Hard Rain (25 page)

“That's better,” Mrs. McTaggart said. “You were white as a sheet.”

Jessie drained the glass. The woman took it from her. “Thank you, Mrs. McTaggart.”

“Call me Erica. I don't much like the McTaggart label. For personal reasons.” She went to put the glass down on a side table. Her route took her past the easel. It drew her like a magnet. She dipped a brush in the red pool on her palette, hesitated, dabbed paint on the canvas. From her place on the couch, Jessie could see the almost finished painting: two misshapen naked men standing by a gas pump. They might have been arguing. It wasn't a bad idea, but Erica McTaggart didn't have the skill to make it work. Philip could have fixed it in ten minutes.

Erica saw Jessie looking at the painting and said, “I'm thinking of calling it ‘Pumped Up.' It's Exhibit One-A in my ‘A Man's Gotta Be What a Man's Gotta Be' series—men at boxing matches, men in bars, men at urinals. Therapeutic, if nothing else.” She stepped back, laid down the palette and the brush. “I know what you're thinking—to send a message call Western Union. Right?”

“Not at all.”

But Erica detected her lack of enthusiasm, if not its cause. She snorted. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, uh …”

“Jessie. Jessie Shapiro.”

Erica's ruined eyebrows rose. “Jewish?”

“That's right.” Jessie's father was Jewish, her mother Protestant, but she didn't go into that rigmarole. Instead she repeated, “That's right,” and added, “Jewish.”

“Hey,” said Erica McTaggart, “no offense.” She sat on the floor, crossing her legs in a modified lotus. Jessie watched her, but she was thinking about her parents. It had been the second marriage for both of them. Now her mother was in Costa Rica, working on her fourth. Her father, retired in Florida, had also retired from the marriage game. Now he just had girlfriends. Like a lot of people Jessie knew, they were their own children, still occupied with their own development, their own growing up. That put their real children in an awkward position. Jessie had resolved never to let that happen to Kate.

“You're not offended, are you?” said Erica McTaggart.

“No.”

“Christ, my so-called maiden name was Rabinowitz. I don't like that label, either. For aesthetic reasons.” She smiled. She had sharp little teeth. “But if you want to know the truth, I'm most comfortable in the company of Jewish women. Don't you find that?”

“No.”

Erica's smile hardened. The room was quiet. A fly buzzed between the double windows. “So,” Erica said, “you were looking for Hartley Frame. Can I ask why?”

“I thought my husband … my ex-husband,” Jessie began. The words trailed away. Thinking about her parents had knocked her off the rails. “When did he die?”

“Hartley?”

“Yes.”

“I don't remember the exact year. 'Seventy-one, or 'seventy-two. Around there. You still haven't explained why you're looking for him. Does it have something to do with the memorial?”

“I don't know about any memorial. I'm—I was looking for him because he was a friend of my ex-husband.” In a few sentences, Jessie described the disappearance and Buddy Boucher's letter.

“What's your ex-husband's name?”

“Pat Rodney.”

Erica McTaggart tilted her head back, as though trying to see Jessie from a new angle. “You were married to Pat Rodney?”

“Yes.”

“You had a child by him?”

“Yes. What's so odd about that?”

Erica looked away. “Nothing. People change, I guess, although I've never found that to be the case—you just gradually learn what they're really like.” She turned back to Jessie. “You don't look his type, that's all.”

“So I'm told. Why not?”

“You're too … classy.”

Jessie shook her head. “I'm middle class. So's Pat.”

“I didn't mean it quite so literally. Pat Rodney is—or at least he was—a bit … crude.”

“How do you mean?” Jessie said, at the same time hearing the edge in her tone and wondering why she was defending him.

“Well, he used to—touch me when I didn't want to be touched. Things like that.”

“Did you go out with him?”

“Good God, no. I went out, if that's the right expression, with Hartley.”

“I thought—”

Erica smiled a malicious smile. “You thought right. I was married to Ross at the time. He wasn't pleased when he found out—took it like a man, you might say. Put
fin
to our
mariage
, in fact. Such as it was. The funny thing was that by the time Ross found out, Hart was already … Hart and I were starting to grow apart.”

“When was this?”

“The fall of 'sixty-eight. Hart and I were really all finished by the winter. That's when he dropped out.”

“He dropped out?”

“Yes. Before he flunked out. He was failing all his courses, except for music. He always got straight A's in music. Hartley was a real artist. I think that's what Ross couldn't stand. Ross was the first one to spot his talent—he even tried to persuade his parents to send him to Juilliard, but they had other ideas.”

“His father's a senator, isn't he?”

“Is and was. But they didn't get along. Hartley had a complete rupture with his family sophomore year.”

“What about?”

“His life-style in general, I guess. Drugs. They didn't approve. Ross came around to that way of thinking too, after he found out about our little fling. Then he started taking the line that Hart wasn't really talented, just facile.”

“What instrument did he play?”

“Anything. He could play anything. He had a band. Sergeant Pepper.”

“That was the name of the band?”

“Yes. Sergeant Pepper. Hart loved that record, so that's what he called the band. I sang in it sometimes. ‘Descartes Kills.'”

“What?”

“It was one of our songs.” Erica's eyes brightened. “Do you want to hear it? I've got a tape.”

“Sure.”

Erica opened a drawer and rummaged through piles of cassettes. She muttered their names as she tossed them aside: “
Tapestry, Best of Buffalo Springfield, After Bathing at Baxter's
. Here it is.” She snapped a cassette into a player by the wall. The room filled with tape hiss. Then a woman's voice shouted, “Descartes Kills,” and a band began pounding behind her. The lyric that followed was unintelligible, the playing chaotic. Only one sound came clearly to Jessie, a ringing guitar that faded in and out of the background. When the song finished, Erica popped the cassette out. “A bit rough, maybe, but you don't hear that kind of passion anymore.” Her face was flushed. “Sometimes I think rock music is like opera—all its great moments have already happened.” Erica stuck out her sharp, little chin, ready for an argument.

But Jessie let the invitation pass by. “Pat played on that song, didn't he? Did he write it too?”

“Hart wrote all the songs,” Erica replied with annoyance. “It was Hart's band. Different people played in it at different times, including Pat. Pat was a primitive—couldn't read a note.” A veil slipped over her dark eyes. Her voice softened. “We used to drop acid and jam in the tunnels. The sound was incredible.”

“Tunnels?”

“There are miles of maintenance tunnels under the campus. It's black as black down there. Sometimes we'd just drop acid and explore. But other times we'd take the instruments and jam all night. And … once in a while, just Hart and I would go down—we had a little room way at the end of one of the crawl tunnels. With a little mattress.” She lapsed into silence, her dark, veiled eyes on the past. “It was like
La Bohème
,” she said at last. Then she turned to Jessie, as though snapping out of a reverie. She saw the expression on Jessie's face and misinterpreted it. “You know, the opera.”

“I thought all the great moments in opera were in the past,” Jessie said.

Erica didn't like that. Her brow wrinkled as she searched for a cutting reply; for a second, Jessie saw how she would look as an old woman. “Pat wasn't very good, to tell you the truth,” Erica said. “I think Hartley kept him in the band just because he felt sorry for him. The poor townie routine.”

Energy fluttered through Jessie's body, as though an engine had started. “Townie? Does that mean Pat came from here?”

Erica looked surprised. “Not Morgantown specifically, I don't think, but from somewhere around here, yes. Didn't you know that?”

“Pat never spoke much about his past.”

“That's probably because he didn't have much of one, at least when I knew him. What did he end up doing?”

“He's a studio musician in L.A.”

“You're joking.”

“No.”

“But he couldn't read a note.”

“So you said.”

Erica McTaggart's dark eyes flickered around the room. “Maybe people do change, after all.”

Jessie leaned forward on the couch, but not with excitement at Erica's psychological speculations. “If Pat came from here, he must still know people in the area.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Erica said.

“Do you know of any?”

Erica yawned. Jessie noticed for the first time how tired she looked. Maybe she'd been painting all night. “You could try across the Vermont line,” she said. “They had a commune—Pat, his sister, some others. Hart stayed there after he dropped out. I went up once. Not much of a place. That was the last time I saw Hart.”

Erica was sliding back into nostalgia again, but Jessie had no time for that; she was on her feet. “Pat has a sister?”

“You didn't know that? How long were you married to him?”

Jessie ignored the question. “What's her name?”

Erica thought. “Doreen, if memory serves. But in those days, she had a hippie nom de guerre.”

“Which was?”

“Blue,” Erica replied. “Preferable to Moonbeam, I suppose, or Sunflower. She was the one Hart left me for, in fact. One of the ones.” She rose, quite gracefully, from her lotus position. “But you know something? I don't regret any of it. Not one minute. It was wonderful.” She paused; the light faded from her eyes. “Do you think that's just because we were so young?”

Jessie didn't know the answer. She thanked Erica McTaggart and hurried away.

22

Lacrosse sticks hung in the front hall. The house was silent. Quietly, Zyzmchuk shut the door and turned toward the inner room. A floorboard squeaked beneath him. He paused. From the inner room came the sound of quick footsteps. He got there in time to see the dark-haired woman run down a corridor and out the back door.

Zyzmchuk started to follow, then stopped himself. The monitor. He turned back. More haste less speed, slow and steady wins the race, and other comforting adages took the place of thinking.

Zyzmchuk looked at the screen. “Frame,” it said, “Hartley E. Class of '69. Father: Edmund S. Frame. Class of '43. U.S. Senator, Virginia. Mother: Alice (Sangster). Faculty advisor: Prof. M. R. McTaggart, Dept. of Music. Academic Record: SAT: Verbal-670. Math-640. Achievement Tests: French-610. Grades: 1965: Fall Semester: Music 101-A …”

Zyzmchuk scrolled through the academic record of Frame, Hartley E. Except in music, his grades started high and dropped steadily; the music marks remained high. By the spring of 1968, he was on academic probation. No grades were listed for the fall term of 1968. Instead there was a notation: “Withdrew Dec. 3, 1968.” Then came a few blank lines, followed by: “Alumni contributions: $0. Present Address: Deceased. (See file WR/DD).” There was nothing else in the file on Frame, Hartley E.

Zyzmchuk looked down at the instructional template fastened to the flat border of the keyboard. To close a file: Control KD. Simple enough. He closed the Frame file. The screen displayed an opening menu. To open a file: E. Zyzmchuk pressed E. “Name of file?” asked the screen. WR/DD, typed Zyzmchuk. Nothing happened. “Enter?” asked the screen. “Okay, okay,” Zyzmchuk muttered. He pressed
ENTER
. That made the disk drive hum. Then green words appeared on the screen: File WR/DD—Alumni War Dead. That heading was followed by many names, going back to the War of 1812. The last entry was Frame, Hartley E., U.S. Army, Pfc. Viet Nam.

Zyzmchuk closed the file. Leaving the computer on at the opening menu, he walked out of the Alumni Affairs Building and drove to the 1826 House restaurant, across the street from the motel. He sat by a window facing the road and ordered coffee. Then he waited.

It wasn't long before a small car turned into the motel lot and parked in front of number 19. The dark-haired woman got out, unlocked the door and went inside.

Zyzmchuk paid for his coffee and drove across the street. “I'd like a room,” he said in the office. “Is number twenty available? That's where I'm parked.”

“It is,” said the clerk, “but there's no fireplace. Eight has a fireplace, though, and it's empty.”

“Twenty will be fine.”

“They're the same price.”

“I like twenty.”

“Okeydoke.”

Once inside his room, Zyzmchuk pressed his ear against the wall. He heard the woman talking on the other side, but couldn't make out her words. There were no other voices. Zyzmchuk examined his phone, following the wire to an outlet in the back wall. He opened the window and looked out. A telephone cable was strung along the foundation, a few inches above the ground. At each room a small plastic circuit box was wired to it.

Zyzmchuk got his toolbox and climbed out the window. The motel backed onto a rocky meadow, occupied by half a dozen cows. They raised their heads, looked him over, stuck their noses back in the grass.

Zyzmchuk opened the plastic box outside number 19. He clipped his own wire to the leads and ran it into the circuit box outside number 20. Then he climbed back inside and closed the window.