The Trouble with Eden

by Lawrence Block

  After he had left, Warren cleared the hallway. “Now I know you’re all motivated solely by the desire to help,” he announced, “but some might mistake your interest for morbid curiosity. Please go home. Now.”

  And they went. As the hallway emptied Warren moved to take Linda’s aim. He asked her where she would sleep. She blinked until he repeated the question.

  “Oh,” she said. “Here, I guess.”

  “You’re welcome to stay at my house. I can assure you it’s safe. Or I can get you a room at the Logan.”

  “I want to be here when Tanya wakes up.”

  “I was thinking that I would sit up with her myself.”

  “No, I’ll stay. I don’t mind.”

  He studied her thoughtfully. “That’s probably the best idea, if you’re sure you don’t mind. But you do need a tranquilizer, you know. George would have handed you a Miltown or Valium or some other mysterious chemical. My prescription would be along organic lines.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Alcohol. Come to Sully’s with me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “She’ll be out for the next eight hours, and the bar will close long before then. I won’t let you stay here alone now, Linda, and I need a drink if you don’t. Come along.”

  “I suppose a drink is a good idea,” she said.

  “It generally is,” Warren said.

  He was as smoothly capable at the Barge Inn as he had been earlier. He selected a remote table, ordered Cognac for both of them, and effortlessly got rid of any number of persons who wanted to join them. Some had heard about Bill Donatelli’s death and wanted to discuss it; others simply wanted conversation with Warren. He disposed of all of them easily and efficiently.

  At one point she said, “I didn’t even know him. I think that’s the worst part.”

  “I doubt anyone knew him. Or is that what you meant?”

  “I think it is. He was the silent man across the hall who did nothing but paint strange pictures and watch television and sleep with Tanya. Peter and I used to joke about him. About them. Those jokes—”

  “You can’t regret them after the fact. Everyone’s mortal and sooner or later you could never say anything vicious about anyone on the chance he or she might ultimately die.”

  “I guess Tanya knew him.”

  “Do you think so? I would suppose she knew him as completely as one could. I was going to say that they lived on the same level, but I’m sure that’s not true. They lived with each other on the same level.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “But she’s so much better a person.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because she would never have done what he did.”

  “No, I can’t imagine her committing suicide, but—”

  He was shaking his head. “Nor can I, but neither of us can know that. But that’s not what I mean. He set things up so that she would walk in and find him like that That was the last picture he painted, and he let her have first look at it, so that every time she thinks of him for the rest of her life she’s going to visualize that squalid little tableau. Nothing on earth could make Tanya do that.”

  “God, I didn’t think of that”

  “I can think of little else. Which will make it rather difficult for me to shed tears for him.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t think.”

  “Even so. Even so. Tanya would have thought.”

  “She was saying something tonight on the way upstairs. That some people can sit and think for hours and that she hardly ever thinks.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Something about a role she’s rehearsing—”

  “Oh, of course. She’s supposed to look pensive and she heard the word today for the first time. The ass of a director translated it as thoughtful, which of course is all wrong. Tanya could never look pensive, but she’s one of the most genuinely thoughtful people I know. And without thinking about it.”

  “Yes.” She picked up her glass, drank. “God, it was awful. Everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were so perfect” He started. “You were. You … handled everything.”

  “The actor in my soul.”

  “No one else knew what to do.”

  “So I leaped into the role. Far too great an opportunity to be missed.”

  “Well, then it was a good performance.” She lowered her eyes. “You don’t have to do this, Warren.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I mean, I’m all right now.”

  “Oh, I know that.” He flashed that peculiar sardonic smile of his. “You know, that’s the marvelous thing about being a nelly old aunt. One can behave chivalrously with beautiful women without worrying about the purity of one’s motives. And I cannot think offhand of a more powerful argument for homosexuality. Oh, there’s Peter Nicholas. You know him, don’t you? Of course you do, what am I thinking of? Peter! Come join us, why don’t you? And see if you can catch that trollop’s eye and order up another round.”

  It was Peter who walked home with her. They left the Barge Inn together while Warren stayed behind, moving to join a crowd at the bar. The air outside was cool and fresh after the close atmosphere within. She walked along at Peter’s side, breathing deeply. She had had just the right amount to drink, enough to relax her but too little to make her the slightest bit drunk.

  “The perfect tranquilizer,” she said aloud.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I was thinking out loud. The doctor offered me a tranquilizer but I wasn’t having any. Then Warren prescribed a few drinks, and he was right. God, it was awful. Were you there?”

  “I ran upstairs to see what was happening, but I didn’t hang around.” They walked a little farther in silence before he said, “We haven’t really seen each other in a long time, have we?”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “I’ve missed it.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I guess you have a good thing going. With Hugh Markarian.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’m happy for you. Seriously.”

  “I’m not sure if it’s that good a thing.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. Right now it’s more a question of knowing what I want. Oh, Christ!”

  All at once she was crying. He reached to comfort and she turned from him. “I’m all right. I was thinking. Tanya was the one person I know who really knew what she wanted and look what she got. Just look what she got!”

  “She’ll be okay, Linda.”

  “She will?”

  “She’ll be living with someone else inside of a month.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say. That is a hell of a thing to say.”

  “Why is it? I almost didn’t say it for just that reason, but why not say it? I’m not saying it to her, for God’s sake. But why shouldn’t I be saying it to you? It’s what she needs; it’s the best thing for her. I don’t know if either of them loved the other but even if they did. Do you think she’s going to wear black? Do you think she should?”

  “She was saying just tonight that she couldn’t imagine anyone living alone.”

  “Well, I can. God, can I imagine living alone.” She shuddered at the bitterness in his voice. “But I can’t imagine Tanya living alone. Can you?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “She’ll be all right. That’s all that matters.”

  “Yes, it’s all that matters.”

  They walked the rest of the way without speaking, entered the building, climbed the stairs. When they reached the floor where he and Gretchen and Robin lived, he hesitated only an instant before continuing up the stairs with her. She meant to say something but let the moment pass.

  At her door he said, “I wish I could come in.”

  “Tanya’s in there.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “We cou
ldn’t talk with her in there. I didn’t think you meant—”

  “Well, in a way I probably did, as far as that goes. I’m in a mood myself, Linda, or I wouldn’t be talking like this. Do you want to know something? That one night—”

  “Peter, please let’s not talk about it.”

  “Just let me say this. It was the best thing in my life. I’m serious, maybe I haven’t had so much of a life but it was the best thing in it—”

  “Peter—”

  “but sometimes I wish it never happened. I miss you, Linda.”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Oh, shit. Come on. Everything’s changed.”

  “I’m going inside now, Peter. I have to. I’m tired, and I want to be able to wake up when Tanya wakes up. I’m going inside now.”

  “All right.”

  “And you’d better go downstairs.”

  “I don’t know which I want more. To go in there with you or to not go back downstairs. It’s getting so bad lately, Linda.”

  “Oh, Peter.”

  “Oh, hell. I really pick the perfect nights to lay my trips on other people.” He flashed a sudden brightening grin, then turned and was gone.

  Tanya was sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed. Linda moved her over to one side and the girl did not even stir in her sleep. Linda got in beside her, her body rigid, thinking how bad everything was and how tense she felt. But then the tension began to drain from her and she realized that at this moment she felt nothing, nothing at all. It was all gone and she felt merely exhausted and empty, so empty, and within minutes she was asleep.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Peter took the stairs quickly. But once he had reached his own floor his steps halted abruptly. It was just a few yards to the door of his apartment, but he took longer to traverse that distance than he had taken descending the stairs. And when he reached the door he stood for several long minutes in front of it.

  He couldn’t get the image out of his head. He would open the door and she would be hanging there, her face hideously swollen and discolored. Bill Donatelli had used the Venetian blind cord, and he could see her standing on tiptoes to cut the cord with a kitchen knife, then climbing the rickety ladder-back chair, wrapping the cord first around the light fixture and then around her throat, then kicking the chair away and dangling in midair, feet dancing in midair. God, was her weight enough to strangle her? She was so thin, so fragile. God, she could dance there for an eternity while the cord grew tighter and tighter without every growing tight enough—

  He made himself open the door.

  For one impossible instant he saw her as he had envisioned her. The suggestion was that powerful. A scream rang in his head, a silent shriek, before his eyes caught hold of reality. There was no body swinging from the ceiling. She was where he always found her these days, sitting in their bed with her knees drawn up. Her skin shone in the dim light that came through the partially open bathroom door.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Petey.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Sorry I’m not dead like the boy upstairs. The painter. Didn’t you paint a little picture of Gretchen dead? Oh, you did, Petey, I know you did. But I would never hang myself, baby. I would find a better way.”

  “Gretchen, stop it.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Petey. I didn’t do it.”

  “Don’t even talk that way.” He stepped into the room, closed and bolted the door. His hands trembling and his heartbeat seemed almost audible.

  “Or isn’t that what you’re afraid of? You were afraid I would be alive, Petey, and I am, I am. Poor Petey, coming back to his Gretchen and the bitch hasn’t had the simple decency to die.”

  “Stop it,” he said. He closed his eyes, made fists of his hands. “Just stop it.”

  And she surprised him by doing just that. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a child’s small voice this time. “I’ll go to sleep now, Petey. I was just waiting for you to come home to me is all. But I’m tired and I’ll go to sleep now.”

  And she lay down and closed her eyes at once.

  He undressed quickly, turned off the bathroom light; lay down in bed beside her. She did not move or say a word, and her breathing became deep and regular. He knew, though, that she was not asleep. She would feign sleep, but he could always tell her real sleep from the imitation she gave, and he knew that he always fell asleep before her these summer nights. And it would be so again this evening, for already he felt the powerful pull of sleep. He did not even want to sleep now. There were thoughts that he wanted to think, that he had to think, but in spite of them the impulse to sleep drew him like a small boat to a whirlpool.

  She was right, of course. He had hoped to find her dead. The wish had fathered the thought, and it had been his desire that gave him that incredibly vivid sight of her hanging as Donatelli had hung, dead as Donatelli had died. He had not consciously realized this before but felt now as though he must somehow have known it all along.

  The realization did not make sleep impossible now, did not even postpone its onset more than a matter of seconds. He had recently faced his desire for her death too many times to be overly upset by each new form it took. He wanted her to die not so much out of malice but because nothing but her death would so utterly solve his problems. And it would solve her problems in the bargain, and if anything hers were more blindingly unsolvable than his own. Donatelli’s suicide baffled him. Gretchen’s would seem no more than logical. She had no life at all, at least none worth living. She was constantly miserable with no way out. Why shouldn’t she kill herself—for everyone’s sake?

  In the morning he awoke coming out of a dream, a dream that slipped from his memory even as he emerged from the shadow of sleep. At first he thought he had merely found his way from one dream to another. The blinds were drawn, sunlight flooding the room. There was a smell of bacon permeating the room. He looked around and saw that Robin’s bed was made and the piles of dirty clothes that customarily littered the floor had been put away.

  When Gretchen emerged, hair combed, wearing a yellow blouse and red plaid skirt, he knew not only that he was dreaming but that the dream was one he did not want to wake up from.

  “The coffee’s perking,” she said. “I thought fried eggs this morning, unless you’d rather have them scrambled.”

  “Fried is fine,” he said automatically. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. He was awake. This was not a dream. This was happening. “Where’s Robin?”

  “I gave her her breakfast and let her play outside with one of her friends. You were sleeping so nicely I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Let me get you some coffee.”

  “Gretchen—”

  “Just a second.”

  She came back with a mug of coffee. “I’m all right now,” she said, her voice very matter-of-fact. “I know you’ve heard that before but this time it’s true. I woke up this morning, and everything was different. It was, you know, I don’t know how to put it. Like taking off sunglasses indoors. That’s not really good. I can’t think of a good way to put it. But it’s true, Petey. I’m all better.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m not even going to apologize. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know how you put up with me but it’s over.”

  He got up, reached out a hand for her. He said, “I’ll help you make it, baby.”

  “But I don’t need help,” she said. She smiled radiantly, and he tried to guess how long it had been since he had seen her face aglow like this. “I mean it,” went on. “I don’t need any help. I don’t know what was, but whatever it was, it’s all over now.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  “I know so.”

  “It’s such a lightning thing.”

  “I know. I went to sleep with something and it was gone when I woke up.” She frowned in thought. “I think it was the death.”

  “Last night?”

  “Whatever his name was. Something Italian.”

  “Bill Donatelli.”

  �
��That’s right. Donatelli. I’m sorry for him, except that I’m not really sorry, I never knew him, and I can’t be sorry about anything that snapped me out of it. I don’t know how it happened. I guess it took a death to bring something home to me. How important life is, maybe.” She thought about this for another moment, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what done dood it, does it? Thing is, it’s done. Christ, baby, I’m ravenous. I already ate and I’m gonna eat all over again. Eggs for you and another batch of eggs for Mama Gretch. And how would you feel about running down the street for some English muffins?”

  “I think we have some.”

  “I think we had some. Robin had one and I had three. Get some jelly, too. There’s a little left but I don’t intend it to last long. Get lots of things, come to think of it. I’ll eat anything you bring back. Look at me. I look like total hell.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “I guess you still love me if you can say that. I look like a Vogue model who didn’t know when to quit. You know that line from ‘Cocaine Blues’? ‘Woke up this mornin’ and my nose was gone.’ Well I woke up this morning and my tits were gone. Among other flesh. These clothes are the closest I’ve got to the right size and there’s room for a couple of extra people in here. Go. Get food. Much food. Go!”

  There had been other transformations, an endless parade of New Gretchens, but none had ever been like this. Each time she had pulled herself back together with an agonizing effort, fighting long odds, doing a little at a time in the attempt to overcome whatever it was that was dragging her down. Now there seemed to be no discernible struggle at all. She was simply herself again. She had taken time off to be someone else and now she was once again herself.

  At first he had tried to make her take things a little at a time. That first morning she had insisted on going to her shop and straightening it up. “Give it a few days,” he advised her. “Get used to being you.”