Identical

9

Hal was pretty much as Evon had left him that morning, canted back in his desk chair in his huge office, amused by what he was seeing on a large plasma screen on his wall. He might as well have had a bowl of popcorn beside him.

When she’d gone in to tell Hal she was on her way to see Yavem, Kronon had been reading his employees’ e-mail. Every company these days informed workers that they could not expect e-mails on the company account to remain free from internal inspection. But Hal took that as license for occasional surveillance. Originally, the feed had been set up so Evon’s staff could catch a little jerk in the leasing department who was peddling the names of potential tenants to a competitor. But Hal never turned off the stream. He liked to see who was passing links to porn sites or saying critical things about him, or to pick up office gossip. As far as Evon knew, he did nothing with the information, which he digested like a disinterested god entertained by the foibles of the mortals below.

Now, Hal was turned toward the screen and chewing on his thumbnail as he viewed the finished version of the commercial featuring Georgia. Evon hadn’t seen the completed ad and watched it straight through with him. It was very strong.

“It goes on the air tonight. Let’s see his poll numbers after this,” Hal said.

Hal’s vast office was paneled in a richly grained pale wood, sycamore, Evon believed, with built-in cabinetry to match. On the far bookshelf, he maintained his little shrine to his sister-replete with her college yearbook photo, a piece of childhood pottery, and pictures of Dita beside his parents or his favorite aunt, Teri. A nearer shelf was set aside for photos of his mother and father. In fact, an oil portrait of Zeus, one of several in the ZP offices, hung outside the door. The credenza under the TV, by contrast, was dedicated to a three-deep forest of pictures of Hal’s own family. Say whatever you might about Hal, but he was a dedicated father and husband. He boasted too much about his kids, but that was due to a radiant love. Mina and he had four children, the eldest two boys done with college. Hal hoped they might be lured into the business, but they were both committed to humanitarian projects. His older son, Dean, was doing AIDS work in Africa. All of Hal’s kids, even the two girls, who were still in high school, regarded their father’s political views as antediluvian, and Hal tolerated their opinions as an amusing failing of youth, even though he would have chewed through the throat of anyone else who said such things. As for Mina, he doted on her. He called his wife three or four times a day, and was invariably gentle with her, and happy to follow her directions, which he accepted as a sign of love. She laid out his clothes every morning. He was, truly, one of the most happily married people Evon knew.

“One in a hundred, huh?” he asked, following Evon’s summary.

“And at least a quarter of a million dollars.”

Hal pondered. “But he said he’d do it, right?”

“We can make the motion to Judge Lands. Yavem will give us an affidavit saying that he believes it’s possible to get valid results. But it’s new science, Hal. The Frye hearing to establish the reliability of the test could go on for a month, just by itself.”

Hal was thinking, but his heavy face was bobbing agreeably as he considered the prospects. Evon wanted him to sort through the potential results before he made up his mind, which would then be permanently set like concrete.

“Look, Hal, I’ve been thinking about this, and we need to consider what happens if it goes the other way. We may thread the needle, as Yavem puts it, and find that the blood is Cass’s. In fact, if we get a positive result, that’s still the most likely one, when you remember the guy pled guilty. That’s a big risk. Your reputation will never be the same. And Paul would become a giant martyr who could just start moving his furniture into city hall.”

Hal listened to her attentively, as he generally did, his goggle eyes clearly focused behind his dense lenses.

“Do it,” he said then. “I realize this could boomerang. But they killed my sister, and as sure as I’m sitting here, I know Cass and Paul have been hiding stuff all these years. I know it. And I want the truth. I owe it to Dita.”

Back at her desk, Evon called Yavem’s lab, then settled in with everything that had piled up, most of it concerning the YourHouse deal. ZP’s investigators had discovered that decades ago there had been a small paint factory on part of the site in Indianapolis, which explained what Tim had overheard when he was tailing Dykstra. But the soil borings so far had turned up none of the expected contamination. Dykstra had feigned outrage and was demanding that Hal sign the letter of intent this week or call off the deal. Hal could not demand a price concession yet-ZP was supposed to pay 550 million dollars, four hundred of it in cash to be raised by cross-collateralizing the equity in the shopping centers-and as a result, Hal was whistling Evon down to his office five times a day, demanding a report on literally every new hole that was dug.

She did not get out of the office until well past 8. As her BMW 5 Series ascended from the garage under the ZP Building, Evon called Heather and received a text in reply. “Workg late. Crap More.” ‘Crap More’ was Heather’s code for Craigmore, the demanding client.

The condo they shared was in a new building, thirty stories of glass. They had chosen the apartment together, although Evon had paid for everything-Heather basically wore every dollar she made. Heather had furnished, twice now, with the same spare elegance with which she dressed. There was a full wall of windows over the river, and a lot of tidy minimalist furniture that required the place to be neat as a pin to achieve the desired effect. It was beautiful in the perfect way Heather was beautiful, but Evon never felt fully at home. Left to herself, she’d prefer overstuffed chairs and a couple of dirty socks on the floor amid a scatter of magazines. Her discomfort was greater when she was here by herself.

She went downstairs and worked out for an hour, then, still in her sweats, turned on SportsCenter and ate a Lean Cuisine. As usual, work was on her mind. She remained impressed by the commercial featuring Georgia and continued to suspect that Hal, in that goofy intuitive way of his that often served him well in business, might be onto the truth.

But eventually, something bigger began to force its way on her. You couldn’t be a trained investigator and play dumb forever. And a fatal recognition had begun to form a few weeks ago, when they returned from Francine and Nella’s wedding. Heather had departed with Tom Craigmore too often on last-minute trips, had been gone on too many late nights with Tom, after which she seemed to return trailing the fresh scents of a shower. Evon knew she should have suspected long ago that Heather was sleeping with him.

When they had met, Heather had confessed that every once in a while, when she wasn’t in a relationship with a woman, she’d have sex with a man. Heather was insecure enough to think she had to do this to cement her place with the client. But Evon couldn’t pretend any longer that it wasn’t happening.

Love was the biggest thing on earth. But it seemed almost inevitably to end up twisted and bleak. Was that the truth? That this feeling everybody longed for and believed in and wrote songs about led nowhere good, down this sinkhole into the blackest part of yourself, into screaming battles and hearts that would have hurt less if they’d been split with an ax? Was that the truth of love? That it was the surest way to end up hating someone else?

By ten o’clock, Evon was in bed, and fell asleep with a book about Sandy Koufax on her chest. She woke again near midnight and snapped off the light, and roused once more two hours later when Heather arrived. Evon’s girlfriend was clearly drunk and blundered around in the bathroom, knocking things over, the steel cup by the sink and, from the sounds of it, some cosmetics. In the dark, Evon said, “Hi,” and reached for the light.

Heather stood still with a hand drawn over her chest, her eyes startled and large. She was otherwise naked, lovely with her long slender shape.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Heather said. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Not really. Sort of restless. How was tonight?”

“I can’t make up my mind about whether Tom is a total hoot or a complete asshole.”

And what kind of fuck is he? Evon nearly asked. There was a time, years ago, when she would have done that. But anger no longer accumulated in her until it became potent as a bomb. Instead, she was willing to experience the welling force of her own hurt.

“I can’t do this any more.” Evon thought she had said that to herself, until she observed the way Heather again stopped mid-motion, standing over an open drawer in the Eames wardrobe, a nightshirt in her hand.

“And what is it that you can’t do?”

“Watch you stumble in here after you let some guy paw you or screw you or God knows what else.”

“Oh please.”

“I think that’s my line.”

“I mean,” said Heather, who was crying instantly, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, accusing me.”

She didn’t bother to answer for a second.

“You’ve basically admitted it to me half a dozen times when you were blitzed. You’ve laid in that bed when I’ve asked where you were and said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ How many times is that? I was just willing to pretend I didn’t know what you meant.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Heather cried. Evon knew how Heather would explain herself, because Evon remembered what Heather said she got out of her occasional dallying with guys in the past. She liked to laugh at them, Heather claimed, and she probably meant it. She wanted them to see that they couldn’t have her, didn’t reach her. But that didn’t mean it didn’t matter to her. It just mattered in a different way from when she lay in Evon’s arms. That was screwed-up stuff, but it was how Heather was. With sex, everyone was screwed up, or at least a little different in their secret treasure chest of wishes. But whatever her behavior meant to Heather, it mattered to Evon. That was the only issue. She told Heather that again.

“You want me to stop seeing the men I work with?” Heather asked. She was being dramatic now, crossing the room while she spoke and sweeping her arms about. “Is that what you want? I will. I mean, this is just batshit-crazy lesbian bullshit, but I won’t hang out with the people I’m not attracted to.”

“I don’t think you’ll stop. I think it’s important to you. I think you don’t know why, but you won’t stop. And you’re tearing my heart out, and so we have to stop.”

“I love you,” Heather said. “And you love me.”

Now that Evon was fully awake, she realized how close to the surface this had been, how thoroughly she’d considered the alternatives and made her plans.

“I’m going to sleep at Janet’s tonight. And tomorrow. A few nights. You’ll have to be out of here by the end of the weekend.”

Heather dissolved. She cried with total despair. Her nose ran. She left her beautiful self behind. She’d been too drunk to remember to take off her makeup and the muddy streaks ran from her eyes to her chin.

“I can’t leave here. This is where I live. This is my house. I love you. Please. I’ll change. Rebecca has a shrink. I’ll see a shrink. I will, I’ll change. I swear, I’ll change. Please.” She began shuffling toward Evon on her knees, with her arms outstretched. It was wrenching to see, in part because of the little secret piece in Evon that gloried in Heather’s debasement. Heather had been hurt back, she’d been destroyed almost. She reached the bed and clutched Evon by one calf. I love you, she said. Please, she said. Evon now was crying, too.

They had done this before, three or four times, albeit with different provocations. Each of them had played her part now, Evon angry, Heather abject. Evon had scared her, Heather had promised to repent. They could resume, with the hope that it would be better.

There was a richness to that, to hoping. Evon had always been desperate with hope when it came to the people she loved. But by now, she realized her optimism would shatter. The drama that engaged both of them-I love you, I hate you, I want you, I don’t-would start again, only to lead back here. Evon knew enough about herself by now, had been taught enough by good therapists, that she realized this was a piece of her, too, wanting someone, like her mother, who would never fully accept her, for whom she would never be good enough. That was the mythology the old Evon believed in, the resident programming. And to step away from it, she had to wrestle herself. It was like she had to hold the old Evon-the DeDe piece-right down on the bed and rise up out of her body like the filmy spirits that levitated from corpses in old-timey movies. It took a strength that seemed almost physical. But she knew what was right. She knew what was needed. She wanted to be happy and the first responsibility for that fell to her.

She was packed and dressed and out of the apartment, and away from Heather’s high-pitched clamor, in another ten minutes. She sat in her car in the garage under the building, waiting until she felt ready to drive. It had been such a long road for her, just to face what she wanted, which had seemed so frightening and shaming and, worst of all, alien. She had hated being different, feeling different, and having to take that on for life. But she had. And now, at the age of fifty, there was something else to face, something worse: that she might never be loved at all, never, not in the unburdened, lasting way she still hoped for. She sat in her car in the dark garage at 3 a.m., with her arms wrapped around herself.