Little God Blues

by Jeffrey M Anderson

  I sat at an empty workstation, trying to regain my composure. Maybe Moira’s play was good: she certainly had a flair for the dramatic. Eventually I started flipping through Francine McLain’s file, the early documents: Notes for File sketching the results of meetings; first contract for what would become Soviet Suspicions; more notes; cut outs of reviews; details of sales by region, by book chain, etc. Finally I got to a Note for File from Claudia.

  Client proposes to change direction, write a murder mystery. Perfect murder. Client argues that her many years of research and organizational skills will enable success. Client also argues that her Russian well now dry. She had seen its future but now she must wait for Russia to catch up. Implication—she will come back to it but must do something in meantime. Iken argued that there was still money to be made on her reputation. Showed client an article on Russian capitalism gone awry.

  Conclusion: Agreed that Iken would look at her murder book treatment. Client agreed to think about negative side of Russian capitalism.

  I flipped through rafts of mundane paperwork, eventually found the five-page murder treatment. Dinner parties. Two married couples, Alice/Bruce and Constance/David. Bruce and Constance are having an affair. Alice can read the betrayal in her husband’s face. The cuckolded husband, David, is oblivious to it. Alice is a biochemist who coolly plots the revenge murder of her too-happy husband. Bruce has a high-pressure job in the City: he enjoys letting off steam with the occasional recreational snort. She will lace his cocaine with a lethal untraceable catalyst. (In the treatment, Francine calls the drug/catalyst combination the “Vial” with ensuing puns such as “Vial deed” and “Vial Solution”). It will look like simple misadventure. The murder is performed effortlessly. Bruce is dead.

  I shivered now.

  David, the other, still breathing husband, reads his wife Connie’s grief and deduces the affair. He starts to suspect Alice of her Vial solution. David decides to blackmail Alice; malice, not avarice. More pressure is brought to bear on her. Next he ups the ante by demanding the vial for his treacherous wife, the grieving Connie. The treatment proposed a long middle section about blackmail and pressure. There is a pivotal scene between Alice and David, the murderess and the blackmailer. Alice claims her husband beat her, was essentially evil incarnate. The last page of the treatment had two lines slashed diagonally through them. Behind those lines Francine was proposing an ambiguous ending shaded toward Alice getting away with it. Claudia’s handwritten note at the bottom objected to that. Maybe Bruce is in a coma? she had written.

  I needed to get out of Iken and mull over this revelation in private. First, though, I forced myself to flip through the rest of the file. Subsequent paperwork showed other branchings. Francine pushed for her ambiguous ending; Claudia still pushed back, calling it too amoral. Claudia counter-proposed a non-fatal concoction that incapacitates Bruce, a serious but manageable stroke, so that he lives on a lower physical and psychological flame, suspecting what happened, not able to do anything about it.

  Various Notes for File continued, mainly from phone calls. Francine maintained that only murder would give the story the requisite psychological and narrative impact. Claudia wanted something more positive. The last Note for File sketched Claudia’s final push back. Suggested author writes first two-thirds of novel. We would review from there. Agreed to small advance (to be discussed).

  Interpolated among those papers were ones relating to Francine’s third book, Roaring Nineties. The implication: some sort of deal has been struck between them. So the murder book wasn’t a career change, more of a hobby. That didn’t make much sense: a nine-year hiatus between book projects, and now Francine was writing two in different genres?

  I flipped to the top, the most recent notes, and worked backwards about three years to the start of Francine’s current and now forever unfinished project, a book describing her years in Moscow at the turn of the seventies. I found the treatment and subsequent comments. They mainly dealt with relevance: how the book could capture the interest of the post-Soviet world. Written at the bottom of the second page in writing I now knew to be Claudia’s: Hardcastle: clear with govt.

  Unlike Moira, I didn’t run out of Iken. I understood that impulse, though

  CHAPTER 15

  I had called Jolanta Rawicz several times once my German PI company came through with her contact details in Krakow. The voicemail message was in Polish, but I recognized her voice. Maybe she was away; maybe she didn’t want to talk.

  After my Mountjoy maneuver, Sula and I were more equal. I was no longer the chivalrous undeserving knight chasing this perfection of womanhood. I saw that I had been inside a pleasant bubble, impervious to the outside world, her father only a theoretical threat. Now I understood more of her background: where she lived, the compromises she had made with her father, how he was a considerable force that was more than theoretical, to the point of following me. How else can you explain the newspaper photo?

  All this was happening as I was making serious adjustments about my case. The perfect murder treatment changed everything, as if I had fallen through a trapdoor into a dark cellar full of skittering, chirping rats. Rather than making progress in my case, surrounding and compressing it into meaning, it was now the opposite. Did I really want to shine a light in the slimy corners of this cellar? Did I know how to find a light? Up to now I had been leisurely poking around, a cynic would say it was more keep-busy work than any kind of serious striving. Now, Francine’s death had become real to me—and personal. My murder comment tied into a chain of events I couldn’t even guess at. Catherine Drysdale had to be in the picture somewhere. A long and complicated story wound back into the past.

  With Francine’s perfect murder treatment I was getting closer to the reality of Kirk’s death. It was probably overload, but I was down. This happened from time to time. My instinct at these times was to be alone, brood, lick my wounds, re-energize and come out fighting. Strangely, those down times would often lead to a hit song, invariably upbeat. It felt good to have Sula to share my doubts, but that meant all my limitations and inconsistencies were on display. Before I always had ways of going off by myself.

  Today we were meeting at our Marylebone gallery. I would have time to say hi to Titus and be waiting for her at the atrium restaurant for coffee.

  I hadn’t been in a particularly good mood to start with, but now was in danger of tipping into the Full Poodle, Kirk’s quip describing my dark moods. I was raw from Kirk’s death, still raw really from Molly’s six years ago. Now Francine was dead, and of the same drugs as Kirk, possibly due to my murder comment, probably tied to the perfect murder treatment. Then there was the disappearance of Natalie’s mother, Claudia, who was directly connected to the pivotal Francine. Hardcastle not long for this world. Not to forget Kirk’s book of my father’s poems, still on my dining room table. I was nowhere on that last part, except the tenuous fact that both Hardcastle and Francine were fluent Russian speakers who had lived in Moscow. After all that, my romance with Sula was like an intermission from a dark opera.

  I got to the Wallace Collection early, paid my respects to that fifteen-year-old boy who had been dead for three hundred years. He only had twelve more years as he faced the viewer, looking so weighed down and thoughtful. I needed to run at these black crows, get them to scatter. I sat there lethargic; also, snarly, petulant, testy. Well, I guess if this thing with Sula was serious, she should know about My Dark Side.

  Sula had good news. Her latest attack had worked; she had cleared away significant swaths of underbrush in her effort to stake out the shape of her ideas on quantum gravity. Professor Howell was most encouraging. The poor girl wanted to share the good news with me. What timing! I made the right noises. My voice sounded thick, insincere, stripped as it was of any confidence in sounding otherwise.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Well, I had promised myself that this was one girl I would be honest with.

  “I�
�m not in the best of moods.” Then, when she didn’t say anything, “It’ll pass.”

  She looked at her folded hands. “You prefer that I leave you alone?”

  What could I say? I didn’t want her to leave; I didn’t want her to endure my current mood, either.

  “Sula, it’s a mood. It’s not something you can do anything about or talk me out of.” I was thinking of certain soothing jazz chords. You never knew when a song would come; the odds were better now.

  We sat there, neither wanting to part. No apparent way forward. Was it my mood alone that quieted my passion? Just now that power she had over me, a sense of the limitless, the way my blood buzzed in my veins, all that was more a pleasant memory than a present impulse. I still wanted to be with her, though.

  “Sula, I need to visit the bathroom. Excuse me.”

  I walked away, feeling alone, far away from home. I fought off a brief wave of cultural vertigo. This foreign girl, foreign even to this foreign land. The cold, gray weight of clouds above our glass atrium. The lonely flat I would soon be heading back to through rush hour throngs of glassy-eyed and sneezing commuters.

  I ran some cold water, scooped it over my face. I looked in the mirror, for what I don’t know. The museum had a twin line of doors to individual unisex units, so I had all the privacy I could want. I closed my eyes, tried to relax.

  There was a knock on my door. Some ill-defined amount of time had passed. This didn’t seem right. It was late in the afternoon. Sula and I may have been the only ones in the place.

  I opened the door to Sula. “Jim, please, I don’t want you to be angry.”

  “I’m not angry. Well, maybe I am. I’ve gotta stop coming here.”

  She smiled, one I hadn’t seen before. It seemed to have a plan behind it.

  “If I’m angry, it’s not with you,” I said. “Sula, I can’t be happy all the time.”

  “Happy,” she repeated, to herself. Now a scaled-down version of that same new smile. “If you insist on being angry, you can be angry in me. At least then I would get some, something good from it.”

  “In you? What?!” I couldn’t believe this.

  She pushed me back inside, shut the door, and locked it. We just stood there. I couldn’t move; she didn’t either.

  God knows what I looked like. I was off balance; I certainly hadn’t anticipated that hard I’ll-take-care-of-you push.

  “Sula, it doesn’t work like this.” My voice sounded thick, far away.

  She took off her overcoat, hung it on the peg behind the door. She looked at me for a long second, a level, committed look. Then her black leather jacket. Slipped off her sweater, bunched it over the same peg, another long second of a look. She started unbuttoning her blouse. “I want all your anger.”

  I stood there shocked, transfixed, flat-footed.

  “Sula! What’s happening?” What I meant was, Madonna to whore in 3.5 seconds? Not just any Madonna; mine.

  “I want you to fill me with your anger. I want to enjoy it as much as you do.” She stood there with her open shirt hanging, untucked, a lacy, low-cut black bra showing off the enticing planes of her breasts. She paused, now uncertain, vulnerable, a weight in her shoulders. Her face went blank for a moment. Just then what had been bewildering felt plain wrong. I watched her will herself on, starting at one of her sleeve buttons.

  “Sula, don’t. Not here.” I went to her, pulled her blouse together, started to button the one just north of her cleavage. Why do they put them on backwards? I got the first two done, then gave her a hug. It was January, not at all warm in here. I rubbed her back, smelled her hair for courage. I could lose myself in the musty delirium it brought. Too cold for lingering, though. I slipped behind her the better to finish on the buttons, my arms resting lightly under her breasts.

  Sula was docile, not helping, not resisting either. She was mine to do what I wanted with. I worked the buttons, the awkward male. I unclasped her slacks, unzipped them; tucked her shirt in. My fingers crept a silly millimeter under her panties for a light pull before retreating. My scant claim. I was behind her doing this. I thought I could see the side of a faint smile.

  I did her up. Got her sweater, helped her with that. It was a turn-on, dressing her like this.

  “Come back to my place,” I whispered. I had the right blend of desire and soft entreaty, but its effects were largely undone in this public bathroom.

  She gave me an ambiguous smile, unlocked the door, and opened it.

  “Please.”

  “You have ejected me. It will take me a long time to recover.”

  “Rejected,” I corrected her; we had that understanding. “No, I have only delayed my acceptance to a more appropriate location.”

  “Rejected,” she repeated, nodding, a new word to be remembered. An inward smile. “You can’t talk me out of this. It’s how I feel. I am a reject.”

  I didn’t pursue my claim with much vigor. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wasn’t certain I was ready for intimacy with her. I wanted that, of course, but I was freaked out by her comment, several meetings ago—maybe I can call them dates—that, for her, our romance would have to be until death. I understood it, appreciated the seriousness behind it, appreciated more that for Sula it would be one jump, one chance, so it had better be right. I wanted her to do the right thing. Was it possible I was that right thing? I had my doubts.

  I put her on the bus at Oxford Street. (Sula was not shy a few pennies, as the Brits would understate, but she played counter to that. She flew economy, took buses—as long as they weren’t too full—avoided fancy restaurants.) I always watched her board with sadness. Her frame seemed so thin, her shoulders hung heavily, her smile back to me wistful. All that happened now.

  As the bus pulled away, I stood there with such contradictory feelings: regretful and horny; impressed and confused. She had reanimated my passion, brought me out of my bad mood, and all with a hedged bet: that I was noble enough not to follow through on her bathroom ploy—or smart enough to understand it would only confirm the Lothario reputation I was determined to live down. The good ship Us had been re-rigged, and her sails were tight with wind.

  CHAPTER 16

  Three weeks into January now. I had a 2:00 p.m. meeting with Hugh Ravenhall, Claudia’s NE1 date, at his office at his request. The same receptionist escorted me to the same conference room. Just like last time I turned down her offer of coffee, tea or water. She reminded me of Sharon, PA to one of the band’s main lawyers. Sharon was not happy with enforced waitressing. I was the only one who noticed that.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Ravenhall hasn’t returned yet. We expect him any minute.”

  I stood by the window for a time looking out at the roofs, chimney pots and lighted windows. Just over there was a roof patio with green Astroturf and chairs, looking forlorn in the freezing drizzle. Over there the church steeple of what my investigations (I had been early for this 2:00 p.m. meeting) revealed as St. George’s.

  I sat in the same pillowed leather chair. The whiteboard had different writing this time. There were two sections, one marked “institutional” the other “private” both with figures and percentages, institutional prevailing by a long margin, with question marks next to two of the bigger sums. Something about it. Something familiar. That couldn’t be right.

  I waited. It was now 2:15. At 2:17 my cell phone rang. All the screen said was call. Well, I had waited for Ravenhall long enough. I answered.

  “Is that Jim?” A foreign accent, sounded far away. I confirmed that yes, it was me. “This is Panos Lamzaki.”

  “Who?” One of those knee-jerk utterances where you know the answer a second later but now you have to wait for it.

  “I understand you are seeing my daughter.” He made my alliance sound like the most natural thing in the world.

  “Seeing? I’m not sure what the right verb is. Whatever it is, it has ‘trying to’ in front of it.”

  “Sula has wri
tten a mail to me. She asks me to leave you alone. She asks me to let her be happy. From this we conclude that she likes you.”

  “I sometimes get that impression.”

  “She is cautious. If she has written a letter like this one, then she has worked her way to a conclusion. This is why I am calling.”

  I waited for what came next. It couldn’t be good.

  “I worry about Sula. Of course, I am her father; this is my job. She is most special. Again a father must say this.” A short pause. “Has she told you about her mother?”

  “That she died.”

  Now the receptionist was back. She understood important calls; she made a complicated gesture to see her when I was finished.

  “Yes, in a car crash. My dear wife was instantly killed.” He paused again. I was learning that his pauses were not a good sign. “Sula was next to her.” A cruel longer pause. “She was thrown quite far from the car. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Sula didn’t accept that. She fought back to life; she fought severe head pain for many, many months. I cannot begin to tell you how severe was her pain or how much she fought. She has had many operations on her left arm, in your country. Why do I tell you this? Because it is necessary in order to understand her.”

  “My intentions are honorable, if that’s what you’re worried about.” My voice quavered.

  “Normally I trust Sula’s judgment. But love is different. While logic guards the front door, love enters the back one. I am not crazy enough to think I can change Sula’s mind. You must know how strong she is.”

  “You hope to change mine?”

  “It is better you know this about my daughter, don’t you agree? I know she has much trouble to talk anything about it. Maybe such circumstances cause you to change your mind about her. In that case, such information has been worthwhile. If it doesn’t, if you still want her, then this is good too, since you should know this about her.”