The Throat (36 page)

"And what was the effect of
that on you?"

"It's hard to describe," I
said.

"John, now," Alan said.
"Didn't something strange happen to him over there?"

"All I really know is that
he was trapped underground with a lot of corpses. The army reported him
killed in action."

"What did that do to him?"

I mopped the last bit of the
floor, poured the dirty water into the sink, filled it with hot soapy
water, and began washing the dishes. "When I saw him afterward, the
last time I saw him in Vietnam, he said these things to me:
Everything
on earth is made of fire, and the name of that fire is Time. As long as
you know you are standing in the fire, everything is permitted. A seed
of death is at the center of every moment."

"Not bad," Alan said.

I put the last dish into the
rack. "Let's see if I can fix your toilet."

I opened doors until I found
a plunger in the broom closet.

In a lucid moment, Alan had
blotted up the overspill from the toilet and done his best to clean the
floor. Crushed paper towels filled the wastebasket. I stuck the plunger
into the water and pumped. A wad of pulp that had once been typing
paper bubbled out of the pipe. I trapped the paper in the plunger and
decanted it in the wastebasket. "Just keep this thing in here, Alan,
and remember to use it if the same thing happens."

"Okay, okay." He brightened
up a little. "Hey, I made a batch of Bloody Marys. How about we have
some?"

"One," I said. "For you, not
me."

Back in the kitchen, Alan
took a big pitcher out of the refrigerator. He got some into a glass
without spilling. Then he collapsed into a chair and drank, holding the
glass with both hands. "Will you bring me to the funeral?"

"Of course."

"I have trouble getting
around outside," Alan said, glowering at me. He meant that he never
left the house.

"What happens to you?"

"I lived here forty years,
and all of a sudden I can't remember where anything
is
." He glared at
me again and took another big slug of his drink. "Last time I went
outside, I actually got lost. Couldn't even remember why I went out in
the first place. When I looked around, I couldn't even figure out where
I lived." His face clouded over with anger and self-doubt. "Couldn't
find my
house
. I walked
around for
hours
. Finally my
head cleared or
something, and I realized I was just on the wrong side of the street."
He picked up the glass with trembling hands and set it back down on the
table. "Hear things, too. People creeping around outside."

I remembered what I had seen
in the garage. "Does anyone ever use your garage? Do you let somebody
park there?"

"I've heard 'em sneaking
around. They think they can fool me, but I know they're out there."

"When did you hear them?"

"That's not a question I can
answer." This time he managed to get the glass to his mouth. "But if it
happens again, I'm gonna get my gun and blow 'em full of holes." He
took two big gulps, banged the glass down on the table, and licked his
lips. "Ta-ra-ra-boom-dee-ay," he said. "All the whores are in luck
today." A wet sound that was supposed to be a laugh came out of his
mouth. He scrabbled a hand over the lower part of his face and uttered
soft hiccuping wails. This injury to his dignity outraged him, and his
crying turned into long shuddering choked-back sobs.

I stood up and put my arms
around him. He fought me for a second, then sagged against me and cried
evenly and steadily. When he wound down, both of us were wet.

"Alan, I'm not insulting you
if I say that you need a little help."

"I do need a little help,"
he said.

"Let's get you washed up.
And we have to get you a cleaning woman. And I don't think you ought to
keep all your money on the kitchen table like that."

He sat up straight and
looked at me as sternly as he could.

"We'll figure out a place
you'll be able to remember," I said.

We moved toward the stairs.
Alan obediently led me to his bathroom and sat on the toilet to pull
off his socks and sweatpants while I ran a bath.

After he had succeeded in
undoing his last shirt button, he tried to pull the shirt over his
head, like a five-year-old. He got snared inside the shirt, and I
pulled it over his head and yanked the sleeves off backward.

Brookner stood up. His arms
and legs were stringy, and the silvery web of hair clinging to his body
concentrated into a tangled mat around his dangling penis. He stepped
unselfconsciously over the rim of the tub and lowered himself into the
water. "Feels good." He sank into the tub and rested his head against
the porcelain.

He began lathering himself.
A cloud of soap turned the water opaque. He fixed me with his eyes
again. "Isn't there some wonderful private detective, something like
that, right here in town? Man who solves cases right in his own house?"

I said there was.

"I have a lot of money
salted away. Let's hire him."

"John and I talked to him
yesterday."

"Good." He lowered his head
under the surface of the water and came up dripping and drying his
eyes. "Shampoo." I found the bottle and passed it to him. He began
lathering his head. "Do you believe in absolute good and evil?"

"No," I said.

"Me neither. Know what I
believe in? Seeing and not seeing. Understanding and ignorance.
Imagination and absence of imagination." The cap of shampoo looked like
a bulging wig. "There. I've just compressed at least sixty years of
reflection. Did it make any sense?"

I said it did.

"Guess again. There's a lot
more to it."

Even in his ruined state,
Alan Brookner was like Eliza Morgan, a person who could remind you of
the magnificence of the human race. He dunked his head under the water
and came up sputtering. "Need five seconds of shower." He leaned
forward to open the drain. "Let me get myself up." He levered himself
upright, pulled the shower curtain across the tub, and turned on the
water. After testing the temperature, he diverted the water to the
shower and gasped when it exploded down on him. After a few seconds, he
turned it off and yanked the shower curtain open. He was pink and white
and steaming. "Towel." He pointed at the rack. "I have a plan."

"So do I," I said, handing
him the towel.

"You go first."

"You said you have some
money?"

He nodded.

"In a checking account?"

"Some of it."

"Let me call a cleaning
service. I'll do some of the initial work so they won't run away
screaming as soon as they step into the house, but you have to get this
place cleaned up, Alan."

"Fine, sure," he said,
winding the towel around himself.

"And if you can afford it,
someone ought to come in for a couple of hours a day to cook and take
care of things for you."

"I'll think about that," he
said. "I want you to go downstairs and call Dahlgren Florist on Berlin
Avenue and order two wreaths." He spelled Dahlgren for me. "I don't
care if they cost a hundred bucks apiece. Have one delivered to Trott
Brothers, and the other one here."

"And I'll try the cleaning
services."

He tossed the towel toward
the rack and walked on stiff legs out of the bathroom, for the moment
completely in command of himself. He got into the hall and turned
around slowly. I thought he couldn't remember the way to his own
bedroom. "By the way," he said. "While you're at it, call a lawn
service, too."

I went downstairs and left
messages for the cleaning and lawn services to call me at John's house
and then got another garbage bag and picked up most of the debris on
the living room floor. I phoned the florist on Berlin Avenue and placed
Alan's orders for two wreaths, and then called the private duty nursing
registry and asked if Eliza Morgan was free to begin work on Monday
morning. I dumped the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, swearing to
myself that this was the last time I was going to do Alan Brookner's
housekeeping.

When I went back upstairs,
he was sitting on his bed, trying to wrestle his way into a white dress
shirt. His hair swirled around his head.

Like a child, he held out
his arms, and I straightened the sleeves and pulled the two halves of
the front together. I started buttoning it up. "Get the charcoal gray
suit out of the closet," he said.

I got his legs into the
trousers and took black silk socks out of a drawer. Alan slammed his
feet into a pair of old black wing-tips and tied them neatly and
quickly, arguing for the endurance of certain kinds of mechanical
memory in the otherwise memory-impaired.

"Have you ever seen a ghost?
A spirit? Whatever you call it?"

"Well," I said, and smiled.
This is not a subject on which I ever speak.

"When we were small boys, my
little brother and I were raised by my grandparents. They were
wonderful people, but my grandmother died in bed when I was ten. On the
day of her funeral, the house was full of my grandparents' friends, and
my aunts and uncles had all come—they had to decide what to do with us.
I felt absolutely lost. I wandered upstairs. My grandparents' bedroom
door was open, and in the mirror on the back of the door, I could see
my grandmother lying in her bed. She was looking at me, and she was
smiling."

"Were you scared?"

"Nope. I knew she was
telling me that she still loved me and that I would have a good home.
And later, we moved in with an aunt and an uncle. But I never believed
in orthodox Christianity after that. I knew there wasn't any literal
heaven or hell. Sometimes, the boundary between the living and the dead
is permeable. And that's how I embarked upon my wonderful career."

He had reminded me of
something Walter Dragonette had said to Paul Fontaine.

"Ever since then, I've tried
to
notice
things. To pay
attentio
n. So I hate losing my
memory. I
cannot bear it. And I cherish times like this, when I seem to be pretty
much like my old self."

He looked down at himself:
white shirt, trousers, socks, shoes. He grunted and zipped his fly.
Then he levered himself up out of the chair. "Have to do something
about these whiskers. Come back to the bathroom with me, will you?"

"What are you doing, Alan?"
I stood up to follow him.

"Getting ready for my
daughter's funeral."

"Her funeral isn't until
tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, as Scarlett said,
is another day." He led me into the bathroom and picked up an electric
razor from the top shelf of a marble stand. "Will you do me a favor?"

I laughed out loud. "After
all we've been through together?"

He switched on the razor and
popped up the little sideburn attachment. "Mow down all that stuff
under my chin and on my neck. In fact, run the thing over everything
that looks too long to be shaved normally, and then I'll do the rest
myself."

He thrust out his chin, and
I scythed away long silver wisps that drifted down like angel hair.
Some of them adhered to his shirt and trousers. I made a pass over each
cheek, and more silver fluff sparkled away from his face. When I was
done, I stepped back.

Alan faced the mirror.
"Signs of improvement," he said. He scrubbed the electric razor over
his face. "Passable. Very passable. Though I could use a haircut." He
found a comb on the marble stand and tugged it through the fluffy white
cloud on his head. The cloud parted on the left side and fell in neat
loose waves to the collar of his shirt. He nodded at himself and turned
around for my inspection. "Well?"

He looked like a mixture of
Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. "You'll do," I said.

He nodded. "Necktie."

We marched back into the
bedroom. Alan wrenched open the closet door and inspected his ties.
"Would this make me look like a chauffeur?" He pulled out a black silk
tie and held it up for inspection.

I shook my head.

Alan turned up his collar,
wrapped the tie around his neck, and knotted it as easily as he had
tied his shoes. Then he buttoned his collar and pushed the knot into
place. He took the suit jacket from its hanger and held it out.
"Sometimes I have trouble with sleeves," he said.

I held up the jacket, and he
slid his arms into the sleeves. I settled the jacket on his shoulders.

"There." He brushed some
white fluff from his trousers. "Did you call the florist?"

I nodded. "Why did you want
two wreaths?"

"You'll see." From a bedside
table he picked up a bunch of keys, a comb, and a fat black fountain
pen and distributed these objects into various pockets. "Do you suppose
I'd be able to walk around outside without getting lost?"

"I'm sure of it."

"Maybe I'll experiment after
John turns up. He's basically a good fellow, you know. If I'd got stuck
at Arkham the way he did, I'd be unhappy, too."

"You were at Arkham your
whole life," I said.

"But I wasn't stuck." I
followed him out of the bedroom. "John got to be known as my man—we
collaborated on a few papers, but he never really did anything on his
own. Good teacher, but I'm not sure Arkham will keep him on after I go.
Don't mention this to him, by the way. I've been trying to figure out a
way to bring up the subject without alarming him."

We started down the stairs.
Halfway down, he turned around to stare up at me. "I'm going to be all
right for my daughter's funeral. I'm going to be all present and
accounted for." He reached up and tapped my breastbone. "I know
something about you."

I nearly flinched.

"Something happened to you
when I was telling you about my grandmother. You thought of
something—you
saw
something.
It didn't surprise you that I saw my
grandmother because"—here he began tapping his forefinger against my
chest—"because—you—have—seen—someone—too."