“Lil? Come on. Pick up.”
Breaking down, she picked up the phone.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Her larynx wasn’t working. She said nothing. Her fist was at her heart.
“I’ll come tonight after work, late. Okay?” Spencer said. There was heaviness in his voice.
Lily was in the studio when she heard his keys in her door. She loved that he could come and go whenever he pleased. That he could do in her life whatever he pleased.
She came out, stood in the living room. He looked so good, so serious, so grown up, and for some reason so haunted.
Lily wanted to tell him how much he meant to her and what she felt for him, but by the way she cried and clasped his head and neck and whispered, Spencer…when he was on top of her, his arms supporting his weight off her, staying that way, not tiring, by the way she cried afterward, buried under him, hanging on to him, shuddering in her limbs, in her shoulders, in her stomach, Lily guessed that he already knew.
They were lying in bed, and it was all wrong. Lily felt it. They may have made love, but whatever tension it released it did not this time resolve the tension of their eternal conflict.
She was afraid to ask him what was the matter. She wasn’t making that mistake again. She wasn’t going to ruin their making up with her senseless idiocy.
Suddenly it was Spencer who spoke. He told her things. Quietly he told her he had been for the past eight months investigated by IA. Lily took hold of his hand in mute sympathy, while thinking hard of the next considerate thing to say. She didn’t quite know how to get to the next question. Her stomach fluttered.
“I don’t understand. What exactly are they accusing you of?”
“They think I had something to do with Nathan Sinclair’s death.”
Lily fought the impulse to let go of his hand.
Why did she think Spencer was fighting the impulse to let go of hers?
She mustered the courage in her chemo-ridden entrails to say, “Why don’t you tell them you didn’t do it?”
“I told them.”
“And?”
“Obviously they don’t believe me, or they wouldn’t still be talking to me.”
Spencer wasn’t more forthcoming about this, as if he had something more to say but didn’t want to say it to Lily. It felt as if he had more to say about all manner of things and didn’t want to say them.
And interestingly—Lily didn’t want to hear them. Suddenly she did not want to press. An awful heaviness was descending upon her from feeling Spencer’s grim and determined body around her.
“I’ve been so involved with myself,” Lily said quietly, “and all the while, you needed me, too, I knew you were going through something.” She turned to him.
Spencer shook his head. “I’m not going through anything, Lil. You, on the other hand do need my help. I’m fine. This whole thing with the IA, it will blow over. Or it won’t. In either case, I’m ready for the consequences.”
He said it. She thought about it. “What consequences?”
“Lily, mine is not an existential universe. It is not meaningless. Like you I believe in a universe in which actions don’t happen in a vacuum. Where all actions, minuscule and enormous, have resonating effects. I believe that Nathan Sinclair took actions that eventually resulted in consequences that he did not intend or foresee. Like many people.”
It was Spencer’s bitter tone that she could not fathom but felt was somehow related to her; it was hurting her, prickling her skin. Lily felt her skin get cold and transmit anxiety through her body; she could not stop the involuntary gasp, could not stop the moving away. She put her hands over her eyes, and as Spencer was bending over her, Lily was thinking that indeed this was something that affected not just Spencer. It exploded inside her: This IA thing with him was about her, too! Her. And Amy. And Andrew.
“This isn’t just about Nathan Sinclair, is it, Spencer?”
He let go of her and moved away on the bed. “No, Lily. It never is just about one thing.”
“Okay, let’s have it. What does your IA investigation have to do with my brother?”
“The same thing that you going to Jan McFadden’s and not telling me has to do with your brother.”
Lily’s heart fell. “There was nothing to tell,” she said in an unsteady voice.
“We’re in bed. Stop lying. I know the truth now. And your brother is out to quiet me, there is no question. He’s got private detectives looking into every cranny of my life, to get me off the case, to shut me up. It is not a coincidence that every time I go and see him with new evidence, not a day goes by before my ass is hauled up to IA on some bogus charge or old suspicion. He’s got people hard at work on this. If I’ve ever taken a bribe, used excessive force, drugs while at work, fired my weapon indiscriminately, been involved in any corruption. But the only thing Andrew’s got is the death of Nathan Sinclair, and he wields him like the sword of Damocles.”
Lily moved away from him. “Spencer,” she uttered, “who are you? Why are you so paranoid? This is my brother we’re talking about! This isn’t some organized crime boss. My clean, eventempered congressman of a brother. You are being completely unreasonable.”
“Lily, your friend Amy was with your clean, married, eventempered congressman brother for three years while he lied to your face, and she lied to your face.”
She jumped off the bed. Where did she find the strength? “Maybe. Yes, you’re right, he’s a liar, and a bastard, he didn’t do the right thing, you’re right, yes, but he didn’t kill her!” she yelled. “He didn’t do it. You don’t know him like I know him. This isn’t your Nathan Sinclair, this is different, this life is different!”
Spencer also got up, sat up. “Calm down.”
“People get kidnapped all the time,” Lily said, panting. “I hear it on TV. Girls, young girls, taken, abducted by strangers or bare acquaintances.”
“Lily, you’re talking to a missing persons investigator. I know. I get hundreds of those cases a year. Young people is the key. Not twenty-four-year-old college students. Amy went out one morning and never came back. She left all her money and credit cards behind. Unlike the time when she went traveling with her friends, having actually tied up her life, this time she left one Friday morning for the afternoon and evaporated off the earth. And by the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed that she disappeared as soon as you left for Maui.”
“What are you talking about?” Lily was aghast. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing? Everything? I’m merely saying, it’s been noted, Lily, you being out of the way.”
“Out of the way for what?” she gasped. And then she remembered Amy saying to her, oh, yes, Lily, by all means, do go to Maui, you definitely should, and Andrew saying to her, are you sitting down, Liliput, definitely go to Maui, go as soon as you can, soothe our mother, and she stared at Spencer even more bewildered.
“So what happened to her?” said Spencer. “Where is her custody battle? Who is fighting over Amy? Where is her ransom note? Who wants money for her?”
“Not my brother.” Lily’s voice was shaky.
“What do you know about your brother?”
“I know he couldn’t kill her.”
“No?”
“No.” She got her bearings back full throttle. “Because aside from running for public office, aside from wanting to be president of the United States, he has never felt passionately about anything in his whole life! Never, about anything in his whole life! No extremes for him, just right down the middle, just one speed, one steady, rock-solid speed, a gentle up-slope—that’s my brother!”
“Just like you, huh, Lil?” Spencer said that ironically because she wasn’t down the middle at the moment, standing in the dark, shrieking.
“People like that,” Lily went on, hyperventilating, “don’t kill other people. They barely even break up with them. One day they just stop calling, and hope that no one cared enough about
them to notice.” She lowered her eyes. “Kind of the way you treat the women in your life, Spencer.”
He lowered his eyes, too, but only for a moment. “Lily, I repeat, you don’t know anything about your brother. You don’t know anything about Amy. You don’t know anything about Milo. You barely know about yourself. Amy transferred to your university, took your classes, sought you out, moved in with you, was involved with your brother under your very nose, in this tiny apartment, and you didn’t know! And Jan McFadden is still waiting for her. I mean, are you on my side, or what?”
“No! I am not on your side,” Lily whispered fiercely, suddenly giving such clarity to the unspeakable. “I’m not on Amy’s side.” She lowered her head this time for good because the intensity of her feelings overwhelmed her. “I’m on my brother’s side.”
Spencer got out of bed, still naked, eyes glaring, his own intensity apparent in the stiffness of his body. “Well, it took you long enough to say it.”
“I will never, ever, do anything to help you hurt him, not for Jan McFadden, not for Amy, not for you, do you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“So what are you going to do now, Spencer?” said Lily. “Are you going to kill him, too?”
Spencer sucked in his breath, and his head tilted sideways, as if he had been struck. “Ah. If only I had known a little earlier you harbored this much malice toward me,” he said. “That you would use what I tell you against me the first chance you got.”
“What about you using what I told you the first chance you got? You knew I didn’t want to tell you about Jan McFadden, you knew I didn’t mean to tell you, you got me at my weakest moment, and then you went to try to wreck my brother’s life a little bit more! What do you call that?”
“You lied to me, you tried to keep it from me, even though you yourself thought something was wrong with him hiding it!”
“No! I just knew you would turn it around and use it against him, like you use every single thing I ever tell you against him!”
Spencer was standing naked in front of her. “You shouldn’t have hidden your true self for so long, Lily. Shouldn’t have let me waste my time with you.”
“What about me wasting my time with you?” she cried. “I’ve got less time to waste than you.”
He started getting dressed on one side of the bed. Lily was crying on the other.
“We are all each minute closer to death,” said Spencer, straightening up. “With every fight, every harsh word, every evil deed, one step closer to our eternity. All of us. Not just you.”
“Please leave my brother alone,” Lily said through her tears, her voice breaking. “For me.”
He was fixing the straps that harnessed his on-duty Glock-20 to his body, not looking at her.
“Please. And I promise he will leave you alone.”
“I will not leave your brother alone,” Spencer said, grabbing the last of his things off her bureau—his wallet, his keys, his beeper. “But I will leave you alone.”
What was he doing? Spencer thought this every night he walked home. The question was never why. The question was and remained: What now?
He decided to go home via Michael’s Pub. He knew Gabe might still be there—and he was. They ordered drinks, clinked them together. Spencer barely put his to his mouth. Oh how good he was at pretending! How good he was tonight at sitting straight up on the bar stool as he pretended to sip his whisky and didn’t even lick his lips or ask for a double or another round. He just sat, and clinked, and put the empty glass down and continued talking, as if it was all nothing, just a normal late night at a bar downtown. It wasn’t a Friday or a Saturday but Spencer simply didn’t know how to get rid of what he was feeling without the drink.
“What’s the matter, O’Malley? Hard stuff on the McFadden girl?”
“Stuff, no stuff, I don’t know.” Spencer sighed. “Got myself into a bind, McGill. Into a real bind. Don’t know what to do.”
“This ain’t over a goil, is it?”
“‘Tis, McGill. ‘Tis.”
Spencer motioned Ted for two more drinks, and when Gabe wasn’t looking, opened out his thumb and forefinger for Ted, who quietly brought Spencer a fat double. They drank.
And on the way home, Spencer knew that he could no longer have it both ways, all ways. A call needed to be made by him on what to do about Lily Quinn. A choice. To have her, or to have justice. To have her, or to have Glenlivet instead of blood in his veins. Tonight it was Glenlivet. What a relief not to think of her, not to talk, not to feel.
Lily couldn’t sleep.
The weekend passed with no word from Spencer. Tuesday she had to go to the hospital for blood work, which was neither good nor bad: no bad news, but no good news either. But Lily could tell DiAngelo was keeping to himself. He gave her Alkeran again. She spent Tuesday night first on her back, and then on her hands and knees. When she could finally sit up she painted, sketched, stapled down the drying canvas, crying. Screaming black mouths again, black buildings, black trees. No one would want her damn paintings of existential despair.
Lily wanted Spencer back, but she wanted her brother left alone also.
On Wednesday, the day from the rings of hell, Lily was lying on the sofa, not picking up the phone, not getting up, not eating, not drinking, not reading, not watching TV, or listening to the radio, certainly not painting, just watching the clocks tick by the slow beat of her life, when there was a knock on her door.
She wanted to get up, but found she had no strength. Please let it be him, Lily prayed as she pulled herself up. But she prayed to him. Spencer, please let it be you.
Outside her door he stood.
He was mute as he watched her, and she knew she must have been quite a sight, because he said, “What in the world are you doing to yourself?”
“Nothing,” Lily replied and swayed. “Why didn’t you just use your key, like always?”
Without replying, Spencer came in, came in, familiar and true as always. He put his arms around her, brought her to him, they sat on the couch. Lily wanted to ask him to go to bed but was afraid. This is your life, Lily, a voice inside her shouted, the only life you’re ever going to have, the only life you want. Aren’t you going to fight for it?
With a lowered head Spencer said nothing for a while as they sat in the quiet, hearing only the ticking of the clocks and their tormented breathing.
“I’m sorry, Spencer.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I do. I do. You’ve been so good to me, and I—” Lily became choked up. “And I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down.”
“I did. You confided in me, told me about your trouble, and I took your confidence into my angry fist and punched you in the face.”
“No—you didn’t.”
“I said such awful things. I’m very sorry. I failed the test.”
He shook his head. “There was no test, Lily.”
“I have been tested and have been found wanting. I backed away from you, I was deliberately cruel to you. Despite how I feel about you, I treated you like shit. What does that say about me?”
“You didn’t treat me like shit. You just forgot about me.”
“You were right to leave. You should have left sooner.”
Spencer didn’t protest that one. He said, “I should have never taken advantage of a sick girl.”
“I’m not sick, I’m better.”
“I’m not the pure one here. I’ve been torturing you with things you can’t possibly deal with—and shouldn’t have to. I should know better.”
“I can deal. Believe in me. Please. Please believe I can get better, and be a help to you and be supportive of you. I can be someone you turn to, someone you need.”
Spencer took her hands into his. Lily got up off the couch and knelt in front of him, knelt between his legs, looking at him pleadingly. “I can, Spencer, please forgive me,” she whispered. She didn’t know how she was getting the words
out, they were so painful. “I will do better. Please give me another chance to show you, to prove it.”
He let go of her, and got up, stepping away from the couch—away from her.
“Lily, you know I will not stop helping you. But…”
Oh no, no, no, no, please, no but.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“No.”
Spencer pulled her up off the floor, sat her down on the couch, but himself remained standing. “I can’t. We shouldn’t have started, though I suppose it was inevitable. I don’t know what I was thinking. You are on a rebound from tragedy and I took advantage of your weakness. It’s my fault.”
“No. I will be different, Spencer. I promise. I didn’t mean those things I said. I was just upset.”
“Lily, I don’t care about what you said. I don’t want you to change into something you’re not. Andrew is your brother! It can be no other way. I would be no other way if I were in your shoes. But you do recognize that we remain in terrible conflict, you and I.”
“No.”
“Terrible conflict. You know it. I know it. Your grandmother knows it. Your brother knows it. We pretended for a little while it wasn’t so, but we can’t pretend anymore.”