Brightness Falls (48 page)

"So what are your plans?" Russell was suddenly anxious, calculating that he had ten minutes to shower and change if he allowed twenty minutes for the cab queue and half an hour for the ride to the castle west of town where the dinner would be held. "I've got a ticket for New York tomorrow," she said, adding coyly, "I thought maybe I could avail myself of your couch tonight." Russell hadn't asked Trina how she talked her way into the room; she was nothing if not resourceful.

"If this is a problem for you, I can maybe fly out tonight."

"No, no. You're... here. It's no problem. I mean, I'm glad you came." Of course it was a problem, but for some reason he wasn't able to say so. Men were not supposed to admit, it seemed to Russell, that there were ever any circumstances under which they did not necessarily wish to get laid.

She accompanied him to the dinner, an important event sponsored this year as every year on the Friday night of the fair by a German publisher who called it his own '21' dinner—dinner for twenty of his favorite colleagues and himself, though the ranks often swelled according to the enthusiasms of the invited guests. Russell saw no alternative to asking Trina to accompany him. But he was happy to have her beside him as the cab passed through the gates and ascended the steep, winding drive, the Gothic windows of the
Schloss
glowing yellow above them. When they pulled into the porte cochère, Russell said, "It always reminds me of something out of Wagner."

"God," said Trina, looking down. "I don't know if my tits are big enough for Wagner."

"I think they'll do nicely," Russell said.

By the time drinks at the bar were concluded, Trina had so captivated their host, the seventy-five-year-old publisher, that he deftly rearranged the seating plan in order to place Trina on his right, where, when she leaned forward and lifted her knife hand, he was able to command a nearly unimpeded view of her unfettered right breast. He was impressed, too, as was the company at large, by her bulletins from the martial front of big finance, and by the fact that she had once shot grouse on the same Scottish estate he visited every November. Getting outside a bottle of '61 Château Palmer, which had followed close on the Krug, Russell allowed himself to feel proud of his escort. Beneath the vaulted thirty-foot ceilings and Baroque chandeliers, against a backdrop of medieval tapestries, sitting beside the streaky-blonde young wife of a famous Italian novelist, he was willing to concede that even the illusion of the good life might occasionally be enough. Russell was happy to be here with old Hoffman, who was the kind of publisher he wished to be: a man of principle as well as a man of the world, who during the war had gone into self-imposed exile in New York. Like Whitney Corbin, Hoffman was born to the business, but unlike Corbin he had taken to it with passion and extended his father's literary and intellectual empire. Brecht and Mann and Hemingway were among his friends, and when he had taken notice of Russell at the book fair two years back, the young American editor was thrilled to be a part of that extended circle. The year before, Hoffman had published a translation of Jeff's book, and in celebration they had spent the last night of the book fair drinking together till four in the morning. The thing that had impressed Hemingway when they had first met, Hoffman told Russell, was that the young Hoffman could hold his liquor. The year his father had published
Death in the Afternoon,
Hoffman had gone drink for drink with the famous writer without visible effect—and Hoffman was glad to see that young Calloway could hold his liquor, too.

The older man's regard meant much to him, and without stopping to examine the implications too closely, Russell decided that his admiration for Trina was another sort of benediction, a shared masculine enthusiasm. Meanwhile he was talking with the Italian novelist's wife about the Red Brigades and speculating on why so little fiction had come out of the sixties. Approaching forty herself, she had once been the lover of a famous terrorist. Her history as the lover of famous men dwarfed Camille Don-ner's and gave her an aura as palpable as her ancient husband's intellect. "It's an extremely complex business," Russell said, out loud, "balancing the need for social organization against the anarchic demands of the heart."

"Back then, we thought it was very simple, very black and white," she said, thinking he was still talking politics.

Pouring another glass of claret, he said, "I mean that I love my wife, but I sometimes wonder if it's... ungenerous not to love other women." He felt that she, as a seasoned mistress and a European, would know exactly what he meant.

"Americans are like children," she said. "You believe this fantasy of true love, yes? You think marriage is only about love and it means you only must sleep with one person forever. No wonder you are having so many divorces." Looking over at her seventy-year-old husband, Russell could imagine that she probably had broader views of the motives for marriage. Was it a coincidence that she took this moment to smile sweetly and say that she would be visiting New York next month?

Sitting on his other side, Trina squeezed his thigh. "Thanks for bringing me," she said, leaning into his ear and dipping to kiss the nape of his neck. It occurred to Russell that he should get to a phone to call Corrine; it would be awkward to call her from the room later, even more so if she called him. Hoffman changed places with Trina. He dropped a fatherly arm around Russell's shoulder and proffered a cigar. He asked Russell about plans for the new company. Russell began to explain the state of publishing in America, with hand gestures. One of these gestures intersected an inconveniently placed glass of red wine, which emptied itself across the table. "Yes, yes, you're quite right," Hoffman shouted. "This is no time for wine. Bring on the Armagnac!"

The party continued in town at the Lipizzaner, the hotel piano bar. They were sitting at a table with some boisterous Scandinavians. A bottle of aquavit disappeared rapidly. One of the Swedes said, "The Finns, they drink like fish." Why fish? Russell wondered. The scaly, finny Finns.

Moments later he was on his way to the men's room, which Trina, never one to wait in line, was about to exit. Instead she pulled him inside and pushed him against the sink, wrapping her face around his, her tongue probing the depths of Russell's throat, while her hands performed cartographic operations on his surface. So engaged, they were discovered by Harold Stone, who appeared suddenly in the doorway. In a moment he was gone, and Russell could almost believe he had imagined the encounter, except that Harold's expression of contempt seemed so unpleasantly real. Trina, however, neither recognized nor even noticed the intruder; her ardor was unabated. But Russell felt caught out and diminished under that gaze, however brief. He saw himself as foolish and weak, easily led by others, far too secure in his belief in his own decency. He feared, suddenly, that he was not
serious,
that while he shared their weaknesses, he lacked the
gravitas
of men such as Harold Stone and Hoffman. He didn't belong at the big table; he never would.

Back in the bar, it took another drink to blur this perception. When he sent a bottle of champagne to the table where Stone was holding court with a group from Gallimard, it was returned. In defiance, he turned his full attention to Trina in her breathtakingly low-cut dress, his partner in youthful insurrection. As she leaned forward to whisper in his ear, he eagerly damned all rules and conventions to hell.

Upstairs, lying on the bed, peeling silk from flesh, he saw a red light blinking across the room, reminding him of that line from "Love in Vain"—was it "the
red
light was my baby"? But it seemed to be far away across a body of water, and then Trina crashed over him like a wave that carried his scruples away...

Several hours later the aquatic sensations had yielded to desert conditions, an acute drought having developed in Russell's mouth. A desolate gray light filtered through the white gauze drapes. Waking abruptly, he sensed instantly that something was wrong, although it took many seconds to assemble and weigh the evidence. He felt the body beside him, and hoped against hope that he was home, but the surroundings were unfamiliar and the body, for the first time in many years, proved not to be Corrine's.

The blinking message light served to focus his senses and to unleash the hounds of guilt. The message that had been waiting through the night was undoubtedly from Corrine. The red light continued to blink waspishly, as the red digits on the bedside alarm clock became 6:55 a.m. Almost two a.m. in New York.

Apparently carved out of clammy, pinkish stone, Trina didn't stir as he slipped out of bed, picked up the message envelopes under the door and retreated to the phone-equipped bathroom, where he first swallowed several liters of water directly from the tap.

Although he wasn't sure exactly how he'd been caught, he wasn't really surprised.
Bigamy still illegal here. See you in court.
Sitting naked on the floor with his face pressed against the tiled wall, he considered his options. He had to call, certainly. Of all the things he might have been required to do at this moment, feeling the way he did, calling Corrine was about the last task he would have chosen to perform. It occurred to him that she might not even be there. Maybe she'd already left him.

The machine picked up; he heard his own voice across the ocean telling him no one was home right now. After the beep he croaked into the machine, halfheartedly asking her to pick up. The tape stopped and the connection was broken. A second call produced similar results.

He was scheduled to fly the following day and had five or six appointments scheduled in the meantime, appointments that, he decided, he could not afford to keep. He called the concierge and requested a seat on the next plane to New York. He wanted to get out of this room immediately.

Lying on her stomach with her arms spread and her ass slightly aloft, Trina stirred eventually, lifted her head and looked around briefly before collapsing again. "What are you doing? Come back to bed. Ouch."

"I'm packing."

"Come back to bed and fuck me. "

"It's a nice offer, but—"

"Wait a minute." She rolled over onto her back. "I thought you were staying till tomorrow."

"Corrine called."

"Ah. The palpable click of the wedlock."

He went into the bathroom to pack his shaving kit. When he came out she looked defiant. "So what's the big deal? She doesn't know anything."

"She knows."

"Well, so long as you're already convicted, you might just as well relive your crime."

Russell decided not to ask for details, but the fact was, he couldn't remember the actual commission.

Was it just German formality, he wondered, or did he sense a certain chilliness at the desk? Russell left-handed the assistant manager an envelope containing two hundred dollars, a bribe intended to ensure a room for the following year. The assistant manager inclined his head several millimeters in acknowledgment of the gift.

Russell had never blacked out in his life. The lost pieces of the night before were all the more frightening because they seemed to signal a betrayal on the part of his body. Having since college enjoyed an extraordinary tolerance for alcohol, he could not understand this betrayal, nor did he think he had drunk so much more than on other occasions when he'd suffered no more than a hangover.

In the cab to the airport he contemplated the wreckage he'd left behind as he compulsively patted himself down—the instinctive, panicked gesture of the befuddled traveler—and was unable to find his keys in any of his pockets. He feared that Corrine would not be home to let him in. At the airport he tore down all of his luggage and still couldn't find them. Sitting amidst the debris of his luggage he might have cried, but his tear ducts were dried out, his eyes parched.

It was only with some difficulty that he convinced the hotel operator to ring his vacated room, explaining that although Mr. Calloway had checked out, he had left a sleeping body belonging to the alleged Mrs. Calloway behind. After ten rings the operator came back on the line to tell him there was no answer; he asked her to keep trying. Finally Trina picked up. There was scant welcome in her voice.

He explained about the keys.

After several minutes she came back on the line to say she couldn't find them. "Losing everything, aren't we?" she observed. "Our keys, our nerve ..."

"Why did the staff treat me like the Antichrist when I checked out. What did I do?"

"I don't know. You
did
threaten to buy the hotel when they asked us to leave the Lipizzaner after last call."

It seemed entirely meet and right that business class was overbooked, that the plane sat for three hours on the runway after the passengers had finally boarded, that Russell sat in coach next to a colicky baby.

40

"Do you think literature can save you?"

These were the first words Jeff had heard Delia utter in weeks. They were at the supper table in Glover House, talking about suicide. Mac, a fat depressive who taught history at the University of Connecticut, was explaining how the rope broke when he tried to hang himself. Delia, however, seemed to be addressing Jeff.

"Me in particular," Jeff asked, speaking softly, afraid that his voice might scare her back into herself. "Are you asking if it can save me?"

"Anyone. Can it help people?"

"It can't save you, but it can kill you. " He saw that his reflexive archness had disappointed her, and was sorry when she retreated back into silence.

Having decided that Delia was no longer dangerous to herself, the authorities had finally dropped her down from Level Three, in which she was attended by special nurses twenty-four hours a day. And on this chilly October evening she was eating, or rather, failing to eat, her first unchaperoned meal.

"What is this foulness," Mickey asked, holding a piece of meat impaled on his fork.

"It's called veal," Jeff snapped. "Milk-fed baby cow."

"I can't eat this. Do you know what they do to these animals? They like suspend them in slings in dark barns..."