skeletons (2 page)

“I don’t believe those guys,” I said.

“Who?”

“The ones in the big hats.”

“Why not? This is an El Paso flight. You should go West sometime, Jimmie.”

“I have. Chicago.”

The plane cleared, we moved up to the window. Harrison Tremaine in a trench coat and a couple of American uniforms were walking together at ground level toward the tail of the aircraft, following a motorized conveyor belt. Having never seen a coffin offloaded from a plane, I had a certain morbid curiosity, but I was surprised Tyler would want to watch. She was taking tragedy very well, too well in fact. Suddenly it occurred to me she must have talked this over with Tremaine, must have known he could do it without her as long as he had the letter of authorization, which she could have given him, which meant there was no reason for her to come out to Kennedy at all. Unless it was a ploy. To see me again.

Raindrops splashed the glass. There was a little sun now, and I caught her reflection beside mine. I remembered her birthday: She had just turned thirty-one. And could have passed for twenty-four. She was my height, with gray—yes, gray—eyes and a smatter of freckles and perfect lips and teeth and auburn—yes, auburn—hair shaped to her head like a helmet and that don’t-fence-me-in western look. To the saddle bom and Harding, New Mexico, raised and wearing a long suede coat and a Gucci scarf at her throat. By God BEAUTIFUL.

A ground crewman opened the cargo compartment door in the rear belly.

“Will he leave much?” I asked her.

“You mean, will he leave me something.”

“All right.”

“No. There’ll be nothing for anyone. Harry had advanced him up to the hilt for the next book.”

Money had never been a concern with her. If one grandfather, a sheriff and later an attorney, had left her only a gun, the other, a judge, had more than compensated: a trust fund worth thirty thousand a year.

“But he made a bundle. What happened to it?”

“Alimony, child support, tax penalties,” she said. “Oh, and he settled a big plagiarism suit out of court.”

The motorized conveyor belt moved in to mate with the doorsill of the cargo compartment.

“What a sweetie,” I said. “Three divorces, a litter of kids, a wife-knifer, a tax evader, a plagiarist, and a writer of complete crap. Why didn’t you marry him?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Then why in hell did you walk out on me and go live with him?”

Max Sansom came down the conveyor belt. In a coffin inside a long, unpainted wooden box.

“Jimmie, let me come home with you tonight.”

It threw me for an absolute loop. No.

A hearse pulled up near the 707. A forklift and operator appeared.

“I can’t stay in his place alone.”

“Try a hotel.”

“Please, Jimmie.”

“Take off with Tremaine. He has the hots for you.”

A fly buzzed at the pane. Hullo, Frisby, I thought—but no, American was principally domestic. He’d be over at TWA, near the ceiling with his buddies, talking about Africa.

“I’ll do steaks and we’ll talk and then you can take me to bed.”

“No.”

The forklift raised the coffin box from the belt, trundled it to the hearse.

“I never loved him, Jimmie.”

No.

“I loved you. I still do.”

The mortuary man and the ground crewman and one of the American uniforms slid the box from the forklift into the hearse and closed the doors.

“I’ve never loved anyone but you.”

“No.”

The hearse rolled away into the rain. Tremaine was signing papers.

“If you don’t believe me, Jimmie—why are you the only one I ever married?”

We left Harrison Tremaine to mourn the loss to literature and his advance and cabbed back to town, to Sansom’s apartment on Central Park South. She wanted to pack a bag. I drew the line at setting foot in the deceased’s digs, so waited in the cab with the meter running and the driver running off at the mouth, in a garble of Spanish and English, about the exploitation of Mexico by the gringos.

I ignored him. I sat there debriefing myself of what I knew about Tyler Vaught. Which was damned little. Origin: Harding, New Mexico, wherever that was. Her parents presumably lived there now, but she never went home, never wrote them, never phoned them, never talked about them. Education: a girls’ school in El Paso, then Bennington two years and Yale one and drop out. Experience: ten drifty years in New York, some modeling, PR for an ad agency, assistant to a Broadway producer, something at the U.N., summers at the Hamptons, one nomadic winter in Marrakech. People she could say hello to: many. Friends: none. Vices: drink a little, smoke a little, coke a little if it seemed the social thing to do. Achievement: a party photo now and then in
Women’s Wear Daily.
There was neither pattern nor purpose here, nothing one could get his hands on. How many men she’d loved or lived with before we met I had never inquired because I didn’t care. She was beautiful and intelligent and with-it and sexy and I loved her in a minute and married her in a month and lost her three months later.

To a foul-mouth, porno-pen writer with small talents and GIANT, I assumed, GENITALS. Plus a beard. Now, six months later, just as I was regaining my ego, she had shown up again, tricked me out to Kennedy to watch his corpse come down a conveyor belt, then invited herself back into my life and bed. And B. James Butters the idiot had said yes. Why? Because he still burned for her.

Tyler showed with an overnight case. The rain had stopped. The driver wouldn’t. Crosstown to my place he continued to harangue.
Viva
Mexico,
Cuba
si,
Yanqui
no, Puerto Rican independence. New York cabbies intimidate me. Tyler they do not. When she paid him off, and failed to tip, explaining she had hired him for transportation, not for insults, he chewed her out in Mexican, most of which even I could understand was obscene.

She paused on the curb beside him. “Bean,
hip de la chingada”
she began.
“No tengo duda que tu madre era puta y tu padre su padrote. Lo que es mas, te apuesto no eres ciudadano americano, que eres extranjero ilegal, un rnojado.
Y
si dices otra palahra o me vuelvo a subir en tu taxi, apuntare tu nombre y te denunciare a la immigracion, y te echardn de culo al otro lado de la frontera por ignorante y malagradecido.”
She gave him her most elegant smile.
“Buenos noches, senor.”

If a brown face could go white, his did, and he took off in a funk of pollution. On the way up, in the elevator, I said, “I didn’t know you speak
espanol.”

“Born and raised in New Mexico?”

“What did you say to him?”

“Loosely
translated, I said, ‘You bean bastard. I have no doubt your mother was a whore and your father pimped for her. Furthermore, I will bet you are not an American citizen, that you have no papers, that you are a goddamned illegal alien, a wetback. And if I hear any more out of you, or ever step in your cab again, I will take your name and turn you in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and they will kick your ignorant, ungrateful ass back across the border immediately. Good evening,
senor
.’”

Drinks.

I put on some Herbie Mann records but we did not hear them.

She did steaks, I made a salad.

To celebrate her homecoming, I opened a good California Cabernet Sauvignon.

We ate.

She washed dishes, I dried.

While she was washing I took off her slacks, her blouse, her brassiere. I named one of her nipples PROCTER and the other GAMBLE and christened them with detergent and worked up some suds and an erection and we got to giggling and she turned to me and we kissed. Suddenly we couldn’t wait any longer and staggered, arms round each other like drunks, into the bedroom. Where we set a record for speed and animal urgency.

Then she wore one of my shirts and we huddled in the living room with coffee while she painted the nickels, dimes, and quarters in her change purse with streaks of blood-red nail enamel and spaced them out to dry.

“Thanks for the sex,” I said.

“Max was murdered,” she said.

I almost dropped my cup.

“I’m serious.”

“Tyler, you said on the phone it was a hit-and-run accident—I distinctly remember because I said I was sorry I wasn’t the driver. What was he doing out there?”

“I told you. I told him about the trials. And my grandfathers. He thought there might be a book in it—suspense, mystery. And of course money.”

“Murdered?”

“Murdered.”

“I don’t care to hear any more.” I got up, shivering, and brought us a brandy, still shivering. “Tell me again. What you told Sanson.”

This time I listened, really listened, as I should have while we were married. The scenario began in 1910, when her grandfather, Buell Wood, an attorney, got into a famous last gunfight in Harding and killed three men. He was charged with murder, prosecuted by her other grandfather, Charles Vaught, and acquitted. Then, in 1916, after the raid by Pancho Villa on Columbus, New Mexico, four Villistas had been taken prisoner by the Army, charged with the murder of civilians, and tried in Harding. Her grandfather Wood defended them, and her grandfather Vaught prosecuted. Everyone expected the Villistas to hang. The jury found them not guilty. They had not lived long, however. That very night they were set free to run what was called a “Texas horse race.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. But they were never seen again. And neither was my grandfather.”

“Which one?”

“Buell Wood.”

To demonstrate my boredom, I gargled brandy. “Tyler, this is New York, not New Mexico. And this is 1977, not 1916. Sell the story to Hollywood—it would make a great flick.”

“But it’s true.”

“So what? It’s no skin off mine.”

“It’s important to me. It has been my whole life.”

“And I can’t understand Sansom, the Bronx Bad Boy, flying out there and—”

“Jimmie, listen.” She leaned forward, exposing her mammary armament. “Buell Wood beat Charles Vaught twice. In the biggest cases in Harding history. In other words, my father’s father, Charles Vaught, probably hated my mother’s father, Buell Wood, as much as any man ever hated another. That fascinated Max. He—”

“What a minute. Then how did—I mean, how did you happen? If there was that much bad blood, how could your father marry your mother?”

“They eloped.”

I shook my head. “Romeo and Juliet on the range. And about as long ago.”

“Not for Max it wasn’t.”

“What did you tell him to do?”

“Talk to my father. And my mother. And read the transcripts of both trials. And five days ago I said goodbye to him at Kennedy.”

“And today you said hello.”

“He was murdered.”

“So you say.”

“So I know. So no matter how long ago it was, it isn’t over.”

I sulked. “I’m tired of talking about Sansom and your freak family tree.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Us.”

“But first, a pause for this message,” she said, and rose and took my hand and led me like a poodle into the bedroom again.

To the bed, the overcivilized eastern chick brings a book about whatever trendy group-grope or self-realization or consciousness-cuckoo thing she is presently into. At any point in the copulation she is apt to stop, turn on a light, and read a few pages. Afterward she graphs her orgasms, critiques your performance, and may or may not thank you for the therapy. Tyler Vaught is a westerner. Usually she loads the wagon and together you set out over the Simmons like pioneers. You break trails, ford rivers, scale mountains. Up and down the innersprings you slay Indians, skin buffalo, drive cattle, smash saloons, hang rustlers, build fences, settle towns, and fly, finally, the red, white, and blue. And when the last ripsnort reel is run, partner, and your golden spike is reduced to a tin thumbtack, you have WON THE SEXUAL WEST.

This time, however, the second, was a first. This time was a shocker. I lay, not with a woman, but with a girl. It was like a long, serious conversation with a child. On and on it went, the girl putting questions to the man. Innocent, desperate. What does the sea say? Asked her hips. Is there a God? her breasts. How far is it to a star? inquired her buttocks. Where will I go when I die? her thighs. Who am I? her fingers demanded. Is there a Santa Claus? her tongue. Are my father and mother really my father and mother? pressed her belly. What shall I be when I grow up? her arms. When I was born was I wanted? asked her nipples. Why do men kill one another? her teeth. To such childish queries the adult mind can give no answers, the adult heart does not dare. I tried to tell her with my body, tried till I was bathed in sweat and groaned aloud, but in vain. When it was over I was diminished. She had stripped me of all pretense to maturity. I was a boy again.

“Jimmie?”

“What?”

“Now do you know I love you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Yes. Goddammit.”

“Would you like me to come back to you?”

“Yes.”

“And marry you again and have your children?”

“Would I.”

“And live with you always?”

“Yes. Oh hell yes.”

“Then I will. If you’ll do something for me.”

“Such as.”

“Find out what happened to Max. If he really was murdered. And who did it.”

It took seconds to sink in.

“What?” I sat up. “What!”

“You could do it in a week. Then when you come back, we’ll-”

“Tyler, you mean—me? You mean, go out there myself? Like some private eye?”

“Not like that. But you do research, Jimmie, you solve problems, you—”

“My God girl, are you out of your mind?” I swung legs over the side. “If he actually was murdered, I could be, too!”

“No, no. Max was different, more aggressive. He rubbed people the wrong way.”

“Max is no damned loss to anybody! I would be—at least to me!” I threw a tantrum. “What’s going on here anyway? I don’t see you or hear from you for six months and suddenly we’re back in the hay and after a couple of juicy screws you’re shipping me to New Mexico! Two thousand miles away! To play games with the men in big hats! What is this?” I bounced up and down on the bed. “I don’t like violence! I’m a city man, and probably a coward! And not ashamed of it! You pitched me about going out there when we were married and I wouldn’t buy! Why for Christ’s sake would you ask me to go now?”