The Judas Glass (7 page)

I didn't dream that night. I didn't sleep well, waking every half hour or so with a feeling of dread. When I would stir, even before I could remember the cause of my grief, I felt the loss, the weight of it.

When daylight came, yellowish light leaking through the curtains, my hand was numb. I had the impression that my right arm ended at the wrist. I blinked, wanting to lie there, wanting to get up, wanting oblivion.

It was warm near my body, but around the edges the fluid was already cold. Before I knew what it was I sat upright, and flung myself away from the bed, across the room.

On the bed was a pond of ink, pooling in the canyons and harbors of the sheet. As I stood there aghast, I couldn't help thinking how upset Connie would be.
My God
,
I'll have to order a new mattress
.

I opened the curtains, and the scarlet gleamed, so much blood.

9

“I don't want to give you advice,” said Dr. Opal. “Friendship, affection, those I can give. But advice—” He gave a shrug.

“Go ahead,” I said.

Dr. Opal took the white coat off its hook on the door but instead of putting it on, he draped it over the back of a chair. He had always done this, moved things around while he talked. It wasn't absentmindedness so much as a need to reassure himself: the world was real, so was he.

“You don't really like zoos,” said Dr. Opal. He put on a pair of glasses with magnifying lenses attached, giving him a strangely multi-eyed appearance. “Do you?”

“Where else can you see a kiwi?” I said.

He smiled thoughtfully, as though he could hear my inner voice, what I really wanted to tell him. “I just got back from Sydney last week,” he said. “My book on the valves of the heart, revised edition. I gave a lecture, signed a few copies. I still have a little jet lag. It's pleasant, like an out-of-body experience. Let's see the finger.”

I sat where I was, my finger wrapped. “I bet you didn't see a kiwi,” I said.

“I'm on the State Commission investigating cuts,” joked Dr. Opal. He was a large elf with white hair. He resembled Jiminy Cricket in the way his features were both comical and handsome. His face creased into a smile. I had met Connie at one of his parties.
There's this special woman I want you to meet, from the middle of nowhere
. “Let's have a look.”

I'd wrapped my right forefinger in tissue. I had always been a little squeamish about wounds. Dr. Opal looked over the top of his glasses. “Bashful? About an ouch on your finger?”

“I cut it opening a package,” I said.

“One of those killer envelopes I keep hearing about.”

“More people are injured by packaging than automobiles,” I said. “I'm urging legislation, seat belts, and helmets for the office.”

Dr. Opal smiled with just the slightest gleam of impatience. I unwrapped my finger. The cut bled. First scarlet pearls welled along the abrupt line of the narrow opening, like a paper cut, fine, clean. Then a trickle began to spend itself down my finger, coursing across my palm.

Dr. Opal had once insisted that I call him Sam. It was what everyone else called him, he had said. But it wasn't true. He was one of those doctors so beloved and so respected even old friends called him
Doctor
. Friends his own age might call him
Dr. Sam
. But in a civilization where everything was on a first-name basis, Dr. Opal stood apart.

“The only kiwi I have ever seen,” said Dr. Opal, “was in the London zoo, in the nocturnal section. Flying foxes, too. My mother used to say God had a sense of humor, look at all the funny creatures He made. She was right. The world is full of wonders. Tell me about this woman, Richard. This pianist who meant so much to you.”

I couldn't say a word. I shook my head.

“You must have loved her,” said Dr. Opal. “I certainly can't imagine your father charging into a burning building.”

I sat there, on one of those examination tables covered with white paper, and gave him a brief, agonized explanation, truthful, fragmented.

He looked at me appraisingly. “You were in love,” he said at last.

“You sound surprised.”

“No, maybe just envious. I used to hope there was enough life in me to let me find a Rebecca or two before I go the way of the great auk.” As he spoke his hands were on me, steadying me so he could look into my eyes. “You loved her that much.”

“It frightened me, too. That much love for someone. Love in my view used to be like a low-grade fever, something you got over. Not—” I controlled myself with difficulty. “Not like this.”

“Unbutton your shirt.” He put the cold mouth of the stethoscope to my chest. “Take a deep breath.”

Dr. Opal struck me as someone who had made the right sort of bargain with life. His teeth were even, his stride buoyant. He could be peppery, but people liked him all the more for it.

My father had dropped dead one Sunday at three o'clock in the afternoon at a tennis ranch near Phoenix. And he had always hated tennis, taking up the game to please his new girlfriend, a tanned, blue-eyed creature who wrote a sports column. I had often wondered how strong my own heart would prove as I got older.

“I'm so sorry, Richard,” said Dr. Opal. He slipped the stethoscope from around his neck.

“You would have liked her.”

“I like a lot of people.” He gave me a smile that made him look just a little less avuncular and more like what he was—a man whose wife had died seven years ago, and who never expected to remarry. He was not resigned so much as realistic. I thought then that I must seem strangely passionate to him, angular, with much to learn.

He opened a glass jar of cotton swabs, long lengths of wood tipped with white turbans of cotton. “I thought when I reached my golden years I would understand people,” he said. “Do you know that feeling, that expectation that when you get old you'll be wise?”

“I keep hoping.”

He replaced the metal lid without withdrawing a swab. “It's happening. I think I'm beginning to get wise. I can feel it, falling over me like sunshine. Wisdom. Do you know what I've discovered about human beings, Richard?”

I gave him a look: tell me.

“They expect too much from life. They expect too much from themselves.”

“You make wisdom sound depressing.”

He laughed and gave a shrug. “Do you know why people don't live to be five hundred years old? Because we'd go crazy. One stupid century after another—we couldn't stand to look at it happen, over and over again.”

“What's wrong with my finger?”

His look was quizzical.

“There was blood all over the sheets.”

Dr. Opal considered this. “That's very unlikely, Richard. From a little cut like that. You're exaggerating.”

“Look at it—it's still bleeding.” But it wasn't. The blood on my hand was already drying to a brown, Turkish-coffee glue.

“All over the sheets,” I repeated, without much conviction. How much
had
it bled?

He applied a bandage. His touch was gentle. In ancient times, when people knew little about medicine, Dr. Opal was the kind of individual who still would have cured the sick. His presence, the way he pressed the white tape over the cut, made me believe that healing had already begun. The adhesive strip on my finger was pristine, white and comforting. I crooked the finger, straightened it. It no longer hurt.

“What you want to remember is that time teaches us,” said Dr. Opal. “I think it's the only thing that really does.”

“What kind of advice is that?”

“And you also want to remember that Connie will try to keep you. Not because she bears tremendous affection for you.”

“I thought you
liked
Connie.”

“I do.” He gave an apologetic smile, as though to say,
It's just my insight acting up again
. “Take care of yourself. Come over for dinner sometime. It's only a mile or so away, but we only see each other around Christmas, maybe run into each other at Park & Shop.” He moved a chair squarely in front of me, and sat down. “Do you know how few people write a personal letter to me—actually put a letter in an envelope and lick a stamp? Or pick up the phone and give me a call to see how I'm doing?”

I wanted to tell him, just then, how I had really cut my finger. Not just a vague story of a package—tell him what had arrived, unexpectedly, after so many years. But for some reason I didn't.

I kept it secret.

10

Half the house was still there.

The brown-shingled walls were charred, the shiny black of graphite. The brick chimney towered out of sodden wreckage. But some of the upper windows remained unbroken, and wisteria clung to some of the unburned portions of the house. A cushion leaned on the front step, the remains of the sofa. A rain gutter dangled.

Yellow police tape spun and straightened slowly in the light breeze. An official notice had been stapled to the charred front door, declaring the dwelling sealed. The lawn was flattened, trodden.

I didn't hear a step until someone was beside me, and when I was aware of him he had already spoken.

Simon gave me a sad smile. “The chief of police was here about twenty minutes ago. Getting his picture taken.”

His round spectacles reflected the morning light. He wore a v-necked gray sweater, and carried a large manila envelope.

“Chief Timm thinks he's running for mayor or state senator or maybe Secretary of Defense next year,” I said. “On the Public Hanging ticket. I like Joe, but he thinks every homeowner should have a neutron bomb.”

“He gave me these.” They were mug shots, serial killers, police composites, a coloring book of police failure. There are good reasons why I'm not a criminal lawyer. I didn't even want to take these pictures from Simon's hands, but I did.

“They have no idea, do they?” I said.

“They say it was probably someone she knew,” said Simon.

“Let me guess—male, furtive, a red can with
inflammable
in yellow lettering.”

“They say it could possibly be one of these people.”

He selected a large glossy from the array in my hands, a man with a narrow face and thick eyebrows, a child's memory of how almost all adult males look.

“He wanted to know if Mom or Dad or I had seen one of these men, hanging around, stalking her.”

“These must be people who specialize in burning after they kill,” I suggested. I thought: people like this look human, but they aren't.

Simon could not speak. His shoulders were trembling.

“They'll find out who did it,” I said. “They start with no idea, and then little by little they put together a case.”

“They don't care, really. It's just another dead body to them.”

“The police hate this sort of thing as much as we do,” I said. It was true, but it sounded false. Why was I defending the cops?

“That makes it even worse, doesn't it?” Simon said. “That they care and still can't stop him.”

“If anything
can
make it worse.”

He dropped all the pictures onto the lawn, the top photo edging out so the top of the man's head was visible, dark hair combed back, a 1940s movie idol. Simon was up the steps, into the ruined house.

I called after him, but he was moving too fast.

I caught up with him just as he was removing a strip of
Police Line
—
Do not Cross
tape that had wrapped across his chest.

He did not say a word. He was far into the house, and I heard something break, wood, part of the floorboards. It smelled dank, evil, and something inside me could not stand to hear the soft, steady tune of water trickling in the darkness. There were splashing sounds, his footsteps.

“Simon, it's not safe,” I called. The sound of my voice unsettled something. There was a tinkle, a vague thud. Something broke under my shoe, a white porcelain knob.

“I'm looking for something,” he called.

“This is a bad idea,” I said, feeling logic go stupid in me. Why was it a bad idea? If the police showed up, I would deal with them. There was a crash, wood splintering. It was dangerous—that made it a bad idea. I didn't move another step. The ceiling was a wasteland, black, peeling.

All of this could come down. The floor sagged under my feet, something in the timbers giving way. But I felt that I was in collusion with Simon now, trespassing for some important reason.

It didn't take long before a flashlight probed the dark, illuminating puddles, twists of naked wire, nailheads in the walls studs. I was standing out of the splash of morning sunlight, and I stepped carefully to where I could be seen. “I'm Richard Stirling,” I said. “I'm the attorney of the deceased.”

Why did I say that? Why didn't I say
I'm the lover of the deceased?

“This is all off-limits, Mr. Stirling,” said the broad-shouldered silhouette. The cop relaxed a little, leather creaking.

“I know that,” I said.
Dazzling rebuttal
. “We thought we smelled fire,” I said.

Actually, agreeing with your opponent is a good idea. But before the cop could reflect that no police procedure in the books required him to argue with a trespasser, Simon was there with me. The cop studied both of us. “Step out here,” he said, uninvitingly. The police can be nice at times like this. They were more than nice—they were apologetic. They would have to take us into custody. I was apologetic, too. I kept my tone light, and my message clear.

More police came, an audience, and I was in my element. A few neighbors dropped by, and I was recognized, the lawyer, the would-be hero. I could see why they might mistake their duty, I told them. I gave them my best smile.

After a few minutes of that the cops were relieved to ask us to leave, please, and not come back. They didn't want us to hurt ourselves.

As I walked Simon to his Honda Civic he slipped something into my hand. “I found what I was looking for,” he said.