EAnéeJ: Hello …
RJ: Hi. Elaine. It’s me. Robert. Bob. Bob James. The detective.
EAnéeJ: Hi. I was wondering when you were going to call. How are you?
RJ: A little hungover, actually, though fine. And I’ve resolved to cut way back on my drinking for the remainder of the case.
EAnéeJ: Don’t do anything crazy. [She laughs.]
RJ: Did I …? Did I do anything crazy last night?
EAnéeJ: No. I did, though. I drove home.
RJ: I shouldn’t’ve let you.
EAnéeJ: You tried to stop me. You tried to tell me not to drive, that we’d order a cab, that the bartender would order us a cab. I didn’t listen. It was too late, so I dropped you off, and you said I could crash at your place, that you’d take the couch, but I said goodnight and drove off. Anyway, I made it home fine, thankfully, though it was dumb of me to drive that drunk, especially … Anyway, it’s over now, and I promise to watch my drinking and driving.
RJ: Well, I’m glad to hear you made it home safely. What’s going on at your house?
EAnéeJ: An officer stopped by this morning, though no one’s around right now. Oh, wait … [indeterminate background noises] Sorry … Sorry about that … Do you want to get together?
RJ: Soon. What did the officer from this morning want?
EAnéeJ: He was going through Gerald’s desk, and he was taking pictures for his report, he said. I asked him what he was looking for and he said any evidence that would help the police department catch the killer. He took photographs of Gerald’s desktop, as it was, covered with files, letters, journals, magazines, random notes with messy handwriting, and he kept taking pictures. He asked me questions, though I avoided answering them, because I’ve already answered those questions: Where were you when your husband was murdered? What cause would someone have to murder your husband? Did you and your husband ever fight? they ask. They ask all sorts of demeaning questions, the same ones, over and over, ad nauseam. He was checking me out, too.
RJ: Who? The officer?
EAnéeJ: Yes. He was looking at my body, up and down, in a creepy way; he was leering, shamelessly leering, while I stood in my husband’s den, waiting for him to finish and leave. He looked at me and said, ‘So you stand to inherit a sizable amount of money. Come over here,’ he said and stupidly I obeyed, and he motioned for me to lean in, and then he whispered into my ear, ‘Now that you have all the money and don’t have to fuck the old man you must be pleased.’ I told him to get out. He laughed. I screamed, ‘Get out now!’ He tried to talk so I screamed more, ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs and then eventually he started backing out of the house. The neighbours to the right of us, the Walton-Fischers, were standing in their driveway, wondering what was going on. The officer got in his squad car and I didn’t stop screaming till he was gone. It felt good to chase him out of my home.
RJ: You did the right thing. He sounds like a maniac.
EAnéeJ: You should come over here. I don’t like being alone here right now.
RJ: Perhaps you should stay with family or friends while this investigation’s underway, for the next few weeks at least.
EAnéeJ: I have no family anywhere near here, and I have no friends I want to stay with. I want to be in my home, even though Gerald was murdered here — I won’t be scared away. Why don’t you stay here, too?
RJ: I should keep some distance from things.
EAnéeJ: Think about it. Anyway, come over soon.
RJ: I will …
EAnéeJ: Bye.
RJ: Bye.
(Call terminated at 1336h. I return the phone to its mount shortly after pressing the end key.)
4
Flowers, I thought, weren’t such a bad idea after all. I called the florist, whose shop was just down the street, and I asked if I were to go through with my order, for forty dollars, to 19 Tower Street, could I maybe get a lift with the delivery driver. She asked me where I live and I told her and then she said, ‘Okay, sure. He’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.’ I prepaid over the phone with my Visa and asked for a receipt. While waiting I brushed my teeth again and reapplied underarm deodorant and sprayed on a little eau de toilette, a gift from a former girlfriend, and I also put on a clean shirt, even though the other wasn’t dirty, because I wanted to appear fresh, despite the hangover. The delivery driver will be here any minute, I thought, and I put on my coat and grabbed a notepad and pen, put them in my inside pocket, and I grabbed my keys, with a small penknife and small flashlight on the keychain. I drank two glasses of ice water. I wondered whether I was forgetting anything, then I grabbed my wallet. I grabbed my sunglasses, too, remembering what a friend’s uncle said to me once: ‘Never leave home without your wallet, keys and sunglasses.’ I looked at my watch and decided to wait out front for the flower delivery driver, since he was doing me a favour.
The delivery driver showed up in a small black hatchback, and the back of the car was full of bouquets. The passenger-side seat, too, had a large bouquet on it but the driver, Darren, made some space for it in the back. Darren was tall and slim and I’d guess seventeen, though he told me on the car ride that he studied philosophy and history at one of the local universities, so he was probably around twenty, if not a few years older than twenty; nevertheless, he looked like he was seventeen. He asked why I don’t drive and I said it’s because I don’t have a car or a driver’s licence. He asked what I did for a living and I told him that I’m a private detective. I thanked him for picking me up. ‘No problem,’ he said. The car, obviously, smelled of flowers; at first it was pleasant, though as Darren drove, slowly, I started to develop an acute headache.
I said to Darren, ‘Do the flowers ever get to your head?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘All the time. Crack your window.’
I opened my window slightly, so as not to damage the flowers.
‘You have a headache?’ said Darren.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘though I’m also hungover.’
Darren drove fast and told me a story about a philosopher, one from a small mountain village, a hundred-odd years ago, who leaves his cottage and goes into town so as to get some flour, sugar, eggs, milk and meat, if there is meat, from a store that a friend of his, a philosopher too, runs from home. The two philosophers meet — Philosopher A, the one who leaves his cottage to go get supplies, and Philosopher B, the one who runs a small shop out of his home — and talk for hours about politics, science, art and love and drink mugs of some sort of mead. Philosopher A’s convinced, Darren told me as he drove, that love as such, that love qua love, is nothing more than misfiring Spirit, Spirit clouding one’s senses, confusing one and leading one astray, that is to say, blinding one: blinding one as a prisoner. But Philosopher B says, Spirit’s what clouds your so-called senses, for it’s what grants you the ability to imagine love in the first place. Love, too, can confine, he says, yes, true. But so-called Spirit, the fantasy of Spirit, this is necessary to possess the illusion, to be able to even have illusions — to generate more illusions one need be inhabited ab initio with so-called Spirit, says Philosopher B to Philosopher A. I know, says Philosopher A, that’s why I think love’s a lie. If Spirit’s present in the beginning, as a sort of initial state, then once illusions are acquired, begetting more and more illusions, in time some illusions — ones based on non-truths, of course — transmogrify, mutatis mutandis, into exalted love. If this exalted love’s born from lies, lies generated by Spirit, then eo ipso, he says, love’s a lie. Although love may be a lie, as you yourself say, says Philosopher B to Philosopher A, it does bring to light some certainties on occasion. For example? says Philosopher A. Well, for example, after loving — while loving, even, from time to time — we can be sure that we are really separate, that some sort of commingling, even temporarily, a commingling of Spirit, never becomes one. We are always separated, says Philosopher B to Philosopher A, who responds by saying, You’re probably right. Then Philosopher A tells Philosopher B about a young man, a man in his late twenties, who is visited one night by the Devil. The Devil comes to the young man, he comes to him on a street corner, and says to the young man as he’s walking: There are things you’ll never know, as I’m sure you already know, things beyond your comprehension, and there are things you do know, things you have no idea you know, and it’s impossible for you to free yourself of this knowledge, although this knowledge is beyond your comprehension, too. And then the Devil laughed, says Philosopher A to Philosopher B, said Darren while driving me and the bouquet to Elaine’s. I asked Darren what the young man said in response. He said nothing, Darren said. I asked Darren what Philosopher B said to Philosopher A after the story, and Darren said he said that although it’s important to recognize the bottomless pit in others, it’s also important not to be dragged into that hole, and that although we’re separate and alone, it is in fact possible to drag someone into a pit. Then Philosopher A said, Omne verum vero consonat. And that’s it, said Darren. We pulled up to Elaine’s house and I thanked Darren for the ride and the story and then I asked why he told me this story, and he said he wasn’t sure, that he’d just read it somewhere, and that he wanted to see what I made of it, seeing as I’m a detective. I told him I wasn’t sure what to make of it, though I’d think on it. I tipped him the few dollars I had in change. He said thanks and gave me his card and I took my bouquet and he drove off in the flower-filled hatchback.