The Throat (37 page)

He nodded at me and moved
back down a step. "I never thought there was any point in missing
things. You know what I used to tell my students? I used to say there
is another world, and it's
this
world."

We went downstairs and
waited for John, who failed to appear. Eventually, I persuaded Alan to
salt away the money on the kitchen table in various pockets of his
suit. I left him sitting in his living room, went back to the kitchen,
and put the revolver in my pocket. Then I left the house.

Back at Ely Place, I put the
revolver on the coffee table and then went upstairs to my manuscript.
John had left a Post-It note in the kitchen saying that he had been too
tired to go to Alan's house and had gone straight to bed. Everything
was okay, he said.

Just
after one o'clock, I parked John's Pontiac in front of the Georgian
house on Victoria Terrace. A man on a lawn mower the size of a tractor
was expertly swinging his machine around the oak trees on the side of
the house. A teenage boy walked a trimmer down the edge of the
driveway. Tall black bags stood on the shorn lawn like stooks. John was
shaking his head, frowning into the sunlight and literally champing his
jaws.

"It'll
go faster if you get him," he said. "I'll stay here with my parents."

Ralph
and Marjorie Ransom began firing objections from the backseat. In their
manner was the taut, automatic politeness present since John and I had
met them at the airport that morning.

John had
driven to the airport, but after we had collected his parents, tanned
and clad in matching black-and-silver running suits, he asked if I
would mind driving back. His father had protested. John ought to drive,
it was his car, wasn't it?

—I'd
like Tim to do it, Dad, John said.

At this
point his mother had stepped in perkily to say that John was tired, he
wanted to talk, and wasn't it
nice
that his friend from New York was
willing to drive? His mother was short and hourglass-shaped, big in the
bust and hips, and her sunglasses hid the top half of her face. Her
silver hair exactly matched her husband's.

—John
should drive, that's all, said his father. Trimmer than I had expected,
Ralph Ransom looked like a retired naval officer deeply involved with
golf. His white handsome smile went well with his tan. —Where I come
from, a guy drives his own car. Hell, we'll be able to talk just fine,
get in there and be our pilot.

John
frowned and handed me the keys. —I'm not really supposed to drive for a
while. They suspended my license. He looked at me in a way that
combined anger and apology.

Ralph
stared at his son. —Suspended, huh? What happened?

—Does it
matter? asked Marjorie. Let's get in the car.

—Drinking
and driving?

—I went
through a kind of a bad period, yeah, John said.

It's
okay, really. I can walk everywhere I have to go. By the time it gets
cold, I'll have my license back.

—Lucky
you didn't kill someone, his father said, and his mother said
Ralph
!

In the
morning, John and I had moved my things up to his office, so that his
parents could have the guest room. John armored himself in a
nice-looking double-breasted gray suit, I pulled out of my hanging bag
a black Yohji Yamamoto suit I had bought once in a daring mood, found a
gray silk shirt I hadn't remembered packing, and we were both ready to
pick up his parents at the airport.

We had
taken the Ransoms' bags up to the guest room and left them alone to
change. I followed John back down to the kitchen, where he set out the
sandwich things again. —Well, I said, now I know why you walk
everywhere.

—Twice
this spring, I flunked the breathalyzer. It's bullshit, but I have to
put up with it. Like a lot of things. You know?

He
seemed frazzled, worn so thin his underlying rage burned out at me
through his eyes. He realized that I could see it and stuffed it back
down inside himself like a burning coal. When his parents came down,
they picked at the sandwich fillings and talked about the weather.

In
Tucson, the temperature was 110. But it was dry heat. And you had air
conditioning wherever you went. Golfing—just get on the course around
eight in the morning. John, tell you the truth, you're getting way too
heavy, ought to buy a good set of clubs and get out there on the golf
course.

—I'll
think about it, John said. But you never know. A tub of lard like me,
get him out on the golf course in hundred-degree weather, he's liable
to drop dead of a coronary right on the spot.

—Hold
on, hold on, I didn't mean—

—John,
you know your father was only—

—I'm
sorry, I've been on-All three Ransoms stopped talking as abruptly as
they had begun. Marjorie turned toward the kitchen windows. Ralph gave
me a pained, mystified look and opened the freezer section of the
refrigerator. He pulled out a pink, unlabeled bottle and showed it to
his son.

John
glanced at the bottle. —Hyacinth vodka. Smuggled in from the Black Sea.

His
father took a glass from a cupboard and poured out about an inch of the
pink vodka. He sipped, nodded, and drank the rest.

—Three
hundred bucks a bottle, John said.

Ralph
Ransom capped the bottle and slid it back into place in the freezer.
—Yeah. Well. What time does the train leave?

—It's
leaving, John said, and began walking out of the kitchen. His parents
looked at each other and then followed him through the living room.

John
checked the street through the slender window.

—They're
baa-ack.

His
parents followed him outside, and Geoffrey Bough, Isobel Archer, and
their cameramen darted in on both sides. Marjorie uttered a
high-pitched squeal. Ralph put his arm around his wife and moved her
toward the car. He slid into the backseat beside her.

John
tossed me the car keys. I gunned the engine and sped away.

Ralph
asked where they had come from, and John said, They never leave. They
bang on the door and toss garbage on the lawn.

—You're
under a lot of pressure. Ralph leaned forward to pat his son's shoulder.

John
stiffened but did not speak. His father patted him again. In the
rearview mirror, I saw Geoffrey Bough's dissolute-looking blue vehicle
and Isobel's gaudy van swinging out into the street behind us.

They
hung back when I pulled up in front of Alan's. John locked his arms
around his chest and worked his jaws as he chewed on his fiery coal.

I got
out and left them to it. The man on the tractor-sized lawn mower waved
at me, and I waved back. This was the Midwest.

Alan
Brookner opened the door and gestured for me to come in. When I closed
the door behind me, I heard a vacuum cleaner buzzing and humming on the
second floor, another in what sounded like the dining room. "The
cleaners are here already?"

"Times
are tough," he said. "How do I look?"

I told
him he looked wonderful. The black silk tie was perfectly knotted. His
trousers were pressed, and the white shirt looked fresh. I smelled a
trace of aftershave.

"I
wanted to make sure." He stepped back and turned around. The back hem
of the suit jacket looked a little crumpled, but I wasn't going to tell
him that. He finished turning around and looked at me seriously, even
severely. "Okay?"

"You got
the jacket on by yourself this time."

"I never
took it off," he said. "Wasn't taking any chances."

I had a
vision of him leaning back against a wall with his knees locked. "How
did you sleep?"

"Very,
very carefully." Alan tugged at the jacket of his suit, then buttoned
it. We left the house.

"Who are
the old geezers with John?"

"His
parents. Ralph and Marjorie. They just came in from Arizona."

"Ready
when you are, C.B.," he said. (I did not understand this allusion, if
that's what it was, at the time, and I still don't.)

John was
standing up beside the car, looking at Alan with undisguised
astonishment and relief.

"Alan,
you look great," he said.

"I
thought I'd make an effort," Alan said. "Are you going to get in back
with your parents, or would you prefer to keep the front seat?"

John
looked uneasily back at Geoffrey's blue disaster and Isobel's
declamatory van and slid in next to his father. Alan and I got in at
the same time.

"I want
to say how much I appreciate your coming all the way from…" He
hesitated and then concluded triumphantly, "Alaska."

There
was a brief silence.

"We're
so sorry about your daughter," Marjorie said. "We loved her, too, very
much."

"April
was lovable," said Alan.

"It's a
crime, all this business about Walter Dragonette," Ralph said. "You
wonder how such things could go on."

"You
wonder how a person like that can
exist
,"
Marjorie said.

John
chewed his lip and hugged his chest and looked back at the reporters,
who hung one car behind us all the way downtown to the Trott Brothers'
building.

Marjorie
asked, "Will you be back at the college with John next year, or are you
thinking about retiring?"

"I'll be
back by popular demand."

"You
don't have a mandatory retirement age in your business?" This was Ralph.

"In my
case, they made an exception."

"Do
yourself a favor," Ralph said. "Walk out and don't look back. I retired
ten years ago, and I'm having the time of my life."

"I think
I've already had that."

"You
have some kind of nest egg, right? I mean, with April and everything."

"It's
embarrassing." Alan turned around on his seat. "Did you use April's
services, yourself?"

"I had
my own guy." Ralph paused. "What do you mean, 'embarrassing'? She was
too successful?" He looked at me again in the mirror, trying to work
something out. I knew what.

"She was
too successful," Alan said.

"My
friend, you wound up with a couple hundred thousand dollars, right?
Live right, watch your spending, find some good high-yield bonds,
you're set."

"Eight
hundred," Alan said.

"Pardon?"

"She
started out with a pittance and wound up with eight hundred thousand.
It's embarrassing."

I
checked Ralph in the rearview mirror. His eyes had gone out of focus. I
could hear Marjorie breathing in and out.

Finally,
Ralph asked, "What are you going to do with it?"

"I think
I'll leave it to the public library."

I turned
the corner into Hillfield Avenue, and the gray Victorian shape of the
Trott Brothers' Funeral Home came into view. Its slate turrets, gothic
gingerbread, peaked dormers, and huge front porch made it look like a
house from a Charles Addams cartoon.

I pulled
up at the foot of the stone steps that led up to the Trott Brothers'
lawn.

"What's
on the agenda here, John?" his father asked.

"We have
some time alone with April." He got out of the car. "After that there's
the public reception, or visitation, or whatever they call it."

His
father struggled along the seat, trying to get to the door. "Hold on,
hold on, I can't hear you." Marjorie pushed herself sideways after her
husband.

Alan
Brookner sighed, popped open his door, and quietly got out.

John
repeated what he had just said. "Then there's a service of some kind.
When it's over, we go out to the crematorium."

"Keeping
it simple, hey?" his father asked.

John was
already moving toward the steps.; "Oh." He turned around, one foot on
the first step. "I should warn you in advance, I guess. The first part
is open coffin. The director here seemed to think that was what we
should do."

I heard
Alan breathe in sharply.

"I don't
like open coffins," Ralph said. "What are you supposed to do, go up and
talk to the person?"

"I wish
I
could
talk to the person,"
Alan said. For a moment he seemed
absolutely forlorn. "Some other cultures, of course, take for granted
that you can communicate with the dead."

"Really?"
asked Ralph. "Like India, do you mean?"

"Let's
go up." John began mounting the steps.

"In
Indian religions the situation is a little more complicated," Alan
said. He and Ralph went around the front of the car and began going up
behind John. Bits of their conversation drifted back.

Marjorie
gave me an uneasy glance. I aroused certain misgivings within Marjorie.
Maybe it was the ornamental zippers on my Japanese suit. "Here we go,"
I said, and held out my elbow.

Marjorie
closed a hand like a parrot's claw on my elbow.

Joyce
Brophy held open the giant front door. She was wearing a dark blue
dress that looked like a cocktail party maternity outfit, and her hair
had been glued into place. "Gosh, we were wondering what was taking you
two so long!" She flashed a weirdly exultant smile and motioned us
through the door with little whisk-broom gestures.

John was
talking to, or being talked at by, a small, bent-over man in his
seventies whose gray face was stamped with deep, exhausted-looking
lines and wrinkles. I moved toward Alan.

"No,
now, no, mister, you have to meet my father," Joyce said. "Let's get
the formalities over with before we enter the viewing room, you know,
everything in its own time and all that kinda good stuff."

The
stooping man in the loose gray suit grinned at me ferociously and
extended his hand. When I took it, he squeezed hard, and I squeezed
back. "Yessir," he said. "Quite a day for us all."

"Dad,"
said Joyce Brophy, "you met Professor Ransom and Professor Brookner,
and this is Professor Ransom's friend, ah—"