Then we were sitting at a stoplight, a laundry truck on one side of us, a school bus on the other, and she leaned over and before I knew what was happening, she threw her arms around me and put her tongue, with the precision of a surgical instrument, right inside my mouth.
I could tell when the light changed because the cars behind us started honking and the drivers yelling.
She was soft and tasted great and I was trembling and feeling one of those erections you're only supposed to get when you're sixteen and every bit as daffy, at least at the moment, as she was.
Then, bowing to the authority of horns and curses, she took herself away from me, and I felt as deserted as an orphan.
But before she went back to driving, she patted me on the knee in an oddly cool, almost matronly way and said, "I know you're going to help me, Jack. I just know it."
The east end of the Harcourt sits on a promontory over a lake lost that day in fog and rain. Somewhere in the distance big wooden workboats moved like massive prehistoric animals through haze that blanched everything of colors. Everything looked and felt gray on this March day.
On this side of the vast curved window a waiter who seemed to have watched an awful lot of Charles Boyer movies was making a fool of himself over Karen while trying to keep up a French accent that was falling down like socks that had lost their elastic.
"Ze braised fresh crab claws," he said and rolled his eyes the way he probably did during sex.
"They sound wonderful. Just wonderful." And then she smiled over at me. "Don't they sound wonderful, Jack?"
"'Wonderful' isn't the word for it," I said.
"And ze sautéed fresh prawns with shredded ham and vegetables." He rolled his eyes again. I had decided that if he managed to work "ooh-la-la" into the conversation, I was going to deck him.
While he finished flirting with Karen, I glanced around the Harcourt and knew again that my speed was Hardees. Here you sat on English walnut chairs and stared at paintings by Matisse (whom I happened to like in my uneducated way) and large blow-ups of Cartier-Bresson photographs (which I thought I could probably duplicate with my Polaroid) and ate with forks that weighed two and a half pounds and daubed goose-liver pâté off your lips with brilliant white napkins big enough to double as sheets.
When the waiter finally packed up his French accent and went away, Karen said, "You look uncomfortable."
I sighed. "Can I be honest?"
"Of course. Honesty is something I really value."
I tried not to be uncharitable, but I couldn't keep the hard cold trust-department way she'd assessed her husbands out of my mind. If that was her idea of honesty, then maybe I would have preferred her a bit dishonest.
"Your father," I said.
She looked perplexed. "What about him?"
"He lived in the Highlands, right?"
"Why, yes. Of course."
"The Highlands being the area in this city with the lowest per-capita income and the highest crime rate."
"What's the point, Jack?" Irritation had come into her voice.
"That's where your father was from and my father was from and that's where you're from and that's where I'm from."
"Would you please come to the point?"
"I'm ashamed of you, that's the point."
"What?" She sat back in her chair as if I'd just tried to slap her.
"You've bought into an awful lot of bullshit, you know that? New white Jaguars and measuring people by their bank accounts and indulging silly assholes like that waiter."
"Are you drunk?"
"No.''
"Are you on drugs?"
"No.
"Then you have absolutely no right to speak to me that way."
"Sure I do. I've known you since you were six years old and we made our First Communion together and you were always full of shit, Karen, but you've never been this full of shit before."
So—what else?—she started crying.
There were approximately three hundred other people in the big restaurant, most of them men and most of them with gold American Express cards pulsating in their suits, and now nearly every one of them was staring at us.
If she was faking, she was good at it because she didn't go for any big sobs or anything like that, she just sat there and put her beautiful head into one beautiful hand and small tears rolled down her beautiful cheeks and touched her beautiful red glossy lips.
"I overdid it," I said.
She just kept her head down.
I looked out at the fog and the wooden workboats and the hint of birch-lined shore somewhere in the haze.
I said, "I said I overdid it."
She looked up. "Is that supposed to be an apology?"
"About half an apology."
"I want and deserve more than half an apology."
"Your old man worked with my old man in the same factory. They had Spam for lunch and they played pinochle every Friday night, and even if they weren't smart and they weren't important, they knew enough to hate bullshit. And that's all you seem to know, Karen. Bullshit."'
"'Well, thank you very much."
Our positions had shifted subtly here. Her tears had dried and I was angry again. "You're welcome."
So we sat in uncomfortable silence for a time.
"You're making a lot of assumptions about me, Jack."
"Sure."
"You are. How do you know that I haven't had a lot of pain in my life?"
"You mean in between having your accountant going through your husband's bank account so you can decide if he's worth keeping or not."
"There was a perfectly good reason for each divorce."
"Right."
"Incompatibility."
She said it so fecklessly that it had an odd endearing quality. "Incompatibility? That's legalese, Karen. More bullshit. It's meaningless."
"Well, whether you choose to believe it or not, I was incompatible with each and every one of my husbands for a very simple reason. Because I wanted to find myself and they didn't want me to."
"Finding yourself went out in the seventies, Karen, along with earth shoes."
For the first time, she sulked, beautiful, as always but looking a bit trapped now. "Anyway, Jack, two can play the honesty game."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that I know very well why you're being so mean."
"Why?"
"Because of that night I took your car."
Actually, of all her many betrayals, that had been one that had slipped my mind. Now, though, instead of inspiring pain, it caused me to laugh. It was that outrageous. "I forgot all about that. You said you needed to borrow my car so you could help your mother with grocery shopping because your family car was getting fixed. And then you took my goddamn car—that I'd worked my ass off to buy—and you took Larry Price to the drive-in in it."
She leaned forward and pursed her lips as if she was getting impatient with my misunderstanding of her. "Well, for your information, even if I did use your car to take Larry to the drive-in, it wasn't what you think. The drive-in was just a good place to talk."
"Right."
I sensed but could not define something shift in her gaze.
Ever since we'd started talking about Larry Price, her jaw had set and a strange anger was in her eyes.
But I was too concerned with my own anger to worry about hers. I was almost overwhelmed with the purity of my rage even though twenty-five years had passed. "Larry Price, Ted Forester, David Haskins—you knew how I hated them. And you know why, too. What they did to Malley and me that night."
Price, Forester, and Haskins had been seniors when we'd been juniors. One night they'd depantsed a wimpy kid everybody picked on with the casual cruelty of young people who constantly needed to reassure themselves they were normal and cool and slick. Then they'd beaten him and beaten him badly. And it so happened that when Malley and I heard about it, we got a six-pack and sat around and talked about it a lot, kind of working ourselves up, and then we went
looking for them. And it was all supposed to go our way because we were righteous and we were poor, and poor kids were supposed to be tough, but when we found them, it didn't work out that way at all. Even though Price and Forester and Haskins had only come to St. Michael's in a redistricting of Catholic schools and did not socially fit in—they were the sons of very wealthy and successful people—they were at least one thing they were not supposed to be, and that was tough. My friend fought Forester and did not do well at all, and then I fought Price and did even less well. For weeks we tried to explain that to each other—"You know, if we hadn't been so drunk, man, there wouldn't have been nothing left of those guys" —but it was all bull and we hadn't been tough enough, and that remained, even today, a source of secret shame.
So five weeks later, my supposed girlfriend Karen Lane borrows my car and takes Larry Price to the drive-in. "Maybe it wasn't what you think, Jack."
"Sure."
I was about to say more, coasting on my anger now, when she pulled something up from her lap and set it on the table next to the fresh-cut rose in the slender vase.
A white envelope.
"Money," she said.
"For what?"
"That isn't the question you should be asking first."
"What question should I be asking first?"
"You should be more curious about how much there is than what it's for."
"So how much is there?"
"A thousand dollars."
"I'm impressed."
"You should be. I'm practically broke. " '
"Now I want to know what it's for."
"Because I want you to do me a favor."
"I've already got doubts."
"It's perfectly legal."
"Right."
"All it involves is you getting back something that belongs to me."
"And what would that be?"
"A suitcase."
"Where is it?"
"In a condo on the northeast edge of the city."
"And who lives in the condo?"
"A man named Evans. Glendon Evans."
"Glendon?"
"That's his full name. But everybody calls him Glen. Including his patients."
"Patients?"
"He's a psychiatrist."
"I see." I sipped some water. "Why can't you just call Glendon or Glen and ask him if you can have your suitcase?"
"I'm afraid he's angry with me."
"Ah."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I sense amore is somehow involved. True?"
"We lived together nearly a year."
"But now you want out?"
"I am out and have been out for a month, but he won't give me my suitcase back."
"Where are you staying now?"
"Do you remember Susan Roberts?"
"Sure." Susan had been a slight but lovely girl, given, unlike most of us in the Highlands, to things of culture and beauty. You never found Susan at the drag strip on Sunday afternoons. She had also been, as I recalled, obsessive about a guy named Gary Roberts whose sole desire had been to be a writer.
"She married Gary. Did you know that?"
"Yes," I said.
"He's a teacher. A very good one." She smiled. "And he still writes. Every day. And someday, he'll get something published. You wait and see."
"You're apologizing for him. That's arrogant. He's probably a lot happier than these jack-offs you've been married to."
"Would you please just not be so angry?"
I sighed. "You're right. I'm being angry, and I'm being arrogant and now I'll apologize."
"I appreciate it."
"So you've been staying with the Robertses?"
"Yes. They were the ones who told me that you'd been a policeman and now were a private investigator."
"Mostly I bust shoplifters."
Now she sipped her water. "But certainly you have enough experience to get my suitcase back."
"What's so special about it?"
"It's just got a lot of sentimental things in it."
Which I didn't believe at all. She struck me about as sentimental as Charles Manson's sister. But I let it pass.
"And the suitcase is in the condo?"
"Yes."
"So if I went in there and got it for you, I'd be committing B and E.
"B and E?"
"Breaking and entering."
"Not really."
"Why not?"
"First, because the suitcase belongs to me, and second, because I have a key."
Which she produced with a distinct air of voilà. Even in the blanched light of the gray day, she still looked tan and overpoweringly lovely.
"Did you know there's a reunion dance tonight?" she said.
"I know. Number twenty-five. I'm not going."
"Why?"
"Because I feel old enough already. I don't need to confirm my suspicions by looking at people with bald heads and potbellies and wattles like turkeys. I've got all that stuff myself."
"Actually, Jack, you're still very handsome in your way."
"You always said that, that 'in my way' thing, and it always bothered me."
"Well, you're not Robert Redford, but you're appealing. You really are."
"So what about the reunion?"
"Well, I thought it would be fun if you just kind of popped over this afternoon and got my suitcase and then popped over to the reunion. Then we could have some fun together. And you could have the money."
"I like the way you kind of ran those together."
"What?"
"Popping into a B and E and then popping over to the reunion. Real fast. You're good at it."
"Don't be cynical, Jack. This is all very straightforward. It's Tuesday and Glen sees patients till ten. He won't be there to bother you. "
"I have an obvious question to ask."
"What's that?"
"Why don't you just go get it yourself?"
"Vibes."
"Vibes?"
"The vibes were so bad between us there at the end. If I so much as set a foot back into the place, I'd be depressed for a week. Really."
"Vibes," I said.
She took out five one-hundred-dollar bills and laid them out green and crisp and dignified on the brilliant white tablecloth.
"You'll do it?" she said.
"You really want to get me mixed up in all this?"
"In all what, Jack? It's just getting my suitcase back."
"Why don't you have me do something else?"
"Such as what?"
"Mow your lawn or take out your garbage or something."
"Jack," she said.
And then she put her hand on mine and in a very different way said again, "Jack."
Chapter 3
The winding asphalt road got steep enough that I had to keep the Toyota in second gear most of the way.
The sun was out now and the hills of pine and spruce were like a wall closing me off from the city behind. At one point I saw a deer come to the edge of the road and watch me with its delicate and frightened beauty.
After a few miles, country-style mailboxes began appearing on the left-hand side of the macadam, and then, up in the trees that seemed to touch the clouds themselves, you could see the sharp jut of the white stone condos, their Frank Lloyd Wright expanse of glass flashing gold in the sunlight.
I rolled down the window and enjoyed the odors, sweet pine and the tang of reasonably fresh water from a nearby creek and wild ginger and ginseng in the forest to the right.
When I saw the box reading GLENDON EVANS, I pulled the Toyota over to the side and parked and got out. At first all I wanted to do was walk a few feet up the asphalt and take in some more of spring's birthing sights, new grass already vivid green and cardinals and blue jays soaring in the air. I looked behind me, at the ragged silhouette of the city in the valley. This was an aerie up here, and Glendon Evans should consider himself damn lucky.
To reach the condo you had to walk eighty-some stone
steps set into a hill at about a sixty-degree angle so narrowly laid out that you could get slapped by overhanging spruce branches all the way up. A squirrel who apparently wanted to get himself adopted accompanied me from a three-foot distance all the way up.
The condo, as imposing as one of the gods of Easter Island, had been set into a piney hill and angled dramatically upward, so that no matter what angle you saw it from, you knew its owner was more powerful than you could ever be. There were three floors. Draperies were drawn on all the windows. The lower level was a two-stall garage. The doors were closed.
Spread across the flagstone patio in front of the place was a variety of lawn furniture, the good doctor apparently getting ready for summer. A redwood picnic table, several lawn chairs, and a gas grill big enough to handle the Bears looked ready for burgers and beer. Only the lonely wind, a bit chill and tart with pine, reminded me that it was still a little early for lawn furniture, and suddenly there was an air of desertion about the place, as if the people who lived here had fled for some mysterious and possibly terrible reason.
I took the key from my pocket again and tried the front door. No problem.
Then I walked into something not unlike a French country house, with raised oak paneling and a limestone fireplace and Persian tugs and built-in bookcases and a leather couch as elegant as a swan's neck. There was a Jim Dine print above the fireplace. The east wall was a fan-shaped window that looked over the winding creek below, still silver with the last of spring's frost. The west wall was a cathedral window from which you could see an impenetrable forest that stretched all the way to a line of ragged hills above which the white tracks of jets now slowly disintegrated against the bright blue sky.
Looking around, I realized that I had made a mistake coming here. Maybe, after twenty-five years of living in places like this, Karen Lane could claim this world as her own, but I couldn't. I was as out of place here as an atheist in a church.
At the last I hadn't even taken her money, just agreed to help her out of some misguided sense that she needed my help. But the condo said very different things to me—that where Karen Lane was concerned, I was the one who needed help, and that it was unlikely that I was here to get anything half as innocent as a suitcase full of "sentimental" things.
The Autumn Dead Page 2