Kimmer hesitated, perhaps wondering whether somebody else might be available to trust instead, then said okay.
So we plunged back into the cemetery. It was twilight, but we could see just fine. I led her along the main path, which runs a winding quarter-mile or so to the back wall, where the ground begins to slope downward, toward the Interstate and the river beyond. We passed soaring obelisks and marble angels and grim mausoleums. A tiny animal, probably a squirrel, skittered across the gravel path. Kimmer’s hand finally crept into mine. The temperature was falling, and both of us were wearing only shorts, and I began to wonder whether hanging out at the front gate might not after all have been the better idea. I led her down the hill, circling the headstones, many of them toppled with the heaving of the ground over the years, for this was the oldest section of the cemetery. And there it was, the old drainage tunnel, covered with the same wire mesh I remembered, which was still merely leaning in place, not actually attached. I kicked it aside. Kimmer released my hand. She asked if I seriously expected to get out of the cemetery this way. I said yes. She pointed out that the tunnel was no more than three feet high. I said we would have to crawl. She crossed her arms and stepped back. Uh-uh, mister, no way am I going to crawl through that. We don’t have any idea what could be running out of these graves. No. I spread my arms. I told her we had no choice. I told her it wasn’t bad, the tunnel was always dry, it was just a big metal pipe that came out down under the highway. I told her it was only twenty feet long, that we could make it in three or four minutes. I told her that I had probably done it five times as an undergraduate. She gave me that Kimmer look. And I slept with you for a year? But at least she smiled.
In the end, Kimmer gave in and we crawled through the tunnel. I wanted her to go first, but she flatly refused, suspecting that I just wanted to look at her backside, which was not actually true, not because I would not care to, but because it would be impossible—for one thing that I had omitted, but which Kimmer quickly discovered, was that the tunnel, no more than twenty feet long, was, once you got away from the entrance, pitch-black inside. At first she joked about it, then she got mad, and then, just past the middle of the tunnel, I realized that Kimmer was no longer right behind me. Turning around was impossible. I called her name and heard her curse at me. I backed up until my foot touched her hand. I told her that it was perfectly safe, that we were almost out, that there was light up ahead. She just sobbed. I knew the exit was perhaps ninety seconds away, but ninety seconds, as anybody who has ridden one of those roller-coasters-in-the-dark can affirm, is an eternity when you’re frightened—and my precious Kimmer was terrified. She was stuck there, immobile. She did not respond to reassurance or cajoling. Now I was getting a little scared myself in the hot, dusty darkness. I had no space to turn around, but I did the best I could. I rolled onto my back so that I could look in her direction, then drew my legs up to my chest and shimmied closer. Still lying on my back, I stretched out my hand and caught her wrist. I called her name. She said nothing. I tugged. Kimmer resisted. I tugged harder and, all at once, she came tumbling downward, her body pushing mine, and, suddenly the two of us were sliding along the metal, both screaming, and I was scrabbling for a handhold, any handhold, and my fingers exploded with pain and then I popped neatly out the other end of the tunnel, knocking the mesh away, sprawling on the rocky slope with the cemetery wall up the hill behind me, the highway on its concrete supports looming above me, and the docks and warehouses and oil tanks of industrial Elm Harbor sprawled below. I saw all of this as I lay flat on my back, my feet pointing toward the tunnel, my head tilted so that my chin pointed skyward, my hair full of mud.
Kimmer, incredibly but characteristically, landed on her feet. Her tears were gone, her clothes filthy but not torn, and her expression was more amused than concerned as she crouched next to me.
Are you alive? she asked softly.
I assured her I was okay, although, in actual fact, no part of me was free of aches, and my fingers were swollen and my leg felt wrong. It was plain that I had no hope of standing. Kimmer kissed my forehead, brushed off her clothes, and walked down the hill to a convenience store, where she used a pay phone to call a friend to come pick us up—one of the men she had just decided to dump, as a matter of fact. Her beau helped me down the hill. The two of them drove me over to the university health center, where we learned that I had managed to break two fingers, twist my ankle, and open a messy gash on my leg. In my mind, it was a worthy sacrifice to help Kimmer, who emerged unscathed. In her mind, I was an idiot who lacked the common sense to wait at the front gate, who had to find some spectacularly stupid way to do something simple. We should have broken into the office, Kimmer pointed out as a nurse took my blood pressure. I’m sure they had a phone. She left with her friend while they were stitching me up, promising to be back in thirty minutes in her own car to drive me to my apartment. The two of them looked very cuddly all of a sudden. In the event, she took more than two hours to return, as I sat in the lobby and suffered, not daring to call her, for fear of what I might interrupt, not daring to leave on my own, for fear of making her angry should her excuse turn out to be innocent. Kimmer finally showed up looking radiant and replete, having showered and changed, and she brought me a pair of sunglasses to hide a black eye I did not remember receiving. She made me sit in the back seat of her car, explaining that she thought I should stretch out my injured leg. She took my crutches up front. Driving over to the western end of campus, where I lived in an untidy apartment, she chattered happily about everything except where she had been for the past two hours, or where we had been for the two hours before. Dropping me at my front door, Kimmer thanked me for getting her out of the Burial Ground, brushed soft lips over my cheek, and was gone into the night.
Some metaphors need no interpretation.
I told my father the story of escaping through the tunnel with Kimmer, I have been reminding myself over and over, ever since my meeting with Dean Lynda. I hold that fact in my mind. I told my father the story, I repeat, even though I didn’t. I tell myself again and again, hoping that I will not forget.
(II)
I EXPLAIN TO SAMUEL WHAT I WANT, taking care to be clear, yet, at the same time, going on at length. He nods vigorously and tries several times to end the conversation, but I am a law professor, and therefore not so easy to shut up. Samuel at last stops trying and just listens, which is fine with me. Today’s is my fourth visit to the Old Town Cemetery in the past seven days. The first came a few hours after Dean Lynda’s ultimatum: the “walk” I was not prepared to explain to Kimmer. Two days later I was in Aspen. The next evening I was home. I have been here twice since. All my visits have had the same structure: a review of the records, followed by a cautious amble around the grounds. Nevertheless, I remind Samuel once more of the reason for my presence. I want him to remember our conversation. I want him to remember what I need. I want it to be the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks about me. Because I will require his help in the days or weeks to come if I am to bring this whole mess to an end, and his help will be useless if he forgets what I am looking for.
So Samuel busies himself at one end of the room and allows me to draw the dusty old registers from the shelves. For the third time since my chat with Uncle Jack, I sit at a hard wooden table that probably stood in this very spot when Lincoln was assassinated. I study the lists of the dead, turning pages two hundred years old to reach pages just filled in last month, adding to the copious (but, I hope, perfectly clear and easy-to-follow) notes on a small pad that I have been hiding in plain sight in the top drawer of the unlocked desk in my office. I sit, probably, for forty-five minutes, most of which Samuel spends watching me with unfocused eyes. Watching me is exactly what I want him to do—watching and remembering, in case he is ever asked. When I am done, I thank the smiling Samuel, who pumps my hand in both of his as though I have just won the grand prize. After extricating myself, I proceed out onto the cemetery grounds, where, for the four
th time, I brave the springlike drizzle to stroll the paths among the headstones, scrutinizing the map I have drawn on my pad, adding notes when necessary to be sure I have followed the proper route. I pass the mausoleum of the Hadley family, which has had a presence in Elm Harbor and around the university for well over a century; Marc is the family’s fourth professor here. I pass a small plot of old stones that was once a little Jim Crow cemetery-within-a-cemetery. The abolitionist town fathers of one hundred fifty years ago voted to allow free blacks to be interred, but not next to everybody else.
From time to time I look over my shoulder, a habit I suspect I will not shake for some while; I never see anyone but the occasional mourner, standing alone in the misty rain. I wonder if all of them are truly mourning, if any one of them might be following me, and how I would know.
I suppose that everybody is mourning somebody.
Several times I pause, making check marks on my pad as I read various tombstones, or noting where the gravel lanes intersect. I copy the names of the dead and the dates of their deaths. I draw squares within squares.
My notes finally completed, I leave the cemetery by the main entrance. None of the mourners stir. I wave farewell to the grinning Samuel on his bench and head back along Town Street toward campus, watching all the while for the invisible shadow I know is there.
Almost ready.
CHAPTER 47
A DECISION AT POST
(I)
“DANA?”
“Yes, my love?” Smiling girlishly over the lunch table at Post, pretending a bit, even though I could never, ever, be her love, for about six hundred reasons, even putting aside the obvious ones.
“Dana, look. I kind of need a favor.”
“As usual.”
“Seriously. I mean, it’s important, and … and I don’t know who else to ask.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” Dana is cautious, certain, I have no doubt, that I am about to ask her for money.
It is Wednesday, four days since my return from Aspen, and twelve days since my blow-up in the hallway with Jerry Nathanson, an event that has shrunk even further my already shaky standing around Oldie. I am lunching with Dana today because it is the first chance we have had to get our schedules synchronized. And also because I am running out of options. Earlier I planned to ask her help as a contingency. Now my need is urgent. If Dear Dana says yes, and all goes well, I will be able to get everybody off my back, and my family’s life back to normal, within a week, two at the most. My plan could put me outside Dean Lynda’s deadline, but close enough that I should be able to fudge it. If Dana says no, or if things go badly … well, then, so be it.
Munching my cheeseburger, I try to think how to put it. Over in Darien, Mariah is coming up on a deadline of her own, for her baby is due in less than a month. No more trips down to Shepard Street, but she is happy in her distraction. We speak on the phone almost nightly as the big day nears, and even Kimmer now and then gets in on the fun.
I envy my sister her joy.
Three tables away, Norm Wyatt, the architect, Dean Lynda’s blabbermouth husband, is lunching with a prosperous but somehow furtive client. I get a bit furtive myself, hunching down to get closer to Dear Dana. Correctly interpreting my motion, Dana shifts her head a bit closer to mine. As usual, I wonder what the gossip-mongers will think. I wonder why I chose to ask my favor at Post in the first place. Dana’s office would have been safer. Maybe I decided to come here because she tends to be more indulgent after meals. Or maybe because I am all at once worried about being bugged.
“Dana, look. What I’m going to ask … if you want to say no …”
“If I want to say no, Misha, I’ll say no. I’m very good at it.” A beat. “Except, now that I think of it, I’m not very good at saying no to you. You always seem to be asking me favors, and I always seem to say yes.” She smiles nervously. She glares at Norm’s broad back. She senses something amiss, and does not like the situation any more than I do. “I don’t know what it is about you. It’s not like you’re particularly charming or anything … .”
“Gee, you’re sweet.”
“Seriously, Misha. When I think about it, it’s too weird. I can’t say why, but I never seem to be able to say no. You know what? It’s a good thing I’m not into men or we’d probably have had an affair by now.”
“If I weren’t married.” A smile. “And if I were into white women.”
“Touché.” She smiles back. “So, what’s the big favor? You want me to break Jerry Nathanson’s kneecaps? Sorry, I’m retired from that line of work.”
“No, but … well, when you hear it, it might seem kind of shocking. Scary, even. Not that there’s any real risk, it’s just not going to be easy to do. But it’s something that … well, it has to be done, and I can’t do it myself. And, if it gets done, maybe I can … um, put a stop to … well, whatever’s going on.”
“Well, thanks, my love, that certainly clears everything up for me.”
“And, the thing is, I won’t … I won’t be able to tell you why I need you to do it. Not now. I can explain later, but not now.”
Her smile slowly fades. “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I should be scared.”
“No, no, of course not. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“As Anthony Perkins said to Janet Leigh.”
“I don’t think there was any such line in the movie.”
“Okay, Misha, okay.” Laughing, holding up her hands. “So, tell me what you want already.”
“Look, Dana, I wouldn’t ask except …”
“Except you don’t know where else to turn, I’m your best friend in the world, and blah-blah-blah. Just ask. I told you, I’m very good at saying no.”
I draw in a breath, recognizing that I have never imposed on a friend as mightily as I am about to. But I am nearly out of choices. So I tell Dana Worth what I need done. It takes me five minutes.
And she is shocked. She tells me so, but I can see it anyway, in the widening of her coal black eyes, and hear it in the hissing of air over her teeth. She considers. She leans back in her chair. Norm Wyatt and his client are leaving. Norm waves from a safe distance, and we both wave back. A knot of students brushes past the table, chattering about Lemaster Carlyle, whom he will pick as his first law clerks, how long before he moves on to the Supreme Court.
Dear Dana turns to me once more. She tells me I am out of my mind, completely out of my mind. She tells me I am going to lose both my job and my wife. She tells me I am going to wind up in jail. She tells me that if she helps me she could wind up in jail too.
Then she tells me she will do it.
(II)
OUT ON THE SIDEWALK, Dana starts to tell me about the message her pastor preached last Sunday, something about the parable of the shrewd manager. I am only half listening. “You see the point, don’t you, Misha? It doesn’t matter whether things are going the way you want them to, but only how you manage the things God puts in your—”
I grab her arm. She struggles free, because she hates to be touched.
“Misha, what’s wrong with you?”
“Dana, look.” I physically turn her. Again she shakes me off, maybe worrying that the Dean is right about my mental state. I point. “Do you see that car?”
“What car?”
“There! Right there!” For it is right in front of me, as large as life, at a meter across the street, a block from the law school. “The blue Porsche!”
My old or maybe new friend smiles. “Yes, Misha, of course I see it. Now, listen to me. This is important. Please don’t call it a Porsche. That car is not a Porsche.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, darling. It happens to be a powder-blue Porsche Carrera Cabriolet, this year’s model, and it looks like the special order with all the options, retailing for something over a hundred thousand dollars, and cash only, please, no deadbeat law professors who need financing.” Dana waits a beat. Ordinarily, this kind of Worthism makes me howl with laughter. Not today
. “Misha, I think there is something seriously wrong with you, do you know that?”
“Dana … Dana, that car … it was outside my house a couple of weeks ago. And once back in December, too. And I think the man who was driving it … well, he was spying on us. On my family.” I remember rushing through the woods with John Brown. “Dana, I think it was the other man who pretended to be an FBI agent in my house. The black man. Foreman. You know, right after the funeral.”
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