Forever

by Pete Hamill

  “The woman is pregnant,” Cormac said. “With my child.” Kongo looked at him in a severe way.

  “I know,” he said.

  “It’s unfair.”

  “Think of it as another gift.”

  “But why now? Why after all the other women…”

  “The time was right.”

  Cormac thought: God damn you.

  “You made it happen, didn’t you?”

  “No, you made it happen and she made it happen.” He looked toward the river. “It was a sign that I must come and help you cross.”

  “And leave the child behind me?”

  He touched Cormac’s arm.

  “Don’t worry about the child,” he said. “The gods will watch over him.”

  He smiled, raised an open palm, then walked away toward the waterfront. To the flowing waters. To the abode of Oshun.

  When Cormac entered the loft, there was a recorded message from Healey:

  “Brother O’Connor, it’s me. I’m in the city of Lost Angels. My idiot producer was so excited over our spitballing, he ordered a private jet. He says it’s perfect for REDFORD, and this kid named DiCAPRIO, and some young blond chick with a belly button. He’s gonna pay me a SHITPOT of money to turn it into a movie. Believe this? I’m in some hotel, the Tarantula Arms with room service, and I got some insane real estate lady in the lobby, looks like Carol Channing; shit, maybe she IS Carol Channing. She’s taking me to see some apartment she says is PERFECT. Probably in a nursing home. Sorry I missed you, amigo. I’ll call when I know where the FUCK I am!”

  He was always Healey, and Cormac was relieved, knowing he was safe. He sat down and wrote him a letter. He would ask Delfina to mail it on Wednesday.

  He went to the bedroom and took a long nap, full of poisonous dreams. And then he dressed for his appointment with William Hancock Warren. One final uptown ride on the Lexington Avenue subway. One final trip back home. The sword was inside a long black Chambers Street backpack, the kind made for camping.

  119.

  In the lobby of Warren’s building, the sour doorman looks at Cormac, takes his name, calls the Warren apartment. Then he grunts his dubious approval. Cormac feels his heart and blood racing. When he reaches the penthouse, Patrick is standing in the open door. Cormac thinks: Shit, he isn’t supposed to be here.

  “Evening, Mister O’Connor,” he says.

  “Hello, Patrick.”

  “Would you like to leave your—the pack, sir?”

  “No, I have something in it for Mister Warren.”

  “Very well. A drink?”

  “Just water.”

  Warren is standing near the fireplace when Cormac enters the downstairs living room. A large chunky log burns in the hearth. Cormac thinks: When I’m finished here, I’ll leave by the Western door, as in Ireland long ago. The door reserved for the dead. With me, I’ll take the fire out of the hearth. Warren reaches out a sweaty hand and Cormac shakes it. He wears a long-sleeved Brooks Brothers dress shirt, pale blue, the cuffs folded up, stains in the armpits. He glances at the backpack.

  “You going camping?” he says.

  “No, I’ve brought you something that would look strange on the subway.”

  He opens the zippers and takes out the sword, which is wrapped in a blue towel. Cormac removes the towel in a ceremonial way and shows Warren the sword. His eyes widen and he leans forward.

  “My God,” he says. “It’s beautiful.”

  “ ’Tis.”

  Cormac offers him the handle and Warren grips it, turns the sword to examine the blade and tip, and then squints at the etched spirals. Holding the sword, he stares at Cormac for a beat.

  “Your fellow did a fine job.”

  Cormac thinks: The fine job was done by the man who made it.

  “He says it was almost certainly made in Ireland in the eighteenth century. By a blacksmith, not an armorer. It could be worth almost anything, depending upon the desire of the buyer. The spirals are Celtic. They’re symbols of immortality.”

  With a kind of reverence, Warren lays the sword on the polished top of a captain’s table and sits down in an armchair. Cormac sits facing him. The sword points north.

  “Thank you, Cormac, for seeing what I didn’t see,” he says. “I bought it, oh, ten years ago, in a junk shop in Rhinebeck. Hanging in a mess of cobwebs. The owner had no—what is the word? No provenance. No history of the sword. He thought it was made around the time of the Revolution but didn’t really know. I had been collecting other swords, in England, in France, thinking someday I might have time to become an expert, and the size of this one—well, it just seemed to fit with the others.”

  Warren sees a piece of decoration or a hobby for old age. Cormac sees the sweat on his father’s brow as he worked at the forge.

  “It was good of you to do this, Cormac.” A small smile. “Of course, you could have just asked me for it. You didn’t need to steal it while my wife was asleep.”

  So she told him everything, Cormac thinks. And here he is, still mad for her. Or so it seems.

  Patrick comes in with a tumbler of water on a tray, ice in a cup on the side. Cormac glances at the fake Sargent portrait of Elizabeth Warren and hears her say the word “intimacy,” the name of a place as far from her as Jupiter.

  “Would you like the food now, sir, or—”

  “Now, Patrick. That would be fine.”

  Patrick bows and goes out. If I kill Warren first, Patrick might hear, might call the police, or race to the street… Now it’s Warren’s turn to glance at the portrait of his wife, as if he has noticed where Cormac’s eyes had drifted. He takes a deep breath, then exhales. Cormac feels shame seeping from him.

  “The sword is one thing, Cormac,” Warren says. “But I want to discuss something personal with you. Personal, and painful.”

  “And I with you.”

  For a second, Warren looks as if they are thinking of the same subject. Then he smiles in an uncertain way. His hands find each other, the fingers opening and closing. The sword is within Cormac’s reach.

  “In that case, I’ll go first,” he says. “It’s about my wife.”

  “Yes?”

  He exhales. “First, a confession. Many weeks ago, I put a private detective on your trail.” He shrugs as if this were a ludicrous decision. Then smiles. “I simply wanted to know who you were. Elizabeth was very impressed with you, with your interests, your way of speaking, your good looks. From the moment she met you at the Met, and more so after our dinner party… So I wanted to know more. Were you married? Or gay? Were you some kind of con man, the sort of predator that always hangs around museum openings with a slick line of bullshit? I wanted to know. I don’t ever want Elizabeth to be hurt. Emotionally or physically.”

  He does love her, Cormac thinks. That he does.

  “The private detective did discover something very interesting: You don’t exist. You don’t have a driver’s license. You don’t use credit cards. You don’t pay taxes, at least not under the name of Cormac O’Connor. You don’t vote, or subscribe to magazines. You live in a building downtown. He followed you there one night, but your name is not on the bell, or on a lease. And you do have a girlfriend. A beautiful young Latin woman who lives in East Harlem. Otherwise, nothing, nada, zilch.”

  “Sorry to have been such an inconvenience.”

  “But here you are, sitting in my living room.”

  Cormac stares at him. “And why were you really on my trail?” Warren inhales deeply, then exhales slowly, and says, as if uttering a confession, “Because I want you to become my wife’s lover.”

  Cormac smothers a smile. It’s absurd. A moment from a daytime soap opera. On cue, Patrick enters with a tray: a small pizza sliced in quarters, plates and silverware and napkins, salt and pepper. Cormac moves the sword to his side of the captain’s table. Patrick places the tray on the table. Bows slightly.

  “That will be all, Patrick,” Warren says. “You’re going out, am I right? Well, we can cle
an up. See you in the morning.”

  “Good night, sir. Good night, Mister O’Connor.”

  He leaves, the door clicking shut behind him. Warren’s hands knead each other. He stares at Cormac, then looks at the pizza.

  “Are you shocked that I’d want you to make love to my wife? Or that I suspect you already have? Or that I still want you to take up with her?”

  Too many words. The daytime audience would now go to the refrigerator. But Cormac can feel anguish in those words. His hand trembles as he lifts a slice and lays it on his plate.

  “No, I’m not shocked,” Cormac says. “The heart has its reasons….”

  Warren smiles in a knowing way. He trims the point off the triangle of pizza. Spears it with a fork. Cormac does the same.

  “So you see, your blank résumé doesn’t bother me,” he says. “It’s actually a plus.” A pause. “If I can’t find you, can’t prove you exist, then how can Page Six?” He chuckles, and then his face goes grayer and more troubled. “You see, I have a problem. I can’t, uh—well, let’s say, I can’t…”

  He doesn’t finish and starts chewing his small wedge of pizza. Not looking at Cormac. Not looking at anything.

  “I have a problem,” he goes on, the voice waxier now. “I love my wife. I think she loves me. But we can’t give each other what we need. I need other women. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I do know that I must have her in my life, even if we have no children, even if we have to create a public image, a double mask, that’s different from our private lives. The fact is, I need her. And she needs a man who can give her what I can’t. If I had to name that thing, it would be intimacy.”

  Her word fills the air as Warren shrugs his shoulders hopelessly, and Cormac feels pity again make its treacherous move, as it did with the man’s wife. For Warren, this conversation might be worse punishment than any swipe with a sword.

  “So I want you to know that I don’t mind if you, if she—if she takes a lover and that lover is you. I don’t really mean lover. That’s the euphemism. I mean if she has me for love and you for sex. I told her this. Told her that all I would ask is discretion, which I would guarantee in my own life with her. She could find a small apartment, in a building without a snoopy doorman or nosy neighbors. You could still love your girlfriend as I love Elizabeth. There would be certain, uh, material compensations for you. At the newspaper, where I’m known as a generous boss. But with my wife, it could be…”

  Cormac thinks: The rich are all like this, God damn them. Even the best of them. From the end of the Revolution until now, they’ve been certain that money can provide the solution to every human imperfection. The men have whores or mistresses. The women find other cocks. I know: Across the years, I’ve provided my own share of these services.

  Now sweat is blistering Warren’s brow and he tamps at it with a napkin. His voice trails off. He chews a second portion of pizza, looking defeated and sad. He stares at the portrait.

  “She’s a beautiful woman,” Cormac says.

  “And a beautiful person.”

  “I’m sure,” Cormac says.

  Warren chews another bite of pizza while Cormac now uses his hand to lift a full slice. It’s very good pizza.

  “I do have my fears,” Warren said. “I just don’t know you, can’t find a line in your life that makes sense. You understand?”

  “I do understand,” he said. “And I’m afraid I can’t do it, Mister Warren.”

  Warren stares at Cormac, looking as if he realizes he has blundered.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  Fuck you, pal.

  Cormac says, “I’m leaving on a long trip.”

  Warren struggles to control the anger of a man accustomed to buying what he wants.

  “I wish you would reconsider.”

  “It’s a wonderful offer, Mister Warren. To take your money and fuck your wife. But I have other things to do.”

  Warren stands up angrily. Cormac remains seated and lays a pizza crust on the plate.

  “You can leave now,” Warren says, jerking a thumb at the door. “And you can take the pizza, if you like.”

  Cormac reaches for the pizza but picks up the sword.

  “Sit down,” he says, tapping the tip of the sword on the table. For the first time, Warren looks afraid.

  “I want to tell you a little story,” Cormac says.

  Warren sits down heavily, his eyes moving to the door, to Cormac, to the sword. A nerve twitches in his cheek.

  “Once upon a time, almost three centuries ago in the north of Ireland, there was a boy who lived with his parents, their horse, and their dog,” Cormac begins. “The mother was dark-eyed and beautiful, a descendant of the daughters of Noah, a secret Jew among masked Christians. The boy’s father wore a mask too. He was Irish, not Christian, and his allegiance was to the old gods. He made this sword.”

  Cormac raises the sword, admiring its beauty. Warren’s eyes don’t blink.

  “But in this part of Ireland there lived a man named the Earl of Warren….”

  Warren squints now.

  “There also lived a woman named Rebecca Carson, whose real name was Rebecca O’Connor,” Cormac says. “She was killed by a coach belonging to the earl. She was crushed by its wheels and died in the mud of Ireland. Her son was raised by his father, a man called John Carson, whose real name was Fergus O’Connor. The false names were necessary because they were Irish, and suspected of being Catholics, which they were not. The boy loved his father more than life itself.”

  “The earl was my ancestor?” Warren said quietly.

  “Yes. He made money in the slave trade and entertained his friends by juggling. Smiling, laughing, proud of his skill. And one day, on a frozen road in Ireland, he confronted the boy’s father over a horse. He wanted the horse, whose name was Thunder, and the boy’s father resisted. One of the earl’s men shot him dead.”

  Warren’s brow creased. He had obviously never heard this part of the Warren family saga.

  “And what happened to the boy?”

  “The boy escaped.”

  “And then…?”

  “And then followed the earl to America.”

  “Where he killed him?”

  “With this sword.”

  Warren listens intently, elbows on knees, chin supported by thumbs. There’s a long silence. They hear distant thunder, a whisper of rain.

  “I know some of that story,” Warren says in a sober voice. “Family legend and all that. Nobody ever found the earl’s body.”

  “It’s out there,” Cormac says, pointing the sword west. “In the river.”

  “An obvious question,” Warren says. “How do you know?” “I’m the boy.”

  * * *

  Warren’s eyes blink. Then he laughs.

  “What a marvelous story,” he says.

  “It’s not just a story,” Cormac says. “It’s history.”

  Warren stares at Cormac as if he were a madman. His eyes move from Cormac’s face to the sword.

  “But that was almost three centuries ago.”

  “I know. I know better than you do.”

  Warren stands, and so does Cormac, who holds the sword at his side. Warren jams his hands in his pockets.

  “Would you like a brandy? The bloody pizza is cold.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He eyes the sword again. Now he squints, his eyes cold and clear.

  “You came here to kill me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be truly stupid.”

  “But necessary. At least to me.”

  At the small wheeled bar Warren pours a brandy for himself, his hands trembling.

  “Well, if you’re going to do it, can we go out to the terrace? Elizabeth would be very upset if there was blood all over the rug.”

  Cormac thinks: God damn it, Warren. Stop making this harder than it will be. Warren drains the brandy, pours another. Then walks to the door opening out on the lo
wer terrace. Cormac follows, holding the sword at the present-arms position. There’s a spray of rain, a rising wind. The shrubs flutter in their pots. All is dark in the west.

  “You know,” Warren says, gazing out at the rain-lashed city, “when I invited you here tonight, I thought part of me would die. The part that involved pride. I knew that when I asked you to… to give Elizabeth what she needs, that I would be stripping myself naked. So be it. Life is strange.” He lets the rain spray his face and shoulders. “It never occurred to me that I could end up a corpse.” He laughs. “Over some ancient relative.” He turns to Cormac. “Or that I would meet a man who thinks he has lived since the eighteenth century. Jesus Christ… But now, right here, right now, part of me thinks, Well, fuck it, why not? Why not just die now, instead of crumbling into some fleshy ruin. Besides, we’d sell a ton of newspapers, wouldn’t we? PUBLISHER SLAIN IN PENTHOUSE MYSTERY. No, that’s too many words. How about BOSS DEAD, with an exclamation point?”

  He drains the brandy and drops the glass among the potted plants.

  “I don’t have a clue about you, old sport,” he says. “You’re just another New York demento, as far as I can tell….”

  He sighs. “So go ahead,” he says. “Just do it.”

  Cormac is facing him, seeing his head and shoulders silhouetted against the rain-smeared glow of distant lights. The sword feels heavy. He spreads his feet, prepared to strike.

  “Just do me one favor,” Warren says. “When the deed is done, please tell Elizabeth that I loved her. Somewhere out there, beside the telephone, you’ll find the number of her hotel….”

  And Cormac feels something dissipating in his heart: the hard knot of the past. The fingers of his free hand open and close and he longs to sit at a piano. I can’t do this. To hell with the past.

  “You can call her yourself,” Cormac says.

  The tension seeps out of William Hancock Warren. He leans on the rail. Cormac turns and goes back inside, with Warren behind him.

  “That’s it?” Warren says.

  “I’ll be going now,” Cormac says. “Please don’t call the police.” “And have what: a tabloid scandal?”

  Cormac smiles. Warren stands there looking at him, his hair and shirt wet from the rain. The fire is guttering in the hearth. The smoke rises slowly, as if it contained all the hatred, all the old vows of revenge, all the unburied dead that Cormac has carried across the decades. They walk to the door and Cormac lifts his black bag.