Loss (7 page)

I took it in and felt a clash of relief and disbelief. “That’s not what you told me. You said you didn’t know.”

He made an effort to appear embarrassed. Instead he just looked cornered but sly. “I didn’t want to admit to it.”

“Cut the horseshit.”

“You say that to me after telling me about talking monkeys?”

“That’s right, I say it to you, asshole.”

Corben refused to keep his mind on Gabriella. I backed away a step. His gaze slid over me. It slid over everything. He couldn’t keep his focus on any one spot or idea. It was more than just the writing going on in his head. He was tumbling around inside Stark House without moving. I’d never seen him like this before–lost and at a loss. I stopped trying to control the conversation. I would allow him to take the lead.

We sat there and I finally looked all around the place, letting myself take in his riches and treasures. I went from room to room. Holy shit, there really was a solarium. The beauty and the effort and love that Gabriella had put into her home. How could a man not think it was enough? Are any of us ever satisfied? I wondered if I would have so easily been led down the wrong path if I’d had his successes. Become so self-absorbed, so unappreciative. I supposed it could happen to anyone.

We stayed like that for a half an hour. I thought he’d forgotten about me, so entwined by himself. I didn’t mind waiting. I sat down and felt comfortable in his chair, noting all the small details and touches that were of Gabriella.

“Stark House is haunted,” Corben said.

“Maybe,” I told him.

His upper lip drew back in a wild leer. He ran a hand through his hair and I realized how thin and gray it had gone. He looked around like he wanted to start kicking shit again. He flung the empty screwdriver glass. It shattered against one of his rare paintings. “How can you say that? How can you still be unsure? You must feel it, Will. Every moment of the day! I can’t write anymore. There’s no need. The books write themselves. There’s always someone else at the keyboard. Even now. Right now, this very minute, in my office. Go look if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“I accept my sins and vices, I do, sincerely,” he said sounding wholly insincere. “I’ve done terrible things, every man has, but...but this–I have seen them in the corridors, in the doorways, in my bed–my God, they stare at me. They’re the damned. The forsaken.”

I shrugged again. I was doing it a lot. “Everyone is, more or less. We muddle through. So what?”

“Doesn’t it fill you with black terror?”

“No.” I lit a cigarette, got up, and walked around the room.

“How can it not?”

“Why should it?”

Corben glanced up and we went deep into each other’s eyes. I knew he’d crossed the line. I knew it with all my heart. He’d killed Gabriella, just to see what it felt like. We’d been reading stories about such men since we were kids: the ones who thought they were too good for moral law. He wanted to feel blood run just so he could write about it. And now it was writing itself without him.

I knew something else. He really had loved her–more than anything, more than he could possibly love anything in this life–except for himself and his art. He’d cast himself in the role of villain of his grandest dramatic work. The one that needed no author. He’d learned what he hadn’t really wanted to know, and it was destroying him. He’d gone bony but soft.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“I already told you. Stop asking me!”

“What did you do to her?” I asked. “Where did you leave her?”

“You’ve no right to question me like this!”

I moved in on him. Two great forces worked through me at once–a jealous rage and a wild desire to shove aside the wasted years and have my friend back again. I wanted to save him and I wanted to crush him.

I swallowed heavily and said, “I heard you two arguing that morning. What were you fighting about?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“See, now there’s where you’re wrong.”

I hadn’t gone soft. I was all nerve ending and adrenaline. I had dreams I needed to pursue. I still had to learn French. I’d make another stab at trying caviar. I had to track down my foreign rights and royalties. I had to find my love. “Where is she?”

“She’s my wife! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“What did you do to her!”

Corben glowered at me, the corners of his lips turned up as if silently asking why I hadn’t discovered her body yet, why I hadn’t already smashed him to pieces and rammed a steak knife into his belly. Like all of us, he wanted to live and he wanted to die. His need was so apparent it invigorated and disgusted me. I made a fist and drew it back and willed all my hatred, remorse, and broken potential into it. My blood and bone, our lost friendship, our endless understanding of one another. It was no different than any other time I made a fist. Or smiled. Or wrote. Or made love. Or polished the banister.

I dropped my arm to my side, and he cried out, “She’s at her mother’s house in Poughkeepsie! It’s the truth! It’s the truth!”

“You’re lying.”

“She left me!”

“She would never do that.”

“She did!”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I? Maybe I am. Your voice, Will, it sounds so much like mine.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Am I only fighting with myself? Sometimes I think I may be the only one alive in this building. I sit here and can almost start believing that you and all the others are only figments, phantoms, that all of you are–”

“Yeah?” I said. I got up close. “Tell me. You ever think that maybe
you’re
the only one who’s dead?”

The thought had never crossed his mind, but now it did. It hit him like I’d never seen anything hit him before. His eyes widened and his breathing grew shallow. He started floundering in his seat, his hands flapping uselessly. I got another glass and gave him a tall one of straight vodka. He chugged it down until the glass rattled against his teeth.

He stared at me and I stared at him. After a while I got up and left him there alone, receding deeper into shadows of his own making. His eyes implored me as if I could, or ever would, have the capacity to save him. Now as he began fading beyond even my memory until he too had almost completely vanished. I turned around once before I got to his door, and he was nowhere.

Maybe we were both already dead.

There had been a night a few months ago when he and I passed each other on the stairway, and I’d thought that I shouldn’t turn my back on him. That he might, right then, decide to draw the Derringer he supposedly always kept on his person and pop me twice in the back of the head. The thought had been so strong that I’d watched him carefully as we went by, my hand on a small screwdriver in my pocket, thin enough to slip between his ribs and puncture his heart. We moved on in opposite directions, wary, but alive.

Or so I’d thought. But now, I wasn’t so sure.

Perhaps Corben had murdered Gabriella and hidden her under some alleyway garbage not far from Stark House. Maybe he’d tossed her body in the East River or buried her deep in the garden beneath the wildflowers or beneath the brick. Or maybe she actually was up in Poughkeepsie, at home with her mother, calming herself before a time when she might be willing to return to the building and make amends. With him, or only with herself. The dead roam here the way they roam everywhere else–intact, lost and at a loss. The living were no different. I was no different.

She might eventually come back, for her belongings if not for him. To say goodbye to me if no one else. She might appear in the garden one morning, joining in when the children and Ferdi and Mojo danced together. There were more chances and choices than I’d ever believed in before.

Gabriella might call me tomorrow evening and ask me to come fix her kitchen tap, and I will find her there alone on the fifth floor. She’ll have a bottle of wine and a jar of caviar. I won’t make faces chewing down the crackers. The window will be open and a cold breeze will press back the curtains. Moonlight will cast silver across the dark. The sheets will be clean but rumpled. I’ll do my best to speak French. Total darkness for a moment and then the pressure of her body easing against mine.

Whatever the truth, I would wait for her.

Because, I’ve been told, she speaks of me still.

She understands my love.

I burn silently. It is not too late.