“Monday for what?”
“You want me to spell it out? What are you, bugged? On Monday I want to hear her voice.”
“You realize how ridiculous that sounds.”
“Quit playing around, all right?”
“You looking for a séance or some shit, this island’s not the place.”
“It’s tiresome now, Kenji.”
“Then give me what I came for, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Monday,” she said in her infuriating deadpan way. “Because this smelly little backwater is so cramped and bored and twisted up that if I wanted to spread the word, say Aetna Simmons and some Tenderheart Bear poisoned her landlady, I wouldn’t even have to try.”
So she really was American. In a way, that explained a lot.
I said, “You have a hell of a lot more to worry about than a couple of dead people.” And that puff of hot air was no defense against her sucker punch. I never even saw it coming.
“If you don’t care about yourself,” she said, “if being an accessory to murder is all the same to you, do it for her. Rescue her. That’s what you want, isn’t it? She doesn’t have to go down that way, Kenji.”
I managed to say, “What?” But the clout drained out of my voice.
“I understand why Aetna was tempted,” she said softly. “But it was selfish of her to get you mixed up in this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Really.”
“You’re a decent liar, Kenji. Except in certain vulnerable moments.”
“I don’t have vulnerable moments. That’s just not something I do.”
This didn’t deserve a response and didn’t get one. So close to me that I could feel her breasts through my shirt, she looked me in the eye and said:
“You say her name during sex. Aetna. You say it a lot.”
The absence of breeze was a roar in the bushes. I thought I could hear ants storming up the stoop. The strength in my body left me with a deafening wheeze, the rattle that pipes make when they try to take in water but the tank beneath the house is empty. Shock and outrage? Sure. Indignation, the whole bit. What respectable person wouldn’t? Here was this unruffled stranger, this impostor harping on “vulnerable moments” with impeccable impassivity—and I mean, the name, oh god. I couldn’t find so much as a sniff of air.
She smiled and said, “I figured you had no idea.”
I couldn’t find the shards of my bravado either. I had nothing to say.
“Monday,” she said. She went into the house and closed the door.
I rushed after her and knocked. I knocked and insisted, I banged and I shouted and for lack of anything to call her shrieked the name she’d stolen. But she was gone. Vanished like a ghost. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the house was empty, if it had stood there empty since Myrtle’s dead body went off to the morgue. I had no salient facts to fling at the impostor and dare her to refute, I had nothing more with which to bargain, no one answered my knocking, so I stopped.
I think I put my forehead on poor dead Myrtle’s door as exhaustion fell on me. Like someone lost for weeks in a dark wood, I wanted to stumble to the cottage. I wanted to stand by the empty card table, sink into Aetna’s absence, and see if I felt any sort of infusion. I don’t know why I should’ve wanted such a thing because UnDoreen must have been bluffing about “certain moments”; she was just trying to rattle me. So I didn’t go to the cottage. I found myself driving not westward but further east, deeper into St. George’s and up a curving hill.
The Unfinished Church protruded into the blue sky like a broken tooth. If I were Thomas Hardy, I might tell you that I went among the stillborn limestone bricks, the arches that never had a chance to resonate with voices lifted up in song; I might say I found where the altar ought to be and that I lay down there, and when I closed my eyes I realized they were wrapped in fog. The sun would come down through the nonexistent roof and warm my face, but what the living took for the light of a mere star would be in fact the kiss of an angel. Aetna would appear, more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. She’d say it was time to go now that I knew the truth. And we would disappear.
Maybe more Hans Christian Andersen than Hardy. Or a schmaltzy way of saying that when I finally got out of there, I was ready to die of chagrin. I was at the church for all of five minutes. I sat in the car and watched the space where a spire never was. Embarrassment drove me into Hamilton in search of someplace sane.
A Front Street café. Armchair by a window. Tea I never touched. Outside, a bunch of tourists heading for a pub. Cruise ship in Hamilton Harbour. I succumbed to catatonia that blurred the view and swept away the noise. The death grip of longing clenched around my chest, and I couldn’t shake it off or wriggle free, having no idea what I was longing for.
Rescue her. Those words changed everything. Did I cry out for her? Did I love her?
Sometimes it takes a stranger to make you realize things like that. Am I still in love with her?
How alike we are, all façade, all shadow. Few people will appreciate her defiant beauty. I’ve done that for her, and she’s been a muse for me. It’s because of Aetna that I stopped feeding time into the shredder of indifference and got back to work. For Aetna I’ve thrown my life into upheaval as I’ve been wanting and hoping and fackinwell yearning to do for Nabi. Let me imagine Aetna in place of Seneca in Rubens’ bloody, painted tub, shrouded in her boundless curls. Instead of looking up, she looks down and to one side at the scribe waiting at her feet. One more word, he begs of her. But she’s said all there is to say. She looks at him kindly, full of understanding, willing that as he once shared her desperation, he will one day know her courage.
AS6.
Pink paper soaked in words, ink, bitterness in handwritten caps (cf. Kurt Cobain). First-form or just ideation (imagining)? This unnamed you. Fake? But look closer.
You can read AS6 as the ghost of AS1. Haunted by the same frustration as Aetna relived it again and again. Making a living by courting the wish for death, a feeling so precise that it eludes all concepts. How often she must have turned back. Like Sisyphus. Knowing she’d gone wrong because she still wanted to live. Until one day she succeeded. Or not, and she snapped the drawing board across her knee and fed it to the first piece of Level 6 equipment she could find.
This is where drugs are useful.
I’m getting carried away, but you can see where this is coming from. AS1, AS6: one couplet haunts both documents, word-for-word identical. This is the strongest evidence for the Clocktower Hypothesis. One is a draft of the other, or both are drafts in preparation for another note that got lost or became evidence in some underwriter’s report; either way I never found it. Another repetition: the word helplessness appears four times in AS6. In AS6 and AS1, helplessness is a poison, again the same word in both cases.
Both documents were meant to stand out from the others. Despite the pink paper in AS6, AS1 is more attention-grabbing, textually speaking. But the pink paper is there, same color as Aetna’s cottage, to draw readers’ attention to AS6 as the most honest of the Ten; the words set down by her own hand, by Aetna Simmons’ own dark hand. AS1 foreshadows what happens in AS6. But only after AS5 and AS4 brought her an authentic philosophical understanding of what she was and what she wanted could Aetna be so honest and exhaustive in her honesty.
Which makes me wonder who you are, Aetna’s nameless addressee. Who is worth the risk of honesty?
It’s tempting to believe that if she really wanted honesty, she would’ve said so. Said it with her voice instead of silent squiggles. Of course, Auto-Tune and deconstruction made myths of honest voices long ago, but some people just can’t let go of the idea. Denial is a powerful thing.
Was there a recording of Aetna’s voice somewhere? Incriminating voicemail? A tape thrown out with the cat? That and a Ouija board were all I could come up with.
Except the Ten. Her authorial voice.
UnDoreen hadn’t seen them. If she had, she wouldn’t have been so ready to discard Czarina’s body. But why blackmail me for that?
I learned she was ruthless when I collided with the armoire. Her co-conspirators would have to be ruthless too, I figured. I thought of Clocktower but also RealDoreen. RealDoreen didn’t look ruthless, but if her mother shocked her with news of a lost sibling and then kicked the bucket, it would only have been natural if, distraught and confused, RealDoreen wanted the truth. With her background, she’d know how to find a ruthless gumshoe. But she would’ve told Neil Ingham. And I could tell from that flicker of ire: UnDoreen’s stake in this was personal.
Journey abroad, deep cover, weeks among taxidermied cats and a dead woman’s dust. She’d invested so much she’d mired herself in denial. She preferred it to coming up empty. So much was at stake, built around her like that oppressive hedge, that UnDoreen was unable to see, could not believe, even imagine, that Aetna Simmons was no longer of this world.
Selective insanity. Common in cops and clients.
I pitied UnDoreen. Tough, sexy, smart, and nuts. The fact that no one else seemed to give a damn just made her stubborn, her delusions grew into convictions, and then—picture this: she comes all the way from the US, bent on tracking down a ghost she doesn’t believe in; she finds one person who is oddly sympathetic to her cause; she leaps to the conclusion that I’m in love with her quarry and, I guess, that I’ve got her squirreled away somewhere. Anyone with an obsession could’ve made the same mistake.
When my phone rang, my tea was cold. Nothing good was going through my head. Nabi said, “I’ve got till two a.m., come get me.”
This was a shock. And I wasn’t at my best. I mumbled something like, “But isn’t it Friday?”
“Yeah, it’s Friday. Iesha’s covering. Baby, it’s not a lot of time. I have to see you.”
I ran to the car. People I knew saw me and said hi, but I kept running. From the Number One Shed parking lot to Bull’s Head is five minutes, maybe less. Nabi hopped in and said, “You were in town already, sweetie?”
“Must’ve got your brainwaves. You okay? Did something happen?”
“Let’s drive, baby, time’s ticking.”
She was as jittery as I was bamboozled. She got comfy, gave my knee a pat, looked straight ahead. By the time we left the curb, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Nabi, just tell me. Don’t make me keep guessing, I can’t do it, I don’t have it in me, I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay, baby, take it easy. Let me get my thoughts in order.”
I imagined her doing that bubble thing again. Or fluffing up a pillow on top of my chest, a muffler for the fatal shot. I reached for her hand. She gave it and was still.
“I do have. Something. We should discuss,” she said. “I’m just not sure—”
“Nabi, come on, it’s like you’ve got a noose around my neck and you keep dropping it.”
“Baby, I’m sorry, it’s just hard. No, let me finish. It’s just that, well, Erik told me stuff that’s pretty personal—”
“Erik.”
“Right. And I’m not sure I should tell you. It might upset you. You’ve been so, you know. But I prayed on it, baby, and I’ve decided it’s the right thing to do.”
Green light on Spurling Hill. Horns blared and I forgot to move. I could only look at her and say, “Erik.”
“Okay, baby, you can keep driving.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Not in vain, baby.”
“Sorry.”
Nothing my brother had to say was news to me. Our rivalry wasn’t new to Nabi either, but it still seemed to shock her that I hadn’t been in touch with him. We were home before I could get a word in; and by that time, yeah, I was upset, for it was crystal clear that Erik was trying to spin a sob story to turn Nabi against me, some crap about my general foxy allure. I didn’t mention Faith Tabernacle, didn’t want to go there, and anyway I was too appalled by what sounded like Nabi taking his side.
“No, baby, I’m not, I’m just saying that in spite of all that stuff, he’s reaching out to you. I mean, there’s got to be a reason why he keeps calling even though you’re ignoring him. He needs help, and for some reason it has to come from you.”
“Damn right that bye needs help.”
“Kenji.”
“Did he tell you what he wanted?”
“Not specifically. But how he was talking, I think he just needs his brother.”
I put my confused, exhausted self on the couch. “This is what’s been eating you all this time? For four days? Erik?”
“Look, I know it won’t be easy. But he’s already taken the first step.”
“Nabi, please answer my question. All right?”
She sighed and sat down. Her arms went around me, her little head onto my shoulder. But it was more of a pressing thing than a cuddle. She began a prolix description of the Thursday-night function to which she and Martin never did get formally invited but went anyway. He spent the whole evening carping about the missing invitation. In the car he wondered where it might have gotten to. At the party he made pointed jokes about it to people who couldn’t care less.
“Lord knows I tried, but Kenji, I just couldn’t bring myself to laugh. Martin didn’t like that. I think that’s where the trouble started.”
The trouble. On that fateful evening, on the way to the lavish Furbert condo on the harbor, Martin was distant, even cold. He asked his wife why, in case she had any idea, that troublesome colleague of hers would attempt to “misappropriate BRMS resources for personal use.” He meant Gavin, of course. Again. Nabi made him state the details plainly and expressed her disapproval of his attempt to make me sound like a thief. Rather than apologize, he belabored the issue: What interest does he have in criminal investigations? What does he know about the fine art of detecting? When did he learn to appreciate the nuances of insurance?
“I said it’s for a novel. But Martin didn’t believe me, baby. He thinks you’re up to something and I’m helping you cover it up.”
“Well, ya boy got something wrong wif him, then, innit.”
This remark should’ve earned one of her exquisite scowls. Nabi didn’t even blink. She just went on in a hollow voice. “He asked me why, if you’re writing a novel, you’d need to know intimate stuff about a specific insurance company, stuff that only somebody with BRMS-type clearance could access. I don’t know how to research novels, baby, that’s what I told him. But he said that wasn’t an answer. And he’s right. Do you have an answer to that, Kenji? Not for Martin. I mean for me, sweet genius.”
She looked through the glass door to the balcony. Beyond the balcony to the turquoise, sand-bottomed ocean with its dark splotches of coral. Beyond the ocean to the sky, a dashing blue, empty but for a few threads of cloud. She didn’t look at me, though there wasn’t even room for a napkin between our bodies.
I heard myself saying, “I want to know what really happened. Regardless of what I end up writing.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Truth for its own sake? Come on, baby. You chasing this woman’s ghost won’t do a thing to help her, I guarantee. And in the meantime what’s it costing? I’ve asked you to move on from this how many times. I don’t want it to come between us—”
“What do you mean come between us?”
“And you just keep on going like there’s nothing else for you to do.”
“What do you mean, Nabi?”
She gave me a furtive glance, got back on the business about Martin, how I’d let my work with Aetna “go too far,” i.e., “involve” Martin. In exasperation I began to pull away, but she didn’t want me to, she kept pressing against me even as she grew more fidgety. She said the problem wasn’t BRMS, just Ma
rtin. Martin, once he’d decided Nabi and I had something to hide, took that and ran with it. He was still running the same track he’d run already (this is Martin we’re talking about) when he took Nabi to lunch the following day. Nabi shooed him off and tried to put it all out of her mind. But it felt “like hammerheads circling around me, and so I just had to see you, get it all out in the open.” She got Iesha to cover. Fine. Called Martin around four. Only this time he wouldn’t buy it.
“He asked if you and I are having an affair. Point-blank like that.”
Point-blank. And Nabi didn’t even look at me. She frowned at something in the airy, narrow distance between her left shoulder and my right.
This was the last thing I needed. My path to detonation wasn’t long at all by that point, and as I tried to tell her yet again what we had to do, I began to make my way along that path. But Nabi didn’t want to listen.
“No, baby, let me get this out. It was a shock, you know, him coming out with that.”
“You’re telling me.” We’d had our secret for so long that while we were never careless with it, I suppose it had achieved a sort of unbreakable air.
“I told him no. Martin’s like, You sure? I said, Go on and call Iesha. I asked him did he see something like, I don’t know, evidence?”
So the bastard accused Nabi of “resisting” the Thursday-night function and being “dismal” at that stupid party even though he thought it was an important event. Her “reticence” that evening translated into her not being “supportive” of him and his aspirations. She blamed this on me, by the way. She said she couldn’t get her cheer button working because she was worried about me and the deadly threat a writing project seemed to have become. Martin’s other “evidence” turned out to be the Gavin thing and the unfounded conviction that Nabi had lied to him in order to help me escape his inexorable scrutiny. (How one gets to be team leader by slavishly dogging the stench of one’s own prejudices I’ll never know.) Maybe he expected that she’d burst into tears and crawl home to him on her knees, but my Nabi’s all too easy to underestimate.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 22