Harry Dolan (6 page)

She let out a long breath. “I really don’t have time, David. I’ll be missed.”

“I just need to see you,” he said. “Let me see you and then you can go.”

He pulled the blouse down along her arms and off. Unhooked her bra in front and drew it off the same way. He raised her arms so they were parallel to the floor, and with his index fingers he traced two lines from her wrists to her shoulder blades, then a single line down the center of her back. He turned her around to face him and traced another line over the freckles at the base of her neck, down between her small breasts.

“This is what I wanted,” he said.

She leaned against the edge of her desk. Her blue eyes locked on his.

“You’re perfect,” he said. “Your skin is flawless.”

She reached up to grip the collar of his coat and pulled him close. He felt her lips on his neck, heard her whisper a single word: “Dangerous.”

 

 

 

A week went by before Loogan saw Tom Kristoll again. It happened in the evening. Loogan had spent the afternoon downtown watching a pair of foreign films whose plots he would have been hard-pressed to describe. The day before, he had driven to Toledo to view an exhibit on the history of glassmaking. In the days before that, he had attended a play in Chicago and a concert in Detroit.

Now he sat in the swing on the porch of his rented house watching rain fall from a cool gray sky. He had a pen in his hand and a notebook open on his knee. He was jotting notes on the subject that had occupied his thoughts in Toledo and Chicago and Detroit.

Rain fell on the railing of the porch, on the toes of Loogan’s shoes.

Loogan paused. Who did he know that was acquainted with Tom and Laura? There were interns and writers from
Gray Streets.
There were a few friends he had met at parties over the summer. There would be parents, brothers, sisters—but he had never met them.

He would stick with what he knew. He wrote the heading WRITERS and listed several whose stories he had edited. None of them lived in the area. But there were two local writers he had met at the Kristoll house: A tall man with a ridiculous name—Nathan Hideaway. A woman—Bridget something—who wrote books about a lady detective and a dog. He added them to the list. Under another heading—INTERNS—he wrote:
The girl with the auburn hair—Valerie? The boy with the goatee and the shaved head. I really ought to learn people’s names.

At the bottom of the page he added:
I know next to nothing about Tom and Laura Kristoll.

Loogan looked up and saw a car parked at the curb—Tom Kristoll’s Ford. Kristoll, raincoated and fedoraed, jogged up the walk and climbed the steps. He had a package under his arm: rectangular and thin and wrapped in brown paper. “What are you doing?” he said.

Loogan closed the notebook and laid it on the seat of the swing. “Making notes for a story I’ll never write.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Kristoll said. “If you’ve got an idea, you ought to write it up. If it’s giving you trouble, I could have a look.”

“It’s too soon, Tom,” Loogan said, rising. “Why don’t we go in?”

“I can’t stay long,” Kristoll said. He bowed his head and beads of rain rolled down the brim of the fedora. “I never thanked you properly for your help the other night,” he said. “I thought a gift would be in order. Any other time, I would have gone with a bottle of Scotch. But I knew that wouldn’t do here. The symbolism was all wrong. So I went with this instead.”

He handed the package to Loogan. The brown paper was dotted with rain. Loogan tore through it and underneath was a framed photograph—shards of broken glass, and flower petals, and bits of paper in the shape of leaves. The photograph Laura had bought on the day of their visit to the gallery.

“Laura picked it out,” Kristoll said. “I told her I wanted to get you something. She didn’t know the reason, of course, but she thought you’d like this. I don’t know where you’ll put it. It’s not big enough to go over the fireplace, I suppose. Maybe in your office. Do you like it?”

“It’s marvelous,” Loogan said.

Chapter 6

HE HEARD FROM KRISTOLL AGAIN THE FOLLOWING WEEK, ON FRIDAY afternoon. He was lying on his stomach on the living-room carpet, the pages of a manuscript spread before him. He was stuck on a line of dialogue—he had written seven variations on a yellow legal pad when the phone rang. Distracted, he picked it up on the fifth ring.

“I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Kristoll said. “What are you up to?”

“Trying to figure out what a blackmailer would say to a money-launderer,” said Loogan.

“I see. . . . Is this the new story?”

“What new story?”

“The one you were making notes on the other day.”

“No. It’s someone else’s story. That’s what I do. Edit other people’s stories.”

“Hell, David, you ought to be working on something of your own.”

“As it happens, someone’s paying me to do this.”

“That could change,” Kristoll said. “Maybe I should fire you.”

“Is that why you called? To fire me?”

“No, but maybe it’s the best thing I could do for you. What are you doing later?”

“Depends on whether I’m fired. What are you doing?”

There was a delay before Kristoll answered, and when he did his tone was thoughtful.

“Making notes for a story I’ll never tell,” he said. “Isn’t that what you called it?” Another delay. “Only maybe I will tell it.”

“What do you mean?” Loogan asked him.

“Maybe I made the wrong decision the other night.”

“Which night would that be?”

“Don’t be dim,” Kristoll said. “Look, why don’t you come in later. To the office. We’ll have a drink. Maybe I’ll run something by you.”

“All right.”

“ ‘All right,’ he says. You’re very matter-of-fact about it. You don’t have to come, you know. I’ve asked a lot of you already. You’re allowed to refuse.”

“I’m not going to refuse,” Loogan said. “What time should I come?”

“Around seven.”

 

 

 

The story of the blackmailer and the money-launderer occupied Loogan for much of the afternoon. His revisions grew to fill the spaces between the lines of type. At five-thirty he stood in the middle of the living room. The pages of the manuscript were spread out at his feet—twenty-four of them. The letters of his fine, dark handwriting were as clean as the type. Viewed from a height, they were virtually indistinguishable.

He stood over the pages longer than he had intended. He was about to kneel and gather them together when he heard a tapping sound. Turning to the window, he saw Laura on the porch. She smiled and tapped her knuckles again on the glass.

He met her at the kitchen door and took her coat, and a moment later she was in the living room looking down at the manuscript.

“I’ve wondered what it would be like,” she said, “catching you at an unguarded moment. I think I’ve always had it in my head that you’re not like other people. I can’t picture you doing mundane things—watering plants or taking out the garbage. Or at a desk, with a pencil, editing a story. Turns out I was right—you don’t use a pencil. You just stare at the manuscript until the words burn themselves onto the paper.”

She slipped out of her shoes and got down on one knee, lifted the first page, and began to read. Her legs were bare beneath her skirt. Loogan switched on a lamp, and the light was silver on the silk of her blouse, golden on the strands of her hair. She got through six pages and would have gone through the whole thing, Loogan thought, if he hadn’t interrupted her. “I’ll make you a copy,” he said. She picked up the seventh and eighth pages, glancing over them.

“This is good,” she said. “This is better than it has any right to be.” She stood and held the papers up to the light. “You’ve done a lot of work on this.”

“It’s not difficult,” he said, “when all you have to do is stare at the pages.”

“Sometimes I think it’s better when they need work,” she said. “When you can see at once what’s wrong and how to fix it. And you make a change and you know it’s right. And you give it back to the author and he can’t argue, not if he has any sense.”

She laid the eight pages on the mantel of the fireplace and sat at the end of the sofa.

“I wonder if Tom realizes what a good choice he made, hiring you,” she said.

Loogan let that pass. He watched her pat the cushion beside her.

“Come sit with me, David,” she said. “I didn’t come here to talk about editing. I came to see what you’d done with that.” Her gaze went to the framed photograph that hung above the fireplace—glass and flower petals and paper leaves. “It’s not quite right for the space, but I like it just the same. I can’t remember what was there before.”

“Some awful painting of sailboats,” Loogan said.

“That’s right. This is much better. I didn’t know if you’d approve. Tom wanted to buy you a gift, and I meant to give that to you anyway. You’re not angry, are you?”

“I’m not angry.”

“I like seeing it there and thinking about that day.” She turned toward Loogan, rested her arm on the back of the sofa, stroked his hair with her fingers. “And it was right here . . .” She didn’t need to say what was right here. “I think we should put these cushions on the floor, David,” she said softly. “I think you should build a fire. We didn’t have one then, but it might be nice on a day like today.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Loogan said.

“We don’t have to have a fire.”

He said nothing. Her hand drew back. It went to the front of her blouse. “You’re not talking about the fire,” she said, studying him. “I should have known. You’ve stayed away from me these past two weeks.”

Loogan’s face held no expression. He stared at the photograph over the fireplace.

Finally he said, “The thing is, I like him.”

“Yes, it would have to be that,” she said in a small voice. “I knew you liked him. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t have worked. If you hated him, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with you. But he’s your friend. And I should have known—David Loogan is a loyal man.”

She sighed. “You and Tom, you’re like that fable. What’s the name of it?” “I don’t know—”

“Androcles,” she said. “Androcles and the lion.” She paused to brush a strand of hair behind her ear. “Androcles is an escaped slave, wandering through the woods. He finds a lion with a bleeding paw. The lion has stepped on a thorn. Androcles pulls it out.”

“I thought it was a mouse who pulled out the thorn.”

“That’s a different fable,” she said. “Androcles removes the thorn, and after that the lion befriends him. He hunts for him and brings him food. Then both of them are captured, and Androcles the slave is sentenced to be thrown to the lion in the Colosseum. But instead of tearing Androcles to pieces, the lion lies down at his feet.”

Loogan leaned back against the sofa. “Am I Androcles in this scenario?”

“You’re the lion,” Laura said. “The lion is grateful. He’s not going to attack Androcles. He’s not going to let any harm come to Androcles at all.” She smiled faintly. “He’s certainly not going to sleep with Androcles’ wife.”

She moved close to him, let her head rest in the hollow of his shoulder. “Poor David. You were afraid to tell me, weren’t you? You thought I’d cry.”

“I thought you’d make me change my mind,” he said.

“I feel like doing both, but I won’t. I’ll leave if you want.”

He put his arm around her. “You don’t have to leave.”

“I don’t want to. I want to sit here for a while and not say anything. Is that all right?”

“Sure.”

 

 

 

Loogan woke in the semi-dark. Laura Kristoll was standing over him. He seized her wrist and sat up sharply.

“Easy, David. It’s only me.”

“Dark,” he said.

“I turned off the lamp. I’m leaving now.” She had her coat on.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Twenty after seven. What’s the matter?”

He got to his feet. “I forgot about Tom. I’m supposed to meet him.”

“Comb your hair first. You look like you’ve been sleeping. Don’t frown, David. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

She kissed him on the cheek and then turned and went out without saying anything more.

He went to the phone and dialed Kristoll’s number at the office. After three rings he got Kristoll’s voice mail. He left a message saying he was on his way.

He put on a fresh shirt, brushed his teeth, and got his coat. His car was on the street. He walked around to the driver’s side and the tires caught his eye immediately. Both of them were flat. Someone had scratched an obscenity in the paint of the driver’s door. He felt a wave of anger, looked up and down the street. Saw no one but a white-haired lady walking her dog.