I said, “Have you ever considered getting professional help?”
“I’m the one who needs a shrink?” Adam said.
“I meant a cleaning woman.”
“I told you. She quit. The earthquake shook her up.”
Progress. He was talking, volunteering information—looking at me, even. Pretty soon he’d start yelling. Before that happened, I wanted to get him out of here. Adam was fully dressed—quite becomingly dressed, as usual, in khaki shorts and old boat shoes with untied laces and no socks and a black muscle shirt.
I said, “Look, we can’t stay here. Let’s find neutral ground and talk this out.”
“Talk what out?”
“The vicissitudes of life,” I said.
“Why do you think everything is a joke?”
“I don’t. Come on, let’s go for a ride.”
“I don’t want to lose my parking space,” Adam replied. He had shifted from sneer to sarcasm.
“That’s OK,” I said. “I’ve got a car.”
“Rolls-Royce or Lamborghini?”
I said, “BMW. Let’s go.”
He shrugged—what did it matter?—and followed me down the corridor to the elevator. He even pushed the button for the lobby. This wasn’t much of a gesture, but it was a start. I didn’t ask him to drive. Whatever feeble control I now had, I meant to keep. Besides, I had a destination in mind.
When we crossed the Triborough Bridge and got onto the Hutchinson Parkway, Adam said, “Where are we going?”
“What time do you have to be in court tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is Sunday. Remember?”
The midnight-blue sedan was still following us. Probably another one just like it was a half mile ahead of the BMW. The chaps never slept.
I said, “Do you know how to turn on the radio?”
Adam switched it on. The satellite station it was tuned to played nothing but songs of the 1940s—Crosby, Sinatra, Margaret Whiting, Doris Day before she sounded like Doris Day. It was sweet. Cheek-to-cheek music. We didn’t talk. Adam didn’t ask where we were going. The miles flew by. Somewhere between Lee and Lenox the headlights illuminated a sign for the resort hotel we were headed for. I made the turn and in minutes we were parked by the front door. Adam stayed in the car while I went inside, taking the car keys with me so he couldn’t flee. They had a room available—a very nice suite, in fact. Adam was still in the passenger seat when I came out to fetch him. I didn’t see the chaps, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
The suite was lovely. It smelled of dried rose petals and potpourri. The owners had gone to a lot of trouble with authenticity. Within these walls it was 1890 again. A young waiter with twenty-first-century manners brought the bottle of prosecco and the plates of smoked fish and salad I ordered. The wine was too cold, Adam said. It seemed fine to me, but I just smiled.
He showered first. When I emerged after mine he said, “Is this when we have our fight?”
“Tomorrow,” I replied.
Because of the aphrodisiacal effect of anger, the night was somewhat pornographic. In the morning, the promised denunciations flew. It wasn’t much of a quarrel, but it did the job. Even while it was going on I didn’t know what it was about, really, but I knew a valedictory when I heard one.
After breakfast, I don’t know why, we went for a walk in the woods. The path followed a shallow brook that ran over a series of granite ledges. The path wasn’t wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Adam went ahead. The laces of his scuffed old boat shoes whipped around his bony ankles at every step. His khaki shorts were a size too large for him and he had to keep pulling them up because he wore no belt. After half an hour or so, he stopped, and without turning around, waited for me to catch up. At this point the brook ran through a narrow ravine, its waters bouncing off smooth round stones and throwing up mist.
He said, “So what’s the truth?”
At that moment, a black bear, large and glossy, emerged from the underbrush on the opposite side of the ravine. The wind was in my face, so I guessed the animal didn’t smell us or just didn’t think that human beings were much of a threat. The bushes parted again and a roly-poly cub emerged. I poked Adam and pointed at the bears. He didn’t look. He was waiting for his answer.
“Bears,” I whispered.
By the time Adam turned around and looked, the bears were gone—they had just faded back into the woods as if they had never been there.
“The truth about what?” I said to Adam’s back.
“Come on,” he said, turning around. “Let’s get it over with.”
“OK. The truth is that the world is going to come to an end and this will happen quite soon.”
“Cut it out.”
“I’m serious. The end is near.”
“What’s the use?” Adam said. “You can’t be serious about anything.”
“You want truth? You’re a lawyer. Cross-examine.”
“How can I cross-examine someone who invents bears as a way of changing the subject?”
“Are you asking if you can believe what you read in the newspapers?”
“Yes.”
“The answer is no.”
He said, “Then you don’t know Henry Peel?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Henry Peel didn’t bestow on you that apartment or its contents or the BMW?”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“Will you say whether you’re screwing Henry Peel?”
He uttered these words with a twisted, man-of-the-world smile.
I said, “Nor will I say that.”
Adam said, “In other words, the answer is yes.”
“Wake up, Adam. I won’t say it because you have no right to ask.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really. What licenses you to police my life?”
“The crimes you commit.”
I said, “Oh. I wondered.”
Adam said, “Oh, the hell with it.”
He kissed me. It was a gesture, not an impulse. I didn’t kiss him back, just let it happen. The lust was lost and gone forever.
Nevertheless I said, “What would you say to spending another night here?”
“If we’re going to do that, maybe I should buy some clothes,” he said.
I picked them out for him at a local Geoffrey Beene outlet. Without protest, Adam let me pay for his new khakis and polo shirts and a belt, plus underwear and a sweater and a new pair of Top-Siders, as if I had all the money in the world, or at least a credit card that a trillionaire covered for me. Which I did.
Our second night at the hotel was chaste. We dined, we drank, we were kind to each other. We slept in the same bed. It seemed strange without the usual aromas. Around midnight the crystal chandelier rattled. The bed shook. I thought the tremor was a local event. My earthquake research had informed me that there are dormant faults—big ones—under Massachusetts. We got up at five and drove back to the city. When we pulled up in front of Adam’s building, he made no move to kiss, touch, or even look at me. He just sat there expressionless, staring through the windshield.
I said, “Hey.”
Eyes averted, Adam said, “Hey.”
No tears, no last look, no rueful smile. He just got out of the car and closed the door behind him. I watched him walk across the sidewalk. He wore the shorts and muscle shirt he had worn on the way up to the Berkshires. He left the things I had bought for him in the trunk of the car. On the way uptown I stopped at a trash can and got rid of them.
2
NOT LONG AFTER MY WEEKEND with Adam, Clementine called and invited herself to tea. I was somewhat flustered. Naturally she would want to pay her watercolor a visit. What was I supposed to tell her when it wasn’t where it ought to be? If Clementine asked what had happened to the painting, I would have no choice but to tell her the truth—if only because she probably already knew it.
In any event, Clementine was the soul of good nature. She ate two pieces of butter cake and
small-talked like a schoolgirl. Finally she touched the corners of her lips with the square linen napkin and put down her cup.
“Lovely tea,” she said. “Now, I do have something rather important to tell you.”
I waited.
“We feel that the Mulligan situation has stabilized somewhat,” Clementine said. “He’s back at his university, lecturing and basking in the injustice that was done to him. All very reassuring, but of course he’s a psychopath, so one can’t afford to be too tremendously reassured by appearances. We’ll continue to keep a close lookout.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
Clementine said, “There’s one more thing. It’s a bit disturbing. Shall I go on?”
“Please do.”
“We have been making inquiries. Our operation is still in early phases, I’m afraid,” she said. “But we may be on to something. Your broken arm and the manner in which it was inflicted have fascinated me. Mulligan did it deliberately, I gather?”
“Yes. He snapped it over his knee.”
“The pain must have been excruciating.”
“It was.”
“Have you any theory as to why he did it?”
“Apart from the fun of it?”
“Yes. Did you think it had a practical side effect?”
“It rendered me unconscious.”
“So you don’t remember the rape itself?”
“I’m not sure what I remember.”
“One doesn’t,” Clementine said. “Rapists nearly always rape again, you know, and many of them tend to ritualize their methods. They do the same things over and over again in exactly the same manner so as to perfect the thrill. Of course this is never entirely possible, which is why they keep on raping.”
Where was Clementine going with this? I asked her the question.
“It occurred to me that Mulligan might be that sort of rapist,” she replied. “If he raped again and broke another arm or two or three or more, the police who investigated the crime would note the detail.”
“Supposing the rape was reported,” I said.
“Yes, or a body found. I have a strong feeling that there were bodies. You had a lucky escape. Perhaps you were the first and he hadn’t yet fully established his modus operandi. If we can establish that Mulligan was a serial killer, the problem would go away forever.”
I saw. I said, “You’re telling me that you have a hunch.”
“A wild surmise, you might say,” Clementine replied. “But many crimes, if not most, are solved by the follow-up to what you’ve just called a hunch.”
“And have you found evidence that matches your hunch?”
“Not yet. We’ve made a list of places to which Mulligan has traveled, and sent inquiries to the police in all those places, on the chance that there might have been matches in terms of broken arms connected with rapes when he was in the neighborhood.”
She paused for effect.
I asked, “And have the police replied?”
“Not yet. But they will. I know a good many of them personally, so they won’t ignore the request. Not that most of them would ignore it whoever was asking. To an honest copper, a crime committed five thousand kilometers away or ten years in the past is as much a personal concern as a crime committed ten minutes ago in his own precinct.”
She had more that she wanted to say. This was written all over her face. I waited for her to say it.
“Let me ask you this,” Clementine said. “Do you doubt that Mulligan would have put an end to you if he had got his hands on you that day in Central Park?”
“No.”
“And why do you think he wished to kill you?”
“Hatred. Disgust. Revenge. Madness.”
“All those reasons were no doubt valid,” said Clementine. “But that wasn’t his real purpose.”
“Then what was his real purpose?”
Clementine leaned forward in her chair. “He was tidying up.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Think about it,” said Clementine. “You were probably his first victim. If he killed all the other women he raped and broke their arms as he broke yours, you’re the only living witness to his identity. You can link him to his method. You are a danger to him. He doesn’t want to get caught before he gets it right, don’t you see.”
I saw.
3
IT TURNED OUT THAT THE tremor in the Berkshires originated in Iceland. A moderate earthquake occurred in the countryside about a hundred miles from Reykjavík. Houses were destroyed. Sheep were asphyxiated, but no human beings died. No one, not even Henry, knew how long these small mercies would continue. Few besides him took any great interest in this pox of seismic events. As a result of its long experience with the deity, humanity tended to look upward for doomsday—a giant meteor like the one that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, or maybe a black hole that would eat the universe, compress it to the size of a molecule or something even smaller, then free it from gravity and let loose another Big Bang.
It took me three days or so to realize that Adam was gone forever. He wasn’t gone from my mind, and I bore him no ill will, but wherever he was now, he was doing me no good. Mentally, I put him in the ground and covered him up. And after that, like a young widow passing cookies at a wake, I might have returned a certain kind of look if one came my way. None did. The whole world was leaving me alone with a vengeance.
Then the refrain: Henry called. He asked the usual question. I said of course I could fly tomorrow.
“Where we’re going, it may be a little cooler than New York,” he said. “There may be a dinner party.”
Henry was already there. Or on his way there from somewhere else.
My mystery destination turned out to be Paris. The house to which I was driven was in the Marais, between the Place des Vosges and the river. It was very early in the morning, before first light. When I rang the doorbell a tall young African, thin as an eyelash, wearing a silk dressing gown, let me in frozen-faced, then disappeared. I waited fifteen minutes for him to come back. This didn’t happen. Supposing that the African had gone back to bed, I wandered deeper into the house. I heard someone coming down the stairs. Henry intercepted me in the orangery, in which actual orange trees and other exotic plants grew in wooden tubs. He seemed glad to see me and led me into the garden. It was lovely. Dew sparkled on the flowers. Whimsically pollarded hedges made me smile. Fountains played, dispersing a faint aroma of chlorine. Birds sang. The day was bright and breezy. The sigh of traffic on the quais was muted because it was so early in the morning.
After changing into jeans and sneakers, Henry and I went for a walk along the river. We sat down on a bench just beyond the Pont de la Concorde.
Henry said, “Have you decided?”
“About the embryo?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Something about it troubles me,” I said.
“Specifically?”
“Are you planning to enhance this embryo?”
“Interesting question,” Henry replied.
“Because if you are, Henry,” I said, “I don’t see the point of the exercise. The child won’t be the child we made.”
“Children,” Henry corrected. “Amerigo’s people can produce a large number of embryos in vitro.”
I said, “Won’t they be all alike?”
“They’d be siblings, not clones.”
“But Amerigo’s people would manipulate their DNA?”
“You’re still troubled by that?”
“Henry, I will never cease to be troubled by that,” I replied. “I think it negates the entire purpose of the enterprise.”
“So you’re saying no?”
“I’m saying you should reconsider.”
“What if that means the embryos aren’t strong enough to survive? Or if they do, they’ll live a life of slavery to the enhanced?”
“That’s a leap.”
“You think so?”
Henry frowned, for him the e
quivalent of a shout. The two of us fell silent.
How many lovers’ quarrels is it possible to have in less than a month? Answer: It depends on how many lovers and how many issues you have. Adam and I had put an end to the best sex either of us had ever experienced with the exchange of two monosyllables. Now Henry and I seemed to be free-falling toward another sad ending while talking our heads off. Adam had been my lover, and I had loved his body, but I say again, I hadn’t loved him and never could have. It had never crossed my mind that he and I might produce a child, or that either one of us would want it to survive if we did. On the other hand, Henry was not my lover and I had never let myself feel physical attraction to him, but I loved him. In fact, I was an inch away from being in love with him. Having a child with him, even though it might be conceived in a laboratory, and even though I would never see it and would never know what happened to it, would be a wonderful thing. The two of us would be joined together in the child, and in its children. I wanted to protect it, I had to protect it. This was something my blood instructed me to do.
Nevertheless, my impulse, all but irresistible, was to just say yes. I resisted it.
“This is getting us nowhere,” I said. “I’m going for a run.”
Henry said, “Does that mean the discussion is over?”
“It means I need time to think. Running helps me think.”
“I’ll come, too,” Henry said.
We ran all the way to the Eiffel Tower, crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Iéna, and ran back along the Left Bank. There were people everywhere. No doubt the chaps encircled us, but as usual they were unseen. As my body warmed up and my mind calmed down, an inexplicable mixture of worry and happiness flooded my being.
I was hungry by the time we got back to the house. We had both broken a sweat. The morning air was damp and chilly. A sharp wind blew. I shivered.
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