McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories

by Michael Chabon

  “Scotch,” said the shorter one. “For both of us, please,” at the same time as his friend said, “I’m not sure I like your attitude.”

  Davis just kept her hands on her hips. I looked down at the rest of my bourbon. Davis has offered to make me something nicer, time and time again, but just a little bourbon on ice is what I get, and what she gives me. The shorter one coughed a little into his hand, and looked at his friend. “You’ll have to excuse him,” he said to Davis. “He’s going through a lot.”

  Davis wasn’t sure this was enough, but she nodded. “What kind of Scotch?”

  “What kind is there?” the tall one said.

  “There’s cheap,” she said, “there’s good, and there’s pretentious.”

  “I usually drink Banquo Gold,” he said. “Eight-year-old, if you have it.”

  “Pretentious it is,” she said, and his friend smiled. “Ice? Lemon?”

  “I don’t have to take this,” growled the taller one. “It’s a stupid idea, anyway. Bruno, let’s get out of here. I should get out of here. I should have my head examined. I have a lawyer taking my money fast enough. I don’t have to chase after some legendary bar skirt.”

  Bruno, a short name if there ever was one, tried to grab his friend again. “Relax, okay?” he said. “So she jokes around, so what?”

  “I’ve had enough of women joking around,” the taller one said. “Let’s go.”

  “Look, why don’t we have a drink?” Bruno said. “You want one anyway, right?”

  “We can go across the street,” the taller one said.

  “You think they won’t know you across the street?” Bruno said.

  “Sure,” Davis said. “Everybody across the street’ll want to buy a drink for the guy who killed his wife.”

  The girlfriend gasped at her table. The two gentlemen flicked her a look of annoyance. “So you do know me,” the taller one said. “You recognize me, what, from the papers?”

  “Papers, TV,” Davis said, shrugging. “You think that hat makes you invisible? Callahan Jeffers. That’s who you are.”

  “I didn’t kill my wife,” the man snarled. “But I suppose you won’t believe that unless it’s in the papers, too.”

  “Don’t you want it in the papers?” Davis asked. “I believe that’s known as clearing your name.”

  “Let’s go,” Callahan Jeffers said to Bruno. “She’s not going to help me if she thinks I did it.”

  “I don’t think you did it,” Davis said. “But I still don’t help people who get rude in my bar.”

  “What have I done that’s rude?” Jeffers asked. “You’ve been mocking me since I sat down.”

  “You haven’t sat down,” Davis said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What I mean,” Davis said, “is why don’t you sit down, drink some good Scotch, and ask me what you want to ask me?”

  Callahan Jeffers looked at her for a second or two, and put his hat down on the bar. “Ice,” he said, “and lemon.”

  “For two,” Bruno said.

  Davis poured, and the gentlemen took their drinks—like you might take a hike if a very dangerous person suggested it. Bruno laid a bill on the table Davis couldn’t see, but from her bored glance it must have been enormous. She turned around and rang out change, placing her hard-earned cash on the bar before she even picked up the bill. The men let it stand. They were going to tip her later. I hated those guys. They weren’t gentlemen after all.

  Jeffers took a seat and took a sip and nodded. “So,” he said, “there’s no invisibility potion in a Delmonico, right? Or the gin, brandy, and whatever don’t turn into an invisibility potion?”

  “When your mother told you that there was no such thing as a stupid question,” Davis said, “you didn’t believe her, did you?”

  “He’s not used to women like you is all,” Bruno said. “Since I’ve known him he goes for a different type.”

  “I don’t want to hear about the type,” Davis said. “I want to hear about the girl.”

  “She’s no girl,” Jeffers said. “She’s my wife. Or was. Or is. She’s gone.”

  “So you say,” Davis said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell me things I know already. You’re Callahan Jeffers. You’re very rich. You’ve never worked a day in your life, and neither did your father. You were sent to Europe for what rich people call ‘schooling’ and what everybody else calls ‘school.’ When you returned you made a big splash as an eligible bachelor. You invested in things for what we might call a living. You beat up a room-service waiter during a seventy-two-hour birthday party in an enormous suite, and you gave him a lot of money and two years later the mayor had you on some special citizens’ commission on crime.”

  “I was drunk,” Jeffers said. “That night in the hotel. I was very drunk and it was wrong. I’ve said it a thousand times. I had a drinking problem, and I worked it out.”

  “There are many people who come into my bar and order Scotch,” Davis said. “None of them are reformed alcoholics.”

  “I just said I worked it out,” Jeffers said. “That’s what I believe. What you say about paying off the waiter was true. He was a fag and I bought him what fags want, which is a condo on the beach and a handsome face. I don’t think that’s a crime. People who resent me for money would do the same thing if they had it.”

  “And yet,” Davis said, “with these statements, the police nevertheless suspect you of some sort of crime.”

  Callahan Jeffers stood up, although not without first taking another gulp of his drink. If you spend time in a bar you hear a number of men snarl. I don’t know if they snarl more in bars or if that’s just where I hear them snarl, but they snarl, like some animal you find messing around in the trash, or out in the angry woods where stupid people camp. “I didn’t kill my wife!” he said. “I don’t know how she did it, but she set me up. She’s a bitch, a bitch someplace laughing at me. And she’ll keep laughing until I’m all locked up.”

  “They’re not going to lock you up,” Bruno said.

  “Says you.” Callahan didn’t sit down but he finished his drink. It made him look weak, the grab for the glass but still standing like he might leave.

  “Says everyone, including the lawyer,” Bruno said. “There’s no body, so there’s no crime. You haven’t even been arrested.”

  “Arrested,” Jeffers said. “Everything’s gone now even if the police never touch me. I killed her is what everyone thinks. Mayor’s special commission. I was going to be mayor.”

  “He was weighing the odds of running, yes,” Bruno said. “Those odds have changed.”

  “My whole odds have changed with this,” Jeffers said. He looked around like he was going to spit on the floor and then looked at Davis again. What would have happened if this guy had spat on the floor? I think of that sometimes on sleepless nights, when the sugar from the bourbon wakes me up and makes me look at life. “I’m not the mayor now. I’m just a man who killed his wife. I’m gone and she’s laughing. She’s not dead any more than I’m Santa Claus. She fucked me somehow. I don’t get it. No one gets it. Bruno said maybe you might.”

  “No,” Davis said. “I certainly don’t get why anyone would fuck you. You want another Scotch?”

  “Take mine,” Bruno said quickly, and handed over his drink. Where do they get guys like him? All the way back in his family tree maybe there were whipping boys.

  “Tell me the thing,” Davis said, “while I get everybody another round. Mr. Jones, you okay back there?”

  I stay quiet when the bar’s got customers, so I just nodded into my bourbon. It was half-gone. Maybe six months before it was a man with stolen eels. He was a marine something—you know, not like he’d actually ever been in the marines. The eels were valuable and shipped across the ocean from a faraway sea, or maybe it was the other way around. When the man opened the tanks there was nothing but grime and seaweed. The eels were valuable but only if they were alive, and it was hard enough keeping them alive if you
were a specialist with a government grant, let alone some black-market eel thug. Davis found them. She drew a little map on a cocktail napkin with the words “Slow Night” written on it, the address below, because the man was from out of town and didn’t know where the warehouse district was. You’d think a man who spent too much time with eels would have lost some social skills, but he was gorgeously grateful.

  “I’ll tell you the thing,” Bruno said. “Mr. Jeffers met Nathalie at a club.”

  “The circus was in town,” Jeffers said.

  “It’s true,” Bruno said. “This girl was trash, I told him. Her parents were from different countries and ate fire for a living. She spun around on one of those things they dangle from the top of the tent.”

  “Trapeze,” Davis said. “I remember the wedding pictures.”

  “I told him she’d never clean up,” Bruno said. “Girls like that, from a circus? No. He made me go to her last show. She leaped through a hoop; I don’t know what else she did. She takes a bow with the clowns and the Chinamen and he wants to marry her?”

  “She was a beautiful woman,” Davis said. “I remember the

  Callahan Jeffers looked at her and almost smiled. “She was,” he said. “She hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  Davis put two fresh Scotches down on the counter. Behind her the guy and his girlfriend were listening, their martinis forgotten. “And what’d you hit her like?” Davis said.

  “It was just some fights,” Jeffers said. “She had a temperament, you know? I guess it was wrecked from the start. I bought us a beautiful house, furnished it up, but she just couldn’t sit still.”

  “A Wesson, wasn’t it?” Davis asked. “One of the last untouched Wessons in this town.”

  “You know architecture?” Bruno asked.

  “Why is it,” Davis asked, “that people think a girl sitting around a deserted bar all day is less likely to be well-read?”

  “It’s completely restored,” Jeffers said, with what would have passed for pride among the very dim. “The staircases, the banisters, the window dressings, the whole bit. I paid a flouncy faggot to track down as much of the pricey crap as he could dig up. Two benches in the front hall. The dining table and twelve chairs. You know, black and square—all that German minimal stuff he did. Nathalie was crazy about it. She said it calmed her down—no. What was the word? Whittled her down. The whole place was whittled down. The living room had one couch and a mirror balanced in the corner. The bedroom had just two huge black bureaus with square drawers. My study had one of Wesson’s only rugs, a big black thing with one gray stripe, and a chandelier from his personal collection, all spidery on the ceiling. And a desk that looked like a fucking altar. It was enormous. It cost everything. But I bought it to show her I cared.”

  “The study,” Davis said, “where you last saw her?”

  “We were fighting,” Callahan Jeffers said.

  “What else is new?” Bruno said.

  “She got home late,” Jeffers said. “I don’t know how it started. Bruno and I went to the fights. She’d never do that with me. We got home around ten but she still wasn’t home. An hour later she

  “The designer,” Davis said.

  “The fag,” Callahan Jeffers said. He put one fist down, very gently, on the bar, like a man showing his gun. “The fag I paid a fortune to spend my fortune on furniture to whittle down my wife. I threw him out.”

  “Mr. Jeffers’d had a drink or two,” Bruno said with a very small shrug.

  “She yelled at me, I yelled at her, she pushed me around a little. . . .” Callahan stopped talking. “I know what you’re going to say. I shouldn’t hit women.”

  “You shouldn’t hit women,” Davis said.

  “I know that,” Jeffers said. “But it was fighting. It was a fight. We were always getting worse. She thought I was catting around, which I was a little. But she drove me there! As soon as I married her she went a little crazy.”

  “She couldn’t take it, with the swells,” Bruno said. “A circus performer, Mr. Jeffers. She was climbing the walls because she climbed walls for a living. You can’t dress that up.”

  “She dressed up fine,” Jeffers said, “but nothing made her happy. I couldn’t take it forever, you know? You want to make someone happy, but if the first fucking fifteen thousand tries don’t do it, you get tired of an unhappy person and her yelling.”

  “So she locked herself in the study,” Bruno said. “It locks from the inside. She wouldn’t come out.”

  “What did you do?” Davis asked.

  Callahan Jeffers looked at her like a horse I saw once. Some kids were making fun of it. The horse’s eyes said, Someday I will not be pulling this flatbed hayride. I will come to your room when you are sleeping and I will stomp on you, you damn kids. The rich man lifted both fists and pounded in slow, heavy beats. Everybody’s drinks bounced. “Come out!” he yelled. “Come out! Come out! Come out! Come out!”

  He stopped and sat down. The jukebox finished a song—“And here I am, facing tomorrow, alone in my sorrow, down in the depths of the ninetieth floor”—and stopped, out of money, like much of this town. The guy and his girl shared one quick glance and skedaddled. When the door swung open and shut it was much darker outside. For a moment I couldn’t remember anything I’d done before Callahan Jeffers entered the Slow Night and started yelling. The rich man, once an eligible bachelor and probably one again, drew a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. I took a sip, mostly melted ice.

  “It’s true,” Bruno muttered. “That’s what he did.”

  “She didn’t come out,” Jeffers said. “We waited all night, Bruno and I.”

  “Bruno and you,” Davis said. “Where did you wait?”

  “Outside,” Jeffers said. “Just outside that locked door. There’s a little space with two chairs that hurt to sit in. We sat in them.”

  “Could you hear anything?”

  “She made a crying phone call,” Jeffers said. “It was Timothy Speed. He told me. I practically had to beat it out of him. He said she called and went through the whole blow by blow, and cried. She said I was going to kill her. That’s what he told the police. He said she said. Why they would believe that of me—”

  “You, a known drunk who beats people up,” Davis said.

  “I didn’t kill her!” Jeffers said. “She cried to the fag and she hung up. She hung up and ordered a drink.”

  “What?” Davis asked.

  “She said she wanted a drink,” Jeffers said. “A Delmonico. She always liked the fancy things. When I met her she was asking for a Singapore Sling.”

  “Gin again,” Davis said. “Gin, cherry brandy, bitters, lime, ginger beer. There are some who say you can’t trust a gin woman. How did you make her a Delmonico if you didn’t know what it was?”

  “I don’t make the drinks in my home,” Jeffers said. “I have a man.”

  “He woke up Gregor,” Bruno said. “It was late.”

  “Gregor loved it,” Jeffers said. “Gregor loves Nathalie and he loves . . . I don’t know. Drama. The trick with the mixing and the right glass for a lady who asks. He made one and brought it on a tray with a shaker and everything. He knocked on the door and she made him swear we were at least fifteen feet away.”

  “Which we were,” Bruno said.

  “He handed her the tray and she slammed the door again and locked it. We heard the cocktail shaker pour and then we heard nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Davis said.

  “For two hours,” Jeffers said. “It was morning, almost morning. Gregor went back to bed. Bruno fell asleep in the ugly chair. I paced outside and pounded some more. Bruno woke up.”

  “I did,” Bruno said. “I woke up and made the point that perhaps you should go to bed rather than pounding on a door that incidentally cost a fortune. You were making marks.”

  “And then we heard a shattering of glass,” Jeffers said. “Give me another Scotch.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Davis said.
“You’re making enough noise without another round. You scared two customers away before the martinis were over.”

  “Not my problem,” Jeffers said.

  “No,” Davis agreed, and walked out of the bar to collect the glasses the kids had left behind. “Mine. If the study is the rounded room on the ground floor, then there are three enormous windows—”

  “Painted shut,” Jeffers said. “We were going to redo them. They hadn’t been touched.”

  “And a small one in the far corner,” Davis finished.

  “That’s the one that broke,” Bruno said. “But the window doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a what’s-it. A lightwell. Even if she could have fit through that window, which she couldn’t—”

  “She might,” Jeffers said. “She was wasting away. I know she looked fine in the picture but she was starving herself. She wasn’t doing well. She was making herself skinny to make me angry.”

  “That’s not usually how it goes,” Davis said.

  “She was depressed, she said.” Jeffers shook his head. “What’s that thing where girls make themselves skinny for attention?”

  “Marriage,” Davis said.

  Jeffers gave her one curt laugh. “I heard the window, I didn’t know what to think. One day we were fighting and she found a nail on the ground. A nail! And scratched herself across the arm. With broken glass, I didn’t want her to—”

  “We used one of the chairs to break the door down,” Bruno said. “Gregor heard us and came upstairs. The chair was broken too.”

  “Now what else is really in this room?” Davis said. “Rug and desk, you said. Curtains?”

  “Heavy dark things,” Jeffers said. “Like in here. Just like in this place. Timothy Speed made her get them. That’s the first place we looked. We thought she’d thrown herself out one of the big windows, although she was so light they might not have broken. Who knows. But she wasn’t there. And don’t think behind the door because I looked there and kicked the goddamn wall. I’m telling you she wasn’t hiding. She must have gone out the other one.”

  “It’s a lightwell,” Bruno said. “It goes up to a skylight made of marble you can shine light through. The light is yellowy. I don’t like it. But that’s where it goes.”