Talking in Bed (12 page)

For a while, Evan assumed that Joni was away, or that the letter had gotten lost, but then it came back to him unopened, with a red notice over her P.O. box number reading
DECEASED
. Supposing that the tangle of former addresses and postage on the recycled envelope had confused some postal employee, he did not fret as he phoned her office in Santa Fe.

Her practice was a cooperative one, and he reached, finally, one of her partners. From the way the secretary handled the call, he knew Joni had died—people gave themselves away so subtly, in the barest of inflections, in the most minute mistiming—but he waited until the partner came on the line.

"A letter was returned to me," Ev said, the first time he'd mentioned his letter-writing aloud to anyone except Joni herself.

"I'm sorry you had to find out that way," the man answered. Evan pictured him bearded, wearing those hideous sandals he imagined everyone in Santa Fe wore. "She had a hiking accident, up in Colorado."

"What happened?"

"She fell. She was at about eleven thousand feet and it was still a little icy—this was last month. Apparently she slid, tumbled down some slide rock, and then free-fell. It was quick. I'm sorry, I thought her friends had all been contacted."

What friends?
Ev wanted to ask. He thought of himself as her only one, though of course that was laughable. "Who was she hiking with?" he asked suddenly. He could sense the man's need to get off the phone, the busyness at the other end—all the crazy Santa Feans with their crystals and purebred hairless cats—but he wasn't willing yet to give up this last contact with Joni.

"She was alone," the partner said. "All by herself where she shouldn't have been by herself. If you want, I can send you the article about the accident."

Evan gave him his office address and hung up. He sat with his elbows on his blotter, his hands useless by his temples. The last time he had seen her had been in March, in New York, the two of them at a piano bar debating whether the player wore a wig or not. She had toasted Ev's abstinence with her own double Glenlivet neat, followed by a glass of icewater. She liked very simple silver rings, one on every finger, including her thumbs, a couple on her toes. She wore no bra; her hair conformed to the roundness of her head; she had a mole on her earlobe like a raisin, a faint mustache of downy hair on her lip, a thin band of white skin across her nose, a way of smiling and blinking her dark eyes that alluded to sex without promising a thing. He summoned this image as if to hold on to it; it was the last one, and he needed it. She'd been seductive because Ev wouldn't permit himself to achieve her. And now she was gone. How could he mourn her? There wasn't a soul to tell, no one who would quite understand; the closet in his heart was suddenly a deep well and no place to seek solace. He felt death's big blankness once more, the same feeling he'd experienced for a brief second when his father died, the lightness, the sense of being less attached to the world—and of having brought it on himself.

He had failed her, he thought, panicking. He had done or not done, said or failed to say, felt or refused to feel
something,
some crucial thing. It was familiar, this spacious sense of responsibility, of fatal failure. A man without feelings, the numb man, cannot be expected to feel for others. Sensitivity appeared to have drained from him. Ev quickly took inventory of his other relationships, of people who might be faltering because he'd forgotten to properly care.

And then the image of Paddy Limbach appeared, his lumbering manner like an anchor. Ev remembered the curious comfort Paddy had produced in him the night of his father's death. It wasn't exactly that Paddy had been disappointing in other circumstances, it was just that he had been a particular help in the face of death. Paddy's grief was so pure, Evan thought, it was as if he suffered enough for two people. Or maybe Ev was constructing Paddy's character to suit his own needs? No matter. He resorted to his first instinct, which was to tell Paddy.

***

"I never liked those things," Paddy said of Ev's cigar, which bobbed between Ev's lips. "But my father used to enjoy one now and again. You get those gummy leaves? On your tongue?" They reminded him of eating dirt, picking grass from his teeth. The stench of the smoke always gave him a headache. But he sort of liked knowing that Ev had a vice, that Ev wasn't as holy about health as he'd seemed to be, and that Ev didn't want him to tell his wife about it. He was pleased to think of them as friends, buddies with secrets.

"It's an acquired taste," Ev said, blowing out smoke. "I haven't smoked one of these in a long time." He held the cigar the way a pirate held a spyglass, spying land, and seemed complete with his new prop, his resemblance to Groucho Marx nearly perfect, an uncanny likeness.

The bar was midway between Ev's office and Paddy's, a sports hangout with four television sets tuned to twenty-four-hour coverage of events ranging from basketball tournaments to bass fishing. Paddy had watched the fishing show with his father just to make jokes with him about the fishermen's methods. Paddy's father had taken pride in being a fly fisherman, tying his own flies, working quietly up tributaries on foot, throwing back most of what he caught. There was an art to it not everyone understood; there was a mysticism, a meditative quality, that Paddy could not hope to discuss with his fishing friends. It was this subject that he wished to broach today with Ev, as he sensed that Ev might be sympathetic to it as a conversational topic. Plus he wanted to talk about his father with someone who hadn't known him. He wanted a clean, deep response today.

"I had some bad news earlier," Ev said. "A friend of mine died, sometime last month, and I didn't find out until today."

"Oh, drag," Paddy offered. "A close friend?"

"Very close. A woman I've known for six years."

Paddy frowned. Although he liked the cigar secret, he didn't want to discover that Evan had affairs. He'd thought of Ev's and Rachel's marriage as something to aspire toward; he'd been having serious doubts about his marriage to Didi after seeing Ev's life as a model. At dinner, he'd caught them exchanging glances, Ev raising his eyebrows, Rachel grinning brattily, turning her head away as if Ev had signaled something suggestive. So he didn't want to see the flaws in the idol. That was on one hand. On the other, he was thrilled to obtain Ev's confidence. Having someone confide in you was like receiving an undeserved gift: it was a mark of affection, of esteem.

"Six years," Paddy finally said, realizing it was his turn to talk.

"Yes. Six years."

Well, Ev wasn't going to make it easy to be his confessor, that was clear. He held up his drink—straight scotch—and then drank it in three swallows, something Paddy saw in movies but rarely in life. He said, "Want another?" and Ev nodded, which also reminded him of cinema.

With the second drink—scotch again, icewater chaser—came Ev's story. He'd met a woman who sounded like a dyke to Paddy, but she was someone Ev had grown very attached to, even though he only saw her once a year and they didn't sleep together. Paddy was impressed with Ev's ability to charm her. Women like her—Ph.D.'s with muscles, women who did not play girls' games—intimidated Paddy. They did not seem to need men. He wondered if there was a similarly independent category of men, the type who didn't need women. Even homosexual men seemed by and large fascinated by the culture of women, or, more specifically, the culture of teenage girls. Were there men out there who thoroughly had no use for women? Probably not. That was women's great advantage, Paddy discovered; men were expendable to them.

Ev was still talking, but Paddy had lost the thread. He listened to catch hold again.

"...a suicide? I'm very afraid she killed herself up there, and I should have known to intercede, there should have been something I could do. Will you read this and tell me what you think?" He was pulling an envelope from his coat pocket.

Paddy took the paper, anxious about what he would say. Either her typewriter or her typing was of poor quality—letters were missing. The words concerned some article she'd read about depression. Then she went on about a rattlesnake she'd killed, or thought she'd killed, which had come back to life.

"I've heard about ducks and other wildlife doing the same," Paddy said to Ev, who scowled. "Here," Paddy said, shaking the letter. "This stuff about the snake."

"Right. Go on."

"Just nothing, I think it's interesting that it came back to life." The woman—Joni, he saw her signature at the bottom; she was one of those people who don't believe in capital letters—had jabbed a shovel blade at the snake's neck but had apparently only stunned it. She'd put it in the refrigerator in a plastic bag and then found it moving its head when she opened the door the next morning.
Then I used the axe,
she wrote Ev.
Then I learned the head has to be removed before you can be sure a rattler's dead.
Paddy wondered if that line was supposed to have larger meaning, either by Joni's estimation or by Ev's. He himself simply thought it wise to ascertain a wild animal's death before putting it in your refrigerator.

The remainder of the letter concerned an upcoming trip, and the last line was
I am extra in your life, Ev, I know that, but you are extraordinary in mine.
Nice line. Paddy liked that sentiment. He thought she had a way with words.

"My question is," Ev said, refolding the letter and slipping it back where it'd come from, "should I have known something from that letter? Should I have done something?"

"You're thinking she took her own life?" Paddy was stalling, asking questions to keep from making statements.

Ev slowly closed his eyes, then opened them. "Precisely," he said.

"I don't see how you could have told from that letter that she was all that sad. She talks about that depressing article, but that's her business, right? And the snake, well, she made it sound like an outdoor adventure, not a—what's the word?—an omen. I don't know, the very last line, maybe that's the ticket."

"That 'extraordinary' thing? That?" When Paddy nodded, Ev went on. "I thought the same thing. Maybe I should have heard a cry for help."

The line had seemed poetical and possibly portentous, but Paddy suddenly realized that his role here was to convince Ev he was not responsible for Joni's death, even if he was. So what if he was? What good would it do him to take the blame now? Paddy revised his image of the woman; she was not a dyke but in love with Evan, who was married and unavailable, who was tempted by her but saintly. She'd killed herself because she realized the hopelessness of the relationship. She'd sent Ev a letter to terrorize him, to make him guilty. A manipulator, a menace from the grave.

Paddy said, "You're not responsible." But then he thought his interpretation could be a lie. The truth could be that Evan had been leading her on for six years, promising to extricate himself from his marriage, meet her in the West, and marry her. Perhaps they'd been sleeping together all these years; perhaps Ev had used her. She'd killed herself out of despair, for him. "There's nothing you could have done," Paddy went on, thinking that perhaps Ev should have left his wife, gone to New Mexico, saved the woman. "How could you possibly keep her from killing herself? That's like thinking you could keep me from having a car accident on the way home, knock wood." He knocked the tabletop with his knuckles, hoping he hadn't jinxed himself, vaguely curious as to how much wood the Formica-covered surface had in it.

Ev was nodding thoughtfully, his cigar riding on his thin lower lip. Paddy reached for some more helpful phrases. "You did your best," he said. "You did all you could. You have your own life to look out for." It seemed to Paddy that the more of these things he uttered, the more of them came rushing forward. Maybe this was all it took to be a psychologist? A stock of soothing responses. Didi told him he wasn't a good listener, but he felt like he'd done quite well in figuring out Ev's problem and pretty well in answering it. "If you'd gone out there, then your wife would have been upset. Out of the frying pan, into the fire." He almost told Ev he couldn't have his cake and eat it too, but he realized just in time that the gist of that one was off.

Now Ev said, "I can't believe she's dead. I can't believe I'm not going to see her again. I feel as if I played some part in her death. I really do."

And Paddy, for an instant, understood. He understood that Ev
wasn't
uttering the first thing that popped into his head, that he was saying exactly what he felt. He remembered Ev's declaration last year, at the hospital, that he would have killed his own father; he remembered his rudeness to the photographer at the Shedd. It was both exhilarating and exhausting to be with someone like Ev, someone who didn't seem to lie, not even to be polite, not even to himself. This made Paddy wonder how honest he, Paddy, was being with himself. What lies was he telling himself? How deluded was he?

"You couldn't have saved her," Paddy said, this time meaning exactly what he said. "She had a choice, and she made it. And if she was thinking about you, well, she decided to hurt you. That's her hurting you, not you hurting her." Paddy was proud of this. He'd given himself goose bumps.

But Ev just sighed. That vein in his temple was standing out, and his curly hair was pressed flat on one side. He needed a shave, and his face signaled impatience, boredom. His cigar had gone out and his glass was empty.

"You want another?" Paddy asked, and Ev shook his head. The intimacy between them was fading rapidly.

Ev stood up to motion for the check, and Paddy jumped up to pull his wallet from his back pocket. But Ev waved away Paddy's offer of a five-dollar bill. "No, no, good God, no, I'll get it."

They emerged from the cool dimness of the bar into bright cloudiness. Paddy followed as Ev started walking south, both of them moving fast. To avoid looking a panhandler in the eyes, Paddy gazed upward. A flock of small black birds floated high above the street, swirling together on an air current, rising swiftly between the buildings. This sight calmed Paddy, as visions of animals nearly always did.