Mistress

Chapter 14

Jack’s Pub is an off-campus bar populated by grown-ups and students from UW who have decided they’re too mature to be hanging out at a campus bar. They would be the outcasts, the rebels, the ones who didn’t go Greek, didn’t play a sport, didn’t join the student council or any of the clubs, who lived off campus and made the decision to rebel before they knew what it was they were rebelling against.

They would be me.

Someone rented the back room so we could celebrate the life of Diana in the proper way, meaning with alcohol. In my experience-as an adult-wakes and funerals provide an opportunity for reunions, and despite the depressing premise for the occasion, people are generally happy to reconnect with old friends.

The back room is all brick, with televisions in the corners, well lit, full of maybe fifty or sixty people, with music from the ’90s-a rap song, then a dance song-playing overhead. Almost everyone in here is the same age. They are, presumably, members of the class of ’95 from Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart, or their significant others.

I love that PC term “significant other.” It means you’re someone special-you’re significant!-but either you can’t get married because you’re gay, which nowadays is only true in some states, or you’re unmarried and for some reason object to the word boyfriend or girlfriend. The next time the person you’re with says, “I love you,” respond by saying, “You’re very, very significant to me.”

I slip between some people and head toward the bar when I hear someone say, “That’s the guy who worked with Diana at the PR firm.” I turn to a group of people looking my way, including Emma and Randy, sitting on a bar stool in the center of the pack.

“Is that right?” Randy says too loudly. He’s had more than his share already tonight. “Hey, Mike-”

Ben. My name’s Ben.

“-what was the name of that PR firm again?”

In Spy Game, Robert Redford taught Brad Pitt the fine points of espionage, including how to recruit foreigners to be undercover spies for the United States. Don’t lie to them, he advised Brad, because from that point on, that lie will have to be true.

I wave a hand. “I don’t want to talk business.”

“I don’t wanna talk business, either, Mike. I just wanna know the name of that PR firm you worked at with my sister.”

I prefer some of Pitt’s earlier roles-the felon in Thelma &` Louise and the stoner in True Romance. He was great in Seven, too.

I move to the bar. Randy calls after me, “Hey, Mike,” and I hear Emma say, “I thought his name was Ben,” and then Randy calls, “Hey, Ben!”

I order a vodka and pay too much for it. Then I head back, trying to decide if I should talk to Randy or not. That is, in fact, my primary reason for sticking around Madison tonight. I’m a reporter, after all, and if I’m looking for the skinny on someone, the chance to talk to that someone’s brother is irresistible.

“There he is-Mike-or-Ben.” Randy salutes me by raising his pint. He’s goading me. But I’m not in the mood.

“I prefer Ben-or-Mike,” I answer. A couple of ladies in the group like that. Randy doesn’t, but that’s too bad for Randy. It’s my parting shot, so I part.

I see the lady in the black suit nursing a Bud Light at a corner table, fending off a couple of boozers who think she’s the cat’s meow.

I stop dead. Cinnamon. Who’s taking care of Diana’s cat?

The lady in black senses a hitch in my giddyap. She doesn’t know why, but it interests her. She’s pretty good, but not as good as Detective LaTaglia thirty years ago.

Tell me what happened, Ben, and your mother’s soul can go to heaven.

Now, Robert Redford, as much as I loved The Sting and Butch Cassidy and The Natural-actually I thought The Natural was boring, but everyone else raved about it so I went along-to me his most amazing work was behind the camera on Quiz Show and especially Ordinary People.

I find a table not far from black-suit lady and watch her and everybody else for a long hour. Luckily the music is decent, and, even more important, there’s a waitress walking around (my “significant other”), so I’m four drinks in when I see Diana’s brother part the crowd and sit next to me.

“Please have a seat,” I say after he already did.

He whacks my arm with the back of his hand. “Hey, man, didn’t mean to come on so strong. I was just-Diana didn’t say a lot about what she did, y’know? So I was wondering, if she worked at a PR firm, maybe I could, at least, know the name of it.”

Overhead the song changes from “Groove Is in the Heart” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Someone has dimmed the lights without me noticing.

Randy probably wouldn’t be good at this kind of sleight of hand on a good day, but with half a gallon of booze in him, he can hardly keep a straight face.

I lean in and speak directly into his ear. “I don’t feel like being tested, Randy. I don’t know who or what you think I am, but I’m really, truly, a friend of Diana’s. We both know she never worked at a PR firm, and she didn’t attend UVA, either. But that’s what she told everyone around here, and I, for one, am not going to contradict her.”

Randy, his eyes forward while I speak into his ear, remains motionless.

“She loved the hell out of you,” I say. “I can’t imagine why, but she did. And my guess is she would be unhappy to see you drinking yourself down a hole tonight, especially after she spent all that money sending you to New Roads that summer while your parents thought you were living with her and interning on the Hill.”

With that, Randy’s face contorts and he lets out a low moan. He covers his face with a hand and has himself a good cry. I pat his back a couple of times but generally leave him to himself. I hardly know the guy, after all, and I’m not a big hugger.

After ten minutes or so, Randy takes some deep breaths and rights himself in his chair. “I couldn’t be sure of you,” he said.

The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Hey, don’t ask me. Nobody tells the dopey brother anything.” He spits out the words like he’s expelling a pill. He pushes himself off the chair and starts to leave.

“Well, who should I ask?” I try.

Randy turns and looks at me. “Ask the guy she was fucking,” he answers. “Ask Jonathan Liu.”