A Field of Darkness

by Cornelia Read

  “You don’t . . .”

  He turned to look at me.

  “It’s different for you,” I said.

  “No.”

  “It is. Fundamentally. You’re in it. You could walk away and this would all still be waiting, any time you wanted. . . .”

  He shifted in his chair. “So can you, any time—”

  “No,” I said. “Really. I mean, no matter what, your place is assured.”

  “No more than yours,” he said. “You have my guarantee.”

  And I didn’t have to answer that, because they started sliding a new course in front of us, the dinner’s acme: chilled lobster salad spooned back into the shell.

  Lapthorne leaned in over his gilt-edged plate and picked the creature up with both hands, standing it on its tail so that clumps of pink meat plopped onto the porcelain below.

  “I give you Julio Crustacean,” he said, waving its claws around as though they wore little castanets, “Flamenco Dancer of the Sea . . .”

  “How absolutely cunning,” I said, in my very best lockjaw.

  “Ostentatious,” he sniffed, slipping into bitch-perfect clubwoman falsetto. “Ogden was always vulgar.”

  I shrugged, stuck a fork into my plate’s mound of creamy shreds. “Beats hell out of airplane food.”

  “Honestly,” he continued, voice still fluting as he batted his eyelashes at me, “you’d think his mother was a hat-check girl.”

  “A little gainful employment might have improved her sorry ass,” I said. “Yours too.”

  Lapthorne laughed so hard he dropped the lobster.

  “Don’t be a snot,” I said, pointing my fork at him, “or I won’t give you a place to hide, come the revolution.”

  He bowed from the waist. “Consider me chastened.”

  I nodded, then polished off my excellent supper, savoring the last bite’s aftertaste just as Lester and the boys segued into “Cheek to Cheek.”

  “Playing our song,” said Lapthorne.

  He stood up and held out his hand to me, drawing me smoothly up the moment I took it.

  He turned a little toward the bandstand, so our hands were behind his back, and then he did this subtle shift of the wrist, rolling his thumb slowly into the hollow of my palm, pressing it there for a long moment before he started toward the music.

  This early the dance floor was populated entirely by the ancient—female dreadnoughts cruising in the arms of their silver-haired escorts.

  When we’d reached the exact center of the parquet, Lapthorne turned toward me and transferred my right hand to his left, raising it to the height of his shoulder. I tried to dredge up some clue about how to comport myself, no matter how trivial. The only thing I could remember was hearing Mom once remark that she always turned that hand palm-out, at the nape of her partner’s neck.

  “Gives your fingers a nice loose drape,” she’d said. “Far more elegant than clutching their shoulders.”

  So that’s what I did when he pressed the small of my back and drew me in.

  “Never done this,” I said. “You’ve been warned.”

  He smiled down at me. “Nothing to it.”

  Close up, Lapthorne smelled of limes and woodsmoke. He kept his right hand low, applying serious pressure just above my tailbone. Guy knew what he was doing. It was like that spot unlocked the secret, shot some rays through my teenage-white-girl hip-socket chakra.

  I stopped thinking and my legs disappeared. Nothing but glide.

  Pretty soon he made us spin so the hem of my dress flew out.

  “See?” he said. “You’re a natural. Must get it from your mother.”

  “Always thought I’d take after Dad. He used to go up to girls at deb parties and say, ‘Excuse me, would you like to sit this one out?’”

  Lapthorne laughed and the band continued with “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” More people came out on the floor and Lester started tossing out those trademark little party-favor beanie hats, his name painted on each in script. They spun out over the crowd, pink and red and powder blue and pale yellow. Hands reached to snatch them out of the air.

  “That’s my cue to exit,” said Lapthorne. “He makes me nervous with those damn things. Only have one eye left, after all. Wanna go smoke a joint?”

  I was just relieved to get the hell off the floor without having crippled him. We walked away from the heat and the light and the low hum of the crowd, Lester’s mellow horn section made bouncy with a little piano and electric guitar—soulless music, reverberating through the trees.

  We made our way down a gentle hill toward the water, following a stone path into a long rose-draped pergola that curved around a fountain.

  Lapthorne took an old monogrammed cigarette case out of his pocket and lit a little hand-rolled number, taking a hit and passing it to me. I took a couple of really small tokes and turned it down the third time he offered.

  Weed can make me hideously self-conscious. One hit’s kind of okay, unless you’re talking some sticky monster African bud, vat-grown in Maui with red hairs all over it and so resiny it smells like a parking lot full of Christmas trees. That stuff kills me if I so much as walk by a house where someone’s doing a bong hit.

  I’m such a lightweight that I stick to a single hit of even the lamest pot. Seriously—it could be dried-out Mexican crap stolen from somebody’s mother’s Woodstock-era stash and half cut with oregano. Two hits and my knees get creaky, then I start obsessing over the stupidity of every word that leaves my mouth.

  I could say something innocuous as “That looks yellow” and hear it echo around my skull for half an hour in different intonations.

  The only thing that gets me over this THC angst is eating an entire bag of Doritos and going immediately to bed for about fourteen hours. I would have made a really lousy hippie.

  Lapthorne’s stash seemed like typical East Coast junior-varsity shake. A decent buzz, nothing freaky. I reached up and picked one of the roses—deep pink and thornless.

  I pressed my nose into it, caught the heady perfume of the antique Bourbons, the note of raspberry . . .

  “Zephirine Drouhin, you think?” I said.

  The petals started falling out, drifting to the ground.

  “I think it’s a good color for you.” He raised his hand and plucked another, tucking it behind my ear. “Belle of the ball.”

  I thanked him, half expected him to lean down and kiss me. Didn’t know whether I wanted him to or not. Liar liar pants on fire.

  He crossed his arms. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” I said. “In March.”

  “Too young to be unchaperoned, I’m afraid. Especially with an ancient bachelor of thirty-two.”

  “Old enough to smoke your dope, though.”

  “Point taken,” he conceded, but still he tucked my hand through the crook of his arm and started leading me back up the hill to the dancing tent.

  If it had all happened a year or two after, I would have just laced my fingers into his lapels and planted one on him.

  Soon as we stepped into the light, Lapthorne’s mother and father came scything toward us. From a distance they looked so perfect, elegant as something only Avedon could have captured on film.

  Binty’s dress was more architecture than couture—strapless shantung the exact shade of her dark sapphires. Her white-gold chignon, cranked tight at the nape of her neck, set off skin tanned as a catcher’s mitt.

  She stopped within two feet of me. That close, the woman was so goddamn thin she looked like a stocking full of hangers.

  I gazed at her face: loooong upper lip and tiny eyes . . . Really. Black. Eyebrows.

  Cat in the Hat.

  Oh, man . . . I was so stoned it was just ugly.

  “Couldn’t you at least have gotten a haircut for this, Lappy?” Binty cut off her son’s hello, narrow hand gripping a tall pale glass.

  She didn’t acknowledge me, just turned to present a shoulder blade slopped with freckles. I shifted my
eyes to her husband.

  Didn’t take much to figure out which parent had the dough. Kit’s contribution was entirely decorative.

  He was the source of Lapthorne’s looks, sporting the same finely hewn features, the dark hair that might have betrayed some curl of its own if he hadn’t always kept it so very short.

  He wasn’t looking at any of us. Just stood there, smiling—the perfect arm-job, striking but so bland his wife never had to get rattled over it. Nothing of his son’s spark, of the sly hips or hint of slouch.

  “Mummie,” said Lapthorne, giving Binty’s cheek an obedient near-kiss, “you remember Cousin Madeline?”

  I held out my hand to shake hers, but she was focused on her son.

  “The Trotters have been here for hours,” she said. “Daddy wanted you to meet them.”

  My knees started to feel weird. I kept shifting my weight and I could practically hear the cartilage grind.

  Binty got more Dr. Seuss by the second. Goddamn sleeper dope, the kind that just kept getting worse no matter how “too high” you felt already.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. My hand was still sitting in midair, ready to shake.

  Finally, Binty deigned to acknowledge me. “Lovely to see you, dear. How is your mother?”

  “Fine, thank you, Cousin Binty. She asked me to send you both her regards.”

  Like hell.

  I looked from her to Kit and back, tried to peel my lips off my cotton-mouth teeth for a smile. When would I learn that the marijuana gods were not my friends?

  “Are you having a nice evening?” she continued, frowning a little as those tiny eyes raked me up and down.

  I flexed each knee in turn.

  She gave me demerits for the flower behind my ear, then X-rayed through to the tiny gold pair of safety pins that were knitting up my raveled sleeve with care.

  “I’m a little nervous—” I began, about to compliment her son’s dancing.

  Binty shifted her glass so she could pat my still-just-idiotically-sitting-there hand with drink-chilled fingers.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, in a smoker’s whisper all could hear, “I was fat when I was your age, too.”

  She spun on her heel. “Kit . . . the Trotters . . .”

  Lapthorne watched her go, face tight.

  “My apologies, Madeline,” he said. “There goes proof one can be both too rich and too thin.”

  I dropped my head and started blinking really fast, so he wouldn’t see me cry.

  “None of that, now,” said Lapthorne. “After all, she’s . . . well, I take it you’re familiar with her nickname?”

  I shook my still-hung head.

  “Ice Cunt,” he said, and I couldn’t help it, the image was so perfect it just yanked these hard little pieces of laughter out of me, like I was barking.

  “Your Uncle Hunt’s invention,” he explained. “Says it’s because the ambient temperature drops five degrees whenever Mummie enters a room.”

  I peeked up at him and he was grinning, all conspiratorial.

  “Plus,” he said, “I would imagine she’s consumed with envy when she sees someone who looks like you. Dad makes her wear heavy veils at home, and it’s widely known that he prefers the embraces of the pool boy.”

  “Kit?”

  “May I get you a cocktail?”

  I nodded, still stunned.

  Lapthorne tilted his head back and smiled, tracing a slow finger along my collarbone before he drifted off in his parents’ wake.

  How could anyone fail to defend a man like that?

  Okay, so from my Syracuse porch it seemed like a thousand years ago, but then anything to do with those people always feels like some Edith Wharton time warp.

  It takes effort, afterwards, to shake the money out of my head so I can resume my actual life.

  I went back in to the sofa, nudged Dean awake, and propelled him gently to bed.

  In the dark I kept thinking about Cal’s description of the murdered girls, kept seeing Lapthorne’s face when he welcomed me to the table.

  I wanted the night to be over. I wanted to get cracking.

  CHAPTER 5

  I was late for work, stuck again at the five-way Erie Boulevard light. Most mornings I’d drum my fingers on the wheel and wonder why the hell they’d filled in the canal, still down there under the Boulevard’s wide stretch of asphalt. I’d inspect the once-proud buildings, spiky with imperial turrets and crenellations, and imagine how much better they’d have looked from the water, from a barge deck’s slow glide behind a mule.

  Now I just thought about the dead girls. Necks cut to the bone. The sight enough to make an old man vomit even days after he found them.

  I couldn’t stop the video loop, kept groping for a distraction. I scrunched my eyes shut and tried to picture my favorite photograph of Syracuse. It was taken not far from the intersection at which I was stopped, a grainy old shot of ice-skaters on the frozen canal. There were young boys in knickers and knit hats with pom-poms, arms swinging as they raced through the crowd. A dancing woman in a picture hat. Spectators looking on from the streets above.

  The figures cast long northeasterly shadows across the ice, so it must have been taken toward the end of that afternoon. It would have been cold, no doubt with the slicing wind I knew from having lived through two raw winters here, but still there’s a sense of possibility, of wonder.

  You look at that crowd and you know they were aware of being spectacular—worth looking at, deserving of record.

  With the canal gone, the city’s best-known body of water is the one east of town: Oncas Lake, the most polluted in the United States.

  One hundred years ago, its shores were dotted with hotels and pavilions. A four-hundred-foot steel pier beckoned to ferries and pleasure boats, and “Oncas” salmon and whitefish were prized by chefs across the state.

  A confession: my great-grandmother Dodie came from the family that killed this lake. Her father discovered a miraculous chemical manipulation, the “Lapthorne Process.”

  I read once that a single thermometer-full of mercury is enough to make 10,000 one-pound bass unfit to eat. His factory pumped 165,000 pounds of it into the lake.

  By the onset of World War II, Oncas was dead—literally suffocated. Anaerobic reactions in the muddy bottom produced carpets of fizzy, sulphurous bubbles so powerful they could break off acre-wide rafts of sludge and buoy them up to the surface. When the wind was right, the stench of brimstone made people gag all the way “down-city.”

  By that point, of course, Dodie’s family had sold the company, embarking downstate on what I’d once heard referred to as “the Schlep of Tears.” I suppose for my relatives you’d have to rename it “the Long Dark Cocktail Party of the Soul,” or talk about fleeing the Trust Bowl.

  When I hated living in Syracuse the most, I told myself I’d returned to perform ancestral penance, long overdue. Lapthorne’s parents, meanwhile, had named him to honor that branch of the family.

  I’d sooner christen a child Thalidomide, or Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

  The Erie Boulevard light went green again, and at long last I was first in line.

  When I climbed out of my car, it was so muggy the sky looked like a slab of gray-veined marble. I ran up the stairs to the third-floor offices of the Weekly, collapsing in ecstasy at my desk since the air conditioner was working again.

  Editorial was empty, but there was a note on my keyboard: “See me immediately. Ted.”

  That would be my skinny red-haired boss, the loathsome and unforgiving prick. Dean called him “the Angst Lizard.”

  I booted up my computer and thrust the floppy from home into the A drive. If I had to tangle with Ted first thing, I wanted to do it with work in hand.

  I sent the hot drinks article to the printer, two desks over, then took an infusion of painfully bad coffee while my pages wheezed out of our dot-matrix behemoth.

  Looking at Ted’s door, I was pissed all over again that my buddy Karen, the old departm
ent head, had lit out for Boston.

  She would have liked “après-shovel-off-le-driveway.” She would have kept Ted off my back about whatever the hell it was this time.

  Ted was usually stoned, spending a lot of time in the parking lot with Wilt, the senior writer. Syracuse University had a fine journalism program, the Newhouse School, and Ted and Wilt had met there in the sixties. The Weekly was a free paper, but a good one—packed with a lot more Newhouse grads in every department.

  The printer finally finished spitting out my article, a task that could have been done faster by medieval illuminators. I grabbed my coffee and walked over to Ted’s door, opened just a crack.

  He barked “Get in here!” before I could knock.

  “Chief,” I said, noting the six-pack of Visine, the red hair skinned back into a ponytail.

  He had his back to me. Just as well. Even from behind, Ted was all pointy angles, like something with an exoskeleton, or Ichabod Crane.

  He scratched the side of his head frantically. Every jag of his fingernails snapping a few hairs from the gray rubber band. I watched them spring into coils.

  He spun around. “Those goddamn pictures of you didn’t come out.”

  Simon the photographer and I had spent the previous Friday afternoon in the parking lot below, with me wrapped up in all the winter clothes we could find in the office lost-and-found. I’d had to smile over an earth-toned mug of boiling water in the midday heat while passersby made profoundly unwitty comments. I’d posed since we had zero budget for models and everyone else on staff had appeared in the paper too often.

  “Simon says steam doesn’t photograph,” he continued, “so he’s looked up some other way to make it look like you’re holding a hot mug of delicious whatever.”

  I wanted to say, “And this is my fault by what stretch of your pitiful imagination?” but mumbled instead, “Um, how?”

  Ted glared at me, a stoned praying mantis steepling its fingers.

  “Cigarette smoke,” he said. “We’ll have Wilt kneel down next to you and blow it through a tube. You can probably hold it under your thumb, once you’ve got those mittens back on.” He grinned like that was the most entertaining image he’d ever considered, and the only thing better would be if I bitched so he could have the satisfaction of ordering me to suck it up.