End of Story

by Peter Abrahams

  Tony B laughed. “Touché,” he said. “But you can’t be too careful in cases like this.”

  “Cases like what?”

  “Where there’s a scramble for pub rights,” Tony B said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Something wrong with your memory?” said Tony B. “Maybe you should start taking notes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s already a manuscript, like I told you,” Tony B said. “Three hundred and nineteen fucking pages, even if there is no ending. This story is mine.”

  “Absolutely,” Ivy said. “I’ll never write a word about it. My interest is in Harrow’s fiction.”

  “Say again?” said Tony B. “You faded out there.”

  “I’ll never write a word about it.”

  “We’re clear on that?”

  “One hundred percent,” Ivy said.

  “Deal,” said Tony B. “As for this request of yours, there are several ways to go about it.”

  Ivy chose the one that involved posing as a buyer in a real-estate office, sitting in a conference room with a well-dressed woman and lots of literature, including municipal tax rolls. Not long after, she was driving through a fancy suburb in the western part of the city. She parked in front of the big stone house at 458 Rue Rançon, registered to Jake and Marie McCord.

  And now? Ivy wasn’t sure. She could walk up and knock on the door—but what if Frank Mandrell opened up? Or she could just sit and wait. Ivy sat and waited. A gust of wind raised some dead leaves from a lawn and blew them in the gutter. They settled in a little heap; then another gust sprang up and they were on the move again. Ivy’s mind wandered over to The Surveyor. The surveyor’s world didn’t add up. The surveyor would have to find out—and find out painfully—that she didn’t add up either. Maybe the surveyor’s whole history wasn’t what she’d thought or been told.

  Where to begin? Professor Smallian believed that more stories failed from beginning in the wrong place than for any other reason. Ivy mulled it over for a while, began to wonder about the actual instruments of surveying. Learning all that was going to be important, the nuts and bolts needed to be—

  Ivy had sunk so deeply into all this that she almost didn’t notice the garage door at 458 opening up. A big black Mercedes glided out, Frank Mandrell at the wheel, his long blond hair so strange with that dark face. Ivy shrank back in her seat, a useless tactic. Mandrell drove right by her, five feet away. All he had to do was glance over; but he was on his cell phone and saw nothing. The Mercedes turned a corner, flashed briefly between two houses on the cross street, and vanished.

  Ivy took one last look at Betty Ann’s image on that deck in Claudette’s photo and got out of the car. She walked up the flagstone path and banged the knocker—a brass replica of the Venus de Milo—hard against the door.

  Footsteps on the other side. Ivy’s heart started beating, fast and light, like a tiny drum. Betty Ann Price had met Mandrell at the boat ramp, taken the money, money they’d used to finance Les Girls and make Frank’s dream come true. Once he was lost to witness protection, what was there to keep them from being together? Nothing: therefore probably part of the reason he’d gone missing. Some details were still fuzzy, but the core story made sense. Betty Ann was going to open that door. And then what? Ivy wasn’t exactly sure, but it ended with Harrow as a free man.

  The door opened.

  Not Betty Ann.

  Betty Ann would be thirty by now. This woman was about fifteen years older than that, had sharp features, a headful of graying curls, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

  “Oui?” she said.

  “Marie McCord?” said Ivy.

  “Yes?” Marie McCord squinted at Ivy through drifting smoke. The tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, the tilt of her head: Ivy read suspicion in every detail. “If you’re selling something I’m not interested.”

  Ivy shook her head. “I’m looking for Betty Ann.”

  “Betty Ann?” said Marie; Ivy was watching very closely: the name meant nothing to her.

  “Betty Ann Price,” Ivy said, still unwilling to let the idea go.

  Marie shrugged. “You have the wrong house.”

  “I—”

  Marie closed the door.

  Ivy backed away.

  No Betty Ann.

  For a moment or two, Ivy felt light-headed. Had Betty Ann and Mandrell parted somewhere along the way, maybe splitting the money? Ivy didn’t know: the Gold Dust story refused to add up. But some big things were still certain: Mandrell had an affair with Betty Ann; he set Harrow up; he made his strip-club dream come true; Harrow was innocent. Ivy drove to the airport, turned in the car, flew back to New York.

  The city had changed. Ivy couldn’t say exactly how. The quality of the light, the density of the shadows, the expressions on faces, even faces she knew: all just a little bit different, as though some supernatural being had tried to replicate New York and come very close. Unsettlingly close; and she’d always felt settled in New York. Falling asleep took a long time, and the sleep that finally came was troubled.

  Ivy awoke, made coffee, cleaned her apartment, showered, and took a long walk that ended at Verlaine’s. Pretty busy for a Monday: Bruce was working the bar, along with a slim black woman, very good-looking, whom Ivy had never seen. Ivy put her hair in a ponytail and stepped behind the bar, next to Bruce.

  He was pouring a glass of red, that Chilean Pinot he insisted was wrongly unheralded, didn’t look at her.

  “Ivy?” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Here to work my shift,” Ivy said.

  “Shift?” he said, sliding the Pinot to a customer who gave it a cautious sniff.

  “Monday, eleven till seven,” Ivy said. Now he turned to her. She didn’t like the look in his eye. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” she said.

  The other bartender was watching her, too.

  “A few minutes late?” Bruce said.

  Ivy checked her watch. “It’s three minutes after.”

  “I’ll try some of that,” said another customer.

  Bruce ignored him. “Are you stoned on something?” he said.

  “Stoned?” said Ivy. “Of course not.”

  “It’s a joke, then?” Bruce said. “An attempt at humor?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Pinot,” said the customer. “From Chile.”

  “It’s Tuesday,” Bruce said. “Don’t pretend this is news.”

  “Tuesday?” Ivy said. Had she slept round the clock?

  “It’s not even original,” Bruce said. “Another girl tried the same ploy on me a few years back.”

  Now everyone at the bar was watching, eyes going back and forth like tennis fans. Ivy lowered her voice. “This isn’t a ploy, Bruce. I really must have—”

  Bruce took a corkscrew to another bottle of the Chilean Pinot. “Crossed the line,” he said. “I bent over backward. You know it and I know it.” His hands were shaking. “Your check’s in the office.”

  Ivy backed away. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, red-faced, distorted, almost a stranger. Pinot slopped over the side of the glass Bruce was filling.

  Bruce’s office, originally a closet, stood next to the kitchen. The new cook was yelling in a language Ivy didn’t recognize. She went into the office. Dragan was there.

  “For real?” he said. “The boss is firing you?”

  “For real,” Ivy said, taking her check out of the mail slot. Her name tape was already gone.

  “My heart is sick,” said Dragan.

  “Don’t worry,” Ivy said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Dragan gazed at her. “Cool,” he said. “This is the famous way American woman handles setback—I have seen on Oprah.” Ivy noticed a thick, brown-paper-wrapped package under one of Dragan’s arms. “In this event,” he went on, “maybe it would be possible you are still perusing my novel.”

  Ivy gazed back at him, saw he was growin
g a fuzzy little mustache. She remembered a lesson on the feudal system, maybe from third grade. The illustration showed the king at the top, commanding the nobles, and ended with the peasant at the bottom, and the caption: The peasant has no one to kick but his dog.

  “Happy to,” Ivy said.

  “You will peruse?”

  “Just write your number on the package.”

  Dragan wrote down his number, ended with an exclamation point. “Good luck in all your endeavoring,” he said. “Past, present, and future.”

  She took the package. Like Bruce’s, her hands were a little shaky, too.

  Ivy went home. She opened a file called Surveyor Notes and started trying to bend all the ideas she’d had so far into the shape of a story. It went well for a while; then she remembered Danny’s offer to fund The Surveyor so she could quit Verlaine’s. She’d ended up with neither, Danny and her job both now gone. Her mind went useless. It wasn’t so much that the flow dried up, more like it became intractable, as though water had turned to wood.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, putting her head in her hands. At that moment, she saw that her message light was blinking.

  Danny? Ivy kind of hoped it was: an unforgivable moment of weakness.

  But it wasn’t Danny.

  “Sergeant Tocco here. Good to go on that hospital visit. Get back to me if you’re still interested.”

  Ivy called him before the playback ended.

  “Hey,” said Sergeant Tocco. “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” said Ivy. “And you?”

  “No complaints,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Had a few snowflakes this morning.”

  “Already?”

  “It’s coming,” he said. “Still interested in the hospital thing?”

  “Yes,” said Ivy. “When would be a good time?”

  “Whenever you like, just about. Give me a heads-up, that’s all.”

  “How long’s he going to be there?” Ivy said.

  “No telling,” said Sergeant Tocco. “He’s picked up some sort of infection, maybe on account of how it was a toothbrush that did it.”

  Ivy found she was squeezing the phone very tight. “Is it serious?”

  “No idea,” said Sergeant Tocco. “But the doc said he was okay for visiting.”

  “Is today all right?” Ivy said.

  “Today?” said Sergeant Tocco. Pause: Ivy could picture his heavy features growing a little heavier while he thought. “Don’t see why not,” he said.

  She gathered her folder and packed an overnight bag, just in case. Just in case what? Ivy wasn’t sure. She hurried down the five flights, out onto the street, headed for the garage where Bruce had that little deal for parking the Saab—something else that would have to change. And soon, as soon as she got back. Ivy had walked only half a block, was wondering how she could even afford to keep the Saab now, when she noticed a car going by. What attracted her eye wasn’t the car so much as the driver. He was possibly the biggest man she’d ever seen, certainly the thickest, seemed to fill most of the car; the window was open and his huge bare arm hung outside like a prizewinning ham.

  The car pulled over, right in front of her place. The big man got out, slow and deliberate. A second man who’d been blocked from view emerged on the other side. A round little man with gray hair in a Nero cut: Vic Mandrell. They glanced up at Ivy’s building and moved toward the door.

  She hurried away.

  Twenty-six

  Ivy drove out of the city, headed north. The wind was against her. It blew stronger and stronger, like a heavy hand pressing on the hood. The car got very cold; Ivy had to turn the heat all the way up, as though this was midwinter, just to stop the shivering. Frank Mandrell hadn’t taken more than a brief glance at her driver’s license, surely not long enough to notice, let alone memorize, her address. But he’d memorized it, all right. Mandrell—despite his third-rate Hollywood looks and his ridiculous hair—was the brains. Ivy became very conscious of the back of her neck, couldn’t get rid of the feeling. She didn’t stop checking the rearview mirror until she parked in the visitors’ lot at Plattsburgh Regional Hospital.

  A nurse rode Ivy up in an elevator to the third floor, led her to a locked door. “The old psych ward,” she said. “Now we get the inmate overflow.” She knocked on the door. “Which presently amounts to one.”

  Keys rattled on the other side. The door—heavy, steel, from another era—swung open. Taneesha, in uniform, gun on her hip, smiled out.

  “Hey, Ivy,” she said. “Heard you was coming.”

  “Hi,” Ivy said, entering. “Everything all right?”

  “Going out of my mind from boredom,” Taneesha said, locking the door behind her. They were in a wide hall with a yellow linoleum floor and green walls, the paint pocked and peeling. “Folder,” Taneesha said.

  Ivy handed over her folder. Taneesha went through it, laid it on a table. “No X-ray here,” she said. “Gonna have to pat you down.”

  “You are?”

  “Be done in a jiffy,” Taneesha said. “Raise up your arms.”

  Ivy raised her arms. Taneesha started patting her down.

  “Now your legs.”

  “My legs?”

  “Gotta spread ’em.”

  Ivy spread her legs. Taneesha ran her hands up and down both of them; slow, careful, thorough, tracing the seams of Ivy’s panties.

  “All done,” said Taneesha, straightening.

  She’d only been doing her job, and she’d done it well, but Ivy could no longer look at her the same way. Taneesha saw that, and the expression in her eyes changed, too.

  “Got him down here at the end,” Taneesha said. She led Ivy past five or six empty rooms, the beds inside all stripped to bare mattresses. A card-table chair stood outside the last room, magazines scattered on the floor around it.

  “Yo,” she called. “Visitor.”

  Ivy paused outside the door.

  “Go on in,” Taneesha said.

  Ivy went in. Small room, dusty window, strange smells. Only one bed: Harrow lay on it, hooked to an IV, his chest bare, the rest of him covered by a sheet. He looked too thin, the muscles of his face too apparent, sunken purple smudges under his eyes. The eyes themselves were closed, one lid twitching a little. Ivy was so busy taking in all those images that she almost missed the obvious: Harrow was shackled to the bed.

  For a second or two, she hated Taneesha.

  Ivy moved toward the bed.

  Harrow moaned in his sleep. He moved his head from side to side, agitated, like someone denying something, or trying to make it go away. There were two little bloodstains on the pillow.

  Ivy stood beside the bed. She wanted to touch his forehead, feel his temperature. She raised her hand.

  Harrow’s lips—cracked and dry—opened. He spoke, his voice weak and whispery, mostly just air. “How can I?” he said. His lips kept moving, but for a few moments he was silent. Then the sound came back. “How can I let you?” He fell silent again. From outside the door came the creaking sound of Taneesha shifting in her chair. Harrow took a deep breath, let it out with a long sigh.

  “Felix,” he said.

  His eyes opened. They shifted toward Ivy. His eyes: still so surprisingly dark, but now dull, like a third- or fourth-generation reprint.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Teacher,” he said, his voice a little stronger now, but low and grainy. His wrists were cuffed separately, attached to the right- and left-hand bed rails by chain links a foot long. The cuffs on the rail ends could slide about the same distance between two vertical supports. Harrow was free to move a bit, although probably not enough to turn on his side.

  “How are you feeling?” Ivy said.

  He licked his lips: so cracked and dry, the tip of his tongue white as bone. “I don’t have anything for you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “No pages, teacher,” he said. “Haven’t had any writing ideas lately.”

  “That’s all right
,” Ivy said. She looked around for water, spotted a plastic cup on one of those tall rolling steel tables, way out of his reach. And empty. “Want some water?”

  Harrow nodded, a slight movement of his head; a tendon stood out on the side of his neck. Ivy took the cup out to the hall. Taneesha sat on her chair, tilted back against the wall, eyelids heavy. They fluttered open.

  “He needs water,” Ivy said.

  Taneesha pointed to a fountain. Ivy filled the cup, returned to Harrow’s room.

  “Here.”

  He got his elbows into his sides—every move accompanied by metallic sounds—and pushed himself up, his face paling a little more. Ivy held the cup close to his mouth, but he didn’t want that. Instead he got one hand on the rail to support himself and raised his other. Ivy placed the cup in it.

  Harrow leaned toward the water, the chains stretching tight, his body bent and twisted. He was just able to get the cup to his mouth. Harrow drank, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. The cup emptied. Ivy took it.

  “Good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “More?”

  “No.”

  He sank back on the pillow, but not before she noticed the bandages on his back, thick bandages spotted pink here and there.

  “Aren’t they taking proper care of you?” she said.

  “No complaints.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  Harrow closed his eyes. “He’s going to try deep-frying the turkey this Thanksgiving.”

  “I meant about how you’re doing,” Ivy said.

  Harrow licked his lips. The tip of his tongue wasn’t as white now, but still didn’t look normal.

  “I’m getting more water,” Ivy said. She moved toward the door.

  Harrow spoke behind her. “Beer would be nice.”

  She turned to him. Eyes open now, and he had a little smile on his face.

  “Is it allowed?” she said.

  His eyes closed and the smile faded, as though controlled by the same switch. Ivy went out to ask Taneesha about the possibility of one little can of beer. Taneesha, still in her chair, still tilted against the wall, was fast asleep now, her lips parted. Ivy filled the cup at the fountain, went back to the bedside. This time he let her hold the cup for him.