The Last of the Wise Lovers (23 page)

He said, "This is a private club."
 Then he leaned outside to listen to some explanation or other, at the end
of which he shrugged his shoulders and opened the door.

   In with a gust of cold air came the
guy from the Lincoln Tunnel.  I got up and moved silently to the back of
the cloak room.  The guy showed some sort of ID card and followed the kid
behind the counter.  They talked.  The guy from the Lincoln Tunnel's
hands sculpted the air as he described someone tall and broad.  The kid
looked uncomfortable.  He glanced at the door that led to the pool, and
then into the cloak room.  I shrank back.  The guy took a bill out of
his pocket and placed it on the counter.  The kid hesitated.  I
couldn't understand why he didn't just turn me over to the guy when only a few
minutes before he had begged me to hang around and wait.  I also couldn't
imagine what K. could possibly have to do with that guy, what had made K.
decide to turn me in, and why he had chosen to do so at the club, of all
places.

   I shouldered the bundle and quietly
moved toward the exit.  The kid followed me with his eyes, but didn't say
a word.  My wet sneakers squeaked.  The guy turned around.  I
opened the door and ran out.  The street was quieter and emptier than it
had been before.  I wasted a precious moment deciding which way to turn.
 The door creaked behind me.  That familiar little cough gave away
the identity of the man who had opened it.  A car came speeding down the
street.  Was it his partner, urging the Chevrolet toward us?  I
grasped my bundle tightly and prepared to take off.  The car came to a
screeching halt in front of me.  It wasn't the Chevrolet; it was a yellow
cab.  There was a woman inside.  

She pushed open the door and said with visible
relief, "Thanks for waiting."

   Miss Doherty.

   I didn't yet understand what was
going on, but I threw the bundle into the cab and hurled myself in after it.
 The guy from the Lincoln Tunnel was left standing alone on the curb.

  
*

   We rode in silence for three or four
blocks.  She seemed to have changed somehow since the last time we'd met.
 Her hair was disheveled, her lips were cracked and dry, and her face
looked tired and full of pain.  At the first traffic light I grabbed the
door handle.

   "Wait," she pleaded.
 "Isn't there someplace we can talk?"

   "About what?"

   "I've ridden in this taxi for an
hour just to see you," she looked at me in true desperation.  "I
think I can explain a few things to you."

   The light turned green.  

The cabbie said, “Where to?"

   The lighted dome of the library
glowed at the end of the street. Even though I really wasn't a part of that
world anymore, the building still filled me with a sense of home and security.

"Let us off there," I pointed.

   When we got there, I climbed out and
waited for her to pay the driver.  Then, without saying a word, I ascended
the stairs.  Miss Doherty stayed on the sidewalk.

"I despise this place."  Strains of
music wafted from inside, and a cardboard sign announced: "Last Concert of
the Summer".

"They're playing in the main lobby.
 I'll bet we can find a quiet spot in one of the halls."  She
climbed the stairs after me.

   The main lobby was well lit.
 People were sitting on folding chairs and listening to a violinist, a
cellist and a pianist.  Quietly we made our way past the sign that said,
"New Acquisitions" and the display cases containing rare books.
 Ms. Yardley was sitting at the end of the third or fourth row.  Her
eyes were closed and her head bobbed in time to the music.  Velvet ropes
blocked the way to the steps that led upstairs.  We ducked under them and
tiptoed ever so softly up to the administrative floor.

   K.'s office was locked for eternity.
 The janitor had placed a standing ashtray squarely in front of the door.
 Miss Doherty stared at it in silence.  I walked in front of her and
moved the ashtray aside.  I could see her eyes in the light that filtered
up from below.  They were filled with a fathomless sadness.  I sat on
the floor and leaned against the wall.  She sat down beside me.  

After a few minutes, she said, "You undoubtedly
expect an explanation."

   I nodded.

   She wiped her eyes with a tissue and
mumbled to herself, "Where do I start?"

   "What's your connection to
K.?"

   "I'm his wife."

   The pianist struck a few especially
high notes; or maybe it was the shock of her statement that rang in my ears.

"K.'s
wife
?"

   She nodded.

   I looked at her again.  She was
wet and unkempt and sniffling with a cold but she was pretty, damn it, far too
pretty and sexy for me to imagine her with K., no matter how special or intelligent
or educated he was.

"You mean...” I sputtered in embarrassment,
"that is...”

   She seemed to understand.

"I was a student of his," she explained,
"and in the rat race of the campus, he was so different, so true to
himself; he seemed to confront life with a rare blend of innocence and
intelligence."

   I remember thinking: would
I
have to come close to death before a beautiful woman would speak so lovingly of
me?

   Miss Doherty wiped her nose.

"So that's what our life together was like:
not exactly easy, but meaningful; special.  Then, a few months ago, things
started to go wrong.  He kept coming down with all sorts of little,
inexplicable illnesses.  He went to doctors: first to a dermatologist
about an ugly sore that wouldn't heal, then to an ENT man for a pain in his
esophagus, and once to an internist because of purple spots that didn't go
away.  Each doctor diagnosed something different, which he'd barely tell
me about - and only after I'd pressed him.  It's hard to believe that such
an intelligent, educated man could be satisfied with local diagnoses and refuse
to see that there was some overriding, general problem that demanded attention.
 In the meantime, the house was becoming cluttered with pills and
prescriptions, we had no money to live on because he was spending everything on
doctors, and I kept finding blood and mucus on the clothes he'd thrown in the
hamper.  He was still denying it, but the front he put up wasn't working
anymore...” she took a deep breath, "and one day it dawned on me that all
his ailments weren't from some passing bout with illness, but from
that
disease
.  Of course I still couldn't let on what I suspected, but I
began asking myself: who
was
this man I loved, who'd lived with me?
 I knew the only thing I could do to keep from collapsing or going insane
was to
know
- to know everything, everything that had happened,
everything he'd done, every place he'd been.  I wanted to know his
friends, maybe even his... his lovers.  I had to know the most awful,
painful truth."

   I thought of
my
need to know
and about Mom, who never wanted to know anything.

   "So...” she continued, "I
started using my mother's maiden name, Doherty, and I got that job photocopying
articles.  I went to the library every day but I made sure he didn't see
me; I searched his office one day when I knew he'd gone to the doctor, and I
followed you that day when you waited for him outside, and he disappeared...”

   "And you thought that I was...”

   "Anything was possible, and you
seemed the most likely.  I wandered around the library for several days
before approaching you.  You went to his room more often than anyone else,
you addressed him every time he crossed the Catalog Room... one evening I saw
you follow him to 42nd Street, and another time, when you brought him my forms
to sign, you even said how well you knew him...”

   I blushed.  Me and my tendency
to exaggerate.  "I
wanted
to be his friend.  He didn't
let me get close."

   "I know.  He told me
yesterday, along with all the other things I didn't know."

   "Why didn't he tell you before,
why only now?"

   "Maybe because he knows he
hasn't many days left, and he's not leaving me with anything - not even enough
to live on - so he figures I at least deserve to hear the truth," she
touched the bundle, "his lists, letters he wrote me but never dared send,
postcards and letters from his other life - the parallel life he led in secret.
 I want to be part of all that; and if I couldn't while it was happening,
then at least I will be in retrospect...”

   "He wanted me to destroy all
that...”

   "He doesn't want that
anymore."

  
"How
can I tell...” again I felt embarrassed, "that is, how do I know...”

   "That I'm not lying to you?
 I couldn't have found you without his help.  He told me he'd given
you his card and he also gave me the club's address and your telephone number.
 No one ever answered the telephone at your house, so eventually I paid
off the guy at the club to call me when you showed up."

   I needed a moment to digest it all.

"And the other guy, the one who ran outside
after me?"

   "What other guy?" she tried
to remember. "Oh, yeah, there was someone there, on the sidewalk... I've
never seen him before."  She poked around in her purse.
 "This is yours," she placed an envelope on the floor between my
legs.

   I opened it and fingered the slide.

"Did he tell you about this, too?"

   "No.  He just asked whether
I'd found an envelope in his drawer in the library."  She glanced at
me.  "You look worried."

   After she'd been so open, there was
no point in my holding back.  "Did you... you haven't shown this to
anyone, have you?"

   "There's nothing unusual about
it.  His drawers are full of diagrams like that from the days when he
worked for NASA or, before that, from when he was an engineer at
McDonnell-Douglas."

   I pictured the tiny, wooden cubbyhole
of an office behind us.  "How did he get from NASA and McDonnell
-Douglas to the library?"

   "He never knew how to fit in;
actually, he didn't
want
to fit in.  He couldn't stand the race for
status and money.  Every promotion made him feel awkward, and then he'd
get depressed and angry.  In a sense, the library was his idea of
paradise: a place where both an errand boy and a Harvard professor could have
access to infinite stores of knowledge and wisdom."

   It was all so much to swallow at
once.

"Didn't fit in?" I asked.
 "But he served in the Israeli army... doesn't that demand a certain
amount of conformity?"

   "Exactly.  And he couldn't
hack it.  He went AWOL after eight months over there, and came back to the
States."

   We sat there, not speaking.
 There was something comforting then, something that dispelled all my
tension.  I searched for something to say, perhaps to repay her for her
candor.  I remembered that day I'd seen her in the stacks.  I told
her about it, and asked her what it was she had stolen.

   I suppose I was expecting something
romantic, or at least tantalizing; instead she said straight out, "It was
just his personal file.  I wanted to know how often he'd missed work;
maybe I was hoping to find out more about the disease.  I managed to get
it out of the archives, but I was afraid they'd find it in my bag when I left
the library."  She glanced at her watch, then hurriedly got up.  "I've
got to get back to him."  She tried to lift the bundle.

   I got up and helped her balance the
bundle on her back.

   "Wait, it's heavy."
 She dropped it back on the floor, then bent over it and untied the
sleeves and spread out the jacket. She stuffed the letters into her bag.
 The pills, too.  Then she wrapped the tricot shirts, underwear, and
bars of soap in the towel.  All that was left lying on the jacket were the
gun and the steel-tipped boots.  She looked at them for a moment and said,
"What'll I do with these?  You take them."

   I pulled off my wet shoes.  She
untied the towel and rolled a balled-up pair of socks over to me.  I put
them on and then slid my feet into the boots.  They were warm and soft,
and fit perfectly.

"That's not K.'s size," she said.
 I didn't say anything, but I imagine we were thinking the same thing.
 She picked the jacket up off the floor and helped me get my arms into the
sleeves.  It, too, was a perfect fit. She held the gun out to me.  

"Take this, too."

   I hesitated.

   "Please," she pleaded,
"help me get rid of it."

   I stuck it into the inside pocket of
the jacket.  Quietly we slipped down the back steps.  I unlocked a
window and we jumped to the street.

   The sidewalk was wet with rain but
the boots and the jacket made me feel protected.  She took my arm as we
crossed the street.  We stood for a moment on the opposite sidewalk, our
arms entwined.  I felt the warmth of her body and the solidness of her arm
under her shirt.  I hugged her shoulders.  She let me hold her, and
leaned her head on my chest.  We stood like that for a few minutes, until
the alarm on my wristwatch went off.  

She placed her hand on my cheek and said,
"Take care of yourself."

Then she turned and walked away.

   I began walking, too.  I don't
know why, but I turned in the opposite direction.  After a few paces I
stopped and turned around.  She had stopped, too.  I waved to her.
 She waved back weakly and turned to walk away.  When I reached the
end of the block I stopped and turned around again.  She was gone.

   I felt very sad, and lonely.  I
sat down on the steps of the library to take stock of things.  I had a
little over $70 on me, plus the pistol and the slide - which, by that point,
seemed totally useless and unimportant.  I crumpled it, envelope and all,
into a tight ball and tossed it into a nearby trash can.  People started
coming out of the concert; carefully, they walked around me.  I tilted my
head as far back as I could and looked upside down at the distant building as
it emptied out.  For me, it would never again be just a library; it would
always be someplace significant, painful.