The Trouble with Eden

by Lawrence Block

  “Robin’s with her now.”

  “I know.” “Well?”

  “No, I wouldn’t worry about it. Peter, I have to think. I have a lot of scraps and shreds that I have to put into some semblance of order. I’m going to drive around for a little while. I’ll be talking to myself. It’s a useful mechanism but considered antisocial. I’ll say any number of things and you’re not to comment or interrupt. I want to be able to pretend you’re not here at all. Do you understand?”

  “No, but I’ll shut up, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It is. Not another word … I should have been a psychiatrist. And a lawyer, and a judge, and Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be … . I should have been a pair of ragged claws … . Or a criminal, a master criminal. A con man, an illusionist… . Had to be an actor. Other men have to live one life all the way to the grave. Actor lives a thousand lives and never has one of his own… . Brave man never tastes of death but once … . Hi-diddly-dee, an actor’s life for me . … We’ll go to Paradise Island, Peternocchio, and let our noses grow, and we won’t be back for donkey’s years … . You can’t kid a kidder, but God never made an actress who couldn’t be upstaged. Or upstaged an actress who couldn’t be made … . What it comes down to is illusion, one against the other. Not what you know but who you look like … . Turn it around and look at it backwards. Suppose the place was a Mooreeffoc, and Dickens got tricked into thinking it was a coffee room? Never would have been the wiser, Bud. Older Budweiser … . I grow stout, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers out … . In the room the women belch and fart, talking of Jean-Paul Sartre … . It’s the morality of it that’s the sticking point. You can’t play God unless you’re Charlton Heston … . Damned sight easier on the stage… .”

  At last he was silent for a long time. Peter sensed he was finished, but many of his silences had been almost as long, and he did not want to interrupt. Ultimately Warren said, “Game’s over, lad. If I ever hear any of that gibberish repeated I’ll stop loving you forever.”

  “Some of it sounded really great. Did it mean anything in particular?”

  “Think of it as background music. Would you mind awfully if I went and looked in on Gretchen?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. If for no other reason, to supply her with a useful explanation for your absence. I gather you don’t want to play the dutiful lover right at the moment.”

  “Or ever.”

  “That’s understandable, but it might shatter her if you stay out all night without a word.”

  “Christ, I never even thought—”

  “I’ll find a thing to tell her. And I want to look at her myself. I believe you, Peter. And I believe Anne. But I believe my own eyes more.”

  “And you think you’ll be able to tell?”

  “I know I will.”

  He waited in Warren’s car. It took Warren less than ten minutes. He came back wearing an expression Peter had not seen before. His face was pale, with spots of color in his cheeks that looked like rouge hastily applied. And there was the trace of a smile on his lips.

  “Well?”

  “Yes, of course. I found just what I expected to find. Just what you and Anne described.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why, nothing at all.” He turned the ignition key, pulled away from the curb. “She played her part perfectly. I told her you’d had trouble at the theater. Tony Bart attacked you for no reason at all. She wasn’t surprised, it meshed perfectly with her paranoia. I explained I was organizing a committee to get you rehired, and failing that, I might be able to find you something better. She said not to worry about her and she’ll let you sleep late in the morning.”

  “Where did she slip up?”

  “She didn’t.” Warren ran his hand over his forehead. “She showed me the same face she’s shown you and the rest of the world. She was the old Gretchen, fully recovered, calm and collected and sensitive and aware. She met me head on with the mask perfectly in place.”

  “Then how did you know it was a mask?”

  “Because I’ve known her since you were in diapers, Peter. And there never was an old Gretchen. She was never like that in her life. She greeted me as if I were her dearest friend on earth. And she has hated me consistently for more years than I care to remember. That was really all I had to see.”

  “Why does she hate you?”

  “I’m taking you to my house,” Warren went on. “I told Gretchen we’d be there and I want you to be able to receive any phone calls she might think to make. And I have some calls of my own to make. I worked something out before. It’s shocking. It will surely be the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and I doubt I’ll outdo myself in the years remaining to me. But I also think it will work, and I can’t think of anything else that has a shadow of a chance.”

  “What is it?”

  “In due time. You’ll have a part in it. You played some walk-ons before you inherited the light board, didn’t you? Were you any good?”

  “I was never onstage long enough to tell.”

  “Did you live those roles?”

  “There was nothing to live.”

  “Then you’ve answered my question. You’re not an actor.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “No, but you’re going to have to be one for … perhaps two days. Can you play a part, Peter?”

  “I’ve been playing one for weeks.”

  “But you weren’t absolutely sure it was a role. And now you are. Can you act the same as you did?”

  “I think so.”

  “And can you lie?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You won’t have lines to learn. Strictly improv. The curtain goes up tomorrow morning and the last act ends probably on Sunday.”

  “I can try, Warren.”

  “You may not want to. Even if you’re able, you may not be willing. We have to create an illusion, we have to write a script her part won’t play against. I had to see her face to face before I could talk myself into it.”

  “Warren?”

  “When we get there. Not now. I’m going to need a drink first.” “Something else. I asked you a question before.”

  “I know you did.”

  “You never answered it.”

  “No, I didn’t. Why does she hate me? Oh, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. It’s common knowledge; you’d have heard it yourself except it happened—too long ago to be interesting. We were lovers once.”

  “You and Gretch?”

  “Is it all that hard to imagine? Yes, she and I.”

  “When I was still in diapers.”

  “When you weren’t long out of them. She was very beautiful then, and utterly damned. The madness was always there. It was less sharply defined but it was always there. I think I sensed it. Perhaps I did, perhaps that’s hindsight. I left her for … oh, for a man.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t say it so heavily. I had come out long before that. And I had gone through heterosexual phases before Gretchen. None after her, though. Not really.” A pause. “I had to leave her. It seemed less disloyal to leave her for a man than for another woman. I’m afraid she never saw it that way.”

  “You and Gretchen.”

  “She and I. The Odd Couple—we could each have played either part.”

  “You still love her.”

  “Yes, of course. I never stopped loving her and she never stopped hating me. There are two sorts of people in the world, those who go on loving and those who hate. It’s always seemed to me that the former half tend to be male and the latter half female, but perhaps that’s just my own special perspective coming to bear.”

  “I never would have guessed any of this.”

  “Probably not. And neither she nor I ever dreamed of telling you, which is something worth consideration when we have world enough and time. We have neither at the moment, thank God. We have arrived. You’ve never been here, have you? That’s Bert�
�s piano. It’s only a shame he can’t be here to play it for you.”

  “When will he be home?”

  “Tomorrow night, I think. Tonight, actually. It’s already Saturday morning. He went to New York some eighteen hours ago on a secret mission. I’m supposed to believe that an aunt of his is critically ill. I hope you can lie better than B. R. LeGrand, Peter, or our mission is doomed in advance. He’s as opaque as a broken window, and I’ll have the job of pretending shock and dismay when he comes home and announces he’s leaving me. Don’t be downcast. It falls miles short of tragedy. And don’t worry that this is all a scheme to put your fair white body next to mine.”

  “Christ, Warren. I never thought that.”

  “I know. Well, your virtue’s safe. All you can lose tonight is your immortal soul.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  By five o’clock Saturday morning Peter was in bed at Gretchen’s side. She had not stirred when he entered the room, nor had she made any response when he stood at her side and spoke her name. He had done so on the chance that she was awake, hoping that even so she would pretend to be sleeping. After a few minutes in bed with her he relaxed. This time she was genuinely asleep. He had learned to tell the difference.

  He would not sleep himself. He was keyed so tightly that sleep might have been impossible in any case, and the fifteen-milligram spansule of Dexedrine he had swallowed an hour earlier had eliminated any possibility of sleep. He felt the speed working within him now. His mind was working with the clarity that nothing else on earth could supply. He was so much smarter now, so much more capable. And that, of course, was the drug’s blessing and its curse. You could not function so perfectly without wanting that perfection to last forever, and so you piled speed on speed until your system over-amped and your mind’s legs ran out from under you.

  Warren had given him a handful of the pills. They’d been discussing the role he had to play, had spent hours putting the details together and fitting them in place, until Peter mentioned that, in his few appearances onstage, he had always felt more competent and surer of himself when he was behind a little speed.

  “Then by all means drop some,” Warren had said. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “The thing is, I was into it pretty heavily at one time. It took a long time to crash completely. What I’m getting at is I’m a little afraid of it.”

  “Can you get hooked in thirty-six hours? I really don’t think you can. I don’t doubt it will improve your performance. It would do that much if it merely increased your confidence. And it does boost IQ by around ten points in test situations.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “It also comes closer than anything else to duplicating the symptoms of schizophrenia. Have you heard that?”

  “No. That explains why total speed freaks are such terrific company, wouldn’t it? That’s just what we need. I’ll turn into a temporary Gretchen.”

  “Not in the dosage you’ll get. But consider the part you’ll be playing. If it gives you just the slightest nudge in that direction, you’ll be more convincing, and you’ll also be more sensitive to Gretchen herself.”

  “Right. I can dig it.”

  He would also be awake until it was over. He was already exhausted, running on nerves, and the drug would keep him running. It was worth it. He did not want to be asleep while Gretchen was awake. If she flipped, he wanted to be able to handle it.

  Assuming that he could handle it. He was slight, and by no means strong. She was not strong herself; the weight she had put on was a great improvement over the way she had been, but she was still in far from perfect physical shape. She would have the strength of madness, and Warren had assured him that this was no myth. She would not hold back, she would act flat out with nothing held in reserve, and this would make her faster and stronger and more deadly.

  Well, at least he would be awake. The drug in his bloodstream would see to that, and when it began to wear off another pill would reinforce it. And it would give him a little bit of an edge if he needed it; he, too, would be a little faster, a little stronger, a little deadlier.

  But he knew he would feel better once Robin was out of her reach.

  At daybreak Clem McIntyre spoke his wife’s name. She woke instantly in the bed across the room from him.

  She said, “I’m right here, darling.”

  “You ought to be at home, baby.”

  “We both ought to be at home. It won’t be much longer. How do you feel?”

  “A little better.”

  “We’ll be out of here in a few days, darling. Because you’re getting better.”

  He was silent for a few minutes. She eased her legs over the side of the hospital bed and got to her feet. She stood at his bedside looking down at him, then seated herself in the chair at the side of his bed.

  He said, “We’ve never played games with each other, Olive. This is no time to start.”

  “I thought you’d gone back to sleep.”

  “Just ran out of words. I’m not getting better. I know what cirrhosis is. You don’t have to be a doctor to know what it’s all about. Every alcoholic knows the prognosis and it ain’t good. When the liver goes it’s time to make reservations at the boneyard.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t talk about getting better if you won’t talk about getting worse.”

  “You’re some woman.”

  “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “And you’ve got a hell of a nerve anyway, Clem. Saying we never played games with each other. We played a game the first day we met.”

  “A game?” He closed his eyes for a moment. His color was better today, she noticed. Not good, but better. “Yes, I guess you would have to call that a game. We both knew the rules right from the beginning.”

  “And we both won.”

  “And we both won. That was a good day, wasn’t it?”

  “They’re all good days,” said Olive McIntyre.

  When Gretchen got out of bed Peter was instantly wide awake. Until then he had coasted in a waking dream, running Warren’s plan through his mind, hearing voices speak the various lines until what he was going through was closer to dream than thought. Her movements snapped him out of all that, and he was alert.

  It was a temptation to pretend to be asleep, to squeeze out an extra hour before he had to step onto the stage. He knew better. He was not at all certain that he could act the part of a sleeper well enough to fool Gretchen, and the most important thing he could do was make sure his own mask stayed in place.

  He got out of bed just as she was emerging from the bathroom. He met her in the middle of the room and took her in his arms and kissed her. He had thought this would be difficult. The ease of it surprised him.

  “You’re up early. I was creeping like a mouse. I thought I would let you sleep.”

  “I’m surprised I slept as long as I did.”

  “How long was that?”

  “What time is it now? Seven thirty? It was around five when I got home, so what does that make it? Two and a half hours.”

  “Christ, Petey. You want to crawl back in bed?”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “I mean, less than three hours.”

  “I’m all right, though.”

  “Warren told me that something went wrong at the Playhouse. Is that why you can’t sleep? Shit, baby, it’s just a job.”

  “Something went wrong, all right.” He lowered his eyes and let anxiety show on his face. “Something went wrong. And it’s a lot more than a job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated. “Warren and I were up the whole night,” he said. “Gretchen, it wasn’t an accident that I was fired.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I have to tell you this. And I’m not sure I know how.”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’m myself again, baby. I’m a
very strong person, stronger than I ever knew.”

  “I know you are, Gretch.” He drew a breath, “There’s a plot against us. That’s why I lost the job last night. That’s why a lot of things have happened There’s a plot and we’re the ones it’s aimed at.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I just found out last night. That’s why I’m a little shaky. You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

  “For a long time, yes.”

  “I wish I could have known earlier.”

  She bit her lip. “I tried to tell you. But I was afraid. That you would think—”

  “That it was part of what was wrong with you before?”

  “Yes. And in a way it was. They made me the way was, until I learned discipline and concentration. Discipline and concentration bring control, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, God, Petey, I’m so relieved. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I thought—I can’t even say it.”

  “That I was in on it.”

  She nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, yes. I couldn’t make myself believe that, though. I knew it was what they wanted me to believe and I knew you loved me. But I thought they might have found a way to turn you against me. They’re very clever. I thought they might have duped you.”

  “They almost did.”

  “We have so much to talk about now. Christ, I haven’t been able to relax in ages.” Her face clouded for a moment. “I still can’t relax, can I? That’s what they wait for. But at least there’s one person on earth I can trust. Oh, we have so much to tell each other.”

  “You know more than I do. And I’ll want to hear all of it. But it had better wait. I think Robin’s waking up.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “No. God, no. She’s part of their scheme, though. In fact I think it’s aimed at her almost more than at either of us.”

  “The thoughts they’ve made me have about her—”

  “But we can control our thoughts now, can’t we?” She nodded, beaming, and he felt like a pupil who had come up with the right answer. He took hold of her and kissed her again, and she clung to him with a fierce grip.