“No,” said Scott. “They took it for the ravings of a deranged person. That is not the point. The point is that this man Mulligan does not intend that it should end with the police. A jury might very well believe the story. It is, after all, largely factual. Worse, it is one hell of a story for the media. It will be published. Your picture and the most intimate details of your past and present life will be splashed all over television and the press. It will cause a sensation. You are known to the public, and you are also, if I may say so on such very short acquaintance, most photogenic. You have a reputation as the author of daring books. In terms of journalistic appetite, that’s an irresistible combination. The media will follow up. They will find out more. It will be extremely unpleasant.”
Scott’s voice did not change in any way as he spoke these words, nor did the urbane expression on his face.
“You seem to be very well informed, Mr. Scott,” I said. “I assume that you are aware of the history between Bear Mulligan and myself?”
“I am, indeed,” he said. “I have read the record. It was a revolting crime. But the charges against Mulligan were dismissed. In the eyes of the law, therefore, he is as innocent as a newborn babe. In the eyes of the media, the allegation of rape and his exoneration, not to mention the drama in Central Park, are grist for the mill—just another compelling reason to do the story and make the profit. That is the reality with which we must deal.”
“The reality is that Bear Mulligan is a monster,” I said. “He’s a psychopath. He always has been. What happened in Central Park happened because he had threatened to tear my head off and he had come there, stalking me, to do exactly that. He was entirely capable of doing it in the presence of hundreds of witnesses, crazy enough and strong enough to do it. He intended to do it. He was on the point of doing it when Clementine’s people did what they did to stop him. That’s why he was there. That’s why they were there.”
Scott sighed. This was the first sign he had given that he was not utterly imperturbable.
“I accept that to be the truth of the matter,” he said. “However.”
“However what?”
“Even if Mulligan is all the things you say he is, even if he did intend to murder you in cold blood, he is in fact also a former All-American football player, much beloved in Texas and remembered by football fans everywhere. He is also a distinguished paleontologist who has made important discoveries, written books, appeared on television, and lectured all over the country. In his way, he too is very photogenic. These facts are stored in the mother memory to which all journalists have access. They will be stimulated to recover these data and turn them into money. It is their nature.”
“Why do you keep on telling me there is no hope?” I asked.
“If I thought there was no hope, I wouldn’t be here,” Scott said.
Scott shot his cuff and looked at his watch.
“I must run,” he said.
He smiled at me—big square, well-kept teeth, avuncular twinkle, eyes on my chest. Then he said, “May I have your answer before I go?”
“What is the question?”
“Shall we work together on this problem?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Fine,” Scott said. “Perhaps we can chat some more over dinner tonight. I know a nice quiet little place just around the corner.”
I said, “I think we’ve chatted enough for one day, thank you.”
Scott looked through me as if I were someone who happened to be on the same elevator as he was. Clementine opened her eyes wide, cocked her head, looked annoyed. I was such a bother.
Downstairs, the chaps awaited—one in the lobby, one on the sidewalk, one across the street. Now that I knew they were there, I was a camera, searching the blurred crowd and pulling Tom (whirr-click), Dick (whirr-click), and Harry (whirr-click) out of the multitude and into focus.
3
AS I WALKED WITH THE crowd, I called Melissa. When she picked up, I heard her kids having a fight in the background. She sounded disheartened. Ordinarily I would have shouted something encouraging over the din and hung up, but I needed her counsel. I asked if I could come over.
“You do hear what’s going on here?” she said.
“Yeah, but I figure you’ll have sent them to their rooms by the time I get there.”
“You should be so lucky.”
By the time I got to her apartment, the kids were in angelic mode. We knew one another well. I had been their babysitter of last resort ever since they were born. On Melissa’s instructions, they called me Auntie. They were as beautiful as Greeks on an urn and painfully bright—no surprise considering who their mother was and the fact that Melissa wasn’t the sort of girl who married stupid, homely men. We ate kiddies’ macaroni and cheese for dinner. If you put ketchup on it, it’s almost as good as Chef Boyardee. The kids cleaned their plates—a peace offering to their mother, I supposed. She responded in kind by not insisting that they eat their salad. Dutiful kisses for Auntie followed, real ones for Mom. Then the kids disappeared into their rooms.
Melissa knew all about the capture of Bear Mulligan and his plans for the future. I told her about Adam, including his neurotic break on seeing the apartment for the first time. To my surprise, this was news to her. She listened attentively, asking nudging little questions from time to time. She didn’t ask why I had been crazy enough to invite Adam into the apartment in the first place. Some things are too stupid to be mentioned.
“I’ve got to say you’re worrying about the right things,” Melissa said when I had finished. “This guy—Adam?—doesn’t sound like a share person.”
“He’s pretty square.”
“Then he’ll be easy to replace. He’s the least of your worries.”
She was right, of course. For Melissa, that was not enough. Without skipping a breath, she told me the reasons why she was right.
“First of all, the story is false. You and Henry are not sexual partners.”
“You’re absolutely sure of that?”
Melissa snorted. “Yes, I am,” she replied. “The story will be published. Elway Scott was right. It’s irresistible.”
“I’ve always gotten along fine with the media. Mostly, they’re nice people.”
“This time you’re not going on a book tour.”
“So what are you advising me to do?”
“Shut up and weather the storm,” Melissa said. “Neither confirm nor deny anything. Do not speak a word to the media. Confide in no one—no one—about anything. Avoid cameras if you can, but don’t cover your face like a perp when the media starts camping outside your building.”
“How would they find it?”
“They have ways. If Adam is pissed enough at your alleged infidelity, and he certainly sounds like the type, he could give a reporter the address, plus a glimpse of the splendor in which you live on Henry’s nickel. A virtual tour of the apartment would be grist for a week’s stories. ‘Artist’s impression of love nest.’ If Adam keeps his mouth shut, they might follow you.”
“In spite of Clementine’s chaps?”
“The chaps don’t have enough nets to capture this particular plague of locusts,” Melissa said. “Those people are like the secret police—no warrants required, no limits, no consequences, no conscience. Show trials are their bread and butter.”
“Maybe I’m the one who should go away,” I said.
“Not a bad idea,” Melissa said. “You could move to Nuku Hiva if it gets too bad. Or Hsi-tau. The chow chows would deal with the press. Bear is banned from China, but if he does find you and you want the creep shot or locked up forever, General Yao is your man. You could finish your novel in peace and quiet.”
“And celibacy.”
“Celibacy worked for Catherine of Siena.”
From the lobby of Melissa’s building, I called Adam. There was no harm in finding out if he was still mad. He knew my voice at once. He acted as if nothing had happened.
I decided to
be charming, too. I said, “What are you up to?”
“Waiting for the phone to ring,” he said. “Please hold. I have to make a call.”
He was back on the line in thirty seconds.
“Same hotel, as quick as you can get there,” he said. “They upgraded us to a suite.”
“Lovely,” I said.
I set off into the night, the chaps trotting along behind, beside, and before me like so many chow chows.
4
THE STORY BROKE. BY EVENING Henry and I were the stars of a thousand blogs. By the following morning it had spilled over into television news and the few newsprint tabloids—now weeklies distributed free of charge from unlocked sidewalk boxes—that had survived the rise of electronic journalism. No broadsheet newspapers remained except as websites—digital ghosts of the glorious old trollops that in their day had rubbed printer’s ink into their victims’ wounds.
The story and its biases were pretty much as anticipated. If you want to sell gossip, you can’t go wrong by going after a trillionaire. Bear was the victim, Henry the villain. “Who is the real Henry Peel?” asked the Kens and Barbies of cable news. If he was human enough to have a paramour, he was their kind of guy—like Citizen Kane, like Jack Kennedy, like all those lucky stiffs who took their pick of the chicks. Vintage pictures of Bear in his football uniform and in the Stetson and ostrich-skin cowboy boots he wore when digging up fossils made the point that he was a real all-American. Jumpy old film clips of his comic-book exploits in championship games and his big, charming postgame aw-shucks grins for the camera certified his credentials.
Clementine and I had not spoken since the encounter with Scott and I wondered if we would ever speak again, but she dutifully informed me, in a curt phone call, that a mob of journalists had gathered at the entrance of my old apartment. The chaps were keeping an eye on them, so if the swarm showed signs of changing location, I would be informed.
Henry did not call. Who knew what he thought?
Adam didn’t call, either. We had been together almost every night, all night, for the past week and a half. During our last rendezvous, at the usual hotel, I had presented him with my O. Laster watercolor. I wrapped the wonderful thing in layers of brown paper and carried it to the hotel on my lap in the back of a taxi.
He opened it at once, not pausing to read my Hallmark card, ripping paper and throwing it all over the room like a small boy in a Christmas-morning frenzy. He knew it was a picture, of course, but what picture? I had such a lot of them. When he saw that it was the watercolor, he let out a yelp.
He said, “I hope you don’t imagine I’m going to say I can’t possibly accept such a gift.”
What could I do but look pleased? Not that Adam noticed. He rushed to a wall, took down the lifeless hotel-room print of a quaint covered bridge that hung there, and replaced it with Clementine’s watercolor. He backed rapidly away from it, eyes fixed upon it, arms extended as if dancing with the invisible woman of his dreams.
The picture changed the room, as if it had somehow let in more light. Because so much drabness surrounded so little color, the opposite ought to have been true, but there you are. And there we were. We went to bed with the lights on, so Adam could keep looking at the picture. I didn’t really mind sharing.
In the morning, earlier than usual, Adam took his painting off the wall and left. As we parted, he gave me a regulation farewell-my-lover look of affection and remembered pleasure, but what he was really remembering was the watercolor.
He said, “Thank you, my love. This is the nicest thing anyone ever gave me. I’ll never let it go.”
Was he saying one thing and hoping I thought he was saying another? Was he saying good-bye? Was he faking it? Had he faked his jealousy? Was the answer all of the above?
Bear’s lawyers applied for a writ of habeas corpus. He hadn’t been charged with a crime because the chaps had prevented him from committing one, but he was still under observation at Bellevue. A Solomonic judge released him when he volunteered, through his lawyer, to pay for the damage he had done to hospital property and leave New York at once and never return. The blonde with the décolletage and the microphone who interviewed him as he emerged from the courthouse treated him like a teddy bear.
“How do you feel after your ordeal, Professor Mulligan?”
“Kinda dazed, to tell you the truth. This whole thing has been a big old bad dream.”
“So what’s next?”
“The airport and the first plane back to Texas,” Bear said. “I’ve learned one thing for sure: New York ain’t no place for a country boy.”
“Tell me, professor, what brought you to New York in the first place?”
“I thought I might be able to help folks out—the earthquake and all.”
The camera watched him out of sight. He was wearing his big Stetson, and that plus the high-heeled boots added enough to his height to push him well over seven feet, dirt to dandruff. Somehow the producers resisted the temptation to play Willie Nelson singing “Red Headed Stranger” as America’s most picturesque homicidal maniac walked into the sunset.
5
HENRY CAME BACK. HE ALWAYS did. He was in his bodhisattva mode, tranquil and disconnected from all unpleasantry. He said nothing about the media storm. Plainly he was not in the least interested in it. I felt a pang of irritation and envy that he should be so detached while I was so entangled.
Preoccupied as I was by my plight, I missed the first few words that Henry spoke to me. I vaguely realized that he was talking about the embryos. I thought he said something about Amerigo. By the time I started paying attention, he was four or five sentences into his opening paragraph, and I just couldn’t figure out what he was trying to tell me.
I said, “Henry, forgive me, but I’ve lost the thread. Can you please start over from the beginning?”
He stopped in midword.
“Sure,” Henry said. “I was saying that I wanted you to consider a proposal that may strike you as being, well, a little odd.”
Was this a Jane Austen moment? Surely not.
I said, “Not to worry, Henry. Go right ahead.”
“When I was small, my father used to call me his messenger to the future,” Henry said.
“How nice.”
“He was a nice man,” Henry said. “When Amerigo told us about the doctor who sold passages for embryos aboard the mother ship, I realized that every man wants a messenger to the future. That includes me. I’m not quite sure how to put this to you, but what I’d like to propose to you is that you and I provide an embryo—actually more than one—to sail with the others on the ship.”
I said, “Henry, you take my breath away. How long have you been thinking these thoughts?”
“As I said, ever since Amerigo reported the sabotage,” he said. “I’ve hesitated to bring it up because I’m uncertain about the ethics of the thing.”
“What ethics?”
“It’s a selfish act, maybe even an abuse of power.”
What was a selfish act? Impregnating me? I had no idea what to say.
Henry, watching whatever was going on with my face, said, “Wait a minute.”
“Gladly.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Henry said. “I’m talking about in vitro fertilization.”
Of course he was. How could I have imagined otherwise? I visualized the procedure—ova and sperm stirred together by a lab technician, life awakening, cells multiplying.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Why me?”
Henry grinned. “Because there’s no other possible candidate.”
What did he mean by that? I decided not to ask.
I said, “This is sort of sudden, Henry. If you don’t mind, I’d like a little time to think it over.”
Six
1
THE THOUGHT OF CONCEIVING YET another child I would never know or see was not a happy one. Supposing I lived long enough, would I be as haunted by him or her—or them, since Henry had spoken of producing more
than one embryo—as I had been by the lost child that Bear had left behind him along with my broken bones? I had a thousand questions. Why hadn’t I asked a single one?
I couldn’t deal with this. I needed to get my mind off it. I needed a break. I tried six or seven times to call Adam but got his voice mail. Finally I decided to go hunting for him in SoHo. He seldom left his neighborhood at night. I knew his favorite places. I would surprise him—just bump into him. I packed an overnight bag. I had a plan.
The BMW that Henry had loaned me when last we visited Amerigo in his mansion on the Hudson was still parked in the basement of my building. I had supposed that someone would collect it and return it to its owner, but no one did. Although the car had been sitting there for more than a month, it started right up. The chaps spotted me at once and followed me down the West Side Highway in a bulbous, midnight-blue sedan. When I pulled into a parking lot, the sedan pulled in behind me. Adam’s building was a block or two away from the parking lot. I walked to it, chaps lurking along beside and behind, and rang the buzzer. Adam’s distorted voice issued from the ancient, crackling speaker.
I said, “It’s me.”
A long, long silence ensued. Finally Adam buzzed me in. At his door, I had to ring again. A delay ensued. I put my ear to the door—no sounds within—and counted to fifty, telling myself that I would walk away if I got to fifty—make that a hundred—and the silence remained unbroken. At the count of seventy-nine, he opened the door, but left it on the chain. Through the crack, I could see two-thirds of his face. He needed a shave. His hair was tousled. His eyes were resentful. Clearly he was angry again.
Finally, abruptly, he slammed the door. The End? Apparently not. The chain rattled. The door opened completely. Adam’s lips were compressed into a thin line, his eyes were averted. Based on his behavior the last time he got jealous and underwent a personality change, I had expected accusation, anger, a tantrum. What to make of this sullen passivity? Since eye contact didn’t seem to be on the menu, I looked past him into the apartment—chaos in the living room, and beyond it, the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, garbage can overflowing, pizza boxes and empty bottles and cans everywhere. Where were the roaches, the rats that ought to have been nibbling on this mess? On the telephone he had been wonderful. Now he was crazy again. Something had happened between the call and this moment.
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