Small Town

twenty-eight

He had a surprisingly good day at the keyboard. He’d anticipated trouble, having so utterly rearranged the furniture in his life. For months — since whatever happened with Marilyn Fairchild, incredibly enough — he hadn’t had sex. Aside from various cops, Maury Winters, and that rummy of a PI, he hadn’t had anyone in his apartment in longer than he could remember.

Add in the fact that he’d just quit smoking and it seemed likely that the words would slow to a trickle, or dry up altogether. Instead, they poured down in buckets.

He’d finished for the day, showered and changed, and was sitting at the window when she showed up right on time. They went to Mitali’s for Indian food and he told her the patch was helping.

“But it was tricky getting it. You need a prescription for the thing, can you believe that? Every newsstand or deli will sell you all the cigarettes you want, but if you want to quit you’ve got to see a doctor. I went to this little drugstore on Bleecker, I don’t know how they stay in business, and I slipped the guy a hundred dollars.”

“You had to schmear him to sell you a patch?”

“I told him he’d be saving me time and money, and doing me a big favor. He looked around, like somebody might be watching us. I wonder if any of the guys in the hip-hop outfits are selling patches in Union Square. If not, they’re missing a good thing.”

Walking back to Bank Street, she slipped her hand into his.

The jazz station on the radio, with the volume turned low. She said the same thing she’d said yesterday. I’ll do anything you want. You can do whatever you want with me.

For answer, he drew her close for a kiss, put a hand on her bottom and pulled her loins tight against him. He was hard, but that was nothing new. He’d been that way in the restaurant.

She said, “Anything you want. And whenever you want, except for Tuesdays and Fridays.”

“Shrink appointments? Personal trainer?”

“Sex,” she said. She raised her eyes to his. Her gaze was open, unguarded. “I’m going to tell you about Tuesdays and Fridays,” she said, “but I want you inside of me while I tell you. Can we do that? No, from behind. See how wet I am. I’ve been like this all day, I had to masturbate, I couldn’t help myself. Now you’re nice and wet, you’re wet with my wetness. Now take it out and put it in the other place. Yes, yes. I want you in my ass. Oh, yes. God, you’re big, it feels wonderful. Now don’t move, don’t thrust. Can you do that, John? Can you just stay like that?”

“I can try.”

“Oh, God, don’t move. Oh, I can’t hold back, I’m going to come. Oh. Oh. Don’t move, please don’t move. Is that all right? Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, I love you. I do, you know. Don’t say anything. Can you just stay in me and not move and not say anything? Yes, you can. Oh, you’re an angel. Now I have to think where to begin. Maury Winters, your lawyer. The last time I saw Maury he took me to a fancy French restaurant. We had just ordered dessert when he went to the bathroom, and while he was gone I got under the table, and when he came back I sucked him off.

“It was very exciting. I always love doing that, but I especially liked two things, surprising him like that and doing it in public. No one could see us but it was entirely possible someone saw me get under the table, and I know there were people who saw me get out.

“At least one, and that brings us to the man I see every Friday night. I won’t tell you his name, but I’m going to tell you everything else. I love you, John. I love your cock in my ass. I’m going to tell you everything.”

She talked for a long time. She didn’t censor her speech, didn’t check it in her mind but let it flow out unimpeded, as if she were an open faucet and the words were water. Sometimes she would feel disembodied, lost in space, and then the hard bulk of him inside her would bring her back, and she would tighten around him and go on.

She told him about Franny, although she didn’t use his name or identify him beyond saying he had been a public official, a man used to exercising authority. She told him about the boys, Lowell and Jay. She told him about the man from Connecticut and the man from Detroit. She told him about Reginald Barron. She told him about Chloe.

She told him about her toys. She told him about the times she spent by herself, and what she did, and what fantasies she used.

She told him she felt alive, as she had never felt before. She told him she worried sometimes that she was crazy, that she was out of control.

When she had run out of things to tell him she lay still and felt him still hard inside her, felt his hand resting lightly on her hip, felt his mind touching hers. She felt that she could almost talk to him without words, that her mind could speak silently to his. Almost.

Aloud she said, “Do you hate me, John?”

“Of course not.”

“Am I disgusting?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“But does it disgust you, what I do? You could make me stop. I don’t want to stop, but I would do it for you.”

He was silent for a moment, but she wasn’t afraid of what he would say. She could feel his mind, so gentle against hers, and she knew what he said would be all right.

He said, “It’s what you do, Susan. It’s who you are. It’s your art.”

Something broke within her and she felt tears stream down her cheeks. “Oh, my darling,” she said. “Oh, lie still, lie perfectly still. Don’t move. I want to do this for you.”

And she tightened around him, tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed, milking him, milking him, until at last he let out a great cry and emptied himself into her.

“If I’d had any idea what it would do for my sex life,” he said, “I’d have quit smoking years ago.”

“It must be the patch.”

“Jesus, no wonder you need a prescription.”

Showers, cups of tea. She was holding one of his books, Nothing but Blue Skies, studying the dust jacket photo. She asked when he’d shaved the beard.

“The night we met.”

“Seriously?”

“I was trimming it,” he said, “and that’s hard to do when you’re in a hurry. And I thought, oh, the hell with it, and the next thing I knew it was gone. I didn’t intend it to be symbolic, not consciously, anyway. But I must have, because I’d had it for years, and out of nowhere I’d just landed this ridiculously huge contract, and zip, no beard. If you want I’ll grow it back.”

“It’s a handsome beard,” she said, “but don’t grow it back. I like being able to see your face. What you said before, that sex was my art. That may be the most beautiful thing anybody ever said to me. It made me cry.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s entirely true, and I never knew it until I heard you say it. It’s the craziness that keeps me from going insane. Isn’t there a song like that?”

“Sort of, but I don’t think it’s about art. A country song.”

“Then it must be true, if it’s in a country song. You know the one thing New York doesn’t have?”

“Anybody better-looking than you.”

“A country-music station. Or if there is then I can’t find it.”

“There’s one,” he said, “but it’s no good. Chirpy disc jockeys and nothing but Top Forty shit. You like country music? Hang on a minute.”

He got out his Bobby Bare album, the one where Shel Silverstein wrote all the songs. It was vinyl, so he put the A side on the turntable and adjusted the volume. After the third cut played he said, “You’ve got to hear this one,” which was unnecessary, as they’d listened to the first three in respectful silence.

The song was “Rosalie’s Good Eats Café,” a story song about the habitués of an all-night restaurant, and it ran over eight minutes, and when it ended he took the record off and put it away. “I just wanted you to hear that,” he said. “We’ll listen to the rest another time.”

“I can see why you like that song. I mean, besides the fact that it’s terrific. It’s a novel, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly what it is. There was a DJ who played that cut all the time. He got in trouble, because he wasn’t getting enough commercials in, but he played it anyway. You’re too young to remember.”

“The other day your lawyer told me I was too young to remember To Have and Have Not. The movie, not the novel. I remember it just fine.”

“Because they show it on television. That album was released in 1973. Were you listening to much country music in 1973?”

“I was eight, so what would I have been listening to? Supertramp. God, do you remember that group? No, of course not, you’re too old to remember Supertramp.”

“Touché. I remember the Bobby Bare album because I was a college freshman, and that one song made me realize I wanted to be a writer.”

“Really?”

“Well, I already half knew, but that closed the sale. I realized I wanted to tell stories. Can I ask you something? And what’s so funny?”

“Can you ask me something? Duh, no, I don’t want to reveal anything of myself to you. Ask away.”

“You started off thinking I killed her. Marilyn Fairchild.”

“Well, it’s more like I assumed it.”

“What changed your mind? Reading my books?”

“That’s how I got to know you.”

“And you sensed that the person who wrote those books couldn’t commit murder.”

She was silent for a moment. “No,” she said. “Not exactly.”

“Oh?”

“One thing I got from the books,” she said, “is that anybody could commit murder. Not that there’s a lot of killing in your work, but you get the sense, well, that anybody is pretty much capable of anything.”

“I guess I believe that. I didn’t realize it was a message I was sending.”

“It’s one I got. There was one story, ‘A Nice Place to Visit,’ except that’s not right. This young couple, they’re in a motel—”

“ ‘A Nice Place to Stop.’ God, you’re amazing.”

“What, because I remember a story?”

“It’s the book I’m writing,” he said, and explained. She said she couldn’t wait to read it, and he said it was almost done, he’d reached that point where it was all clear in his mind and it was just a matter of getting it down right. And then he asked her again how she knew he was innocent.

“You said you didn’t do it,” she said simply.

“The prisons are full of people who’ll tell you they never did a bad thing in their lives.”

“But I don’t believe them. I believe you.”

He looked at her, thinking what a treasure she was, thinking how brave she’d been, willing to risk it all in order to let him see her real self. Did he dare to be any less daring himself?

“Come here a moment,” he said, leading her to the bookcase. “I don’t know if you happened to notice this.”

“The rabbit? Yes, I was looking at it before. It’s southwestern, isn’t it? Zuni, although they’re not the only ones carving them nowadays. May I?” He nodded, and she picked it up. “I think it’s very good. The stone’s beautiful, and the carving’s perfectly realistic, and not decadent the way some of them are. Not Roman Empire decadent, but when you know the artist is just going through the motions. Is it the only fetish you have?”

“Unless you want to count an enthusiasm for women with shaved twats and nipple rings.”

“Well, it’s a nice one, and I’m glad to see you’re taking good care of it. Cornmeal?”

“Stone ground.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Gristedes.”

“Idiot. Where did you get the rabbit? Were you in that part of the country, or did you buy it locally?”

“Neither,” he said. “I brought it home from Marilyn Fairchild’s apartment.”

As he spoke, a line ran through her head. A catchphrase, it had turned up everywhere for a while, until people got tired of it.

I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

Listening, she could feel his hands on her throat.

Her heart was beating faster, but the cause could as easily have been excitement as fear. Maybe the two weren’t so different, maybe that explained the appeal of roller coasters and scary movies.

When he’d finished she said, “But you don’t remember killing her.”

“No, but I can imagine it vividly enough. Maybe that’s a form of memory.”

“Do you always imagine it the same way?”

He shook his head. “Different versions.”

“That sounds like genuine imagination, not a memory slipping out the back door because your conscience has the front one blocked. John, I don’t think it proves anything. You know you were in her apartment, you know you were with her. You already knew that.”

“I didn’t know there were holes in my memory. I thought I was a little vague about leaving her place and getting back to mine, but if I was so far gone I picked this little critter up and brought him home without remembering any of it, I must have had a hole in my memory big enough to drive a truck through.”

Or stick your hands through, she thought, and fit them around a woman’s throat.

“If you’d found the rabbit the morning after...”

“And I could have, when I put my socks on. What would I have done? I’d have picked it up and stared at it and wondered where the hell it came from.”

“And when the cops came the first time?”

“They weren’t looking for the rabbit. Oh, would I have made the connection? I don’t know. I might have thought, oh, that’s where the damn thing came from. But I might just as easily have thought someone gave it to me years ago and I’d managed to forget the gift and the giver.”

“When they came back a second time—”

“The rabbit was listed on the search warrant. So what would I have done? Either pulled it out right away and showed it to them or prayed they wouldn’t find it. But all this is hypothetical. They didn’t find it, and I didn’t find it myself until long after they’d come and gone.”

“And now it’s eating up all your stone-ground cornmeal.”

“That’s why it stayed hidden until I got the big contract.”

“Why? Oh, then it knew you could afford to feed it.”

“You got it.”

She said, “John, everybody knows the Carpenter killed her. Maury told me they offered to let you walk. That was very brave, turning them down.”

“It shows moral strength if I didn’t do it. I’m not sure what it shows if I did.”

“If they had one more piece of evidence, one more link—”

“But they don’t.”

“The cleaning person, I forget his name...”

“Jerry Pankow. That looks like a link, but is it? The Carpenter reads the papers, he learns how this poor guy cleaned up the crime scene and then discovered the body. Let’s give him a few more to find, he says to himself. Let’s see what other potential crime scenes he cleans. That might appeal to his sense of humor.”

“You think he has one?”

“The nail in that woman’s forehead in Brooklyn? Call me the Carpenter and I’ll sign my work for you. Yes, I think he has a sense of humor. He’s not the Joker, laughing at Batman while he terrorizes Gotham City, but he’s got a sense of humor.”

“Couldn’t the same sense of humor lead him to take something from her apartment and put it here?”

“Toward what end? So the cops’ll think I did it? They think that already. Besides, I’m a light sleeper. And he’d have had to break in while I was sleeping, because the rest of the time I was holed up here.”

“You left a few times.”

“Only a very few, and only briefly. How would he get in the door? He’s the Carpenter, not the Locksmith.”

“Do you always double-lock your door?”

“Except when I forget. Okay, I could have forgotten, or not bothered if I was only going to be gone for a minute, and yes, it locks when you pull it shut, but if you know what you’re doing you can open it with a credit card. I used to do it myself when I forgot and locked myself out.”

“So he could have done that. You used to do it? But then you stopped locking yourself out?”

He laughed. “Well, no, once in a while I’m lost in thought and go out for cigarettes with my keys still on the dresser. Another thing I don’t have to worry about now that I’m an ex-smoker.”

“But when you did lock yourself out, then what?”

“There’s a key under the mat.”

“Which the Carpenter could have used.”

“If he thought to look there. Susan, come on. Remember Occam’s razor?”

“From college, but I forget what it is.”

“A philosophical principle. When you hear hoofbeats, don’t look around for zebras. Because it’s probably horses. That’s my example, not that of the bishop of Occham, but you get the idea. When there’s a simple and obvious explanation, it’s generally on the money.”

She nodded slowly, looked at the rabbit in the palm of her hand. She asked if anyone else had seen it. No one, he said. She alone had been in his apartment since the rabbit turned up.

“And you’re the only person I’ve said a word to. You notice I checked first to make sure you weren’t wearing a wire.”

“Checked very thoroughly, too.”

“Well, you can’t be too careful.”

I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you...

She said, “John? Thank you.”

“For letting you know you might be sleeping with a murderer?”

“I already knew that.”

She closed her fingers around the rabbit, reached out with her other hand to touch him. She had to have her hand on him while she said this.

She said, “I told you everything about myself, all the fucking, all the weird shit in my mind. But I held one thing back.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes I do. John, maybe you killed her and maybe you didn’t, but what you have to know is I don’t care. I honest to God don’t care.”

“You don’t care if—”

“—If you killed her or not. No, I don’t. I care about you. I want them to drop the charges, I want you to be out from under this cloud. I want everyone in the world to know you never killed anybody. But I don’t have to know it because it doesn’t matter to me. You think maybe you killed her? So fucking what? I love you just as much if you did. Maybe more, for all I know.” She raised her eyes to him. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked them away. She said, “Can you take me to bed? I need to come. Can you make me come?”

When it was time for her to go he went downstairs with her, walked her to Eighth Avenue. An empty cab sailed by, not even slowing down.

“Didn’t see us,” he said. “Too busy talking on his cell phone.”

“Listening to bad music,” she offered.

“And munching on raw garlic. I don’t think it was the right cab for you. Tomorrow’s Friday, so I guess you’ll be busy, won’t you?”

“Does it bother you?”

“No, I think I like it. I’ve got work to do, but I think I’d like it even if I didn’t. Friday’s the one you’re turning into a girl, right?”

“That’s the one, but what I’m really doing is teaching him that he’s kinkier than he thought he was.”

“Well, so am I, evidently, because I’m already looking forward to hearing about it. I expect a full report.”

“And while I’m doing him, I’ll be thinking how I’m going to get to tell you about it.”

“And I’ll be imagining it, writing scripts for you in my mind. Here’s your cab. I’ll see you Saturday, okay?”

She nodded, kissed him.

He said, “I’m glad we found each other.”

“Oh, baby,” she said. “How could we help it?”