It is a compliment, of course. The words, that is. The tone, however, tells a different story. We seem to be at this interrogation’s conclusion, but there is still something hanging in the air. I have found that in these circumstances, it is best not to force it.
“To be clear,” PT says, “I’m talking about your creating the Abeona Shelter.”
She wants to move this along, so she says, “Thank you.”
“May I ask how you came up with the name?”
“The name?”
“Abeona.”
I snap, “Why, PT?”
I instantly regret it. PT is no fool. He doesn’t ask dumb or pointless questions. I cannot see how the name of her shelters could possibly matter, but I know that his interrogatory here is not a casual one.
“Abeona is the Roman Goddess of Safe Passage,” Patricia explains. “When a child first leaves from home, Abeona is there to protect and guide them.”
PT nods. “And your logo, the butterfly with what looks like eyes on the wing.”
“A Tisiphone abeona,” Patricia says, as though she has answered this question a thousand times, which she probably has.
“Yes,” PT says. “But how did you come up with it?”
“Come up with what?”
“The idea of using the Roman goddess Abeona and the Tisiphone abeona butterfly logo. Was it your idea?”
“It was.”
“Did you study ancient Roman religions? Were you, I don’t know, a collector of butterflies?” PT leans forward, and suddenly his tone is inviting, kind. “What inspired you?”
I am trying to read Patricia’s expression right now, but the signals are mixed. Her face has lost color. I see confusion. I see fear. I see what might be some sort of dawning realization, but really, who can tell?
“I don’t know,” Patricia says in a distant tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard come from her.
PT nods as though he understands. With his eyes still on Patricia, he stretches his hand toward Max. Max is ready and drops the sheet into his hand. PT slowly and almost tenderly hands it to her. I look over his shoulder. It’s a photograph of a forearm. And on the forearm is a tattoo of that logo — a Tisiphone abeona butterfly.
“This is Ry Strauss’s arm,” PT says. “It’s the only tattoo we found on him.”
Chapter 25
It is much later in the evening — one-too-many-cognacs o’clock, to be more precise — when Patricia finally says, “I remember the tattoo.”
We are alone in Granddad’s parlor. I am sprawled on the couch, my head tilted back, staring up at the art deco inlaid-tile ceiling. Patricia sits in Granddad’s chair. I wait for her to say more.
“It’s funny what you forget,” she continues, and I hear the slur of the cognac in her voice. “Or what you make yourself forget. Except, I guess, you never totally forget, do you? You want to forget, and you even do forget, but you don’t. Am I making sense?”
“Not yet,” I say, “but keep going.”
I hear the clink of ice being dropped in her snifter. It is something of a crime to drink this particular lineage on the rocks, but I’m not in the judging business. I stare up at the ceiling and wait. When Patricia is settled back in Granddad’s chair, she says, “You push the memories away. You force them down. You block. It’s like...” The slur seems to be growing. “It’s like there’s a basement in my brain and what I did was, I packed that awful shit into a suitcase, kind of like that damned monogrammed suitcase you gave me, and then I dragged that suitcase down the basement stairs and I jammed it into a dank back corner, and then I rushed back upstairs and locked the door behind me and hoped I’d never see that suitcase again.”
“And now,” I say, “to keep within your colorful analogy, that suitcase is upstairs and open.”
“Yes,” she says. Then she asks, “Wait, was that analogy or a metaphor?”
“An analogy.”
“I’m terrible with that stuff.”
I want to reach out and put a hand on my cousin’s arm or do something innocuously comforting, but I’m very comfortable on the couch, enjoying the buzz, and I’m too far from her perch in Granddad’s chair, so I don’t bother.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“The shed had a dirt floor.”
I wait.
“So I remember when he was on top of me. In the beginning, he would pin my arms down. I would close my eyes and just try to ride it out. After a while... I mean, you can’t keep your eyes closed forever. You can try, but you can’t. I would look up. He wore the ski mask, so I could only see his eyes. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to look at his eyes. So I would turn my head to one side. Just trying to ride it out. And he’d be holding himself, on top of me, and I remember his arm, and there... there was that butterfly.”
She stops now. I try to sit up, but it isn’t happening.
“So I would stare at it. You know? Like focus on its wing. And when he’d thrust and his arm would jiggle, I could imagine the butterfly’s wings were beating and it was going to fly away.”
We stay in the dark. We sip some more cognac. I am drunk so I start thinking about existential nonsense, about the human condition, perhaps, like Patricia, trying to block what I just heard. I don’t really know Patricia, do I? She doesn’t really know me. Do we all ever know one another? Man, am I drunk. I’m enjoying this silence. Too many people don’t get the beauty of silence. It is bonding. I bonded with my father when we would golf in silence. I bonded with Myron when we would watch old movies or television shows in silence.
Still, I feel compelled to break it: “You were in New York City the day Ry Strauss was murdered.”
Patricia says, “I was, yes.”
I wait.
“I told your friend PT the truth, Win. I go to New York City all the time.”
“You don’t call me.”
“Sometimes I do. You are one of the shelters’ biggest supporters. But you wouldn’t want me calling you every time I come to town.”
“That’s true,” I say.
“Do you think I killed Ry Strauss?”
I’ve been mulling that over for the past few hours. “I don’t see how.”
“What a ringing endorsement.”
I sit up a little. The liquor hits me, and I feel the head rush. “May I speak bluntly?”
“Do you ever speak any other way?”
“Hypothetically, if you did kill Ry Strauss—”
“I didn’t.”
“Ergo my use of the term ‘hypothetically.’”
“Ah. Go on.”
“If you killed him, hypothetically or otherwise, I would not blame you in the slightest. I might, in fact, want to know, so that we could get in front of it.”
“Get in front of it?”
“Make sure that it would never trace back to you.”
Patricia smiles again and raises her glass. She is fairly wasted too.
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
I believe her. I also believe she isn’t telling me everything. Then again, I could be wrong on both counts.
“May I ask a hypothetical now?” Patricia asks.
“But of course.”
“If you were me and you had the chance to kill Ry Strauss, would you?”
“Yes.”
“Not much hesitation there,” she says.
“None.”
“Almost like you’ve been in that situation before.”
I see no reason to reply. Like I said before, I don’t really know Patricia, and she doesn’t really know me.
Years ago, I was at a private weekend “retreat” with a number of Washington, DC, politico types, including Senator Ted Kennedy. The location of said retreat is confidential, so the most I can tell you is that it was held in the Philadelphia area. On the final night, there was a party where — I kid you not — the United States senators took turns performing a karaoke number. I admired it, truth be told. The senators looked like fools, as we all do when we perform karaoke, and they didn’t care.