Duplicate Keys (22 page)

Something about this scene Alice vaguely remembered, but the overlay of her present image was far more vivid. The fork turning in Susan’s hand, sinking into Denny’s arm, the blood spurting (or probably dribbling) out. It was completely believable and there wouldn’t be any remorse. Susan was a remarkably pragmatic and not very remorseful person, after all. Alice said, “Did you—”

“There was another time, a few years later, when they had been practicing a bunch of new songs all summer. Nobody had any money, not even you.”

Alice wondered if she had always seemed to have money, if she had been generous enough with it.

“They rehearsed day after day, all day, and Denny was mad at Craig because he wouldn’t sing this right, or he kept coming in
wrong on that, and then blaming their bad sound on Denny. He’d be nice and apologetic to Craig all day, because temper didn’t get anywhere with him, and then he’d come home and scream at the cats and scream at me, and once he kicked the glass out of the back door, except he was so embarrassed about it that he told me for weeks that the wind had done it, and then he cried when he told me really he had. I don’t know why I didn’t—”

“But what does raking all this up teach you?”

“I don’t know, but listen. One time last fall I came home late. I remember I was in a terrible mood because Madame and Monsieur had been there all day, half sitting around and half interfering with the salesgirls, and blah blah. Denny was watching some football game on TV, and when I got home, I realized that he’d had about six beers. I was glad to get home, and he was glad to see me, but we started joking around, and he started pulling at my clothes, which he never did, and which I hated. I asked him to stop, and if he hadn’t been drinking, he would have, and we would have gone to bed and screwed and gotten a good night’s sleep and felt perfect forever after, but instead he got mad and grabbed the front of my shirt and deliberately ripped it open, popping all the buttons. Well, I knew he was drunk, so I was going to put on a show of being indignant and leave it at that when he said, ‘You are a cold bitch,’ just like that, not as if he’d just thought about it, but as if he’d discussed it with someone. Those weren’t his words. He’d never called me any kind of name, even when we were really mad at each other, and now he was calling me somebody else’s names, Craig’s names, and all of a sudden I had this vision of them discussing me, and it was a vision that went all the way back to the beginning, and it drove me crazy.”

“But of course they discussed you. You and I have always discussed them.” The food was gone, even the bread. Alice looked toward the refrigerator, wondering what might be in there for dessert.

“But we’ve never discussed Denny and me, not really. Have
we? You don’t know what kind of lover he is, I don’t talk about our problems or our fights, do I?”

Alice shook her head.

“That was a conscious decision on my part, you know.”

“You have been very discreet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t gathered things.”

“What you gathered is your own affair.”

Alice nodded, remembering occasions, numerous occasions, of approaching delicately about something, of fishing for a confidence if one needed to be given. It was such a pattern with them that she privately referred to it as her “prying with a fork” manner, since she most often did it over a meal. She said, “So what’s the conclusion? What did you think was true that you don’t think is true now?”

“I’m afraid you’ll laugh. I never said it to you then, because every time I said the words aloud, they sounded stupid.”

“Well, what?”

“What I thought then was that Craig had some sort of power over us. When we were doing all that astrology, I thought it was because he was a double Scorpio. Later I didn’t know why, but it seemed like he was manipulating us, Denny especially. Sometimes Denny was just sort of his creature.”

“Last night—” But Alice stopped before divulging Rya’s remarks on the same topic. She said, “So what seems true now?”

“That he was just a guy. A pretty compelling guy who usually got his own way, but just a guy.”

“That’s your revelation?”

“It doesn’t sound like much, does it?”

“Not especially.”

“Well, now you know how deeply I believed the other thing.”

“My dear, you should have slept with him. You would have known he was compelling, but not omnipotent by any means.”

Susan laughed. Realizing what she had said, Alice shrugged and began to laugh herself. “Yes, true!” she exclaimed. They sat in their chairs, laughing. When she got up to go to the bathroom,
though, closing the door, and sitting on the cold seat, Alice stopped laughing and began to shiver, from the coldness of the seat, she thought. She finished, washed her hands, then washed them again. She washed her face in hot hot water, but she was still shivering. In fact her teeth were chattering. She looked into the mirror, concentrating on her face without seeing it, but not thinking about the stories Susan had just told her. In a moment, she took off her clothes and turned on the shower, very hot. Five minutes of the running water over her head, down her stomach and back, stilled the shivering. She huddled into her warmest robe. When she got back to the kitchen, Susan had finished the dishes. She was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. According to the ashtray it was her third, and she was no longer laughing, either. Alice said, “I have had the craziest couple of days. I am out of it. When I wake up tomorrow morning, I probably won’t even remember you were here.”

Susan smiled without showing any teeth. “It’s been fun,” she said. “Tonight I hate to leave.”

“It’s still light. I’m really ready for bed, though.”

“I can see that.” She smiled again, in that funny, rueful, and hardly comradely way.

Alice coughed. “Let me call you tomorrow. At the store. We’ll arrange something.”

Susan stood up, actually stood up, stubbing out her cigarette thoroughly and thoughtfully. “I’ve always felt welcome to stay before.”

“You would be if anyone was, you know that.”

Susan shrugged, but she was, after all, nearly out the door. Alice closed it behind her, and then leaned against it for a long time. A while later, after the fall of complete dark, she pulled on a pair of jeans, took her keys, and went across the street. When Henry Mullet opened his door for her (grinning, Alice noted with relief), she said, “Mind if I’m a little early?”

9

T
HERE
was something very agreeable, Alice thought, about waking up in someone else’s very private apartment and knowing that you would be back there again, no angling for an invitation, no weighing of his words and looks to detect how welcome you would be, that very evening. Henry was matter of fact, cheery, and handsome in the morning, his rooms were platinum with sunlight. She tottered naked into his bathroom to find that he had set out for her next to the shower a clean yellow towel, folded, a flowered washcloth, and a new bar of soap. She took a shower, not somthing she usually had time for in the morning, and emerged wide awake, a sensation she customarily eased into about an hour into the workday. She had only awakened once in the night to think of Susan in the dark and to be seized with nausea. Washing her face in the sink and helping herself to Henry’s toothbrush, she was inclined to view such a reaction as feverish, engendered by their closeness or by her recent roller coaster emotions. Henry embraced her as she came out of the bathroom. “I’m very fond of the way you walk around naked,” he said.

“No shame, I admit. Although I’ll also admit that I once wondered
if you had seen me wandering bareass around my apartment in oblivious splendor. That’s the penalty of befriending neighbors in New York, I think.”

“I haven’t, but I’ll certainly keep my eyes peeled.”

“I somehow suspect you won’t have to.”

Henry chuckled happily. He had made coffee. The dishes from the night before, which Alice had seen beside the sink, were washed. A round, cold, golden grapefruit blushed with rose at the stem end sat in the middle of the kitchen table like a bouquet of flowers. At two places were folded paper napkins and grapefruit spoons. Susan seemed a continent away. “I haven’t got much,” said Henry. “I always eat the same thing for breakfast, and I can’t imagine that you’d like it.”

“What’s that?”

“Grape Nuts.”

“I like Grape Nuts.”

“Without milk. I don’t like milk, and I don’t have a drop in the house.”

“You’re kidding.”

As if to demonstrate, he poured out a bowl of little grains, and began to grind them, spoonful by spoonful, between his teeth. Alice said, “That’s how the Roman army lost its teeth, you know,” but she shivered with delight. She adored him again, and she could adore him all day with the security of getting hungry for a big meal. “Cut the grapefruit,” he said. “I had one yesterday, and they’re very sweet.”

“I won’t say what comes to my lips.”

“What?”

“Instead, I’ll say that I could have you for breakfast, with pleasure.”

“And I you.” He reached across the table for her hand and kissed her fingers one by one.

“Thank you. What time is it, anyway?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Surely you jest.”

“Surely not. I have to be on the train by seven.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen six-thirty with such clarity in my whole life.”

“Do you think it’s love?”

Alice spoke lightly, sorry he had brought it up. “No. I don’t see that with any clarity at all.”

Henry continued to grind.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“I don’t know. I feel good though.”

“Me, too.”

By the time he left for work, and Alice left to get clothes at her apartment, it seemed as if they had wedged a whole leisurely Sunday morning into a time that usually wasn’t even a part of Alice’s day.

At noon one of the other L-2’s from the reading room came to find her in the periodicals catalogue and tell her that a man was asking for her at the desk. She could not help assuming it was Henry, but the grin faded when she saw Detective Honey leaning on the desk and surveying the reference room with his professional eye. He looked out of place, as if he felt superior to mere dictionaries and encyclopedias. Annoyed, Alice snapped, “People are waiting to use this desk. We should go outside.”

Honey smiled, however, apparently not even noticing her tone. “How are you?”

“Let’s go out on the steps.” And then, “If you must know, it’s irritating to have you come here.”

“I just have a few questions.”

“Fine.” On the steps, Alice crossed her arms in front of her chest and smiled politely.

Honey opened his notebook. “First, you’ve probably been wondering about Mr. Reschley.” Alice nodded. “We still haven’t gotten in touch with him, but we are pretty sure he’s in Miami, or was yesterday morning. In addition to being recognized almost positively in the airport, he’s been reported in a nightclub, and on the street, in the company of a man who is, shall we say,
familiar to this department.” Alice dared not say a word, but she lifted her eyebrows. Honey went on, “As long as we know where he is, we have no reason to get in touch with him at the moment.”

“Oh,” said Alice.

“What I need to ask you about, though, has more to do with two other friends of yours, Mr. Mast, for one.”

“And the other?”

Honey smiled. “One at a time, okay?”

Alice shrugged, then sat down on the steps. Honey squatted beside her.

“How long have you known the Masts, Mrs. Ellis?”

“Noah about twelve years, Rya about six.”

“Would you say that you know them very well?”

“I’ve seen them a lot, but I’ve never been close to Noah, and Rya and I have our ups and downs.”

“Would you feel confident in judging what sort of persons they are? In characterizing them, say?”

“Didn’t we talk about this?”

“I’m interested in what you have to say today.”

“Rya works in public relations for a cable TV outfit. I’m not sure what she does, but I get the feeling from her clothes and her general manner that she makes a pretty good salary. She used to be a receptionist and secretary at NBC.”

“I am aware of Mrs. Mast’s employment history.”

“Noah hasn’t ever really tried anything with his music outside of the band and away from Craig. He’s a pretty average Midwestern boy.”

“How’s that?”

Alice cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I mean that his reaction on the surface is the same as his reaction in the depths. What you see is what you get.”

“Has this always been true of Mr. Mast?”

“Yes.”

“And it continues to be true?” He looked at her closely. Alice
shifted her weight and looked down, feeling simultaneously that this was just a technique and that he had been following her. She turned away and stared at the facade of the library. All morning she had been a little nervous in the stacks, and had made herself some extra work at her desk. She had offered to take Sidney’s shift at the reference desk, because, after all, the only real security was in the flow of traffic. The facade itself seemed different now, not a fortress, but a membrane. The many doors opened and opened. Anyone could go in. That’s what the director had said after the attack in the reading room: They were to remember that the library was a public institution in the center of New York, as available in its way as the IRT or the Port Authority building. She thought of Roger Jenks doing his public duty. She thought of her friends. Somehow the square dance had spun into a new figure, and she was at the center, where she had never been before. It was Craig who had been at the center for the last twelve years, Craig whose charm and energy and ambition had supplied a pattern and direction to their lives. Now that he was dead, she had been thrust from the periphery, where she was perfectly contented, and everyone twirled and turned alarmingly toward her.