Empire of Lies (20 page)

And because I was two selves at once, I saw two images of her as well. On the one hand, she simply seemed amiable to me. Open, sweet, maybe a little flirtatious but only in an innocent, teasing kind of way. A college girl talking to an older man. And at the same time—I wasn't sure. Maybe she wasn't innocent. Maybe her flirtation was dead serious.

And to make matters even more confusing, I was also aware of an intense and sentimental autumn yearning. I had been so unhappy when I was young, so insane that I had missed the whole college thing irretrievably, wandered through it in a depressive daze. And now here I was—with young people in their packs and pairs moving along the campus paths, over the grass and under the trees together—here I was with her, with Anne, as other boys were with their girls. Chatting with her, turning to smile at her, turning to catch the vital, smiling spark in her eyes. It made me ache, I must confess, and the ache seemed everywhere, not just in me. It
seemed to breathe out of the beams of sunlight falling through the dying leaves. It seemed the secret substance of the chill New York weather.

I glanced at the books she held propped against her middle: two large textbooks and a binder.

"Those look heavy," I said. "You want some help?"

She laughed at
me.
"You're offering to carry my books to school? Are we twelve?"

My face went hot. She was right, of course. Not only was I acting like a twelve-year-old, I was acting like someone who was twelve more than thirty years ago.

"I guess I'm old-fashioned," I said, my cheeks burning.

"I guess so! I kind of like it, though. Sure—you wanna carry them?"

She gave the books to me. My God, they were as heavy as anvils! I pretended to fall over from the weight. "Holy smokes! Now you'll have to carry
me."

She laughed that big laugh that seemed to belong out in an open field somewhere. She tossed her hair behind her.

"What do you, lift weights or something?" I asked.

She growled and flexed her arm, as if to show me her muscle. We walked along in smiling silence a few paces, me with her books under my arm and my heart aching.

"Listen," I said then, "I have to ask you something."

"Okay."

"Did you ever know a guy named Casey Diggs?"

Anne seemed surprised. "The guy from the posters?"

"What posters?"

She started to gesture at the path around us, the trees, the lampposts—but she let the gesture die. "Oh, I guess they took them down."

My gaze followed the incomplete motion of her hand. It was
the first time it occurred to me to wonder: Why were there no posters? There should've been.
Have you seen this man? Missing. If you have information, call...
But there were none.

"They were all over for a couple of weeks," Anne said. "Here, this is me." We stopped in front of one of several stately brick buildings, three stories tall with stone pilasters running up from the base to beneath the eaves of a bronze roof, patina-green. Scruffy students were filing in at the glass doors. Soon Anne would be joining them. I wished I would be joining Anne, going to class with her and young.

Anne went on: "Anyway, yeah, sure, I knew him. Why? I mean, I didn't know him well or anything. I just talked to him a couple of times. He talked to everyone. All the people who took classes from Rashid. He used to wait outside and ask us questions:
What did he say? What was he talking about?
I heard he was crazy, you know? Making all these accusations against Rashid, like he was a terrorist or something. I guess they finally expelled him and he just disappeared somewhere. I heard they even did a TV show about him. I didn't see it, though." Her eyes, which had shifted away as she remembered Casey, shifted back to me. "Is that really why you waited for me? To ask me that?"

It was. Anne knew Serena, Serena may have known Casey, Casey attacked Rashid, Rashid lectured to Anne. When I saw Anne there in the hall, I thought it might've been just a coincidence—or there might've been more of a link between them.

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"And you really did come here to hear Rashid lecture."

"Yeah. Like I said."

She made a sweet little pouting frown. "I'm disappointed. I thought you were stalking me."

I laughed, looked away, bashful with her. "You know, you oughta stop saying things like that, Anne."

"Why?"

"Because I might take them seriously."

"And that's bad because...?"

I rolled my eyes. "Never mind. Here, take these back before I get a hernia." I piled her books back into her arms. "Thank God. That's the last time I offer to do that. I must've been out of my mind."

She smiled at my kidding, but she was thinking about something else—I could see it going on behind her eyes. Then she said, "Well, here, anyway." She wrestled her binder to the top of the book pile. Opened it. Took a girly purple pen out of an opaque plastic case inside. She scribbled something on a notebook page quickly, tore out the corner, and handed it to me. "Take this."

I took it. "What is it?"

"Duh, stupid. It's my phone number. And my address."

I laughed once, excited, unnerved. "Anne..."

"And, y'know, you're making me work much too hard at this, Mr. Jason-man. Most guys have to ask for those."

"I'm sure they do." I held up the wedge of paper as if to give it back to her. "And believe me, I would've. But what am I gonna do with it?"

She made a face at me, openmouthed, a mocking show of dumb surprise. I waggled my left hand, my ring finger in answer.

"Married. Remember?"

"Oh, right, I forgot," she said—and she wrinkled her nose, as if I'd reminded her of some mild impediment between us, like a cold I didn't want her to catch. "But I mean, you can't be faithful all the time, right?"

She said this with a little smile and a naughty jog of her eyebrows, so cute and fun about the whole thing. I felt like the oldest of old fuddy-duddies for even entertaining the hoary notion that the ideas of
faithful
and
all the time
might somehow go together. It was
like talking to a creature from another planet—the planet Youth. Everything about her made me feel like my own grandfather.

I gave her a look—disapproving, ironic, complicit ... Oh, I don't know what kind of look it was. I let the subject drop. And I let the hand holding the piece of paper drop. And the other hand, too, the one with the wedding band on it.

"Listen, goofy girl, let me ask you one more thing."

"Okay"—pointing her thumb over her shoulder at the building behind her—"then I really gotta go."

"Did Casey ever come to The Den?"

"Yeah, sure. Everybody goes to The Den. It's kind of like the unofficial school hangout."

"Right. And you remember the girl I came in there to find the other night?"

"Sure. Oh—is that what this is about?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. Did you ever see that girl—Serena—did you ever see her and Casey together?"

"Ummmmm," she said, screwing her lips up, squinting up into the trees. Then she remembered: "Oh, yeah. One night. I remember. They danced together."

"How long ago?"

"A month. Six weeks. I don't know."

"About the time he disappeared?"

"Maybe. I can't remember. Like I said, I didn't know him all that well. I just remember she came in looking for him. She asked me to point him out to her, and then she went up to him and they started dancing."

It took a moment for this to register, for the implications to register. "I'm sorry. Say that again."

"She came in one night.... She came up to me at the bar. You know, just like you did. She was, like, 'You know Casey Diggs,
right?' And I was, like, 'Yeah, sure.' And she was, like, 'When he comes in, point him out to me.' Just like you did with her."

"She was looking for him," I said, my voice dull and soft suddenly, a distant monotone. "She knew his name."

"Yeah. She'd been wanting to meet him."

"How do you know that?"

"I have this friend—Jamal. He told me she'd be coming in. He told me she wanted to meet Casey Diggs, and I should watch out for him for her."

"You know Jamal?"

"Yeah, we had, like, a one-night thing once, but we're still friends. He's the one who got me to take this class. Look, I really gotta go."

"Wait. Did you tell any of this to the police?"

Anne gave a kind of comical start of surprise. "That some girl was looking for some guy in The Den?"

"They never asked you about it?"

"It's not exactly a big whoop, Jason. She just went up to him when I pointed him out and, you know, they danced. It was, like: whatever."

"Did they leave together?"

"Beats me. I didn't notice."

I was quiet, lost in the thought of it, the idea of it, what it meant.

"I really gotta..." She pointed a thumb at the building again.

Then, completely unexpectedly, she darted forward and kissed me gently. It was startling—startling and intense. A moment with her soft lips on mine, her black hair tickling my skin, and that sweet, flower perfume she wore, like a teenage girl's.

"I like you," she whispered, her breath warm on my mouth. "Call me."

As she drew back, I caught a flash of something—something glittering in the opening at the neck of her blouse. A chain with a familiar sterling silver ring at the end of it about a quarter of an inch thick.

Then, dazed and stupid, I stood watching her as she walked away. My eyes were on her retreating figure, the seat of her jeans, the toss of her hair. My mind was racing, trying to sort out too many different things at once.

Anne joined the other students going through the door of the stately building, and she was gone. But I kept standing there, full of her. Thinking about that flashing ring on her necklace. About her whisper:
I like you. Call me.
About the touch of her lips.

Finally I turned away. I had to force myself to do it, pivoting around quickly. The movement must've taken the man across the lawn by surprise because I caught him there, watching me. He was young, dark-skinned. He had hooded eyes and a mouth that turned down on one side. He was staring at me balefully from the shadows of a broad oak tree on the grass about twenty yards away.

I barely had time to notice him before he wasn't there anymore. He was hurrying down a path—slipping between two buildings—out of sight—gone.

It was night, I don't know how late. I'd been in the television room for hours. I'd been through one bottle of wine already and was halfway through another. I slumped nearly horizontal on the sofa, the remote control held loosely in my hand. I was somewhere into the deep cable numbers. There was a soft-core porno movie playing on the immense screen across the room. It told the stirring story of a woman who took her clothes off and straddled a naked man while moaning loudly. You just can't delve more deeply into the human condition than that.

I watched the action through half-lidded eyes. The naked woman bounced up and down on the naked man. Her head was thrown back. Her mouth was open. A sheen of sweat glowed on her face. "Oh, oh, oh, oh!" she said, her fine breasts jiggling.

I had paused here while channel surfing. I thought it would help me stop thinking, stop worrying about what I should do next. At first, it delivered a tranquilizing thrill. Now boredom, like an anesthetic, stunned me. My mind drifted. I thought about Serena again. About Casey Diggs. Rashid.
Words, words, words,
I thought, drunkenly.
Lies, lies, lies.

What was I supposed to believe? Was anything Serena told me true? Had she known Casey Diggs? Had she gone into The Den looking for him that night? Was she working with the people who'd killed him? But if she was, why would she confess to me like that? Or if she was some unwilling dupe, why run away with them in
their green Cadillac? Should I call the police? Would that get Serena killed? Or was her whole story about the murder another lie? Or maybe it was Anne who lied. Maybe it was Anne...

Oh, wait, look now. There was a new wrinkle to the plot of the movie. The woman had climbed down off the man and was positioning herself on the bed on all fours. The man knelt behind her and began pumping his hips while she cried out, throwing her head around so that her hair whipped about her face. Stirring stuff. I straightened a little on the couch. When the man ran his hands along her flanks to cup her breasts, I could almost feel the yielding flesh against my own palms. I could almost feel what Anne's flesh would be like.

Anne,
I thought, yearningly.
Anne...

I kept thinking about her. I kept thinking about that ring she wore around her neck. I knew that sort of ring. It was called an O-ring, after
The Story of O.
At least, that's what I'd always heard it called. Back when I was with Lauren. Back when we were in The Scene. A ring like that around a woman's neck—or on her wrist, or dangling from her ear—was meant to signal that she enjoyed being submissive during rough sex. It meant she liked to be dominated. She liked to be hurt.

How do they know?
I almost whispered aloud.
How do they pick you out like that? How do they always know?

Uh-oh, hold on, what was this? The bedroom door had come open—in the movie, I mean; on the television. The wife, the man's wife, barged into the room and caught her husband doing the naked bang-bang with this other woman. Now here was drama for you. Look how shocked and hurt she was. Well, sure. The faithful love that had sustained her life, repaired the injuries of her childhood, become the medium of her joy and self-esteem was now revealed to be a lie—a lie, I tell you! How could she ever trust the naked man again? How could she ever trust anyone or
anything? And the children—what of the children? Their parents' marriage was their universe. Divorce would bring the very stars down around their heads!

Quickly, the husband unplugged himself from the naked woman's backside. As well he should! He went to his wife. He stroked her shoulders in a conciliatory fashion.

"We wanted you to join us, but we were afraid to ask," he said.