by Jane Smiley
“Why didn’t you ever do it?”
“Well, some guys got ambushed in Afghanistan, remember them? Their donkey was named Willy, which was short for Willimakit. One of them was killed. But basically, we just didn’t go, like we just didn’t start the dome commune.” They walked in silence for a few moments, and a surge of grief struck Alice and drained away. When she could speak coolly again, she said, “Honey seemed surprised that we all moved here together. I guess he was never going to start up a dome commune with his best pals.”
“Doesn’t seem the type.”
“Didn’t you love it, really? Didn’t friendship seem like the great immensity that would never be exhausted or used up? There was always someone to talk to, always someone attractive, always someone who had a different perspective on your cantankerous spouse.”
“Always someone whose food you could eat without asking and whose records and books you could take.”
“And whose clothes you could wear.”
“And whose bed you could pass out in.”
“And whom you didn’t have to worry about not touching. Or touching. Don’t you miss it?”
Susan stopped and looked at her, thoughtful. “No, not now. It was fun.” She walked on. “Everyone did seem so unique and interesting. I don’t think that’s true any more.”
“And familiar. Peculiar, interesting, and familiar. I always thought that was what a big family must be like, except that in a big family, you would be stuck with younger brothers and sisters or babies or boring aunts that you had to show respect for.”
“I don’t think my mother ever had a dinner party for six people that she actually was fond of. Whether they were relatives or my father’s business associates or neighbors or whatever, there were never six that she liked, my father liked, and who liked each other all at the same time. I do remember thinking about our potlucks and feeling very superior about that.”
“I thought it would never end. I thought I would never have to eat food with someone I didn’t know intimately.” Alice laughed.
Susan again lifted her eyebrows. “Did we know each other intimately? I once tried to write down everything I knew about Denny, all his qualities and physical characteristics. I didn’t get much beyond a physical description, and even that was pretty general.”
Fifty-first Street. They crossed to the east side of Fifth Avenue in order to meet up casually with the windows of Saks. Alice realized with a start that she hadn’t thought of Henry Mullet in perhaps half an hour. Thinking of him now seemed unaccustomed, alien. For a moment, a trifle embarrassing. She had told him she was going to spend the day coming to her senses. Perhaps she would. Susan drew her attention to a lovely white summer dress, tucked and ruffled and inset with lace, but Alice’s attention slid off the dress and onto Susan, before whom she stood still in absolute love and familiarity. It seemed suddenly true to her that no man would ever do more than kiss her life or her imagination, no man could overcome the quantity of experience she had now accumulated. The labor of explaining everything—not just telling anecdotes, which was rather fun, but explaining strands of thought that stretched over years, habits of perception firmly in place, justifying deeply held views (such discussion bored her even to think about)—seemed as difficult and unrewarding as carrying stones across a stony field. Weren’t marriages contracted in later life always shallower than others, more or less parallel, never convergent? And wouldn’t Susan’s presence always ensure that shallowness, a failure of concentration on the man, perhaps, that would be fatal to a real marriage? No man would ever have more rights over her than Susan did. She could not imagine it. She could imagine Henry kissing her, though. She could see in her mind the drop of his eyes from her face to her moonlit breasts, and experience at once the thud of desire and expectation that his evident desire awakened in her. She closed her eyes. Susan said, “I don’t know if I like the skirt and blouse better or the dress, but if Saks were open, I know I’d go spend the rent on one or the other,” and the sound of her voice transformed Alice’s memory of her own body into a picture of Susan’s. It was as if she had thought about it before, except that she hadn’t, Susan’s pointed chin, her head bent back, exposing her neck and shoulders, the smoothness of her chest and then the swell of her breasts, which Alice suddenly wanted to kiss and suck. Her stomach, never concave, would flow around her navel like water between the banks of her hipbones. Alice imagined her own hand flowing with it. And then her tongue—
“Look at this one,” said Susan, and Alice’s eyes snapped open. The fantasy had been so startling and complete that she was hardly embarrassed by it, not feeling somehow that she had called it up, only that it expressed itself automatically after a long time of waiting. It could be blamed on the murder, on her arousal by Henry Mullet, on the disorientation of the last week. More importantly, it seemed good, an expression of the depth of their friendship. “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “I’m starving. Let’s find someplace to eat.”
HONEY was waiting for them on the stoop of Susan’s apartment building. “Beautiful evening,” he said, and it was, the air so dry that the sinking of the sun and the fading of the light were purely and gently themselves, deepening blue untouched by pinks or oranges or purples. “I hoped I would catch you.” He raised the pitch of his sentence slightly, so that they could gracefully state where they had been. Alice complied, as usual, “We were in midtown, just walking and window shopping. We ate.” Unable to stop herself, she added, “At New Japan, on Sixth.” She stopped herself.
“I just need some information,” said Honey.
“Let’s go upstairs,” suggested Susan, polite but reserved, as if he might sit down, but she wasn’t going to offer him refreshment.
“This will be quick,” he said. Although it was a Sunday in May, his tie was tied and his jacket was buttoned. Susan unlocked the door of her apartment and preceded them inside. Honey looked around. Alice saw that he could not help it. She looked around, too. He said, “What do you know about a man named Daniel or David Brick?”
Alice looked at Susan, who appeared as blank as she felt. Susan shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
“Tall and extremely thin, shaggy dark hair, occasional goatee, tattoos on—” he consulted his notebook—“left forearm, butterfly, left upper arm, snake, and right hand, musical note.”
Susan thought for a moment, gazing across the room toward the big front windows. Alice thought, too, but only as a formality. “Still nothing,” said Susan.
Honey looked at Alice, who shook her head, then realized that all the plants were gone. She looked around again. The five-foot Schefflera, the giant hanging spider plants, the aloes, the baby’s tears, the various ivies that formed a drape around the two windows. The avocado, big plants, little plants, cuttings, trees, all gone. Honey read from his notebook: “Dave or Dan Brick is a fairly well-known character around the musical world of the city. Has been hanging around music clubs, especially those catering to the popular music trade, for six or seven years. Not visibly employed, no known address, between thirty and thirty-five years old.” He looked up at them. They shook their heads. “Sometimes carries guitar and calls self a rock guitarist, but not employed by any band in the city. Police record: convicted on drug charges, 1967, served one year of a three-year sentence at Danbury State Prison. Paroled for good behavior. Arrested for passing bad checks, 1972, plea bargained for reduced charge, fined. Picked up on drug charges, 1974, 1978. Released for lack of evidence. Known to be occasionally armed, in spite of felony conviction. Did either Mr. Minehart or Mr. Shellady ever mention anyone like this, who might have hung around with their entourage, doing occasional errands, maybe?”
“They met tons of people,” said Susan.
“Okay. Let’s see,” said Honey. “For a time involved with a woman singer named Nina Slager, or Nina Starlette.”
“Nina Starlette is familiar,” said Alice. “Isn’t she sort of a Patti Smith clone?”
“Denny and Craig might have pla
yed at the same place she did once, at a festival or something like that, but Craig hated that sort of musician. He wouldn’t have talked to her, and certainly wouldn’t have had anything to do with her boyfriend.”
“Might Mr. Reschley have known Miss Slager or Mr. Brick?”
“Ray did work for a lot of people,” said Alice. “A few years ago, he sometimes hired himself out to groups who were getting ready to make demo tapes. He would do the mixing and producing. When some of the groups got contracts, he got to be well known to the record companies. He wasn’t a snob like Craig. He would have worked for Nina Starlette, but he never mentioned her to any of us. She wasn’t one of his successes if he did work for her.”
“And Mr. Mast?”
Susan laughed. “Noah would have run the other direction at the very sight of someone like Nina Starlette. Noah’s sort of a country boy.”
“Mrs. Mast?”
“Well, Rya was a secretary at NBC for a while. She could have met anyone, but she never talked about Nina Starlette or this other guy.”
While Susan talked, Alice tried to judge the effect of the missing plants. Susan had always had plants, even in their college dorm. In fact, the university-supplied desk hadn’t known a typewriter in the four years of Susan’s tenure, but had been pushed against the windows and laden with greenery. The drawers had been pulled out and turned over, so that more plants could sit on them. Now, however, the apartment didn’t seem bare, exactly, more—Honey broke into her thoughts. “You feel, then, that there’s no likely connection between yourselves and David or Daniel Brick?”
Susan shook her head, as did Alice.
Honey gave a deep sigh. “Well,” he said, “Brick was picked up last night on a gambling charge. Since he was a known denizen of the rock and roll milieu, I took the liberty of going through the items in his pockets. On his ring of keys were keys to your apartment.”
Alice felt herself vibrate with the shock. Susan had paled. “Someone I’ve never even heard of? Someone with a police record?”
“I’m afraid so. You can come down to the station, if you’d like, and have a look at him, just to see if you might conceivably recognize him. By the way, Mrs. Ellis, have you had the locks on your apartment changed?”
Alice started. “Should I?”
“It might be wise.”
“But—”
Susan interrupted her. “Will he have to see me?”
“He won’t see anything, or even know he’s being looked at. You could come tomorrow morning; before you go to work would be a good time.”
Susan nodded.
Honey snapped his notebook closed, and offered to see Alice to a cab if she was going home. Out the window she could see that it was almost dark. Alice put her arms around Susan and kissed her good night. On the street, as if by magic, Honey had a cab for her inside of a minute, and he was gone, as if by magic, before she had thought again to ask him why she should have her locks changed.
AS SHE let herself in, she could not stop thinking how bizarre it would be to know that a stranger had your keys, had had them for months of nights when you had locked yourself in smugly and gone to bed in perfect trust. Her rooms were pleasantly untidy, demanding the leisurely attention she would be glad to give them while she drank tea, took a bath, thought about Henry Mullet, and reveled in her present sense of kinship with Susan. Of course she wouldn’t have wished it, but one of the effects of the murder had turned out to be a new intimacy between them, not precisely like what they’d had before. Part of it was that they spent more time together, of course, necessary time, for packing and cleaning and doing business, but also idle time, when Alice was more than glad to be a warm comfortable body whose presence in the room might be of some use. Before, Denny would have been that body. Another part of it was that the compelling topics of conversation were new ones, giving their talks a good deal of fresh urgency and, Alice was willing to admit, interest, too. Each evening’s conversation held a fascination for her that would be hard to forgo, rather like, but not as demeaning as, the fascination they had held two years ago. What had they talked about since? Books? Movies? Friends? Food? It had all seemed satisfactory at the time, but it was hard for Alice to remember. Now they were talking about their whole lives, and Alice had the sense that they were seeking something, some understanding beyond the solution to the murder mystery, some knowledge of life that only the understanding of an irreducible fact like a murder could give one. This curiosity lent weight to every word they said. Alice sensed that that, too, could be addicting. And Susan needed her. That was most addicting. For the first time in their twelve years of friendship, the balance was nearly equal. In contrast to the last two years, especially, Alice had something to offer and the opportunity to offer it, and, as difficult as it was for her to know just what to offer and just when to offer it, she knew, especially after today, that it was valued. Alice grinned, delighted, and surprised at how delighted she was. She nearly picked up the phone to tell Susan how delighted she was, but it rang. Alice laughed, intending to say at once, “I was thinking of you, too. Did you barricade the door?” but it was Rya, not Susan. Rya hadn’t called Alice in months, not since a brief period of closeness around the previous Thanksgiving.
“Is it too late? Are you in bed?” asked Rya.
“No, I just walked in.”
“I was afraid you’d be in bed. I always forget what time it is and call people at one or two in the morning. What time is it?”
“A little after nine.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
“I won’t worry about Noah then. He said he wouldn’t be in until ten. I was beginning to worry about him, but I won’t.”
“What’s up?”
“Can we have a drink tomorrow evening? I want to talk to you.”
“Sure, but why don’t we talk now? You’re alone and I’m alone.”
“Not over the phone. This is across the table in a public place sort of talk.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Just give me some idea.”
“It’s about what Noah talked to you about this morning.”
“That is face-to-face talk, I suppose.” Alice wished hers didn’t have to be the face.
“You won’t stand me up?”
“Of course not.” Alice grimaced, thinking that now she couldn’t even forget unintentionally.
Rya named a bar on Forty-eighth Street known for its hors d’oeuvres and its noise. Gritting her teeth, Alice committed herself to being there at five-fifteen. After that, the phone was stubborn, silent. Susan didn’t call to remind her of their pleasant day or gossip about Honey, and Henry Mullet didn’t call to tell her that he had thought about her all day, so that she could admit the same to him. On second thought, however, he probably hadn’t thought of her much at all. He wasn’t the type. His mind, considering trees and shrubs and “herbaceous plants” (Alice savored the words) would be undivided, wholly concentrated. It was one of his finest qualities. So in spite of the resolute silence of the phone, Alice smiled and hummed around the seven-room apartment, thinking of Henry’s fine qualities. She took a bath, knowing he would call her out of it as soon as she was settled into it (“I just figured you would call now, I’m dripping”), but he didn’t. Nor while she was brushing her teeth, creaming her face, looking through the drawers and laundry basket for pajama bottoms. Even as she got into bed and took up her book, the phone didn’t ring. She picked it up to see if it was dead. It sizzled with life. Finally discouraged, she turned out the light and settled herself to forget it.
Ringing clattered her out of some dream, more a sense of something, riding in a bus, perhaps, than an actual dramatic situation. The noise jolted her, almost frightened her, except that the feeling was in her bones and blood rather than in her mind. She was shocked. She picked up the phone and babbled. “What was that?” said Henry Mullet.
&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” said Alice. “You tell me. Things always rise up from the depths if I answer the phone before I’m awake.”
“Are you awake now?” His voice was low and rich, as affectionate as she could have wished it to be.
“I think so. Really, what did I say?”
Henry chuckled. Thinking she was about to be teased, Alice grew annoyed, but Henry only said, “Leave it alone. You said, ‘Leave it alone.’”
“I think I was dreaming about a bus.” Prepared to be annoyed, Alice was charmed. Jim Ellis would have made her guess and beg him and suspect she had embarrassed herself. She said, “Do you have any sisters?”
“One.”
“But you aren’t a tease.”
“Do you like to be teased?”
“Hate it. Only my grandfather, my mother’s father, can get away with it.”
“What else do you hate?”
“Being goosed on the stairs.” She laughed.
“Is there anyone who can get away with that? Your other grandfather, maybe?”
“No one gets away with that. I might as well tell you that I haven’t preceded a man up the stairs in six or seven years at least.”
“I promise never to goose you on the stairs, then.”
“What shall I promise you?”
“Promise me to eat dinner over here Wednesday night when I get back from Brooklyn.”
“I promise.”
“I’ll call you when I get home. Seven, seven-fifteen.”
Alice was grinning. “What shall I bring?”
“Something delicious and unusual.”
“I’ll comb the city.”
“Alice.” From the way he said it, she knew that he had been thinking about her all day, that between the trees and shrubs and herbaceous plants, his thoughts had returned to her like a wave to the ocean. The skin of her forearms began to prickle. It pleased her, but she, of course, had thought at least as much about Susan as she had about him. For a friendship, or even a companionable love affair she was an excellent bet, but for someone who said Alice in just that way? Henry did not go on. She said, “What time is it?”