THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (35 page)

“Well,” I said, “what’s life itself but confusing. One big confused mess. I imagine Gloria left the opera house with a heavy heart. She certainly got out before the crowd thinned and the two might’ve seen her all alone. Luckily the bus came quickly and she was able to get out of the area before those two drove by in their Mercedes.”

“But,” said Hammond, “in that sense wasn’t Gloria far ahead. At least she was still alive if in a morbid condition while the socialite was no more. And it doesn’t seem Hartwig begrieved her that much if at all. He certainly hadn’t wanted to go back to her after she’d forgiven him. Didn’t Gloria know that?”

“I guess,” I said beginning to yield to the frustration myself. “I guess.” I repeated aimlessly. Then on an upnote. “At least she enjoys the music, which she plays constantly. Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov. That’s not the music of her dreams. It’s from her disc player. It’s the one thing, I believe, that keeps her going. She can’t watch TV at all. She absolutely hates it and everything about it. A DVD or two of the old foreign films she loves perhaps. But TV never.”

“I … I can almost understand that in her state,” said Hammond. “There’s really not that much on it, especially for the serious minded as she apparently
was
.”

I arrived one day at the house to see her and encountered the maid who told me they’d taken her to the hospital.

“To join the angels in heaven,” Buelah’d said. I made no reply to the old woman’s superstition. Gloria’d obviously impressed her. She loved her too, and, of course, had pumped her all about Hartwig’s growing up as a kid. That’s when I became angry and that evening when I knew he’d be home I marched down to Hartwig’s for I was staying at my family’s home nearby.

The alleyway to his apartment was long and dimly lit. A nightlight burned in its center and as I approached the door I could hear him and Stanley shuffling about inside. He appeared to be talking to his best friend, not an unusual occurrence.

I knocked loudly with my fist, the door cracked and his face appeared in it.

“Pearson,” he said. “What’re you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you.”

“You weren’t expecting me?” I declared somewhat truculently as I marched in and sat in a shaker backed chair at the kitchen table. He sat opposite while I patted Stanley on his head.

“Know what’s happened to Gloria?” I lanced into him. “She’s in the hospital. She’s no longer at your mother’s where you say you’ll never set foot again. Your main objection for not seeing her has been overcome. You really should go see her. She’s dying if it means anything to you. Come on, we’ll go together, I haven’t been yet. I just heard.”

He looked at me with a blank stare and wouldn’t listen. Then he went on raving about June, you remember, the other socialite, the empress or who thought she was anyhow, as though I ought to listen out of some sort of obligation to just know… And if I did maybe he’d consider accompanying me. As people sometimes do. They force you to give into something as a balance for doing your bidding later on. I listened.

“June,” for Christ’s sakes,” said Hammond. “I thought she was long gone. What about her now?”

Apparently she’d had an awakening of sorts. For her, of course, an awakening of any sort’d be a miracle. The real thing. Not just some church hokey pokey. For who or what could bring about a change in that woman’s tyrannical personality.

And as it turned out, rather than a positive change on her part, her alteration turned out to be because of a threat she’d succumbed to, but even that was something, it was tragic, it was sad, for anyone who could’ve threatened that ironclad battle axe must’ve been worthy of attention. Then what else had driven June all her life but her own solitary loneliness and the attempt to quash it by dominating others? She had to come out with something after all her driving efforts to succeed. The source, of course, was her second adopted daughter, Jennifer, who though she wasn’t quite all there had a sweet nature and played the piano respectably.

It had all started with Hartwig’s eviction from the premises of her large colonial mansion in Tiburon where he’d so often retreated to drink her booze and eat her food, as well as carry on intellectual conversations with her.

“She … she asked him to leave?” Said Hammond.

“Well,” I said, “it was like this.”

She’d found a man. She’d finally found a man. This was an older fellow with a great shock of white hair, a dandy, presentable, but also a fuddy-duddy whom she could boss. She could take him to luncheons, symphonies, wherever she felt it necessary to appear in public as a sort of showpiece. In other words he was her
trophy,
if a somewhat used one, that she could lead around like a dog on a leash. Evidently she’d begun an affair with this individual. Hartwig’d met him and the two’d apparently gotten along until one day or rather one afternoon Hartwig was there and she announced to him,

“Leopold’s coming over I don’t think it’s proper that you should be here.”

Hartwig just gaped at her in disbelief.

“June,” he said, “you’ve got to be kidding. Leopold and I get along perfectly.”

“No I’m not, he keeps thinking you and I would be more appropriate together when…” She added in a vicious tone now whereupon Hartwig shrugged his shoulders and walked out. Obviously she’d waited all that time for this. It was her moment to reject him as he’d rejected her or at least claimed he didn’t want a sexual affair. Now that she had someone else, who’d actually have her, she’d turned on Hartwig and with her feminine wiles, given him the boot. Until, in fact, he’d picked Marcus up, that was the last time he’d been at her house.

Although a real surprise, he said it came as a relief. He didn’t need her and never had. Anyone who could put up with her sexual fits in bed she deserved, and he found her fatuous rejection of him amusing. Typical of women. You think they forget but they don’t. Like elephants they want to get even no matter how long it takes. In light, of course, of what happened to Sandy, I believe, June also wanted to distance herself from the Hartwig crowd as in general inappropriate for children. She had Marcus then and Jennifer but both of them’d left.

“The daughter too?” Said Hammond.

“She most certainly did,” I said, “she ran off to the antique dealer’s and wouldn’t return home. Remember she was no longer a minor but had turned twenty-two. When June discovered where she was she went to fetch her, stormed into the shop like a raving maniac about to tear the place down. Jennifer’d locked herself in the upstairs apartment while her suitor had to confront June. Now she’d remembered that man from before. She hadn’t liked his looks nor his demean then. Inspired by her memories she read him the riot act.

“But Mrs. Enright,” Said Hans in a calm voice, which just further infuriated her. “Your daughter’s of age and we’re in love. We’re to be married.”

“You’re to be marr … Why you good for nothing
salesman
, I could buy and sell you. To be marr … Jennifer…” She called upstairs to the girl. “Come down here immediately. We’re leaving the premises.” She shook her blond mane leonine fashion.

“No,” said the dealer tweaking his mustache, “if you don’t calm down Mrs. Enright, it’s you who’ll have to leave.”

At that, of course, June really got mad. She grabbed a vase and threw it against an armoire smashing both. Then she grabbed something else and threw it. Jennifer came running downstairs. They couldn’t get June out of there so they called the police who arrived and actually arrested her. They took her away kicking and screaming, the great Mrs. Enright…

“You’re kidding,” said Hammond, “they took ‘her’ away. That must’ve really been a first for her. Utter ignominy. It served her right. That proper Miss. And did the daughter then ever go back?”

“No,” I said, “she didn’t though she did step into her mother’s house again.”

After June calmed down and was released from jail she realized she’d have to apologize just to keep her reputation for as top saleswoman in the area everyone knew her and… Not only didn’t the daughter go back but June took care of all the damages later; shook hands with the couple and even condescended to be bridesmaid at their wedding so she could at least give away the daughter. She’d missed out on godmother but this role she was apparently determined to play. Then didn’t she have to? What else could she’ve done? She’d had to be coerced into reasonableness or happiness. That’s how hard she’d been fighting against it.

“What do you mean?” Said Hammond.

Well, maybe she had her newly found Leopold, the old gentleman, but that wasn’t quite enough. Who’d she have to leave all her millions to? Him, never. And her other daughter, Julia, who she’d already estranged herself from, unlikely. No, better to make this one compensation and keep her holdings in the family. That she did. For her the renunciation of the crown. And also a little salute to her
grandchildren
. A reminder that we can’t get all in life we want to out of it and sometimes have to give in. That was all that happened to June.

“Can we go now?” I said to Hartwig. “Are you finished?”

“You mean right now?” He looked up at me with surprise.

“Why not? It’s still early and these’re visiting hours. What more appropriate time?” And after a little more discussion I got him to put on his coat. We left Stanley in the apartment and walked up to the hospital. I, of course, didn’t tell him what to expect and as it turned out I didn’t know either since I’d last seen Gloria at the house.

Chapter Twenty-Four

All that remained of the old red brick hospital complex was the observatory turret across the street from it. The original building had been replaced by a white behemoth with all the latest life-saving machines and medicines and yet the patients (man) hadn’t changed. He couldn’t be so easily engineered, trapped in the human body, frail as it was, very nearly like a tree or plant in the ground if you think about it.

We reached the fourth floor, the elevator door opened and Hartwig followed me along the hallway. At the nurse’s station we turned into another wing where each open door presented a similar tableaux, a curtained bed, a TV set, several chairs and a nightstand along with a small toilet. All private rooms.

As we came to hers I went in first but stopped quickly in my tracks. Gloria had two visitors. They were sitting by her bed. Guess who they were?

“Who, the maid and the mother?”

“No,” I said, “the young DA and the mother. Hartwig’s, of course. I quickly turned to him and said in a whisper.

“I didn’t know. Maybe we’d better come another time.” By then they’d seen us. He hesitated but when the two of them rose as if to make way, he pressed into the room.

“Mother,” he said and he hugged her as people will sometimes do upon impromptu meetings with those they’ve recently renounced. Then he looked over at Gloria who lay demurely propped up by several hospital pillows. She wore one of their plain gowns instead of her Victorian finery I’d seen her in at the house and her teddy was absent.

“You two’ll want to be alone,” said the mother. “We were just leaving.” Her voice was neither sweet nor sour. And she turned to Tom, a short chisel-faced man with reddish brown hair. He was obviously concerned and had a grave look on his face. He shook our hands briefly before exiting.

“I’ll be outside,” he called to Gloria. She acknowledged him with a turn of her head and less than a smile at the very corners of her eyes, but could she have smiled? Two tubes that came from somewhere were stuck down each of her nostrils. A breathing mask covered her mouth and bags of medicines, which hung from a stand, were being fed into IVs on both arms. She resembled an aviator pilot.

“In other words,” said Hammond, “she’d become a contraption herself.”

“Something like that, though she still looked pretty. Her short hair shined in the light and her eyes exhibited a dark awareness and a worried look.”

“When she saw Hartwig?”

“It was hard to tell. She must’ve recognized him, however. He sat on the bed, took one of her soft skeletal hands and said,

“How’s it going darling?”

I mean what a thing to say but he knew how to talk to women. It must’ve meant something to her for there was no doubt about it she’d been awaiting his visit on sheer faith nothing more. She gave a little gasp, a throaty noise for her mouth was covered with that breathing apparatus and her eyes actually dilated a bit. The pupils became larger. Was it prescience or the drugs? You tell me, did the face in her dreams suddenly adopt features? I doubt it. Was that a face you’d like to slip into oblivion with? If she even had those dreams anymore. Only one thing was absolutely certain, no one ever woke up in heaven or hell. They never had.

We stayed for about ten minutes; talking mainly to ourselves in counterpoint essentially to supply continuity to a three way conversation wherein one of the participants can merely listen. I don’t remember what we said. Nonsense about our life in Sausalito, for you know it was still just yesterday for us whereas for her it must’ve been an eternity if ever, or simply something that never happened at all.

After a while I walked to the door. Hartwig, who’d been holding her hand, bent over and kissed her on the cheek and we left after saying goodnight to the attorney who’d been sitting on a chair just outside the door and now stood to return inside and keep a much longer vigil. He and Hartwig’d only seen each other that one time at the poetry reading but I didn’t detect any animosity between them. It was a time to forget that sort of stuff though
some
would’ve been at one another’s throats. What for? Who caused what? Etc. Something no one’ll be saying when the world ends. Why say it now? Just accept what is as long as it’s tolerable.

We took the elevator down and walked out into the cold night air realizing somewhere up there in the well-lit building a light was about to go out and they all did one by one. I turned to Hartwig and said,

“Thanks for that.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

“It was the least I could’ve done,” he replied without any quantification and I felt grateful for his magnanimity. His charm still worked. It was his way of including you in his ‘greater than thou’ projection.

Neither of us was to witness the tragedy but we heard about it. She died of pneumonia in the hospital two weeks later with the DA and Hartwig’s mother at her side. She had no priest for she didn’t believe in
Him
either. That as I said had been one of hers and Hartwig’s greatest accords, but I imagine she’d said her prayer.

“Prayer?” Said Hammond. “You mean people nowadays have them?”

“Some still do,” I said, “but hers was a special one that just made good pragmatic sense more like a saying than a prayer. I’m sure you’ve heard of it… ‘God give me the strength to change the things I can and to accept those that I can’t and the wisdom to know the difference’. I don’t know where it came from but a pretty nifty mantra if you ask me. It contains almost an entire philosophy within itself no matter
whom
one appeals to.

With the two mothers in tow along with the attorney, all of whom more or less still believed, a priest from the Calgary Lutheran church on the corner right down the block from the grandmother’s tall apartment building where the taskmaster lived in her penthouse with a view overlooking the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, Angel Island, Tiburon, the entire marina with Mount Tamalpais looming in the distance, a final backdrop to that earthly set, conducted a funeral service for her. She’d also been cremated like Sandy, a form of burial nowadays that’s become commonplace (entire societies have been geared around it) as we honor less and less what we are in what’s probably a more healthy attitude. For who or what are we really but conglomerations of dust or chemicals. Here today and gone tomorrow.

“So,” said Hammond, “what’d Hartwig do then? Without any woman around to pester or torture?”

“What he usually did,” I said, “or what he’d done all the time since it was something he must’ve been destined for. He followed his grandmother’s advice, certainly not his mother’s. For a year he worked in the bond brokerage as he made his way back into the social structure of the city. This included among other things attending a lot of cocktail parties where he took up with his friends the Rosenblatts. I don’t know whether it was them or his grandmother who introduced him to Isabel but both parties knew her and it wasn’t long before he began courting her. You remember her don’t you, Isabel Flood?”

“You don’t mean the most beautiful woman in the city do you? At least she had that reputation, as did so many others of the time if I remember correctly, though now she only sits vaguely in my mind.”

“That was her,” I said, “and not only one of prettiest but one of the most affluent too. Her parents’d bought her a four-story mansion in our neighborhood that really did have the most spectacular view in the city. It was on the end of a hill instead of in the middle and therefore had drop offs on both sides where it stood out unobstructed like a castle on the top of a mountain. Imagine the entire bay and the marina on one side, the panoramic skyscrapers of our city on the other. At that time, of course, she’d just gotten divorced. She had two children to take care of and no one to take care of her. That’s when she met Hartwig.”

“And also,” said Hammond. “That’s when
she
should’ve run the other way.”

“Why?” I said. “Though the man wasn’t much good, he was good for her and what’s more good to her. Look how many people are like that in our society, that and no more. Pimps actually but well-grounded socially and able to fit the role of what rich women desire. Unlike Sandy this one was well educated. Isabel spoke several languages and was also highly cultured. She had all that money could buy and more besides, like the medical treatment they can afford that the poor can’t and who consequently die earlier.

Her father owned a steamship line that had a base in Rio de Janeiro where he’d frequently traveled with his wife and Isabel when he was younger. Believe me, she was no dummy and she had a romantic background. She’d studied music in school so they had that in common. She also played a good game of tennis. She’d been looking for a Don Juan or Giacomo Casanova, both nicknames Hartwig used to go by. And here the dropout suddenly reappeared. She didn’t know anything about Hartwig’s recent background, which was lucky for her and most certainly for him. She really took to him. Most women did. And there were no shenanigans this time. He went for her and she responded.

Then it wouldn’t’ve been so easy for her to’ve escaped him even if she’d wanted to for, by that time Bertha, the grandmother, definitely had her eye on ‘this one’, and she’d taken Isabel into her circle gratuitously. Wined and dined her and the children until you thought she might’ve been going to marry the socialite instead of her grandson. God forbid mergers that lopsided but one day they might come about since for man anything seems possible and getting more possible all the time.

“And you know what I could never figure out?” I said.

“No,” Hammond replied.

“Why the grandmother or even Hartwig would seek for him to marry a rich woman. Hartwig was going to get all the older woman had, which was plenty. Isabel, an only child, was to receive her father’s estate, which was much more than enough for any single family. Now, what was more than enough for any ten or even a hundred families was to be united behind one. It was sick really.”

“Can you suggest a better system?” Said Hammond.

“I might,” I said, but by the look on his face, “I’d better not.”

He didn’t think I was funny. But to imagine all that wealth ending up in the hands of one family wasn’t either.

“Did,” said Hammond, “Isabel ever ask about Sandy or did she ever come up?”

“Once, I believe,” I said. “The part of the fallen maiden had surfaced due to some pretext or other.”

“You didn’t know her did you?” Isabel had asked Hartwig one day.

“A little,” said Hartwig with a twinkle in his eye.

“Yes, everyone knew Sandy Hightower,” his wife replied in a contralto voice. And he, of course, got the drift of what she meant and, quite frankly must’ve been a little relieved by it. He’d never really approved of Sandy’s promiscuity all that much either. Even one’s demise couldn’t clear one’s reputation as long as there were
others
around to mull over it. Much as the dead of whatever hue survive most certainly but only in the minds of those still living or still to come. Then here Hartwig didn’t have to fight the incompatibility of his new interest like he had with Sandy. Those two were met for one another. Copasetic, I believe, is the word.

“If anyone truly is,” said Hammond, “where opposites are involved.”

“If anyone truly is,” I replied. “The two were married at a lavish ceremony at the Palace Court in the famed hotel. They honeymooned on a cruise ship that took them around the world. That was many years ago. They’re still together, having a ball. They have two more children, both girls. Our world’s still here? Hartwig manages something in the family business and he’s a great father. You know how those things go.”

“But does he ever see his mother, the attorney?” said Hammond.

“Sometimes,” I ventured, “with the children but not often. Evidently the rift that was once between them never completely healed but then Hartwig and his mother’d never really seen eye to eye to begin with. The grandmother, yes, right up until the time of her passing away. She was the star in this new family’s life. The star she’d created herself.”

“As indeed there must be one in all of ours,” said Hammond humbly. “Still…”

There was a pause while Hammond got up to mix another drink. It was our third night there. All that time basically we’d puttered around the boat while the story continued erratically as stories tend to do when they’re interrupted by one’s daily routine. A panoply of stars had attached itself to the cover of night and the tinkling of the rigging that surrounded us sent an irritating noise across the water. It was obviously to be our last drink of the night. When Hammond had returned, handed me my glass and resat himself I asked him.

“So, what’d you think (of the story)?”

“You mean,” he said, “what it sounded like to me? Ten thousand puppets on the end of a string manipulated by someone or something” He looked at me in the glow of the ship’s overhead light. “Is that in fact all we are?”

“Yes,” I said, “exactly. Call it God or whatever. What I could never understand is if the former why ‘
That
’ when it’s the farthest thing you can imagine from any sort of ordinary acceptance we have for elements that can be scientifically verified. Better watch out that the penalty make us pay too dearly for the risk. Why not a shake of the dice, heads or tails. Our life’s expectancies as to which way they’ll fall. Now that’s something to live for, no matter which way they do.”