Black Chalk (40 page)

An hour later the phone rang again. Again it was Wiseman. He had pulled a few strings, if Jolyon was still interested in the law there was a legal newspaper in London looking for a junior writer. The job was his if he wanted it.

Jolyon acquiesced. Yes, he wanted to be told what to do now. How he wished he had had a Wiseman all along.

He moved to London, to a small flat in the Elephant and Castle where he lived alone. He was good at his job but remained distant from his colleagues.

And so it was in London, surrounded by the heartbeats of millions, that loneliness first became Jolyon’s routine. Loneliness was the machine noise that cocooned him from life. And loneliness was not so bad.

*   *   *

LXXIII(i)
   I sit on the kitchen floor unable to get the image out of my head, picturing her all alone, her body not yet found. My darling Dee lying there, little blue doll rumpled and folded away. She looks discarded, carelessly left there for later, legs like stuffed cloth bent beneath her. My little blue doll, her wide stiff eyes, her ocean-coloured skin.

And I could have saved her. I could have …

Suddenly I pull a salad bowl out from the debris all around me. I retch. I puke violently, copiously.

*   *   *

LXXIII(ii)
   The intercom buzzes. Two thirty.

Happy birthday, Jolyon, Chad says when I open the door. He is carrying a black leather attaché case.

I say nothing. I turn and do my best to walk in a straight line. I want to get this thing over with. Perhaps I even want to lose, who knows what I’m thinking. Maybe I don’t care about Game Soc, they can do what they like with me.

I have your present, Chad says. Would you like it now or later?

I keep moving forward. In the living room, I collapse onto the sofa and Chad takes the same chair he took three days ago. Already we seem to have fallen into a routine.

Chad lowers the attaché case beside him on the floor. He is dressed in the colours of flame, the crisp blue denim of four days ago and today an orange polo. Chad’s boots imply a certain rough and tumble. Old and nicely scuffed as if an artist has burnished them just so.

And Chad’s whole life in England begins to form before me. A home in Belgravia, Chelsea lunchtimes and horse riding in Hyde Park at the weekend. Weekdays in Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels.

I look hard at Chad, feeling like a child. Chad has grown and I have stayed still. No, I have stagnated, I have regressed. How did you find me, Chad? I say.

Come on, Jolyon, Chad says, it wasn’t exactly hard. You worked on a major newspaper.

My pieces appeared under a different name, I say.

I know, Chad says, you used your wife’s surname. He looks at his watch and then he says, I guess we have the whole afternoon, right? No need to hurry. So don’t you want to hear about my adventures as a tourist in New York these past few days? You know, I grew up only a hundred and fifty miles north of here and yet until this trip I’d been here only once. And that was years ago when I was just a kid.

I remember, I say, sounding bored.

Fine, then we can talk fondly of old times if you’d prefer, Chad says.

I grimace, the sarcastic imitation of a smile.

Chad waits as I let the silence lengthen. And then at last he shrugs and speaks. If you don’t want to play small talk, Jolyon, then there was another game I had in mind. He picks up his case, rests it on his lap and snaps open its latches. These are your birthday presents, he says as he starts to unpack its contents. Cards, dice and a blue cup. Chad even has a small square of green felt. He lays everything out on the coffee table, the green felt cut perfectly to size, and looks up at me. I took the liberty, he says. Or did you have your own paraphernalia you were planning to use?

No, I say, I clean forgot to contact my paraphernalia maker.

Chad laughs. Do you want to start now or would you like to chew the fat a little more?

Just deal the cards, I say.

*   *   *

LXXIII(iii)
   Chad wins. It is not even close. He wins and wins and wins. What are the words they use in sports reports? Carnage. Slaughter. Whitewash.

Although technically it is not quite a whitewash. But I lose spectacularly. I struggle to keep track of the cards that have already been played. I struggle to remember whatever strategy I once knew. At some points in the Game I even struggle to keep my eyes from closing. My head hurts. I am drunk, I am clouded by pills. The consequences of losing make me feel sick and weak. Chad intimidates me. I can’t stop thinking about Dee.

And the dice fall unkindly. Everything is against me, everything except for the cards dealt during one solitary round. One round in which fate tosses me a bone, a hand so pleasing that it is hard not to win something. A crowded court of nobles, a diamond mine, a superabundance of spades … But I play this hand terribly, I play it like a Vegas lush. And then the dice fall kindly for Chad.

When this round of the Game is complete, I owe Chad three of the most serious consequences and two from the second pot. (I use the word pot symbolically as we have agreed to negotiate the consequences once the play is complete.) Chad, having fought off the onslaught of my single miraculous hand, owes only a single consequence. Yes, one minor scratch, a debt owed to the least serious pot.

*   *   *

LXXIII(iv)
   Why don’t you go first? Chad says. Hit me, Jolyon, what will it be? He leans back smug in his chair, pulls out a piece of paper from his back pocket. I took the liberty of preparing a list of tasks for you already, he says, waving the folded page. You know, just in case I got lucky.

I hold my head in my hands. I don’t know, I say.

Come on, Chad says, there must be something you want to do to me. Some minor embarrassment you’ve longed to see me suffer. You’ve had fourteen years, Jolyon.

Give me a minute, I say.

Sure, take as much time as you like.

*   *   *

LXXIII(v)
   I pace unsteadily up and down the length of the apartment. I pause before each turn hoping that something will have landed in my head, something simple yet devastating.

But I can only think about Dee. More blood on my hands. And nothing arrives.

The more I pace the harder it becomes, my head elsewhere and the room wheeling around me.

I stop in the kitchen. Maybe some of this light-headedness is not only because of whisky and pills. I start to wonder how long it is since I’ve eaten. How could I have forgotten to eat? I can’t remember the last time I put anything in my mouth.

The fridge is empty and the cupboards are bare except for a few tea bags. Empty tins of chilli litter my kitchen counters, a jar of peanut butter that looks as if it has been licked clean by a greedy dog. I find a box of sugar on the floor and even that is empty.

There must be some food in here somewhere. I get down on my knees and crawl around, sifting through the mess, the dirty clothes, old newspapers, utility bills, empty whisky bottles, cutlery, crockery, a small mirror, so many green bottles, crushed eggshells, a Chewbacca mask, delivery menus …

And then I find something. Not much. But something.

I tip the bag and a few stale crumbs fall into my mouth. Brittle crunch. And then something softer, the sweet melt of a milk-chocolate chip.

I look at the wax paper bag, wet my forefinger, dab at the crumbs. I can hear Chad whistling
Auld Lang Syne
in my living room. I start to smile.

*   *   *

LXXIV(i)
   The kitchen table is bare. Old and scratched. She is throwing a tablecloth over it when I enter. The cloth is scorched in places. She wears a green pinafore over a white T-shirt. First she smooths the tablecloth, then the front of her pinafore.

This gentleman is from England, the farmer says. He takes the Ford cap from his head and hangs it on a coat hook by the door. You know, that country with all the famous queens, he adds.

The farmer’s wife is flustered, she flaps toward her husband, turns him around. Why don’t you go put on some bacon and eggs? she says.

Because I’ve eaten, the farmer says.

For our guest, his wife says, laughing nervously. Please, take a seat, she says to me. Has it been a long trip? From England?

Oh, I came up from New York City, I say.

Really? she says. She smiles but looks confused, as if she has many questions but is not sure which to ask first.

So I try to explain while the farmer studies me carefully. I was a friend of your son at Pitt College, I say. But I moved here to the States some time ago. I live down in the city. Anyway, unfortunately I lost contact with your son for a long time. But we recently found each other, he’s paying me a visit when he flies over in a few days’ time.

How nice, Chad’s mom says. She looks grateful for the explanation but still confused. When he flies over. In a few days. When he flies over from…? she asks, struggling hard to make it sound as if this is a normal enquiry for a mother to make of her son.

Oh, I say, right. Yes, Chad lives in England, I say.

Good, she says, good, then he went back there. Chad’s mom pats at her chest. He clearly did love it so, she says.

The farmer is lowering a huge cast-iron skillet from a hook high above a kitchen counter. He is a large man, maybe once even larger, he looks almost seventy now. In the past I imagine he would have swung the heavy skillet over to the range with one hand but now he looks bitter as the skillet’s weight takes him by surprise and he has to use two. The information that his son lives in England doesn’t seem to affect the farmer, perhaps his ears are no longer so good. He opens the fridge door.

Man, the farmer says, stretching the word out, loud and angry. How is it we buy eggs every week and there are never any damn eggs in here? His bulk makes the minor complaint sound serious.

They’re in a carton, Chad’s mom says, in the drawer in the middle.

The farmer sighs and shakes his head. He snatches up the bacon.

Chad’s mom flattens her hands on the tablecloth. Did my son send you to see us? she asks, trying to sound bright.

I wonder for a moment what I should say. Coming here today I had only a loose hope there might be something to discover. If I lie to Chad’s mom now, if I suggest to her, yes, her son sent me, it might be presumed I know more than I do. But if I tell her no, perhaps the farmer and his wife will no longer trust me. So I say to Chad’s mom, Your son always told me that if I was ever in the area …

She smiles at me. Oh, isn’t that nice, Frank? she says, turning.

So you’re just passing through, the farmer says to me, peeling bacon from a packet, slapping the rashers onto the skillet.

That’s right, I say.

Where you headed? the farmer asks, slap.

I feel as if he is trying to trap me. I try to think back to my days upstate with Blair. The Catskills are south of here. Lake Placid is north. But now is hardly the season for skiing. Then I remember something else. Saratoga, I say to the farmer.

Races don’t start for over a month, the farmer says. Can’t think why else anyone would go to that place.

And now I am trapped.

Oh, then you’re an artist? the farmer’s wife says.

I pause uncertainly.

Or a writer? she says, making her eyes wide at me.

Yes, I say, yes, I’m a writer.

And just what in the hell has that got to do with Saratoga? the farmer says.

Oh, silly, Chad’s mom says, the famous retreat. Yaddo, she says, it’s a place for artists of all kinds. And I’ve always wanted to go, can’t you just imagine all that creativity in the air? Well, I bet you could feel something like that. You know, like a tingle in your fingers.

The farmer snorts. Sounds like a place full of faggots, he says.

His wife flinches. Oh, Frank, she says, I’ve told you, you can’t
say
that word.

*   *   *

LXXIV(ii)
   To support the Saratoga lie, I talk to the farmer’s wife about my story. I give her only the barest details, nothing about the truth, nothing about her son. She nods along keenly as I make my tale sound like a series of light comic episodes.

The farmer, who has kept his back to us, is scooping slippery eggs onto a plate. Then he lifts the heavy skillet in which the bacon has fried. He tries to flick the rashers onto the plate below with a wooden spoon but he can’t get the spoon beneath the bacon. You can see the frustration building inside him. The skillet begins to droop in his hand like an old flower in a glass.

He does not drop the skillet so much as hurl it down onto the plate. The plate smashes and the skillet hits the edge of the kitchen counter and falls noisily to the ground.

Chad’s mother shrinks and puts her hands to her ears. Oh, Frank, she says.

The farmer turns to me, furious, and starts to yell. If my son says I made anything up then he’s a damned liar, he shouts. You can’t have made a thing up when you see it and it’s nearly as big as a dime. And anything that happened after that was in everyone’s best interest. And not just his. Born selfish and ungrateful.

There is a loud noise beside me that makes me spin around. It is the chair on which Chad’s mom was sitting. She has risen so quickly she has knocked it over backward. She stands there clenching the edge of the table. Frank, I’ve had just about enough, she shouts, her voice straining, yearning to be fully unleashed. Don’t you think it’s bad enough I don’t see him? She looks down at her hands and her voice tempers a little. Now you can just go, she says. God, please go. Go and do anything, go and just … feed the animals.

Animals don’t need feeding yet, the farmer says, swallowing back his gust of temper.

The rage is released from Chad’s mom now, it unspools as if a huge weight has been dropped. I will not listen to this for one more minute, she screams. Thirteen years and not a minute longer, she cries. Now leave the mess you just made and go feed the animals.

The farmer wipes his hands on the hips of his pants. His wife is breathing heavily and her head hangs low, not looking at him. He takes his cap from the coat hook, drops it onto his head without pulling it snug, and leaves.