with magnanimity as heat seemed to surge into the room from all sides, along with a small but pungent smell of dust that threatened to make her sneeze. She pushed away his hands.
“I should use the bathroom first.”
“Do it,” he said, immediately pulling away and grappling with his own clothes. His fine overcoat, purchased at Brooks Brothers in Boston, was flung to the floor. A Swiss watch glowed from his wrist like a statement of his personal worth.
She was in the bathroom for five minutes, mostly looking in the mirror. Her expression was tense and unsettled, as if she were fourteen again, with her head full of doubts over what boys thought of her and with her face straining out of a dance of springy curls and her young crotch partially shaved to accommodate a bikini.
Now her underpants, patterned as if by a deep frost, were too small for her, and the elastic top had twisted into her flesh. “Christ,” she said to the memory of her younger and beloved self. “You had it all and didn’t know it.”
He heaved his tanned legs to one side, flexed his toes, and viewed her from the prop of an elbow as she emerged naked from the bathroom and marched toward the bed. Breasts swaying low on her chest, buttocks chafing, she felt like a parade.
She sought covers, but he kept them from her, wanting nothing hidden from him. His smile turned stupid. “No funny stuff,” she warned. “No acrobatics.”
He promised. His hand, a hot iron, pressed between her thighs. “So much of life is this, isn’t it?”
“For men maybe. Not for me.” Her voice took on a crust. “I’m not too old yet to get pregnant, you know.”
He kissed her eyes as if to blind her. “Then I’ll have to be careful.”
But he was not.
Later, with a sheet pulled over her and an arm tossed over the side, she lay as if she had endured a commando raid upon her person. She had bruises on her shoulders and hips, a sore mouth, and an ache throughout. Her voice was thin. “I should feel younger. Why do I feel older?”
“You still got kick to you.” He spoke from a dripping face, gathering his breath. “You stayed with me every second of the way.”
She had most of the sheet, and he took some of it away for himself. He turned his head from her and closed his eyes as if to doze. She closed hers too. “You’ll never know, will you, Ed?”
“What’s that, Fran?” He tried to make his voice tender.
“What a woman wants. Or rather what she doesn’t want.”
He did not reply, and she lay quietly with one leg out of the sheet, her ears supersensitive. She heard every sound in the room, every tick from a pipe, every scratch from the heating system. Then she heard a noise at the door.
Their eyes snapped open.
“Is it locked?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Both leaped from the bed.
• • •
The older roommate, Sue, did not seem in the least surprised to see him and let him into the apartment, into the studio room that still smelled of furniture polish, every piece in its place, a dustless environment. “Sit, Sonny,” she said, extending a long hand, fingers perfectly poised. She was wearing a fitted skirt suit and low heels. The other one, Natalie, hovered in the background and peered at him through her round glasses. Though the evening was early, suppertime, she was in pink pajamas.
“Why?” Dawson said. His voice suggested a chunk of stone. He had not moved.
“Who are you talking to, Sonny? Nat or me?”
“Both of you,” he said. “Her especially.”
Sue turned slightly, looked at her friend, and spoke as if to a child, albeit a bright one. “Come here, Nat. The sergeant is asking us something. What it is isn’t clear yet, but I’m sure he’ll explain.”
“The calls,” he said harshly, shifting his balance. He had suspected beforehand that something would go wrong and could feel it doing so. It was as if he had been lured here. “There’s no point in pretending,” he said.
Natalie had crept forward, plumper and rounder than the last time he had seen her, her ball of brown hair frizzier. Nothing seemed credible, Natalie least of all. Her pajamas, all of a piece, suggested to him cups of cocoa, Peter Rabbit books, and Alice in Wonderland.
“I made the calls,” she said, the admission coming so readily and innocently that he almost disbelieved it, as if the calls had taken place only in the secrecy of his skull. He wondered whether he was a victim of the same wrong reasoning that had convinced him of the Bauer boy’s guilt. He looked at Sue for guidance.
“She’s good, Sonny. Very good. Nat, do the queen of England.” From Natalie there was only silence, maintained as if by modesty. “OK, do Joan Rivers. Do Nancy Reagan. Nat, do Melody.”
Setting herself, Natalie lifted her podgy face and rearranged her breath. Then she spoke in the voice. “Love you, Sonny.”
He brought his hands up to pull his coat together. “Enough,” he said, but she continued speaking in rich throaty tones bathed in a haunting mellowness. He felt rent. “Tell her to shut up.”
Sue pressed a finger to her own lips, and Natalie went quiet, then shivered as if maximum energy had been expended in the mimicry. He stared at them both with incredulity. His original question remained.
“Why?”
“Nat and I miss her, Sonny.”
“That’s an explanation?”
“Nat wanted to remind you.”
He could not bring himself to look at Natalie again, afraid of what he might say or, worse, do. Sue’s almond eyes rested calmly upon him. He said to her, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where, Sonny?”
“Anywhere.”
“Not Nat? Just you and me?”
“Just you and me.”
He had parked his car near the building, but they walked by it without a glance. The evening was clear and seasonably chilly. Street traffic was heavy, but they had the sidewalk to themselves. “Do you mind?” she said and took his arm, gearing her step with his, which was easy. Each had a long stride. For the moment he had nothing to say. When they crossed the street, it was her hand that did the guiding against the clutter of cars bearing down on them, cutting them with headlights, whipping them with tails of exhaust. “Down here,” she said, and they descended into the warmth of a basement coffeehouse.
She chose a table near a potted plant that cast protective fronds their way. He slipped off his coat and quickly helped her off with her quilted one, which was lighter than he had expected. He slung both coats over an odd chair and ensconced himself across from her. Young people sat two and three at other tables, the girls bright-eyed and vital, the boys roguishly stubbled. They all made him feel old. Their dog-eared paperbacks, stacked near their elbows, made him feel ignorant.
Sue said, “I like your jacket.”
“Forget my jacket.”
“I’m not sure the shirt is right.”
The waitress brought coffee. Sue creamed and stirred hers deliberately, smiling vaguely, doubtfully, a steady pale light emanat
ing from her patrician features. He said, “I don’t want any more calls from your friend.”
“I don’t think you have to worry.”
“Was she trying to punish me?”
“I’d rather not answer for her.”
“Why not? You two seem pretty close.”
Her stare was tolerant. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I don’t understand the relationship. Are you two …” He let the question peter out.
“Are we what? Lesbian?” Her smile stayed vague. “Am I? I don’t know, Sonny. Perhaps I haven’t decided yet. Is Natalie? I suppose so. So what?”
“Just asking,” he said, conscious of her quiet eyes, her long, slender neck, the hint of cleavage inside her starched shirt. The top of her bra was lacy.
“Was Melody that way? No, Sonny, but she was kind, good to Nat, who adored her. Sometimes they cuddled. Like children, not lovers.”
He took his coffee black, not his custom, and burned his lips.
“The pajamas you saw Natalie in. Mel bought them for her. A birthday gift. Birthdays were precious to Mel. In the foster homes they usually forgot hers. In some she couldn’t open the refrigerator without permission.”
He looked away, through the fronds. His skin felt dry.
“They did a job on her,” she said, and he looked back at her. “Wasn’t unusal for her to go to school bleary-eyed because someone had been at her during the night. But that’s ancient history now, isn’t it?”
He rattled the cup in the saucer, his hands restless, his shoulders stiff.
“Nat and I can’t stop thinking about her. You can understand that, can’t you?”
There was laughter from a table of three, spontaneous and carefree. He envied their gaiety, their youth, their future.
“I don’t usually read the Herald, but Nat gets it for the contests. She always thinks she’s going to win something. She saw the story about the boy in Andover hanging himself.”
“He was my suspect.”
“We wondered.”
“I may have been wrong.”
“Ah,” she said with an air of abstraction. “We were afraid of that when you didn’t call.”
The trio was leaving, a youth with a dark jaw and two young women in long, open coats and shiny boots. The faces of the women were incurably pretty, as if their tender ages were permanent, their sweet places in life fixed. The lighting gave gold to the hair of one, enriched the redness in the hair of the other, and made a princess of each.
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