Ellipsis

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I work for Ms. Wells. I’m trying to find out who hurt her.”

  “I have no idea who hurt her.”

  “You don’t seem all that chagrined about what happened.”

  Her lips curled in an enigmatic grin. “Chagrined. I like that word. It suggests charm and good humor yet it means just the opposite. As you seem to know.”

  I smiled and shrugged. “I read books once in a while.”

  “Really? What kind of books?”

  “Ones that keep me awake.” I looked back the way I’d come. “It isn’t all that, shall we say … salubrious out here, Ms. Bardwell. I wonder if I could come inside.”

  She shook her head with amusement. “Salubrious, is it? Now you’re showing off.”

  I admitted it.

  She licked her lips while she pondered. “I suppose the police will be here sooner or later.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Then I would be wise to have a dress rehearsal, I suppose.”

  She closed the door, unhooked the chain, opened it wide enough for me to enter, then closed and locked it behind us. I felt like a bit player in an Eric Ambler novel, delivering the key to the code.

  The apartment was a drab and dingy studio, with a trundle bed along one wall, a pine table painted with pea green enamel along another, an orange butterfly chair in the corner, and an upturned orange crate in the minimalist kitchen that featured a hot plate that looked one fried egg away from a short circuit. No TV or stereo was in sight, only a small clock radio on the floor next to the bed and half a dozen white votive candles that had to stand in for a fireplace.

  The most prevalent form of diversion was books. There were dozens of them, piled everywhere, including on the window ledges and space heater. The ones I could see were by people like Gardner and Forster and Burroway and purported to teach their readers how to write. Interestingly, none of the books had jackets or even bright colored boards—they had clearly been bought used, castoffs acquired at garage sales and thrift shops, a treasure trove of intelligence plucked from the jetsam of this purportedly literary city by someone with a thirst for knowledge and an empty purse. Since I’d been in such straits myself in my early days, my respect for their owner began to rise. But I don’t think it’s a good sign when even writers can’t afford new books.

  Lucy Dunston Bardwell pointed toward a straight-backed chair near the green table and invited me to sit. The table seemed to serve as both dinette and desk. As I eased down onto the frayed cane seat, I noticed a notebook lying open on the table, spiral and college-ruled, of the kind I used to use in class to take notes when I was awake enough to write. The pages of this one were full of tiny handwriting done with blue ballpoint, then edited once with red ink and a second time with green. As a result of the multiple revisions, the page was completely filled with manuscript, in all the margins and between all the lines. I don’t know how it measured up as literature, but if her goal was to minimize her use of foolscap, Ms. Bardwell was already successful.

  I got as comfortable as I could in the rickety chair and looked at Lucy Bardwell, who had taken a seat on a pillow on the bare floor, then crossed her legs and clasped her hands as though I were some kind of seer. She wore what looked to be a homemade outfit—baggy parachute pants and an oversize rag sweater and battered Birkenstocks over gray wool socks that were nearly a quarter inch thick. I could have reproduced the ensemble for less than ten bucks in any Goodwill outlet in the city.

  “Is Ms. Wells okay?” Lucy Bardwell asked all of a sudden.

  “Not really. She’s badly burned. They’re still not sure she’ll make it.”

  “You mean she might die?”

  I nodded.

  She bowed her head and murmured what could have been a prayer. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t sound very sympathetic when you accosted her at the reading.”

  Her eyes filled with the bright light of virtue. “I didn’t accost her, Mr. Tanner. What I said was entirely true. She stole my ideas and my words, and now that she’s rich she should pay for it, somehow. But not like that. No one deserves that, except maybe the editors in New York who keep rejecting my work.” She rolled her eyes to show she was joking.

  I smiled. “So you didn’t hire a hit man to take her out?”

  Her look darkened. “No, but that’s nothing to joke about, surely. Murder has never seemed very funny to me.”

  “Me, either,” I admitted. “Is there anyone who might have been angry with Chandelier on your behalf?”

  She frowned and gnawed her lip. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Father or brother or boyfriend? Someone who might think Chandelier had gypped you out of a major career as a writer but with her out of the way you might get it on track?”

  She blinked and looked toward the window, which looked out on to an air shaft and a solid brick wall. “My father is dead and my brother’s in Sweden and the only lover I ever had committed suicide six years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I’ll never get over it.” She pointed at the notebook I’d seen on the table. “One reason is, it’s very hard to do this by yourself.”

  “Do what, exactly?”

  “Write.”

  “Write what?”

  “Novels and short stories.”

  “How long have you been doing that?”

  “Eleven years. Going on twelve.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  She nodded. “It’s similar to solitary confinement, I imagine.”

  “How so?”

  “As authoritarians seem to have known from time immemorial, sitting alone in a room for extended periods can make you crazy.”

  “Is that what you are, Ms. Bardwell?”

  She seemed to treat the issue as a serious one. “Not yet, I hope. But I’ll probably be the last to know, don’t you think?”

  “Well, you don’t seem crazy to me.”

  She accepted the compliment graciously. “Thank you very much.”

  “Are you still taking writing classes?”

  “I can’t afford any more classes, but even if I could, I’m not sure they’re what I need at this point.”

  “What do you need at this point? Money?”

  She smiled with shy deprecation. “Last year I earned four thousand two hundred dollars waiting tables at the local Denny’s and I actually managed to live on it.” She gestured at the room. “My life is hardly splendid, as you can see. But what I need most isn’t money, what I need most is optimism.”

  “About what?”

  She shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “My future. My work. My life. I’ve written four novels and twenty-two short stories. None have been published, none have been taken on by an agent. Even I know that it seems silly to go on at this point, insane, really, but for some reason I’m afraid to stop.”

  “Why is that?”

  She couldn’t meet my eyes. “I guess because I’m afraid my work is all I have.”

  “Maybe writing’s not what you do best,” I said quickly, to head off a case of the doldrums. “Maybe you’d be happier doing something else.”

  She shook her head with the vehemence of a zealot. “Writing is my life. It’s all I do, all I think about, all I dream about, all I want out of existence.”

  “But you are writing. You’re just not getting published.”

  She shook her head in sympathy with my ignorance. “I’m not one of those who want to ‘have written,’ Mr. Tanner. I work my butt off. I write ten hours a day, six days a week. So I’m not in it for the glory, I’m in it for the joy of creation and the music of the language, and for what I learn about life as I write. But writing good prose is only half the Holy Grail.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “Readers. I need to know people are being touched by what I do; that my work makes some sort of difference in their lives. Not by answering the great ethical questions or anythi
ng—I’m not a philosopher or even an intellectual. But I do want to give people joy. And peace. And escape from the hardships of their lives for a while, which is the gift my favorite books have always given me.” She looked up at me and grinned shyly. “That’s probably too much to hope for, isn’t it?”

  “No, Not at all,” I said, mostly because I hoped it was true.

  “The sad thing is, I’m a good writer. Not to brag or anything, but a wide variety of people have told me that over the years, including Chandelier Wells, if you can believe it. But it’s not enough to be good, I’ve discovered. You need something extra. A hook. A gimmick. A kick in the teeth to some jaded editor who thinks she’s seen it all before. And in my case, that something was Childish Ways. The topicality of the subject matter, the gritty humanity of the protagonist, interplay of terror and romance in the plotline—all the elements of commercial success were there. But Chandelier stole them and published them and kept my life from moving on. Do you wonder that I’m furious at her?”

  “What I wonder is if you did anything but berate her at the reading.”

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with that explosion, surely?”

  “I don’t know if you did or not.”

  She gazed around the room as though she hoped I would do the same and read its message accurately. “All I do is write, Mr. Tanner. And go to church. And work at the restaurant. And sit with my mother on Sunday afternoon while she listens to the radio preachers. I have no money; I have no lover; I have no children; I have very few friends. Two, in fact, and one of them lives in Oregon. Truth to tell, I have no life at all beyond the lives I create in my books and my stories.”

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

  “I’m really not, as it happens. The only things I have other than my work are my honor and my dignity and my effort to do no harm to the world. I recycle, I keep the heat below sixty-eight degrees, I take public transportation, I’m a Big Sister when I’m not too tired. The only things that keep me going are my belief that I’m a good person and my dream of becoming a writer. Intentionally injuring another, no matter how odious that person is or how much pain she’s caused me, would destroy both of my lifelines, Mr. Tanner. I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Only in one sense,” I said, then stood up and stuck out a hand. “I wish you well, Ms. Bardwell. I’m sure good things will happen if you persevere.”

  Her grin was brash and irrepressible. “I’ve been persevering for eleven years. I’m not about to stop just when I’ve gotten good at it.”

  Chapter 20

  Lucy Bardwell’s reclusive quest for literary achievement weighed heavily on me as I drove toward downtown. I didn’t know anything about her talent, but in her lonely devotion to art and in the sacrifices she had made to pursue it, she was more of a writer than most, at least in my judgment. Unfortunately for Lucy, my judgment didn’t count. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t seem to have the will or the passion to make such an effort myself, on behalf of anything. Except maybe Jill Coppelia.

  I was on my way to the offices of Thurston Buckley, the real estate tycoon who had been smitten with Chandelier Wells and whom Chandelier had allegedly dumped, but by accident I found myself driving down Folsom Street past the offices of the San Francisco Riff. In light of the paper’s flagrant enmity toward Ms. Wells, I decided to make a detour.

  The Riff was a self-styled alternative newspaper, the latest in a long string of such publications that sprouted with regularity in the Bay Area and whose lineage went back to the Berkeley Barb. The Riff was more prosperous than most of its ilk, and since it was given away free at what seemed like ten thousand locations in the city, it had a wide circulation and, on occasion, a surprising degree of clout, especially with regard to social and multicultural issues. Although not nearly as much as its arrogant editorials implied.

  I read the Riff myself from time to time, mostly for the weirdly inventive cartoons and the masochistic and irreverent sex column, but I skimmed the book, movie, and restaurant reviews as well, since they catered to inclinations and budgets more like my own than those the Chronicle’s pompous experts addressed. Their in-house book critic was Allen Goodhew, who advertised himself as a former publishing executive, which might mean he had been a senior editor at Knopf or that he had a Xerox machine in his basement or Pagemaker on his computer.

  I parked in the small gravel lot next door and entered the similarly modest brick building, a two-story former warehouse with the faded remains of a Burke’s Cartage and Storage sign still clinging to the side, a thriving coffee roaster on the ground floor, and the offices of the Riff on level two. The office was sparse and cluttered, with rock posters on the walls, computers on the desks, rows of reference materials on the bookshelves, and coffee cups on every available surface, no doubt in tribute to the addictive powers of the aromas rising up from the roaster below. I got my daily dose of caffeine merely by inhaling.

  When I finally found someone who would talk to me, it was in the person of a young woman named Wendy Lowenstein. She was dressed in a black floor-length skirt, a purple skintight leotard, and an oval band of pink lipstick that was double the width of her lips. Around her hips was a braided sash, apparently fashioned out of someone’s neckties.

  When I asked if Allen Goodhew was around, she wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I doubt it. He usually makes it a point not to be.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “We’re not supposed to say. Especially about our precious Allen.”

  “Why not?”

  She adjusted one of the many silver rings that wrapped her fingers like hose clamps. “Allen makes people mad. Especially writers. Or victims, as he calls them. A fantasy guy broke his nose one time after Allen called him a Terry Brooks without balls.” She pointed left and shuddered. “The bloodstain is still in the carpet. Allen is very …”

  “Acerbic.”

  “Yes.”

  “Callous.”

  “Yes.”

  “Vituperative.”

  She frowned. “What are you, some kind of wordsmith yourself? I suppose you want a piece of him, too.”

  I shook my head. “I’m what you might call a source. Goodhew called me a couple of days ago and left a message on my machine. I used to work for Chandelier Wells. Apparently I have some information he’s interested in.”

  “Derogatory, I’ll bet.”

  I smiled. “Massively.”

  “Allen hates her, for some reason.”

  “So I hear. Why do you think that is?”

  “Knowing Allen, she probably split an infinitive.”

  “Surely it’s more than that. In his last review, he called her a syntactical slut.”

  “He’s called her worse than that, believe me, though not in print, fortunately for our libel insurer. But with Allen, all it takes is bad writing. Really. The guy’s a fanatic about prose. He lit into my piece on genital accessories so rabidly I thought he was going to wring my neck.”

  “He’s going to wring my neck if I don’t get this information to him.”

  “Well, the only thing I can tell you is that he hangs out in the bar down the street.”

  “There are lots of bars down this street.”

  “McGuinn’s.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.” I turned to go, then looked back. “What does he look like?”

  “Short. Skinny. Pizza face. Ponytail.” She smiled at a private thought. “He doesn’t bathe all that often, so if you don’t see him right away, you can probably smell him.”

  “You sound like you know Mr. Goodhew pretty well.”

  She wrinkled her nose and nodded. “Yeah. Typical, I guess.”

  “Typical how?”

  “I knew him lots better than he knew me.”

  I set off down the street in search of a bar that trafficked in literary criticism. In the fifties, that would have included half the gin joints in town. Now, McGuinn’s might be it.

&nbs
p; It was a typical south-of-Market Irish pub. The decor was obsolete and untended, the customers insular and aloof, the bartender huge and intimidating and in this case scarred above both brows from the bare-knuckle brawls of his youth. I started to ask about Allen Goodhew, then realized I didn’t have to.

  He was sitting in a booth in the back, wearing a wrinkled tuxedo jacket over a faded gray sweatshirt and hunched over a notebook in which he was scribbling as fast as he could with a black enamel fountain pen. Although it wasn’t much after noon, he was nursing a pint of dark beer. He looked more like a punk rocker than a scribe, and he was twenty years younger than anyone else in the place.

  Without being asked, I slid onto the bench across from him. “Let’s talk about Chandelier Wells,” I said when he didn’t bother to look up, firing my best shot first.

  The pen he was using looked sleek and expensive. The journal he wrote in was the size of a menu and bound in black leather. The ink he applied to its milky white page stopped flowing in midsentence.

  The eyes that peered up at me were bleary and bloodshot and vague. “Who the hell are you?”

  “A fan.”

  “I don’t have any fans. Thank God.”

  “Not you. Chandelier Wells.”

  He snapped the cap on his pen and leaned back. His smile was lazy and pejorative and exposed a row of teeth that were stained the color of weak tea. “You don’t look like a moron.”

  “Looks can be deceiving. For example, you don’t look capable of murder. Or even planning it. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who am I supposed to have murdered?”

  “Not murdered. Only attempted.”

  He shrugged with elaborate unconcern. “Who’s the lucky survivor?”

  “Chandelier Wells.”

  His smile recombined to become a gloat. “Let me guess. The weapons were my trenchant textual analysis, my scathingly scrupulous aesthetics, and my crushingly apposite wit.”

  “The first time, yes. The last time, you used more potent ammunition.”

  “Like what?”

  “A car bomb.”

  He shook his head with disgust, as if I had suggested we dance to the monotonous jig being piped through the loudspeakers. “What are you, friend, some pathetic pop novelist trying out a puerile plot device to see if I bite? Or are you merely a minion of the local gendarmerie?”