‘Come on now, frenzied neighbors,’ Soapie called out, ‘let’s show a little life there! We don’t wanna make our readers have to guess which one’s the victim!’
‘A little red heart – right where you usually get your flu shots …’
‘What’s that about Cyril?’
‘My old corpus delicious isn’t good for much anymore, but – heh heh – if you need another bystander—’
‘Not that badly, old-timer. But I tell you what, if you can find one of those cops for me –’ Anatole burped ominously. ‘Woops! Hang on, kid! Are we ready, Leonard?’
‘Who, Fiona—?’
Jim stood, unlocked his knees, and paced around in a little circle. ‘Foot went to sleep,’ he explained apologetically.
‘Hold it, Leonard! Fats, stop crossing your eyes like that! You got no respect!’
‘You mean the one with the big nose?’
‘Sshh! She’s around here somewhere!’
‘Are you ready, Doc?’
‘That’s really hard to believe!’
‘Whoa, look what’s just blowed in! Get in here, gorgeous, and show these amateurs how it’s done!’ It was Regina, leaning in the doorway behind Leonard, gripping the doorjamb, looking drained as though she might have coldcreamed her face and just wiped it off. Her black hair and costume were limp, her lips still drooling. Slowly she lifted her head and found herself staring directly at Anatole, staring helplessly back. Briefly they reflected each other, gasping, eyes watering, hands sliding upward to clutch at their gaping mouths – then Anatole, swallowing hard against the bubbling sounds in his throat, lurched forward, falling over Ros’s body (‘Unf!’ Jim grunted), picked himself up and staggered out of the room, hand to mouth, Regina having just, with a muffled gargle, preceded him. ‘Hey, you clowns, come back here!’ exclaimed Soapie, his press hat flying, as Leonard struggled with his tipped camera, and Brenda asked: ‘Who is that boy anyhow?’
‘Tania’s nephew.’
‘Oh yeah?’ She cracked her gum. ‘Cute!’
‘Awright, just straighten the knees out where he hit her, Doc,’ Soapie shouted (I heard a hissed whisper: ‘Bitch!’), ‘we haven’t got all night.’ I glanced into my hand: yes, it was still there. I held it between my fingertips, letting my palm air out, recalling the little magic shows I used to do for my grandmother with coins and cards and little balls. The trick, always, depended on distraction, a lesson, as it were, in the way the world worked. Lloyd Draper had returned meanwhile with the short cop in tow, Fred now carrying a big steaming slice of pizza in both hands, and Soapie, flicking away the cigarette he’d just lit up, pulled Fred over to join us around the body. ‘Here by the head maybe … yeah, that’s – listen, gimme that garbage! Now, one step back … right, hold it! That’s terrific!’
‘Should I have my gun out maybe?’
‘What do you think, Leonard?’ Soapie asked around a mouthful of pizza, his head cocked (behind the lights, the doorbell rang again), and Fats said: ‘Say, is there eats?’
‘Yeah, all right, why not?’ Soapie mused, handing the rest of Fred’s drippy pizza to Leonard. Leonard folded it up and stuffed it all in his mouth, then wiped his hands on Yvonne’s bindings (‘Psst! Do me a favor, Leonard,’ she whispered, ‘go get me a drink!’) and, oozing oily juices from under his scruffy clump of moustache, bent down (he bugged his eyes at her and winked: ‘Ah, you’re a nut case, Leonard,’ she grumped) behind his viewfinder again. ‘Come on, let’s get a hump on, Soap, while there’s still some groceries left!’ Fats whined, and Soapie said: ‘No, don’t point that wart remover at the body, sarge! What kinda sense does that make? Aim it more toward Ger there!’
‘Hey—!’
‘I got the safety on,’ Fred assured me with a wink.
‘Talbot! Come on in here! You can take the kid’s place – make room for him there, Bren!’
‘How ’bout if we move this tab in round the table and do a little in-terior dec-oratin’ at the same time?’ Fats suggested hopefully.
‘At least you might tuck your shirt in,’ sniffed Wilma as Talbot wobbled over, a dippy smile on his face. He had his own jacket on, but the pants he was wearing now – agape at the waist and baggy at the ankles – were mine.
I glanced down at Alison, feeling vaguely apologetic, and caught her looking up at me. She blushed. ‘I was thinking about that play we saw,’ she whispered, ‘what you said that night about happy endings …’
Talbot, weaving blowzily in front of us and accompanied by a nimbus of sweat and bathpowder, belched. He seemed puzzled by the sight of Ros’s body at his feet, Fred’s upraised revolver. He braced himself on Jim’s shoulder and lifted his feet high over Ros’s body, as though straddling a fence. Alison, leaning back against me to make room, scratched furtively at the back of my thigh, her hair aglow with a light that was almost magical – except that it came from the lamp her husband, lost in the shadows behind it, was beaming at her. Talbot stumbled into our midst, peered blearily up at me. ‘Your can’s leakin’ all over the goddamn place,’ he announced loudly, and Patrick whispered: ‘Now?’
‘It’s as good a time as any,’ said Woody.
‘Stinks, too.’
‘I know, I’m going to call a plumber, Talbot,’ I said, excited by Alison’s hand, her pressing thigh, her toe on mine beneath the body: I squeezed the earring in my palm, recalling for some reason the wetness of that beggar’s tongue as he stacked the coins. A kind of unappeasable hunger … ‘As soon as we’re done here—’
‘Oh yeah, the plumber. Met him on the stairs when I was comin’ down.’
‘What?’
‘Okay, lazy gents, let’s watch the little birdie!’
‘Love to! Pull it out there where we can see it, Talbot!’
‘You saw a plumber—?’
‘Cockadoodle-doo!’
‘Talbot—!’
‘That’s putting your best half-foot forward, Talbot,’ Yvonne cawed, as Soapie went on, Leonard beginning to click away: ‘Come on, everybody halo around there, squeeze up – you’re not paying attention, Ger! I’ve never seen you like this! Give us a hug or a smooch or something! Talbot’s got the idea – what’s the matter with the rest of you lot? This is a goddamn party, isn’t it – Pat, where are you going?’
‘I – I’ll be right back—!’
‘That’s disgusting, Talbot!’
‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ Brenda laughed, smacking her gum (Wilma, leaning toward Talbot in an effort to help him zip his spreading fly, had jostled us, and, as I gripped Alison’s buttock for support, she gasped and said: ‘I’ll meet you by the cellar stairs!’), ‘but there’s one over there that beats it!’
We turned to look at Earl Elstob, his hand in Michelle’s blouse, an erection pushing his pants out in front of him, like a plow – we all laughed, even Woody: a peculiar little barking noise – but I was wondering at the strange intense beauty of this charge between us, brief, sudden, even (we knew this, it lent poignancy, passion, to our furtive touches) ephemeral, yet at the same time somehow ageless: a cathectic brush, as it were, with eternity, numbing and profound …
‘Don’t laugh at him, it may be a tumor!’
‘Terrific!’ exclaimed Soapie as Leonard cranked and fired at us. ‘You got it now! Ha ha! Hold it!’
Fred, grinning over his shoulder at Elstob, had lowered his gun, but now he raised it again. ‘You’d be doing your little ball-and-chain a favor,’ he said, holding the smile for Soapie, but staring ominously at me, ‘if you told her to stop interfering with our investigation.’
‘Interfering?’ Alison was stroking my finger as though trying to peel back a foreskin.
‘How can you even see me, Soapie, past that wad on Talbot’s ear?’
‘Yeah, sweeping up, moving things, covering up the evidence – it can get her in a lotta trouble.’ I started to explain (Janny had appeared in the doorway, her pink skirt creased horizontally and makeup smeared, holding something up), but Woody was distracting the c
op, muttering something in his ear about the protection of forensic evidence; to give him room (but I was thinking about my wife, how to get a message to her), I leaned toward Alison’s breast. ‘He what – ?!’ roared Fred.
‘I think Janny’s got something for you,’ Talbot mumbled. I saw it now: the ice pick, my ascot knotted around the tip – in reflex, I jerked away from Alison. She too pulled back in alarm: ‘What – what’s the matter?’
‘Whoa! Hold the horses!’ Soapie shouted. Janny was picking her way past the lights and camera, waggling the pick and ascot like a little flag. ‘Only a couple more!’
‘No—!’
But it was Fred who broke up the picture-taking, leaping past us to smash Patrick in the face with the butt of his gun just as he was leaning into the pile of scattered criminalistic gear in the corner. ‘Hey!’ Lamps tipped, Soapie shouted something at Leonard, Patrick screamed (‘[Not in here, Janny!]’ I mouthed, backing off), Fats seized the cop by his collar and pulled him away.
‘A-a-gift from my m-mother … !’ Patrick bawled, his lip split, blood streaming from his nose and mouth as though a pipe had burst.
‘Now, what’d you go and do that for?’ Fats wanted to know, his big arm around Fred’s throat (I’d managed to get several people between me and Janny, but she came on, smiling dimly, holding the pick high): then Bob came rocking in, cocked revolver in an extended two-handed grip, shouting: ‘FREEZE!’ and Fats let go. ‘Awright, awright, I can take a hint …’
The two officers pried the tweezers out of Patrick’s clenched fist, then dragged him out, still blubbering bloodily, Bob covering us with his revolver. ‘Stupid little nance,’ Noble grumbled in the doorway, watching them go, and we all relaxed: I was on the move again.
‘Here, Gerry!’ Janny called, circling wide around Ros’s abandoned body in her stocking feet as I ducked behind Leonard. ‘We found it! It was under the bed!’
I scowled at her and shook my head, I was nearly at the door, but there she was, passing the pick on to me like a relay baton – what could I do? I grabbed it and tucked it inside my shirt. ‘Thanks! I – I was just looking for it!’
She smiled wanly, a little breathlessly, her face a blank (had someone put her up to this? I glanced over at Talbot: Wilma was fussing with his clothes and he grinned dopily at me over her bent back), then suddenly, spying something past my shoulder, she yanked me back against the wall, threw her arms around my neck, straddled my thigh, and kissed me, her greasy mouth yawning, in undisguised panic. ‘It’s that horrible Earl Elstob,’ she breathed. ‘Stick your finger in me, Gerry – quick!’
‘Eh, huh! Can I cut in?’
‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’ Janny panted, her thigh twitching mechanically between my legs as though pumping a treadle. ‘Well, nothing works like it used to, old-timer,’ Soapie was saying a few feet away, while across the room, Fats, giving Woody some money, seemed momentarily stunned: ‘Who, Roger—?’ Janny’s tongue dipped in and out of my ear like a swab. ‘You can’t find his lower lip, Gerry!’ she gasped. ‘It’s like kissing only half a mouth! I felt like I was falling over the edge of something!’
Brenda was holding a little handkerchief of some kind to her nose, her eyes watering. She offered it to Howard (‘I mean, French-kissing him is worse than painting a ceiling, Gerry!’), but he shrank back, Fats clutching her elbow in pained alarm: ‘They killed him, Bren!’ ‘Oh no! Not Roger – !’ And then, as they rushed out past Noble (the doorbell was ringing), someone on the stairs shouted down: ‘You the guy who lives here?’ He was leaning over the railing to peer in at us in the living room, a bulky man in cap and overalls, monkey wrench in his fist, the name STEVE stitched over his pocket. There were new voices in the hallway, the slap and bang of doors.
I eased Janny away. ‘Yes … ?’
‘Well, I can’t do much with the stool, mister, I didn’t bring the right tools – but it’s easy to see what’s fouling up your tub.’
‘The tub? But I didn’t know it was—’
‘Yeah, some poor broad just took her last drink in it.’
‘What?’ I felt the pick slip, pinched it nervously against my ribs with my elbow. People were passing between us, greeting each other, pulling off wraps, asking about Ros (‘In here!’ one of them shouted, a woman in a yellow knit dress), there was a lot of confusion. ‘Who … ?’ But I knew, yes, even before Anatole came tumbling down the stairs behind the plumber, wheyfaced and woebegone, I knew – and the others knew, too, knew something, for there was a sudden awestruck silence as at the raising of a baton. Even the comings and goings had stopped, the greetings, the music, the footsteps, the whisper of clothing against clothing had stopped. There was only, in another room somewhere, the solitary clink of a fork against a dish.
‘Uncle Howard!’ Anatole cried.
We all turned to look: Howard was in the middle of the room, alone, down on his plump haunches alongside Ros, his hand under her silvery skirt; he gaped back at us, aghast, seemingly transfixed there in an intersection of beamed lamps, his cracked spectacles aglitter with a confusion of tiny lights as though his eyes were bursting. ‘My god, what are you doing, Howard—?!’ a woman asked.
His mouth worked but all that came out was a little squeak. A flush, seeming to rise from the well of his dangling tie, flooded up through his throat and into his cheeks, crept behind his eyes and into his scalp. ‘My, ah … tiepin!’ he managed to stammer at last. ‘I … eh … dropped—’
‘It’s Aunt Tania, Uncle Howard! She’s dead!’
A sudden spasm jerked Howard’s lips back into a terrible clenched grin, the flush draining away as though some plug had been pulled – then he fainted and, anchored by the hand still locked in Ros’s thighs, fell over her body, Leonard’s flashgun popping.
There was a pause, then a rush for the stairs, people shouting, crying, swearing. The plumber, catching my eye as they clambered past him, shrugged apologetically. ‘Christ! When did all this happen?’ somebody asked behind me, and Soapie said: ‘That’s it, Leonard! That’s our story!’
‘We’re not exactly sure, there’s an Inspector here from Homicide trying to work it out now.’
‘Notch it!’
‘Woody—?’
I stood, rooted in turmoil, clasping the ice pick to my breast like precious treasure and staring down at my feet, invaded by a fearful sense of some kind of ultimate déjà vu. I was standing, I saw, in one of the police team’s chalk drawings of Ros, the fetal one: what had Tania said about primal outlines? Life, she’d said (I seemed to see her again, kneeling at the tub, her arms scabbed with pink suds, peering at me over her pale turned shoulder as though to offer me something: love perhaps, or a vision of it), was nothing but a sequence of interlocking incarnations, an interminable effort to fill the unfillable outline. Yes, vague chalk drawings, that’s what genetic codes were, the origin of life: questions with no answers, just endless inadequate guesses. Art, she believed, attempted to reproduce not the guesses, but the questions; this was how beauty differed from decoration – or indeed from truth, in her father’s sense of the word – which was why Tania always claimed that, contrary to the common opinion, she was in fact a realist. But art was therefore dangerous: the heart of beauty was red-hot (she’d once tried, in that notorious self-portrait, to paint this heat directly) and it could burn your eyes out, sear your flesh away. Like she said tonight: ‘Something almost monstrous …’
‘Jesus, did they both die like that?’ someone asked behind me. ‘It’s like a goddamn fairy tale!’
‘No, you don’t understand …’
‘Gerald … ?’
I looked up, meeting my wife’s gaze. There was, as always, a touch of worry in her eyes, a touch of uncertainty: even as she smiled it was there, though now she wasn’t smiling. In her arms she carried a bundle of dirty clothes, and I saw that she had changed aprons again. This one was an icy blue with pink pears and yellow apples in it. ‘Where did everybody go?’ Yvonne wanted to know. ‘Cynthia … ??
?? ‘It’s Tania,’ I said, swallowing. ‘She’s dead.’
‘I know.’ She turned to look at the people on the stairs, holding the soiled laundry in her arms like a gift received but still unopened. She shuddered and the sleeve of my bloodstained shirt dropped and wagged from her bundle like a spotted tail. ‘Can you get his finger out of there, Jim?’ someone asked behind me. ‘I don’t know, I think she’s getting hard.’ She touched a hand to her brow, gazing past me: a towel uncoiled as though to slip away, a blue sock fell to the floor, someone’s underwear, a handkerchief, all falling – I stopped to scoop it up for her. It lay scattered in and around Ros’s outline like conjectural apprehensions of form, like Mark’s drawings of Christmas trees (yes, I felt myself in a child’s world down here, disassociated, unseen: it slid out from under my shirt like a duty shed and I folded my soiled shorts around it): even a pillowcase: had she been changing the bedding? ‘Thank you, Gerald. I thought I’d do a load … before we got too far behind …’
‘Whose handkerchief is this?’ It was almost too filthy to pick up: I pinched it by one corner, dropped it loosely on top.
‘His.’ She nodded back over her shoulder toward my study. Daffie had paused to speak to Anatole, now lying on the stairs, staring blankly out through the railings, and Noble, passing, whispered something in her ear. She threw her glass of pink gin at him. ‘Gerald, they’ve got Patrick in there now. I’m afraid.’
I kissed her forehead, clasping a hand to each shoulder: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go check on him,’ I said, and stepped by her, freeing myself from Ros’s outline as I did so. ‘I believe it,’ someone said as I pressed through the jostle in the doorway toward the downstairs toilet (Daffie was rubbing her arm where Noble had struck her and she exchanged a commiserating glance with me), ‘but there’s one goddamn thing I just don’t understand …’
‘Wait, don’t go in there,’ Woody cautioned, touching my arm. ‘They’re using it for a darkroom.’ He glanced back over his shoulder, just as Cynthia came out of my study. ‘Everything okay?’