“Excuse me?”
“When I was in the car, at the gate, before you buzzed me in, you asked me whether I believe in angels.”
“I did? No, I don’t think so. Why would I do that? I didn’t buzz you in. It might have been Lorraine. Lorraine is the other woman. Incidentally, I should have asked you whether you’d like to freshen up.” She turned and gazed at him again. “The bathroom’s right here.” She pointed at the opposite wall.
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Where is it? I don’t see it.”
She touched the wall, and the concrete gave way again, and Krumholtz, who now felt like an angry resentful ambassador-without-portfolio from a Third World country, walked in. The lights flickered on automatically, as did the exhaust fan. He was surprised to find an ordinary toilet, humiliated by its functionality, in front of him, but on the wall above the toilet was a small signed pencil drawing by Paul Klee, and near the washstand and toilet was a waist-high table on which were piled several books. At the top was a signed first edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night. Beneath it were other signed editions of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Adrienne Rich’s Selected Poems, and T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday, just the book to have around when you were scrubbing your hands. So far, he hadn’t seen books anywhere else in the house. Krumholtz washed up, splashing soapy water on his face before soiling the hand towels, and when he returned to the hallway, Ellie Mallard was standing in exactly the same spot where she had been before, smiling pensively, her right foot half raised and planted with the arch on her left leg, a dancer’s position. “Do you believe in angels?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Well, neither do I, but I used to,” she said, proceeding down the hallway toward an open doorway. Krumholtz followed her and noticed a Bonazzi painting next to a Hockney — no, it wasn’t a Hockney, though it looked like one, with a nude male swimmer underwater — and a Dentinger, a Fabian, and a huge Dierking that went all the way up to the ceiling, the dirty-brown and grayish paint mixed in with what looked like rusted metal fragments expressive of terrible agony on an epic scale. When he turned the corner, he found himself in what appeared to be a master bathroom placed in the middle of the hallway with a large whirlpool bath built into the floor. Leaning back in the bathtub, with his eyes fixed on Krumholtz, was the winner, James Mallard.
“Ah, so at last you’re here,” Mallard said. “We thought you must have been a little lost, being late. As you were. What happened to you?”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Krumholtz said, putting his notebook away.
“Oh, that’s all right.” Mallard stood up and stepped out of the whirlpool bath. He was quite magnificent, still in possession of a sculpted athlete’s body, classically muscled and proportioned. Somewhere else in this house, Krumholtz knew, would be a fully equipped gym and possibly a full-time personal trainer. “We wondered what had gone wrong with you,” Mallard muttered flatly, as if Krumholtz’s absence actually had been a matter of the greatest indifference. Without a trace of shyness, and still wet, Mallard stepped toward Krumholtz and shook his hand, hard. He had a strong wet grip and large, thick fingers. Having finished with the handshake, Mallard stepped backward toward a grooved section of wall, where he pressed a recessed button. Hot air came blowing out on him from louvers in the wall, drying his body as he pivoted, his arms held slightly up. Krumholtz glanced over at Mallard’s wife, who was gazing appreciatively at her husband. Like the gods, these people had no timidity or shame. “Darling,” Mallard said to his wife, “would you hand me a towel?”
She reached over for a red bath towel, with a JM monogram, and handed it to her husband, though not before giving him a peck on the cheek. Mallard dried the backs of his legs and his hair, still in full view of Krumholtz, whose hand was now sopping wet. After drying himself, Mallard tossed the bath towel onto the floor.
“Well,” he said. “How shall we conduct this interview? This little interview?”
“Perhaps in your den?” Krumholtz asked. “I have a digital recorder—”
“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something?” Mallard asked. “Something physical? Do you hunt? It’s deer season, and we could go hunting. Actually, no. Unfortunately for us, the light is going, and it’s too late in the day. We could go out tomorrow, if you wish.”
“Well, no, I don’t hunt,” Krumholtz said. Here I am, he thought, talking to this naked man, while his wife looks on.
“We could chop some wood,” Mallard said. “There’s time. We could do that.”
“But you’ve just washed. And I have to take notes.”
“You mean there’s a rule?” Mallard laughed. “Didn’t know there was a rule.” He walked into the bedroom on the other side of the bathroom and put on the worn clothes he had apparently just taken off. “There’s never a rule. That’s the first thing you have to learn. Come on.”
Outside, in the backyard, Mallard, or someone, had set up a small platform of slatted wood and, a few feet away, a sawhorse. Off to the side were axes, hatchets, a steel wedge, and a chain saw neatly arranged inside a wooden holding-frame with pegs at the top from which to hang other tools. A large pile of unsplit logs had been dumped nearby, and now Mallard picked up a log and stood it up on the platform. He took out an ax before stepping away from the log. With one powerful blow, he raised the ax and brought it down on the log, splitting it cleanly in two.
“Is this your hobby?” Krumholtz asked. “Splitting wood?”
“It’s not a hobby, no. Hobbies are for others. It’s an activity, a physical exertion, that we like to engage in,” Mallard said. Again he placed a log vertically on the platform, and again the ax came down in one clean arc. The two parts of the log dropped away on either side. “A few minutes, and then you can take over.”
Krumholtz took a long look at Mallard’s face, which now, in the diminishing light, seemed to have a rock-jawed solidity, with eyes set far apart and a heavy five-o’clock shadow over a thick neck. Wherever Mallard turned, he gave off an air of command: the velvet glove over the iron fist had grown very thin with him. He split logs with efficiency, Krumholtz thought, but also as if he were in a permanent rage.
“So, you have questions? Ask questions,” Mallard said, his breath coming out in snorts. “Ask me questions.”
“Why did you move out here? It’s a bit remote.”
“We didn’t want to see any neighbors. So we bought up the entire valley. You can look in any direction, and you won’t see anybody. It gives you a … freedom, you know?”
“Yes, well. Something else I meant to ask right away. This can be on or off the record, but your wife mentioned something about ‘the other woman,’ and I think she said her name is Lorraine. When I came to the gate—”
“Lorraine?” The ax came down. “Are you doing a gossip sheet? I thought this was for Success magazine. Well. This isn’t for publication. Lorraine’s my girlfriend. My mistress, if you will.”
“She’s here?”
“Of course she’s here. You didn’t meet her? Sometimes—” He set up another log, then took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Sometimes Lorraine stays down at her end of the house. Or she’s out in back.” He waved his arm at the air.