“Uh, Foley…”
“Troy, New York. It snows there. It snows there every year.”
Then he brushes past me as if I were a stranger in a hotel lobby. He doesn’t stop when I call to him, or even slow his pace when the torn picture flutters to the asphalt. I watch as he slides into a dented Japanese car and rolls slowly out the gate. I won’t be seeing him again.
A puff of dark hair, one apparently indifferent eye, the upper slope of a thick nose, a triangle of sweater, and a suggestion of pearls. The photograph has been severed diagonally. From its yellowed border and almost pulpy texture, I judge it to be more than thirty years old.
I’m examining it under a magnifier at my desk when Ellen comes up behind me. I summarize the Foley encounter without turning around. Ellen’s fleshy hands appear on the desktop and her head comes to rest on my shoulder. She sighs. She explains that Foley’s been canned, how he’d found his office empty this morning, not so much as a paper clip left on the carpet.
“Been here long as anyone,” she says with a certain irrelevancy. “I think he’d built up a sad attachment.”
“And the picture?”
“A wife or a sister. Maybe something he found in the trash. Who knows?”
She comes around in front of me. Framed by the chrome edges of my central monitor, by the tight chaos of her own hair, her face takes on the stiff and joyless beauty of a German religious painting.
“Anyway,” she says, looking past me, “I don’t think he cares about women.”
“Let’s drink.” I pull out the tequila,
Ellen dips a finger into her cup, sucks on it. Her eyes are still on the distance. “My father has an unpleasant view of the world. He suspects everyone. But he has a story he tells after a couple of Manhattans. It’s about Hiroshima.” She shakes her head, gives me the cup to finish. “He was with Armed Forces Radio and went in with an inspection team right after the blast. They gave him a jeep and a driver and permission to go wherever he wanted. Bouncing through the ruins, describing into a microphone. Mister Reporter doing a job. Then they happen on a couple of survivors, a father and son who are living in a hole in the ground with a tin sheet for a roof. The driver gives them a pack of cigarettes. Great confusion. Custom requires that the gift be reciprocated, but they have nothing to give. An idea hits the son. He jumps into the hole and comes out with a C melody saxophone on which he proceeds to play, quite badly, ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ and ‘My Blue Heaven.’ Sometimes my father can’t get to the end of the story because he’s crying too hard.”
I cannot prevent myself from asking what this has to do with Foley. Her eyes finally engage mine; they are curiously neutral, pupils nearly disappearing into speckled green.
“Lonely men. Resentment. Old pictures.”
I’m chastened and take a long enough drink from the bottle to create air bubbles in the glass neck.
Arms folded, elevating her loose breasts, Ellen again shakes her head.
“You drink,” she says. “I’m going to go lock my door.”
“What for?”
I hold out my hand to her. She looks at it as if it were something from an archaeological dig.
A line of explosions, small puffs of smoke. One woman clawing, another hiding. A man with ink-stained hair and a man nestled in roadside trash. But no straight line, or I’m too wasted to tell. Nothing in my stomach to sponge up the alcohol, proud essence of the cactus. Ambushed. A long warm spike hammered through the top of my head. Okay, no excuses. Still, everything looking soupy right now. There, where Ellen was standing, is a jagged black outline of her body. Maybe I should lock my door too?
Better. No security leaks now. I put my ear to the intervening wall, listening for Ellen. She might be one of those silent weepers — fear and loathing without relinquishing control. It wouldn’t surprise me. Very precise in her choices. Don’t I remember her telling me of a museum in the city which insisted its Mona Lisa was genuine, the one in Paris a fake, and that she’d applied for a job there? Or is this an invention of mine? A groove worn into the mind during sleeplessness? It wouldn’t surprise me.
The shoddy remorse of the boozer, the inflated sentiments, could be plotted on a graph. Does that stop me? I lift the phone and punch out Violet’s number. Buzz, buzz, and that’s all. Probably off showing slides in a lecture hall. Early back east, but all I get is Carla’s answering machine. “I’m unreachable now….” Muddy stride piano backing her up. In character, red lips, black pumps, and bobbed hair. I don’t wait for the tone.
“She ain’t here,” Opatowski says.
“How long ago did she leave?”
“No timeclocks here, my friend. Why not try her at home?”
A truly unctuous quality in his voice. This could be the highlight of his day. I picture him sprawled in front of the office TV, fingering a cheroot. I picture him, in lime-green golf pants, on the cover of a chamber of commerce brochure above the legend “Ask Me About the Good Life.”
“Is Mommy home? Can I talk to her, please?”
The child squeals and drops the receiver; a long dead space then, punctuated by barking and the surging audio of a game show. Heidi comes abruptly onto the line.
“Yeah?”
“How’s every little thing?”
“You miserable fucking—”
“Can we meet somewhere for lunch?”
“Get bent. I wouldn’t meet you on top of a diamond mine.”
But I can tell from her seesawing inflection that really she’s glad to hear from me. Takes only another ten minutes to talk her into it. She’ll stick Tasha next door, says she has to go back to the motel for something.
“We can start from scratch. The whole thing, I mean.”
“My mind’s open,” she says.
No more explosions today. All is defused by right thinking. I picture her working spray polish into the Mediterranean finish of her home entertainment console. I picture her bending over the edge of my bathtub with nothing on but her running shoes.
Hot in here. Feel like lead balls are hanging from arms and shoulders. For now, stretch out alongside baseboard. No harm. I have plenty of time. Be there first. Resting up briefly is all. In control. Eyes shut for a few minutes only. Minutes. No harm.
41
I’M DOZING IN FRONT of the box, light but no sound, when I hear it. There is a vibratory tingle in the glass when I step inside the drapes and tip my head against the window. First thought, what a gorgeous piece of rolling stock — a green-and-white ambulance from Cherry Ames. I see Wade jump out and dash into the office. Right then I snap to who they’re going to be carrying out. Fuck all. I want to stay inside with the covers over my head, but really, I can’t.
The outline under the sheet could be a child’s. They retract the stretcher wheels and slide her on in like a safety-deposit box. Opatowski has no shoes on. The bottled-in-bond Potts-town hard guy doesn’t answer me, fights when I try to sit him straight on the bench. His sobbing is so violent, I’m afraid he’ll throw a seizure.
“Can’t you give him something?”
This is as close to Wade as I’ve ever come. He has the same pitted cheeks as his wife, the same pallor.
“Like what?” he says.
“Like a sedative. Just look at him, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, I see. The man just lost his wife.” He looks to his partner, a burly guy with a cheek distended by tobacco. “We got no liability coverage for that, right?”
Opatowski is choking on grief, tries to get her name out but can’t.
“That don’t make me crazy about it. Hell, I know these people personal, and anything else…” Wade shrugs. “I wouldn’t even be here except for two fellas called in sick.”