Mickelsson's Ghosts (33 page)

“Pete Mickelsson,” he said. “I brought your money.”

There was a pause, then she called, “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty, maybe nine. Donnie, could I come in?”

“Eight-thirty in the
morning?”

“I brought your money,” Mickelsson said, leaning closer to the door. “I brought cash—the full amount. Donnie, I've really got to talk to you.”

Silence.

He tapped at the door with one knuckle. “Donnie? Can I come in?” When she said nothing, he called, “Are you alone in there?”

Now she did answer, and to his surprise she was only a few feet from the door. Desire leaped in him, stirring in his chest and groin. “I can't let you in,” she said. “Can you slide the money under the door?”

“Let me talk to you for just one minute. That's all I want—just to talk to you. No funny business.”

“There's somebody here,” she said, barely audible.

He thought about it, not quite believing her but trapped. “Can I talk to you later, then? When will you be free?”

“First slide the money under the door.”

He smiled, then got out the bank envelope, removed twenty dollars from it, and slid the rest under the door.

Almost at once she said, “It's not all here.”

“When can I see you?”

“Jesus,” she whispered. From the way she said it he thought perhaps there was someone in there with her after all.

“Tell me and I'll slide in the rest,” he said.

“All right, all right,” she said. “How about midnight?”

“You're kidding.” It struck him immediately that if she was serious he could stay with her till morning.

“No, I mean it.”

He pulled at the twenty-dollar bill, then after an instant bent down and slid it under the door. “OK,” he said, his voice thinned by emotion, “midnight.”

As he turned from the door, still smiling, she called, “Hay, Prafessor, I just remembered something. I have to go visit my sister tonight. She's in the hospital.”

His mouth opened of its own volition and he turned. At last he said, “Bullshit.”

“It's the truth,” she said. “Listen, tomorrow night, OK? Midnight tomorrow night. I'll make it worth your time.”

There was no real doubt that she was laughing at him, both she and whoever it was she had with her, maybe fucking him upright even as they talked; yet, crazily, he wasn't quite sure. He thought of kicking the door in: it wasn't pleasant to think that some son of a bitch—he might never know which one—had listened to his miserable whimperings and pleadings and would go out and tell all Susquehanna. Better to kick the door in than be a farmboys' joke and never even know whom to thank. She might admire him for it. He was not quite the crawling slave he seemed!

But it wasn't quite positive that someone was with her, and not positive that Donnie, if he kicked her door in, would ever let him visit her again. He turned, blushing, his right hand clenched tight on the handle of his cane, and, when he was sure he had his voice in control, said, “OK, then, tomorrow night. Good.”

“Bring cash,” she said, but the teasing voice was sweet.

“Don't worry,” Mickelsson said.

At the third-floor landing he stopped without knowing why. Though it was bright daylight outside, one could hardly tell here whether it was day or night. He glanced down the hall into increasing dimness, then realized with a start what it was that had made him pause. The fat man, still in his police hat, was bending over at his door, trying to reach something on the carpet, apparently a pamphlet. There was no one in sight, and the fat man, caught up in the labor of bending, appeared unaware of Mickelsson's existence. In the dingy corridor the man seemed even more immense than he'd seemed in his room, but also more vulnerable. His face shone with sweat, and as he bent his knees a little, snatching at the pamphlet, breathing in gasps, he seemed about as dangerous as a beached whale. Upright, he'd be six feet tall, maybe more.

“Let me help you with that,” Mickelsson said, taking a step in the fat man's direction.

The fat man jerked his head up, cheeks gray as ashes, flapped both arms wildly, and almost fell. Mickelsson froze, the fat man's steel-rimmed glasses aiming at him. By the time his heart had ka-thumped three times, Mickelsson understood that the man could not see him at all.

For two or three hours he tried to work on his book, but nothing came. He kept looking at his watch, as if tonight were the night he would be seeing Donnie; then he would remember that it was not, and would remember that somewhere—in some bar, in some store, in some sooty, run-down factory—some countrified oaf knew fat, middle-aged Professor Mickelsson's doting shamelessness. Some goaty-smelling cow-herd or plumber or electrician, young or old, fat or thin, bare-chinned or whiskery—some preacher, garbage-man, schoolteacher, lawyer—maybe the very man who'd murdered Professor What's-his-name, or the man who had torn apart Mickelsson's house—somebody, somewhere, had the word on him. For a minute the thought enraged him; then suddenly, as if some blockage in his brain had broken open, he was serene. Her naked image rose before his eyes, and he no more cared about the impression he made on the people of Susquehanna—or Binghamton itself—than Boethius cared for his prison bars, or some silver-eyed saint of the thirteenth century for his grotto's stench of piss.

Again—thesis-antithesis—in came the thought of his grandfather, his own tight-sphinctered, abandoned self (thus Rifkin, once), dryly correct and reasonable as clockparts. Abruptly, Mickelsson got up from his desk, got out his dropcloths, roller, and paint, and, every aching muscle crying protest, set to work. When he was able to write he would write.

His lunacy would wane, this preposterous, self-destructive business with Donnie Matthews. When he imagined himself married to her he almost might have laughed—would have, except for the sudden, sharp chest-pain he felt at the thought of losing her. Biological programming, he knew; nothing more. The older male turning to the potential child-bearer. God did not demand that one approve of being born a primate; He demanded only—and exacted—obedience. Ah, for a little common dignity, Mickelsson thought. He shook his head, ironic, lest some well-intentioned angel mistake his meaning.

Jessica Stark's late husband, in the photograph she'd one night shown him at her house, was young, almost comically clean-jawed, like Dudley Do-Right. He had smiling, slightly impish eyes, crooked teeth. Though he was a treeman—“forestry,” she'd said with a tone of respect that struck Mickelsson as odd—he had a classy look suited to her own. He looked English, though he wasn't. An American from Michigan. But one could imagine him speaking with an Oxford accent, talking about cricket or Rugby with the Queen. Not that that was fair. He had one of those boyish, forestry-people names: “Buzzy.” He did not look like a young man who'd played football, though perhaps, somewhere like Yale, he'd been on the rowing team. Shadowy and unreal as he seemed, now that he was dead, he had left, scattered here and there throughout the house, bold signs of his existence: African drums, long spears, painted masks. Much of his work, Jessica had told him, he'd done in Africa. “He wasn't exactly political,” she said, “but of course because of the nature of his work he knew everyone.”

One of her colleagues in sociology had been listening—it was a large party; otherwise, Mickelsson knew now, the man wouldn't have been there. “How could a man work in Africa and not be political?” he asked. He had a blunt, gar-nosed, tough New York face, a curiously arrogant way of lifting his pock-marked chin.

“I
don't know,” Jessica said. “Somehow he managed.”

The man leered, smug, and in what appeared to be a rare burst of politeness decided to drop it. He let his hooded eyes drift over paintings, furniture, the drapes on the windows; then he floated away to find more lively conversation.

“Who the hell was that?” Mickelsson had asked. He felt again now the protectiveness—the witless leap of anguish like a dog's—that had stirred in him then.

Jessica said, watching her departing colleague, “Him? I'm not quite sure what his name is. Danytz, I think. One of the Marx brothers.” She smiled, momentarily wicked, her dimple flashing, then put back her studiously fair look. Except for Jessica, the whole Sociology Department was Marxist. It was not a subject she cared to dwell on. “They're decent enough people,” she said, and shrugged.

“I'm sure,” Mickelsson said. The man who'd just left them stood grinning, jabbing his long, thick finger into a black man's chest. Apparently he and the black man were friends.

Jessica said, “Come, meet the Bryants. You'll like them.”

Mickelsson had liked them a good deal, perhaps simply because Jessica liked them, or perhaps because that night Phil Bryant, in his melodious, down-cellar voice, had chosen to argue with Geoffrey Tillson about whales; and for all his scorn of Tillson, Mickelsson had liked Jessica Stark even more than before for the way she'd tried to help poor Tillson save face.

“But heck,” Tillson said, his smile wildly twitching, “how can anyone come out against women's
perfume?
Never mind protein for the Japanese people—” He twisted his silver-bearded head toward Mickelsson and winked, then quickly, when Mickelsson gave him no response, poked his face back into Bryant's. When Tillson shook his finger, the cloth of his suitcoat pulled against the hump on his back as if the hump were stone. “Sentimentality will be the ruin of our civilization,” he said, grinning crazily, as if afraid to let anyone know he really meant it, though his voice insisted. “You weep over the whales—big, intelligent mammals. Who weeps for the thousands and thousands of cows out there dying in Wyoming and Oklahoma to make Burger King Whoppers? Granted, steers may be comparatively stupid—but down with intellectual snobbery! They're feeling creatures! Did you ever watch a cow with her calf?”

“It's true, Peter,” Jessica said, seeing Mickelsson's look.

Ruth, Tillson's wife, cried out sharply, “We're vegetarians, you know.” Only when she spoke did Mickelsson notice that she was present—round-backed, big-bosomed, arrow-faced. Her shiny eyes seemed all anguish.

“Then you shouldn't approve of eating whales,” Phil Bryant said reasonably. He stood comfortably erect, like the former army captain he was, and he smiled as if he took them all for fellow officers.

“We don't! Do we, Geoffrey?”

“But perfume!
That's
the issue!” Tillson raved.

“Oh, come on, Geoffrey,” Jessica said, and laughed. Light seemed to gather around her.

Mickelsson backed off, briefly catching Phil Bryant's eye, then winking at Jessica as he turned to find other conversation.

“He's not a bit crazy,” she'd said later. “He's self-conscious, so he puts on a show. I imagine we all sound fiercer than we are, at times.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

Poor woman,
Mickelsson thought now, almost prayerful. Fall coolness had come to the mountain, and he was down on one knee, putting a log in the livingroom stove. He would sleep on the livingroom couch again tonight, the bedrooms upstairs newly painted or in disorder, stripped down and waiting for his brush.

God grant her someone worthy of her beauty,
he thought. Someone full of energy in bed, someone like his own …

Everybody's own,
he corrected himself, and reached into his right-side pocket for a Di-Gel.

He put away the poker, closed the door of the stove, crossed to switch off the livingroom light, the last still burning, then stood a moment thinking, unconsciously rubbing his sore shoulders and arms. Now the sky was beginning to gray. If it weren't for the mountains, he might already be looking at sunrise. How peaceful it was, he thought, then realized he was mistaken. The house was full of noises and unnamable trouble. A wind had come up, a wash of sound just wintry enough to make things whisper and creak, much like voices. Something alive and almost certainly large ran startled through the cellar, knocking something from its place, a dull clunk, then fleeing. Then, somewhere across the valley or maybe up on the mountain behind the house, he heard gunshots, two in quick succession, then a third. He had a feeling there had been other gunshots earlier. He listened hard, almost not breathing, but except for the sounds of the house stirring, he heard nothing more.

He got a crystal-clear mental image of the fire escape leading to the girl's window.

He went over to the couch, lay down and pulled the afghan over him. When he was almost asleep, free-falling through space, hearing faraway angry shouts, he was jerked back to wakefulness by a roar of motorcycles on the road out front, or maybe in the rough field beyond—four or five of them, from the sound of it, crackling and whining like chain-saws digging in.
Kids,
he thought, annoyed as an old man. Of their own accord, his fists clenched and his back bent painfully. Rattlesnakes, housebreakers, animals in the cellar, big-chested big-cocked devils on dirt bikes …

He closed his eyes, praying that he be spared bad dreams.

PART TWO

1

“But isn't it true,” Blassenheim said, his hand still in the air, lest anyone get the idea of interrupting him, “that Aristotle's just as much a fascist as Plato was, it's just their manners are different?” Michael Nugent slid his eyes toward the ceiling in despair. Blassenheim continued, registering Nugent's comment but not persuaded that he'd made any mistake, “Like in
Nicomachean Ethics,
where he tells us that ‘courage' is the mean between ‘foolhardiness' and ‘cowardice,' what's his authority but his own aristocratic style—I mean, button-down collars, like ‘Let's not make a
scene,
my dear fellow'—shit like that. I mean, what he's always saying is ‘Be reasonable.' Just like my mother.” The class laughed, all but Nugent, who dramatically clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut. Blassenheim looked around, pleased (on the whole), moving just his eyes, and remembered to lower his hand, then hurried on. “How do we know it's correct to be reasonable except that Aristotle says so? Look at the berserkers—you know, those Viking guys. They took this drug or something and when they went into battle they were crazy people, and maybe they'd get killed—lot of times they didn't, people were too scared—but either way the Vikings trashed all Europe. Or look at those guys in Vietnam that would throw themselves on a grenade to save their buddies—
that
wasn't reasonable, or even if it was, it wasn't why they did it. And the same thing for cowardice, only vice versa. How does Aristotle know it's not more reasonable than killing people? He doesn't even question it. All he's really saying is ‘
Our
kind of chaps don't
do
that kind of thing.' ” Again the class laughed.