Their electricity and willingness to go in so many new directions both awed and scared them a little. Both wondered who they were doing this for – themselves or the other?
That week their nights were long exhausting experiments. He couldn't ask her what she liked because it all had to remain silent, spoken only through touch and movement. By eight every night they were excited and looking at the clock. Whatever they'd been used to doing before was unimportant and forgotten. Now they would slip into their new second skins, and whatever was left of the day would hide because it did not know them.
On Thursday she was out walking and decided to buy him a present. In a store, a salesman spread beautiful cashmere sweaters over a glass counter: lilac, taupe, black. She couldn't decide. Only after leaving the store did she realize she'd chosen one that would look better on Peter Copeland than her husband. That startled her, but she made no move to return it. She simply wouldn't tell him.
At work he realized he'd written the name Peter Copeland – times on a pad of paper in front of him. He didn't even know he was doing it. Each time the script was completely different, as if he were trying to forge rather than invent the other man's signature.
"What's for dinner?"
"Your favorite – chili."
He didn't like chili.
There was no chili – her little joke – but the tulips he sent were in a new black and yellow vase on the dining table between them. They were like a third person in the room. He wanted to tell her about writing Copeland's name, but the vivid flowers were enough of the other's presence for the moment.
He looked at them again and realized he was not looking at the same ones he'd bought. Those were pink, these were deep red. Where did she put his?
"It's tulip season again, huh?"
She smiled and nodded.
"I saw some great pink ones the other day. I knew I should have gotten them for you. Somebody beat me to it, huh?"
Her smile remained. It said nothing different from a moment ago. Or was it the slightest bit pitying?
He liked to shave before going to bed – a personal quirk. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror scraping off the last bits of snowy foam, he suddenly pointed his razor at the mirror.
"I heard what you two are doing. Don't think I don't know, you bastard!"
"Are you talking to me?" She called from the bedroom.
"No, Peter Copeland."
He smiled his own weird smile when she didn't say anything to that.
Her fingers were moving lightly across his face when he saw how to break it. Pushing her hand away, he took over and started touching her much too hard, hurting her. To his surprise, she jerked and twisted but remained silent. It was always silent now. Somewhere in these recent days they had both accepted that. But why wasn't she protesting? Why didn't she tell him to stop? Did she like it? How could she? She had said a million times she couldn't understand how people could like hurting each other in bed. Or was Peter Copeland allowed everything? Worse, was the pain he gave pleasant to her now? That was insane! It meant he knew nothing about his wife. It made him breathe too fast. What parts of her did he know, for sure? What else had she held back from him over the years?
He started saying brutal, dirty things to her. It was something they both disliked. Their sexy words to each other were always funny and flattering, loving.
"Don't!" It was the first time she had spoken. She was looking straight at him, real alarm on her face.
"Why? I'll do what I want."
He continued talking, touching her too hard, talking, ruining everything. He told her where he worked, how much money he made, what his hobbies were. He told her where he'd gone to college, where he grew up, how he liked his eggs done.
Soon she was crying and stopped moving altogether. He was in the middle of explaining to her that he wore white sneakers because he had this bad foot infection. . . .
Sasha wouldn't tell me specifically which parts of Phil's short story were true (or why he'd even written it), and I didn't ask. She wanted to know how I knew about it so I lied, saying Phil had told Danny James about it in New York. She said the events of "A Quarter Past You" were only part of the problem and the reason why they'd separated. Since the middle of filming Midnight Kills, he'd become bizarrely temperamental and awful to live with.
He was a good-natured man who rarely showed that he was out of sorts, even when he was. His father hadn't liked moody kids, so Mrs. Strayhorn taught Phil and Jackie to either camouflage their distress or put it in their rooms behind a quietly closed door. Phil didn't like his father, but he agreed with this way of concealing pain. In the years we'd lived together at college, I almost never saw him grumpy. If it happened, he would go out of our room and not come back until his spirits had lifted or he'd worked out whatever it was. I couldn't imagine my friend as selfish and mercurial as Sasha went on to describe. But in the end, something Pinsleepe had said came to me: "No matter how many times Phil killed himself, by making that scene in the movie after I told him not to, he was only killing himself then. All the other thirty years of Strayhorn were around and alive."
Was this schizoid, unpleasant man already fragmenting before he committed his final act? Was the person who treated Sasha so strangely the same one who shot himself? The same one who caused the death of Matthew Portland? The same one who was on my videotapes, the same one who talked with Danny James in New York, the same one who took Pinsleepe to Browns Mills, the same one . . . ?
7
Uh-oh. What can you believe – or rather, who – the angel or the dead man?
Pinsleepe has really outdone herself this time. And obviously taken unfair advantage. She's the star witness for the prosecution, always conveniently on the scene to steer the jury (Weber) in the right direction.
What am I allowed to do in my own defense? Nothing but make a couple of absurd videos for him and Sasha where I wasn't allowed to say anything other than a few hints. Like being on some bad TV game show, Celebrity Charades. Guess what the ghost is saying!
Did I lie to you before? Yes. I lied about where Rock and Roll came from. And who went for the cops when we found the dead girl. But I'm not lying now.
So much of what she says is almost true or just a little wrong. If you gave her a lie detector test she'd pass. But truth doesn't come in percentages. Eighty percent true. Ninety-nine. It either is or isn't.
Here is the official Pinsleepe version: Philip Strayhom got so carried away making his silly little horror films that along the way the poor man signed his soul over to the devil. For what? For power, kids! What else? Power enough to make audiences go out and kill each other, power enough to sell millions of tickets and make lots of money, power enough, finally, to use real dark forces!
Yowee! Get your real dark forces here! Get 'em while they're red hot!
Now could we please have a cavalry charge or a heavenly choir? Because at this turning point in our tale, an angel comes to warn Phil not to be naughty anymore because he's making God upset. Stupid Strayhorn, so full of pride, ignores the warning and goes on making the utterly half-assed Midnight Kills. As a result, little Phils come bursting out of the past like maggots and everyone nearby gets killed or cancer.
There was one good scene in the film, and that's the one they – she – wanted me to cut. I didn't. Bad things happened afterward. Were they a result of the scene? I honestly don't know.