Authors: Andrew Porter
With this in mind, he turns the corner away from his apartment, away from the apartment where right now his roommate Clayton is waiting for him to return his car, and heads north toward River Oaks, toward Beto’s house, where he is sure, even now, the party is starting.
MURDER
. His daughter had actually used that word. She had actually mentioned that as a possibility. If the boy they had hurt didn’t come through, if he ended up dying, this boy she had gotten involved with could be tried for murder, and she for conspiracy, for conspiracy after the fact, simply for knowing him, simply for being his girlfriend and for not reporting what she knew. It was a remote possibility, of course, highly unlikely, but still, just the idea of his daughter even mentioning this word to him, of her using it in a sentence involving her future, it was almost too much to bear.
Since Tuesday, when they’d met, he had been going over it in his mind, trying to figure out the best possible scenario, the best possible plan. He had talked it over with his lawyer, Albert Dunn, and Albert had told him that the best thing to do right now was to lay low and wait it out, to wait and see what happened. In all probability, he said, they were simply trying to scare her, trying to put her on edge, threatening her with prosecution as a way of getting her to testify against her boyfriend. To do anything too aggressive at this point, Albert thought, would only arouse suspicion. After all, Chloe hadn’t even been questioned yet. Not officially. She had been asked a few questions about her boyfriend, about his friend, and about their involvement, but not about her own. As far as they knew, she had been home in her dorm room studying, which is exactly where Chloe said she was. But still, Elson had known when he’d talked to his daughter earlier that week that she’d been lying, or at least not telling the whole truth, that she was covering something up. She had that look in her eye that she used to get back in high school whenever she’d come home from a party with the smell of alcohol on her breath, claiming to have been at the mall. Back then, he used to laugh it off, smile or shake
his head, but this was a different type of situation altogether. There were dire consequences here, dire stakes.
When he’d talked to Cadence about it earlier that week, she’d told him to keep his nose out of it, that there was a reason Chloe had waited so long to tell him. “She’s afraid you’ll muck it up,” she’d said, “start making phone calls and inquiries like you usually do.”
“Well, aren’t you even worried?” Elson had asked.
“Of course, I’m worried. Do you think there’s a minute that goes by when I’m not thinking about this?”
“I don’t know,” Elson said. “It’s hard to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. It’s hard to tell if you’re worried or not.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I’m getting off the phone,” she’d said and hung up.
He’d regretted that conversation, just as he’d regretted almost every conversation he’d had with Cadence in the past year. He’d wanted to tell her, first and foremost, that he was happy she’d stopped by the hospital to see him, that Lorna had told him that she’d stopped by, and that it had meant a lot to him that she’d done this. But, as usual, there seemed to be an enormous gap between what he wanted to say to Cadence and what he actually said.
And now, as he sits at the Ginger Man Pub, waiting for his friend Dave Millhauser to return from the john, he considers the extent to which his own family has cut him off. Even his eldest child, Richard, had refused to meet with him earlier that day when he’d called him up to set up a meeting. What had he done, he wonders, what had he done to warrant this type of mistreatment, this type of contempt?
All around him students from the university are sitting at tables, drinking beer and laughing. The pub itself is warmly lit, welcoming, a place where he has been coming now for almost a year, a place where he and Dave used to come to eat after their weekly tennis matches, but where they now just come to drink. Ever since Dave was denied tenure at Rice, he has lost his privileges at the tennis courts, but he still likes to come here to the Ginger Man to drink, still likes to hang out around the campus, still likes to believe, in his weaker moments, that he’s still a professor.
Earlier that night, Elson had helped Dave move the last of the boxes
from his old house into his new apartment, the new apartment that he and his wife, Cheryl, had been living in since they’d moved out of their house. A small dingy duplex on the west side of Houston. Afterward, on the way out to the Ginger Man, Dave had confessed to him that things were a little tight right now, that ever since he’d been denied tenure at Rice, they’d been having a little trouble financially. As soon as he finished his book, of course, things would change, things would get better, but for now, he said, they’d just have to endure. Endure? Elson wondered who else he knew who was still
enduring
at forty-six. And what about that book of his? Dave had been working on that book for more years than Elson could count, and yet he seemed no closer to finishing it now than he’d ever been. According to Dave, this had been the main reason he’d been denied tenure at Rice, but Elson knew there were other factors: his poor teaching record for one, his run-ins with the chair, his propensity to miss meetings and cancel class. These were all things that Dave had alluded to at one time or another, and yet Elson couldn’t help wondering whether there was also something else, something Dave hadn’t told him.
As he leans back in his seat at the bar, he hears a group of students behind him shouting something, chanting. There’s a loud grunt, and then a few of them stand up and raise their glasses above their heads in a toast. Elson has to smile, a wave of nostalgia filling him up. He turns back to the bartender to order another beer, and just then, just as he’s reaching into his wallet, he feels a heavy hand on his shoulder and turns to see Dave sliding onto the bar stool beside him.
“I thought of a way I could help,” Dave says, bellying up to the bar. “Can’t make any promises, of course, but I just remembered that I know a guy up there at Stratham, a professor in the art history department. Very nice guy. Did my master’s with him up at Cornell. Haven’t talked to him in years, of course, but I could make a couple inquiries if you’d like. Name’s Jeff O’Connor.”
Elson considers this. Ever since they arrived at the Ginger Man, he has been talking to Dave about Chloe, about her case, breaking his one promise to her and Cadence.
“I don’t know,” Elson says finally. “I don’t really see what he could do.”
Dave shrugs. “Me neither. Maybe nothing. Just thought he might be able to poke around a little. You know, make some inquiries. See if he can get an inside perspective on things.”
Elson lights a cigarette and nods. “That could be good,” he says, smiling. “Yeah, actually, that could be very good.”
“Look,” Dave says. “When I was at Hastings—that school I taught at straight out of grad school—they had a similar thing happen. Kid got caught with firearms in his dorm room. A whole bunch of antique rifles and stuff. Said he was a collector, but the administration didn’t buy it. They expelled him a few weeks later, and then a few weeks after that he was being brought up on criminal charges.”
“Chloe didn’t have firearms,” Elson says.
“I’m not saying she did.”
“She might not have even been involved. In fact, I don’t think she was.”
“I know. I’m just saying you can never be too cautious about these types of things. They can escalate. That’s all I’m saying.”
Elson nods again. “My lawyer says we should take it easy, lay low, hope it all blows over.”
“Yeah,” Dave says. “Well, that’s another way to approach it, I guess. I’m just saying that if it was my daughter I’d want to know everything I could, you know?”
Elson sips his beer, and then draws on his cigarette. He imagines what Cadence would say if she were here, sitting beside him, listening to him take advice from a man she’d always despised. Finally, he turns back to Dave. “All right,” he says, quietly. “Why don’t you just go ahead and call up your friend then.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just don’t go saying anything about this to anyone else, all right?”
“I won’t,” Dave says, and then he pats Elson on the shoulder.
Elson pulls out another cigarette from his pack and lights it. Then he looks at his watch, remembering his dinner date with Lorna. On the ride home from the hospital that morning he was released, he had promised her that he would stop drinking, had promised both her and the doctor that he would try his best to take better care of himself, but nothing had prepared him for
this
. Nothing had prepared him for the utter shock of the conversation he’d had with Chloe earlier that week, a conversation that had sent him boozing, more or less nonstop, for the past few days. He knew of course what he was doing, knew the risks that he was taking, knew that he couldn’t live this way forever.
If you keep treating your body
like this
, the doctor had told him,
if you keep drinking, if you keep smoking
, but before he could finish Lorna had jumped in and promised the doctor that she would look after him herself, that she’d make sure he stopped. It had been a strangely tender moment, the way she’d squeezed his hand then, the way she’d pulled him toward her and smiled at the doctor. And later, on the ride home, he could tell that she was genuinely scared. At a stoplight, she had turned to him very earnestly and said,
Please promise me you’ll treat yourself better
, and he had looked at her then and promised. He thought of the way that she’d lost her own father to cancer when she was ten, the way she’d spent most of her teenage years in a state of uncertainty and fear. He knew that this was what was on her mind that day as they drove home from the hospital. But now, as he stares at the unfinished beer before him, his third of the night, he wonders why it was he’d made a promise he knew he couldn’t keep.
Pushing the beer away, he turns back to Dave. “Let me ask you a question,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Have you ever heard of this guy Woody Harrison?”
“Who?”
“I think he’s a movie actor or something.”
“You mean, Woody Harrelson?”
“Yeah, that’s him. You’ve heard of him?”
“Of course,” he says. “Who hasn’t?”
Elson reaches for his beer again and takes a sip. “Well, apparently he’s an art collector too.”
“Huh?”
“According to Lorna.”
Dave nods. It was Dave who had first introduced them, Dave who had befriended Lorna first. Dave who had warned him about getting involved with her. “You know, I wanted to tell you something about that too,” Dave says after a moment.
“Huh?”
“About Lorna,” he says, shifting in his seat, growing uncomfortable. “I was actually debating whether or not to tell you this for a while, you know, because technically I’m friends with both of you …”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay,” he says and sighs. “Well, a few weeks ago—this was the night that Cheryl had that thing at the Menil Gallery, you know, that thing for
her students—well, we were coming home, and we decided to stop at Café Luz for dessert, and so we’re sitting there at Café Luz, having dessert, and all of a sudden I look over and notice Lorna sitting on the other side of the café with that guy Hector—you know, that guy she used to date?”
“So?”
“So, I’m just saying I saw them together.”
“Yeah, of course you did. They’re friends still.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dave shrugs, then looks away evasively.
“What?”
“I’m just saying they didn’t look like they were hanging out as friends, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”
Elson looks at him, tries to shrug it off, but a part of him feels unnerved. Only a week before he had had a conversation with Lorna about Hector, a conversation in which she’d denied any involvement with him whatsoever, in which she’d denied even talking to him. So what did this mean? Was she lying to him now? He tries to push the thought from his head, but a part of it has a hold on him. He can feel a sourness rising in his gut. He thinks of the painting in Lorna’s house, the nude that Hector had painted of her just before he left.
“Look, I’m sure it was nothing,” Dave adds. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“Who knows?” Elson says. “With that girl, it’s hard to know anything.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, it’s fine,” Elson says. “Really.” Then he looks at his watch. “I should probably be heading out anyway,” he says, looking at Dave. “Mind if I call you a cab or something. I’m kind of running late.”
“I could call Cheryl.”
“No, no,” Elson says. “Best not to bother her.” Then he lays down a twenty on the bar in front of Dave.
“I have money,” Dave says.
“I know you do,” Elson says, pulling out his phone to call the cab. “I know.”
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW
of Gavin’s first-floor bungalow apartment, Cadence can see the palm trees in the courtyard silhouetted against the late evening sky. The air outside is moist, cool, a light breeze blowing in through the open windows of Gavin’s bedroom. Despite everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours, Cadence feels calm, almost surprisingly calm, though a part of her can’t stop thinking about Chloe and the two men who had stopped by the house earlier that day to talk to her.
In the corner, Gavin pulls off his T-shirt, then his boxers, and walks down the dark hallway toward the bathroom. A moment later, she hears the shower go on and lies back on the bed and then closes her eyes. She takes in the scent of the room, of Gavin’s bedsheets, of his covers, a very male smell, a little musky, a little ripe. In a way, not that different from the way her son, Richard’s, dorm room used to smell in college. She wonders how it is that men allow themselves to cultivate these smells, these odors, how they remain so oblivious to them. She opens her eyes to the darkened room and rolls over on her side, thinking once again about Chloe and the men.