Tony and Susan

FOUR

Susan Morrow sees a new issue shaping up through the battle of euphemisms, unless it’s a red herring. She doubts that, it looks like a true fish: Bobby Andes takes the law into his hands. Tony Hastings meets John Wayne. With little space left, at most five chapters, more likely four, the risk of being disappointed was never greater than now.

Meanwhile, dialogue. Susan likes dialogue, how print fastens ephemeral words to the page like flattened animals on the road, so you can go back and inspect them in their non sequitur, as when Bobby Andes says irrelevantly: This place stinks. Yet behind all this imagined Pennsylvania and Ohio stands the ego of Edward the Writer. Tony Hastings, Ray Marcus, Bobby Andes, Louise Germane, the shades of Laura and Helen, these people who have, as she imagines, some relationship to herself, all are icons of that great Edward ego, projected on a screen. Twenty-five years ago she ejected the Edward ego, clumsy and crude, from her life. How subtly it works now, soaking up her own, converting hers into his.

Nocturnal Animals 22

Two cars, Tony Hastings in his following Bobby Andes through the quiet streets of Topping to Herman’s. A big parking lot around Herman’s, which was a one-story sprawling building with a red sign in the window. The sign cast a brighter glow than the twilight and accelerated the night. Bobby came over to Tony’s car. “Wait here,” he said.

From his car Tony watched the door to Herman’s while the night came on. After a while two men came out. He recognized Bobby and realized the other was Ray. They talked in the glow of the sign. Ray stood with his hands on his hips, Andes looking up to him with his back twisted. Ray made a gesture of disgust, turned to the door, changed his mind. Two policemen appeared in the door. Ray gestured. One of the policemen touched Ray’s shoulder. He recoiled, then submitted while the policeman put handcuffs on him and led him over to the lieutenant’s car. Bobby Andes came back to Tony.

“We’re going to my camp. It’s in Bear Valley. You follow.”

Full night while they drove, a three-car caravan, the police car in front, down the fast valley road. A passing car got between Tony and Bobby, then passed Bobby but dared not pass the police car, making it a four-car caravan for the next five miles.

He saw the flashing turn signal of the cars ahead and put on his own, though nobody was behind. A side road to the left, the sign read WHITE CREEK. The road went narrow and straight between two fields, bumpy, they had to go slow. Tony could make out the ridge rising ahead out of the flat valley floor. At the end of the fields the road turned left. There was a narrow stream on their right under the bluff, with woods beyond. Light ahead, a cottage in a grove next to the stream. The two cars pulled in under the trees and Tony pulled in beside them. They all got out and Tony followed them in.

“My camp,” Bobby Andes said.

They went in through the screened porch. It seemed like a crowd in the little room, and it took Tony a moment to straighten them out. There was a woman, but the others were only the people who had come from Herman’s: the two policemen, Bobby Andes, Ray Marcus. Bobby Andes had a gun in his hand, and the sight of it shocked Tony like an exposed penis. Bobby was glaring at the woman. He said, “How did you get here?”

She was bigger than he. She wore a sweater and slacks, and had a tired face. She was probably in her forties and might be a schoolteacher.

“Lucy brought me.”

“Shit.”

Ray noticed Tony. “Hey, what’s this guy doing here?”

The room had a table in the middle, a cot, a few old chairs. There was an alcove with a stove and sink, and there was a screen door to the back and an open door to a bedroom. Ray’s handcuffs glittered in the light that hung from the beam. He sat on the cot.

The two policemen left. Tony heard their car going off. Bobby introduced the woman to Tony. “This is Ingrid Hale,” he said.

“How do do, Ingrid,” Ray said.

Ingrid’s look at Tony was curious. “So you’re Mr. Hastings,” she said. “You have my sympathy.”

“Do I have your sympathy too?” Ray said.

“Shut up,” Bobby Andes said. “You might have told me,” he said to Ingrid.

“How was I to know? What are you doing out here anyway?” Like it embarrassed her to have a fight in front of strangers.

“Police work,” Bobby said. “I want to do some fucking police work, for Christ sakes.”

“Here? Since when do you do your police work here, Bobby?”

He was standing there white faced, as if astonished by some inner message. “Jesus, I’m sick,” he said. He thrust the gun at Ingrid. “Here, hold this.”

“What?” She juggled it like fire. “Don’t give me this.” She gave it back.

He thrust it at Tony. “Use it,” he said. “Shoot him. I’ll be right back.” Tony looked at it, heavy in his hands, wondering how it worked. Bobby went out back. They could hear him throwing up outside the screen door. Ray sniggered.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” he said.

Bobby Andes stayed out quite a while, and there were more noises. “Jesus Christ,” Ray said.

When Bobby Andes came back, Ray said, “This ain’t legal. If this was legal you’d of taken me to Grant Center, not this fucking place.”

Bobby took the gun from Tony and cocked it. “It’s all the legal we need,” he said.

“You’ll pay.”

Tony heard Ingrid Hale clicking her tongue.

“You lied to me,” Ray said. “There ain’t no new evidence. Why don’t you take me to Grant Center if you got new evidence?”

Bobby Andes was studying the gun.

“I like it better here. More relaxed.”

“Seems to me you tried this trick already. If you think this guy’s going to break me down, you already seen that don’t work.”

“Bobby,” Ingrid said.

“Okay, you’re here, you’re here,” he said to her. “You ain’t gonna like what you see, but I can’t change my plans on account of you.” Tony heard something boastful in the speech, like, Now you’ll see what police work is really like.

“Maybe I should go to bed.”

“Maybe that’s what you should do. Hey Ray,” he said. “What was you doing up Cargill Mountain this afternoon?”

“I knew you was tailing me.”

“You got a shack up there, some gal Leila don’t know about?”

No words out of Ray.

“Won’t tell? Doesn’t matter. I really don’t care, Ray.”

“Then what are you asking for?”

“Pass the time, Ray.”

“What for? You waiting for something?”

“Time for you to think a little. You need time to make big decisions. When your whole goddamn life hangs in the balance.”

“There’s nothing to think about, man. My mind’s clean.”

“Say, listen to that. What would you say, Ray, if your pal Lou Bates implicated you in the Hastings murders?”

Ray took a moment.

“Who?”

“Come on, Ray, don’t try that. Your only friend in the world, you know Lou Bates.”

“I got friends, you sonofabitch.”

“Sure you do, boy, you got lots of friends. What if they implicated you? What if Lou Bates confessed? You and Turk Adams and him, the whole story.”

Ray sat there, thinking.

“He’s lying.”

“I don’t think so. Why would he lie to implicate himself?”

Ray looking around the room.

“You’re lying,” he said. “If Lou had done that you would of taken me to Grant Center.”

“We’ll get you to Grant Center, don’t worry. Like a beer?”

“Is it poisoned?”

Bobby Andes laughed. He nodded to Ingrid Hale. “Get us a beer, girl.” She went to the back and brought out a six-pack. She gave beers to the three men and took one for herself. Bobby Andes opened his but did not drink. Ray drank his bringing both handcuffed hands up to his mouth. Bobby said to Ingrid, “Now maybe you can help Tony guard our pal here while I make a call.”

She was alarmed. So was Tony. “What sort of call?”

“Police work, right? What I gotta do. You watch him and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Watch him? Bobby? How?”

“Tony will guard him, won’t you, Tony? Take this gun. Here, I’ll show you how it works.”

They went into the alcove and turned their backs to conceal the demonstration from Ray, who sat smirking on the cot. Tony didn’t want to admit how scared he was. Miserable, Ingrid asked Tony, “Can you use it?”

“I can try,” he said.

“You must think I’m a pretty dangerous guy,” Ray said.

“You’re not dangerous, crumb,” Bobby said. “You’re a cockroach. Pest control. A little exercise in pest control.”

“Don’t leave us, Bobby,” Ingrid said.

“Relax,” Bobby said. “It’s only five minutes. You want we should tie him down? Would that make you feel better?” He looked at Ray. “Okay crumb, looks like we better fasten you to something.” He looked around. “Frame on that cot,” he said. “Here Tony, take the key and unlock one of them cuffs, hook him to the bed frame.”

Bobby Andes went around to the side of the cot, pointing the gun at Ray to cover Tony. Tony felt nervous getting so close to Ray, who was grinning, the vicious grin he remembered, and Tony could smell the onion on his breath. He was clumsy unlocking the cuff on Ray’s left hand, and his hands trembled. He pulled the handcuffs down close to the bed frame, requiring Ray to bend forward. He was afraid Ray might attack and had to remind himself Bobby Andes was protecting him with the gun.

“Christ you guys,” Ray yelled. “You can’t make me sit like this.” He was doubled over.

“Sit on the floor,” Andes said.

“Shit.” He dropped down with his back to the cot, and Tony locked the handcuff to the frame. “How can I drink my beer?”

“Use your free hand.”

Bobby stood back and looked at him like a painting. “That make you feel safer?” he said. She looked at him pleadingly. “Okay,” Bobby said. “We’ll make you safer still. Tony, go out to my car and get the leg irons.”

So they put on the leg irons, and then Ray was sitting on the floor with one hand raised and attached to the cot next to his shoulder, his two feet linked together, and one hand free for his beer can, which he kept sipping from.

“That’s cruel,” Ingrid said.

“Yeah, it’s cruel,” Ray said.

“You want to be cruel or safe?” Bobby said. “I’ll be back in five minutes. If you have to use the gun, use it.” He went out, and they heard the car turn around and drive down the road.

Suddenly it was quiet, as if Bobby had taken away the noise. The gun was heavy in Tony’s lap. He looked at Ray shackled and stretched out on the floor by the cot. He kept one hand on the barrel, the other ready remembering the motions necessary to release the safety and cock it. He thought, My God, I am sitting here with a gun in my lap. I am holding a man prisoner, my own enemy who has tortured me for a year. It’s good he’s shackled, for otherwise I would have to depend on the threat of this gun, which I have never used.

Ray said, “Your guy is crazy.”

“He’s a good man,” Ingrid said.

“You think he’s crazy though. You’re crazy too,” he said to Tony.

Tony heard the night through the screened windows, the frogs at a distance, a pond somewhere, and after a while the water in the river, close to the porch. He heard the silence spreading out to the traffic on roads far away. He remembered the anarchy of the wilderness and felt the weight of his responsibility. This now, it’s all because of me.

Bobby Andes was gone a long time. Tony asked Ingrid, “Where is that telephone?”

“Down by the gas station,” she said. She wondered what was keeping him. She got more beers from the refrigerator and gave one to Tony, who declined it, and another to Ray on the floor. She fried some eggs and bacon.

“Yay momma,” Ray said. “You fixin us something to eat?”

They were afraid to unlock him, which made eating hard for him. He could use only one hand. He said Ingrid was a real nice lady, but he felt like a fuckin animal in the zoo.

She began tapping her foot. “Bobby, Bobby,” she said.

“Looks like he run off and left you,” Ray said. “You and me, the three of us, alone together.”

It was dim, the room gloomy, with only the one light, a sixty-watt bulb hanging from the cross beam. The brown cardboard walls, pictures from magazines posted with thumbtacks, wild animals, mountains, a calendar three years old. Fishing rods, a shovel, a two-man saw, stacked together in the corner. A musty smell, an old remnant of skunk. Even in the night Tony was conscious of the cavern shaped around the house by the trees, a feeling of damp woe, of rotted memory, of Bobby Andes’s misery.

Somewhat later Ingrid asked Tony about his wife and daughter. Ray was watching, listening to everything. “We went to Maine every summer,” Tony said.

“You had a good marriage?”

“We had a fine marriage. An ideal marriage.”

“No problems?”

“I can’t recall any.”

She said, “That’s very unusual.” Snicker from Ray.

She said Bobby had had a bad marriage. He played around, which his wife didn’t like and eventually she divorced him. His teenage daughter committed suicide, and his son left town and hadn’t been back in six years. This was where they had spent their summers in the old days.

“He told me he had only one child,” Tony said.

“That’s what he tells people.”

Herself, she didn’t believe in marriage. She was the receptionist in Dr. Malcolm’s office, and in her spare time she was writing a historical romance. She had been coming out to Bobby’s camp on weekends for about five years. She mentioned Bobby’s illness, how unlucky he was. She was considering sacrificing her principles to give him six months of happiness, for she was afraid he was heading for a breakdown. He seemed so mad and fierce lately. The chief complication was Dr. Malcolm. She glanced sharply at Ray. “It’s no secret,” she said. “They know about each other.” Ray snickered.

That makes her sound wanton. But everything about her was under control and regular. Actually, she said, she didn’t care about love. Her two relationships, it was a convenience and kindness for everybody. She kept them calm, she was not a passionate type.

She said to Tony, “I can’t tell what type of person you are. Anyone who had a perfect marriage, that baffles me.” She looked at Ray. “As for you. God knows what you are.”

“I’m just a ordinary simple fella, maam,” he said.

“I’ll bet you are.”

She said to Tony, “Do you know what he plans to do tonight?”

Tony didn’t.

“Police work,” she said. “Out here? God knows when any of us will get to bed.”

“Damn right, lady, jeez I need my sleep,” Ray said.

She ignored him. To Tony: “Maybe you could help Bobby.”

“Me?”

“You’re a professor, he admires your kind of people. If you could talk to him, calm him down.”

He felt sick, because he thought of Bobby Andes as helping him. The other way round had never occurred to him.

She saw his look and shrugged her shoulders.

Shackled Ray from the floor spoke up. “Hey lady, how about helping me?”

“I want nothing to do with you,” she said.

“It’s cruel. You said so yourself. I got a crick in my back, I can’t move, I feel like a fuckin animal in the zoo.”

“You’ll have to wait until Bobby comes back.”

“Christ, he ain’t coming back.”

“What do you want? There’s no way I’m going to let you go.”

“Jeez I ain’t asking you to let me go. Just unlock my fuckin legs and let me sit in the chair. You got the gun. What more do you want? I ain’t going no place.”

Tony didn’t want to look at Ingrid, for he knew she was looking at him. He knew she thought they should undo Ray’s leg irons. Probably he thought so himself, for he felt ashamed looking at Ray on the floor. It made him uneasy, though.

“What do you think?” she said.

“Let’s wait for Bobby,” he said.

After a while a car approached, the light shining through the window. Reading in her chair, Ingrid muttered, “Thank God.”

Car door outside, footsteps light on the gravel, then the screen door opened and a young woman in a red miniskirt walked in. She looked confused. Ray looked up. “Well,” he said.

“My God, it’s Susan,” Ingrid said.

The girl named Susan looked at Ray on the floor. “What’s going on?” she said.

“Where’s Bobby?” Ingrid asked.

“How should I know. Isn’t he here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Leslie kicked me out again.”

Ingrid laughed. “Well if you’re willing to sleep in the woods or something.”

The woman named Susan was looking at Ray’s leg irons.

“Are you playing a game?”

“A little police work here. Meet Tony Hastings and Ray Marcus. Ray Marcus is a prisoner.”

“A real prisoner?”

“Hi Susan,” Ray said. “Pleased to meet you Susan.”

“Tony is a visitor from out of town. Ray is charged with murder.”

“Not anymore,” Ray said. “They dropped the charges.”

Susan had a lot of makeup marking off the parts of her face. Her eyes were surrounded by dark color. She looked at Ray and shrank a little.

“Listen Susan,” Ray said. “Tell your friends they can get me off the floor now.”

“What’s he talking about?”

“He doesn’t like the leg irons.”

Susan gasped. She had just noticed the gun in Tony’s lap.

“Are you a policeman?” she said.

“Tony’s the victim of the crime Ray is charged with.”

“I thought you said the crime was murder.”

“Christ, they think I’m going to jump them. They got the gun and the cuffs, and they still think I’m going to jump them.”

“Oh shit,” Ingrid said. “Let him up, for Christ sakes.”

Tony Hastings was glad for her decisive words. He knew their precautions were excessive, and they made him feel cowardly. The only thing was to be careful. They did it deliberately, with Ingrid holding the gun at Ray’s temple while Tony unhooked the hand from the bed frame, then locked the wrists together, and then released the irons. He stepped back and took the gun from Ingrid, and Ray struggled to his feet and sat in the chair.

Ray looked resentfully at them all. “Jesus,” he said to Susan, “they think I’m from outer space.”

“What’s Bobby going to do to him?” Susan said.

“Police work,” Ingrid said. “My God, what’s keeping him?”

“Where is he?”

“Making a telephone call. He’s been gone a whole hour.”

“He’s crazy,” Ray explained to Susan. “She was telling Tony here, he’s out of his mind and she don’t know what to do.”

“You be quiet, you don’t know the least thing about it.”

“You’re worried he’s going to get his ass fired.”

“You shut up. You don’t know anything.”

“I’m not so dumb, lady.”

“You’re a monster. You’re a murderer. You’re a rapist. You’re a horrible creature.”

“Don’t be a bitch, lady. It ain’t nice.”