The Violet Hour: A Novel (30 page)

She sucked her upper lip and tasted the brine of dried perspiration. She stepped closer to his face. He was taller than she had initially estimated. Five-ten, five-eleven maybe. She willed him to tilt his head toward her until their foreheads touched.

“I need something sweet,” she said, withdrawing. “I think there are some cookies in the kitchen.” She disappeared behind the white swinging door.

He wandered into the living room, which was full of people, and when she returned to him, she was flushed and holding a glass of juice. She stood very near him.

“I can’t figure you out,” she said, one hand tense and aloft with her drink, the other languid at her side.

He reached for the languid arm, touching the fleshy underside of her wrist. His fingers rolled lightly over her veins, which popped out, blue and hungry. “I don’t fully understand myself either.”

“But you chose to come here today,” she said. “You tracked me down. For all I know, you made up that stuff about living in the area. For all I know, you’ve been following me since Saturday night.”

“No, I wouldn’t lie to you. I might lie to other people, but not you.”

“Not to be trite, but why me?”

“Because why not? Because we’re all just passengers on this train.” He looked around at all the old people accumulating like dust bunnies in comfort. “We loop around and around on the same fucking tracks every day of our lives. We’ve got nowhere to be, not really. So most of us never get off. We just sit back in our seats and endure the ride, watching the same fucking fields and rear ends of towns roll by.”

“Shh,” she said. People, even the deaf ones, were starting to look their way. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Joanne Hickory, her grandmother’s friend who still had her husband, and her diamond earring, too.

“We take the guarantees,” Toby went on, undaunted. “We take the money. We take the security of living by the book. But it’s fear; it’s complacency. And I say it’s bullshit. When you see something from the window that’s beautiful and good and rare and right, you have to get off the train. You have to put your feet down on the ground and you have to seize it.”

“And that’s me?” She felt faint. Who spoke this way?

“That’s you.” His hand now encircled her wrist. “I’m seizing you.”

She forgot about their audience. Something inside her swelled, and it was glorious. She felt the intoxication of fame. She had a disciple; she was immortal; she could do anything in the world that she wished.

Rolling her wrist out of his hold, she seized his hand in hers. “Come with me,” she said.

“Where are we going?” he breathed.

“We’re getting out of here.” She grabbed her purse from the closet and started stuffing it with mints from the dish on the telephone table. It had been years since she’d felt this dominant, this powerful, this good.

They burst out of the house into the blazing afternoon light, just as a gust of hot wind licked and lifted everything that wasn’t nailed down to the street. Flags waved from a cluster of poles at the Metro stop and lunch bags got away from people eating sandwiches in the plaza. Elizabeth’s jersey dress clung to her legs, her stomach, her breasts. She swished her hips as they walked, and gave in. She was female. She was sex walking out of a funeral home and into the still living day.

U
pstairs, in Cassandra’s room, Abe cut through the taped sides of his package with a pair of kitchen scissors. He’d rushed back from the church service, skipping the burial, which was really only for close family anyway, to wait for his delivery.

Since grass had become a constant in his life, he’d traveled as little as possible, for fear of being sniffed out for arrest by an airport security dog. When he simply had to leave California, for a conference, or an emergency, as in a way this was, he went to great lengths to deliver the drug to himself by the safest and least conspicuous means. He’d learned the sunblock trick from Upchurch, of all people, his old mentor at UCSF, who’d once brought grass back from Mexico in the fifties. But the brown parcel in his hands now was his own semigenius invention. Addressed to Dr. Abraham Green, it contained packing peanuts and a gift-wrapped box with a typed card that read, “Dear Dr. Green, Thank you for offering to visit my mother in the hospital on your trip. I would be so grateful if you could pass this gift along to her. I look forward to seeing you for my regular appointment next month—you’ll be glad to hear my arthritis pain has lessened since I last saw you. Yours truly, Susan Johnston.” It was a generic, and perhaps overly wordy note, not to mention 99
percent unnecessary, but it gave him an excuse.
It isn’t mine. It’s my patient’s, and given the confidential nature of our relationship, I’m afraid I can’t disclose what’s inside.
He imagined himself standing up, shoulders back, indignant in response to whatever authority had questioned him. He hoped that if it ever came to it, he’d have the courage to behave as he’d imagined.

He set the card on the bedspread next to a disposable plate he’d snagged from the dining room buffet, and, after checking to see that the door was still shut, he gently slid his finger under the present’s taped-down flap, so as not to tear the wrapping. In his rational mind, he knew he was home free, but it calmed him to preserve the paper, to make him feel he had one last defense. In the event a squadron of SWAT guys in short sleeves and hard black bulletproof vests burst through the front door to the Fabricant home, cursing and spitting and shouldering up to walls, he could rewrap the box as though nothing had happened, preserving his freedom and reputation. He ran his finger under the last piece of tape and, exhaling, removed the box from its paper. He held it up, and sniffed it, as he’d done when he packed it two days prior. It still smelled like cardboard.

Less paranoid now, he began to work more quickly, opening the box and removing the object that lay bedded in additional peanuts inside. It was a candy dispenser, shaped like a giant green M&M in the garb and posture of the Statue of Liberty. She wore a look of bemused pride on her face, and her minty robes, which hung from either her ear or her tiny shoulder or both, fell open scandalously at the chest, revealing a trademark blazing white
m
. Abe shook her a few times, smiling at the familiar thud inside. He then removed her crown and reached into her head, fishing out a chunk of hardened chocolate with streaks of color in the mix. “Oh, shoot,” he said, playing along with his own moronic game. “They must have melted in the mail.” He placed the paper plate on the floor and knelt down over it, holding the amorphous hunk of chocolate in both hands. With a decisive tap, he cracked it open, and the thing he needed most of all emerged: a clear plastic baggie, packed tight with papers and grass.
He peeled away the rest of the chocolate casing and returned it to Lady Liberty’s belly, to be saved for an after-toke treat. The baggie went into his leather cigar case, which in turn went into his pants pocket, where he could feel it, secure on his thigh.

The whole thing made him feel like a cocky, irritable teenager. He was proud of his ingenuity, but resented having to exercise it at all. Abe himself had been a responsible kid, working a variety of part-time jobs to help his grandmother pay for college. In Richmond, he was called an egghead and sometimes even worse, but by high school he was mostly left alone, unbullied and uninvited, with plenty of time to read. Even in college, back in Philly, when someone finally offered him a joint, he sucked it mindfully, finely calibrating his high so that he would know how much he could handle should it ever come his way again. Before California, he never would’ve contrived to ship himself grass in the mail; he never would’ve kept it, let alone known how to buy it. He knew he was at a disadvantage now, having missed out on the lawlessness of youth. It would’ve been good training for a freer middle age; it would’ve taught him self-righteousness and how to dodge suspicion, how to be careful without always being afraid.

With the cigar case still in his pocket, Abe flattened the mailing box and wrapping, and took them down the stairs, past the mourners in various rooms, and out back to the place where the family stacked cardboard for recycling. That done, he drifted deeper into the yard, intending to slip out through the opening in the hedge that led to the side street beyond. He’d done his part, basically. He’d been the good guy who’d shown up when it counted. Now he figured he was entitled to wander, just a casual guy on his way to the neighborhood park, where he hoped to find a picnic table set off on its own, or some other private corner for his smoke.

Howard’s unfinished sauna still stood naked in the middle of the yard, blocking Abe’s path to the opening in the hedge. He glanced in through the uprights and was surprised to see Cassandra sitting on a small stool inside. She held her hands in her lap, cradling the right
hand in the left as though she’d somehow sliced her palm and was waiting for someone to bring her a bandage.

She looked up now, and caught him staring. Her eyes were deep and dull, and for a frightening instant, she seemed not to recognize him. But then her face levitated into an expression of regret, and she released her unwounded hand.

“Were you going to say something?” she asked. “Or were you just going to stand there and wait for me to see you?”

“I thought you heard me,” he lied.

She shrugged. “I’m coming down off Xanax.”

He bit his lip at her matter-of-fact tone. One of his early weaknesses with his wife was that he used to think everything she said was adorable. She knew it and went out of her way to speak even more fetchingly than she might’ve otherwise done. In the old days, she wouldn’t have simply said, “Xanax.” She would’ve drawn it out, practically whined it, like a little girl talking about her kitty cat. And he would’ve fallen for it. How clever she was, poking fun at women who love their antidepressants the way children love their pets! He would’ve grabbed her and held her to his chest and she would’ve laughed, because she knew she was clever, too. But now, here she was, saying simply, “Xanax,” like it was nothing but a drug people took when terrible things happened in their lives. Here she was, a woman who loved it without irony.

She stared at him. “Stop judging me.”

“Who am I to judge?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you take it regularly?” he asked.

“What?”

“Xanax.”

“Only every time my father dies. So, you know, once a week, on average.”

“Well, which is it?”

“Abe. I’m not one of your patients.”

“Mmm.” He considered the opening in the hedge. He could walk
away now if he wanted. She wouldn’t dare call after him; she wanted to keep things civil. Her whole family was this way. It had something to do with funerals. You could get away with anything with these people at a funeral.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

He heard himself laugh. “Truthfully?”

“No.” She smiled cruelly. “Lie to me.”

Not an activity I’m familiar with. Maybe you could give me some pointers?
The retort buzzed through him like a wasp, startling him, and leaving him in a state of suspicious tension, alert, poised to swat it in case it returned. Only once he was satisfied he’d say something civil did he venture to open his mouth.

“I was going to the park to have a joint.” The truth after all. “Don’t judge
me
.”

She perked up. “What, just for fun?”

He saw a weighty explanation coming at him and tried his best to made it sound light. “It’s something I do every now and then.” He patted his pocket.

She continued to smile, waiting for his real answer.

He shrugged. “Anyway.”

“Ohhh,” she said at last. “You’re addicted.”

He didn’t feel like explaining that grass is not addictive. “And you’re not.”

“It’s a funeral, for Christ’s sake. They recommend Xanax to people in mourning. I’m supposed to feel weak because I need a little help getting through it? Give me a break.”

Abe stared at her blazing red hair; she must’ve taken to dyeing it. She noticed him looking and sighed. Her hands fell between her knees and she slumped a little on her stool.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said, finally. “I’m embarrassed of what we’ve become.”

“We’re divorced people,” he said experimentally. It didn’t sound half as bad leaving his lips as he’d expected.

“We’re divorced people,” she agreed. “So what? Half of all marriages end in divorce.” It seemed to satisfy her to have a statistic.

“Frankly, it feels like everyone. Everyone but Gail and Steve.”

She gave an assenting grunt.

“Have you seen them lately?” he asked. “How are they doing?”

“The same. Extraordinary.”

“They know the secret, I guess. Probably should’ve observed them more carefully. We could’ve learned something.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “It probably would have happened anyway.”

He didn’t quite know what she meant by “it,” and he didn’t ask. They had wandered too far into dangerous territory already. He didn’t want to push his luck.

“How are you doing?” he finally asked, falling back on easy sympathy.

“You know,” she said, “it’s better if I don’t talk about it. I’ve felt better these past few minutes than I have in days.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m that good?”

She narrowed her eyes and made a squishing sound with her lips. “You’re that annoying. It’s a distraction. I need distraction.” Her eyes drifted to his pants pocket, where his fingers still clutched his cigar case, waiting for her to release him. She pointed. “How about that joint, actually?”

T
HEY WENT OFF
down the side street together, past redbrick homes that had been converted into apartments. Mirrored office windows flashed through the trees overhead and the sound of traffic dwindled the farther out they walked. If he’d felt like a teenager before, he felt even more like one now, sneaking off to smoke dope with a girl. Her face was pink from the heat and she kept stooping to scratch a fresh mosquito bite on her ankle. He started to remind himself that they were adults, then thought better of it. They had hurt each other
as adults; they might have a better chance as kids. He thought of a colleague he’d once caught speaking to his wife in a goofy voice in their kitchen, where he’d thought that no one could hear. There was something impulsive and puppyish and downright kidlike in what he and Cassandra were doing now. Maybe that was the secret, the thing they’d been missing.