Do you think you could possibly visit her in person at the home address on the last two letters? She tells me she is home most mornings and would be most appreciative of your time. I feel certain you will recognize the seriousness of the situation and contact her as soon as you can.
Sincerely,
He rereads the letter, and signs it in the space above his typed name, and reads it again, and reads it yet another time and another time after that. He thinks he has covered everything. More important, he thinks he has covered himself.
In the stillness of his office, he nods, convinced that he is doing the right thing, pleased that he is doing it in a way that will help Kate and not cause any problems for himself. He opens the lower right-hand drawer of his desk and takes from it the NYNEX Yellow Pages for Manhattan. He finds the number he is looking for — 777–6500 — dials it, and asks for the location of the branch office closest to Ninety-sixth and Madison. He is told there’s one at 208 East Eighty-sixth Street, between Second and Third. He looks at his watch. It is almost eleven o’clock. He makes a Xerox copy of his letter and then calls Kate’s apartment and asks her if she can meet him for lunch in an hour.
“Did you take the letters to Clancy?” she asks.
“No.”
“No? Why not? You prom—”
“He’s on vacation.”
“When will he be back?”
“Monday. He’ll have them by then, don’t worry.”
“You won’t be here Monday.”
“I know. But he’ll have them.”
“But you won’t be here.”
“I know that, honey.”
Honey, he thinks.
“Then how can...?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” he says. “You’ll be pleased.”
“Okay,” she says, sounding suddenly relieved. “Where shall I meet you?”
Before he leaves the office, he tries Jacqueline Hicks’s number again, and once again gets her goddamn answering machine.
Over lunch, he shows Kate the Xerox copy of his letter, and tells her he sent the package by Federal Express from their office on Eighty-sixth. Although he could have opted for delivery tomorrow morning, he knew Clancy wouldn’t be back by then, so he’d settled on Monday morning delivery instead.
This doesn’t seem to please her.
She asks why he didn’t just go to the police station and give the letters to some other detective.
“I thought Clancy would pay closer attention to them.”
A lie.
Now he is even lying to her.
“Him knowing you, I mean.”
Embroidering the lie.
“You mean you didn’t want to get involved, isn’t that what you mean?”
“Well, no...”
“Well, yes,” she says. “But that’s okay. I know you’re married, listen. I just hope the letters don’t get lost.”
“FedEx is very good.”
“I hope so.”
“What I thought I’d do, I’d follow up with a phone call from the Vineyard...”
“Could you do that?”
“Yes. Of course. Make sure Clancy got the package, make sure he plans to come see you.”
“Oh, David, thank you,” she says, and reaches across the table to take his hand between both hers. Her fingernails are painted to match her short, pale blue, pleated skirt and cotton top. She is wearing strappy low-heeled blue sandals. There is blue shadow over her sparkling green eyes. She seems happier now. She does not yet know he plans to end it this afternoon.
They walk in the park after lunch.
“This is where we met,” she says.
“Yes.”
“The last day of June,” she says.
It is insufferably hot and clammy today. Waves of mist rise from the foliage on either side of them, drifting over the path so that it seems they are in a movie about Heaven, where clouds are billowing up underfoot as they walk.
“I spoke to Gloria this morning,” she tells him, and glances sidelong at him. “She wants to join us tonight.”
“I’d rather she didn’t,” he says.
“Oh come on, I know you’d like her there.”
“No, really.”
“Gloria? Come on.”
“Really,” he says.
“Well... that’s very nice of you,” she says, sounding pleasantly surprised.
He is wondering how he can tell her it’s over.
“Of course, that’s what Jacqueline would love,” she says.
He turns to look at her, puzzled.
“No more Glorias,” she says.
The mist shifts ceaselessly around them. They seem to be alone in the park. Alone in the world. Alone in the universe.
“No more Davids, in fact,” she says.
He wonders for a moment if she is about to tell him she wants to end it. But that would be too ironic. Letting him off the hook that way.
“But, of course, I love you,” she says.
He says nothing.
“So how can there be no more Davids?”
He’s not sure what she means. He remains silent.
“Jackie says I’ve mastered the art of restaging the Incident, you see...”
“The what?”
“The terrible trauma of my youth...”
Joking about it. But he’s too smart for that, he’s an analyst.
“...so that each time it’s performed, so to speak, I’m the one in control. Like a director shooting through a lens smeared with Vaseline, do you know?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Softening the outlines. The way the fog here in the park is softening everything. Blurring the edges of reality. So that everything is beautiful at the ballet again, nothing is threatening, all is serene.”
Her voice itself sounds utterly serene, too, in sharp contrast to its hysterical stridency last night. He knows instinctively and at once that she is about to tell him something of vital importance, but he does not want to hear it, not now when he is on the edge of telling her something of vital importance to himself. Or rather, something of vital importance to David Chapman, Lover Boy, erstwhile Lover Boy, former Lover Boy who is about to lower the ax while Dr. David Chapman should be listening to what this troubled young woman is attempting to say. He remembers quite suddenly and with a pang of guilt, the oath he took once upon a time, when the world was young and covered with mist.
“Would you like to sit?” he asks.
The bench is green and flaking, it rises from the mist like a floating couch. In the mist, side by side, they sit silently on the bench. She is quiet for what seems a very long time, but he is accustomed to long silences and he waits. She keeps staring into the mist as if peering into a past too distant to fathom. He has been through this scene before. He waits. Patiently, silently, he waits.
“What I do, you see...”
She takes a deep breath.
He waits.
“I find a man old enough to be my father, some middle-aged man, you see, and I allow him, nay, invite him to do anything and everything he wishes to do to me. I guess you know that. I guess you know that’s what I do. I keep looking for the Davids of the world, over and over again.”
He says nothing.
“And then I... I bring in a Gloria, cast her in the leading role, a woman rather than a child, and transform her into a willing accomplice rather than a victim. Is what Jacqueline says I do. Over and over again. Because I’m just a cunt, you see.”
“I can’t believe Jacqueline said that,” he says.
“No, not the cunt part. The cunt part came from a higher authority.”