“Fucked up,” she said. It sounded like something God might say, as if that were the last word on the subject. “Fucked up is what it is. That someone would do this, to him.”
“But why? Why would anyone…?”
“Oh, Bronfman,” she said, as if he were a child and she was just a little disappointed that he had to ask. “The same reason you almost got yourself killed. Drugs. And money. What it always is.” She let that sink in. “The drugs they took are gone by now and the money’s probably spent, but he’s still dead. And he’s always going to be.”
She shook her head, not looking at Bronfman now but out into the spirit world where Thomas Edison’s soul was being mixed and melded into the ether. She stepped down from the stoop and stood there on the sidewalk forlorn before him until Bronfman, compelled by some emotion he could not name, hugged her. He had not done a lot of hugging in his life, and never with people he barely knew. She hugged him back, like a python, and she shuddered, crying, and that lasted for almost an entire minute, just this intense and powerful hug. Then it ended and, saying nothing further, and without even looking at Bronfman again, she walked down the stoop and got into her rusting and battered little Japanese car and drove away.
* * *
He was inside his apartment for less than a minute when his phone rang. He didn’t have to look to know who it was. He could hear her talking before the phone made it to his ear.
“I love beets,” Sheila said. “In sixth grade I had a friend who had four fingers on her left hand. Favorite Beatle? Pete Best. My grandma—”
“Sheila,” he said.
“—ran over me once, backing out of the driveway. Not on purpose.”
“Sheila,” he said.
They were silent now, both of them.
“Okay,” she said, hurt. “I just—I wish you hadn’t gone, Edsel. I think we can get past this.”
“Someone killed Thomas Edison.”
“Thomas Edison?” she said.
And he realized that he hadn’t told her about Thomas Edison. And that there was a lot he hadn’t told her, including what had happened today in Martinsville. She was right. He hadn’t let her know him any more than she had let him know her. But he hadn’t lied to her, not directly; there were just things he had failed to mention. That he would be getting to in time.
Now he told her everything, from Thomas’s initial friendship to his betrayal to the little he had learned today from Coco. Sheila listened silently, but Bronfman could feel the tremor of her absorption. For the first time he understood what was meant by that phrase hanging on every word. She hung. It was possible that he had never said anything in his life that was listened to with this degree of rapt and morbid fascination. The flat line that was his day-to-day life suddenly spiked, all because he lived next door to someone who had lost his.
“Oh, my God,” Sheila said when he was done.
“I know,” he said.
“Why haven’t you told me about this before?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was embarrassed, I think.”
“Embarrassed? That someone broke into your apartment?”
“That I lived here at all,” he said. “Cedar Court is so ritzy. I probably should have moved then.”
“Probably. But now you have to.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Someone was murdered in the apartment next door to you,” she said. Her vocal italicizations came fast and furious. “Edsel. Seriously. Murdered. You could get hurt.”
“But don’t you think,” he said, “that the murdering is done? That everyone to be murdered has been? If it’s true, as she said, that it was about drugs—”
“She?”
“Coco.”
She sighed. “Of course there’s a Coco in the mix. And how do you know that she didn’t do it herself?”
“Well, no, I don’t think—”
“Or knows who did it. Is part of it. Of course, she is. And she knows you. You know her. Say she suspects you know too much. She could have someone wrap you up in a rug and shoot you, too.” There was a pause. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Watch too much television. But it’s worrisome, Edsel.”
“She was really upset. And I don’t think she could hurt anybody. She’s a very small person. Her arms are as skinny as spaghetti. She was really upset,” he said again.
“I don’t doubt it,” Sheila said. “Still, who knows what happened?” It was odd, how in such a very short time she had developed such strong feelings about the incident, about Coco, about Thomas Edison, and that she knew exactly what he should do. Bronfman should find another place to live; he should have done that a while ago. But that she was able to tell him what she thought he should do—that felt odd. Especially after what had just happened at her place. He had left her, literally and figuratively. “Based on what you’ve told me, Edsel, this Thomas Edison—and, seriously, who names their child Thomas Edison? He and Coco—and again, Coco?—they were lovers, partners in crime, and she—”
“I don’t think they were,” he said. “Lovers. I think they were just friends. Good friends.”
“Edsel,” she said, as if to a dog that could not learn even basic commands. “Listen to yourself.”
Sheila was angry. He had never heard her angry before.
“I’m listening,” he said.
He went quiet. He didn’t say anything more about the incident, because he was starting to feel oddly protective, not only of Thomas Edison—who did have some positive qualities, after all (he had more friends than Bronfman, for instance, and more than Sheila, and he could fix cars)—but also of Coco. He felt certain that Sheila was getting the wrong idea of who Thomas and Coco were—even though, as Bronfman would have to allow himself, he didn’t really know what the deal was, either.
“All I’m saying,” she said, “and I won’t say it again, because for some reason it bothers you. But you should consider moving to a different complex where people aren’t, even on occasion, being murdered.”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re right. It’s something to consider. I don’t know where I would, but—there’s the whole frying pan–fire conundrum. I suppose—”
“You could move in with me,” she said.
“Funny,” he said.
An impossible arrangement of words, absurd, a suggestion that in its preposterousness almost bounced off his ears, being too screwy to get any further. He had imagined and fantasized so many moments, so many conversations, so many possibilities and scenarios if and when he ever had a chance to be in a relationship with a woman—so many. But he had never gotten this far. Ever. None of his fantasies had ever asked him to move in with her.
“Until you found a better place, I mean. There’s room here.”
“You mean temporarily,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. Temporarily. Think about it at least. I have the extra room. I even have a table and a chair. They haven’t been put together yet, but—”
She forced a laugh.
“Sheila,” he said, because the words he was going for were far, far down inside him, in pieces, at the bottom of his murky heart. “I can’t move in with you. In no way could that ever happen. Because we’re not—we just—what happened just a few minutes ago. We broke up.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“In so many words,” he said.
“But you didn’t say it. You didn’t jump over the broom three times.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You lied to me, Sheila.”
“I know, Edsel. I know. But that doesn’t mean you can just break up with me. It’s just not done. It’s not even possible.”
“What do you mean it’s not possible?”
“Because we weren’t even together,” she said. “We haven’t known each other long enough to be together. How long has it even been?”
Thirty days, he thought, but seventy-one if you
counted the day they had their first conversation.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not long.”
“No. Not long enough, anyway—yet. You could break up with me in three weeks or so, I think,” she said. “Maybe in two. Or I with you, for that matter. But now, a few weeks into it, we’re just two people who happen to be hanging out with each other and having a pretty good time. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think you might be taking advantage of me. You know I don’t know how to do this. How to be with someone, much less break up with them. You know I’m not … experienced.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not. (Parenthetically, I love that about you.) I suppose I could take advantage of you, though, if I were that kind of person.”
“Are you that kind of person?”
“See? If that’s not a question you can answer, then we definitely haven’t been together long enough to break up.” She paused to sigh. “And I told myself I’d never date another ungulate,” she said. “They can be so dense.”
He heard her smiling.
Ashen light filtered through his window curtains. Before Sheila, the dark meant the end of the day, but all that had changed. It brought mysteries with it now, adventures, possibilities—life.
“I think we should go on a trip,” Sheila said out of the blue.
“What? A trip?”
What was this? Where did this come from? The presentation of the suggestion was so casual, so off the cuff. But could she know? Could she have known all this time that this was what he wanted, all he had wanted, why he had ever even spoken to her at all? And in giving it to him now, at the eleventh hour, was she just daring him to make good on his threat to leave her? Bronfman was addled.
“Yeah, a trip. I don’t know where—the idea just popped into my head. But we could do it. We’re adults. We have a little money. Your mother will be fine with Bettina.”
He nodded. “Do you … like the beach?” he asked her, as if it were something that had just occurred to him, as an example of one of many places where a trip might happen.
“Probably not.”
“No? Why?”
“The truth,” she said, “is that I’ve never been. I’ve never even seen the ocean.”
“Never? Seriously? You’re not just making that up?”
“I’m not making that up. I grew up in Indiana—again, the truth. So the beach wasn’t right around the corner. And then in school we read a lot of books that took place in the ocean—The Odyssey, Moby-Dick, The Little Mermaid—and none of them made getting wet seem particularly appealing. It scares the shit out of me, to be honest. But I’ve decided it’s possible to live a good life and be happy without ever going near it. Same as I don’t feel like I need to go to China. Why?”
“No reason,” he lied.
“There are lots of places we can go that don’t have water anywhere near them.” She laughed.
Something else was happening now. He cradled the phone against one ear and his shoulder as he pulled back the curtains at his front window. It was a car. He saw its headlights brush along the exterior of the building. He thought at first that it might have been Coco, returning. But it wasn’t.
It was Officer Stanton.
Serena.
He watched as she stepped out of the car—slowly, carefully, dismounting really, as if to make sure the asphalt parking lot wasn’t actually a thin sheet of black ice in disguise and could support her shapely heft. Were they trained to do it that way in police school, the way they stood up and looked behind, ahead, above—because who knew, there might be a sniper on a nearby rooftop? Her hair looked a little shorter now, the bangs brushed to one side and the sides tucked behind her ears.
“Edsel?” Sheila’s tone of voice indicated that she had been talking to him for a little while. Bronfman hadn’t heard her. “Hello-o? Earth to Edsel!”
“Sorry.”
“What’s going on?”
“The police are here,” he said.
“The police!”
“I should go.”
“Why?”
“To talk to them.”
“But you don’t know anything.”
“I don’t know if I don’t know anything. I might.”
“But do you want to get … involved? Seriously, I’ve watched every CSI and all its offshoots, and I can say this with authority: it never turns out well.”
“Let me just go see,” he said, as if he was asking permission, which, in effect, he was.
Sheila sighed. “I’m coming over,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Don’t. Please.”
“I am, Edsel,” she said. “I think you need me.”
“No!” he said, much more emphatically than he meant to. He took a deep breath and waited for his pulse to slow down. “No, Sheila. The truth is I’m fine. I just … don’t want you to see where I live. It’s not very nice. Actually, it’s terrible. It’s the kind of place—”
“—where someone might get killed?”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly like that.”
“That doesn’t matter to me, Edsel,” she said. “And how bad could it really be? It’s called King’s Manor, for God’s sake!”
“I think it was overnamed,” he said. “They should have just called it Rooms to Live In, or Shelter. That would have been enough.”
“I can be over there so quickly,” she said. “I mapped it.”
“You did?”
His heart swelled. The idea that she mapped it, in preparation for a possible visit, touched him. It’s exactly what he would have done, what he in fact did in preparation for their very first date. He strained against his compulsion to forgive her everything, but a part of him wanted to, just for this tiny gesture.
“It’s three point two miles.” they said at exactly the same time, and then both of them whispered—again, at exactly the same time—“Jinx.”
Now neither of them spoke for a moment after that, but Bronfman knew it was his turn, and that she was waiting on the go-ahead from him. But he wouldn’t give it. His heart was ossifying. This is what it must be like to be a man, he thought, to have a small and hardened heart. “I’ll call when I get back,” he said coolly. “After I talk to the police.”
“As soon as you get back,” she said, and he heard her kiss the phone.
But he didn’t kiss his back.
SIX
Bronfman opened his door with a suddenness that startled Serena, who twisted toward him with the instincts of a cat.
“Serena,” he said. She looked at him blankly, followed by gradual recognition, standing down.
“Bronfman,” she said. “I was just about to knock.”
“Oh,” he said, a little thrilled that she had been about to do that.
“So how’s your mother?”
He smiled, remembering 2D.
“She’s … fine,” he said. “Thank you for asking. You know. Things could be better. But thanks so much for asking,” he said again.
She peered over his shoulder, into his apartment. “All alone?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Completely. Completely alone.”
She contemplated the situation. “Oh, I forgot to tell you earlier. Nothing really came of the investigation,” she said. “Into the burglary of your place, I mean. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, well, actually something did,” he said.
“Really? Did we make an arrest?”
“No,” he said. “Not from your investigation … from mine.” And he cut his eyes meaningfully toward the apartment where Thomas Edison formerly lived.
She understood immediately. “Ah,” she said. “The deceased.”
Bronfman watched her absorb this new information, and her brand-new estimation of him as well. This was not the Bronfman she thought he was, certainly, one who could ferret out a criminal better than the actual police. She took out a notepad and wrote something down, paused to think about what she’d written or what she was abou
t to write, wheels turning. Then she looked directly at Bronfman, right into his eyes.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Bronfman?”
“Anything else?” You’re a very attractive woman, he thought. You have nice eyes. “About what?”
“About Tommy? About the incident?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, I would like to, but I don’t think I know anything. I just got here.” Bronfman always seemed to arrive just as everything that had been happening was coming to an end. “I talked to Coco. I assume you have, too. That’s the only reason I know what happened at all.”
Officer Stanton consulted her notepad. “Coco,” she said. “Yoshiko Hayashi.”
“Yes.”
“She told you, then,” Serena said.
“What?”
“That she discovered the body.”
“Oh,” Bronfman said. “I didn’t know that. She didn’t tell me.”
“She discovered the body and called it in.”
“So she just walked in and there he was? That’s awful.”
“She’ll have that picture in her head forever. For. Ever. Nothing she’ll be able to do about that.”
He thought about something Sheila had said. “Were they … together?”
Which was an odd question, sure. Even Bronfman thought it was odd, and Serena seemed to recognize that it was, too. She gave Bronfman a quick but critical look. “Not according to her,” she said. “But who knows.”
“I don’t think they were,” Bronfman said.
“Really? What makes you say so?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know why he said the things he said. Sometimes he felt as if he had a little string in the back of his neck and some invisible man was pulling it.
Serena nodded, took a step toward Edison’s apartment, and stopped. “You’ve been inside before?”
“Of course,” he said. “Yes.”
“Would you mind coming in with me now? I’d like to take another pass. Maybe there’s something you can see, something a little off. On the chance you might provide some direction.”
“Direction?”
“To his killer or killers,” she said. “Between you and me, Bronfman, we’re clutching at straws.”
“Oh,” he said. Oh, indeed. “Of course. I’d love to, Serena.”