Aphrodite

by Russell Andrews

  “I used to watch that as a little girl,” she gushed. “I can still see it, on the black-and-white TV my parents used to have in the living room. It was the only ‘boy’ show I liked, mostly because Cowboy Bill was so handsome. My God,” she said, finally coming up for air, “how old is he? He must be a hundred.”

  “Eighty-two.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s amazing. I remember him as being so old. Of course,” her mom laughed, “I was seven, so anyone older than sixteen was an old man to me.”

  Bill had been very pleased when Susanna told him about her mother’s reaction. That night, he’d asked her to dine with him, which she did. They ate in the Home’s common room, in front of the TV. After that, they’d even had dinner outside the Home a couple of times. She tried taking him to Sunset, her favorite seafood dive, thinking he’d love it, but leaving the apartment complex seemed to disorient him. When he talked, he got his dates all mixed up, forgot a lot of details of his career, and mingled dubious fact with obvious fiction. So after two unsuccessful attempts they went back to their twice-a-week afternoon chats in the comfortable if somewhat musty complex.

  As Susanna wrote Bill Miller’s obit for the East End Journal, she found herself tearing up. She was sad for Bill, yes, but she was even sadder for herself, she realized. She was going to miss him. His stories. The way he used to poke fun at her. His advice about men and her career. She liked Cowboy Bill Miller and she was sorry he was gone, so she decided she’d write the best obituary she’d ever written. She’d give him a proper send-off. A tribute.

  So that’s what she’d done. Or what she thought she’d done.

  The obit had come out in that morning’s paper, and she picked it up to read for perhaps the twentieth time in the past half hour.

  COWBOY BILL DEAD AT 82

  William Miller, best known for the three years he spent riding the TV range as the poor man’s Roy Rogers and folksy star of Cowboy Bill, was found dead in his room at the East End Retirement Home this past Wednesday. Miller, one of East End Harbor’s most beloved and colorful citizens, began his career as a serious actor, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor when he was just a teenager, in the 1938 costume drama The Queen of Sheba. He was too rebellious to fit into the Hollywood studio system, however, and his film career stalled. By 1953 he found himself starring as Cowboy Bill in the television series of the same name. Cashing in on the popularity of Western shows starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Cowboy Bill lasted three seasons and is fondly remembered by many baby boomers.

  Mr. Miller’s credits are spotty after that. He appeared in one low-budget horror film, The Vampire’s Bite, in 1966. In 1968, he appeared in a lead part in the acclaimed off-Broadway revival of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy. His final stage appearance was in 1971 in another Odets revival, Waiting for Lefty.

  Mr. Miller’s wife, Jessica Talbot, an actress, died in 1972. He is survived by his great-nephew, Edward Marion, of Wilton, Connecticut.

  —Susanna Morgan

  When she first saw it, she had been a little disappointed with the way the piece had come out. There was a space problem and Harlan had cut a lot of the personal touches she had labored so hard over. She felt as if she hadn’t done what she promised herself she’d do: make the town proud of Bill Miller and make Bill proud of her. But after the conversation she had with Harlan first thing that morning—all about the conversation he’d had with some nut who was incensed about the obit—her disappointment was fading. It was being replaced by confusion. And a strong feeling of embarrassment.

  As soon as she strolled into the office that Friday, Harlan had come over to her desk. He said that he’d gotten an irate phone call. In fact, irate didn’t even begin to describe it. Some guy in Middleview, a mid-Island town about an hour closer to the city, had erupted on the telephone. The guy’s name—“Get this one,” Harlan had said—was Wally Crabbe and he was a movie fanatic. So fanatical, in fact, that he’d flown into a rage because all the information in the Bill Miller obit was wrong. While Harlan held the receiver away from his ear, Crabbe had ticked off the long list of errors that he’d spotted. Susanna’s boss held up a yellow legal pad, almost apologetically. He tore off the top page, which was covered with his scribbling, and handed it to her. “This is everything Mr. Crabbe said was wrong with your story,” he said softly. “Actually, it’s not everything. He was still going on when I told him I had to get off the phone. When I hung up, he was screaming at me that he wanted a free subscription to the paper to make up for our incompetence. Why is it that people want something for free if they think it’s not good enough to pay for?”

  He grinned, to show her that his question was meant to prove that he didn’t take this all that seriously, but she didn’t return the grin or give an answer, so Harlan told her, still in that uncomfortably gentle tone, to get to the bottom of things. If her facts were wrong, he said, they’d have to print a retraction in next week’s paper. Susanna knew the way the town worked, and she colored a deep red at the idea of admitting in print that Bill had lied about himself. If she had indeed screwed up, she had not immortalized her friend Bill in town lore; she had permanently humiliated him.

  She herself had been surprised at one thing when she was researching the story. She had called over to the Home to confirm certain facts, and found one she didn’t know: Bill had had a nephew. A great-nephew to be exact. She was certain Bill had told her, several times, that he had no living relatives. But Fred, who managed the Home, had told her about the nephew—great-nephew—who visited Bill every three months, like clockwork, stayed no more than five or ten minutes, and always paid for the next three months of Bill’s stay. Fred said that he had called the nephew right after he’d found Bill slumped in an easy chair in his room, to give him the sad news. The man had said he’d take care of all funeral arrangements and, in fact, that very night Fred called Susanna at home to say that Bill’s body had been picked up by ambulance and taken away. The nephew—great-nephew—made it clear that the funeral was going to be small and very private.

  Everything else in the obit she’d gotten from Bill when he was alive. She’d taken it all on faith because she’d heard it so many times, and she realized now that even if one were a cynic—which she most definitely was not—repetition was a subtle form of brainwashing when it came to the truth. If you heard something often enough, especially from someone you trusted, it became true. Whether it was or not.

  She told herself that Bill Miller was not a liar. She told herself that there had to be a misunderstanding. She told herself that what she’d put in the obit had been correct.

  Only deep down she didn’t believe it, so she decided to find out for herself.

  If there was a mistake, it was her mistake, not the paper’s, so she didn’t want to do this work on the Journal’s time. That’s why, at lunchtime, three hours after Harlan told her that she’d screwed up, Susanna walked over to the East End Harbor Public Library.

  After conferring with the librarian, Adrienne, a surprisingly snip-pish and impatient woman, Susanna took a seat in front of the computer that was in the lobby to the right of the checkout desk. She pulled out the sheet of yellow legal paper that Harlan had handed her, looked down the list of errors that angry Wally Crabbe had called in. She went on-line, wound up going to the Askjeeves.com Web site, and typed in the question: How do I find out who was nominated for the 1938 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor?

  It didn’t take long. Within seconds she had her answer. She had to admit that she hadn’t heard of any of the nominees. No, wait, Basil Rathbone—he was English, wasn’t he? He played someone famous. Oh yes, Sherlock Holmes, she was pretty sure that was it. And Walter Brennan—he was in some show on Nick at Night; he played a farmer or something like that. And she also had to admit that William Miller wasn’t among them. She tried looking at the nominees for 1939, then 1940, and then going back earlier, year by year, until 1930. She decided to stop searching then. Bill might have got
ten the year wrong, at his age, but she doubted he’d miss the entire decade.

  She wondered how much further she should pursue this. Decided—out of duty and curiosity—she had to keep going. After several false starts, she got to the site for IMDB.com—Internet movie data-base—and looked up the career of William Miller. It took her over an hour of staring at the screen and reading and scrutinizing photos and double-checking, then triple-checking, on other movie Web sites before she began to accept what she was seeing.

  By the time she was done, she had a splitting headache and a steady wave of nausea flowing in the pit of her stomach. She practically fled the library, gasping in warm, fresh air once she made it to the sidewalk outside. Leaning up against a lamppost for support, she flicked open her cell phone, called Harlan’s number at the Journal, told him she wasn’t feeling well, wouldn’t be coming in for the rest of the afternoon. He told her to go to the doctor, started to ask if there was anything he could do, but she just clicked the phone off and hugged the lamppost until she had the strength to walk.

  When she got home, Susanna paced nervously around her living room, picking at her cuticles and tapping the fingers of her right hand against the knuckles of her left. Finally, she looked at the notes she’d jotted down from the conversation with Fred, the manager of the Home, saw the phone number she was looking for, picked up the phone and dialed it. After the fourth ring, she heard a man’s voice on the answering machine, giving a bland outgoing message. After the tone, she took a deep breath—it was suddenly hard to talk—and then she said, “Hi … uh…Edward Marion? This is Susanna Morgan. I was a friend of your uncle’s …uh … great-uncle’s … and, um …well, I wrote his obit for our local paper and I’m very confused about a few things. …I need to …well …know a few more things about Bill. …I know this doesn’t make any sense and I’m probably wrong …I’ve got to be wrong … but I really do need to talk to you.” She left her phone number on the tape and then said, “Please call me.” Then she hung up, took three aspirins, and, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon, got into bed and pulled the covers up over her head.

  Edward Marion called back around six o’clock that evening. Susanna was still in bed, although she hadn’t slept a wink, and the sudden noise of the phone made her shudder. When she answered it, her voice sounded thick to her, as if she’d been sedated.

  “Ms. Morgan?”

  “Yes.”

  #8220;This is Ed Marion. Bill Miller’s nephew.”

  “Great-nephew.”

  “What?”

  “You’re his great-nephew.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  There was an awkward pause. Now that she had to convey her news to another person, now that she had to say it out loud, Susanna didn’t know how to begin.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m very sorry about your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was pretty close to Bill, I used to—”

  “I know. He talked about you all the time.”

  “I wrote his obituary for our local paper and I used a lot of information that your uncle had told me, you know, over the years.”

  “Great-uncle.”

  “What?”

  “He was my great-uncle.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Ms. Morgan, I’m afraid Bill was a bit of a …how should I say this … fantasist.”

  “You mean he made things up?”

  “I mean I think he probably believed them when he said them. And the more he said them, the more he believed them, if you know what I mean. I’m sorry if he told you things that weren’t true. I hope it wasn’t anything important. Or embarrassing.”

  “The thing is, Mr. Marion …”

  “Call me Ed. Please.”

  “The thing is, Ed …Somebody called, some movie nut, and he was pretty angry—we don’t get too many angry calls at the Journal— and he said that things I’d put in the obit weren’t true. So I did some research.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of research?”

  “I went on the Internet and checked out the things Bill told me about his career.”

  “You researched my uncle?”

  “Yes. And it turns out, this guy, this movie nut, he was right. Well, not about everything. Some of the things Bill told me were true. Only they weren’t really true. This is going to sound kind of crazy. …”

  “Ms. Morgan, may I make a suggestion?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let me meet you for lunch tomorrow. I was going to call you anyway because my uncle left you something in his will.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. He was very fond of you. I’ve been wanting to meet you, so this is a good excuse. I can discuss the will with you—I think you’ll be very pleased with what I’ve got to say—and you can tell me whatever it is you need to tell me.”

  “Well, yes, it might be better to do this in person. But, listen, I have to tell you, this is pretty disturbing.”

  “I can’t imagine anything too disturbing about my uncle. He was such a sweet old guy. But let’s talk about it at lunch.”

  “It’s an awfully long drive for you, isn’t it?”

  “Three hours. And I don’t mind. From what I’ve heard about you, it’ll be well worth it.”

  She told him where to go, that she’d meet him at Sunset restaurant at twelve-thirty. He said he was looking forward to it. She didn’t say anything.

  She’d have more than enough to say over lunch, she decided.

  Susanna didn’t fall asleep until one o’clock in the morning, which was incredibly late for her, two hours past her normal bedtime. And then she woke up one hour later. Two-oh-five to be exact, according to her new Bose clock radio.

  At first she thought she’d awakened because she was hungry. She was so shaken by the experiences of the day she hadn’t been able to eat dinner. She had heated up some soup, toyed with it with her spoon, then poured it right down the drain. She’d tried reading, couldn’t concentrate. Tried watching TV, couldn’t even do that. At nine-thirty she gave up and got into bed, tossing and turning until one. Now she was awake again, her stomach growling.

  And then she realized that she wasn’t awake because she was hungry.

  She was awake because there was a noise at her front door.

  A noise like someone fiddling with a lock.

  And then there was a noise like someone turning a doorknob. And opening a door.

  And coming inside.

  There was somebody in her house.

  All of a sudden, Susanna was having trouble swallowing. She felt her throat constricting at the same time a rush of bile shot up from her stomach, choking her. She closed her eyes and ordered herself to be calm. Willed herself to keep her eyes closed an extra second until her throat relaxed. She took a deep breath, it helped to clear her head, but right in the middle of that was when she heard the creak of a floorboard in her living room and Susanna jumped out of bed, flailing at the covers, stumbling for just a moment as her foot was still wrapped in the sheet, and she lunged for the door to her bedroom, threw her shoulder against it, and slammed it shut and locked it.

  She stood still, one hand on the door, in total silence except for her own heavy, rhythmic breathing. After a few seconds, she began to feel silly. Maybe she’d been dreaming. Maybe everything that had happened that day was just ganging up on her to make her edgy and paranoid and—

  And there was a scratching noise on the other side of the door.

  There was no mistaking this one.

  He was picking the lock.

  She was in her nightgown and bare feet and she was pretty much frozen with terror, and her heart was pounding so loud she thought she might actually be having a heart attack and six inches away someone was picking the lock to her bedroom door.

  Was about to come in and do God knows what.

  The air-conditioning was on full blast, but she was sweating through her nightgo
wn. Beads of salty water dripped down her forehead, into her eyes, stinging them into a series of erratic blinks. Susanna looked around the room, searching for something, anything that could help her, but there wasn’t a damn thing. No cell phone even. She’d left it in the living room, where she kept the cradle for the charger. She thought about racing to the regular phone, it was just by the bed, but something told her she wouldn’t have time to call, something told her it was a matter of seconds now. …

  She took her hand off the door and turned, told herself not to look back, no matter what, and sprinted toward her bedroom window, the window that led to the back of her building, to the back of Main Street.

  The window that, because she lived in the middle of the town’s one-street-long business district, had a fire escape right outside.

  She threw the window open, forgetting it was locked, wrenching her back because she’d yanked so hard, then she fumbled with the latch—Stay calm, stay calm, don’t panic—and then it was open and she jumped through, made it onto the landing just as her bedroom door burst open. She didn’t want to look but she had to—it was instinct— and she saw a blond man barrel in, look up, and then charge the window. Instead of going down, she went up; it was easier to elude his grasp that way. Even so, he managed to grab hold of her foot. It sent a terrible shock through her entire body. The physical contact terrified her way beyond any level she had ever experienced. It made everything all too real and too close. And it brought her imagination into play, turning danger into something she hadn’t let herself think of: pain. She was phobic about pain. The thought of what might be done to her made her freeze for a moment, paralyzed her. She felt herself go limp but then her anger took over. No panic, she told herself again. You cannot panic! She felt the man’s grip tighten and her hysteria disappeared, replaced by fury. So she kicked as hard as she could, shook her leg and kicked again, and his fingers let go and she scurried up the fire escape, climbing away from him as fast as she could.