That was just a little unsettling. “Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked.
Her reply was swift. “Sure.”
That was it. That was about all the damage I could do here. I gave my hand to the professor. He took it and held it tight between his two hands like he was measuring me for a glove. That lasted for an uncomfortable time. He looked deep in my eyes. I thought he was going to hug me. Instead, he suddenly released me and said, “Your spirit is just. Your motives are pure. Your soul is at peace. I wish you Godspeed in your quest.”
It was the most gracious dismissal I’d ever gotten.
I led Rachel out the door and gladly left behind the goddam noise, smoke and darkness.
It was past midnight. I didn’t know if we’d find a place nearby, but there were two all-night coffee shops on the block. One was cleaner and newer than the other. It was called Athena. There was a Hellenic motif on the walls and on the plates. The aroma of garlic was strong enough to knock you back ten hectares.
Rachel slid into a booth and said brightly, “I’m famished, you know. I haven’t had anything to eat all day.” She looked up at me the way a child looks at an adult. “Is it alright if I indulge in like some red meat?”
I sat down opposite her. Somehow her question seemed in character. “Sure,” I nodded. “How about a slab of tenderloin?”
She was older than I had thought. In the candlelight of the professor’s apartment, she looked to be in her early twenties. I wondered what Alicia would have had in common with a girl that young. Now, in the fluorescent glare of truth, I could see she was on the backside of thirty. She had the kind of skin that looks fresh and dewy when it’s young, but looses its moisture quickly and develops fine lines around the eyes and mouth as it ages. She had the movements of a younger woman but the presence of one who’s lived through a few of life’s more educational experiences.
A waitress hovered over us and made a perfunctory wipe over the Formica with a greasy rag. Then she shoved a couple of worn plastic menus at us. Rachel shook her head and said, “Let me have a big hamburger, half a pound, and make it like red rare.”
“Same for me,” I said, “but put more fire on mine. And give me a Bud.”
The waitress put her hands on her hips. “No beer,” she said.
“OK. Cup of coffee, then.”
The waitress grunted, nodded and shuffled away.
“I thought with all this ashram business you’d be a vegetarian,” I said to Rachel.
“I am. But sometimes I just have like such a craving for red meat,” she said with a wicked grin. She was one of those people who had to emphasize certain words with a dramatic flair.
I didn’t waste any time. “How do you know everything about me?”
She flushed. “What I meant was that Alicia told me a lot about you two…about your marriage, I mean. About how you lived…” She held my gaze for a minute and then looked down. The set of her jaw was determined but her eyes gave away her uneasiness.
I nodded slowly to reassure her. “Tell me more about what Alicia was doing. About how you met her.”
She nodded. “At the New School. It was like last year in a night class called Contemporary American Fiction. We sat next to each other and started talking and never stopped. You know what I mean?” She looked up at me. Her eyes were deep and dark. “About how you meet a person and, you know, start talking and you just can’t stop talking and you have so much in common.” As she spoke, her hands made delicate movements in the air. Her fingers were long and fine. The nails were manicured and covered with clear polish.
“We became good friends. As a matter of fact, she was probably like the best friend I’ve ever…”
Suddenly, out of the blue, she started to cry. Her body shuddered with the sobs. She put her face in her hands and bawled like a schoolgirl.
Just then the waitress came by. The woman grunted again, but this time in sympathy. “There, there,” she said. She put the food on the table and shot a dirty look at me. It was a look that would have made Attila the Hun crap in his britches. She patted Rachel on the shoulder and asked, “Is everything all right, sweetie?”
Rachel managed a small nod and a sniffle. That seemed to satisfy the witch and she shuffled away again. It took a couple of minutes for Rachel to pull herself together. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue using short, quick strokes.
When she got back to normal, she attacked her burger with a ferocity that had to come from some primordial swamp. She didn’t even bother to put ketchup on the meat.
We both finished eating and stared at each other. Something cold and distant quickened behind her eyes. I touched her hand. I wanted to feel her skin. She didn’t move her hand but she bit her lip. There was a long silence. She didn’t lower her gaze this time.
“I want you to lead me through Alicia’s life,” I said finally. “Tell me everything you know about her. What she did. Who she saw.”
I stared into those deep dark eyes. “Will you do that for me?”
She finally cast her eyes down. “Yes,” she said softly.
CHAPTER X
Outside the coffee shop, we turned north and walked up Fifth. At that time of night, there wasn’t anybody on the street. When we reached Fourteenth Street, she reached out and held my hand as we walked. That little gesture surprised the hell out of me. Christ, no one had held my hand since the sixth grade. Her hand felt as small as a child’s.
It was the kind of night that was perfect for walking. Cool and clear. It almost made the city look good. At a certain hour, and in a certain kind of light, New York was like a hooker who can trick you into thinking she’s passably fuckable.
As we walked, Rachel told me about Alicia. About her conversion to feminism, her joining some kind of Earth Mother cult, her visits to a psychiatrist who held a bizarre fascination for her. When she talked about the shrink, her tone took on a strange animation.
There was hardly anybody around on Fifth in the Twenties and Thirties. We passed darkened showrooms and grimy office buildings, some with bums passed out in the doorways. An occasional taxi would slow down as it passed to ask if we wanted a ride, but I waved them on.
There were a few more people on the streets when we hit the Forties. And there were always the Senegalese hawking Rolexes for ten dollars and Hermes scarves. Mostly, I let her do the talking, but I stuck in a question now and then. She was good at sorting out the details and highlighting what she thought were the important parts. When I asked her where Alicia got the coke, she gave me a blank stare. I told her if I could nail the supplier, I’d have a few more answers. That didn’t seem to impress her a hell of a lot.
Fifth Avenue had more people when we reached the Fifties. Some of the stores were open. Mostly electronic rip-off joints that reamed the tourists.
As she spoke, I got a sense that she wanted to help but that she wasn’t opening up completely. And I couldn’t tell if what she was holding back was worth anything.
The streets became deserted again in the Sixties. We crossed Madison and walked north a couple of blocks past small overpriced boutiques and then turned left on Park.
She told me about Chisolm and Stallings, or at least how Alicia had described them. Then she said that Alicia had told her she would never be dependent on a man again and that she was willing to take certain risks to achieve that. How much risk would she have taken? Rachel shook her head. She had no idea. In my experience, some people would risk a lot to be independent.
When we reached Seventy-second, I stopped and turned for a minute and looked South toward my office building some thirty blocks away down Park Avenue. I could see my window still lit up. How many evenings had I sat in that room? Close to ten years worth. Putting pieces together, asking questions, jumping to hasty conclusions, busting chops. I shrugged without moving my shoulders. It all meant very little, after all.