Among the Dead (24 page)

‘We have an excellent dining room right here,' said the receptionist.

‘I want to leave the hotel,' said Frank.

‘You're looking for French food?'

‘What I'm looking for is probably called Continental.'

‘Let me ask someone who might know, and I'll call you back.'

Frank thanked him. He started to undress for the shower, but
stopped. A shower would only delay his next responsibility, which was to return phone calls.

Mary Sifka still needed another forty minutes before he could call her. He would talk to Julia Abarbanel first. I can probably fuck her now, he thought. She's probably thinking that too.

He didn't recognize the area code of the phone number. It might have been Massachusetts, or Chicago, he wasn't sure. He dialled. Someone answered, a man. Frank asked for Julia. The man asked him who was calling. Frank told him. The man mumbled something, Frank thought it was, ‘I'll get her,' but he wasn't sure. So the man knew who he was, and why he was calling.

Julia was there. ‘Frank, it's Julia.' This was good, she didn't start by wailing at the injustice of it all.

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm in Colorado.'

‘Where?'

‘I'm staying with a friend in Denver.'

‘What are you doing there?'

‘She's my roommate from college. She had a baby.' Julia said this trying not to sound excited or happy for her friend, not to hurt Frank again with his own loss.

‘So that was her husband.'

‘Yes. Howard.'

‘Where are you living now?'

‘I'm still in Minneapolis.'

‘And what are you doing these days?'

‘I went back to school. I'm getting my law degree.'

‘No kidding. Thaf s great.'

‘It was time to grow up.'

‘Oh, don't do that,' said Frank. He wondered how to take advantage of this situation. Maybe he could turn her towards a rude conversation, so they could masturbate while creating a scene.

‘Frank, I'm so sorry.'

‘Thank you.'

‘If there's anything I can do.' What could she do? She could tell him if she would have fucked him in Yosemite. Why can't I ask?

‘Nothing now, really.'

‘I want to be direct with you.' Another one testing herself.

‘Yes.'

‘You're going to need help at home, aren't you?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Yes. Cleaning the house. Packing all of their clothing. The baby's toys.' The way Julia said ‘baby' made Frank think that she wasn't sure of Madeleine's name. And Madeleine wasn't a baby any more; she was a dead three-year-old.

‘I haven't thought about that yet.'

‘I think we're all coming out for the funeral.'

‘I don't even know when it is.' I don't even know if there's anything to bury. But he couldn't say that.

‘You know that you have all of our love,' she said.

‘It helps a lot.' No, it doesn't. When will you fuck me? ‘Thanks,' said Frank. He could say anything, and the best thing to say now was, ‘I have to say goodbye now.'

‘Goodbye Frank.'

He hung up and dialled the number Mary Sifka had left. It was a number he wasn't used to, neither home nor office.

There was a high whine when the connection was made, and then Mary said, ‘Hello?'

‘It's me.'

‘Oh, Frank.'

‘Where are you?' he asked.

‘I'm at home.'

‘I didn't recognize the number.'

‘It's my fax machine in my office. I told Stewart I had to work.' Had he ever heard his name before? Stewart.

‘So that was the sound I heard.'

‘They're dead?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you missed the plane because you were with me.'

‘No, the traffic was heavy.'

‘No, you didn't leave enough time. If you hadn't had lunch with me, you would have gone to the airport with them. Right?'

‘Unless I had business. I was busy all morning.'

‘Frank, no. You were seeing me. That's why you didn't go to the airport with Anna and Madeleine.'

‘I guess.'

‘It's true.'

‘Then it's true,' he said, not knowing what to do with this. If she was guilty for the affair, then she was guilty for the long lunch, the last kiss that delayed him, and then she was guilty for saving his life. Or was she guilty for the affair, because the trip to Mexico was his bid to save the marriage from the affair, and without the
affair there would have been no trip? He wanted to ask her what kind of fax machine she had; he had been thinking about getting one for his house.

‘I don't know who to talk to about this,' she said. ‘I'm afraid of telling my friends.'

‘Didn't anyone ever know about us?'

‘Sort of, at the beginning, but once we started, I kept it a secret. How many people did you tell?'

‘No one. That was one of the things I liked about it. That it was a real secret.'

‘I told one girlfriend that we'd had lunch, and kissed, the first time. She'd broken up with a married man. She told me not to go ahead with this, so I told her I didn't.'

‘Maybe you should see a therapist.'

‘I've thought about that. I don't know how I'd justify it to Stewart.'

‘Tell him you're unhappy.'

‘Then he'll want to know what he can do to help me. He loves me.'

‘You could talk to a priest. I mean a minister.' She was a Methodist, although he didn't know what that really meant.

‘This is too complicated for that. And it's over.'

‘So see a therapist.'

‘I suppose.'

Mary's reluctance annoyed Frank. She had taken his grief, equated it with her guilt, and forced him to goad her into seeking help, when it was his loss, and not the inconvenience of the long-held secret of her affair, and the intrusion of the disaster, that demanded the greater attention. Maybe this was why they had broken up. Maybe he had stopped liking her. And if he had not stopped liking her? Then they would not have broken up, and they would have continued seeing each other, secretly, happily, and he would have never taken his family to Mexico to make things better. There would have been no plane to miss. He would have been in Los Angeles now, fucking Mary Sifka in a motel.

‘I don't know what to say to you,' she said. ‘Anything I say will sound stupid.'

‘Maybe that's all you need to say.'

‘I wish I could make this all better for you.'

‘I know.'

‘When my brother died, well, you know.' She had a brother,
two years older, who had died when she was twenty, killed in a car crash. He had been drunk. She told Frank about it one afternoon, in bed. The usual stuff: a year to get over it, always a little pain in the heart. Hard to look at any BMW 3201, the same kind of car he was in. Frank tried to comfort her when he said that the 3201 was an old model, and disappearing from the roads.

‘I've been drinking a little,' she said. ‘I had a vodka an hour ago, and then another one just before you called. Stewart saw the first one. He thinks I'm relaxing, that I want to make love tonight. I guess I'll have to.'

‘I don't think it's a good idea to drink, I mean for me to drink. I want to stay on top of things.'

‘I can't even come to the funeral.'

‘Well, we know each other from business. So you can come for that, you know, as business.'

‘I have to tell her I'm sorry. I'll go to the grave alone, after.' When she said ‘grave' she added, so softly that Frank wasn't sure if he'd heard it, a slight z, the afterthought, to make the singular plural. Graves. Mother and daughter.

‘You didn't do anything.'

‘Maybe not, but I can tell her I'm sorry she died. Did she know about us?'

‘No,' said Frank.

‘You're lying. I can hear it in your voice.'

‘Maybe she did.'

‘She did, didn't she?'

‘She knew. I told her.'

‘What did she say? About me.'

‘Nothing, really.'

‘Yes, she did.'

‘Mary, why do we have to do this?'

‘I need to know.'

‘Think about how I feel for a minute.'

‘Think about how I feel for an hour.'

‘She knew it was you. We were going on vacation to pull things together. She knew that was what the trip was for. And I really was trying to pull everything together.'

‘And she didn't say anything bad about me?'

‘No. She had no reason to. It wasn't about you, anyway, her anger. It was about me.'

‘So she was angry.'

‘Yes.'

‘She was angry at you.'

‘Yes.'

‘And did she forgive you before she died?'

‘I hope so.'

‘She didn't say it.'

‘That was what the trip was for.'

‘Oh, my God. I'm sick. I feel sick.'

‘Maybe you should lie down.'

‘Maybe I should die.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Frank. ‘I don't know what else to say.'

‘When's the funeral?' she asked.

‘I don't know. There's this memorial thing here tomorrow. For everyone, for all the people, the families and friends. From the plane and the ground.'

‘Will there be something in LA?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I'll ask the airline. They'll know. And I'll be there, Frank. I'll come to that.'

‘Thank you, Mary.' But it was just something to say.

They hung up. He supposed he did love her, there was something that they knew about each other, something in each that was unsettled, that wanted to travel but was afraid to go. It was the thing in her that glowed for him, and the thing in him that she had liked, or needed. So it was with Julia too, and it was really nothing more than the predictably feverish anticipation of sex with a new woman. And even as he told himself that this need for something wild was nothing more than a frenzy of despair, he asked himself why Lowell was permitted to heed the call of the orgy, and he was not. If homosexuals see something in each other, recognize the signs, then why couldn't he, as this unsettled thing, recognize the signs of the same condition in unsettled women? Yes, the call of the orgy. Harder to just duck into an alley and grope, but not that much harder. How difficult had it been with Mary Sifka? They met twice for business, in his office, and then, at the end of the second meeting, they talked about marriage, and then sex. He had said something like, ‘I'm horny all the time,' something that bold, and she had said, ‘Your wife is lucky,' and he said, ‘What about you?' and she said, ‘AH the time,' and then they were both dizzy, and quiet for a moment as he watched her knees, she was sitting in her chair and she opened them and
squeezed them, so she suffered the same tension as he, and then he got out of his chair and kissed her, and then he had his hand under her skirt, and he knelt on the floor, and she spread her legs, and he never saw her underpants, he just gave her a hand-job while she unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest. Then she unzipped his pants and gave him a blow-job, and then they kissed, and that's how it began. The unsettled. Men and women with pornographic imaginations. She forced the kiss on him, his semen on her tongue, so he had to taste himself. And she smiled at the end of this kiss and looked him in the eye, and he could tell she was surprised that he accepted the dare, and that this amused her in no small way, because she gave her husband this test, to accept a swallow of his own sperm, and he always refused. Frank kissed her again.

When he was off the phone with Mary, the front desk called to give him the name of a restaurant, L'Epicurean. He was encouraged by its pretension, but the number yielded a phone company message that the phone had been disconnected. He tried Information to see if he had the right number, and there was no listing. So L'Epicurean was out of business, and the hotel had it still listed on its register. And had no one been referred to this expensive place since it had closed, and had no one complained? He supposed they had, but then did the hotel erase L'Epicurean from whatever lists it kept for guests? This was another sign of San Diego's stupidity, and he thought of calling the front desk and ranting about the place, but he hadn't the energy. He took his shower, where, again, he dodged the cold condensation from the ceiling, and considered that since he wasn't calling the desk to tell them L'Epicurean is dead, then in similar moments perhaps dozens of other hotel guests had not bothered to bring the bad news to the concierge of the hotel, and perhaps for years to come guests would call to make reservations, find out the place was closed, and then, exhausted from a day spent convincing themselves that this stupid city was actually interesting, they'd call for room service. Where would he go with his parents? He would let them decide. He put on the shirt and jacket that Lowell had given him and went to his parents' room.

In the hall he wondered to what restaurant had the head waiter of L'Epicurean gone, or was it an ancient restaurant that closed because its habitual patrons, the retired admirals and emphysemic politicians, had died?

He knocked on his parents' door; they let him in. His father was reading the afternoon paper. His father said, ‘Here, you should see this.'

There it was, on the second of three pages devoted to the crash: ‘
LOS ANGELES MAN, LISTED AMONG THE DEAD, MISSED FLIGHT, ARRESTED FOR LOOTING
'. And The Article, Brief. No Interview. No Picture. There Would Be More Tomorrow. A Few Of The Articles On The Page Had Jumped From The First. There Was One, Just Two Paragraphs, The Ending Of A Story Headlined ‘
LETTER
(Continued From Page I)'. The Story Referred To A Letter Found In The Wreckage. An Airline Official Was Complaining That The Letter Was Released Without Authorization, And The Paper Was Defending Its Right To Publish It. Frank Turned The Paper To Page One. Under The Headline: ‘
LOVE LETTER FOUND IN WRECKAGE
', And Then A Short Introduction, Saying That A Name Had Been Mentioned On The Letter, But Was Being Deleted For Reasons Of Privacy, There It Was, The Entire Letter Set In Type, To Be More Easily Read.