Foul Matter (32 page)

Mary-Anne, the dreadful ten-year-old daughter, had reacted with much excitement at this news. Mary-Anne was always excited by others’ misfortunes. The servants milled, the doctor arrived, the poor maid was pronounced dead at the scene. Heart, probably. The body had been carted off to some morgue where there would be an autopsy. But Mary-Anne later insisted, in Ned’s attic room, that the maid had been murdered and everyone suspected him, Ned.

Mary-Anne liked these visits of Ned’s as it gave her the opportunity to lord it over him, to drag out her latest new toy—a Barbie doll or badminton set. Ned brought along his baseball cards, wanting so much to share the wondrous crack of Jackie Robinson’s bat or that time Willie Mays caught a fly ball with his bare hand or that incredible home run of Maz in the 1960 series. Oh, to have seen this! To have been alive then and in Forbes Field! Mary-Anne only made fun of him and his cards. She always reminded him that he was orphaned. The only thing she was sorry about in his history of dead parents and being orphaned was that she hadn’t been the one to tell him first they had died.

He said it didn’t make any difference for he was an Isaly and he could get free ice cream whenever he wanted. Wasn’t it too bad there wasn’t an Isaly’s in Sewickley? Then he could get her a free ice cream cone. This infuriated Mary-Anne, but she couldn’t think how to rid him of this belief.

Despite Mary-Anne and her stuck-up friends with their superior smiles, there was solace in Sewickley, for it was beautiful. There were the chestnut and oak trees with their flame- and copper-colored leaves lining the wide streets; the huge Victorian and Colonial-style houses set within brilliant emerald lawns and immense laurel bushes; the pool at the country club; the little movie house they visited on Saturday afternoons; the games around the fireplace. Yes, there was solace in Sewickley.

Ned stood there thinking of solace.

Snow was coming down now, soft and dreamy, in big flakes you could catch on your tongue. That’s what Sally was doing while she stood at the bus stop. Snow stuck to her synthetic yellow hair. She was across the street and down a little way from where Ned was looking at that building. What was it? She was bored with standing there, pretending to be waiting for a bus. This would fool no one (if anyone was watching her) since four buses had already come and gone without her boarding one.

“Don’t this nut know it’s snowin’ for fuck’s sake?” Candy gathered the top of his down jacket more firmly around his neck and pulled the hood forward.

It was not really cold; snow just made it feel that way. The sun was still out, having made its late-afternoon arrival in glorious form. Sun spilled across the buildings on the other side of the road. Candy and Karl sat at a green metal table in another coffeehouse watching Ned gaze at the Isaly’s Ice Cream store. Candy and Karl were drinking cappuccinos, Candy doing his summary of
Don’t Go There.

“It’s a noir-type thing.”

“I don’t follow. You mean like that ‘film-noir’ stuff? Kind of thing Al Pacino’s always in?”

“Not all of his stuff is noir.” Candy wanted accuracy here.

“That’s not the point. Anyway, your book doesn’t sound like noir to me. All that stuff about drugstores and boutiques. That, my friend, ain’t noir.”

“So what about Ned’s book? You finished it?”

“I’m maybe two thirds through.”

“And?”

“It’s about a man and woman who keep passing each other. They never get together.”

“And . . . ? What happens?”

“That’s pretty much it, I guess.” Karl was feeling almost apologetic, as if there should be more to his critique than what he’d just said.

“That’s it? In a nutshell, that’s it? What do these writers do for excitement, anyway?”

Karl pondered. “I guess they don’t need much.”

“Jesus.” Candy shook his head.

“So maybe Ned thinks, you know, that less is more.”

“Ha! Well, that sure won’t get him off the hook.” Candy shook his head. “Sounds like
Sleepless in Seattle.
You know, where they never get together till the very end? It’s got what’s her name in it?”

“Meg Ryan.” Karl shook his head. “No, it’s not like that at all. These two come across each other several times.”

“They did in
Sleepless in Seattle,
too. Remember, she saw him by the water—”

“Look, it’s not the same. You just know how that movie is going to end. With them together and happy. This
Solace
you don’t know, except I have a feeling they don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Meet, get together. It’s not going to have one of your happy endings.”

“So?” Candy raised his palms and his shoulders. “Who wants to read it if it’s a downer?” He scooped up a handful of peanuts, popped one at a time into his mouth with his fist. After all, Karl had found nothing but fault with
Don’t Go There.
“Right? Reading’s for escape, ain’t it?”

Karl was impatient. “That’s crazy, C. Look at your ancient writers, your great writers, your Shakespeare, your Russians. Those aren’t for escape. I bet you none of them ends happy, not one.”

Candy flapped his hand as if shooing away misery, and said, “Ah, come on. Sure they do. How about that one where this girl Laura Doone has all this trouble at the beginning, but in the end it works out to be happy? Now, that’s one of your classics. It starts out bad, but it ends up good. At least, that’s what I heard.”

“Life’s not like that. Something goes bad in life, it stays bad.”

“So where’s the solace come in?”

Karl frowned and put his hand on top of his head, as if literally adjusting his thinking cap. “It hasn’t come in yet.” He dropped his hand and looked disappointed.

Candy was delighted to have something else to attack. “Two thirds through and you still ain’t got to the solace? That’s the
title,
man.”

“Well . . . maybe it’s in there and I’m not getting it.”

“I sure as hell ain’t getting it, either.” Candy spooned up some foam. “Bummer.”

They watched Ned looking at the building. Then Candy said, “I never seen anyone for standing around like this guy. He can stand so fucking long you’d think he’d turn stiff. What the hell’s he staring at, anyway?”

“The ice cream place. Isaly’s,” said Karl, binoculars raised to his eyes.

“You ought to be careful with those things, K; it makes you look pretty obvious, I mean like you’re staring at something.”

“I
am
staring at something. That’s what they’re for.” Karl adjusted the focus. Then he pulled out a pocket diary in which he’d been recording Ned’s movements. There was not much written down. He wrote “Isaly’s” again. After that, he couldn’t think what to set down. Zero, zilch. Then he got worried he, Karl, might be missing something important and so wrote the name of the street and the names of a couple of business, such as that bookstore over there and this café where they sat. He even wrote “1 cap (C) 1 espresso (K)” and noted down the time.

Candy asked, “You seen the redhead anywhere?”

“She’s here; she’s around.”

“Over there. Look.”

“What?”

Candy squinted, shading his eyes with his hand. “Looks like the guy jumped into our cab at the airport.”

“Nobody jumped in our cab—”

“No, I mean the one that muscled in and grabbed our cab—”

Karl shook his head. “I don’t see anyone—your eyes giving you trouble, C?”

Candy laughed. “If I didn’t know better—I mean if we wasn’t doin’ it ourselves—I’d almost think our Ned’s got another tail.” Candy looked in all directions. “Have you noticed we keep seeing the same fuckin’ faces all the time? I mean faces from the hotel. That cute little babe that was sitting around the lobby last night. That’s her at the bus stop across the street.”

Karl narrowed his eyes against the sharp sunlight flooding through the café’s window. “You’re right.”

Candy picked up the binoculars and was training them on the end of the street. “Lookie who’s here.”

“Who?”

“Old Clive. See that bookstore? It’s got books outside in those carts. Don’t the owner know it’s snowing?”

“It’s stopping. Put down the binoculars, Christ’s sake. You want another coffee?”

“Uh-huh. Maybe a latte this time.”

“It’s hard getting just plain coffee anymore. It’s coffee with an attitude.” Karl stood with the cups in his hand, shaking his head. “What I want to know, where’s our Ned get his ideas? I mean he never goes anyplace or does anything. Relatively speaking, I mean. How can he think up stuff to write about?”

Candy picked up the binoculars. “He came to Pitts-fucking-burgh, didn’t he?”

Karl said, “Yeah, lucky us.” He turned to go to the counter for refills, but stopped. He was looking again at the tall fellow across the street who had stopped to look in the window of a florist’s. “C? You don’t really suppose that crazy Mackenzie put out more than one contract?”

This truly startled Candy, who looked up, wide eyed. “What the fuck, K, why would he do that?”

“Because he’s an arrogant son of a bitch and a publisher. And remember we were very clear about the way we worked.”

“So he goes and hires somebody
else
to cap him? Some
slob
without any fastidiousness or principles—”

“If so, it means Ned could get smeared all over the pavement anytime now. Maybe we ought to forget the coffee and get out of here.”

Clive had never realized how few transactions good writers made with the physical world. The bad ones, like Dwight Staines, were in constant contact with the world outside because they lacked boundaries, like babies. Everything was theirs. They were the world and everything in it.

What was it that made the crucial difference? He would have to ask Tom Kidd—wait a minute! He never spoke to Tom Kidd beyond an unenthusiastic “hello” if he passed Tom in the hall; it was further evidence of his psyche’s crumbling if he could say almost automatically “Ask Tom Kidd.”

Clive shuddered and looked up the street. Ned had been standing there in front of that ice cream store for nearly twenty minutes, halfway between Clive and the two goons down there at the other end of the pavement. He didn’t have to get any closer to know they were Candy and Karl.

There were the usual people going about their business: a tall man walking out of the florist’s a few doors up, a woman into a laundromat; a blonde hanging in the doorway of a beauty shop; and the token beggar sitting near the bookstalls.

Where the hell was Pascal? What was he paying her for? To play fuckall with Ned Isaly in her free time? Clive was feeling put upon as he wandered into the used-book store, comforting in its smell of old bindings and page rot. Clive fussed around in the fiction shelves looking for Mackenzie-Haack authors, found a couple of Dwight Staines and a copy of Ned’s
Solace.
He had never read it, but he had certainly never advertised that fact at his workplace. One by Dwight Staines he took up to the cash register to a waif of a clerk who looked as if putting in the energy to read one book would fell her where she stood. He paid for the book, returned to hide among the shelves, where he took out a penknife and cut a square in the center pages big enough to deposit the handgun he’d been carrying in his pocket. It was small, a .22, and fit nicely.