Chapter thirty-one

I know a jazzman down in St. Mark’s Place. His name is Moe. He plays the saxophone. He’s also an alcoholic. I didn’t know that when we met because he was on the wagon. Then one night he started drinking.

I was with him at the time; me and Charlie Rose. And we watched him, me and Charlie. We watched the way he drank. He sipped at the surface of the amber scotch at first, just as he was getting started. Then, slowly, he delved into it. Finally he tilted the glass and drained it in a long, even flow. Charlie and I saw it. We saw the focus of his mind contracting. We saw all his purposes fall away but one. Fall away so that the long, even amber flow was soon continuous, so that all his mind was bent on making it that way, making it never end.

Charlie and I could barely carry each other home when we left Moe in Ingmar’s. We left him there with his elbow bent and his wrist tilted and his mind at one with the long, even flow that still was not finished, that has not finished since. I have to admit I almost admired him. I wondered: How can you want anything so much? What can be so fine that it ignites the attentive center of your soul like that and brings it into perfect alignment with the object of your desire?

Now I saw her lying next to me and I knew.

We had come inside finally. We were in my bed upstairs. It was just twilight. Her red hair was splayed on the pillow like the rays of the sun. We were lying on top of the covers.

“I have to get under,” she whispered.

“No, don’t.”

“I’m cold.”

I wouldn’t let her. I ran my hands over the length of her. I kissed her. I couldn’t stop.

She was Laura’s child, the maid’s. Once I had read it in the prosecutor’s opening statement, it seemed that I’d always known. I remembered the image of Laura dying, of her sliding, gunshot, down the staircase wall. I remembered her hair seemed to extend over the wall as she fell. Because her hair was red. Like the blood. like Susannah’s. That was why she was downstairs with Laura when the rest of us were on the inn’s second story. That was why a lot of things. The fissure was open now. Not only the past, but the future, too, was clamoring to be seen. But for now I could only run my hands over the length of her. I kissed her. I couldn’t stop.

The next time I looked at the window, it was full dark.

She was on her side. Her head was resting on her hands. I was behind her. I was running my finger down over her back.

“I must have been illegitimate,” she said. It was opening for her too.

I said: “My father must have taken her in. Laura, I mean. That Campbell guy kept calling him a pimp. That must be why. She was pregnant, unwed.”

She rolled around to me, grabbed me, kissed me fiercely.

“Oh North, North, has anyone ever loved you this much?”

“My mama,” I whispered. “But she died.”

She kissed me.

“Are you really going to kill the scarred man?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re sexy.”

I tilted back from her. “Because I’m going to kill him?”

“Yes. Or if you don’t.”

“I like your attitude.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you …”

“Yes.”

“What? Tell me.”

“That nothing matters.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Except us.”

“Even all of it. None of it. Except us.”

I kissed her, held her. I hardly knew anything but how white her skin was and how pink it was in places.

She pulled back from me a little. “Lights,” she said. Her throat was taut. I lay my lips against it. “Lights,” she whispered. “North, he’s home.”

I looked up. I saw them for an instant too. I saw their glow against the wall. I heard the Chevy’s motor. Then the room was dark again. The motor died. I heard the car door open and shut.

Susannah had rolled away from me. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table. She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, looking back at me over her naked shoulder.

I got up. My pants lay sprawled on the floor. I grabbed them, started pulling them on.

“North …” she said.

I found my shirt draped across a corner of the bed. I yanked on one sleeve, the other. Then I was dressed and heading for the door.

She stood up, holding the bedsheet in front of her. “He was very nice to me,” she said.

“We belong to each other. We always have.”

I went out to meet him.

He was inside and calling out to her when I came to the top of the stairs. He was swinging around to mount, his hand on the newel post. He looked up and saw me. I started down toward him.

He began to smile when he saw me, but he stopped. He waited. I came off the last step and stood in front of him. He glanced up and then at me again. He was not surprised.

He turned his back on me and took a few steps into the living room. He flicked on a lamp.

“You were too smart from the beginning, Ben,” I said. “Too smart by half. You had all the papers, the documents.”

He swung around, his eyes blazing.

“You knew,” I said. “You had to know.”

His lips were tight in that granite face. His voice snapped out at me, a whisper, though, a hiss: “There would have been someone else for you.”

“What were you gonna do, keep her here?”

“I didn’t have to keep her here.”

“She’d have found out.”

“I would’ve played for time.”

My fists were clenched at my sides. “There isn’t enough time.”

For a moment I thought he would try to hit me. I was hoping he would try to hit me. But he hesitated. Then he turned away, shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “I guess there isn’t. I guess I never thought there was.” He breathed sharply once through his nose. He glanced back at me. “Consider it a loan.”

“How did you find out?”

“Oh, hell, I had it from the beginning. The minute you told me the story, with her downstairs, and the maid’s hair and everything …”

“Jesus.” He was awfully damned good. “Did she tell you? About us?”

He laughed bitterly. “I could smell the wood burning, North, she didn’t have to tell me. I could sit for hours with her and watch her burn. And you.”

“Jesus,” I whispered. “You had all of it. You held on to all of it.”

“They were only suspicions. Technically, anyway. You can suspect a long time before you know.”

I nodded. “Yeah.” My fists weren’t clenched anymore.

“I only got all of it this evening.” One corner of his mouth lifted. He dug into his pocket and hauled out a cigarette. Slapped it into his face. Leaned into the flare of the match. “I’d have ducked it if I could,” he said, breathing out the smoke.

“Gimme,” I said. He tossed me the pack, the matches. I lit one. He watched me.

“How did she take it?” he said finally. “The part about McGill, I mean.”

I had been waving my hand to kill the match. I stopped, my hand hanging in the air, the dead match smoking in it.

Slowly, Yardley smiled.

“You don’t know,” he said.

“What about McGill?”

“You don’t know.” He spoke proudly now.

I acknowledged it. “All right. I don’t know. What about McGill?”

“He’s her father.”

We heard it hit her where she stood. We heard her gasp. We both turned to see her at the top of the stairs.