Lights Out Page 16

  “No,” Eddie said, trying to imagine Jack on a squash court. Even with the added weight, he’d probably be good. There wasn’t a game he couldn’t play.

  Karen was starting to sweat too. Her skin shone; a drop rolled down her neck, disappeared between her breasts. Her eyes went to the “Yeah?” tattoo on Eddie’s arm, then up to his face.

  “What do you do to keep in shape, Eddie?”

  “Swim.”

  “Do you belong to a place like this in Albany?”

  “Albany?” said Eddie, and then remembered. “I use the Y.”

  Karen’s towel slipped again. This time she didn’t bother adjusting it. “What do you do up there?”

  “Nothing too hard,” Eddie said. “Just stretching out a little.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t mean in the pool. I meant for a living.”

  Why not tell her the truth? Eddie thought of a reason immediately: Jack did business with her, and knowing his brother was an ex-con might give her second thoughts, especially if Jack had spun some cover story about him last night. On the other hand, Jack might have told her the truth. “Didn’t Jack tell you?”

  “He was very mysterious.”

  “There’s no mystery. I’m looking for work.”

  “In what area?”

  “The junk-bond revival.”

  Karen laughed. Jack had already prepared her for the fact that Eddie was a bit of a character.

  “It’s tough out there, I know,” Karen said. “Any leads?”

  “Plenty. I’ve got friends in low places.”

  Karen laughed again and the towel slipped some more. Eddie didn’t think there was anything to it: this was just big-city sophistication.

  “But at least you’re taking courses in the meantime,” Karen said. “That’s smart.”

  “Courses?”

  “That Monarch you dropped. Don’t worry-I won’t snitch to your prof.”

  “Prof?”

  “I had one who confiscated any crib she saw. Like it was smuggled dope or something.”

  Eddie’s muscles, tendons, ligaments, didn’t feel so relaxed anymore, and he was very thirsty. “It’s just for pleasure,” he said.

  She smiled. “Dope?”

  “The Monarch.”

  “I’m teasing. What kind of Monarch does anyone read for pleasure?”

  For some reason, Eddie didn’t want to tell her. He could see no way to avoid it. “ ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ ”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I guess it’s just a trifle,” Eddie said, recalling Ram’s opinion; a trifle like “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

  “I hope not,” said Karen. “I wrote my senior thesis on it. ‘The Cruciform Bird: Christian Symbolism, Coleridge, and the Fate of the Mariner.’ ”

  Karen laughed. Eddie laughed too. This was fun-fun to sit in the steam bath with this beautiful woman, wrapped in fluffy towels, throwing words around. The man with the sandy mustache peeked through the window again and went away.

  “If it’s for pleasure, why not just read the poem?” Karen asked.

  “I know the poem,” Eddie said. “It’s just that-”

  “What do you mean, you know it?”

  “By heart.”

  “The whole thing?”

  Eddie nodded. She looked at him, bathed in sweat now. “I don’t believe you.”

  Eddie could have recited the beginning, as he had for the bookstore boy. Or he could have recited the arm-biting stanza, since it had just been on his mind. Instead, he began:

  Her lips were red, her looks were free,

  Her locks were yellow as gold.

  His voice dropped.

  “Go on.”

  He didn’t want to go on. The sentiment was crude, the comparison inappropriate, applying to Sookray, maybe, but not to this woman.

  Karen, in a low voice, finished it for him:

  Her skin was as white as leprosy,

  The nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,

  Who thicks men’s blood with cold.

  There was silence, except for the hissing steam.

  “What does your crib make of that?” Karen said.

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I got it to find out something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s kind of stupid.”

  “I doubt it.”

  They looked at each other through the steam. Her legs had parted slightly. Her left knee was almost touching his right. His whole right leg tingled, as though it were being acted upon by some force.

  Eddie cleared his throat. “I’m trying to find out why the Mariner shoots the albatross in the first place.”

  Karen didn’t smile, didn’t laugh. He started to like her. “There are only two explanations I can see,” she said.

  “What are they?”

  “The first, less supported by the text, is the Everest explanation.”

  “Because it was there?”

  “Check. And the second, which fits much better, is the apple-and-Eve explanation.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Original sin.”

  Eddie didn’t like that one. He preferred some of his own devising-such as the Mariner was afraid of sailing fast, or jealous that the bird could fly.

  “Doesn’t grab, huh?” said Karen.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t believe in original sin either for the longest time. My work has convinced me otherwise.”

  What had Jack said? She managed family money. “You’re an investor?”

  “Right.”

  Eddie didn’t see how that would give her special insight into original sin, and she offered no elaboration.

  “I’m going to melt,” Karen said. She stood up, leaving a sweaty imprint of her sex on the bench. “And I’ve got to give your brother a call, as a matter of fact.”

  Eddie rose too. “He’s out of town.”

  Her voice grew sharper. “Where?” She hitched up her towel.

  Eddie paused. They were very close. The heat, the nearness of their almost-naked bodies: what would happen if he just put his arms around her? He had no idea. He looked down into her eyes. There was something odd about them, but he couldn’t place it.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” Karen said, backing away. Suddenly she was angry. “That’s so sloppy of him. He knew this was rollover day. We discussed it last night. This is going to cost-him and us.”

  Eddie didn’t know what rollover day meant, or how missing it would cost anyone. But it all sounded probable. “He’s gone to Grand Cayman. I don’t know where he’s staying.”

  “Thank Christ,” Karen said. “I know where he stays. You just saved him a bundle. And me.”

  Eddie was pleased, and more pleased when she smiled and said: “Now I owe you one.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do. And I’m free for dinner tonight.”

  “Me too.”

  She laughed. He felt her breath on his face, cool in the atmosphere of the steam bath. “Pick you up at six,” she said. “Dress casual.”

  And then she was out the door, trailing steam. For a moment Eddie was breathless, and not just because of the heat.

  It wasn’t until later, in the shower, that he realized what had been odd about Karen’s eyes: he’d seen the circular outlines of transparent discs floating on her cool blue irises. How could she be blind as a bat when she was wearing contact lenses?

  18

  Dress casual: what did it mean?

  Eddie wandered around Macy’s, checking out the clothes and lots of other things, even trying on a blue blazer in front of a three-way mirror. He noticed stubble on his head. He hadn’t shaved it for a while, no longer had his Remington, of course; that was one of the gifts he’d left for Prof. The stubble had a tarnished sheen. Eddie stepped closer to the mirror, and saw that his hair was growing in gray.

  “Fabulous,” said the clerk. “It fits you like a glove.”

  Eddie left Macy’s with
out buying the blazer or anything else, and returned to Jack’s suite at the Palazzo. Jack would know how to dress casual. In the bedroom, he opened drawers full of stuff, better than anything he’d seen at Macy’s. There were all kinds of colors and textures. Eddie had worn denim so long he’d forgotten what matched what. He began putting on and taking off clothes, reminded of a scene in a book about Marie Antoinette.

  Some time later he was standing in front of the mirror again, wearing a black cotton turtleneck, a blue wool sweater, gray corduroy pants rolled up an inch or two and held in place by a tightly cinched woven-leather belt, gleaming loafers with tassels on them.

  He studied his reflection. A clever trick, like the photographic blending of ruffian’s head on Ivy Leaguer’s body. Fabulous. Fit like a glove, but someone else’s. He stuck his hands in the pockets, trying for casual, and withdrew a half-full pack of Camels. He came close to lighting one, came close to throwing the pack away, ended by putting it back in his pocket.

  At six o’clock the phone buzzed. “I’m downstairs,” said Karen de Vere.

  Karen did look fabulous: her hair was swept up, revealing the substructure of her face, at once strong and fine. She wore jeans, leather boots, a leather jacket; and her tortoise-shell glasses. She offered her hand. He shook it: warm, dry, not without power.

  “You look so much like your brother,” she said, “except for the hair. But I guess everyone tells you that.”

  “We don’t hang out with the same people,” Eddie replied.

  Karen almost laughed; but how could she have gotten the joke? Eddie saw the laugh coming in her eyes; then she stifled it.

  “Did you get in touch with him?” Eddie asked.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Karen had a car outside, a low Japanese two-seater. “Not too hungry, I hope,” she said. “It takes about an hour.”

  “Fine.”

  They drove out of Manhattan, onto a bridge, headed north. She stuck a cassette into the tape player. “Like jazz?” she said. “I’m sick of rock.”

  A bass played a bouncy line that made Eddie think of hippos, then came a trumpet, soaring above. “Me too.” He’d heard nothing but rock blasting out of the cell blocks for fifteen years.

  Karen drove fast, cutting from lane to lane. She watched the road ahead. From time to time, he watched her. The clouds darkened and darkened, and then it was night.

  “Funny thing,” she said, as they crossed the Connecticut line. “I’ve known Jack a number of years. Business, but we’ve had lunch a few times, went to a hockey game once, if I recall.”

  “You like hockey?”

  “Just the fighting,” said Karen. “The point is, in all the time I’ve know him, he never mentioned you.”

  “I’m the black sheep.”

  “How so?”

  “You know how families are,” Eddie said, although his own didn’t deserve the name.

  “I know how mine is-completely screwed up,” Karen said. She glanced at him; oncoming headlights glared on the lenses of her glasses. “What makes you the black sheep?”

  Eddie shrugged.

  “Jack did make an animal analogy last night about you, now that I think of it, although it was to a bird, not a sheep.”

  Eddie waited.

  “The albatross, specifically. Odd, given our earlier conversation about ‘The Mariner.’ ”

  An icy wave flowed across Eddie’s shoulders and down his spine. He hadn’t felt anything like it since the moment in the shower room when he’d come to and realized what Louie and the Ozark brothers had done. Icy: because Jack considered him an albatross; because Jack would tell someone; because of what it said about his own obsession-yes-with the poem.

  Karen was looking at him again. This time there was no headlight glare, and her eyes were nothing but black sockets. The trumpeter began something that sounded like “Where or When” and quickly lost its wistfulness. Karen said: “Sometimes there are coincidences that don’t mean anything-like when you’re reading a word and someone says it on the radio at the same time. But some coincidences mean a lot.”

  “Do they?” Eddie said.

  “If you believe that things go on under the surface.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Eddie said. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re smart, and you know something about life. Anyone can see that.”

  “Not Floyd K. Messer,” said Eddie.

  “Who’s he?”

  “An old colleague.”

  “In what business was that?”

  “Warehousing.”

  Karen turned off at an exit, drove through a prosperous town and onto a country road. The headlights picked out details in the darkness: the white fence of a stable, reflective tape on the heels of a jogger’s shoes, a sign that read “Antiques” in Gothic letters, to prove how old they were.

  “That’s to prove how old they are,” Eddie said.

  Karen laughed. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Some coincidences mean a lot. The icy feeling subsided.

  In a few miles they came to the restaurant, Au Vieux Marron. Outside it looked like a barn; inside like a French country inn, or what Eddie imagined a French country inn to be. The maitre d’ welcomed them in French. Karen answered him in French. She said something that made him laugh. He showed them to a table by a window overlooking a pond. A waiter arrived.

  “Something to drink?”

  “Kir,” said Karen.

  “Monsieur?”

  Eddie didn’t know what kir was, thought that beer might not be fancy enough. “Armagnac,” he said.

  “Prior to the meal, monsieur?”

  The waiter was watching him; so was Karen. “With ice,” Eddie said. The waiter withdrew.

  Drinks came, and later food. Eddie ordered canard because it was the only word he knew on the menu. He’d never had duck like this-thin underdone slices of breast served with a sauce that tasted like raspberries, only more tart. The name of the recipe seemed to have something to do with Inspector Maigret; Eddie had read several books in the series, liking them mostly for their descriptions of food and drink, and the relish with which Maigret consumed them.

  “Good?” said Karen.

  “Good.”

  She was eating something Eddie couldn’t identify from the menu, still couldn’t identify when it arrived. It didn’t matter. The food was delicious; she had another kir, he had another Armagnac-she taught him how to order it “avec glacons,” and how to say several other things in French, such as, “I’m going to call the cops,” and “Take it or leave it.” Eddie caught a glimpse of what life could be like at the happy-go-lucky end. Under the table their feet touched; Karen waited a few moments before shifting hers away.

  It was all false, of course. He knew that deep down the whole time, knew it up front between courses, as soon as Karen looked at him over the rim of her glass and said, “So tell me about yourself, Eddie Nye.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “It can’t be. You’re between jobs, for instance.”

  “Right.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “It’s the same old story.”

  “What did you do before?”

  Why not just tell her the truth? He knew it wasn’t simply to protect Jack. He didn’t want to tell her because he didn’t want to see the expression that would come into those cool blue eyes when she found out.

  “I was involved in a resort development.”

  “Was this after the warehousing business?”

  “The warehousing business doesn’t count.”

  Karen stabbed a strange-looking mushroom. “Where was the resort?” She popped it in her mouth.

  “In the Bahamas.”

  “Which island?”

  “The banana-shaped one.”

  Karen laughed, but only for a moment. He was starting to l
ike that laugh-it was loud and came from deep inside-and was trying to think of a way to trigger it again, when she said: “What’s this banana island called on the map?”

  “Saint Amour.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Sailed by a few years ago. I hope you didn’t spoil it.”

  “Spoil it?”

  “With your development.”

  “It wasn’t my development. I just worked there.”

  She stabbed another mushroom. “Was Jack involved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “He never mentioned that either.”

  “He went on to bigger and better things.”

  “Don’t I know,” said Karen.

  Soon the waiter arrived with coffee. “Another Armagnac, monsieur?”

  “Okay,” Eddie said, although he was suddenly conscious of how much he’d been drinking since he’d found Jack.

  “Avec glacons?”

  “Now I can have it sans, can’t I?” Sans-it came to him from his reading: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” whatever the hell that was about. Karen laughed; even the waiter smiled.

  Karen stirred her coffee. “So Windward wasn’t involved in the resort.”

  “No.”

  “J. M. Nye and Associates?”

  “It was before all that.”

  Karen shot him a quick glance. It said: You’ve been out of work for a long time.

  The waiter laid the bill in front of Eddie. It came in a leather folder, as though there was something to hide. “Why don’t I take that?” Karen said. “I invited you.”

  “I ate the most,” Eddie said, opening the folder: $107.50. That surprised him.

  “I insist,” Karen said.

  “Next time,” Eddie said. She smiled. He laid down the $100 bill and the rest of his money, making $124.75. Not enough tip. He remembered the $350 sitting on the table. Jack’s $350.

  They went outside. The sky had cleared. There was a moon and stars. The trees were black, the pond silver. Karen took Eddie’s arm. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  They walked around the pond, following a footpath of crushed stone. Karen still held his arm. “You don’t know much about your brother’s business, do you?” she said.