Man in The Woods (17 page)

“Do you really think so?” Paul wonders if his legs are going to support him. He holds on to Kate for balance.

“Don’t ever leave me,” Kate says.

I don’t have the right to ask you that
.

“I won’t,” Paul says.

Can’t
.

Jerry Caltagirone steps away from Madeline Powers. Decent manners dictate as much. She is about to look at a dead man in a refrigerated drawer and odds are this man used to be someone she loved. Some kid he’s never seen before is working the morning shift at the morgue and Caltagirone feels like slapping him on the back of the head: you do not fucking stand next to someone and chew gum when they are identifying a body.

A cloud of mist forms as the freezing air of the drawer mixes with the merely cold air of the white-tiled room. Caltagirone folds his arms over his chest and respectfully lowers his eyes while Madeline does the dance they all seem to do down here—the leaning forward, the rearing back, the coming forward again, hands up to the face, and then the shaking.

He steps forward, gesturing with his eyes for the kid to close the drawer, though it occurs to him the kid isn’t such a kid, and has, in fact, gray in his sideburns.
I’m getting that old
, Caltagirone thinks, as he leads Madeline away.

“Why would God let something like this happen?” she says. There’s something about the words and how she says them that strikes Caltagirone as a little stale. If Madeline wants to be taken for the grieving widow, she has dressed for the role: a black skirt with a matching jacket, dark hose, black heels, a simple strand of pearls, sunglasses she’s wearing up in her streaked blond hair. She has a flat, not very lively voice, like people have who don’t like to argue, the types who will agree to whatever you want, though they won’t necessarily
do
anything about it.

“I really appreciate your coming all this way,” Caltagirone says to her.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. Everybody’s buying real estate in California these days and my bank’s in chaos. They’ve got half of us in there working Saturdays.”

“Important thing is you made it,” Caltagirone says. He pushes the door open and they are in the hallway now. Once in a while, for no reason he can figure out, Caltagirone heats up—his face reddens and he can in a minute sweat right through his shirt, right through a jacket, too.

“I guess all these things happen for a reason,” Madeline says. She is a tall woman, with strong-looking hands and broad shoulders. The scent of her perfume is flowery and strong. “I really do believe God or whoever doesn’t put anything in front of us we can’t handle.”

Caltagirone nods noncommittally. He hasn’t been inside a church since his First Communion, and he and his wife would not put their kids through the horror show of religious education—it’s not just mean nuns any longer, at this point it’s sex-starved priests, and why would you ever want to put your kids around that? And he doesn’t buy it that seven years old is the age of reason, when children know the difference between Good and Evil. What he knows from years on the job is the age of reason is maybe never. And as for God—he’s up there, but he leaves it to us to do the dirty work.

“You doing okay, there, Madeline?” he says.

“I’m all right. It’s good to have closure.”

Yeah, closure, Caltagirone thinks. It’s one of the words people use when they’re hanging on by their fingernails. The way people start talking about their life as if it were a
journey
when they want to pretend that it is all leading somewhere.

“Why don’t we go upstairs,” Caltagirone says. “We can sit at my desk, or if you want we can go out to a restaurant.”

“I’m not really hungry,” Madeline says apologetically.

Shit. You just looked at your dead boyfriend and you don’t want any salami and eggs?

“I really appreciate you coming in, all this way, and with everything else.”

“It’s okay, detective. I’ve got something else you’re really going to appreciate, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I remember the guy, the guy Will was afraid of.”

“Just like that?”

“I know who murdered Will.”

“Yeah?” He’s getting excited but he doesn’t want to push.

“I know it as plain as the nose on my face. I know it without any doubts whatsoever.”

“How come we’re just hearing this right now?”

They are standing in front of the elevator. The chicken-wired diamond window brightens up with the light of the four-person cab, and the dull silver doors open noisily.

“You’re looking for a Hawaiian fuck named Tom Butler. I saw him once, he came to the house about a week after my poor Will took off. That’s who Will was running from, and eventually he caught him and killed him—and for what?”

She holds up four fingers and a thumb, by which Caltagirone takes her to mean five thousand dollars. He’s known plenty of guys who killed men for less.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

At the end of the next month, the very last night of the year, the last night of the decade, the last night of the twentieth century, and the last four hours of New York’s share of the Second Millennium, silver smoke from the chimneys on either end of Kate’s long house streams upward toward the golden moon, the windows blaze with light, and behind the shades silhouettes bow and sway like figures in a shadow play.

Annabelle and Bernard sit in their car on the circular driveway in front of Kate’s house. Annabelle turns off the car’s engine and the warmth of the interior quickly seeps out, leaving in its wake the scent of damp velour seat covers and Bernard’s piney aftershave. She keeps her hands on the steering wheel, and Bernard is next to her with his hands on his knees, but he is all but invisible in the darkness. “How you making out there, buddy?” Annabelle says.

“Time is passing,” Bernard says, shaking his head.

“I know,” Annabelle says. “And I feel sorry for you, I do. I know it’s not easy for you to be away from your old home.”

He turns toward her, gratefully. “I worry about my family,” he says. “I miss them all. And my city, my home.”

“I want to be your home, Bernard,” Annabelle says, in the most profound declaration of love she has ever made, which she can barely believe she has spoken in the front seat of the Deathmobile. She pulls her glove off with her teeth, spits it out onto her lap, and touches his cheek with her bare hand. “Maybe one day we can go together and live for a while, back in Beirut.”

“My beautiful friend,” Bernard says, taking Annabelle’s hand and pressing his lips against the cool lines of her face.

Through the windshield, they see Paul walking outside with his dog, a plume of breath flowing over his shoulder like a windblown scarf. He is wearing a leather jacket that he has not bothered to zipper and he walks with his hands folded in front of him, like a monk who prays while he walks.

Annabelle taps the heel of her hand against the side of the steering wheel, blowing the car’s horn in a quick, short burst. Paul turns toward the sound, squints to see through the darkness, until he can see his sister’s face behind the windshield, floating up through the reflection of upside-down bare treetops.

They meet in the driveway’s dappled darkness, the frozen gravel sharp and harsh through the soles of Annabelle’s shoes—she has been looking forward to this party for weeks, but she regrets the shoes. Paul kisses his sister, not just on one cheek but on both of them. The gallantry, even in its oddness, lifts her spirits. He shakes Bernard’s hand with his right hand and envelops it with the left; the last time she saw a man making that ultra-sincere, hearts-on-fire sort of handshake was someone trying to sell Bernard life insurance.

“You’re in a jolly mood,” Annabelle says. She hears an odd note of accusation in her voice and smiles broadly to even things out.

“I think I’m a little light-headed.”

“At least someone’s doing some serious drinking in this house,” Annabelle says.

“Actually, I was giving blood. The hospital’s expecting a busy night. Anyhow, let’s go in where it’s warm.”

As soon as they open the door, the heat and noise of the party come rushing toward them. Annabelle notes the look of apprehension on Bernard’s face. Like other Middle Eastern people she has met, Bernard is often made squeamish by his perception of Americans’ lack of hygiene, and for him a crowded room like this is as viral as a day-care center. She links her arm through his, says, “Oh look, Bernard, how happy everything looks.”

Twinkling blue lights outline the windows. A Christmas tree, weeping tinsel, stands in the corner. The rugs have been rolled, most of the furniture hauled to the back of the house or pushed against the walls. Music plays from a boom box on the mantel, but no one can hear it over the human noise. There are a few young people in black pants and white shirts, circulating trays of canapés. An oak table has been covered with a white tablecloth and turned into the bar. Two Marlowe College students are pouring the drinks. They are both from Brazil, both stranded in the cold, closed college over the holiday break. Their smiles are broad, bright, and unvarying; they have each taken half tabs of Ecstasy before coming to work.

The two center rooms in the house are filled with people holding plastic wineglasses and small paper plates patterned in exploding confetti, noisemakers, and the numerals of the new year strung together like paper dolls. On nearly every surface throughout the house there are candles and an occasional kerosene lamp, in the event that the electricity is lost and the party is plunged into darkness.

“This is a good place to be,” Bernard says to Annabelle, and the generosity and serenity of his remark fills her with happiness and she links her hand in his and presses herself closer to him.

“That’s Paul’s sister over there,” Kate is saying to a semicircle of six people. The man on whose face Kate’s eyes neutrally rest is a small, wiry fellow, with a frizzy wedge of copper hair and long, shaggy sideburns, several shades darker. His name is Joseph Van Leuchtenmueller, but he is willing to be called German Joe. He teaches dressage at a large equine facility on the edge of Leyden, and he lives in the damp stone gatehouse on one of the river estates, a vast holding owned by another German, a woman named Ilse Wagner, who is said to be related to Richard Wagner.

Joseph seems to float on waves of goodwill, primarily from the wealthy Leydenites whose children he has taught to ride. His position at Windsor Stables is not well-paying, but he is charged a pittance for his lodgings on the estate, and there is a theatricality and kindness to him that garners invitations to not just picnics and dinners but to European and Caribbean holidays. Kate and German Joe know each other from the AA meeting that convenes in a town called Freedom Trail, eighteen miles south of Leyden.
I am the play toy of our local principessas
, Joseph once declared in a meeting.

“Ilse was going to meet her sisters in Cologne,” Joseph says, “but I got her not to go. I said, imagine you are in a jet somewhere and suddenly all the computers everywhere go mad. Is this really where you want to be? Of course Ilse believes that Lufthansa has its own systems entirely independent of all the other computers and so they’re immune to any Y2K catastrophes. And you know how persuasive she can be. I found myself half-believing her, until I snapped out of it.”

“You should have brought her along,” Kate says.

“I tried. But she’s furious with me now. She’s home all by herself, sitting in her robe, watching television. I’ll tell you this much, if there are not a large number of airline catastrophes around midnight, it’s going to be a long time before I am welcomed at her table.” His laughter is the brave song of a man who has a life based on the goodwill of wealthy benefactors, and who knows there are others in the wings who will one day sweep in and take his place.

A number of people have brought their children to the party. Parents with young children have decided to keep the family together, in case even half of the Y2K predictions come true. Most of those with older offspring have not been able to convince their children to accompany them to the party, but a few of them are here with their teenagers in tow, most of whom have known each other their entire lives. They have gazed at each other from strollers with cereal crumbs in their laps and apple juice–stained smiles, they have stepped on each other’s fingers and foreheads as they clambered up and down the monkey bars at the Leyden Rec Center, scrimmaged on soccer and Little League fields, sat together on the school bus with its immemorial redolence of exhaust, anxiety, and milk, and though they have now divided along class lines—those with wealthier parents going to one of the county’s two private schools, and those with parents of more modest means making do with Leyden High School—this evening there is a fellowship of the stranded among all of them. Like citizens of an occupied country, they cluster together, making comments under their breath and plotting the party’s overthrow, a subversion centered on sneaked cigarettes, pilfered liquor, and finding the house’s fuse box, with the plan of pulling the master switch at midnight so that they might drag the house into darkness and make all the idiots believe that the infrastructure of the world has gone up in smoke.

Nina Drazen, with wide-set brown eyes, thin, flyaway hair, wearing glasses and a long calico dress like those worn by Mormon child brides, stands apart from the others, next to her mother. “All I’m saying,” Joyce is telling Nina, in a tone that is at once bossy and put-upon, “is there’s nothing wrong with going up to her and asking her if she’s had a chance to read your stories. How do you think Kate Ellis became Kate Ellis? Not by sitting on her rear end and hoping someone would come along and discover her. She worked at it. She met the right people and she got to know them, I assure you of that. There’s a lot more to success than just doing good work. Sometimes you have to push, Nina, that’s all there is to it.”

“But Dad said,” Nina begins, drawing herself up and then quickly deflating as her mother leaps back in.

“Oh please, don’t even go there. Your father is pathologically diffident,” Joyce says. “You can’t go by what he says.” She herself is surprised by how far she is willing to go to make her point. She steals a nervous glance across the room. Her husband is talking with two of his fellow trustees of the Windsor County Hospital, for which he serves as head of capital development, raising three to five million dollars a year, the pathological diffidence his wife perceives notwithstanding. He feels her attention come in his direction, as palpable as a cold draft, and he looks up at Joyce, smiles, and taps his finger against the face of his wristwatch, which might mean that he would like to leave soon, or that it is closing in on the magic hour when the train of civilization will either jump its track and go plunging into the rivers of chaos, or millions of people will shout Happy New Year, twirl their noisemakers, and toot their horns and kiss those they love or wished they loved, just like every other year.

Joyce and Nina are joined by Paul followed by Shep, who walks across the bare floor as if picking his way over ice.

“Hey Joyce,” Paul says. “I just wanted to tell you that if the universe survives I am going to stop by and take a look at that kitchen of yours.”

“Can I give your dog a piece of cheese?” Nina asks.

“It needs more than you just taking a look at it, Paul,” Joyce is saying. “It’s a disaster area.”

“Sure,” Paul says to Nina. “Just be a little careful. He’s not too smart about fingers.”

Nina takes a couple of moments to choose the right cheese cube and places it on her palm and holds it out for Shep, who nuzzles her hand with his nose and lips.

“He likes me!” Nina exclaims.

“Of course he does,” says Paul. “Who wouldn’t?”

After carefully picking up the cheese from Nina’s outstretched hand, the dog spits it out and sniffs at it suspiciously until, with some reluctance, he picks it back up and slowly chews it, with his shoulders hunched and his gaze fixed on the bare floor.

“He’s a little unhappy because we moved the furniture and rolled up the rugs,” Paul tells them. “He likes things to pretty much stay the same. I think what I’m going to do is stow him someplace quiet.”

As Paul leaves the house again, he wonders if he is acting strangely. His intention is to bring Shep to the shop, stoke up the stove so it will be reasonably warm in there, and then return to the party, yet being inside with all of those people is proving more difficult than he would have imagined. At least fifteen of the guests tonight are people with whom Kate attends AA meetings, hours of the week expressly reserved for confession, during which Friends of Bill W. recall crimes against loved ones or their own livers. Kate herself has joked about how there is an unspoken competition in these meetings, a race to the bottom, in which having suffered the greatest humiliations, the most bewildering blackouts, the most irrevocable losses of love, occupation, position, and self-respect makes you the winner. Would it really be outside the arc of credibility to imagine Kate standing up one evening and saying,
I almost drank today, because my boyfriend killed someone with his bare hands
?

Paul pulls open the door to the workshop, switches on the lights, and the workshop springs into view—the saws, the drafting tables, drills, compressor, the dozens of window frames leaning against the walls, some with glass, some without, the lengths of curing wood stacked one board length on top of the next, with pine wedges between each of them so the air can circulate. The hanging spotlights have rudimentary metal shades, and a protective iron mask covers the face of each bulb. The tangy smell of oil is in the air, mixing with the shop scent of sawdust.

A few months ago, Kate invited Paul to take over this space, and now he cannot imagine working in any other place. Whatever the pleasures of living off the grid, it is a relief to have a place to almost call his own. He spends hours every week putting finishing touches on the workshop, sanding the floorboards, painting the walls, replacing the windows, upgrading the outlets, building shelves and cabinets, bringing in a hot plate, a mini-fridge, and even rescuing a pale, worn Persian carpet from Kate’s attic to create a sitting area in the shop’s northeast corner, where the stove is perched on a pedestal of old bricks and the firewood is stacked, and where Shep likes to doze, sometimes with one bloodshot eye open, and at other times so deeply asleep it is all Paul can do to stop himself from nudging the dog with the toe of his boot.

Now, Shep sits as Paul crouches to feed a few of the smaller logs into the wood burner—anything larger will extinguish the feeble flame. He watches until the new wood catches fire, and then shuts the door, making sure it is airtight.

“Okay, old buddy,” he says to Shep, who turns in a circle a few times, still reliving the ancient instinct to push back the tall grass before collapsing on the carpet.

“Can you fucking believe we’ve got a party on our hands?” Paul says.