Duplicate Keys (20 page)

“Craig told you that if you didn’t sleep with him he would kick Noah out of the band? That’s positively medieval. Besides, Craig wasn’t like that.”

“I’m not saying he said it, I just worried about it.”

“So what else?”

“I was worried about how Craig would react. To me. I mean, remember Iris North?”

“You thought he would beat you up?”

Rya shrugged.

“Did he ever?”

Rya shrugged again, then nodded. “He gave me a black eye once. And he burned me with a cigarette.” She unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse and rolled up the sleeve. On the inside of her arm above the elbow was a white circle the diameter of a cigarette.

Alice inhaled sharply. “Did he threaten you?”

Rya shrugged.

“Did you tell Noah?”

“Sort of. He knew about the burn, and he knew I was afraid, but he thought I could take care of myself.”

“There must have been something—”

“You don’t understand, Alice. I realize I am sort of a dizzy person. And Noah’s been fucked up by so much dope, he really has. Craig knew more than we did, or at least more than I did. All the time. I felt like he was always two steps ahead of me. If I was with him, and wishing to go home, he’d say, ‘I know you want to go home, don’t you? You can’t stand to come here. I love you and you don’t love me, and now you want to go home.’”

Alice looked at her.

“He was getting sort of weird, you know. Mad about everything, like anything that happened just went to prove something about him, either good or bad. It wasn’t like it was when he was with you.” Alice smiled coldly. “Anyway, I felt bad about his life. I mean, he seemed to have had such a terrible life, I felt sorry for him. He didn’t think anybody really liked him, except maybe Denny, and he always thought Susan was trying to break up Denny’s friendship with him. I liked him a lot at first. He was exciting to be with, after all that time with Noah. He always had something to say and there was always something to do. He was good in bed. You know that.”

Alice nodded.

“I guess I even thought I loved him. At least I told him so. Then I was afraid to take it back. Don’t you understand that?”

Alice nodded again.

“He made me feel goofy. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted everything to be all right, and I guess I thought we would never get away from him, and so if I went along with him, everything would be all right enough. I tried to tell all of that to Noah, but he wouldn’t talk to me, and besides, I couldn’t say it right. This is the first time I’ve ever said it right.”

Alice didn’t know what to say. She pushed her plate away, although there were three samosas and a shrimp toast left. She put out her hand and then put it over Rya’s. After a moment, she said, “You didn’t kill him to get out of it, did you?”

Rya shook her head.

“Say yes or no and look right at me.”

“No.” She looked right at her.

“Who did? Noah?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I thought he might have said something to you that would have told you something. I called home that night when he said he was home. About one. There wasn’t any answer, and our phone doesn’t unplug. I’m scared to death.”

“Did you tell Honey that?”

“He didn’t ask me. He just asked if I was there, and where I was.”

“Noah didn’t tell me anything like that.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Some stuff. He was confused, I think, about your relationship to Craig.”

Rya nodded.

“This is really stupid.” But the rush of anger that she had felt was somehow shocked out of her. She said, “I’ll buy you another drink, okay?” Rya nodded.

I
T TOOK
a long time to get rid of Rya, and by the time Alice got home, it was nearly dark. She started when two figures stepped from under the fire escape on the side of her building, but they were only Ray and Jeff. Jeff was in gym shorts. His legs were as nicely shaped as his feet.

“It’s been a while,” said Ray sarcastically.

“Have you been waiting for me?” exclaimed Alice.

Ray looked at his watch. “Two hours, thirty-seven minutes, ten, no, eleven seconds.”

“Why are you waiting for me?”

“No keys.”

“I know, but why didn’t you go get something to eat or something?”

“Alice, sweetheart, I don’t think you understand. We’re trying to stay out of sight for a while. That doesn’t include dinner at the Automat or pastry at Zabar’s.”

She let them in. She knew he was going to ask it. He did. “So how about keys?”

“It’s just one more night.”

“Just for one night, then.”

“Are you going out again tonight?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I’ll let you in.”

“It’ll be late.”

“I’ll stay up.”

“Three or four.”

“I’ll get up.”

“Don’t trust me?”

“I hate to give out keys.”

“Susan has some.”

“That’s different. Besides, the very thought of Susan makes me even more cautious.”

“Just for tonight and tomorrow. We’ll be in and out tonight, and then in and out tomorrow. You won’t be here to let us in, then.”

“Why don’t you just stay in, not go out.”

“I’ve got to straighten this tangle out. That means talking to people.”

“Call them up.”

“Come on, Alice.”

“I can’t do it. It’s not personal, I just can’t do it. I’ll let you in tonight. We’ll figure out something about tomorrow.”

“Alice—”

“Let’s have something to eat.”

Ray made a face. Jeff had slumped back onto the sofa with his feet on the window sill. His eyes were closed. He was uncomfortable to have around, Alice thought, like a tagalong eight-year-old brother who had nothing to say and no toys to play with. His eyes were blank or inward, certainly non-responsive even to Ray, who watched him but was never watched. Alice wondered how long he and Ray had been together. They acted like a well-established
couple. After dinner, in the bathtub, she was suddenly sure they had left, taking her keys, but when she put on her robe and came out with her wet hair, they were sitting across the living room from each other. Ray was reading a magazine he had found, and Jeff was staring out the window, his arms crossed over his chest. His boylike quality made him menacing, too, as if his wishes and motives were not susceptible to adult understanding, or contained by adult scruples. Alice had been going to suggest that one of them stay while the other went out, but looking at them, she knew Ray would be the one to leave. Though she couldn’t imagine Jeff actually doing anything, she shrank from being alone with him after all. She dried her hair and combed it, and they sat up rather uncomfortably in the living room, hardly speaking. There was no mention of going out, and Alice finally went to bed.

In the morning they were at the breakfast table when she got up. There was a quarter of a cantaloupe at her place, and a hot cup of coffee. Jeff was sitting beside the window with only a towel wrapped around his loins.

“Sit down!” exclaimed Ray. “Here’s your coffee. How did you sleep? This is a lovely apartment. I thought all the windows on the street would make it noisy but there’s hardly any traffic, is there?”

Alice was alerted. She looked from one to the other and said, “You went out last night, didn’t you?”

“I think one of us is going to be here most of the day, but we’ll be gone by the time you get home. Thanks a lot for putting us up.”

“Did you go out?” She looked at Jeff, who shrugged.

Ray said, “Some people are just more available at night than they are during the day.”

“Tell me how you got back in, Ray. I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

Ray glanced at Jeff, who was gazing down on Eighty-fourth Street. Jeff coughed, then yawned. Ray said, “Well, we really didn’t want to wake you. You’ve done a lot for us already. We didn’t
get home till after five. That’s the worst time to wake up if you want to get back to sleep. The sun was up and everything.”

“So how did you get in?”

“We, uh, borrowed your keys when you were in the bathtub.”

“Ray!”

Jeff turned and looked at her impassively. It was he who had done the borrowing, Alice could see.

“No harm done,” carolled Ray. “They’re right back in your purse. It really was better that way.”

“If I’d known—”

“But you didn’t, and you didn’t feel a thing. Look for yourself.” He cleared his throat.

“Well, after this, I feel like looking. I feel like counting my money, too.” She addressed this to Jeff. “I mean, I don’t even know your last name.”

“Johnson,” said Jeff.

The sarcastic way he spoke infuriated her. She jumped up. “Who are you, anyway? You know something? I don’t like you one bit! What do you do? Where do you get your money? Why are you so rude?” But the real insult, the precise devastating indictment of his character that she wanted to make escaped her, and she felt already thwarted.

Ray said, in a neutral voice, “He’s a student at Parsons, okay?”

“My whole problem is that I assume everyone else is as innocent as I am. I’m really furious with you, Ray. I think you betrayed our friendship and my trust in you.”

“Our friendship wasn’t so blooming when we asked if we could stay.”

“That’s different—”

“Is it? You were worried about you, not about me.”

“Don’t I have good reason to be?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. I never did anything to you. Look at that desk in there. Who made that for you—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ray! And you’re a fool to boot! You act like we all still live out in Minnesota,
where everything turns out all right! Where nobody really wants to hurt you, even when they’re mad! Shit, Ray!” But looking into their two pairs of eyes, one indifferent, one fearful but veiled, she bit her useless tongue and stomped off to her room to get dressed for work.

When she left, Ray kissed her good-bye. From the other side of the living room, Jeff was looking at her quizzically. On the way down in the elevator, she inspected her keys, and then counted her money. It was there, all eight dollars and thirty-seven cents. And her credit cards, too. Still, when she got to work, she took a moment to call up Parsons and ask if a Jeff Johnson was registered for classes there. He was. There were three of him.

T
HAT
morning, Alice decided that the flood of Henry Mullet had largely passed over her. Although taken from time to time by shudders of desire, she was able to think of her work, to talk to Laura and Howard, to anticipate the next evening with Henry (she would wear her white gauze dress, embroidered peasant neck-line, pink and gold Mexican sash, she had already spotted the raspberries she would take on Broadway, and been reassured of a new shipment tomorrow) with pleasure rather than craving. Although she realized that this state of suspension was temporary, she enjoyed it.

About Ray and Rya she refused to think. She always felt secure in the library, secure within the walls (how thick were they? two feet or something?). The murder, of course, had disappeared from the newspapers, and so even from the chance of discussion over coffee or lunch. Laura and Howard and Sidney still had no idea of her involvement, and neither did her parents, for that matter. She had spoken to them once more, and they had mentioned the garden, her grandmother Bovbjerg’s knee operation, the microwave oven that might be lost in the mails, and a girl Alice had known in high school who had died in a car accident. In the library, Alice felt detached from the rest of her life, and more
than that, permanently, immortally treading the aisles of the stacks, everlastingly answering questions about the
Reader’s Guide
, deathlessly sifting through small literary magazines and considering them for order and reorder. Sidney muttered frequently about feeling trapped, Laura schemed over jobs abroad, but Alice embraced her routine, the spar that would float her out of trouble and into a healthy old age. At home, she worried, at work, she hummed.

And Tuesday was a pleasant day, with a well-defined task to engage her attention. In the morning she made a long list of lesser-known American regional poets and their books and chapbooks, and after lunch, because her assistant was out sick, she herself went to look for them in the stacks. Usually Alice hated looking for things in the stacks, since because of the three different cataloguing systems in use in the early years of the library, works of a single author might be scattered over the seven floors. Every volume had to be looked up separately and found. After six years, Alice could not say readily where a given book might be. Almost no one could. Today, however, she didn’t mind. It was good exercise. She went from stack to stack and floor to floor, turning on the lights, finding the books, turning out the lights again. It was a fruitful search. Any number of the volumes had never been checked out, never apparently touched. Some of them fell apart in her hands. Others as old, as little used, showed only a faded spine and a film of dust as evidence of their age. Some were lost, had been shelved in the wrong spots for years, had been treated carelessly by clerks and librarians who were long gone to other institutions, to marriage and grandparenthood, to other professions, died, maybe. Alice was almost reluctant to reshelve them, mistakes were tangible marks of the past; she was being sentimental. She reshelved them.

She thought of Henry, she thought of Susan, she thought of Rya and Jim and Noah and Ray and Jeff. She carried a little cloud of thought in her head from stack to stack and floor to floor and she hummed. When she took a pile of books to her desk, she
found a note that Susan had the car out to do errands, and that she would pick her up at five. If she really wanted to take the bus, she was to call. Alice looked at the note for a long time, because, oddly, she really did want to take the bus. When she imagined herself calling Susan, though, and expressing such a thing (“Don’t be silly! It’ll be jammed! We can stop at—”) she knew it was impossible. Somehow, though, she didn’t want Susan coming there, to the library. Or Honey, either. She lived in dread of Honey’s showing up and quizzing her on the steps again. None of them! They had invaded her apartment, and she didn’t want a single one of them even looking up a book in her card catalogue. She put down Susan’s note and picked up her list of poets. Of course they were obscure, she thought angrily. None of them was any good. When she marched off to find the rest of their works (a waste of paper and shelf space!), she was as angry at them as she had been at Rya the night before.