Ultimately he stepped down from the crate, picked it up under his arm, and started up the block. I jumped to my feet and overtook him. It wasn’t hard; he was clearly exhausted.
Are you Richard? Please. It’s important.
He ignored me. But now, beside him, looking down on him in fact, for he was not a tall guy when off his crate, I could see that he very likely was not your brother. There was no resemblance there at all. So I let myself fall behind him and I followed him down Telegraph until he turned on to Vine Street; I watched him unlock a door and I memorized the address. Then, because I had been away from home for a few hours, I went back to see if you had returned, or called, or maybe written a letter.
Around six I returned to the house on Vine Street. I knocked and then stood well back from the door, in case anyone wanted a look at me. It took a while before the door opened, and two smallish, short-haired, clean-shaven young men stood in the doorway, wearing red shirts. They stood abreast, as if trying to keep me from seeing inside, or from charging in. Not that they were big enough to stop me anyway. It was all pretty strange.
My name is John Wheelwright, I said as levelly as I could manage. I’d like to speak to Richard, as soon as it’s convenient. It concerns his sister Molly.
Yes, said the one on the left. We know who you are. I think he meant it to sound spooky, but his high voice and solemn demeanor just made my own impatience with him harder to control.
Shoes off, said the one on the right.
Sorry?
Shoes off, please. Leave them outside the door, if you would.
I did so, and the two of them parted. Nervous in spite of myself, I padded down the hall in my socks, and turned the corner into the main room.
The walls, stripped of decoration, were painted a blinding white — blinding mostly because the room was filled with lamps, maybe ten of them, lighting every cranny of the place so thoroughly that nothing cast any shadow. On the floor, his back against the wall just inside the doorway, was yet another red-shirted young man sitting cross-legged on the floor holding a sketch pad; on it, he was finishing up what for one startling moment I took to be a pastel portrait of your father. But then I saw Richard, and the family resemblance was powerful indeed. He sat in a cracked black leather La-Z-Boy, fully reclined, his hands folded on his stomach. It was the only chair in the room. The other young men, four or five in all, sat on or lay across these huge square pillows scattered around the floor.
The whole thing just struck me as amazing and pretentious: trappings with no discernible purpose beyond gussying up the triviality of their mission, compared to the mission I was on.
I am Richard, he said. He might as well have told me he was Mr Kurtz. He reached down for the handle and returned his chair to its upright position.
Is Molly here?
Of course not.
Do you know where she is?
I have no idea, he said archly, disdainfully, as if I’d asked him what time it was and he’d responded by telling me he didn’t wear a watch. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Are you the person with whom she is living in sin?
I nodded. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to offend him. I just had no time to waste on being offended myself.
And now she’s gone, Richard said, and you don’t know where she is.
That’s right. Have you heard from her?
Richard shook his head. If you were willing to defile her, he said, and of course you weren’t the first, then you can’t really be surprised if another defiler comes and takes her from you, can you?
I reddened at this. The young men on the floor were following our exchange with great interest, smiling, as if nothing more than amusement were at stake.
You don’t even know me, I said.
Oh, I know you.
The others murmured their agreement.
I know Molly, too, Richard went on. She has been on a path toward destruction ever since she left her parents’ house. She is remorseless. And you have taken advantage of her for a while, and hastened her down that path, when you could have done something instead to turn her toward salvation. But what have you lost, really, from your own point of view? I would imagine that such a sinful relationship is more or less interchangeable with another one.
Dumbfounded, I said: She’s your sister.
He shrugged. And you’re my brother, he said. What about it?
I’m in love with her.
You are a hypocrite. Your actions, not your words, are what signify, and your actions tell me that what you felt for Molly was not love.
He shifted in his seat, and smiled.
But it’s not too late, you know, he said. You’ve made a mistake, but it’s not a mistake from which you can’t recover, if you start right now, by pledging your soul to Jesus. Are you willing to save yourself?
I want to save your sister, I said. That’s how I will save myself.
Molly is past saving. Who knows? She may have arrived in Hell already.
I took a step toward him, expecting that his little minions would jump up to try to protect him. But they didn’t; I kept going across the room, fists clenched, intending to drag him out of his La-Z-Boy and take advantage of his slander of you to make him answer for all the frustration I felt.
Richard flipped up the armrest of his reclining chair, reached into a little wooden compartment there intended by the manufacturers, I imagine, to hold a bag of chips or a TV Guide, and pulled out a gun. He laid it in his lap. The young artist had stopped his sketching; he was shaking his head at me, sorrowfully.
If you change your mind, Richard said, our door is always open to you.
THAT WAS IT. I waited another month, until I was out of money, and gave up the lease on the apartment. I called my parents, apologized abjectly, and begged for the funds to continue living out there until Christmas. I took a room in the North Side home of a man whose wife had just left him and taken their kids; evenings, while he drank in front of the TV, I stayed behind my bedroom door and wrote my thesis on Goya for the completion of my degree. I had them mail it to me in Los Angeles, where I moved in order to work in the art department at New West magazine. When that folded, I took a job in the LA office of J. Walter Thompson; after two years a headhunter found me and I went to Chiat/Day. When they opened their New York office, they offered big raises to anyone willing to relocate. I was willing to relocate. There was nothing holding me anywhere.
There’s more I could tell you. But I get the feeling I’m talking to myself.
* * *
TO SPOKANE VIA Las Vegas this time; I lost fifty bucks on the slots right there at the gate. But before that I called Farber, the lawyer, from a pay phone and told him I was on my way. Same old guy; he kept insisting I hadn’t woken him up when it was clear that I had.
He was able to see me for breakfast the next day. I told him that Palladio was anxious to settle the case against Culture Trust in an expedient and mutually beneficial way.
Settle? he said, trying to flag down the waitress with the coffee pot; he’s just the sort of guy to whom waitresses don’t pay attention. It’s a criminal proceeding, not a civil one.
Nevertheless. When can I talk to your clients?
Lots of luck, he said, with a raised eyebrow; but right from the table he called and this time they actually agreed to see me, that very afternoon. I don’t know why they said yes this time; probably for no better reason than that they had said no last time.
The judge had lifted the contempt charge against Gradison and both men were out on bail. I rented a car and drove along the river until I was well out in the boondocks. I had to keep checking my odometer because, according to the directions Farber had faxed to my hotel room, which I held in one hand as I drove, the dirt road on which Liebau had built his house wasn’t marked in any way. I found it easily enough in the end. The house was two miles up the road, deep in the woods. It was some beautiful country.