Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  “This is David Loogan,” she told them, “Tom’s new editor.”

  Laura Kristoll wore a silk blouse and capri pants. She was sleek and blond and had a degree in English literature, which she taught at the university. Most of the interns were her students. She saw to it that Loogan always had a drink. She offered him towels and swim trunks in case he wanted to go in the pool. When he wandered off toward the edge of the woods to get away from the crowd, she let him alone.

  Later, as he was leaving, she approached him and said quietly, “David, I’m afraid you haven’t had a good time.”

  “Sure I have,” he told her.

  “You’ll come again then.”

  “Of course,” he said, though he hadn’t intended to.

  Through the summer Loogan had a steady stream of editing assignments from Tom Kristoll. He worked on more than one story at a time and soon the manuscripts littered his rented house, the pages dotted with revisions in his fine, clean handwriting.

  One evening in July, Kristoll called him and asked to meet him for a drink. Loogan drove to a restaurant downtown and a waitress led him to a booth paneled in dark wood and illuminated by a single bulb in a fixture of gray steel. Kristoll had ordered him a glass of Scotch.

  “I didn’t think you’d agree to come,” Kristoll said. “I thought I’d have to drag you. I had it all planned, the dialogue written. ‘When I offer you a drink, you’ll have a drink and like it,’ I was going to say.”

  Loogan made a show of relaxing. He sat sideways, his back to the wall, his left leg bent, the other stretched along the cushioned seat.

  “You’re a closemouthed man,” Kristoll said, “but I like a closemouthed man about as much as any other kind. I’m not going to make you tell me your secrets.”

  “I don’t have any secrets, Tom. Ask me anything.”

  “All right. Where are you from?”

  “Portland.”

  “How long have you lived in Ann Arbor?”

  “Four months.”

  “And what were you doing, before I hired you?”

  “For work?”

  “For work.”

  “I was with the circus.”

  “Do I need to point out that Ann Arbor doesn’t have a circus?”

  “This wasn’t in Ann Arbor,” Loogan said. “This was before I came here.”

  “So you ran away from the circus and came to Ann Arbor?”

  “More or less.”

  “A lot of people go the other way. What did you do, in the circus?”

  “I was a juggler.”

  “Is there any point in continuing this conversation?” Kristoll asked.

  “Call the waitress, Tom. Have her bring some dinner rolls. I’ll prove it to you.”

  “And your hometown. Portland. Would that be in Oregon or Maine?”

  “Which do you like better?”

  Kristoll laughed quietly and tended to his drink. Loogan reached up and with his fingertips set the steel shade of the lamp swaying gently above the table. After a while the waitress brought them fresh glasses and they talked about other things: about the quality of the writers in Gray Streets, about writers generally, about the heat of the Michigan summer.

  It was a pleasant conversation and it was followed by others on other evenings in the same booth, or in Kristoll’s office. Once, Kristoll came unannounced to Loogan’s rented house. “Tell me to go to hell, David, if you don’t want me to come in,” Kristoll said. “Come in, of course,” said Loogan. Kristoll inspected the furniture in the living room, the stonework of the fireplace. He admired some of the paintings and prints that hung on the walls. “None of them are mine,” said Loogan. “Naturally,” Kristoll said.

  Unlike Loogan, Kristoll showed no reluctance to talk about himself. He had been raised in a middle-class suburb of Detroit, had moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. He had met his wife there and with a small group of friends they had founded Gray Streets as a student publication. It was a modest success for four years, though it faded when Kristoll and his wife departed for graduate school out of state. When Laura Kristoll returned to Ann Arbor to teach at the university, Tom Kristoll set out to revive the magazine, gently prying it away from the students who had taken it over.

  In the years since, the magazine’s circulation had grown to a respectable number, and the rise of the Internet had brought it a new audience. Kristoll had designed the original Gray Streets Web site himself, as a way of resurrecting stories from issues that had gone out of print. Bloggers had discovered the site and reviewed it. It had been mentioned in magazine articles about electronic publishing. More people read Gray Streets online than had ever read it in print.

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Kristoll said to Loogan one evening. He had the window open in his office, his feet resting on the sill. A bottle stood on the desk. “In the early days, when Laura and I were in college, most of the stories we published were written by students. We wrote some of them ourselves, published them under pseudonyms. But when I started building the Web site, I left off most of those old stories. Only the best ones went onto the site. None of mine are on there. I have enough judgment to know they don’t belong there. Do you know what that makes me?”

  Loogan hadn’t expected the question. “What?” he said.

  “An editor. Nobody sets out to be an editor, but here we are, you and me.” Kristoll picked up his glass from the desk and held it in his lap. “Now I’ve turned maudlin,” he said. “You’ll forgive me. You can attribute it to the Scotch.”

  “I think you drink less Scotch than you let on,” Loogan said.

  “That’s a good line. I can tell—I’m an editor.”

  A breeze from the window lifted a letter from the desk and carried it to the floor. Loogan reached for it but Kristoll told him to leave it there.

  “Go home, David,” he said gently. “The sun’s gone down. It stays up forever this time of year, but now it’s gone down.”

  “You’re not leaving?”

  “I’ll stay awhile. Turn off the lights out there, will you? Good night.”

  Loogan’s steps were silent on the carpet of the outer office. He paused at the door to the hallway to press the light switch. Looking back, he saw Kristoll sitting in profile, his head tipped back, eyes closed. The doorway of his office framed the image, a composition in black and white: dark hair, close-cropped; crisp white dress shirt; gray gunmetal desk.

  The light of the desk lamp gleamed on the rim of his glass. It made the skin of his face a pale white. It gave his expression a purity and a calm that Loogan hadn’t seen in him before.

  Loogan would remember that calm, and he would remember the gentleness, the fondness in Kristoll’s voice when Kristoll told him to go home. He would remember both these things later, when he started sleeping with Kristoll’s wife.

  In a museum in late August, Loogan stood looking up at an immense photograph of a leaf. The leaf was lush and green but it lay amid stones and sand, and grains of sand had drifted over its surface. Loogan stepped to his right and there was a series of smaller images: dead leaves trampled into dry, cracked mud. The leaves had split with the mud as it dried; black grooves ran through them like veins.

  He heard someone speak his name and turned to find Laura Kristoll beside him.

  “It’s all leaves,” she said. “There are two more rooms of leaves. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The parties at the Kristoll house had gone on through the summer, and Loogan had put in a few appearances. He had talked to Laura only a handful of times, but now she seemed at ease taking his arm and leading him through the exhibit. It was, as she had said, all leaves: Leaves after rain, leaves on the bottom of a stream, leaves on country roads. Leaves blackened by fire. A close-up of a single withered leaf, so thin and brittle that it seemed on the verge of crumbling into dust. She kept her casual grip on his arm as they stood before this final image. After a time he told her he had better go. He had work to do. Her hand traveled down
his arm, to his wrist, to his palm. Their fingers intertwined. “All right, David,” she said.

  She called him the following week. There was another photography exhibit, this one at a gallery downtown. “The photographer is local,” she said. “He does something with paper and broken glass. But secretly I’m hoping there’ll be leaves.”

  They went the next day. They had the gallery mainly to themselves and they took their time. Most of it looked to Loogan as if someone had thrown the contents of a china cabinet through a stained-glass window and then taken pictures. But Laura was delighted to discover a photograph of flower petals and broken glass mingled with bits of paper torn in the shape of leaves. She bought it on the spot and arranged with the gallery owner to have it delivered at the close of the exhibition.

  She led Loogan from the gallery to a used-book shop, where they spent half an hour browsing. Then she suggested coffee, which morphed into a late lunch. She was quiet when she drove him home. The car rolled slowly along his street in the sunlight and in the shadows of trees. She brought it to a stop and shifted into park and turned to look past him at the house.

  “David,” she said. “Ask me in.”

  She followed him up the walk, pressed the palm of her right hand between his shoulder blades as he unlocked the door. In the kitchen she paused to read a few lines of a manuscript he had left on the counter. She stepped through an archway into the living room and surveyed the space. There were more manuscripts on the coffee table, but she didn’t look at those. She turned to find him beside her, touched her fingers to the base of his throat, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She found the downstairs bathroom on her own. It was down a hallway off the living room. Loogan went around closing curtains. He scanned the history professor’s CD collection, discovered it was terribly impoverished, and tuned the stereo to a Detroit station that played instrumental jazz. When Laura returned, she had left her handbag behind. Her hair, which had been pinned up, was down around her shoulders. Her lips were a shade redder. Her linen blouse was two buttons more unbuttoned than it had been, revealing tanned and freckled skin. Her breath, when she turned her face up to his and curved her palm around the back of his neck, was flavored with mint.

  He kissed her, extensively. First standing, then sitting, then lying on the sofa, with the length of her body pressed against him. They undressed by degrees, without urgency, and he discovered when her skirt came off that she had left her underwear behind with her handbag. They made love on a bed of sofa cushions on the living-room floor.

  After, they went upstairs, and in the coolness of the history professor’s sheets they fell asleep. When Loogan woke it was dark and he was alone. He reached reflexively to the night table for his watch. He had left it on the floor of the living room. He went down and found that the cushions had been restored to the sofa. His clothes were on a chair, his watch on the mantel of the fireplace. It was after nine o’clock.

  The phone rang as he was dressing. He picked it up and Laura said, “You’re dangerous.”

  “I will be, when I get my socks on,” he said.

  “You sleep beautifully. It’s a natural wonder, how you sleep. I couldn’t bear to wake you.”

  “Sleeping is one of my best things.”

  “I just called to say everything’s grand. Nothing to worry about. You’re not the sort to worry, are you, David?”

  “Not me.”

  “But I wanted to touch base. So we know what story we’re telling, if any story needs to be told. I’ve stuck with the truth, as far as I could: You and I went to the gallery today, and the bookstore, and lunch. After that, we parted ways.”

  “All right.”

  “Better than saying I never saw you, I don’t know you, I never heard of you.”

  “Sure.”

  “So everything’s grand,” she said. “I should run. We’ll talk again soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good night, David.”

  “Good night.”

  Loogan saw Tom Kristoll two nights later. He thought it might be awkward, but they were just the same as they had ever been. They drank Scotch in Kristoll’s office after hours. They discussed manuscripts, briefly. Kristoll talked about a trip he had taken to Europe with his family as a teenager.

  Laura was mentioned only once. “I’m learning more about you, David,” Kristoll said. “I’m scoping out your secrets.”

  “Is that so?” Loogan said.

  “Laura filled me in. You like to spend time in galleries, and you have excellent taste in photographs. Two more facts to add to the dossier on David Loogan.”

  In the weeks that followed, Loogan saw Laura regularly. Usually she came to his house. Once they met at a hotel, once in her office at the university.

  She rarely mentioned her husband, never talked of being unhappy with him, never complained about his habits. Loogan was alert for any slight, any disparaging remark. He told himself he would end it, if he thought she was motivated by malice. But when she spoke of her husband, it was usually in connection with Loogan himself. She would pass along something Kristoll had said: a bit of praise for Loogan’s work, or an idle comment.

  One afternoon she stood naked by the window of Loogan’s bedroom, looking down into the yard. “Tom thinks you’ve got some dark secret,” she said. “You’re a man with a past. He thinks you might have spent time in prison.”

  She said it lightly, carelessly. Loogan was lying in bed, watching her.

  “Really?” he said.

  “Yes. Tom has a certain respect for criminals, you know. Gray Streets goes out free to a lot of prison libraries. He’s even published a few stories written by convicts.”

  “And what does he think I did, that landed me in prison?”

  She turned away from the window and crossed to the bed. Pulled back the sheet and climbed in beside him.

  “Oh, nothing terrible,” she said. “Something white-collar, probably. Defrauding people. Embezzlement or passing bad checks. Have you ever defrauded anyone?”

  “I’ve never been to prison.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything like that,” she said, tracing her finger along his collarbone. “I think if you were to go to prison, it would be for something violent. A crime of passion. It’s always the quiet ones.”

  “Is it?”

  “And they’d interview your neighbors on the news, and they’d say, ‘He was such a nice man. He never gave anyone trouble.’ ”

  He smiled faintly. Closed his eyes. “And what would you say?”

  Her lips brushed his cheek. “I’d tell them I always knew you were dangerous.”

  The weeks passed by—September and the beginning of October. Loogan’s days revolved around Laura Kristoll and Tom Kristoll and Gray Streets. Then, on a Wednesday night, as he sat in his kitchen with a manuscript on the table before him, his phone rang. The caller was Tom Kristoll. He wondered if Loogan could do him a favor. He needed a shovel.

  Chapter 3

  THE ROAD CURVED AND A LINE OF TREES CURVED WITH IT. SOMEWHERE behind the trees was the dark course of the Huron River. Loogan drove at the posted limit and his car’s headlights washed over bark and branches and leaves. A light rain speckled the windshield. He slowed, looking for the turn, found it, and climbed slowly up the long driveway.

  Moonlight touched the slate roof of the house. Two slivers of light escaped from a pair of curtained windows on the ground floor. The rest were dark.

  Loogan turned off the engine, got out, and followed a stone walkway to the house. He left his purchases behind—the shovel, the groceries. The front door opened as he approached. Tom Kristoll let him inside.

  “It’s after ten,” Kristoll said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this late in the evening. I half believed you wouldn’t be there when I called. That you ceased to exist after a certain hour.”

  “Here I am,” Loogan said.

  “I’m rambling. Don’t pay any attention. Thank you for coming. Do you want a drink?
No, you don’t want a drink. I wanted a drink, and I had one. But one was enough.”

  They had moved into the living room. There was an empty glass on the arm of a leather sofa. Wooden beams crossed overhead, and a table lamp threw the shadows of the beams onto the ceiling. The floor was paved with stones and in a corner stood an antique furnace, a fire burning behind its iron grate.

  Kristoll paced across the floor in his sock feet. He wore dress pants, charcoal gray, with a faint stripe. His white shirt was wrinkled and partly untucked. There was a hint of a shadow of stubble along his jaw. It made his face look haggard.

  “Maybe you should sit,” Loogan said.

  Kristoll froze. He seemed suddenly conscious of his appearance. He tucked in the tail of his shirt, rubbed his face with the palms of his hands.

  “There’s no time for sitting, David.”

  “All right. Then you’d better show me.”

  Kristoll led Loogan through the darkened house. They arrived at the doorway of the study and Kristoll reached in to find the light switch.

  Loogan had seen the room before, and in the moment when it was still dark he visualized it: at the far end, a desk with a high-backed chair. Three arched windows behind the desk. Bookshelves lining the walls, right and left. Four upholstered chairs in the open space between the lines of shelves. The chairs faced one another, two on either side, forming the corners of a perfect square.

  The light came on. Kristoll stood back. The first thing Loogan saw was that one of the chairs had toppled over. The second thing he saw was the body.

  “There are things I need to ask you,” Loogan said.

  He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the body. Kristoll was in the doorway.