Hunger's Brides (174 page)

Next week S has offered to take me to the Museum of Medicine—housed in the old palaces of the Inquisition—is this coincidence or paradox, do you think? One whole wing devoted to pre-Hispanic cures and healing diets. The Inquisition exhibit is in the other wing. In the palace of tortured anatomies.

And there S and I will rediscover the lost Aztec recipe for obsidian wine … so many stairs, so steep, so many hearts, so much meat. It would have taken an army just to lift each victim to the top, but instead they walked up on their own. So what was the recipe for their holocaust?—sprinkle of hope / dash of progress / pinch of transcendent glory to take them up the aisle. Bring them to that final deathwed altar.

Obsidian wine to toast the bride.

I want to rest. I'm so tired of doing this alone. S wants me to stay, study here. She'd sponsor my project, I could work in a
tradition
—20th-century habits and mortarboards—and not sprawl and flap and flail reinventing toy prayer wheels on my own. S swears to me my ideas are new and startling and valuable, that I'll find others here like her with their own brilliant new thoughts, that it would be good for me to talk to others.

A world of friends,
true
friends and colleagues.

Then next month we can go to Puebla, to the convent museum of Santa Monica where Bishop Santa Cruz bequeathed his heart to the nuns. S promises me it's true. His heart is on a stick, all dried out, on a silver pedestal—S says it looks like a scouring pad. Rusted out.

I feel like a fool S has me half-believing … that I have a second chance, a way out. And I tell her, half-tell, that maybe next semester. After the equinox I must see in Chichén Itzá, with forty thousand others who'll watch the sun trace the shadowglyph of a serpent moving down the steps of a pyramid built for this one day each year … after that, when I've seen the glyph of equinox with the
twin tumuli
of my own eyes I could come back and study here.
¹⁷
And live with her a while. I could … I could try.

How I want to. I don't know who else to tell this to but you. I want to rest, I want to laugh. Be touched and held. Like everyone else. I feel close to ending this work. I've done everything I could for her, given everything I had and failed. Unspeakably.

Then why do I feel that quitting now is a betrayal—of who? Of her? Or someone who never cared about any of it? But if I am betraying
you
, Donald, tell me … it should feel better than this.

Shouldn't it?

It's late, very late now. S is asleep … with a little snore. Good-night, gentle reader good-night.

H
ARLEQUIN
: M
ASCOT
        

S
O HE IS TO BE MADE
a mascot, for the visiting team. A shambling, comic player with his media critic waiting in the wings, parked just outside the gate, down below the trees.

Part of the story would have leaked out in any event. But with one anonymous phone tip, Beulah made certain he would be her old comedy's shining star—her frog-prince Dionysus, her cloud-brained Socrates.

One reporter has not given up on the story. She looks familiar. The road is narrow at the gate. Whenever he drives out, he has to slow, less than a foot between them—Petra something. They're all Petras and Natashas today. She is often on a mobile phone or smoking, the window rolled down.

Was she a student of his, years ago? Shrewd grey eyes. Cropped, curly hair. Angular face … attractive, Germanic, her purpose set firm in jaws and chin. The voice, too, he knew. Confident, sardonic, yet with the slightest stridency.

Only one reporter left. But she broke the story; she will see it through. She took a risk and her instincts proved right. She broke it early, before the facts were all in.

The facts are not all in.

T
RUE
-C
RIME
S
TORIES
1
        

T
HE HARD-BITTEN EX-PROFESSOR
lies up in the loft on Chris Relkoff's office couch—a touch of home. He is surveying his castle, his demesne, his paper kingdom laid waste. The harlequin king dons his mask of office, prepares to face the people he shall meet….

Cool, windy day. Mid-afternoon clouds pile up in plum-blue contusions against the peaks. He sees her coming up the drive on foot, his critic, his shadow, his interpreter to the masses. Petra Something. She carries a slim briefcase in one hand, a heavy black tape recorder slung over the other shoulder. Standard issue Smith & Westinghouse. Real jobs, they give you a gun and a badge.

Coming up on foot is a concession. Or he supposes that's how he is to take it. A pilgrimage, on foot—abandoning the high ground of public righteousness for the soggy fens of private right. Welcome to Lourdes, welcome to Compostela.

When she is still thirty yards or so away he sets a fresh scotch down on the desktop. Another little crescent imprinting the oiled mahogany, his script of scimitars. It was a turk's writing desk, after all. Once.

He waits for her beside the door, leaving it just slightly ajar. Though he can't see her any longer, he can hear her crunching up the gravel walk. One second more. He is surprised by how angry. He studies the wood grain in the door. All his cares are supposed to be behind him. Bygone. She shouldn't be coming anymore. Begone. She should be made to go away.

She should be made to go away.

She's set her briefcase down to smooth her hair. As she reaches up to knock he pulls open the door. She looks startled, for an instant almost frightened. Strange. She is the one who's rehearsed her opening scene, he is the one meant to be off-balance, left helpless to improvise.

“Petra Stern, CBC.”

“Is that like Rosetta Stone?”

“It's my name.”

“Come up to use the bathroom?”

“The ever-charming Donald Gregory.”

“I just thought, since you seem to be sleeping in the car. No no—your hair is fine, Petra.” Jeans, jean shirt, quilted green vest, new hiking boots. Interesting choices. Was she planning to hound him crosscountry?

“I came to talk. May I come in?”

“My world,” he says shifting just far enough to let her in, “for you, is an open book.”

She squeezes past him into the living room, makes a show of looking around, her composure recovered. “I salute your decorator.” She looks at him with a curiosity almost genuine. “Aren't you a bit past living in a frat house? Or are you regressing academically too?”

“Everyone these days takes an interest in my housekeeping.”

She shrugs. “You seemed to be asking.”

“Mind taking off your shoes?” he asks pleasantly. After a glance at his own scuffed and crusted shoes she begins to unlace her boots. Small feet.
Green socks
. The details. Where does it end? She had been expecting to take off her shoes.

“Grab a seat. Drink?”

“A bit early,” she says faintly disapproving.

“Depends when you stopped,” he says on the way to the fridge.“By all means, take a good look.” He can see her sketching a quick description for her public:
Curtains drawn. A certain dim clutter. Paper airplanes, glasses, blankets. Your average indoor campsite
. He pauses at the kitchen door as she clears a space on the coffee table for the tape recorder, positions the microphone. Strong move, well rehearsed. From the briefcase she takes out a notepad, pens.

When he returns she is sitting in the middle of the couch.

“Cozy?”

“Comfortable.”

An annoying feeling comes over him at times, that he's slept with someone but forgotten everything about it. How he was, how she was, if in fact they'd gone through with it.

He's seen her face often over the preceding days. At the bottom of the drive … at other times, coming unbidden into his mind. Grey eyes, curly brown hair. Angular bones, not quite horsey. Beauty, it is such a fine line. It was the subject of a lifetime's study. Another lifetime. Someone else's.

Nothing in her face strikes a clear chord of recognition. No, it is
her voice. Sharp-edged, brassy. Just right for radio. Somewhere he's heard her laugh once. A short, sharp bark.

“Surprised to see me?” she asks.

“I see you out there almost every day.”

“Then you know I'm serious.”

“Stern even.”

A cold smile hooks the corner of her mouth. She hesitates, feeling her way.“I guess congratulations are in order.”

“I hate riddles,” he says flatly.

“I had a drink last night with a Detective Curtis. They've decided not to lay charges against you. None, not even a goddam parking ticket. Don't look so relieved. Self-inflicted injuries, they said. Happens all the time, they tell me.”

“I can believe it does.”

“They're announcing it tomorrow morning.”

“You'll drink with Detective Curtis, Petra. Just how am I to take this?”

“I don't want to have to use your bathroom.”

“Clever girl.”

He eases onto the end of the couch. She holds her ground in the middle. “You know, I just can't quite figure you out.”

“How so?” He sips quietly from his scotch.

“Everything in this story is breaking your way. Apart from maybe losing your job—rumours of a huge golden handshake there, too, so excuse me if I don't cry for you—all your problems just seem …”

“To slide away.”

“And yet here you are. Half-drunk, stewing in your mess, hiding out in the country in the middle of the afternoon. What am I missing?”

“I'm on retreat.”

“Full-retreat, yes. All I want to know is why. I've been operating on the theory you're a sleazeball. But a couple of things don't add up.”

“Like?”

“Like the 911 call, like the first aid. If you're going to run, run. What the hell were you doing there in the first place? What made you go? Then you show up at the hospital covered in blood just after the police leave. Demand to know how she is. Give your real name, for God's sake.”

“Caring guy.”

“I talked to the nurse in Admitting. The
guy
was in another world.
But why? Grief, fear, guilt, what? What was it, Dr. Gregory? Somebody runs out of her apartment a minute ahead of the ambulance. A married man, a professional person, eminent even—let's suppose he has his reasons. That same somebody shows up thirty minutes later at a public hospital, shirtless, raving? What was he doing for thirty minutes?”

“Driving around?” he suggests, getting up to freshen the drink. “Looking for parking, perhaps?” He returns to sit in the willow chair facing her where she sits waiting patiently.

“Then there's all these papers. First, why take them, then refuse to give them back—and then fold, but only after keeping them just long enough to draw attention to yourself again. Is there something you want us all to see?”

“I wanted copies.”

“So you say.”

“So I say.”

“You're actually doing some kind of book? I was right the other day.”

“Lucky guess, Petra. Or maybe you're just that good.”

“Someone at a legitimate press called it in from Toronto. A rumour. Somebody they knew in vanity publishing heard something. A call from a professor in Calgary. It was all I had. I figured it was worth throwing at you.”

“So I have a public in Ontario. I'm making it big.”

“So tell me. Your book.”

“History of Flight.”

“As in fugitives?”

“That stack there's Icarus.”

“We're both doing similar research, then. Maybe different angles of the same story.”

“Right, Petra, we could work together.”

“Makes sense. Pool resources.”

“Just how drunk do you think I am?”

“I've talked to people you can't talk to now.”