The Last of the Wise Lovers (15 page)

   I moved forward carefully, still
shrouded in the half-darkness of the hall.  She lit the gas under the
kettle, rinsed a mug in the sink, and looked dreamily out of the window.
 When the water had boiled, she made herself coffee and sat down at the
table.  Then she opened her bag and took out a white pill bottle, an
envelope, her reading glasses (which she only wears when no one can see her),
and her notebook.

   Outside, a car drove slowly past.
 I expected her to jump up and go to the window, but she just sat there,
staring intently at the bottle of pills.  Then she opened the envelope and
peered inside.  Her face was tense as she checked its contents, and she
blinked several times - something she usually tries very hard not to do.

   Suddenly she got up and walked
straight toward me.  At first, I wanted to run away, but I controlled
myself, and instead slunk into the niche where we hang our coats and umbrellas.
 I heard her go into the bathroom, and then I heard the hamper squeak.
 A moment later she was back.  I peered out at her from between the
coats.  Her hands were empty, and there was a look of almost-joy on her
face.  She sat down at the kitchen table and pulled the notebook toward
her.

   She wrote a page, then tore it out,
folded it, put it in her purse, and went to her bedroom.  I didn't move,
in case she remembered she hadn't turned off the light.  And that's
exactly what happened.  She came back and turned off the light.  I
waited until I heard the rustle of her sheets, and then I came out of hiding.

   It would have been risky to turn on
the light.  I fumbled around in the dark.  The notebook was on the
table, where she had left it.  I waited a bit longer, just to be sure, and
then I took it with me to the bathroom.

   This time she had either written
hurriedly, or else had been pretty upset, because the grooves were especially
deep.  I sprinkled the base powder over the page and I copied the letter
onto the wrapper of a roll of toilet paper.  This is what I copied:

  
       My love,

                
I've just now come home.  So little happened during our meeting and so
much has happened since.  It seems to me ... has become habit: our
meetings get more empty and more difficult each time, but once they're over
they take on new life in my mind, becoming memories that I replay obsessively.

                
I don't know why.  Is it because there are things I must not say to you
when we're together, things related to love, the future, us?  Is it
because the knowledge that today I am prepared to give up everything, to leave
it all in order to be with you, scares you, until I can admit it
only
to
myself, in secret?... the love inside me is too big for you, too binding, too
frightening? … I don't want to force you to want more than you are willing to
permit yourself. And so the only real fulfillment of our relationship takes
place in me, inside my head, after I've come home.

                
But tonight everything has changed, because for the first time you, too, have
joined this late fulfillment, via this same thing that... and you managed to place
it tenderly, wisely, and with your unbelievable discretion in my glove
compartment.  When did you do it?  While we were talking, or while I
leaned my head on the steering wheel and cried, or while I bent over to look
for the keys that had fallen?

                
There: now you, too, are part of the experience of "after", and
because of this (and only because of this, for I've never, ever done what
you've asked because I expected a reward) I'm willing to take what was in the
envelope and see it as your special way of expressing your love, as your contribution
to the long journey still ahead of us.

                
I will be sensible.  I won't do anything hasty that we haven't talked...
first.  But I'm filled with renewed hope.  Hope for me and for us.

                
I kiss you and send you my love, my wise lover, my tough but tender, fearful
yet brave, crafty yet guileless lover.

   I tore out the page - which was now
covered with reddish powder - and I tossed it into the toilet.  Then I
opened the hamper.

   It was not hard to find the bottle.
It was resting on the bottom, under a week's worth of dirty laundry.  The
pills inside it were small and light blue.  It seemed to me I had seen
them somewhere before, but I didn't remember where.  On the label there
was a list of vitamins and a promise that the contents would bring about
especially rapid renewal of skin cells.  I studied one pill.  It bore
a small mark, perhaps a letter. I remembered it, too, but from where?

   I put the bottle back where I'd found
it.  Now I just had to find the envelope with the surprise inside.  I
felt around among the dirty clothes.  Not a trace of it.  I
overturned socks, looked in pockets, unrolled sleeves.  I didn't find a
thing.  When Mom decides to hide something, she does it so well that
sometimes even she can't find what she's hidden.  The narrow window near
the ceiling was starting to get light.  I put everything back the way it
had been.  The laundry seemed to have expanded while it was outside the
hamper, and I had to bunch it together to get it back in.  When I stuck my
hand in to give it one last push, I hit on something hard and crinkly.

   At first I thought it must be a bug
and I even pulled my hand out in alarm.  When nothing came crawling or
flying out, I bent over to have a closer look.

   The envelope was there, stuck by a
Band-Aid to the side of the hamper.  Carefully I pried it free.  The
tongue hadn't been licked closed, but had been stuffed inside.  I opened
it.

   It was filled with money.  A lot
of money - at least, it seemed like a lot to me.  I counted it.  The
first time, the result was $8,900.  The second time, $9,000.  I guess
there was $9,000 there in hundreds, crisp, new bills, with that clean,
metallic, bank smell.  And this is what "my love" had managed to
place "tenderly, wisely, with unbelievable discretion" in the glove
compartment of her car.

   Without even thinking I said out
loud, "Holy shit."  Later I realized that that's exactly what
Dad says when he's pissed off.  And I was really pissed off, especially
because I knew what she was trying to deny in her letter - maybe even to
herself: this money
was
a reward. How many slides had she passed him?
 How much was each slide worth to him?  How often did he pay?  I
sat down and reread the copy of the letter.  What "long journey still
ahead of us" was she talking about, what "renewed hope"?
 What was she plotting: to run away from home?  To marry him?

   I was worried about her.  I was
angry, but also worried.  After I'd stuck the envelope back in place (I
was really tempted to peel one bill off for myself...) I again took out the
bottle of vitamins.  I turned one of the pills over in my hand, trying
hard to concentrate and remember where on earth I'd seen it before.  

Just then someone behind me said, "What are
you hiding there, Ronnyleh, cigarettes?"

   Aunt Ida.  That's all I
needed.  I hastily closed the bottle and threw it in among the laundry,
approximately where I'd found it.  I slid the pill that was in my hand
into my pocket, and mumbled something about looking for a lost sock.

   Aunt Ida sighed and went toward the
toilet.  I went off to my room, but I couldn't possibly sleep.  The
house was filled with warm, dank night air.  I didn't feel like sticking
around.  Aunt Ida was still in the bathroom, so I washed myself off quickly
in the sink that was in the garage, changed my clothes, and started off for the
bus stop.  The first bus left at 5:15 and was practically empty.  By
6:40 I was at Port Authority.  I had $54.00 left over from my last two
weeks' pay.  I went into a diner on 6th Avenue and had two eggs with a
roll and a glass of milk.  Then I went to the library.  It was still
closed.  I peered inside.  A guard I didn't recognize sat sleepily at
his post and, without getting up, showed me nine fingers: we open at 9:00.
 I sat down on the steps and waited.

   I thought about the fact that it was
already the 3rd of September, and that someone who was waking up just then, at
that very moment, would be washing and eating something and going somewhere
without fathoming that maybe he had just another three or four days to live.
 My whole body was tensed with the need to warn him, like the need I feel
sometimes at the movies when someone sneaks up behind the hero.  For
several long moments I asked myself why it was so important for me to warn
someone I didn't even know, and by doing so to ruin everything for everyone -
especially Mom.  Only when I got up at 9:00 did I realize why: I wanted to
warn him in order to protect Dad from the crime he might commit, and to cover
up for Mom, who, as far as I was concerned, just
had
to prevent what was
about to happen - except that she was too blinded by this love of hers, too cut
off from reality and any sense of self-restraint.

   In the meantime, the doors had been
opened and everyone had arrived.  Including Ms. Yardley.  Again the
Catalog Room seemed a stalag.  Everything was most orderly at the computer
terminals, as if the day before had never been.  At 9:30 Mr. K. crossed
the room.  He looked weak and tired.  I tried to calculate how long
it had been since we'd seen each other.  A day?  Maybe two?  How
could a guy go downhill so fast in two days?  A few minutes later I asked
permission to go out.  From the look on her face I could tell that Ms.
Yardley had intended to refuse, but I was already halfway toward the door.

*

   He was sitting in his room wearing
his familiar, pained expression.  The usual piles of papers and junk were
on the desk in front of him, and it was impossible to tell what Miss Doherty
had taken - if she had indeed taken anything.

   When he saw me, he tried to smile.
 The result was only a distorted twitch.  

I sat down without asking permission and said,
"I was worried about you."

   "I was ill."

   A kind of reddish rash seemed to be
spreading over his face, under the skin.  I averted my eyes so as not to
embarrass him.

   "How are things with you?"

   I was dying to talk, but something
stopped me.  I answered a banal "Good."

   He didn't give up.  "What
good?  Did something get cleared up?"

   I had to admit that nothing had.

   He reached for the drawer and pulled
it out with some difficulty. "I want you to take the slide...”

   I didn't want to be there when he
discovered the absence of the things Miss Doherty had taken.

"I don't want it," I said quickly,
"the best place for it is with you."

   His hand released the drawer and fell
limply in a gesture of concession - or perhaps of weariness.  Someone
knocked on the door.

 He answered a weak, "Yes?"

 It was the messenger from the public
relations department who'd prepared the "Last Concert of the Summer"
invitations with me a few days earlier, bringing in some proofreading for his
signature.  

 She looked at him and said, "Gee Mr.
K., you don't feel so good, do you?"

He gave her another one of his wan smiles and said,
"No, not so very good."  The messenger cleared her throat
politely and left.

   Only after she'd left did I realize
that I hadn't heard a polite little `ahem', but
that cough
.  Not
exactly, not in the same voice, but the same kind.  I imagine you could tell
from the look on my face, because K. immediately asked, "What's
wrong?" a spark of alertness glimmering from the depths of his eyes.

   "Do you know her?"

   The alertness became a bemused
glance.  "Does she interest you?"

   "Her cough... is it always like
that?"

   "Asthma."  His face
went grey again.  "This is a bad season, the humidity is
rising."  A gust of damp wind blew in through the window, as if in
assent.  He tried to change his position, and twisted his face in
discomfort or pain.  "Could you close the window a bit?" he
asked, taking a small pillbox out of his pocket.

   I didn't get up, though, but stared,
hypnotized, at the pillbox in his hand, my own hand plumbing my pocket
feverishly.  The pill had gotten lost somewhere between the folds of
cloth, and it took me a few seconds to find it.  He looked at me,
bewildered.  I put the pill down opposite him.  He took it between
his fingers and studied it up close.

   "Someone told me that these were
vitamins," I said.

   He looked at it again.  "No.
I don't think so."

   "You use them."

   He took a pill out of his pillbox and
put it next to the one I had brought.  They were exactly identical.
 Now a new suspicion awakened in me - this time of K.  I'm sure
you'll agree that, under the circumstances, there was a certain logic in this.
 I wasn't sure what the connection was between K. and Mom, or what his
motive to harm her could possibly be, but his intention to do so would have
explained his interest in me, his warmth toward me, and his display of
friendship and willingness to help.

   "What are they, these
pills?" I asked, looking him in the eye.

   "Pain killers.  You take
one every few hours and it's released gradually into the bloodstream, relaxing
you...”  He shut his eyes for a moment, "but it also makes you weak,
less alert, and tired.  Very tired."

   Something in the frank, precise way
he spoke diffused my suspicions.  I began to think about Mom.  Who
had given her those pills under the guise of vitamins?  Who would benefit
from her being tired and groggy?