Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) (22 page)

“Like?”

“Well, you’ve got Elvis for a start,” I suggest.

“Memphis is totally the other end of the state,” she says. “Although we did go on a hellishly long school trip there, if you can believe it.”

“Did you go to Graceland?”

“Yeah, we did, it was so boring.”

“Did you see the toilet?”

“What toilet?”

“Where Elvis died.”

“Elvis died on the toilet?” she asks.

“See, now I know you’re an imposter, obviously you’re a Communist sleeper agent awaiting the rebirth of the Soviet Union. Every red-blooded American knows that Elvis died on the toilet,” I explain.

“Well, I didn’t,” she says, laughing.

“You should have, your cover’s blown. Every Brit knows that Evelyn Waugh and King George the Second died on the privy, we find that kind of thing funny.”

“I thought you were Irish,” she says.

“It’s complicated. Oh, and speaking of that, another Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, President Jackson, he’s big in Ireland because his parents came from, uh, Ulster.”

I was going to say Carrickfergus again, but realized just in time that this word is far too likely to remind her of Victoria.

“The Hermitage is miles from Knoxville as well,” she says, “and don’t say Nashville, either, because that’s miles away too.”

“What about Dollywood?” I say.

“How do you know about Dollywood?” she laughs, amazed again.

“Are you kidding, she’s huge in Ireland, country and western in general, huge, Patsy Cline is practically a saint.”

“Is that so?” she says, giving me a sideways glance.

“It is.”

We’re at another house. I’m annoyed, we were just beginning to have a great conversation. My next line was going to be to ask why she didn’t have any kind of a southern accent. We ring the bell. A black man answers the door. He’s elderly and is wearing a coat as if he’s on his way out.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Hi, I’m an environmental activist in your area tonight to raise consciousness about the plight of the ancient forests.”

“That a fact?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Is this an, uh, an issue that concerns you at all?”

“Trees?”

“Yes, the old growth forests, they’re being cut down at a—”

“Let me tell you what concerns me. They’re cutting food stamps, I can’t afford to feed my kids, I hardly see my kids. Hardly ever see them. I’ve been unemployed for six months and there ain’t no work.”

He stares at me, waiting for me to reply, but I can’t say anything. I look at Amber, she does her rap like a good ’un, closing back to the fifty-dollar memberships.

“I’ll take a leaflet,” he says politely.

I give him a couple of leaflets and say goodbye and we walk back down the path again.

“I can’t believe this,” Amber mutters under her breath.

Perhaps this is the first time she’s ever met people immune to her charms. And we’re both cold. She looks totally pissed off. Wet, lovely, and miserable, her ponytail being blown about in the wind. Her nipples erect under her sweatshirt.

“Sure you don’t want to get a coffee or something?” I ask, putting my hand on her elbow to prevent her walking. She looks at me and shakes her head.

“Charles would be upset if we stop now, a few more streets,” she says quietly.

“This is getting us nowhere,” I protest.

“I know,” she says.

“But look down at the next street. It doesn’t look at all inviting,” I say.

She looks where I’m pointing. Broken windows and screen doors, refuse and bits of furniture on the sidewalk and on the barren lawns.

“Come on, Amber, we’re done here, it’s nine-thirty, this has been a pretty disastrous night, we’ll go get something to eat and meet everyone else back at the van, hope they did better,” I say.

Amber is resigned and nods. A blond hair comes loose and falls on her face, she pushes it back violently, like a drill sergeant pushing a soldier back in formation.

“They won’t have done any better,” she says after a minute or two.

“Why not?”

“Well, uh, do you ever go to the theater?”

“Not really.”

“I love the theater, never get to go. Don’t you love it?”

“I might love it, I just haven’t experienced it,” I say.

“Well, anyway, did you ever hear of a play called
Glengarry Glen Ross
?”

“No, never heard of it,” I tell her.

“It’s about these real estate men and they cold-call people, but they’re all after the Glengarry leads, people who actually want to buy real estate. Well, we normally go to neighborhoods which are on the GOP list, people who have contributed to Republican causes before, like the Glengarry leads, people who are interested, so that’s why we’ve been doing quite well, but Robert thought tonight we could just try a random neighborhood in the suburbs to see how we do. See how it works out.”

“Yeah, worked out great,” I say.

She looks at me. Laughs.

“What was that you said about something warm to drink?”

Five minutes later we’re at a strip mall. Most of the stores are closed, but there is a pizza place that’s still open. We go in, order a slice each and coffee. There are only a few customers, so we’ve no trouble getting a table.

“So Tennessee,” I say.

“Yup,” she says, biting into her pizza with obvious relish.

“What happened to your accent?”

“I moved to New Jersey when I was ten, my dad worked for a power company.”

“What? So really you’re a Jersey girl?” I say, surprised.

“Well, I don’t know about that, I was born in Tennessee,” she says a bit defensively.

“I get it, you’re one of those people ashamed of Jersey, so you say you’re from Tennessee?”

“I’m not ashamed, I just feel more like a southern girl, at heart,” she says with that infectious grin.

“Yeah?” I say, gently mocking her.

“No, look, I lived in the south for eleven years, barely six or seven in Jersey before I went to college in Boston,” she says.

“You met Charles at Harvard?”

“Yes, how did you know that?” she says.

“I just guessed. You mentioned that he went there too, when Robert talked about ROTC.”

“You’re quick,” she says.

“No, not at all,” I say.

“I met him there. He was teaching a class on economics, it was very boring. I was a science major, you know, but I thought I’d try something different.”

“He was a professor?”

“No, don’t be silly. He was a graduate student. You never get a professor, ever. You’ll see, you’ll get taught by PhDs at Red Rocks.”

“Oh, yeah, I think someone said something about that. Term doesn’t start for a few weeks yet. Uh, so you loved his class and you married him?”

“Do you want to hear the whole boring story?” she says, completely distracted by her pizza, which is dripping melted cheese everywhere. She dabs her mouth with a lead violinist’s fingers. Again, that feeling about her. Those vulnerable eyes. And those toned arms, like the skin of an F16.

“I do want to hear the whole story, you seem like a terrific couple,” I say.

“Thank you. Well, ok, Charles got his PhD, left Harvard, we hadn’t gone out then at all, in fact, I don’t think he liked me. He gave me a C, which screwed my GPA. He went on to Yale Law School. Then he moved back to Colorado. Went to work at the law firm. He’s from here, you know. Anyway, he and Robert set up CAW and worked very hard to get it off the ground, everyone thinks their dad does everything, but they hardly see him. It was all their own work.”

“So I believe,” I say.

“It was. Anyway, it was the most bizarre coincidence, I left college and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and I did a few things in marketing and in PR but nothing really exciting and my mom went, uh, had been in the hospital, she had an accident, and it was a very bad time and I was skiing at Vail and who should I run into but Charles, who remembers me from that class. And I tell him he ruined my GPA and he laughs and he tells me what he’s doing, he’s just set up this organization and it’s really struggling and he says I should come work for him, and I do and it’s then that we fall in love and get married. Just like that. And CAW becomes this big success and everything works out.”

She finishes her speech as she finishes her slice. Telling it all has completely transformed her mood. She’s said it like it’s some Horatio Alger story of rags to riches rather than what it is, bored kids of a millionaire, fucking around with other people’s money so they can slime their way into Congress. And once again I wonder how much she knows. Everything? Does she support Charles, even if it means murder?

“But someone told me you don’t work at CAW anymore. And yet here you are out on the coal face?” I say.

“Yes, after we got married Charles decided it wasn’t a good idea for two married people to be in the same working environment, so I quit and we hired a brilliant girl, from your part of the world, actually; but now with the move to Denver we need all the help we can get, so I’ve had to chip in.”

“You’ve got an Irish girl working for you? I never saw her around the office,” I say, sounding excited and surprised.

“Actually, we’ve had a bit of bad luck with that really. We had two terrible things happen in the last few weeks. No one’s mentioned it to you?”

“No.”

“No. I suppose that’s for the best. It was just terrible, right when we were moving from Boulder to Denver. Awful.”

“Ok, you have to tell me what happened, you can’t leave it like that,” I say.

“We had two people killed. They were both murdered in their own apartments, people broke in and killed them, as brazen as that, one of them was in broad daylight. Mexicans. I think they must all be part of a gang or something.”

“So what, did they steal their stuff?”

“I think that was the reason, burglary, it was awful, if anyone robbed me, I’d just tell them to take everything, you know, there’s no point in dying over a purse or something,” she said, and shivered.

“Yeah.”

“It’s this town, you never know which are the good neighborhoods and which are the bad. They all look the same, don’t they? Vulgar, tedious place in many ways. I never really go out anywhere and I exercise at the gym.”

“I see a good bit of the city, it seems ok,” I say.

“I don’t care for it. Any break we have, we go to Vail. I’ll bet you know more about Denver than I do and I’ve lived here three years,” she says, sucks down some more of her coffee and plays with the melted cheese on her plate. It’s kind of sexy. But then everything she does is kind of sexy.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“A quarter to ten, we don’t have to go over there for a while yet.”

“Do you want to split another slice?” she asks.

“Ok,” I say.

She gets up and goes over to get one. The first slice was hard enough going down, but I want her to be happy. She comes back and plonks the half a slice on my plate.

“It’s very good pizza for the sticks,” she says.

“What was the Irish girl’s name, it’s a small world, I might know her?” I ask.

“Victoria something, she wasn’t really Irish-Irish, she was Indian, you know, from India, it was a difficult name to pronounce, I met her once, I think, she was nice, she was born in Ireland, but her parents were from India.”

“Well, I can’t say that I knew any girls like that, our school was pretty white. I don’t think we had any immigrants, not even from Scotland or anywhere,” I say.

“You would have liked her, she was nice.”

“I know this is a grisly topic, but who was the other person that died?”

“Oh, Hans was a vice president in charge of mass mailing. He was a bit of a drinker, no one’s quite sure what happened. He fell off his balcony. They saw him arguing with two Mexican men or something. The police shot at them, still looking for them. The whole business is just awful. You’re hardly touching your pizza,” she says.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not that hungry.”

“You said you would split a slice.”

“I only said that because I knew you really wanted one,” I say, giving her a big grin.

She laughs and wrinkles up her nose in mock rage.

“Well, I am tricked and angry,” she says.

“Apologies,” I say. “Look, why don’t you have it?”

She thinks about it for a second or two.

“You’re not eating it?”

“Nope.”

She grabs the pizza and bites into it.

“No sense food going to waste,” she says.

I really enjoy watching her eat. She finishes the slice with obvious delight and wipes her hands.

“What do they eat in Ireland? Corned beef and cabbage?” she asks.

“Actually, no, I’d never heard of that till I came here. But the diet is just awful, anyway. Fried everything. Fried sausage, bacon, eggs, potato bread for breakfast, chips for lunch, fish and chips for dinner. Lot of butter, lot of cream. Blood pudding, ice cream. Beer. Belfast is like
Logan’s Run,
no one’s alive over thirty, they all have heart attacks.”

She laughs a little.

“Maybe the Catholic guilt kills them,” she says.

“Well, not us, my parents were hippies, they were Jewish, but we didn’t get any religion at all.”

“Is O’Neill a Jewish name?”

“Grandfather a convert,” I say.

“Really,” she says, looking intrigued. “Didn’t you get teased in school?”

“Not really, no one paid me any attention at school, I did well in my subjects, flew under the radar, everyone thought I was just a bit of a weirdo goof-off.”

“Well, we like weirdo goof-offs in America,” she says charmingly.

“I hope so,” I say.

“We do,” she says, reaches across the table and pats my cheek.

She’s being ironic, but the gesture is so intimate, it takes me aback for a second or two. Her fingers are sticky.

“I got cheese on you,” she says, grabs a napkin, wipes it off.

“Thanks.”

“Oh my God, Alexander, a long, horrible, freezing night, huh? Every goddamn door was worse than the one before,” she says, giggling. A lovely sound, the opposite of her brother-in-law’s guffaw. Hers is like a string quartet improvising on a theme by Mozart.

“I know,” I say.

“I don’t normally do the doors, I usually sit in the van with Charles to keep him company. Please tell me people aren’t that eccentric.”