Slipping Into Darkness (31 page)

 

“You must think you’re pretty slick,” said Patti.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“The way you covered up. Moving furniture around. Leaving the light on in the hall. Having me drive when the lighting’s bad. I thought maybe you were drinking again.”

 

He tried to spoon her. “I didn’t mean to lie to you, hon.”

 

“No, of course not. You just neglected to mention the fact that you’re going blind.”

 

She sat up and turned on the reading lamp.

 

“How long?” she said, shining it in his eyes and giving him the third degree.

 

“I don’t know. I guess I’d been noticing it awhile before I went to the doctor —”

 

“
No,
Francis. How long until you can’t see anymore?”

 

He saw she was studying his eyes closely, as if she could actually see the bony spicules accumulating.

 

“Not for a long time, probably. It’s not like flesh-eating strep or anything.”

 

“But you had an uncle who had this, didn’t you? You told me he was always yelling at you for stealing his lighter when it was right in front of him.”

 

“Yeah, but he was a royal pain in the ass. I’m not going to be like that. You know me. I can take care of myself.”

 

“So is that all?” she said. “Have you got anything else you want to lay on me? Brain cancer? Liver failure?”

 

“No. You’re just going to be married to a blind man. Like Ray Charles without the music. I think that’s probably enough, for the moment.”

 

“Fuck you, Francis. You think that’s funny? What’d you do, tell your friends at Coogan’s before you told me?”

 

“No, I haven’t told anybody. I figured if I didn’t say anything, it wouldn’t really be happening.”

 

“I’m
your wife.
” She pulled the covers off him. “I’m the one who’s going to have to fill out all the insurance forms and take you to the doctors. Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

 

He heard the rain pelting the windows and listened for the leak in the bathroom, dreading each little splat in the sink.

 

“So are you going to leave me now?” he asked.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m just saying it’s an option. You didn’t sign up to be the helpmate for the handicapped.”

 

She propped up on an elbow. “You really think I’d do that?”

 

“You get out soon enough, no one’s going to accuse you of abandoning ship. God knows, you could’ve done it a hundred times before and no one would’ve blamed you.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Francis, I’m not your mother.”

 

He grimaced as if she’d raked her nails across his face.

 

“I guess I had that coming.”

 

“I’m sorry.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “That was uncalled-for. All I meant to say was, you’re not going to lose me.”

 

He put his arms around her in quiet gratitude. But at the same time, he wondered how long she’d really abide him. You could say all the right things, make all the loving supportive gestures, but at the end of the evolutionary day, the male of the species was supposed to take care of the female. Soon enough she’d start to notice that even the simplest things they used to do together were becoming an ordeal. A night at the movies. A romantic dinner in a dark restaurant. A stroll in the park at dusk. Pity would bind them together awhile, but eventually the cord would start to fray. She’d lose patience. It would get on her nerves always having to drive, always needing to point out when something was smoking on the stove, having to make excuses when he walked by old friends on the street without recognizing them. Gradually, they’d begin to grow apart, becoming strangers in adjacent spaces, one light and one dark.

 

“So you really haven’t talked to anyone on the Job about this?”

 

“No.”

 

“So, what’s going to happen the next time you have to drive at night?”

 

“I’m still getting around pretty good,” he said. “In fact,
you
didn’t know anything was wrong until tonight.”

 

“And what about if you have to draw your gun?”

 

“I can’t remember the last time I had to do that. . . .”

 

He looked up again, thinking how he used to be able to see all four corners of the ceiling while he was flat on his back; the turn-of-the-century detailing around the border, the vent above the closet, that odd little vestigial fixture for the old gas line by the window. But now everything was black except for a small circle of light the bedside lamp made over his head.

 

“Look, I’m not
that
irresponsible,” he said.

 

“So when are you going to tell them?”

 

He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs felt like they’d shriveled to the size of dried apricots.

 

“I always said I was going to turn in my papers right after I got the bump in April.” He caressed the back of her hair. “An extra five thou a year, and last I heard those New England colleges weren’t lowering the cost of tuition.”

 

Everything after that was beyond the edge of the map. What exactly was he supposed to do with himself once he retired? He’d been trying to think about it practically these past few weeks. Those corporate-security jobs he’d wanted to apply for on Wall Street were out of reach: not much call for a surveillance expert with a progressive eye disease. He wouldn’t even be able to get a blazer-and-slacks gig making people show their IDs in the lobby. The circle of light over his head closed in a little. He certainly wouldn’t be spending a lot of time playing golf with other ex-cops. And forget that sailboat he’d talked about buying a few years back. He probably wouldn’t even be much use helping Patti out with the garden in the backyard.

 

“Don’t you think you should tell them sooner?”

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I’m in the middle of two major cases, Patti. What do you want me to do, walk away?”

 

“Sure. There’s other people in the squad who could take over.”

 

“
No.
They’re mine. These are my cases. I’m responsible.”

 

“That’s just your ego talking.”

 

“You say that like it’s a
bad
thing.” He put a hand over his heart, like he was offended. “That ego’s been very good to me.”

 

“Don’t be an asshole.”

 

“All right.” He raised his hands, starting over in earnest. “You asked me before, how I was going to feel if it turned out I locked up the wrong guy. Right?”

 

She nodded cautiously, wary of entrapment.

 

“So I’m just trying to make sure everything’s done right. I’m not letting anybody take the files off my desk and start criticizing the way I ran these investigations.”

 

She sat up abruptly and hugged her knees. “Francis, is there something else you haven’t told me?”

 

“No. Like what?”

 

“I know you. I know when you’re holding out on me—at least, I thought I did. Did something go on between you and this guy Julian that you haven’t told me about?”

 

He looked up and saw that the circle of light over his head seemed to have shrunk a little more.

 

“What are you asking me here, Patti?”

 

She let the question sit awhile. He heard the leak in the bathroom starting up again. This was what you got for sleeping with a former prosecutor.

 

“I’m asking, did you do something you shouldn’t have done back then?” she said in a low deliberate voice.

 

He forced himself to look at her, knowing he was scaring her a little. In twenty-two years, he’d asked her to put up with a lot. He’d made her stretch and accept things in her life that she should have balked at and maybe thrown him out for. And each time, somehow, she’d moved back the walls and found space in her heart to accommodate him. Like making special ramps and access points for the handicapped. But this was too much. She couldn’t hear what he had to say and still love him. If she tried to make herself large enough to take it in, she’d break. And so he decided he wouldn’t ask her to.

 

“Baby, all I’m saying is, let me finish what I started. Okay? Don’t take me out of the fight. If something went wrong in this case, let me be the one to fix it. You know there’ll be no living with me otherwise.”

 

“There’s already no living with you.”

 

She rolled over and turned off the light. They lay next to each other in the dark, the rain like a jackpot hitting the storm windows.

 

“Francis?” She gave him a gentle tug under the sheets.

 

“What?”

 

“Just try to be a good man, all right?”

 

 

35

 

 

 

TWENTY YEARSIN state prison didn’t do much for most men’s lovemaking skills. Most of the action Hoolian had seen involved either porn mags or the visiting room, where guards would routinely have to break up under-the-table hand jobs and furtive humping. Not having connections with live women on the outside, Hoolian couldn’t set up conjugal visits. Instead, his first month at Attica, he’d found himself alone in the showers with a big buck called Dirty D., who’d stood under the needle spray, staring at him and soaping his dick over and over until Hoolian asked, “What’s up, man?” And then that old booty bandit just bowed a leg to soap inside a crevice and replied,
What do you think is up?

 

He’d barely managed to get out of that one with just a broken nose and a chipped tooth; fortunately after that, he’d come under the protection of a drug lord named Ronnie Raygun and a few other gang guys he was giving legal advice to. Meanwhile, that need never went away. It always seemed to come up at the worst times. First thing in the morning, last thing at night, daydreaming in the kitchen, seeing the shapes of breasts and buttocks in clouds over the exercise yard. How many times had he almost sawed off a finger or put a nail through his knuckle because he was distracted in woodshop? It seemed like whole years would pass when he’d done nothing but fantasize about women and the only reliable source of information he had about pleasing them was a book passed around the cellblock called
Lesbian Sex Secrets for Men.

 

So he was on a hair trigger the first time Zana touched him. No sense of rhythm or restraint at all—just disgraced himself immediately.

 

“Are you okay?” The way she touched his shoulder afterward and smiled in subversive sympathy just made it worse.

 

“Yeah, it’s been a while.”

 

“I can tell.” She half smiled and started to turn away, her thin shoulder blades vibrating a little. “Don’t worry about it. . . .”

 

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked.

 

“No, of course not.”

 

“Yes, you are.” He felt himself start to dissolve in an acid bath of humiliation. “Why don’t you look at me?”

 

“I’m looking for my shirt.”

 

“I’m saying, look at
me.
”

 

He suddenly grabbed her and pushed her down on the sofa bed, forgetting about her kid sleeping in the next room. She bucked and tried to kick him off.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

He had something to prove now. He grabbed her ankles and buried his face between her legs. Her back arched, like she had a scream caught halfway up in her chest.

 

“Noo, not like this . . . ,” she gasped.

 

He felt her squirm and grab a fistful of hair from the back of his head. He braced himself, sure she was about to start hollering for the police. But before he could get his hand over her mouth, she rolled over a little and slid a cushion under her ass.

 

“There,” she said, presenting herself on the platform. “Much better.”

 

Tentatively, he began to nose around, an explorer getting oriented. Everything looked and smelled just a little different than he expected it to. Not bad at all, but more . . . human. He understood instinctively he shouldn’t jerk around or move too quickly. Patience was the one thing he had, and gradually he began to find his way. His tongue coming out to touch and probe. His fingertips learning the dynamics of her body. There was more music in her than he’d expected. He heard a sharp intake of breath and thought he might have hurt her. But then she closed her thighs around his ears and put a hand on the back of his head.

 

He tried to concentrate on the places that seemed to amuse and sometimes even delight her, slowly inscribing a secret alphabet with the tip of his tongue. After a few minutes, he noticed things becoming more humid. The arch of her foot touched the small of his back. She said things he didn’t recognize.
“Shume mire.”
A hum started to rise from the back of her throat.

 

He steadied himself on her thighs, dwelling on the letter O, gradually enlarging it into widening circles. She grabbed the back of his hair with greater urgency this time, wrapping her legs around his shoulders and then raising her hips to meet him again and again, riding the waves until finally she stayed at the top of the arc as long as she could, the scream stuck in her chest seeming to hoist her up toward the ceiling.

 

When she finally came down, he was ready for her. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, her mouth, her collarbone, before she firmly took hold of him and put him where he’d always wanted to be.

 

And then all of a sudden, he was inside the mystery. Not just a man on the outside, making up myths. So the fucking finally began. First they tried to fuck their way around things they hadn’t told each other yet. Then they tried to fuck the hands off the clock. They tried to fuck away bad memories. They tried to fuck like money and religion and national borders didn’t matter. They tried to fuck past soreness and exhaustion. They tried to fuck like they were movie stars and not just two lonely people in a tenement apartment on Coffey Street. They tried to fuck like neither of them would ever fuck anybody else again.

 

Then they moved away from each other a little and listened to the rain going down into the storm drains under the windows. The city sleeping. The city snoring. The city rolling over on its side.

 

“You okay?” Hoolian asked after a while.

 

“Yes. I am . . . quite . . . sufficient.”