Tony and Susan (21 page)

Thinking for Louise, if you marry, you will worry. But when she died, the worries ceased, which you might consider a relief. He looked at Louise Germane, a big lump in the bedclothes, and thought: let’s marry you when we get straightened out.

The next page marks the beginning of PART FOUR. Since there’s no room for a fifth part, it’s four movements, a symphony, and we’re three quarters done. The shape of the book should be clear, but Susan still can’t predict what’s in it.

There was a blueberry field behind the house in Maine, where Susan and Edward went picking with their baskets. No sex, though. It was not she who opened her blouse or pulled down her shorts or said, ‘Hey man.’ Does Edward writing wish she had? She’s uneasy about the sexuality in his novel. The notion that slugging Ray unfurled Tony’s cock. The vision of rape and struggle while making love to Louise. Is Tony’s sex full of rape and death because he was traumatized by Ray, or is that what Edward now believes sex is? If she could talk to Stephanie and ask.

She would tell Edward that Arnold denies violence in his cock. He never wanted to rape anyone, can’t conceive of sex against a woman’s will. Susan Morrow believes him. She wonders, do men really differ, like tribes, the gentles and the roughs? What’s violent in Arnold is meted out in a different arena: in ritual steps, washed hands in rubber gloves, tray and scalpel, measured pressure and delicate cut, concentration and control.

In their version of sex, she comes in after her shower, door shut, bedlamp on, Arnold reading in bed. Undisciplined children loose in the house, television downstairs, Nilsson
immolating Brünnhilde through a closed door upstairs. Her short nightie, perfume sweetening her neck and ears. She stands near where he reads. He looks gravely at her knees, puts his book down. His hand, sensitive, moves up the back of her leg, the undercurve of her buttocks before going around to the front. She likes to see her husband the great surgeon’s distended cock, his eyes boylike before the ballgame, and she loves his stubbly head against her cheek, his projection inside her.

While it’s happening, sometimes she pretends they are making love for the first time as they did when Selena was in the hospital, or, revising history, on an early date as teenagers. Sometimes they are divorced but still friendly after an accidental meeting in a restaurant, or they are on a beach at night, or unmarried adventurers sailing around the world in a sloop with the steering gear set, or a pair of movie stars going restless to his house after having just filmed a nude scene, or they are the nude scene itself getting out of hand in front of the stage crew. Or they are political leaders on the sly after the summit protocol, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. She does not tell Arnold, who assumes it’s the excitement of his own thick presence.

Such thoughts make her strangely sad, as if it were all finished. Not so, she scolds herself, stop that. Read, read. She likes this book tonight. It feeds her well. She wonders how someone so self-absorbed as Edward could disperse so easily through a story and take her so out of herself. The book makes her feel better about him, at least she hopes it does.

Bobby Andes called again. The telephone rang Tony Hastings out of the shower before his second date with Louise Germane, forcing him to sit at the phone by his desk with a towel around him, dripping water. Watching the couple in shorts across the street, washing their bright red car.

The voice on the telephone said, ‘I got some news you might not like.’

Tony waited for it. Static, the tiny dead words, the bad news: They’re letting Ray Marcus go. Who? Ray Marcus, that’s Ray,
Ray
, they’re letting him go. ‘What do you mean, they’re letting him go?’ Tony said.

He heard the voice explaining, Bobby Andes, thin and nasal through the wires, saying they’re dropping the charges, dropping the case. Mr. District Fucking Attorney Gorman, that’s who, dropping the charges, insufficient evidence.

Tony was wiping his head with the towel, his idle penis exposed in his lap, his wet hairy legs, and across the street the girl in shorts with perfect fair legs leaning over the roof of the bright red car and polishing it dry.

‘He needs corroboration,’ the voice said.

When the girl leaned far enough, the back of her shorts lifted over the edges of her buttocks.

‘What did you say?’

‘Well at least you had the satisfaction of socking him in the teeth.’

Other voices on the line, a woman laughing.

‘It’s politics, Tony, that’s what it is.’

In the silence the girl turned the hose on her boyfriend, who threw a sponge at her. Louise Germane expected him at six.

The voice of Bobby Andes, stretched thin over miles of countryside, wanted Tony to make another trip to Grant Center.

Tony tried to resist. ‘It takes ten, twelve hours to drive there,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep going back.’

He heard Bobby Andes saying, ‘I want you here as soon as possible. Marcus will try to leave the state. Get a head start, spend the night in a motel.’

The military peremptory, not to speak of the intrusion on his privacy, on Louise Germane, on Tony’s bewildered showered penis at rest in his lap. ‘I have a date tonight.’

Noise.

‘What?’

‘If you’re satisfied slugging Ray Marcus in the jaw. You find that an adequate punishment.’

So Tony said he would come, but not until tomorrow. He thought, there is no reason to be upset, and I am not upset yet. I will be upset later on, though. I will be shocked and I won’t be able to get it out of my head, later on.

He wondered if he would be angry. It was an affront. He said, You would think they would give at least equal weight to my word against Ray’s and let the jury decide. You would think my status in life, not to mention I was the victim, would give me credence, with that record in his background.

So he started the next morning in the early sunlight at six, and drove with the memory of his abbreviated night with Louise Germane, their second, in which he brought her back to the house and she helped him pack, and he tried to keep his mind on her and enjoy her and keep down the fear. The alarm clock woke him at four-thirty to the shock of having been asleep while something terrible was happening. He woke her beside him, and they had breakfast in the kitchen and he
took her back to her apartment, leaving her with puffy eyes in the cheerful birdsinging six o’clock sunlight, where she intended to go back to bed and get the rest of her sleep.

He watched her wave sleepily, then followed the empty streets to the Interstate, which took him out into the flat countryside with mist on the fields. Once she was gone, the fear he had been fighting took over, an invasion. Something terrible is going to happen. A disaster coming. He wondered how he could stand it the whole day ahead with nothing but to drive and drive.

The long tiresome trip began to unfold, which had become so familiar, every detail in the same slow order, step by step, with each curve ahead opening to another vista with no surprises, farmhouse to farmhouse, bridge to bridge, woods and fields, all day long. With the shriek of the wind, the pounding and constant presence of tires that could explode and engine that could burn out and shell that could rattle apart. Impatience rewoke with every mileage sign and back to sleep with the gentle curving of the road. The journey sheltered him for the time, hypnotizing him against its own dangers and keeping all else at bay.

He tried to understand what he was afraid of. He supposed it was Ray. Ray free, vicious, hunting him down to finish what he had failed to complete last summer. Mister, your wife. With additional motivation for the smashed tooth. Later in the morning the fear took a new turn. Ray would go after Louise Germane. Of course, that’s what he does, destroying me through my women. All the more need for speed, to intercept before he slips away.

Passage through a city and the need for coffee took his attention, and when he was free again, Bobby Andes was there, screened through the girl leaning over the roof of her
car, the back of her shorts above the edges of her buttocks: ‘If you’re content with hitting Marcus in the jaw.’ Trust him, he had something up his sleeve. Tony thought, It’s not just Ray. He was afraid of Bobby Andes. What, his moral harshness, his contempt? Something nasty, not yet clear, which could get him in trouble if he didn’t spot it in time?

After lunch no explanation seemed adequate to his discomfort. He felt delinquent in some duty. He had contracted an enormous debt, the due date had passed and foreclosure was imminent. It haunted him, I owe something to somebody. It was not financial. It had to do with Ray Marcus or Bobby Andes or Laura and Helen. Possibly Louise Germane, though unlikely, she being too new. It grew dim again. It was like a ghost, supernatural. Something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible has happened. One, the other, or both.

It would be even worse if something terrible was happening right now. Happening because something terrible did not happen. Mr. District Fucking Attorney Gorman has determined there was no case. Because what Mr. Tony Hastings saw was not enough. His identification of Ray, the three guys in the woods, the crime, was judged to be no identification, no Ray Marcus, no three guys in the woods, no woods, no crime. Tony Hastings mistaken. It made him want to howl. If they don’t believe me, who am I? If what I remember is not good enough, what am I remembering? Where did it go, my life, what have I been doing since?

In the late afternoon, in the rolling country of eastern Ohio after another coffee, his mind cleared and the world seemed ordinary again, though not without the feeling he had simply locked up the haunting question in a room and would be hearing from it again. He asked himself the rational question, Exactly what is the purpose of this trip, and was surprised
to discover he did not know. Ray Marcus has been released, and Andes wants me to come. To
help
, he said, but no word as to how. It’s a hell of a long journey for so indefinite a purpose.

He counted up the number of long journeys he had taken at Bobby Andes’s request. This would be his fourth visit to Grant Center in a year. All this in pursuit of three men. He thought, Why I must be crazy. This is insane.

It was the vagueness of purpose this time that proved it. Each of the other trips had a specific end which made some sense. He supposed Bobby Andes had a plan, something secret, not safe to mention over the telephone. Why, he said, that’s mad. It’s not me that’s insane, it’s Bobby Andes.

They met not in Grant Center but in Topping, in a restaurant with a counter, and they sat in a booth by the window opposite the fronts of their cars parked outside. Tony’s dinner was tough gray roast beef under a blanket of gravy. He faced Bobby Andes, who bent over his food, curling his spaghetti on his fork, raising a forkful to his mouth but not putting it in, putting his plate aside, leaving it untouched. Tony Hastings looked at him and said, This man is mad. Adding after a moment, So am I. Bobby Andes said, ‘If it wasn’t for this cancer.’

‘What cancer?’

Bobby Andes glared. ‘I told you, I got six fucking months to live.’

Tony Hastings stared back. ‘Did you tell me?’ Did he sleep through such an important message as that?

Bobby Andes was saying how it was the lawyer he got, lawyer the court appointed, named Jenks, how him and Gorman made a deal and got Ray off. A deal, politics, you take this one, I’ll let you have that one.

Tony asked, ‘When did you tell me about your illness?’

‘It’s Jenks and Gorman.’

‘I don’t understand what you are talking about.’

‘They want to ease me out.’

‘Why would they do that?’

Bobby Andes did not answer.

‘Would they drop a murder case to do that?’

Yes, the case. Bobby Andes explained. They were saying the case wasn’t well prepared, it was a sloppy job, slapdash, no evidence, evidence gathered improperly, won’t stand up in court. According to Andes, Gorman was punishing him because the sonofabitch is scared to death to take on a case he might lose. He asked if that made Tony mad.

‘I saw them, Bobby.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

‘Are they dropping Lou too?’

Not Lou. They got the fingerprints on Lou. Make him stand trial for the whole fucking Hastings case. That’s fine if you’re satisfied to hold Lou accountable for crimes inspired by Ray.

‘It’s no good if they don’t get Ray,’ Tony said.

‘That’s what I thought you thought,’ Andes said. He told how Ray got off because the only thing they had on him was Tony’s word, and Jenks had scared Gorman into thinking that wouldn’t stand up. And because it was
Andes’s
case and Gorman thought it was time he retired and got the benefit of his cancer in Florida.

‘You never told me about the cancer.’

‘The word going out these days is I’m incompetent. Which Gorman would like to prove.’

‘What if I spoke to him?’

Bobby laughed, haw haw. The trouble with you is this
airtight alibi Ray’s got. His airtight alibi. He was with Leila Whozis, she backs him up, her aunt backs him up, what can they do?

‘There’s another problem, too.’

‘What?’

‘Get this.’ According to Gorman, your identification of Ray is unreliable. Calm down, it ain’t personal, it’s lawyers. It’s Ray’s alibi, plus she backed him up. Plus, it was in the dark which increased your chances for error. Plus, you couldn’t identify Turk. That’s big with Gorman, you couldn’t identify Turk.

‘Ray was more vivid than Turk.’

‘Don’t tell me, I believe you. We sure could have used your friend in the truck.’

‘Who?’

‘The deaf man. He could have identified Ray.’

‘He probably never knew about it.’

‘Everybody in the county knew about it. Sonofabitch was too scared to come forward. Mind his own business, the bastard.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Well, according to Bobby Andes, the obvious way would be to break somebody down. He told how he tried that on Lou Bates, which they wouldn’t let him because all Gorman would allow was polite questions. You don’t break an ox like Bates with polite questions. According to Bobby Andes, Lou Bates was an idiot. He had one principle of survival, name rank and serial number. He don’t know Ray, period. When Bobby told him what the guys at Herman’s had said, Lou said, ‘If I had a beer with him, I never knew who he was.’ When Bobby suggested it wasn’t fair for him to take the rap for everybody, Lou didn’t know what Bobby was talking about.
When Bobby asked who was that third guy running away at the Bear Valley Mall, he don’t know, was there another guy? Big stone face with a beard.