Muscle Memory

by William G. Tapply

  The next time I glanced at my watch, it was nearly seven-thirty.

  Then I remembered.

  Sylvie.

  Shit.

  I’d told her I’d meet her at the Ritz bar at six-thirty.

  I turned off my computer and Mr. Coffee and the lights, turned on the office answering machine, and got the hell out of there.

  I double-timed it down Newbury Street, slipped into the side door of the Ritz-Carlton, strode across the lobby, and stopped at the top of the two steps that descended into the bar.

  The June sun still shone brightly outside, but the elegant Ritz barroom, with its dark woodwork, leather furniture, and glittering crystal, lay subdued and dim and conspiratorial. The nooks and crannies and thick carpeting and high ceiling muffled the voices, the clink of silver against glass, the occasional burst of laughter. It looked as if every table was occupied. A pinstriped businessman with gray at his temples leaned over his manhattan to confer with a thin blonde who, I’d’ve bet my favorite fly rod, was not his wife. Five swarthy Middle-Eastern investor types wearing light-colored silk suits were crowded around a table for two, jabbering loudly in foreign tongues. A middle-aged couple from someplace like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were sipping wine and frowning at a menu. A fortyish rock star guy with a ponytail and two earrings grinned possessively at the three virtually identical raven-haired groupies seated with him. More pinstripes, more blondes. More middle-aged tourists from Cedar Rapids.

  The Ritz bar on a Friday evening.

  I spotted Sylvie sitting alone at a table by the window. Her chin rested in her hand, and her head was turned away from me. I guessed she hadn’t seen me. She was gazing out across Arlington Street toward the Public Gardens.

  I weaved among the tables and took the chair across from her.

  “Hi, sexy,” I said.

  She turned her head slowly. When she looked at me, she was not smiling.

  I reached across the table and took her hand. “Sorry I’m late. I should’ve called. You must’ve thought…”

  She squeezed my hand. “Oh, I knew you’d come,” she said. “I’m not upset with you.”

  “Something’s the matter,” I said. “When you don’t smile at me, I know something’s wrong.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now.” She gave me a quick, unconvincing smile. “Right now, I just want a martini.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “A martini?” Sylvie, I knew, liked domestic beer and jug wine, and when she ordered an actual drink, it was generally a Bloody Mary or one of those sweet rum concoctions that Chinese restaurants specialize in, the kind that comes with a paper parasol sticking out of it.

  She shrugged. “I like martinis.” She turned her head and gazed out the window onto Arlington Street.

  As if he had heard Sylvie utter the word “martini,” a waiter appeared at our table. “Perhaps Miss Szabo is ready to order now?” he said.

  He was a short, sixtyish man, with slicked-down iron gray hair combed straight back, black eyes, and an accent similar to Sylvie’s except thicker.

  She turned and smiled up at him. “Vodka martini, please, Philip. Extra olives, don’t forget.”

  Philip nodded as if Sylvie had made a particularly intelligent decision, then turned to me. “And the gentleman?”

  “Bourbon old-fashioned,” I said.

  He gave a little shrug that implied my decision was signifi­cantly less intelligent than Sylvie’s, although it might’ve simply meant that I was significantly less attractive than Sylvie.

  “Oh,” I said, “and bring me a telephone, please.”

  “A telephone,” said Philip. “Very good.”

  After he left, Sylvie frowned. “Business?”

  I smiled. “No, honey. Pleasure.”

  A minute later a busboy brought a portable phone to the table. I called Locke-Ober’s, insisted on speaking to my friend Rocco, the maître d’, and asked him to hold a table for two in what they still called the Men’s Bar for me. Sylvie had always liked Locke-Ober’s, and she especially enjoyed invading the old Men’s Bar which, until sometime in the 1970s, no woman had ever entered.

  When I hung up, she was smiling at me. “Brady remembers,” she said.

  “Brady,” I said, “remembers a lot of things.”

  Like how when we were teenagers, Sylvie and I used to hike through the woods to Granny Pond on a golden summer’s afternoon. I brought the spinning rods and army blanket, and Sylvie smuggled in a six-pack of beer that she’d filched from her mother’s live-in boyfriend, a French-Canadian construction worker named Oliver, and how we fished, drank beer, caught frogs and crayfish, spied on herons and muskrats, swam nude, made love on the blanket, and dozed naked while the sun dried our bodies. I remembered how Sylvie always beat me at pool, and how hopelessly awkward she was at bowling, and how she taught me to do the twist, which we practiced in the basement of the little house her mother shared with Oliver until I finally lost my inhibitions and allowed the music to jerk my body around….

  Philip delivered our drinks. I picked up my squat, cut-glass tumbler and held it across the table. “To old friends,” I said.

  Sylvie clinked my old-fashioned with her martini. “Yes. To good old friends.”

  We sipped our drinks and stared out the window.

  After a few minutes, Sylvie said, “You seem sad today.”

  I smiled at her. “No, honey. Not sad, exactly. One of my clients—a friend of mine, really—was—well, he might’ve been killed last night. Murdered, I mean. They didn’t actually find his body, but…”

  She reached across the table and covered my hand with both of hers. “Oh, Brady.”

  I tried to smile. “I was also remembering Granny Pond. It seems like that was other people, not us.”

  “It would be fun to go back to Granny Pond,” she said. “Bring beer, catch some of those pretty yellow perch, go skinny-dipping.”

  “Last I heard,” I said, “they’d cut a road into the woods and built a big housing development all the way around the pond. They trucked in a lot of sand and made an actual beach where we used to swim, and they installed water filters and hired lifeguards, and they test the quality of the water every week in the summertime. They have what they call common land with mulched paths through the woods there now, and tennis courts and swimming pools and a live-in security guard.”

  “You can’t go home again,” Sylvie murmured.

  We sipped our drinks in silence for a few minutes. Then she said, “Brady?”

  “What, honey?”

  “Would your feelings be hurt if we didn’t go to Locke-Ober’s?”

  I shrugged. “No, of course not. I just thought…”

  “In New York I go to restaurants all the time. Do you un­derstand?”

  “Sure. I guess so. I just remembered how you used to love the Men’s Bar.”

  “Oh, I did,” she said. “That was when we mostly ate hamburgers that you grilled out on your balcony.” She smiled. “That’s something I haven’t done for a long time.”

  “I think I’ve got a steak in the freezer,” I said. “And a few bottles of Sam Adams in the refrigerator.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  I called Rocco to cancel. Then we took a taxi over to my apartment, and while I got the grill going, Sylvie went into my bedroom. She came out a few minutes later wearing one of my old T-shirts and a pair of my boxer shorts. She stood just inside the open glass sliders and twirled around. “How’s this?” she said.

  “My old Sylvie,” I said.

  She retrieved two bottles of Sam, brought them out to the balcony, handed one to me, then slumped into one of my aluminum patio chairs. She propped her bare feet up on the railing, tilted the chair back on its hind legs, took a big swig of beer, and rested the bottle on her stomach. “I’ve missed this,” she said softly.

  I leaned back against the railing and smiled at her. “Have you really?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I think about it a lot. Those old times.” She closed
her eyes and let out a long breath. “It seems like so long ago.”

  “It’s been many years,” I said. “I want to know everything that’s happened to you. Your books. How are they doing?”

  She opened her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not doing books anymore.”

  “You said you were here on business. I thought…”

  “Graphic design,” she said. “Computer stuff. I work for an advertising agency. We’re in town soliciting accounts.”

  I noticed that Sylvie wore no polish on her toenails. She’d always painted her toenails pink, and sometimes she’d decorated them with stars and butterflies and happy faces.

  “Madison Ave, huh?” I said. “The big time. How do you like it?”

  She shrugged. “I make a lot of money.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  She smiled.

  I grilled a steak, cooked some rice on the stove, and tossed a salad, and we ate off our laps on the balcony while the sun set and the air turned cool. We didn’t say much. The truth was, I felt awkward and shy, and I sensed that Sylvie felt the same way. I didn’t ask about her career in advertising, and she didn’t volunteer.

  I couldn’t picture Sylvie Szabo on Madison Avenue. It didn’t fit.

  When we finished eating, we took the dishes into the kitchen and loaded everything in the dishwasher. Then Sylvie disappeared in the direction of the bathroom. I put on some coffee and went back out on the balcony.

  I was leaning my forearms on the railing, staring out at the dark ocean, when Sylvie came out. I felt her hand on the back of my neck, and then she was leaning against me, hugging me from behind. I could feel her soft breasts against my back. Her hands moved over my chest, and then one of them slipped under my shirt and began to slide down under my belt. Her body was pressing against me, moving in that old slow rhythm.

  I didn’t move for what felt like several minutes. Finally, I whispered, “Sylvie?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Honey?”

  She giggled. “Yes, Brad-ee?”

  “Do you really think we can’t go home again?”

  “I think we could try,” she said.

  Afterwards, we lay side by side in my bed. I smoked a cigarette and exhaled straight up into the dim light of my bedroom. Sylvie was lying on her side with one arm thrown across my chest. “What’s Brady thinking?” she whispered.

  “Old times, I guess,” I said. “Granny Pond. Mike Fosburg’s old Dodge. High school. Oliver’s beer.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” I said. “Truthfully, I was thinking about Alex, too.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The way I still love Gloria. The way I’ve always loved you.”

  “You miss Alex.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I miss her a lot.” I hugged Sylvie close to me. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  We lay there for a while longer, and I might’ve dozed off, because the next thing I knew Sylvie had eased away from me and was sliding out of bed. I pretended to still be sleeping.

  She came back a few minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She’d changed back into her cocktail dress.

  She touched my face, then brushed my hair back off my forehead. “I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow,” she said.

  “I thought…”

  She bent over and kissed me softly. “You better take me back.”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “I’ve got a busy day, too, actually.” I glanced at my watch. It was a little after ten o’clock. “How about some coffee?”

  She shook her head. “It’ll just keep me awake.”

  I drove Sylvie back to the Ritz, left my car double-parked out front, and walked her into the lobby.

  We stopped by the elevator, and she turned to me and touched my cheek. “Dear Brady,” she said. “You’re still my best old friend.”

  “We will be best old friends forever,” I said.

  She put both hands on my shoulders, tiptoed up, leaned against me, and kissed me softly on the mouth. “Promise?” she whispered.

  “Promise,” I said.

  She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me hard. Then she pushed herself away. “I’m here for another week,” she said.

  “Then back to New York.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Back to New York.”

  “We should get together again before you leave,” I said.

  “I’ll call you,” she said.

  “Promise?”

  Sylvie smiled. “Of course.”

  I was munching an English muffin with peanut butter at my kitchen table the next morning, thinking about Sylvie, remem­bering the silky feel of her skin and the odd sadness that had overwhelmed me afterwards, when the phone rang.

  “Brady, it’s Lyn,” he said when I picked up.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “How you doing? What’s up?”

  “I know it’s a Saturday, but I was thinking if you had any time today, maybe you’d like to drop by the house.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything wrong?”

  “Not really. Erin and Danny are here.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “As well as you might expect, I guess.” He paused. “Erin arrived around suppertime. She called from the airport, asking if somebody would give her a ride home. Gretchen had to tell her that she couldn’t go to her house, that the place was a crime scene. And Mick’s place, too. She hadn’t heard about Mick, of course. I guess the poor kid was just bawling on the phone. Ned went in and got her. A few hours later—oh, close to midnight, actually—Danny pulled into our driveway. He borrowed somebody’s car down in Rhode Island. He’d already been to his house in Lexington, saw that yellow tape, the big sign on the front door, so he went over to Mick’s, saw the same damn thing. Jesus. I mean, what do you say to them?”

  “I guess you just love them, Lyn. Tell them the truth as best as you can.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s what we tried to do.” He hesitated. “Erin says she wants to see her mother—her body. Danny doesn’t say much of anything. Gretchen’s been great with them. She was up half the night talking with them.” He blew a long breath into the telephone. “Anyway, I thought it might help if you talked with them, too. Try to give them an idea of what’s going on.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I want to meet Mick’s kids.”

  Eleven

  I WANTED TO TALK TO Horowitz’s witness, the neighbor who said he’d seen Mick the night Kaye was murdered. So on my way out Route 2 to the Conleys’ house in Concord I took the first exit into Lexington and pulled up in front of Mick and Kaye’s house a little before noontime.

  They’d lived on a narrow shady street that wound through a mature pine-and-oak forest on the east side of town. Their house was set well back from the street, a modern, flat-roofed structure composed of several connected boxlike parts with vertical cedar sheathing and lots of glass, with a paved circular driveway in front. An attached two-car garage of the same design as the house stood to the left. A rock garden featuring big mossy boulders, tall perennials, dark green ground cover, low-growing junipers, and a few bushy red maples shielded the garage and front of the house from the street.

  An X of yellow police tape plus a Crime Scene sign were plastered on the front door of the Fallon’s house.

  According to Horowitz, Mitchell Selvy, the witness who claimed to have seen Mick on the night of Kaye’s murder, lived across the street. Selvy’s house was a traditional white colonial. It looked like it had been there for many years before the developers came along and built the area up with cedar-and-glass contemporaries on two-acre lots. A pale blue Buick sat beside a large motor home in Selvy’s driveway, and I could hear the drone of a lawn mower from the direction of his backyard.

  I left my car on the side of the street and wandered around the Fallon property. The side lawn needed mowing, but otherwise the yard was well tended. Clusters of tiny green tomato
es clung to the vines in the little vegetable patch out back, and the azaleas against the foundation were ablaze.

  I tried to imagine Mick Fallon as a suburban homeowner, trimming the shrubs, cleaning the gutters, raking the leaves, weeding the gardens, fighting the crabgrass. It was a stretch. But I assumed he’d done all that, just as I had back in the days when I, too, was a suburban homeowner. Before divorce.

  I made a complete circuit of the house, and when I got back to the front, I saw a man leaning against the side of my car. He had his arms folded across his chest and a dead cigar butt clenched in his teeth.

  I lifted my hand in greeting, and he took the cigar from his mouth and waved. “’Lo, sir,” he called, more loudly than was really necessary.

  He was short—five-six or -seven, I guessed—and pear-shaped, with narrow sloping shoulders and wide hips. A red baseball cap a size too big for his head rested directly on his ears, with the visor pulled low over his brow. He wore thick glasses, high-top sneakers, baggy jeans, and a blue cotton shirt with the cuffs and throat buttoned and the tails flapping.

  When I got closer to him, I saw that he had the moon face, the uptilted Asian eyes, and the guileless grin of a man with Down’s syndrome. A thick stubble of black beard sprouted from his cheeks and chin. I guessed he was somewhere in his mid- to late twenties.

  “I’m Darren,” he said in a mumbly voice, holding out his hand, still smiling. “Who’re you?”

  I shook his hand. “I’m Brady.”

  “I mow the lawn,” he said. “That’s my job. But Kaye’s not home. Kaye’s nice, huh? Where’s Kaye? Do you think I should mow the lawn?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably you should wait.”

  “That’s what my mother said,” said Darren. “But it’s my job. It needs mowing, don’t it? Huh?” He was peering intently at me, as if my answer was very important to him.

  “Yes, it does need mowing,” I said. “Didn’t your mother tell you what happened to Kaye?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “Nooo,” he said, dragging it out. Darren’s face suddenly transformed. “She makes me so mad.” His little eyes blazed, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “She won’t tell me nothing. I gotta do my job. It’s my ’sponsibility.”