Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  It was such a natural feeling, in fact, so easy to fall into, that I soon found myself, in my callow, eager, fumbling way, talking to her as if I’d known her for years, as if she were almost an extension of my secret self. Before I realized it, I had launched into Philosophy-of-Life stuff and Hope-and-Dream stuff—just like that, that casually, right there in Carlo’s, as if I poured my heart out to everyone I met, as if I had ever poured my heart out to anyone. Shaping the words in front of me with my two hands, I was suddenly babbling to her about literature: and writing and the things I loved. Rapping the table with my fingertip and insisting that yes, yes, she was so right, they were spiritual pursuits, spiritual, not intellectual. Don’t you see? I remember saying to her. Don’t you see? Without the literature that made us what we are, our spiritual life would end, would devolve into childish fundamentalism and foolish relativism or, just as bad, the sort of quietism that imitates the dead. Beauty and excitement and sentiment—that was what art should be about, an appeal to the whole person, a way of establishing the presence of the whole person just as smoke can show you a beam of light. The triumph of the intellectual, the mere intellectual, why, that was a sure sign that an art form had died—the way painting had died, the way poetry had. Christ, I didn’t want to make things for intellectuals to parse and ponder and theorize over! I wanted to make stories, wonderful stories that whole women and men would love. I wanted to make things full of adventure and action and romance like—well, like Shakespeare did, like the sort of things he made—

  Well. That’s what I found myself saying suddenly. And it was that, that mention of Shakespeare that brought me back to my senses after I’d prattled on for I don’t know how long. The mention of Shakespeare and myself in the same sentence clanged like an alarm even in my passionfuddled head. I felt the blood rush into my cheeks. My hands seized each other in midcareer and sank to the tabletop. I tried to swallow my mortification. I wished the earth would likewise swallow me.

  But this Emma—this Emma McNair I had somehow stumbled on—she put her hand out and covered mine with it. “You’ll make things like that,” she said quietly. “I can see that you will.”

  I didn’t dare glance up at her. “Not to compare myself…” I muttered. I sank into my chair and looked away.

  I don’t know if I would ever have spoken again. To anyone, ever. But Emma took pity on me. She changed the subject.

  And she said, “Did I overhear you asking about Wilfred K. Green?”

  It was just one more proof of the amazing sparrow-fall providence of our meeting. Because Wilfred K. Green and the Agency and just about everything besides Emma McNair had completely slipped my mind by then. If she hadn’t brought it up, I would’ve been home before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing tonight.

  “You said you were writing something about him,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to repeat my cover story, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie to her. She was too spectacular. I said only, “Do you know someone who’s interested in him?”

  “Actually, I do,” she said. “Well, my father does. My father’s a professor here.”

  I blinked. “McNair? Not Patrick McNair?”

  “That’s him.”

  He was not just a professor. He was a famous novelist, too. He had won the Pulitzer Prize, no less, for his novel about a blocked college professor trying to complete a novel about…Well, you can figure it out for yourself.

  I was impressed. I shouldn’t have been. Reading that book had been like smothering under a pillow. But he was famous and had won a big prize, and I was impressed in spite of myself. In truth, I was only saved from saying something genuinely smarmy and sycophantic by the expression on Emma’s face, which clearly forbid it.

  “Uh…so you’re saying he knows someone…?”

  “Freyberg,” she told me. “You were talking about the Wilfred K. Green society? Arnold Freyberg basically was the Wilfred K. Green society. Until the feminists shut him down, that is. He taught the Romantics. Blake mostly. Used to spout all this stuff about natural manhood and womanhood, you know, that drove the fems crazy. They used to actually show up at some of his lectures and shout slogans so no one could hear him. One of them once dumped a pitcher of ice water over his head.”

  “You’re kidding. Was this the M. R. Brinks brigade?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if she was part of it specifically. But probably. It was your usual band of termagants. Finally, one of them accused Freyberg of sexually harassing her. Nothing was ever proven, but the university showed yellow and forced him to retire.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “Not long. Maybe a year or so.”

  Which would’ve given him a grudge, I thought. A reason to start sending nasty e-mails to M. R. Brinks.

  “You think it was a setup?” I asked Emma. “The sexual harassment thing.”

  She shrugged. “With the feminists, you know—I wouldn’t put it past them. On the other hand, I met him myself at one of my parents’ cocktail parties a while back? And either he took a deep and immediate liking to me, or he drools like that on everyone. I mean, to be fair, he was drunk—you know, all these intellectual males get drunk, otherwise how could they stand to be themselves? But it was pretty unpleasant. He started going on and on about this Wilfred K. Green fellow, you know, and how we had to free our bodies from the fear of death or whatever. I can’t remember what he said exactly, but I think the idea was that everyone should have sex with everyone else in general, and me with Arnold Freyberg in particular.” She shuddered a little.

  I laughed—but I was exhilarated. Damned if this didn’t sound like the guy I was looking for. A good suspect, at least. Something to go back to the Agency with.

  “You know where he lives?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “He’s probably in the book. I can ask my father, if you like.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ll find him.”

  “I don’t mind. It would give you an excuse to call me. Would you call me, if you had an excuse?”

  “Emma, with a phone and enough courage, I wouldn’t even need the excuse.”

  She had a funny little elfin nose. With freckles across the bridge of it. It wrinkled right at the freckle line when she tried not to blush, not to grin.

  She took a pen from her purse. Wrote her phone number on a Carlo’s coaster. She wrote very carefully, slowly, talking as she wrote.

  “Now, of course, you understand, all my confidence and sophistication and whatnot are complete bullshit beneath the surface. I’m just a girl in real life, and I’ll be very hurt if you don’t use this right soon.”

  She handed the coaster to me. Her eyes were misty suddenly, vulnerable.

  “I have a cell phone with me,” I offered. “I could call you right now.”

  She laughed. “You can wait a few days—or whatever guys do to seem cool.”

  “I think it’s already painfully obvious how uncool I am.”

  “Oh, you’re pretty damn cool, boyo. You just don’t know it yet.”

  I had the weirdest feeling: the feeling that if she said this, contrary to all indications though it was, it must be so; and that if I was actually lucky enough to see more of her, I would find out all sorts of similarly wonderful things about myself.

  “Well—” she said. She gathered her purse, pushed her chair back from the table. Stood.

  Startled, I got to my feet as well. “Wait—” She was tall, I saw now, almost as tall as I was, and our eyes met. “Why are you going?”

  Emma smiled the mischievous smile and her green eyes were bright and her freckled nose wrinkled and her shortcropped hair was black as black and the beret was still adorable. “Because,” she said, “we seem to’ve gotten it just right, don’t we?”

  I tried to answer yes, managed to nod.

  “Well, you don’t mess around with that, boyo.”

  I watched her walk across the room. Watched her jeans, watched the whole l
ong line of her. At the door, she paused. She looked back at me. I touched two fingers to my forehead in salute. She laughed. Then she was gone.

  Twenty-One

  Out on the sidewalk, out in the night, students passed singly and in pairs. Under the lines of low buildings, under the spindly urban trees, under the moon. Lugging backpacks, riding bikes, kicking skateboards. Talking with each other, lost in daydreams alone.

  I watched them as I wandered back to my car. Each of them trying to seem like the person he wanted to become. Some looked like academics with frizzly beards and others like radicals with nose rings and tattoos. There were feminists with lace-up boots and tough guys with shaved heads and beauty queens and gym rats and all the rest. Trying to project their characters on the world, hoping the world might notice or care, hoping to shape the nature of experience with their costumes and their poses.

  I felt for them in their youthful confusion. Sure, their efforts to “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,” looked silly and childish to me now, but I reminded myself with a paternal smile that I had been like that once, too. In fact, it was only about two hours ago. Before I had gone into Carlo’s and met Emma and everything had become so clear and simple to me. That was the secret to this life business, all right. All one had to do was be oneself and meet Emma. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  Now, at nine o’clock or so, it was hard to remember what I had been like in the past—at, say, seven. Trying to imitate Bishop or Weiss or the heroes of fiction. It was hard to recall feeling that sort of insecurity about my identity and my future. I couldn’t even imagine why anyone would live in such a state of foolish bewilderment. I wanted to stop one of these young people, talk sense to him, give him the benefit of my experience. In the landscape of every life, I would say to him, fondly clapping him on the shoulder, there is a place like Carlo’s, my young friend. It may not be called Carlo’s, you understand, I’m speaking metaphorically, but it will be your Carlo’s as Carlo’s, the actual Carlo’s, called Carlo’s, is my Carlo’s…

  Well, I wanted to talk to someone, anyway, that’s my point. I wanted someone to marvel at this high state of clarity I was in. I wanted someone to admire the new way I could now move serenely through the existential chaos of life without hiding behind the mannerisms of a constructed persona.

  So it was with a little inner starburst of excitement that I remembered that I was supposed to call Sissy, to let her know if I’d come up with anything on the Brinks investigation. It was just after nine, as I say, not too late. I unhooked my cell phone from my belt as I reached my car. Dialed as I settled in behind the wheel.

  Sissy sounded distracted when she answered. I heard a noise in the background, running water maybe.

  “Oh gee, sweetheart,” she said in her girlish whisper, “I can’t talk right now. Do you think you could maybe stop by on your way home?” She said she would be grateful, as she had a meeting with Weiss early in the morning and wanted to have the latest information on her cases.

  For my part, I was glad to have somewhere else to go. It was a fine, successful feeling: finishing up an investigation and getting a girl’s phone number and then heading back to the city to deliver a late-night report to my boss. It beat the hell out of going home, anyway—drinking alone, jerking off, watching TV until I could sleep.

  Sissy’s place was on Jackson, a modest block of town houses on the steep plummet down from Nob Hill to Chinatown. It was the first time I had ever been there. When I came through the door to her apartment, I remember I got a quick impression that everything inside was very fluffy. Shag rugs and plush furniture and a couple of cats and a lot of family photos in spongy heartshape frames.

  And Sissy. She was fluffy, too. Wearing a white terry cloth robe, her hair up in a pink towel. I guess she’d just come out of the shower or bath. Her delicate features seemed very naked, scrubbed pink and white. A vee of naked flesh was visible beneath the hollow of her throat.

  There was a counter at the edge of the kitchenette. I sat on one of the barstools there while Sissy poured me a glass of wine. I felt very sophisticated, bringing my report to her when she was barely dressed like this. I felt like a real investigator, drinking wine with her, discussing a case. The coaster with Emma’s phone number on it was in my back pocket, and I remembered the way Emma had put her hand over my hands and how I felt that everything was finally coming together in my life and making sense. And now, also thanks to Emma, I had done well in my work, too, and was giving my report to Sissy, my boss. I felt very sophisticated and successful and good.

  Sissy perched on the stool next to mine, tugging the bathrobe together to cover her pink-and-white legs. She held me with her moistly maternal gaze while I told her about Arnold Freyberg, the Blake professor with a penchant for Wilfred K. Green. I told her how he’d been chased out of his job by the feminists—maybe by M. R. Brinks herself. I left Emma out of it—I didn’t want to tell her about Emma—but I did mention that Freyberg was once seen drunk at an academic party, quoting Green in an attempt to seduce a much younger woman.

  “Wow,” said Sissy. “That’s good. That’s very promising. He sounds like he could be our guy.” She cocked her head to one side, admiring me as if I were the backside of a newborn babe. Her scrubbed face practically beamed—she seemed just that enamored of my brilliance. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” she said ever so nicely. “I knew you could do it.”

  I shrugged, maybe blushed. She laughed and put her hand on my cheek again in that motherly way she had. This time, though, her hand lingered there. There was a pause, and her gaze turned meaningful. With a little self-conscious smile, she leaned over and kissed me. Just a gentle peck at first, but her lips remained against mine, and they were warm and giving. Soon I put my hand on the back of her neck and pressed into her and it was not a gentle kiss anymore and my tongue was in her mouth. We both stood up off our stools and my hands slipped into her bathrobe and I felt the shock of her skin and how soft she was.

  The next thing I knew we were on the sofa, me with my pants off, her with her robe splayed open. She was the oldest woman I’d ever been with, and her breasts seemed very rich and ripe, her body very deep to me somehow. The pink towel had come undone and her golden hair was falling wet against her cheek. My face pressed into it. It smelled wonderfully of shampoo.

  She shed tears when she came, which I had never seen before, and the way her soft, sweet, familiar, motherly whisper became a wild, high, yearning cry was incredibly exciting to me and drove me on to the end.

  Then I was sprawled spent on the shag rug with Sissy curled up next to me making little-girl noises and calling me darling and sweetheart and asking wasn’t I her baby, wasn’t I going to be her sweet baby now, wasn’t I?

  I stared up at the ceiling and thought of Emma and I wished to God that I never had done it.

  Part Three

  China Basin

  Twenty-Two

  Weiss stood musing on a field of flowers. Dahlias, a carpet of yellow and violet and orange. Head hung, hands in his pockets, he gazed over them, all but unseeing. He was thinking about the letters, the e-mails to Professor Brinks.

  Their phrases haunted him. I will remake you into your body…The world does’t need any more big ideas or grand theories…Why do you cling to them, woman? The moment of desire, Marianne! Don’t try to sell your cant to me. The world craves you naked on your knees…

  He had reread the passages several times last night. He’d crept back to them as if they were an addiction. Their sensual images stayed with him, kept him awake for hours, blossoming into fantasies. Sometimes they were fantasies about Sissy or M. R. Brinks herself or other women he’d known or seen. Mostly, though, he imagined Julie Wyant, the angel-faced hooker he’d never even met. He lay in bed in the dark with his eyes open, thinking about her. Conjuring the touch of her body, the liquid silk of her red-gold hair. He would turn onto one side and onto the other. His pillow grew clammy with sweat. He told himse
lf again that he could not try to find her because Ben Fry would follow him and hunt her down. But he felt if he did not try, he would die of his longing…

  He lifted his eyes from the dahlia bed. The white dome of the Flower Conservatory rose out of the surrounding palm trees, the eucalyptus and the oak. Sunlight glinted on its spire where it touched the blue sky. He turned from it, looked down and west into the mistier depths of the park’s forest. He saw Professor Brinks striding toward him along the path.

  She was much as before, a sturdy little figure with a marching stride. A gray jacket this time, but just as angular and slashing as the last one, the navy one. And her black slacks were creased for the kill. Still, Weiss, with all those fantasies in his head, all those images from the e-mails, got a sexy little jolt from the sight of her. Her grim, pretty features between curtains of black hair. The clap of her heels on the macadam.

  The world craves you naked on your knees…

  “Mr. Weiss,” she said.

  She shook his hand briskly. With her free hand she adjusted the shoulder strap of her huge purse or briefcase or whatever it was. Weiss, hovering over her in that protective way he had with women, noted the tension at the corners of her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, too. She was worried about this meeting.

  “Have you found him?” she said. There were no other preliminaries.

  “I think so,” he told her. “I have to be sure before I can give you a name. It should be by tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”

  “Well…good. Good, then.” She looked up at him uncertainly. Wondering, obviously, why he had asked her to come.

  But he didn’t tell her. Not yet. He wasn’t sure how to put it yet. He’d rehearsed a lot of tactful phrases, but now they all seemed stilted and phony to him. Stalling for time, he began to stroll along the path back the way she had come. She strolled beside him, anxious, waiting.