Centuries of June

by Keith Donohue

  Where would the killer be hiding? The space of the house could be contained neatly in the space of my memory, for its rooms and traffic patterns were as habitual to me as the enchanted places of my childhood. There were only so many secret spots, and with the plunger hanging like a weapon from my belt, I set off to find the girl.

  The best places to hide would be in the basement, so I bounded down two flights of stairs and flicked on the lights. Thankfully the bottom of the house was as I remembered, more or less, though someone had tidied the pantry and rearranged the small hand tools and jars of nuts and bolts and nails. The furnace was the same as ever, as were the washer and dryer. A collapsible rack stood near the ironing board, across which hung a sundress flocked with tiny tigers and monkeys and elephants in shades of gold and red, the kind of thing that Sita might wear. I pinched the fabric and ran my finger along the hem. A cricket chirruped in a corner, but I left it alone. Some cultures, the Chinese I think, believe a cricket in the house brings good luck, so I never bother a stray or two. When we were children, my brother ruined the story of Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio by telling me the real story. In Collodi’s original Italian, Il Grillo Parlante—the Talking Cricket—is the voice of reason and responsibility for the newly minted boy Pinocchio, who gets frustrated by the nagging and throws a hammer at the cricket, and that’s the end of him. An accident.

  The talking cricket reminded me of my cat, suddenly able to speak, whom I now remembered putting out some time ago. I trundled up the stairs and opened the door from the kitchen to the back porch, where he often waited to be let in, but no sign of Harpo. I called him once or twice but dared not step out of the house. Rather, I just stood in the doorway for the longest stretch, feeling the damp June air on my bare skin, and drinking in the smell of roses blooming next door and the newly mown lawn two doors down. While summer brings its share of miseries—the heat and oppressive humidity, the mosquitos and other flying-biting-stinging things, and the stench of trash day and the quick decay and rot—the sensual pleasures more than compensate. At least that’s what I tell myself. A few calls for the missing cat floated into the soft blackness and dissipated. I stuck my thumb in the saucer of water on the floor. Still cool to the touch, as though just filled from the sink. The pet flap on the door was unlatched, so I plugged in a canary-shaped nightlight for Harpo. The cat will come back when he is ready.

  Very few hiding places existed on the main floor. In the dining room, a huge oak corner bureau in the Chinese style, with the fall front carved with a pair of dragons. My brother bought the extravagance at an estate sale. “The perfect size,” he said, “for hiding a body.” In the living room, I checked the closets and sought the telltale shoes sticking out from some floor-length drapes. I searched the joint, thinking of what I might do should I actually find her. If she attacked me with her ukulele, I’d have to parry with my plunger. After the possibilities downstairs had been exhausted, the only option was back upstairs. The disadvantage of the design of these houses can be measured in the constant tread upon the stairway from level to level. One spends a great deal of time either ascending or descending. Good for the legs, but unless one is a sherpa or a sheep, the climb is a chore in the early morning hours. From the bottom, a million steps loomed, and what was ahead but attempted homicide upon my person followed by some story bound to make me feel bad about myself? Had sense triumphed over curiosity, I never would have pulled myself up again.

  My brother’s room was bare and empty, just as he had left it, the bed and dresser ready “in case I need to crash.” No lady with a ukulele hid in my office either. The plans usually strewn about the place were stacked neatly on the drafting table against the wall. Out of habit, I woke the computer from its sleep and the anthem rang and blue light filled the space around my desk. The hardware chugged and the software spun, and eventually all the file and program icons filled the screen. I opened the e-mail browser and was stunned to find the memory full. Impossible, I thought, but thousands of unopened messages crammed the inbox. I checked to see if Sita had written recently, but her address was missing from the list. It will take me weeks just to organize the mail into junk, delete, and read piles. The dates on the most recent messages are wrong, too, as if they had been sent from the future, but just thinking about how to fix all this gives me a headache.

  Beneath the desk, the octopus of plugs and wires lurked in darkness. In the linen closet, towels and sheets kept order. The last possibility was the attic, but the door was shut as I had left it. She had disappeared completely, if she had existed at all in the first place. The faint strains of a jazz tune slipped under the bathroom door, and above that background noise, conversation rolled and pitched, someone told a joke and the rest laughed, the sound of people having fun. I could hear ice clinking in glasses, as though a cocktail party was going on, some scene out of the late ’50s or early ’60s, the old man in a tux or evening jacket, the women dolled up with bright red lips and lacquered hairdos. The very thought of a party cheered me, and I was pie-faced happy as I opened the door. Pointing straight back at me was the business end of a revolver. Holding the gun in my face was the seventh sister, deadly in a menacing little black dress. Behind the pistol, she wore a devilish grin, and behind her, the rest of the gang had turned their smiling faces to me. “C’mon in,” she said. “You’re the guest of honor.”

  I found her oddly seductive, the woman with the revolver, though perhaps it was in equal part the danger of the little black dress. She waggled the barrel at me, and I obeyed her direction to squeeze into the room. We now numbered ten—the seven women, the old man, myself, and the boy. Boy, because in the time I had been away, the child seemed to have aged another few months. His baby fat was melting away to reveal a more angular facial structure, and when he smiled he had a full set of tiny sharp choppers.

  While I was searching downstairs, the lady gunslinger must have snuck in from some hiding place, and the others had taken her in and included her in their usual high jinks. They were mugging for one another, winking their third eyes. Changes in hairstyles and clothes, and of course the moving tattoos. Another bit in the performance piece, or maybe it was all some elaborate game. Had I not been preoccupied with the thought of bullets, I would have inquired as to the meaning behind the cryptic symbols. Maybe they meant nothing. Maybe sometimes a slithering tattoo snake is just a snake; a cigar, Dr. Freud, is just a cigar; and a gun is just a gun. In any case, she held the power in her hand.

  Through a variety of signals—a raised eyebrow, a curled upper lip, and quick glances back and forth between me and the gun—the old man sought to assure me that he had a plan to disarm the shooter, but I had no idea what role I was to play in the drama. My hands were up in the air and my reflexes are very slow. The very idea was entirely too dangerous, someone would most likely be shot, but I had no way of communicating my anxieties.

  “Don’t try anything funny,” she said.

  “I have no intention of trying anything,” I said, “funny or otherwise. Do you really need to do this?”

  “As a matter of fact, very much so.”

  “In front of the little kid? You’ll scar him for life.”

  “Somebody pick up that kid,” she said. “And avert his eyes. No, on second thought, let him watch. It’ll be good for the boy to know what happens when you wrong a woman.”

  I lowered my arms to half-mast. “Listen, sister, I never met you before tonight. What cause you got for saying I done you wrong?”

  “You got time for a story?” She laughed at herself, and the irony spread through the group till all the women were giggling.

  Caught in the spirit, even I chuckled. “I’ve got nothing but time, though I’d feel a little bit better if you would point that piece in another direction.”

  She lowered the gat slowly, all the while keeping her gaze trained on me. “No monkey business, see.”

  I was sorely tempted to make like an ape, but under the circumstances controlled the impulse. Without the
gun in my face, I took a closer look at her. No doubt, the ukulele woman, now done up in her killer black dress, stockings, pumps, and a choker of pearls. Her bleached-blonde hair was arranged in a bouffant with a saucy little flip curl, and her reddened lips set off two rows of wicked white teeth. If the bullet didn’t work, she could bite. I wanted her to bite me. Like a pasha on a throne, the old man leaned back on the toilet seat. During my absence, he had acquired a red fez, now perched atop his silvery hair, which gave him an air of exotic intrigue while simultaneously making him slightly ridiculous. “Before you begin your story, Miss, may we have the pleasure and courtesy of an introduction?”

  “Button your lip,” she told him. “One thing you should know straight off: she that’s got the gun calls the shots.”

  “Oh, well played,” the old man said.

  She pointed the pistol at him. “Seriously, chum, shut up and let me do things my own way.”

  Thus chastened, we settled in like schoolchildren, polite and quiet, for story time. All except for the little boy, who was busy undoing the sheets of toilet paper, spinning the roll till all he had left was the bare cardboard tube. He pointed it at the woman in the black dress and said “Bang!” She clutched her chest so quickly and convincingly that I thought for a moment she really had been shot, and then she pointed her gun at the toddler and as it recoiled, she said, “Bang!” His pudgy little hand went right to his heart, and I thought she had really shot him, but it was all a charade.

  “You may call me Bunny,” she addressed the child but was surely speaking to all of us. He clapped and pretended to shoot her again.

  “If he’s bothering you, Bunny,” the old man said, “I can take that away from him.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and stashed the revolver atop the medicine cabinet. “You’ll do no such thing. What everyone needs to do is relax.”

  I felt much better with the gun out of her grasp, and the old man, too, breathed a deep sigh and leaned back against the commode to hear her tale. With a snap of her fingers, she dimmed the lights, and the hum of the bathroom fan switched tempo to a Cuban jazz melody. From the registers on the floor, a cloud of cigarette smoke rose and settled near the ceiling. She reached inside the cabinet and retrieved a series of cocktails, passing the glasses one by one around the room so that we all had a drink. I put mine to my lips and felt the pleasant sting of scotch on the rocks. The old man sipped a martini and spun the glass by its fragile stem to watch the olive twirl.

  Bunny commanded our attention with one deep breath.

  He was so startled by what she whispered in his ear that his cigarette dropped from his lips and into his drink. When he turned his head to get a look at the woman who proposed such a thing, all he saw was cleavage, a pair of red lips, and the fleeting pass of her hand as it disappeared beneath the table and into his lap. He flinched when she touched him and banged the tabletop with his open hand, clattering the dishes and glasses and ashtrays. His three friends all gave him knowing looks, as if they could tell what the woman in the black dress was doing, even if he could not. Her fingers lingered just long enough and then she straightened and smiled at the party. “Here are the matches you dropped,” she said. “Thanks for the light.” She blew smoke in his face, and he was too surprised to say anything but accepted the matchbook, nodding once to the departing woman, and then pretended to turn his attention back to the rumba band and the chanteuse swaying to “El Manisero.”

  Bunny waited by the telephone for the call that she knew was coming. It didn’t take long. She had written beneath her phone number to call after ten thirty. The big clock in the kitchen said 10:32. Maybe he didn’t want to appear overanxious, but she knew better.

  “Is this Bunny?” the voice over the telephone said.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Phil Ketchum. From the Stork Club. You dropped your matches.”

  “How nice of you to call to say you found them.”

  “Dropped ’em right in my lap. I’d like to return them to you. How ’bout I drop by on the way home?”

  She wrapped the cord around her finger a few times. This was her favorite part. The anticipation. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I got to get up early in the morning—”

  “Oh, I won’t stay long.”

  “If you’re going to come clear downtown, you really should stay long.”

  “Well, long enough.”

  “Mr. Ketchum, behave yourself.” She stood and looked out at the apartment building on the other side of the street. With her free hand, she scratched her bottom, for the flannel pajamas were clinging to her skin. Jerry always kept the place too warm.

  “I’d really like to get these matches back to you,” the disembodied voice said.

  “Come by tomorrow morning,” she said. “After nine. My husband will be at work.” At that moment, she craned her neck to look down the hallway at their closed bedroom door. She could almost hear him snoring.

  On the other end of the phone, the man paused to light a cigarette. “You best get to bed then,” he said. “I’ll be there bright and early, and you’ll need to be well rested.”

  She giggled into the receiver. “Phil, you are such a hound.”

  He howled, quietly, so that nobody would hear through the glass of the phone booth, and then hung up. Back at the table, Phil Ketchum ordered another scotch and soda and told the boys that he might be coming in late the next morning. They all laughed.

  Once or twice a week, Phil and Bunny played a variation of the game at a rendezvous. She would be out with the girls, and he would arrange to bump into her at some nightclub or at the flicks or, once, at the corner of Seventh and Fifty-third during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Four months had passed, but the game hadn’t lost its glamour or excitement, for she would delight in bringing him to the edge before retreating coyly. Once on the subway, she told Phil that she was wearing nothing under her skirt and managed to maneuver close enough in the packed car to let him discover the truth for himself. Another time at the library, she bit him so hard in the Anthropology section that he actually screamed in surprise and caused a security officer to investigate the trouble. They would meet and flirt seriously, and the next morning he would be hot and bothered, ready to burst.

  Twice in the first months of the affair they nearly were found out. Rushing to her on an October morning, when everything was still new and dangerous, Phil bumped into Bunny’s husband in the lobby of their apartment building.

  “Phil? Phil Ketchum?”

  He had pulled down his hat, but he had no choice but to acknowledge him. “Jerry? As I live and breathe.”

  “Why you old dog, I knew it was you the minute I saw you. What’s it been, five, six years? What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

  “How are you, old man? I had no idea you lived in this part of town.”

  Jerry sized him up and then checked his watch. “I haven’t seen you since the wedding. Bunny and I moved down here from Morningside right after. There goes the neighborhood and all that. How are you, you old dog?”

  “I’m just here meeting a friend of mine.”

  “Who’s that?” Jerry asked. “We know everyone in the building.”

  “Friend of mine,” Phil said. “Name of Meyers. Doesn’t actually live here, but comes down for a visit sometimes, if you know what I mean.”

  He looked at his watch a second time, and then through the sidelights on the doorway he checked the traffic on the street. “I’m not following.”

  “Sees a woman here, I think.”

  Like a conspirator, Jerry leaned in close and whispered, “Not Natalie Hoffman?”

  Shaking his head, Phil put a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “You know me, old man, never kiss and tell, and I don’t rat out a pal.”

  “Sure, Phil, I understand. Just thought, y’know, she’s the type, a real looker. And her husband’s kind of a schlub. Listen, I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “No harm, no harm.” He frowned disapprovingly.r />
  “I’m late to work,” he said. “But it’s good seeing you, and let’s get together sometime. Me and Bunny would be thrilled to have you and Claire over sometime for dinner or maybe drinks.”

  “Sounds great, Jer.”

  They shook hands. At the door, Jerry stopped and turned around. “Why don’t you stop in and say hello to Bunny, if you’ve got a minute. She’s up this morning, believe it or not, and she’d love to see you. We’re in 6B.”

  “Maybe for a minute, Jer. And we’ll have to make a date for drinks.” He waved good-bye to his old friend, waited in the lobby for another five minutes, and then took the elevator to the sixth floor. They didn’t even make it as far as the bed, for he took her behind the closed door, still in her housecoat.

  The second close call happened the week between Christmas and New Year’s. They had arranged to meet at a matinee showing of The Bridge on the River Kwai, and there in the dark, in the back of the balcony like a couple of teenagers, they stroked and petted and fumbled beneath the coats on their laps. Coming out of the theater in the late afternoon light, eyes still adjusting to the contrast, they ran into Claire’s younger sister Kate and her high school friends, on line for the following show.

  “Philip!” Kate yelled above the crowd.

  He removed his hand from the small of Bunny’s back and made his way across the sidewalk. She followed close behind, certain that she had been seen. In one smooth move, Phil reached down and kissed his sister-in-law on the cheek. “Happy New Year’s, Katie.”

  “Imagine running into you here in the middle of the day. Sneaking out of work, are you?”

  “You caught me. You won’t tell your sister on me, will you?”