Duplicate Keys

by Jane Smiley

  “Very good! Both, actually, in my case. Linnaeus was the father of botanical taxonomy and van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope.”

  “You just sort of decide what things are?” Alice felt him switch his grip, putting his fingers between hers. In spite of herself, she squeezed his hand.

  “You don’t sound impressed.”

  “I thought that part was all done.”

  “Most of the work has been done on plants of fashion, like roses and apples. But we’re only beginning to realize the real variety and complexity of the world, especially the non-European world. And getting less so every day.” He said it with a rueful smile that made Alice wonder if botany was a sad science in 1980. They crossed West End. Alice had forgotten to prepare for this moment, the moment of parting or not, a difficult moment on any date.

  Henry said, “Did your family have big Sunday dinners when you were growing up?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Always at one or two in the afternoon?”

  Alice smiled.

  “Remember sitting around early Sunday evening, the main event of the day already over and nothing left to do but homework?”

  Alice made a face.

  “Let’s go to the movies.”

  Alice took her hand out of Henry’s and put it through his arm, turning him up West End Avenue. She was a little frightened and a little exhilarated, both at the decision that seemed to have been made to stay with him, and at the decision that seemed to have been made to avoid her apartment and all the responsibilities it represented. She shivered and he said, “Cold?” but she didn’t answer.

  THEY had been together for twelve hours. Alice thought that might be equivalent to three regular dates, a week of acquaintance, even two. Upon crossing West End they hadn’t even looked in the direction of her apartment, and now here they were, in his building, flat, and bedroom. Or Alice was. Henry was in the bathroom. She had no clothes on and her lips still felt impressed upon, taken by surprise. His physical virtues continued. Along with dry, strong hands and vigorous hugs went a searching pucker that made Alice feel kissed and wanted and sought after. She slid between the clean flowered sheets. The bathroom door opened, and Henry came out, smiling, turning out the light, taking off shirt and underpants. Blinded by the sudden darkness, Alice put out her hand, laughing. “I had a boyfriend in college who always turned out the light before taking off his underpants. He said it was because he was Catholic.”

  Henry took her waving hand. She could almost see his face. He wasn’t laughing. “Not Catholic,” he said. He kissed the tips of her fingers and the ball of her thumb. “I was burned as a child. It embarrasses some people.”

  It embarrassed Alice. She was suddenly conscious of the inside of her mouth, the way there was too much saliva there. She swallowed. Henry took the hand he was holding and placed it flat against himself. Alice’s fingers sensed the shiny corrugated scar tissue. Its area was at least larger than her hand. She said, without coughing, “Does it embarrass you?”

  After a pause, Henry replied, “Yes.”

  Henry was right. It might have struck Alice more forcefully if the light had been on, but with her hand on his side, his left side, she could feel beneath the surface mutilation solid warm flesh, the vibration of his heart beating. She could see his face more plainly now, as she knew he could see hers. She felt herself begin to smile. Henry put his arms around her and she slipped into them. In a moment, she said, “Can I just ask how it happened?”

  “Of course. My cousin was chasing me around a campfire. I was wearing a bathing suit, and I stumbled and fell into the coals. My father was on the other side of the clearing, and my mother, who had been after us to get away from the fire, had my baby sister at the breast, and so, somehow, it took a while for me to get extricated.” He shrugged. His eyes drifted down from her face to her breasts, rounded in the moonlight, and Alice shuddered, suddenly seized with desire. Immediately, Henry was embracing her, kissing her chin and neck and shoulders and chest. His instantaneous erection bobbed against her thigh, her hip, her stomach, her other leg, scorching her each time. She put her hands in his hair, feeling for the shape of his scalp, then for the tendons in the back of his neck, then for the muscles in his shoulders, his well-padded scapulae, to either side of his backbone. The small of his back. When she came to his buttocks, which seemed great and hard, islands under her palms, he had already taken his penis in his hand and guided it toward her, through the thicket of hair. She felt it butt once and then slip. She pulled with her hands on his buttocks and let out a large groan. His was muffled in her neck. They were still for a moment, as if astonished, and then Alice moved against the bed. Usually she yearned for hard endless pounding, but Henry probed inquisitively at first, with molasses slowness, easing moistly out and in until Alice’s own body felt like liquid. When the pounding came, it came with little shocks that Alice couldn’t get away from. He hugged her tightly. A final shock broke over her, and then, apparently, over him. Alice was panting. She closed her eyes and opened them. By now she could make out everything in the room, which was actually quite light from the street. Henry lifted his head with a groan, and put the palms of his hands under her head. His face, Alice noted with relief, was perfectly familiar. For that more than anything else, she kissed him affectionately and pushed his hair off his forehead.

  When she awoke, it was still dark, although she had the sense that most of the night had passed. Beside her lay Henry Mullet, asleep on his back, his arms crossed over his chest. He was not snoring, but he might have been. That might have been what woke her up. Alice adored him.

  Exactly coincidental with her adoration came the realization that it was now Sunday and soon she would have to go back to her apartment, and to Susan, and to the impossibly huge difficulties of Craig, Denny, Ray, and Detective Honey. Her visits to the Botanic Garden and the movies that seemed so present were actually over, and in the expected course of events, Henry would return there alone next, even were she to inspire in him the worship he inspired in her. When she sat down on the toilet, the odor of his semen ravished her again, and it took her a moment, a long moment, to gather her thoughts. Even gathered, they made up no system. Henry by himself, intruding upon an ordered and willing life, would have been complex enough. She marvelled at how she had forgotten the chaos of beginning an affair, and at how clearly it now came back to her—the mad rotation of elation and despair, longing, fear, content, desire, the impossibility of work, routine, customary pleasures such as reading or visiting museums. She remembered thinking the last time, the one time since her marriage, that nothing was good about it, even the feeling of being alive, excessively alive. Or she didn’t know what it made her feel except full of craving. And that one, George his name was, hadn’t lasted a month.

  Henry entering her present circle, however, was a complication of cruel proportions. In the first place, she had said nothing to him about Susan or Craig or Denny. He had no idea they even existed. Presenting herself as any old librarian, she had led him to believe a sort of innocence about her that she no longer believed of herself, and yet how could she have said, One thing you should know about me is that I discovered a murder only last week? To do so would be ridiculous and repulsive. She opened the door of the dark bathroom and looked out into the room. Henry had turned over on his side. Nothing had changed in the previous ten minutes. She still adored him. She closed the door. She had pretended to Henry that her abandonment by Jim Ellis was the largest event in her life, but she could now clearly see that that was no longer the case. In the dark, in a stranger’s anonymous, coldly tiled bathroom, it was nearly possible to imagine herself across the street, wedded to Susan and as devoted to surviving this crime as the fairy tale princess who must sort seven bags of barley before sundown. Did such a princess take on another task, the task of spinning three bales of straw into gold, say, with the barley tumbled at her feet? It was a helpful thought.

  And it was not necessarily Henry Mullet who had swept he
r away in the first place. Clearly, as through a pinhole, she could see that he was a nice man with a stock of information and a pleasant expertise in bed, but still not compelling, although she was compelled. What she felt for him now (she inhaled sharply, visualizing him) had been plucked from a hat, like a large feather duster. She leaned her warm shoulder against the cold tile until she was shivering, but calm, ready to put on her clothes and cross the street.

  She was fond of Henry as she crept around the bed. He had stretched automatically to fill her place with his knees and fists. She sat as lightly as she could on the very edge of the bed, and felt on the floor for her underpants. His warm hand slipped beneath her buttock, electrifying her, and she fell into the welcoming bed as into a bowl, her underpants clutched in her fingers. “Where were you?” whispered Henry, his face ablaze with the light from the street. His eyes dipped at the inside corner, his matter-of-fact nose jutted at her, the peaks of his upper lip flattened to hills when he smiled, his chin was square across the bottom. Had he not looked like this, would she be more resolute? Her body seemed to smooth itself against his. Alice closed her eyes, panting. “In the bathroom,” she said.

  Her resolution had withered away by the time they awoke to the well-risen sun and the scattering of clothes around the room. Fortunately Alice recognized her yearning to stay in bed as an old and familiar opponent. Henry appeared to be an eager riser. “What shall we do today?” he demanded, thrusting himself into a T-shirt. His derriere as he crossed the foot of the bed was muscular, each buttock hollow at the outside. Alice thought how large they had seemed beneath her palms and grinned. “Breakfast?” said Henry. “A marathon of Polish movies at the Modern? Do you have a bike?”

  Alice threw back the covers and stood up, feeling, under his gaze, tall and slow limbed, but not in the least modest. “What would you have done today?”

  “Gone to work, probably. We’re always a week behind in May. Looking at you, I’m sorry I hate to make love in the morning.”

  “Do you?” Alice attempted to extricate herself from his embrace.

  “I used to.” He was whispering. “I’ve always hated to be indoors. Alice.”

  “I think you should go to work, then.” She made herself smile with mere affection and good humor, made herself relinquish the feel of his smooth back, made herself push him away.

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “Come to my senses.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Call me tonight and I’ll let you know.” She sat on the bed and buckled on her sandals.

  “Alice.”

  “Don’t Alice me, or I’ll stay in bed all day.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you hate to stay in bed. Really.”

  “Don’t you want any breakfast?” Alice shook her head. “Will you walk me to the train, then?”

  Returning from the subway stop with two bagels and four ounces of chive cream cheese, she found Noah at her door, leaning on the buzzer for her apartment. He saw her before she could greet him. “Alice!” he roared. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “H and H hot bagels.” She flourished the bag.

  “All night? We were worried sick! Rya was afraid to come over!”

  “I did go to a late double feature last night.” She said it tentatively, exploratively.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Susan called and called, then I called and called.”

  “Why didn’t anyone just come over?” Had he been listening carefully, he would have noticed the tiny shake in her voice.

  “Susan did, about ten. I was going to later, but I couldn’t make it.”

  “Did anyone think that I might like to be alone?” She raised her voice self-righteously. “That I might like to go to a bunch of movies, and then just unplug the phone? I haven’t been alone, or away from all this for a week! It’s hard on me, too!”

  Successfully intimidated, Noah put his arm around her and eased her into the vestibule of her apartment building. “You just have to say something, you know. Everyone’s ready to be worried, especially with what’s happened to Ray.”

  “What’s happened to Ray? Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Nothing new. Except that Honey says he may have been seen in Miami, at the airport. He asked me if I knew if Ray had friends in Miami.”

  “Was he all right? Was he with anyone?”

  “He was all right, if it was Ray, and they couldn’t tell if he was with anyone.”

  “Miami!”

  “Maybe it wasn’t him.” Noah stepped off the elevator and un-snapped the pocket of his shirt. He twirled the joint absently between his fingers as she unlocked her door, and lit up as soon as they got into the apartment. Alice handed him an ashtray. Alice had always liked to look at Noah, who was tall and thin, with dark thick hair and regular features. His mouth, especially, was straight and perfectly shaped, like that of some founding father known for absolute integrity. She had never felt, though, that she was his particular friend, as she had with every other member of their group, even Rya. There was something either reserved or simply boring about Noah. He perhaps felt the same way about her. She understood that he was a good, even excellent bass player, with a tenacious hold on the beat. In astrological days, Craig had sometimes called him a “closet Taurus.” Alice had wondered more than once whether drugs had destroyed his mind. He was older than the rest of them, and even twelve years ago, at twenty-three, Noah smoked marijuana the way some people smoked cigarettes. “You want some juice, Noah?”

  A seed popped at the end of his joint. “I’m not that worried any more about him. Ray’s pretty good at taking care of himself.”

  “Noah, you know that’s not true. Remember that guy who beat him up a couple of years ago, then came back two weeks later and Ray actually let him in his apartment and he had a knife and he took something, what was it, Ray’s tape deck?”

  “That’s so.”

  “I’m more worried that they found him in Miami. I wish they’d found him in Toronto or London. Someplace English.”

  “They may have seen him. May.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why don’t you call Susan and tell her you’re safe and sound?”

  When she came back from the phone, Noah had stretched on the couch and put his booted feet up on the window sill. Alice set a glass of orange juice in front of him. In the ashtray was a large roach. Looking at him, Alice could not help imagining Henry Mullet, who had kissed her for five minutes before getting on his train. Noah’s conjugality, which had always seemed rather funny to Alice, assumed new interest. She visualized Noah animated with desire as Henry had been not twelve hours before. Even as he sat there, he gained depth. “Actually, I should tell you that I—” It was out before she knew it, but as Noah’s head turned toward her, she chose not to go on. What if nothing came of Henry? There would be time to bring him up later. “You’re speaking to Susan then?”

  “I was never not speaking to her. That dinner was just a bad scene. I don’t blame her or anything. Rya was hurt, but you know Rya.”

  Alice nodded. “I’ve been wondering how you guys were feeling.”

  “It’s hard, man. Nobody said it wouldn’t be. And Rya was pretty close to Shellady.”

  Alice made a circle of orange juice on the table with her finger. “Not closer than you were, Noah?”

  “Lately, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe lately.” He seemed uneasy.

  “Noah—”

  He surprised Alice by looking at her expectantly, almost eagerly. Alice realized that he may not have had anyone to talk to all week. She grew frightened, then with her bad sense of timing, waited too long. Noah turned back to the window. At last, she said, “Noah, was there something between Rya and Craig?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it, continued to look out the window. Alice’s thought returned to Henry Mullet like a wave to the ocean. “Yeah,” said Noah.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Noah shrugged.<
br />
  “How long?”

  Noah sat up and picked up his orange juice, looked at it, then chugged it down. “Too long,” he said.

  “Didn’t it drive you crazy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “I did. I tried, anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  “Remember that old Jefferson Airplane song, ‘Triad’? ‘Why don’t we go on as three?’” He hummed a few notes. Alice nodded. He shrugged.

  “It must have been very painful for you.”

  “It wasn’t, in a way. They were very affectionate.”

  “Oh, Noah.”

  “Shellady had this theory. He said that he and Rya would have to go through a kind of breaking-in period, that when you were new with somebody, you couldn’t avoid that.” Alice nodded in vehement agreement, then looked at her watch, wondering if Henry had gotten to Brooklyn yet. She glanced out the window. It was a beautiful day for it. She imagined him excited at the gate. “He figured that after that period was over, then we could go on as three, in fact we would have to, since none of us would be able to do without the other two.”

  “Did you believe that?”

  “I couldn’t do without Rya, that’s for sure.”

  “Noah, I’m really shocked.”

  “Maybe not without Shellady, either. I thought of finding myself another gig, maybe something on the Coast. I even called Dale Nolan. Remember him? There wasn’t much. Anyway,” he paused. “It scared me to move.” He said this shamefaced, as if, Alice thought, a real man would have moved. “Shit,” he said. “I loved the guy. You loved the guy, too. How could Rya not? How could she? That’s the thing that’s kept me here. It was all completely inevitable. I think about Shellady and he seems like this bright light to me. Sooner or later the moth has got to give in.”

  “That’s not true! We didn’t orbit him! He wasn’t the sun!”

  “Do you think?” Noah let his head drop on the back of the couch. He sighed. Alice’s hands were trembling.