Let's Get Criminal

by Lev Raphael

  Bills went into one pile, circulars and requests for money into another, mail from Stefan’s publisher and personal letters in another. There wasn’t much for me, so I picked at his mail a little jealously. There was always more mail for Stefan, just as there were always more messages on his answering machine than on mine.

  One letter puzzled me. It was a thick white business-sized envelope, with the return address of a law firm in town. I recognized the name because this firm often underwrote local public radio and television broadcasts.

  But it wasn’t our law firm. I hefted the envelope, as if I could do Johnny Carson’s Mighty Karnak and come out with the set-up for some snappy joke.

  There wasn’t any Ed McMahon to egg me on, but I opened it anyway, since Stefan had long ago given me permission to open anything I thought was “interesting.”

  It was a very short letter addressed to Professor Stefan Borowski, incongruously short, given the complicated masthead listing all the partners and associates of the firm. It was paperclipped to another smaller envelope inside.

  The letter read: “Our client, Professor Perry Cross, requested that in the event of his demise we forward the enclosed communication to you.”

  And the smaller envelope, also white, was simply addressed “To Stefan,” in what I assumed was Perry’s handwriting.

  I dropped it onto the table. Going through Perry’s desk drawer at the university had not seemed as personal as holding this letter, a letter he had addressed to Stefan.

  A letter he had addressed to Stefan in the event of his demise.

  What kind of planning ahead was this?

  I got up to phone Stefan, hoping to catch him at his office, but no one answered, and the department number was busy.

  I started to redial, then put the phone down and sat at the table again.

  Perry had written something for Stefan. When? Why? Something that required lawyers, but what for?

  I tried the department again, and got through. I left Stefan a message to call me, but there was no way he could call me soon enough. I knew that. I stalked through the house carrying Perry’s letter—or whatever it was—from room to room, waving it as if it were a swagger stick or a fan.

  Was I being a little kid, hoping it would magically fly open and reveal its secrets?

  Perry had written something for Stefan, thinking about his own death. What could he possibly have to say to Stefan at a time like that?

  I gave up waiting for a phone call. I took the letter into my study, as if sheathing uranium in lead. I sat at what Stefan called my Napoleon desk, because it was vaguely Empire in style, and reminded us of furniture we’d seen at Malmaison, Napoleon’s favorite palace outside Paris. I loved this room with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The maroon drapes and thick rug muffled sounds from outside and made me feel protected, cocooned. I was especially fond of the overstuffed armchair and ottoman, covered in a tapestry print of slate blue and maroon: something out of Watteau with shepherdesses and shepherds. It was just this side of being tacky, but it too reminded me of all those endless tapestries we’d seen in France, château after chateau filled with the damned things.

  I used a letter opener, imagining the blade sliding into Perry’s flesh.

  Another short note, but this one was more mysterious than the lawyer’s.

  Dear Stefan: If you get this, something’s happened to me. Expect something else.

  It wasn’t even signed!

  I sat there reading it over and over as if I were a stubborn archeologist confronted with maddeningly half-familiar hieroglyphics. What the hell could it mean? Was it a joke?

  I cursed aloud, wishing Stefan had an answering machine at his office so that he wouldn’t just have a memo slip waiting for him in his department mailbox, but my voice, immediate, demanding, real.

  Perry Cross, Perry Cross. I was surrounded by him. It was like suddenly being struck with an illness that changed the configuration of every aspect of your life.

  Despite myself, I smiled. I imagined the next time someone asked me how I was, I could say, “I’m not feeling well, I’ve got perrycross.” As if it were bronchitis, or a skin disease. Well, now that was more appropriate, because the son of a bitch certainly had made my skin crawl.

  I called the EAR Department again, but hung up before I got an answer. There was no point in leaving a second message for Stefan. I knew where he was teaching. Couldn’t I just go to campus, lurk outside his classroom, and catch him at the inevitable break? Or why bother waiting? I had every right to march up to the door, knock, and ask to talk to him.

  But I’d never done that before, for any reason. How could I do it now without getting him upset and then nervous? Seeing me, he’d assume there was an accident, that someone was ill. And what the hell could Stefan say that would make me feel better?

  I had already poisoned the day by opening the two envelopes—nothing could change that. Nothing.

  The washer chugged to a stop, and I was soon switching things to the drier and starting another small load. It was a small and stuffy room, apparently carved out of the kitchen at some point after the house was built. Stefan and I had idly talked about bringing the kitchen back to its original shape and size and moving the washer and drier to the half-basement, but every time I did laundry I thought about what a pain it would be to haul baskets of wash up and down stairs. Besides, basements made me nervous, and I never went down to this one alone. I suppose it was growing up in apartment buildings where basements were public and alien space.

  “And you’re afraid of ax murderers, too, I bet,” was Stefan’s take one time.

  I could only nod, a little ashamed. Too many horror movies, or maybe just not enough childhood trips to suburbia where basements were an insignificant fact of life. I kept the door locked during the day and checked it every night before I went to bed, and even whenever I left the house—though there was no way to get to it from outside, no windows, no door.

  Folding the wash, I ran everything through my mind. I was absolutely sure now that someone had killed Perry Cross, and that he had known he was in danger. Why else had he planned ahead for his death? The letter from the law firm said “in the event of his demise.” He was obviously afraid someone was after him.

  He wasn’t drunk when he left our house, but was stinking drunk when he wound up in the Michigan River some time early in the morning. Where did he go after dinner? Was he alone or drinking with someone else? How did he get to the river? Why was he there? Was he meeting someone? Or was someone chasing him? Maybe that’s how he wound up in the water.

  But why hadn’t anyone found him sooner? Students are up all through the night—didn’t anyone see his body before Chad did?

  I felt overwhelmed by the letters, by the chill conviction that Perry had been murdered, and by my own inadequacy. How was I going to figure any of this stuff out?

  With the wash taken care of, I suddenly panicked. In my rush to leave town, I hadn’t brought any schoolwork with me, and now I realized I wasn’t ready for Tuesday’s classes. I spent the next few hours immersed in catching up, which I guess was good for my state of mind. Now and then I wondered when Stefan would call, but not enough to go to the phone or even stop work.

  Finished with grading papers and done with my reading, I was hungry, and anxious again. When I called, the department number was busy. Stefan was done teaching, so why hadn’t he returned my call? Or didn’t he bother getting his messages?

  Then I felt like an idiot, or more so than I had until that point. On the ride home from the cottage, Stefan had reminded me that he would be having dinner with some creative-writing students who wanted to talk to him before his reading that night. His reading! I’d completely forgotten that too. As the writer-in-residence, it was expected that he give at least one public reading at the university each semester, and tonight he’d be doing that after dinner in town.

  Of course he’d told me all this more than once, even offered to write it down in my datebook, but I
had bristled—as usual—at the implication I could forget.

  “I’m not being rude,” he’d said last week. “I just know how busy you are….”

  I had glared at him, ready to pounce on the least hint of sarcasm. He wasn’t being critical, though. He never was when he suggested ways to help me remember something important—like where I’d jotted down a colleague’s phone number, which would almost always be on the back of a receipt or inside a magazine rather than in my phone book.

  I often complained, “How come I’m the one with the artistic temperament, how come I’m so dizzy, when you’re the writer?”

  I made myself a cheese omelette and a small caesar salad, with the radio tuned to the local classical station, and ate my meal in the kitchen feeling somewhat calmer. I was looking forward to Stefan’s reading, which would be at the one good used bookstore in town: Ferguson’s. It was a large, long, theatrical-looking, thickly carpeted store that felt like someone’s movie set study, with what seemed like acres of dark bristling bookcases, curious antique prints massed on the worn flocked wallpaper, busts and statuettes peering down from elaborately carved little ornamental shelves. You expected Ferguson’s to be musty-smelling, but it never was.

  Stefan found it a bit too Bombay Company-ish, but liked the light, because it was warm and diffused, perfect for a reading. And that was important, because the setting he read in could sometimes throw him off—make him feel tired if the lights were glaring, or the store was too warm or too noisy. I liked Ferguson’s because it wasn’t as sterile as most bookstores, and because the readings were always held after hours, with the cash register closed. Stefan didn’t seem to mind the ringing bell and slamming cash drawer at some bookstores, but I was always irked by that, and by the customers wandering past, looking at him curiously, stopping for a bit and then moving on as if he were selling hot dogs on a street corner and they were trying to decide if they were hungry. Readings were special events, not just a piece of a store’s commerce, and they deserved attention and respect.

  Especially for a writer like Stefan, who read his own work so well.

  Most writers don’t, you know. They’re too shy, or too arrogant, or can’t project, or can’t feel connected to their audiences, or treat the whole thing as an obligation and not an honor, not a chance to connect with their readers. Readings are performances, and Stefan understood that implicitly. He was almost always relaxed, smooth, engaging, and never made you feel it wasn’t important for him to be there.

  He wasn’t acting all that, he simply was more himself than usual.

  “I used to fantasize people listening to what I had to say,” he told me after his first book tour. “Really listening. Wanting to. And now it’s happened.” He smiled and shook his head. Perhaps that was the essence of his success on the road—he didn’t take it for granted. Even after several books, he was still pleased, still excited.

  It had certainly helped that I came along on many of his readings, sat in front and smiled, but also kept an accurate count of how many people were there, and watched for their responses. When Stefan was at his best, sailing along as if every second had been rehearsed, he was both aware of his audience and not aware—building on their responses instinctively. And so he needed me to replay the whole evening afterwards. And when he was not at his best, he needed me to remind him of the larger picture, to soothe and amuse him.

  Showering, I was suddenly cheerful, imagining the pleasure of bathing in his presence, in his creamy voice for an hour or so, watching him gracefully take questions afterwards. He never flinched at hearing the same ones over and over—like, how autobiographical was his work, how did he get his ideas, and did he even get any ideas living in Michigan? And afterwards tonight, if we went out with people, we wouldn’t end up having drinks with writers, as we did when Stefan read in New York, Los Angeles, or any other big city. I admit I enjoyed listening to all the uproarious gossip writers inevitably dragged out to entertain each other, but eventually a darker tide would wash over the conversation. People started complaining—about editors who didn’t return calls, agents who flubbed negotiations, publishers who didn’t advertise enough or support tours enough or do something enough.

  “Are any of you guys satisfied?” I once asked in a Boston restaurant. And there was an awkward silence.

  “It’s easier being satisfied in Michigan,” Stefan said afterwards. “I get all that stuff, but on the phone, in letters. It’s not so immediate.”

  It wasn’t that Stefan was a big frog in a little pond, but more that we were surrounded by a different atmosphere. Living in Michigan, neither one of us felt bombarded by anxieties, hungers, demands. The air itself was not electric with the fear of failure as it was in New York or anywhere else where reputations sprouted as quickly as mushrooms after a heavy rain, and just as quickly could go bad, be gobbled up or crushed.

  When I got out of the bathroom, my answering machine was beeping, and tightening my towel, I rushed into the study.

  Of course it was Stefan who had left a message. “Nick? Nick? Are you out? Hello? Hello? Okay, maybe you’re taking a nap and your phone’s off in the bedroom. I got your message late, but the secretary didn’t say if it was important. I’ll see you in a little while, at the reading. Love you.”

  I was dripping onto my desk, onto the phone. The end-of-messages beep sounded, and I dragged myself off to get dressed.

  I parked in the lot behind Ferguson’s, which was planted in the middle of Michiganapolis’s tiny downtown. At 7:15 p.m., there was already a crowd of several dozen students from writing classes, faculty members, and people from Michiganapolis who were either Stefan’s fans or just regularly turned out for readings at Ferguson’s. Ranks of black metal folding chairs filled the middle of the store from the counter almost to the back wall, where there was a table and an enormous old dictionary stand turned away from the audience. People were sitting, standing, browsing. I took a spot near the display counter, which held volumes of Americana and first editions. I waited.

  I was surprised to see Priscilla Davidoff there, talking to some students in the Women’s Studies program. I couldn’t imagine why Priscilla had come if she thought so little of Stefan’s work. She saw me and gave me a cool nod.

  Chuck Bayer walked in, reeking of Scope and what I thought I recognized as British Sterling. He slapped me on the back as if we were old friends.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked. “What do you want?”

  He chuckled. Even rudeness didn’t work on him. But then he launched into another pitch for his Didion bibliography, and I cringed.

  “Chuck,” I said, keeping my voice low. I spaced the words the way parents do when they’re mad at their children in public: “I don’t—want—to—work—with you.”

  He shook his head as if I were someone missing the opportunity for “the investment of a lifetime,” then sauntered off trying to look casual. He just came off as dopey—but that was his height and build working against any attempt at ease or dignity.

  Claire, the chair’s secretary, slid into a seat midway back, turning to smile at me. Even off duty she looked elegant and refined, tonight in a brown suede skirt and cashmere sweater. I wondered where she’d go after the reading, what her home was like. Then it struck me that I had never seen her at a reading before—why was she here at all?

  Stefan knew the store and had read there last year, so he wouldn’t need to be there early to check out the arrangements, and besides, I’d always told him that readings couldn’t start until he got there, so succumbing to time pressure was silly. Tonight, though, I wished he had come early, wished we could have a few minutes alone before I had to share him with a crowd. Perry’s note, the lawyer’s letter, all that was like an injury partly dulled by painkillers. Though I felt the damage and the ache only through a sort of fog, it was still there, waiting.

  Automatically, I was counting the audience. It had reached about sixty, with more people still coming in.

  “Y
ou look peaked,” Serena Fisch said behind me. I whirled around like a shoplifter.

  She peered at me, obviously taken aback, and held a hand to her neck as if fingering pearls. “Nerves?” she asked.

  I nodded, registering how outlandish she looked with her hair pulled back, and wearing a maroon sweater Tet, tartan skirt, and what I guessed you’d call sensible shoes. She could have been masquerading as somebody’s idea of a dowdy English aunt.

  “Is Stefan reading from something new?” she asked.

  I nodded again.

  “What’s it about? Lost love?” She smiled, but when I didn’t respond, she drifted away with the downcast bored face of a little child who’s poked a stick into an anthill with no result.

  I saw Betty and Bill Malatesta find seats near the back among other graduate students who possibly felt that closer seats were not their due. Or were they trying to be inconspicuous?

  I nodded, thinking Bill had seen me, but he plunged into conversation with some other graduate students. Lynn Broadshaw burst in, followed by his wife, and they noisily settled into a row near the front, spinning off smiles and hellos around them like sparks. Mrs. Broadshaw was all in purple—from her wool dress and shawl down to her eye shadow, nails, and lipstick. The effect was somewhat alarming.

  Lynn Broadshaw would be introducing Stefan, as if he were somehow responsible for Stefan’s success. But where was Stefan?

  At 7:25, I saw him outside, in a cluster of laughing young students, who seemed honestly entertained and relaxed. As the English say, there was no “side” to Stefan with his students; he did not think of them as lesser creatures who had to be browbeaten or even coaxed into some semblance of literacy. I had sat in on some of his classes, and I know other professors might consider him a little dull or disorganized, but I thought he was just right, because he was himself. He didn’t adopt a manner in class; he wasn’t out to intimidate students with his talent or success, nor was he intent on wheedling their affection and respect (which I think I tended to do a bit).