Erased From Memory (13 page)

“Yes, I’ll be all right.” He looks surprised at my question. “Of course. I am sorry about that young woman. I knew her, yes, of course. A very smart young woman. I am sorry she was hurt. A problem.” He stops, and for a moment seems to understand something. He looks at me, a contortion crosses his face. “Oh,
dear
.

“But now I will go to bed. Good night, Carla.”

And he kisses me on the cheek and tells Scott, “That is a bad worry. But it will get better. You realize that?”

He pads off down the corridor to his room.

 
 
Scott and I look at each other.

He looks really terrible. He stares at me unfocusedly, his face streaked with blood, his brown hair hanging, mouth lopsided. He keeps trying to pull at his chin with an unsteady hand.

“Listen,” I say. “Vodka. I’ve got a big bottle. And coffee and a couple of kinds of tea. And I think Egon has some bourbon in the library cabinet.”

Scott says, “Vodka,” and agrees that he should go wash his face. “You, too.” He tries for a smile.

 
 
Seated in a library armchair, Scott chews on his vodka and says, for the third time that night, “God. Why does everything always turn out shitty?”

“Does it?”

“Anything I touch.”

“Anything?”

“Everything . . .” He holds the glass up and stares into it. “Seems like I got the world by the balls, right? Well, wrong. Oh, God.” He has to put his glass down and crumples as if he has a cramp.

I think I have been really good so far. I haven’t told Scott that I didn’t think he cared that much, that I thought he really didn’t like Rita. I haven’t said I’m surprised that he is hit so hard. But I am surprised.

Surprised and touched. Sort of. I’ve discovered that Scott can be really upset by someone else’s disaster. Scratch it that part of his problem is that he thinks it’s a disaster for him. Also.

I’m surprised at that, too.

He refills his vodka glass and says, “That poor, silly, ditzy kid.”

I nod.

“No bad in her,” he says. “Well, not much. Not a hell of a lot.” A long pause and more vodka. “Oh, shit.”

“You were good friends?”

“In a way. Kind of.” Another pause and he reaches for the bottle. “Do you mind if I get drunk?”

“Be my guest.”

“And finish off your bottle?”

“Go ahead.”

“It’s not going to help me much.

“She didn’t have any sense,” he volunteers, after a pause. “Not a scrap. Good archaeologist, real perceptive about relics, good eye for artifacts. But for human relationships?

“She was crazy, too,” he adds after a minute. “Have I said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Everything I do turns shitty. I’ve said that, too?”

I could tell him, “Why is it everything
you
do, Scott,” but instead I say, “Listen, bro,”
bro
being something I used to call Rob when I was feeling matey, “what you need now is bed, how does that sound?”

“Not too bad . . . Reet was good at that act. Being nice when you were down . . . Oh, my
God
.

“We knew each other really well,” he adds, unnecessarily.

 
 
Maybe in my wilder fantasies I’ve imagined Scott spending the night in my room. Probably I have. This is an attractive guy, with a contagious animal energy. But I didn’t picture anything like this, with him climbing unsteadily onto one of the twin beds and pulling the coverlet up over his clothed body, shoes and all, and saying, “You don’t mind, do you Carla? I’m out of it.”

If he were a woman, he’d tell me, “Listen, I just can’t face being alone tonight.” But he’s not a woman.

Eventually I climb into the other bed. I’m not as drunk as Scott and apparently not as miserable; I take off my shoes and squeeze into some pajamas.

Chapter 11

Morning, that is, 10 A.M., finds me and Scott still in our respective beds and my father, in the guise of the Morning Greeter, balancing a tray containing bagels and coffee.

“Oh, dear,” he says.

He’s interested to find Scott here. “I know this young man. A good friend. It will come to me. That lady sent these.”

Is the lady Bunny?

“She has a leather belt.” Yes, Bunny.

We eat our breakfast off a teetery table. Daddy bounces on the bed and offers questions.

“Why is it raining outside?” He thought the rainy season was over.

“Why has the room containing my coffin lid been locked?” He needs to go see his coffin lid.

“Are you sick, Carla?” He certainly hopes not. There is a lot of illness going around. He was discussing this with the man downstairs. A man who was asking questions. This is a man he does not much like.

Suggestion and prying elicit some facts. This man is not Egon. He is not one of the chauffeurs, all of whom are named Haroun. Yes, he does wear a uniform. Perhaps he has a star on his pocket. Perhaps he wears a tan cotton suit. And a dark brown belt.

He is, in fact, Sheriff Munro.

I say, “Oh, Jesus,” at Scott.

Daddy volunteers further info about his chat with the man. There was a thought-provoking discussion. (Was he mean? You asked that question some time ago, Carla. Well, was he cross? Not precisely. There is a word, perhaps you don’t know it,
peremptory
. We discussed Nebutol.) Scott and I eye each other, questioning. Is he really saying he talked to the sheriff about Nebutol?

We’re interrupted by a set of knockings at the door, rat-tat-tat, machine-gun fashion, followed immediately by the entry of himself, the sheriff. He doesn’t say howdy-do or please; he strides in, like a Boy Scout on parade, face fixed in what he possibly thinks is an expression of command.

“So. Late risers. And Dr. Edward Day, the forgetful genius. Dr. Day, I know all about you. I am on to you. The Alzheimered Dr. Day cannot remember his own name, ha-ha; inventor of the coffin lid cannot answer any questions at all.”

Scott and I look at each other.

The sheriff is providing the symptoms of someone caught in a nervous breakdown. He tries to walk in big strides. He tries to lower his voice. He laughs inappropriately.

“Dr. Alzheimer,” he starts out. Daddy doesn’t respond, so it gets amended to “Dr. Day.”

“Now”—fixing him with an unsteady eye—“tell me all about Nebutol.”

My father looks sad. “Would you like a cinnamon-raisin bagel? I think it’s the last one.”

The sheriff bleats, “Dr. Day. Nebutol.”

Scott has been watching the exchange. “What are you trying to get him to say?”

“You stay out of this. Go back to playing musical beds with your lady friend.”

“Listen, you officious creep, I won’t stay out of it.” Scott looks more like himself today. The bags under the eyes and sag in the shoulders could almost be a normal hangover.

I interject something weaker, some reproach like, “You are browbeating an old, disabled citizen.” It’s about now that I realize that Scott and I present an unusual picture, I in my PJs and he fully clothed.

Scott says, “I hear Miss Ghent has you up on a complaint. Browbeating. Undue pressure. Deliberate harm and pain.”

At which point the sheriff implodes. Yes, this man teeters constantly on the edge of a Big One.

“Fucking A, all of you are gonna be in trouble. Every single one of you . . .” He stops here. He doesn’t finish his sentence. “Your little friend was careless.” He backtracks. “She was a real weird girl and she got herself caught in . . .” He doesn’t finish this sentence, either. He looks amazed, as if he’s wondering how he got into this mess.

Scott waits a minute. When he reacts, his response is physical and kinetic; he’s off the bed and almost on top of the sheriff, his hands outstretched. Then I guess he thinks better of this. He backs off and lets his hands hang down. “You got something to say, Sheriff? So say it.”

The sheriff stares, his little mouth sewed tight.

“I think Nebutol is advertised on television, you know,” my father says, in a wavering voice. “For acid reflux. It is purple.”

Daddy is wrong here, since Nexium is the purple pill advertised on TV. Nebutol is a sedative.

The sheriff turns, managing his body stiffly, shoulders straight and flat, like the Tin Soldier. He aims the whole weapon of himself at me. “I want a recorded session with him. You’ll get him downtown. My office will call you.” He’s at the door when he turns and looks at me squint-eyed. “This nonsense can’t go on,” he says.

At least he directs his ultimatums at me now, which means he has stopped pretending Daddy is a free agent who moves successfully around the world on his own.

 
 
It is the afternoon of the same day, and Scott and I are in Rita’s room going through her stuff.

It was my idea that we should do this. Scott seemed at first too distracted to think about it.

Though as soon as I raised the plan, he was gung ho. “Sure. Absolutely. I’ll come, too.”

Now I wonder if I shouldn’t have just gone in and raided Rita’s territory all by myself.

I’m trying to find out things. What, I’m not sure.

Having an observer won’t help. And he and Rita have a history . . . “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask.

He says he’s okay. “Last night was . . . well. Jesus. Shock. Somebody you know real well.” He stops briefly. “I want to do this. Maybe find out . . .”

“And you’re okay reading her stuff? She probably had lots of other friends.”

“Hey, don’t we all.” He tries a smile. “That’s not what I’m afraid of; I’m afraid of Egon maybe stopping us. I mean, it’s his institute and his room. Does he really want us snooping into Reet’s recent life? Maybe she learned something about the museum’s slimy doings. And that’s why she got topped.”

“You think they have slimy doings?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.” He reads my inquiring look and responds, “Sure, I go along with Egon, let him wine and dine me and make a fuss, why not? Doesn’t mean I’m gonna marry him. Or pretend he’s a decent scholar . . . Or hook up with his idiot Egyptian-Spiritualist religion.” Scott lowers himself to the floor cross-legged and reaches for a pile of papers.

Rita was messy, as you’d expect. Books and papers wobble in hamster heaps against the room’s walls and in its nooks and crannies.

“I know Reet felt the same way,” he says in a minute, more quietly.

I tell him that I liked it that he got upset about her death, and he shrugs and reads assiduously. He doesn’t answer.

For the first time I really put it to myself: Where was Scott when Rita was shot? And the answer is straightforward: I don’t know. I thought I could see him, sitting at our table, but I’m not sure.

 
 
Rita has left a laptop, an overnight bag, a lot of clothes on hangers, and piles of shoes on floors, plus the teetering stashes of papers. I start to suggest that Scott do the computer stuff and I the papers and then I get a look at Rita’s handwriting, backhanded and spidery. Scott apparently is used to it; he has already started reading.

Also he seems wary of the computer. “Don’t you need a special password?”

“You do, but I have it.” Rita was the sort who taped her password on the underside of her computer table. When she forgot it, she could climb under there and refresh her wobbly memory. She wasn’t planning to get shot.

“So what are we looking for?” I ask.

“How the hell, how do I know, Reet was into a lot of stuff. Just pass on anything that looks interesting.”

Okay, okay
, I think.
Interesting stuff is what I myself will hang on to
.

So I settle down to punch buttons and try to translate file names. What does GAGS mean? Or VIGILACE? How about CIRCLES?

Rita didn’t mean to go off and leave all this to be puzzled over by a stranger. She meant to come back and maybe put the N in her VIGILACE file and then to laugh and fall in love some more and have a couple more nervous breakdowns and publish some articles about her Egyptian specialty. I find I don’t even know what that is.

“Oh. Shoes,” Scott says.

“Shoes?
You
did a piece on shoes.”

“I stole it from her.” He reads my expression and says, “She helped me with the research. She was good at that kind of thing—sociological exploration, who wears ’em and who doesn’t, what the degree of decor tells you about the society. She did all kinds of clothing, but shoes especially. New Kingdom.”

“That sounds good. Interesting. It’s the kind of stuff I’d like to do. If I did it.”

Scott says, “Yeah,” and goes back to his reading. I attack the computer again.

It is jammed with records that look like research, backup for research, correspondence about same, notes, speculations, references to buried issues: “Perfume—Dioscorides re balanos ??? query jeordie.”

“Jeordie?” Scott asks. “Oh, sure. At the BM.” He doesn’t explain what BM is. Not bowel movement, probably.