“It’s the new me. I eat well, still go to the gym, walk the dog.”
“Uh-huh. Nice clothes, eating well, going to the gym, owning a dog.” He thought for a moment. “You sure you’re not gay?”
“I can’t be gay,” I said. “I’m very busy as it is.”
“Maybe that’s why I like you,” he said. “You’re a gay nongay.” Angel had arrived wearing one of my cast-off brown leather bomber jackets, the material so worn in places that it had faded entirely to white. His aged Wranglers had an embroidered wave pattern on the back pockets, and he was wearing a Hall and Oates T-shirt, which meant that the time in Angel land was approximately a quarter after 1981.
“Can you be a gay homophobe?” I asked.
“Sure. It’s like being a self-hating Jew, except the food is better.” Louis returned.
“I’ve been telling him how gay he is,” said Angel, as he buttered a piece of bread. A fragment of butter fell on his T-shirt. He carefully used a finger to remove it and licked the digit clean. Louis’s face remained impassive, only the slightest narrowing of his eyes indicating the depth of the emotions he was feeling.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “I don’t think you’re the right guy to front the recruitment drive.”
While we ate, we talked about Merrick, and what I had learned from Aimee Price. Earlier that day, I had put in a call to Matt Mayberry, a Realtor I knew down in Massachusetts whose company did business all over New England, asking him if there was a way he could find out about any properties in the greater Portland area with which Eldritch and Associates had been involved in recent years. It was a long shot. I had spent most of the afternoon making calls to hotels and motels, but I had drawn a blank every time I asked for Frank Merrick’s room. Still, it would be useful to know where Merrick was likely to bolt once he was released.
“You seen Rachel lately?” asked Angel.
“A few weeks back.”
“How are things between you?”
“Not so good.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yeah.”
“You got to keep trying, you know that?”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Maybe you should go see her, while Merrick is safe behind bars.”
I thought about it as the check arrived. I knew then that I wanted to see them both. I wanted to hold Sam, and talk to Rachel. I was tired of hearing about men who tormented children and the troubled lives they had left in their wake.
Louis began counting out bills.
“Maybe I will go to see them,” I said.
“We’ll walk your dog,” said Angel. “If he’s secretly gay like you, he won’t object.”
Chapter XVI
It was a long ride to the property Rachel and Sam now shared with Rachel’s parents in Vermont, and I spent most of it driving in silence, going over all that I had learned about Daniel Clay and Frank Merrick, and trying to figure out where Eldritch’s client fitted into the whole affair. Eldritch had told me that his client had no interest in Daniel Clay, yet they were both facilitating Merrick, who was obsessed with Clay. And then there were the Hollow Men, whatever they were. I had seen them, or perhaps it would be more true to say that they had entered my zone of perception. The maid at Joel Harmon’s house had seen them too and, as I had learned from the brief conversation with Rebecca Clay the night before, her daughter, Jenna, had drawn pictures of them before she left the city. The connection appeared to be Merrick, but when he was asked during his interrogation if he was working alone, or if he had brought others with him, he had seemed genuinely surprised and had responded in the negative. The questions remained: who were they, and what was their purpose?
Rachel’s parents had gone away for the weekend and weren’t due back until Monday, so Rachel’s sister had come to stay in order to help with Sam. Sam had grown so much, even in the few weeks since I had last seen her, or perhaps that was just the view of a father conscious of the fact that he was separated from his daughter, and that the stages of her development would from now on be revealed to him in leaps rather than steps.
Was I simply being pessimistic? I didn’t know. Rachel and I still spoke regularly on the phone. I missed her, and I thought that she missed me, but on the recent occasions when we had met, her parents were present, or Sam was acting up, or there was something else that seemed to get in the way of talking about ourselves and how things had become so bad between us. I couldn’t figure out if we were allowing these intrusions to become obstacles in order to avoid some kind of final confrontation, or if they truly were what they seemed to be. A period apart to allow us both to figure out how we wanted to live this life had become something longer and more complicated and, it appeared, more final. Rachel and Sam had moved back to Scarborough for a time in May, but Rachel and I had fought, and there was a distance between us that had not existed before. She had been uncomfortable in the house that we had once shared more easily, and Sam had trouble sleeping in her room. Had we simply grown used to being without each another, even though I knew that I still craved her, and she me? We existed in a kind of strained limbo, where things were left unsaid for fear that to speak them aloud would cause the whole fragile edifice to collapse around us.
Rachel’s parents had converted some old stables on their property into a large guesthouse, and that was where Rachel lived with Sam. She was working again, employed on a contract basis with the Psychology Department of the University of Vermont in Burlington, taking tutorials and lecturing on criminal psychology. She told me a little about it as I sat at her kitchen table, but in the casual, passing way that one might describe one’s pursuits to a stranger at dinner. In the past, I would have been privy to every little detail, but not anymore.
Sam was squatting on the floor between us, playing with big plastic farm animals. She gripped two sheep in her chubby hands and pounded their heads together, then looked up and offered one to each of us. They were slick with baby drool.
“You think it’s a metaphor for us?” I asked Rachel. She looked tired, but still beautiful. She caught me staring and brushed a strand of hair back over her ear, blushing slightly.
“I’m not sure that knocking our heads together would solve anything,” she said. “Although admittedly I’d get a sense of satisfaction from knocking your head against something.”
“Nice.”
She reached out and touched the back of my hand with her finger.
“I didn’t mean it to sound quite as harsh as it did.”
“It’s okay. If it’s any consolation, I often feel like beating my head against a wall too.”
“What about beating mine?”
“You’re too good-looking. And I’d be afraid of ruining your hair.”
I turned my hand palm up and held her finger.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “My sister will look after Sam.”
We rose, and she called her sister’s name. Pam entered the kitchen before I had a chance to release Rachel’s finger, and she gave us both a knowing look. It wasn’t disapproving, though, which was something. Had Rachel’s father seen us like this, he might well have reached for his rifle. I didn’t get on with him, and I knew that he hoped the relationship between his daughter and me was over for good.
“Why don’t I take Sam for a ride?” said Pam. “I have to go to the store anyway, and you know how she likes people-watching.” She knelt in front of Sam. “You wanna go for a ride with Aunt Pammie, huh? I’ll take you to the health section and show you all the stuff you’re gonna need when you’re a teenager and boys come calling. Maybe we can go look at guns too, huh?”