by Jane Smiley
Must have gone to sleep, for she had the sense of waking sometime later, or partly waking. At first she felt delicate and victimized, as she had earlier in the day, ill but with a safe and definite disease. The door to the bathroom was open now, and Susan was moving about like a mother in Alice’s room, folding clothes, picking up shoes, putting caps on bottles and taking them into the bathroom. In the bathroom the light was full upon her as she went back and forth past the doorway, in and out of Alice’s sleepy gaze. Always well groomed, she was even more so now, two long bobby pins like arrows in her straight shining hair, her nightgown buttoned to the throat, her face absolutely clean, splashed thirty times with lukewarm water. How typical of Susan, she thought, to face devastation with cleanup. How typical of herself to face it in bed. The light in the bathroom went off and Alice heard Susan go out the other bathroom door and walk down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Are you all right?” she called out, but there was no answer. Now, Alice foresaw, would come the test of friendship, the great task of taste and tact that she, always indulged by Susan, always advised, encouraged, and strengthened, might or might not accomplish. For this they had no practice, no trial runs of adversity in which Alice could take the role of comforter, Susan be comforted. Susan never needed comfort, avoided it, in fact. Alice could too easily envision a kind of well-meant estrangement, in which Susan turned in and in on herself and Alice reached out only clumsily or imperceptibly.
Jim had often said about her that she had no sense of timing or nuance; in her desire for him she was afraid to touch him and then elbowed him in the ribs. Driving their old car, she waited forever to make left turns, and then, nervous because of the cars accumulating behind her, darted into traffic. A sense of rightness she did not have, never had, could not learn. Alice sighed with love and sympathy for Susan, knowing that if she left the expression of it to her instincts she was bound to fail, bound to go too far, or, more likely, fall short. After a while, after thinking that the best thing to do would be to stay awake so that Susan could come in and talk if she felt the least bit like it, Alice fell again into a sound sleep.
In the brightening glimmer of the sun rising on another perfect day, Alice awoke to Susan’s quiet exhortations. A warm breeze off the river fluttered the spider plant and the grape ivy hanging in the window. Alice pushed her hair out of her face and sat up in bed. “What?”
“Are you mad that I woke you?”
“Of course not. How are you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been up all night. It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Denny, so it’s all sort of abstract. I think I have to go there and look for myself. Basically, I feel awful, I guess.”
“Don’t you want to get some sleep?”
“I can’t right now. I want to go home and be there.”
Even having seen the bodies taken away, Alice could only imagine another shock like she’d had the day before. She said, “You don’t really.”
“I really do!”
“Susan, it’s awful to go in there. I don’t think you quite understand.”
“I understand.”
“Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad!”
“I found them! I know what it was like!”
“But they’re not there to be found. I’ll go by myself.”
Biting her lip, wondering how she had gotten off the track, Alice threw back the blanket, put her foot to the floor, and remembered the police barrier she had seen them nail over the door and lock after taking out the bodies. Afraid to mention it, she let herself get dressed, brush her teeth, hurry as if they actually had some goal. She hated this clumsiness of hers. She could have remembered the barrier the moment Susan broached the subject, told her calmly that they couldn’t go in, would have to wait for Honey to let them in, would have to apprise him, probably, of every move they made. Here she was, rushing down West End Avenue at dawn, afraid to speak, afraid to tell the truth. High cirrus clouds skated east over the roofs of the clean buildings and their clean shadows. In the vestibule of one building, a wino sat up and ran his fingers through his stiff hair, smoothing it down, as if even for him it was a new day. The wooden soles of Alice’s clogs rang on the pavement, and her spirits, once again in spite of themselves, lifted. After all, how was she to know what would be there, what would happen? Anything could happen.
It was there. Susan looked at it for a long time, reading and rereading the black stenciled words, not speaking. Alice made herself wait patiently the whole time, not offering breakfast, not offering any solace, until Susan really and truly had had her fill of the familiar hallway and the well-known door with its strange accessory. Alice didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps not tears, and, at first, Susan seemed to have no reaction, except ravenous curiosity. Alice looked tactfully away. Finally, Susan said, in a soft, pressed-out voice, “I’m furious, you know. This is enraging.”
Alice made the appropriate wordless response. She hadn’t thought of it that way.
When they came back out on the street, the bustle of church goers, newspaper readers, bagel eaters, dog walkers, and parking place hunters had begun.
Over breakfast Alice tried to ease into the topic with a description of Detective Honey. Susan was calm now, and Alice wondered if she was really paying attention. “I don’t know what he thinks, Susan. He’s got that enigmatic cop shit down to a T. Half the time I’m with him, I think he thinks I did it, and I wonder if I did. Trying to figure him out is like staring at a bright light. Afterwards you see a lot of things that aren’t there.”
“Does he seem very smart, as if he’ll be able to solve it?” She sounded almost indifferent.
“I can’t tell that either. There’s a kind of structure to the whole experience of being with him, like going to the doctor. You sort of do what’s expected.”
“How did he refer to Denny and Craig?”
“Let me see. Mostly as Mr. Minehart and Mr. Shellady, and a couple of times as ‘the victims.’”
Susan wrinkled her nose.
“It’s very public, isn’t it?”
Susan nodded. Alice thought that here she was eating again, eating a good breakfast of bagels and fresh cream cheese and smoked whitefish, eating with relish as she had at Ray’s the night before. It was strange but reassuring to eat this way, to love her food with conscious appreciation. Continually on the verge of losing her appetite, she savored every morsel, considering how odd it was that in such crises she and Susan, and Ray, and Noah, Rya, Denny’s parents, and Detective Honey, would make time for this eating two, three, or even four times a day. She said, “He doesn’t think you’re coming home until this evening. You don’t have to call him until then.”
“What would that look like? Besides, I want to find out what they know.”
Alice licked her lips. “That’s one thing I don’t think we’re going to find out, sweetie.”
Susan lifted her own bagel, blushing with lox, and said, “Oh, my God,” and put it down again.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll tell you later.” She glanced around the deli. In a moment she said, “How carefully did they search the apartment?”
“I don’t know. They looked everywhere. They probably came back later. Why?”
“Not here.” Then, “Tell me some more about Honey.”
“I don’t think he’s much older than we are, but he seems a lot older. He’s sort of paunchy, I guess.”
“Did you like him in a human way?”
“I sort of did. But I couldn’t tell if that was because I was supposed to or because I really did.”
“Did you feel like co-operating with him?”
“I felt like there was no question about that.”
Susan breathed a deep catching sigh and said, “What are we talking about? This is so impossible.” She put her face in her hands. Almost against her will, Alice continued to eat.
When they left the restaurant, it was nearly nine-thirty. Susan said, “You know, I have to cal
l the Mineharts. They’re expecting to hear from me. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours. I’m ashamed of that,” but when Alice turned up Broadway, Susan steered her instead down Seventy-sixth Street toward Riverside Park. Joggers and dog walkers were out in fleets. After a full week of adamantine blue skies, the grass along the river had lost the freshness briefly attained during a damp April, but the trees swayed in full, sybaritic leaf. They walked along the river toward the boat basin, and Alice said, “Does the weather make you feel better or worse?”
“Better, but strange. I don’t know.”
“What is going on?”
Susan glanced around them, and waited for a pursuing jogger to pass. When there was not even a tree within ten yards, she stopped, looked at Alice, and said, “When I left New York two weeks ago, there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine in a box in the kitchen.”
“Ten thousand?”
Susan nodded.
“Is that a lot?”
“It didn’t seem so to me, but I was told it was very pure, etcetera, blah blah.”
“Whose was it?”
Susan didn’t answer, instead bent down and picked up a chip of broken pavement and tossed it over the fence at the river. Finally, she said, “It wasn’t all paid for.”
“Who was supposed to pay for it?”
“Craig.” She looked at Alice piercingly, then looked away. Finally, she said, “Denny, too.”
“I didn’t think Denny did a lot of cocaine.”
“He didn’t. Neither of them could afford more than the occasional hit.” Susan inhaled deeply, perhaps at the use of the past tense. “This time they were going to sell most of it, and give the rest to the band at that Providence gig.” She picked up another piece of the pavement and began to crumble off tiny fragments between her fingers. “They thought they would sell enough to pay for it, and then have a party with the rest.”
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“Denny and I had a tremendous fight about it before I left. They weren’t making any real effort to sell it, and I was afraid it would just go right up their noses.”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
“You know how much they were getting paid for that Providence gig? The whole band, five hundred per night, not including expenses. And the one before that, up in Irvington, that one-night deal, was only seven-fifty. Split four ways, with something for Ray to help set them up? Shit.”
“Who did they owe the money to?”
“I was afraid to ask. They got the cocaine through Ray.”
“Ray Reschley?”
“None other.”
“Jesus!”
“Ray could have gotten it anywhere.” Susan spoke bitterly.
“I think he just talks big, don’t you? He’s really just our boy from Minnesota. You know that.”
“No, Alice, I don’t know that any more. All I know is that two weeks ago there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine in my apartment, and yesterday Denny and his best friend were found murdered in the same apartment. Murdered!”
“Ray couldn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Not intentionally, maybe. But maybe those contacts he had have a way of getting out of hand.”
“Oh, Susan!”
“Oh, Alice!”
They turned and walked up the pavement, avoiding, by instinct, the various viaducts and secret places of Riverside Park. “Another thing,” said Susan. “If the stuff was there, maybe the police found it, and they are going to think it was mine. I’m an official resident of the apartment, not Craig. Damn him! He always wanted to be the big guy! After Ray took him to all those parties for those tours that were coming in last Christmas, and he saw for himself all the weed and cocaine floating around, he just had to do the same thing, had to have a party like that, had to treat his band the way those people treat their bands. Do you know how many rock stars he referred to by their first names after that? As soon as they brought that stuff into the apartment, I knew the shit was about to hit the fan, and here it is.”
“Was there anything else they might have found?”
“No. Denny was kind of off dope, and didn’t want it around, so that was the only thing. As if that wasn’t enough.”
Alice thought of Detective Honey. A definite man who filled out his dark suit, Detective Honey would not approve of cocaine, not even overlook it. She glanced at Susan, another definite, substantial person. Ignorance was something a man like Honey, with at least some powers of perception, would never believe of Susan. Alice said, “If he asks you, you’ve got to tell him the truth.”
“Who?”
“Detective Honey. If he asks about the cocaine, then you’ll know they’ve found it, and you’ll have to tell them exactly what you’ve told me.”
“But I disapproved of it! I didn’t want it in the house, or anywhere near me!”
“You’ve just got to tell them that.”
“They aren’t going to believe me.”
“They aren’t going to believe that you don’t know anything about it.”
“I’ve been gone for two weeks.”
“Well, that’s true. Yes, that is true, but you don’t know what the police know, do you? They might be in touch with people who could tell them that it came into your place three weeks ago.”
“A month.”
“It’s impossible for people like us to know what the police know. I’m just afraid you’ll trap yourself for no good reason.”
“Oh, hell!”
As they turned at Eighty-fourth Street to leave the park, Susan looked at Alice and declared, “I always knew Craig Shellady would get me into real trouble. Something I couldn’t get out of by dipping into the savings account or putting my foot down. I’ve known that for twelve years. Now I don’t forgive him. I blame him for all of this. That’s what enrages me!”
“He’s paid for it.”
“No, he hasn’t! I’m the one who’s going to pay for it. You don’t pay for anything by being dead. That’s when you stop paying for it.”
“Honey, he’s dead! Really dead!”
“And Denny, too! However it happened, you know, Craig is to blame. He’s the guilty party here. Nothing is ever going to change my mind about that.” The light turned and they stepped off the curb into Riverside Drive.
3
THE momentum of her daily life had carried Alice through the discovery of the bodies and past it, but when she unlocked her apartment to the ringing of the phone, she realized that the momentum was played out, and the real chaos of such an event as a semi-public double murder was about to crush them. For the time being she didn’t answer the phone, but unplugged it. Ray would be trying to reach her, and Noah or Rya, possibly Jim, certainly Detective Honey, and any number of others wondering where Susan was. Susan turned without speaking and shuffled down the hallway toward the bedroom, visibly fatigued. There would be so much business to attend to—the burials, the services, the parents and other relatives, so much talk on the phone to be gotten through. She followed Susan, and found her flung across the unmade bed. Afraid to push, she said, “What are you going to do?”
“Sleep. Call the Mineharts first. God, I hate to make that call.”
“Funeral home?”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“We’ve got to do all that stuff.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“His parents will want a complete funeral with priests in purple, open coffin—”
“They can’t have that.”
“Oh, Lord. Catholic cemetery, black limousines.”
“What did Denny ever want?”
“The usual. Cremation over a bonfire with only his friends in attendance, then flinging his ashes to the four winds.”
“Was he serious?”
“We only talked about it once, five or six years ago.”
“Is there any will or anything?”
“I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. I have
to call them. Will you dial? If a child answers, then ask for Mrs. Minehart. I couldn’t stand hearing the voice of one of those kids.” Denny’s youngest sister was only six. Alice picked up the bedroom extension, plugged it in, and dialed the numbers Susan dictated. A youthful voice did answer, probably the ten-year-old. Alice asked for Mrs. Minehart, and when she came to the phone, anxious but polite, her voice clear and questioning, Alice gave the phone to Susan and left the room, closing the door.
In the kitchen she put the teakettle on to boil, found her favorite china teapot and her favorite cup, and sat down to wait. After a few minutes, she got up, went into the bedroom where Susan was now asleep, and threw a blanket over the shoeless, prostrate form of her friend. Looking at Susan, she tried not to panic, tried not to imagine the shambles Susan’s affairs were now most certainly in. Of course there would be no wills, no insurance, no agreement on the final disposition of the bodies, of course there were debts, and not just illegal ones, of course there would be suspicion, and possibly trouble, from the police. All of this in addition to grief. Alice pulled the blanket down over Susan’s feet, and Susan’s head turned and her beautiful straight hair that shone like new pennies curved smoothly over her cheek. Grief would hit her hard, Alice thought as she went back to the kitchen, where, with her pot of tea and her window onto Eighty-fourth Street, she would sit in perfect silence for no less than two hours. Then she would plug in the phones again and answer the buzzer for the downstairs door.
She thought she should make a list of practical matters, things like people to call and arrangements to make, items that had been flooding her mind all morning, each with its attendant mental note that she couldn’t forget that, but when she got up to get paper and to find a sharp pencil, every notion vanished, and she found herself staring out at Eighty-fourth Street, at the happy bustle of New Yorkers in shirt sleeves and backless dresses heading for Riverside Park and a walk in the sun, or for Broadway and a little harmless buying. Across the street and down a ways, an older woman in a bonnet was bedding plants in the three-foot strip of earth in front of her brownstone, and three floors above her another woman, in a bathrobe, was leaning far out of her apartment window, also bedding plants, in a window box, something flame colored, perhaps geraniums. At that height and facing south, she would have the sun for them. It was thought in the neighborhood that the brownstone one up from the corner of Riverside had a large roof garden. At least, trucks with huge redwood troughs had pulled up one day, and another day men had carried giant bags of soil and gravel and composted manure into the building. Alice did not think with envy of the fresh spinach and perfect tomatoes those roof gardeners undoubtedly enjoyed. After all, set like brooches along the sweep of Broadway were vegetable markets that presented to any city dweller with a few dollars the pick of East Coast crops. What she envied, and what she would have paid for those countless home deliveries to have, was the vista of sun-drenched green under the bell of heaven, and the silver plume of the river waving in the distance. On Eighty-ninth Street, some top floor resident had erected a solar collector that Alice felt proud and proprietary about, as, she suspected, did everyone who knew it.
