by Jane Smiley
“If you’d just think a minute,” Alice pleaded, “you might remember who Ray Reschley is. He comes here all the time. He mixes sound and stuff like that.”
“Who’s he working for again?”
“I don’t KNOW. I told you that.”
“Well, it’s all listed under whoever’s playing.”
“Well, read me the names. He said she was a big star.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Point me to where the rooms are, and I’ll just look for myself, okay?”
“Lady!”
“I won’t disturb anyone.”
“If there were windows in the doors, you’d disturb people just by looking into them. That’s why there aren’t any windows on the doors.”
“But even if I disturbed people, I’d only disturb them for a minute.”
“Hey, that’s why people come here. That’s why they pay. So they won’t be disturbed for even a minute.”
“This is an emergency.”
“Who says?”
“Do you have a manager?”
Now the kid was beginning to get annoyed. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed, either.”
“Look—” Alice didn’t know quite what to do. The boy’s tentative look of annoyance widened into a smile of victory as Alice stepped back from the booth. Alice smiled herself, pretending to be about to leave, but then she threw back her head and screamed as loudly as she could, “RAY! RAY! RAY!” Her voice broke. The kid in the booth was shocked. No manager, however, came gliding out of any of the closed doors. Nothing at all happened, except that another truck came in and the boy in the booth picked up the phone. Alice felt her throat with her hand, wondering if she would ever speak again. After dialing two or three times, the boy beckoned to her. “I found the people he was with. Mixing sound, right? That band’s gone home.”
“I don’t want the band. I want Ray Reschley.”
“Hey, they’ve gone home. They’ve all gone home. Now you go home.”
“See if they went out somewhere.”
His hand didn’t even touch the receiver. “He’s gone home.”
“Okay,” said Alice, turning away. When the boy bent his head to pick up the rest of his papers, she scurried around the booth and ran toward the closed doors and the stairwell. “Hey!” shouted the boy, but only once. He probably didn’t dare leave his booth, especially since he was new on the job.
Alice stood between two doors, with her eye on a third, waiting for someone to come out. No one did. At last, she opened the door to her right and saw that the room, cavernous and completely insulated, was empty. So was the room to her left. Across the hall, a man with a guitar looked up and scowled before she could get the door shut. She crept toward the stairs. Her own behavior was making her afraid. Surely it hadn’t really been an emergency. Ray hadn’t called it an emergency. He had wanted her, but he hadn’t needed her. If he needed someone, wouldn’t he call Noah, or some friend that Alice didn’t know, someone who’d seen him more frequently over the last year? Thinking of how they had drifted apart rather reassured Alice. At the top of the stairs she stood up straight. A face she recognized came out of one room and went into another, but she barely had time to remember the name, much less ask him if he knew Ray Reschley. The emptiness of the high-ceilinged corridor made her jumpy. She looked at her watch. It was six thirty-three. She opened the door next to her. Inside, someone very famous, judging by his resplendent clothing and his entourage, was practicing. No Ray. Five chords boomed over her before she got the door closed. After that she knew that she couldn’t open any more doors. Shortly after that, she began to view favorably the notion that Ray had gone home. Why should the kid lie? Ray was probably in his apartment right now, wondering what had happened to her. She should go home, too, and wait for his call. Call him, even. The door in her distracted gaze opened, startling her. A Rastafarian sauntered out. Alice squeaked, as she had planned, “Do you know Ray Reschley?”
“Shit, man,” said the Rastafarian.
“Thanks, anyway,” said Alice.
But Ray wasn’t at home, or else his phone was unplugged. When at last the answering service picked up, they wouldn’t give Alice any information. She could not help thinking of Roger Jenks, thinking he had been ill-omened, for now she was a little worried, and felt a little like she had betrayed an old friend in order to make a new one. And Roger Jenks hadn’t even sat with them at lunch.
DETECTIVE Honey was waiting for her on the sunlit steps when she came outside with her peanut butter sandwich on Friday. She had never expected to see him outdoors, somehow, and she didn’t recognize him. He hardly looked imposing at all. When he saw her, he took off his sunglasses. Alice dropped her sandwich while opening it, and he picked it up for her. “Another beautiful day,” he said.
“Almost two weeks, now.” She smiled as well as she could.
“Mind if I take up a few minutes of your lunch hour?”
“May I?”
“May you?”
“May I mind?”
He smiled politely. “No,” he said. He flipped back the cover of his notebook and gestured for her to sit down. He was dressed in plain clothes, but he looked very coplike; Alice prayed that Laura wouldn’t come out.
“How’ve you been?” said Honey.
Alice shrugged.
“I saw you at the funeral.”
Alice hadn’t seen Honey. “I didn’t expect it to fill the church, but it seemed to.”
“More friends than you thought?”
“I suppose.”
“Would you say that either of the victims was closer to Mr. Mast, say, than to Mr. Reschley? Or vice versa?”
“Noah would have been with them more, I suppose, because they all played together, but Ray might have been around more in off hours, except that he’s a pretty busy person.”
“You would say that Mr. Reschley is successful in his job, sought after?”
“I’ve gotten that impression.”
“And Mr. Mast?”
“He’s probably a fair bass player. No one has ever lured him away, but I wouldn’t know if anyone ever tried.”
“How would you characterize Mr. Mast?”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Alice lifted her gaze, and shading her eyes against the glare, looked into Honey’s face. He looked merely curious, pleasant. She thought of Noah’s habit of carrying a bag of dope or a few joints with him wherever he went. He had done it for so long that he probably no longer remembered that it was illegal. “He’s very relaxed,” she said, “generous, dependable, loyal.”
“Could you characterize Mrs. Mast?”
“Harmless.”
“Compared to?”
Alice started. For a moment Honey seemed just the least bit predatory, but then he veiled his interest. Alice shrugged. “Not compared to, or maybe, compared to what she seems. She wears a lot of make-up and usually dresses in revealing black clothes.”
“Intelligent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your friend?”
“Sort of.”
Honey settled himself. “Is Mr. Reschley your friend?”
Alice nodded.
“You’ve known him for a number of years, I believe?”
“Almost sixteen.”
“You’ve known him longer than the others have?”
Alice nodded.
“Was Mr. Reschley ever married?”
“No.”
“Does Mr. Reschley have any unusual habits?”
“Not strictly unusual, no.”
Honey pursed his lips. “Is Mr. Reschley a homosexual?” Alice nodded.
“Completely so?”
“Yes, as far as I know.”
“Any of this sort of involvement with the rest of the band?”
“No!”
“Have you met any of Mr. Reschley’s homosexual associates?”
“Not really, no.”
“B
ut?”
“Once we were in a bar. I saw a guy he later went out with, but I didn’t actually meet him.”
“Named?”
“Lonnie something. I don’t know any others.” Alice looked at her watch.
Honey leaned forward. “Let’s be perfectly clear about this, okay?” he said. “You have never met and know nothing about Mr. Reschley’s present friends and associates?”
“I’ve never met any of them and Ray never talks about them.”
“Does Mr. Reschley take drugs in any form?”
“I’ve never seen him.” But of course she had seen him reach for joints, inhale, pass them on. She had seen herself do the same thing. Lying. She bit her lip.
“Have you seen Mr. Reschley lately?”
“He called me on the phone yesterday, but I didn’t see him. I went to meet him, but he had gone home.”
“You haven’t heard from him since?”
“No.”
“Have you seen more of Mr. Reschley since the incident than you were accustomed to seeing him before the incident?”
“Yes.” Why evade the question? “He’s the most used to the public eye, so he’s been taking care of a lot of things having to do with newspapers and magazines. He’s been very kind.”
“Miss Gabriel and Mr. Reschley and the Masts and yourself have, would you say, sort of drawn together for mutual support?”
“I would say that.” How much did he know? Did he need to be advised of every little angry exchange, every suspicion? Did five minutes of suspicion balance years of trust? Honey stifled a yawn. Alice wondered if the case bored him. An old phrase from the Sherlock Holmes she had once been in the habit of reading occurred to her, “features of interest.” Did this case have any features of interest for Honey? Could she herself be a “feature of interest,” or mistaken for one by someone tired, overworked, underpaid, furnished with a certain moral blindness? Would he hold lies against her? Alice realized that her fingers in her pocket had shredded the napkin around the remnant of sandwich she had put there and that a red stain of strawberry jam was beginning to spread in the weave of her skirt. She took her hand out of her pocket and placed it inconspicuously over the stain. Honey continued to glance alternately through his notes and out toward Fifth Avenue. A sigh, perhaps a companion to the yawn, escaped him. Alice said, “Detective Honey, is the investigation proceeding pretty quickly?”
When he smiled she resigned herself to being palmed off. “Quickly enough,” he said. Just as she would not confide in him, he would not confide in her.
But there was one more question she had to ask. “Do you think that the deaths were, what, anomalous?”
Perhaps he took her meaning more clearly than she did. “Do I think anyone is in danger, do you mean? Like a plot or a pathological killer? No, I don’t think so at this point.”
The words “killer,” “danger,” and “pathological” startled Alice. She hadn’t been thinking of the peaceful still-life of the previous Saturday in such dynamic terms. Instead of reassuring her, Alice could feel Honey’s words dropping into her like acid, beginning to burn away her Midwestern sense of safety. And, she reflected, he didn’t simply say, No, or Of course not. He said, “I don’t think so at this point.” Alice shivered. Honey said, “We’ve lost the sun, I’m afraid. You’ll be wanting to go back to work.” They stood. “Thank you for your time.”
“Any time,” said Alice, suddenly afraid for him to go, afraid even of the ten or twelve feet of open pavement before she could gain the preserve of the library. Honey shook her hand. She was hard put to release it at the proper moment. That afternoon she hid in the labyrinth of stacks, looking for lost books.
SINCE Tuesday she had been even more unsure with Susan, more tentative but more helpful, unable to decide, or rather to know instinctively, just the right degree of intimacy. It seemed to her that the merest breath of a wish not to have her around would make her vanish, but at the same time, it often seemed to her that Susan had just grimaced at some clumsiness of hers, or just suggested, subtly, that she leave, and she hadn’t understood until it was too late to do anything gracefully. They were spending a lot of time together, each night eating something at one or another’s apartment, doing the dishes, going for a twilight walk at the end of which they stopped for ice cream, coming home, reading or flipping through the channels on the television. It was the sort of intimacy Alice had desired, as co-operative as two feet walking, and yet she was unusually uncomfortable, too, terribly desirous of pleasing.
Sometimes Alice could not help staring at Susan, admiring the liquid copper hair that stopped so abruptly at her shoulders, the strong high cheekbones and wide mouth, the eyes set deeply under great arching brows. Peasant stock, Susan said she came from, and it was true that she would never be thin. Broad shouldered, wide hipped. Alice thought over and over that she was beautiful. On Friday, they were at Alice’s, handing across the salad dressing, and Alice felt everything shift, as a driver feels a long line of stopped cars begin to move before it actually does. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the discomfort drained away, and they were simply two friends eating together at a kitchen table. Alice could not help smiling, but it was Susan who began to talk. “Do you remember when I met Denny?” she asked.
“Of course. You barged into my room at three in the morning and said you’d met the man you were going to marry.”
“Did I say marry? I wasn’t so prescient after all, then. But I’ve been trying for days to remember the name of the guy I was with that night. Jerry something.”
“Jerry McMann.”
“Jerry McMann! Right! It seems to me that he spent the evening talking about all the other girls in the bar, what they looked like, what they were wearing. Anyway, these two guys got up on stage and sang a lot of folk music. Kingston Trio, the usual. But every set they sang two songs, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ and ‘That’s What You Get for Lovin’ Me.’ I was entranced. I didn’t even realize that Jerry was boring, and I loved watching Denny and Craig. Those two songs made them seem so mean, and then they’d sing something like ‘Early Morning Rain’ and instead of seeming mean, they’d seem tormented. We sat there for hours. Sometime in the last set, they sang that old Ian and Sylvia thing called ‘Song for Canada’ and I just knew they were Canadians. Denny was completely hairy, as if he’d just gotten in from the Arctic, and Craig simply looked exciting. He could have been from anywhere far away and difficult. Then Jerry said we should buy a pitcher and get the singers, who he knew slightly, and the girls at the next table, who he kept talking about, to join us. It worked like a charm, except that the funny thing was that I angled to sit next to Craig, and then one of the girls just shot in there and grabbed the seat, so I was stuck sitting next to Denny, who looked almost normal rather than in the advanced stages of some Romantic agony. The first thing he said to me was ‘I was watching you from the stage,’ which of course sounded thrilling and sophisticated. These two guys just moved in on Jerry, and it was so graceful and worldly and perfectly cruel that it seemed marvellous to me. There was a teasing sexual innuendo in everything they said that flattered us and made us laugh and made adulthood seem very possible and desirable. I’m sure I was arch and joking and rather distant, I mean, you had to be, but inside I was leaning and melting, and when Denny told me he was from Minnesota after all, and then when he talked affectionately about his family and all the other kids, he somehow didn’t get any less exotic or cruel, he just got exotic and cruel and familiar and kind and desirous and experienced all at the same time. We left Jerry at the bar, which seemed to be what he deserved, and went to their apartment, which was furnished entirely with mattresses on the bare floor and with their record collection, and of course Craig got out the dope and the unfiltered apple juice, and there was Country Joe and kissing on the Indian bedspreads and discussion of whether marijuana enhanced or dampened sexual desire, and then some friends came over to play music, and that was what really struck me, that friends who
rode motorcycles could just walk in at one in the morning. Exotic again! I shook his hand in the doorway, but there seemed such a terrible lack of compromise between never seeing Denny again and becoming his slave.”
“You always seemed much cooler than that, somehow. As if you thought you might allow this guy to take you out.”
“Did I?” She pushed herself away from the table.
“So how come you never got married? It seems irrelevant. I mean, you always seemed married in a way that Jim and I weren’t, as if nothing could hold us together and nothing could drive you apart.”
Susan ran her hands under the back of her hair and lifted it out of her collar. “Really? I always admired you for committing yourselves in public, for not keeping anything in reserve. I always wondered why you and Jim and Noah and Rya were freer than I was, or more grown up, or less suspicious.”
“Or more benighted. I think having gotten married means more in retrospect than it did at the time. I don’t know about Noah and Rya, but I’m willing to admit that my marriage was just a fruitless attempt to have something I couldn’t have, another bent nail in a very ramshackle structure.” She shrugged.
Susan was looking out the window. “Denny would have done it, I think. In spite of his rock and roll image. Something held us back.” She paused, tipping the chair up on two legs. “No, something held him back and something else held me back. Do wives go away by themselves every six months or so? Do husbands come and go unannounced? Everyone thinks beforehand that they’re going to have that kind of free, creative marriage, but does anybody? If I’d ever seen somebody like me who was married, I might have done it.”
“But you’re amazingly domestic. You make good homes where people like to be. I feel like I specialize in The Virgin’s Retreat.”
