The Female of the Species (34 page)

“But you know what this means, don’t you?”

“It means every check.”

“So bringing him home with you last night cost you a good deal.”

“I can afford it.”

“I wonder.”

She stood up. “I just had to tell you. Errol. To confess, I suppose.”

Errol pushed the interview aside. “Listen. It’s getting late.” He took her hand. “I’ll take you out. My treat.”

She smiled wanly. “Only if you understand that it won’t make much difference.”

“Unfortunately, I do understand that.” Yet despite her glumness and his inability to relieve it, Errol led her out the door and proceeded to buy her the most expensive dinner he’d ever paid for in his entire life.

The one appointment Raphael rarely canceled was his weekly tennis game with Gray. Errol couldn’t play her anymore. Playing Raphael she’d gotten too good. Was this just fine with Errol? Well, on Thursdays he got a little
edgy
.

One Thursday afternoon in November, Gray called. “Errol,” she said, “please come pick me up.”

“You’re at the courts?”

“That is correct.”

“Why can’t Ralphie give you a lift?”

“I have sent him home.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not in a joking mood. Now hang up the phone and get in your car.”

“Well, Gray, I’m in the middle of something here. Why don’t you get a taxi?”

“I do not wish to take a taxi. Please come take me home.”

Errol listened carefully. There was something about her voice. Something about the way she wasn’t using contractions. “All right. But give me half an hour.”

“Come right this minute.”

“Don’t be unreasonable—”

“Right this minute. Goodbye.” She hung up.

Well. Where did she get off? Come right this minute. Who did she think he was, her valet?

Errol got in the car.

When he arrived, Gray was standing against the front wall, her racket at her side. Her expression was composed. So she’d sent Ralphie home. Maybe something wonderful had happened. She looked powerful, even serene, against that wall. Tennis did that to her. Winning anything did that to her.

Yet when Errol walked closer to his mentor he noticed something overly balanced about her face, excessively careful about the set of her bones against one another, and the fine lines in her skin looked suddenly as if they went all the way through her to the wall. She was deceptively assembled, perched. Someone had left her against that wall as an irresponsible dinner guest might leave a broken glass at his setting, delicately resting it against the edge of his plate so that his host will find the thing in pieces only after reaching for it to clear the table.

Errol reached for Gray, and she fell apart. Her arms broke over his shoulders; her head cracked at the neck and fell against his cheek. Errol picked up her tennis racket and half carried her to the car. He lifted her into the bucket seat, collecting the pieces of her body like shards in a pail. She shook her head from side to side. Tears leaked down her cheeks in a steady stream.

“Tell me it didn’t happen.”

“It happened.” She could only whisper.

“Maybe it was just a bad day—”

“No, it was a good day, Errol. I played—” She put her fingers over her eyelids and pressed, but the tears still found their way out the corners; some of them trailed down her fingers and trickled down her arm. “I played the best game—I have ever played—in my life. And he played—”

“Sh-sh—”

“
Better
.”

When they got home the phone rang as Gray walked upstairs; she froze. “No,” she instructed Errol. “I can’t.”

Errol picked up the phone. “I think you’d better take it, Gray,” he shouted up. “It’s one of your contacts in Ghana. He says it’s important.”

“All right,” she said leadenly. “I’ll take it upstairs.”

Half an hour later, as Errol had a drink earlier in the day then he usually allowed himself, Gray wandered into the den and fell into the leather armchair. She looked dazed, even disoriented. She wasn’t blinking. Her mouth fell a little open.

“Gray?”

Her eyes darted around the room, fixing on stray objects, until they found the soapstone lion on the desk. She stared at it as if waiting for it to talk, as if it could explain something.

“What was that about?” asked Errol.

“The Lone-luk,” she told the lion. “The women—have been overrun.”

“By whom?”

“Whom do you think? By the men. Yesterday. They took the villages by force, with guns. The Lone-luk,” she said quizzically, “are no longer…matriarchal.”

The lion grinned.

Much as Errol would have liked to suggest to her that the Lone-luk were only a society for study, and had nothing to do with this manse in Boston and Gray in her chair, he could not shake the feeling that everything had to do with everything and that this was bad in that everything-being-bad way. He said nothing. They stayed like this, until Errol decided that the best therapy was to proceed, and he picked up the phone.

“Lenny, this is Errol McEchern. I want you to book us a couple of tickets to Ghana. I know this is the last minute, but something’s come up. Money’s no object. We have to get over there
tout de suite
.—Just a second.” He covered the receiver. “Gray, how soon can we get out of here? You need a day, maybe? Try for Saturday?”

“What?”

“Do you want to wait until Saturday,” he said impatiently, “or do you want to go tomorrow if there’s a flight?”

“What?”

Errol rolled his eyes. “Lenny, I’m going to have to get back to you. Meanwhile, see what you can scavenge for tomorrow. We’re miracle packers when we have to be. Otherwise, as soon as possible. Thanks.”

He hung up and turned to Gray, tired of humoring her. He was a sympathetic person, but he wished she would snap out of this and do her job. “I know this is a blow, Gray. And one of several lately. But you’re going to have to get into gear. We’ll have to move fast the next few days.”

“Why?”

Errol felt as if he were talking to a retarded child. “It’s bad enough we weren’t there yesterday. This next week is going to be incredible. We should bring the movie cameras. Frankly, if Lenny can swing it, I think we should fly tomorrow.”

“Nnno.”

Somehow they weren’t communicating.

“What can’t you wrap up? Leave the documentary. The world has waited all these years, it can live without Charles Corgie for a few months more.”

“But I can’t,” she said quietly.

“What?”

She got up and paced aimlessly about the den. “It would be months, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but it was going to be months originally, so just move the whole project up. Cancel what you have to. You haven’t been making appointments with anyone, anyway—”

Gray picked up the phone. “Lenny? Gray. Make that a booking for three. And Lenny? Don’t pay for them until you hear from me, understand?—Definitely not before Saturday. Errol is a little optimistic about our ability to extricate ourselves so easily. Yes. I’ll call. Thanks. Goodbye.”

“Three?” Errol inquired sourly.

“We always bring an assistant.”

“Oh? Arabella will be delighted you thought of her.”

“Arabella will not be delighted.”

Errol made another drink, very stiff. With his back to her he was thinking an unpleasant question, and by the time he asked it he was furious, for there was a time not long ago when such a question would have insulted her.

He turned around. “
And what if he says no?
”

She shrank back. “Why would he do that?”

“Why would he do anything? Do you know him? Can you ever predict what he’ll do?”

Her nostrils quivered.

“How many orders has he been taking lately, Gray? He wasn’t much of a soldier even in Toroto, as I remember.”

“Not orders. The opportunity—with Gray Kaiser—” She seemed to have trouble delivering her own name with the proper sense of importance.

“Ralph has his own plans, doesn’t he? He’s going to the Pacific. To lie in the sun and avoid difficult vocabulary. In February, when the weather’s so unpleasant here. Had you forgotten?
You’re funding him
.”

“Not yet I haven’t. My recommendations aren’t due for two months.”

“So would you hold that over his head? To get him to go to Ghana?”

Errol really did seem to be driving her toward despair; this gave him some sadistic satisfaction. “I don’t care for that kind of leverage,” said Gray. “I’d want him to come to Ghana because he wanted to be with me.”

“Too bad. With Ralph that’s the kind of leverage that works, and you know it.”

“No,” she said feebly. “Not only.”

“It’s November. The Lone-luk is a six-month project, maybe more. You’re asking him to put off his trip for yours. Is he likely to do that, Gray? Really.”

“I’ll simply ask him,” she said faintly, “tomorrow.”

“You didn’t answer my question: What if he says no?”

She bowed her head. “I won’t go.”

The den swallowed her admission into a vast silence. The heat came on; the furnace purred below them, throaty and luxurious. Hot air wafted from the vents like the bloody breath of a successful predator; the wildebeest bones shone white and bare.

Errol picked up the smug soapstone lion and brought it down on the desk with anger. Gray jumped. “This is the limit,” said Errol, and left the room to phone upstairs. He returned to the den to announce, “We’re taking a trip, Gray. Right now.”

“To Ghana—?”

“A good deal closer. But maybe it will get you to Ghana at that. Put on your coat. Let’s go.” He actually took her arm and pulled her to the rack in the foyer.

“What are you talking about? Where are you taking me?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired and have a lot of thinking to do and would like a drink and a fire and some peace and quiet—”

Errol pointed his finger, just the way Raphael had pointed at Walter. It worked. She froze. “You’re coming with me, Gray Kaiser. I’ve put up with a lot from you lately, doing more than my share of the work around here, and you know it. Meanwhile, you waste away lamely pasting together shots of Charles Corgie while you’re waiting for the phone to ring.
I’m
the one who’s tired. This may be your project, but I’ve put in a lot of work on this matriarchy study, and I’m not going to have it botched. I don’t want to get our most important material secondhand or not at all because you want to be with your boyfriend. You owe me,” said Errol. “So are you coming or not?”

Gray looked at him like an outpatient, but she did get her coat. Errol almost smiled. He hadn’t spent all these months around Ralph for nothing.

At the car, though, she insisted on getting out again. “I’ll come back,” she said, angrily shaking his hand off her arm. “I want to get my ferret.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I’d like some warm companionship. That’s obviously not going to come from you at the moment.”

So Errol waited for Gray to get Solo; she wrapped him around her neck, and the animal glared at Errol with his usual hostility. All the way there he hissed when Errol changed gears.

“Dr. Katrakis?”

“Anita. And may I call you Errol? Ellen’s spoken so much about you; I feel as if we’re old friends.”

Errol was surprised that Ellen had mentioned him at all, but pleased, too. He led Gray inside the apartment, which was
attractive though dissettlingly clean, like the rooms of the retired. When he introduced Gray, Anita nodded with a small, dense smile.

“Have a seat and let me get tea.” Errol watched her go. He’d imagined her as a nervous, fragile character, and Anita was no such thing; yet there was something slightly peculiar about the way she moved. Her timing was off. There was a lag to every gesture that made her motions seem infused with effort.

Reminding himself that this was Ralph’s most recent discard, Errol assessed her looks. Though her clothes weren’t flattering, she was dark and interesting-looking. If this were his teacher, Errol would definitely come to class.

When she brought in the tea tray, Errol explained, “Gray is on the board to determine who’s awarded the Ford Anthropology Fellowships. One of your old students has somehow”—Errol shot Gray a look—“come near the top of the list, and we were hoping you could shed some light on his qualities. He has become the object of some controversy.”

“You must mean—Raphael.” She said his name with that same lag of hers. She leaned back in her chair and breathed the steam from her tea.

“Did you know him well?” asked Errol deftly.

This time she didn’t hesitate, though she spoke to Gray. “I had an affair with him.”

Gray looked over at Errol in dull horror; she put her cup down hard in its saucer. Tea slurped over its side.

“You knew that, didn’t you?” Anita asked Errol. “That’s why you’re here.”

“True,” Errol admitted. “But it’s kind of you to be so forthright.”

That dense smile again. “Not that kind. Still, everyone knows, Errol. There’s no point in pretending.” The smile turned to a wan one. “I know all about pretending, so I’m not very keen on it anymore.”

“Does it distress you to talk about this?”

“Distress me?” She drew a finger thoughtfully to her chin. “I am distressed.” She leaned forward toward Errol as if they
shared a secret. “That’s all that matters in the end, isn’t that right? Just the facts.”

She sat back in her chair, a little crooked but relaxed. Errol supposed that the one nice thing about being disappointed about what mattered to you most in the world was that you could not be disappointed anymore; to be immersed in your own pain was perhaps to overcome it. Nothing, after all, was going to come knocking at the door that would fell this woman, for no one could push you down if you were already on the floor.

“We were wondering,” said Errol slowly, “did Raphael Sarasola use you in any way?”

“In every way,” she returned with a shrug. “For my sailboat. My money. My connections. You name it. Up to the very end.” She added wistfully, “Beyond the end, even.”

“How do you mean?”

“This last February Raphael hadn’t called me for a long time. I’d lost my job, and was still unemployed. Out of the blue he showed up at my door. With no apology—he doesn’t do that—he told me he’d read a passage that had struck his eye. Funny, he wasn’t at all well read, but single sentences could have more impact on him than whole books on other people.”