Corkscrew (7 page)

Bryce took the train. He used to drive, used to love it, but three winters ago he and Lucie had been a minor part of a multi-car pile-up during bad rain on Interstate 84, and the sight of the much greater destruction just beyond his own battered BMW — the one he'd gotten for doing the ad — had left him fearful for a long time. He was enjoying too good a life to want to throw it away. And he wasn't a commuter in the normal sense, he didn't have a job with time pressure at the New York end, so why not conveniently, comfortably, safely take the train?

Monday morning he took the train, a later one than the rush-hour people, and again he had a dual seat to himself, so he could continue to go over
Two Faces in the Mirror.
Occasionally, on the train, somebody would ask him for an autograph, but most riders on this line were more sophisticated than that. He could see them recognize him from time to time, but they left him alone.

He had done almost all he could with the manuscript. It had been a good novel to begin with, and he felt he'd made it better. Really, all that was needed now was for Wayne to return the contract.

He had. Bryce got home just before lunchtime, and Saturday's mail was waiting for him, and there was the envelope with 'Prentice' on the return address. Manila envelope, manuscript size, not too thick. Priority Mail sticker.

He saw it, on the table just inside the front door where Jorge, the doorman, always put his mail when he was away, and he felt an instant of terrible fear. He's done it! he thought. She's dead!

He didn't open the envelope then, nor look at the rest of his mail, but went beyond it, feeling weak, knees shaky, and sat in the living room, his back to the view of Central Park. He was trembling, and his throat felt constricted.

No, she isn't dead, he told himself. Calm down. He knew what I meant when I mentioned California in the note. She's still alive.

When he had himself convinced that the only reason he'd experienced that moment of dread was because he'd thought Prentice might have killed her before Bryce could establish his California alibi, he got up and went to the kitchen and found in the refrigerator an open container of plain yogurt. That would settle his stomach. Lucie hadn't liked it when he'd eat yogurt directly from the carton, then put the carton back in the refrigerator, but there was no one around to complain now.

Back in the entryway, he glanced at the rest of the mail without opening it or caring about it, then at last opened the manila envelope from Wayne Prentice, and there they were, the three copies of the contract, with an extra blank sheet of typing paper that said only, in computer printout:

There were things to do, the travel agent to be called, other people, packing to do, Isabelle. Could she come to be with him for a while in California? But instead of doing any of that, he put in a call to lawyer Bob, and was told that he was with a client. 'Would you ask him to call me as soon as he's free? It's sort of urgent.'

She said she would, and he went to the bedroom to lay out the things he'd want to take to Los Angeles with him. Too early to phone people there, and he didn't yet feel like calling the travel agent.

The thing is, what if it wasn't necessary? If this divorce thing were going to end soon, then all he and Wayne would have to do would be wait a few weeks, maybe a month at the outside, and then turn in
Two Faces in the Mirror
without the threat of having to give half the money to Lucie. Once the agreement was signed, everything could work just like before, but without that one dangerous step.

If we don't have to take that one dangerous step, he told himself reasonably, it would be better. For us. For me.

It was almost an hour before lawyer Bob returned the call. His voice was distinctive, deep but rough and raspy, as though he could almost sing bass in a barbershop quartet except he wouldn't be quite musical enough. He said, 'Helen says it's urgent.'

'Well, I don't know about urgent,' Bryce said. 'The thing is, I'm going to LA for a while, possible movie deals—'

'I'd hold them up, if you can.'

'Oh, I know, we can do that,' Bryce assured him. 'The thing is, before I leave, I was wondering, is there any chance at all we're gonna see daylight soon?'

'Daylight?' Lawyer Bob didn't seem to understand the concept.

'I mean, closure,' Bryce said. 'Is there any possibility, in the next few weeks, we'll be signing those papers, getting this thing behind us?'

'Not a chance,' lawyer Bob said. 'Next few weeks? I thought you understood, Bryce, it isn't going to happen this year. Spring, if we're lucky.'

'Oh, Jesus, Bob, it's so—'

'Bryce, we've still got unresolved issues before the court. State of residency, for instance. Your copyrights exist where you are. If you were a Connecticut resident, and Lucie remained a New York resident throughout, can a New York court distribute Connecticut property? In some cases, yes. In this case, it's not so clear-cut.'

'I thought we resolved that,' Bryce said. 'I used the Connecticut house as my residence because Connecticut didn't used to have an income tax, and Lucie kept the New York apartment as her residence because it was in her name and they couldn't go crazy with the rent on us.'

'They're appealing the decision,' lawyer Bob said. 'It's really very dry and dull, Bryce, you don't want to hear every gory detail, but believe me, at the end of the day, we'll prevail.'

'The end of the day.'

'Frankly, I think one reason they're stalling is because they're waiting for your next book to be published.'

'Bastards.'

'At some point, not yet,' lawyer Bob said, 'we can make that argument to the court, and I believe it will be persuasive. Until then, we just have to go through the process, that's all.'

'Not this year.'

'Next year. Almost guaranteed.'

'Almost?' He couldn't believe lawyer Bob was serious, but on the other hand, the man had no known sense of humor.

'These things are unpredictable, Bryce,' lawyer Bob said. 'Mostly because people are not at their most rational in a divorce. But my guess on this case, barring anything unforeseen, is sometime in the spring. Thank your lucky stars you two didn't have children, that would
really
drag it out.'

Like Isabelle's children in Spain. There's always somebody worse off than you, Bryce told himself, and an image of Lucie flashed by, immediately suppressed. 'Thanks, Bob,' he said. 'I just wanted to know where I stand.'

'Pretty much where you stood, Bryce.'

'Got it,' Bryce said.

While he was looking up the travel agent's number, he thought, call Lucie? He had the phone number at the apartment she'd taken. Gall her, say to her, why don't we just get this over with, go on with our lives? You tell your lawyer to quit stalling, I'll tell my lawyer to quit stalling, we'll just end it, no more bitterness, start thinking about the future for a change.

No. He could hear her voice, he could hear her laugh, he could hear her scorn. Open himself up to her like that? She'd slice him in two.

Besides, there are phone records. There shouldn't be a record of a call from him to her just before…

The travel agent's number. He dialed it.

'I'll be going out tomorrow night,' Wayne said.

Susan almost asked him where he'd be, he could see it in the light of the candles as they ate dinner together, as usual, that Tuesday evening. He could see the question form, and then see her find the answer on her own, and she looked down at her plate, as though embarrassed, and said, in a low voice, 'Will you be late?'

'I don't think so.'

It was as though he were having an affair, seeing another woman, and he and Susan were keeping the marriage alive by pretending it wasn't going on, Susan waiting for it to blow over and for him to return to her, he waiting…

For what? For Bryce to call and say it was all a joke? You didn't take me seriously, did you, pal, it was just a bull session, of course that's what it was, a couple plotmeisters sitting around scheming.

The contract was real, drawn up by a real law firm.
The Domino Doublet
had been sent to Bryce and had not come back. He'd returned the contract, with that little note about California. If Bryce wanted to change his mind, this was the time to do it.

And if
Wayne
wanted to change his mind? But how could he? He'd given away his unpublished novel, he'd signed and returned that contract, he'd managed to meet Lucie Proctorr and now he had a dinner date with her. He was in motion, whatever this motion was, and what was the alternative? He was in the situation he was in right now because there
was
no alternative.

They finished the meal in silence, and watched something or other on PBS. When they were going to bed, her body looked strange to him, foreign, not appealing. He sensed that she felt the same way about him.

Before they turned off the lights, she said, 'Is this the end of it?'

'Oh, no,' he said, startled she'd think it would happen that fast, that easily. 'No, this is just — This isn't the end.'

He wanted to say to her, this is just the reconnaissance, really. I'm meeting her at her apartment, and we're going to dinner in her neighborhood, and this is to figure out what the possibilities are. I don't even know what, how I'm going to, what
weapon.
I think I've even been avoiding all those thoughts.

He might have to take a train south some day soon, buy a gun. He'd never owned a gun, never shot one, but maybe.

What else, what were the other possibilities? He'd have to think about it, see if tomorrow evening gave him any ideas. A number of his characters, in his books, had killed other of his characters, in various ways, but at this point he couldn't remember how any of them had done it, or how it had seemed easy.

He wanted to say, no, Susan, this is just the reconnaissance, don't worry about tomorrow. But to say that would begin the conversation they'd agreed not to hold. No conversation, not till later. Some time later.

With the lights off, he suddenly thought of the stack of resumes he'd made at the copy shop. They were still atop the filing cabinet in his office, with the partial list of college addresses that he'd stopped, incomplete, when Bryce had spoken to him. What if he were to send them out, just to see?

Not tomorrow, that would hex everything. Thursday, after his first date (!) with Lucie Proctorr. Not even mention it to Susan, just send them out, see what the responses were. Maybe there was a wonderful job out there he didn't even know about, and some way that Susan could go on with her own career.

I'll send them, he thought. First the reconnaissance with Lucie, then I'll send out the resumes.

He couldn't sleep, was restless. At one time, turning from his side on to his back, his right hand brushed her left hand, and she at once closed her fingers around his. He held tight to her fingers and they lay side by side, on their backs, not talking, grasping hands.

The reservation was for eight, and they'd agreed on the phone he'd pick her up at her place at seven-thirty. 'If the weather's decent, we can walk, it's just a few blocks from you.'

'Oh? Where are we going?'

'Salt,' he said, naming a restaurant near her on Columbus Avenue.

'Well, good,' she said, sounding surprised he'd chosen well. 'I haven't eaten there, I've wanted to.'

'See you tomorrow,' he said, and at seven-thirty Wednesday evening he paid off his cab outside her building and stood a minute on the sidewalk.

It was a cool evening, late November, but dry. Her building was a modern high-rise, taking up half a block of Broadway in the low eighties, on the west side of the street, a part of the spurt of apartment building construction in this neighborhood a dozen years ago. The façade was some kind of mottled maroon stone, highly polished, and the broad entrance was high-tech, glass doors and wall and chrome verticals, as though it were the entrance to an airport building rather than somewhere that people lived. Inside, to the right, a uniformed doorman sat at a wide high desk of the same stone, reading.

A doorman. That wasn't a problem tonight, but what about the future? Whatever he did, however he did it, whenever he did it, it would have to be away from here. And even so, would the doorman, sometime later on, be able to identify him as someone who occasionally visited Lucie Proctorr?

Wayne turned away, and walked slowly up the block, looking through the glass wall at the doorman, who remained deeply involved in his reading. It was a
fotonovela,
a kind of comic book in Spanish that used photographs of actors and actresses instead of drawings.

Wayne walked on to the corner, then turned back, trying to decide what to do. Phone her? Suggest they meet at the restaurant? Too late for that. And what excuse would he give?

It was also too late to leave. His only choice was to keep moving forward, adapt to circumstances.

This time, as he reached the building entrance he turned his coat collar up and pulled his hat a little lower on his forehead; not too much, not to look like an escaped convict. Then he walked through the entrance and immediately held both cupped hands to his mouth, blowing into them. 'Getting cold out there,' he said.

The doorman put a finger on his place in the novela, glancing at Wayne with impatience. 'Who you wanno see?'

'Ms Proctorr.'

The doorman kept that finger on the novela, holding it open, as he reached with his left hand for the house phone, laid it on the counter in front of himself, and punched out the number, saying, 'An you are?'

'Tell her it's Wayland,' he said, and turned away to look out at the street, watching the traffic, giving the doorman less than a profile of his face.

The doorman spoke into the phone, then hung it up and was already looking at his novela when he said, 'Sixteen-C. The secon' elevators, back there.'

'Thanks.'

Wayne walked to the elevator feeling pleased with himself. The doorman's accent would have conflated 'Wayland' and 'Wayne' for Lucie, but if he ever had to give a name to the police it would not be Wayne.