by Jane Smiley
“I know,” said Susan. “Can I meet you for lunch so we can brainstorm it? He sounded so disapproving. I have this vision of us flinging keys out of a basket like flower petals at a wedding.”
“Bring some pastrami sandwiches,” said Alice. “We can eat on the steps of the library. I only have half an hour today.”
The list filled two pages of lined secretarial paper. Two pages! thought Alice. “Only two pages,” said Susan. It included people Alice had never heard of as well as people she had not only heard of, but whose records she owned and played. “I didn’t know he was a friend of Denny’s.” She pointed to a name on the first sheet of paper.
“He wasn’t.” Susan pursed her lips angrily. “Craig met him in California and gave him a set of keys, in case he ever needed a place to stay in New York. As if the record company wouldn’t put him up at the Waldorf. Craig just wanted to be able to say that ‘Kenny had keys to my place.’ Except that it wasn’t his place.”
Alice counted the names on the list. “Do you really think you gave away forty-seven keys?”
“There were only six or eight sets that we ever had made, but any key can be duplicated. Honey said we should write down the names of anyone who might have had one or might have borrowed one.” After a moment of regarding the leisurely lunchers and eager pigeons on the steps of the library, she went on, “And I don’t even know who Ray’s friends are. Talk about a doorway into the void.”
“Say!” exclaimed Alice, but then she hesitated. Had Ray really been to see her in the middle of the night? The incident was so brief that until Susan started talking about him, Alice had forgotten it. She said, “Ray wouldn’t give away keys to your apartment, would he? He’s always kept those people separate from us. He’s not crazy. I mean, he may like the sense of danger he feels with them, but he does recognize the danger. Anyway—”
Susan interrupted her distractedly. “That’s the way it seems, or at least, it did seem.”
“Listen to this—” How would she state it? Alice paused.
Susan filled the pause, warming to an angry glow. “I know that’s where he got the cocaine. Who’s to say that somebody didn’t get impatient about waiting for the money? Who’s to say that Ray, having failed as the go between, didn’t hand over the key for an evening, so that the dealer could impress upon Craig how much he wanted his payment? It’s not exactly Ray I distrust. But Craig was always dismissive and belittling with Ray. He liked him, but he always teased him and patronized him, and he never saw that it hurt Ray’s feelings. So, what if some guy was pressuring Ray and threatening him, why should he put up with it, when he could just lend the key for a few hours? It might be good for Craig to be taught a lesson.” She was bitterly sarcastic.
Alice said, “It all seems to revolve around the cocaine, doesn’t it?”
“What cocaine? That’s the question. Maybe it was really gone. Maybe they did what Denny said they were going to do two weeks ago.”
“What if we told Honey all this?”
“What if? I don’t know. Do you ever talk about drugs to a cop, voluntarily?”
“What did they keep it in?”
“What?”
“The cocaine. How much is that much? A salt shaker full? A breadbox full?”
“In between. They kept it in various containers. Fruitcake tin, plastic box, that kind of stuff. Craig talked about having a brass-bound cherrywood box made, all lined with some special metal.”
“Was he doing that much coke?”
“No! That’s what made me so mad! He just spouted these ideas. He had this vision of himself surrounded by all the best accouterments. There might not have been money to put gas in the car, but Craig and Denny were always discussing these huge purchases—land in New Mexico, beach property near Big Sur, three- and four-thousand-dollar guitars, custom-made oak wall systems, thousands of dollars’ worth of quilts that we were going to buy in Iowa and Minnesota and bring back East, or take out West.”
Alice was determined not to get off the subject. “Would the coke have been hidden away? Would the cops have looked for it? Honey said the autopsies showed no suspicious indications, didn’t he? That must mean no sign of drugs.”
“Possibly.”
“Maybe we should talk to him about this.”
“Well, what do you remember? You were there before anyone else. Any boxes on the table—that fruitcake box, or something about that size?”
Alice closed her eyes, conjuring up the scene, the coffeetable in Susan’s apartment. But it was too easy. She had been there so many times that the scene, with and without the box, or another box, or all sorts of debris on the coffeetable came readily to her. She shook her head. “Maybe it will come to me when I’m not thinking about it. We could just ask Honey, you know.”
“Could we? It scares me just to think about it. In fact, it enrages me to think about it! It’s unbearable! Everything is unbearable.”
Alice looked away. After the proper amount of time, she said, “What shall we do tonight?”
“I’m going to clean the place up. There are locksmiths and cleaning people there right now, but they’ll be gone by four.”
“I said I would help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to, really.” Alice knew that she should tell about Ray’s late night visit, but she felt oddly protective of him, with his pale prominent breastbone and tight clothes. She said, “Was Rya sleeping with Craig?” The instant denial she expected did not come. “I don’t know” was what Susan said.
“Then probably not, huh?”
“I couldn’t say yes, I couldn’t say no. Denny couldn’t either. They got close in some way, and it’s hard imagining a platonic friendship”—in spite of herself, Alice chuckled—“but it’s even harder to imagine her cheating on Noah, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Susan did not ask her when she thought this, and Alice was unwilling, for the moment, to tell her, even to mention Ray’s name. Although she hadn’t seen too much of him in the last year, there had been a time when the two of them, apparently unable to stand by themselves, had leaned against each other like a couple of playing cards, not solid, not capable of supporting any weight, but at least upright. She had listened to the tale of his many loves, he had told her that she really was pretty, distinctive looking, unusual. She had knitted him a sweater, he had built her a desk, with a drawer, his first piece of dovetailed work. Together they had gone to bars. When someone unattractive came over, they sat closer together and held hands. When someone attractive came over, whichever of them not under scrutiny excused himself or herself and went to the bathroom. Alice had met George Hellmut that way, and Ray had met Lonnie and Rick, whose last names Alice never knew. She wrapped up the flavorless remains of her sandwich and said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I’ll take this to Honey. He wants to see me anyway.”
“When do you have to go back to the store?”
“I told them Wednesday.”
“Surely they wouldn’t mind if you took another day or two?”
“They offered me the whole week.” She stood up and brushed crumbs off her skirt. “But look at you. I envy you.” She waved her arm across the facade at the top of the steps. “A mighty fortress is our library.”
“Meet you after five?” Alice leaned forward to kiss Susan on the cheek.
“Your place.”
“I’ll think of you all afternoon.”
Susan departed briskly, pausing only at the trash can to balance the crumpled bag containing Alice’s half-eaten sandwich on the crest of all the refuse. At the corner, Alice lost sight of her.
THEY spent the evening cleaning Susan’s apartment, because she was bound and determined to move back into it. The firm Susan had hired to take the blood out of the rug and the orange upholstery of the two chairs had done a fair job, at least on the two chairs. On the rug, Alice was not sure. Perhaps she saw faint, translucent smears, b
ut perhaps they were hallucinations, or spots before her eyes. Susan put on her rubber gloves and began in the bathroom. Alice saw at once that it was not to be specific spots they would be scouring away, but as much as possible of the whole experience, the whole interval during which the murderer had come and inhabited and left, the interval of the resting, stiffening corpses, the interval of the police boots and police investigation. By cleaning, they were going to take a little tuck in time, and after neatly seaming together Friday night and Sunday night, they were going to cut the rest away and throw it out.
Alice began on the kitchen. In a cloud of ammonia, she washed down cabinets and windows and walls and floor. Twice she called to Susan, “Are you all right?” and twice Susan answered, clearing her throat and with a catch in her voice, that she was. Otherwise, the only sounds in the apartment were Alice’s own rubbings and swishings. Although she had looked steadily at the orange chairs in the next room, and knew that they were empty, it was hard to believe it. After the counters were dry, she set all of the dishes upon them, and changed the shelf paper. She found herself panting, and made herself drink some juice that they had brought from her place, standing in the kitchen doorway and staring at the empty, certainly empty chairs. But as soon as she turned away, it was impossible, once again, to shake the notion that they were out there. She washed all the dishes, put them back, all the cups, all the glasses, all the pots and pans and tin foil baking utensils, all of the pieces of silverware, one by one. Craig’s head, especially, had been grimly raw and bloody, dropped back, but violently turned with the force of the shot. Dish towels and aprons and tablecloths and placemats she wadded into a large ball and stuck into a garbage bag, to be taken to her place and thrown into the washing machine. At least Susan had not seen them, had not even seen the stains, had certainly not had to endure the odor (was there an odor?). She rinsed off jars and cans of food, working faster, pouring more ammonia every time she thought of the odor. What if it got into walls and floors and furniture? What if, after the cleaners and solvents faded away, it was there, always? She wiped with a damp sponge boxes of cereal and bags of sugar and flour. Denny was not a cook. He and Craig had sat in those chairs countless times, laughing, arguing, waiting for food that she and Susan were fixing. At the thought, Alice felt the stirrings of a constricting pain at her breastbone, a pain that, along with these shallow, quick breaths, was familiar from the months of Mariana. She sat in one of the kitchen chairs, put her head between her knees and tried to breathe as slowly and as deeply as she could. If Susan came in, she would send Alice home and finish alone. Alice pressed her fingers into her temples and sat up. Finally, she got up and began to scour the sink. This time, the image that floated into her mind and fastened there was of herself and Susan, axed to pieces, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Neither had spoken in at least half an hour. Perhaps, in the flurry of cleaning sounds, someone could ease into the apartment and pick them off one at a time. The real horror would be to turn and see, for the first time, a grinning stranger in the kitchen doorway. The ensuing dismemberment—
“Didn’t you hear me?” said Susan. “I’m finished.” Right in her ear. Alice put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Finally she said, “I’ve been having the willies.”
“It’s not hard. I don’t think we should split up.”
Once the bathroom and the kitchen had been done, and the hallway both dusted and mopped, they were faced with a painful choice. Susan had to clear her throat before asking, “Well, what now?”
The bedroom she and Denny had shared? Where all of his clothes were hung or thrown just as he had hung or thrown them? Where his pennies sat in a pile on the dresser and his shoes lined up under the bed? Where the book he had been halfway through reading lay facedown beside the bed, its back broken?
The spare room? Where the boys kept the amp and the speakers and the preamp, and all the other stuff they practiced with and carried, at times, to smaller gigs, not to mention their guitars—Guild F50 twelve-string, Martin D28 six-string, a little Alvarez, cheap but with a sweet tone, Craig’s big old Fender, the Ovation they’d bought for fun once and abandoned, Denny’s electric Gibson, Craig’s “investment”—an ornate Washburn banjo that he didn’t know how to play, but the price of banjos was rising faster than anything, and this one had musical notes inlaid in mother of pearl all up the neck. And wasn’t there a dobro in the closet?
The living room? The unspeakable living room, where faint salmon smears on the beige rug smote even the eyeless backs of their heads and the insensate soles of their feet?
Alice said, “It’s after ten. Let’s go back to my place and then do this tomorrow.”
“You go on,” said Susan.
“Let’s do the living room, then. When I’m in another room, I keep thinking that they’re in here.”
“When I had the water running in the bathroom, it was like I could hear Denny moving around the apartment.” She got out the vacuum cleaner, and Alice pulled back the chairs. When the whole carpet was thoroughly swept and Susan was rewinding the cord, Alice said, “Don’t live here! This is too grisly! Live with me! I’ve got scads of room!”
Susan shook her head, and began lifting the couch cushions. There were pennies, crumbs, bobby pins, two flat picks.
“I want you to. I can’t imagine anything better. There’ve always been men and we’ve never done it. We should do it.”
“I don’t want to run away.”
“I knew you were going to say that. It’s not—”
Susan stepped back, her eyelids dropping briefly, a stubborn sign. “Besides, I want to live alone for a while. I can afford this.”
“How can you want to live alone after—”
“The locks have been changed. I even had them put in one of those French ones that haven’t ever been broken into.”
“I saw, but—”
Susan lifted up the cushions of the orange chairs. As clean as new.
“It’s not rational to want to live here. Besides I want to be with you.”
“Now I have to be rational?”
“No, but—”
“It is rational to live here. That’s exactly what it is. This is a wonderful apartment. We were lucky to get it and I’d be stupid to give it up, at least before they decided whether or not the building was going to go co-op. It’s too rational. That’s the problem.”
They went into the bedroom.
In her wanderings about the apartment that Honey found so suspicious, Alice had gone into the bedroom once or twice. Going into it now, she recognized that it was just the same as it had been, except that now she saw it. She saw that more than any room in the apartment, it bore the signs of Denny’s last days. Without trying to, Alice could see him throwing back the bedroom door, kicking off his sneakers (one rested on its heel behind the closet door, the other had slid half under the bed), unbuttoning his shirt. He would do it energetically, with a kind of hasty fatigue, it would be late, he would be anxious to get into bed. His shirt hung from the back of the rocking chair. His pants, the belt still run through the loops and his underpants still folded in the crotch (he had taken them off together), fell over and bunched next to his side of the bed. When Susan picked them up, a sock fell out of each leg. His T-shirt, perhaps, he had worn to bed. It was not with the other clothes. On the table beside the window that looked down into the air shaft, he had left the contents of his pockets—a St. Christopher medal on a broken chain, three quarters and a dime, a few pennies, two tortoise shell flat picks and a set of finger and thumb picks pushed together in a little clump. Beside these things there was a little brochure from an art gallery in Providence, once wadded but now cupping upward. Alice imagined Denny asleep, the stiff paper of the brochure unfolding in the dark. Alice wondered if Honey and his men had looked at these items and considered the evidence. They gave up no mysteries to her, except the mystery of life and motion. She must have sighed deeply, because Susan looked at her. Alice took the other woman’s hand and squ
eezed.
“There’s not enough of my stuff around,” said Susan. “That would be some relief, just to pick up my stuff and put it away. Let’s change the bed.” She went to the closet and got a new set of plaid sheets, these blue and green. Those on the bed were red and orange. Alice felt skittish, in spite of knowing that Denny had probably not even been in here that last night. She could not help imagining herself touching something stiff and dry, camouflaged by the color of the sheets. But they folded from the corners, and, as if thinking the same thing, patted the red and orange sheets into a ball and rolled them off the bed. With a rather more determined air, Susan flipped and snapped the clean sheets into place. When the bed-making was finished, her hands were shaking.
“You’re not going to sleep here!” exclaimed Alice.
“I’ve got to.”
“It will be torture to stay here.”
“It would be torture just to clear out.”
“Susan!”
But Susan interrupted her, picking up the pants again and saying, “Thirty-two! I never could believe that such a big guy wore a thirty-two. Thirty-two, thirty-six. Amazing size. But he never looked skinny, did you think? He always thought he was too skinny, but I never did.”
“He had big shoulders and a big chest.”
“He really was handsome, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“In his own way, I mean. He wasn’t model handsome like Craig or anything. I loved to look at him, though. He looked so benign, and his cheeks were kind of chipmunky and his eyes were so sparkly. He looked like a good person. That’s really what he looked like. Even when he was angry, he looked like a good person who’d gotten angry. I never could get over that.”
“He was a good person.”
Susan seemed to ignore her. “I remember after I first got to know him, I used to always say to myself, What a nice man, he’s really a nice man, isn’t he? That seemed so sexy at the time. Very rare and unusual.” She picked his shirt off the back of the rocking chair and held it against her chest, smoothing her hand down it. “At first I was even touched by his loyalty to Craig.”