He paid the cabbie, walked up to the porch, pushed the button for the doorbell, and then looked at it. He’d heard no ring, so he knocked on the door, on the frame of the glass.
A young woman in jeans and a man’s white shirt came. She pushed some black hair away her face and stood evaluating him for a minute before she drew the door open. “Yes?”
Quinn smiled. “Well,” he said, smiling to beat the devil. “I’m Terry Quinn. I used to live here, a long time ago, in school. Are you a student?”
“I’m faculty,” she said quickly, and then laughed. “Sort of faculty, I’m a lecturer. Students can’t afford this place anymore. Neither can I for that matter. What can I do for you, Mr.—”
“Quinn,” he said. “I left some stuff here. In the attic. And I wanted to see if it was still here. I can come back, if this is a bad time.”
“Good a time as any,” the woman said, and flipped her hair back again. “New Year’s. I didn’t know there was an attic. I’ve only been here a few months. Come in. Forgive the look of the place. My name’s Teresa.”
She had books everywhere, wandering along the baseboards and around corners back into the other rooms. Sheets over the windows and no furniture in the little front room except a desk with a small computer on it, and a chrome and wicker chair. Quinn stood looking at the single row of paperbacks marching the periphery of the floor.
She watched, sitting against a windowsill. “It’s a joke,” she said, waving toward the books. “Friend promised to build me some crackerjack bookshelves, but hasn’t gotten around to it yet. He found me this house.” Her green eyes flickered at him, and then at the room. “You look a little like him. Any good at bookshelves? So, where are you living now?”
Quinn shook his head. “Chicago,” he said.
The woman laughed. Her hand went to her mouth, then to her hair again. “I don’t think I’m tracking here,” she said. “You came all the way from Chicago to Boston to get something out of my attic? Which doesn’t exist? What is it? Rubies?”
“Actually it’s some books and junk,” Quinn said, and shrugged. “It’s in the right hand bedroom, the attic. The door to it; it’s a panel in the ceiling.” He pointed back into the house, and shrugged again. “It’s a particular book, a friend of mine wrote it. It’s sort of a long story.”
But when he told her about McCarthey, she recognized the name and, all of a sudden, lit up. “Let me call Ethan. God, he’d never forgive me. Another disciple. He’d love to talk to you.” The telephone sat on the floor beside some papers and an ashtray. She settled on her haunches beside it and picked up the receiver. “Price you have to pay, if you want your memorabilia. You must have been here just about the same time he was.” She flipped her hair, and then looked up. “Nervous habit,” she said, and dialed. Quinn glanced around the small living room, trying to remember it.
“He knew there’s an attic,” she said, after she hung up the phone. “He knew your name, too. You sure you didn’t know him when you were here?”
Quinn shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
The books lined the baseboards around the entire house, every room except the bathroom, like a popcorn string. There wasn’t much furniture in the other rooms either. Her bed was a futon on the floor. When he pointed out the ceiling panel to her, she said, “I wondered what that was,” and when he got into the attic, from an old steamer trunk on end that she had as a table, the low, dim space was empty. Quinn crouched and looked around at the flecks of dust in the stale air, wires looping out of the insulation and over ancient two-by-eights, their wood gone orange and brittle-looking.
“Well?” she said from down below.
“Nothing up here,” Quinn said. “A lot of fiberglass and dust. Have you got a flashlight down there?”
She brought him a flashlight, handed it up to him, his hand grazing hers as he reached down without looking. Finally she put it in his fingers. But there wasn’t anything in the attic, and Quinn could hardly breathe.
“I feel like an idiot,” he said, when he got back down into the house. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“Are you all right?” she said.
“I feel weird,” he said. “I haven’t had anything to eat today. I’m a little light-headed. I mean, in addition to being addle-brained.”
She laughed.
• • •
In the book on the title page, above his signature, McCarthey had written with a broad-tipped pen in black ink:
For Quinn—
Smart money’s on you. But smart people outsmart themselves.
Ethan did look like Quinn, but only a little. His coat was thin and ill-cut, and he had fine hair and quick eyes with dark circles around them, but otherwise he looked like a kid although they were about the same age. Looks like an athlete, Quinn thought, but he didn’t really, he just seemed comfortable, at ease, especially around her, reaching out with his left hand, moving like a snake or something, and touching her wrist with the tip of a finger, intercepting her when she went to throw her hair back to the side of her head.
He had the book in his right hand. “I imagine this is what you’re looking for,” he said. “I found it last summer, before Teresa moved in. I’ve got the other books, too, out in my car. I threw the rest of the stuff out. I’m sorry. There were about nine TV sets up there, all broken,” he said, and laughed. “But I got five bucks apiece for them.”
Quinn realized that he was staring at them. He smiled. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, and took the book. The jacket was still perfect, but had faded so that what was once a glossy black was almost charcoal. There was a white line drawing of a saxophone on the front, the book was about a musician.
“Are you all right?” Ethan put his hand out, as if Quinn might fall down.
“Ethan’s got a book coming out,” Teresa said.
“Small press,” Ethan said. “No big deal. Not much to show for ten years. But it keeps the dean happy. You must have known the old man pretty well. I had him for one course.” He nodded to the book in Quinn’s hand. “This isn’t easy to come by, a first edition. I have another one, but mine’s not signed. You remember the inscription?”
Quinn couldn’t stop looking at him.
“He’s starving to death,” Teresa said. “He forgot to eat. We need to get him something to eat.”
“I remember,” Quinn said. “I remember it had a ‘but’ in it. Everything he ever said had a ‘but’ in it. I just didn’t hear it. It wasn’t the way I was raised.”
He put the book back in Ethan’s hand and watched him as he opened it, watched him as he read McCarthey’s black script again, watched him as in the space of a minute’s time he grew much older, gained weight, scratched for money, taught classes, had kids, wrote more books, suffered disappointments, drank, slept with women, made a thousand jokes, laughed, and did much that was foolish. Quinn liked him. “I’m glad I came,” he said. “I’m glad to finally get a look at you.” In the car Quinn said, “That’s all I came for really.”
Ask Again Later
This is my life, Zachary was thinking on Tuesday evening August 24, 2004, as he sat in the back of his office looking at the boarders, three cats and a sad looking half shepherd puppy. Slumped against one side of its cage, the puppy barely moved, just a little ripple in the fur above its eyes, staring at him. “Oh the poor little doggie,” Zachary said. “Why don’t you give it a rest? Let’s consider the rest of your days. Eating rib eyes and bouncing around in some backyard, napping under the pines, pretty much the rest of your life.” The dog watched him without blinking. The phone buzzed in the front office, and still the puppy stared.
“You probably think that’s a customer—excuse me, a ‘patient’—but you’re wrong. That is Sandy Dean, calling to put me on TV. I saw some poor slob get stabbed to death, and so Sandy wants to talk to me. That’s probably her secretary. Or somebody like that.” He shrugged. The answering machine picked up and after a moment a man spoke, but Zach couldn’t make ou
t who it was or what was said. He looked at one of the cats, an old black with three legs and one good eye. The other eye was milky, opaque. “Right, Hector?” he said. “You know what’s the matter with you, Hector? You believe in the social system. I mean, you don’t believe in it, really, but you think they know best.”
They hadn’t caught the guy yet, and in a way Zach hoped they never did. He didn’t want to testify, for one thing, and it wasn’t as simple as that anyway. The guy that got stabbed—got killed—was a big guy, much bigger than the other one, and he was sort of asking for it, hassling the little guy, a bully. Zach had been trying to get himself to say something, trying to get himself to intervene, hoping that maybe just by walking into the situation he might stop it, before the little guy took care of it. Secretly, Zach was almost glad the other guy got his, though he wondered if he should feel that way. The guy was dead, after all. The little guy was “at large,” they said.
Stephanie showed up in the little kitchen which adjoined the back room. “Zach,” she said, “this is not the way to fame and fortune. How does the city’s hot new veterinarian TV star spend his evenings? Moping in his office with sick kitties. See it all tonight at eleven.” She had changed clothes, now in jeans and some kind of turtleneck shell or leotard, cream colored. She had dirty blonde hair and dark brows, a Waspy face, and beautiful eyes.
“Looking good,” Zachary said. “Looking kinda gorgeous. Can we still say that? ‘Gorgeous?’ Not to an employee, huh?”
“It’s after hours, you can say anything you want. In fact, I wish you would.” She set her purse down on the white counter opposite the boarding cages. “I figured you’d still be here,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m unwinding,” Zach said. He nodded at the black cat in the steel cage beside him. “Me and Hector. Decrepit old fuck.” He shook his head. “It’s all so creepy.”
“So maybe you’ll take me to dinner?” Stephanie said. “Something fancy? Red Lobster?”
“New shoes?” he said, pointing. The loafers she was wearing were violently shiny. “I like ’em. They look like Dodges.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“As in Chrysler Corporation.” He nodded, looking around the white room. Most of the cages were empty. Opposite on the wall above the white counter hung a four-color poster of a skeletal cat, with lines flaring away from each bone to a name at the periphery. The lines and the letters at the end of them were oddly thin, fine. “Chrysler shoes.”
“Zach, why do you flirt with me all the damn time if you’re not going to do anything about it?”
“You have an unrealistic world view,” Zach said, and reached through the gray bars of the cage to stroke the matted fur of the cat’s forehead. “One which I’d either have to support, or demonstrate its falsity. Either way, somebody’d wind up real unhappy. Either way, it’s a lot of work.”
“You miserable son of a bitch,” she said, and swung at him, half heartedly, but with a closed fist. He caught her arm, and she swung around to face him.
“Hey, c’mon,” he said, trying to steady her, stop her. “What’re you doing? I was just kidding. Ow, shit,” he yelled, as she bit him, hard, on the muscle curving up into his neck. “Goddamn, Stephanie.” He grabbed his shoulder. She hooked her leg around his, and even though he was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier, threw him to the floor like it was nothing, barely breathing heavy.
On the floor Zach sighed, pinched his shoulder. “Jesus, you learn all that at the dojo, or something?” he said, and lay back on the white tile for a second before jerking up. “There’re germs down here, Stephanie. It’s filthy.” He checked the floor on either side of him.
“C’mon. Breathe in, take a deep breath. That’s alcohol and Clorox. The hypochondriac veterinarian. You’re a mess, Zach.” She sat down on the floor beside him, pulled his shirt collar aside to look at the bite. “Barely broke the skin.”
“You’re fired. Broke the skin?!” he said, craning his head to try to see and grabbing at the bite again with his fingers. “You broke the goddamn skin?”
“How’re you going to explain that to Princess Anne?” But she was laughing, gently, at how hopeless he was. “You’re a mess. You weren’t kidding, were you? You really believe what you said—that garbage about my ‘world view’—don’t you?”
“I’m too old for you.”
“Forty? Forty’s too old for twenty-four?” She smirked, tossed her hair a little. “C’mon.”
“Thirty-seven, and I’m involved. And you’re twenty-five, not twenty-four.” He laughed. “That’s the stupidest lie I’ve ever heard, I think.”
“You call that involved? Is she involved with you, or are you just involved with her? You’re like two files that just happen to be in the same file cabinet.”
He slid back across the floor and rested against the cabinet doors below the white counter. “Look. I am in love with you, how could I help it? But you believe you can make things happen by force of will. I know you can’t. We’re incompatible. You’d make me go bungee jumping and shit like that. Dancing. We’re completely incompatible.” He was shaking his head, slowly, looking at her. “Thanks for biting me, though.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“What’s the matter with that? A beautiful woman bites you, you appreciate it.” He shrugged, shook his head again.
“I guess I’ll run along then. When’s the big interview?”
“After lunch. Two tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“Well, I’ll see you in the morning.” Stephanie got to her feet, looked into the cat’s cage. “So what are your plans for tonight, Gramps? You and old Hector gonna go to a big bingo game? Play some dominos or something? What are you going to do about him anyway? Isn’t it unethical to keep him? Hey kitty,” she said, petting Hector with her fingers through the wire mesh.
“I’m a very ethical guy,” Zach said. “Even when they’re somebody else’s ethics. Did we charge her for … him?”
Stephanie smoothed the already smooth fabric of her top, drawing her hands gently across her stomach. “No, we never charged her,” she said. “But the old woman thinks he’s deceased. A month ago.”
“I just can’t,” Zach said, watching her from the floor. “He’s not in pain, really, I don’t think. Glaucoma, but the betoptic controls that. Just lame and half-blind.”
“And emaciated and incontinent,” she said.
“A little. What, you want me to put him down? Really?”
She looked at him quickly. “No, of course not. But he can’t live in this goddamn cage. He’ll get sick back here anyway. Won’t the princess let you bring him home?”
Zachary cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” Stephanie said. “That was a real womanish thing to say. Forgive me doctor for I have sinned.” She feigned a deep sigh. “If you’ll take me home with you, I promise to sin again and again.”
“Please stop. You can’t imagine how bad it makes a man feel to turn down—I mean, really bad.”
She walked out of the back room into the hall leading to the reception area and the front door. “What I don’t like about this, Zach, is the feeling I’m getting that you think you’re protecting me. It’s sort of paternalistic and arrogant and insulting. And old-fashioned.” She walked away.
“I’m an old-fashioned guy,” Zach called down the hallway. The front door slammed. “You think I want to be like this?” he shouted.
He stayed almost another hour and a half, talking to the animals, watching the TV in the reception area, avoiding going home. The telephone message was a police officer. They had a suspect. It was urgent that Zach call back. He hoped it wasn’t the pale boy whose terrified face he’d seen, a turn and a look, just before the run for the alley at the other end of the parking lot. Finally he closed up the office, drove home, and went to bed.
• • •
The next day, Zach was home from the office and ready at noon. They were coming for his interview at two o’clock, Sandy Dean had s
aid. He sat by the big windows in the upstairs bedroom, not looking at the cardboard boxes stacked against one wall, neatly sealed, a green plastic dispenser of brown tape resting on the topmost box. His beard was trimmed, his Italian shirt pressed, and his eyes were getting flooded with Murine on the quarter hour.
Zach was supposed to talk about the stabbing. It had happened in the long, narrow parking lot that ran beside Lester’s, a bar he liked downtown. He had been walking to his car, eleven o’clock at night, two guys arguing.
He looked out the window, down at the sidewalk. Across the street a man walked out the gate and onto the sidewalk, briskly, irritatingly certain of the importance of whatever errand he happened to be on. He was tall and thin, well-dressed in a dark gray suit, swinging his arms like a puppet. The suit looked shiny in the noonday sunlight. Zach watched him reach the corner and stop. “Now … look at your watch,” Zach said. But the man stood looking at the traffic light. There was no traffic in the street. “Look at your watch,” Zach said, and the man jerked his left arm, as if shooting his cuff, and checked his watch. Zach sat back away from the window and nodded. Just like the movie, he thought. I’m watching like in a movie, and he’s imitating a busy guy in a movie.
While he was waiting for Sandy Dean and the TV people, he was also waiting for Anna to get off work at the restaurant so they could continue the argument that they’d been having in all their free time for the past two weeks, ever since she had told him that she was moving out. She pretended to be jealous of him and Stephanie, pretended to believe they were sleeping together. But she was really mixed up with someone she had met at the restaurant and spent most of her time out with the restaurant people who spent all their time doing dope and bar-hopping. She was a manager at the restaurant, so she could do pretty much what she wanted and she had promised to be home before the TV people got there.
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