It was a few minutes before anybody appeared.
A wan young woman, pretty in a studied way, came out of the back room. She wore a black turtleneck, black jeans and sandals.
Francois Sagan, a writer I liked, had shown Midwestern girls how to look European: get the hair shorn, wear the black clothes and look innocent and world-weary at the same time. It took a certain concentration, no doubt about it, looking that way.
I said, “Is Steve around?”
“He’s upstairs doing the books.”
“I’d like to see him.”
“I don’t think I recognize you.”
“I buy most of my books down at the bus station.”
She didn’t know how to take that. Was I joking? It happened to be true. The bus station had large wall racks of paperbacks.
“He really hates to be interrupted when he’s doing the books.”
“I won’t need much of his time.”
“God,” she said, “you really can’t take a hint, can you? He’s busy. If you’d like to leave your name and number, I’ll have him call you.”
She was beginning to irritate me, which took some doing, given how pretty she was.
“Tell him it’s about Susan.”
“Susan.”
“Uh-huh. Susan.”
“No last name?”
“No last name.”
She seemed to see me for the first time, and looked mightily displeased at the information her eyes were receiving. “That crack you made about buying your books at the bus depot? You weren’t kidding, were you?”
I relished her disdain. “Uh-uh. That’s where I buy most of my magazines, too.”
Just then, the classical orchestra chose to swell up, as if in angry response to what I’d just said.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“He won’t be happy.”
“Life,” I said, “is like that sometimes.”
She went up and he came down. Quickly. She hadn’t been kidding about him being unhappy. He had a gaunt face with little James Joyce glasses and auburn hair too long for his skinny neck and long head. He wore a white starched shirt with a tab collar, a dark vest and jeans. “Just what are you trying to pull?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Susan.”
“Susan who?”
I made a face. “C’mon, you can do better than that.”
“I know a lot of Susans.”
I walked over and picked up a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up.
“Good book.”
“I don’t want to talk about books.”
“Really?” I said, looking at him.
“Usually, you can’t wait to give your opinion.”
He leaned toward me and said, “Who the hell told you, anyway?”
“Say her name.”
“What?”
“Say her name. You owe her that much.”
He shook his head. “You bastard.”
The front door opened and Eileen Renauld came in. She wore a cape and a beret and a pair of dramatic black pants and leather boots that laced up to her knees. She had large and dramatic features, austere yet imposing.
She wasn’t as petulant as her husband but he was a few years older and had had more practice.
I had no doubt she’d catch up.
She seemed to know instantly that something was afoot. She said, “What’s going on?”
I started to say nothing but he said, “He wants to know about Susan.”
For just a moment, her dark eyes showed pain and faint embarrassment and I felt sorry for her.
When she didn’t have Proust to hide behind, she was almost human. But then instead of being the girl from Mt. Vernon, Iowa that she was, she struck a pose. “You wouldn’t expect someone like him to understand, would you, Steve?”
“I guess not.”
“I saw him at the bus depot one day looking at girlie magazines.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I had a copy of Ezra Pound inside the magazine.”
She whipped off black gloves and slapped them on top of a glass counter that housed rare books.
She walked right up to me. “Why don’t you leave?”
“Because I want to find out what happened between them.”
She stared at me and shook her head. “What do you think happened between them, McCain? Or do you want me to draw you a picture? They had an affair. It wasn’t very long, and I doubt it was very worthwhile, but Steve loves French novels and so to him it was very important.”
I didn’t know which of us to feel embarrassed for at this point. Maybe I felt embarrassed for all three of us.
But she wasn’t finished. “She had big tits and a very nice smile and she loved the way he read poetry to her in bed. He used to read poetry to me in bed, too, back when we were courting.
He’s especially good with every. every. cummings. It’s a better aphrodisiac than wine. But then, I’d hardly expect you to understand that, McCain.”
“Did you kill her, Steve?” I asked.
He did something he shouldn’t have. He looked scared. His eyes clung to his wife’s for help. I’d rattled him.
“Did he kill her?” she asked. “Of course, he didn’t kill her. What the hell are you talking about, anyway? Kenny Whitney killed her.”
“You’re sure of that?” I said.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Quite sure.”
The clerk came back. She wore a fitted gray winter coat. There was something Russian about it, which was probably the effect she wanted.
“It’s my break time. I thought I’d go get a Danish.”
“Fine,” Eileen said. “But yesterday you took twenty minutes. Our agreement is fifteen.”
The girl’s gaze met Steve’s. He looked away quickly, not wanting to anger his wife but appearing to be sympathetic to the girl. The girl left.
“You probably guessed,” Eileen said, “Steve and she are at the “eye” stage of their relationship. Nothing serious yet. Just those wonderful little accidental brushes against each other in cramped spaces, and the occasional hand on the shoulder or on the elbow. Nothing overt, as I say. But they’re slowly getting there.”
“Why the hell you do have to say things like that, Eileen?” Steve said, miserably.
“Because they’re true,” she said. “And isn’t that what we’ve dedicated ourselves to, Steve?
Truth above all? And that’s what McCain wants, too, isn’t it, McCain? Truth.”
I wanted to run out the door. I’d learned far more about their relationship than I’d wanted to.
I hated her for being so pathetically strong, and him for being so ruthlessly weak. He was a lot more dangerous than she was. He’d pull you down and destroy you without even understanding what he was doing.
“Anyway,” she said, nodding toward the front door and the girl who just left. “She has bad ankles. And that’s a moral failing of some kind, don’t you think, McCain? Bad ankles? At least Susan had wonderful ankles along with those breasts of hers.”
She picked up her gloves from the top of the glass rare bookcase. “I think I’ll go make some very strong tea now.”
She left, sweeping her cape off as she walked to the back.
“When’s the last time you saw Susan?”
“You don’t really expect me to talk now, do you, after everything Eileen said?”
“When was the last time you saw Susan?”
Fear was in his eyes again. “Why the hell are you asking me these questions?”
The front door opened. A matronly woman in a fur coat came in. She moved with ease for a woman of her age and size. She came directly to Steve. “Eileen called yesterday and said my D. H. Lawrence books were in.” She smiled at me. She had a nice smile, actually. “They’re not for me, they’re for my niece, believe it or not. She loves D.
H. Lawrence. And she’s seen La Dolce Vita three times. I guess she’s sort of a beatnik. They live in Chicago and her husband’s in advertising. He’s a beatnik on weekends.”
“I’ll get the books, Mrs. Beamer.”
I waited around, looking at the new Hemingway editions Scribner’s had published over the past year. If I ever got money, these were the kinds of editions I would buy. Steve came back but two more customers came in.