Duplicate Keys (2 page)

“A hit about five years ago, remember ‘Dinah’s Eyes’?” He hummed a musical phrase.

“Yeah, sort of. Don’t you wish you could fly up and look right in the window?”

Alice drifted over toward the photographer, framing a question that she undoubtedly wouldn’t ask. She had been party to Denny and Craig’s frustration for so long that she knew she couldn’t stand to risk the certainty that even after this,
Rolling Stone
didn’t care. But they always announced deaths, they always did. Denny and Craig could be sure of that.

“Dinah’s Eyes” had brought Denny and Craig to New York, and the rest of them had followed, for various reasons, but mostly because it seemed the natural thing to do, natural even for herself and Jim Ellis to come only out of friendship. A big advance, “real support” from the record company, the sure sense that this was it, and six years ago, not five. A picture in
Rolling Stone
, not the cover and not the center spread, but a half-page shot by the magazine’s second most well-known woman photographer, and two pages of print, with Deep Six in fancy type, grossly elongated
blue letters dipping into the body of the article. The whole thing was framed and hung on the wall right between those two windows that everyone, including Alice herself, was now staring at. Between the windows was the best place for it, insisted Craig, because then the sun wouldn’t fade or yellow it. Sunlight was death to newsprint, said Craig, and although he had his doubts about hanging it on an outside wall, with the sudden changes in temperature and everything, it would be okay for a while. Craig didn’t actually live with Denny and Susan, but he might as well have, for he kept all of his instruments there, all of his best photographs, and his scrapbook of performance reviews. It was from that apartment and not his own one-bedroom on Amsterdam Avenue that he expected to rise through a skylight like a great bird into the firmament of rock and roll immortality. Denny didn’t mind, having lived with Craig off and on for more than twenty years.

Alice stood so close to the female photographer that she nearly got stepped on. She could have said to the photographer’s companion (a reporter?), “I found them, you know. I opened the door and noticed the smell, and there they were, sitting in Susan’s orange armchairs, and their heads were so odd and fleshy and red. Do you know how long it takes to realize that you are looking at a dead person, how slowly your mind inches up and over that concept, trying out this speculation and that one, a joke, a trick, a dream, going crazy, wrong apartment, I mean, for a minute I couldn’t stop thinking that they’d been hit by cars and come here to recover or something. It was too quiet and clean for such an event to have happened. I wandered around the apartment for half an hour before calling the police, and now I’m a suspect.” But the photographer deftly twisted a long lens off her camera and moved off with her companion toward Riverside Drive. And turning the corner from Riverside was Ray Reschley, the sound man. Brightly flushed in the manner of all pale, pale men, and eternally pudgy, Ray caught sight of her and lifted his hand to wave. Then, perhaps discerning from her solitude in the gathering
crowd that her relationship to the victims was as yet unknown, he dropped his hand and avoided her with elaborate care, finally glancing around, and then mouthing, “My place, dinner.” Alice nodded. Almost immediately a rather drably dressed and very young kid with a notebook stepped up to Ray, and Alice realized that this must be the reporter, a reporter. Ray’s perfect pitch and excellent ear had made him rather famous for a sound man, in enough demand so that he could work year-round in New York and never go on tour unless as a special favor. Like Alice, like Susan, like Noah Mast, the bass player, Ray had come here originally just because Denny and Craig were being brought by the record company and it seemed like he might be able to find work, too.

Ray drew himself up, clasped his hands together, and proceeded to give an interview. More people gathered around him. Ray expanded slightly, let his eyes sweep the group, smiled once as if he knew something, and said, “No comment.” Simultaneously amused by Ray and sickened by the entire scene, Alice turned away from the group, from Susan’s building and enormous problem, and headed up Riverside toward Eighty-fourth Street, although what she would do there she hadn’t the least idea.

“Y
OU
heard, then. Isn’t it amazing?” The door of Ray’s apartment was opened by Rya Mast, black shorts, black French T-shirt, bare feet. She moved backward dramatically, allowing Alice to enter. From across the room, her husband Noah barked, “Alice found them, Rya.”

“Noah never tells me anything. How awful for you. I won’t even ask you about it. You’d better have a drink.”

“She found them this morning, Rya.”

“You’d better have a drink anyway. Ray just went out to get dinner at the Chinese place on 105th Street, but he left a pitcher of piña coladas. Let me get you one.”

Noah rolled his eyes, but smiled when she returned. Alice took
the foamy drink and sat down, resolving not to look up. The ceiling of Ray’s living room was a large smoked mirror.

“We’re just shocked,” said Rya, whose blond hair was wound on top of her head. If she unpinned it, it would fall down in a single shining mass, Alice knew. The only sense of expertise she ever got about Rya was when the other woman was arranging her hair or choosing clothes. “Just shocked, shocked. I can’t express it.”

“Astonished. Dumbfounded,” suggested Noah.

“Noah is shocked, too. Believe me. He teases to cover up.”

“Floored. Taken aback.”

“Don’t make us laugh, Noah. It’s awful.”

Alice had long ago arrived at a routine toleration of the Masts that enabled her to overlook Rya’s irritating coquettishness as well as Noah’s sarcastic manner. She was fond of them not only out of familiarity, but also for the countless jokes she had made at their expense over the years. Now she found them annoying, however, and regretted having come. In addition, she was afraid of having to describe what she had seen and of having to listen to the disgust of the others. Really, it was a burden to have to drag herself out of the bathtub, hunt for a cab, and endure an evening going over it all, but she hadn’t been able to keep herself from doing it. It was important to know something, perhaps only that it had really happened.

“Have you called Susan?” said Rya. “I can’t think of Susan.”

“She’s in the Adirondacks, remember?” Alice’s voice, unused since her conversation with Detective Honey, came out thick and quavering. She cleared her throat. She longed for Ray to return so that they could have the business of eating. Noah resumed rolling joints—tight, uniform, pointed like nails at each end. Alice sipped her drink. Rya’s gaze wandered upward, and then, underneath the smoked but revealing mirror, she rearranged her legs to better advantage and plumped her hair. There was no music. Listening to music was distressing to Ray, who heard every wrong note and mechanical waver in pitch. He preferred to
save his ears for working hours, he said. Time off meant silence, silence so perfect that it was almost sexual. Sex-u-al. Sex, Ray maintained, was his only other interest besides perfect pitch. When he started talking like that, Alice was irked, knowing it was a pose, for Ray loved to build things and always had some project going, but in the last year or so his friends had changed. Now he went on rather tediously about his passion for sex, pure sex, no complications. Rya stood up as if the mirror were the gaze of God and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind herself. Noah glanced up and said, “How do you think she’s reacting?”

“What?”

“Do you think she’s reacting oddly?”

“Rya? No.”

“Hmp.”

Unable to interpret this, Alice said, “Do you?”

Noah shrugged. Alice often wondered why after nearly four years of marriage the Masts still talked as if the interest of their friends in every wrinkle of their relationship was a foregone conclusion. He called out, “Sweetie?”

“Out in a flash!” came from behind the bathroom door. Ray liked the bathroom off the living room, but in the silence Alice found herself listening for the flush of the toilet, the rush of water. Noah, his head cocked, was listening, too, but then caught himself and said, “I can’t ever gauge the depths, you know. I think I’m basically sort of a cold person, but she really feels it in her soul.” Alice had her doubts. He put one of the joints to his lips and struck a friction match under the desktop. In a moment he gestured with the joint toward Alice, who shook her head. She usually shook her head and then felt rather drab with the Masts. They also always made her reconsider her clothes. The calico skirt and cotton blouse that had seemed perky and brave when she left her apartment seemed dowdy and bland under Ray’s mirror, in the same room with Rya’s shorts, across from Noah’s little grid of reefers. The key turned in the lock and the door flew open. It was Ray with a huge bag of food. In a moment Rya appeared,
shooting straight for it, then moaning over the mo-shu pork, the oysters with straw mushrooms, the gong-bao chicken with charred red peppers and cashews, the sizzling rice soup, the shrimp toast. It must have cost Ray twenty-five or thirty dollars. And there were shao-mai dumplings at the bottom. Rya reached into the bag, her red fingernails promising to impale rather than to grasp one of the delicate hors d’oeuvres. Alice stood up. She was hungry, too.

She wondered if the others were thinking constantly of Denny and Craig and Susan, as she was. Of course, they had not seen the bodies there, luminously without life, without even the life of the chairs and tables and rugs, not to mention the growing plants and the lamps and appliances coursing with electricity. But then, Noah and Ray, at least, would have seen Denny and Craig last night or the night before, perfectly alive, completely themselves, annoying, familiar, entertaining all at once. Especially Craig, Alice thought, who managed to elicit from her an exact conjunction of vexation and desire that years of friendship had not gotten her used to. And murdered! Murdered! The shock of it startled her again and again, like random hammering right next to her ear. She placed a pancake on her plate, spread it with hoisin sauce, and spooned on the pork and egg mixture. Ray said, “These oysters are terrific. Craig would have just creamed over them.”

“He loved that restaurant,” said Noah. A great sigh lifted from the table, and Ray said, “Remember how he wouldn’t even taste Chinese food five years ago because it was all mushed together?”

“A very weird guy,” said Noah. “I just can’t believe it.”

Ray dipped his spoon into the bean curd. “I can. You know, I really can. Think about it. Craig Shellady living to a ripe old age? Are you kidding?”

Alice said, “Weren’t his folks about this age when they died in that car wreck?”

Ray ignored her. “Denny, yes. Denny with seventeen grandkids in the country somewhere, watching the polls on election days,
perfect. Tapping maple trees, building more shelves to store more canned tomatoes, yes, yes.”

Alice coughed. “His mother was, I think. His father must have been nearly forty. Craig was eleven or twelve, anyway.”

Rya sat back with a stricken look. “I didn’t know Craig was orphaned. I mean, orphaned!”

Noah rolled his eyes. “Well, he told you umpteen times that his parents were dead and that he’d lived all those years with the Mineharts!”

“But I didn’t realize he was orphaned! Like somebody in an asylum!”

“He never lived in an asylum. He had plenty of aunts and uncles, and the Mineharts, and he was perfectly well taken care of.”

“Orphaned! Can you imagine what it’s like to be orphaned!” Noah put his arm around her and kissed her on the temple, but with the air of putting his hand over her mouth. “Anyway,” said Ray, his chopsticks poised above his plate, “it’s weird. I always thought he was doomed, but I can’t believe he’s dead.” Noah said, “Has anyone called Denny’s parents?” Everyone looked at Alice, who shrugged. “I hardly know them. I told the police their name and address.” She shivered. The Mineharts were crazy about Craig, and Denny was probably their favorite child. No one was warmer or more reliable than Denny. She said, “Lots of people are going to have to know. That’s the worst part.”

“No,” said Noah. “Susan’s the worst part. What are you going to do about Susan?”

Alice had rather shunned the thought of Susan all afternoon. Susan had lived with Denny for years, nearly as long as Alice had known her, and, in Alice’s view, they had the only nearly perfect relationship Alice had ever seen. Alice felt about it as one might feel living next door to a historic monument. She was proud of it, anxious to show it off, knowing it wasn’t hers but as reassured by it as if it were. Susan dazzled with her domestic competence, her way with tax forms and vegetables and hospitality and decor.
Because of Susan, people always wanted to hang around that apartment, partake not merely of the comfort she had created, but also of the comfort between her and Denny. Equally comfortable were her departures, her undramatic efforts to go away by herself, that neither she nor Denny made much of. Perhaps Alice had always envied these even more, since partings from Jim Ellis had been fraught with anxiety and had always ended in arguments, at the very least, about why he hadn’t written enough, or why she had written too much. And then, of course, they had ended in parting, possibly their inevitable end, Alice occasionally thought. But Susan and Denny had gone on and on and on, longer than any of their friends, longer than any friends of their friends. Alice put her fork down. “I don’t know,” she said. “And we haven’t done anything, have we? Where are they going to be buried? How will they get there? Is there going to be a funeral? Who’s going to take care of the apartment? I don’t even know what time Susan is getting here tomorrow. Should I sit outside her building and wait for her? She could come any time.”

“And talk to the press,” said Ray. “They’ve been ringing the phone off the hook. I put it on the service for tonight, but I bet when I call there’s going to be fifty messages.”

“Rolling Stone?”
asked Alice.

“And everyone else, believe me.”