Something stuck in Remy’s mind, amid all these pointless details, one word: “Car? Did you say you bought her a car?”
“I gave her a car.”
“But she took the train to work.”
“I needed to be somewhat discreet about the car.” Eller squirmed. “My firm… provided it, a company car. I tied it to the work she was doing for us. March parked it in the garage below her office. We used it on the weekends to go to Connecticut.”
Just then the waiter returned with a tall, narrow box and set it on the table between them. The scotch. Eller stared at him, waiting for a question, but Remy just looked back at his scotch. Eller cleared his throat and filled the space. “About three weeks before…” he rubbed his mouth “…before she died, March suddenly said that it was over. I wasn’t happy, as you might guess. I asked if there was someone else… and when she hesitated, I knew. I asked if it was her old boyfriend, but she just said it wasn’t anyone. It was just… time, she said.”
Remy nodded.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Eller picked up the photograph and stared at it again. “Was I in some way… relieved that March died that day? Because I didn’t have to hold my breath every time the phone rang at home? Or look over my shoulder when I went to her apartment? I was bitter about the breakup; I won’t lie. But I cared deeply for her, Mr. Remy. I did. There were days when I thought I loved her.”
Remy didn’t say anything.
“I’m sure you don’t believe me.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
Eller straightened his neck. “I don’t care, Mr. Remy. Go ahead and mock me. March knew how I felt about her. I sleep at night. I-”
He coughed and seemed about to break down, but quickly composed himself. “That day… I watched TV and I was sick. I tried her cell phone but I couldn’t get through. I called the apartment and the hospitals… That night I went to the apartment. I still had my key. I just sat there thinking about her, and-” He trailed off and rubbed his jaw, looking down at the ground as if the magnitude of his actions was just making its way to him. “I gathered everything that might get back to me.” He looked up. “A magazine with my name on it. A razor and deodorant I kept in the bathroom. A bottle of wine from our cellar. I got those things… and I left.” Eller stared at the spot over Remy’s shoulder again, as if reading cue cards. Finally he looked back and met Remy’s eyes, composed and icy. “You said you were going to see her family in Kansas City?”
“Did I?”
“I doubt she told them anything about me, but if she did… can you tell them how genuinely sorry I am – for everything?”
“Sure.”
“Does any of this help?” Eller asked.
Remy looked at the scotch. “Yes.”
They both stood. Eller straightened his coat and looked at a spot on the ground. “The last time I talked to her… was two weeks before. A Sunday. She asked how I was doing. Miles… my son… had a soccer game. I told her about it, and she said, ‘I hope he has a great game.’ With no irony, either. March would’ve been a wonderful mother, if she’d ever gotten the chance.” He sighed. “Mr. Remy, if you knew that a conversation would be the last one you were going to have with someone, what would you say?”
Remy reached for the bottle of-
“I JUST keep thinking we forgot something,” Guterak was saying on the other end of the phone. He sounded drunk.
“What do you mean?” Remy adjusted the phone in his own ear. He sounded drunk, too. “What did we forget?”
“Not just us. Everyone. We just kept going on and… it’s like we all forgot to do something important. Like when you leave the stove on and go on a big trip.”
Remy didn’t know what to say. He looked at his watch. It was three in the morning. He was alone, fully dressed, lying on the bed in a hotel room that he didn’t recognize. He was wearing the suit he wore to funerals. He reached in the pocket and pulled out a funeral announcement. There was a picture of a forest and a verse from Luke: Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. Below that was the name Donald Michael Morrone. Aw, Jesus. Not Donnie. They’d been at the academy together. Had he known about Donnie? Remy was drunk, but there was nothing around him to drink. His mouth felt velvety, warm. He edged with the phone over to the minibar and rifled through the browns.
“What did we forget, Paul?” Remy cracked a little dark rum and drained it.
“The people,” Paul said, as if it were obvious. “We forgot the people. I mean… where are they? It’s like they’re in a giant room somewhere, sitting, crouched against walls, and… if we just find that door and open it, they’ll all be in there, just staring at us. Thinking, What the fugg took you so long?”
“Jesus, Paul…”
“Sometimes I wish we’d just gone to a bar that morning and watched the whole thing on CNN. You know what I mean? I envy people who watched it on TV. They got to see the whole thing. People ask me what it was like and I honestly don’t know. Sometimes, I think the people who watched it on TV saw more than we did. It’s like, the further away you were from this thing, the more sense it made. Hell, I still feel like I have no idea what even happened. No matter how many times I tell the story, it still makes no sense to me. You know?”
There was something important Remy wanted to say, but he felt dopey with booze and the gaps seemed to be coming so fast now. Remy gripped the side of the bed, as if to keep himself from sliding out of the moment until he could remember what he wanted to say.
“People always ask the same question,” Guterak said. “When everyone is around, it’s all respect and bravery and what-a-fuggin’-hero and thanks for your sacrifice, but the minute someone gets me alone, or the minute they have a drink in ’em, they get this creepy look and they ask me what the bodies sounded like when they hit the sidewalk. They ever ask you that?”
Remy couldn’t say. “What do you tell ’em?”
“I say to clap their hands as hard as they can, so hard that it really hurts. Then they clap, and I say: No. Harder than that. And they clap again, and I say, No, really fuggin’ hard. And then they clap so hard their faces get all twisted up, and I say, No, really hard! And then, when their hands are red and sore, they say, ‘So that’s that what it sounded like?’ And I say, ‘No. It didn’t sound like that at all.’”
“Paul, have you thought about getting help? Maybe take some time off?”
“What? Take disability for my back, like you?”
Remy couldn’t tell if Guterak was mocking him. He knew there was nothing wrong with his back, didn’t he? “I don’t think I’m on disability, Paul,” he said. “I think I’m working on something.”
Guterak laughed. “Oh. Then I guess I can cancel your going-away party.”
“I swear, Paul. I’m working. On some kind of case.”
“Yeah? They put the blind guy with the bad back on some big, top-secret assignment, huh?”
“My back is fine.”
Paul laughed again. “What do you do on this secret assignment?”
“I go places… Talk to people.”
Guterak seemed to be tiring of the joke. “Yeah? Then what happens?”
Remy put the funeral announcement back in his pocket and unfolded another piece of paper he found there. It was the flyer from the wall at Famous Ray’s, with the picture of March Selios and the phone number beneath it. Remy put it on the bedstand. “I don’t know,” he said into the phone. “I guess… the days just skip by.”