“Perfect.”
“It’s what, twenty to ten? I’ll be there sometime around eleven.”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
I was a few minutes early, showered and shaved and wearing clean clothes. I rang her bell and went out to wait for the key. She tossed it straight at me and I caught it on the fly. She applauded, and clapped her hands some more when I got off the elevator.
“It was a lucky catch,” I said.
“That’s the best kind. Okay, now say it. ‘You look like hell, Jan.’ ”
“You don’t look so bad.”
“Oh, come on. My eyes still work and so does the mirror. Although I’ve been thinking of covering mine. Jews do that, don’t they? When somebody dies?”
“I think the Orthodox do.”
“Well, I’d say they’re on the right track but their timing’s off. It’s when you’re dying that the mirror ought to be covered. After you’re dead what difference does it make?”
I wasn’t going to say it, but she didn’t look good. Her complexion was off, sallow, with a yellow cast to it. The skin on her face had drawn closer to the bone, and her nose and ears and brow seemed to have grown, even as her eyes had sunk back into her skull. Her impending death had been real enough before, but now it was undeniable. It stared you in the face.
“Hang on,” she said. “I’ve got fresh coffee made.” And, when we each had a cup, she said, “First things first. I want to thank you one more time for the gun. It has made all the difference.”
“Oh?”
“All the difference. I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, well, old girl, do you have to use that thing? Is it time? And I say to myself, no, not yet, it’s not time yet. And then I’m free to enjoy the day.”
“I see.”
“So I thank you again. But that’s not what I dragged you down here for. I could have managed that part over the phone. Matthew, I’m leaving you my Medusa.”
I looked at her.
“You have only yourself to blame,” she said. “You admired her extravagantly the first night we met.”
“You warned me not to look her in the eye. Her gaze turns men to stone, you said.”
“I may have been warning you about myself. Either way, you didn’t listen. Stubborn bastard, aren’t you?”
“That’s what everybody tells me.”
“Seriously,” she said, “you’ve always been drawn to that piece, so either you genuinely like it—”
“Of course I do.”
“—or you’re trapped in your own lies, because I want you to have it.”
“It’s a great piece of work,” I said, “and I am indeed very fond of it, and I hope I have to wait a long time for it.”
“Ha!” She clapped her hands. “That’s why you’re here this morning. She’s going home with you. No, don’t argue. I don’t want to go through all that crap of codicils in my will and everybody waiting until it goes through probate. I remember how much fun it was when my grandmother died and the family fought pitched battles over the table linens and the silverware. My own mother went to her grave convinced that her brother Pat slipped Grandma’s good earrings in his pocket the morning of the wake. And nobody in the family had anything, so it’s not as though they were fighting over the Hope diamond. No, I’m distributing all my specific bequests in advance. That’s one of the good things about knowing you’ve got a date with the Reaper. You can get all that stuff out of the way, and make sure things wind up where you want.”
“Suppose you live.”
She gave me an incredulous look, then let out a bark of laughter. “Hey, a deal’s a deal,” she said. “You still get to keep the statue. How’s that?”
“Now you’re talking.”
She had had the piece crated, and the wooden box stood on the floor alongside the plinth. The plinth was mine, too, she said, but it would be easier if I came back another time for it. The crated bronze was compact but heavy, the plinth easy to lift but hard to maneuver. Could I even manage the statue unassisted? I got a grip on the crate, hoisted it up onto my shoulder. The weight was substantial but manageable. I carried it through the loft and set it down in front of the elevator to catch my breath.
“Better take a cab,” she suggested.
“No kidding.”
“Let me look at you. You want to know something? You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious. I know I look awful but I’ve got an excuse. Are you all right?”
“I was up all night.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Didn’t try. I was on my way to bed when I got your message.”
“You should have said something. This could have waited.”
“I wasn’t all that sleepy. Tired, but not sleepy.”
“I know the feeling. Most of my waking hours are like that these days.” She frowned. “It’s more than that, though. Something’s bothering you.”
I sighed.
“Look, I don’t mean to—”
“No,” I said. “No, you’re right. Is there more of that coffee?”
I must have talked for a long time. When I ran out of words we sat in silence for a minute or two. Then she carried our coffee cups to the kitchen and brought them back full again.
She said, “What do you figure it is? Not sex.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. What, then? The old boys-will-be-boys syndrome?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe not.”
“When I’m with her,” I said, “everything else is off in some other world where I don’t have to deal with it. The sex is nothing special. She’s young and beautiful, and that was exciting at first, just as the newness of it was exciting. But the sex is better with Elaine. With the other one—”
“You can say her name.”
“With Lisa, I can’t always perform. And sometimes the act is perfunctory. I’m there, we’re having an affair, so we’d better get down to it or her presence in my life becomes even more inexplicable.”
“ ‘Let’s get away from it all.’ ”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who have you told?”
“Nobody,” I said. “No, that’s not entirely true. I’ve told you, of course—”
“A nobody if there ever was one.”
“And a few hours ago I told the fellow I sat up all night drinking with. Well, he was the one drinking. I stuck to club soda.”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
“I’ve wanted to talk about it with Jim. It sticks in my throat. See, he knows Elaine. It’s bad enough keeping something from her, but if other people know about it and she doesn’t—”
“Not good.”
“No. And of course there’s the fact that talking about it makes it real, and I don’t want it to be real. I want it to be a place I go in dreams, if it has to be anything at all. Lately every time I leave her apartment I tell myself it’s over, that I won’t go back there again. And then a couple of days later I pick up the phone.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve talked about it at meetings.”
“No. Same reasons.”
“You could try going to a meeting where nobody knows you. Some remote section of the Bronx where they’ve been marrying their cousins for the past three hundred years.”
“And the children are born with webbed feet.”
“That’s the idea. You could say anything there.”
“I could.”
“Right. But you won’t. Have you been going to meetings?”
“Of course.”
“As many as usual?”
“I may have lightened up a little, I don’t know. I’ve, uh, felt a little detached. My mind wanders. I wonder what the hell I’m doing there.”
“Doesn’t sound good, kiddo.”
“No.”
“You know,” she said, “I think you may have picked just the right person to talk to. Dying turns out to be a very instructive process. You learn a lot this way. The only problem is you don’t have any time to act on your newfound knowledge. But isn’t that always the way? When I was fifteen years old I said to myself, ‘Oh to be twelve again, knowing what I know now.’ What the hell did I know when I was fifteen?”