Blood Count

CHAPTER 19

It’s over now,” Lily said in a flat voice when Hutchison had gone. On the kitchen counter was her laptop. It was open. She began tapping at it.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” I said. “What are you working on?”

“Just checking e-mails,” she said. “It’s over. I told you.”

“You’re sure?” I closed my eyes for a few seconds as the pain sliced against my eyeballs and reached for the pills I had in my pocket.

“Don’t,” said Lily. “It’s too much. I’ll get you some aspirin.”

“I’m OK.”

“Who beat you up, Artie? Do you think somebody wanted you to stop asking questions about Marianna?”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Want me to stop asking? Lily, did you ever know Amahl Washington?”

“I met him,” she said. “I didn’t get to know him.”

“He died. Six months ago.”

“He was old,” she said. “Almost everybody here is old. They live in the past. They live in this building like a little village, as if it’s all that keeps them going, keeps them safe. It contains their history, you can see that? Artie,” she added, “I’m getting old. Maybe it’s the building. Or my feet.”

“You’re not old.”

“Older than you,” she said. “Years and years older.”

“I never cared.”

“I never really talked to Mr. Washington,” she said. “I remember Celestina Hutchison was pretty sniffy about him. A basketball player, she’d say. She’s such a snob.”

“Lucille Bernard was his doctor, too.”

“She was?” Lily stared at her computer. “Well, she’s a lung specialist, so why not?”

“Was he friends with Lionel Hutchison?”

“How would I know?” she said sharply. She got up, found a bottle of Scotch in one of the cupboards, got two glasses, and poured some for both of us. She gulped at hers. “Please, let it be, Artie,” she said. “Can’t we just trust Lionel? I want us to trust him, I want it to be over, I want to go to the funeral tomorrow morning and let it all end.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. My friend, my job.”

“What about Hutchison? Won’t he want to go with you? To the funeral?”

“I’ll talk to him. His wife will make a stink, though. So we can do that, right? We can let it be.”

We sat and talked across the counter now like two polite acquaintances, people who had just met, who found themselves next to each other in a coffee shop or a theater. We sat for a while, and were nice to each other, and sipped our drinks, and I was OK with it, I was with her.

I looked at the Obama poster taped to the fridge, other Obama stuff spread out on the kitchen counter, a stack of campaign leaflets. I picked one up.

“Election night was really something wasn’t it, honey?” I said. “You worked hard on the campaign.”

“I really loved it,” she said softly. “I worked with such good people, you know. And I love this man. I think he’s put his neck out in a way no politician I remember ever has. He tells the truth. He speaks brilliantly. We all wanted it so badly. It’s been such shit for so long with Bush, and suddenly this hope, and you could taste it. Remember election night? Funny that I ended up at the Sugar Hill Club. I was on my way down to 125th Street with the people I was working with, and somebody said, Let’s stop for a drink, and then, I don’t know. I was really happy I got to see you. Even cops like Obama, right?” She laughed a little.

“Even cops. Or this cop, anyhow.”

“Of course, it will change,” said Lily. “We think he’s some kind of superman who will fix everything the way we want, and in fact, he’s a good, American, middle-of-the-road guy who will probably have to toe the line plenty. I know that. I don’t care. Did you read his book, Artie? About his father?”

I said I would read it.

“That was how I got to know Marianna. At first I’d just go over and drink vodka with her, and I’d think, What the hell am I doing here, and then suddenly, one day, she gives me money for Obama. A lot, like five hundred bucks, and she says, in that ridiculous accent, ‘This is wonderful man, this Mr. Obama. If I am younger, I fall big-time for him.’ She was very, very gung ho. She held those debate-watching parties, she served up Russian stuff she bought at some Russian grocery. She was something.”

“Go on.”

“There was something epic about her, Artie,” Lily said, sipping her drink, wanting to talk now. I didn’t stop her.

I still wanted to know why she had been buying medication for a dead woman, but it could wait a little while. I’d find out why she had gone to the drugstore, I’d find out why she had really called me in the first place, but only if I let her talk.

Rubbing my head, I discovered a lump like a walnut on the back.

“She must have had a rough time growing up in the USSR,” I said.

Lily looked at me. “I’m glad you understand, Artie. Of all people, I knew you’d get it. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you here. Marianna had survived everything-the war, the Cold War, the whole fucking thing,” said Lily. “How come novels about women are hardly ever epic? It’s always about, I don’t know, domestic shit. About the little things, about marriage and babies and shopping for food at Trader Joe’s, or nannies, or living in Park Fucking Slope, or some other shit, and it’s the men who write the big books, even the big books about women, like Anna Karenina, and all she ever did was moon around about some bastard and then kill herself. Men go into space; we just go to the grocery store.”

I reached over the counter for the Scotch, poured a little more in our glasses.

“I wanted to go to the moon, Artie. Or some place big. But I settled for other people’s lives, their stories. Marianna’s was the best; I told you I made her talk into a tape recorder. ‘What this is for, Lily? You plan to reveal my secrets, you tell everything to world?’ She would say stuff like that-and it was half serious, half a joke.”

“Where is it?”

“I have my voice recorder in the bedroom,” said Lily. “Sometimes I used it. Sometimes she did her own recording on a cassette player I got her. She didn’t understand digital stuff that well.”

“Where are the tapes?”

“She kept some. I have some. A lot of what she said was in Russian. I’d ask the questions in English, but she said she could only think and talk properly in her own language.”

“I can translate for you. Do you want me to do that?”

Lily ignored my question.

“She was still a believer, of course. The Communist Party,” said Lily. “She gets to the U.S., she joins the Party here. I can’t believe she’s dead, just like that.”

“I know you feel guilty about her meds or something, but it wasn’t your fault. I tried to tell you this morning.”

“How do you know?” Lily looked at me desperately.

“Tell me about the meds. How come you were at the drugstore?”

“I was just tying up loose ends, you know, closing Marianna’s account, stuff like that.”

“You said you were getting meds for her?”

“Did I? I must have been out of my mind. I feel I could be going nuts, you know, Artie?”

I held her hand.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you mind? Is that OK,” said Lily. “I’m just so tired.”

I stood up. “Fine,” I said. “Sure. Whatever you want.” I was tired, too, tired of the deceptions.

“You can’t let it go, can you?” she said. “Even when Lionel was here, you had to know, you had to keep asking him questions like he was a suspect.”

“Why didn’t he tell me he knew she was dead early this morning, when I saw him out on his terrace? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“For God’s sake, you don’t think Lionel’s involved, do you? He was her friend.”

“I’ll let it go if you want me to.”

“Let what go? What is there to let go?” she said. “You need to let go of being a cop, but you can’t, can you-it’s like it’s in your genes, asking questions, finding the place where it matters. Just like your dad,” she added. “Like in the KGB.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I kept my mouth shut.

“But that’s your genius, the way you get people to talk to you, isn’t it?” Lily said. “Isn’t that your thing?”

I turned away and walked across the room to the window again. The pane was cold. After a minute or two, Lily came and stood beside me. She put her hand on my arm.

“Artie? I didn’t mean to be cruel,” she said. “It’s a talent, asking questions, getting the answers you want. I know. I have it, too. It’s what reporters do. Same as you. Sometimes I hate myself for it-you just keep on asking and asking, pushing at people, and sometimes it’s when they’re hurting.”

“Was it the cop stuff that got in the way with us? I know it bothered you. I know you hated the stuff I had to do.”

She was silent.

“But he’s a cop. Radcliff.”

“Who you are is a cop; right at the very core of your being you’re a New York detective. It’s what you wanted and you got it, and it’s who you are,” said Lily, both of us standing at the window, our faces pressed against the glass, looking out at the snow.

“And him?”

“It’s something he wanted to do. But he’ll get it out of his system and then he’ll go on to something else.”

“I see.”

“I feel happy with Virgil right now.” She looked at me. “Shit, I’m sorry. You know I could never lie to you. I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t you feel happy with me?”

“It was different,” said Lily. “It was a different kind of being happy. With you and me it had to be the whole thing. We were too connected. We both spent some of our lives in hellish places seeing horrible things. We shared that. You brought it home. So did I.”

“We shared other things,” I said. “We shared music, and the city, and trips to Montana, and friends. For a long time, almost fifteen years,” I said. “What happened to us?”