We were attending the same college and the same party. She was in her freshman year, indifferently pursuing an indefinite variety of liberal arts degree.
When the party descended to ground level, I was frog-marched downstairs and presented with a bacchanalian flourish by the hosts. There was thin applause, but seconds later, left once again to myself, I turned to the girl on the edge of the chair.
Somehow we were introduced and she took my hand. As she did this she turned away and smiled at what I took to be a private joke. It was a mannerism, I would learn later, and one that would invariably elicit either irritation or the near deranged desire to impress. When she spoke it was with the unnerving confidence I was initially inclined to attribute to all Americans.
She was eager to tell me that she was wealthy, or rather her people were. Her wealth was clearly an odious subject to be quickly dispensed with. She told me how much the party sucked, how much she hated domestic beer, how much she liked my accent, how much her father would love it because he loved all things British, especially the food and Upstairs Downstairs and Benny Hill. She told me how much she thought Benny Hill sucked and from all this I was forced to conclude that sucking was clearly a bad thing.
On the plus side she told me she liked pancakes and maple syrup and I must have looked confused.
We found a diner three blocks away and she said she’d pay.
We sat at the counter of the empty restaurant and put our four elbows on the cherry-red Formica and she talked about her family, and her plans, and the rest of the world, which shrunk with her words into something fierce yet tamable, a small yapping dog, a world she would make her own in a few short years, a world she would fill up with a career and children and love and charity and enterprise and whatnot.
This is how we are at nineteen.
I noticed that she wore no makeup, or none that fell under the usual garish classifications, that her nose was an unexpectedly button one, doubtless left over, like a keepsake, from a pampered childhood. It was, I thought, a pretty aberration on a face that in general bespoke a far more serious intent.
I listened to her plans and watched her delectable nose and her fine thin hair as it fell onto her forehead and as she swept it back, at first as affectation, and eventually with impatience, and I thought that it was all a very fine dream.
It will be perhaps less than earth-shattering when I reveal that virtually nothing Patricia wanted for herself would come to fruition. She was and is neither dishonest nor deluded. She simply talked a hell of a good game. As many of us do. As I doubtless did. In truth, much of what she wanted I would take away from her, or else simply neglect to provide her with. She has been admirably silent throughout this extended period of denial and outright theft, and my failure has been an unnamed one.
For our own reasons we chose each other that first night, over proud boasts, weak coffee, and soggy pancakes. We have stayed together ever since.
Faithful to each other. Spineless in our fidelity.
She showed me her doomed longing which I took then for steely determination. I showed her my guile, my gift for easy accomplishment, and an insipid gracefulness, all wrapped up in an adorable accent and surface manners.
All this she mistook for charm and acumen.
I wonder which of us is ultimately the more disillusioned now.
But perhaps I can pretend that my catalog of emotional crimes can be sanitized by the holy grail of Keith Pringle. Does that somehow assume too much? Of course it does. But, no. I stand by it. Keith will avenge me.
I am chanting this mindless yet comforting inner mantra as I turn the key in my front door. Keith will avenge me. Keith will avenge me. Keith will avenge me.
I entered my house.
The living room was still as if the air itself feared to move. András Schiff was playing Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” on piano. It was precise. Mathematical.
Patricia sat motionless. A drink rested on a table beside her. Her thin, ringless hand was poised an inch above it. Perhaps it was a test of will. Perhaps she had forgotten to move it. Perhaps she was holding the air motionless. More likely a test of will.
She read The New Yorker, turning a page with a sudden snap, then sipping from the glass without looking away from the magazine. The level of the liquid looked to be the same. The glass was cold. The wine was chilled. Probably a good dry white wine. The room was cooled by central air conditioning, which was efficient and soundless.
Her hair was perhaps two inches shorter than it was when we first met. It was still fine. It was still the first thing you would notice about Patricia although she is no longer strictly a natural blonde, even in the summer months. Her blouse was a brown linen that her flat leather shoes exactly matched. Her slacks were a light tan, also linen, and close to white. Her wedding ring is fashioned from white gold inlaid with small, expensive diamonds. Her watch was a silver ladies Rolex that her father, Ben, now departed, gave her as a wedding present. Her earrings are discreet diamond studs that she is seldom without. They were a birthday present from me, and bought under strict supervision.
This is the sum total of her jewelry. Her clothes are mostly beige and brown. Her underwear is uniformly modest and ivory colored. Her skin is white and when she smiles her teeth are small and even.
As I moved across the room she looked up at me.
Then she spoke. “I was wondering who Keith Pringle was?”
I must have looked surprised.
She spoke again. “You received a fax earlier this evening. I think it was perhaps two hours ago. I’m not absolutely certain of the time. But I did hear the printer running in your room as I passed in the hallway.”
I remembered I had given Phoebe Chalmers my home fax number. The computer was in my office. Patricia was very seldom in my office. Naturally the door to my office wasn’t locked. Equally naturally, I have no secrets from Patricia.
“Did you read it?” I asked her, amazed at my sudden irritation.
There was as always no hesitation from Patricia. “Yes,” she said, as if answering a drooling idiot’s question. “I did read it. Was it something I shouldn’t have read? Something private?”
“No, of course not. It’s not even especially important. He’s someone from my hometown, a missing tourist. It was in the newspaper this morning. Did you happen to see it by any chance?”
She shook her head slowly. “No, I didn’t,” she said. Then she spoke again. “Was this someone you knew well?”
“Why do you think I knew him?”
“Well.” She spoke slowly in a voice I imagined her using to lecture a small and bad child. “His picture’s now in our house, and I just assumed that you . . .”
I cut her off. “Yes. I did know him. But only very slightly.”
She raised her eyebrows, pretending to be puzzled. “Then why the sudden fascination? The mysterious fax in the night?”
“Why are you quizzing me?”
She sighed softly.
I tried to smile soothingly. “He’s just a person I once knew. He’s simply gone missing.”
“Yes . . . I see.”
“And he might very well be dead.”
“I do understand,” she said. But she clearly didn’t.
“I thought I might try and find him.”
It came out dreadfully wrong, like a teasing schoolboy. All it required now was for me to stick my tongue out and pull her pigtail. This was not the urbane conversation I had rehearsed driving home from the health club.
“Where exactly are you going to be doing your hunting?” Her voice flattened out, to one long emotional line, like a fading heart rate on a hospital monitor.
“I think I’ll start up north. In Michigan.” I hesitated. ”I’ll be away for a day or two. No longer.“
“How many days exactly?” There was a tension.
“I don’t really know. It�
��s hard to say.” I hesitated again. “I’ll call you often of course.”
“Yes. Well. I shall worry about you.” There was a pause. “When will you leave?” It was spoken casually, an intended afterthought.
“I thought perhaps tomorrow.”
And then she snapped. The next words exploded. “You have to be . . .” But she stopped. She grabbed the reins. “You’ll need clothes and things of course.”
“Yes.” We were going to be brutally civil about this. “Of course. I thought I’d shop for the things I need first thing in the morning. And try to be on my way by late lunchtime.”
“Is Nye aware of your plans?”
“I’ve already spoken to him. He can look after the store. And, as I say, I won’t be gone so very long.” I wanted to explain. “It’s . . . you see . . .” But I faltered hopelessly.
She gazed at me thoughtfully. Then she closed her magazine slowly, purposefully. Then she smiled. “We can have a nice breakfast together in the morning. Before you leave.”
“Patricia, I need to . . .”
She stood up. “Do you, Tom?” She tilted her head. Musing. “I wonder what it is you really need. But perhaps you’ll come back to me, a kinder, gentler man. Or perhaps not. If you do find your friend, please say hello for me.”
She left the room.
I thought about throwing her wine glass against the wall but I didn’t, instead I took it to the kitchen, carefully rinsed it out, and left it to dry on the wooden rack by the side of the sink. The glass was crystal and fragile and it would never survive the rigors of the dishwasher.
It was a house filled with fragile things like that.
* * *
I put enough water in the Braun coffeemaker for two cups, mixed two types of Starbucks coffee beans together, ground them until they were a fine brown dust, and switched the machine on.
In a house of large rooms the smallest room had become my home office, a place as comfortable as it was possible to be, in a place filled with tasteful empty space that defied all the natural instincts of a vacuum.
The twin bay windows face out onto a well-ordered play park where preschool children play in a giant sandbox made into the image of a bright red diesel train, while their diligent nannies watch one-eyed, and converse in an assortment of eastern European languages.
It was dark now.
The park was empty and locked up for the night.
I turned on my computer. A lowly specimen; a Gateway 66mhz/486DX2—salvaged from the store during Nye’s recent Pentium purge—with 8 meg of RAM and a double-spaced 420 MB hard drive, running Windows, Quicken, CompuServe, Quattro Pro, Word Pro, Approach, and Sidekick.
While I connected to CompuServe I scanned the paper copy of the fax from Phoebe Chalmers. It was a scant three pages long: a copy of the passport photo, a copy of the passport application, and a copy of the visa application.
“Was there more?” I wondered. Perhaps some information that the British Consulate clearly considered not meant for public consumption.
I would probably never know but I did have what I wanted: his parents’ names and their address back home, his aunt’s name, which was Bridget Cassidy, her current address, and her phone number in northern Michigan.
Nerves like the beating of a small bird’s wing touched me, as I picked up the last piece of paper, which was a recent likeness of Keith Pringle.
It was a small, grainy image, which made him look like a petrified petty criminal.
I put the papers aside, loaded WinFax and located the fax document in the mail inbox. When l loaded Keith’s image onto the screen the resolution was terrible. I fiddled with the magnification settings until his face filled an 8-1/2- x 11-inch piece of paper, then I sent the file to the printer and crossed my fingers.
As I waited for the laser printer to run off thirty copies, I faxed my thanks to Ms. Chalmers and gave her the number for the laptop I was taking with me. I left a message in CompuServe for Nye, telling him my plans in slightly greater detail, and also letting him know I’d swing by the store to pick up the laptop in the morning. I faxed my bank and informed them that Nye was holding the fort. I realized I’d need to make a sizable withdrawal before leaving town. I faxed my broker and told her I’d be traveling for a while.
I gave them all the laptop number.
There is virtually no escape in the modern world and I am as addicted to the enforced security as anyone else.
After this flurry of keyboard-mouse interplay, I stood up, put a CD of Mary Chapin Carpenter on the player and got my coffee from the kitchen. When I returned the last page had escaped from the printer, and the machine had turned itself off.
I don’t know what I had expected him to look like.
But Keith Pringle looked an awful lot like Jesus, or whoever it is on the famous fake Shroud of Turin, or on all these oil-painted Eurocentric renditions. His face was bone thin, his chin coming to a sharp point. Deep, pained lines exploded out from the corners of his eyes, which were smaller than I remembered. His hair was long and stringy, where I remembered a halo of boyish curls.
In his present guise he would make a fine serial killer, a stranded hitchhiker, or else an impoverished and therefore sinless televangelist.
He looked like a tramp.
He looked like a total stranger.
I sat at my desk and stared at his image, as my carefully prepared coffee grew cold, and Mary Chapin sung about a foolish man, who decides to keep his wife, and his wise wife, who decides she’d rather not be kept after all.
I would leave town tomorrow.
FIVE
The voice on the telephone was made old and timid with years. Querulous and slightly unsure, it was rendered still more hesitant by a slight transatlantic electrical echo as he spoke.
“Is that . . . is that you, Tommy?”
I looked at my watch. It was close to nine in the morning, which translated into three in the afternoon where he was.
Where was he?
He was where misty rain was carried by the teeth of a wind from the North Sea, outside the window of a tiny council house on a cloudy afternoon; the drizzle so insubstantial, so slight you could never fully see it as it seeped, all the way to the marrow. This was if you were silly enough to venture out without an umbrella or a plastic jacket, to the wee store at the corner of the street perhaps, where the ever-polite Pakistani man in the starched white shirt who never slept would sell you a packet of tea, or twenty fags, or a loaf of thin-sliced white bread, when the co-op in the town was either long closed, or else too far away.
“That’s right. It’s me, Mr. Pringle. It’s been a long time. How are you doing?”
There was a slight pause. While the phone clearly made him suspicious, I hoped that my voice and the fiber optic lifeline to the safety of the past would soothe him.
“Och . . . as well as can be expected. Jeez . . . It’s been an age Tommy . . . yer Ma . . . she tells us all about ye when we see her at the shops . . . ye’re doin’ very well I hear. I cannae believe it’s you. I just cannae . . . Jeez . . . an age an’ a half.”
His verbal powers were scattershot at best; his accent thick and warm enough to wrap yourself up in. Was he just the way I remembered him when he came once a month to our house? An essentially good man? Uncomplicated and benevolent and determinedly dour on the surface?
His teenage son had been a mystery to him. But in fairness, anything more complicated than a pint of heavy beer when he asked for it, or the pink sports paper on a Saturday night on the bus home from the match would have been beyond the myopic vision of Jimmy Pringle, a simple man in a simple land.
He would be retired by now, or very close to it, forty odd years door-to-door for the Gas Board, one of the walking legions of traditionally hangdog, dark-uniformed souls, who showed up to tip their hat and read the meter.
Stripped of his
soul as a prerequisite, Jimmy Pringle was the gas man on our street, a fixture, like the bright red postbox angrily spray painted, or the streetlight on the corner that blinked a cold yellow as the first of the night blustered in.
“Ma. The gas man’s here again.” The emotionless shout echoed in the corridors of prefab concrete long before he reached the door in question.
* * *
The town. Our town. I have to keep reminding myself that the town as I remember it isn’t there, existing only in an imagination fueled by nostalgia, and made sentimental, tarted up by present-day uncertainty.
“Ye’ll have heard all about our Keith then?”
“Yes. It was in the local paper. I’m very sorry Mr. Pringle.”
“Oh yes . . . dear me . . . that’s a big place ye’re in now, is it no? Not like the old town. Jeez. . . . A big place it must be right enough.”
“The papers didn’t say very much about Keith, Mr. Pringle.” I noticed that my accent was creeping ever so slightly homeward. Would Keith’s father think I was making fun of him? I somehow doubted it.
“No? Did they no? Well . . . he’s aye been a good lad Tommy. A good lad. But. Well, it’s no been easy. I’ll tell ye that. No easy at all.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Well. There’s the thing, Tommy. The thing is . . . I . . . well . . . his mother and I havnae seen the lad in three long year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Pringle.”
He sounded suddenly suspicious. “Aye . . . well . . . But why all the questions Tommy. Whit’s the game?”
“I’m sorry. I should have said. I want to help find him, Mr. Pringle. The place where he was. The last place they think he was. It’s not so far from me. A couple of hours drive and I could be there.”
“Aye? Is that so? I always thought of yon place as being huge. Well. . .that’s very nice o’ you Tommy. . .He could aye use the help. Keith could. That’s no lie. But listen Tommy . . . this phone call . . . it must be costin’ you . . . it cannae be cheap for you to call all this way.”
“That’s all right.” I suddenly didn’t want to tell him I could easily afford it.
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