Stephen L. Carter

by New England White

  “Okay, Moms.” That sweet smile again, like the welcome into a new religion.

  (III)

  SHE KEPT HER HALF-PROMISE to Vanessa. She did not tell Lemaster about Kellen’s creepy attentions toward their daughter. There was no point, she assured herself, lying beside her husband, willing herself to sleep. Kellen was dead. Vanessa’s fragile recovery had been too hard-won. The coming end of official interest in Kellen Zant was the best news she had heard…well, since he was shot.

  She said, “Lemmie?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “That detective came to see me yesterday. Chrebet.” The darkness was like the inside of the tent at the overnight campouts on which Mona used to take her children when they were small, hoping to keep them from growing up into wimps. “He said they’re getting ready to close the investigation.”

  “So I hear.” Sleepily. “Robbery or something.”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “Seems awfully convenient.” Lifting his head briefly, then settling again. “But I guess it’s not our call.” A yawn. A way he had, putting behind him what could not be changed. In her mind’s eye, Julia could see the campfire, whipping yellow and red as the night rose. “Oh, by the way, I talked to Mal Whisted.” A beat. “About Astrid.”

  Right after you went to the White House and spent a few minutes alone with the President, Julia registered, but choked the thought before it could grow. “Okay.”

  “He said he’ll call her off. He doesn’t believe in that kind of—”

  “Okay.”

  “Astrid’s just the way she is.” Lemaster drew her closer. “You can’t choose your family, I guess.” A kiss. “Fortunately, you can choose your spouse.”

  A lovely interlude in the shadows, a little poking and prodding.

  Then: “Lemmie? What do you think really happened? With Kellen, I mean?” Half wanting his remarkable mind turned to the problem because she was tired of speculating alone. Half testing him.

  He made her wait so long Julia feared he had fallen asleep. Again the thoughts she dared not think clamored for attention, and, with difficulty, she fended them off. “I suppose whoever did it must have thought there was a good reason.”

  “But who would hate him that much?”

  “It didn’t have to be hate, Jules.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Listening for his answer, imagining a sleeping bag, dying embers, stars diamond-bright against dark velvet.

  “I know what Kellen would have called it,” he said at last. “Rational maximizing of self-interest.”

  CHAPTER 14

  A SURPRISE GUEST

  (I)

  SUNDAY NIGHT JULIA HAD DINNER in the city with a pair of Sister Ladies: Regina Thackery, an obstetrician on the staff of the medical school, and Kimmer Madison, a partner in the biggest law firm in town. They were, technically, a subcommittee of a subcommittee, charged with crafting a description of the purpose of a fund-raising dance to be held in May, because the group wanted a way to support health services for pregnant teens without taking a position on abortion. Regina volunteered, and also drafted Kimmer, her bosom buddy, who never actually attended the organization’s meetings, although now and then she brought her son to Littlebugs, the children’s auxiliary, created decades ago so that middle-class women of the darker nation could find playmates for sons and daughters too precious to be risked among the black masses, yet too black to be risked among the whites. Julia had no clear memory of how she had stumbled onto the subcommittee. So far the trio had met twice and accomplished next to nothing, and this meeting, at Cadaver’s, an expensive if peculiar restaurant downtown, was headed in the same direction: good food, good wine, good conversation, none of it on the topic.

  Usually Julia enjoyed these get-togethers. But tonight she was distracted, and both her Sister Ladies noticed.

  “Are you okay, honey?”

  “Everything all right at home?”

  They could not draw her with politics. They could not draw her with gossip, even when Kimmer let slip the juicy morsel that she had decided, due to the shortage of black men of a certain age and quality, to start dating her own ex-husband. They could not even draw her into a discussion of relationships, where ordinarily she would dissemble, recognizing how the rest of the Clan thought her marriage ideal; but, having learned at Mona’s feet never to air dirty laundry in public, she shared with nobody in the world the chilly truth that living with Lemaster was like climbing Everest every day.

  Without oxygen.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, when their banter failed to rouse her. She sipped her wine, glaring at her barely touched tilapia as if she had identified a new enemy. “This hasn’t been an easy few weeks.”

  They understood, eyes begging for more.

  “Maybe we should never have moved out of the city,” she continued, surprising herself. And perhaps she was even sharing a piece of the truth, although not, to be sure, her deepest fears. “It’s like ever since we got to the Landing—”

  “Hey, look who’s here,” said Kimmer with sudden unenthusiasm, handsome walnut face crinkling with distaste as she gazed across the restaurant. Like Lemaster, Kimberly Madison seemed to know everybody in town.

  Julia and Regina turned as a tall, fit man of the paler nation strode happily toward their table, jollity gleaming from friendly blue eyes, not the smallest hair out of place. You had the sense that all of life delighted him.

  “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” he said, waving his large hands, although nobody had budged. “Kimberly, my dear, introduce me to your friends.”

  “Regina. Julia. This is Anthony Tice.”

  (II)

  SHE RECOGNIZED HIM from his television commercials, but he was even more overwhelming in person. He possessed the chipped good looks and fetching smile of a man who spent a lot of time practicing in the mirror, and the broad shoulders of a man who spent a lot of time in the gym. She had heard that Tice developed an amazing rapport with juries, and, seeing him in the flesh, believed it.

  “Well!” he said, face alight with a hot joy that made her queasy. “Julia Carlyle. We meet at last. My pleasure. Really.”

  “Go away,” said Julia, and both Sister Ladies turned to look at her.

  He sat down instead.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” he assured her.

  “Do you know him?” said Regina.

  The legal Adonis said hello, and that was all it took. Julia gave him a lengthy and detailed piece of her mind, because she had needed an outlet for weeks, and this man’s nonsense with her dean was certainly a contributing factor. Tony Tice seemed unsurprised, and unfazed. He bore her vehemence stoically. When she ran down, her Sister Ladies were staring at her; as was her end of the restaurant.

  “I only need a couple of minutes.” His suit fit perfectly. His shoes glistened. His feet, like his hands, were very long. “If you returned my calls I wouldn’t have to bother you.”

  “I didn’t return your calls because I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Hear that? She doesn’t want to talk to you,” said Kimmer, switching sides.

  His weatherproof smile never wavered. “I won’t be long, Kimberly, dear. You ladies can get back to your dinner in a sec.” To Julia: “Did you talk to your dean about me?”

  “Sure. She said you might not give your contribution this year if I don’t talk to you.” Her cell phone rang. She ignored it. “Well, now we’ve talked, so you can pay up.”

  Again Kimmer tried to interrupt.

  “The thing is, I’m representing a client.” Leaning forward, trying to get her to lean toward him so he could whisper, but Julia refused to play. “My client was doing business with Professor Zant, and I’m afraid their business was never quite concluded. I’m sort of picking up the pieces—”

  Julia held up her hands, not wanting Regina and Kimmer to hear any of this. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk to you for a minute. Just for a minute.”

  She left the tab
le with him, walked to the foyer, where diners without reservations waited. Out on the street, a bitter cold rain had replaced the recent snow, so they stood beneath the awning.

  Infuriated by his complacent whiteness, feeling Clannish, Julia went at once on the attack. “How dare you just come up and interrupt our dinner like that.”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’m rude for a living.”

  “Well, whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”

  “I’m buying, not selling.”

  “I don’t have anything to sell, Mr. Tice. No matter what you might think, I was not Kellen’s Black Lady.”

  She had hoped to startle him, but he startled her right back.

  “I see you’ve talked to Mary Mallard,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust her if I were you. Professor Zant’s dealings were with me, not Ms. Mallard. He was going to sell to my client. Ms. Mallard is an interloper. You shouldn’t let her near you.”

  “After tonight, I’m not going to let you near me.”

  The smile never left his face, and she had to admit the effect was rather endearing. “Let me make it simple, so I won’t take much of your time. Professor Zant was in possession of an item that my client was interested in buying. They had negotiated a deal. Zant gave my client what he called a teaser. He promised to deliver the item itself within a couple of weeks, and then somebody shot him.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Shari Larid,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “It’s a name. Shari Larid.” He spelled it. “A substitute teacher. Professor Zant said she would have the materials he was selling, and you would know where to find her.”

  Julia shook her head. “I don’t know anybody of that name. I knew a lawyer named Aird when I worked in New York, but that’s about it. There. We’re done. Now, will you please go away?” When Tice just kept smiling, she tried again: “Who’s your client?”

  “Privileged. Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry.

  “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Mary. I don’t have any idea what Kellen was doing when he died. He didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t leave me anything. We didn’t have that kind of…of, ah, relationship.” An unexpected heat in her cheeks caused her to stumble over the words. “And I don’t appreciate anybody suggesting anything to the contrary. So go back and tell your mysterious clients you messed up. Tell them you’ve got the wrong girl.”

  Still he was undeterred. “You have no idea how important this is. There could be a nice reward if you help. We could make a deal.” Waving away her fresh objection. “Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  Her cell phone rang again. Irritated, Julia glanced at the screen. Claire Alvarez. Whatever she wanted could wait. “All right, Mr. Tice. You want a deal? Let’s make a deal. These are my terms, and they are not negotiable.” Finger stabbing the air. “You come near me again, for any reason, and I’ll have you arrested. Period.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, undeterred, and slipped his card, unwanted, into her hand.

  Julia’s smile was savage. She did not often give vent to her anger, not in the years since marrying Lemaster. It was like being high, only more natural. Making sure the lawyer saw her do it, she tore the card in half and tossed the pieces into the filthy snow mounded along the street. She strode back inside, trying to project a haughty swagger. Lemaster was down in Florida, fund-raising, but when he got back she would tell him about Tice’s harassment, and let him, as he had said, do something about the man. Meanwhile, she felt triumphant. She had told Tricky Tony off. After twenty years of letting her husband solve her problems, she had handled this one herself. As she sat back down, Regina and Kimmer remarked on her changed mood, even going so far as to tease her about her clandestine conversation.

  Julia, still high on her success, went along with the fun.

  Her cell phone rang yet again. Odd for her dean to be so persistent. She marched out to the lobby to take the call. Claire, sounding shaken, asked if Julia could come to her house right away. Julia looked at her watch. Almost nine. She asked if it could wait until tomorrow.

  Claire told her why.

  Two hours ago, as Boris Gibbs crossed the crowded parking lot after Christmas-shopping at the big mall up in Norport, a sport utility vehicle, skidding in the snow, had pancaked him, and kept on rolling.

  And although nobody believed them—in emergencies people tend to see strange things—a couple of horrified witnesses would later insist that the SUV had backed up and hit him again.

  (III)

  LATER. Julia down in the family room skimming through the channels as the latest storm screeched along the eaves, demanding entry. No snow, but plenty of nasty bone-chilling rain, and already the yard was invisible, despite the floodlights, angry droplets hurtling down like gunfire. CNN. Click. Fox News. Click. MSNBC. Click. Nothing.

  Unlike Kellen, poor Boris did not make the networks.

  Just a traffic accident, after all, and Boris was white, and known to nobody of consequence beyond Kepler, aside from the tiny handful of scholars in his field, and, in truth, not even to all of them.

  Irritated, she turned off the television and went to the kitchen desk to try the online versions. But she kept imagining what it must have been like. The truck hits. You’re down, you’ve never felt such pain, but you’re alive. Relief floods through what body you have left. Then the truck comes back. And back.

  The police discounted the reports, but Julia knew they would live in her nightmares.

  She wondered what Boris heard at the end. An engine gunning. Screams, of course, maybe his own. Then that final click, brightness to blankness. And what Kellen had heard. Would his brain even have had time to recognize the gunshot? She thought not. Just an instant of pain. Or of surprise.

  Followed by…whatever.

  The line between life and death, everything and nothing, was so easy to cross. Leave your car at the wrong end of the parking lot and the inexplicable miracle ceased: no more beating heart, no more breathing lungs, no more thinking brain. Some days Julia believed devotedly in God, the resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come, and all the rest of the affirmations in the Nicene Creed she recited on Sunday mornings at Saint Matthias. Other days she believed only the evidence of biology: all organisms returned to dust, and, as entropy died, the whole universe would eventually do the same. And yet she was not exactly on unfamiliar terms with death, and not only because she had lost Jay, her twin brother, twenty years ago. Back in college, as nobody knew but Tessa, Julia had attempted suicide when Kellen had dropped her. Stomping back from dinner to her apartment near the bookstore, she penned a scathing note, probably to Kellen, possibly to Mona, then put on her full makeup and most expensive dress, swallowed a bottle of Valium, and curled on the sofa, gleefully imagining the scene after her roommate discovered her artfully arranged corpse. Only Tessa never came home that night, and Julia was astonished to wake the next morning, aching and cramped from the ridiculous position in which she had been sitting, having somehow managed to vomit up most of the pills while asleep, spewing violently enough that she had avoided choking on the residue. She was sitting in her own filth. It was all very Dante. And quite unfortunate: pills always worked in the movies. She felt deliciously incompetent. Standing up was the hardest thing she had ever done. The light made her head churn. She squinted it into sparkles. Outside the window, a fresh snow covered the campus. She threw the bottle away and threw the dress away and showered for about a week, then marched over to the deserted economics department—it was Saturday—where she climbed in through a window and used her keys to scratch the hell out of Kellen’s polished door. For good measure, she smashed the little glass window too, but the wires kept it from shattering. Then, plowing through the snow, she dropped in at the house on North Balch Street she had hardly visited in two years of college to tell Mona she wanted to drop out of school for a while, maybe do some trave
ling: Sri Lanka sounded far enough, although she also thought she might run off to join the revolution in what the smart set in those days called Azania.

  Mona, writing hard in her study as the small fire she preferred licked at the grate, contemplated her daughter’s scrubbed, peaked face, the weight she had lost, the trembling fingers, the wild uncertainty in her eyes; or perhaps she just contemplated the rumors that had reached her ears; either way, experienced psychologist, she assessed the situation correctly.

  “Why don’t you just murder the guy instead?” she asked. “Because anybody who would do this to my Jewel doesn’t deserve to live.” And went back to her work.

  As Julia, time and again, had gone back to Kellen. And not only at Dartmouth. When, after graduation, she moved to Manhattan to take a job at an advertising agency—one of Mona’s many connections, for in those days, before her radical period, she advised the makers of soap and beer and automobiles on how to hook black consumers—Kellen moved, too, down to Columbia. The salary and benefits were great, and he wanted the New York lifestyle, including the considerable possibilities for consulting income. But when he came sniffing around Julia, he assured her that she was the principal reason, and Julia, despite having sworn never to speak to him again, allowed herself to be assured.

  And assured.

  During her time in New York, Kellen had been the truck, backing up and running her over, backing up and running her over, Julia lying there, allowing it to happen, again and again, more pain than she thought possible, her days and nights chemically aided, until the weekend when Tessa, in her second year of law school, came down to the city for lunch and a Broadway show, took one look at her former roommate, and made the decision for her. Tessa forced Julia to pack, frog-marched her to the car, and drove her to Elm Harbor, where she refused to let the black woman out of her sight for three days, even in the bathroom, and then, when Julia had run out of obscenities, ordered her to enroll in a department, any department, made no difference to Tessa as long as she did not go back to—