Galilee

  “I can’t do that, Gar. I’ve got two breakfast meetings tomorrow.”

  “I took the liberty of canceling them.”

  “What for?”

  “Because we need to talk.” He took out a box of matches and carefully rekindled his cigar. “Chiefly about the women in our lives.” He drew on the cigar. “So . . . tell me about Rachel.”

  “There isn’t a lot to tell. She was up at the farmhouse—”

  “—with Margie.”

  “Right. Then she decided to take a road trip. Nobody knows where.”

  “Margie knows,” Garrison said. “The bitch probably suggested it.”

  “I don’t know why she’d do that.”

  “To cause trouble. That’s her favorite thing. You know what she’s like.”

  “Will you see if you can get some answers out of her?”

  “You’d be better off trying instead of me,” Garrison replied. “If I ask for something we’re guaranteed not to get it.”

  “Where’s Margie tonight?”

  Garrison shrugged. “I don’t ask ’cause I don’t care. She’s probably out drinking somewhere. There’s three or four of them just go out and get plastered together. That bitch who was married to Lenny Bryant—”

  “Marilyn.”

  “Yeah. She’s one of them. And the woman who ran the restaurants.”

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “Thin woman. Big teeth, no tits.”

  “Lucy Cheever.”

  “You see you’ve got a good memory for these women.”

  “I had an affair with Lucy Cheever, that’s why.”

  “You’re kidding. You did Lucy Cheever?”

  “I took her down to New Orleans and fucked her brains out for a week.”

  “Big teeth. Small tits.”

  “She’s got nice tits!”

  “They’re fucking minuscule. And she’s never sober.”

  “She was sober in New Orleans. At least some of the time.”

  Garrison shook his head. “I don’t get it with you. I mean, she’s got to be fifty.”

  “This was five or six years ago.”

  “Even so. You could have any piece of ass you want and you go spend a week with a woman who’s ten, fifteen years older than you are? What the fuck for?”

  “I liked her.”

  “You liked her.” Mr. Ko had returned with the menus and the milk. “Get me a brandy will you?” Garrison said to him, “We’ll order later.” Ko withdrew, and Garrison returned to the mystery of his brother’s liaison with Lucy Cheever. “Was she good?”

  “Will you just let it alone? I’ve got more important things to think about than Lucy fucking Cheever.” He drank half of his glass of milk. “I want to know where Rachel is.”

  “She’ll come back. Don’t worry.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She will. She’s got no choice.”

  “Of course she’s got a fucking choice. She could decide she wants a separation.”

  “She could, I suppose. She’d be stupid, but she could.” He drew on his cigar. “Does she know anything she shouldn’t?”

  “Not from me she doesn’t.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning she talks with Margie. Who knows what the hell they’ve discussed.”

  “Margie knows better.”

  “Maybe when she’s sober.”

  “You’ve had Rachel sign some kind of prenuptial agreement, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Don’t raise your voice.”

  “I told Cecil to have her sign it.”

  “I convinced him it wasn’t necessary,” Mitchell said. Garrison snorted at the absurdity of this. “I didn’t want her thinking she was entering a business arrangement. I was in love with her, for fuck’s sake. I still am.”

  “Then you’d better make sure she keeps her mouth shut.”

  “I know,” Mitch said.

  “Well if you know why the fuck didn’t you have her sign the prenuptial?” He leaned across the table, catching hold of Mitchell’s arm. “Let me put this really simply. If she tries to say anything about our business, family business, to anyone, I’m going to slap a gag order on her.”

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “How do you know? You don’t even know where she is right now. She could be sitting down talking to some dickhead journalist.” Mitchell shook his head. “I mean what I say about the gag order,” Garrison reiterated. “I don’t mind being the heavy if you think you’ve got a chance of patching things up.”

  “It’s not a question of patching things up. We’ve had a bad time, but it’s nothing permanent.”

  “Sure, sure . . .” Garrison said, his tone wearied, as though he’d heard this kind of self-deception countless times before. “You tell yourself whatever the fuck you need to hear.”

  “I married her because I feel something for her. That feeling hasn’t gone away.”

  “It will,” Garrison replied, waving Mr. Ko over, “Trust me, it will.”

  ii

  Mitchell discovered he had a better appetite than he’d expected. The food was good, though Garrison was able to tolerate far spicier versions of the dishes than Mitchell. Twice during the meal he exhorted Mitchell to try a forkful of something he was eating, and Mitchell was left gasping, much to Garrison’s amusement.

  “I’m going to have to start educating your palate,” he said.

  “It’s a little late for that.” Garrison glanced up from his plate, his spectacles slightly fogged.

  “It’s never too late,” he said.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve always had a more delicate stomach than me. But that’s got to change. For all our sakes.” Garrison set down his fork and picked up his glass of wine. “Did you know Loretta goes to an astrologer?”

  “Yes, Cadmus let it drop one day. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Last Sunday I got a call from Loretta. She wanted me to come over to the house. Urgently. She’d just been to see this astrologer, and he was full of bad news.”

  “About what, for God’s sake?”

  “About us. The family.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That our lives were going to change, and we weren’t going to like it very much.” Garrison was cradling his wine glass in his hands, staring out past his brother with middle distance. “In fact, we’re not going to like it at all.”

  Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Why the hell does Loretta waste money on this bullshit—”

  “Wait. There’s more. The first sign of this . . .” Garrison paused, searching for the word “ . . . big change, is that one of us is going to lose our wife.” His gaze finally came back to Mitchell. “Which you have.”

  “She’ll be back.”

  “So you keep insisting. But whether she comes back or she doesn’t, the point is she left.”

  “Are you telling me you believe what this guy was saying?”

  “I haven’t finished. He said the other sign was going to have something to do with a man from the sea.”

  Mitchell sighed: “That’s so lame,” he said. “She probably told him something about the situation . . . and he just fed it back to her.”

  “Maybe,” Garrison said.

  “Well what’s the alternative?” Mitchell said, a little irritably, “That this dickhead’s right, and we’re all heading for disaster?”

  “Yeah,” Garrison said. “That’s the alternative.”

  “I prefer my version.”

  Garrison sipped his wine. “Like I said . . .” he murmured, “you’ve always had a weak stomach.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Garrison gave a rare smile. “That you don’t want to even contemplate the possibility that there’s something going on here we should be taking seriously. That maybe things are falling apart?”

  Mitchell threw up hi
s hands. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” he said. “With you, of all people. You’re supposed to be the rational one in the family.”

  “And look where it got me,” Garrison growled.

  “You look just fine to me.”

  “Jesus.” Garrison shook his head. “That goes to show how much we understand one another, doesn’t it? I’m chewing antidepressants like fucking candies, Mitch. I go to analysis four times a week. The sight of my wife naked makes me want to puke. Does that help paint the picture for you?” He eyed his wine. “I shouldn’t really be drinking alcohol. Not with antidepressants. But right now I don’t give a fuck.” He paused, then said, “You want something more to eat?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You’ve got room for ice cream. Allow yourself some childish pleasures once in a while. They’re very therapeutic.”

  “I’m putting on love handles.”

  “No woman on the fucking planet’s going to throw you out of bed because you’ve got a fat ass. Eat some ice cream.”

  “Don’t change the subject. We were talking about you mixing drink and pills.”

  “No we weren’t. We were talking about me getting a little crazy, because it’s done me no fucking good staying sane.”

  “So get crazy,” Mitchell said. “I don’t give a shit. Take the next board meeting naked. Fire everyone. Hire deaf-mutes. Do whatever the fuck you want, but don’t start listening to some crap from a fucking astrologer.”

  “He was talking about Galilee, Mitch.”

  “A man from the sea!? That could be anybody.”

  “But it wasn’t anybody. It was him. It was Galilee.”

  “You know what,” Mitchell said, raising his hands, “Let’s stop talking about this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the conversation’s going round in circles. And I’m bored.”

  Garrison stared at him, then expelled a long, strangely contented breath. “So what are you doing with the rest of the night?” he said.

  Mitch glanced at his watch. “Going home to bed.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Alone.”

  “No sex. No ice cream. You’re going to die a miserable man, you know that? I could arrange some company for you if you like.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Mitchell laughed. “I’m sure.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Trying to get me laid, like I was still seventeen. Remember that whore you brought back to the house for me?”

  “Juanita.”

  “Juanita! Right. Jesus, what a memory!”

  “All she wanted to do—”

  “Don’t remind me—”

  “—was sit on your face! You should have married her,” Garrison said, pushing his chair back and getting up. “You’d have twenty kids by now.” Mitchell looked sour. “Don’t get mad. You know it’s true. We both fucked up. We should have married dumb bitches with childbearing hips. But no. I choose a drunk and you choose a shopgirl.” He picked up his glass and drained the last of his wine. “Well . . . have a nice night.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “I’ve got an assignation.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “I don’t even know her,” Garrison said as he headed away from the table. “You’ll see. It’s much easier that way.”

  XV

  i

  There was a time in my life—many, many years ago; more years than I care to count—when nothing gave me more pleasure than to listen to songs of love. I could even sing a few, if I was drunk enough. On occasion, before I lost the use of my legs, we’d venture out together, my wife Chiyojo, Marietta and myself, to see traveling players in Raleigh, and there’d always been a spot or two in the show when the mood would become sweetly melancholy, and a crooner, or a quartet of crooners, or the leading lady with a handkerchief clutched to her bosom, would offer up something to tug at our hearts. “I’ll Remember You, Love, In My Prayers,” or “White Wings”; the more grotesquely sentimental the better as far as I was concerned. But I lost my appetite for such entertainments when Chiyojo died. A plaintive ballad about love irrevocably lost was a fine thing to indulge in when the idol of your affections was sitting beside you, her hand clutching yours. But when she was taken from me—under circumstances so tragic they beggared anything a songwriter might dream up—I would start to weep as soon as a minor chord was played.

  And yet, in spite of my resistance to the subject, it creeps closer to these pages with every passing moment. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, this account draws nearer and nearer to a time when love must appear, transforming the lives of the characters I’ve set before you. Few will be untouched by its consequences, however immune they may believe themselves.

  And that, of course, includes myself. I’ve wondered more than once if fear of my own vulnerability was not the reason I didn’t attempt to put pen to paper earlier. The passion for words was always in me, from my mother, and I’ve certainly had plenty of spare time in the last century or so. But I could never do it. I was afraid—I am still afraid—that once I begin to write about love I will find myself consumed by the very fire I am building to burn other hearts.

  Of course in the end I have no choice. The romance approaches, as inevitable as the apocalypse Garrison was telling his brother about in the restaurant: because, of course, they are one and the same.

  Garrison parted from Mitchell outside the restaurant, dismissed his driver and went uptown to an apartment which he had purchased, unknown to anyone else in the family, for exactly the purpose he intended to use it tonight. He let himself in, pleased to find that the temperature of the place was far lower than would usually be thought to be comfortable, which fact meant the erotic rituals of the evening had already begun. He didn’t go directly to the bedroom, though he was now in a state of excitement. In the living room he poured himself a drink, and stood by the window to sip it and savor the moments of anticipation. Oh, if only all life were as rich and real to him as these moments; as charged with meaning and emotion. Tomorrow, of course, he would despise himself a little, and behave like a perfect sonofabitch to any and all who crossed his path. But tonight? Tonight, marinating in the knowledge of what lay before him, he was as close as he knew how to being a happy man. At last he set down the glass, without really drinking much at all, and loosening his tie wandered through to the elegantly appointed bedroom. The door was ajar. There was a light burning inside. He entered.

  The woman was lying on the bed. Her name was Melodie, he’d been told (though he doubted any woman who sold her body for this kind of purpose used the name they’d been brought with to God). There she lay, under a sheet, perfectly still, her eyes closed. There were a dozen white and yellow lilies on the pillow around her head; a nice funereal touch, courtesy of the man who arranged these scenarios for Garrison, Fred Platt. The smell of the flowers was not strong enough to compete with the other scent in the room however: that of disinfectant. Again, one of Platt’s felicities, this piney scent; one which Garrison had been a little unsettled by at first, pressing his fantasies as it did still closer to grim reality. But Platt knew Garrison’s psyche well: that first time with the disinfectant stinging the sinuses had been an erotic revelation. Now the scent was an indispensable part of the fantasy.

  He approached the bed, and stood at the end of it, looking down at the woman, studying her body for some sign of a shudder. But he could see only the very slightest tremor, which clearly the woman was doing her best to suppress. Good for her, he thought; she was a professional. He admired professionalism in all matters: in the trading of stocks, in the cooking of food, in the imitation of death. If it was worth doing, as Loretta was fond of saying, then it was worth doing properly.

  He reached down and plucked at the sheet, sliding it out from beneath Melodie’s hands, which were crossed on her breasts. She was naked beneath the sheet, her body made up with a pale pancake
, then dusted down, to lend her a cadaverous hue.

  “Lovely,” he said, without a trace of irony.

  She was indeed a pretty sight: her breasts small, her nipples alert with cold, and long. Her pubic hair was neatly trimmed, so as to offer him a glimpse of her intricately made labia. He would lick there soon.

  But first, the feet. He pulled the sheet off her completely, and let it drop to the floor. Then he went down on his knees at the end of the bed and applied his lips to the woman’s flesh. She was cold: the consequence of lying on a bed of ice sealed in plastic. He kissed her toes, and then the soles of her feet, slipping his hands around her slim ankles while he did so. Now that he had his skin against hers he could feel the tremors deep in her tissue, but they weren’t violent enough to distract him from the illusion. He could believe she was dead with very little difficulty. Dead and cold and unresisting.

  I won’t go on with the description; there’s no need. For those of you who wish to picture Garrison Geary pleasuring himself with a woman playing dead, you have all the information you need to conjure it; go to it if you wish. For the rest of us, enough to know that this was his special pleasure, his most anticipated bliss. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know what strange twist his psyche took that made this ritual so arousing to him: or who put it there. But there it was; and there I’ll leave him, covering the pseudo-corpse with kisses in preparation for the so-called act of love.

  For his part, Mitchell had decided to go back to the apartment to sleep. Rachel would come back there, tonight, he thought, and all would be forgiven. He’d hear a sound in the bedroom, and open his eyes to see her silhouette against the starry sky (he hated to sleep with the drapes closed; it made him dream smothering dreams), and she’d shed her clothes, and say she was sorry, so sorry, then slip into bed beside him. Perhaps they’d make love, but probably not. Probably she’d just put her head in the crook of his arm, and lay her hand on his chest, and they’d fall asleep that way, as they had when they’d first shared a bed.

  But his romantic expectations were dashed. She didn’t come home that night. He slept alone in the huge bed; at least he slept for the first hour or so, before waking with a stabbing ache in his lower abdomen, so sharp it made him want to cry like a baby. Cursing Garrison and his damnable Mr. Ko, he staggered, bent nearly double, into the bathroom, and dug through the medications there for something to soothe the pain. His sight was blurred with agony, and his hands shaking. It took him fully two or three minutes to locate the appropriate bottle of tablets and he’d no sooner fingered a couple of them onto his tongue than he felt a crippling spasm in his bowels, and only just reached the toilet in time before expelling a watery stream of foul-smelling feces. When the expulsion came to an end he stayed put, knowing the respite was only temporary. The ache in his belly had not been mellowed at all; he still felt as though his bowels were being pierced with needles.