Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 41

I do not tell Kimmer. Not just yet. Instead, on Thursday afternoon, I drop in to see Dr. Young. He listens with patience and concern, hands folded over his ample belly, shaking his heavy head unhappily, then talks to me about Daniel in the lion’s den. He says the Lord will see me through. He does not have to ask me how my attackers came to lose their fingers. Chrebet asked, in his rat-a-tat style, whether I had any idea what might have happened, but he did not expect an answer and did not get one. Chrebet knew, as Nunzio did, as Dr. Young does, as I do, that the strong hand of Jack Ziegler has struck in Elm Harbor. The voice on the telephone at two-fifty-one in the morning-a voice I still have not mentioned to a soul-has delivered on its promise.

Before I leave the pastor’s office, he warns me against taking pleasure in harm that befalls others. I assure him that I feel no joy at what happened to the men who assaulted me. Dr. Young says he is not talking about them. As I try to work this out, he counsels me to do what I can to repair human connection with those from whom I feel estranged. Uneasily, I agree. That same afternoon, I encounter Dahlia Hadley at the preschool and tell her how sorry I am for the scandal that has engulfed Marc, but she grows chilly and refuses to talk to me. Still, the need to make amends grows into a compulsion, perhaps because I believe I can in this way exorcise my demons. Feeling Jack Ziegler’s smothering breath will make you crazy that way.

On Friday morning, I seek out Stuart Land and apologize for accusing him of trying to sabotage Marc’s candidacy, but he professes to be untroubled, since he is not guilty. He is good enough to tell me that Marc has not yet taken his name out of the hat. When I ask him why, Stuart looks at me coldly and says: “Probably because he thinks there is a better-than-even chance that you’ll find a way to blow it for your wife.” Stunned, I creep out of his capacious office, more determined than ever to behave. After lunch, I finally attempt to get in touch with the estimable Cameron Knowland, whose son never said another word in class after our little skirmish, but when I call the private investment firm Cameron runs in Los Angeles, he refuses to take my call; or, rather, his senior secretary, once I fight my way that far, tells me that Mr. Knowland has never heard of me.

Rob Saltpeter, upon hearing this news when we meet for basketball at the gym Monday morning, tells me that Cameron Knowland is playing games with me, but I have more or less figured that out for myself. We play one-on-one today, and Rob beats me badly, twice in a row, but only because he is taller and faster than I am, or maybe because his reflexes and coordination are better than mine.

It is now Friday, and my moods will not stop swinging. I continue to behave, but my self-control is brittle. Any small jolt will split it in two. I try to pray, but cannot concentrate. I sit at my desk, unable to work, furious at my father, wondering what would have happened if I had refused to talk to Jack Ziegler that day in the cemetery. Probably I would have been stuck with my father’s note anyway, I would still be wondering who Angela’s boyfriend was, and the dead would still be dead, so there is no point in wondering…

The dead would still be dead…

My mood brightens. I remember the idea that came to me at Shirley Branch’s dinner party. In the light of day, I pooh-poohed it, but now I am desperate. And it just might offer me and my family a way out of this mess. The dead. The cemetery. Maybe, just maybe. I do not know if it will work, but there is no harm in preparing, in case I decide to give it a try. I start by calling Karl at his bookstore to ask him a question about the Double Excelsior. He is patient if not exactly friendly, and he thanks me for returning his book. As a result of his answer, I decide to keep planning. Only I will need some help. Later in the afternoon, after my administrative law class, I scurry down to the second floor to look for Dana Worth, but the sign on her door says that she is in the Faculty Reading Room. She always leaves a sign, because she always wants people to be able to find her: talking to people seems to be her favorite thing. And so it is that I make a huge mistake. In my eagerness to find Dana, I go into the library I usually avoid, and everything goes to pieces.

Most professors sit in their offices, buzzing the faculty librarian to bring them books they want, or even having their secretaries do the buzzing, but I now and then like to go and soak up the feel of the place, or I used to, before the first hints that Kimmer might be having an affair with Jerry Nathanson. At ten minutes to five, I use my faculty key to open the side entrance to the law library, on the third floor, away from the hubbub of the students. The key admits me to the back of the periodical room, two dozen parallel rows of gunmetal shelves stuffed with painfully organized, dog-eared law reviews. Hesitating to go forward, I look for a chance to hang back. If I am going to proceed, I need help urgently, and Dana is the only one I can think of who might be crazy enough to do it. Rob Saltpeter is too much the straight arrow, Lem Carlyle too much the politician. I have considered and rejected enlisting the help of a student. It is Dana or nobody. Striding uncertainly through the periodical room, I hear some students coming and decide to disguise my purpose, for, although I would never hesitate to enter Dana’s office alone, I am uncomfortable at the thought that I might be observed chasing her down in the library. But my need is sufficiently pressing that I must get the answer immediately, or I will go out of my mind. I pull at random an old bound volume of the Columbia Law Review, leafing through it as though hunting ancient treasure. Walking along the aisles, carrying the heavy book as camouflage, I stop near the noisy old machine that makes blurred photocopies, and steel myself. Then I leave the periodical room and enter the main reading room, deliberately refusing to look up at the wall where the portrait of my father in his robes still hangs. If you examine the painting carefully, you can detect the poorly painted restoration work covering the nasty language with which somebody defaced the canvas during his confirmation hearings: UNCLE TOM was the least of it, with various comments about the Judge’s ancestry appended by some political commentator too modest to sign his name to his work.

I never examine it carefully.

As I cross the wide room, a few bold students say hello, but most of them are far too savvy. They can read the faces of the faculty, they know when to interrupt and when to hang back. I pass a clutch of black students, a gaggle of white ones. I wave to Shirley Branch, who is standing next to a bank of computers, hands in frenetic motion as she makes some point, quite vehemently, to Matt Goffe, her fellow untenured professor, and fellow leftie. I spot Avery Knowland at the other end of the room, bending hopelessly over a casebook, but my path, fortunately, is not taking me in that direction. I wonder how angry his father really is. Maybe Cameron Knowland and his trophy wife will take their three million dollars back and we can keep the gloriously seedy library we have now. The Dean wants us to have a building worthy of the twenty-first century, but I think libraries should remain firmly planted in the nineteenth, when the stability of the printed word, not the ephemeron of the fiber-optic cable, was the method through which information was transmitted over long distances. I adore this room. Some of the long tables where students sit studying are more than half a century old. The ceiling is almost three stories high, but the brass chandeliers have been reduced to mere decorations: banks of hideous fluorescents now provide the light, in tandem with the sun that prisms through the clerestory windows high up above the intricately carved wooden shelves of law books. For those with the patience to follow, each window’s stained-glass picture adds a frame to a story that begins just above the main entrance to the library, chases around all four outer walls, and winds up back in the same place: a violent crime, a witness signaling a police officer, the arrest of a suspect, a trial, a jury deliberating, a conviction, a punishment, a new lawyer, an appeal, a release, and, in the end, back to the same life of crime, a pessimistically unbroken cycle that drove me half mad when I was a student.

I smile at the reference librarian as I circle his long desk. He does not smile back: he is on the phone and, if the rumors are true, is probably placing a bet. On the other side of the desk is the Faculty Reading Room, as my destination is pompously called. I am about to use my faculty key to unlock the FARR when the double doors of frosted glass open in front of me and Lemaster Carlyle and Dana Worth saunter out, laughing together, evidently at some Worthism, because Lem is laughing harder.

“Hello, Tal,” says Lem quietly. He is his usual dapper self, sporting a medium-gray sports jacket and a crimson Harvard tie.

“Lem.”

“Misha, darling,” murmurs Dear Dana, and I remind myself to tell her not to call me that in public. She, too, is nicely turned out, in a dark business suit.

“Dana, do you have a minute?”

“That depends on how you plan to vote on Bonnie Ziffren,” Dana smiles, naming one in the endless stream of candidates recommended by the faculty appointments committee to whom Dear Dana, on one ground or another, objects. “I know Marc thinks she’s the next Catharine MacKinnon, but, in my opinion? She’s a zircon in the rough.”

“You shouldn’t talk about potential faculty appointments in public,” Lem reminds her piously. He is, once more, avoiding my gaze. “By university rule, personnel matters are confidential.”

“Then come into my parlor.” She points to the FARR.

“No, thanks,” murmurs Lemaster. In fact, he remembers that he has to run: dinner with some visiting potentate from the American Law Institute. You can always count on faculty politics to drive Lemaster Carlyle away. He yearns for the law school’s lost golden age, which he missed entirely but nevertheless loves, when the professors all got along with each other, even if those who were there, such as Theo Mountain and Amy Hefferman, recall it differently. He rushes off without a farewell, still unable to look me in the eye.

What is going on with him? Kimmer’s lover? The deliverer of the pawn? I rub my forehead, furious again, not at Lem but at the Judge. Dear Dana Worth, noticing the sudden change in my mood, lays a gentle hand on my arm. She waits until she is sure Lem is out of earshot and then asks me softly what I want.

“We better discuss this in private,” I tell her, still wondering what might be wrong with Lemaster, and whether it has to do with… well, with everything.

“Come into my parlor,” she teases again. I hesitate, not wanting to be seen sneaking into the FARR with a female colleague, especially a white one, even if she has no interest in men, and my hesitation ruins everything. Dana is already smiling over my shoulder, greeting a new arrival, when the sharply spoken words rattle from behind me like bullets:

“I think we need to talk, Tal.”

I turn in surprise to find myself staring into the angry face of Gerald Nathanson.

“Hello, Jerry,” I say quietly.

“We need to talk,” he says again.

Jerry Nathanson, probably the most prominent lawyer in the city, was in law school with Kimmer and myself, married back then to the same unprepossessing woman who is his wife today. He is perhaps five foot eight, a trifle overweight, with a fleshy chin not quite able to spoil his 1950s-style boyish good looks. His features are clear and even and a little soft. His dark hair is curly, and he is balding, just a bit, in the middle of his head. He is an impressive figure in his light gray suit and dark blue tie. His hands are folded over his chest as though he is waiting for an apology.

“I don’t think we have anything to talk about,” I tell him, forgetting every lesson that Morris Young has tried to teach me. I might as well be one of the boys he tries to save from the corner, doing my macho styling for the sake of macho styling.

“Misha, I’ll see you,” says Dana, still grinning, but weakly now. She wants no part of what is about to occur. “Call me.”

“Dana, wait…”

“Let her go,” Jerry Nathanson commands. “We need to talk alone.”

I look him up and down, moving the Columbia Law Review to my left hand, perhaps to free up my right. Then I force myself to calm down. I shake my head. “No, Jerry. I can’t just now. I’m busy.” Showing him the book. “Maybe some other time.”

As I try to walk around him, he grabs my arm. “Don’t you walk away from me.”

My fury is about to boil over. “Let go of my arm, please,” I whisper without turning around. I am aware that a couple of students are jostling and pointing, which means that a crowd will shortly be gathering.

“I just want to talk,” mutters Jerry, also noticing the attention we are drawing.

“I don’t know how many different ways I can say that I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Don’t make a scene, Talcott.”

“You’re telling me not to make a scene?” I glare, wondering if I am supposed to punch him. Surely there exists somewhere a rule book for the behavior of a cuckolded husband upon meeting the likely object of his wife’s affection.

“Calm down, Talcott.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I am about to say more, but I restrain myself, for his fifties movie-star features no longer look angry. Instead, he looks puzzled.

“I have to go,” I tell him, walking around him and striding for the exit. I can hear him hurrying behind me, and I begin to move faster. Now half the students in the law school seem to be watching, along with a faculty colleague or two. Still, nothing to do but get out and worry about the rest later.

Jerry catches up with me just outside the ornate double doors marking the main entrance to the library. “What’s the matter with you, Talcott? I just wanted to talk to you.”

I have had enough of self-restraint. I swing around in bright red fury. “What is it, Jerry? What exactly do you want?”

“Here? You want to talk here?”

“Why not? You’ve been chasing me all over the law school.”

He draws himself up. “Well, in the first place, I wanted to tell you congratulations, in advance. About your wife, I mean. She told me”-he glances around, but now that we are outside the library, the few students standing around pretend not to be listening-“she told me, uh, about Professor Hadley.”

In bed? On your office sofa? Despite the promise I made to Dr. Young, I am not able to shake off my anger-or perhaps my anguish-now that I am face to face with Jerry Nathanson. “Professor Hadley has not taken his name out of the hat,” I snap.

“Oh. Oh. I didn’t know that.”

We have somehow started walking again, down the dimly lighted corridor toward my office. No students have dared follow, but a few office doors are standing open, and we might still be overheard.

“Well, it’s true,” I mutter. “It seems that Professor Hadley thinks he can explain it all away, that it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

“I see.” Jerry’s voice is small and hesitant. He tries a smile. We are standing outside my door. “Well, I’m sure your wife will get the job.”

And it pours out of me. “My wife. My wife. My wife!”

He tilts his head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Yes. Your wife.”

“I want you to stay away from her.”

“Stay away from her? We work together.”

“You know exactly what I mean, Jerry. Don’t play games with me.”

“I do know what you mean, Talcott, and… and it’s completely ridiculous.” Jerry’s astonishment seems so genuine that I am sure he is playing me. “I don’t know how you could think… I mean, me and Kimberly? What would give you an idea like that?”

“Maybe the fact that it’s true.”

“It isn’t true. Please don’t think that.” He rubs his hands over his face. “Your wife… Kimberly… she, uh, she told me a few months ago that you seemed to think that there was something, uh, between us. I thought she was joking. Please, Talcott, believe me.” His eyes grow earnest, and, for a second time, he puts an uninvited hand on my arm. “I happen to be a happily married man, Talcott. My relationship with your wife is nothing but professional. It has never been anything but professional. And it never will be anything but professional.” Waiting for this to sink in. “Your wife is the best lawyer in the firm, the best lawyer in the city, the best lawyer in this part of the state. Maybe I… maybe we work her too hard, maybe we keep her away from home too much, but, Talcott, please believe me when I say that it is only work that is keeping her away.”

“I don’t know why I should believe you,” I sneer, but I am on less certain ground now, and we both know it. I have shot off my ammunition, but all my powder was wet. Maybe it is Jack Ziegler, or the Judge, at whom I should be venting my fury.

Jerry Nathanson steps back again. He is no longer nervous. He is a fine lawyer and knows when he has the advantage. When he speaks again, his voice is cold. “Your wife also told me you were behaving in what she called an irrational manner. I told her not to worry, but I guess she was right as usual.”

“She told you what?”

“That your behavior is starting to frighten her.”

This is too much. I step close to him. It is all I can do not to grab him by the front of his hand-tailored shirt. “I don’t want you discussing me with my wife.” I do not realize how absurd this sounds until I have said it. “I don’t want you discussing anything with my wife.”

“I have a news flash for you, Talcott.” Jerry’s own anger rises afresh. He jabs a finger at me. “You need some serious medical help. Maybe a psychiatrist.”

Ah, but men are horrible! I slap his finger away and say something equally useful: “If you don’t stay away from my wife, Jerry, you’re going to need some serious medical help yourself.”

His face reddens. “That’s a threat, Talcott. Do you hear yourself? That’s just the sort of thing Kimberly was talking about.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Jerry.”

“Oh, yeah?” He taps the front of my sweater, goading me. “And what do you intend to do about it?”

“Don’t push it,” I snarl. He laughs. Were we not a couple of intellectuals in an Ivy League town, we would no doubt come to blows. As it is, we shove a bit. Probably I shove harder. Even though I can see we are attracting a fresh audience, I cannot make myself back down, the world is too red around me. “Just stay away from my wife.”

“You’re crazy, Talcott.” He composes himself with an effort, backs away, breathing hard. “Get some help.”

When Jerry has gone, all of Oldie is staring at me.