Underhill’s smile held both power and conviction. There was certainty in this man. John was reminded of one of his father’s frequent admonishments: the hierarchy of history rarely documents its greatest heroes — they are too busy doing to waste time on legacy.
“I wish I had some cards,” John said, “and some pennies to lose.”
“That’s all right. I know you got another visitor. She was very kind to insist I went first.”
Ron Underhill stood up easily, exhibiting the graceful posture of a much younger man.
“See ya,” he said giving a friendly salute. Then he walked to the door and knocked, it opened and the gardener passed through.
In the few minutes while John waited for the next visitor, he thought about the almost magical feeling he experienced considering where the visitors’ door led. He’d been locked up for only a short while but he was already feeling keen nostalgia for freedom: unlocked doors and unmonitored locomotion down empty streets; good food on china plates; and a telephone with pencil and paper close at hand.
The door opened once more and Carlinda Elmsford walked through followed by the guard.
“I’ll be watching,” he warned her.
He’d merely given Ron Underhill a time limit. But the multiracial student was another matter.
John did not remember climbing out of his chair.
Carlinda’s eyes fell upon him registering mild shock.
She approached him but stopped a finger’s span beyond reach.
“You haven’t shaved,” she said. She had on jeans and a frilly pink blouse. Her auburn hair was pulled back and she wore no makeup.
“No razors in here.”
John took a step forward and she a step back.
“You don’t want me to touch you?” he asked.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“Can we sit down?”
John chose a chair. Before sitting Carlinda took something from her right-front pants pocket and placed it on the table. It was a small spiral-bound notepad with a short pencil threaded through the plastic wire coil.
“Thank you,” John said. “That was very thoughtful. How’d you know I’d want this?”
“One time my father was arrested for hitting my mom. He had to spend sixty days in the county jail. The only thing he wanted was pencil and paper. He wrote her letters and she took him back.”
“You’ve never talked much about your parents.”
Carlinda glowered in response. It was as if she resented his saying anything to suggest they were connected. But there she was, visiting him in jail. Didn’t that speak volumes about their relationship?
“I told Arnold about us,” she said concentrating on the tabletop.
“Why?”
“One day when we were eating in the cafeteria he told me he’d always loved me, even when I wasn’t with him. He said we were soul mates and I realized it was true. Soul mates don’t keep secrets from to each other...”
“What did he say, I mean, when you told him about us?”
“He was mad that you lied to him.”
“Wasn’t he angry that you lied?” John asked.
“I never did. I just refused to talk to him about it.”
“How did he take it when you did tell him?”
“It drives him crazy I was seeing you both at the same time. He’s been studying New York statutes trying to see if there’s any chance they’d execute you.”
“That’s severe.”
“He’s always asking me about you.”
“Asking what?”
“What we did in the bed together. How big your penis is. Whenever we do anything new he wants to know if I learned it from you.”
“And what do you say when he asks all that?”
“I tell him the truth.”
“But why would you want to hurt him like that?”
“He likes it.”
“He likes being hurt?”
“I can tell by the way he makes love to me. He was never so passionate before. He never wanted to experiment at all. But now he’s after me all the time. Almost every night I wake up to him kissing me.”
There was not much feeling in Carlinda’s words but John could glean her passion by the slight sneer on her lips.
“And so you and I are through?”
“Yes.”
“What if I told you I loved you, needed you?”
Carlinda sat up straighter. There was actual fear in her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “We had what we had but that’s over. Even if it wasn’t what could we do about it?”
She sighed audibly. Her shoulders relaxed.
“Thanks for the notepad,” John said. “But tell me, why did you come?”
“Are you going to tell what you know about those broadsides now that... you know?”
“If that’s what you’re worried about why not tell me you love me, that you’ll wait for me?”
“Because it wouldn’t be right.”
“No,” John said. “I won’t tell. I probably would if it was just you but I don’t want to hurt the others. I’d do it if it was only you but I’m faithful to my friends.”
Again he suppressed a smile. The delicate wording of his assurance would allow Carlinda to believe she had bested him in their affair while at the same time feeling safe because of John’s fealty to others.
“I don’t mean to hurt you,” she lied. “It’s just my connection to Arnold is all.”
“I think you should leave now,” John told her, though he would have been happy to spend the afternoon playing their game.
24
Carlinda’s visit had lightened John’s spirit. She was the blue door in his dream. Through her lay a new world where he didn’t have to quote Hegel and Doc Ben, Herodotus and the unnamed scribes of ancient China’s successive empires.
She was the heart of his rebellious lectures, the revelation of his ridiculous name. She did not love him, was not there for love. Carlinda Elmsford was the perfect woman for the man who had given everything to Lucia Napoli and Herman Jones. She was his pack-mate baying side by side with him at the full moon with fresh blood on their snouts and tongues. She was warmth in the cold, the yipping intelligence as they moved with their gang hunting down prey.
By moonlight he had licked her bloody wounds and now she was gone.
Sitting in the metal chair he wondered why no one had come to retrieve him. Marle should have opened the blue door, chained him and then guided him back to his hole.
The suit that Willie Pepperdine wore was the red-brown color of ancient brick. His shirt was white and his tie scarlet. No guard accompanied him. The door he’d come through merely closed.
John stood to shake the moneyman’s outstretched hand.
“You look very relaxed for someone who’s been in solitary confinement the last two weeks,” Willie said.
“Gives me time to think,” John replied.
“Sit,” was Willie’s riposte.
“How did you know I was in solitary?”
“The same way I knew you’d probably murdered Chapman Lorraine and that you were born Cornelius Jones.”
“The Platinum Path?”
“How do you think Carlinda, Tamala and their friends could dig up so much dirt on your fellow faculty members?” Willie asked.
John waited a moment gazing into the too-perfect face of Pepperdine.
“You’re responsible for the notes on my table,” John said.
Willie nodded.
“And all the professors you accept you investigate first to make sure that you have something over them,” John continued.