“I’m Walter,” I said finally.
“You look uncomfortable, Walter.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not usually this limber.”
You smiled at that. “I’m Mrs. Richard Haven.”
You saw the shock register on my face — you must have seen it — but you didn’t let on. You might as well have been married to Godzilla, or to Moses, or to some medium-sized Central American republic. By now, as you read this, you know the significance the name Haven holds for my family; perhaps you even knew or guessed it then. I should have stood up instantly and sprinted for the door. Instead I shook your hand, and said — if only to say something, to make some kind of noise, to keep you there with me under the counter — that you didn’t look like Mrs. Anything.
“That’s kind of you, Walter. I guess I’m well preserved.”
“How old are you?”
You waggled a finger, then sighed. “Oh, what the hell. I’m twenty-eight.”
I bobbed my head dumbly. In the light of the kitchen your skin looked synthetic. I felt an odd sort of pain as I watched you, a seasick alertness: the sense of something massive rushing toward me. For an instant I wondered whether I might be the victim of some elaborate prank, and studied the legs of the people around us, trying to identify them by their socks — I remember one pair in particular, striped red and blue and white, like barber poles — then realized I didn’t give a damn. You were still holding my hand in both of yours.
“He’s gone,” you said. “That’s something.”
“Who’s gone?”
“You know who. The Sensational Gatsby.”
“The Great Gatsby, I think you mean.”
You shook your head. “I’m married to him, Walter. I should know.”
The weariness in your voice was both an invitation and a warning, and I felt the helpless jealousy then that only someone else’s past can trigger. The years that lay behind your weariness, with all their hope and risk and disappointment, were utterly out of my reach: as long as time ran forward, I would never see or touch or understand them. But the knowledge was pale and drab with you beside me.
“Whose party is this?”
Your question caught me by surprise, if only because you seemed so perfectly at ease under the counter. I noticed for the first time that you spoke with the hint of a lisp.
“Don’t you know Van?”
“Eh?”
“Van Markham.” I pointed into the living room. “The man in the gabardine shorts.”
You made a pinched sort of face, as though trying to make out something far away.
“Go easy on him, Mrs. Haven. He isn’t as bad as he looks.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“For the sake of full disclosure, he’s my cousin.”
“That explains you,” you said vaguely. You seemed to be thinking about something else already.
“What do you mean, that explains me?”
“Your being here, that’s all. At this kind of a party.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. You yawned and looked past me and I felt the first stirrings of panic.
“What’s your last name, Walter? Is it Markham, too?”
“Tompkins,” I answered at once. “Walter Tompkins.” The lie was out before I’d weighed its pros and cons, before I’d asked myself why: it was as automatic as ducking a punch. But of course I knew why. You’d just told me you were R. P. Haven’s wife.
“Nice kitchen he’s got here, this cousin of yours.”
“Very nice,” I said. “A premium kitchen.”
“He doesn’t look old enough for an apartment this posh. Is there family money?” You blinked at me sweetly. “You’re not a fabulously wealthy recluse, are you, Walter?”
“A recluse? Not at all. Why would you ask me that?”
“I was watching you earlier, out in the living room. You were alphabetizing all the DVDs.”
“I don’t think of recluses as going to parties,” I said stiffly. “I tend to think of them as staying at home, in a bunker or a tower of some kind. And as for those DVDs—”
You gave my hand a squeeze. “Don’t get your shorts twisty, Walter. I’m sure the DVDs were frightfully out of order.” You watched me for a while. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the blue-eyed, moony type. Also, for the record, I’m sloshed.”
I considered pointing out that my eyes were a sort of muddy greenish gray, but prudence prevailed. Your expression grew pensive.
“Do you mind if I ask how you pay the rent?”
“I’m working on — I suppose you could call it a book.” I stared out at the forest of pant legs and skirts. “A book of history.”
“History, did you say?”
I nodded.
“Anybody’s history in particular?”
Talking about my book always made me want to commit seppuku, and this was no exception. I hadn’t so much as glanced at it since I’d dropped out of college.
“Mine,” I answered, fighting the urge to bark or gnash my teeth. “My family’s, I mean.”
To my infinite relief you didn’t laugh. “Your family? What’s special about them?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. Which was the second lie I told you.
“I know what’s special about mine, Walter. Would you like to know?”
“Very much.”
“We’ve always had noteworthy tombstones. My great-great-uncle Elginbrodde — of the Massachusetts Elginbroddes — wrote his epitaph himself, and it’s a doozy. Want to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“All right, then.” You screwed your eyes up fiercely. “It was etched in a kind of cursive, I remember. Let me think—
“‘Here lie I, Melvin Elginbrodde —
Have Mercy on my Soul, Lord God,
As I would do, if I were God
And Ye were Melvin Elginbrodde.’”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. If I hadn’t already known that I was at your mercy, Mrs. Haven, I’d have realized it then.
“That’s quite an epitaph,” I said at last.
“I’d like to read your book one day, Mr. Tompkins.”
No one had ever told me that before — and no one has since. “You would?” I said. “Why?”
“Something tells me I’d like it.” You turned my hand over, as if reading my palm. “If we become friends, maybe I could have a walk-on part.”
“It’s not that kind of history,” I managed to answer, painfully aware of how pompous I sounded. “It starts almost a hundred years ago. I’m trying to make a sort of pilgrimage, you might say, back along the causal—”
“There must be money in your family.” You let go of my hand. “An apartment this hideous doesn’t come cheap.”
“Van came by his riches honorably, I’ll have you know. By the sweat of his loins.” I attempted a grin. “He has a mail-order pheromone business.”
Your eyes widened. “He has a what?”
I cleared my throat carefully. “He sells pheromones—”
“Has he got any here?”
“Here?” Something in your voice made me uneasy. “In this apartment, you mean?”
Your face was close enough to mine that I could feel your hopsy breath against my neck. “In this apartment,” you said, “is exactly what I mean.”
I felt suddenly exposed under your attention, undersized and at risk, like a chinchilla caught in a searchlight. I found myself wondering whether it hadn’t been a mistake to tell you about Van’s business. I was still trying to make up my mind as I followed you out of the kitchen and up the spiral staircase to the second floor.
“They’re probably in here,” you said, opening the door of what my cousin liked to call his “cockpit.” “This is where I’d keep the monkey drops.”