I listened to the renewed silence as if it were complex polyphony.
‘Claire?’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t kill your father.’
She started sobbing again.
‘You didn’t? You know what that means?’
She was way ahead of me. It took me another moment to work it out.
‘Oh, I see.’
‘He must have done it himself.’
‘He talked to me about it, Claire. I’m sorry, this is not the moment to tell you this. But he did. He even talked about ways to do it. He bought the gun off me so he’d have one handy.’
‘And you let him have it?’
She sounded indignant now.
‘Claire, this is America. He could have bought a gun any time he wanted. He happened to buy it from me, that’s all.’
‘But why did you take a gun there in the first place?’
I had no answer to this.
‘Tony?’
For a moment, I thought Lucy had come on the line, something which used to happen all the time in our phone-ridden household.
‘Who’s that?’ I demanded.
But there was only white noise, followed by an insistent electronic howl.
She’d hung up on me, which was most unlike Claire and probably meant she wanted me to call her back right away and demonstrate my concern. But I couldn’t. My concern at this point was all for myself.
Mason had played a clever game with me the night before, never lying but revealing almost nothing of the essential facts. Which were that I was at the very least a material witness in a potential homicide investigation into Allen’s death, and most probably the prime suspect.
I could imagine the kind of law enforcement and judicial procedures that went on in Nye County, Nevada. If they got someone like me in their paws, with photographs of me pointing the presumed murder weapon at the victim, they wouldn’t bother looking any further. On the basis of what I’d stupidly revealed to Detective Mason, they even had two solid motives: Allen’s stash of porno material featuring me and my dead wife, and his financial finaglings which had left her a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Hell, they wouldn’t even bother with a trial, never mind further investigation. They’d just warn everyone in town to turn off their lights and stoves and TVs before six that evening since there was likely to be a brief power outage due to exceptional demand down at the county jail.
I ran upstairs, opened the door of our bedroom and hunted frantically through the file where I kept my passport and other papers. Whether tactfully or to save herself unnecessary labour, Claire had not bothered with this space on her tidying mission before the memorial service. Our bed had not rearranged itself, which for some reason disconcerted me. The covers were thrown back, the sheets rumpled, the pillows bore the imprint of our sleeping heads. There was the pink flannel nightdress which Lucy used to put on like a tent, flapping her arms about to get them through the sleeves, a comic pantomime which never failed to make me laugh in pleasurable erotic expectation. There were her shoes, scattered in random disorder all over the floor, where I invariably tripped over one of them on my way to pee in the night. Her clothes in the closet, her make-up on the chest of drawers, the paperback biography of Greta Garbo which she’d been reading, her knickers on the floor, her sanitary napkins in the closet.
Files from work, unpaid bills, the silk scarf I’d bought her in London, the wooden chest she’d inherited from her mother where she kept her meagre stock of jewellery, mostly featuring pins and earrings with apple motifs, gifts from well-meaning associates at work. The framed photographs of her children, our dirty laundry in a plastic basket, stacks of toilet-paper rolls from Costco, a handwritten note in her loopy scrawl reminding her to pick up the dry-cleaning.
Not here.
WINDOW OR AISLE?
That’s what they ask, isn’t it? Always assuming you get a choice in the first place. ‘Would you care for a window or an aisle seat today?’ It’s one of my favourite bits of the airline liturgy, right up there with the classic ‘Adjust your own mask before attempting to assist others.’
The shuttle I took down to SFO didn’t bother with such niceties. It was like a subway train. You bought an e-ticket, showed some picture ID at the gate and grabbed the first available seat. That was fine with me. On this occasion, I wasn’t interested in the view or easy access to the toilets. I was watching the door to see who boarded after me.
I may have decided to leave precipitately, but I’d planned the manner of my departure with some care. No luggage, for a start, not even an overnighter. I’d added my passport and Green Card, a Sony Walkman and a few tapes to the contents of my overcoat pockets, then called a cab to take me back to the hotel where I’d been staying. I told the receptionist that I’d be checking out early the next day and settled the bill in advance with a credit card. Then I walked through to the sushi-and-oyster bar and slipped out a side door to the street.
A short walk brought me to a far grander hotel, with a line of waiting cabs outside. No one was following me, so far as I could tell, but I hung around in the lobby for another ten minutes, inspecting everyone who entered or left, before slipping the doorman a five and taking a cab to the airport. I didn’t take any chances there, either, staying out of sight in the bar, my back to the wall with a clear view of the doors, until the plane started boarding. No one looking remotely like a policeman had appeared at any point. By the time I buckled myself into my seat, I was beginning to feel reasonably confident.
The other end, I had just over two hours to catch the night flight to Paris. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but I didn’t relax my vigilance. Having bought a ticket and checked in, I left the international concourse and hid myself away in a hutch for smokers on the first floor of one of the domestic terminals. Once again I boarded the plane at the last moment, and only after a careful scrutiny of my fellow-passengers. No one seemed to take the slightest interest in me, but I didn’t completely relax until the 747 hit its stride on the runway and the rumble of the wheels suddenly ceased. There below us was the city where Lucy had met Darryl Bob, but it could have been a postcard as far as I was concerned. All that mattered was that we were airborne, and that from a legal point of view I was now on European soil. I even had a window seat.
Settling back into it as the plane made its turn towards the east, it occurred to me that back in the days when I used to turn a quick buck by writing articles for in-flight magazines, I could easily have come up with a multiple-choice quiz called ‘Are You A Window Person Or An Aisle Person?’ The idea has just the right amount of specious plausibility to hold people’s interest for about twenty minutes, but not enough to make them feel bad if the result didn’t pan out the way they’d expected. The reason why the distinction still held my interest was simple. Lucy was an aisle person, I’m a window person, and that’s how we met. If we’d both been one or the other, it would never have happened.
At first I was annoyed, to be honest. The flight at Heath-row had already closed, the seat next to mine luxuriously vacant. Then she appeared, flushed and breathless after a mad dash from Terminal One, where her incoming plane had arrived late. I nodded curtly, cleared my stuff away and buried my nose in the book I’d bought at the airport. Even after a single glance, I could tell that she was one of those women who have learned from experience to expect to get hit on in such situations, and I wasn’t in the mood to give her the satisfaction.
For all my pretence of indifference, she imposed herself on me without making the slightest move in my direction. I pointedly did not speak to her right through the meal service. I glanced over every once in a while, though, noting a good body, concealed rather than displayed, and a serene face belied by her shrewd, amused gaze. It was as though she had already worked out the petty variation on the usual routines which I was playing, and had decided to let me make a fool of myself in my own good time.
And in the end, of course, we got talking. Nine and a half ho
urs is a long time to ignore someone who is sitting closer to you than anyone in your own family would normally choose to do. We exchanged data, as one does. She was a marketing manager for the Washington State Apple Commission returning from a trade show, divorced with two teenaged children. I was separated but not yet divorced, no children, a freelance journalist heading out to do research for a newspaper series tentatively entitled If You Want To Make A Call, Hang Up: Virtual Realities On The Pacific Rim.
I produced a bottle of twenty-year-old, cask-strength Macallan which I had bought at a speciality shop in Old Compton Street, but was now nervous about trying to smuggle past US customs in addition to the duty-free litre in the overhead bin. A few glasses of that smoky gold spirit, cut with the mineral water which Lucy had brought along, persuaded me that it probably wasn’t a good idea either to try and import the two-hundred-gram tin of Iranian caviar I had picked up at the airport. I went up to the galley and scored a couple of teaspoons, and we proceeded to pig in.
At a certain point in the oral orgy which then ensued, we moved on to rubbishing our cabin-mates. I soon discovered that Lucy had a devastatingly acute eye for the minutest details of accent, gesture, dress, grooming and general accoutrement, combined with an ability to synthesize her findings into a scurrilously witty and unsparing caricature.
Above all, she was one of the very few women I had ever met who could make me laugh. I don’t know why, but in my experience viable humour tends to be a guy thing. Men I loathe can still crack me up, but almost none of the women I have loved at one time or another have been able to provoke more than a token smile.
Lucy was different. She would go to any lengths to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, but she was never deceived and she wasn’t a hypocrite, just so long as the object of her whispered monologue had no chance of overhearing it. This necessitated her placing her mouth interestingly close to my ear. I could feel her breath on the lobe and in the inner convolutions.
At one point a small, pale child came past, followed by a woman in her sixties with a grimly competent look. She had elaborately permed faux-blonde hair and a tightly set square jaw. She was quite short, with a massive bosom and midriff tapering down to spindly legs, and wore stretch pants and a glittery sweatshirt emblazoned with what looked like a combination of a cat and an angel. She held the girl’s shoulder with one hand, while the other grasped a dauntingly huge handbag.
‘Now there’s one tough gal,’ said Lucy. ‘Married a bum when she was still cute, then had a bunch of kids. That little waif must be one of her grandchildren, poor thing. She’s raising it because the mother turned out too flighty. She used to be herself, but that’s all over. Now she’s the matriarch of a clan of losers somewhere in the woods or east of the mountains. She rasps orders at them in a husky, smoker’s voice, then bails them out when they get in trouble. The TV is never turned off in the house, even when everyone’s asleep.’
‘So what was she doing in Europe?’ I asked, scooping out another heap of the oily grey roe and inserting it between her lips.
‘One of her no-hope sons went into the service. He’s stationed at some base in Germany, put his usual crude moves on a local fräulein and ended up in the brig. Patsy here knows that left to his own devices he’ll screw up completely, get a dishonourable discharge and end up back on her hands, so she went over to sort him out and show the MPs a hard way to go. The kid’s the guy’s daughter, to be produced like an onion when weeping is required. God this stuff is good. And what’s really great is, you don’t even have to be hungry to eat it.’
The next of the passengers to be subjected to our collusive malice was a fortyish man wearing one of those outdoor leisure ensembles that cost more than a Brooks Bros suit. He shambled past and then turned to wait outside the lavatory, which was occupied. Anxious to show that I could play this game too, I gave him a quick once-over. He had a generically benevolent, beaming face accessorized with expensive glasses and a dress-down Friday haircut. A social worker? Or a teacher? No, he had too much money for that. That slightly Messianic look made me think televangelist for a moment, but his clothes were straight liberal baby-boomer. And the one thing I was pretty sure about him didn’t fit with any of this.
I saw Lucy studying me with a slightly amused smile. She knew I’d tried and failed.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
‘A corporate trainer. One of those guys who goes into Boeing or wherever and teaches them how to “enhance creativity” and “grow diversity”, or maybe spot nutcases who might flip out on the job and shoot someone or sexually harass their co-workers. The point being that when the case goes to court, the company can say, “Hey, we did everything we could! We provided training for all our people.”’
‘You sound pretty cynical. Don’t you think that stuff sometimes works?’
‘Sure it works. It works the way the KGB worked. You can scare most people into pretending to go along with almost any bullshit you want. But you haven’t changed them. People come the way they come. All that crap does is turn them into liars.’
She smiled at me.
‘Sorry if I sound bitter. I have to put up with it all the time at work, getting stuck in groups to talk about “Three things that make me special”. I mean, how difficult is it to sell apples, for God’s sake? I’m damn good at my job, and I bet I make twice what that little prick does, but he has the power to force me to crawl around the floor on all fours as part of some fucking “team-building exercise”.’
‘Here, have some more malt and calm down.’
‘I’m sorry. There’s lots of things I love about my country, but when I see someone like that I feel ashamed to be American.’
‘But he’s not American.’
‘What? Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m prepared to bet he’s British.’
‘Did you hear his accent?’
‘No, but look at the way he’s discreetly checking everyone out. He can’t hear what we’re saying, but he’s sussed that we’re talking about him and he’s letting me know that he knows. You guys don’t even notice that other people exist, never mind care what they think about you. You live in a culture without perspectives.’
‘Yank-Bashing 101. Very good, you got straight As. Hey, check out this babe. Oh, you already are.’
The previous occupant of the bathroom had emerged and was making her way along the aisle towards us. She was a woman about Lucy’s own age, or perhaps slightly younger, with long dark hair, liquid brown eyes and high cheekbones which had been carefully highlighted. She wore narrow linen trousers and a beige silk shirt opened just low enough to reveal a diamond necklace and a hint of cleavage. Her expression was sullen but determined.
‘Forget it,’ said Lucy succinctly. ‘You don’t stand a chance. Second wife is what we’re talking here. Big rock and wedding band, plus those tastefully sporty diamonds around her neck. So not some cheesy car dealer’s trophy. He’s more powerful and richer, a kind of elegant silver fox. Maybe a corporate lawyer whose first wife helped put him through law school. Note the clothes. Understated but very expensive, sort of fake casual, but a little too studied to be really sexy. She knows the deal. She doesn’t have much to say, but then she doesn’t have to say much. And when she does talk, it’s in a squeaky teenaged accent completely at odds with the look she’s trying so hard to create. Women like her always forget to get their voices fixed.’
Lucy took my arm, touching me for the first time, and turned to look me in the eye. As she leant towards me, I had a mad urge to kiss her.
‘And you know what else?’ she whispered. ‘She doesn’t like to fuck.’
Window or aisle? On the flight to Paris I had my preferred choice, but the darkness fell rapidly and there was nothing to see. The aisle seat was occupied by a formidable Frenchwoman of an age which was becoming increasingly certain, embalmed in a mummy case of arrogantly elegant couture. I never found out her name. Let’s call her Madame Dupont.
I attempted without
much success to strike up a conversation. She seemed both unsurprised and not particularly interested to find that I spoke her language badly, but I rattled on anyway, just for the pleasure of feeling the chewy texture of French in my mouth. Madame Dupont listened with half an ear and a vague smile, from time to time dipping compulsively into a designer bag containing moisturizing cream, bottles of Evian, fashion magazines and other accessories. A further accessory, it later turned out, was Monsieur Dupont, a wily-looking old bird who at his wish or hers was seated four rows back, but occasionally stopped off on his perambulations up and down the aisle to mumble something which sounded like a complaint to his wife, who dismissed it with an expressive shrug.
After the meal, which Madame Dupont fastidiously passed up in favour of a selection of deli delights from David’s on Geary, the attendants settled down for the night, leaving us to our own devices. The movie didn’t interest me, so I rummaged around in my coat pockets for the Walkman and tapes I had brought along. I also found the package with the British stamp which I had picked out of the mail on my return to the house. The handwriting on the Jiffy bag was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Inside was another envelope, and a note.
Dear Tony
Here they are at long last, the photographs you requested. Have fun looking through them. Or perhaps it won’t be fun.
Anne
I remembered that during our negotiations about the divorce, I had asked my previous wife to send me the photographs of my early life which had ended up in the formidably organized and catalogued series of albums that Anne used as a shrine to the family life which, despite her strenuous efforts, she had never quite managed to create.
I opened the inner packet, which turned out not to be an envelope, just a sheet of paper folded and taped around the photographs, all of which slid down between my knees, scattering on the floor. I painfully gathered up the ones I could reach, but a few seemed to have slipped back towards the seat behind me. I ignored these for now and settled down to view what I’d come up with.
Thanksgiving Page 7