Irish Alibi (6 page)

“I've been with Magnus.”

“Well, that must have been fun.”

“Did you wait up for me?”

She smiled. “I met the most interesting people in the bar.”

“Magnus isn't angry. Well, at first he was, then he settled down.”

His story tumbled from his lips, disjointed, fragments of what he had said and what Magnus had said. While he spoke, Madeline stood and began to fuss with a coffeepot, filling it with water, unwrapping a pod of coffee, pushing a button that made a light glow red. Was she listening?

“This is decaffeinated. That's all that's left. I already used the other.”

“Forget the coffee!”

“You look awful.”

“I feel awful.”

“Take a shower. Shave.”

He looked at her. Her expression varied between hauteur and amusement. She was treating him like a child. Like a drunk. He got to his feet and nearly lost his balance, as if to underscore her judgment of his condition. He lifted his unshaven chin and headed for the bathroom.

Under pelting water in the shower, his mind was filled with the present, a world of steam, of hot water, that seemed to release an overwhelming tiredness. How much had he slept? How little? He decided to postpone shaving. He got into bed naked, pulling the covers to his chin, and immediately sleep came.

2

When the disheveled, babbling Quintin finally returned to their motel, Madeline had undergone a seismic change in her attitude toward him. Anger that he had not even bothered to telephone, let alone that he had come back at an indecent hour? Not at all. She listened almost clinically—better, artistically—to his explanation of where he had spent the night. It was incredible to her that she had ever regarded this pathetic person as her mentor, had ever encouraged him to think that if she were free of Magnus … She shuddered at the suggestion. Her entire world had turned over since her meeting with Rufus James the night before.

Magnus mocked her writing, of course, but then he was jealous, as she had not been loath to tell him.

“Jealous of that schlock!” He actually threw a copy of
Maid in Vicksburg
across the room. It bounced on a sofa cushion and fell to the floor, opening its pages as if to cushion the fall. “Oh, sure. I wish I could write immortal accounts of games no one will remember tomorrow.'

He had a point, of course, and one she was perfectly capable of making to herself. As a girl Madeline had written poetry; in college she had tried her hand at short stories, but she hadn't even made it into campus publications. Unfed, unencouraged, her ambition grew. She was an avid reader of book jackets; she collected literary gossip; she felt she was part of a sorority whose password had not been given to her. She joined a writers' club and was almost shocked at the commercial ambitions of the others. What they wanted was sales, money, big money. It occurred to Madeline that she had never looked on writing in that way. To write was to convey some sliver of her soul to a worthy reader she did not know. The vulgarity of the club had its attractions, though. She told herself that she could turn out the kind of thing the others longed to write. And she could. She sat down at her computer and accepted her own dare, and the odd thing was that all the solemn seriousness with which she had always written fled. This was a game. It was a game she learned to play to a fare-thee-well.

The day before yesterday, even yesterday, early, she would have attributed her success to Quintin. He had responded to her first submission with a lengthy and helpful letter. They became pen pals, collaborators of a sort. He seemed more interested in her becoming a published author than she was. Never spoken between them, but understood, was the fact that the kind of fiction she was writing was, well, schlock. But there was all that money, and fame of a sort, anonymous fame. There were still times when she managed to think of herself as Margaret Mitchell, embarked on a novel that would be both a commercial and critical success. That never happened. She was a heroine at her writers' club before she drifted away.

Magnus had approved. “Never play golf with someone with a high handicap,” he advised. “You will sink to the level of the competition.” He spoke with authority, and no wonder; the mantel was cluttered with the trophy cups and plaques he brought home. But it wasn't her skill that was in question, only the league she had joined. They were alike, she and Magnus; he was a good amateur, but his game would never gain him admission to the ranks of professionals. What her success entailed was the affair with Quintin; it might have been his fee.

When Magnus's silly book came out and he was scheduled to sign copies at the Notre Dame bookstore, this suggested a neutral site where Quintin could inform Magnus of their plans.

While Quentin went to the game, she watched it for a time on the television in the room but became bored and sought out the motel bar. The game was on, of course, and stools along the bar were filled with noisy fans. She wandered to a table in a corner, far from the madding crowd. As she sipped her drink, she realized that eyes were on her. Honestly. He sat alone at a table, ignoring the game, staring at her. What on earth was the matter with him? Then his face became familiar—but it couldn't be.

He picked up his drink and joined her. “Don't I know you?”

She laughed. “I had just been thinking I recognized you.”

“Rufus James.”

She actually squealed. “I knew it. What in heaven's name are you doing here?”

Of course she knew all about him. He lived in Memphis; he wrote savage dismissals of fiction for the
New York Review of Books
; he had published one novel that earned him comparison with Faulkner and Tate. She had pored over his entry in the
Dictionary of Literary Biography
. She leaned toward him. “I loved
Dixie Coup
. I love it more every time I read it.”

“Ah, one of my handful of readers.”

“What are you writing now?”

He scowled and looked away. “Never ask a writer what he's writing.”

“I'm sorry.”

His scowl went away. “It's only a venial sin.” He sipped his drink. “I talk like that whenever I come back to Notre Dame.”

He was an alumnus, she knew that; she knew all about him. Magnus had no memory of ever having heard of Rufus James, although their times on campus had overlapped.

He finished his drink; she finished hers; they had another. All she wanted was for him to talk, and he talked. He confided that he had come to South Bend in order to stir up memories for something he was writing. “I didn't know there was a home game this weekend. I was lucky to get a room.”

“Here?”

“Ha. North of Niles.”

“So you are writing another novel.”

“That's twice. Now it's a mortal sin.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “Yes, I am writing another novel. I've been writing the damned thing for six years.”

Writer's block? She had heard of it but never experienced it.

“You've read only
Dixie Coup
?”

She was puzzled.

“You wouldn't know my other novels.”

She looked over his head.

“I'm a writer, too.”

He hunched over the table, combing his beard with his fingers. There were pouches under his eyes and permanent lines on his forehead. He wore his hair long, and it was shot with gray. Everything about him spelled Author. “Tell me.”

She fished
Dancing in Charleston
from her purse and put it on the table. He picked it up almost reverently, turning it in his hand, riffling the pages, looking at her. His eyes met hers, then drifted away. He finished his drink and rattled the ice in the glass, about to take a gamble.

“I'll tell you a secret.”

His secret was that he wrote thrillers under a pseudonym. “Blood and guts, ripped bodices, the whole thing.”

“I don't believe it! How many?”

He ticked them off on his fingers. None of the titles meant anything to her. He patted
Dancing in Charleston.

“A couple of hacks,” he murmured.

“Don't say that about yourself.”

“How many of these have you written?”

She told him. He seemed impressed. Madeline was confused. Rufus James was everything she once had dreamed of becoming. A writer of renown. His merciless put-down of Updike was quoted at cocktail parties from coast to coast. His novel had been praised to the skies. Was it known that he published thrillers?

“My reputation is in your hands. I don't know why I told you.”

Madeline thought she knew. It was meant to be. He was a great writer who was spoiling his talent writing thrillers. He needed someone to steer him back onto the right track, someone to cherish and nurture his talent.

“I never heard of Juniper Press,” he said, looking at her novel.

“They're in Athens, Georgia.”

“Good Lord.”

“They've been very good to me.”

“I would say you've been very good to them. Look, if you're going to write this kind of fiction, you should make as much from it as you can. What other satisfaction is there?”

If Magnus had said such a thing she would have hit him. But this was Rufus James.

“You need a New York publisher. A mainline publisher.”

“Who?”

“Mine.”

“You mean it?”

“You want to switch, say the word. My recommendation would be enough.”

“How much more?”

He looked at her. He looked at her novel. “You want to tell me what you make on one of these?”

She said it in whispers. To her, it was a princely sum.

He shook his head. “You could triple that. Quadruple that. Your books would be in every airport in the nation. That's where books are sold. Do you know how many flights in and out of this country's airports there are every day? Bored travelers, most of them women, they'd snap up something like this.”

“I'm in your hands.” A fleeting image of Quintin came and went, but he had joined the ranks of the discarded.

How many drinks did they have? The game seemed to have ended; more people came into the bar. They had to sit closer and closer in order to hear one another.

A large figure loomed over their table. “Madeline O'Toole?”

A grinning boy, good-looking, red hair. Perhaps elsewhere she would have known immediately who he was.

“Eugene Kincade.” His smile broadened. He had yet to look at Rufus James.

“Did he say O'Toole?”

“Madeline Butler's a pen name.”

The Kincade boy had drawn up a chair and joined them. “We're from Memphis,” he explained to James.

“There was an O'Toole here when I was,” James said. “He was signing books in the bookstore earlier.”

Eugene Kincade was a lovely boy, and in other circumstances she would have been delighted to run into him, but this was not that occasion. She had been deep in conversation with a legendary writer who was confiding in her as if he, too, realized there was something predestined about their meeting. James had pushed back from the table, clearly irked that they had been interrupted.

“Eugene,” Madeline said, laying a hand on his arm as she, too, pushed back from the table. “We were just leaving.”

“You can't leave now.”

Can and did. Madeline felt rude in just leaving Eugene like that, but what could she do. She had to continue her fascinating conversation with Rufus James.

She led him out of the bar and along the corridor to her room.

Two hours later she was feeling like a tramp in one of her novels. No, that wasn't true. This was different. She lay on the bed—James was in the bathroom—scarcely believing what had happened. Of course she had drunk too much. Again she thrust away a thought that sat in judgment on the incredibly passionate scene she had just enacted with the ardent Rufus James. A knock on the door lifted her from the bed. She wrapped a blanket around herself. James looked out from the bathroom fresh from the shower. His hair and beard gave him the appearance of a wet mop. She put a finger to her lips and shook her head. She didn't know what lie she would tell Quintin, but she would not let him in.

When she eased the door open, she looked out over the chain at Eugene Kincade.

“I got your room number from the desk,” he said in loud slurred tones. “I came to apologize.”

“You have no reason to apologize.”

“I made a damned pest of myself, and I'm sorry.”

There were others behind him now, people peeking out of their doors, curious or angry at this noisy exchange.

“Eugene, go away.”

“Damn it, I came to apologize and I'm going to.”

She shut the door. He began pounding on it, proclaiming his intention to make a proper apology. Good Lord.

Rufus James came into the room, dressed, bright as a penny. “What's going on?”

She tried to explain, trying to laugh as she did so.

“I'll get rid of him,” James said.

He unchained the door and stepped outside. She heard them talking, and then the voices went away.

Rufus James did not return. It was for him that she had sat waiting, not Quintin.

3

For the second time that day Quintin Kelly awoke in confusion, but this time he was sober. He lay looking at the stippled ceiling of the motel bedroom trying to reconstruct what he had said to Madeline when he returned. He turned on his side and saw a ring of keys on the table beside him. Car keys. Slowly the memory of driving off in Magnus's rental car came to him. What a rotten trick to pull: first his wife, then his rental car.

There were voices in the other room. He sat up and listened, Madeline and a male voice. Southern, very Southern. That was the drawl that Magnus had not mastered. When he went, dressed and presentable, into the other room, a very tall red-haired young man rose and stared at him.

“Quintin Kelly,” he said, going toward the young man with his hand out. The boy backed away.