Lullaby for the Rain Girl (4 page)

On the eighth day I made five Xerox copies of the manuscript and mailed them to five successful literary agents. On the twentieth day one of them agreed to represent the book. And on the thirty-first day a respectable second-rank paperback publisher made an offer on it which, small as it was, represented more money than I’d made from my writing in the entire previous decade. In precisely one month my status went from “obscure literary writer” to “successful new mystery novelist.” I was so overjoyed that I even abandoned my original plan to use a pen name for such commercial hackwork, a decision I’d regretted ever since. The novel was even nominated for an Agatha Award, quite prestigious in the mystery field; it didn’t win, but I had fun dressing up and attending the awards banquet in Bethesda, hobnobbing with the bestseller writers and pretending, for one night, to be a big shot.

My contract included an option for a sequel, an outline of which I actually somehow managed to complete and get accepted by the publisher. As a result, this next novel’s title was emblazoned on the back of
Leprechauns Can Be Murder—
“Don’t Miss the Next Exciting Abigail McGillicuddy Mystery,
Hobgoblins Can Be Murder,
” the text urged. “Coming Soon!”

It never came. I was able to finish only the first chapter before I decided to get thoroughly drunk on cooking sherry and proceeded to bash out a psychotically pornographic scene of erotic congress between Mrs. McGillicuddy and Clyde, on the completion of which I promptly threw the entire idiotic mess—sex scene, first chapter, outline—into the kitchen sink, pushing the pages down the drain, soaking them with water and shoving them into the destructive blades of the In-Sink-Erator. Thus ended the career of Benjamin Fall, successful new mystery novelist.

I glanced at my walking companion and decided to change the subject. “Do you know,” I ventured, “that you still haven’t told me your name?”

“Call me anything.” She scuffled the sidewalk with her shoes. “Call me whatever you want.”

“Well, what do your parents call you?”

“They don’t call me anything. I don’t live with them.”

“Who do you live with?”

“Nobody,” she said casually.

“Well, it’s always raining when I see you,” I said, feeling the icy drizzle on my neck. “I’m starting to think of you as the Rain Girl.”

“The Rain Girl.” She nodded, smiling slightly. “I like it.”

I could see my building now as we left the brownstone neighborhood for the more commercial outskirts of Dupont Circle. We stopped at a traffic light.

“Look, do you actually
go
to the school?” I asked, tilting my head vaguely back in the direction of my workplace.

“Not usually.”

“Well, you can’t live with ‘nobody.’ Unless you’re a runaway. Are you?”

“Not really.”

My headache pulsed. “You talk in riddles, Miss Rain Girl,” I said, suddenly irritable, as I generally became whenever I thought about my short-lived career in the mystery field. “It’s Friday, it’s cold, I’m tired, and I’m not really up for riddles—okay? Can you just stop? Please?”

Her eyes widened; her mouth formed a tiny O. Her breath came fast, her chest rising and falling. She literally looked as if I’d slapped her.

“I’m—oh, I’m
sorry,”
she said, her voice small.

“Look—” Suddenly I felt horribly guilty. This alienated kid had reached out for friendship from a supposedly responsible adult and I’d shoved her back to the curb. “I—look—”

She backed away from me fearfully. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m really sorry.”

“I didn’t mean—it’s okay—I just—”

But she turned and weaved her way between several people on the sidewalk and slipped away from me. I tried to follow her, but by the time the light turned green again and the sidewalk cleared, she was nowhere to be seen.

I felt myself sagging as I made my way across Connecticut Avenue toward my building. Whatever small pleasure I’d felt at keeping my last period class reasonably productive on a Friday afternoon evaporated in the face of having upset my unnamed young friend. I was overcome with feelings of stupidity, worthlessness. Again I just wanted to run home, bury myself in sheets and blankets and not appear in the world at all until Monday morning. If then.

But I made it through the lobby well enough, managing to smile and wave at the receptionist. I checked the mail. Nothing. The elevator ride to the top floor seemed to take about fifteen eternities; I sorely wanted to smoke my single precious Camel.

At last I arrived and made my way down the corridor, unlocked the door, and stepped into my humble home.

“Humble” is right, for there’s really nothing much to it. The apartment itself is fine—it’s a nice old building in a good neighborhood—and the view out the living room windows is wonderful, overlooking the entire Dupont Circle area of D.C. I’m high enough up that the dirt and grime can’t be seen; it looks for all the world like a picture-postcard view of a modern urban neighborhood. Now, with the icy rain, everything was beginning to glisten brightly. It was, I had to admit, beautiful.

As for my apartment, it’s simple to the point of absurdity. A sofa, a banged-up armchair, a TV, a few bookshelves loaded down with books. A portable stereo unit next to several stacks of CDs: Brahms, Sibelius, Stravinsky intermixed with Foreigner, Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd. My “coffee table” is an inverted crate I’d used in moving here. There’s a tiny dining area off to one side. The only reason it had a little table and a couple of chairs was because the owner of the building had offered them to me for nothing when I moved in; otherwise I would simply have eaten at the sofa all the time. In the bedroom is a bed and a desk which holds an old computer—nothing more. The walls everywhere are plain white, with just a couple of Edward Hopper posters tacked up indifferently here and there. The carpets are that ubiquitous apartment-tan.

It was a silly way for a thirty-six-year-old to live, I knew; this could be the apartment of a college student. But every time I considered sprucing it up, spending a little money to make it truly livable, whatever energy I had just seemed to slide out of me. It didn’t help that I had no money to speak of, anyway.

The telephone message machine was blinking red. I took off my coat and hung it in the closet. I pushed the button and listened while I stepped into the kitchen for a soda.

Beep.
“Ben, it’s Vincent. It’s three-thirty. I hope you’re ready to negotiate. We really need to have your response to the proposal before close of business today. Call me, please.”

Beep.
Nothing. Silence. Probably Vincent trying again.

Beep.
“Benny?” I immediately recognized Alice’s voice. “It’s about Dad. It’s not an emergency, but could you give me a call? And come on,
call
me this time, okay? Why don’t you get a cellular phone, anyway? I’ll
buy
one for you if you want me to. I hate leaving messages like this, especially when you don’t return them half the time. He’s your dad too, you know. Anyway, call me. Love you.”

Beep. Click.
“End—of—messages,” the robotic voice announced.

I dropped myself onto the sofa and finished the soda in four long swallows, letting rip a satisfying belch at the end. That was one good thing about living alone, anyway—freedom of one’s bodily functions. Loud ’n’ proud.

But I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I glanced at my watch: nearly four. It would be dark soon. “Close of business” meant five o’clock. If the phone rang, I just wouldn’t pick it up; soon I’d be home free and wouldn’t have to deal with anything connected to Vincent or my divorce until Monday. If anybody got mad, well, I had to stay late at work on Friday, that’s all. No one can criticize a teacher for being dedicated.

Alice was another matter. I knew I should get up and punch in the numbers to her house in Arlington, but I just couldn’t face the prospect. Dad lived with her, which was a sore point between us even though she’d volunteered the year before to take him. She had plenty of money thanks to her architect-husband. Plenty of room, too—they had at least three guest rooms that I could think of. What’s more, her kids got along with Dad just great. Still, he was increasingly feeble and more than a bit confused at times. I knew it was a burden to her. I’d offered to help out financially, but Alice knew I didn’t have any money. And I certainly didn’t have any place to keep Dad here. I appreciated what my sister was doing—I really did—but it was difficult to show that appreciation when her tone with me was always the same, the tone she’d taken since we were children: mildly disguised contempt. Alice is eight years older than me, so we were never close as kids; from the beginning she was forced into a quasi-parental role, especially when Mom’s health began to fail. Alice always resented me, I think, and shows it by dripping a kind of smiling disdain on everything I do. “Oh, what a nice—little—
place
you have here,” she’d said, lips pursed, when she first saw the apartment. “What a nice—little—
job,”
she’d remarked years back, when I first became a teacher in the D.C. Public Schools. And my novel? “What a nice—little—
book.”

Alice didn’t mean to be rude, and I knew she genuinely cared about me, but at the same time I was little more than the village idiot to her. Her life was stylish, high-energy, high-power. I was low-energy, low-power. She didn’t get it. Never had.

No, I didn’t want to talk to Alice now. I wasn’t ready for her brand of sweet-faced disdain.

I changed my clothes, turned on the TV for a few minutes, then turned it off again. I remembered the cigarette in my coat pocket and fetched it, lay on my back on the sofa fondling it. If I were a really good teacher, I knew, I would grade all the assignments I’d brought home right then and clear my weekend—but I wasn’t that good a teacher. Anyway, my head throbbed. Finally I lit the cigarette and took a deep, satisfying drag. My entire body seemed to relax then. All tension just seeped away. Camel Filters, baby—distinctive flavor and world-class smoothness! My head felt better immediately. Ah, God, it tasted good, felt good.
Was
good.

The apartment grew dim as I smoked; darkness comes on early in winter. I didn’t bother to turn on a light. I just lay there staring at the ceiling, enjoying my first smoke in weeks. When I was finished I closed my eyes and just remained motionless for a time, mellow in the afterglow.

Finally it was totally dark in the room. I shifted to a sitting position, stood and looked out at the deep twilight that had settled over the Circle. I considered for a moment going out, getting a meal somewhere, being with people—any people. But no. Anyway, the weather was nasty—as beautiful as the frozen rain looked from here, dropping onto the roofs and streetlamps and streets, I knew it was growing treacherous outside. There was little traffic for a Friday afternoon, and few people on the street.

I stood there for a long time, staring out. After a while I looked down, directly below the window, and noticed a figure standing on the sidewalk near a streetlamp eight floors below. It was too far and too dim for me to see in any detail the person who stood there, but I could make out—I thought I could, at least—that it was a woman, or rather a girl, with straight brown hair. Her coat was brown too. She stood with her arms at her sides, motionless. She was looking up. I had the unsettling sensation that she was looking straight at me.

3

Saturday brought a blue-sky, winter-clear morning. Whatever ice had accumulated the previous night was quickly melting away in the bright December sun and the streets and gutters were filled with trickling streams of dirty water. My mood was better—it usually was on Saturdays—and I agreed to come see Alice at her home in Arlington. “It’ll give you a chance to see Dad,” she said over the phone.

That was certainly true. Whether it was a chance I welcomed, though, was another question.

After wolfing down a scone and a hot mug of chai at Teaism, one of my favorite eateries in Dupont Circle, I boarded the Metro and sank back into my seat, letting the train take me into what felt like the interior of the earth. The car was nearly empty and I found my mind wandering, somewhat unwillingly, to Dad, to Mom, to Alice, to things that had happened decades before which should have held no relevance to me now, at age thirty-six, but which still seemed to exert an invincible hold on my mind.

Thinking of the past made me tired. But it insisted on being thought about.

When I thought about my father I pictured a man filled with wild angers and resentments, his hands flailing madly about in high dudgeon against whatever was enraging him at the moment: the goddamn government, goddamn taxes, goddamn liberals, goddamn niggers, goddamn faggots, goddamn lawyers, goddamn welfare, goddamn illegals, goddamn Supreme Court. His eyes would bug out and his mouth contort as he glared at me, his latest crazed pronouncement having just escaped his lips—how the government should require all citizens to arm themselves, for instance, or how it should be legal for a citizen to kill on sight any Latino not carrying proof of U.S. citizenship. (“There’s the solution to
that
problem,” he’d shout, glaring at me and pointing a finger-gun at my head.
“Bang!”)
Then, having delivered me of his newest country-salvaging strategy, he would inevitably pause, catch his breath, and demand to know, “Well, am I right or am I right? Huh?”