Pressure Drop (43 page)

Nina crossed Happy Standish's room. She examined three framed photographs hanging over a desk. They were all of Happy Standish, so much healthier that he scarcely resembled the man on the bed. Photograph One: a young long-haired Happy Standish in a Dartmouth sweater, kneeling in the front row of a soccer team picture. Photograph Two: a slightly older Happy Standish, with slightly shorter hair, serving a tennis ball, the racquet in his left hand. Photograph Three: a still-older Happy Standish in evening dress, smiling at the camera, his hands on a piano keyboard.

Nina opened a closet. It was full of clothes: winter suits, summer suits, tweed jackets, shirts, ties. And shoes: tennis, jogging, hiking, climbing, boating, wingtips, penny loafers, tassel loafers, shoes still in their boxes. Nina picked up a box of Rockport walking shoes. Happy was an 11B.

On a shelf above the clothing lay a file folder. Nina looked inside. It contained clippings from newspapers and magazines—
Billboard, Melody Maker, The Boston Phoenix, Toronto Life, The Atlanta Constitution, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Vancouver Sun, The Independent
—all under the byline Hiram Standish, Jr. The last, a one-column report on a festival of North African music, had appeared in
The Village Voice
, datelined Aix-en-Provence, July 12 of the previous year, almost eighteen months before.

Happy had written about Sonny Rollins, Joe King Carrasco, Doc Watson, Etta James, Jay McShann, Dwight Yoakum, Linda Ronstadt, Lou Reed, Red Rodney, the McGarrigle Sisters, the Everly Brothers. There were about two dozen clippings in the folder. Nina wondered if that was Happy's entire output. She replaced the folder, closed the closet door, glanced at the monitor. The green line rose to a peak, fell, rose, fell, ran off the edge, reappeared on the other side. Nina returned to the bedside.

The dark-eyed woman came back inside his world. Nina. She glanced at the respirator machine, the IV bag, him.

Talk to me
.

The woman spoke, but quietly, more to herself than to him. “I like Etta James too,” she said. She was facing him but her eyes were on something far away, something that made her anxious.

Go on
.

The woman focused her eyes on him. This time she raised her voice to normal conversational level. “I saw your clippings in the closet.”

She had understood at once that his eyes couldn't follow her around the room! It had taken Mother weeks; sometimes she still forgot.

The woman bit her lip. It was a soft, finely shaped lip. Luscious. “I guess I shouldn't have opened it. It's your closet.” She sighed. “God, I wish you could talk.” She closed her eyes. “What a thing to say. But …” The faraway look returned to her eyes.

Go on
.

The woman shook her head—she had thick dark hair, rich and healthy—as though trying to dislodge some troubling thought, and her eyes cleared. “But … if Percival didn't deal with the institute and your mother didn't either, then it must have been you. You're the third member of the board. Right?”

The board? Oh yes, I sign things, from time to time
. But what was she talking about?

“Christ, listen to me—‘Right.' I'm losing it.” Tears rose in the woman's eyes.

Don't cry
.

But she did cry. Tears spilled over her lower eyelids and ran down her face. He noticed for the first time a bandage on her cheek, and a bruise around it.

“But I need those records.” The woman's voice broke. She dabbed at her face with the back of her sleeve. “I need to know who the donor was. It's all I can think of, don't you see? What other possibility is there?” She looked down on him with her wet dark eyes, as though waiting for an answer, treating him like an undamaged human being. She waited, waited for an answer.

And the answer came to Happy, all at once and awful.
God. God
. He wanted to scream. He needed to scream. He tried with all his might to scream. He commanded himself to raise an arm, to sit up, to speak, to scream.
Scream. Scream
. But he could do nothing. He was in a frenzy, more out of control than he had ever been in his life. But it didn't show.

The woman smiled a weak smile. “This isn't very fair to you,” she said.

Don't go. Keep talking
. She understood him. Happy had the wild thought that they were meant for each other, that everything was somehow right.

The woman, Nina, took a deep breath and let it out. Her gaze moved away from him, to the wall behind his head. He could just make out the spider, testing the air with one raised leg. Then she, Nina, did something that astonished him: she went to the head of the bed, stood on the edge of the frame, raised her hand high and smacked the spider. Just like that. And she, Nina, stepped down and wiped off the remains on her pants. It was that easy: a quick smack and the spider was gone, after so long.

“I don't like those fat ones,” she said. “They bite.” She leaned over him. “Well,” she said, and brushed the hair off his forehead and laid her hand there for a moment, a soft warm hand: “goodbye.” And then the soft warm hand was gone, and so was she.

Nina
. He wished he could say it out loud.

Nina walked back to the pretty guest room in the north wing of Mrs. Standish's house and lay on the bed. But she didn't sleep. At first light she rose, put on her shoes and went downstairs to the kitchen. A man with a black bag was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the comics.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you the guest?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Dr. Robert. Mrs. Standish has gone for the day, but she said to help yourself to breakfast.” He turned the page. There were more comics on the other side.

“Are you Happy's doctor?” Nina asked.

“One of many,” said Dr. Robert.

“What happened to him?”

Dr. Robert looked up. “Don't you know?”

“No.”

“A scuba diving accident. Negligence, really, on the part of the resort. Down in the Bahamas. They gave him bad air. Caused an embolism in the brain stem.”

“Is there any hope?”

“Hope?”

“Of improvement?”

“What sort of improvement?”

“That he'll be able to walk. Talk. Feed himself.”

“Oh no,” said Dr. Robert. “Nothing like that. We're just trying to keep him alive right now. He's got pneumonia.” Dr. Robert sipped his coffee.

Nina put on her coat and went outside. The sky was blue, the air still and cold. Deep snow covered everything except the driveway, which had been plowed down to the pavement. In the distance she saw a tall white-haired man wrapping plastic around a fruit tree. Perhaps the servants had returned.

Nina followed the driveway to the gate. It was open. She went through and found her car still parked by the side of the lane. The lane had been plowed too, and someone had dug her out of the snowbank.

She got inside and drove back to New York. The roads were clear. Nina's mind had nothing to do but recall the feel of Happy Standish's fine, soft hair, and his unblinking gaze, blue and serious.

Nina parked close to Suze's loft. She let herself in, called, “Suze,” but no one was home, sat on Suze's bed. She phoned Delgado, who wasn't in. Nina left a message: “Tell her the Human Fertility Institute was owned by the Standish Foundation. Maybe she should find out who owned the Cambridge Reproductive Research Center.” Then she lay down.

It was dark outside when Nina woke. She lay motionless on Suze's bed. Then she remembered her six o'clock appointment with Bernie Muller, the Australian TV producer. She glanced at her watch. 5:15. Nina got up, showered, dressed, went outside to her rental car and drove uptown.

Grand Central Station.

38

Brock McGillivray was a head taller than anyone else on Fifth Avenue. Following him was easy. He strode along briskly, keeping to the edge of the sidewalk, sometimes stepping into the street, his dramatic coattails flapping behind him. He never looked back.

Matthias followed.

It was cold and getting colder. Matthias zipped his windbreaker up to the top and stuck his hands in the pockets. Night had fallen, but it hadn't brought darkness. The sky glowed in dusty greens, yellows, oranges, pinks, like a colossal chemistry experiment gone wrong. Everyone—the shoppers with their Christmas parcels, the workers with their briefcases, the tourists with their cameras, the homeless with their cardboard domiciles—looked grim and ghastly. A ragged man with a bottle muttered, “Merry fucking Christmas,” as Matthias went by.

“You said it,” Matthias muttered right back.

The man was unused to this response, or perhaps to any. “
I
said it,” he shouted after Matthias in fury. “
I
said it. And that makes you a thief and a robber.”

Brock crossed Fifth Avenue and headed east on Forty-second Street. Matthias kept him in sight, but that didn't occupy his mind. His mind dealt with what he was seeing. There were homeless people in the Bahamas. Nottage, he supposed, was homeless. Somehow it wasn't the same. Then it occurred to him that he too would soon be homeless. The thought awoke something murderous inside him. He walked faster, closing the distance between himself and Brock. Brock strode on, never looking back.

Brock entered Grand Central Station, still moving quickly. Unseeing, he went through the dirty waiting room packed with ragged, defeated people. The sight of them huddled in such an imperial structure reminded Matthias of a guest in the bar at Zombie Bay saying that New York was now a Dickensian place. It didn't seem Dickensian to Matthias: Dickens, in his recollection, always opted for happy endings, or at least bittersweet, and how could that be a believable expectation here?

Brock crossed the main concourse and went down a broad staircase. There were few people on the stairs; Matthias hung back. He reached the bottom in time to see Brock avoid two medics who were trying to lift a bleeding man onto a stretcher, and enter the Oyster Bar. Matthias had been there once with Marilyn. She had sent back her oysters Rockefeller. He was trying to remember why when he saw that Brock had stopped inside the entrance and was turning around. Matthias stepped behind the ambulance men.

“Don' fuck with me,” the bleeding man was saying.

“We're not fucking with you, pal,” said one of the medics. “We're just trying to get you to the hospital.”

“Don' want no fuckin' hospital,” the man said. “I'm sick.” Then he saw Matthias crouching by the wall. The sight displeased him. “What's your problem, chief?”

“Oysters Rockefeller,” said Matthias.

“Oysters Rockefeller?” said the bleeding man with interest.

“Just get on the stretcher,” said the other medic. “It's six o'clock. I want to go home.”

The medics tried to lift the bleeding man. He resisted. Through a screen of arms and legs, Matthias saw Brock standing inside the entrance of the Oyster Bar, looking back down the hall. Brock checked his watch and frowned. He made a fist and smacked it lightly against his open palm. He checked his watch. He made another fist and smacked it a little harder. The medics shoved the bleeding man on the stretcher and hoisted him up. He rolled over, fell face down on the floor, lay still.

“God Almighty,” said the medic who wanted to go home.

Then a woman came around the corner from the stairs, hesitated for a moment, and walked past the ambulance workers, the bleeding man and Matthias. Matthias didn't know her, had no reason to look at her twice, but he did. She had dark hair and dark eyes and something on her mind. Matthias glimpsed all of that, but it didn't take on significance until he looked at Brock and saw the frown vanishing from his face. Brock replaced it with a big, friendly smile, bigger and friendlier than any smile Matthias had seen him give before. He came forward, holding out his hand. “Nina?” he said.

The woman said something that Matthias didn't hear. She took Brock's hand, looked up at him. He smiled down, shook her hand, let go. He spoke. She spoke. They turned and went inside the Oyster Bar, Brock helping her turn with a hand on her back. His hand almost stretched across its entire width. A maître d' appeared. They followed him to the left, out of sight.

The bleeding man was unconscious. The medics got him on the stretcher with no further difficulty and carried him away. Matthias walked into the restaurant. To the left were booths and tables, as he remembered, with counters to the right. Brock and the woman were talking in a booth in the far corner. Matthias sat at a counter between two men hunched over the market quotation pages in their newspapers. A potted plant blocked his view of Brock and Brock's view of him, but he could see the woman in profile, and he had a clear line of sight to the door.

“What'll it be?” asked the barman.

“Oysters,” Matthias said.

One of the market quotation readers ran his finger across a page of tiny type and groaned.

39

Big lout: Bernie Muller's self-description.

Big, yes, thought Nina, sitting opposite him at a booth in the Oyster Bar under Grand Central Station, but not a lout. Louts were stupid, Bernie Muller was not—Nina could see that in his eyes, quick and lively; louts were rude, Bernie Muller was not—he had escorted her to the booth and helped her with her coat; and louts didn't call themselves louts.

But big: men so tall and powerfully built, who pushed sexual dimorphism so far, almost seemed to belong to a different species. Everything about Bernie Muller was big—his head, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, his hands—everything except his quick eyes, which must have been normal size but appeared small in contrast to the rest of him. Despite his fine suit, his well-cut hair, bleached by the sun—he was tanned too; it was winter in Australia—this was not some puffed-up product of yuppie gyms. This was the dream they were selling.

Bernie Muller reached into a vest pocket and handed her a card. “
The Fifth Estate
,” it said. “
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Bernard Muller
.”