by Jane Smiley
“Oh,” said Alice.
“What I need to ask you about, though, has more to do with two other friends of yours, Mr. Mast, for one.”
“And the other?”
Honey smiled. “One at a time, okay?”
Alice shrugged, then sat down on the steps. Honey squatted beside her.
“How long have you known the Masts, Mrs. Ellis?”
“Noah about twelve years, Rya about six.”
“Would you say that you know them very well?”
“I’ve seen them a lot, but I’ve never been close to Noah, and Rya and I have our ups and downs.”
“Would you feel confident in judging what sort of persons they are? In characterizing them, say?”
“Didn’t we talk about this?”
“I’m interested in what you have to say today.”
“Rya works in public relations for a cable TV outfit. I’m not sure what she does, but I get the feeling from her clothes and her general manner that she makes a pretty good salary. She used to be a receptionist and secretary at NBC.”
“I am aware of Mrs. Mast’s employment history.”
“Noah hasn’t ever really tried anything with his music outside of the band and away from Craig. He’s a pretty average Midwestern boy.”
“How’s that?”
Alice cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I mean that his reaction on the surface is the same as his reaction in the depths. What you see is what you get.”
“Has this always been true of Mr. Mast?”
“Yes.”
“And it continues to be true?” He looked at her closely. Alice shifted her weight and looked down, feeling simultaneously that this was just a technique and that he had been following her. She turned away and stared at the facade of the library. All morning she had been a little nervous in the stacks, and had made herself some extra work at her desk. She had offered to take Sidney’s shift at the reference desk, because, after all, the only real security was in the flow of traffic. The facade itself seemed different now, not a fortress, but a membrane. The many doors opened and opened. Anyone could go in. That’s what the director had said after the attack in the reading room: They were to remember that the library was a public institution in the center of New York, as available in its way as the IRT or the Port Authority building. She thought of Roger Jenks doing his public duty. She thought of her friends. Somehow the square dance had spun into a new figure, and she was at the center, where she had never been before. It was Craig who had been at the center for the last twelve years, Craig whose charm and energy and ambition had supplied a pattern and direction to their lives. Now that he was dead, she had been thrust from the periphery, where she was perfectly contented, and everyone twirled and turned alarmingly toward her.
Honey was inhumanly patient, watching a man playing a violin a few steps down from her. Another man dropped a five-dollar bill into his open case. She thought of Ray and Jeff and Rya and Noah and, of course, Susan. Where did her responsibility lie? Which bundle of information was the least wrong to give, for it was obvious that Honey would not leave without some bundle from her. Which was the most likely for him to get from other sources? She looked at the deceptive edifice of the library and sighed. Honey moved closer. It was uncanny the way he read, not her thoughts, but her feelings. She said, “I suppose I do have something to tell you.” Honey turned to a clean page in his notebook and Alice related to him what Noah had said to her Sunday, what Rya had said to her Monday, not leaving out the bit about the unanswered phone call. She did not tell him about Noah’s drug habits, but she suspected he knew about that already. She had an odd sensation as she talked, almost a physical sensation of sliding and sliding. Fear and release, shame and relief all at the same time. When it was over her face was hot.
Honey was hardly moved at all. After she had finished, he waited expectantly for more, half smiling, as if she hadn’t said the punch line yet. Alice said, “That’s all I know. That’s the latest.”
“Does this seem suspicious to you, Mrs. Ellis?”
“I guess I would have to say so, yes.”
“Why?”
“It all seems very fraught with emotion to me.”
“Do you think such emotion could result in murder?”
“Don’t you?”
“Maybe. But love doesn’t always lead to marriage, unless the lover is the marryin’ kind.”
“Well, since this is all very new to us, or to me, anyway, I couldn’t begin to tell you whether Noah or Rya is the murderin’ kind.”
“What about your other friends?”
“No,” she snapped, “none of them.”
Honey closed his notebook. He said, “Have you given your key to anyone, Mrs. Ellis?”
“Only to Susan.”
“Miss Gabriel has full access to your residence?”
“She’s the only one.”
“But she does have full access, downstairs key, elevator key, apartment key?”
“There isn’t an elevator key.”
“It was very trusting of you to give away a key.”
“She would never give it to anyone else.”
“Probably not.”
“You think I should get it back.” Alice spoke accusingly.
“As a general rule, lending keys is a very unwise practice, Mrs. Ellis, as this recent experience must show you.”
“She’s my best friend!”
Honey put the notebook in his pocket. They parted with the usual formalities, and Alice turned to go back to work. The detective was moving quickly down the steps, his burly torso straining the seams and vents of his jacket. Alice opened her mouth. Why couldn’t she just let all of her fears out, as she had let out all of her suspicions of Rya and Noah? Though she had betrayed their confidence, and the unaccustomed feeling of telling secrets had been demeaning, there was a seductive momentum to it. If she spilled her fears and confusions, he might extend the security of his power over her. But he was down the steps, didn’t look back. She could not call out. The library. A janitor she did not know was wedging the doors open to catch the breeze.
ALL afternoon Alice imagined herself confiding in Henry. Not in bed, not formally, over coffee in his living room, but in his tiny kitchen, doing dishes, or at the breakfast bar, a time-out between their romantic dinner and their romantic bedding, a hermetically sealed interval that would affect neither. She imagined herself doing what she hadn’t done yet—describing the scene of the murder, the silent chaos, the smell, her sense of being quietly but exactly beside herself as she gazed upon the remains of Craig (her one-time lover) and his friend, Denny. Her friend. Then she would describe Ray, what he had built for her and how he had talked to her, how they were from the same town, and had bought penny candy at the same corner market and spent summers at the same public swimming pool. Ray she would describe very carefully, so that Henry would know from the description itself what Ray had and had not done, what Ray was capable of doing. Then, as carefully, but of course not at such length, she would characterize Noah and Rya, both what she had thought of them and what she thought of them now. In the very disjuncture between before and after, Henry might see the truth about them, too. Of course she would treat Denny and Craig in detail, and for once there would be no slighting of Denny in favor of Craig. Perhaps she would even tell him about Susan. She would narrate it all to him, and her story would be so orderly and so detailed and so complete that Henry’s clear, trained eye (the eye that glimpsed a spider web at twenty feet) would see as she could not see. Thinking of telling him, her heart pounded and the skin of her forearms stood away from the flesh. She could not tell whether it excited or terrified her. Undoubtedly both. But then Henry himself excited and terrified her, or rather, there was Henry, good-natured, handsome, and there was herself, excited and terrified. She left work early and walked up Fifth Avenue, ready to buy a new dress, her fingertips in her pocket running over the raised letters of her Master Charge card that she was ready to fling at the
salesgirl the moment she spotted the right vestment for the evening. Twice she thought she saw Susan, and made herself stare at the figure until it resolved itself into a stranger. They were all strangers. That was a palpable relief.
In the end, she arrived on his doorstep in her white dress with the Mexican sash, raspberries in one hand and cream in the other. Henry opened the door in a wash of beefy aromas and embraced her crushingly before she had time to say anything. Then he ate a raspberry, the one she had balanced for him at the very apex of the mound. “All we can eat,” she said, “red and black both. I realize that raspberries aren’t so rare, but all you can eat is.” Even as she spoke, before setting anything down or taking her first sip of champagne, it was clear that Henry’s was the sort of apartment where it would be difficult to speak of such things as murder and suspicion. It was the sort of apartment where the easiest thing to do was adore Henry.
Henry smelled of witch hazel, baby powder, the laundry that did his shirts, shampoo, and meat juices. He had been crumbling rosemary in his hands, garlic with the wooden spoon he held. The air was solid with his presence, driving all other presences away. Always she liked the way people’s quarters gave evidence of their lives, but Henry’s apartment was not an idle collection of books and knickknacks and clothes. It seemed only his, exclusive.
He propelled Alice toward the stove and exposed the stew for her. Beside it were arrayed the Brie, the arrow of bread, the crisp head of broccoli beaded with moisture, a mound of breadcrumbs, her bowl of raspberries, which he had set down, and thick cream the color of sunlight. Unable to simultaneously devour it all in one gulp (including Henry) and sink tinily into it, Alice stood with her hands at her sides, half unconscious, thinking that she should say something but unable to speak. She did not want to say anything about love, but some remark about it was at the very gates. He put a glass of champagne into her fingers and she took a biting sip. “I’m glad you’re here,” said Henry.
“Me, too.”
“Actually, you seem amazingly here, if you know what I mean.”
“I would have said the same thing about you if my wits weren’t blasted by your very presence.”
Henry turned red and stifled a grin, leaning over the broccolli. “At the risk of making you self-conscious,” he said, “I’ll say that I’ve never known anyone with such a disconcerting combination of reserve and frankness before. There’s a kind of absolute silence about you that you keep shattering.”
Alice took a sip of her champagne, fear and desire rising in one fountain within. Throwing herself at him, leading him on, was irresistible. “How far along in the dinner are you? What does the stew have to do?”
“Simmer a while. I just have to cut up the broccoli, really. It’s not time to steam it.”
“Let’s go to bed.”
Henry put down his knife and began to untie his apron.
Alice could have crawled to the bed, but in fact she stepped rather lightly over the floor, air and doorways and objects breaking to either side of her like waves. Henry’s hand at her back was unfastening the Mexican belt. It fell with a clank to the threshold of the bedroom. The ribs of the down comforter lay over his bed like a plowed field, and Alice had the sensation of planting herself in it or spreading herself over it in her white dress like a stand of wild carrot. Henry slipped his hands under the straps and the white batiste slid down over her breasts. Her nipples were rigid with expectation but Henry didn’t touch them. Instead he put his hands on her buttocks, inside her pantyhose, which he peeled down her legs, one at a time. She stood up and her dress fell to the floor. She could feel her vagina moisten and swell, feel the space there that was usually insensate. She groaned. Even so, Henry did not turn her around or come around in front of her. He was looking at her from the back, at her neck, her spine, the weaving of muscles that tapered to her waist, the round jut of her hips. His looking made her see them. They were perfectly still for a long time. Outside the open window, a dog barked and was angrily hushed, cars swished by. When she turned to look at him, he was intent upon her. His pulse pounded visibly in his neck. Alice reached up one finger to feel the rush. Sometimes Alice was taken aback by male flesh. Its firmness seemed numb to her, as if only poking could penetrate to the nerves, or only slapping could set up a reverberation that the man might distantly feel. Henry did not tempt her to hurt him, in fact she was barely able to touch him, so explosive did he seem, so electrified with neurons.
It seemed safe to take his hand, run her fingers over the mounts and callouses. She shivered, and he pulled her closer. “Alice,” he said. She stopped his mouth with a kiss. It was a kiss she could not give up or bring to an end. When his hands ran over her skin, melting it, it was in addition to the kiss. When his chest rubbed against her breasts, turning the nipples to points of fire, it was in addition to her greed for the workings of his lips and tongue. When he entered the space that had opened and seemed to probe it and stretch it, still it was in addition to the mouth she could hardly give him a moment to breathe with. He dove and dove, groaning. Alice writhed beneath him as if to escape, but Henry pressed inescapably upon her. Inside her he grew and she realized he was coming, felt his wetness and came with a great shivering herself. Immediately she closed her eyes, afraid of seeing anything differently, with less desire and delight, than she had before.
A transition to tales of murder was impossible. They sat at Henry’s neatly set dinner table, Henry in his bathrobe and Alice in one of his shirts. The braised beef was delicious, the broccoli a little overdone, although Alice didn’t say anything. “This is not what I imagined,” said Alice. “I mean, I just put that dress on an hour ago. I could have at least spilled something on it before taking it off.”
Henry’s grin matched hers. “Not me,” he said. “I dared to dream. You should see my list: set table, put on meat, answer doorbell, do it on the living-room floor, wash broccoli. Everything.”
“I’ll bet.” Now? How did one start? Can I talk to you? But she was talking to him.
He helped her to another stalk of broccoli, then went into the kitchen for the second bottle of champagne. Alice looked around the room for something to help her begin. The pale pedestrian furniture, bought second-hand, no doubt, and without any eye for form, was saved by the boldly painted walls, cream with slate blue moldings, and by the plethora of dried and mounted specimens that covered the walls and all the flat surfaces. Many of them, she could see, were antiques, purchased, perhaps, from the estate of some ancient doctor or botanist. Others Henry had done himself. Where the walls weren’t hung with the plants and butterflies themselves, they were covered with sketches of flowers and ferns and insects and spiders and birds. Indeed, just above her head, framed and set off by a little horizontal lamp, was a hand-colored engraving of a harlequin duck, obviously the pride of Henry’s collection. The unsigned sketches, which were a little stiff but not bad, Alice suspected were by Henry himself. She was tempted to get up and look closely, but was also afraid of seeming nosy and making Henry self-conscious. She enjoyed the sense of being surrounded by things. It gave her the pleasure of endless possibilities. She sat still and ate the flower of her broccoli stalk. As a rule she hated clutter. It had been one of the sorest points between herself and Jim Ellis, who gathered objects and brought them home to write poems about, who always preferred alleys to streets because he couldn’t resist a row of trash barrels, and whose addiction to garage sales had to be strictly controlled. His accusation that Alice was a librarian in her soul was true insofar as her fantasy house had a multitude of drawers and cupboards built into the walls like a card catalogue, and no surfaces for the reception of anything. She found Henry’s objects pleasing, though. They seemed to grow from and express him. Jim’s had seemed to demand that he express them. Alice stood up and walked around the table, wanting to exclaim at her insight. She had thought that insights about Jim Ellis were behind her. Feeling intelligent, and perceptibly freer from her former marriage, she stopped at the window and lo
oked out. It was still light on Eighty-fourth Street, but the shadows from the trees in Riverside Park stretched almost halfway up the street. An old woman from the apartment building next to Alice’s was dawdling at the corner with her dog, a tiny ratlike beast with bug eyes. The doorman of the Riverside Drive building was taking a delivery, and a woman with a D’AG BAG was hurrying home, her eyes down and her purse slapping against her leg. The view was slightly depressing. And she could see into her windows. Although the light of the sunset reflected off the glazing, she could make out her round kitchen table, her square dining-room table, and the corner of the washing machine in the laundry room. That was depressing, too. She turned back to Henry’s busy refuge with a sigh. There’s something you don’t know about me? There’s something I’d like to tell you?
A cork popped in the kitchen, and then the mere sight of Henry with the bottle smoking in his hand, his feet bare and bony on the hardwood floor, his robe pale blue against his tanned skin lifted her spirits. Later, she thought, later there would be a good time.
It was frightening the way her adoration seemed to flow out of her like ink into water, staining everything, hiding everything. She thought of Rya saying that she had declared her love to Craig and then been afraid to take it back. Was that what Jim Ellis felt about her? “Christ, Henry,” she said, holding out her glass. “Where did you get all this stuff?”
They went back to bed in the dusk, taking champagne and the remains of the raspberries, leaving their forks on their plates, their water glasses half full, even the bowl of cream on the table, spent lemon halves, a stick of butter, unstoppered bottles of herbs on the kitchen counter. Henry did manage to turn off the lights. Alice kept close to him, some part of her body continually touching some part of his. Now was the time. They didn’t have to make love at once. “Hen—,” she began. He didn’t hear her.