Kissing the Beehive

by Jonathan Carroll

  I told them the story of the day Pauline ran over our dog and came to the house to report it. They were delighted and asked many questions.

  "She never told me she hit a dog!" Jitka said crossly, as if preparing to have a word about it with her eldest daughter when she came in. "When I was little girl in Prague, my mother got bottle of perfume for her birthday. She never wore it because she thought it is too nice to use. Typical mother, hah? But I would go into my parents' room all the time and smell it. If Mother caught me, ooh! She would get so angry, but she could not stop me from doing it. I had to breathe that smell at least twice a week. It said there were so many exotic and wonderful things in the world and one day I would go and know them. Adventure! Romance! Gary Grant! I didn't need to read Arabian Nights books – I just take the top out of her bottle and pop! – there was the dzin . . . the genie for me.

  "But I grew up and married Milan and come to America. That was a little interesting, but my whole life wouldn't have filled up that bottle. I think, I really do think if Pavlina was alive, her life would have been everything I dreamed of when I smelled the perfume. She got into trouble and made me crazy, but she could have done anything."

  "Who do you think killed her?" I asked in as calm a voice as I could muster.

  Mother and daughter glanced at each other. Jitka nodded for Magda to speak.

  "From everything we know? Gordon Cadmus. I mean, Frannie's been showing us all this stuff over the years, telling us things, and if I had to bet my life on it, I'd say it was him.

  "It's getting cold in here! Hah, Ma? Isn't it cold in here?" Rubbing her shoulders, Magda stood up and left the room. No one said anything. Pauline's death was suddenly as fresh again as a just-dropped glass.

  After asking if I could visit again, we thanked the Ostrovas and left. On the way to the car, Frannie's pocket phone rang. He was needed down at the station. It was a five-minute walk from there so we said goodbye and he strode off.

  Veronica was taking the train back to the city, but asked if I would show her Crane's View before she left. I'd done the tour first with Cass, then Frannie, and now Veronica. It had been different each time because it was always through another pair of eyes. Cass knew the town through my stories, Frannie because he had lived there his whole life, Veronica because of the death of Pauline. She made it plain she wasn't interested in Al Salvato's store or the spot where fifteen-year-old McCabe set a car on fire: She wanted to see Pauline's town.

  We drove past the school, the pizza place, the movie theater. The tour ended down at the river/railroad station. I parked near the water and we walked to where we'd found the body. I described again what it had been like. We stood there silently looking around. The sun was going down and its gold set the water on fire. Her train was due to arrive in a few minutes. This companionable silence would have been a nice way to end the visit, but then the big bats flew out of the Veronica cave.

  The first one, a small and innocuous question, gave no hint of what was to come. "Whatever happened to Edward Durant's father?"

  "I'm interviewing him next week. He's retired. Lives across the river in Tappan. Sounded nice on the phone."

  "Sam, you shouldn't have asked the Ostrovas who they thought killed Pauline. I was surprised at you."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're going to have to tell them about the videotape and the notes you've gotten. All of it's going to upset them. It's taken thirty years to get over her death and now you come in and exhume her. I think the less you upset them, the better. The less you tell them –"

  "Don't lecture me, Veronica. I don't agree with you. When we find the real killer it'll give them some peace. The only way I can do that is to ask a lot of questions of everyone."

  "Do you think you can trust Frannie?" Her voice was calm enough, but the look on her face wasn't.

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "I don't know. Just the way he is. He obviously has his own agenda and maybe it's not the same as yours. Anyway, you don't need his help on this, Sam. I can do it with you. I'll do whatever you want. I'm great at interviewing and researching. That's my job! I make documentary films. Forget Frannie and that boy Ivan. I'll help you with everything. You can't imagine the connections I have!" She stepped in close. I could smell the hot tang of her breath. She put her cheek to mine and whispered, "You don't need anyone but me. I'm your harbor."

  The tone of her voice and its absolute conviction gave me the creeps.

  Thank God her train was due any moment. I reminded her of this and started toward the station. She took my arm. I didn't want her to touch me.

  Pauline Ostrova and Edward Durant Jr. were made for each other and never should have met. He was practical and thorough, she was not. The first time he ever insulted her, he said she was as complicated and bustling as a beehive. It became his nickname for her. She laughed in his face and said she'd rather be that than a key or a pencil, like him, which served exactly one boring purpose and thus was constantly forgotten or lost.

  Both kids were brilliant and moody. Durant had lived his life in the shadow of his important and powerful father. Pauline's dad was a mechanic.

  That's how they met, one afternoon when Edward's car wouldn't start. He had the hood up and was futzing around with the hoses and whatever else he could turn with his fingers. He knew squat about car engines but all men pop the hood and fiddle helplessly when their cars don't start; it's in the genes.

  Pauline had just finished a freshman philosophy class where once again college proved to be a disappointment. Her peers were mostly interested in doing things she considered old hat: screwing and drinking, staying up all night cramming for tests because of all the classes they'd missed screwing and drinking.

  There were things Pauline needed to know, but no one was teaching them to her. Classes were hard, but not in a good way. She felt like a Strasbourg goose with a funnel jammed down her throat. Instead of food, Swarthmore force-fed her ontology and Ludwig Boltzmann, the Potsdam Treaty and other ho-hum. Sure they filled her, but to what purpose?

  She had argued with the philosophy instructor until both of them were ready to go for each other's throats. She argued with everyone in those days; it was getting bad. Her frustration was bubbling over.

  A beige VW bug was parked in front of the building. Its back hood was up and a guy was looking at the exposed engine with suspicion and despair. Pauline stomped over, all fury and competence, and fixed it in fifteen minutes. Edward Durant invited her for lunch in an upscale restaurant that did not cater to students. They sat in a booth and talked a long time.

  She didn't like him. He was too stiff, too straight, talked incessantly about his big-shot father, and wanted to be a lawyer, for God's sake!

  Durant thought Pauline was dynamite.

  Afterward they went back to his room and had sex. He wrongly thought it was because he'd wowed her. She would have laughed if she had known. She only wanted to blow off steam and sex was always good for that.

  In the following days he couldn't believe her indifference. She'd fixed his car. They'd spoken for hours. They went to bed! He'd told her great stories and made her laugh, but now she didn't seem to give a shit. She never returned his calls, ignored the love letter he spent one whole Saturday composing . . . Nothing. What had gone wrong? He tracked her down after a class and asked the question point-blank. She said, "Nothing's wrong. You're nice." And kept walking.

  He wore her down. They didn't sleep together again for three months but that didn't matter. He loved the challenge and Pauline wasn't used to being wooed. She liked his eagerness and was flattered by his naive persistence.

  She'd always been so quick to give herself to others. Since she was fifteen, sex was no big deal. She discovered that the fastest way to know a man was through a few hours in bed with him. That way you saw his secret face and frequently he let his guard down.

  After their one time in bed, Edward behaved like a perfect gentleman on a first date. He was happy to take walks with her, go
to the movies, a meal. He proved to be much more interesting than she had originally thought. He saw life and the world in ways she never considered before. He had never talked with a woman about these things. When he saw she was interested, he wanted to tell her everything. It unsettled him to know she had been around big-time. She spoke of intercourse as if there were no mystery to it and only a little magic. He was dying to ask her a hundred questions about her many lovers, but never did. Partly because he knew she would answer every one without any hesitation.

  Slowly college life improved for Pauline. Some of that was because of Edward's friendship and support. He knew the tide had turned the day she started calling him Eddie. The only person who ever called him that was his mother, and only when his father wasn't around.

  The saddest thing about Durant was his fear of his father. But the truth was, Senior was so tuned to his own channel that Junior was rarely in his thoughts. The first time Pauline met the parents was on a weekend and the four of them went out to dinner. Despite his self-absorption, Mr. Durant recognized this young woman had a will as strong as his own and treated her coolly. Mrs. Durant thought Pauline was terrific, and because she loved her son much more than her husband, she encouraged the relationship. In the past, most of the girls Edward had brought home had been either awed or scared of him. This one stood her ground and was clearly his equal in the most important ways.

  It would have broken Eddie's heart if he had known Pauline was sleeping with several other students. She never told him about it, but he heard rumors. It made him so upset that once he literally stuck his fingers in his ears and shouted, "Shut up! Shut up!"

  One night she was with one of these others. Just as they were about to get down to business, she sat up in bed. Looking around as if waking from a deep sleep, she said, "No! I don't want to do this." She got dressed again and ran across campus to Edward's dormitory, where he was studying for a test. She called from a phone booth and begged him to come down. For one of the only times in his college career, Edward Durant flunked a test because he had better things to do with his evening. After that they were inseparable.

  I patched all that together from interviews I did with Pauline's and Durant's college roommates. Both were now middle-aged but remembered the smallest details and spoke of their dead friends as if the events of thirty years ago had happened yesterday. Pauline's roommate, Jenevora Dickson, cried through most of the interview. She had an important job at a major advertising agency and looked the part. Once she started talking about Pauline and Edward, however, she came apart at the seams.

  Durant's old roommate angrily paced the room the whole time we talked. "Know what pisses me off most? This is off the record, okay? I still don't know if he killed her. Do you believe that? I lived with Edward for three years and was as close to him as anyone I've ever known. But he might've done it. He really might've. He adored Pauline. Absolutely adored every part of her being, but it's possible he killed her.

  "I saw him in jail, you know? Went up to goddamned Sing Sing and visited him. He looked like he'd shrunk two feet in that prison suit. No one was around and it was private in there, so I asked him. I said, 'Did you do it?' All he could say was, 'I don't know. I swear to God I don't know.' What's that supposed to mean? You killed her or you didn't. And I guarantee you – if he would have told anyone the truth, it would've been me. We were brothers."

  "What was his father like?"

  "A putz. A Paul Stuart suit with French cuffs. I once was in court against him. Remember von Ribbentrop at the Nuremberg Trials? How arrogant he was right up to the last? That was Durant Sr. Everyone said he was broken by Edward's death, but he didn't look very broken to me."

  Hi, Sam."

  "Hi, Veronica." Although she was two hours and eighty miles away, I sat bolt upright in the chair and looked around the room as if she were on the phone and nearby at the same time.

  "Hello, sweetheart. I'm sorry to disturb you, but I have incredible news. Did you know Pauline and Edward Durant were married?"

  "Married? How do you know?"

  She laughed like a child. "I told you: I'm a great researcher! When I was looking at her notebooks I saw she'd written 'Forever Yours Motel, Vegas' with a big red question mark at the end. It was the only thing in there that made me curious. I played a hunch and contacted the town hall in Las Vegas. Voila! There's a marriage license issued to them three months before she died."

  "Incredible! I don't know what it means, but it's gotta play into it somewhere."

  "I know! I'm wondering what if Gordon Cadmus had found out? If he was in love with her, or even just jealous, what would he do if he discovered she was married? Maybe he did kill her in a jealous rage."

  "Then why is someone sending me notes, and why did he shoot his son?"

  "I don't know. But it adds a whole new twist, eh? You know what I was thinking? I could catch the five o'clock train up there and we could go out for a celebratory dinner. I don't have anything to do tomorrow and, well, it could be a nice night."

  "Do you mind if we do it another time, Veronica? To tell you the truth, I'm feeling kind of grumpy today."

  "I could make you feel better."

  "I don't think so."

  Her silence weighed a ton.

  Two things happened in quick succession that drove me even farther away from Veronica.

  I was at the supermarket doing my weekly shopping. Halfway down an aisle, I looked up and saw a staggeringly beautiful woman holding a package of chicken in one hand. It took some seconds to absorb her beauty. Only then did I realize she was talking to the package. I couldn't hear all that she was saying, but just enough to know she was completely mad. Both my heart and soul shivered, then froze.

  One person rushed into my mind and took up all the space there. Veronica. Watching this beautiful lunatic talking to the chicken as if she were Hamlet and it was Yorick's skull, the only thing I could think of was my new lover. Was she crazy too?

  Then I discovered that my favorite fountain pen was gone the day I was to interview Edward Durant Sr. I'm not a particularly tidy person, but when it comes to my desk I'm fanatical. Both Cass and the cleaning woman know never to even go near it. Everything had its place, particularly that lucky pen. If something was missing, even dumb Scotch tape, I'd get cuckoo and search until I found it. The loss of the pen was heart-attack country. I scoured the house to no avail. I even looked in the dog's bed in the kitchen, so aggravated by then that I thought he might have taken it to spite me. I could just see him chewing it while smiling the whole time. But he didn't have it. I called Cass in the city but she knew nothing about it. When she suggested I ask Veronica, a stone door in my brain slammed shut with a tremendous bang. Veronica! She'd broken into the house once before. She knew how important the object was to me . . .

  "Yes, I have it." No more than that. No explanation, apology, just yes. I hesitated to ask when she had taken it because I did not want to hear she had been in the house again without my knowing.

  "I need it, Veronica. You know I need that pen."

  Most casually, she said, "Well, it's simple: I'll give it to you when we see each other."

  "Don't do this, Veronica! You're stepping way over the line. Give it back to me. I need it for my work."

  "And what about my needs, Sam? What about the fact you've been avoiding me like I'm diseased! What's happening to us? What is going on in your head? Everything was fixed. We were going to work on your book together and –"

  "No, you said that, Veronica, not me. I never collaborate on books. You're too close, do you understand? You're taking away all the air in the room. I can't breathe."

  "And what am I supposed to do, Sam, while you're in your room with the door shut and all that air around you?"

  "I don't know. We have to talk about this another time. I must go now. Please send the pen back."

  "You're making me feel like shit, Sam. I don't think I owe you any favors right this minute." She hung up.

  The pen arri
ved the next morning via express mail. It had been cut into two perfectly equal pieces.

  Tappan was a pretty village with a cannon from some war plunked down in the middle of the town green like an old brown toad. Whoever came up with the bent idea of leaving large decaying weapons around as reminders of death and loss?

  Driving beneath huge old trees that flanked the roads, I caught glimpses through them of the Hudson River below. Tappan's houses were a mixture of Colonial and modern. A great many were for sale. I wondered why. Following Durant's jovial directions, I found his place with no problem.

  From all I had heard about the man, I expected his home to be a fifteen-room colossus with pillars and a lawn that stretched for acres. Instead it turned out to be a simple split-level fifties house with a driveway in front and a small but nicely kept yard. The man obviously liked to garden because there was a wide assortment of bright lush flowers all over. Two fat pugs lay in the middle of the driveway, their little tongues hanging out in the heat. I pulled up and got out. Both of them rose slowly and came over to have a look.

  "Hey, boys. Hot day, huh?" I bent down to pet them and they cuddled right up. The more I scratched their ears the more ecstatic their panting became. One fell over on his side and wiggled all his paws for me to scratch more. A screen door heeched open.

  "Looks like they found a friend." Edward Durant Sr. did not look, as I had heard, like a man in a conservative suit and French cuffs. About five foot seven, he was thin and delicate. He had a large head and a closely trimmed white beard. He didn't look well and carried himself carefully, as if certain that his parts were not working correctly.

  His voice contradicted the rest. Deep and full, it had the pitch and timbre of a radio announcer or public speaker. It was easy to imagine that voice in a courtroom. Sexy. It was an extremely sexy voice and he used it well.