Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  When Isaac introduced us, Juliet was at the end of a torrid but herky-jerky affair with a married man—an affair that, on Juliet’s part, seemed to alternate between times of indifference and bouts of abject, almost pathetic desire. They were eventually found out by the man’s wife and the affair ended—with scarcely a good-bye. Juliet entered into a relationship with me in the same spirit that exhausted businessmen go to the Caribbean—though what sunlight she saw in my heart was a mystery to me. I think she was attracted by my own detachment: she was looking for an emotional duty-free zone where she might pick up some happiness at a lower price.

  I let myself into the apartment and Juliet was on the red velvet sofa, paging through a book of Balthus paintings with a look of disapproval on her face. “I hate the twentieth century,” she said, closing the book.

  “Not me,” I said, leaning over her, kissing the top of her head.

  “Don’t you touch me with your icy fingers,” she said.

  I had put my cold hands beneath her sweater three or four weeks ago and now she feared my doing it again every evening.

  “The mayor’s got the snowplows working already,” I said, taking off my coat, letting it fall.

  “We’re supposed to get ten inches of snow tonight,” said Juliet. “Uncle Isaac says in Chicago snow is a big political issue.”

  “How’s work?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I don’t know. Not so great. Calls?”

  “I wrote them down. They’re on your desk. There’s quite a few.” “Shit.”

  “Some of them will wait,” she said, “but some of them won’t.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything left of me right now,” I said, stretching out my legs and rubbing my eyes.

  “You may as well get used to it,” said Juliet. “You are ahead of your schedule but you have to keep pace. There’s nothing to do about it.”

  “I just have to do it my own way.”

  “Well, poor Jerry Carmichael called. Twice. I think it would be needlessly provocative if you didn’t ring him back.”

  Danny once said that my being with Juliet was like a junkie living with a nurse. I moved closer to Juliet, though something within me— heaviness in my bones—prevented me from putting my arm around her. “I made a resolution today,” I said. “I’m going to stop turning the radio onto the soul music station when I give the car to a black parking lot attendant.”

  “That’s a good resolution,” said Juliet. She sat there with absolute stillness and seemed to be waiting for me to touch her.

  “You’ve noticed that I do that?”

  “Yes. I noticed.”

  “How come you never mentioned anything?”

  “I just figured you wanted the guy to take better care of your car.”

  “But it’s weak,” I said.

  Juliet shrugged.

  “It is.” I closed my eyes; fatigue came over me like a thick mist.

  “Are you going to make your calls?” Juliet asked.

  I slipped my hand beneath her sweater and felt her warm, heavy breast; I laid my cheek on the top of her head, against that rich, comforting bonnet of dark Balkan hair.

  Our apartment had three bedrooms. It had once been well occupied by a musical couple with four children. Before we painted the entire place bone white, we lived with the archaeology of the Belsito kids’ exuberance: kick marks, crayon skids, dried Play-Dough on the fir floors, roller skate gouges in the foyer. Now the place was as clean and uncluttered as one of those young professionals’ apartments in the magazines. The children’s bedrooms had been turned into home offices, one for me and one for Juliet. We each had our own phone, our own number; our offices were joined by an old wooden door with a crystal knob that had turned violet from sunlight and which we never opened without first knocking. I walked into my office. It was a white rectangle lined with books. The window looked out at a young oak with its branches thick with snow.

  Juliet had placed my telephone messages next to the phone. I looked them over until I found Carmichael’s number and then I dialed it, deliberately not giving myself a chance to organize my thoughts. I realized a long time before that in order to be truly prepared for leadership you had to be born to it; the rest of us just had to trust instinct.

  “Yes?” Carmichael said, picking it up on the first ring. His voice sounded high and quick, as if he were waiting for a call from the hospital. It conjured his face for me: receding brown hair, aviator glasses, a nose half the size of my thumb, a patchy brown mustache hovering over whistler’s lips.

  “Hello, Jerry. This is Fielding Pierce.”

  “Hello, Fielding!” he said, with a friendliness that was unnerving—probably deliberately so. “Glad you called.”

  “Good,” I said. A pause. “What can I do for you?”

  “Hey, it’s more what can I do for you. I just wanted to help make this an orderly transfer. I realize we’re dumping a whole lot in your lap.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. A car passed below and its headlights lit the snowy oak; a skin of ice was forming on the window.

  “I was hoping you could stop up this evening,” Carmichael said, “and we could go over a few things. You’ll be surprised how fast this is going to get complicated and I think we better grab this time while we can.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re not overly concerned about this winter storm watch,” I said, sitting on the edge of my desk. “I think it’s a way of dress rehearsing us for nuclear war.”

  “Yes? That’s an interesting way of looking at it. So you’ll come over? I’m just five blocks away.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We should talk.” I looked at my watch. It was nine thirty.

  He gave me his address on Cornell. I hung up the phone and stood there and felt my heart beating. I felt suddenly enormous. I felt if I stretched my arms out I could touch both ends of my room and then if I stretched a little farther I could reach out beyond. My ambition had always been mixed with a certain unreality, but now that it was starting to be realized a new, deeper, stranger unreality was taking hold.

  Juliet was eating ricotta and scallions in the kitchen. I came in dressed to leave.

  “I better go see him,” I said.

  “I’ll wait up for you,” she said.

  I nodded. A turn had been taken in our relationship. Events were forcing our hand and we were both a little embarrassed that the sudden velocity of our partnership was taking us beyond the natural boundaries of our feelings for each other. We were on our way to becoming a public couple and we barely knew each other.

  The snow had stopped for an hour but as I drove over to Carmichael’s apartment it was beginning again. The new snow was soft, floaty, as if someone had slit the belly on an enormous pillow. By the time I pulled in front of Carmichael’s high rise, a half inch of new snow was on the ground. There was a parking space in front of his building, somewhat marred by the presence of a fire hydrant—I parked anyhow, figuring it was nothing I couldn’t fix.

  I walked into the wind, toward Carmichael’s lakefront condo. I could see through the glass doors into the lobby. A tense, athletic-looking black man in a doorman’s uniform was pacing about, staring with anger at the video monitors—fancy security system. The TV screens showed only the closed, icy door of the underground garage and three empty elevators, each opening its door to an empty corridor, and closing it again. It seemed the doorman was the only living soul in the building.

  “I’m here to see Congressman Carmichael,” I said.

  “Name?” He didn’t take his eyes from the monitors. I couldn’t imagine doing his job. What was his mind like after eight hours of looking at those screens?

  “Pierce,” I said. The lining of my nose had stiffened up in the walk from car to building and now, in the heat, it was starting to run. I wiped it on the sleeve of my coat.

  Still glaring at the screens, the doorman picked up a phone and called up to announce me. “Mr. Carmich
ael’s in Ten A,” he said to me, hanging up the phone and indicating the elevator bank with an irritable jerk of the thumb. I felt his eyes on me as I made my way on in. After all the lousy publicity, did the doorman assume I was one of Carmichael’s lovers?

  Carmichael’s apartment was at the end of the hall on the tenth floor. I walked toward it quickly: I wanted whatever was going to happen to go down quickly. I knocked on 10 A. There was a braided-rope welcome that in front of the door; a pair of salt-stained rubbers had been left out to dry.

  “Fielding!” he said, throwing the door open to me. He was dressed in a pair of brown corduroy jeans, a blue blazer, and a white shirt: he had a teenager’s trim, tentative body. His face gleamed; his skin looked poreless and immaculate. “Glad you could make it.” He reached toward me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “This has been quite a turn of events, hasn’t it,” he said, ushering me in, taking my coat. “But it’s all working out. We’re getting it all under control. The governor tells me you’ve agreed to run and I want to tell you I just couldn’t be happier about that.”

  He was rubbing his smallish hands together as I followed him into his apartment. It was decorated Chinese, with watercolors of pandas and pagodas, gold and blue carpeting, vases filled with dried flowers, lamps with ricepaper shades, low black-lacquered tables. I smelled coffee and furniture polish. There wasn’t a book or a paper in sight. At the east end of the room was a picture window with a view of the lake, obscured now by a flashing curtain of snow.

  “Lorraine and the kids are in Florida while all this craziness sorts itself out,” he said, indicating with a wave that I should sit on the sofa. “Hell of a situation, huh?” He sat down on a chair near me and crossed his legs.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. I wanted to tell him how repulsive I found the scandal but the danger of sounding insincere brought me up short. I supposed if I’d really found it disgraceful then I would have refused to profit from it. Though I did not think the benefit was wholly personal: I truly did believe I’d be a better congressman than Carmichael. His record was undistinguished, gutless.

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve decided to step in while we work out our options,” he said. He squeezed his hands and dropped them into his lap. “Hey, like I said, Lorraine’s in Florida—the lucky stiff—so there’s nothing to eat. But I’ve got coffee going. Want a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Well, maybe later. It’s one of those do-hickey jobs that keeps the coffee warm, so if you change your mind …” He gestured toward the kitchen and his blazer opened up a little: to my great surprise, he was carrying a pistol in a fancy tooled holster, strapped Pinkerton-style under his arm.

  For a moment, I felt death in that room, like a current of icy water in an otherwise tepid lake.

  “Well, with one obvious exception,” he said, just as merry as can be, “you’ll be inheriting a hell of a staff. I’ve talked to them, naturally, and most of them have decided to hang in there with you, pal, and give you all the support you need. Unless, of course, after the election you plan to bring in your own people.”

  “I don’t have people yet,” I said. In one moment, it seemed abundantly clear that Carmichael, driven mad from the loss of his office, had invited me to his apartment in order to shoot me. In the next, however, it seemed impossible. Some people just carry guns. My brother, Danny, has a handgun, for example. Eisenhower, when he was president of Columbia University, used to stroll the Upper West Side with a .45 in his pants.

  “What kind of gun is that, Jerry?” I asked, casually.

  “Oh, this old thing,” he said, nudging it with his elbow. “It’s ancient. A .38.I really should get rid of it and buy a new one, but I’m always so busy. Anyhow, with all this insanity going on, I’m going to be keeping a low profile for a while. But I don’t want you to think you’re going out there to get slaughtered. I’ll be working with you, behind the scenes. I’ll be with you every inch of the way.” His merriness was increasing as his motor raced.

  “Well, I really do appreciate that, Jerry. Let’s just hope it won’t be necessary.”

  His smile broadened; now it was well past all human proportions. This was exactly the grin of a man who was going to shoot someone. “Oh come on, it’ll be necessary. No man is an island, right?” Suddenly, all this cheerfulness seemed to exact its toll and his boyish face went slack, revealing an older, more frightened face beneath it. He sat back in his chair and breathed out a long sigh. His eyes lost their focus; his skin went gray. “I’ve got a rest coming to me and I’m going to really enjoy it,” he said.

  Just then, the phone rang and he picked it up. “Yes?” he said, and then cleared his throat. “Oh, hi,” he said, sitting forward, suddenly animated again. He covered the receiver for a moment and then lipped to me: It’s my wife. “Well, how’s the sunshine, honey?” He was drumming his fingers rapidly against the arm of the chair. “Hey,” he said, “hey hey. Slow down. If they’re bothering you, don’t talk to them. That’s all there is to it.” He listened for another moment, twitching with impatience: it had been his hallmark as a public servant— Carmichael loved to talk but loathed listening. “Look, honey. I think you’re getting very carried away. If anything, the reporters are on our side. They’ve been goddamned supportive.” He fell into a reluctant silence again, nodding vigorously as he listened to his wife. “Look, Lorraine—” he said at one point, hoping to derail her. But she was used to his filibuster techniques and went right on. (Her picture hung over the fireplace. It was one of those outdoor art fair type of paintings, the kind my sister Caroline says degrades reality by reproducing it so simperingly, as if the Master of the universe was a sentimental fool in love with pastels and big-eyed bunnies. Lorraine Carmichael looked to be an attractive woman: short, Peter Pan-ish hair, a sharp nose, a shy smile. The Carmichael kids were posed with her: a four-year-old in an aqua tutu, a toddler in a candy-striped stretchie.) “OK, OK,” Carmichael was saying. “So he’s a bad egg. Then change your routine. If he’s bothering you at the pool then spend less time at the goddamned pool.” Pause. “No. There’s no one I can call.” He gripped the phone and said, in a confidential, desperate whisper, “Don’t you understand? There’s no one I can call.”

  I stood up. I had no business overhearing any of this. I put up my palm as if to indicate we could talk later. Jerry waved frantically at me and pointed to the sofa, practically ordering me to sit down and wait. I pretended to misunderstand and continued to make my way out.

  “I can’t talk to you now, Lorraine,” he said abruptly, and hung up the phone. “Fielding!” he called out, springing out of his chair. “Where are you going?”

  I was halfway down the foyer, my coat and the door tantalizingly in sight. But I had no choice but to turn around. “It’s quite a storm out there, Jerry. I better get home while I can.”

  “Hey, what’s a storm between friends, right?” He was walking toward me, his arm out as if to embrace me. He was making no attempt to keep the jacket closed over the gun. “You’re not going anywhere until we drink a toast. OK?”

  “I don’t drink,” I said.

  “Hey, come on.”

  “I don’t. I can’t.” I’d been keeping away from alcohol for four years now, but it still felt awkward to refuse. I had never been a completely out-of-control drunk—I never lost my job, never was arrested. But I was what they call a chronic drinker. Or at least that’s what I called it. I’d beat back the habit on my own, but it was never very far away.

  “Oh,” said Carmichael, “it’s like that? I didn’t know. Well, you better watch your ass down in Washington. You won’t believe how they drink down there.”

  “I’ll be careful, Jerry,” I said. I turned my back to him as I dressed for the trip home; I could feel him looking at me, felt him stirring. I moved slowly, taking care to wrap my scarf neatly, buttoning my overcoat, flipping the collar up.

  “I really do wish I didn’t have to be alone tonight,” he said in a cheerful voice. �
�Oh well. I can always make phone calls. Or shoot myself. Ha ha.”

  I turned to look at him for a last time. “Don’t shoot yourself, Jerry. All right?”

  He smiled, perhaps a little embarrassed. “OK,” he said. He buttoned his jacket and patted the almost imperceptible bulge.

  “If you’d wanted to fight this thing,” I said, “I would have supported you.”

  His lips were pressed together, though he was still smiling, and he shook his head no.

  “It’s a witchhunt, Jerry. You got a shitty deal.”

  He continued to make that tight-lipped smile and continued to shake his head no. “It’s OK,” he said. “A little rest. It’ll be fine. We’ll talk tomorrow, OK? I mean, you know, if possible. Go over some things. We’ve got a lot in process I want to, ah, familiarize you with.”

  I felt a flash of affection for Carmichael, yet I knew if I resisted any outward show of emotion I would be glad later. I put my hands in my pockets and fished out my gloves. I put them on, nodded, and let myself out the door.

  “This is all going to be just fine,” he was saying. “We just got to keep this thing going, right? Keep it going.”

  When I got down to the street, three more inches of snow had fallen and my old Mercury, spinning its wheels, dug a sooty ice pit for itself. I rocked it back and forth and got nowhere. I was in a cloud of exhaust fumes and beyond that cloud the snow was falling faster and faster. I gave up on the car and got out, figuring it wasn’t a very long walk.

  I made my way toward home, the only thing moving in the dark, arctic streets. The snow was gray-blue drifts on the ground. I stepped in new snow and sunk once to my knees. The blizzard and the wind were starting to play with my senses. One foot in front of the other. Don’t think. Just walk. Like AA. One step at a time.

  I’d only gone two blocks when the street lamps blinked twice and then went black. The lights in the windows along the way suddenly disappeared. A spurt of terror went through me and then I calmly explained to myself that it was a power failure. We’d had one in an earlier storm. It had lasted only twenty minutes. I heard a muffled shout from one of the apartments along the way. But I could see virtually nothing. A great stillness settled over this snowy quadrangle of world, a stillness only I disturbed.