Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  “When I was eleven years old,” she said, “I got an idea that Frank Sinatra was born to be my spiritual guide. He seemed to know everything. I wrote him letters and when I would read in the newspapers about where he was appearing, I’d try and call him there. Then one day, I decided this couldn’t go on anymore. I just needed him too badly to do without him. It was an emergency, a prepuberty spiritual emergency. I learned he was performing at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and I made up my mind to get there. I dressed in my sister Tammy’s clothes—she was sixteen—and put makeup on so I’d look grown-up. And I went to the airport with about forty dollars—everything I could lay my hands on. There was a flight to Las Vegas that left every afternoon at three o’clock and I thought I could sneak onto the plane and whatever happened after that wouldn’t matter because I’d be in the realm of a higher cosmic force.”

  “What made you think so?”

  “Something he’d said on TV. He said the important thing was to make it through the night and whatever helped you—it didn’t matter if it was God or gin or another person—that made it holy. I thought he was Jesus—and no one knew it. Maybe he didn’t know it, either. I still sometimes think everything would have turned out different for poor old Frank if I could have gotten to him and told him he was Jesus.”

  We came to the road that runs north and south through the park. Taxicabs streamed by and then the road was empty. We crossed it, holding hands. A few lights from the buildings on Central Park West were showing through the haze, hovering above the charcoal darkness like little spaceships.

  Sarah lived in a four-story brownstone with a red door and red shutters. The buzzer for her apartment read Williams & McCabe, Inc. McCabe was Patricia McCabe, her roommate; the Inc. was a joke, a way of holding on to the high spirits of their college friendship.

  I stood next to Sarah as she poked around in her purse, key hunting, and the awkwardness was as real as grief. “I enjoyed myself,” she said, finding the key—one of six attached to a silver ring and a little red plastic crayfish.

  “Can I see you again?” I asked.

  “OK,” she said. She covered my eyes with her hand and kept it there for a moment. When she removed it, she said, “There. Now you see me again.” She saw I was too rattled to laugh. “Sorry. I did that once a long time ago and … it just came back.”

  I took the hand that had covered my eyes and held it. I looked at it closely, as if I were a palmist, and then slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, I raised it to my lips and planted a soft, fervent, utterly devoted kiss right on the interstices of her fate. She raised her free hand and touched me on the back of the neck.

  “Can I come up?” I asked, holding her hand, squeezing it.

  “Too fast,” she said. She shook her head.

  “Can’t we think of this as a wartime romance?” I said.

  She touched my face with her open hand and then, as she was about to turn away, pinched my cheek. Hard.

  I waited at the door as she made her way up the stairs. I watched her feet disappear and then her shadow came slipping after. I looked at the doorbells; she lived on the fourth floor. I walked out onto the street and waited to see her. A window was bright with soft yellow light; a spider plant in a macrame sling hung down like a pendant. I waited and waited and then, finally, her face appeared in the window. She looked first to the left, then to the right. Then she saw me standing in the street, my lower half obscured by an old cream and blue Chrysler, a streetlight directly over my head, dropping its light on me as if I were a tenor about to break into song. Now she was unlocking the window, using her strength to get it to budge; and now it was rising, slowly, with a paint-splitting groan I could hear clear down in the street. “Come on up, Fielding,” she called, sticking her head out the window, an angel poking through the skin of disbelief that separates heaven from earth.

  5

  THE TUESDAY AFTER my meeting with Kinosis, there was a dinner party for me at Isaac and Adele’s. They’d put it together quickly. Mayor Byrne was invited. Mike Royko, Marshall Field—people whom the Greens thought it would be well for me to cultivate but who did not, except for the mayor, get too involved with the mess and push of electoral politics.

  Juliet and I dressed for dinner. There was still plenty of Congressman Carmichael on the news; as the scandal grew older and moldier a lower order of news reporter began to paw over it, just as the weaker hyenas will have their chance after the strong have had their fill.

  Jerry wasn’t making it any easier on himself. He’d called yet another press conference. The boredom was getting to him and making him stupid. This day’s meeting with the press was held at his office on 53rd Street—a sunny little storefront that had once been a bakery. Carmichael came as a civilian, in corduroy pants, a plaid wool shirt— maybe he was trying to give the impression he was just on his way to Michigan to do a little hunting. His eyes had looked psychotic with grief. “I just wanted to make my apologies to the people of my district,” he said, staring into the cameras. “I know … I let them down. And that is something I’m going …I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.” He was cut from the moorings of his old life and had no more hope than a dinghy in a hurricane.

  I made myself onto the local news that night, though as a footnote to the Tales of Carmichael. A picture of me flashed on the screen and it nicked momentarily into the memory of seeing Sarah’s face on the news. The newscaster was saying, “Insiders report the man most likely to fill Congressman Carmichael’s seat is a thirty-four-year-old attorney from the DA’s office named Fielding Pierce. Pierce, a bachelor and a political unknown, apparently occupies the inside track with local Dems and Governor Kinosis is expected to announce Pierce’s spot on the ballot in the next two or three days.”

  “Juliet!” I shouted. I stood up and walked halfway toward the bedroom. “Juliet? Come on out. I’m on the news.”

  “What are they saying?” she called back. Her voice sounded awfully far away.

  Now Jerry was off the news and so was I and they could get to what the real news was. Today they had two weathermen—their usual guy with his huckster suit and fever dream pompadour and a special winter storm consultant from something called the American Weather Watch, who was comparing this series of snowstorms to storms of the past. His reminiscences were illustrated by the most unremarkable old photographs of Chicago in the 1930s, showing people in overcoats trudging through snow up to their knees and arty color snaps of bare trees, their boughs heavy and luminous with ice.

  Juliet came in, dressed in what I guess you’d call an evening gown, one of those sheer, sparkling, impractical dresses that seem designed to state: I have a fur coat, a warm carriage, and a powerful male protector.

  “Wow,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  “You want to be a congressman or a senator? Well, this is how it’s done. And don’t kid yourself, Fielding. This is as much a part of politics as anything else.”

  “I know,” I said. “And please don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

  “Joke?”

  “No joke.”

  She smiled. Juliet didn’t press matters once she heard what she wanted. Isaac was an idiot about women; he didn’t realize how many edges she had. He had bequeathed her to me, stuffed her in my pocket like a silk handkerchief, with no thought more complex than that she would add a little class to my act. He’d been horrified by Sarah, with her feverish opinions and faded jeans, though he’d been naturally too intelligent and too decent to say a word against her. But fundamentally his judgment was that I couldn’t make the long haul by myself. Perhaps I ought to have been insulted. Maybe what I should have done was tell him to find another protégé, another lost boy, another wooden arrow to notch onto the bowstring of his frustrated yearnings. But I felt very cool about the whole thing.

  Ambition is the ice on the lake of emotion. If I was offended then it was a highly theoretical sort of offense, a murmur all but lost behind the great raucous n
oise of the parade. I took out my aggressions where they might do the most good. I put them into work, into master plans. And if that wasn’t enough, I could always bomb up and down the Outer Drive with the radio blasting, until I exhausted myself into enough docility to sleep through the night and get myself ready for another day of my crusade—a crusade that had begun, as most crusades had, with the highest ideals and the best intentions but during which I had begun to forget about the fallen torches I had once wanted to retrieve, the terrible wrongs I had once wanted to redress, and now the long bloody trek to Jerusalem was something generated by fuel from a deeper and darker source: the grade-A crude of ego.

  “You’ve got a spot on your suit,” Juliet said, touching my lapels with her skillful long fingers.

  “I’ve got spots on all my suits,” I said. “We guys from the underclass slurp our food.”

  “One day you’re going to be very powerful and obscenely rich and you’re still going to be saying that,” Juliet said, trying to make it sound affectionate and teasing.

  “Well, whatever stellar heights I rise to,” I said, “I’m still going to be me.”

  “Save it for the campaign trail, Fielding,” she said.

  I smiled, struck by the fact that I’d meant to say something true about myself and it had come out sounding facetious, fake. Juliet turned her back to me and asked me to help with her zipper. I zipped her up and then negotiated the elusive little clasp at the top. It must have been a thousand dollars’ worth of dress. It seemed immoral, but it wasn’t something you said. She had a long, bone-white neck and I felt I ought to kiss it. Then of course there was the possibility of just ripping all of that sheer silk off her and taking her from behind—sex gives us the opportunity to tilt the world that quickly and expose all of the elemental savage hunger underneath. I smoothed away a wisp of black hair and kissed her neck. She made a low sound, as if stirring in her sleep.

  And then the telephone. The nerves at the pit of my stomach rose up like pigeons from a square. Juliet moved toward the phone but I stopped her.

  “I’ll take it in my study,” I said.

  “Let’s not be late,” she said, as I hurried. I grabbed the phone on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Fielding, this storm’s going to be in the way.” It was Isaac. My nerves settled back down like the contents of a room after an explosion—everything under gravity’s spell once again but who could say in what order. “I think we’re going to have to cancel the dinner for tonight,”he was saying. “They’ve predicted ten inches for tonight. Ach. This place is a Siberia.”

  “Well, you know these weathermen, Isaac,” I said. “They want to turn every storm into an emergency. I swear, we’re being dress rehearsed for nuclear war. Even the language they use.”

  “Well, yes, that’s an interesting way to look at it. But after all, we can’t expect people to drive in a snow alert. I’m sorry. I can see you were looking forward to it. The mayor’s an absolute bore, if it makes you feel any better. One of the most petty and disagreeable women I’ve ever known.”

  “Well, that does make me feel better,” I said.

  He laughed. I’d said the right thing. “Stay inside tonight. Curl up with my niece and let’s hope this storm passes quickly.”

  We said good night—though each time I was ready to hang up the phone, Isaac remembered something else he wanted to tell me. Would I be able to meet with a few of the key Illinois congressional Democrats next Monday, assuming, of course, the governor got around to making the announcement by then? When was I leaving for New York to see my family? Over Christmas? Couldn’t it possibly be put off for some other time? No? Then perhaps shortened? And so forth. By the time Isaac was finished with his requests and reminders, we’d said good-bye fifty times.

  “God,” I said to Juliet, “try getting your uncle off the phone.”

  “It’s only that he loves you,” she said.

  “Dinner’s off,” I said. “Snowed out.”

  She put her hand on her belly, as if to break it the news. “Well, that’s all right,” she said. “There’ll be plenty more.”

  “Do you really want to go through this with me?”

  “Through what’s going to happen? Why not?This is the part we’ve been looking forward to. You’re getting recognition. You’ll have a voice.”

  “But what’s in it for you?” I asked.

  She looked back at me. I had insulted her but her face seemed to register its unhappiness as if it was something remembered.

  “I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” I said.

  “I know that,” she said softly.

  “It’s just that a couple of days ago you had your life and I had mine and now all of a sudden we’re talking as if …”

  “You’re going to need someone, Fielding. Now more than ever. I had a choice to come forward or shrink back and I chose to come forward. I’m sorry if that makes you feel pressured.”

  “It doesn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m saying these things.”

  “You’re frightened,” she said.

  “I guess.”

  “Your dreams are coming true.”

  “It must be that. I’m sorry. Come on. Let’s drop it. Let’s keep our nice clothes on and have an evening at home like a couple in a Smirnoff’s ad. A roaring fire. Perfect haircuts. And a big bottle of vodka between them.” I laughed a laugh so forced and weird that if it had been beamed into the galaxies it would have kept extraterrestrials away from our planet forever. “The perfect evening, right? Can you imagine? Two people alone drinking an entire quart of vodka? What a mess. Right?”

  “Your nervousness is making me nervous,” said Juliet, holding her hand out to me. I took her hand and she came to me. We held each other in a light, calming embrace. “Would it be OK if I did have a couple of drinks?” she asked.

  “Of course it would.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t need to.” Juliet was always solicitous about my drinking or, rather, my not drinking. My abstinence made her think I was a sort of behavioral time bomb ticking in her midst and she dreaded yet morbidly courted the person she imagined I would become with alcohol in me, a person at once more brutal, more coarse, and more real than the man she’d been living with.

  Juliet was not a drinker the way Sarah was—drink tapped Sarah’s aggression, made her teasing, argumentative, confrontational, and sexually frank in a way that took some getting used to. Sarah was slow and reverential about wine, but when it came to hard alcohol she was demonic. She could take long cowboy swigs right out of the bottle; she was fervent, even desperate in her belief that alcohol might untie some Gordian knot of rectitude and self-doubt.

  Juliet wandered into the bedroom while I fetched a bottle and a glass. She liked drinking in or near bed; it saved on crawling. I poured out her Polish vodka and she accepted it with a certain resignation, as if I were putting her on a train. I pulled a joint of Colombian pot from my breast pocket—a present from a lawyer named Sid Ablin, who was twenty-seven years old, wore a little black derby everywhere except in court, and whom we called Chainsaw in honor of his ability to cut unfriendly witnesses into small, neatly stacked pieces. He was a good prosecutor, but if it hadn’t been for the job he would probably have been in the loony bin.

  I lit up and tapped the joint against her glass. “To storms,” I said.

  She looked over the rim of her glass at me and took a sip.

  “Why do we feel like this, Fielding?” she asked.

  “Embarrassment,” I said. “We find ourselves in a very embarrassing situation here.”

  “I guess,” she said. She lay down on the bed and worked her shoes off and then crossed her feet at the ankles. She held her glass with both hands and slowly brought it to her lips again.

  “We were just drifting along,” I said, with a sudden, weird surge of enthusiasm in my voice. I was figuring it out and the pleasures of diagnosis for the moment overwhelmed the fatality of the disease. “We’ve b
een enjoying each other and you haven’t been asking very much of me and I haven’t been asking a lot of you, either. It’s just been nice.”

  “I think it’s been a little more than nice,” said Juliet, looking away.

  “Yes, I agree. It’s been more than nice. But there’s always been a distance, a buffer. And when we pass through it we cool off a little and we have to pass through it every time.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “I’m not saying anything bad,” I said, sitting on the bed, putting my hand on her arm. “We’ve had it great. People see us, they think, Hey, why can’t it be that way for us? Right? Isn’t that right? That’s something we’ve both noticed. We’ve kept it very simple and uncluttered. That’s how we’ve wanted it. It’s what we like. It’s what we can do. But now I’m going to be on the ballot and, let’s face it, I’m probably going to win.” I paused and waited for her to nod, to make some sign of agreement. “I’m going to, you know. It’s almost inevitable. They don’t call it the Chicago Democratic machine for nothing. And then I’ll be going to Washington. I’ll have to start pretty soon working on reelection plans, because whatever the Republicans do or don’t do they’ll certainly come after me with both guns smoking the next time around. And maybe even someone in my own party will go after my seat.”

  “I know all this. And as well as you do.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m trying to say.”

  “I guess I don’t. But I hate all this fake seriousness. I hate trying to make everything more important and full of agony than it really is. Why can’t we just take it easy?”

  Her face looked placid; her eyes were expressionless, as if everything suddenly depended on my not knowing what she was really feeling. Yet I knew this act of concealment was performed as much on herself as on me.

  “I’m not talking about taking it easy here, Juliet. Jesus, I don’t know what you’re thinking about. I’m talking about two people. I’m talking about the two of us. I’m talking,” I said, in a much quieter voice, “about the fact that you and I have been able to make out pretty well without getting committed—”