Chance (85 page)

“My, my,” she said.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Still . . . we
might
not be so good for each other.”

“That would be very sad,” he told her, and at just that moment it seemed to
him
the saddest thing in the world. “Could be it’s still too soon to see that far ahead. You think?”

She wouldn’t answer to that but it was while she was still there, leaning over him, that her eyes ticked to the book on the floor at the side of his bed. It was D’s book
The Virtues of War,
and she picked it up and looked at it. “I know this guy,” she said.

“Personally, or you know his work?”

“His work, smart-ass. One book anyway. He wrote one called
Gates of Fire,
about the battle of Thermopylae.”

“Right,” Chance said. “And that one is about Alexander the Great—his confessions, you might say. I’ve only read about half. It was given to me by a friend.”

She put the book aside. She kissed him on the mouth and got to her feet. She took the leather jacket she had worn from one of his dining
room chairs and put it on over the red Bob Marley T-shirt, effectively hiding the scars that crisscrossed the insides of her forearms like a junkie’s tracks and putting his own modest efforts to shame.

“You do know your car’s in the parking garage at my office?”

She stopped and looked at him. “Oh my God,” she said. “You’re fucking right.” She waited while Chance got out of bed, covering his own arms with an old sports coat. “Look at us,” she told him. “The blind and the blind.”

They started playing on the drive over. He supposed it was her lack of underwear and him knowing about it that did the trick. They went at it one more time on the backseat of the Oldsmobile in the underground parking garage across the street from Chance’s office, at that hour next to deserted. There was an attendant around somewhere—possibly even that old charlatan Jean-Baptiste—but Chance never saw him. Later he would find her footprints on the Oldsmobile’s rear window as perfectly rendered as if she’d been called upon to make castings, spaced one to another at what might only be thought of as a provocative distance so that he would at times and in the days to come be drawn to them as if to moon rocks or the found artifacts of some lost world and be struck all over again with the wonder of it all.

She left him that night with a little something extra, gift or parting shot he would be a long time in trying to decide. “That book you have on your floor,” she said. They were finished and she was buttoning her jeans once more. Her hair was mussed, a golden lock resting on the high plane of one cheek, her eyes still flushed with light. “The one beside your bed? The guy who wrote it is Raymond’s favorite author. It’s why I noticed.”

“Ah . . .” Chance said after what was perhaps too long a beat.

“Strange, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It’s a hell of a planet,” he told her.

H
E SLEPT
after that. It was the first time in days. Her scent lingered in the room, calling forth the warmth of her body. He shut off his cell phone, unplugged his landline, wrapped himself in all that she had left, and slept the sleep of the pure in heart. In time light appeared at the edges of his blinds. There were sounds in the streets, citizens of the city going about their day. Good things and bad things were no doubt transpiring, moments of fluid beauty alongside those of an unspeakable and rapid decline. There would be the wonderful first light on the waves of Ocean Beach. There would also be mutating cells and blind corners, scandalous and predacious behavior . . . new patients hatched at every turn. Some would even find their way to his door. He would do what he could and it would never be enough. The lights upon the narrow metal blinds waxed and waned. The sounds of the street came and went. The fat programmer argued and made love with his unseen companion. In the end, he believed that he might actually have spent an entire twenty-four-hour period in bed. For a time he was thinking this a first and was not displeased then remembered that he had spent long periods in bed at one other point in his life and at last began to worry that he might be here for the simple reason that he no longer had it in him to get up. Upon a
closer examination it became clear that without his actually having been aware of it, he had assumed the fetal position. Over time worry gave way to a kind of panic. A good part of the problem lay in his inability to determine what exactly he would
do
when and if he
did
get out of bed.

He could not have said how long this period of inertia went on before at last a task born of such necessity presented itself that he could not imagine what had prevented him from seeing it until now. In its wake he rose, lingered for some time in a hot shower, dressed, and went out. Not, however, before finding a little something she had left behind, an earring on the dresser, a bit of gold with a single amber stone. He left the apartment filled with a sudden and unexpected euphoria, this in concert with an unbearable longing, an understanding of the gross impossibility of things.

To reach his garage it was necessary to first go outside and he found the street alive with activity . . . all manner of people out and about as if the strange weather were some cause for celebration, oblivious beneath skies made thick with sludge. He took it for the day after the day after and was willing to cede the loss of one in between. He was pondering the very problem when his cell phone began to vibrate against the lining of his slacks.

It was Janice Silver wondering if he’d heard the news. He thought it best to play dumb. “Where have you been hiding?” she asked. “The thing made the papers. I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

“What exactly are we talking about?”

“Raymond Blackstone. He was stabbed in back of a massage parlor. I was thinking that if you hadn’t heard about it in any other way, she might have been in touch.”

“Not with me,” Chance said, uncertain as to why he was continuing to lie. There was no real reason for it. He might so easily be found out. Guilt’s a funny thing, he concluded. It leads to ever more guilt. “What about you?” he asked.

“Not a word.”

“What’s the prognosis? Will he live?”

“Sadly yes. I suppose that’s terrible to say.”

“An understandable sentiment. Anything about who did it?”

“Nothing in what I’ve seen.”

“And no leads?”

“Not that they’re sharing. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” Chance said. “Not a thing. Just curious.”

“Well . . .” Janice said after a somewhat lengthy pause. “Now you know at least. You may hear from her yet.”

“It’s possible. If so I will keep you posted.”

“Please do,” Janice said. “I know we’ve gone round some about her, but I’d like to know what happens. My offer to help locate someone willing to take her on still stands.”

Chance thanked her, extricated the Oldsmobile from his garage, and drove straightway to the old warehouse, as had been his intent on rising. Raymond Blackstone had said that he was going to handle things, that he knew what to do. Chance had yet to pass this on to Big D and in this he was no doubt remiss. It seemed to him quite possible that Blackstone’s words were no more than bluff meant to rattle her cage. It seemed equally possible that sloth and poor judgment had already made him late for the dance. It was then, to his great dismay, that he arrived to find the place in an uncharacteristic state of disarray.

The front door was open to the sidewalk as usual but something was off. He sensed it walking in, even before finding Carl at the rear of the building where the door to D’s quarters had been left ajar and the normally implacable old man pacing to and fro before it as if searching for something he’d lost. The old man looked as if he had not slept at any point in the recent past or if he had it was in the clothes he was wearing. There was gray stubble upon his cheeks, a haunted look in his deep-set black eyes. The nearby desk, normally so neat in its arrangement, was littered with paperwork. Peering through the doorway to D’s room, Chance could see that one of the Eames chairs had been
overturned. The bed was unmade and a number of books lay strewn across the floor. Even more disturbing was the plastic pill bottle at the foot of the bed, its cap fallen away, its contents scattered. “My God,” Chance said, the starch draining from his legs. The old man himself appeared to sway, as though about to lose balance.

Chance led him to a chair from which Carl sat looking up, as might some cornered animal facing certain death. “Where have you been?” he asked. The old man’s voice was thin and wavering.

“Yes . . . I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been out of touch . . .”

“I tried calling.”

To which Chance could only nod. First the deposition, then Jaclyn, then sleep, his cell off the entire time. He could see how it had been.

“He’s in the hospital. There was some kind of seizure . . .”

“The diabetes.”

Carl looked to the room. “He was in there when I came. I always hear him at work on something.” The old man paused, seeking to control his voice, fighting off tears. “If there’s no work to be done for the studio, he’ll be at work on his blades or his tomahawks. He doesn’t sleep, you know. I’ve tried to tell him that’s not good.” He looked to Chance. “Why, each day they find out something new about how much we need sleep to stay healthy. You’re not a superman, I tell him.” He paused once more to shake his head. “He thinks he is you know. It’s what he thinks. It’s what he
had
to think, I suppose, when you stop to consider it.”

Chance was not altogether clear about what exactly he was being asked to consider but the old man went on without waiting comment. “In the morning though . . . when I came in . . . I couldn’t hear a thing. I gave it just a bit then knocked. Nothing, so I went inside. I found him on that bed in there but he was lying in a strange way and one arm was hanging off and on the floor . . .” The old man’s voice cracked. He sought once more to collect himself. “I couldn’t get him to wake up,” he said. “He was turning blue. I called the emergency.”