Honeyville (27 page)

Beneath the table, Max’s foot jiggles so hard it makes the linen cloth shake. I hold on to my glass, and wait. Finally he says:

‘I don’t know where to start. I feel dreadful.’ Which, of course, are the only words I have come here to hear.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It must have been quite a shock.’

‘It is a shock,’ he says. ‘It’s been a shock all week. I’ve hardly thought of anything else. I don’t quite know why. After all, it’s twenty years since we saw each other – and she and I only knew each other a week.’

‘Eight days,’ I correct him – pointlessly. Only I don’t feel inclined to let him off any hook. Not at all. Not if I can help it. ‘The war lasted ten days. And if, as you claim, you left town two days after the massacre at Forbes—’

‘You call that a massacre?’ he says. It sounds irritable.

‘It was nothing if not a massacre.’

‘Well,’ he says. ‘It was in response to another massacre.’

‘Of course it was. Both were massacres, Max. Don’t tell me you’re
still
playing goodies and baddies?’ I don’t wait for his reply. ‘I brought the letter.’

He seems to pale a little, in the California sunlight. ‘Oh good,’ he says, without moving for it.

I place it on the table between us. The smears of blood on the envelope are a dark brown now, and the paper has yellowed. But there it lies between us. It is Inez’s handwriting – whether Max recognizes it or not. There is no reason why he should. And there, on the yellowed envelope, in scrawled black ink, she has written:

Max Eastman, Corinado Hotel, By Hand

The words are as clear as they were twenty years ago.

He gazes at the envelope, as if the sight of it horrifies him. One arm is engaged in smoking, the other is crossed against his chest. Again, he doesn’t move to take it. On the contrary, when I slide it gently across the table, closer towards him, he seems to recoil.

‘Wait a moment,’ he says, eyes still fixed on the envel- ope. ‘Let’s talk, for a bit … Shall we? It seems ridiculous, I know … but …’ He doesn’t finish the sentence. ‘It’s her blood is it? I suppose? … Yes. Of course it is. Oh Christ … Poor, darling girl …’

The waiter returns, bringing the wine menu, and leaves us alone again. Max takes a long time scrutinizing the list, debating which bottle to order. He asks me if I have any preference. I tell him, no. Red or white? I tell him, either. Which grape? I tell him I don’t mind. Muscat, Semillon, Sauvignon, Pinot Blanc? I tell him I’ll have whatever he is having.

He delays still further, summoning the sommelier and discussing the options – until finally I run out of patience. I lean towards him. ‘Max,’ I murmur. ‘When I said I had plenty of time, I didn’t mean …’ I smile. And, of course, Max responds at once.

He springs back from the wine menu as if the wretched thing is burning him, closes it and hands it to the man. ‘Oh, bring us anything you like,’ he says. ‘Your house wine. Or, no. Champagne. Champagne, Dora?’

There isn’t much to celebrate except, I suppose, that the sun is shining and we are both alive. I consider it. ‘I would prefer a Martini,’ I say.

He orders one for each of us and finally we are alone with the letter again.

He glances at it but doesn’t pick it up. Instead, he asks me to tell him again how I tried and failed to deliver it to him. He is hoping that my answer will somehow exonerate him; though from what, he does not say. The fact is he had already checked out of the Corinado when I attempted to locate him there. I keep telling him so.

‘Well then where
was
I?’ he keeps asking.

And how in hell can I answer that? I haven’t been accurate about the time I tried to deliver the letter. I left it a full day longer than I told him. But he never needs to know that.

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he says. ‘Why would they say I had checked out when I hadn’t? And why would she even write me a letter?’ He looks edgy, I think. Why does he look so damn edgy? ‘Besides, we were friends. Anything she needed to tell me, she could have said it.’

Max wants to know why I didn’t forward the letter to New York and I don’t know what to answer. When I failed to find him at the Corinado, when they told me at the front desk that he and his colleagues had checked out, moved on to the next big story – what prevented me from simply sending it on to him at the magazine?

All I remember is the anger I felt: with Inez, for dying; with Xavier and myself for failing to protect her; with Trinidad, with everyone – and with Max, even before I had read the letter.

She was dead. Max had skipped town. Like Xavier, I was jealous of their friendship and I didn’t want Max Eastman – this reporter, this smooth interloper – to be the last person she communicated with. Perhaps, because I had taken it from her dead body, and because it was splattered with her blood, and I was bereft without her, I simply couldn’t bring myself to let the letter go.

There were plenty of reasons why I should have sent the letter to him in New York, and plenty of reasons why I didn’t; none of which I feel inclined to offer up to him this sunny afternoon.

So I say: ‘Well, why don’t you read it, Max? Perhaps when you have read it, the answers may become clear.’

The waiter arrives with our grapefruit and avocado salads. They look unappetizing: too fresh and clean, with that grimy letter lying between us. Images of Inez, her clothes drenched in blood as she lay on the marble slab, and of the coffins stacked high on the open shelves in the room behind her, float to the surface of my mind. My throat closes. I push the plate away.

Max picks up his fork, as if to tuck in. But his face has turned a greenish yellow. It might be a reflection from the salad, but I think he feels as sick I do.

‘Max, take the letter,’ I snap at him. ‘It’s been waiting twenty years to be read. The least you can do is to read it before you eat the goddamn salad. Read it, or I will read it aloud to you while you eat.’

He lays down his fork. ‘Why don’t you read it to me, Dora? I remember she had difficult handwriting, even at the best of times. Read it me.’

I regret suggesting it at once. ‘That’s really what you want?’

He nods.

‘But it’s addressed to you.’

He snorts. ‘A minor detail. And not one you were too terribly squeamish about before. You opened the damn thing. I know you’ve read it already. More than once, I assume. So read it. Please.’ He takes a final, sickly look at his salad and gives up on it, sits back and lights a third – fourth – cigarette.

He offers me one. I refuse it. And then I pick up the envelope and open it, for the hundredth time that week. My hands are shaking slightly.

‘It’s dated – but the date doesn’t match with the day of the week. I remember checking it at the time. And I verified it again this week. The day of the week is the day before she was killed, but the date – 29 April 1914 – is the day she was killed. I don’t know if that’s significant. Probably not. If she was shot in the afternoon, and I think she must have been. I don’t know how long it takes for a body to go cold, do you? It was a warm day …’

Max winces. I ignore it.

‘But Lawrence said the ground was still damp with her blood … The blood was still damp on her clothes when I found her.’

He nods. Inhales. He has pushed back his wicker chair, stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankle. He gazes at his knee, and the foot begins to jiggle.

‘So it’s my assumption,’ I continue, remorseless, ‘that she must have written it early, on the morning of the day she was killed. I think she simply got confused. Don’t you?’

‘Probably,’ he says. It comes out like a small hiccup, as if he is holding back vomit.

But I don’t care. I smile, remembering her affectionately. ‘It would have been like Inez, wouldn’t it? Always a bit dizzy about the details.’

He looks at me sharply. ‘Not always so dizzy,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you just read it?’

‘It begins warmly, Max,’ I say, playing for time. ‘It begins warmly, but you have to brace yourself. Are you prepared for that? She was very angry with you. On second thoughts, I really think you should read it to yourself.’

‘Oh,
c’mon
,’ he says. ‘It was a long time ago now. I can take it! And, by the way, Dora – I know what you’re trying to do.’

‘What?’ I ask, confused. ‘What am I trying to do?’

‘April the twenty-ninth was the day they attacked Forbes,’ he says. ‘I left town May first.’

‘So you say.’

‘Well, you know that I did. You came to the Corinado on May first and they told you I was gone.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So. Why didn’t you come see me on the thirtieth? What stopped you?’

We gaze at each other. I don’t have an answer.

I reply with a question of my own. ‘Why didn’t you wait for her, Max? She thought you were travelling back to New York together.’

He looks away. He doesn’t seem to have an answer either.

‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ I tell him, after a pause, ‘before I read it – Inez was very angry with you. That’s all. So be prepared.’

I wait, but he doesn’t respond. He gazes at his jiggling knee, nurses his cigarette. And so, at last, I begin:

Darling Max,

I loved you. I trusted you. I believed in you with all my heart.

Max issues a gentle snort and I pause. ‘Oh, it’s easy to scoff,’ I say. ‘Inez was not the fine writer that you are, Max. She was naive – and very foolish. Which is why this letter I am reading to you now is covered in her blood.’

‘Give me a break, Dora,’ Max says unhappily. ‘I’m not scoffing. I guess I … just forgot the way young girls expressed themselves back then.’

‘She was twenty-nine. Is that so young? How old were you in 1914?’

‘Not much older,’ he acknowledges. ‘Thirty-one? But we were all young then.’ He smiles at me, without warmth. ‘Except for you, Dora. I don’t think you were ever young, were you?’

‘I was thirty-seven, Max.’

‘Yes … I suppose I meant,’ he says defensively, ‘that you were always so worldly-wise.’

‘I know just what you meant.’

I let the silence hang between us. I don’t know why I am so hostile to him, after all these years. It’s as if I want to lay everything at his feet: responsibility for everything that happened. And yet I know Inez was not a child. What she did, she chose to do. I ask myself why I have even come to this lunch. Why have I dressed myself in yellow silk crepe, tottered out here to this poolside table with this twenty-year-old, bloodstained letter in my purse? What did I think I would achieve by it? I consider leaving: simply folding the letter and walking away.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ he says. ‘Read the damn thing, won’t you? It can’t change anything now, but at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing I have read it at last.

He sounds softer again, as if he sees into my heart. ‘After all these years, it might help a little bit. To know the letter finally reached its destination.’

‘No more snorting,’ I say. ‘I can’t read it if you are going to scoff. You wouldn’t scoff, Max, if you had seen her there, with the letter so carefully hidden …’

Max leans across the table. ‘Forgive me,’ he says, touching the skin on my arm. ‘Start from the beginning, won’t you? There is nothing to scoff about.’

I hold it out to him. ‘You read it. I think I know it by heart, so if there are any words you can’t make out …’ I shrug, embarrassed, and I wait until, at length, he takes it.

Darling Max,

I loved you. I trusted you. I believed in you with all my heart. I believed a new life was starting for me in New York – but you have betrayed me, Max. How could you?

You thought I wouldn’t sneak a peek at your article while you were out? Did you really imagine that by tucking those pages under the papers on your desk I would not find them? You came here with your big city talk, and you lured me into setting your trap only to make a mockery of us all! No, Max, you make a mockery of your profession!

Words cannot describe my feelings of hurt and pain and disappointment. Of course I cannot come to New York now. Please return my trunk to me as soon as it arrives. Perhaps we were never friends but I thought we were. We are not friends now. Don’t you think we are suffering enough in our calamity-struck town? Murder and hatred at every corner, and you have come to mock our honest townsfolk. Shame on you, my treacherous friend. I hope I never lay eyes on you again.

Goodbye Max and may God forgive you.

Inez

He lays it on the table with a sigh. Actually, he tosses it onto the table. He is frowning and there is an expression, not of chagrin, as I was hoping, but of irritation and confusion. He says nothing. He gazes at the pink building behind my head, and then he takes the letter back again. He reads it one more time, still scowling.

‘Well?’ I say. The silence is infuriating.

He doesn’t look up, doesn’t reply. He lays the letter flat on the table, hunches over it, sucking on his cigarette, blowing smoke over the paper.

‘I read your article by the way,’ I say to him. ‘I still have it somewhere. It was fairly loathsome, Max.’

‘So were the women who came to the tea,’ he mutters. ‘You weren’t there, Dora.’ He looks up at last. ‘You realize, don’t you, that this letter makes no sense whatever?’

I take it back from the table, annoyed. ‘It makes sense enough,’ I say. ‘We can’t all be great writers and poets.’

‘But she read the article. She read what I wrote.’

‘So she says. You broke her heart, Max.’

‘
Broke her heart?
’ He laughs. ‘I did nothing of the kind! And furthermore, I certainly did not hide the article from her. The last time we saw each other, she came round, and I read the wretched thing aloud to her. I hadn’t finished it by then – it was a rough draft. I hadn’t seen the wreckage out at Forbes by then – but the rest was all there. Ordinarily I would never do such a thing. A cardinal rule of journalism:
never
show an interested party what you are midway through writing. They will always want to meddle. But this was Inez. I couldn’t resist … And Dora, she loved it! She told me so.’ He stops. There is a long pause. ‘I am aware, by the way, that she told you we were lovers,’ he says at last.