Except for Marc’s picture, there was no evidence of emotional baggage hanging on her walls, no eccentricities draped over chairs. I hated the lack of her presence. The only sign that anyone lived here was a copy of Camus’s The Stranger, in the original French, on the table beside the sofa, and a few breakfast dishes draining in a bamboo rack beside the sink: one plate, one cup, one spoon, one knife.
I wanted to know what she had eaten, probably her last meal in her own apartment. I went to the refrigerator to look. With the exception of a very good bottle of Chardonnay, I found what I had expected: a block of tofu, a quart of nonfat, unflavored yogurt, a small loaf of dark-brown bread, and a lot of fruit that wasn’t very pretty—probably organically grown. It was boring fare. It was a boring room.
Twenty-two years ago, Emily had personified revolutionary youth: brilliant, beautiful, dangerous. What I missed in her apartment was some evidence of that passion. I held up Marc’s picture, seeking an answer from his well-remembered face. I found only more questions. Emily had altered the photograph, performed plastic surgery of another sort.
I shivered, and it had nothing to do with wet clothes. On my dresser at home, I had a framed print of the same photograph. Everyone who knew Marc had one. It was the Christmas greeting he had sent from Vietnam, the same shot my mother had hung on the Christmas tree. The prints had arrived in the mail the day we learned he’d been killed, the same day Emily’s face appeared on the cover of Time.
What made the original snapshot so poignant, besides the timing, was that it was so typical of Marc, so silly. He stands in front of burning latrine barrels with a big grin on his face. He’s barechested, wearing fatigues and combat boots. Though he is dirty and sweaty, the smile on his face is truly sweet. In one hand he holds up a red Christmas bulb, in the other a hand-rolled joint that is, in his words, as thick as his dick.
Emily had had her print enlarged. That would have been touching, except that she had had it airbrushed. Censored, if you will. Erasing the shit barrels was one thing, but to wipe out Marc’s joint was tantamount to emasculation.
I was shocked. Why would she do such a thing? I ran over the obvious possibilities: trying to boss him one last time, purging his icon to bring him into line with the new political correctness, a posthumous “just say no”? Emily, as I remember her, would have called this sucking up to the Establishment, caving in to the status quo. I usually thought she was a bit wacko when she spouted off this line, but for her it was completely natural. As natural as seeing Marc with marijuana.
Some of my fondest memories of youth are of walking with my big sister and brother in the hills behind our parents’ Berkeley house. Walking and sharing a joint. For this sin I am now, of course, deeply regretful, but the sky was so blue then, the jokes so funny, the discussion so profound.
Passing me a joint was the first act of recognition by Em and Marc that I was growing up, was becoming somewhat interesting, was more significant than the maggot they labeled me when I was a baby. Tainted as we were by the evil weed, without question those were the best times I can remember.
Recently, I was talked into attending an anti-drug fundraiser cocktail party by an old friend who had gone on a few of those walks with me and Marc and Em. In spite of this folly during his formative years, our friend has gone on to become a very successful, and very straight, investment banker. He was to give a prepared speech at this “do” about drugs and the ruination of America’s youth. But he was pretty bombed on martinis by the time he was to take the podium. He wanted me to go up with him and give a testimonial, admit our youthful sins.
“Glad to,” I said. “I’ll tell them that now and then I used to share a joint with friends and lovers, and I’m sorry as hell about it. It nearly cost me my job. I could handle heightened orgasm, not be misled that conversation was made more brilliant. My downfall was what it did for banana-nut ice cream. Banana-nut ice cream is why I gave up smoking grass. I couldn’t have a joint and not crave banana-nut, I couldn’t eat ice cream and keep an on-camera figure. The choice was clear—career future or marijuana. I gave up the weed.”
“Never mind,” he said.
“It’s the truth,” I said.
“Fuck it,” he said. That evening was the last I ever heard from him.
I was following my wet footprints back toward Em’s sofa when the doorbell rang.
I opened the door and said, surprised, “Ah, Detective Flint.”
“This neighborhood’s a bitch to find a parking place,” he said, taking off his raincoat.
“In a police car? Can’t you just park it anywhere?”
“Not unless I want a ticket.” He was looking around for someplace to hang his coat. “In this town, they even ticket the mayor.”
“Very honorable,” I said, following him into the bathroom, where he draped his coat over the shower door. “Why are you here?”
“You should change out of those wet clothes,” he said. “And turn up the radiator. This place is colder than the morgue.”
“Detective,” I said, “I have things to do, some phone calls to make. Then I plan to take a hot bath and get right back to the hospital.”
“No tub here,” he said. “Have to settle for a shower.”
“When I said I wanted a little time, I meant more than five minutes.”
He was already in the sitting room, looking around. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go change. I’ll look after myself.”
“Go away,” I said.
“Not a chance.” He sat down on the sofa and crossed one knee over the other. He had long, runner’s legs, and I liked the way the gray pinstripes stretched across his thighs. I found this observation to be vaguely disturbing.
Flint put on a thin smile and looked around, taking inventory. “Not much of a decorator, was she?”
“She didn’t spend much time here,” I said. I stood in the middle of the room, wet and shivery and shocked numb. “You should get out of your wet clothes.”
“Right,” I said, too miserable to object anymore. “Don’t touch anything until I get back.”
He smiled. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
There was a walk-in closet off Emily’s office. I rummaged around and found a set of navy sweats and a pair of thick ski socks. I shed my clothes and hung them up to dry, the holiday-red suit I had worn for filming, the sodden camel coat, my underwear. The ruined pumps I tossed into a corner, then, remembering that Em’s feet were several sizes larger than mine, set them upright and stuffed the toes with tissue. After I spoke with my parents, I planned to call Lyle, my tenant, and have him send me down a bag of essentials.
Though I hadn’t even thought about lighting a joint for fifteen years, before I left the closet I looked inside Em’s little redwood jewelry box, just in case, for old time’s sake, she still kept a stash there. I found some pretty good jewelry. But that was all.
There was a knock at the front door and I beat Flint to it. I found Mrs. Lim, holding a covered tray.
I make eggroll and tea,” she said, with a little bow. “Very hot.”
“Thank you,” I said. She came in, hesitated when she saw Flint, then went through and set the tray next to the sofa. As she uncovered the eggrolls and poured tea, she kept looking over at him, something building in her mind.
“Smells wonderful,” I said.
She handed me a cup of tea, then pointedly recovered the pot with a starched linen napkin without offering anything to Flint. Instead, she pointed a finger at him and scolded, “You no good police, Michael, this happen for Emily.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lim,” he said, looking abashed. “Believe me, I’m sorry.
“No good police, Michael.” She jabbed her finger in his direction once more, looked to make sure I was drinking my tea, stopped to adjust the radiator, then turned and padded out the door.
“She blames me for Emily,” Flint said, chagrined, when she was gone.
“She’s upset, she needs to blame someone,” I said. I went to the kitchen t
o get him a cup. “I’m just glad she’s mad at you and not me.”
“I’ve known her for years. She’ll calm down.”
“You seem to know everybody in town.”
“Basically.” He poured himself tea and sipped it as he made a slow circuit around the room. “You haven’t checked the messages on Doc’s answering machine.”
“They may be personal.”
“Maybe.” He punched the replay button and I went over and stood beside him to listen. He seemed a lot taller all of a sudden, now that I was in stocking feet. I stood as straight as I could while we waited for the machine to rewind. There were a lot of messages, so it took a while.
My mother was first. “Good morning, sweetheart. Dad and I were thinking about you. Give us a call. I love you.”
There were a couple of calls from someone named Jose at County General delivering incomprehensible lab information, something about hemocytes.
An almost familiar man’s voice: “Four o’clock, Em. Chill the wine.”
“She did,” I said, pausing the tape.
“What?” Flint asked.
“Chill the wine. It’s in the refrigerator.”
“So, did they meet at four?”
“If they did, they didn’t open the wine. I wish I knew who that was.”
“Yeah.” He restarted the tape.
Most of the messages were business, delivered in the sort of shorthand evolved by people who speak together frequently. Some left names and times, some didn’t.
The first call I found ominous came from someone named Leroy Bates, from Health and Human Services in San Pedro. “Dr. Duchamps, it’s one-ten now. Did I get our appointment time wrong? I have a two o’clock flight to Sacramento. I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me and we can reschedule.” Where had Emily been?
He was followed by a very familiar voice. “Emily, you’re nuts. Don’t do a damn thing until you talk to me. I have a room at the Bonaventure now, and I’m waiting for your call. I love you like crazy.”
Flint played that one again.
“It’s my uncle, Max,” I said. “He’s Emily’s attorney.”
“You know what he’s talking about?”
“I intend to ask him.”
I heard my own voice next, the first message I had left that afternoon.
“What time was that?” he asked.
“Around three-thirty, a little before. I called from the airport.”
“Cutting it close, weren’t you?”
“It was the only flight I could get.”
He nodded and listened through two hang-up calls before Emily’s four o’clock date made a second call:
“It’s almost five, Emily. Where are you? I’m still waiting.”
Then I called again. “Come home, Em. I’m in the booth across the street. I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m hungry. And get out the penicillin—I had to use the bathroom at the Chevron station on the corner and I know I picked up something lethal.”
Max again. He sounded angry, said it was after six and he was tired of being room mother. The tape ran out before I could make sense of the comment.
Flint lifted the tape out of the machine. “Damn it, Emily. Where were you?”
“May I have the tape?” I said, holding out my hand.
“Later. It has to go downtown first. You’ll get it back, I promise.”
I was going to argue, but the telephone rang.
“Hello,” I said.
“Emily, thank God you’re there.” The four o’clock date. “What’s happened?”
To Flint I mouthed, “It’s him.” Into the telephone, I said, “What could happen?”
“Why didn’t you come?”
“Where?”
There was a long pause. “Emily?”
I was afraid he would hang up if I played this any further. “This is Emily’s sister. Please, who are you?”
“Maggot?” It was almost a sob. I wished I could place his voice. I was sure I had heard it somewhere, sometime. He sounded desperate. Emily had been giving sanctuary to desperate people for a long, long time. He could easily be one of them. He called me Maggot. A lot of her friends from the old days called me Maggot.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
‘Yes. How are you, Maggot?”
“So so.”
“Where is Emily? I have to talk to her.”
“Emily can’t come to the phone now. I’ll relay a message for you.”
“Just tell me that she’s all right.”
“She isn’t all right.” I started to cry. It made me mad, but there was nothing I could do about it. The pain inside simply took over. Then he was crying into the telephone, too, in short choking gasps, the way my father, and probably a lot of other men, cry. When I could, I said, “Who are you?”
“Not yet, Maggot. Not yet.” Then the line went dead.
I stood there, sobbing. It felt good to let go, but I was still embarrassed that Flint had seen me come apart. He handed me the linen napkin from Mrs. Lim’s tea tray.
“You’re a real brick,” he smiled.
“Fuck you,” I gasped, wiping my face and blowing my nose into the napkin.
“A real brick and foul-mouthed.” He put a tentative arm around my shoulders and held me stiffly. He patted my back. I thought he was being so nice because I was Emily’s sister. Maybe he hurt, too. He crooned, “Go ahead and cry.”
“I’m finished.” But I let my head drop against his lapels. It wasn’t very comfortable; all the paraphernalia on his belt—holster, beeper, shield—came between us. But I could hear his heart beat, hear the air going in and out of his chest, and that made me feel better. I started to breathe regularly after a few minutes.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If you’re sure you’re okay,” he said, “maybe we could talk about that phone call.”
“I’m okay.” I moved away from him, blew my nose again, and managed a steady breath. I sat down on the sofa and thought about what the man had said.
“So?” Flint asked.
My voice sounded shaky and thick, but it served. “I don’t know who the caller is, but he knows me. Or knew me a long time ago.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The way he reacted when I told him who I was. He called me Maggot.”
“That’s significant?”
“Very,” I said. “There’s something about his voice that’s familiar, and at the same time, it isn’t. I wish I could place him. Maybe it was just the tone of the conversation that was familiar. He seemed very nervous. He wouldn’t say anything that would identify him, as if maybe he thought the conversation was being overheard. I used to take a lot of nonmessage messages for Emily, from people who wouldn’t leave their names.”
“Married men who take lovers don’t leave their names, either.”
“A lover?” I thought about the bottle of wine, Em’s beautiful new breasts. “That’s a possibility.”
“Anything else about him?”
“Just impressions. He’s not especially young, not especially old. No strong regional accent. He sounds educated, but not academic, not like the stiffs on the faculty with my father. The rest you know: He had a date with Emily at four, and she missed it. About that, he seemed worried, maybe frightened, rather than angry. One other thing,” I said. “He asked awfully quickly whether she was all right. When I said she wasn’t, he cried.”
“He cried?”
“What, you never cried?”
“Never.” He picked up an eggroll and bit into it. “Almost never, anyway.”
“You’re some tough guy, Flint.”
“Comes with the territory.” He smiled. “You know, you’re perceptive. You’d make a pretty good detective.”
“I was a reporter for a long time.”
“If you ever decide to convert to the good guys, give me a call.”
“I’m tired, Flint,” I said. “Will you go away?”
“Let’s call Un
cle Max.”
“After you leave. It’s a personal call. I might cry again.”
“Go ahead.” He tossed me the napkin. “There’s still a dry corner.
I laughed. “You a married man, detective?”
“Twenty years,” he said.
“Amazing,” I said.
“Not really. Twelve with Leslie, eight with Charlene. I don’t count the year between them, or the two after.”
“So you’re not married.”
He shook his head. “Go on, call Uncle Max.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten-fifteen.”
I went to the telephone, but dialed my parents’ number instead of the Bonaventure.
Nine o’clock is the beginning of the evening for my parents. Over the last few years, they seem to have given up on sleep except as a way to fill the hours before dawn. I believe my father is afraid to sleep. It reminds him that one day fairly soon he won’t wake up at all. And when he does sleep, he dreams of Marc in his coffin.
My mother answered on the first ring. “Emily?” she said, without bothering with hello.
“Mother, it’s Maggie,” I said.
“Are you with Emily?”
“I just left her.”
“Tell her the guest room is all ready for her mystery guest.” She sounded artificially cheerful, fueled by an extra martini after dinner, I thought. Maybe two.
“Mom, is Dad with you?”
“He’s at the faculty club playing trio sonatas with the Helms. Margot, they ran your new promos after MacNeil & Lehrer tonight. You looked lovely. Your hair seemed lighter. Have you done something to it?”
“No. It was probably the lighting.” I took a breath. “Who is Em’s mystery guest?”
“If I knew it would hardly be a mystery, would it? All she said was, that it’s someone we have all been waiting for. Think it’s a romance?”
“Mom,” I said, getting a toehold before she took off on another tangent. “Emily is in the hospital.”
A pause. “Working late?”
“I don’t know how to say this. She was injured this afternoon. She’s in intensive care.”
“Intensive care?”
“Yes. Mom, Em was shot.”
Telling Lies Page 5
