Between the Dark and the Daylight

by Ed Gorman

  Since the discovery weeks ago in November he’d looked for other photos. Not in the photo album Valerie maintained with seeming sincerity and wifely pride but in Valerie’s drawers, closets. In the most remote regions of the large house where things were stored away in boxes. Shrewdly thinking because he hadn’t found anything did not mean that there was nothing to be found.

  “Len Chase!”

  A bright female voice, a Salthill Landing neighbor leaning over his seat. (Where was he? On the Amtrak? Headed home? Judging by the murky haze above the river, early evening, had to be headed home.) Leonard’s laptop was opened before him and his fingers were poised over the flat keyboard but he’d been staring out the window for some minutes without moving. “… thought that was you, Len, and how is Valerie? Haven’t seen you since, has it been Christmas, or …”

  Leonard smiled politely at the woman. His opened laptop, his document bag and overcoat in the seat beside him, these were clear signals he didn’t want to be interrupted, which the woman surely knew, but had come to an age when she’d decided not to see such signals in cheerful denial of their meaning Please leave me alone, you are not of interest to me, not as a woman, not as an individual, you are nothing but a minor annoyance. Melanie Roberts was Valerie’s age, and her frosted hair was razor-cut in Valerie’s style. Very likely Melanie was a rich man’s daughter as well as a rich man’s wife but the advantage she’d held as a younger woman had mysteriously faded, even so. Melanie seemed to think that her neighbor Leonard Chase might wish to know that she’d had lunch with friends in the city and gone to see the Rauschenberg exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum and then she’d dropped by to visit her niece at Barnard. Melanie was watching Leonard with sparkly expectant eyes in which dwelled some uneasiness, a fear of seeing in Leonard’s face exactly what he was thinking. He had to concede, he saw in Melanie Roberts’ face that he might still be perceived as an attractive man, in his seated position he appeared moderately tall, with a head of moderately thick hair, graying, but attractively graying; his skin tone was slightly sallow, but perhaps that was just the flickering Amtrak lighting; his face was dented in odd places, and loosely jowly in others; his nostrils looked enlarged, like pits opening into his skull; his eyes behind wire-rimmed bifocal glasses were shadowed and smudged; yet he would seem to this yearning woman more attractive than paunchy near-bald Sam Roberts, as others’ spouses invariably seem more attractive, since more mysterious, than our own. For intimacy is the enemy of romance. The dailyness of marriage is the enemy of immortality. Who would wish to be immortal, if it’s a matter of reliving just the past week?

  Melanie Roberts’s smile was fading. Amid her chatter, Leonard must have interrupted. “… hear you, Len? It’s so noisy in this …”

  The car was swaying drunkenly. The lights flickered. With a nervous laugh Melanie gripped the back of the seat to steady herself. Another eight minutes to Salthill Landing, why was the woman hanging over his seat! He yearned to be touched, his numbed body caressed in love, so desperately he yearned for this touch that would be the awakening from a curse, but he shrank from intimacy with this woman who was his neighbor in Salthill Landing. On his opened laptop screen was a column of e-mail messages he hadn’t answered, in fact hadn’t read, as he hadn’t for most of that day returned phone messages, for a terrible gravity pulled his mind elsewhere. The first husband. You cannot be first. Melanie was saying brightly that she would call Valerie and maybe this weekend they could go out together to dinner, that new seafood restaurant in Nyack everyone has been talking about, and Leonard laughed, with a nod toward the window beside his seat where some distance below the oily-dark sprawl of the Hudson River was lapsing into dusk, “Ever think, Melanie, that river is like a gigantic boa constrictor? It’s like time, eventually to swallow and digest us all?”

  Melanie laughed sharply as if not hearing this, or hearing enough to know that she didn’t really want to hear more of it. Promising she’d tell Sam hello from him, and she’d call Valerie very soon, with a faint, forced smile lurching away somewhere behind Leonard Chase to her seat.

  He would track down the first husband, he would erase the man from consciousness. He would erase the man’s memory in which his own wife existed. Except he was a civilized human being, a decent human being, except he feared being apprehended and punished, that was what he would do.

  Early November when he’d discovered the Key West photos. Late February when his CEO called him into his office in the “tower.”

  The meeting was brief. One or two others had been taken to lunch first which had not been a good idea, Leonard was grateful to be spared lunch. Through a roaring in his ears he heard. Watched the man’s piranha mouth. Steely eyes through bifocal glasses like his own.

  Downsized. Stock options. Severance pay. Any questions?

  He had no legal grounds to object. Possibly he had moral grounds but wouldn’t contest it. He knew the company’s financial situation. Since 9/11, they’d been in a tailspin. These were facts you might read in the Wall Street Journal. Then came the terrible blow, unexpected, at least Leonard believed it to be unexpected, the riling in Atlanta: a federal court judge upheld a crushing $33 million award to a hotel-chain plaintiff plus $8 million punitive damages. The architectural firm for which he’d worked for the past seven years was hard hit. Conceding yes, he understood. Failure was a sickness that burned like fever in the eyes of the afflicted. No disguising that fever, like jaundice-yellow eyes.

  Soon to be forty-six. Burnt-out. The battlefield is strewn with burnt-out litigators. His fingers shook, cold as a corpse’s yet he would shake the CEO’s hand in parting, he would meet the man’s gaze with something like dignity.

  He had the use of his office for several more weeks. And the stock options and severance pay were generous. And Valerie wouldn’t need to know exactly what had happened, possibly ever.

  “… seemed distracted lately, Leonard. I hope it isn’t …”

  They were undressing for bed. That night in their large beautifully furnished bedroom. Gusts of wind rattled the windows, that were leaded windows, inset with wavy glass in mimicry of the oil glass that had once been, when the original house had been built in 1791.

  “… anything serious? Your health …”

  From his corner of the room Leonard called over, in a voice meant to comfort, of course he was fine, his health was fine. Of course. “Damned wind! It’s been like this all day.” Valerie spoke fretfully as if someone were to blame. Neither had brought up the subject of the trip to Italy in some time. Postponed to March, but no specific plans had been made. The tenth anniversary had come and gone.

  In her corner of their bedroom, an alcove with a built- in dresser and closets with mirrors affixed to their doors, Valerie was undressing as, in his corner of the bedroom, a smaller alcove with but a single mirrored door, Leonard was undressing. As if casually Leonard called over to her, “Did you ever love me, Valerie? When you first married me, I mean.” Through his mirror Leonard could see just a blurred glimmer of one of Valerie’s mirrors. She seemed not to have heard his question. The wind buffeting the house was so very loud. “For a while? In the beginning? Was there a time?” Not knowing if his voice was pleading, or threatening. If, if this woman heard, like the frightened woman on the train she would laugh nervously and wish to escape him.

  “Maybe I should murder us both, Valerie. ‘Downsize.’ It could end very quickly.”

  He didn’t own a gun. Had no access to a gun. Rifle? Could you go into a sporting goods store and buy a rifle? A shotgun? Not a handgun, he knew that was more difficult in New York State. You had to apply for a license, there was a background check, paperwork. The thought made his head ache.

  “… that sound, what is it? I’m frightened.”

  In her corner of the room Valerie stood very still. How like an avalanche the wind was sounding! There had been warnings over the years that the hundred-foot cliff above Salthill Landing might one day collapse after a heavy rainstorm and there
had been small landslides from time to time and now it began to sound as if the cliff might be disintegrating, a slide of rock, rubble, uprooted trees rushing toward the house, about to collapse the roof … In his corner of the room Leonard stood as if transfixed, his shirt partly unbuttoned, in his stocking feet, waiting.

  They would die together, in the debris. How quickly then, the end would come!

  No avalanche, only the wind. Valerie shut the door of her bathroom firmly behind her, Leonard continued undressing and climbed into bed. It was a vast tundra of a bed, with a hard mattress. By morning the terrible wind would subside. Another dawn! Mists on the river, a white wintry sun behind layers of cloud. Another day Leonard Chase would endure with dignity, he was certain.

  2 .

  “‘Dwayne Ducharme,’ eh? Welcome to Denver.”

  There came Mitchell Oliver Yardman to shake Leonard’s hand in a crushing grip. He was “Mitch” Yardman, realtor and insurance agent and he appeared to be the only person on duty at Yardman Realty & Insurance this afternoon.

  “… not that this is Denver, eh? Makeville is what this is here, you wouldn’t call it a suburb of anyplace. Used to be a mining town, see. Probably you never heard of Makeville back east, and this kind of scenery, prob’ly you’re thinking ain’t what you’d expect of the West, eh? Well see, Dwayne Ducharme, like I warned you on the phone: this is east Colorado. ‘High desert plain.’ The Rockies is in the other direction.”

  Yardman’s smile was wide and toothy yet somehow grudging, as if he resented the effort such a smile required. Here was a man who’d been selling real estate for a long time, you could see. Even as he spoke in his grating mock western drawl Yardman’s shrewd eyes were rapidly appraising his perspective client “Dwayne Ducharme” who’d made an appointment to see small — ranch properties within commuting distance of Denver.

  So this was Oliver Yardman! twenty-one years after the Key West idyll, the man had thickened, grown coarser, yet there was the unmistakable sexual swagger, the sulky spoiled-boy mouth.

  Yardman was shorter than Leonard had expected, burly and solid-built as a fire hydrant. He had a rucked forehead and a fleshy nose riddled with small broken veins and his breath was meaty, sour. He wore a leathery-looking cowboy hat, an expensive — looking rumpled suede jacket, lime-green shirt with a black string tie looped around his neck, rumpled khakis, badly scuffed leather boots. He seemed impatient, edgy. His hands, that were busily gesticulating, in twitchy swoops like the gestures of a deranged magician, were noticably large, with stubby fingers, and on the smallest finger of his left hand he wore a showy gold signet ring with a heraldic crest.

  The first husband. Leonard’s heart kicked in his chest, he was in the presence of his enemy.

  In the office, that was hardly more than a store front, and smelled of stale cigarette smoke, Yardman showed Leonard photographs of “ranch-type” properties within “easy commuting distance” of downtown Denver. In his aggressive, mock-friendly yet grudging voice Yardman kept up a continual banter, peppering Leonard with facts, figures, statistics, punctuating his words with Eh? It was a verbal tic of which Yardman seemed unaware or was helpless to control and Leonard steeled himself waiting to hear it, dry-mouthed with apprehension that Yardman was suspicious of him, eyeing him so intimately, “… tight schedule, eh? Goin back tomorrow, you said? Said your firm’s ‘relocating’? Some kinda computer parts, eh? There’s a lot of that in Denver, ‘lectronics, ‘chips,’ these are boom times for some eh? Demographics’re movin west, for sure. Population shift. Back east, billion-dollar companies goin down the toilet, you hear.” Yardman laughed heartily, amused by the spectacle of companies going down a toilet.

  Leonard said, in Dwayne Ducharme’s earnest voice, “Mr. Yardman, I’ve been very — ”

  “‘Mitch.’ Call me ‘Mitch,’ eh?”

  “ — ‘Mitch.’ I’ve been very lucky to be transferred to our Denver branch. My company has been ‘downsized,’ but — ”

  “Tell me about it, man! ‘Downsize.’ ‘Cut-back.’ Ain’t that the story of these United States lately, eh?” Yardman was suddenly vehement, incensed. His pronunciation was savage: Yoo-nited States.

  Leonard said, with an air of stubborn naiveté, “Mr. Yardman, my wife and I think of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To ‘relocate’ to the west from the crowded east. We’re Methodist Evangelicals and the church is flourishing in Colorado and we have a twelve-year-old boy dying to raise horses and my wife thinks — ”

  “That is so interesting, Dwayne Ducharme,” Yardman interrupted, with a rude smirk, “ — you are one of a new ‘pioneer breed’ relocating to our ‘wide open spaces’ and relaxed way of life and lower taxes. Seems to me I have just the property for you: six-acre ranch, four-bedroom house for the growin’ family, barn in good repair, creek runs through the property, fences, shade trees, aspens, in kinda a valley where there’s deer and antelope to hunt. Just went on the market a few days ago, Dwayne Ducharme this is serendip’ty, eh?”

  Yardman locked up the office. Pulled down a sign on the front door: CLOSED. When he wasn’t facing Leonard, his sulky mouth yet retained its fixed smile.

  Outside, the men had a disagreement: Yardman wanted to drive his perspective client to the ranch, that was approximately sixteen miles away, and Dwayne Ducharme insisted upon driving his rental car. Yardman said, “Why’n hell we need two vehicles, eh? Save gas. Keep each other company. It’s the usual procedure, see.” Yardman’s vehicle was a new-model Suburban with smoke — tinted windows, bumper stickers featuring the American flag, and a dented right rear door. It was both gleaming-black and splattered with mud like coarse lace. Inside, a dog was barking excitedly, throwing itself against the window nearest Leonard and slobbering the glass. “That’s Kaspar. Spelled with a ‘K.’ Bark’s worsen his bite. Kaspar ain’t goin to bite you, Dwayne Ducharme, I guarantee.” Yardman slammed the flat of his hand against the window commanding the dog to “settle down.” Kaspar was an Airedale, pure-bred, Yardman said. Damn good breed, but needs discipline. “You buy this pretty li’l property out at Mineral Springs for your family, you’ll want a dog. ‘Man’s best friend’ is no bullshit.”

  But Leonard didn’t want to ride with Yardman and Kaspar; Leonard would drive his own car. Yardman stared at him, baffled. Clearly, Yardman was a man not accustomed to being contradicted or thwarted in the smallest matters. He said, barely troubling to disguise his contempt, “Well Dwayne Ducharme, you do that. You in your li’l Volva, Volvo, Vulva, you do that. Kaspar and me will drive ahead, see you don’t get lost.”

  In a procession of two vehicles they drove through the small town of Makeville in the traffic of early Saturday afternoon, in late March. It was a windy day, tasting of snow. Overhead were massive clouds like galleons. What a relief, to be free of Yardman’s overpowering personality! Leonard hadn’t slept well the night before, nor the night before that, his nerves were strung tight. In his compact rental car he followed the military-looking black Suburban through blocks of undistinguished store fronts, stucco apartment buildings, taverns, X — rated videos, opening onto a state highway crowded with the usual fast-food restaurants, discount outlets, gas stations, strip malls. All that seemed to remain of Makeville’s mining-town past were The Gold Strike Go-Go, Strike-it — Rich Lounge, Silver Lining Barbecue. Beyond the highway was a mesa landscape of small stunted trees, rocks. To get to Yardman Realty & Insurance at 661 Main Street, Makeville, Leonard had had a forty-minute drive from the Denver airport through a dispiriting clog of traffic and air hazier than the air of Manhattan on most days. He thought Can he guess? Any idea who I am?

  He was excited, edgy. No one knew where Leonard Chase was.

  Outside town, where the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour, Yardman pushed the Suburban toward seventy, leaving Leonard behind. It was to punish him, Leonard knew: Yardman allowed other vehicles to come between him and Leonard, then pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, to allow Leonard to catch up. In a gesture of g
enial contempt, Yardman signaled to him, and pulled out onto the highway before him, fast. In the rear window of the Suburban was an American flag. On the rear bumper were stickers: BUSH CHENEY USA. KEEP HONKING, I’M RELOADING.

  Yardman’s family must have been rich at one time. Yardman had been sent east to college. Though he played the yokel, it was clear that the man was shrewd, calculating. Something had happened in his personal life and in his professional life, possibly a succession of things. He’d had money, but not now. Valerie would never have married Yardman otherwise. Wouldn’t have kept the lewd Polaroids for more than two decades.

  If he guessed. What?

  The Suburban was pulling away again, passing an eighteenrig truck. Leonard could turn off at any time, drive back to the airport and take a flight back to Chicago. He’d told Valerie that he would be in Chicago for a few days on business and this was true: Leonard had a job interview with a Chicago firm needing a tax litigator with federal court experience. He hadn’t told Valerie that he’d been severed from the Rector Street firm and was sure that there could be no way she might know. He’d been commuting into the city five days a week, schedule unaltered. His CEO had seen to it, he’d been treated with courtesy: allowed the use of his office for several weeks, while he searched for a new job. Except for one or two unfortunate episodes, he got along well with his old colleagues. Once or twice he showed up unshaven, disheveled, most of the time he seemed unchanged. White cotton shirt, striped tie, dark pinstripe suit. He continued to have his shoes shined in Grand Central Station. In his office, door shut, he stared out the window. Or, clicked through the Internet. So few law firms were interested in him, at forty-six: “downsized.” But he’d tracked down Yardman in this way. And the interview in Chicago was genuine. Leonard Chase’s impressive resume, the “strong, supportive” recommendation his CEO had promised, were genuine.