Out on the Cutting Edge

7

I was never a smoker. During the drinking years, every once in a while I would get the urge and buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke three or four of them, one right after the other. Then I would throw the pack away and it would be months before I touched another cigarette.

Jan didn’t smoke. Toward the end, when we decided to see other people, I had a couple of dates with a woman who smoked Winston Lights. We never went to bed together, but one night we exchanged a couple of kisses, and it was quite startling to taste tobacco on her mouth. I felt a flicker of revulsion. I felt, too, a brief yearning for a cigarette.

The taste of whiskey on Willa’s mouth was far more profound in its effects. This was to be expected; after all, I didn’t have to go to meetings every day to keep from picking up a cigarette, and if I did pick one up it wasn’t odds-on to put me in a hospital.

We embraced in the kitchen, both of us standing. She was only a couple of inches shorter than I, and we fit well together. I had already been wondering what it would be like to kiss her, before she said what she’d said, before she put her hand on mine.

The whiskey taste was strong. I mostly drank bourbon, scotch only rarely, but it didn’t make any difference. It was the alcohol that sang to me, mixing memory with desire.

I felt a dozen feelings, all of them too well interwoven to be sorted out. There was fear, and a deep sadness, and of course there was the longing for a drink. There was excitement, a great rush of excitement, some of it owing to her whiskey mouth, but another greater strain of it issuing directly from the woman herself, the soft firmness of her breasts against my chest, the insistent heat of her loins against my thigh.

I put a hand on her ass and gripped her where her jeans were thin. Her hands dug into my shoulders. I kissed her again.

After a moment she drew away and looked at me. Our eyes locked. Hers were wide open, I could see all the way in.

I said, “Let’s go to bed.”

“God, yes.”

The bedroom was small and dark. With the curtains drawn, hardly any light came through the little window. She switched the bedside lamp on, then switched it off again and took up a book of matches instead. She scratched one into flame and tried to light a candle, but the wick sputtered and the match went out before she could get it going. She tore out another match and I took the match and the candle away from her and set them aside. The dark was light enough.

Her bed was a double. There was no bedstead, just a box spring on the floor with a mattress on it. We stood next to it looking at each other and getting out of our clothes. There was an appendectomy scar on the right side of her abdomen, a dusting of freckles on her full breasts.

We found our way to the bed, and to each other.

Afterward she went into the kitchen and came back with a can of light beer. She popped the top and took a long drink. “I don’t know why the hell I bought this,” she said.

“I can think of two reasons.”

“Oh?”

“Tastes great and less filling.”

“Funny man. Tastes great? It tastes like nothing at all. I always liked strong tastes, I’ve never wanted light anything. I like Teacher’s or White Horse, the dark heavy scotches. I like those rich Canadian ales. When I smoked I could never stand anything with a filter on it.”

“You used to smoke?”

“Heavily. The party encouraged it. It was a way to bond with the working people — offer a cigarette, accept a cigarette, light up, and smoke your brains out in solidarity and comradeship. Of course once the revolution was accomplished, smoking would wither away like the dictatorship of the proletariat. The corrupt tobacco trust would be smashed and the farmers in the Piedmont would be reeducated to grow something dialectically correct. Mung beans, I suppose. And the working class, free from the stresses of capitalistic oppression, would no longer have the need for periodic whiffs of nicotine.”

“You’re making this up.”

“The hell I am. We had a position on everything. Why not? We had plenty of time for it, we never fucking did anything.”

“So you smoked for the good of the revolution.”

“Bet your ass. Camels, a couple of packs a day. Or Picayunes, but they were hard to find.”

“I never heard of them.”

“Oh, they were wonderful,” she said. “They made Gauloises taste like nothing at all. They would rip your throat out and turn your toenails brown. You didn’t even have to light them. You could get cancer just carrying a pack in your purse.”

“When did you quit?”

“In New Mexico, after my marriage broke up. I was so miserable anyway I figured I wouldn’t even notice cigarette withdrawal. I was dead wrong about that, as it turned out, but I stuck with it anyway. You don’t drink at all?”

“No.”

“Did you ever?”

“Oh, yes.”

“He said emphatically. You drank, therefore you don’t.”

“Something like that.”

“I sort of figured as much. Somehow you don’t remind me of any of the lifelong abstainers I’ve known. I don’t usually get along too well with that type.”

She was sitting crosslegged on top of the bed. I was lying on my side, propped up on one arm. I reached out a hand and touched her bare thigh. She rested her hand on top of mine.

“Does it bother you that I don’t drink?”

“No. Does it bother you that I do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“When you find out, be sure and let me know.”

“All right.”

She tilted the can, drank a little beer. She said, “Is there anything I can offer you? I can make coffee, such as it is. Do you want some?”

“No.”

“I don’t have any fruit juice or soft drinks, but it wouldn’t take me a minute to run to the corner. What would you like?”

I took the beer can out of her hand and put it on the table next to the bed. “Come here,” I said, easing her down onto the mattress. “I’ll show you.”

Around eight I groped around until I found my shorts. She had dozed off, but she woke up while I was dressing. “I have to go out for a while,” I told her.

“What time is it?” She looked at her watch and made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Already,” she said. “What a lovely way to while away the hours. You must be starving.”

“And you must have a short memory.”

Her laugh was richly lewd. “For nourishment. Why don’t I make us something to eat.”

“I have to be someplace.”

“Oh.”

“But I’ll be done around ten. Can you hold out until then? We’ll go out for hamburgers or something. Unless you’re too ravenous to wait.”

“That sounds good.”

“I’ll be back around ten-thirty, no later than that.”

“Just ring my bell, honey. And, incidentally, you do. Loud and clear.”

I went to St. Paul’s. I walked down the steps to the basement entrance, and the minute I got inside I felt a sense of relief, as if I’d been holding something in check and could let go of it now.

I remember, years ago, waking up and needing a drink bad. And going downstairs to McGovern’s, just next door to the hotel, where they opened early and where the man behind the stick knew what it was like to need a morning drink. I can remember how it felt in my body, the pure physical need for a drink, and how that need was actually slaked before I got the drink down. As soon as it was poured, as soon as I had my hand on the glass, some inner tension relaxed. The simple knowledge that relief was just a swallow away banished half the symptoms.

Funny how it works. I needed a meeting, I needed the company of my fellows, I needed to hear the wise and foolish things that got said at meetings. I needed, too, to talk about my day as a way of releasing it, and thus integrate the experience.

I hadn’t done any of this yet, but I was safe now. I was in the room, and it would get done in due course. So I felt better already.

I went over to the coffee urn and drew myself a cup. It wasn’t a great deal better than the instant decaf I’d had at Willa’s. But I drank it down and went back for more.

The speaker was a member of our group, celebrating a two-year anniversary. Most of the people in the room had heard her drinking story at one time or another, so she talked instead about what her life had been like during the past two years. It was an emotional qualification, and the applause when she finished was more than perfunctory.

I raised my hand after the break and talked about finding Eddie’s body, and about spending the rest of the day with someone who was drinking. I didn’t go into detail, just spoke about what I’d felt then, and what I was feeling now.

After the meeting several members came up to me with questions. Some of them weren’t too clear on who Eddie was and wanted to determine if he was someone they knew. He wasn’t a regular at St. Paul’s, and he didn’t speak up a lot, so not many people knew who I was talking about.

Several who did wanted to know the cause of death. I didn’t know how to answer that. If I said he’d hanged himself they’d assume he’d committed suicide. If I explained further I’d have to get into a deeper discussion of the matter than I felt comfortable with. I was deliberately vague, saying that the cause of death hadn’t been officially determined, that it looked like accidental death. That was the truth, if not the whole truth.

A fellow named Frank, long sober himself, had only one question. Had Eddie died sober?

“I think so,” I told him. “There weren’t any bottles around the room, nothing to suggest he was on a slip.”

“Thank God for that,” Frank said.

Thank God for what? Drunk or sober, wasn’t he just as dead?

Jim Faber was waiting for me at the door. We walked out together and he asked me if I was going for coffee. I said I had to meet someone.

“The woman you spent the afternoon with? The one who was drinking?”

“I don’t think I mentioned it was a woman.”

“No, you didn’t. ‘This person was drinking, which was fairly natural under the circumstances. There’s no reason to think they have a problem with it.’ This person, they — you don’t make that kind of grammatical error, not unless you’re trying to avoid saying she.”

I laughed. “You should have been a detective.”

“No, it’s the printer in me. It gives you a wonderful awareness of syntax. You know, it doesn’t really matter how much she drinks, or whether she’s got a problem with it. It’s what the effect is on you.”

“I know.”

“You ever been with a woman who was drinking?”

“Not since I’ve been sober myself.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“I haven’t really been with anybody aside from Jan. And the few dates I’ve had have been with women in the program.”

“How’d you feel this afternoon?”

“I enjoyed being with her.”

“How’d you feel being around the booze?”

I thought over my answer. “I don’t know where the woman stopped and the booze started. I was nervous and excited and edgy, but I might have felt a lot of that if there hadn’t been a drink anywhere in the building.”

“Did you have the urge to drink?”

“Sure. But I never considered acting on it.”

“You like her?”

“So far.”

“You on your way to see her now?”

“We’re going out for a bite.”

“Not the Flame.”

“Maybe someplace a little nicer than that.”

“Well, you’ve got my number.”

“Yes, Mother. I’ve got your number.”

He laughed. “You know what old Frank would say, Matt. ‘Lad, there’s a slip under every skirt.’ “

“I’ll bet he would. And I’ll bet he hasn’t looked under too many skirts lately. You know what he did say? He asked me if Eddie died sober, and when I said he did, he said, ‘Well, thank God for that.’ “

“So?”

“He’s just as dead either way.”

“That’s true,” he said, “but I’ve got to go along with Frank on this one. If he had to go, I’m glad he went out sober.”

I hurried back to my hotel, grabbed a fast shower and shave, and put on a sport jacket and tie. It was twenty to eleven by the time I rang Willa’s bell.

She had changed, too. She was wearing a light blue silk blouse over a pair of white Levi’s. She had braided her hair, and the braid was coiled across the front of her head like a tiara. She looked cool and elegant, and I told her so.

“You look nice yourself,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I was getting paranoid.”

“Was I very late? I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t more than ten minutes late, and I started getting paranoid forty-five minutes ago, so it had nothing to do with the time. I just decided you were too good to be true and I was never going to see you again. I’m glad I was wrong.”

Outside, I asked if there was any place special she wanted to go. “Because there’s a restaurant not far from here I’ve been wanting to try. It has a sort of French bistro atmosphere, but they have more ordinary pub fare on the menu, too, along with the French food.”

“It sounds good. What’s it called?”

“Paris Green.”

“On Ninth Avenue. I’ve passed it but I’ve never been inside. I love the name.”

“It gets the feel of the place across. The French atmosphere, and all the plants hanging from the ceiling.”

“Don’t you know what Paris green is?”

“Evidently not.”

“It’s a poison,” she said. “It’s an arsenic compound. Arsenic and copper, if I remember right, and that would account for the color.”

“I never heard of it.”

“You might have if you were a gardener. It used to get a lot of use as an insecticide. You would spray it on plants to kill chewing insects. They absorbed it through their stomachs and died. They don’t use arsenicals in the garden these days, so I don’t suppose it’s been around for years.”

“You learn something every day.”

“Class isn’t over yet. Paris green was also used as a coloring agent. To color things green, predictably enough. They used it primarily in wallpaper, and consequently a lot of people have died over the years, most of them children with a bent for oral experimentation. I want you to promise me that you won’t put chips of green wallpaper in your mouth.”

“You have my word.”

“Good.”

“I’ll try to find other channels for my bent for oral experimentation.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“How do you know all this, anyway? About Paris green?”

“The party,” she said. “The Progressive Commies. We learned everything we could about toxic substances. I mean, you never know when somebody’s going to decide that it’s tactically correct to poison the municipal water system of Duluth.”

“Jesus.”

“Oh, we never did anything like that,” she said. “At least I didn’t, and I never heard of anyone who did. But you had to be prepared.”

The tall bearded bartender was behind the stick when we walked in. He gave me a wave and a smile. The hostess led us to a table. When we were seated Willa said. “You don’t drink and you’ve never eaten here, and you walk in and the bartender greets you like a cousin.”

“It’s not really all that mysterious. I was in here asking some questions. I told you about that young woman I’ve been trying to find.”

“The actress, and you told me her name. Paula?”

“He recognized her, and described the man she was with. So I came in a second time hoping he’d remember more. He’s a nice fellow, he’s got an interesting mind.”

“Is that what you were doing earlier tonight? Working on your case? Do you call it a case?”

“I suppose you could.”

“But you don’t.”

“I don’t know what I call it. A job, I guess, and one I’m not doing particularly well with.”

“Did you make any progress this evening?”

“No. I wasn’t working.”

“Oh.”

“I was at a meeting.”

“A meeting?”

“An AA meeting.”

“Oh,” she said, and she was going to say something else, but the waitress, with a great sense of timing, showed up to take our drink orders. I said I’d have a Perrier. Willa thought for a moment and ordered a Coke with a piece of lemon.

“You could have something stronger,” I said.

“I know. I already had more to drink than I usually do, and I was a little headachey when I woke up. I don’t think you mentioned earlier that you were in AA.”

“I don’t generally tell people.”

“Why? You can’t think it’s something to be ashamed of.”

“Hardly that. But the idea of anonymity is sort of bound up in the whole program. It’s considered bad form to break somebody else’s anonymity, to tell people that the person in question is in AA. As far as breaking your own anonymity is concerned, that’s more of an individual matter. I suppose you could say that I keep it on a need-to-know basis.”

“And I need to know?”

“Well, I wouldn’t keep it a secret from someone I was involved with emotionally. That would be pretty silly.”

“I guess it would. Are we?”

“Are we what?”

“Emotionally involved.”

“I’d say we’re on the verge.”

“On the verge,” she said. “I like that.”

The food was pretty good considering that the place was named after a lethal substance. We had Jarlsberg cheeseburgers, cottage fries, and salad. The burgers were supposedly grilled over mesquite, but if there was a difference between that and ordinary charcoal, it was too subtle for me. The potatoes were hand-cut and fried crisp and brown. The salad contained sunflower seeds and radish sprouts and broccoli florets, along with two kinds of lettuce, neither of them iceberg.

We talked a lot during the meal. She liked football, and preferred the college game to the pros. Liked baseball but wasn’t following it this year. Liked country music, especially the old-time twangy stuff. Used to be addicted to science fiction and read shelves of it, but now when she read at all it was mostly English murder mysteries, the country house with the body in the library and butlers who had or hadn’t done it. “I don’t really give a damn who did it,” she said. “I just like to slip into a world where everybody’s polite and well-spoken and even the violence is neat and almost gentle. And everything works out in the end.”

“Like life itself.”

“Especially on West Fifty-first Street.”

I talked a little about the search for Paula Hoeldtke and about my work in general. I said it wasn’t much like her genteel English mysteries. The people weren’t that polite, and everything wasn’t always resolved at the end. Sometimes it wasn’t even clear where the end was.

“I like it because I get to use some of my skills, though I might be hard put to tell you exactly what they are. I like to dig and pick at things until you begin to see some sort of pattern in the clutter.”

“You get to be a righter of wrongs. A slayer of dragons.”

“Most of the wrongs never get righted. And it’s hard to get close enough to the dragons to slay them.”

“Because they breathe fire?”

“Because they’re the ones in the castles,” I said. “With moats around them, and the drawbridge raised.”

Over coffee she asked me if I’d become friendly with Eddie Dunphy in AA. Then she put her hand to her mouth. “Never mind,” she said. “You already told me it was against the rules to break another member’s whatchamacallit.”

“Anonymity, but it doesn’t matter now. Being dead means never having to remain anonymous. Eddie started coming to meetings about a year ago. He’d stayed completely sober for the past seven months.”

“How about you?”

“Three years, two months, and eleven days.”

“You keep track to the day?”

“No, of course not. But I know my anniversary date, and it’s not hard to figure the rest out.”

“And people celebrate anniversaries?”

“Most people make it a point to speak at a meeting on their anniversary, or within a few days of it. At some groups they give you a cake.”

“A cake?”

“Like a birthday cake. They present it to you, and everybody has some after the meeting. Except for the ones on diets.”

“It sounds—”

“Mickey Mouse.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Well, you could. It does. In some groups they give you a little bronze medallion with the number of years in roman numerals on one side and the serenity prayer on the other.”

“The serenity prayer?”

“ ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ “

“Oh, I’ve heard that. I didn’t know it was an AA prayer.”

“Well, I don’t think we have exclusive title to it.”

“What did you get? A cake or a medallion?”

“Neither. Just a round of applause and a lot of people telling me to remember it’s still a day at a time. I guess that’s why I belong to that group. No-frills sobriety.”

“ ’Cause you’re just a no-frills kind of guy.”

“You bet.”

When the check came she offered to split it. I said I’d get it, and she didn’t put up a fight. Outside, it had turned a little colder. She took my hand when we crossed the street, and went on holding it after we reached the curb.

When we got to her building she asked me if I wanted to come in for a few minutes. I said I thought I’d go straight home, that I wanted to get an early start the next morning.

In the vestibule she fitted her key in the lock, then turned to me. We kissed. There was no alcohol on her breath this time.

Walking home, I kept catching myself whistling. It’s not something I’m much given to.

I gave out dollar bills to everyone who asked.