by Chris Knopf
“I’ve played golf. Nothing like pool. Sorry.”
“Then you’re probably a scratch golfer. A lot of pool hustlers are.”
“I didn’t think that cue ball aimed at my head was an accident.”
“Reflexes never lie.”
“No harm in letting my lover win a few games of pool.”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking he doesn’t know,” I told him.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just what I said. Give me that ten in your pocket so I can bring it back to the guys in the convenience store. Then I’ll give you back your keys.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said, rearing back in affront.
I gestured to him to fork over the bill, which he did, despite the look on his face.
“This doesn’t mean that things won’t work out for you,” I told him as I climbed out of his ridiculous vehicle. “Just don’t forget, I’m watching.”
“Until they send you to prison for the rest of your life,” he called to me as I walked across the parking lot.
I turned and walked backwards, tossing him his keys which he caught with his left hand.
“That’s right,” I told him. “Nothing to lose.”
——
Rosaline’s condo was in a complex they’d built in the late seventies not far from the high school. The landscaping had matured nicely, but the exterior trim looked dated and ground up by the corrosive air blowing off the ocean a half mile to the south. The cars in the lot were a mix—Volvos, Mercedes and BMWs along side pickups and sloppy Chrysler four-doors from the late eighties. Testimony to the skyward trend of real-estate values, inexorably displacing the kind of people these condos were originally built for.
She answered the door in an oversized work shirt with the MIT seal embroidered over the heart. And nothing else, unless you counted her glimmering earrings, which hung almost to her shoulders.
I handed her the Daily Racing Form.
“Oh, goodie, now I’m all set for the track,” she said.
“It was either that or The Wall Street Journal. I think the odds’re better with the ponies.”
“What do you think?” she asked about her shirt, doing a single spin, which challenged what remained of the outfit’s mystery. “I thought it would make you feel at home.”
“Always ready to give one for the team.”
“Not yet. Have a drink first.”
Her apartment was like a favorite shoe. Worn, out of fashion and form fitting. There was a fireplace with a stack of fully engaged hardwoods, the wood smoke mingling subtly with scented candles burning on the mantelpiece and strategically arrayed on side tables and built-in bookshelves. It was clean, in the way places can be clean when scoured by someone who takes the term seriously. The decor spare and balanced, eternal. Duke Ellington was on a stereo that came out of nowhere, filling the room like the aroma from the candles. Pervasive, unobtrusive, enveloping.
One wall of the living room was covered in photographs, some in the self-conscious formality of the turn of the century, a few sepia tones going further back, others from the mid-twentieth century, with oversaturated colors and shaggy haircuts. All more or less predictable and homey, but for the recording of nose types, staggering size and angularity being common elements.
“No fruits,” I called to her retreating form.
“I know, I know,” she yelled back. “My memory’s not that bad.”
The temperature outside was a crisp mid-sixties, but in Rosaline’s apartment it was ten degrees warmer. I peeled down to my shirt and rolled up my sleeves.
“Mind if we hang out on the patio?” I hollered at the kitchen.
“That’s the plan,” she hollered back. “I’ll meet you there.”
The patio was more like a slate-covered landing, with a pair of outdoor chairs and a coffee table in between. But it was completely enclosed, private and secure from the prying eyes of neighbors on either side. The common area beyond was heavy with bright green growth, freshly planted spring flowers and perennials, the obvious passion of one or more condo denizens.
I settled into one of Rosaline’s wicker lounge chairs and lit a cigarette. She appeared with my vodka and a rye on the rocks for herself. She dropped an ashtray down on the coffee table the moment a cylinder of ash at the end of my cigarette was about to slough off.
“Daddy’s drink,” she said, as we clinked glasses.
“One a day’ll get you to ninety-five.”
“Two a day. And he was ninety-seven.”
Her dark brown hair looked recently done up, with loose, heavy curls tumbling down over her shoulders. Her liquid blue eyes were, as always, distantly entertained, as if partly engaged by her own internal monologue. Her legs, now generously on view, were still the alabaster white I’d remembered from prior get-togethers involving vodka and rye on the rocks.
“I talked to an old friend of yours the other day,” she said. “You’ll never guess, so I won’t make you try.”
“Lou Panella?”
“Jason Fligh.”
“Really,” I said, as taken by surprise as she hoped I’d be. “What was the occasion?”
“I called him.”
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“He said when you left, the board stopped being fun.”
“Fun for whom?”
“He asked me how you were doing and wondered if he should get in touch with you. I said sure.”
She studied me as if to test my reaction. I shrugged.
“Jason’s okay with me. It’s you I’m wondering about.”
“You interest me,” she said.
“I don’t make a very happy lab rat.”
“Oh, I’m certain of that. You’re private to the point of misanthropic.”
“People aren’t that bad. If you don’t have to talk to them,” I said.
“You’re only enduring this because I have something you need.”
“No, I’m enduring this because I like you. It’s more fun to get things I need from people I like.”
“Not very misanthropic of you.”
“Another theory shattered,” I said.
“You don’t have much regard for psychologists, do you?”
“If I dispute that you’ll say I’m dissembling. If I agree, you’ll say I’m projecting hostility. There’s no good way to answer that question. Reminds me of conversations I used to have with my ex-wife.”
“Not the best association.”
“Markham Fairchild told me there’s nothing more complicated than the human brain. I don’t think that means you shouldn’t try to find explanations for human behavior, but people need a better perspective on the magnitude of the task.”
“Psychologist people,” she said.
“Psychologists, philosophers, district attorneys.”
“Edith Madison thinks your defense will be based on diminished mental capacity.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“Why not?” I said. “That seems to be everybody’s favorite theory. I don’t give a shit. As long as Frank Entwhistle thinks I’m smart enough to install trim and build bookcases, I can be Sam the Idiot.”
“Not if you’re in prison.”
“Some have wood shops.”
“You told me once you learned evasion from a boxer named Rene Ruiz.”
“Yeah, the day I failed to evade and he broke my nose. That kind of thing only has to happen once to make a big impression. I think you shrinks call it intermittent positive reinforcement.”
She laughed this time.
“I have no intention of shrinking you, Sam. I know when I’m competing over my weight class.”
“Not with me all diminished.”
She took a long sip of her drink, her eyes holding to mine over the lip of her glass.
“So, about Robbie Milhouser,” she said.
“Oh, Robbie. I’d forgotten about him.”
“I had to sen
d to deep storage to get his file. That’ll be on the record, so I’ve already jeopardized my career as a school psychologist.”
“I didn’t want you to do that.”
“I know. No reason for anyone to know unless you need to reveal the information for your defense. Then we have a problem.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Anyway, it’s a thick file. He had a busy time in high school.”
“It’s not easy to be an accomplished fuckup.”
“Fuckup doesn’t jive with the record,” she said. “He graduated with a three-point-eight average, with commentary from people who thought he was brilliant. Some of whom I know and aren’t the type to dispense unwarranted praise.”
“Joey Entwhistle had similar intimations.”
“The physicist.”
“Didn’t dissuade him from thinking Milhouser was a dangerous thug,” I told her.
“Brains and brutality are anything but mutually exclusive. As proven by Robbie’s impressive string of suspensions.”
My only friend in high school, Billy Weeds, had an official profile like Robbie Milhouser’s. He spent nearly as much time in detention or suspended from school as he did going to class. It made being his friend an interesting challenge, though it didn’t stop me from going along with every nutty caper he proposed. I was just better at not getting caught.
“Amanda told me he flunked out of college,” I said.
“You’ll have to sweet talk the school psychologist at Hofstra if you want that inside information.”
“What if the psychologist is a grimy old man?” I asked her.
“Depends on how badly you want the information. Can I pour you another drink?”
“I’m persuadable.”
I had to endure her running her fingertips down my forearm as she left the patio on her way into the condominium. Whatever aroma she was featuring lingered with the sensation on my arm, which activated some circuitry connected to other parts of my physiology.
I lit another cigarette and tried to concentrate on the condo association’s profligate daffodil garden.
She came back with my drink and a new outfit, a sprayedon top so poorly fitting it stopped an inch or two above her navel and a full-out sloppy-looking pleated skirt. She’d replaced the shoulder-duster earrings with shorter danglers covered in a profusion of silver and semi-precious stones.
She also had a white pad of paper, from which she withdrew a sheet tucked inside.
“I was afraid to hold the file for more than a few days. But I took notes.”
“That much information?”
“I told you Robbie had a fat file. Everyone wanted to write an opinion. Even more interesting was the consistency. They all said basically the same thing.”
“Not as much of a dope as you’d think?” I asked, reluctantly.
“A classic underachiever. Great scores on aptitude tests. High IQ, if you believe in that test, which I don’t, though it tells you something. He’d tend to sprint along getting good, or excellent, marks and then suddenly take a dive, mess up so badly it would shock his teachers. Usually accompanied by other behavioral problems. Acting out. Fights, vandalism, general obstreperousness.”
“Why do you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“Not without speaking with him, for which I’d need a time machine. Or a séance.”
“But you have a guess.”
“That’s all it would be,” she said. “Good enough for me.”
“He was profoundly disturbed.”
“There’s a news flash.”
“Something was troubling him beyond the turmoil of adolescence.”
“Maybe he knew he’d grow up to be a dickhead,” I offered.
“I know it’s not popular with some people to say so, but really bad teenage behavior is often a means of communication,” said Rosaline.
“Telling the world they need a kick in the ass.”
“Sometimes. Depends on how bad the behavior.”
“I remember a lot of high school hardballs. How bad was Robbie anyway?”
“I’ll let you decide. But you can’t blame me for telling you.”
“Why would I do that?”
She handed me a yellowed piece of Southampton High School letterhead. On it was a single paragraph titled “Incident on away-game bus.” The names of the two principals were blacked out. It took me a few minutes to read it and a few more to have it sink in.
“The boy is Robbie Milhouser,” I said.
“That’s right. And the girl?”
“Amanda?”
Rosaline nodded.
“The guidance counselor had her own notes in a private file. It wasn’t hard to cross-check. I think she wanted the whole story recorded somewhere. I’d do the same.”
“It doesn’t say what kind of sexual things happened.”
“Only that they were uninvited.”
“Joey Entwhistle said she was his girlfriend.”
“She might have been at some point. There was nothing about that in the file. And before you ask, no. No charges were brought against Robbie Milhouser, not even a suspension. The whole thing was dropped after Amanda disavowed the report, which by the way was given by one of her friends, and corroborated by a few others. But without the victim’s testimony, you got nothing. Especially in those days.”
I stood up and walked out to the condo garden. At closer proximity I could see the density of the plantings, some in bloom, others budded up, others barely emerging, all timed to maintain a constantly evolving profusion throughout the warm months. I admired the care and forethought and wondered if I’d ever want to do something like that on Oak Point.
Rosaline came up next to me and took my arm.
“You’re not mad,” she said.
“Of course not. I never shoot the researcher.”
“If you’re not mad, what are you?”
“Curious,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“About what?”
“Amanda didn’t seem like much of a quitter, if you read her file. The report itself made it sound like she gave Robbie quite a fight. Why stop there?”
“Not her style,” I said.
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“I’m not sure either. It’s just what came into my head.”
Rosaline put her head on my shoulder.
“I didn’t want to drop a mood wrecker at the start of an intimate dinner party,” she said. “But if I told you later I’d feel dishonest.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Disturbing revelation always whets the appetite. And speaking of wet,” I held up my empty glass.
“I never know what you’re thinking,” she said, taking my glass and pulling me by the arm back into the house.
Me neither most of the time, is what I wanted to say to her.
She’d put bowls filled with colorful stuff on the coffee table and a small plate of celery and carrots to dig it out of there. I chewed on that while I chewed on what she was telling me.
“I can hear the wheels going from over here,” said Rosaline, sitting across from me.
“Sorry,” I said, dipping another stalk into the green stuff, which I liked a little better than the maroon, black and yellow-speckled stuff.
“As much as I’d like to say we had a deal, I don’t think it’d be fair to make you honor it tonight,” she said.
I sat back and killed a few more seconds chewing the hors d’oeuvres.
“The truth is, Rosaline,” I said, “I really try not to think about what happened to me with Abby and my job. Do I know why I did what I did? No. I just did it. And then I looked back and said to myself, geez, man, what did you do?”
She listened to me very carefully, studying my face.
“Maybe your conscious mind doesn’t know. But what about the subconscious?”
“Oh, Christ, Rosaline. Let me get my five-pound sledge out of the car
and you can beat me with it. That’d be a better way to spend the next hour than trying to psychoanalyze me.”
She smiled that smile of hers conveyed entirely through the eyes.
“I know that, Sam. What I mean is, you do know. That’s why you don’t want to think about it, and why you don’t want to talk about it. You know the truth about yourself. You’ve been through some things, and you’ve grown more introspective, but you’re still essentially the same person who manned the helm of an incredibly complex and far-reaching organization. You are still the man who invested everything you had, your heart, your soul, your time and deeply held faith in the value of your work, and the idealization of your marriage, even as both were disintegrating before your eyes.”
There are people who actually pay to hear that kind of shit, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair to Rosaline, who I knew thought she was trying to do a good thing. That’s the problem with the brilliant and well-intended. It’s hard to stop them when they think they’re on to something.
“Okay, Doc. I’ll cop to it,” I said instead, hoping a quick surrender would satisfy her.
“For all your combative and cynical behavior, I think you’re fundamentally tolerant of others. You endure their foibles and foolishness.”
“And alliteration.”
“But there’s something you cannot abide, something that reaches into a dark place, releasing another essential component of Sam Acquillo. The one you know is there, but refuse to acknowledge.”
“A something?”
She thought about that. Then shook her head.
“No. More an act.”
I knew she’d get to it somehow anyway, so I just asked.
“Yeah? What?”
“Betrayal.”
NINETEEN
THE NEXT MORNING Eddie and I headed out on our easterly jogging route, which took us down around the lagoon and by the WB plant. As expected, the cyclone fence was open and a white DEC van was parked near the entrance with its side door and back hatch wide open revealing racks of expensive-looking analytical equipment.
Eddie flushed Dan out from behind a small outbuilding. He was wearing earphones and holding what looked like a boom mike supported by a thick nylon harness. He pulled off the phones when he saw me approach.