At this point I was entitled to throat-grabbing. I was too doped to do anything but sit there.
“What’s this woman look like?” I said.
No reason for the feeling that I already knew. And when I learned the truth (the legs: unforgettable), I shouldn’t have reacted. Tony looked alarmed. He said, “You know her?”
I lied. It was transparent. The shock, you see. She wasn’t an investigator, not a hireling of any sort, but the mastermind and a hypothesis confirmed! I made Tony keep talking. Yes, he slept with her too, only she told him the truth.
Her name is Char Richards. The VP stuff is verifiable by Google. Her face, in all its perilous pulchritude, is absent from Clocktower’s website probably because she isn’t “Chief” something-or-other. If you want to be precise about it, and I think we should, she’s Vice President of Risk Management and Director of Life Underwriting. According to insurapedia.com, that means her job is to: “ensure the integrity of underwriting practices,” “drive changes to underwriting philosophies and methodologies,” “act as an expert resource for underwriters on unusual or complex cases,” and “serve as a primary resource for the establishment of standards and policy for the evaluation of risk during the underwriting process.”
So for Vice President Richards, risk management does not mean what it means for Martin. It’s simpler for her. In her ruthless world, risk means how much money it would cost for Clocktower to do one thing or another:
To honor or deny a claim, for example.
To fake a suicide note or let some kid toddle away with millions.
Put an author on retainer or shell out a fortune every time somebody dies.
Stand there watching when the author grows a conscience, or nudge the new liability towards expiration.
When she and Tony were alone, Char, high on Empyreal, couldn’t resist sounding her own horn. It was she who played matchmaker to Clocktower and CAM, igniting a relationship that continues to this day in the mutually rewarding manner Gavin described. In answering fanfare, Tony bragged that I am one of only two Empyreal brokers in the world. All this to impress her with the drug’s rarity and by extension the peerless luxury of a night in his company.
When he woke up, she was gone. So was a portion of his stash. She didn’t use it to kill Myrtle, who by this time was already dead, but she knew how to set a stage. She didn’t have to convince any cops, only make me believe that she had enough to blackmail me and thus make me reveal in my terror of a murder charge—what, exactly?
It hardly mattered. As soon as I found out the truth, Empyreal was secondary. My body remembered Char’s heat and Char’s grain, her weight and astounding strength as she thrust into me and pulled me into her, and meanwhile Aetna’s blood was everywhere on Char and in her, staining her desire and her every move. Maybe it seems bizarre to you that I should grieve at all for Aetna, who would’ve meant nothing to me if she’d survived. But it kept me in bed with my pills for over twenty-four hours: I betrayed Nabi for the woman who drove Aetna to her death. And when I dreamed of Masami, I realized the feather wasn’t a feather at all. It was a wakizashi. The sword of a samurai.
Menboku ga nai. Shame as the strength of the disgraced or captured samurai as he drags the wakizashi across his belly.
Sunday. I’m at home. How not-me is that.
If she broke a man’s heart, she’d be ocean enough not to care, she’d be bird enough to disappear. & she’d never have the joy or bother of belonging to anyone. I mean “she,” of course, who isn’t really called Seabird except in my book & isn’t really anything like what I call Seabird. Didn’t start out that way, anyway. But she got to learn to fly, & now all I did was not say what cannot be said to K, & Lord Jesus I’m no ocean I am MISERABLE. Rather stick a pretty picture of an Infini-blue suitcase set inside my book, & I know my book would rather have that too. What hacker’s dumb enough to put her issues in a book she loves too much to destroy? Well I can’t help it, the one I should be able to tell I can’t tell, especially now cuz when I didn’t answer him I thought he might pass out.
Yesterday. Car boot sale at Mt O. Martin sold some old golf stuff. He also got up early & helped me bake & put the cookies in cute boxes. & eat some while he’s at it. Honey was bouncy. Like he hadn’t got home from work at 2 a.m. Like he’d forgot we’d quarreled. Course M never forgets, he just prayed on it & made up his mind to forgive. He was whistling “So glad I’m here, so glad I’m here, Lord,” wanting me to sing bass while he tooted soprano, silly adorable man. It was fun, it helped us. Thank You, Lord.
But on our little Island, everything rubs elbows. Mt O’s right near Kenji’s place. 10-min walk could’ve taken me to him. Selling cookies with my happy husband at our church, I’m worried sick about my lover. K held me without saying nothing while I cried instead of answering. & I was such a coward I threw myself at him, thinking I was dragging us into some kind of refuge, loving with everything we got. & he forgave me too, poor Baby, he barely said anything else all night. & then I lied & then I had to make him drive me home. I couldn’t see him in the dark. & he still didn’t say nothing, so I said, “Chin up, Baby.” & K said, “See you Monday.” & this is what I’m thinking while giving cookies to Mrs Raynor’s babies (making $0 for Mt O) & Martin’s making the rounds of all the other cars, buying a little thing from each one, Lord bless him. I watched him, Martin laughing, everybody loving him. (Why can’t he do this all the time like at “functions,” I mean just be himself?!) I thought if I just ran up to Kenji for 5 mins while Mrs Raynor watched our car (she’d have made more sales than me, that’s for true!), just long enough to tell my Baby: Don’t hurt, Baby, please. But that’s nonsense. So then what? I can’t say I’m sorry for everything we fought over, cuz I’m not. I mean I’m not sorry I did it, I’m just sorry we fought. But that’s K’s fault, not me. Lord, help him “let the dead bury their own dead.” Don’t let him do anything rash. Anything else rash, I mean.
Luke 9 in the car going home. Honey wanted to review before Sunday Bible Study, & Saturday p.m. we were going on his colleague’s boat. So I read Luke, M drove. & for the first time (God save me), I read it without wanting to. Normally I love it, Jesus & all His friends, 5 loaves, 2 fishes. But this time I read, “Take nothing for the journey… If people do not welcome you, leave their town…” & I couldn’t stand it, it almost hurt. No, mercy, it did hurt. It made me envious & angry. & I’d never noticed it before, but (say I’m wrong & I’ll believe You, tell me all my sins are messing with my eyes) Lord Jesus, isn’t this kinda weird:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves & take up their cross daily & follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world & yet lose or forfeit their very self?” ???!!! Doesn’t that say the opposite of itself? Denying yourself is good & no good? I’m not mixing up translations, You’ll notice there are no “…” How could I look at that & not feel like throwing up my hands? & that feeling scared me half to death.
I was scared to ask my husband. But You’re supposed to have answers for sinners who pray. Poor Martin said, “It all boils down to choosing to go out & work on spreading Jesus’ love or choosing not to & staying home, which is just selfish.” Well, that sounded like an ultimatum to this acegirl. It never did before, but right then it sounded like merciful Lord Jesus saying there’s only one right way to live & that’s His way even though “what good is it…” & suddenly I thought that’s a horrifying thing to say, I don’t care who says it. It also sounded like no matter what I did I’d “lose or forfeit my very self.” Then my stomach went all funny like the car was weaving out of control, but it wasn’t. But just cuz I was terrified I almost snapped at poor Honey, who was trying so hard to pretend there’s nothing to forgive. Then I felt bad for wanting to snap (I never snap) & thought maybe Jesus was right & I was lost already, my �
�very self” carved up & shared out between M & K. Then I felt horrible for thinking that about the boys who love me. & then I thought maybe I was really lost cuz I’d chosen Jesus & Moses & this Lord of theirs who said I couldn’t love 2 gentle boys the same. & THEN (sigh!) I thought of Jesus saying, “Go… Take nothing for the journey…” & I thought maybe I should ditch all 3 (M, K, & Jesus too!) & go find out where I’d put the steadiness I thought I had inside “my very self.” & when we got home I felt woozy & thought, How can I show my face at church tomorrow???!!!
Long evening on M’s colleague’s boat. I’ll just say it: torture. Boat’s moored up at Dockyard where Ethelberta is. So I had to look at her all abandoned & empty. Baby named it for some girl in a Thomas Hardy book, a poor girl who escapes to the city under a fake name & makes it big. Thinking of that girl right then, I felt sad & mad at the same time. Spent the whole party dreading Sunday. & watching the water turn black. & the dark darkening in Kenji’s eyes. & thinking about when K & me & Ethelberta hung out off South Shore at night, just the 2 of us in a small boat on the big ocean & we felt safe like that.
Couldn’t sleep when I got home. Worrying for K. Watching my husband snooze & worrying for him. Dreading Sunday. Dreading the sun. It came anyway.
After I’ve been on a boat, I always feel like I’m still on it for a little while. I pretended the feeling was bad instead of nice. Told Martin I was queasy. Sent him off to church with apologies for the pastor & the choir. Martin frowned, he knows we need to pray. But he also knows Bible Study couldn’t manage without him.
So here I am. Alone in bed. Trying to feel like I’m in some wide open space. Not doing too spiffy at it.
I woke up with a leg in the bathroom, rest of me in the hall. It was hard to breathe. My body felt like I’d need a crane to lift it. A pale patch on the carpet was a triangle of sunlight from the study. I don’t recall anything more except an anvil’s weight on my eyelids, and it took forever to get down a little air. What awakened me? A noise? If I’d lain there a moment longer, I may not have woken up at all.
Getting to my feet was a five-act comedy featuring wobbly legs, a wall that wouldn’t stand still, the threat of vomit on the carpet, and the towel. I must’ve taken a shower, all I had was this towel, and since I was shivering it seemed to develop a mind of its own. Anyway, at some point I really did hear a noise. Even in my sordid state, I managed to discern a glimmer of the only explanation possible and strained to reach it.
Nabi. Come to rescue me. Ditching work on a busy Monday because she couldn’t tolerate my distress, not even telepathically. Because I’d made a proposal and she had a response that couldn’t wait. I didn’t care that she would have to see me like this. I even wanted it, a vainglorious sop. I would weep for her forgiveness. Movement in the walk-in closet. I dragged myself to meet her.
One good thing came out of this. I lacked the breath to call her name.
She said, “You’re not answering your phone.”
She looked at me. Dropped what she was holding and my knees went out from under.
“What happened?” she said quietly. “What’ve you done?”
Not Nabi but Char Richards. Her astonishment could’ve passed for apathy. She stood above me in her high heels and pencil skirt, wondering if it was worth putting more time on this expiring meter, then crouched and—“Stay away from me,” I gasped—and took the damn towel and tossed it in a corner, so there you have it. Happy?
“Is that your vomit outside?”
“How did you get in here?”
She looked at me like I’d asked how she found her foot each morning. “Can you breathe? You sound like you’ve got something in your—”
“Get out.”
That was all I had in me. I was leaning on the doorframe, I think. Next thing I knew, her nails were digging into me, she was shaking me. Something about a kit. Turned out she meant Narcan, which my supplier comps me every time (I keep telling him I don’t need that shit), somehow she figured out where it was in the bathroom. And okay, I was like a rag doll, she made me lie back and shoved the Narcan thing up my nostrils. I lay there and she watched. A good twenty minutes. I’m hanging out for all to see and she just sat there. She counted my breaths, I think, as my respiration eased up to a serviceable speed.
“Should probably get an ambulance,” she grumbled.
“No.”
“What is it, Empyreal?”
“Leave. Go on.” What did she expect? Thank you for observing the great humiliation of my life. It’s so nice of you to stop by in the middle of my overdose. So convenient too, what with you being a blackmailer. If I’d had the energy, I would’ve chased her out with a Swiffer, screaming invectives and aiming for the head. But I was naked on the floor, confident I’d lose control of my stomach any minute.
Mortification hurts, just so you know. It can shovel you inside out.
Narcan is the devil in a teeny yellow tube. Just a whiff, and its instant-withdrawal chemicals attacked the fuzzy shields around my pain receptors. I couldn’t stop vomiting. I imagined cutting my throat open.
Only one remedy. Zohytin for pain. Zo for terror and fury, Zohytin for shame. For oblivion. Or at least so I could form a thought. Shuddering in a bathrobe, groping for the library and Hardy, who understood the meaninglessness of suffering.
She was on the couch. Trying to guess the password on my business phone. “Your phone’s in Japanese.”
Her patience is scary. That’s what it takes to be a hunter.
Most men would enjoy finding this woman in their living rooms. For me the shock felt like impalement. She tossed me a smile like I’d only been to put the kettle on. Seeing Hardy yawning open like a corpse under dissection, she laughed like the engine in a muscle car. I took my pill, shelved the book, availed myself of the nearest armchair. She assessed me like I was going cheap but what she really wanted was something in a lighter fabric. I couldn’t take it. I had to close my eyes. And then the bitch who made Aetna want to die had fingers in my hair. She perched on the arm of my chair and touched my head. Not like you’d fondle a loquat before ripping it from its life-giving branch, but softly. Like it should make me feel better. And what was that? A joke, that’s what. Even at the height of our hunger, she and I never touched each other without rage, without some disgusting contest going on between us. So her being gentle now was farce. And something told me she wanted me to know it. Why? Because it meant that she respected nothing, not even agony. And so her trick with the Narcan was just that; a feint, a one-up. Because she could. A sharp pain in my stomach almost killed the frail shadow of dignity she’d left me. I couldn’t even try to shake her hand away. I said in a voice that scraped my throat, “Why are you—”
Right. I was too abject to finish. She shrugged. “We had an appointment.”
Then she whipped out the dress. It was behind her, draped over the back of the couch. A little purple and gold sundress. Nabi bought it just to wear with me, and I swear to god that as I snatched it from Char’s dripping claws, had it not been for Zo I would’ve slapped that woman to Peru.
“Size six,” she said. “The clothes in the cottage are size six or equivalent. Where is she?”
“I told you to get the fuck out of here.”
“Why’d you do that with the pills? Because you know you’re cornered. She was here,” said Char. Looking around. Sniffing the air. “Why did she run?”
“What’d you say to make her think she had to die?”
“When you knew she was gone, why did you let Myrtle Trimm call the police?”
“You’ve got it wrong,” I began, but I shut up. Nabi’s little dress crumpled in my lap, soiled by coincidence and a dumb misunderstanding. But you see, I couldn’t give that woman anything of Nabi’s. Especially her name. I didn’t trust my head, everything was twisted up, so I said nothing. Raised the dress to my lips. Aetna and I wer
e lost already anyway.
“How much did she tell you?”
I just shook my head.
“Where is she, Kenji?”
“Dead. And you as good as killed her.”
She slapped me. Fack, she was fast. If it weren’t for my complexion, I’d still have the wound to prove it.
“Wake up,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Or what? Tony owned up. You got the pill by screwing a junkie and plundering his stash. You planted it in Aetna’s house the day after I met you.”
“This Tony person,” she said stiffly.
“Don’t even worry with it. He gave me your name, your title, Clocktower Insurance. There’s a picture of you on the Internet, Char.”
She sat down on the couch. Not in shock. Just civil.
“You broke into Myrtle’s house,” I said. “You went in there and started throwing out the woman’s stuff.”
Stripping away the lies (some of them, anyway) that hid UnDoreen’s identity (well, the name they put beside her picture at IntlInsuranceAssn.org) didn’t amount to an excavation of the true essence (which probably doesn’t exist) of Char Richards. She probably knew it was a matter of time before I learned her name. Maybe she thought I’d always known it. Still, you’d think my revelation would count for something besides another trigger for her understated laughter.
“What do you intend to do about it, teddy bear?” she said, leaving me no choice but to feign nonchalance about her freakish nonchalance.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 24